"Headlong" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wife, control thy humour, For to-day all must be spent here!" And he left not till the watchman With the halberd came and ordered That 'twas time to close the tavern. With uncertain steps, ill-humoured, To his mountain-home he totters: And the silent night is witness Of some sudden headlong tumbles. But she covers them with darkness— Kindly—as she does the beating Which, as finish to the feasting, He bestows on his ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... himself upon the two dead lovers, and, with great lamentation and weeping, kissed both of them several times and asked their forgiveness. And after that he rose up in fury, and drew the dagger from the gentleman's body; and, just as a wild boar, wounded with a spear, rushes headlong against him that has dealt the blow, so did the Duke now seek out her who had wounded him to the bottom of his soul. He found her dancing in the hall, and more merry than was her wont at the thought of the excellent vengeance she had wreaked on ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... the trail of a murderer, shoved with his whole strength against a little door of the House-of-the-Eight-Half- brothers. It yielded suddenly. He shot in headlong, and the door slammed behind him. As he fell forward into pitch blackness he was conscious of shooting bolts behind and of the squeaking of a beam ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... at that instant, by his side, A beast of fearful form he spied: At first he thought it was a bear, And headlong fell in dire despair. He lost one slipper in the moss, And this was not his only loss. With paws and snout the beast was nimble, And very soon cleared out ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... large sturgeon which came alongside, and with its great glassy eye turned up, seemed to recognize the magician. Owasso rose in the boat to dart his spear, and by speaking that moment to his canoe, Mishosha shot forward and hurled his son-in-law headlong into the water; where, leaving him to struggle for himself, he was ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... close to the horses. Your father, forgetful of the fact of his wooden leg, rushed over to lift her; but the suddenness of the movement, he being a heavy man, snapped the wooden leg in sunder, and he fell headlong in the street. He was within reach of the child, and he caught her by the clothes and jerked her aside; but before he could, in his crippled condition, regain his feet, the wheel was upon him, and he ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... resistance, when the Bastard of Burgundy rode in and rescued him. Very desperate seemed the count's condition. When night fell, no one knew where lay the advantage. The fugitives spread rumours that the king was dead and that Charles was in possession, others carried the reverse statements as they rode headlong to the nearest safety. It was a rout on both sides with no credit to either leader. But in the darkness of the night, the king managed to slip out of his retreat and march quietly towards the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... his destiny and his own headlong nature had again made a consummate fool of him. The same knowledge was offered him freely in a pair of gray eyes which fairly blazed at him. No gratitude there of a maiden heroically succored in the hour of her supreme distress; just the leaping anger of a girl with a temper ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... the bottom of the well and struck the ground with the hilt of his kandjar, but the compact rock did not resound. Lord Evandale and the doctor, burning with eager curiosity, bent over the edge at the risk of falling in headlong, and watched with intense interest the search undertaken by ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Rosemary said to herself with stern insistence, trying to find comfort in the thought, but comfort strangely failed now. Another suspicion assailed her and was instantly put into headlong speech. "Is your husband dead, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the ugliest recollections of his life. He opened his eyes in terror, and saw the man of the photograph, in the costume of the photograph. His hair stood on end, his eyes grew as big as saucers, he uttered a loud cry, and flung himself headlong between the seats among the legs of ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... to stream from the interior of the barn than they became aware of the fact that someone was running headlong toward them. Toby threw himself into an attitude of defense, raising the piece of wood he had grasped for a club; but Elmer realized that the runner was approaching from the direction of the farmhouse and therefore must be a ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... headlong flight now took place, but the enemy lost only two thousand men, for the difficulties of the ground made it hard to pursue. The Romans, however, made themselves masters of their baggage, tents, and slaves, and marched through Epirus in such an orderly and well-disciplined ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... under my aunt's care," he said, with a smile that had a certain meaning in it which was not lost on Mr. Pawle or on Mr. Carless, "but there are matters connected with her which ought not to wait, even for ten minutes hanging round Miss Penkridge's tea-table. Now, I have been thrown headlong into this case, and like all the rest of you, I am pretty well acquainted with it. And I take it that now that the murder of Ashton has been solved, the real question is—what is the truth about the young lady who ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... breasted them gallantly, toiling sturdily up the steep acclivities, poising breathlessly on foam-crested summits for dizzy instants, then plunging headlong down the deep green swales; and left a boiling wake behind her,—urging ever onward, hugging the wind in her wisp of blood-red sail, and boring into it, pulling at the tiller with the mettle of a race-horse slugging ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... conflagration and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed man strode like all that, we know of wicked valor, stern in the face of death. A shock, a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if to overtip the stature God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong to the floor, lying there in a heap, a ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... exotics. The gigantesque levity, the flamboyant eloquence, the Rabelaisian puns and digressions were seen to be once more what they had been in Rabelais, the mere outbursts of a human sympathy and bravado as old and solid as the stars. The human spirit demanded wit as headlong and haughty as its will. All was expressed in the words of Cyrano at his highest moment of happiness, Il me faut des geants. An essential aspect of this question of heroic comedy is the question ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... swept over me, my senses swam, my knees gave beneath me and I pitched headlong to the ground upon the very verge of the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wisdom of half a century spent in listening to the thunder of the waves had spoken unconsciously through his old lips. The cat purred on the windlass. Then James Wait had a fit of roaring, rattling cough, that shook him, tossed him like a hurricane, and flung him panting with staring eyes headlong on his sea-chest. Several men woke up. One said sleepily out of his bunk: "'Struth! what a blamed row!"—"I have a cold on my chest," gasped Wait.—"Cold! you call it," grumbled the man; "should think 'twas something more...."—"Oh! you think so," said the nigger upright ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Hawthorne received news by telegraph to-day that he is turned out of office headlong. I have written to mother, and told her, fearing she would hear of it accidentally. We are not cast down at all, and do not be anxious for us. You will see by my letter to mother how we are hopeful and cheerful about it, and expect better things. The cock is crowing ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... them. Before they gave their final answer, the principal senators, bringing their gold and silver, and that of the public treasury, into the market-place, threw both into a fire lighted for that purpose, and afterwards rushed headlong into it themselves. At the same time, a tower, which had been long assaulted by the battering rams, falling with a dreadful noise, the Carthaginians entered the city by the breach, soon made themselves masters of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Rankin and the McClane men were at the front cars taking out the stretchers; John and McClane were going up the road. She had got out her own stretcher and was following them when the battery came tearing down the road and cut them off. It tore headlong, swerving and careening with great rattling and crashing noises. She could see the faces of the men, thrown back, swaying; there was no terror in them, only a sort of ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... wild erratic freak or another conveyed him off, she could not tell what mishap could have befallen him. Despite of her prejudices and the true bent of her disposition, which, though it partook not of the furious and headlong intolerance of the times, was yet sufficiently imbued with the spirit of her sect, the cavalier had won so unsuspectingly upon her kindness that she started as though she would have escaped from her own thoughts, when she felt the deep ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... headlong down the silent street, neither knowing nor caring whither. Half mad with grief, half with resentment, he vented curses upon himself, upon Angelique, upon the world, and looked upon Providence itself as in league with the evil powers to thwart his happiness,—not seeing that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... this world's wild joys had been To me one savage hunting scene, My sole delight the headlong race, And frantic hurry of the chase; To start, pursue, and bring to bay, Rush in, drag down, and rend my prey, Then—from the carcase turn away! Mine ireful mood had sweetness tamed, And soothed each wound which pride inflamed:— Yes, God ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... roll that must have caused the wallowing vessel to list thirty-five degrees at the very least, sent her headlong across the passage. She slipped down in a heap. The same lurch had sent him reeling against the wall some distance away. She sat up but did not at once attempt to arise. Instead she clutched frantically at her skirt to draw it down over her shapely ankles and ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Eunice, she had blundered, strangely enough, on something like the truth. But when she spoke of herself, the headlong malignity of her suspicions—making every allowance for the anger that had hurried her into them—seemed to call for some little protest against a false assertion. I told her that ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... do not know how to proceed. These full stops in life's journey are generally awful places. We meet there, as a rule, the devil and his angels—they tear us and rend us, they shake us to our very depths with awful and overpowering temptation; if we yield, it is all over with us, we rush at headlong speed downhill. ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... Soul hurried down the Stream to embrace low and base Objects; if those Spirits, which are the Life and enlivening Powers of the Soul, are drawn off to Parties, and to be engag'd in a vicious and corrupt manner, shooting out wild and wicked Desires, and running the Man headlong into Crime, the Case is easily resolv'd, the Man is possess'd, the Devil is in him; and having taken the Fort, or at least the Counterscarp and Out-Works, is making his Lodgment to cover and secure himself in his Hold, that he ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Scott, and all his vile gang of Lowlanders and Highlanders. The black corps, the fekete regiment of Matyjas Hunyadi, was worth all the Scots, high or low, that ever pretended to be soldiers; and would have sent them all headlong into the Black Sea, had they dared to confront it on its shores; but why be angry with an ignorant, who couples together Thor and Tzernebock? ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... course as straight as a crow's flight between the ranch of Drew and his old place, a desperate trail that veered and twisted up the side of the mountain and then lurched headlong down on the farther side of the crest. Half a dozen times Anthony checked his horse and shook his head at the trail, but always the figure of the girl, glimmering through the dusk ahead, challenged ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Stead, I don't believe in ghosts, but I was firmly convinced during that run of mine, and can vouch for the accuracy of it, not having heard a word of the Englishman or his white horse before my headlong return to the camp that night. I shortly hope to be near that bush again, but, like the old Boer, I can say I wouldn't go into that bush again for all the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... obeyed with alacrity. Not a man flinched. The loop of the lasso settled over the polished horns to the roots, and Don Juan San Diego set it tight with a twang. Napoleon Bonaparte and George Washington rushed headlong upon her and hung to horns and ears; while the man from Michigan fastened a grip on her lifted tail, as she tore past him, which straightened him out like a lathe. As to myself, I could only stand and gaze with ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... council, in debate, in act, As when our great Demosthenes hurled back Defiance to the tyrant. Nay, my lord, Forgive my open speech. I have not forgot That we are one in heart and mind and soul, Knit in sweet bonds for ever. Put from thee This jaundiced humour. If State-craft please not, by the headlong chase Which once I know thou lovedst. Do not grudge To leave me; for to-day my bosom friend, After two years of absence, comes to me. I shall not ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... the Moselle, astray in the Lorraine forests. But he held his pace, his pipe griped in his teeth, his gun swinging at his side. Presently, as he turned into a grass-grown carrefour, a mere waste of wild-flowers and tangled briers, he caught his ankle in a strand of ivy and fell headlong. Sprawling there on the moss and dead leaves, the sound of human voices struck his ear, and he sat up, scowling and rubbing ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... end of the platform is now deserted—the London express departed half an hour ago with thirteen passengers, very crestfallen and envious—and across the open centre porters hustle barrows at headlong speed, with neglected pieces of luggage. Along the edge of the Highland platform there stretches a solid mass of life, close-packed, motionless, silent, composed of tourists, dogs, families, lords, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Philomenus, who was the author of the plot for betraying the city to Hannibal, rode away from the battle at full speed. Shortly after, his horse, which was loose and straying through the city, was recognised, but his body could not be found any where. It was generally believed that he had pitched headlong from his horse into an open well. Carthalo, the praefect of the Carthaginian garrison, while coming to the consul unarmed, to put him in mind of a connexion of hospitality which subsisted between their fathers, was ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... put her finger on her lips to enjoin him to be silent. He, however, informed me of this act of friendship of the little heroine, who had not told me of it herself." I admired the Countess's virtue, and Madame de Pompadour said, "She is giddy and headlong; but she has more sense and more feeling than a thousand prudes and devotees. D'Esparbes would not do as much most likely she would meet him more than half-way. The King appeared disconcerted, but he still pays her great attentions."—"You will, doubtless, Madame," said I, "show your sense ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... that the thing was desperately grave, graver even than the battle before me. Russia had gone headlong to the devil, Italy had taken it between the eyes and was still dizzy, and our own prospects were none too bright. The Boche was getting uppish and with some cause, and I foresaw a rocky time ahead till America could line up with us in the field. It was the chance for the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Tortosa's confines swiftly sped The sacred messenger, with headlong flight; Above the eastern wave appeared red The rising sun, yet scantly half in sight; Godfrey e'en then his morn-devotions said, As was his custom, when with Titan bright Appeared the angel in his shape divine, Whose ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... pivots as Mrs. Lidcote's daughter and her friends: their Coras, Matties and Mabels seemed at any moment likely to reveal familiar patronymics, and once one of the speakers, summing up a discussion of which Mrs. Lidcote had missed the beginning, had affirmed with headlong confidence: "Leila? Oh, Leila's ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... had hindered him, representing that Alexander, who was easily moved, as soon as he heard that his father was a prisoner would unhesitatingly give himself up to his enemies as a hostage, and rush headlong into danger. Alexander must remain in hiding so long as Caesar was in Alexandria. He (Argutis) would go instead of Philip, who, for his part, might call on the prefect later. He would cross the lake and warn Melissa not to return home, and to tell Alexander what he might think necessary. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... less than his Adrian Willes—even if quite another man was the model—never understood how it was possible for people to be bored. Flaubert once said in a letter, "Life is so hideous that the only way of enduring it is to avoid it." But Harland believed in plunging into it headlong and getting everything that is to be got out of it. He had eyes to see that "life is just one sequence of many-coloured astonishments", and the colours were the gayer when he came to our Thursday nights because he was still ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... river-bank was momentarily sobered, and for a time there was order in crossing the remaining bridge; but as dusk fell both wind and battle raged more fiercely, and groups began to surge out on right and left to pass those in front. Many dashed headlong into the angry river; others, finding no opening, seated themselves in dumb despair to wait the event. At nine the remnant of Victor's ranks began to cross, and the Russians commenced cannonading the bridge. Soon the beams were covered with corpses, laid like the transverse ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... think so, but after all was ashamed to play the sophist with himself. The letter he carried in his pocket told the truth. He had but to think of her as married to Robert Narramore and the jealous fury of natural man drove him headlong. ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... veranda of a friend's house, and later found the nests of no less than seven of them within sight of the house. When one starts out to hunt birds it is well to bear in mind a few simple rules. The first of these is to go quietly. One's good sense would of course tell him not to rush headlong through the woods, talking loudly to a companion, stepping upon brittle twigs, and crashing through the underbrush. Go quietly, stopping to listen every few steps. Make no violent motions, as such actions often frighten a bird more than a noise. Do not wear ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... creek, I had some thoughts of turning back; but as by that means, I foresaw that I could not possibly reach Bammakoo before night, I resolved to cross it; and leading my horse close to the brink, I went behind him, and pushed him headlong into the water; and then taking the bridle in my teeth, swam over to the other side. This was the third creek I had crossed in this manner, since I had left Sego; but having secured my notes and memorandums in the crown of my hat, I received little or no inconvenience from such adventures. The rain ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... and arrogant, dost thou believe I boast for pride or pastime? forced to boast, Truth costs me more than falsehood e'er cost thee. Divested of that purple of the soul, That potency, that palm of wise ambition, Cast headlong by thy madness from that height, That only eminence 'twixt earth and heaven, Virtue, which some desert, but none despise, Whether thou art beheld again on earth, Whether a captive or a fugitive, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... Tom, now or never, and kick up the dark man there," but he sat still as a statue. We laid our shoulders to the end wall, and heaved at it with all our might; when we were nearly at the last gasp it gave way, and we rushed headlong into the middle of the party, followed by Sneezer with his shaggy coat, that was full of clots of tar blazing like a torch. He unceremoniously seized "par le queue," the soldier who had throttled me, setting fire to the skirts of his coat, and blowing up his cartouch box. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... surface of the rocks was marvellous to behold. Nearing the cape the ice was piled up so high that I feared at one time we should never succeed in rounding the headland. The sleds were constantly hauled up hummocks sixty to seventy feet high, and much care was needed to prevent them falling headlong from the summits with the dogs. Every one had over a score of bad falls that day, and although no bones were broken I slipped up towards midday and landed heavily on the back of my head with my feet in the air. But for ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... wife, when he has exultingly shewn her the money and she has asked him how he got it—'I found it'—and the other to his old companion and tempter, when he charged him with having killed that traveller, and he suddenly went headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out, 'It wasn't I who murdered him—it was Misery!' And such a dress; such a face; and, above all, such an extraordinary guilty wicked thing as he made of a knotted branch of a tree which was his walking-stick, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... wildly up, livid with fury and despair, and rushed headlong from the place with both hands clenched and raised on high. So terrible was this inarticulate burst of fury, that Jorian's puny ire died out at sight of it, and he stood looking dismayed after the human tempest he ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... through this recited text, live and triumph for ever and ever. Horus repeated these words four times, and his enemies fell headlong. And (Osiris) Aufankh has repeated these words four times, so let him ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... We have counted eighteen hundred odd From Benavente hither, pistoled thus. Some we'd to finish for them: headlong haste Spared them no time for mercy to their brutes. One-half their ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... and scramble ensued. Some boys, taking off their coats and tucking up their sleeves as they ran, made headlong for the playground. Some, with books under their arms, scuttled off to their studies. The heroes of the Sixth stalked majestically to their quarters. The day boarders hurried away to catch the train at Maltby. A few slunk sulkily to answer to their names in the detention-room, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate. There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies like a straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is full of curves like this, your winding river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. For though ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me!—the gods have laid The woe that wrapped round Troy, What time they led down from home and kin Unto a slave's employ— The doom to bow the head And watch our master's will Work deeds of good and ill— To see the headlong sway of force and sin, And hold restrained the spirit's bitter hate, Wailing the monarch's fruitless fate, Hiding my face within my robe, and fain Of tears, and chilled ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... where lay Tragoge. The path was not only difficult but dangerous—in some places a mere hand's-breath of gravel, on the edge of a plane so steep that a single slip of a horse's foot would have sent him headlong to the bottom. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... Hell in it, and is perpetually pressing down towards it as towards its own place. There needs no fatal necessity or Astral influences to tumble wicked men down forcibly into Hell: No, Sin itself, hastened by the mighty weight of its own nature, carries them down thither with the most swift and headlong motion."[30] "Would wicked men dwell a little more at home, and descend into the bottom of their own Hearts they would soon find Hell opening her mouth wide upon them, and those secret fires of inward fury and displeasure breaking ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... moment when Agatha Renier makes her appearance 'swaying like a scarlet vine' to the bridle of old Mrs. Copeland's maddened horses and stopping their headlong progress, the reader has a right to expect marvelous developments. And in ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... uninjured is beyond me to explain. When we had recovered our breath we examined ourselves and our sledge. One of my ski-sticks had caught on a piece of ice during our headlong flight and torn itself from the sledge. It rolled into the great blue-black chasm over which we had come, and its fate made me feel quite cold when I thought of what might have happened to us. When my heart had stopped beating so rapidly from fright, and I had recovered enough to look ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... was at its fullest height, proclaiming midday to the tenants of the woods and fields, when a rustling was heard at the entrance of the little dell, and an Indian bounded headlong within its shelter. The wild gleaming of his eye, the fresh wounds which covered his body, the convulsive thick breathing, the fierce clutching of his tomahawk and rifle, showed that he fled for his life, while the ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... purple and crimson splendors of the setting sun! And so firm does this grand cloud pavement look that you can hardly persuade yourself that you could not walk upon it; that if you stepped upon it you would plunge headlong and astonish your friends at ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in a narrow part of the old tote-road, a big white hare crossed the path ahead of the dogs, perhaps seeking to escape the pursuit of some marten or weasel. At once the team broke into a headlong gallop, a helter-skelter pursuit, while their master roared at them unavailingly. Down a small declivity they flew. A moment later one side of the toboggan rose suddenly and the passenger felt herself being ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... roared Jack, as he caught sight of his prize. He scrambled up on his legs, and made a rush at Andy, who imitated a woman's scream and fright at the expected embrace; but it was with much greater difficulty he suppressed his laughter at the headlong fall with which Big Jack plunged his head into a heap of turf, [Footnote: Peat] and hugged a sack of malt which ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... to stay for him. A minute later, as we slipped and stumbled through the scrub of the wood, we heard him close behind us, crying to us in a smothered voice to stop. We ran on, terrified; and then Hugh's foot caught in a briar, so that he fell headlong with ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... choice roused contemporary criticism. In the Satyricon of Petronius we find a defence of the old conventional mechanism placed in the mouth of a shabby and disreputable poet named Eumolpus (118). He complains 'that young men plunge headlong into epic verse thinking that it requires no more skill than a showy declamation at the school of rhetoric. They do not realize that to be a successful poet one must be steeped in the great ocean of literature. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... candlemakers could stand; yet very delightful, notwithstanding the qualmishness and face-playing of the majority. This year, they are all invited by the Bishop of Winchester to the brave old castle of Farnham—a treat to which they are looking forward with all the headlong eagerness of youth, and which, we trust, will have other and even better results than the pleasures we wish them. A bishop entertaining a set of factory children will be a welcome sight in these days of clerical pomp, when the episcopal purple so often hides the pastoral staff. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... indicated a northerly direction. Whither was it flying? That night we covered two hundred leagues of the Atlantic. Onward we kept our course, the speed never lessening, and for fifteen or twenty days, during which we prisoners never saw the captain or his lieutenant, this headlong race continued. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... many human beings. Now was our opportunity, and firing away as quickly as we could load, we killed five of the poor beasts, and no doubt should have bagged the whole herd, had they not suddenly given up their attempts to climb the bank and rushed headlong down the nullah. We were too tired to follow them, and perhaps also a little sick of slaughter, eight elephants being a pretty good bag ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... the seed and looks not back Along his furrowed track; The reaper leaves the stalks for other hands To gird with circling bands; The wind, earth's careless servant, truant-born, Blows clean the beaten corn And quits the thresher's floor, and goes his way To sport with ocean's spray; The headlong-stumbling rivulet scrambling down To wash the sea-girt town, Still babbling of the green and billowy waste Whose salt he longs to taste, Ere his warm wave its chilling clasp may feel Has twirled the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... brother returned every evening, sometimes in the most unconventional manner. Celbridge, like other Irish villages, had its pigs. The Irish pig is longer in the leg and more active than his English cousin, and the Napier boys would be seen careering along at a headlong pace on these strange mounts, with a cheering company of village boys behind them. They were Protestants among older Roman Catholic comrades, but they soon became the leaders in the school, and Charles, despite his youth and small stature, was chosen to command a school volunteer corps at ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... climbed out on the tail proper than he lost his hold and plunged headlong after his comrade. He went down pawing and clutching into the void below like a lost soul, in horrible contrast to the rigid figure of the pilot. Then the aviatik turned its nose down with a jerk and fell after its human freight, ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... They laid violent hands on Him, and led Him out to the brow of the hill,—perhaps it was yonder on that steep, rocky peak to the south of the town, looking back toward the country of the Old Testament,—to cast Him down headlong. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... forward as he emerged from the cabin door, glanced along at the filled boats held in the davit, tried to speak, and fell headlong on the deck. A surgeon near by rushed up, turned him over, felt of his heart and pulse, shook his head, and drew the body close up to the side of the cabin wall. Then the officer made a search to ascertain the name of the man, and extracted ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... altar—to Mercury the hastener!" exclaimed Sergius. "Quick now! with the knees!" and, pressing the flanks of his Cappadocian, both animals bounded forward into a headlong gallop. ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... no question that the blow had been effective. Four or five of the airships, partially destroyed, tumbled headlong toward the ground, while even from our great distance there was unmistakable evidence that fearful execution had been done among the crowded structures along the ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... of February 1513. "A prince," says Guicciardini, "of inestimable courage and tenacity, but headlong, and so extravagant in the schemes he formed, that his own prudence and moderation had less to do with shielding him from ruin than the discord of sovereigns and the circumstances of the times in Europe: worthy, in all truth, of the highest glory had he been ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... ever be tried, so stupid, so unrighteous, so oppressive, so destructive of every end for which honest men enter into government, as that which their forefathers had established, and their fathers alone venture to tumble headlong from the stations they have so long abused. It is unfortunate, that the efforts of mankind to recover the freedom of which they have been so long deprived, will be accompanied with violence, with errors, and even with crimes. But while we weep over the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... perhaps the Buondelmonti in Valdigreve.[3] The confusion of persons has always been the beginning of the harm of the city, as in the body the food which is added.[4] And a blind bull falls more headlong than the blind lamb; and oftentimes one sword cuts more and better than five. If thou regardest Luni and Urbisaglia,[5] how they have gone, and how Chiusi and Sinigaglia are going their way after them, to hear how families are undone will not appear to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... when they were tearing headlong after him down the coulee's rim and into a shallow gully which seamed unexpectedly the level, that they saw his horse swerve suddenly and go bounding along the edge of the slope with Andy "sawing" energetically upon ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... reduced that distance to 400 feet in 1544, when Boulogne was captured, and fortifications built around the tower by the English troops. Still, however, the merciless waves rushed onward to the coast, undermining the cliffs more and more, until at length, on July 29th, 1644, Caligula's tower fell headlong with a crash into ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... mount, where clouds obscure the day; Where scarce the mule can trace his misty way; Where lurks the dragon and her scaly brood; And broken rocks oppose the headlong flood?" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... moderate rheumatism, that which I encountered in the sleigh outside the walls of Moscow, on Christmas Eve, 1876, was like a fierce gout. The ride was in all conscience Russian enough to have its ending among gypsies, Tartars, or Cossacks. To go at a headlong pace over the creaking snow behind an istvostshik, named Vassili, the round, cold moon overhead, church-spires tipped with great inverted golden turnips in the distance, and this on a night when the frost seemed almost to scream in its intensity, is ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... to the front and propose making one effort to storm the enemy's impregnable fortress. Finding our colonel opposed to such a wild enterprise, these gentlemen, reckless of the consequences, plunge headlong into an adjacent thicket, and thence presently the sound of fire-arms proceeds. For upwards of an hour we await the return of these mad adventurers, and during the interval the firing is incessant. Finally the 'besiegers' are seen to emerge from a distant ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... were with Montgomery in the launch; but the launch was now fully laden, and was shoved off hastily. A broadening gap of green water appeared under me, and I pushed back with all my strength to avoid falling headlong. The hands in the launch shouted derisively, and I heard Montgomery curse at them; and then the captain, the mate, and one of the seamen helping him, ran me ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... a word or two upon each question. As to the first, namely, when it was that the Oracles fell into decay and silence, thanks to the headlong rashness of the Fathers, Van Dale's assault cannot be refused or evaded. In reality, the evidence against them is too flagrant and hyperbolical. If we were to quote from Juvenal—"Delphis et Oracula cessant," in that case, the fathers challenge it ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... happens not unfrequently in the month acknowledging allegiance to both seasons, spring had plunged headlong into summer, with no preparatory gradations from breezy coolness to sultry days and oppressive nights. Friendly Terrace wore an air of relaxation. School was over till September, and now that the bugbear of final examinations was disposed of, no one ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... on his lights. He drove the car through the damp darkness at headlong speed along the trail that leaped from the gloom to meet them and vanished behind. At the end of a quarter of an hour he swung into a canyon; and Janet perceived they were ascending Terry Creek. He ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... the cabin and, making sure that no one was looking, began climbing it. He was on the top rung and was just stepping softly to the roof when there was a snapping of rotten wood and the bar beneath his foot gave way, sending him crashing headlong to ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the cabin. His bare breast and his face glistened in the light; his sarong, soaked, clung about his legs; he had his sheathed kriss in his left hand; and wisps of wet hair, escaping from under his red kerchief, stuck over his eyes and down his cheeks. He stepped in with a headlong stride and looking over his shoulder like a man pursued. Hollis turned on his side quickly and opened his eyes. Jackson clapped his big hand over the strings and the jingling vibration ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... swayed and jolted over the rough road; to keep from pitching headlong from side to side the girls had to sit down on the sacks. Their one consoling thought was that, if they could not get out, their captor, whoever he ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... from the wagons in an instant, while I remained to hold the horses. Ranging themselves around the circle, the three hunters every now and then, dashed headlong after the fawn as he flew past; but missed him by a ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... done up his work, no doubt, and now is off for a frolic. I lie here, not a stone's throw from him, watching his merry antics, and rejoicing to think how free from fear he is, when all at once the leaves of his tree are cut by a flying missile, and the next second I see my gay fellow tumble headlong from the bough, and fall in a helpless little heap on the grass. I start up in affright, and hear a passing boy call out to another, ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... just as the Saxons, pouring across the planks which connected the ships with the shore, fell upon them. Taken utterly by surprise, the Danes could offer no effective resistance. The Saxons, charging with levelled spears, drove those above headlong into the water; then, having made themselves masters of the platforms, they dashed below and despatched the Danes they found there. The torches were now applied to the contents of the holds. These were for the most part crammed with the booty which the Norsemen had gained at Havre, ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... girl, this is all your doing!" Then, as if wakening from a trance, she uttered a long, piercing shriek, darted into the pavilion between the gory corpses, and flung herself headlong out of the open window into the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... Bulgarian force a few days later); on November 18 the Servians occupied Monastir, and the Albanian seaport, Durazzo, at the end of the month. The Bulgar army meanwhile drove the Turks southwards in headlong rout until in the third week of November the fortified Tchataldja Lines opposed an invincible obstacle. There, on December 3, all the belligerents, except Greece, concluded an armistice, and negotiations for peace were begun at London on December 16. Up to January 22, 1913, Turkey seemed inclined ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... sons; the elder was an impetuous creature, a fiery spirit, one of the masterful souls who want the restraint of the curb if they are not to hurry headlong into the abyss. Old Deemster Christian had called this boy Thomas Wilson, after the serene saint who had once been Bishop of Man. He was intended, however, for the law, not for the Church. The office of Deemster never ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... debris and banks of shingle, backed by a pestilential little swamp at the mouth of each torrent, show how furious must be the downpour and down-roll before the force of a sudden flood, along so headlong an incline. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... he was out in the street again, with tears filling his eyes, and joy his heart, for here at last was bread, bread, bread, for Edie and the baby! He ran without stopping all the way back to Holloway, rushed headlong into the house and fell into Edie's arms, calling out wildly, 'He's taken it! He's taken it!' Edie kissed him half-a-dozen times over, and answered bravely, 'I knew he would, Ernest. It was such a splendid article.' And yet thousands of readers ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... up, with equal justice and sound judgment, the principal traits of his character: "He was a prince," says the historian, "of incalculable courage and firmness; full of boundless imaginings which would have brought him headlong to ruin if the respect borne to the Church, the dissensions of princes and the conditions of the times, far more than his own moderation and prudence, had not supported him; he would have been worthy of higher glory had he been a laic prince, or had it been in order ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... countrymen, he carried things to extremes. Extremes in language were the most common, for he had all the oiliness and glibness of an Emeraldic tongue, and in conversation, when a little excited, the words tumbled out with headlong velocity or flowed like molten brass into the mould of the founder, and, to carry the simile farther, some would sputter over. He had in his storehouse of language, many queer phrases and sayings that he brought out to embellish his conversation, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... a wooden sword was no insignificant weapon, wielded by the thews and sinews of a Triboulet. Crouching like an animal, the king's buffoon sprang with headlong fury, uttering hoarse, guttural sounds that awakened misgivings regarding the fate ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... ten steps before some object, unseen in the darkness, tripped me up, and I fell headlong on the stones. In the fall my burden rolled from my arms; instantly it was snatched up by a dark figure, which rose as by magic beside me, and was gone into the gloom almost as quickly. I got up gasping and limping, and flung a curse after the man; but the lights already ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... tropics; and there, with a childish disregard to danger, and knowing that she was surrounded by all the unseen perils of the ocean, her crew performed the ceremony usual to the occasion, while the vessel was running headlong on destruction. The captain, presided over the disgraceful scene of merriment, leaving the ship to the command of a Mons. Richefort, who had passed the ten preceding years of his life in an English prison—a few persons ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... dates from July 6 the first of five phases, or alternating changes (peripeties), which the diplomatic campaign, as he terms it, traversed in its headlong course. They are successively described and commented upon in the chapters of his volume; and they may be here set down in his own language, for the guidance of our readers through ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... all her care, The well-earned feast to hasten and prepare. The sifted meal already waits her hand, The milk is strained, the bowls in order stand, The fire flames high; and as a pool (that takes The headlong stream that o'er the mill-dam breaks) Foams, roars, and rages with incessant toils, So the vexed caldron rages, roars and boils. First with clean salt she seasons well the food, Then strews the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... that the addition to the stables which he contemplated would be large enough to accommodate his stud, with other similar inquiries which, while indefinite and tentative, were, so to speak, but flies thrown out on the stream of talk,—the major rising continuously, seizing the bait, and rushing headlong over sunken rocks and through tangled weeds of the improbable in a way that would have done credit to a Munchausen of older date. As for Jack, he let him run on. One plank in the platform of his hospitality was to give every guest ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... we cannot! The Archangel Michael flames from every window, With the sword of fire that drove us Headlong, out ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... abductions, murders, and I don't know what besides—and you will have some faint idea of the tumultuous episodes of The Men Who Wrought (CHAPMAN AND HALL). To say that the story moves is vastly to understate its headlong rapidity of action. And, while I hardly fancy that the characters themselves will carry overwhelming conviction, there remains, in the theory of the submersible liner and application to political facts, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... threatening again, and then, after again soaring aloft, down again into the driving of the spray; the old ship rolling, plunging, and now and then quivering, as some side wave struck her, with a complication of motions, sidelong and headlong, the huge waves flying before us and yet carrying us on,—wild motions, rolling, pitching, sinking down the long green slope into the valley, to be flung up into the tumult of wind and wave again. In all this complexity of forces we were ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the premisses which led to these extravagances, and at the party, which, while disapproving them, shrank, with whatever motives,—policy, generosity, or secret sympathy,—from joining in the condemnation of them. It was more than a defeat, it was a rout, in which they were driven and chased headlong from the field; a wreck in which their boasts and hopes of the last few years met the fate which wise men had always anticipated. Oxford repudiated them. Their theories, their controversial successes, their learned arguments, their appeals to ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... she did not know where to go next, Margaret came to a pause in her headlong flight, and, sinking on to a chair, covered her face with her hands. Even though the length of the whole house separated her now from the billiard-room, she had not escaped from the sound of the shouts and squeals to which ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... when we walk against a post or a door in the dark. We discover how dangerous it is, when we slip or trip and come down, perhaps breaking or dislocating our limbs, or overlook the last step of a flight of stairs, and discover with what headlong violence we have been hurling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... his ship into a wild spiral for reply, and the thin crack of guns came to him from outside. Down! A headlong dive! Then ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various |
