"Stab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father had the elder baby, the weaned child, the golden-brown, wondering vivid eyes of the little Ursula were for him, who had waited behind the mother till the need was for him. The mother felt a sharp stab of jealousy. But she was still more absorbed in the tiny baby. It was entirely hers, its need was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... circumstances— beginning they hardly knew how, by dodging one another round and round the table, making snatches at one another, gradually assuming the characters of hunter and Red Indian. Only when the hunter had snatched up Aunt Jane's tortoise-shell paper-cutter to stab with, complaining direfully that it was a stupid place, with nothing for a gun, and the Red Indian's crinoline had knocked down two chairs, she recollected the consequences in time to strangle her own war-whoop, and suggested that they should be safer on the stairs; to which ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Aias and Ulysses led the Greeks, for we are not told that Agamemnon was fighting in this great battle of the war. Now as angry wild bees flock round a man who is taking their honeycombs, so the Trojans gathered round Aias, striving to stab him, but he set his great shield in front, and smote and slew all that came within reach of his spear. Ulysses, too, struck down many, and though a spear was thrown and pierced his leg near the knee he stood firm, ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... killed it. This made me very angry, and I told the man not to do so again; upon this, he caught up another, and was about to throw it, when I seized him by the collar with my left hand, and with my right drawing my American knife, I threatened to stab him with it, if he attacked the beast. The man started back, and in so doing, fell over a piece of rock, on his back. This quarrel brought the mate to us, along with two or three of the men. My knife was still lifted up, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the muses weep for thee, But every tear shall scald thy memory. The graces too, while virtue at their shrine Lay bleeding under that soft hand of thine, Felt each a mortal stab in her own breast, Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest. Thou polish'd and high-finish'd foe to truth, Gray-beard corruptor of our listening youth, To purge and skim away the filth of vice, That so refined it might the more entice, Then pour it on the morals of thy son To taint ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... mishap to slay two such noble knights! Doubtless thou thinkest thou hast done mightily, sir knight of the turnspit, but I saw well how it all happened. The first knight's horse stumbled on the stones of the ford, and the other thou didst stab from behind. ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... B was the best choice," he said at last. It was a wild stab at nothing, he realized, and yet he could do no better. Had he ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... had. It is recorded that one of the wounds given by the bravo Scoronconcolo, whom Lorenzino had hired to assist him in the murder, and who ran up to complete the job when his master was disabled by being fast held by the teeth of Alexander, was a stab in the face. And of the truth of this tradition also the skull of the murdered man still affords evidence; for on the left-hand side of the face, a little below the socket of the eye, there is a mark in the bone beneath the cheek which must have been made by the point of the sword or dagger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... unlucky dispositions there is such an envious kind of pride that they cannot endure that any but themselves should be set forth for excellent; so that when they hear one justly praised they will either seek to dismount his virtues, or, if they be like a clear light, they will stab him with a but of detraction; as if there were something yet so foul as did obnubilate even his brightest glory. When their tongue cannot justly condemn him, they will leave him ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... than his own. To be sure, his first emotion was that of angry indignation, sending the outraged blood through every pulse; then, as it cooled, the act appeared so utterly unwomanly. If she had passed him by carelessly—but to designedly attract his glance, and stab it thus, was as if a giant had taken a club to kill a butterfly because it breathed the fragrance of the rose. He shut out that vision. You can tell what impression she had made upon him, when he always ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... as Leonidas and Miltiades, Themistocles and Epaminondas? Of Rome it would be superfluous to speak at large. It is sufficient to name the mighty mistress of the world, before Sylla gave the first stab to her liberties and the great dictator accomplished their final ruin, to be reminded of the practicability of union between civil slavery and an ardent love of liberty ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... she wrote to say she was concerned at the accident to her old friend.—The sad comedy was still kept up between them.—And Halcyone had stiffened. No, indeed! not that! She was woman enough in spite of the ennobling and broadening effects of her knowledge of nature, to feel the stab of jealous pain, though she had resolutely crushed from her thoughts the insinuation she had read of in the first notice of the disaster—about Mrs. Cricklander's interest in her lover. Her pride took fire. Certainly until ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... custom in Arabia, where coolness is the first consideration, were dimly lit; and with the caution which had grown to be his second nature, Kettle instinctively kept all his senses on the alert for inconvenient surprises. He had no desire that Rad el Moussa should forget his submissiveness and stab him suddenly from behind, neither did he especially wish to be noosed or knifed from round any of the dusky ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the ordinary. Just a usual Lascar, very frightened, waving a cheap cane with a handle like a snake's head. Then another policeman came up in a hurry, and pushed through the crowd. The crowd was on my side, maudlin and sympathetic. They knew all about it. The coolie had tried to stab me. An eager young lady in an apron asked a boy in front—he had just forced through—what was the matter. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... gardener approached and stood and looked at her: then all at once she felt a sharp stab in her from his knife, and a vivid pain ran ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... enough, he saw, to his father and brother. 'It seems to be his Grace's desire to make me ridiculous,' he went on to say to himself: 'what a dead-level of grim words! In English, it appears, you do not talk. You stab with the tongue.' In truth, there was no conversation. The King or the Prince spoke, and Madame Alois moistened her lips; she looked nowhere but at the old tyrant, not at his eyes, but above them, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... "To stab a man or imprison him for life is what you call neutralizing his influence," said Croustillac. "Ah, well, this is probably a political view of it. After all, I understand the distrust that I inspire you with, for I am an incorrigible conspirator. They cut off my head before my partisans, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... front of the other. This man shouted out loud and charged me, shield and spear up. Now I had no shield—nothing but the assegai; but I was crafty and he was overbold. On he came. I stood waiting for him till he drew back the spear to stab me. Then suddenly I dropped to my knees and thrust upward with all my strength, beneath the rim of his shield, and he also thrust, but over me, his spear only cutting the flesh of my shoulder—see! here is its scar; yes, to this day. And my assegai? Ah! it went home; it ran through ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... most dangerous," he said. "Now, then, what next? Cut on shoulder, not serious—ugly gash on head, bad—stab in thigh—must have been mounted—bullet in muscles of shoulder, fired evidently as the man was escaping. Hah! enough for one poor fellow. Now, Vincent, we'll stop the bleeding, and then we must have him carried on a litter ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... bad neither. Chane has got a stab in the hip—he gin the feller goss for it. Let me louze the darned thing off o' your neck. It kum mighty near chokin' ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... and breaking. More than we know of is rising and making. Stab with the javelin, crash with the car! Cry! for we know not the thing that we are. Stand, O sun! that in horrible patience Smiled on the smoke and the slaughter of nations. Thou shalt grow sad for a little crying, Thou shalt ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... minutes the fight went on. Wulf received more than one stab from the Breton knives, as two or three of them often rushed in upon him at once, but each time when he was hard pressed Osgod's axe freed him from his assailants, for so terrible were the blows dealt by the tall Saxon ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... and went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt. "You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at hearing the girl laugh ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... joy to thee! What if thou heard'st him now? What if his spirit 80 Re-enter'd its cold corse, and came upon thee, With many a stab from many a murderer's poniard? What if, his steadfast eye still beaming pity And brother's love, he turn'd his head aside, Lest he should look at thee, and with one look 85 Hurl thee beyond all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the thrusting began. Feet trampled, steel rang. A furious pass from the Jerseyman was with difficulty caught in Elliot's cloak, and the sword for a moment hampered. Before Le Gallais could extricate it, Elliot, with a savage cry, ran in upon him, drawing back his elbow, so as to stab his adversary with a shortened sword. A scuffle ensued, of which no bystander could follow with his eye the full details, till the Scot's sword was seen to turn upwards, and the point to pierce his own throat. Each combatant ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... the moon is full; 160 Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished. He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; Or, like a mountebank, did wound And stab herself with doubts profound, Only to show with how small pain The sores of Faith are cur'd again; 170 Although by woeful proof we find, They always leave a scar behind. He knew the seat of Paradise, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... odd moments the Weltschmerz, the sorrow of the world, would pierce this man who no longer felt sorrows of his own—stab him through and through—bring the sweat to his temples—fill his eyes with that strange pity and trouble that moved you so deeply when you caught the look; and soon the complicated anguish of that dim regard would resolve itself into gleams of a quite celestial sweetness—and a heavenly message ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Janno offered another wigwam if this were too small, and urged that all his white brothers should sleep at once while his own men watched; in vain Kamuso tried to attach himself to the party inside, meaning to stab the captain in his sleep; without a show of anger or suspicion Standish put both attempts aside, and finally with a jeering laugh advised Janno to retire to his own wigwam and to order his braves to do the same, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... dropping their slates like tears, and uttering their hollow sighs through empty casements, merely because they were "one mile two furlongs from the Castle." But the new stone tablet which told you so seemed to mock their misery, and looked like a fresh stab into their poor old sides; as if the rapier of a king ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... royal kitchens, Juan Rubio by name, who had been the unsuccessful agent in the poisoning scheme, together with two professional bravos, hired for the occasion. It was Insausti, one of this last-mentioned couple, who despatched Escovedo with a single stab, the others aiding and abetting, or keeping watch in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sharply marked off then from all the unprecedented world storm that rushed together without, vividly aware of one another, only concerned with one another. Then the door would open again, messengers would enter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was like a window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to a hurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... on the wrong man was, of course, rather favourable to the designs of Kateegoose, so that, when the party passed the summer-house, he was enabled to spring upon his enemy, unobserved for the first moment, with knife upraised. But the stab from which the Sioux chief could not have escaped was rendered harmless by the prompt action of Okematan, who threw up his left arm, turned the blow aside, and received a ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... knee, and Eugen went on playing—improvising, or rather speaking the thoughts which were uppermost in his heart. It was wild, strange, melancholy, sometimes sweet, but ever with a ringing note of woe so piercing as to stab, recurring perpetually—such a note as comes throbbing to life now and then in the "Sonate Pathetique," or in Raff's ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... many, perhaps, as she wants, and to whom she puts out a shy hand of friendship, and presently soothes and consoles as the strong, silent, storm-tossed man who rode with so soldierly a bearing beside Mr. Pym; suffering no stab of love and longing any more as he looked over her fair bosom, because the shy hand was in his, because there was that subtle sense of understanding in his heart which seemed to tell him that even as he loved ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... my little maid! I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade, And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame, And gild with a rhyme your household name; So you shall smile on us brave and bright As first you greeted the morning's light, And live untroubled by woes and fears Through ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with the weapons at your call— With musket, pike, or knife; He wields the deadliest blade of all Who lightest holds his life. The arm that drives its unbought blows With all a patriot's scorn, Might brain a tyrant with a rose, Or stab him ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... Brentano's work, one sentence (p. 116) is significant: "Godwi spukt heutzutage nur mehr in den KOepfen der liberalen Literaturgeschichtsschreiber, denen er einen willkommenen Vorwand an die Hand gibt, mit einigen stereotyp abgeschriebenen Phrasen den Stab Ueber den phantastischen, verschwommenen, unsittlichen u.s.w., u.s.w. ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... means a stab in the back. It means that those skunks are trying to do by lying what they couldn't do by bribery. It means that while we're thousands of miles away they are trying to gull the public and get other ball players to jump their contracts by a barefaced lie like this. I ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... who was always ready with a stab, and who had not forgotten her encounter of two days ago, spoke up with a little malicious laugh. "Miss Hester 'ain't got no family: mebbe she might take the child. 'Pears like she ought ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... dinner-time? Several reasons make me doubt it. In the first place, the attack is so much veiled as to have all the appearance of a mere kiss. Besides, it is made anywhere, at the first spot that offers. The expert slayers employ methods of the highest precision: they give a stab in the neck, or under the throat; they wound the cervical nerve-centres, the seat of energy. The paralysers, those accomplished anatomists, poison the motor nerve-centres, of which they know the number and position. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... himself. How eagerly, then, must the younger brother have looked forward to meeting him; to serving with one who, in his young eyes, was all that was brave and noble! What a bitter awakening from the dream! It is not those we hate who can injure us most—only those we love can stab us ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... a wretch! I know your whole conduct, and I know what you are aiming at, but as the safety of the whole crew is confided to me, if any man of you thinks of conspiring to destroy them, I will stab him with my ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... other; "I would see her in her grave first. Holy Father! the daughter of a rabbi to bring such disgrace upon her family! Truly our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, have brought this evil upon our house. If I meet him here I will stab him to ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... and went below to my own chest, where I got a soft silk handkerchief of my mother's. With this, and with my aid, Hands bound up the great bleeding stab he had received in the thigh, and after he had eaten a little and had a swallow or two more of the brandy, he began to pick up visibly, sat straighter up, spoke louder and clearer, and looked ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broke in curtly. "It isn't over," he said. "There's the stuff he" with a glance like a stab at Von Wetten ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... clever thing than get ten thousand francs. At such times his face lights up, he is at once on his mettle, his eyes look almost fiendishly beautiful. He is a handsome man, but he is wicked, and I do not think he has one little sense of morals. I do not suppose he would stab a man in the back, or remove his neighbour's landmark in the night, though he'd rob him of it in open daylight, and call it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... made solid as before. The wretched captive does not long survive his doom, or it may be he lives too long, for death must be a release from such protracted misery. In this dark cell one of the evil-minded brethren, who essayed to stab the Abbot of Kirkstall in the chapter-house, was thrust, and ere a year was over, the provisions were untouched—and the man being known to be dead, they were stayed. His skeleton was found within the cell when it was opened to admit ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have wolves!" Billy Louise snapped back at him and so lost her point just when she had practically gained it. Ward certainly would not tell her, after that stab. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... howl of contempt. Austria was finished; you could do what you pleased with her with impunity; the next war would be with Austria. Montenegro, on her side, thought well to insult her. Perhaps one more stab would make her fight, and then ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... the butcher that cuts his throat steps out afterwards, and that's his sergeant. His living lies within the city, but his conscience lies bed-rid in one of the holes of a counter. This eel is bred too out of the mud of a bankrupt, and dies commonly with his guts ripped up, or else a sudden stab sends him of his last errand. He will very greedily take a cut with a sword, and suck more silver out of the wound than his surgeon shall. His beginning is detestable, his courses desperate, and his ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... like a stab at his heart. He remembered that in a conversation with Signora Roselli and her daughter about serfdom, which, in his own words, aroused his deepest indignation, he had repeatedly assured them that never on any account would he sell his peasants, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... not. The supple slave Whose worthiest record is a nameless grave, Whose truckling spirit bends and bids him kneel, And fawn and vilely kiss a patron's heel— Even he can cast the cursed suspicious eye, Inquire the cause of this—the reason why? And stab the sufferer. Then, the tenfold pain To feel a gilded butterfly's disdain!— A kicking ass, without an ass's sense, Whose only virtue is, pounds, shillings, pence; And now, while ills on ills beset him round, The scorn of such the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... are at home and fast asleep; and if there's any of 'em shut out and roaming about in the streets—I mean in the sea—it's so dark that they couldn't see more than an inch before their noses; so let's open our knives ready, in case one should come, so that we could dive down and stab him, same as the natives do, and then swim on ashore. I'll ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... England and English affairs at a bound. But to which period was Miss Baylis referring? Electra had not the ghost of an idea but would make a stab at ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... danger and hazard so enraged Lucila's husband (for it was he who had taken his stand by Don Fadrique) that without further delay he drew his sword from his sheath, and with a voice of suppressed rage called out, "Draw, or I shall stab you!" "Very gladly, Senor," replied Fadrique quietly; "you need not threaten me; you might as well have said so calmly." And so saying he placed his guitar carefully in a niche in the church wall, seized his sword, and, bowing gracefully to ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... she recovered, without losing a minute, I dressed myself, and, full of an inexpressible rage, I directed my steps towards the parsonage. But before leaving my house, I had concealed under my shawl a sharp butcher's knife to stab and kill the villain who had destroyed my dearly beloved child. Fortunately for that priest, God changed my mind before I entered his room—my words to him ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... stab one gives in childhood to one's parents' tenderest feelings! I did not mean to be ungrateful, and I had no measure of the pain my father felt at this hint of the insufficiency of all he did for my comfort and pleasure at home. Mr. Andrewes knew better, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... crowd, that stung her with its pure contemptuous pity, a look not to be shut out with draperies as the stars are; and even through her soul, harder than the soul of that unowned sister walking the midnight street beneath the window, since it has ceased to know the stab of sin or the choking agony of shame,—even through that world-trodden heart flashes one conscious pang, one glimpse of a possible heaven and an inevitable hell, one naked and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... body, examined the clean, deep wound in the abdomen, shrugged his shoulders, and empanelled a hetrogeneous jury who would have returned a verdict to the effect that "deceased came to his death through a stab wound inflicted by some person to the jury unknown." My friend was not a professional detective, but the recital of his experiences was enough to fill me with new respect for those engaged in the "man ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... cries of distress, and at the same time the knife flashed, and he rolled over dead. The warrior was too quick for the animal; he first bit his sensitive nose to distract his attention, and then used the knife to stab him to the heart. He fought many battles with knives thereafter and claimed that the spirit of the bear gave him success. On one occasion, however, the enemy had a strong buffalo-hide shield which the Cheyenne bear fighter could not pierce through, and ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... them would have imagined that he had used all the arts of a Lothario to entrap the unguarded affections of the writer, and then, when successful, had first neglected the lady and afterwards betrayed her. And with every stab so given there was a command expressed that he should come instantly to Berkeley Square in order that he might receive other and worse gashes at the better convenience of the assailant. But as Mrs. Bond's ducks would certainly not have come out of the ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... and arrested on suspicion. This was Andre, who had come on a visit of sympathy. He was taken to the Luxembourg and afterwards to Saint-Lazare. During the 140 days of his imprisonment there he wrote the marvellous Iambes (in alternate lines of 12 and 8 syllables), which hiss and stab like poisoned bullets, and which were transmitted to his family by a venal gaoler. There he wrote the best known of all his verses, the pathetic Jeune captive, a poem at once of enchantment and of despair. Suffocating in an atmosphere of cruelty and baseness, Chenier's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... his eyes blazing under their heavy brows, he suggested to Lady Hannah's nimble wit and travelled experience the undeniable analogy between a chaffed and irate Doctor and a baited Spanish bull, goaded by the stab of the gaudy paper-flagged dart in his thick neck, and bewildered by the subsequent explosion of the cracker. He only wanted a tail to lash, she mentally said, and had pigeon-holed the joke for Bingo when ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... compared the love, the faith, and the honor of this woman whose husband had committed a crime with that one night's indiscretion of Mrs. Becker. It was in her eyes and face that he had seen a purity like that of an angel, and the pain seemed to stab him deeper when he thought that, after all, it was the criminal's wife who was ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... of inspiration. The first and more practical was concerned, like Carlyle's Chartism, with a challenge to the social conclusions of the orthodox economists. He was not so great a man as Carlyle, but he was a much more clear-headed man; and the point and stab of his challenge still really stands and sticks, like a dagger in a dead man. He answered the theory that we must always get the cheapest labour we can, by pointing out that we never do get the cheapest labour we can, in any matter about which we really ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... fork drive Nature out, She will ever yet return; Hedge the flowerbed all about, Pull or stab or cut or burn, She will ever ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... friends, the companions of his sports, his neighbours, and his servants. She eyes him all round, she feels him all over, and, if he has a vulnerable point, if he has a speck, however small, she is ready with her stab. How many hundreds of men have been ruined by her without being hardly able to perceive, much less name, the cause; and how many thousands, seeing the fate of these hundreds, have withdrawn from the struggle, or have been deterred from ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... taken the plunge and said her say, but the last words are spoken with sinking inflection, followed instantly by a sinking heart. He makes no answer whatever. She dares not look up into his face to see the effect of her stab. He stands there silent only an instant; then raises his ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... who, at the first irruption of force, had risen as one man to defend their comrade's cause, bowed their heads without a murmur before the unquestioned authority of a legal judgment. Solomon received unflinchingly the stab that pierced his heart. No sigh escaped his breast; no tear came to his eyes; his wound did not bleed. Since his son's arrest he had sold all he possessed in the world, even the little silver cross left by his wife at her death, even the pearl necklace that flattered ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... under my pillow was the work of a second; to fire it into the body of the man who was trying to stab me, that of another. A groan and a heavy fall on the deck told me what had happened, and springing out of my sleeping berth I found my ci-devant friend the captain lying on his face, dead as a door nail. In the meantime I heard a row in the fore-part of the ship. On going forward I saw ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... herself on an armed Europe to win freedom for its peoples from their kings, England stood coldly apart. To men frenzied with a passionate enthusiasm, and frenzied yet more with a sudden terror at the dangers they were encountering, such an attitude of neutrality in such a quarter seemed like a stab in the back. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... mystery and of confidence, a certain tale of the time of his youth, in a black night, on the Spanish territory, in the gorges of Andarlaza. Seized by two carbineers at the turn in a dark path, he had disengaged himself by drawing his knife to stab a chest with it: half a second, a resisting flesh, then, crack! the blade entering brusquely, a jet of warm blood on his hand, the man fallen, and he, fleeing in the ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... this ugly business. Captain Oliver rides this night to head-quarters, with the papers which you carried. Before he starts he will pay you a visit, to fish what he can out of you with all the fine promises he can make. Humour him a little, and when you find an opportunity, stab him in ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... said the host. "But, kinsman, I would not have you call him Tony Fire-the-Fagot, if you would not brook the stab." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... well," came calmly from Frank's lips. "If I were to give the signal my friends would rush in here to my aid. If you stab me, make sure the knife goes through my heart with the first stroke, so there will be little chance that ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... the weapons at your call— With musket, pike, or knife; He wields the deadliest blade of all Who lightest holds his life. The arm that drives its unbought blows With all a patriot's scorn, Might brain a tyrant with a rose Or stab him with a thorn. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... own behaviour as his end drew nigh. For some time past a sharp internal pain—the stab of a penknife, he called it—had warned him of his doom; in April, 1821, when vomiting and prostration showed that the dread ancestral malady was drawing on apace, he bade the Abbe Vignali prepare the large dining-room ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... When it is intended that, unless another species of legislation is agreed to, the money of the people, paid for that purpose, shall not be used to maintain their government, the threat is revolution and its execution is treasonable." Then he gave the mortal stab. Of the ninety-three senators and representatives from the eleven disloyal States, he said, eighty-five were soldiers in the armies of the rebellion, and their support of these "revolutionary measures is a fight for empire. It is a contrivance to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... voice, even in a whisper, startling his ear-he ventured forth with a stealing step toward the slumbering group. Like his brave ancestor, Gaul, the son of Morni, "he disdained to stab a sleeping foe!" He must pass them to reach the private stairs. He paused and listened. Silence still reigned; not even a hand moved, so deeply were they sunk in the fumes of wine. He took courage, and flew with the lightness of air to the secret door. As he laid ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... observed and commented upon, and her looks continually wandered as though in search of some lurking enemy; for in truth no woman, nor man either, could easily forget the suggestion which had recently been brought to her knowledge, that an assassin might "lurk in her gallery and stab her with his dagger, or if she should walk in her garden, he might shoot her with his dagg, or if she should walk abroad to take the air, he might assault her with his arming sword and make sure work." Even ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... temper as a part of policy, without any effect on Clara; and that was matter for sickly green reflections. The lover who cannot wound has indeed lost anchorage; he is woefully adrift: he stabs air, which is to stab himself. Her complacent proof-armour ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... large doll. The rebels were aware of this when it was too late. I was ordered to ride post-haste with an escort in pursuit of your carriage; and I had to swear by the Holy Gospels that, if I could not bring you back to Paris, I would stab you ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... have again entered your dwelling; and I again repeat the offer I made the other day, of gladly seizing the first opportunity of being useful to you." Each of these words expressive of the kindest feelings towards her was like the stab of a poniard. She, however, extolled them with the most exaggerated praise, imploring me to believe how deeply she regretted her behavior, and talked so long and so much about it, that when she quitted me, it was with the most certain impression on my mind, that in her I possessed a most ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... and stab yourself because you have a rival. You say that your mistress deceives you for another; it is your pride that suffers; but change the words, say that it is for you that she deceives him, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... on his feet, make him happy.... It is not Ivanov she loves, but this task. Argenton in Daudet's book says, "Life is not a novel." Sasha does not know this. She does not know that for Ivanov love is only a fresh complication, an extra stab in the back. And what comes of it? She struggles with him for a whole year and, instead of being raised, he ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... on, and the wind was so high that all the windows and doors in the old house shook and rattled. In fact, it was just such weather as he loved. His plan of action was this. He was to make his way quietly to Washington Otis's room, gibber at him from the foot of the bed, and stab himself three times in the throat to the sound of slow music. He bore Washington a special grudge, being quite aware that it was he who was in the habit of removing the famous Canterville blood- stain, ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... other lodgers would assuredly complain of the smell of garlic pervading the house. Consequently, he looked at his visitor as a butcher looks at a sheep whose throat he intends to cut. But whether the rustic comprehended the stab of that glance or not, he went on to say (so Massol told me), 'I've as much ambition as other men. I will never go back to my native place, if I ever do go back, unless I am a rich man. Paris is the antechamber of Paradise. They tell me that ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... oldest of the Catamaran's crew the curious circumstances of the sword-fish thrusting his rostrum through the raft, and snapping it asunder, needed no explanation. Both knew that it was not with an intention of attacking the Catamaran that the "stab" had been given; nor was the act a voluntary ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... but scarce were we out of the cove and hard beside Bartlemy's tree than I started to the vicious prick of a knife, and whirling about despite the fierce hands that sought to hold me, I saw Smiling Sam about to stab me again. But now, as I strove with my reeling captors, was a flicker of vicious steel as Tressady sprang and, whipping his hook beneath the great fellow's belt, whirled Smiling Sam from his feet despite his prodigious weight and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... with all my force at his head. But, even as I struck, came a flash and the sudden deadness of a deep wound, for he had but feinted, and then, avoiding me so that I touched him not, he drove his point into my breast. Between the force of my own blow and this stab I fell forward on my face, and thence rolled over on my back, catching at my breast with my hands, as though to stop the blood, but, in sooth, not well knowing what ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... has studied much, but without any patients. Seven or eight days ago, a man having received behind the Arsenal a stab with a knife, I sewed up the wound, and cured him. This made for me some reputation in the neighborhood, to which I attribute the happiness of having been last night awoke by a ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... then, going to the court of Pelias, she avenges the injuries which he had done to the family of Jason, by making him the victim of the credulity of his own daughters, who, in compliance with her pretended regard for them, stab him to death. Medea, having executed her design, makes her ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... outlying trees of the wood the first Basuto, a lank fellow with a mouth like a rat trap, arrived and threw an assegai at us which passed between Anscombe's back and my nose. Then he closed and tried to stab with another assegai. I could do nothing, but Anscombe showed himself cleverer than I expected. Dropping the reins, he drew his pistol and managed to send a bullet through that child of nature's head, so that he went down like ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... vessels are suffered to sail from Philadelphia and other ports quite down to the middle of August, without a single line. This circumstance was urged against my assertions, and was near proving a mortal stab to my whole proceedings. One Mr Hopkins, of Maryland, in this service, and who is in the rank of Brigadier General, appeared desirous of going to America, but on my not paying him the regard he vainly thought ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... slaves Nelusco and Selica. The latter has lost her heart to the proud Portuguese, who saved her and her companion from a slave-ship. But Vasco is only thinking of Ines, and Nelusco, who honors in Selica not only his Queen, but the woman of his love, tries to stab Vasco—the Christian, whom he hates with a deadly hatred. Selica hinders him and rouses the sleeping Vasco, who has been dreaming of and planning his voyage ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... more. Every one of these words was a fresh stab to her remorseful heart—every tone showed to her the depth of love that lay in that father's heart, and revealed to her the suffering that she must have caused. It was too much; and with a deep groan she sank away from his arms upon ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... human gore, worse than Etna lava, then I'm mistaken. There'll be the very devil to pay, that's a fact. I expect the blacks will butcher the Southern whites, and the Northerners will have to turn out and butcher them again; and all this shoot, hang, cut, stab, and burn business will sweeten our folks' temper, as raw meat does that of a dog—it fairly makes me sick to think on it. The explosion may clear the air again, and all be tranquil once more, but it's an even chance if it don't leave us ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Death snapped the sparks, and Vengeance hurled the flames. Like blood the fire fell o'er the bare young heart, And he who watched in one mad bound foresaw How blood indeed might flash across that breast. The high resolve grew dim in that fierce light, "'Tis noble, strong;" then, in a stab of keen Humor, he saw again a native brave Decking his naked body with the coat Crowned with the hat of some sea-faring man,— Aping the civilization of his stride Till his new prowess fell to comrade's jeers. So with a tiger heart it were to ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... wounded that some time was spent by them in bandaging up their hurts, and as soon as this was done they came on deck eager to wreak their vengeance on their captive foes. They now came about them with their long knives, flourishing them before their eyes, and pretending to stab at them. Some indeed, more brutal than the rest, actually stuck their knives into their flesh, but though blood was drawn, the seamen generally disdained even to utter a word, though one or two said, "I'll tell you what, you villains, if I can get my fists at liberty, I'll give ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... ladylike enough to be an American," thought Frances approvingly and with a sudden stab of homesickness. ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... more steps—I could not see, I could hardly feel—and my head bumped against the stone at the top of the column. I put out my hand, groping around half crazily, and by some wild chance it came in contact with the slide that moved the stone stab. I pushed, hardly knowing what I did, and the stone flew to one side. I stuck my head through the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... older hymnals. This he resented hotly and genuinely, for he was quite sincere; as sincere as Sheffer, in his belief in himself. But he despised Sheffer and feared Severance, not for what the latter represented, but for the cynical honesty of his attitude. In retort for Severance's stab, he dubbed the pair Mephistopheles and Falstaff, which was above his usual felicitousness of characterization. Sheffer (who read Shakespeare to improve his mind, and ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... whom we may not otherwise suspend. But even traitors have rights which white men and white women are bound to respect. We will crush them, if we can, but we will crush them in open field, by fair fight,—not by stealing into their bedchambers to stab them through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... will see what it is," cried the Juffrouw. "Do you think I would let them beat you, or stab you, or murder you, my boy! Never! Whoever touches you will have to walk over me. But I will give them ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... according to their Moorish custom; and there they all ate, drank, danced, and sang. For this it was the usual practice to fetch a hog, which the catalona or priestess ordered the most graceful girl to stab with the knife, amid certain dances. That done, and the hog having been cooked according to their custom it was divided among all the company, as if it were a relic; and they ate it with great reverence and respect, with the other food of their feast. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... again upon the captives. Several were still in the last throes; they were finished by the thrust of a heel in the mouth or a stab with the point of ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... morally the same as the tricks of hedge bandits. It is privilege of genius to get down to fundamentals. Behind the stately speech of international pourparlers and the rhetoric of national appeals burn the old lust and greed and rapine. A stab in the dark is still a stab in the dark though courts and councils are the miscreants. A war of aggression is not less brigandage because the armies march to proud songs and summon the Almighty ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... chief. He would have found that life was governed by a code of morality and honour widely different from that which is established in peaceful and prosperous societies. He would have learned that a stab in the back, or a shot from behind a fragment of rock, were approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He would have heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wreaked on hereditary enemies in a neighbouring valley such vengeance as would ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mistress knows very well that she is dearer to me than all there is besides under the sun. To a man of heart like me one says, 'Caballuco, you stupid fellow, do this or do that.' And let there be an end to sarcasms, and beating about the bush, and preaching one thing and meaning another, and a stab ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... either—not even most—but he didn't know that; they might be for all he could tell. He looked at them all with the same bewildered, hurt, inimical eyes, and it was that which gave Peter his deepest stab of pitiful pain. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... lay down my life for the British female? Really, who knows? One has bowed and talked, till, little by little, All the natural heat has escaped of the chivalrous spirit. Oh, one conformed, of course; but one doesn't die for good manners, Stab or shoot, or be shot, by way of a graceful attention. No, if it should be at all, it should be on the barricades there; Should I incarnadine ever this inky pacifical finger, Sooner far should it be for this vapor of Italy's freedom, Sooner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... character as a warrior was in jeopardy. To have fled from a man thus wounded and disarmed, or to have suffered his victim to escape, would have tarnished his fame for ever. Uttering, therefore, a terrific yell, he rushed on and attempted to stab the exhausted ranger. But the latter warded off his blow with one hand and brandished his rifle barrel with the other. The Indian was as yet unharmed, and, under existing circumstances, by far the most powerful man. Higgins' courage, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... opened one of the front windows and had awaited a suitable opportunity to stab me. Now, recognizing failure, he leapt out on the near side as I lurched and stumbled from my seat, and ran off like the wind. I never ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... spite on Monckton's part. He did not for a moment suppose that his lie could long outlive Walter Clifford's return; but he was getting desperate, and longing to stab them all. Unfortunately fate befriended the villain's malice, and the husband and wife did not meet again till that diabolical poison had done ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... had the man by the throat. He held him there, striking him again and again in the face. Twice the man tried to stab him with the steel compasses, but Marche dragged them out of his fist and hammered him until he choked and spluttered and collapsed on the ground, only to stagger to his feet again and lurch into the thicket ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... breast and pulling out his knife said that he would kill me, for he had never yet killed an English person. I told him that he might go to war and that would be more manly than to kill a poor captive who was doing their drudgery for them. Notwithstanding all I could say he began to cut and stab me on my breast. I seized him by the hair and tumbled him from off me on his back and followed him with my fist and knee so that he presently said he had enough; but when I saw the blood run and felt the smart I at him again ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... startled; it came to her like a stab. But she had strength enough to control herself and ask with apparent ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... women of the Temple drag her in. Publius! Publius! No, Antonius would not suffer me to break Into the sanctuary. She hath escaped. [Looking down at SINNATUS. 'Adulterous dog!' that red-faced rage at me! Then with one quick short stab—eternal peace. So end all passions. Then what use in passions? To warm the cold bounds of our dying life And, lest we freeze in mortal apathy, Employ us, heat us, quicken us, help us, keep us From seeing all ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... graceful figure, could hardly restrain her mortification and rage. She felt a longing amounting almost to frenzy, to spring upon the girl and stab her in the back. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... in her soft, musical voice, "if I had to do it to protect myself or my friends. But you must not hold it like that, you might wound yourself if the person you were going to stab were to draw back." Then, sitting up in bed, "See," she added, "you must strike like this—upward! If you do so, the thrust is sure to kill, they say. Happy are they ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... pretending to defy the national guards, who seemed to spring from the ground without, they were in reality awestricken before the wrath of the armed citizens within. A quick burst of Spanish anger, a sharp stab of the Spanish poniard—the frequency of such incidents began to create a panic among the French boy-soldiers. The seizure and sack of a city had for years been a traditional amusement of the grand army, connected in Italy and Germany with little or no loss ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and the eyes fixed and glassy in death! I raised to a sitting posture and glowered on that corpse till the light crept down the bare breastline by line—inch by inch—past the nipple—and then it disclosed a ghastly stab! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... want but leisure to invent fresh falsehood, and soothe me to a fond belief of all your fictions: but I will stab the lie that's forming in your heart, and save a sin, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... wife and children they may shatter. The public is a pretty keen judge, and will in most cases drop works devoid of the immortal elements of genius. The critic may point the way, but he need add no unnecessary stab to a downfall ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
