"Thorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meadows green, And through the brake and thorn, And there did he the maiden find, She drove her ...
— Tord of Hafsborough - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... Telling over proverbs that the tribal wisemen teach, Brother promising blood-brother partnership in weal and woe - Nightlong stories of the runners come from spying on the foe - Nights of boasting by the thorn-fire of the coming tale of slain - Oh the times before the English! When will those times ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... easily, so pleasantly on mountains and in the fields. Oh, once I was thirsty; but now the dew is mine and the little springs. Once I traced my way painfully by forest paths through bog and brake and tangled brier. But now my pathways are in the bright, clear air, where never thorn can tear nor beast can follow. Farewell, dear father! I am ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... receptacle opened, a sort of false cupboard constructed in the angle between the wall and the chimney-piece; in this hiding-place there were some rags—a blue linen blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old knapsack, and a huge thorn cudgel shod with iron at both ends. Those who had seen Jean Valjean at the epoch when he passed through D——in October, 1815, could easily have recognized all the pieces ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... ten miles from the mouth of the harbour, and three from the mainland, had long been a thorn in the side of Bombay trade. At the time of the first occupation of Bombay it was uninhabited. In 1679 it was suddenly occupied by Sivajee, who began to fortify it. The danger of this to Bombay was at once seen, and part of the garrison was sent in small vessels, afterwards reinforced ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... death from us has torn, We did not think so soon to part; An anxious care now sinks the thorn Still deeper ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... June had lured her rose To mask the sharpness of its thorn; Knocked yet again, heard only yet Thee singing of ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... being so greedy she forgot to be afraid, and actually flew to a neighbouring thorn tree to meet the Cardinal, coming with food, before she realized what she had done. For once gluttony had its proper reward. She not only missed the bite, but she got her little self mightily well scared. With popping ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... a day—that is, we did not start again until the evening, husbanding our strength for the worst part of the way, which was yet to come. From this point the water-holes became less frequent, and the landscape particularly cheerless—monotonous stony expanses alternating with hideous thorn-thickets. Yet both men and beasts held out bravely through those three miserable days, and on the 12th of May we reached in good condition, though wetted to the skin by a sudden and unexpected downpour of rain, the charming ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... potatoes and young beets separately till tender; then peel and slice. Put thorn in alternate layers in a vegetable dish, with salt to taste, and enough sweet cream nearly to cover. Brown in the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... did come a visitor in the night, as evidenced by a scrawled warning, on a dirty piece of paper, fastened to a stubby tree by a long, sharp thorn. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... shillings, three watercolour paintings, "Spring," "The Banjo Player," and "Windsor Castle," for five shillings; a tiny fender, half-a-crown; a toilet set, five shillings; another very small square-topped table, three and sixpence. Whenever I bid for anything, Whitehall thrust his black-thorn up into the air, and presently I found him doing so on my behalf when I had no intention of buying. I narrowly escaped having to give fourteen and sixpence for a stuffed macaw in a ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... no error, the Bible was true, more or less; Faith was not built on running water or on sand. Life was not a mere hellish mockery, where tiaras turned to crowns of thorn and joy was but an inch rule by which to measure the alps of human pain. Life was a door, a gateway. The door dreadful, the gate perilous, if you will, but beyond it lay no dream, no empty blackness. Beyond ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... prey. For if we do not utterly fail, which is the lot of so many of us, still partial success has little power of bringing perfect satisfaction to a human spirit. One loss counterbalances any number of gains. No matter how soft is the mattress, if there is one tiny thorn sticking up through it all the softness goes for nothing. There is always a Mordecai sitting at the gate when Haman goes prancing through it on his white horse; and the presence of the unsympathetic and stiff-backed Jew, sitting stolid at the gate, takes the gilt ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... depth being from two to three fathoms. At the fourth hour, imagining our cattle to be far behind, we pulled in, and walked up a well-cultivated hill to Yaragonjo's, the governor of these parts. The guide, however, on first sighting his thorn-fenced cluster of huts, regarding it apparently with the awe and deference due to a palace, shrank from advancing, and merely pointed, till he was forced on, and in the next minute we found ourselves confronted with the heads of the establishment. The father of the house, surprised at our unexpected ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... and the aik and the thorn (Sweet fruits are sair to gather) He's laid his brother to lie forlorn: And the wind ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... have I kept for thee. And the Beloved to know and to have peace in the remembering. But what doth be the peculiar sorrow of they that have gone over-lightly, when that they shall meet the Beloved; for then shall there be a constant and inward regret, as a thorn in the heart, that they not to have observed alway that holy care of all which doth pertain unto love; and they nigh to moan in the spirit, if they had but known, if they had but known. Yet, in the end, of their pain, shall they ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... That I shall ravish you! Your arms are languorous lilies— There is not a thorn In all your slender greenness, And you are sweet to ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... Ilion's city came by stealth A spirit as of windless seas and skies, A gentle phantom-form of joy and wealth, With love's soft arrows speeding from its eyes— Love's rose, whose thorn doth pierce the soul in ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... psychological fact of long standing we know that other elements may be injected into that system so as to change it, or that one system may be destroyed and another system built up to take its place. This is the secret of cures of this nature—of mental troubles—the irritating factor, the thorn in the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Thorn—', no, 'Thorndyke, Lawton and Dwight.' I'm too excited—convicts must feel like that when they tunnel a hole and get out. It will be ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... song, Voluptuous soul of the amorous South! Oh! whence the wind, the rain, the drouth; The dews of eve; the mists of morn; The bloom of rose; the thistle's thorn; Whence light of love; whence dark of scorn; Whence joy; whence grief; Death, born of wrong— Ah! whence is life ten-thousand passions throng?— Thence ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... been the awakening of a new life within her; it marked her off from the criminals whose only regret is failure in securing their evil wish. Deronda could not utter one word to diminish that sacred aversion to her worst self—that thorn-pressure which must come with the crowning of the sorrowful better, suffering because of the worse. All this mingled thought and feeling kept him silent; speech was too momentous to be ventured on rashly. There were no words of comfort that did not carry ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... descending to the high-road in parallel lines, their back gardens (which are somewhat longer) climbing to a little wood of secular elms, traditionally asserted to be the remnant of a mighty forest. The party hedge is heightened by a thick screen of white-thorn on which the buds were just showing pink when I took up my lodging in the left-hand cottage (the 10th of May by my diary); and at the end of it are two small arbours, set back to back, their dilapidated sides and roofs ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... account of me above that which he seeth me to be, or heareth from me. And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations—wherefore that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... charmed them with the prospect of a fete, which, as he said, he was to give in my honor, and they believed the mockery, and allowed themselves to be touched by that noble condescension, and felt not the cruel boasting with which he solemnizes the return of him who is a thorn in his flesh, a thorn which he is firmly determined to pluck out, and tread under foot! I came here humble, poor, and empty-handed, and he solemnizes my return by offering presents to my mother and my sisters! And they accept them, feel not at all the degradation, and will appear at the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai. 5 But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low 10 lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech bolt snick where never ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... he climbed the lava to the topmost cone, and never slipped on a ragged crust nor touched a choya thorn. A voice called to him. He saw Nell's eyes in the stars, in the velvet blue of sky, in the blackness of the engulfing shadows. She was with him, a slender shape, a spirit, keeping step with him, and memory was strong, sweet, beating, beautiful. Far down in the west, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Vladika had certainly expressed to me a hope that he should visit England some time. There can be no doubt that it is well worth while thus to secure the alliance of the Montenegrians, for they would prove a bitter thorn in any collision either with Turkey or Austria. The country is divided into twelve military jurisdictions, under so many captains, and every man is bound to serve, though by what power, except inclination, I am sure I do not know. I do not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... hoarsely. "You've said the wrong thing." He peered round earnestly at the door, to make sure Joan had not returned. "Baxter—the man she's going to marry—is a perfect martyr to indigestion. It is the one thorn in the rose. A most suitable match in every other way, but he lives"—and the old gentleman tapped Vane on the shoulder to emphasise this hideous thing—"he lives on ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... because he splashed mud all over me. Old Peter brought me one day an immense pair of boots large enough for me to jump into when going from one place to another, and to jump out of and leave at the entrance of the sick wards. With these, an army blanket thrown over my shoulders and pinned with a thorn, and my dress kilted up like a washerwoman's, I defied alike the liquid streets and the piercing wind. My "nursery" was at this time filled to overflowing. My mind's eye takes in every nook and corner of that large room. It is very ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... but the first time that she looked at him be became as red as a carrot; for nothing in the world would he have looked a second time—he wriggled on his chair for an hour afterward as if he had been seated on a thorn; he told me afterward that the look had recalled to his mind all the histories of that impudent Bradamanti about the savagesses, which made him blush so much, my old prude ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... did, and I had never, to my knowledge, felt just so about Agnes Anne. Indeed, I don't think I had ever held Agnes Anne's hand so long in my life, except to pick a thorn out of it with a needle, or to point out ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... country called Red Russia, the palatinate of Belz, and a portion of the province of Volhynia. But even this did not satisfy the spoliators. The treaty was scarcely signed when Frederick extended the limits of his acquisitions in the neighbourhood of Thorn, and to the east of the Devenza, while Austria seized on Casimir, part of the palatinate of Lublin, and some lands lying on the right bank of the Bog. Were not these three powers actuated by a spirit of revenge and envy, as well ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... have no thorn To lean my breast on. I've been happy all day, And happiness ever made a ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... did, and tied their horses to a thorn-bush growing thereby; and Waywearer took the bundle off his horse and said to Osberne: "Hast thou any guess at what this good thing is?" Osberne reddened and said: "That is the sword which thou didst promise me last spring." Waywearer laughed and ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... the gnarled thorn, Prattles upon his frolic flute, or flings, In bounding flight across the golden morn, An azure gleam from off his splendid wings. Here the slim-pinioned swallows sweep and pass Down to the far-off river; the black crow With wise and wary ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... the secret of his taste when he wrote in "Wenderholme": "For the present we must leave him (Captain Eureton) in the tranquil happiness of devising desks and pigeon-holes with Mr. Bettison, an intelligent joiner at Sooty thorn, than which few occupations can be more delightful." About the pigeon-holes, a friend of my husband once made a discovery which he declared astounding. "I well knew that Mr. Hamerton was a model of order," he said to me; "but I only knew to what extent when, having to seek ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... than Peter? and yet by repentance (saith Curysologus) they got both Magisterium et ministerium sanctitatis, the Magistery of holiness. The prodigal son went far, but by repentance he came home at last. [6774]"This alone will turn a wolf into a sheep, make a publican a preacher, turn a thorn into an olive, make a debauched fellow religious," a blasphemer sing halleluja, make Alexander the coppersmith truly devout, make a devil a saint. [6775]"And him that polluted his mouth with calumnies, lying, swearing, and filthy tunes and tones, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... whether he could keep his hold on the Belgian coast. About thirty miles along the coast from Ostend, and forty or more miles from Zeebrugge, lay the port of Dunkirk, occupied in strength by the navies of France and Great Britain, and by the Royal Naval Air Service. Dunkirk was a thorn in the side of the Germans. The docks and harbours at Bruges, Zeebrugge, and Ostend were incessantly bombed from the air. Ships and works were seriously damaged, but the effect on the morale of the German forces was ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... its own. Everything is all buddy-buddy now. Purges are something from the past. However, those on the very top sometimes find this unfortunate. One manner that has been devised to remove such Party members who have become a thorn in the side of the powers that be, is to have them challenged by such as ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... poured forth money to create a Paradise out here, and, when it was nearly finished, had suddenly repented of his whim and refused to spend another farthing. The thousands upon thousands of mighty trees were bounded by long, irregular walls of hard earth, at the top of which were stuck distraught thorn bushes. These walls gave the rough, penurious aspect which was in such sharp contrast to the exotic mystery they guarded. Yet in the fierce blaze of the sun their meanness was not disagreeable. Domini even liked it. It seemed to her as if the desert had thrown up waves to ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Goodie She trots betimes Over the meadows To Farmer Grimes. And never was queen With jewelry rich As those same hedges From twig to ditch; Like Dutchmen's coffers, Fruit, thorn, and flower - They shone like William And Mary's bower. And be sure Old Goodie Went back to Weep, So tired with her ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... Alexandria slept in a marsh, and exposed his naked body to the stings of venomous flies.... His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well.... St. Besarion spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn bushes, and for forty days and nights never lay down when he slept.... Some saints, like St. Marcian, restricted themselves to one meal a day, so small that they continually suffered the pangs of hunger.... Some of the hermits lived ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... over hills and over dales he fled, As if the wind him on his wings had borne; Nor bank nor bush could stay him, when he sped His nimble feet, as treading still on thorn; Grief, and Despite, and Jealousy, and Scorn, Did all the way him follow hard behind; And he himself himself loath'd so forlorn, So shamefully forlorn of womankind, That, as a snake, still lurked in ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... bright-winter's day? She told them of the fairy-haunted land Away the other side of Brittany, Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea; 155 Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande, deg. deg.156 Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps. For here he came with the fay deg. Vivian, deg.158 One April, when the warm days first began. He was on foot, and that false fay, his friend, 160 On her white palfrey; here he met his end, In these lone sylvan glades, that April-day. This tale of Merlin and the lovely fay deg. deg.163 ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... Quarles. "Now, here are the letters. This one is dated eighteen months ago, postmark Liverpool, written at Thorn's Hotel, Liverpool. 'Dear Jack,—Back again like the proverbial bad penny. Health first class; luck medium. Pocket full enough to have a rollick with you. Shall be with you the day after to-morrow.—Yours, C.M.' Your friend Parrish was ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... in one of his Cornish stories exactly this conception. Rags were offered. "Just a rag tored off a petticoat or some such thing. They hanged 'em up around about on the thorn bushes, to shaw as they'd 'a' done more for the good saint if they'd ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... New villanies on the part of this most perverted man came to my ear: but he is dead; let us spare his memory. For you—oh, still let me deem myself your friend,—your more than brother; let me hope now that I have planted no thorn in that breast, and that your affection does not shrink from the cold word ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was in these days a thorn in our hero's side; but Mr. Hart was a scourge of scorpions. Mr. Hart never ceased to talk of Mr. Walker, and of the determination of Walker and Bullbean to go before a magistrate if restitution were not made. Cousin George of course denied the foul play, but admitted that he would repay the money ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... had been escorted on horseback as far as Eerste Fabrieken on the North-east Railway, when they had nearly run into the enemy's lines. They altered their course and rode to Irene, hiding themselves and fastening their horses in a clump of thorn trees, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... host, and was off, and already out of the town, just as the Duke and Dr. Joel reached the inn, to try and get him back again. So they return raging and swearing, while Jobst crouches down behind a thorn-bush with his little daughter, till the coach comes up. And they have scarcely mounted it, when Dr. Cramer, of Old Stettin, drives up; for he was on his way to induct a rector (I know not whom) into his parish, as the ecclesiastical ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... celebrated in the present. Susan was that thing. It was said of her that she had kept her husband, an elegant soft old gentleman, in Congress for a quarter of a century and up to the very day of his death by being a thorn in the side of the political life of the state. She kept scrapbooks in which she pasted dangerous and damaging information about politicians and prominent men generally. Whenever one of them became a candidate ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... inventive handling of rhythmical language, from what Keats called the 'sensuous life of verse.' The element of song in the singing accompanied by the profound joy of motion, is so sweet that, while the incomplete lives of ordinary men bring no healing power with them, the thorn-crown of the poet will blossom into roses for our pleasure; for our delight his despair will gild its own thorns, and his pain, like Adonis, be beautiful in its agony; and when the poet's heart breaks ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... formation secured to Greece as a whole, was at its utmost in these minute reflexions of the national character, with all the relish of local difference—new art, new poetry, fresh ventures in political combination, in the conception of life, springing as if straight from the soil, like the thorn-blossom of early spring in magic lines over all that rocky land. On the other hand, it was just here that ancient habits clung most tenaciously—that old-fashioned, homely, delightful existence, to which the refugee, pent up in Athens in the years of the Peloponnesian ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... The natural strength of his Countrey. Watches and Thorn-gates. None to pass from the King's City without Pasports. His Soldiery. All men of Arms wait at Court. The Soldiers have Lands allotted them insted of Pay. To prevent the Soldiers from Plotting. The manner of sending them out on Expeditions. Requires all the ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... come out to ramble The hilly brakes around, For under thorn and bramble About the hollow ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... Williams himself was not long in coming to the Baptist position and passing beyond it. The Quakers found Rhode Island a safe asylum from persecution, whether Puritan or Dutch. More disorderly and mischievous characters, withal, quartered themselves, unwelcome guests, on the young commonwealth, a thorn in its side and a reproach to its principles. It became clear to Williams before his death that the declaration of individual rights and independence is not of itself a sufficient foundation for a state. The heterogeneous population failed to settle into any stable polity. After two generations the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... sure you want me? Are you not tired of the thorn that has fretted you so long? Remember, I am so young, so ignorant, and unfitted for a wife. Can I give you real happiness? make home what you would have it? and never see in your face regret that some wiser, better woman was not in ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... species of the thorn distributed throughout the United States. All the Northern species, so far as I know, have white flowers. In the South they are more inclined to be pink or roseate. If Columbus picked up at sea a spray ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... child-laughter rang out, and there appeared in the doorway, illuminated by the afternoon sunbeams, the vision of Miss Roxy's tall, lank figure, with the little golden-haired, blue-robed fairy, hanging like a gay butterfly upon the tip of a thorn-bush. Sally dropped the sheet and clapped her hands, unnoticed by her mother, who rose to pay her respects to the "cunning woman" ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to Washington "from many official and consular sources that the late British agent at this capital [presumably Mr. Green] was always a thorn in the side of this Government, and that he is, in part, responsible for this present war."[8] It was pointed out that since this was the attitude of the Republican Government there existed at Pretoria a decided aversion to the recognition of any one who might ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... her betrothed, and turned from him, and hardened at his tenderness, and made her sweet shape as a thorn to his caressing, and his heart was charged with anguish for her. So at the last, when he had wept a space in silence, he cried, 'Thou hast willed it; the Jewel shall be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for breaking up quarters at St. Louis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty. Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid thorn good-bye. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... that li'l nest finished time began to hang heavy on his hands. Yes, Suh, it cert'nly did. Just because he didn't have anything else to do he began to add a little more to his house. One day he stepped on a thorn. 'Ouch!' cried Brer Rat, and then right away forgot the pain in a new idea. He would cover his house with thorns, leavin' just a little secret entrance for hisself! Then he would be safe, wholly safe from his big ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... commiseration. The level rain-storm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the cloth-yard shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks to the wind, while the tails of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside out like umbrellas. The gable end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eaves-droppings flapped against the wall. Yet never was commiseration for the shepherd more misplaced. For that cheerful rustic was ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... factiousness, and were especially kind to a poor little brown baby, which they handed round and nursed by turns, but the heat, the filth, and the stench of the ship defied description. At Mahar, one of the places where they landed, Burton injured his foot with a poisonous thorn, which made him lame for the rest of the pilgrimage. Presently the welcome profile of Radhwa came in view, the mountain of which the unfortunate Antar [119] sang ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... his wife, eagerly, "that would be a blessing! And though Tibby would be a thorn in every inch of grandmamma's body, if they were alone together, I have no doubt they would get on very well ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... clinching of his fist, a knitting of his brows, and a gathering blackness in his eyes as he listened while Katy, rousing partially from her lethargy, talked of the days when she was a little girl, and Morris had built the playhouse for her by the brook, where the thorn apples grew and the waters fell over ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... manner to view her betrothal with such a man as Frank? Her mother's remarks depressed her more than she could have thought it possible; the excitement of the morning was having its reaction, and she longed to go up to the solitude under the thorn-tree, where she had hoped to ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... The girl's thorn-scarred, sun-blistered hands clasped together almost convulsively. But she met his look of ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... and fair, They knew I could have for the asking, and so they went on with their fun, Till the "Senior Partner" gave a cough, and then all their mirth was done. But I asked from Heaven though I know the way is mingled flower and thorn, That not one from partner to porter may bear all I have borne. So Jasper thinks I am sad; how the wintry winds whistle to-night! Heaven grant no poor woman or children are out in this sleety blight. I cannot read this eve; what ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... need not murmur, though you are sorry.' MURISON. 'But St. Paul says, "I have learnt, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content."' JOHNSON. 'Sir, that relates to riches and poverty; for we see St. Paul, when he had a thorn in the flesh, prayed earnestly to have it removed; and then he could not be content.' Murison, thus refuted, tried to be smart, and drank to Dr. Johnson, 'Long may you lecture!' Dr. Johnson afterwards, speaking of his not drinking wine, said, 'The Doctor spoke of lecturing (looking to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the cabin so near the road. So he put her up on his horse and bade her follow. The rain had ceased for the time being, though evidently the storm was not yet over. The tracks led up a wash to a wide flat where mesquite, prickly pear, and thorn-bush grew so thickly that Jennie could not ride into it. Duane was thoroughly concerned. He must have her horse. Time was flying. It would soon be night. He could not expect her to scramble quickly through that brake on foot. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... appeared. The man gave himself up for lost: but, to his utter astonishment, the Lion, instead of springing upon him and devouring him, came and fawned upon him, at the same time whining and lifting up his paw. Observing it to be much swollen and inflamed, he examined it and found a large thorn embedded in the ball of the foot. He accordingly removed it and dressed the wound as well as he could: and in course of time it healed up completely. The Lion's gratitude was unbounded; he looked upon the man as his friend, and they shared the cave for some time together. A day came, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... night nor shadow of earthly care. I come not to bid you forget; I come to bid you remember. Remember all that is past, treasure it in the secret storehouse of the soul where the few flowers culled from life's abundant thorn are laid in their fragrance and garnered up. Remember also the future. Think that your time is short, and that the labour shall be sweet; so that in a few quick years you shall reap a harvest of unearthly blooming. Fear not to tread boldly in ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... century of years and dreary wastes of sea and land lay between 'em, but these cow-slip blows and daisies took them back to their youth and the sunny fields they wandered in with the young lover whose eyes wuz as blue as the English violets, while their own cheeks wuz as rosy as the thorn flowers. ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... Alfred's own birthplace and heritage. And up the heights came the Saxons, as they did at the Alma. "The Christians led up their line from the lower ground. There stood also on that same spot a single thorn-tree, marvellous stumpy (which we ourselves with our very own eyes have seen)." Bless the old chronicler! Does he think nobody ever saw the "single thorn-tree" but himself? Why, there it stands to this very day, just on the edge of ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Ronsard. His writings were epical, lyrical, tragical, satirical, and especially elegiacal. He is a classic in Poland. Grochowski left a volume of diversified poems, hymns on various texts of Thomas a Kempis, The Nights of Thorn, etc. Martin Bielski, who was an historian too, but in Latin, left two political satires on the condition of Poland, and his son Joachim wrote a history of ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... satisfactory: she hates learning, sewing, washing up the dishes, all equally. I am sorry to say she shows no natural piety. Her companions detest her, and the nuns, although they admit that she is not exactly naughty, seem to feel her as a dreadful thorn in the flesh. She spends hours and hours on the terrace overlooking the sea (her great desire, she confided to me, is to get to the sea—to get back to the sea, as she expressed it), and lying in the garden, under the big myrtle-bushes, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... doctor. Brought him over from Africa. He didn't like his master, 'cause he was mean. So he make a little man out of mud. An' he stick thorns in its back. Sure 'nuff, his master got down with a misery in his back. An' de witch doctor let de thorn stay in de mud-man until he thought his master had got 'nuff punishment. When he tuck it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... wives have not been good ones. Jerome Cardan was so unfortunate as to have a wife who was proverbial for her ill temper and arbitrary conduct. John Knox said of Lord Erskine, "He has a very Jezebel to his wife." Salmasius, the opponent of Milton, was made perpetually uneasy by a similar thorn. The unfortunate husband was a Frenchman, and Milton said (as Dr Johnson observes,) "Tu es Gallus, et, ut aiunt, nimium gallinaceus." Milton himself seems to have suffered from a similar cause, for he evinces so much hostility ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Brahma, saw that ascetic with knotted hair, clad in rags, and his flesh, skin, and sinews dried up owing to the hard penances he was practising. And the Grandsire addressing him, that penance-practising one of great fortitude, said, 'What is that thorn doest, O Sesha? Let the welfare of the creatures of the worlds also engage thy thoughts. O sinless one, thou art afflicting all creatures by thy hard penances. O Sesha, tell me the desire implanted in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in the bush and blazed apace, The thorn-leaves crackled and twisted and sweated in anguish; Then God left ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... for slaughter now; he lusted blood—the blood of the Anthropoid pack which from the beginning had hung upon his flank and been as a thorn ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... full moon, but a young crescent. I saw her through a space in the boughs overhead. She and the stars, visible beside her, were no strangers where all else was strange: my childhood knew them. I had seen that golden sign with the dark globe in its curve leaning back on azure, beside an old thorn at the top of an old field, in Old England, in long past days, just as it now leaned back beside a stately spire in this ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... day was the day of St. John, the longest in all the year, and they travelled far, till at last in the long afternoon they arrived in sight of a cluster of little homesteads, clay huts thatched with bracken and fenced about with bushes of poison-thorn, and of tilled crofts sloping down the hillside to a clear river wending ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... to kill instead protects. Last September I watched two larvae of the rather common moth, Protoparce sexta, the tomato sphinx. Great fat green fellows as large as one's thumb, they were, each with a spine-like thorn cocked jauntily on his rear segment. They had fattened on my tomato vines until they had reached their full growth and were ready to go into the cocoon stage, in winter quarters. They dropped from the vines and began to wander hastily, but seemingly aimlessly, on the ground beneath. But ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... and looked upon the river, which was not more than a couple of hundred yards from the terrace or platform on which it stood. The ground here sloped rapidly to the banks, and, like that in the front, was a wilderness with rock and patches of tall fern and thickets of thorn and bramble, with a few trees of great size. Nor was wild life wanting in this natural park; some deer were feeding near the bank, while on the water numbers of wild duck and other water-fowl were disporting ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by: The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice, I hear—with cheeks that flush and pale— The passion ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... our lips met. We were near a handy bowery alcove at the end of a walk, in the most retired part of the garden, so that we could easily hear anyone approaching, and it was so closed in all round by a thick thorn fence, with a wall behind, that no one could creep close enough to spy ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... view of these two opposite influences of the forms of destruction of the group symbol upon the solidity of the group by reference to the consequences of the destruction of the Jewish temple by Titus. The hierarchal Jewish state was a thorn in the flesh of the Roman statecraft that aimed at the unity of the empire. The purpose of dissolving this state was accomplished, so far as a certain number of the Jews were concerned, by the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... mintery, cutery-corn, Apple seed and apple thorn; Wire, brier, limber-lock, Five geese in a flock, Sit and sing by a spring, O-u-t, and ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... one who had never appeared in this parlour was the captain's wife. That had been a thorn in Abramka's flesh. He had spent days and nights going over in his mind how he could rid this lady of the, in his opinion, wretched habit of ordering her clothes from Moscow. For this ball, however, as she herself had told him, she had ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... amorous head To kiss those matchless feet, Checked thy career too fleet, And all heaven's host of eyes Entranced, but fearful all, Saw thee, sweet Hebe, prostrate fall Upon the bright floor of the azure skies; Where, mid its stars, thy beauty lay, As blossom, shaken from the spray Of a spring thorn, Lies mid the liquid sparkles of the morn. Or, as in temples of the Paphian shade, The worshippers of Beauty's queen behold An image of their rosy idol, laid ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... felt his heart oppressed with a new and more bitter emotion. The company thought him happy in exclusive possession of the lovely girl's society—his side was pierced with a cruel, rankling thorn. ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... inflamed the gray, No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn, No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray; Worn horses mused: "We are not whipped to-day"; No weft-winged engines blurred the moon's ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... which hung from his girdle he drew a small twig and handed it to La Mothe. It was spray of wild sloe cut from a thicket and trimmed to the shape of a cross, with one stiff thorn, broad based and sharp at the point as a needle, projecting at right angles from the intersection. The marks of the knife were still fresh upon it, the bark so soft and sappy that it must have been cut from the living plant within the hour. La Mothe shook his head as he turned it ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... would have chosen. It was forced upon him. To travel through the jungle itself was next to impossible with a girl, especially as they were dressed for city streets and not at all for battling with dense and thorn-studded undergrowth. And to stay with the plane was obviously absurd. Sooner or later they had to abandon it, though the moment they did desert it they would be encountering not only the impersonal menace of the jungle, but the actual enmity of all the human ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... cottage gardens saluted him as he passed, and the occasional whiteness of a face at the back of a window indicated an interest in his affairs on the part of the fairer citizens of Seabridge. At the gate of the first of an ancient row of cottages, conveniently situated within hail of The Grapes, The Thorn, and The Swan, he paused, and walking up the trim-kept garden path, knocked ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... always had a warm side to the English and Scottish poor—his own order, indeed. If twenty or thirty families would come out as an experiment, he was ready to give L2000 without saying from whom. He bids Mr. Young speak about the plan to Thorn of Chorley, Turner of Manchester, Lord Shaftesbury, and the Duke of Argyll. "Now, my friend," he adds, "do your best, and God's blessing be with you. Much is done for the blackguard poor. Let us remember our own class, and ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... earth. At last he came to where another road crossed the way he followed, and about the crossway was the ground clearer of trees, while beyond it the trees grew thicker, and there was some underwood of holly and thorn as the ground fell off as towards ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... she came to have such a spirit, and whom she took after, for her mother was as quiet and meek a little woman as ever was born, and always had been; while her father was a stern, silent man, who looked upon his flighty daughter as a thorn in his side, a cross laid upon him for his good. But the fact remains that Anne was the most daring of all the young people in the parish, doing things that even the boys were afraid to do, for she had no fear, nothing awed her, and there ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... managed to tie a bundle of chaparral thorn to the bull's tail, so that the huge creature had literally lashed ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... foot-way tread, For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. All but yon widow'd, solitary thing That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; 130 She, wretched matron, forc'd in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn; She only left of all the harmless train, 135 The sad historian of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and the growth was very slow, but it certainly increased, and the boy stretched out his hand to reach over an intervening gooseberry-bush so as to touch David, but he touched an exceedingly sharp thorn instead and winced, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... the dialogues are those between the male occupant of the dingle and the popish propagandist, known as the man in black. More fascinating still, perhaps, are the word- master's conversations with Jasper; most wonderful of all, in the opinion of many, is his logomachy with Ursula under the thorn bush. We shall not readily forget Jasper's complaints that all the 'old-fashioned, good-tempered constables' are going to be set aside, or his gloomy anticipations of the iron roads in which people are to 'thunder along in vehicles pushed ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... see the end of it, How fair the well-lov'd land appears; I see September's misty heat Laid like a swooning on the corn; I see the reaping of the wheat, I hear afar the hunter's horn, I see the cattle at the ford, The panting sheep beneath the thorn! The burden of the years is scor'd, The reckoning made, Hodge walks alone, Content, contenting, his own lord, Master of what his pain ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... blossom, for my pain; But only at the wicket gaze I here: Old scents creep into mine inactive brain, Smooth scents of things, I may not come anear; I see, far off, old beaten pathways they adorn; I cannot feel with hands the blossom or the thorn. ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... dear, at midnight, or at morn, In vain exhausted nature strives to rest, Thy absence plants my pillow with a thorn, And bids me hope no more, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... large-flowering currant, thimbleberry, blackberry, elder, snowberry, dwarf bilberry, blueberry, black haw, hobblebush, and arrow-wood. In the way of fruit-bearing shade trees he recommends sugar maple, flowering dogwood, white and cockspur thorn, native red mulberry, tupelo, black cherry, choke cherry, and mountain ash. For the same purpose he especially recommends the planting of the following vines: Virginia creeper, bull-beaver, frost grape, ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... that scene in my memory; and, I doubt not, were the period ten times multiplied, it would be as vivid still to us—the surviving actors in that drama! The touch of time, which blunts the piercing thorn, as well as steals from the rose its lovely tints, is powerless here, unless to give darker shades to that picture engraven on our souls; and tears—ah, they only make ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... took the unruly sprite out into the desert and gave him a sound beating with thorn branches. The blood ran down the poor little creature's arms and legs, and the teats down the man's cheeks. But the only words that he said were: "You must learn to want what she wishes —do you hear?—you ...
— The Unruly Sprite - The Unknown Quantity, A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... rich in the bones of martyrs and in the relics of Christ and His apostles, it was within the ambition of the pilgrims to possess a hair of the Virgin, a thread from the seamless coat, a nail which had pierced His hand, a splinter from the cross, or a thorn which had torn His brow. All these were believed to possess powers of healing, and their possession permanently increased the dignity of families and the wealth ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... concluded at Hanover in the month of September. It implied a mutual guarantee of the dominions possessed by the contracting parties, their rights and privileges, those of commerce in particular, and an engagement to procure satisfaction to the protestants of Thorn, who had lately been oppressed by the catholics, contrary to the treaty of Oliva. The king having taken these precautions at Hanover, set out on his return for England; embarked at Helvoetsluys in the middle of December; and after having ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the thorn of penitence, That of all other things the one which turned me Most to its love became the most ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... Aspiring to equestrian distinctions, he wrought upon maternal indulgence, until, not without misgivings, maternal anxiety was stifled, and, with injunctions that we should hover protectingly near him, he was sent forth, a thorn in our sides. In half an hour he was accidentally remembered, and was found to be nowhere within view; so we pursued our way, well pleased. He had dropped quietly off, at the first canter, into a miry slough, and had returned sobbingly, covered with mortification and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... produced by the penetration of a sharp or blunt-pointed substance, such as a thorn, fork, nail, etc., and the orifice of these wounds is always small in proportion to their depth. In veterinary practice punctured wounds are much more common than the others. They involve the feet most frequently, next the legs, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... can be used successfully as phonograph needles. These substitutes will reproduce sound very clearly and with beautiful tone. The harsh scratching of the ordinary needle is reduced to a minimum, and the thorn is not ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... brighter and brighter, until it hurt one's eyes to look at it, as though it had been the blessed sun itself. Angel Gabriel's hand was as white as silver, and in it he held a green bough with blossoms, like those that grow on the thorn bush. As for his robe, it was all of one piece, and finer than the Father Abbot's linen, and shone beside like the sunlight on pure snow. So I knew from all these things that it ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... characteristic feature is its beak, the upper mandible having two sharp processes and a sharp hooked point. It cannot fly away to any distance with the bird it kills, nor hold it in its claws to feed upon it. It usually impales its victim upon a thorn, or thrusts it in the fork of a limb. For the most part, however, its food seems to consist of insects,—spiders, grasshoppers, beetles, etc. It is the assassin of the small birds, whom it often destroys in pure wantonness, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs |
