"Breath" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would go! Wouldn't it be lovely if they did, and you came to stay?" And Marjory drew a long breath of delight at the ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... all conceivable frames of mind, with the illustrious dead of every age and nation. But the solution of the difficulty is still incomplete, for although these literary "Pleiades" could furnish as it were "the sweet influences of rain and sunshine," to foster his native talent; yet, breath being denied them, its improvement is more than his friend Cowper could have accounted for, without ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... floated about for two nights and two days in the water, with a heavy swell on the sea and death staring him in the face; but when the third day broke, the wind fell and there was a dead calm without so much as a breath of air stirring. As he rose on the swell he looked eagerly ahead, and could see land quite near. Then, as children rejoice when their dear father begins to get better after having for a long time borne sore affliction sent him by some angry spirit, ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... he dragged himself dreamily through the press of swaying, weeping worshippers, over whom there still seemed to brood some vast, solemn awe, and came outside into the little square and drew in a delicious breath of fresh air, his eyes blinking at the sudden glare of sunlight and blue sky. But the sense of awe was still with him, for the Ghetto was deserted, the shops were shut, and a sacred hush of silence was over the stones and the houses, only accentuated ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... maples and crimson-tinted oaks, but the glory of the forest had departed; the silent fall of many a sere and yellow leaf told of the death of summer and of winter's coming reign. Yet the air was wrapped in a deceitful stillness; no breath of wind moved the trees or dimpled the water. Bright wreaths of scarlet berries and wild grapes hung in festoons among the faded foliage. The silence of the forest was unbroken, save by the quick tapping of the little midland woodpecker or the shrill scream of the blue jay, the whirring ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... with gloom, thy Theo. sat, bewailing thy departure. Every breath of wind whistled terror; every noise at the door was mingled with hope of thy return, and fear of thy perseverance, when Brown arrived with the word—embarked—the wind high, the water rough. Heaven protect ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... doorstep and stood there for a moment, stamping snow off his feet. Billy Louise caught her breath and waited, her eyes veiled with her lashes and shining expectantly. A little color came into her cheeks. Ward had been delayed somehow, but he was coming now because she needed him and he ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... surface of the lake was violently agitated, though not a breath of air was stirring, and a steady flow of ripples was breaking on the sandy ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... or devices of manner or words employed by him for winning the popular ear. He never seemed to forget the solemnity and responsibility of his position in the pulpit. He hesitated not "to declare the whole counsel of God." He stands before me now as I listen with bated breath to the fire of his eloquence, denouncing where denunciation was needed, contending with a burning earnestness that never failed to carry us with him, for "the faith once delivered to the saints," and then with exquisite tenderness seeking to draw his hearers to Him who is Saviour ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... without delay; but I can but pause to thank God with every breath that she can no longer do me injury, seeing she ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... to his bicycle and was gone in a breath. Geoffrey waited a moment for a tram which was rushing brilliantly up to him in the rain. Then he mounted and rode in the opposite direction. He went straight down to Lumley, and Madame had to remain on tenterhooks ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... is good. The tenth calls for a perfect drive straight down the middle of the course, in default of which the second shot will abound with difficulty; and at the fifteenth another very straight tee shot is wanted. If there is a breath of wind to help the ball from the tee, a plucky player may then come to the conclusion that he has a chance of reaching the green with his second, and a fine shot will take him over the treacherous little ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... changed at every turn. Rivers, fields, forests, and rocks, spread out at our feet over an enormous distance, moved and trembled, iridescent, in the silvery moonlight, like the tides of a mirage. The fantastic character of the pictures made us hold our breath. Our heads grew giddy if, by chance, we glanced down into the depths by the flickering moonlight. We felt that the precipice, 2,000 feet deep, was fascinating us. One of our American fellow travelers, who had begun the voyage on horseback, had to dismount, afraid of being ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... question of reaching the end of that limb before the mire closed over his chum's head. Never did sailor go aloft more quickly than he swung himself up from branch to branch. Quickly he reached the overhanging bough. At its juncture with the trunk he paused for a second to catch his breath, then swung himself out on it cautiously, hand over hand. The bough creaked and cracked ominously, but did not break. Near the end of the limb he stopped, and throwing a leg over to free his hands, he knotted ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... this most charmingly done? It seems to me that the warlike interpretation of the scene is delightful; and those embattled fans—their perfumed breath comes down a ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... what would happen, with a good-looking, well-dressed, well-bred young man, who had the authority of a master, it is true, but the manners of a friend and equal, moving about among these young girls day after day, his eyes meeting theirs, his breath mingling with theirs, his voice growing familiar to them, never in any harsh tones, often soothing, encouraging, always sympathetic, with its male depth and breadth of sound among the chorus of trebles, as if it were a river in which a hundred of these ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... young boy, scarcely older than Chris himself, and the fly could almost feel the quickening of Zachary's heartbeat at the sudden flood of dark, the sense of the late hour, and the rat-infested hold. Zachary moved quickly in the pitch-black, his hands outstretched to feel the ladder, his breath coming and going rapidly through his parted lips. The heat of the airless place, the heavy smells of the cargo itself, oppressed and weighed on both Zachary and his unsuspected companion. The Mirabelle was moving slowly forward in calm tropic seas, scarcely making headway on an almost breathless ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... pre-Christian and post-Christian. She forms a divine triad with the Father and the Son: that is ancient and natural. But she also becomes the Divine Wisdom, Sophia, the Divine Truth, Aletheia, the Holy Breath or Spirit, the Pneuma. Since the word for 'spirit' is neuter in Greek and masculine in Latin, this last is rather a surprise. It is explained when we remember that in Hebrew the word for Spirit, 'Ruah', is mostly feminine. In the meantime let us notice ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... take up arms against the "writs of assistance." The speech, says Bowen, "gave vitality and shape to the dim sense of oppression and wrong from the mother country, which already rested indistinctly on the minds of the colonists." "It breathed," says Adams, "into this nation the breath ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... only for the moment. In the next breath, it rushed over him that with that cool glance the luncheon engagement upon which his whole mission depended stood canceled; and with that thought he felt his will hardening into iron. What she thought ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... spreading in pale light over the heavens, and condensing with its cold breath the lurid smoke which still ascended in volumes from the burning ruins, when Wallace, turning round at the glad voice of Edwin, beheld the released nobles. This was the first time he had ever seen the Lords Dundaff and Ruthven; but several of the others he remembered having ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... this morning Mr. Chute and I went to see him, and to scold him for not having writ oftener to you, which he protests he has done constantly. I cannot flatter you, my dear child, as much as to say I think him mended; his shortness of breath continues to be very uneasy to him, and his long confinement has wasted him a good deal. I fear his case is more consumptive than asthmatic; he begins a course of quicksilver to-morrow for the obstruction in his breast. I shall go out to him again the day after to-morrow, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... and hear her rippling, joyous laughter. They will become tense as the father is telling her of his vow. But the climax is reached when they hear her saying, "My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth." And, with bated breath, they see her meeting death with a smile that her father may keep his covenant with the Lord. Ever after this story will mark to them the very zenith of loyalty, and the lesson in grammar ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... Age above the red chaos of the East. And standing a little apart, we perceived convincing signs of the long-promised ignition on the part of America—signs as yet without splendour, to be sure. These things have to do with the very breath we draw; they relate themselves to our children and to every conception of home—not the war itself, but the forming of the new social order, the message thrilling for utterance in the breasts of the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... death; either death or life 5 Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences. That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, 10 Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble; For all ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... she lifted up her arms as if to put them round his neck and draw him down to her; she almost felt the rough beard on her face, and the strong heavy arms round her body. She smiled to herself and took a long breath; then, slipping back the sleeves of her nightdress, she looked at her own thin arms, just two pieces of bone with not a muscle on them, but very white and showing distinctly the interlacement of blue veins: she did not notice that her hands were rough, ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... shady arcades of the theatres; which Catulus was in his aedileship the first person to raise, in imitation of the lascivious manners of Campania, or else they play at dice so eagerly as to quarrel over them; snuffing up their nostrils and making unseemly noises by drawing back their breath into their noses; or (and this is their favourite pursuit of all others) from sunrise to evening they stay gaping through sunshine or rain, examining in the most careful manner the most sterling good or bad qualities of the charioteers ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... an electric shock;—a moment ago I was dozing off, and the cow, long since laid down, appeared asleep; that one roar had not died away among the hills when she had scrambled on her legs, and stood with elevated head, stiffened limbs, tail raised, and breath suspended, staring, full of terror, in the direction of the sound. As for the biped, with less noise, and even more alacrity, he had grasped his "Sam Nock," whose polished barrels just rested on the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... without further parley. He ate as with two shovels, his fork in one hand and his knife in the other; when he once got started his wolf-hunger got the better of him, and he did not stop for breath until he had cleared every plate. "Gee whiz!" said the other, who had been watching him ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... wall of the park, her mental vision too actively raking the past to spare a beam for the familiar picture, suddenly switched her searchlight away from those milestones in her historic progress and concentrated it upon a suspicious shadow opposite. Surely it had moved, and there was not a breath of wind. The night was mild ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... I could forget young Stephen," he caught his breath—"Bobby, I see him everywhere, all the time. I lie awake hours at night thinking about him. I see him in my sleep, see him sometimes grown-up—splendid, famous.... Sometimes I think he comes back. I can see him, lying on his back and looking up at the ceiling, and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... dancing puppets, walking automatically with their swaying motion. And it seemed to her as if something had been swept out of her; as if her over-excited dreams had been pushed into the gutter, or into the drain, and so she went home, out of breath, and very cold, and all that she could remember was the sensation of the motion of those brooms sweeping the streets of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... mistily of being hurled into his arms; but after that came a blank until the moment of her rescue. It was evident that Wynne had in some way been hurt in protecting her, and the very vagueness of the service he had rendered made the deed loom larger in her imagination. She felt his breath warm on her cheek, and suddenly into her dispassionate musings there came a fresh sense, which made her face grow hot. She was angry at the absurdity of flushing there in the dark, and asked herself why the mere breath ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... shadow, his grip on the chick's neck preventing any outcry. Hiding his game at a distance, he creeps back to capture another in the same way; and so on till he has enough, or till he is discovered, or some half-strangled chick finds breath enough for a squawk. A hen or turkey knows the danger by instinct, and hurries her brood into the open at the first suspicion that a ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... sprays. The "chefs" introduced this herb into all their sauces, and scented their wines with its essence. The Roman housewives made a paste of the Peppermint with honey, which they esteemed highly, partaking of it to sweeten their breath, and to conceal their passion for wine at a time when the law punished with death every woman convicted of quaffing the ruby seductive liquor. Seneca perished in a bath ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... songs and ballads of our genial-hearted countryman, Morris. I had previously worried myself by a course of rather dry reading, and his poetry, tender, musical, fresh, and natural, came to me like spring's first sunshine, the song of her first birds, the breath of her ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... storehouse for petroleum before. But Hassel did not stop here; he had the building fever on him in earnest. His great project of connecting the coal and wood store with the house below the surface nearly took my breath away; it seemed to me an almost superhuman labour, but they did it. The distance from the coal-tent to the house was about ten yards. Here Hassel and Stubberud laid out their line so that it would strike the passage ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... even if the topic had been less agitating, and the emotion caused by this unexpected complication, consternation at the difficulties she foresaw, and the present difficulty of framing a reply, were altogether too much for Mrs. Woodford. She turned deadly white, and gasped for breath, so that Peregrine, in terror, dashed off in search of the maids, exclaiming that their ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... amid the ruins of Carthage? What party is it that has brought about the desolation you behold? To whose strategy was it owing that the once impregnable city was betrayed and surrounded, and its lofty battlements levelled with the dust? What foul coalition circumvented you, and whose pestilential breath is now whispering in your ear? Has that party against which you have fought for twenty years—which you have regarded as essentially corrupt and dangerous to the Union—all at once, and by some magical ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... she had many and many a time sat musing, and laid their burden softly on the pavement. The light streamed on it through the coloured window—a window where the boughs of trees were ever rustling in the summer, and where the birds sang sweetly all day long. With every breath of air that stirred among those branches in the sunshine, some trembling, changing light would fall ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... his side, one arm cleaving the water and the other supporting the nearly inert body of Joe. "Here comes 'Brownie,'" the rescuer heard him say cheerfully. "All right now, Joe. We'll get you in in a jiffy! Roll over, 'Brownie,' and get your breath," he added. "We're all right for ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Beauty still Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; And Woman's tears, produced at will, Deceive in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... long breath as they got out again into the moonlight, "what a poisonous place! Good gracious, Charlie, who ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... convinced that his brother must be joined with his father and the lawyer in this conspiracy. He felt, also, that he could meet neither Mr. Grey nor his brother without personally attacking them. All the world might perish, but he, with his last breath, would declare himself to be Captain Mountjoy Scarborough, of Tretton Park; and though he knew at the moment that he must perish,—as regarded social life among his comrades,—unless he could raise five hundred pounds ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... where wrecks are thrown up and slowly go to pieces. There is the cradle which the old man you just remember was rocked in; there is the ruin of the bedstead he died on; that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put under his pillow in the days when his breath came hard; there is his old chair with both arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had nothing earthly left to lean on; there is the large wooden reel which the blear-eyed old deacon sent the minister's lady, who thanked him graciously, and twirled it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... breath and his composure now. He covered his bald head with his hat, planted himself against the fence, his little, twinkling eyes fixed on Trudy with an intense gaze, and continued ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... Johnson himself was the only one man in the Republic who would be benefited by President Lincoln's death; and, as he was found "asleep" at the "unusual hour" of nine o'clock P.M., of the 14th of April, and had made haste to take the oath of office as President of the United States as soon as the breath had left the body of his predecessor, insinuated that he (Johnson) might with more reason be suspected of "complicity" in "the foul work" than the "Rebels and Traitors" charged with it, in his Proclamation; so charged, for the very purpose—Thompson insinuated—of ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the most fateful night in the history of France. All the world was watching with bated breath, watching to see whether France was really a "back number"—whether the Prussian was truly the salt of the earth. If Paris fell, the French Armies in the field were cut off from their base; defeat was certain, and the national history of France, or, at any rate, the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... rest of my time—well, I employ it in doing what good I can among the poor and those who need comfort or who are bereaved, especially among those who are bereaved, for to such I am sometimes able to bring the breath of hope that blows ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... doing right well. He made a good speech at Portland, one that seemed to me carefully prepared. I think he answered his critics quite conclusively, but if I were in John's place I would now save my breath and make no more speeches, but simply say in reply to other invitations, 'Read my Portland speech,' because whatever other efforts he may make during the campaign must be more or less a rehash ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... died. Died not knowing what killed them; not knowing even that they died. Costigan, bitterly resentful of the inhuman treatment accorded the three and fiercely anxious for the success of his plan of escape, held his breath and, grimly alert, watched the amphibians die. When he could see no more motion anywhere he donned his gas-mask, strapped upon his back a large canister of the poison—his capacious pockets were already ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... shocking offence in the eyes of those, whose plans it had disturbed. With one particular old fogy he got into something of a newspaper controversy in consequence. The "consummate assurance" of one so young fairly knocked the breath out of this Mr. Eminent Respectability; it was absolutely revolting to all his "ideas of propriety, to see a stranger, a man who never paid a tax in our city, and perhaps no where else, to possess ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... went to sleep first of all, but when Brodir woke up, he drew his breath painfully, and bade them put off the boat. "For," he said, "I will go to ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... infantry; set it also whirling: and in a word, the whole 200,000 whirled, without blow struck; and it was a universal panic rout, and delirious stampede of flight, which never paused (the very garrisons emptying themselves, and joining in it) till it got across the Donau again, and drew breath there, not to rally or stand, but to run rather slower. And had left Wallachia, Bessarabia, Dniester river, Donau river, swept clear of Turks; all Romanzow's henceforth. To such astonishment of an invincible Grand Turk, and of his Moslem Populations, fallen on ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... grow weary of their sojourn at Boulogne, a town less likely, perhaps, than any other to render such an inactive existence endurable. They did not murmur, however, because never where the First Consul was did murmuring find a place; but they fumed nevertheless under their breath at seeing themselves held in camp or in fort, with England just in sight, only nine or ten leagues distant. Pleasures were rare at Boulogne; the women, generally pretty, but extremely timid, did not dare to hold receptions at their own houses, for fear of displeasing their husbands, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the love of God a mere wavering thing, perhaps known only at critical times; or was it not rather His vital breath and native air? "I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me where I am"; and "the only-begotten Son is in the bosom of ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... formulated by Lenin, wherein "the getting of food and clothing shall be no longer a private affair,"[731] would meet with stronger opposition from working men—and still more from working women, to whom "shopping" is as the breath of life—than from any other section of the population. Even such apparently benign Socialist schemes as "communal dining-rooms" or "communal kitchens" appeal less to the working-class mentality than to the upper-class mind ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... deep. No sound was heard but the panting breath of Cephyse, and, at intervals, the slight crackling of the charcoal, which began to burn, and already sent forth a faint sickening vapor. Cephyse, seeing the fire completely lighted, and feeling already a little dizzy, rose from the ground, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... we can make something of our days, something of the drama of this confused turmoil, and perhaps, after all—who can tell?—there is more in it than mere "amusement." Once and again, as we pause in our reading, there comes a breath, a whisper, a rumor, of something else; of something over and above that "eternal now" which is the wisest preoccupation of our passion, but not wise are those who would seek to confine this fleeting intimation within the walls of ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... smiled and caught her breath, and then the tears dropped one by one on her husband's sleeve. It almost seemed like the voice of an angel speaking to the world from out of ...
— Three People • Pansy
... profitable way, would be to say simply, that an epic is a poem which produces feelings similar to those produced by Paradise Lost or the Iliad, Beowulf or the Song of Roland. Indeed, you might include all the epics of Europe in this definition without losing your breath; for the epic poet is the rarest kind of artist. And while it is not a simple matter to say off-hand what it is that is common to all these poems, there seems to be general acknowledgment that they are clearly separable from other kinds of poetry; and this although the word ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... sat down side by side. And now I began to see a change in him. His eyes, that were fixed upon mine, grew brighter and deeper, until it seemed as if I could look far down into their burning depths. His breath came hot upon my face. Suddenly, he threw an arm around me, and then I saw myself in the strong folds of a great serpent! I screamed for help, and next found myself in your arms. Oh! it was a strange and ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... and fixed them on him in a manner truly frightful. When at last the blade had been entirely withdrawn, a red froth issued from the mouth of the wounded man and a stream of blood spouted afresh from the wound when he at length drew breath; then, fixing his eyes upon Grimaud with a singular expression, the dying man uttered ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of her? She had dropt down into the street, and had crept into the shade of one of the heavy broad stone-carvings beneath the window, knowing that there she was safe enough for the present; and she lay down, panting with the fright, to recover her breath a little, and consider what was to be done. To go back to the palace was clearly out of the question. But then where could she go? Poor cat! what a perplexity she was in! She lay snug for the best part of an hour before she durst venture out of her hiding-place. ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... hypersuperfine. So good she made the saints seem scalawags; An angel child; a paramaragon. Halt! Turn! When she elected to be bad, Black fails to paint the depths of ignomin, The fearsome sins, the crimes unspeakable, The deep abysses of her evilment. Hist! Tell 't wi' bated breath! One day she let A rosy tongue-tip from red lips peep forth! Can viciousness cap that? Horrid's the word. Yet there she is. There is that Little Girl, Her goodness and her badness, side by side, Like bacon, streak ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... the mountains, or whither thou wilt," and giving a blast as if he blew something away, turns round clapping his hands together, which tremble as if with cold, and shuts his mouth. After this he blows on his hands as if warming them, then draws in his breath as if sucking something, and sucks the sick mans neck, stomach, shoulders, jaws, breast, belly, and other parts of his body. This done he coughs and makes wry faces as if he had swallowed something very bitter, and pulls from his mouth what he had before concealed there, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... storm were coming," said Nyoda in a low tone. The night was wearing away fast and the girls knew that it was safer to escape under cover of darkness. About three o'clock in the morning the storm broke, a terrific thunder shower. The tower swayed in the wind and at each crash they held their breath, thinking that the house had been struck. The spray from the waves as they were flung against the rocks often came in through the open window. Both girls looked down into the boiling sea beneath them and drew back with a shudder. "Wait ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... air in the ship was growing more foul every second. It was hard to breathe even on the floor, and all were gasping for breath. A few minutes more and they would all become unconscious and death would come in a little while if the air was ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... the poor was not one of Miss Ashton's faults. By this time the whole school knew of the ride, of its discovery, and was holding its breath over the ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... forbidden him the messroom. The indefatigable Morgan then put himself in communication with some of the inferior actors at the theatre, and pumped them over their cigars and punch, and all agreed that Costigan was poor, shabby, and given to debt and to drink. But there was not a breath upon the reputation of Miss Fotheringay: her father's courage was reported to have displayed itself on more than one occasion towards persons disposed to treat his daughter with freedom. She never came to the theatre ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... experience—hearing in the musician, touch with the blind, etc.—we may estimate by this how much sharper certain senses may have been then than now. Several centuries ago visual delusion was with adults what it is now with children in remotest country parts. A quivering leaf, a nothing, a breath, an unexplained sound creates an image which they see and in the reality of which they believe absolutely. Man is all of a piece; the hyperaesthesia of the will presupposes that of the sensibility, one is conditioned on the other, and it is this which makes men of revolutionary ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... of great might, created Jrimbhika to kill Vritra. And as Vritra yawned and his mouth opened the slayer of the Asura, Vala contracted the different parts of his body, and came out from within Vritra's mouth. And thenceforth the yawn attaches itself to the living breath of animated beings in three worlds. And the gods rejoiced at the egress of Indra. And once again commenced the terrible fight between Vritra and Indra, both full of ire. And it was waged for a long while, O best of Bharata's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... neighbourhood, where certain of our besiegers had been seen to enter. While I was firing, a cannon shot reached me, which hit the angle of a battlement, and carried off enough of it to be the cause why I sustained no injury. The whole mass struck me in the chest and took my breath away. I lay stretched upon the ground like a dead man, and could hear what the bystanders were saying. Among them all, Messer Antonio Santacroce lamented greatly, exclaiming: "Alas, alas! we have lost the best defender that we had." Attracted by the uproar, one of my comrades ran up; he ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... doctors but could learn nothing: this malady was unknown to them, and defied all the resources of their art. A fortnight later she returned. Some of the sick people were dead, others still alive, but desperately ill; living skeletons, all that seemed left of them was sight, speech, and breath. At the end of two months they were all dead, and the physicians had been as much at a loss over the post-mortems as over the treatment ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... for your starving children?—what but this plunderer, this robber, seizing the funds that extremity has dragged from the poor in order to buy up the grain of the States? A pretty speculation! No wonder that you murmur and complain; that you curse him under your breath, that you call him il cardinale affamatore. And no wonder, if you happen to belong to a great association that has promised to see justice done, no wonder you come to that association and say, 'Masters, why ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... thunders of well-merited applause; and sure I am, that a whisper, a breath from almost any other opponent than Mr. Ward, would have produced a ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... raised her head; it seemed as if a voice had called her, a voice so clear, so still, so full of power that she waited submissive and wondering. In another moment she came to herself, the brave self that suffering had thrust away usurping its place by a wicked will. She drew a long breath as if waking from a horrible dream, and sat quiet for a while, her hands clenched and brought together. She shivered in the summer air. Suddenly she rose, took up the paper, and going to the window, tossed it out, scattering ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... partially recovered from the fatigues and trials of the voyage when our arrival pulled the string of the social shower-bath, and the invitations began pouring down upon us so fast that we caught our breath, and felt as if we should be smothered. The first evening saw us at a great dinner-party at our well-remembered friend Lady Harcourt's. Twenty guests, celebrities and agreeable persons, with or without titles. The tables were radiant with silver, glistening with choice porcelain, blazing ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... ceased. He lay extended on his back, breathing so feebly that twice they thought his breath had ceased forever. At last, a little before ten o'clock, his cheeks suddenly colored and he shuddered. He rose up in bed, his eye staring, his arm stretched out toward the window, and ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... breath!" she gasped. Then, after a moment she smiled brilliantly into the wind-bitten face of the kneeling man. "It's all over, Robert," ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... brew-houses, shops, &c.; and who going necessarily through the streets into shops, markets, and the like, it was impossible but that they should, one way or other, meet with distempered people, who conveyed the fatal breath into them, and they brought it home to the families to which they belonged. (2) It was a great mistake that such a great city as this had but one pest-house; for had there been, instead of one pest-house—viz., beyond Bunhill ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... of things without, puffs of vapour, half liquid slush, excavated, sliding, falling, sliding. We dropped into darkness. I went down with Cavor's knees in my chest. Then he seemed to fly away from me, and for a moment I lay with all the breath out of my body staring upward. A toppling crag of the melting stuff had splashed over us, buried us, and now it thinned and boiled off us. I saw the bubbles dancing on the glass above. I heard ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... gentleman held the unpromising objects in his hand and meditated upon them. They might be a treatise on conic sections, or a Latin Grammar, and again they might be a Book. He untied the string and opened one of the volumes. Was it a breath of summer air from Isis that swept out of those pages, which were as white as snow in spite of the lapse of nearly two centuries? He read the title, MUSARUM ANGLICANARUM ANALECTA. The date was 1699. He turned to the table of contents, and his heart gave a contented throb. There was ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... startlement and the feeling that there was something uncanny about her, but as the deep eyes met his own and the pretty mouth smiled at him from beneath the glinting pale halo of her hair, he drew his breath in a long sigh of appreciation and admiration. His wife, looking at him with some deprecation, as though fearing an adverse judgment, smiled as his evident conquest became apparent. Standing near him the two boys stared and stared, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... at her festival, to re-obtain his human shape, she says: "Throughout the entire course of the remainder of thy life, until the very last breath has vanished from thy lips, thou art devoted to my service.... Under my protection will thy life be happy and glorious: and when, thy days being spent, thou shalt descend to the shades below, and inhabit the Elysian fields, there also, even in the subterranean hemisphere, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... my Maker with my breath; And when my voice is lost in death, Praise shall employ my nobler powers." ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to get along with only few breathes, learned to stop breathing. He learned, beginning with the breath, to calm the beat of his heart, leaned to reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... drive past the window. If that worthy lady could have seen us, that bread and cheese which was giving us life would inevitably have been her death; she certainly would have had a stroke of apoplexy (what the French call foudroyante), for gentility and propriety were the breath of life to her, and of the highest law of both, which can ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... good!" exclaimed both officers in one breath, as, standing open-mouthed, they hardly knew whether they were to believe the evidence of their own ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... returned home in the evening she told him that her mother was not well, and begged him to examine her. This examination proved that Madame Cormier was in her usual health; but she complained that her breath failed her—during the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that extreme physical effort that makes the singer red in the face and causes his upper tones to shriek rather than sing. Such a display of force discloses an erroneous idea of how to produce the upper voice. When there is the right relation existing between the breath and the vocal instrument, when there is the proper poise and balance of parts, no such effort is necessary. On the contrary the tone seems to flow and the effort required is only that of a light ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... earnestly upon the calm features of the faces so closely pressed together. There was no pity, no remorse in his heart, for life and death were matters which touched him not at all. War was as the breath ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... poetry is low and false, and we think it of some importance to show that the "Night Thoughts" are the reflex of the mind in which the higher human sympathies were inactive. This judgment is entirely opposed to our youthful predilections and enthusiasm. The sweet garden-breath of early enjoyment lingers about many a page of the "Night Thoughts," and even of the "Last Day," giving an extrinsic charm to passages of stilted rhetoric and false sentiment; but the sober and repeated reading of maturer years has convinced us that it would hardly be possible to find a ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... out went the port and starboard lamps. Then there was a ten-minute wait, while Mr. Howland, Virginia, and the rest of the party who had ventured on deck, thrilled and delighted with the situation, held their breath. Dan pulled another switch and the masthead lights went out. The Tampico was now a part of ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... breath, before he knew what had happened, the soldier found himself dragged to the bank, disarmed, robbed, his hands bound behind him, and his feet hobbled. He could speak Spanish and so could the "tulisanes." Words told him that his captors, ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... boy," answered the major. "Brown turned his ivories and we all held our breath as we read his four-three. A mad joy flamed in Andrew's face and he turned his cup with a steady wrist—and rolled threes. We none of us looked at Brown, a man who had led another man in whose veins ran a madness, where in his ran ice, on to his ruin. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the human mind intuitively springs an objection which is at once aimed at the very citadel of Darwinism. On what rests the validity of these intuitions except it be that "breath of life," which, as we have before said, was breathed into man when he became a living soul? If we follow the divine record, instead of these blind systematizers leading the blind, we shall have no difficulty in establishing the validity of these intuitions—the highest ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... dish which you know you must not drop, you check the flexion reflex which would naturally pull the hand away from the painful stimulus. The young child learns to control the reflexes of evacuation, and gradually comes to have control over the breathing movements, so as to hold his breath or breathe rapidly or deeply at will, and to expire vigorously in order to ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... arrived at the meeting quite out of breath. And his friends noticed that he seemed uneasy about something. He kept looking up at the sky and asking everybody what he ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey
... never was unfriends," answered Dick. "Y' are a brave lad in your way, albeit something of a milksop too. I never met your like before this day. But, prithee, fetch back your breath, and let us on. Here is no place ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... utterly repudiates such a view of himself as this, for he cannot draw his breath in the commercial world. [Footnote: Several poems lately have voiced the poet's horror of materialism. See Josephine Preston Peabody, The Singing Man; Richard Le Gallienne, To R. W. Emerson, Richard Watson Gilder; Mary Robinson, Art and Life.] In vain he assures his ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... her feet, over her head, and beyond the reach of vision, because inhabiting that realm into which the spirit alone can send its aspiration and its prayer, was one influence, one spell: the warmth of the good wholesome earth, its breath of sweetness, its voices of peace and love and rest, the majesty of its flashing dome; and holding all these safe as in the hollow of a hand the Eternal Guardianship ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... gentle Night outflew The fleeting balm on hills and dales she shed, With honey drops of pure and precious dew, And on the verdure of green forests spread, The virgin primrose and the violet blue; And sweet breath Zephyr on his spreading wings Sleep, ease, repose, rest, peace and quiet brings. The thoughts and troubles of broad waking day They softly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... the hedge with you when the bolts begin to fly your way! Take heed, good fellows all, that our business is to bestride the highway, and not let them get in on our flank the while; so half to the right, half to the left of the highway. Shoot straight and strong, and waste no breath with noise; let the loose of the bowstring cry for you! and look you! think it no loss of manhood to cover your bodies with tree and bush; for one of us who know is worth a hundred of those proud fools. To it, lads, and let them see what the grey goose bears between his wings! Abide us here, ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... join Bunny when the train went around a curve, and so sudden it was that the freight car swayed and jolted, and Sue lost her balance. Down she sat on the floor, rather hard. She was not hurt, but she was surprised and she lost her breath for the moment. If Bunny had not held tightly to the edge of the door he might ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... their weight, When from his pomp retir'd alone He feels the duties of the throne, Feels that the multitude below Depend on him for weal or woe; When his powerful will may bless A realm with peace and happiness, Or with desolating breath Breathe ruin round, and woe, and death: Oh give to him the flowing bowl, Bid it humanize his soul; He shall not feel the empire's weight, He shall not feel the cares of state, The bowl shall each dark thought beguile, And Nations live ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... picked up some wood and replenished his fire. And glancing at Neale and Betty, who still lingered, he let fall a muttered whisper under his breath. "Bide a bit—till those chaps have gone," he said. "I've ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... again. With a heavy sigh for all these woes, she gathered a flossy bud of willow, and fixed it on her breast-knot, to defy the world; and then, without heed of the sea, sun, or sands, went home with short breath, and quick blushes, and some wonder; for no man's arm, except her father's, had ever been round her ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... bedaubed with mire, sit, half sleeping in disease and hunger on decayed door-stoops. Men with bruised faces, men with bleared eyes; men in whose every feature crime and dissipation is stamped, now drag their waning bodies from out filthy alleys, as if to gasp some breath of air, then drag themselves back, as if to die in a desolate hiding-place. Engines of pestilence and death the corporation might see and remove, if it would, are left here to fester—to serve a church-yard as gluttonous as its own belly. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... deserted playground—for we all sat on the parapet of the terrace by the lingerie; boys and servants, le pere et la mere Jaurion, Mlle. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris—all feeling bound to each other by a common danger, like wild beasts in a flood. Dear me! I'm out of breath from sheer pleasure in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... asked themselves, to kill each other and devastate each other's countries for the sake of such questions? Could these problems ever be decided at all? If not, was it not much more reasonable to let everyone believe what he could, and, instead of wasting breath and arguments, convincing to nobody, on transubstantiation, predestination, and real presence, to cultivate sciences which really placed lasting and verifiable truths within the reach of the understanding, such as mathematics and natural philosophy, geography ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... cat gets into a room where a baby is sleeping, the cat will suck the baby's breath and ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... not the vocabulary which deteriorates. Words are ever at command. What one learns to forget in England is the simplicity to use them; to utter, with an air of deep conviction, a string of what we should call the merest platitudes. It sometimes takes your breath away—the things you have to say because these folks are so enamoured of rhetoric and will not ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... uttered something under his breath which Nat could not catch. Evidently, he was very angry, and he went into a side room, slamming ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... were afraid to send them by post. He was much disturbed by them. Events were developing rapidly in the East; the occupation of the Principalities by Russian troops had thrown all men's minds into a ferment; the storm was growing—already could be felt the breath of approaching inevitable war. The fire was kindling all round, and no one could foresee how far it would go—where it would stop. Old wrongs, long cherished hopes—all were astir again. Insarov's ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... only epitaph, pronounced most incongruously with the same breath that expressed his comrade's longing for whisky, but perhaps it was sufficient, for when one is called a white man it implies a good deal in that country. Nobody, it seemed, knew where he came from, or whether there was any one who belonged ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Then he laid the thin blade against the stone upon the table, kissing it gently along its full length of edge. The man's breath seemed to hiss softly as the steel slipped across the stone; and as it turned deftly and came back, the hiss changed to a blissful, watery gurgling, thin and long drawn in. A prickling ran across Scanlon's scalp; he had the sensation of warm flesh being cleverly ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... breath next morning, it was inclined to think that it was enduring the full horror of war; and was preparing to summarise the situation. But before it could draw a second breath it was marched off to—to what I will call a reserve camp. It was not technically a reserve camp, ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... that shout. With caught breath and blanched faces they turned towards the direction whence it came, and they saw the madman bounding towards them with streaming locks and glaring eyes. A single look sufficed. The entire population of the village ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... background. Whatever the drawbacks of my bringing up, there was at least no pretence about it. I know now what people mean when they say they are weighed down by Things. The material atmosphere of that house was crushing; I didn't draw a deep breath until I was on an express train coming back. All the furniture was carved and upholstered and gorgeous; the people I met were beautifully dressed and low-voiced and well-bred, but it's the truth, Daddy, I never heard one word of real talk from the time we arrived until we left. I don't think ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... chair, speechless with amazement. He seemed to gasp for breath as his long fingers pressed the green table-cover before him. His small eyes were wide open, and his toothless jaw dropped. Gouache feared that he was going ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... blamed her for it, blamed the old woman awfully. They said pride wuz so wicked. Wimmen who would run like deers if company came when they wuzn't dressed up slick, they would say the minute they got back into the room, all out of breath with hurryin' into their best clothes, they'd say a pantin' "That old woman ought to be made to go to the poorhouse, to take the pride out of her, pride wuz so awfully, dretfully wicked, and it wuz a shame that she wuz so ongrateful as to want a home of her own." And then ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... fast asleep. My late night, the long morning in that stirring air, and the excitement of two missed-by-a-hair's-breath murders, had trundled me out again. The last wicket was down and the innings over as I slept. The one bit of luck I did have was not setting the bed ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... irrepressible dread of what was expected to take place, started at the close of the last words, and with a heart divided between the two terrors, stood in that stupefaction which is only the resting-place of misery, where it takes breath and strengthens itself for its greatest trials. Ho stood with one hand as before, pressed upon his forehead, and pointed with the other to the door. The wife, too, paused, for she could not doubt for a moment, that she heard sounds mingling with those of the storm which belonged not to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Gethryn no longer figured for the First Eleven, Gosling was the School's one hope. Baynes was good on his wicket, but the wickets he liked were the sea-of-mud variety, and this summer fine weather had set in early and continued. Lorimer was also useful, but not to be mentioned in the same breath as the great Samuel. The former was good, the latter would be good in a year or so. His proper sphere of action was the tail. If the first pair of bowlers could dismiss five good batsmen, Lorimer's fast, straight ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... and dishonoured it,—history cannot yet reveal. Thanks to Louis Bonaparte, this revered field of the Federation may in future be called Aceldama. One of the unhappy soldiers whom the man of the 2nd of December transformed into executioners, relates with horror, and beneath his breath, that in a single night the number of people shot was not less ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... I do," said Jenkins, the second lieutenant, one of a group who were collected on the weather side of the quarter-deck. "I can distinguish the lions' and boa-constrictors' breath in it, too, if I'm not mistaken. Not much of Araby's spicy gales here, ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... reverence that used to belong to Death is now only paid to it in the case of immensely rich persons, whose wealth is spoken of with bated breath. 'He died, sir, worth two millions; a very warm man.' If you happen to say, though with all reasonable probability and even with Holy Writ to back you, 'He is probably warmer by this time,' you are looked upon as a Communist. What the man was is nothing, ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... of June and July the wind blows in this valley with astonishing violence; yet only a short gun-shot off towards the town of Delisha, over against the road where the ships ride, there is hardly there a breath of wind. About 100 years ago [1500] this island was conquered by the King of Caixem, or Cushem, as the Arabs pronounce it, a sovereign of no great force, as his army does not exceed two or three thousand soldiers. Besides Socotora, this king has likewise the two ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... good fortune than our merit. It is by favor of our stars, not by virtue of our own, that we turn not aside from the plain path of truth to the by-ways of supernaturalism and improbability. Yet we refrain with difficulty from a breath of self-praise; there is a proud and solid satisfaction in holding an unassailable position could we but catch the world's eye, we would ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... on in the old golden chair, watching the deep hollows beneath the sleeper's temples, the puffs of breath stirring the silver round his mouth. Her ears burned crimson. Carried out of herself by the sight of that old form, dearer to her than she had thought, fighting its great battle for the sake of its idea, her spirit grew all tremulous and soft within her. With eagerness ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
