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Throes   /θroʊz/   Listen
Throes

noun
1.
Violent pangs of suffering.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Throes" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the cart and spoke to his cousin. I recall much that the wind bore to me of his words and the carrier's. It seemed as if the friendship of years were dissolving amid throes. ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... again that cry! It is,—it is my husband's voice! Oh hasten, to his succour fly, No more hast thou, dear friend, a choice. He calls on thee, perhaps his foes Environ him on all sides round, That wail,—it means death's final throes! Why standest thou, ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... change it: they could hardly {185} imagine that the Russian Republic would withdraw even that reluctant co-operation in the coercion of Greece which the Russian Empire had accorded; and, at any rate, the voice of a country in the throes of internal disintegration could have little effect upon ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... Kaunitz, in an absent tone. Then, addressing Joseph, he continued: "Did I not tell your majesty that your adventure was not to end with the throwing of a bouquet? I know these Polish women; they coquette with every thing—above all, with the throes of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... there was nearly an accident. The cart suddenly bounded as though in the throes of a convulsion, began trembling, and, with a creak, lurched heavily first to the right and then to the left, and at a fearful pace dashed along the forest track. The horses had taken fright at ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... hurts my—hurts my—limb." The salesman smiled in a manner mild, Like an artless, undesigning child; Then, checking himself, to his face he gave A look as sorrowful as the grave, Though he didn't care two figs For her paints and throes, As he stroked her toes, Remarking with speech and manner just Befitting his calling: "Madam, I trust That it doesn't hurt ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... some consuming passion, at the cost of injuring someone else—suppose he can do so with safety and success—why should he prefer humanity's interests to his own? Why, indeed? We make bold to say that no one in the throes of conflict between duty and desire, at the moment of moral crisis, has ever been influenced by the worth of his action for humanity. The ultimate sanction of right conduct must be drawn from a Source beyond humanity, which enjoins the right ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... Murder's itinerary for a day, Set forth in graphic phrase by skilful pens, With pictures of its face, its favourite dens, Its knife or bludgeon, pistol, paramour, Will swell the swift editions hour by hour, More than high news of war or of debate, The death of heroes or the throes of state. From club-room to street-corner runs the cry After the newest fact, or latest lie: The hurrying throng unfolded broad-sheets grasp, And read with goggled eyes and lips a-gasp, Blood! Blood! More Blood! It makes hot lips go pale, But gives ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various

... all sunshine for the lovers. Paris was in the throes of famine and plague and flood. Poverty and discontent stalked through her streets, and there were scowling and envious eyes to greet the King and his lady when they rode laughing by; or when, as on one occasion we ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... instructors, and would be placed alongside of British regular regiments so as to acquire the proper polish. This would, no doubt, have been very desirable, but when we reached Salisbury Plains we found the British War Office in the throes of evolving what was known as "Kitchener's Army." The whole country was alive with recruiting committees, bands and patriotic organizations, and in the music halls the songs were all of the "Soldier's ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... the god of a hundred sacrifices, who is gratified. If his feet are washed, it is the Pitris who are delighted; and if he is fed it is Prajapati that is pleased. One should with collected soul, give a cow when (during her throes) the feet and head of her calf are visible, before her delivery is complete. A cow with her calf in the air in course of falling from the uterus to the earth, is to be regarded as equal to the earth herself. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... penetrating, and luminous, cannot discover by its own force. It is remarkable, that at this time his fancied activity was for the moment so vigorous, that he promised his work should be published before Christmas, 1757[945]. Yet nine years elapsed before it saw the light[946]. His throes in bringing it forth had been severe and remittent; and at last we may almost conclude that the Caesarian operation was performed by the knife of Churchill, whose upbraiding satire, I dare say, made Johnson's friends ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... attained save as we fulfil still the third requirement—"to walk humbly with God," which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the lowliest of His creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the company of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with the pangs and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected whenever it attempts to ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... thoroughly, Jasper's hideous levity and coarse bravado gave way before the lingering human sentiment knitting him back to childhood, which the sight and voice of his injured father had called forth with spasms and throes, as a seer calls the long-buried from a grave. And as the old man extended his arms pleadingly towards him, Jasper, with a gasping sound-half groan, half sob-sprang forward, caught both the hands in his own strong grasp, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... now to give of him at work should be prefaced by a word or two that may throw light on the design he was working at. It was a large theme for so small an instrument; and the disproportion was not more characteristic of the man, than the throes of suffering and passion to be presently undergone by him for results that many men would smile at. He was bent, as he says, on striking a blow for the poor. They had always been his clients, they had never been forgotten in any of his books, but here nothing else was to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What Teufelsdroeckh would call a 'Divine Idea of Cloth' is born with him; and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... Association at Michigan under its present form,—that we are apt to forget how recent is this movement in American universities. To glance through the average college or university history one would imagine these associations sprang full-armed, with no preliminary throes of organization. Suddenly we find the alumni asserting their desires in some important matter and thenceforth their voice has a recognized place in university councils. It is quite obvious that the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... enough of it everywhere, if one will only look away from the slum to those it holds fast. "The people are all right," was the unvarying report of the early Tenement House Committees, "if we only give them half a chance." When the country was in the throes of the silver campaign, the newspapers told the story of an old laborer who went to the sub-treasury and demanded to see the "boss." He undid the strings of an old leathern purse with fumbling fingers, and counted out more than two hundred ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... is before me now: In thy calm dignity, and sweet repose, Alas! sad memory re-invests thy brow, With death's stern agony, and pain's last throes. ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... this aspect it could not but produce agitation. Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature; opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks, throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history,—you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... last throes now. His elbows were on the table, and his twitching hands pressed on his ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... charm remains; and he who knows The root and stock of freedom's laws, Unscared by frenzied nations' throes, And hugging yet the good old cause, Finds in the shade these beeches cast The wit, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... respected Was bashfulness in Athens, it erected To chaste Agneia,[103] which is Shamefacedness, A sacred temple, holding her a goddess. And now to feasts, masks, and triumphant shows, The shining troops returned, even till earth-throes Brought forth with joy the thickest part of night, When the sweet nuptial song, that used to cite 380 All to their rest, was by Phemonoee[104] sung, First Delphian prophetess, whose graces sprung Out of the Muses' well: she sung before The bride into her ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... to the promptings of his own indomitable will, and his fiat went forth, that not only the army, but all ranks of citizens, from the nobles to the serfs, should shave their beards. A certain time was given, that people might get over the first throes of their repugnance, after which every man who chose to retain his beard was to pay a tax of one hundred roubles. The priests and the serfs were put on a lower footing, and allowed to retain theirs upon payment ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... that cannot be again, And pleasures too that never can be more: For loss of pleasure I was never sore, But worse, far worse is to feel no pain. The throes and agonies of a heart explain Its very depth of want at inmost core; Prove that it does believe, and would adore, And doth with ill for ever strive and strain. I not lament for happy childish years, For loves departed, that have had ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... distance. Some "down-east" Yankee, called it "Pie-Island," from its (to his hungry imagination) fancied resemblance to a pumpkin pie, and the name, like all bad names, sticks. McKay's Mountain on the main-land, a perpendicular rock more than a thousand feet high, up-heaved by the throes of some vast volcano, and numerous other bold and precipitous head lands, and rock-built islands, around which roll the sapphire-blue waters of the fathomless bay, present some of the most magnificent views to be found on ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... O fearful ploughshare, tearing thy way through so many bleeding hearts! O terrible throes, out of which a new nation must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... Le Dore, having heard why Helene was at need to leave the convent of the Eternal Father, showed her the door of the house. That was hasty, but not hasty enough. His mother-in-law, having already eaten meats cooked by Helene, was in the throes of the usual violent sickness, and died the day ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... the while. He was in no hurry: being a night-bird of very pronounced tastes, he was quite ready to sit here until the small hours of the morning watching Citizen Chauvelin mentally writhing in the throes of recollections of the past ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... converted ("mob" being, as we conveyancers say, a short form for "mobile", changeable) and escorted our national hero to his home in safety, I really think the little incident worth recording. We are just now in the throes of such a mobocracy,—and know how much one firm policeman can avail to calm a riot. While speaking of the Duke and Apsley House, let me add here another word of some interest. My uncle, Arthur W. Devis, had painted life-sized portraits of Blucher and Gneisenau, which his widow had ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... more dreary solitude, to a mind writhing under the throes of some new and hidden sorrow, than a brilliant ballroom? The stirring music jars like harshest discord upon the unattuned ear; the glaring lights dazzle the pained vision until utter darkness would seem grateful; the merry ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... behind the bulwarks of constitutional law and judicial decision; he found a united South, resolute in her determination to perpetuate slavery in the nation; a vacillating North, divided in its sentiment on the great question of property in man. He found the nation in the throes of civil war, and died in the triumphal hour of his country's deliverance, with the sceptre of slavery shattered, her fetters broken and in rust, and her ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... and depressing meal to which they sat down that evening, long after the accustomed hour, a fact which Mr. Baron would not forget, even in the throes of an earthquake. He groaned over it; he groaned over everything, and especially over his niece, who had suddenly developed into the most unmanageable element in the whole vexed problem of the future. He felt that they owed her very much, and that she held ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... proportion. They shrank from the illuminating quality of wit as if it were a sacrilege—this auto-seriousness was even an important part of William's character. He put on solemnity like a robe when he was in the throes ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... have been expected of her. And it is important to note that she faced her future without repining or self-pity, without either joy or despondency. She would go on; she would do as best she could. And nothing that might befall could equal what she had suffered in the throes of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... and at first they were sad, since of what he sang they remembered the like in Lyonnesse—plough and sickle and flail, nesting birds and harvest, flakes of ore in the river-beds, dinner in the shade, and the plain beyond winking in the noon-day heat. They had come too late for the throes of his music, when the freed spirit trembled for a little on the threshold, fronting the dawn, but with the fire of the pit behind it and red on its trailing skirt. The song rolled forward now like a river, sweeping them past shores where they desired to linger. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... open seemed that shelter And unguarded to the foes, Helpless, as the fiery welter Rocked it in volcanic throes; But there was defence to bind it With the force of Destiny, And an Empire stood behind it ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... was at Nice France was in the throes of the Dreyfus affair. Chekhov began studying the Dreyfus and Zola cases from shorthand notes, and becoming convinced of the innocence of both, wrote a heated letter to Suvorin, which led to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... and expressive line was never penned. In five words it illustrates the fiercest passions of humanity by the direst convulsion of nature:" (Opinions, p. 7) a criticism which illustrates the fiercest throes of nonsense, by the direst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the peace-blood's ebb, Till the long, low roar grows more and more, from the ships of the "Yank" and "Reb." Till over the deep the tempests sweep, of fire and bursting shell, And the very air is a mad Despair, in the throes of a living Hell: Then, down, deep down, in the mighty ship, unseen by the mid-day suns, You'll find the chaps who are giving the ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... was then in the throes of her birth. She had not yet reached the vigour of her youth, though she was full of life and energy. She was about to become the England of free thought, commerce, and manufactures; to plough the ocean with her navies, and to plant her colonies ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... was really a cool and determined fellow; and while Charlie was in the throes speculating about probable dissolution before the morrow's sun should rise, Bob was actually priding himself on superior ability in handling a revolver. He was, in fact, far too arrogant a man to imagine that he could be shot by a silly boy like Walker. He had made up his mind to shoot straight ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... shall be able (I hope) to put 400,000 effective men in the field; and these, well handled, might resist a million of assailants from without. We have the center, they the circumference; let them beware of 1864—when the United States shall find herself in the throes of an embittered ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... our own police-courts. A worthy aim, I doubt not. One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not enough another is "out of her head," while a third, Dr. Callandar, the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown. This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a precis) which is the designedly central but actually subordinate theme. I have the absurd idea that this might really ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various

... while he was still in the throes, conviction battling with common-sense, his own apprehension. He rose at once to his feet and turned a white ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Cirque, he ordered Roland to open a way; and that lusty paladin with one blow of his good sword Durandal opened this breach for the passage of the army. There is another version of the making, which links it with the throes of Roland's defeat and death at Roncesvalles, at the end instead of at the beginning of the invasion; but even under unbounded poetic license, the mind refuses to admit that the wounded hero, bleeding and gasping for breath, could have made his ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... a-field, the work-girl plying her poor needle; the lawyer at his desk, perhaps; the beauty smiling asleep upon her pillow of down; or the jaded reveler reeling to bed; or the fevered patient tossing on it; or the doctor watching by it, over the throes of the mother for the child that is to be born into the world; to be born and to take his part in the suffering and struggling, the tears and laughter, the crime, remorse, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the right, Whose hand is ever raised to smite. Each milder art is tried in vain: It wins no glory, but disdain. And victory owns no softer charm Than might which nerves a warrior's arm. My humble suit is still denied By Ocean's overweening pride. This day the monsters of the deep In throes of death shall wildly leap. My shafts shall rend the serpents curled In caverns of the watery world, Disclose each sunless depth and bare The tangled pearl and coral there. Away with mercy! at a time Like this compassion is a crime. Welcome, the battle and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... first importance in the world. She is practically a total stranger to you, she's of a different nationality, a different rank, yet she's infinitely the most precious and important person in the world. When you're absent from her you can do nothing but think of her, gloating with throes of aromatic pain over the memory of your last meeting with her, longing with soul-hunger for your next. The merest flutter of her gown, modulation of her voice, glance of her eye, will throw your heart into a palpitation. You look in the direction of the house that she inhabits, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... of a case of which I happen to have first-hand knowledge. In Jersey, near the bay of St. Brelade, is a cave, in which we dug down through some twenty feet of accumulated clay and rock-rubbish, presumably the effects of the last throes of the ice-age, and came upon a pre-historic hearth. There were the big stones that had propped up the fire, and there were the ashes. By the side were the remains of a heap of food-refuse. The pieces of decayed bone were not much to look at; yet, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... while his cruel talons, all powerless now to do aught else, ploughed deep furrows in the hard and rocky soil. All nature seemed to be undergoing its final convulsions in the few moments which elapsed ere the monster at length lay limp and gasping in the last throes of death. ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... this commentary was naturally not that of the pretender's host and hostess. In the throes of their anger and chagrin their one consoling reflection was that no friends less tried than Mr. and Mrs. Rentoul happened to be there to witness their confusion. Yet other sufferers since Job have found that the oldest friends ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... newcomers climb out. Then Ben had words with Bush Jones because he wanted him to wait there and take 'em back to town when the party was over and Bush refused to wait. After suffering about twenty seconds in the throes of mental effort I reckon he discovered that he had business to attend to or was hungry or something. Anyway, Ben paid him some money finally and he drove off after calling out 'Good-night, all!' just as if nothing ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... about with the tense, preoccupied, self-centered air of a man who is brooding over some impending disaster, and I conjectured vainly as to what it might be. Though he was seemingly entirely idle during the few days I knew him, his manner indicated that he was in the throes of work that told terribly on his nerves. His eyes I remember as the finest I have ever seen, large and dark and full of lustre and changing lights, but with a profound melancholy always lurking deep in them. They were eyes that seemed to be burning ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... explain to myself the reason of a certain friendly and familiar look which the great abyss had for me. One sees or feels at a glance that it was not born of the throes and convulsions of nature—of earthquake shock or volcanic explosion. It does not suggest the crush of matter and the wreck of worlds. Clearly it is the work of the more gentle and beneficent forces. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... remained stationary, as if in waiting for the fatal messenger. It came the next moment. True to its aim, the tiny sphere of lead entered the head of the bear at the most vulnerable point, and the life went out from that huge mass. A rasping growl, a few spasmodic throes, and ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... wide-spreading feet, stalked across the newly-formed plains, or flew shrieking, with wings of prodigious expanse skimming the glittering sea,—the lords paramount of this lower world. At length the earth, convulsed by mighty throes in the far-away west from north to south, began to cast up a long line of rocky heights, now to sink, now to rise once more above the surface,— till by degrees Pelion piled on Ossa—the vast chain of the Cordilleras rose towards the skies, forming a mighty ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... despair kept at a white heat because half the village owned, up in the fields, what the other half coveted. Many, also, and fierce were the heated faces we looked in upon at the justice's door, in the very throes of the great moment of facing justice, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... convulsions in my stomach for want of some sustenance, that I cannot describe them, with such frequent throes and pangs of appetite that nothing but the tortures of death can imitate; and this condition I was in when I heard the seamen above cry out 'A sail! a sail!' and halloo and jump about as if they ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... alter the shape of his own soul. He could alter the shape of his nose if the difference between a turned-up nose and a turned-down one were worth the effort. One does not face the throes of creation for trifles. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... it necessary to answer. It was no business of his, after all. He lit a cigar and leaned back in his seat, letting his eyes take their fill of indolent pleasure. In the throes of invention she had pushed back her hat, loosening the stray lock which had invited his touch the night before. After looking at it for a while he stood up and wandered to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... laughter, for he had a certain sense of dignity which did not permit him to laugh outright all alone by himself, and so the shock was diffused through all his members, and his body quaked like that of a man in the incipient throes of a fever and ague fit. The magnanimous conduct of O'Brien, who flogged Peter for seasickness, simply because he loved him, proved to be almost too much for the settled plan of the boatswain, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... found the Back Country of North Carolina in the throes of the Regulation Movement. This movement, which had arisen first from the colonists' need to police their settlements, had more recently assumed a political character. The Regulators were now in conflict with the authorities, because the ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... and France alone, from the moment of her revolution. On that happy change, all our dread of that nation as a power was to cease. She became in an instant dear to our affections, and one with our interests. All other nations we ought to have commanded not to trouble her sacred throes, whilst in labour to bring into a happy birth ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... minute," said Charley, as the captain stepped forward toward the bear which was kicking, out in the last convulsive throes ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... in 1774, when the eastern colonies were on the verge of revolution, the west was in the throes of an Indian war. When Lord Dunmore learned that the Shawnees had declared war, he at once proceeded to raise in Virginia an army of fifteen hundred men; and he instructed General Andrew Lewis to go to Kentucky and recruit among the borderers there an army of the same numerical strength, and ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond

... about great people: he told her all sorts of ridiculous stories when upon this theme. But, at any rate, the acquaintance was made: Lady Kicklebury would not leave Lady Knightsbridge; and, even in the throes of sea-sickness, and the secret recesses of the cabin, WOULD talk to her about the world, Lord Pimlico, and her father, General Guff, late aide-de-camp to ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... look back to this day with mingled feelings: sheer gladness at being out in the open with Sidney; the memory of the shock with which he realized that she was, unknown to herself, already in the throes of a romantic attachment for Wilson; and, long, long after, when he had gone down to the depths with her and saved her by his steady hand, with something of mirth for the untoward happening that ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... shed, and the long moss screens him from the tiger; what orgies he may celebrate, what abominations he may practice, when there is none to call him to account; all this I can only conjecture; but I conjecture on the charitable side. In the upper waters of the St. Johns I have seen them in their death-throes; huge animals, at least fifteen feet long; seen them in scores at a time, some swimming about, some tumbling in clumsily, some sprawled on shore, apparently asleep, and some raising their black claws as if to call down vengeance upon us, gnashing their teeth, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... Unbelieving critics have dwelt at length on what they designate an inconsistency if not a contradiction in these versions; and yet both accounts embodied in the three records are plainly true. The maid was seemingly breathing her last, she was in the very throes of death, when the father hurried away. Before he met Jesus he felt that the end had probably come; nevertheless his faith endured. His words attest his trust, that even had his daughter actually died since he left her side, the Master ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... receding—a feature which turns out, however, to be not incompatible with a weight of brain closely approaching our own average. Whether this type has disappeared altogether from the earth, or survives in certain much modified descendants, is an open question. The fact remains that during the last throes of the Glacial Epoch this rough-hewn kind of man apparently had Northern Europe as his exclusive province; and it is by no means evident what Homo Sapiens, the supposed highly superior counterpart and rival of Homo ...
— Progress and History • Various

... constantly to be worse, as his labour is more. The effusions of passion, which exigence forces out, are, for the most part, striking and energetick; but whenever he solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, meanness, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... this year on the continent of Europe offer a striking contrast to the repose of England. While the wise and steadfast policy of Mr. Pitt had secured to this country the blessings of peace, now rapidly expanding into a condition of almost unexampled prosperity, France was undergoing the throes of that desolating Revolution which brought the Sovereign to the scaffold, and laid the train of those disasters which finally expelled the Bourbons from the throne. There are few traces of those disturbing circumstances in the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... a treadmill, rang the bell of Josephine's house and passed in at the big bronze doors. The butler must have particularly admired the way he tossed aside his coat and hat. As soon as he was in the presence of his fiancee he saw that she was again in the throes of ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... recall forgotten vocabularies. The classrooms, given over to pens, ink, and sheets of foolscap paper, were the abodes of a silence only disturbed by the occasional scratching of a pen, or the sigh of a candidate in the throes of attacking a stiff problem. To Honor the experience was all new. She tried her best, but found it difficult to curtail her statements sufficiently to allow of her answering every question, in spite of Miss Farrar's oft-repeated warning against devoting too much time to one part ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... pitched and roared frightfully in the seething billows. The vessel had throes as of sickness, and seemed to be trying to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... succeeding, by shoulders and fists, in bringing the wreath away piecemeal; and then they give themselves up to mutual embraces, groans, laments, and all the enginery of pathetic affection in the last gasping throes of separation,—to the doleful tearing of hair and the rending of their fantastic garments. It is the personification of legalized rowdyism; and if young men would but confine themselves to such rowdyism as may be looked at and laughed at by their mothers and sisters, they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... not slave! Despair is free! I will not tell thee of the throes—the struggles The anguish—the remorse: No, let it pass! And let me come to such most poor atonement Yet in ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of onlookers, none of whom heeded me, and found Apporo and Exploding Eggs holding torches. The madness of play was upon them. The sad placidity of every day was gone; as in the throes of the dance they kept their gleaming eyes upon the fluctuations of fortune before them. Twice I spoke sharply before they heard me, and then in a frenzy of supplication ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... He took the poor child in his arms, and she nestled to his breast as to a mother's, and clasped him in hands that were strong like vices. He felt her whole body shaken by the throes of distress, and had pity upon her beyond speech. Pity, and at the same time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There arose from before him the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... knows that. All must needs be told. For, after the first throes of the overwhelming calamity, in which her thoughts alone dwelt on the slain son, they turned towards him suspected as the slayer. In her case with something stronger than suspicion—indeed almost belief, based on her foreknowledge of the circumstances; these not only accounting for the crime, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... subjoined the addition of, "A good wife to our brother, to keep the Manse in order." On this occasion David Deans was delivered of his first-born joke; and apparently the parturition was accompanied with many throes, for sorely did he twist about his physiognomy, and much did he stumble in his speech, before he could express his idea, "That the lad being now wedded to his spiritual bride, it was hard to threaten him with ane temporal spouse in the same day." He then laughed ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... for money; he will dry up the bloom and freshness of health, for earthly power and fame; he will actually wear his body out for sensual pleasure. But what is the intensity and paroxysm of this activity of mind and body, if compared with those inward struggles and throes when the overtaken and startled sinner sees the eternal world looming into view, and with strong crying and tears prays for only a little respite, and only a little preparation! "Millions for an inch of time,"—said the dying English Queen. "O Eternity! Eternity! ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... rustle of clammy scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became more convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old fisherman sniffed it eagerly, as we smell ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... for a charge, his quick, resourceful brain grasped the situation at once. A puff of smoke, a jet of flame from behind the tree-fern. One of the warriors fell forward on his shield, beating the earth with his great limbs in the throes of death. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, and travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the throes of birth are upon us; and we have something of this advantage in seasons of strong formations, doubts, suspense—for then the afflatus of such themes haply may fall upon us, more or less; and then, hot from surrounding war and revolution, our speech, though ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... a question of degree. Soothe yourself ever so little with alcohol, and you don't get QUITE the full sensation of gambling. You do lose just a little something of the proper tremors before a coup, the proper throes during a coup, the proper thrill of joy or anguish after a coup. You're bound to, you know," he added, purposely making this bathos when he saw me smiling at the heights to which he ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm

... couple of loud reports echoed through the cave— one of Ossaroo's arrows whistled, and penetrated the thick shaggy skin— and the next moment the huge black mass rolled down from the rock, and lay back uppermost, kicking his paws about in the last throes of death. Then Fritz leaped upon his upturned breast, seized the white throat between his jaws, and choked and worried at it till the last breath was squeezed out of poor Bruin's body, that the next moment lay ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... Cynthia stopped to see G. G.'s mother and found the whole household in the throes occasioned by ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... earthly lot May be 'content and happiness'? Dire foes Without one common trait which kinship shows I hold these two. Contentment comes when sought, While Happiness pursued was never caught. But, sudden, storms the heart with mighty throes Whenceforth, mild eyed Content affrighted goes, To seek some ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... parents' equipage before it picks out the proper soul for the baby! Ho! the Duchess of Manchester is in labour:—quick, Raphael, or Uriel, bring a soul out of the Numa bin, a young Lycurgus. Or the Archbishop's lady:—ho! a soul from the Chrysostom or Athanasian locker.—But poor Moll Crispin is in the throes with twins:—well! there are plenty of cobblers' and tinkers' souls in the hold—John Bunyan!! Why, thou miserable Barrister, it would take an angel an eternity to tinker thee into a skull ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... into the great wooden shed, where some unplaned boards laid across boxes served as counters, Bregenz being in the throes of the erection of a ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... not strange, at such a sight. Before us lay the bodies of the buffaloes. They were all dead, or quivering in the last throes. Each bad a wound above the brisket, and from this the red stream gurled out, and trickled down their still panting sides. Blood welled from their mouths and out of their nostrils. Pools of it were filtering through the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... on an average eighteen hours a day, and that he has been known to continue an experiment for three months day and night, with the exception of a nap from six o'clock to nine of the morning. In the throes of invention, and under the inspiration of his ideas, he is apt to make no distinction between day and night, until he arrives at a result which he considers to be satisfactory one way or the other. His meals are brought to him in the laboratory, and hastily eaten, although his dwelling is ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... Britain!" it began; "opposed though we have always been to revolutionary politics, a clear line is indicated to us out of the throes of the Re-birth. The old feudal relations between Foxes and Men have had their day. The England that has been the paradise of the wealthy, of the pink-coated, of the doubly second-horsed, must become that of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various

... Roland felt the throes of death approach, and turning his face toward Spain and toward his enemies he placed his sword and horn beneath him, and lifting his weary hands to heaven he closed his eyes. Death and silence brooded o'er the valley; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... friend! That's a little more delikit work than I been doin', but they's a party near here—lemme see—" She passed one of the plump white hands over her brow in the throes of recollection. "I think his name is Professor Balthasar. I ain't ever met him, understand what I mean? but they say he's a genuine wonder an' no mistake; tell you anything right off the reel. You set right there and lemme go see if I can't ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... ignorant, and had little hope of bettering themselves in this world, their thoughts turned much to the other world. The country was often swept by storms of religious excitement; at the camp-meetings the devout fell in fits and trances or were convulsed with strange throes called the jerks, and all sorts of superstitions grew up easily among them. The wildest of these perhaps was that of the Leatherwood God which flourished in Guernsey County, about the year 1828. The name of this fanatic or impostor, who was indeed both one and the other, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... the British Isles, had swept successive conquests with their grim train of sufferings for the conquered; but these storm-clouds had not burst over the island. The shocks which preceded the fall of the Roman Empire had not been felt, nor had the throes which inaugurated the birth of Frankish rule in Gaul and Saxon supremacy in Britain, disturbed the prevailing tranquillity. Occasional descents of pirates, Northmen from Scandinavian homes or Southmen from the Iberian peninsula, had hitherto had a beneficial effect ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... all-importance of morals, and the same determination to make all his theoretic studies subordinate to the solution of the moral problem. Also, partly because he lived at a later time, and in the midst of a society which was in the throes of a social revolution, and partly because of the keenness and strength of his own social sympathies, he gives us a kind of insight into the diseases and wants of modern society, which we could not expect from Kant, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... night, they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay. The irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and an intolerable brightness was with him. He was in the throes of that intense visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet apart from the waking world, where nothing is really real and nothing normal. He had a call to go hence, and he must go. Minute after minute passed, hours passed, and the fight of the soul to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... thousandth part Of the horrors and crimes and sins and woes That arise, when with palpitating throes The graveyard in the human heart Gives up its dead, at the voice of the priest, As if he were an archangel, at least. It makes a peculiar atmosphere, This odor of earthly passions and crimes, Such as I like to breathe, at times, And such as often ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... of them. She had lost the power of loving. Her love, by her awful position, was frightened into its death-throes. All she desired to do, was to get away from them both, and like a haunted hare, or wounded bird, creep into some safe ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... in the throes of temptation. I told you of the thousand dollars which the Senora Parker, in a moment of that great-heartedness which distinguishes her (what a triumph, could I but baptize her in our faith!) forced ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... which is really a part of the British Empire (ceded by the Chinese in 1841) though a vast majority of its residents are Chinese, I decided to have a look at a real Chinese city, Canton, located about ninety miles up the Canton River. As Canton happened to be in the throes of a revolution at that time, people were flocking by the thousands from there to Hongkong. Cook's Agency was warning people to keep away, and Hongkong papers had as headlines "Serious Outlook in Canton"; but I did not ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... gathered up in these words! And yet the impress of this time left upon some of Dr. Newman's writings seems, like the ruin which records what was the violence of the throes of the long-passed earthquake, even still more indicative of the terrible character of the struggle through which at this time he passed. We have seen how keenly he felt the suspicious intrusions upon his privacy which haunted his last years in the Church of England. But in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... Miss Morkin, who was laying violent siege to him, with a battery of words, if not of charms. If the position of Mr. Poletiss, as to deliverance from his fair foe, was a difficult one, his position, as to maintaining his seat during the violent throes and tossings to and fro of the wagon, was even more difficult; for Mr. Poletiss's mildness of voice was surpassed by his mildness of manner, and he was far too timid to grasp at the side of the wagon by placing his ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... the old mother, "that I should have suffered such throes for a craven. Cornelius Vanslyperken, you are not like your ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... were best If so to rest Went man and maid in peace away! The throes a heart May make to smart Unless love have his way, In April woods ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... death-throes were over; his body lay extended half across the Courtyard, while the head, after having bitten one or two of the carriage horses rather severely, had also ceased from troubling. "Perhaps," said ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... began to talk and to tell her tales which were likely to terrify her weak and dying mind. Some minutes before one died the Devil appeared, she said, to all who were in their death throes. He had a broom in his hand, a saucepan on his head, and he uttered loud cries. When anybody had seen him, all was over, and that person had only a few moments longer to live; and she enumerated all those to whom the Devil had appeared that year: Josephine ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... hoped that, now that their unhappy country is in the throes of the most ghastly terror of her history, the irreconcilable elements in the Irish nation will see an all-compelling reason for exercising the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various

... lowered, his cheek got gaunt and haggard, and his eye hollow and wolfish with ferocity. Neither did he make any great secret of his intention to execute vengeance on those who hurried his dying child out of life whilst in the very throes of dissolution. He was never known, however, to name any names, nor to mark out any particular individual for revenge. His denunciations were general, but fearful in their import. The necessity, too, of deserting his wife and child sealed his ruin, which was not hard to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... there will be only too frequent occasion to refer to a somewhat corresponding state of things in the religious life of the country. For two full centuries the land had laboured under the throes of the Reformation. Even when William III. died, it could scarcely be said that England had decisively settled the form which her National Church should take. The 'Church in danger' cries of Queen Anne's reign, and the bitter war of pamphlets, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... brought about, it was the great achievement of his career. Free Trade, by liberating commerce from the bondage under which it groaned, gave food to starving multitudes, redressed a flagrant and tyrannical abuse of power, shielded a kingdom from the throes of revolution, and added a new and magical impetus to material progress in every quarter of the globe. The commercial treaty with France, by establishing mercantile sympathy and intercourse between two of the most powerful nations of the world, carried forward the work which Free Trade ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... filled with awful death-groans or the agonizing cries of the wounded. Men whose parting breath was an ascription of praise to the god of battles, whose last earthly joy was the knowledge of victory, and others who, shattered and torn and in throes of agony, yet repressed their moans that they might listen for the music of the fount which "springs eternal," whose bright waters (to them) mirrored the ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... the room, or when Lord Beaconsfield gave pressing orders for a special train to take him back to Calais; but there seemed good grounds for regarding these incidents rather as illustrative of character, or of the electioneering needs of a sensational age, than as throes in the birth of nationalities. The "Peace with honour," which the Prime Minister on his return announced at Charing Cross to an admiring crowd, had virtually been secured at Downing Street before the end of May respecting all the great points in dispute ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... of the railways leading to the Austria-Hungarian Empire, as well as all the rolling stock within three miles of the frontier, balked any attempt to rush supplies in from the east, and in two days Austria was in the throes of a revolution far more devastating internally than Germany's, for that excitable and harassed people, long on the verge of despair, merely caught the ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton

... Pope's decretals at Wittenberg, and still later that Henry VIII. threw off the papal dominion in England. But great crises in a nation's history never arrive without premonition;—there are no moral earthquakes without premonitory throes, and sometimes these are more decisive and destructive than that which gives electric publicity. Such distinct signs appeared in the age of Chaucer, and the later history of the Church in England cannot be distinctly ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... to stimulate the action of the organs within, or else striding up and down the room, in a brown study, over sundry half-written and discarded sheets of paper, scattered on the floor. L'Isle's servant wished to speak to him, but was too wise to disturb him in the midst of those throes of mental labor. But, when pausing suddenly in his walk, he pressed his forefinger on his temple, and exclaimed, "I had it last night, and now I have lost it!" his confidential man thought it time to speak. "What is it, sir, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... wives. But the Sieur Grimod is made of different metal. Less lead, but a great deal more brass—more polished, but less useful—a pinchbeck imitation of the lords and ladies who were waltzing, flirting, acting proverbs, and writing pasquinades, at the very moment when the first great throes of the "portentous doom" were beginning to shake France to her foundations, and the cloud was gathering that was to fall down in the blood and horror of the Revolution. A sub-collector of taxes! in his country-house—with his friends' wives about him, in addition to his own—giving parties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... which my long struggle with disaster would end? You were my last friend. All others, even our old master Bordin, despised me for the very reason that I borrowed money of them. Oh! you do not know, Alain, the dreadful sensation which grips the heart of an honest man when, in the throes of poverty, he goes to a friend and asks him for succor,—and all that follows! I hope you never may know it; it is far worse than the anguish of death. You have written me letters which, if I had written them to you ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... of circus or conjuror, minstrels or athletic sports, drama or lecture. In July, when I was there last, Horsham was anticipating a fete, in which a mock bull-fight and a battle of confetti were mere details; while it was actually in the throes of a fair. The booths filled an open space to the west of the town known as the Jew's Meadow, and among the attractions was Professor Adams with his "school of undefeated champions." The plural is in the grand manner, giving the lie ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... in Canada, and England, in her colonies, could not live in peace here, while the volcanic throes of war were shaking the island of Great Britain, and the ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... The throes of recovery from drowning are more painful than the drowning. These Arrius passed through, and, at length, to Ben-Hur's delight, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... street of the town, the Krestchatik, formerly the bed of a stream, in front of our windows, was in the throes of sewer-building. More civilization! Sewage from the higher land had lodged there in temporary pools. The weather was very hot. The fine large yellow bricks, furnished by the local clay-beds, of ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... flourished, and fallen in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and as South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland were apparently following in the same legislative path, the next generation would in all probability witness the last throes of the system on ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois



Words linked to "Throes" :   suffering, hurt



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