"Contorted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... showing that it is a feat of which I, personally, am not capable. Aunt Dahlia, to my amazement, now did it apparently without an effort. She was well wedged into a deep arm-chair, but, nevertheless, she staggered like billy-o. A sort of spasm of horror and apprehension contorted ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
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... and false securities did the good teach you; in the lies of the good were ye born and bred. Everything hath been radically contorted ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
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... band, with trumpets extraordinarily out of tune, in the gallery; there were country gentlemen, greatly flustered, with their inevitable families, mauve ices, viscous lemonade; servants in boots trodden down at heel and knitted cotton gloves; provincial lions with spasmodically contorted faces, and so on and so on. And all this little world was revolving round its sun—round the prince. Lost in the crowd, unnoticed even by the young ladies of eight-and-forty, with red pimples on their brows and blue flowers ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
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... walking over my skin. I brushed at it hastily, and something seemed to fall on the table. "No, the other side I mean," said he, and again I felt the same horrid tickling and went through the same exercises, with a face, I've no doubt, contorted with terror. Anyhow, it seemed to amuse them very much; Wag, in fact, was quite unable to speak, and could only point. It was dull of me not to have realized at once that these were "his" earwigs and not real ones. But now I did, and though I still felt the tickling, ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
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... by imperceptible breezes on the smooth water; their motion could hardly be heard, and their white sails, stretched out on yards, fell languidly in a thousand horizontal folds like window-blinds, their strangely contorted poops, rising up castle-like in the air, reminding one of the towering ships of the Middle Ages. In the midst of the verdure of this wall of mountains, they stood out ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
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... the further slope by a narrow gulley. Here the shell-holes were less frequent. A miry path led through an abandoned camp—a chaos of riddled and shattered boards and contorted iron sheeting. Dead Frenchmen were lying everywhere. From a drab heap of mud and clothing a human arm projected. The terminal finger-joints had dropped off. The blackened skin was drawn tightly over the back of the hand which seemed to clutch frantically at ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
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... filmy fluttering light and solid bedded shade. I am thinking also of that patch of pre-historic cypresses in Monterey. These differ from the straight, symmetrical classic redwoods as Rodin's "Thinker" differs from the Apollo. Monstrous, contorted shapes—those Monterey cypresses look like creatures born underground, who, at the price of almost unbearable torture, have torn through the earth's crust, thrusting and twisting themselves airward. I refer even to that astonishing detail in the general Californian sulphitism, the seals which ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
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... of oriental alabaster, polished like a jewel, upheld by griffins with outthrust tongues curiously contorted and entwined. But beyond the silken curtains of the palace-windows the forest and the hills, with a wandering breath of coolness from the mountain-breeze, drew and welcomed him, with some faint, new perception of ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
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... him!" quoth Dame Elizabeth, and snorked [twisted, contorted] up her mouth, as the comb that instant moment came to a spot where her hair was louked [fastened] together. "Bless the comb!" saith she, and I guess she meant it but little. "Wala wa! Dame Joan, think you 'tis matter ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
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... to his last long sleep; whereas those who had died from the thrust of a pike, or the blow of a cutlass, however mild the living expression of their countenance might have been, were always fearfully contorted both ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
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... was after her with a bound, his little eyes gleaming with a venomous expression, his face contorted with passion. She raised the revolver and fired. For a breathless instant she thought that she had hit him, for he sank almost to the floor. But she saw that it was only a trick for he was up again on the instant, a mocking smile on his face and closer than ever. She fired again, and ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
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... hand this night!' Thus he prayed on in a wild rush of burning, pleading words, writhing prostrate upon the floor in the vehemence of his supplication, while we, poor trembling mites, huddled round our mother's skirts and gazed with terror at the contorted figure seen by the dim light of the simple oil lamp. On a sudden the clang of the new church clock told that the hour had come. My father sprang from the floor, and rushing to the casement, stared up with wild expectant ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
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... to three principal groups, based upon the form of the foliage: (1) Plain varieties, in which the leaves are nearly as they are in nature; (2) moss-curled varieties in which they are curiously and pleasingly contorted; and (3) fern leaved, in which the foliage is not curled, but ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
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... Sneering, vengeful laughter contorted Kranitski's face, the red spots spread over his brows and covered half of his forehead, which was drawn now into ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
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... ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words. "Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People vowed vows and sang as they had never sung before the hymns in their church song-books. The strands of Life leapt and contorted themselves but they could not ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
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... as that of a king on a copper coin, was deeply lined and darkly sunburnt. His head, bald no doubt, was tied up in a crimson handkerchief that gave him the value of a rare picture by the hand of some old master. Seeing the cure, the pair stopped under an immense olive tree, a tree so twisted, so contorted that it seemed to have settled down to treehood only after the wild whirl of a maenad dance. Now in its old age, which had been youth in Caesar's day, it was more like a gray, ruined tower than an olive tree. It had divided itself into a few crumbling, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
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... him, the flat of the sword had been used—but it was enough. The American reeled under the terrific swipe. He had a last glimpse of two inflamed eyes, of a savage, contorted face; then the universal whiteness went black, and he fell, and the whole incredible scene ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
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... less high-sounding title and a far smaller fortune. She had revenged herself in various small ways, and had often turned her brother-in-law's wife to ridicule by representing her as an ascetic mediaeval saint, in contorted attitudes of ecstasy, with sunken cheeks and eyes like saucers full of ink. Like many other people, Giovanni had seen some of these drawings, for the resentful Marchesa had not destroyed them when the Princess Chiaromonte died; but no one had ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
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... eastern side, and was soon at the base of the great cone. I made my way by tortuous walking round the erupted masses of lava, and also by portions of the lava streams, which, on losing their original fluidity, had become piled up and contorted into ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
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... so covered up that only his face was visible, lay one whom at first I failed to recognize, for the horribly contorted features presented a kind of mottled green ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
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... or the desire of liberty on the part of peoples. Some were lying calmly, as if their last moments had been as peaceful as when little children they laid themselves down to sleep; others twisted and contorted with looks of horror and anguish fixed upon their mournful faces, which bespoke agonies attending the departure of life like to the travail pains with which it had been ushered into existence. Seymour with a sad heart stooped ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
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... a short silence, during which I was observing the very peculiar physiognomy of this misshapen being—those long deep wrinkles that moated in his wide mouth, his small eyes with the crow's feet at the outer corners, that contorted nose, bulbous at its end, and especially that huge double-storied forehead of his. The whole figure reminded me not a little of the received pictures of Socrates, and while warming myself and listening to the crackling of the fire, I went off into ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
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... even in design; but there are many that will delight, improve, or encourage the reader. On the one hand, the Hebrew Psalms are the only religious poetry on earth; yet they contain sallies that savour rankly of the man of blood. On the other hand, Alfred de Musset had a poisoned and a contorted nature; I am only quoting that generous and frivolous giant, old Dumas, when I accuse him of a bad heart; yet, when the impulse under which he wrote was purely creative, he could give us works like "Carmosine" or "Fantasio," in which the last note of the romantic comedy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
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... Hicks, Jr., reposed gracefully on his back, staring up at the cross-bar, which someone kindly replaced on the pegs, big Butch Brewster, who seemed suddenly to have gone crazy, tried to attract Coach Brannigan's attention. Succeeding, Butch—usually a grave, serious Senior, winked, contorted his visage hideously, pointed at Hicks, and sibilated, "Now, Coach—now is your ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
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... beech, and birch, in the midst of which, in its season, the dogwood puts out its white blossoms. Wild grapes trail over the sand-dunes and festoon the dwarf trees. Here and there are almost impenetrable swamps, thick-set with white cedars, intertwisted and contorted by the lake winds, and broken by the weight of snow and ice in winter. Swans and wild geese paddle in the shallow, reedy bayous; raccoons and even deer traverse the sparsely wooded ridges. The shores of its creeks and fens are tenanted by minks and muskrats. The tall tower ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
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... the court room was painful in its intensity. The Elder leaned forward and listened with contorted face, and the prisoner held his breath. A pallor overspread his face and ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
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... the shivering leaves overhead, Beltane of a sudden espied a naked foot—a down-curving, claw-like thing, shrivelled and hideous, and, glancing higher yet, beheld a sight to blast the sun from heaven: now staring up at the contorted horror of this shrivelled thing that once had lived and laughed, Beltane let fall his staff and, being suddenly sick and faint, sank upon his knees and, covering his eyes, crouched there in the grass the while that grisly, silent thing swayed to and fro ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
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... hall, and a few minutes later, while the gentleman was giving W. his instructions, they were both horrified by a piercing shriek and the sound of a fall, and rushing out they found the child lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror. The doctor was immediately summoned, and after some examination he pronounced the child to be suffering form a kind of fit, apparently produced by a sudden shock. The boy was taken ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
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... In reviewing the work by previous writers on the Moel-Tryfan deposits, Mackintosh refers to Darwin's "very suggestive description of the Moel-Tryfan deposits...Under the drift he saw that the surface of the slate, TO A DEPTH OF SEVERAL FEET, HAD BEEN SHATTERED AND CONTORTED IN A VERY PECULIAR MANNER." The contortion of the slate, which Mackintosh regarded as "the most interesting of the Moel-Tryfan phenomena," had not previously been regarded as "sufficiently striking to arrest attention" by any geologist except Darwin. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
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... It rolled, clattering and clinking, and settled down at the feet of the Midas of Medicine who stared at it with a contorted face. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
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... Vernet, (when not mere views,) we see the imitator of Salvator, or rather copyist of his lines; and these we have in all their angular nakedness, where rocks, trees, and mountains are so jagged, contorted, and tumbled about, that nothing but an explosion could account for their assemblage. They have not the relation which we sometimes find even in a random collocation, as in the accidental pictures of ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
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... attempt at imitating simple nature; which was "copied most vilely." In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we trace the latent wish for the delineation of beauty struggling again into life; but it was simply the wish rather than the power to delineate the graceful, that we find displayed in the contorted figures which the artists of these days attempted to picture as graceful beings. Still, crude and strange, or even grotesque, as they may appear, they are not to be despised. Amid much that is repulsive to modern cultivated taste, we occasionally find ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
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... never got over it. He fell back wounded. Within three days he was back in England again, but with only one leg. Seven months of training, five minutes in action, then crippled for life! The writer saw one young fellow whose face was left contorted by shrapnel, which had carried away one eye and the bridge of his nose. He was a quiet, earnest Christian. He said, "Of course, they cannot send me back again into the line or compel me to go with only one eye, but I am going just the ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
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... empty, if I except the stoves; but still, if we chose, these two rooms could be Margaret's and mine, and the corridor as well, with a beautiful balcony which commanded an enchanting view of the rich Pusterthal up and down, right and left, with a row of jagged, contorted dolomite mountains thrown into the bargain. All this was to be ours if only the Hofbauer would have us. So down we went, casting longing looks around us—down into the entrance-hall, where a crowd of poor people were streaming out of the stube, the parlor of the family, such as in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
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... face, and his plump little features were convulsed in sympathy with the sufferer's pain. As soon as the courageous old man, fighting hard with the paroxysms of pain, had got the better of them, taking his hands from his contorted face, and drawing a painful breath, he began anew to explain his will. Lobnitchenko dropped his eyes again ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
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... the endless controversy and intrigue between the Allies themselves, which at last after some months culminated in the presentation to Germany of the Reparation Chapter in its final form. There can have been few negotiations in history so contorted, so miserable, so utterly unsatisfactory to all parties. I doubt if any one who took much part in that debate can look back on it without shame. I must be content with an analysis of the elements of the final compromise which is known ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
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... a popular "seance." I heard a concert of gratitude. Lesions in the lungs, displaced organs, asthma, Pott's disease (!), paralysis, the whole deadly horde of diseases were being put to flight. I saw a paralytic, who sat contorted and twisted in his chair, get up and walk. M. Coue had spoken, he demanded confidence, great, immense confidence in oneself. He said: "Learn to cure yourselves, you can do so; I have never cured anyone. The power is within you yourselves, ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
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... valuable, the man straightened the contorted limbs of the dead body and covered it decently with a quilt. Then he stood ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
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... in shirt and trousers only, and he sat up with braced arms. For one half-second he stared at them, his face a mask of horrible contorted terror. His upper lip was drawn back so that the gums of the teeth appeared, and his eyes were focused not on the two who approached him but on something quite close to him; his nostrils were widely expanded, as if he panted for breath, and terror incarnate and repulsion and deathly ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
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... dark and impressive countenance, the features grew more sternly prominent than the reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more lurid in their light; the frown, that had merely flitted across his brow, seemed to have contorted it with an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him again, I was often filled with remorse, when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire that was burning in a cave. "He is a man after all," thought ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
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... voices, holding down the torch. The face of the priest was blackened and contorted; his eyeballs protruded from their sockets; his tongue was nearly bitten through in the desperate efforts he had made to release himself from Alan's gripe; his hair was erect with horror. It ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
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... his bed motionless. Sound asleep? No, not merely asleep—the twisted unnatural lie of the limbs, the contorted legs, the one arm drooping listlessly but stiffly over the side of the berth, told of ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
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... serpentine convolutions by yesterday's tropical heat. Both sides are considerably displaced, but they still bear the right relation to each other, and the faithful machine, sniffing and picking her way carefully, glides safely over the contorted path. A short tunnel, with sides of solid masonry and roof-arch of brick, again demands extra care, and it is well that the pace is slowed, for half-way through, a man becomes dimly visible running a trolley off the line. Mountains arise on the left and in front, and my old friend Croagh ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
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... once at Wilton's contorted face, and recoiled, the movement confessing at last his lack of ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
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... terror on a human face? That was what I saw in Denise's—inexpressible, unbearable horror, worse than the fear of death could ever be. Her green eyes were widened so that the whites showed around them; her perfect lips were contorted, her whole face strained into a mask ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
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... Maulbow died. The taut body slumped against the bed and the contorted features relaxed. The eyes remained half open; and when Gefty came around to the side of the bed, they still seemed to be looking up at him, but they no longer moved. A thin trickle of blood started from the side of the slack mouth ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
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... black, contorted, mocking faces, their fierce gestures, and their fluttering garments, they would have made a study for any painter who wished to portray Milton's conception of ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
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... color. The veins of minerals are about a half an inch to—in the case of druses of magnesite, which penetrate the rock in all proportions and directions—even six inches in thickness. They lie generally in a perpendicular position, but are frequently bent and contorted in every direction. They are the more abundant where the rock is soft, as veins, but included minerals are more plentiful in the harder rock. There is hardly any one point on the outcrop that may be said to be favored in abundance, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
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... trying hurriedly to get dressed to go. It was dark; though I tried my best I could not finish dressing quickly. Suddenly I felt a box of matches and a candlestick with a whole candle in it. As soon as the room was lighted up, Liza sprang up, sat up in bed, and with a contorted face, with a half insane smile, looked at me almost senselessly. I sat down beside her and took her hands; she came to herself, made an impulsive movement towards me, would have caught hold of me, but did not dare, and slowly bowed her head ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
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... Ricardo stole a glance at Wethermill. How did he take the theory? Wethermill was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed, his face white and contorted with a spasm of pain. But he had the air of a man silently enduring an outrage rather than struck down by the conviction that the woman he loved ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
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... effect. Enid, inspired by sudden terror, rose to her feet; Bale-Corphew sat gripping the arm of his chair, his face contorted, his mouth working, while a rustle, an audible murmur of excitement passed over the whole chapel, and the Precursor, who all along had been crouching at the foot of the throne, turned quickly and anxiously ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
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... throughout the afternoon and evening of that disastrously eventful day, in the shape of dead and wounded men, the former lying stark and cold in the light of the moon, some of them with limbs disposed as though they merely slumbered, while the contorted bodies of others showed that they had passed away in the throes of mortal agony; some with eyes decently closed, others with their sightless eyeballs upturned until only the whites were visible: while from the lips of the wounded there issued one low, continuous moan ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
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... of sudden terror which contorted the innkeeper's face was a revelation to the three men ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
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... as widely spread The enormous loads that clothed their head. For British dames new follies love, And, if they can't invent, improve. Some with erect pagodas vie, Some nod, like Pisa's tower, awry, Medusa's snakes, with Pallas' crest, Convolved, contorted, and compressed; With intermingling trees, and flowers, And corn, and grass, and shepherd's bowers, Stage above stage the turrets run, Like pendent groves of Babylon, Till nodding from the topmost wall Otranto's plumes envelop all! Whilst the black ewes, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
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... body against the far wall. The strain of his effort, whatever its purpose, was easy to read in the contorted line of his shoulders. Then the wall slid under Loketh's urging, a slow move as if the weight of the slab he strove to handle was almost too great for his slender arms, or else the need for caution was ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
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... an effort that contorted every muscle of his body—"oh! but I cannot." While saying these words, he fell upon his knees, but with his mighty hands he clung to the rocks, and raised ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
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... head, with a brusque movement he clutched the woman and drew her to him. She repelled him, with a violence full of hatred. And, after a brief struggle, during which Lupin caught a glimpse of the man's bestial and contorted features, the two of them stood face to face, railing at each other like ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
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... soon I'll find myself in Morningside Asylum, sticking flowers in my hair and flattering myself I'm Queen Victoria. But I will not go mad. I am going to get on. I am going to be great. But am I? I think I am not." Her face made a wet contorted mask against her sleeve, and a swallowed sob was as sharp in her throat as a fishbone; and there struck through her like an impaling sword a certainty which she could not understand, but which was surely a certificate that ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
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... danced it was far less graceful, and at times bordered on the grotesque. They contorted and twisted themselves out of all semblance to the human body; they made their abdominal muscles rise and fall with the music; they seemed at times to put the body out of joint, and then reset it properly ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
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... a natural prejudice against this personage, glanced uneasily at Talbot Potter's face and was surprised to find that fine bit of modelling contorted with rage. The sight of this emotion was reassuring, but its source was a mystery, for it had seemed to the playwright that the wasp-waisted youth's remarks—though horribly damaging to the cheap little Canbys with their cheap little "Roderick Hanscoms"—were on the whole rather ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
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... the methods employed in these performances. To see a young woman or girl suddenly struck down, speechless, pallid as in death; with muscles rigid, eyeballs fixed or rolled back in their sockets; the stiffened frame either wholly prostrate or drawn up into contorted attitudes and shapes, or vehemently convulsed with racking pains, or dropping with relaxed muscles into a lifeless lump; and to hear dread shrieks of delirious ravings,—must have produced a truly frightful effect upon ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
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... Chinaman, dead, seated by a stove in which the fire had burned very low. Sprawling across the old man's knees was the body of a raven. Lying at his feet was a woman, lithe, contorted, the face half hidden in ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
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... generate vapor from the moist soil. This vapor rising around the stem of the plant, and attracted by it, becomes congealed into what we term hoar-frost, in numerous forms; some like shellwork, others like tulips, with radiated petals, variously contorted, and often as ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
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... ever been made in stone. The Palace of the Legion of Honor is also a very distinguished bit of pastry. The dome of the wheat market is an English jockey cap, on a grand scale. The towers of Saint-Sulpice are two huge clarinets, and the form is as good as any other; the telegraph, contorted and grimacing, forms an admirable accident upon their roofs. Saint-Roch has a door which, for magnificence, is comparable only to that of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin. It has, also, a crucifixion in high ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
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... him. It seemed the first time in his life he had ever determined to act. All the rest had been aimless drifting. The blood sang m his ears. He fixed his eyes on the half-obliterated figures that supported the shields under the beams in the wall opposite. They seemed to be wriggling out of their contorted positions and smiling encouragement to him. He imagined them, warriors out of old tales, on their way to clay dragons in enchanted woods, clever-fingered guildsmen and artisans, cupids and satyrs and fauns, jumping from their niches and carrying him off with them in a headlong rout, to a ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
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... with a wealth of firs, pines, tamaracks, oaks, maples, bushes and flowers, was not new to them. However, it was not long after their decision to look for a mooring place when they found an ideal cove and tied the Catwhisker to an overhanging bent, gnarled, contorted pine tree. ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
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... rest later." Ransome's eyes burned into the crewman's. The latter looked away. Ransome tightened his grip, and pain contorted the gunner's features. ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
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... short, was one thing and himself another: of the first, the reader will find what I believe to be a pretty faithful statement and a fairly just criticism in the study; of the second he will find but a contorted shadow. So much of the man as fitted nicely with his doctrines, in the photographer's phrase, came out. But that large part which lay outside and beyond, for which he had found or sought no formula, on which perhaps his philosophy even looked askance, is wanting in my study, as it was wanting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
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... his face with his hands as if to shut out the sight. Ali fell prostrate upon the deck, pressing his contorted visage ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
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... and entered his tent. Cazi Moto was there, unfolding the canvas bath tub, laying out the clean clothes. He looked up from his occupation, his wizened face contorted in a shrewd smile. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
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... their visit; but then I had gained less than nothing, and had been bitterly dispirited into the bargain. Ronald had stuck to his guns and refused me to the last. It was no news; but, on the other hand, it could not be contorted into good news. I was now certain that during my temporary absence in France, all irons would be put into the fire, and the world turned upside down, to make Flora disown the obtrusive Frenchman and accept Chevenix. Without doubt she would resist these instances: but the thought ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
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... said Clinch very softly. Then, of a sudden, his shadowy visage became contorted and he jerked up his rifle and threw a ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
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... the building, the line, and the railway bridge have all been crumpled up together, as if some giant hand had squeezed them into a shapeless mass. The iron bridge still spans the road, but with rails and girders so contorted and covered with debris that we were afraid to drive under it for fear the slight concussion caused by a carriage passing beneath might bring the tottering mass down on our heads. A little beyond, a sentry is placed to prevent people passing beneath a house which is on the ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
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... such support to be able to go on living; and, for my part, I confess I rejoice as often as I hear that one has succeeded in breaking his prison bars. When the crystal shrine has grown dim, and the fair forms of nature are in their entrance contorted hideously; when the sunlight itself is as blue lightning, and the wind in the summer trees is as 'a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains;' when the body is no longer a mediator between the soul and the world, but the prison-house of a ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
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... the west bank, but the bridge above having been carried away, we crossed by a plank, and proceeded along very steep banks of decomposed chlorite schist, much contorted, and very soapy, affording an insecure footing, especially where great landslips had occurred, which were numerous, exposing acres of a reddish and white soil of felspathic clay, sloping at an angle of 30 degrees. Where the angle was ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
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... boys were frightened by the effect of those words. The old seaman whirled about, his one black eye blazing weirdly and his face contorted. Then he collected himself ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
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... muttered the warder, holding the lantern over a ghastly face contorted by agony. "Well, mate, I'd give ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
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... Butler, his pallid visage contorted. "What do I care for Brant? Who is Brant to offer you immunity? By God, sir, I tell you that you shall answer my questions—any I think fit to ask you—every one of them—or I turn you ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
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... and the shriek and whistle of the barrage. The Division was attacking Fayet, the enemy's last stronghold beyond the city. Before they went over, grey and green coated figures were being brought down. There were many other grey and green figures grotesquely contorted in the brown ribbed fields, and those of them who had escaped from the inferno fought it out intermittently, in the woods beyond the village. But their sniping was braved for a few days more, and then one night they staggered weakly back through nightmare villages ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
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... the village a stretcher was carried through. The body on it was covered with a mackintosh sheet, but the man's face was visible, and if he had not been so busily occupied, the ashen face might have upset him a little. It was absolutely calm, and its expression was contorted neither by pain nor hate nor fear—the face of one who was indifferent, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
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... I heighten the reader's wonder? While writing these latter sentences, I happened to glance towards the large, round globe of one off the brass andirons, and lo! a miniature apparition of Monsieur du Miroir, with his face widened and grotesquely contorted, as if he were making fun of my amazement! But he has played so many of these jokes that they begin to lose their effect. Once, presumptuous that he was, he stole into the heaven of a young lady's eyes; ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
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... both men started violently at a sound in the hall; and the Major sat up on the bed, unchecked. It was the voice of the nurse speaking to Fanny Minafer, and the next moment, Fanny appeared in the doorway, making contorted efforts ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
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... distance from which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen anything so minute,—it appeared to him, however, that a drop or two of moisture from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the lizard's head. For an instant the reptile contorted itself violently, and then lay motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this remarkable phenomenon and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom. There it blushed, and almost glimmered with the dazzling effect of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
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... His figure was drooping; his face purple and contorted, for one of the troopers had crammed his scarf into the man's mouth, half strangling him. As he was led past us, with a sudden frantic effort, fit to dislocate his jaw, he disgorged the ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
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... stopped and stared at him, he coolly turned to the chief and handed him his pistol, butt foremost. Was Roger mad, I wondered? He was the sanest man of all our crew. The chief gravely took the proffered weapon and looked at Blodgett, whose face was contorted with fear, and at the Malay, who by now was sitting up on deck blinking about him in a dazed way. Then he smiled and raised his hand and the points ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
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... becomes impossible for any serious investigator to refuse to admit that Tlaloc and Chac are merely American forms of Indra. Even so fantastic a practice as the representation of the American rain-god's face as composed of contorted snakes[145] finds its analogy in Siam, where in relatively recent times this curious device was ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
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... or compound-contorted, below obconic, gray, ribbed with calcareous thickenings; stem short, fuscous, longitudinally wrinkled; hypothallus distinct, black; columella none, although the lime massed at the centre of each sporangium simulates one; capillitium white, densely ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
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... arms and head bent forward await the hour of awakening. In their uniform tombs, that, isolated, become nearly transparent, they seem almost like hoary gnomes, lost in deep thought, or legions of virgins whom the folds of the shroud have contorted, who are buried in hexagonal prisms that some inflexible geometrician has multiplied to the verge ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
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... not so very large, considering, and strangely square, considering, which the minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one evening with young Norton of our gallant little ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
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... teeth with rage and turned his back on the worker for a moment until he could master the contorted ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
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... seen that leaves immersed for some hours in dense solutions of sugar, gum, and starch, have the contents of their cells greatly aggregated, and are rendered more or less flaccid, with the tentacles irregularly contorted. These leaves, after being left for four days in distilled water, became less flaccid, with their tentacles partially re-expanded, and the aggregated masses of protoplasm were partially redissolved. A leaf with its tentacles closely clasped ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
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... intoxication eventually made its mark upon Mr. Wilfer's countenance, and contorted his face into a caricature—with its mottled skin and bleary eyes—of the good looks which had won Lucy Goodwin's heart in former times. His language had also degenerated as well as his looks. All trace of German accent had been ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
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... the ball of color, Carse was a ghostlike figure. Rigid and quivering, he sat in the chair and watched the color-maelstrom. His face was contorted; his cheek muscles stood out weltlike in his sweat-glistening skin; his eyes, which he could not close, throbbed with agony. But yet he was conscious; yet he ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
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... repeated the word, and when he had done so turned on the other a look that led the Captain to think that he was going to be ill again. Then, "It cost me—it will cost me"—again a spasm contorted the Syndic's face—"I don't know what it will not have cost me before it is ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
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... had advanced. As her eyes became used to the ruddy dusk, she could see better, but everywhere they lighted on shapes inexplicable, whose forms to the first questioning thought suggested instruments of torture; but cruel as some of them looked, they were almost too strange, contorted, fantastical for such. Still, the wood-cuts in a certain book she had been familiar with in childhood, commonly called Fox's Book of Martyrs, kept haunting her mind's eye—and were they not Papists into whose hands she had fallen? she said to herself, amused at the vagaries ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
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... track full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines, and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in foliage, like willows. On the far side of the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks, shining vividly in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
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... Italian frontier, though it lengthened their journey, somewhat mitigated its dreariness, and an hour after noon, after traversing some flinty fields, they observed in the distance an olive-wood, beneath the pale shade of which, and among whose twisted branches and contorted roots, they had contemplated finding a halting-place. But here the advanced guard observed already an encampment, and one of them rode back ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
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... than cold eggless batter upon a lead platter—as mad as a hatter, and who will relieve me? Can anyone? I tell you it's dreadful to face a whole bedful of spectres and spooks (born of papers and books) with, most horrible looks, limbs contorted in crooks, and bat-wings with big hooks, which haunt all the nooks of tester and curtain, and which, I am certain, will drive me insane if some one can't explain where the mischief we are, 'midst the jumble and jar of factions and fads, of crotchets and cads, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
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... ended it hitherward, outside the hedge being arable ground. Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some stretched out—all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
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... the Lieutenant's servant. The opposite party had not yet appeared on the field. But when they came upon the ground, there sat upon the roots of the old thorn a figure as vigorous in his decay as the moss-grown but strong and contorted boughs which served him for a canopy. It was old Ochiltree. "This is embarrassing enough," said Lovel:"How shall we get rid of this ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
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... feeling bitterly envious as he went by the offices. He had already seen seven smugly-similar faces when he came by Room Eight. Suddenly the face of its occupant contorted in agony, then the man got up and paced about as if in a trap. Deciding he had seen more than was good for him, Connor hurried on. But the man in Nine was acting out the same curious drama. He quickly retraced his steps, passing one scene of consternation after another, and went back down ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
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... over, and then his contorted face grew almost calm. He had reached that stage which may be called the somnambulism of fear. The perspiration covered his skin in an instant, and his voice ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
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... that during a long course of ages they had been battered and undermined by rain, hurricane, and lightning, and all the mighty artillery of time. Piled on one another, and repeated over and over again, these strangely contorted rocks stretched as far as the eye could reach, sinking, however, as they receded, and leading the mind, though not the eye, down to the plain below, through which a turbid stream wound its way rebelliously, like some great twisting, twirling, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
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... wild little man, his face contorted with rage and the lust which finds satisfaction in a blow. He went fiercely on, butting his shoulder against every woman he met. Nobody arrested him; nobody cried "shame." "Give ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
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... the governor's residence. Large bonfires illuminated the scene, lighting up the throng of inhabitants, who formed a great circle about the performers. The latter, in considerable numbers, disguised as animals, devils and sorcerers, jumped and contorted themselves in rhythmic dances timed to the measure of the monotonous and unpleasing music made by two long trumpets ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
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... unintelligible and plunged at me—another tribe! I saw a white-furred, chinless face, contorted in rage, a small ugly knife—a female! I ripped out my own knife, fending away a savage slash. Something tore white-hot across the knuckles of my hand; the fingers went limp and my knife fell, and the trailman woman snatched it up and made off with her prize, swinging lithely ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
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... people fearful to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny. Is not Paris a vast field in perpetual turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by death, only to be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and contorted faces give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the poisons with which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as masks; masks of weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible signs ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
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... pulled back to reveal the grinning teeth, the eyes bursting from the head, the features swollen and contorted from the deadly poison. A tiny, tufted dart of wood stuck in the brown flesh on the side ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
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... two went out, that she followed them almost immediately afterwards through the darkness and, a little later, she came running back to the hotel with that pallid face and the hand clutching her dress over her heart. It can't have been only Bagshawe. Her face was contorted with agony before ever her eyes fell upon me or upon him beside me. But I dare say Bagshawe may have been the determining influence in her suicide. Leonora says that she had that flask, apparently of nitrate of amyl, but actually of ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
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... all accounts, was that of the victim of some malignant sorceress; he seemed to have drunk of Circe's cup; beast-like; rags insufficient to hide his nakedness; his befreckled skin blistered by continual exposure to the sun; nose flat; countenance contorted, heavy, earthy; hair and beard unshorn, profuse, and of fiery red. He struck strangers much as if he were a volcanic creature thrown up by the same convulsion which exploded into sight the isle. All bepatched and coiled asleep in his lonely lava den among the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
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... to again lift the frail bark. The better to preserve the equilibrium of the canoe—a conveyance treacherous at the best—wrapped in a blanket in the bottom of the canoe I laid, looking into the faces of the Indians, contorted by fright, and listened to their peculiar and mournful death wail, "while the gale whistled aloft ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
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... was standing beside P.D. and Prather's burro next to him, both unharmed. Nogales's horse had also been killed, but its rider was safe. Prather was crawling down the side of the arroyo on his belly, digging his hands into the dirt, his face white and contorted and his eyes shifting back and forth in ghastly incomprehension. His horse followed him and sank down in ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
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... time, and, while pronouncing the four last words, absolutely touching the ground with a kind of contorted gesticulation. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
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... corner of the sheet, disclosing the face, contorted and of a peculiar, purplish hue from the congested blood vessels. He bent over and I did so, too. There was an unmistakable odor of tobacco on him. A moment Kennedy studied the face before us, then ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
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... palace and donjon-keep; but the right, more attractive, seemed to invite to the apartment of the women. At a side door, reclined on a couch, two guards of the haram, with their naked swords grasped in their hands, and features fiendishly contorted between sleep and dissolution, seemed to menace death to any who should venture to approach. This threat deterred not Artavan de Hautlieu. He approached the entrance, when the doors, like those of the great entrance to the Castle, made themselves instantly ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
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... he had removed the earth, and then, drawing out the plant, shook its roots free of the mould. I noticed that a mass of woody contorted rhizomes, somewhat thicker than those of the sarsaparilla briar, adhered to the stem. They were covered with ash-coloured bark, and quite inodorous. Amid the fibres of these roots lay the antidote to the snake-poison—in their sap was ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
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... Dislocated, almost ripped out of their sockets, the arms of the Christ seemed trammelled by the knotty cords of the straining muscles. The laboured tendons of the armpits seemed ready to snap. The fingers, wide apart, were contorted in an arrested gesture in which were supplication and reproach but also benediction. The trembling thighs were greasy with sweat. The ribs were like staves, or like the bars of a cage, the flesh swollen, blue, mottled with flea-bites, specked as with pin-pricks by spines broken ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
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... The other contorted and twisted awkwardly, but finally managed to thrust first one foot, then the other, between his shackled wrists. Alfred bound together his ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
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... that moment that the heir to the throne had gone mad. His lips were contorted, his eyes were starting out of their sockets. He drew his sword, rushed to ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
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... for about a mile, that is an Icelandic mile, we walked upon hardened lava; this ground is called in the country 'hraun'; the writhen surface presented the appearance of distorted, twisted cables, sometimes stretched in length, sometimes contorted together; an immense torrent, once liquid, now solid, ran from the nearest mountains, now extinct volcanoes, but the ruins around revealed the violence of the past eruptions. Yet here and there were a few jets of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
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... is why the serious study—may I even add, the reform—of Christianity is more likely to proceed from St. Sulpice than from the teachings of M. Lacordaire or M. Gratry, and a fortiori, from that of M. Dupanloup, in which all its doctrines are toned down, contorted, and blunted; in which Christianity is never represented as it was conceived by the Council of Trent or the Vatican Council, but as a thing without frame or bone, and with all its essence taken from ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
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... with it; and soon all that Wally had to look at was a smouldering heap of coals, in the midst of which one chimney stood, tottering and solitary, with the kitchen stove a glowing mass of red-hot iron, and strangely contorted masses of metal that once were beds. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
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... contorted her drawn face and again her eyes closed under the agony. She re-opened them at the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
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