"Torrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Madame Astier, unaffected by the torrent of grief. 'You are come from the cemetery, I suppose, where you have been working up your feelings again. But you know, dear, there must be an end to Artemisia!' She understood the woman's weak vanity, and insisted on the absurdity of this interminable mourning, ridiculous ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... spent, and though by a mighty effort he 'ups flukes' and sounds, he soon rises, for the killers thrust him upwards to the surface again. Then the flashing lance—two, three swift thrusts into his 'life' a gushing torrent of hot, dark blood, and he rolls oyer on his side, an agonised trembling quivers through his vast frame, the battle is oyer and his life ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... been. Small, but the variety, the intensity of the life, the changes, the vicissitudes, the picturesque incidents, no history could compete for that kind of interest with the history of that little torrent that had flowed through such a rocky, narrow bed. Crimes or illegalities got easily into books, and this was a little unfortunate, because people dwelt on such crimes and illegalities as constituting ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... forest, yet it was back there behind her. Not a pine-needle quivered in the light of the camp-fire. But the air seemed to be oppressed with a terrible charge. The roar augmented till it was no longer a roar, but an on-sweeping crash, like an ocean torrent engulfing the earth. Bo awoke to cling to Helen with fright. The deafening storm-blast was upon them. Helen felt the saddle-pillow move under her head. The giant pine had trembled to its very roots. That mighty fury of wind was all aloft, in the tree-tops. And for ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... had now melted into one party, much upon the same principle that the various little streamlets on the mountains around them all run, when swollen by a sudden storm, into some larger torrent equally precipitous and turbulent. Keenan, who was one of those pertinacious fellows that are equally quarrelsome and hospitable when in liquor, now resumed the debate with a characteristic impression of the ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... lady's eyes glared wider and wider; her chest heaved; she seemed about to break out in a torrent of angry speech; but making a visible effort, she controlled herself. "How do you do, my—my dear?" she said, taking Margaret's offered hand, and giving it a little pinch with the tips of her fingers. "I—a little misunderstanding, no doubt. Willis,—the Blue Room,—for ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... journey by night in the Highlands (Works, ix. l55):—'The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough music of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before.' In 1783, when he was in his seventy-fourth year, he said, on hearing the music of a funeral procession:—'This is the first ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of Saumur with a pleased impatience. He was for some reason in a condition of curious hilarity. His spirits were already unnaturally high; they rose as the Saumur sank, and in half an hour his talk was a torrent of nonsense. He professed to be making out a plan of the conversation which was going to ensue between himself and the deadly Marquis. He jotted it down wildly with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... castle, and she as little, saving the one room in it where her boy lay. The grey of Welsh history knew a real castle beside the roaring brook frequently a torrent. This was an eighteenth century castellated habitation on the verge of a small wood midway up the height, and it required a survey of numberless happy recollections to illumine its walls or drape its chambers. The permanently lighted hearth of a dear home, as in that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of a good and desperate purpose. Oshondonto knew that on the issue of this shameless business—this cruel sport of Silver Tassel—would depend his future on the Peace River. As he shot forward with strong strokes in the whirling torrent after the helpless lad, who, only able to keep himself afloat, was being swept down toward the rapids below, he glanced up to the bank along which the Athabascas were running. He saw the garish colors of their dresses; he saw the ignorant medicine-man, with his mysterious bag, making ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... it may be conjectured that opportunity was not long wanting, or might soon be made, for giving utterance to the suppressed fires of anger which were struggling in his heart. Days and weeks may elapse, but the antipathy will declare itself at last. It would be easier to lock up the mountain torrent after the breath of the tornado has torn away its rocky seals, than to stifle in the heart that hates, because of its love, the fierce fury which these united passions enkindle ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... the splendor and richness, that burned like a magic stone, The torrent suffusion that deepened and dazzled and broadened and shone, The pomp and the pageant of color, triumphal procession of glare, The sun, like a king in armor, breathing splendor from feet to hair, Stood forth with majesty girdled, as a hero who towers ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... hath bless'd me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... of the town lay northeast of the sleepy little Lobos River, which cut Santa Paloma in two. It was a pretty river, a boiling yellow torrent in winter, but low enough in the summer-time for the children to wade across the shallows, and shaded all along its course by overhanging maples, and willows, and oaktrees, and an undergrowth of wild currant and hazel bushes and blackberry vines. Across the river ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... master's, would ever be set upon it. Here lies the ponderous stone as it fell after the upheaving blast had dislodged it from its bed; and there, vaulted over, is a gulf that makes the brain dizzy, and strikes us with terror as we look down into it. Now we see an arch, fit to bridge a mountain torrent; and in another step or two we meet another, only fit to span a simple brook. Tiers of passages are met with, as dangerous to enter as they are strange to look at. It must ever be a matter of regret that after Mr. Williamson's death, some one ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... encouraged schemes for abolishing the order of bishops, and selling the dean and chapter lands, in order to defray the expenses of a Spanish war. And the king, though he still entertained projects for temporizing, and for forming an accommodation with Spain, was so borne down by the torrent of popular prejudices, conducted and increased by Buckingham, that he was at last obliged, in a speech to parliament, to declare in favor of hostile measures, if they would engage to support him.[****] Doubts of their sincerity in this respect, doubts which the event showed not ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... she had an agreeable manner of uniting her tones by the happiest transitions, and diminishing with insensible gradations. She excelled in the effects of vocal embroidery, and her passion for ornamentation tempted her to disregard the dramatic situation in order to give way to a torrent of splendid fioriture, which dazzled the audience without ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... with weakened numbers, Germany could no longer resist the onslaught of the armies of France and Britain and Belgium. Here, then, in front of Verdun, the French had but a mere handful in their first-line trenches—a mere handful—upon whom that torrent of shells was rained. Just a scattered, yet noble band, ready to hold up the assault which would most ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... delicious was its subjection that she had not dared to move lest she should lose this sweet peace. Her lips had murmured an Our Father, but so slowly that the Sanctus bell had rung before she had finished it. Nothing troubled her, nothing seemed capable of troubling her, and the torrent of delight which had flowed into and gently overflowed her soul had intoxicated and absorbed her until it had seemed to her that there was nothing further for ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... kiss'd you, Or think at least some one who miss'd you Had sent you a thought,—if that cheers; Or a bird's little song, faint and broken, May pass for a tender word spoken: —Enough, while around you there rushes That life-drowning torrent of tears. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... whole country-side is aflame. At other times, when there is peace in the land, and the wet season has made the unbridged rivers impassable, whole companies of travellers camp on either side of some river—a silver thread in the dry season, a rushing torrent now. But the r'kass knows every ford, and, his long pole aiding him, manages to reach his destination. It is his business to defy Nature if necessary, just as he defies man in the pursuit of his task. He is a living proof of the capacity and dogged endurance still ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... of the world." In April and May, after the Congress had opened the ports, the tide set strongly and irresistibly in the direction of the formal declaration. "Every post and every day rolls in upon us," John Adams said, "Independence like a torrent." It was on the 7th of June that Richard Henry Lee, in behalf of the Virginia delegation and in obedience to the instructions from the Virginia Convention, moved "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent State...; ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... of pain, and the mind from all perturbation. This state must not, however, be conceived to be perfect in proportion as it is inactive and torpid, but in proportion as all the functions of life are quietly and pleasantly performed. A happy life neither resembles a rapid torrent, nor a standing pool, but is like a gentle stream, that glides smoothly and ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... well for a name for a very queer boy," said she, stifling a laugh; "but a torrent ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... as they broke, and pursued them in their flight. Gates, in person, assisted by their generals, made several efforts to rally the militia; but the alarm in their rear still continuing, they poured on like a torrent, and bore him with them. He hastened with General Caswell to Clermont, in the hope of stopping a sufficient number of them at their old encampment, to cover the retreat of the continental troops; but this hope was ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... poured at him a torrent of vigorous oaths. He was so taken by surprise that he forgot to do anything but wonder, and ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... was beer. With a cry, the Vicar ran towards the doorway, wading ankle-deep in beer as he crossed the threshold and broke in to the kitchen. The whole house swam with beer, but not with beer only; for when, no inmate answering his call, he followed the torrent up through yet another doorway and found himself in the inn cellar, in the dim light of its iron-barred window he halted to gaze before one, two, three, a dozen casks of ale, port, sherry, brandy, all pouring their contents in a general ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... no effort to check the torrent of tears that followed my first stunned feelings; indeed, his "Poor child!" so tenderly uttered, only made them flow more quickly. It was not until we were seated in the railway compartment, and I had dried ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... deliberate, and did not look forward; he had done with all his past, he leaped forward into the future; from the dreary bank of his lonely bachelor life he plunged headlong into that glad, seething, mighty torrent—and little he cared, little he wished to know, where it would carry him, or whether it would dash him against a rock! No more the soft-flowing currents of the Uhland song, which had lulled him not long ago ... These were mighty, irresistible torrents! ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... this way, fellows. Seems to go clear through the Mound. The water's rushing down in a torrent. ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... the Chartreuse. It is six miles to the top; the road runs winding up it, commonly not six feet broad; on one hand is the rock, with woods of pine-trees hanging overhead; on the other, a monstrous precipice, almost perpendicular, at the bottom of which rolls a torrent, that sometimes is tumbling among the fragments of stone that have fallen from on high, and sometimes precipitating itself down vast descents with a noise like thunder, which is made still greater by the echo from the mountains on each side, concurs to form one of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... father by the arm and steered him outside and along the terrace walk where the agonized sobs and moans of her mother could not be heard—for what Elizabeth feared in that first great moment of remorse was a torrent of self-accusation from her mother. If, as her father had stated, Donald was en route to be married, then the mischief was done and no good could come out of a confession to The Laird of the manner in which the family honor had been compromised, not by Donald, but ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... that she looked sickly or unhappy, and then all her tenderness would return like a torrent, and bear away all reflection. In this manner was her sensibility called forth, and exercised, by her mother's illness, her friend's misfortunes, ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... streaming hitherward in advance;[97] the dust appearing high in the air convinces me, a voiceless, clear, true messenger; the noise of the clatter of their hoofs upon the plain,[98] reaching even to our couches, approaches my ears, is wafted on, and is rumbling like a resistless torrent lashing the mountain-side. Alas! alas! oh gods and goddesses, avert the rising horror; the white-bucklered[99] well-appointed host is rushing on with a shout on the other side our walls, speeding its way to the city. Who then will rescue us, who then of gods ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... the answer. "Wait till you hit the Canyon. You'll have to cross a raging torrent on a sixty-foot pine-tree. No guide-ropes, nothing, and the water boiling at the sag of the log to your knees. If you fall with a pack on your back, there's no getting out of the straps. You ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... of the feeling—was she getting as small as that?—and, in consequence, she congratulated Olga a good deal more warmly than otherwise she would have done. But this warmer manner of hers opened Olga's flood-gates so wide, swamped her in such a torrent of sentiment, that Rose simply ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and threatening to sacrifice as traitors to their country all who should embrace measures that seemed to favour a foreign interest. The commissioner and his friends were confounded and appalled. Finding it impossible to stem the torrent, he, with the concurrence of the other ministers, wrote a letter to the queen, representing the uncomfortable situation of affairs, and advising her majesty to pass the bill encumbered as it was with the act of security. Lord Godolphin, on whose council she chiefly relied, found himself involved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... In the second they were vanquished in a bloody battle, with more loss and dishonor than they had sustained since the foundation of their monarchy. Impatient for revenge, they returned a third time with accumulated force, and Autharis yielded to the fury of the torrent. The troops and treasures of the Lombards were distributed in the walled towns between the Alps and the Apennine. A nation, less sensible of danger than of fatigue and delay, soon murmured against the folly of their twenty commanders; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... white foam, in consequence of the deep excavations of the rocks, and the clouds of spray produce in the sunshine a brilliant variety of prismatic colours. The dark-green foliage of the dense forests that overhang the torrent on both sides, forms a striking contrast with ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the white glacier-torrent unites with the black, and the milky stream is nearly as cold as ice, and is boiling along over huge rocks, its banks bordered with pine forest, I came upon a native fishing for trout. He was using a short rod and a weighted line with a small "grub" as bait. He dropped his line ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... is exceptionally unsuspicious, soft-hearted and vehement. In both he is completely overwhelmed, passing through fury to madness in the one case, to suicide in the other. Famous passages in both plays are curses. The misanthropy of Timon pours itself out in a torrent of maledictions on the whole race of man; and these at once recall, alike by their form and their substance, the most powerful speeches uttered by Lear in his madness. In both plays occur repeated ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... deeds, had their origin in one corrupt and common source, the passions of man being let loose, in wild uproar, throughout the land; when the wars of the Roses had almost desolated the realm, and England's best blood flowed like a torrent. Such was the aspect of the time to which the following ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... torrent, which overflowed the banks of the village brook, tore at the bridge, and swept through the lanes. In the fields, grain was beaten into the ground and it was clear that the villagers would have little or no harvest to celebrate during the approaching festival. The wind grew in force, ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... need to grip me so close this mawnin'," he said, as he pondered over his meal. "I reckon it will mightily astonish her when I tell her how harmless the torrent is lookin'." He held out to his pony a slice of bread matted with sardines, which the pony expertly accepted. "You're a plumb pie-biter you Monte," he continued. Monte rubbed his nose on his master's shoulder. "I wouldn't trust you with berries and cream. No, seh; not though ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... feet deep in the forests, and the path was, in many places, quite drifted over. The white cloud-masses were whirled past by the wind, continually enveloping me and shutting out every view. During the winter the path had become, in ninny places, the bed of a mountain torrent, so that I was obliged sometimes to wade kneedeep in snow, and sometimes to walk over the wet, spongy moss, crawling under the long, dripping branches of the stunted pines. After a long time of such dreary ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... necessary under the circumstances that we are considering; but there may be exceptional conditions where the covering-in of a brook, or storm-water course, cannot be avoided; and in such cases the volume of water may vary so greatly that there will at times be a mere thread of a stream, and at times a torrent. Here the oval form is the best, as concentrating a small flow within a narrow and deep channel, and still giving the capacity needed for exceptionally large volumes. All bricks used for sewers, man-holes, &c., should be of the very hardest quality, and true in form. The general rule is ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... evident that this helped the good fellow to control himself. Marco remembered that at the time he had actually turned pale, and had struck his forehead and poured forth a torrent of Samavian dialect in penitence and terror. But, though he no longer saluted them in public, he omitted no other form of reverence and ceremony, and the boy had become accustomed to being treated as if he were anything but the shabby ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Ruler?" "Yes. Are you?" Instantly a torrent of protest. He was a Mahometan, eminent in law and politics; clever, fluent, forensic, with a passion for hearing himself talk, and addressing one always as if one were a public meeting. He approached his face close to mine, gradually backing me into the wall. And I realised ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... shed. And even in the pauses between them, dividing the rollers in sunder, High overhead seems ever the sea-line fixed as a mark, And the shore where I stand as a valley beholden of hills whence thunder Cloud and torrent and storm, darkening the depths of the dark. Up to the sea, not upon it or over it, upward from under Seems he to gaze, whose eyes yearn after it here from the shore: A wall of turbid water, aslope to the wide sky's wonder Of colour and cloud, it climbs, or spreads as a slanted ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... my soul did blow * That consumed my liver for stress of lowe; When my sweetheart went all my longings grew; * And with tears in torrent mine eyelids flow: Such my doubt and fears, did I tell their tale * To deaf rocks and pebbles they'd melt for woe. Would Heaven I wot shall I sight delight, * And shall win my wish and my friend shall know! Shall be folded up ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... and death. She wants the earth in her love—but her lover is strange and hears persistently a call that is not of earth. The woman tries to hold him. All earth beauty is about her—her love a perfume, a torrent. The voice of destiny speaks to her that it must not be. She rebels. The story rushes on, many voices coming to her re-stating the inexorable ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... you villain!' roared the luckless artist, pale with consternation. 'My splendid sign! A painting worth thirty-five francs! I am ruined and undone!' And he continued shaking the ladder, and pouring out a torrent of abuse upon David, who, caring neither for the reproaches of his victim, nor for the crowd that the sudden clamour had attracted, went on pitilessly effacing the 'Break of Day,' and mingling in one confused mass sky and sun, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... on a grassy bank, in the shade of a cliff, by a tumbling brook that streamed down from the rocks. By and by Mary remarked that she would like to see where the little torrent came from, and Windham said he would try and find out for her. He scrambled up, and soon passed out of sight among the bowlders. He found some tough climbing, but kept on, and after a while traced the stream to a clear pool where a spring bubbled out of a rock wall in a cave-like ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... truth. Twice had he yielded to her, and he was not the man to yield easily. Once, and he had thought it a passing light mood, when he had let down the bars for her to come in. Now that recklessly he flung open the flood gates which had dammed his own emotions, allowing the headlong torrent to sweep away everything with it. It was madness; it was folly; it was insanity for a man like David Drennen to let his heart be snared out of him by the girl upon whom he had looked so few times. And yet, be it what else it might be, it was the ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... intense stillness was broken by the rushing music of the birds—a careless, cheery torrent of song poured forth from bramble and woodland. Distant and nearer cockcrows rang out above the melodious tumult, through which a low, confused undertone, scarcely apparent at first, was growing louder—the dull sound of the stirring of ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... the deafening roar of foam and breakers were a novel experience which some of our passengers would apparently have cheerfully dispensed with. There was an awkward moment when the cable got foul of a snag, and the White Horse swerved round and lay broadside to the torrent, which for several minutes heeled her over at a very uncomfortable angle. "Something will happen here some day," coolly remarked the pilot, a long, lanky New Englander, lighting a fresh cigarette, and viewing the wild excitement of men afloat and ashore ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... his hopes, he had not seriously considered the latter possibility. The more he meditated on the thought of failing in his suit, the more wretched became his condition of mind. The torrent of words that he had come to speak slowly deserted his tongue until when Jane entered, a quarter of an hour later, wreathed in smiles, ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of the Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was suspended, as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal waters plunged into the Viorne, ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... never was weary of. If the distinguished Ithacan had travelled with a hat-box, how finely and minutely Homer would have described it—its depth and girth, its cunningly fashioned lock and fair lining withal! And in how interminable a torrent of hexameters would he have catalogued all the labels on it, including those attractive views of the Hotel Circe, the Hotel Calypso, and other high-class resorts. Yet no! Had such a hat-box existed and had ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... provisions and depended almost entirely upon meat, my head man and I started at once for the hills. The little stream by our camp was swollen into a rushing torrent, and we were obliged to go almost to its source—a miniature glacier—before we could wade it. Climbing to the crest of the mountains on which we had seen the sheep the evening before, and following just under the sky line, we soon saw a large and two small rams ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... steps to an artificial octagonal pool, formed by carefully destroying the whole natural beauty of the wild and rocky little English glen beneath. To feed it by fitting a conduit, the moss-grown boulders that strew the bed of the torrent above and below have been carefully removed, and the unwilling stream, as it runs into the pool, has been coerced into a long straight channel, bordered on either side by bedded turf, and planed off at measured intervals so as to produce a series of eminently ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... making towards my horse instead of me; but as it reached the mustang, the latter drew his feet out of the hole, and throwing up his heels at the bull's nose, scampered off, followed by his enemy, while the rest of the herd swept by like a torrent, not ten yards from where I lay. Some stragglers, however, caught sight of me; and another big bull was rushing on to give me a taste of his horns and hoofs, when a loud "Whallop-ahoo-aboo! Erin go bragh!" sounded ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... of a house that announces its purpose beneath the sign of a spreading bush. They are positioned as crossing the river to a set purpose, and the bridge is devoid of a rail in the hope that on their return they may all fall into the torrent in a helpless condition and be drowned, to ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... the old man said: "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide! And loud that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... natural that we should look closely to the apes and monkeys for language, both by voice and sign. In 1891 there was a flood of talk on "the speech of monkeys," and it was not until about 1904 that the torrent stopped. At first the knowledge that monkeys can and do communicate to a limited extent by vocal sounds was hailed as a "discovery"; but unfortunately for science, nothing has been proved beyond the long-known fact that primates of a given species understand the meaning ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... influence which men, exalted and powerful, exert on their age, and on society; it is difficult to believe that a similar influence is exerted by every individual man and woman, however limited his or her sphere of life: the force of the torrent is easily calculated,—that of the under-current is hidden, yet its existence and power ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... broadside was nobly returned, or as much of it as the weather permitted, but the smoke of both discharges was still driving between his masts, when the dark hamper of the Carnatic glided into the drifting canopy, which was made to whirl back on the devoted Frenchman in another torrent of flame. Three times was this fearful assault renewed on the Scipio, at intervals of about a minute, the iron hurricane first coming from to windward, and then seeming to be driven back from to leeward, as by its own rebound, leaving no breathing time to meet it. The effect was ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... utter a word. He jumped up then from his bed, and clutched with both hands his spear, Skarphedinn's gift, and drove it through his foot; then flesh clung to the spear, and the eye of the boil too, for he had cut it clean out of the foot, but a torrent of blood and matter poured out, so that it fell in a stream along the floor. Now he went out of the booth unhalting, and walked so hard that the messenger could not keep up with him, and so he goes until he came ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... insisted afterward that it sounded like the snarling of a wolf over a bone. "Is it that you come here to give the orders? Is it that you insult?" Followed a torrent of molten French, as it were. Followed also Jakie, with the eyes of a snake and the toothy grin of a wild animal and with a knife which Happy Jack had never seen before; a knife which caught the sunlight and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... weigh'd What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer, And find our griefs heavier than our offences. We see which way the stream of time doth run, And are enforced from our most quiet there By the rough torrent of occasion; And have the summary of all our griefs, When time shall serve, to show in articles; Which long ere this we offer'd to the king, And might by no suit gain our audience: When we are wrong'd and would unfold our griefs, We are denied access unto his person Even by those men that most ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... scanty camel-thorn and tezek. Whenever the prying curiosity of the occupants of neighboring menzils impels them to visit our quarters, to stand and stare at me, my friend the hadji waxes indignant, and, waving a stick of firewood threateningly toward them, he pours forth a torrent of withering and sarcastic remarks. Once, in his wrath, he hops lightly off the menzil floor, seizes an individual twice his own size by the kammerbund, jerks him violently forward, bids him stare until he gets ashamed ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... The carriage wheels splashed mud over this wall, but it did not move. I was standing on the front seat of an open carriage; from time to time a man in rags would step out from the wall, hurl a torrent of abuse at us, then cover us with a cloud of flour. Mud would soon follow; yet we kept on our way toward the Isle of Love and the pretty wood of Romainville consecrated by so many sweet kisses. One of my friends fell from his seat into the mud, narrowly escaping death on the ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... congratulate you!" I said, in a studiously indifferent and slightly bored tone, though my heart pulsed fiercely with the torrent of wrath pent up within it. I understood his meaning well. In six months he proposed marrying my wife. Six months was the shortest possible interval that could be observed, according to social etiquette, between the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... top to bottom, spreads apart. The path lies in this breach, between two gigantic walls. A roaring torrent flows through the gorge. The air is icy, the granite looks black, and high above one the glimpse of blue ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... glistening white belts. The fateful book is closed with a snap, and the echoing walls ring to the quick commands of the first sergeants, at which the bayonets are struck from the rifle-barrels, and the long line bursts into a living torrent sweeping into the hall-ways to escape the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... violent and extravagant. Therefore the choruses of the Greek drama displease him. The merit of his own poems he sees in the fact that they pass passion by, they abstain from pathos altogether—'there is not a single storm in them, no mountain torrent overflowing its banks, no exaggeration whatever. There is great frugality in words. My poetry would rather keep within bounds than exceed them, rather hug the shore than cleave the high seas.' In another place he says: 'I am always most pleased by a poem that does not differ too ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... that combination which seemed to be directed against John's peace of mind. If I said that it is not unusual for the current of events to run very quietly before a great crisis, I should not be saying anything original, since the torrent's calmness ere it dash below has been remarked before now. But it certainly was so in this instance. John, I need scarcely say, did not present himself at Lady Mariamne's on the afternoon at five when he was expected. He wrote a very civil note to say that he was unable to come, and still less ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... upon Sibylla?" Lionel said to her one day that he had gone to Deerham Court. He spoke in a low, deprecating tone, and his face flushed; he anticipated he knew not what torrent ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the quarrel had been an insignificant something that speedily lost itself in the torrent of angry words that burst from the lips of the irate husband and wife, until by night it would have been difficult for either the man or the woman to tell exactly what had been the first point of difference. By that time, however, the quarrel had ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... young trees cowered before the blast, the strong and vigorous beat their branches together with a groaning sound, the old and worn fell crashing to the earth. Presently the rain rushed down, slant lines of silver tearing through the wood with the sound of the feet of an army; hail followed, a torrent of ice beating and bruising all tender green things to the earth. The wind took the multitudinous sounds,—the cries of frightened birds, the creaking trees, the snap of breaking boughs, the crash ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... tumbled down from the mountain to be lost in the dismal swamp. But Dol felt that it had accomplished its mission when he unfastened the tin drinking-mug which hung from his belt, and drank—drank—drank! He straightened himself again, feeling that some of the bubbling life of the mountain torrent had passed into him. His eyes lit on a towering pine-tree just beyond it. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... different over his bed, the patient lay struggling with those terrible bonds of weakness, labouring to find expression for something which wrought him into a fever of excitement. While Mr Wentworth bent his ear closer and closer, trying to make some sense of the inarticulate torrent of sound, Lucy, inspired by grief and horror and indignation, leaned over her father on the other side, doing everything possible to calm him. "Oh, papa, don't say any more—don't say any more; we understand you," she ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... proved to be quite true, for they had a long, long journey through rugged valley, up steep mountain side, down precipitous gulch, and across many a roaring torrent, one of which necessitated the use of knotted-together ropes to ensure that the mules with their ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... organ, aided by two double-basses, bellowed out, carrying all the voices in its torrent—baritones, tenors, basses, not now serving only as sheaths to the sharp blades of the urchin voices, but openly with full throated sound—yet the dash of the little soprani pierced them through all at once ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... apex, and above that even towered Orohena, nearly a mile and a half high, and never reached by man despite many efforts. Tropic birds, the bo's'ns of the sailor, their bodies whitish gray, with their two long tail-feathers, had their haunt there, and piped above the trees. The river was a fierce torrent, and leaped into a water-hewn lava basin, where it swirled and foamed before it rushed, singing, through a stone funnel to the border of the chasm, and sprang with a ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... new element. There were the Fan, with the jets shot forth in rays, the Fortress, which seemed to be defended by waterspouts, the Faithful Friend, with her plume crowned with the rainbows, the Giant, spurting forth a vertical torrent twenty feet round and more ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... subjected to any special restriction. [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 389 et seq.] Without denying the danger of the extension of slavery, he argued that it was not for Congress to stay the course of this dark torrent. "If you have power," said he, "to restrict the new states on admission, you may squeeze a new-born sovereign state to the size of a pigmy." There would be nothing to hinder Congress "from plundering power after power at the expense of the new states," ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... push my way through the wood, I followed the course of a mountain torrent. At first, from the waterfalls and number of dead trees, I could hardly crawl along; but the bed of the stream soon became a little more open, from the floods having swept the sides. I continued slowly to advance ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and more repressed habits of modern times can give no idea of the wild fervor of a religious revival among a people so passionate and susceptible to impressions as the Italians. It swept society like a spring torrent from the sides of the Apennines, bearing all before it. Houses were sacked with religious fervor by penitent owners, and licentious pictures and statuary and books, and all the thousand temptations and appliances of a luxurious age, were burned in the great public square. Artists ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... titmouse : paruo. toad : bufo. toast : panrostajxo; toasto. tobacco : tabako. toe : piedfingro. toilet : tualeto. tolerate : toleri. tone : tono. tongs : prenilo. tongue : lango. top : supro, pinto; verto; turbo. torment : turmenti. torrent : torento. tortoise : testudo total : tuto. totter : sxanceligxi. tourist : turisto. towel : visx'ilo, -tuko. tower : turo. town : urbo. trace : postesigno. trade : negoci, komerci; metio, (—"union") sindikato, metia unuigxo. tradition : tradicio. train : vagonaro; ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... ferns, and having a large fountain in the centre sending up a sparkling jet of water, which fell into the shallow stone basin filled with water lilies and their pure white flowers. At the end was a mimic representation of a mountain torrent, with real water tumbling down real rocks, and here and there in the crannies and crevices grew delicate little ferns, while overhead towered the great fronds of the tree ferns. The roof was a dense mass ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... minutes of leaping and scrambling brought us to a collection of miserable huts built all higgledy-piggledy along the edge of a torrent, overtopped by a square building of more consequence, built of grey stone and roofed with slate shingles, but with nothing but ill-shaped holes for windows; and this, Don Lopez with some pride told us was his castillo. A ragged crew of women and children, apprised ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... of the river are, like the bank in the gulf, but accumulations of the sand borne down before the torrent, that, suddenly swollen by the rains, rushes annually to the sea. The one on which the temple stands is partly artificial, having been raised from the bed of the Meinam by the king P'hra Chow Phra-sat-thong, as a work of "merit." Visiting this island ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... and the farm of Laban and the well of Rachel," to the environs of Nisibis and Ur of the Chaldees, lost to the Roman Empire since Julian's defeat; thence by "Padan-aram" back to Antioch. When crossing the Euphrates the pilgrims saw the river "rush down in a torrent like the Rhone, but greater," and on the way home by the great military road, then untravelled by Saracens, between Tarsus and the Bosphorus, Silvia makes a passing note on the strength and brigand habits of the Isaurian mountaineers, who in the end saved Christendom ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... sea-level down, the first 80 feet consists of sand and clay; the next 100 feet or so is stiff blue clay, while the last 20 to 60 feet is a conglomerate, composed of sand, shells and stone. It will be readily seen that great damage might be done by a raging torrent boring into the sand and clay of ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... sight of thee, thou sullen labouring slave Of gravitation,—yellow torrent poured From distant mountains by no will of thine, Through thrice a hundred centuries of slow Fallings and liftings of the crust of Earth,— At sight of thee my spirit sinks and fails. Art thou alone the Maker? Is the blind Unconscious power that drew thee dumbly down To ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... boiling motion or ebolition of it's waters occasioned no doubt by the roling and irregular motion of the sand of which its bed is entirely composed. the particles of this sand being remarkably small and light it is easily boied up and is hurried by this impetuous torrent in large masses from place to place in with irristable forse, collecting and forming sandbars in the course of a few hours which as suddingly disapated to form others and give place perhaps to the deepest channel of the river. where it enters the Missouri it's superior force changes and ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... and a flood of tears being imminent, Miss Latimer strove to avert the torrent by saying, "Come, come, Debby; that is strong language to use. You and I great healthy creatures do not know what it is to be confined to a couch day after day, and suffer almost constant pain. I should feel it very hard to be unable to go about and walk in God's beautiful sunshine, ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... by beguiling Alpine travellers suggested the memory of a certain short cut which involved a bit of amusing scrambling. I was speedily occupied in fighting my way downwards through a steep ravine, cloven by a vicious little torrent from a lofty glacier, when—how it happened I know not, for all forms of earth and grassy slope were obliterated at a few yards by the descending showers—I suddenly found that I had left the right track and was descending too sharply towards the stream. At the same ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the reeds of their little dark pond, and the black blur of the flowering currant bushes. And the young lime-trees, not yet in full leaf, quivered ecstatically in that moon-witchery, still letting fall raindrops of the past spring torrent, with soft hissing sounds. A real sense in the garden, of God holding his breath in the presence of his own youth swelling, growing, trembling toward perfection! Somewhere a bird—a thrush, they thought—mixed in its little mind as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... drenched!" cried Grace, thinking of her new walking suit. Without more ado the girls hurried through the gate, up the gravel walk and got to the porch just as the rain reached its maximum. It was coming down now in a veritable torrent. ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... thank his preserver most profusely, and Mrs. Chiffield to burst into a new torrent, when Matthew, to avoid these demonstrations, rose, opened the door, and let in the pack ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... aghast. Fight the Turk! Was that not the very thing they had for a century been trying not to do? Disturb the Sultan in those dominions of which he was the only safe and harmless occupant! Tear away the barrier between Europe and Asia, and let the torrent rush through—the prizes going to the strongest! What madness—what folly! What impertinence for this King George to assume such a responsibility, and to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the dashing torrent of angry words stopped at the mere mention of her mother. The word recalled her to herself, but too late. It woke in her memory the clasp of her mother's arms, the sound of the sweet, tired voice: 'Only two of us against the big world, Polly—you and I. Be brave, little daughter, brave and patient.' ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... roadway now lay lifeless. There were overturned wagons like sun-dried bowlders. The bed of the former torrent was choked with the bodies of horses and splintered parts ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... her mother had gone to our house, as agreed upon, to pack our trunks. As they left their rooms, having accomplished their task, they found the landlady waiting on the staircase, who at once overwhelmed my wife with a torrent ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... heavy over everything, and the twinkle of an occasional camp-fire is but the sodden glow of ember whose life is long since burned out. But, see! Through the deep, jagged rift where runs the Potomac, along the rock-bound gorge through which in ages past the torrent burst its way, there creeps a host of tiny shafts of color—the skirmishers, the eclaireurs, of the irresistible array of which they form but the foremost line—the coming army of the God of Day. Here behind the frowning Loudon no such light troops ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... looked-for and most galling shapes, searching every thread and fibre of his heart, and finding out the last remaining image of respect or attachment in the bottom of his breast, only to torture and kill it! In like manner the "So I am" of Cordelia gushes from her heart like a torrent of tears, relieving it of a weight of love and of supposed ingratitude, which had pressed upon it for years. What a fine return of the passion upon itself is that in Othello—with what a mingled agony of regret and despair he ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... is dead! His body no longer animated with life; his spirit gone to God. How like a torrent thought rushes on, in swift review, of his wonderful and glorious career. His gifted youth, what if it were attended with the errors that almost invariably accompany genius like his! Has he in the wide world an enemy who can bring aught against him? Look at his patriotism, his benevolence, ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... cascade, pouring down from some spring on the hillside, whereon the old Fort stood. It was absurdly wide for the trifling watercourse it now disgorged upon the river. But then, in spring the whole character of it was changed. In spring it was a rushing torrent, fed by the melting snows, and tearing out its banks in a wild, rebellious effort ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... themselves to the resuscitation of a language, neither living nor dead." Twenty-five years have brought on a great revolution; and those enthusiasts are no longer "a few." But they have still a hard combat to fight. It may be doubtful whether their strength will hold out to struggle against the torrent of time; which, in its resistless course, overwhelms the nations, and only throws their vestiges in scattered fragments on the banks, as feeble memorials to show to an inquiring posterity ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... no fire like passion; there is no shark like hatred; there is no snare like folly; there is no torrent like greed. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... yet in Western telegraph circles of Charlie Moore's great exploit. The candidate was in grand form that night, and his speech came rushing forth in a torrent. The missing Wymond was still missing, and the luckless Barr was still ill, but the fledgling sat alone in the box, his face bent over the key, oblivious of the world around him, and sent it all. Through him ran the fire of battle and great endeavor. He heard the call and replied. He never missed ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... got there the shouts had ceased, and in their place we heard a torrent of amazed oaths and knew that Uncle ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the point of view of those in whose country you eat, drink, sleep, and sight-see may breed only minor discords, and after all you will pay for your manners in your bill. But to ignore the point of view of those whose country you govern may let loose a red torrent of tragedy. Such a temper of mind may, at the first touch of resistance, transform your stolid, laudable, laughable Englishman into the beastliest of tyrants. It may drive him into a delirium of cruelty and injustice. It may sweep away, in one ruin of war, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... they shook their crests like tongues of fire, and flashes of bloody light gleamed along their foam. Their sound came mightier and mightier on his senses; his brain grew giddy with the prolonged thunder. Shuddering, he drew the flask from his girdle, and hurled it into the centre of the torrent. As he did so, an icy chill shot through his limbs; he staggered, shrieked, and fell. The waters closed over his cry. And the moaning of the river rose wildly into the ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... keep the hurrying citizens fuming at the open draw of a bridge. All side-wheelers were these pioneers, wooden of course, and but sorry specimens of marine architecture, but they opened the way for great things. For some years longer the rushing torrent of the Ste. Marie's kept Lake Superior tightly closed to steamboats, but about 1840 the richness of the copper mines bordering upon that lake began to attract capital, and the need of steam navigation became crying. In 1845 men determined to put some sort ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... affording relief or resource in the first intoxicating surprise—I had almost said terror—of such a revolution, that they render it more intense. The sources of thought multiply beyond calculation the sources of feeling; and mingled, they rush together, a torrent deep as strong. Because Portia is endued with that enlarged comprehension which looks before and after, she does not feel the less, but the more: because from the height of her commanding intellect she can contemplate the force, the tendency, the consequences of her own sentiments—because ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... pushed her forward upon the sill. There were two windows looking upon the piazza. One was made of glass doors that were shut; the other, fortunately, was quite low; and Mrs. Fraser seated herself on the edge, and succeeded in passing her feet over to the other side, a torrent of chocolate creams following her as she came. She then turned to see if she could help Carrie. Carrie was trying to eat her way toward the window, and stretched out her arms to her mother, who ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... rose with a gesture of impatience, walked to her window and gazed on the torrent of humanity pouring through Twenty-third Street from the beehives of industry that have changed this quarter of New York so rapidly in the last five years. She turned ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... (When he came to a town, though there were three hundred houses in it, if he wanted anything, he would let sleep come to the eyes of no man until he had it.) Osla Gyllellfawr (he bore a short broad dagger. When Arthur and his hosts came before a torrent, they would seek a narrow place where they might cross the water, and lay the sheathed dagger across the torrent, and it would be a bridge enough for the armies of the Three Islands of the Mighty and the three islands near thereby, with all their spoils.) The sons of Llwch ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... had untied the one whose place had been taken by Nazu, he came straight for the Earth-man and would have brained him with a huge stone had not his fellows interfered. He objected strenuously, his eyes red with hate and a torrent of harsh gutturals pouring from his lips. But the others held him off; this strange white giant from the machine of the skies was to be saved for the embrace ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... will not," replied Lady Clonbrony. "Is this your condition, Colambre?—I take it exceedingly ill of you. I think it very unkind, and unhandsome, and ungenerous, and undutiful of you, Colambre; you my son!" She poured forth a torrent of reproaches; then came to entreaties and tears. But our hero, prepared for this, had steeled his mind; and he stood resolved not to indulge his own feelings, or to yield to caprice or persuasion, but to do that which he knew was best for the happiness of hundreds of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... live in, Mary. Why don't you cut out the seashore and find a quiet place—out of this torrent? Something—like Kettle." The mention of Kettle brought him suddenly to a ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... apparently knew his way, trudged steadily on in advance even of his lieutenants. A bank of dark clouds had risen in the east, the heat of the day being followed by a thunderstorm that growled menacingly above the Taunus mountains, evidently accompanying a torrent of rain, although none fell ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... dividing itself into a short channel or two, and trees grow on the rocks which cause its separation. The torrent, in many places, has eaten deep into the rocks, and split them into large fragments by driving others against them. The trees on the rocks are in bloom and vigour, though their roots are half bared and many of them bruised and broken ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... a veritable Amazon, its black, ugly waters rolling and twisting like the slow boiling of a thick liquid over a fire. There was little rush about it, no frenzied haste, no mountain-like madness in the advance of the torrent. Rod had expected to see this, and he would not have been startled ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... rain from heaven was restrained" (Gen. viii.2), what prevented the mass of water, several, possibly very many, fathoms deep, which covered, say, the present site of Bagdad, from sweeping seaward in a furious torrent; and, in a very few hours, leaving, not only the "tops of the mountains," but the whole plain, save any minor depressions, bare? How could its subsistence, by any possibility, be an affair of ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Achilles, but before his eyes Still swift Scamander rolls where'er he flies: Not all his speed escapes the rapid floods; The first of men, but not a match for gods. Oft as he turn'd the torrent to oppose, And bravely try if all the powers were foes; So oft the surge, in watery mountains spread, Beats on his back, or bursts upon his head. Yet dauntless still the adverse flood he braves, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... France. The daring of the young barrister, who thus turned the tables on the authorities and impeached the head of the State, made a profound impression; it was redoubled by the Southern intensity of his thought and expression. Disdaining all forms of rhetoric, he poured forth a torrent of ideas, clothing them in the first words that came to his facile tongue, enforcing them by blows of the fist or the most violent gestures, and yet, again, modulating the roar of passion to the falsetto of satire or the whisper of emotion. His short, thick-set frame, vibrating with strength, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... seeks To drink, and water ne'er is granted him Wherewith to quench the heat within his members, But after idols of the liquids strives And toils in vain, and thirsts even whilst he gulps In middle of the torrent, thus in love Venus deludes with idol-images The lovers. Nor they cannot sate their lust By merely gazing on the bodies, nor They cannot with their palms and fingers rub Aught from each tender limb, the while they stray Uncertain over all the body. Then, At last, with members intertwined, when they ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... withdrawn and screened by trees, the noises grow clearer and the clash of armour swells. I shake myself from sleep and mount over the sloping roof, and stand there with ears attent: even as when flame catches a corn-field while south winds are furious, or the racing torrent of a mountain stream sweeps the fields, sweeps the smiling crops and labours of the oxen, and hurls the forest with it headlong; the shepherd in witless amaze hears the roar from the cliff-top. Then indeed proof is clear, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... begin to inspire him with his own prejudices, and draw melancholy pictures of the misgovernment of France. But Charles's own spirits are so high and so amiable, and he is so thoroughly convinced his cousin is a fine fellow, that one's scruples are carried away in the torrent of his happiness and gratitude. And his would be a sordid spirit who would not clap hands at the consummation (Nov. 1440); when Charles, after having sworn on the Sacrament that he would never again ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fifty yards apart. There was one advantage, the torches were pitch-pine and gave a fairish light, but not so much as tarred rope would have done; but it was enough for me to be able to make out the face of the cliff, and I saw a break by which I could get up for a good bit anyhow. It was where a torrent came down when the snows were melting, and as soon as I had got to the bottom I made straight up. There were rocks piled at its foot, and I got to the top of ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... far behind. All the wide wastes of forest and hill, of canyon and tundra, of glacier and torrent, had passed under his feet. Now the swift waters of Snake River were speeding under driven paddles. Another day and he would gaze once more into the sweet eyes which meant for him the haven ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... by a torrent of questions from the two girls. What was she like? What was her name? Could she walk? Where did she come from? Did Father and Mother find her in Drymouth? And so on. Jeremy was silent. At last he said: "We don't want any more ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... had seen them from his home by the mountain torrent, for he was so high up, he looked down upon the whole village; and he had often longed to join them and hear what they were saying; but as he was nothing but a River-Troll, he was not able to venture within sight or sound of the water ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... youthful time. It opened a new fountain and sent forth from it another stream, to echo this attempting, clanging and complicated society; and this stream did not flow like a full river, making large or sweet melody, but like a mountain torrent thick with rocks, the thunderous whirlpools of whose surface were white with foam. Changing and sensational scenery haunted its lower banks where it became dangerously navigable. Strange boats, filled with outlandish figures, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... she should be calmer. It was useless to attempt stemming her momentary torrent of rage. It was like one of the sudden and magnificent tempests that often swept these hills, a brief visit of the furies. One must seek shelter and wait. It would end as suddenly as it had come. At last, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... her hands, and stiffened visibly. Had the man been her social equal or any other than her master, her pent-up wrath and indignation would have broken forth in a torrent of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... would you have had him really strike her?" I would have had him do any thing rather than choose himself and reject his wife: make of it what you will. Had he struck once, had he seen the purple streak rise in the snow, that instant his pride-frozen heart would have melted into a torrent of grief; he would have flung himself on the floor beside her, and in an agony of pity over her and horror at his own sacrilege, would have clasped her to his bosom, and baptized her in the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... paying an enormous annual tribute to foreign countries in the shape of freight and passage moneys. Our grain and meats have been taken at our own docks and our large imports there laid down by foreign shipmasters. An increasing torrent of American travel to Europe has contributed a vast sum annually to the dividends of foreign shipowners. The balance of trade shown by the books of our custom-houses has been very largely reduced and in many years ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... tremendous overhang of the black rock; he understood why the ancestors of the Folk, coming to these depths after incredible adventurings and long-forgotten struggles, had settled here. Any exposed location would have been fatal; no hut could have withstood the torrent, nor could any man, caught in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England |
