"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intense desire to see the effect of the queerly chosen place on his queerly chosen companion, he now turned to him. And as he saw the effect, every shock of the night seemed to recoil upon him. The feeling of mystery; the foreboding, despite his courage and his conviction that the boy was mad, of the imminent unknown; his recurrent and absorbing curiosity to learn the gruesome secret that he had declared; all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of this speech, in its brusqueness and slang, was an echo of Yuba Bill's teaching, how much of it was a part of Jeff's inward weakness, I cannot say. He saw Miss Mayfield recoil from him. It added to his bitterness that his thought, for the first time voiced, appeared to him by no means as effective or powerful as he had imagined it would be, but he could not recede from it; and there was the relief that the worst had ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... otherwise, the Zulu war was unjust indeed. If we continue to fail, as we have hitherto, to carry out our responsibilities as a humane and Christian nation ought to do, our lapse from what is right will certainly recoil upon our own heads, and, in the stern lessons of future troubles and disasters, we shall learn that Providence with the nation, as with the individual, makes a neglected duty its own avenger. We have sown the wind, let us be careful lest we reap ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... She does not recoil, yet her very atmosphere repels him, while looking up with those woful eyes blanching her cheek by their gathering darkness. "And, Rose,"——she sighs, then ceases abruptly, while a quiver of sudden scorn writhes spurningly down eyelid and nostril ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... exclusion from medical societies referred to under Example 2, like many similar actions in life, tends to recoil on its instigators. For instance, a medical woman in another northern town applied for and accepted a post which the local men had decided was unsatisfactory in some particulars, and for which therefore none of them had ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... it to the steam of dye-houses. The magistrates of the district must have dreaded him. They were slow, timid men; he liked both to frighten and to rouse them. He liked to force them to betray a certain fear, which made them alike falter in resolve and recoil in action—the fear, simply, of assassination. This, indeed, was the dread which had hitherto hampered every manufacturer and almost every public man in the district. Helstone alone had ever repelled it. The old Cossack knew well he might be shot. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... was several times in danger. The British lost Zandvorde, Gheluvelt, Messines, and Wytschaete. The front of the Allies, thus contracted, was all the more difficult to defend; but defended it was without a recoil. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... issue. As the fight went on, each individual combatant seemed inspired by direct personal malignity, and men found a pleasure in deeds of cruelty, from which generations not educated to slaughter recoil with horror. To murder defenceless prisoners; to drink, not metaphorically but literally, the heart's blood of an enemy; to exercise a devilish ingenuity in inventions of mutual torture, became not only ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Atlantic Monthly for 1862, shows, in brief compass, what inestimable benefits have followed in the smaller islands from conferring the boon of personal freedom, even with so stringent a social dependence remaining. In Jamaica, freedom has been more complete, and the recoil of the social elements from each other more violent. The disaffection of the governing class has also been greater, and Freedom has been left to take care of herself.[11] But though thwarted and frowned upon, she is at the last justified ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... they not say so?" continued Fouquet, still laughing; "and I would lay a wager there would be people found wicked enough to laugh at it." This sally disconcerted the monarch. Fouquet was skillful enough, or fortunate enough, to make Louis XIV. recoil before the appearance of the deed he meditated. M. d'Artagnan, when he appeared, received an order to desire a ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... our mind the impersonal mass-crimes to which our own times so frightfully incline, when many a man who would recoil in horror from an ordinary act of pocket-picking or from manslaughter with intent to commit larceny, robs thousands in cold blood by means of a swindling enterprise, or, for the sake of a fraudulent insurance, destroys the lives of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the Chief Justice appears to recoil from this abrupt dismissal of the clear and present danger formula for the more serious cases, and he makes a last moment effort to rescue the babe that he has tossed out with the bathwater. He says: "As articulated by Chief ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... reverential. A deep calm Came over me, and to the inward eye Vivid perception. Set against each other, I saw weigh'd out the things of time and sense, And of eternity;—and oh! how light Look'd in that truthful hour the earthly scale! And oh! what strength, when from the penal doom Nature recoil'd, in His remember'd words: "I am the Resurrection ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... grew by your neglect of them; your care of them was displayed, as soon as you began to take care about them, in sending persons to rule them who were the deputies of deputies of ministers—men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them—men who have been promoted to the highest seats of justice in that country, in order to escape being brought to the bar of justice in their own. I have been conversant with the Americans, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... absolved from the necessity of behaving to him on the ordinary footing of man and woman. What a ground to start from with a husband! The idea was hateful to her. She tried the argument that such a procedure arrogated merely a superiority in social standing, but it made her recoil from it the more. He was so immeasurably her superior that the poor little advantage on her side vanished like a candle in the sunlight, and she laughed herself to scorn. "Fancy," she laughed, "a midge, on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... days of seeing his "mistakes," and, in his recoil, calling himself by opprobrious names, he began to get used to his situation and boldly to meet its requirements. That he would prove equal to them he had scarcely any doubt. It was, in fact, next to inconceivable that a ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... dull varlet! See! he treats us like old dotards and crawls at our feet to deceive us; but the cunning wherein lies his power shall this time recoil on himself; he trips up himself by resorting ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... sequence when I felt the powered grip of the suited man on my arm. I twisted, jammed the needler against his hand, and fired. The arm flew back, and even through the suit I heard his wrist snap. My own hand was numb from the recoil. The other arm of the suit swept down and struck my wounded arm. I staggered away from the door, ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... is of a richer consistency, and has, altogether, greater vitalizing properties than that in ourselves, since on the severest day in winter he will frequently scorn any covering beyond his shirt, and the nether garments usually suggested by its mention, and, so apparelled, will not recoil ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... such a thing as "possession," devilish possession, he had pleaded it on both occasions. Would it, however, have seemed of any great importance to him now, but for Constance Bledlow's horror-struck recoil? All men of strong and vehement temperament—so his own defence might have run—are liable to such gusts of violent, even murderous feeling; and women accept it. But Constance Bledlow, influenced, no doubt, by a pale-blooded sentimentalist like Sorell, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords bewilder'd laid, And back recoil'd, he knew not why, E'en at ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Lord's recoil from the tumult. He had retired before cunning plotters; He withdrew from gaping admirers, who did not know what they were crowding to, nor cared for His best gifts. It was no fastidious shrinking from low natures, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... opportunity to try to get back at Fred Fenton. He had played several tricks on the other, and his chosen friends, who also came under the condemnation of Buck; but as a rule the vicious leader of the bad set had had these things recoil on ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... twice as strong as my good Marigold's, that I felt the ghastly and irrational revulsion. The only thing to which I can liken it, although it seems ludicrous, is what I imagine to be the instinctive recoil of a woman who feels on her body the touch of antipathetic hands. I know that my malady has made me a bit supersensitive. But my vanity has prided itself on keeping up a rugged spirit in a fool of a body, so I hated myself for giving way to morbid ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... just the same. And yet the sensation is one I shall never forget, and I shall never cease to be glad that the major gave me my chance. The most thrilling moment was that of the recoil of the great gun. I felt exactly as one does when one dives into deep ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... complaint to the dean of their head-master was a daring measure; such as the school, with all its hardihood, had never yet attempted. It might recoil upon themselves; might produce no good to the question at issue, and only end in making the master their enemy. On the other hand, the boys were resolved not to submit tamely to a piece of favouritism so unjust, without doing something. In the midst ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... given Etta no sign of recognition, but the horror in his once-handsome face, now white and drawn, told of his shock at finding her with me, and fear and recoil weakened him to the point of faintness. In his effort to recover himself, to resist what might be coming, he struggled as one for breath, but from him came no word, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... of Faith its bare, dry boughs must shed That nearer heaven the living ones may climb; The false must fail, though from our shores of time The old lament be heard, "Great Pan is dead!" That wail is Error's, from his high place hurled; This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod; Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God Troubling with life the waters of the world. Even as they list the winds of the Spirit blow To turn or break our century-rusted vanes; Sands shift and waste; the rock alone remains Where, led of Heaven, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... yet no improvement had been made by which the soldier was enabled to take aim. The butt of the arquebus was perfectly straight, and placed against the breast when the gun was fired. The danger of being knocked over by the recoil of the piece was great, that of hurting the enemy very small. The Germans first conceived the idea of bending the butt downward, and thus elevating the barrel so as to bring it in the range of the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of ridicule, but you could not understand that you were consenting to buy me—me—your wife! You wished to possess me for a little, as a sort of variation to your usual list, although your heart must have told you that it was degrading to me to be placed on such a plane. You did not recoil from such an idea, but pursued it, just as you pursue them, and the more eagerly, because I was more expensive. But you have deceived yourself, not me. Not thus will you ever regain possession of your wife. Adieu, Monsieur! [Throws the money ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... cried Holmes; "the deadliest snake in India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten. Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another. Let us thrust this creature back into its den, and we can then remove Miss Stoner to some place of shelter and let the county ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... his beautiful wife and she loved him. She loved him just as all good women love, with a complete abandon—with heart, mind and strength. He at first had periods of such abandon, too, but his conscience soon made him recoil from an affection of which God might be jealous. He believed that a man should forsake father, mother, wife and child in order to follow duty—and duty to him was the thing we didn't want to do. That which was pleasant was not wholly good. And so he strove to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... too, is Kue Pih-yuh! When the land is being rightly governed he will serve; when it is under bad government he is apt to recoil, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Panic struck as the British were, they would have been defeated, notwithstanding the delay at that impromptu fortress, if the fog had not occasioned the American soldiers to believe that the firing on their own side proceeded from the enemy, and that they were about to be surrounded. Hence the recoil and retreat. It was apparently a great misfortune, but it was the destiny of Washington to achieve greatness in spite ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... blood, for the purchase of the world's deliverance. Standing in the shadow of Peter Cooper's death, I pray God that all the resources of America may be consecrated. We are coming on to times of prosperity that this country never imagined. Perhaps here and there a few years of recoil or set-back, but God only can estimate the wealth that is about to roll into the lap of this nation. Between five years ago, when I visited the South, and my recent visit, there has been a change for the better ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... charge with limpet grip. Lester sank to his knees, tugging savagely at the tightly clasped burden, and angry cries rose from the scandalized onlookers. A questioning, threatening ring formed round him, then shrank back in recoil as he shrieked out one hideous word. Lady Barbara heard the word and saw the crowd race away like scattered sheep, saw the Prince forcibly hustled away by his attendants; also she saw her son lying prone in an agony of overmastering terror, his spasm of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... distance from the ground. The tender speckled moth here dancing seen, The vaulting grasshopper of glossy green, And all prolific Summer's sporting train, Their little lives by various pow'rs sustain. But what can unassisted vision do? What, but recoil where most it would pursue; His patient gaze but finish with a sigh, When musing waking speaks the sky-lark nigh! Just starting from the corn she cheerly sings, And trusts with conscious pride her downy wings; Still ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... luscious fruit. "Like begets like." An enfeebled father means not only feebleness in the next generation, but also perpetuated misery and vice and crime. Marriage is sacred and necessary and obligatory, but not all marriages are so. There are some marriages from which woman should recoil as much as she would from death itself. Rather that death would woo her than a man—if I may be permitted to honor him with that name—whose constitution is undermined, whose strength is sapped, and whose marrow and blood are poisoned. Rather an old maid than a ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... away, my hearties," said Selim, "you lose a little with every recoil of that gun, and you can't reach us with anything that carries powder in the ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... appear so," she said, with a flash of her occasional repugnance to the man; and then after a pause, "Herr von Gondremark," she added, "I recoil from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her life, her father repelled her, shrinking away from her with a brusque, involuntary recoil that shocked her, thrusting her arms roughly to one side, and rising up hastily to retreat into the house. He said in a bitter, recriminating tone, "You don't know what you are talking about," and left her standing there, the tears frozen in her eyes. He went heavily upstairs ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... with the fourth drive into the stubborn barrier. There was the same nerve-racking shock of impact; but now the recoil was followed by a second forward plunge, and Gallagher yelled his triumph when the 206 burst through the remaining lesser drifts and shot away on ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... peacefully grazing some thirty yards off. While everybody watched attentively to see the result of this marksman's shooting, he pulled the trigger; the rifle went off with an extra loud report, and behold! the rifle burst and the violent recoil gave the Lama a fearful blow in the face. The rifle, flying out of his hands, described a somersault in the air, and the Lama fell backward to the ground, where he remained spread out flat, bleeding all over, and screaming ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... Like that of wing-borne cloud, that, in the west Laves his aerial image, till afar The sunlight leaves him, melting into star. Did Phidias from her brow the veil remove, Uncurtaining the peerless queen of love? The fluent stone in marble waves recoil'd, Touch'd by his hand, and left the wondrous child, A Venus of the foam! How softly fair The dove-like passion on the sacred air Floats round her, nesting in her wreathed hair, That tells, though shadeless, of its auburn hue, Bathed in a hoar ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... partridge live near birch brush. Fall season. Hunting for partridge allowed from September to December. Tramping through the woods. Something moving. Creeping up. How I felt; excited; hand shook. Partridge on log. Gun failed to go off; cocking it properly. The shot; the recoil. The flurry of the bird. How partridges fly. How they taste when cooked. Getting the bird. Going home. Partridges are found in the woods; quail in the fields. What my sister said. My brother's interest. My father's story about shooting ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... on her white lips, and the sound died away in her throat. She saw him recoil from her with a look of white, frozen horror on his face which gave place to stern, bitter wrath. Slowly and sadly he put her clinging arms away from him, folding his arms across his breast with that terrible ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... a matter of no ordinary difficulty, as they apprehended that the Bodagh and his wife would recoil with indignation at the bare notion of even condescending to discuss a topic which, in all probability, they would consider as an insult. Not, after all, that there existed, according to the opinion of their neighbors, such a vast disparity in the wealth of each; ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Court-House. That day the Cat, standing in her place behind the new and temporary breastwork thrown up when the battery was posted, had the felloes of her wheels, which showed above the top of the bank, entirely cut away by Minie-bullets, so that when she jumped in the recoil her wheels smashed and let her down. This covered all old scores. The other guns had been cut down by shells or solid shot; but never before had one been gnawed down by musket-balls. From this time all through the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... toleration filled With charity for all. In Reason's Ways Profound. In thought, he mounts the throne of power And sways the world. He tries frolic Nature's grasp To lure her secrets still untold till we, Amazed at his bold course, recoil abashed. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... scarcely a human being upon whom this sort of retribution could have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a consciousness of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the detestation of mankind as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet the imperiousness of his temper and the constant experience he had had of the pliability of other men, prepared him to feel the general and undisguised condemnation into ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... which science has. They are often such excellent, respectable, orderly, well-meaning persons. They desire so sincerely that everyone should be wise: only not too wise. They are so utterly unaware of the mischief they are doing. They would recoil with horror if they were told they were so many Iscariots, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... in danger. The timid recoil into themselves, yielding most of their faculties to a tormenting imagination, that augments the causes of alarm and diminishes the means of security, while the firm of mind rally and condense their powers to the point necessary to exertion. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... to Sir de Fourcy, that Hugo von Danveld advised such actions from which every knight's soul should recoil; and the other brothers not only were not angry with him, but approved of his words. Therefore astonishment seized him more and more; finally he became deeply thoughtful, pondering whether it was proper to join in the performance of ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... directly observe it; if the process is partly cerebral or mental, as in social movements which depend on feeling and opinion, it can but remotely be inferred; even if the process is a collision of moving masses (billiard-balls), we cannot really observe what happens, the elastic yielding, and recoil and the internal changes that result; though no doubt photography will throw some light upon this, as it has done upon the galloping of horses and the impact of projectiles. Direct observation is limited to the effect ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the man, with his all too light burden, halted. A flame shot through him as Molly turned her head to gaze too: he shook with a brief agony of jealousy—jealousy of the dead! The next instant he felt her recoil, look up pleadingly and cling to him again, and he knew into the soul of his soul that the words spoken by those loyal lips—now clay beneath that clay—were coming true, that, out of his house laid desolate to him was to rise ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... astronomical tower. But directly Daniel (that was the house-steward's name) opened this postern, the storm, blustering and howling terrifically, drove a heap of rubbish and broken pieces of stones all over him, which made him recoil in terror; and, dropping the candles, which went out with a hiss on the floor, he screamed, "O God! O God! The Baron! he's miserably dashed to pieces!" At the same moment he heard sounds of lamentation proceeding from the Freiherr's sleeping-cabinet, and on entering ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... began to recoil before the sweep of the English cannon. Dieskau received a severe wound and the ardour of his followers was visibly cooled. At four o'clock the English general thought the opportune moment had arrived to make a sortie, and his men climbed over the rampart ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... gladness; it is the death in it that makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the mistake. If gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow, against which we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We recognise it as death—the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow but for a recognition of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must be life. It is of the nature of light, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... oppressive. Again and again caissons were exploded and added to the terrible list of casualties. Wagons and ambulances—such of them as were not wrecked—were driven out of range. Every moment or two the ground shook with the recoil and thunder of our batteries, while the air above and around us seemed literally filled with shrieking, moaning, whistling projectiles of almost every size and pattern in present use. From them came puffs of smoke, sharp cracks, heard above the general ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... through Robin. Since he had given this girl the arrow which he had denied to her, the Sheriff's daughter, there could be no doubt that strong friendship, at the least, existed between them, so that any blow at Robin must recoil upon Mistress Fitzwalter. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... fixed their stigma; upon the spendthrift, and the swindler, and the thief, the bankrupt debtor, the "moping idiot, and the madman gay," whom a paltry spirit of economy congregated to share this dismal habitation, he felt his heart recoil with inexpressible loathing from enduring the contamination of their society ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... in good earnest.— How sometimes nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines Of my boy's face, methoughts I did recoil Twenty-three years; and saw myself unbreech'd, In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzled, Lest it should bite its master, and so prove, As ornaments oft do, too dangerous. How like, methought, I then was to this kernel, ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... Polytechnic School—who had distinguished themselves in the bloodiest scenes of the street-fight with the troops of Charles X.—sent a committee to the Hotel de Ville with a military order, to which they demanded an official signature. The appropriate officer, M. Lobau, refused to sign it. "You recoil, do you?" said the determined young man who presented the ordinance. "Nothing is so dangerous, in revolutions, as to recoil: I will order ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... his lips, but with the recoil of his splendid frame and the ferocious expansion of his eyes. This invitation was a cataract of lightning leaping down an ink-black sky. In one instant of all-pervading clearness ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... of the Duc d'Enghien had not made them recoil in terror and disgust from Napoleon, they might have perhaps been welded into one mass with his new aristocracy of services, talents, and wealth. They were ready to adhere to him during the Consulate. During the Restoration ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... flight sublime Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art, Dissolve, in purifying tears, the heart, Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime; The fond illusions of the youth and maid, At which so many world-formed sages sneer, When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed, Our natural religion must appear. All things in thee tend to one polar star, Magnetic ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... have been his uncle's companion on the road, but he knew better than to insist. Master Bernard de Brocas well knew what he was about, and was plainly deeply interested in the story he had heard. Raymond had long been high in his favour. To cause to recoil upon the head of the treacherous Sanghurst the vengeance he had plotted against his own nephew, to punish him for his treachery — to wrest from his rapacious grasp the lands and the Manor of Basildene, was a task peculiarly agreeable to the statesman, who knew well what he was about ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... cheerily from the other side of the iron screen, and was lost from sight in the hurrying crowd. And as he disappeared, an unexpected poignant loneliness fell upon his nephew so heavily and so suddenly that he had no energy to recoil from the shock. It seemed to him that the last fragment of his familiar world had disappeared, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... towards Lobositz, where it disembogues in rather swifter fashion);—and are saluted with cannon, from the farther side; and see serried ranks under the gauze of mist: Browne's Army, in fact! The Twenty Squadrons have to recoil out of shot-range, the faster, the better; with a loss of a good many men, in those two charges. Friedrich orders them up Hill again; much regretful of this second charge, which he wished to hinder; and posts them ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... especially of the Middle West, are not near enough to any aristocracy even to be sham aristocrats, or to be real snobs. But their standards are secure; and though I do not really travel in a bath-tub, or believe in the bath-tub philosophy and religion, I will not on this matter recoil misanthropically from them: I prefer the tub of Dayton to the tub of Diogenes. On these points there is really something a million times better than efficiency, and that ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... irony of this poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, which is the faith of his whole soul in the excellence of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... instinctive recoil from pain were by no means all the elements of the impulse moving Hester in this direction. An honest and active mind such as hers could not have carried her so often to church and for so long a time, whatever might be ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... at coquetry, for, in her usual charming selfishness, she was perfectly frank and open; and it might not have been her last, but she had gone too far at first, and was not prepared for a recoil ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... the time is hurling its formidable missiles. There is the "catapult," which shoots a giant arrow, sometimes tipped with material on fire, from a groove or half-tube to a distance of a quarter of a mile. The propelling force, in default of gunpowder or other explosive, is the recoil of strings of gut or hair which have been tightened by a windlass. There is also the heavier "hurler," which works in much the same manner, but which, instead of arrows, throws stones and beams of from 14 pounds to half a hundredweight, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... patients with stories of their own professional skill, while depreciating the services of others of the fraternity. Such unscrupulous quacks sought also to win over the patient's friends by little attentions, flatteries and innuendoes. Many, said this philosopher, recoil from a man of skill even, if he is a braggart. "When the doctor," he continues, "attended by a man known to the patient, and having a right of entry into the house, advances into the dwelling of the sick man, he should make his appearance in good clothes, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... far-reaching influence of the disappearance of unlimited resources open to all men for the taking, and considering the recoil of the common man when he saw the outcome of the competitive struggle for these resources as the supply came to its end over most of the nation, we can understand the reaction against individualism and in favor of drastic assertion of the powers of government. ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Sabir said, "Have patience, O woman, for the issue of patience is praised. This lion it is which transgresseth against us, and the transgressor, perforce must Almighty Allah destroy him. Indeed, 'tis our long-suffering that shall slay him,[FN166] and he that doth evil needs must it recoil upon him." A few days after, the king went forth one morning to hunt and falling in with the lion, he and his host, gave chase to him and ceased not pursuit till they slew him. This news reached Abu Sabir who improved the occasion to his wife, "Said I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... again. No, Con., that's of no use, I should know myself for a liar all the time. I shall never quit liquor; I can't and I tell you," he whispered this fiercely, "they know that I can't, and they know why I can't. Oh! you need not recoil; we are not the first family that has inherited a taint; and I am the one unfortunate in whom that taint has broken forth. Let me tell you a secret; since my first potation, my mother has never once remonstrated with me; never once upbraided; my proud, high tempered mother. She knows ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the naked rails on the other side. Higher up Michael could see the breast of an engine; it was backing, backing, towards the troop-train that waited under the cover of the roof. He could hear the clank of the coupling and the recoil. At that sound the band had their mouths to their bagpipes and their fingers ready on the stops. Two or three officers hurried down from the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... precipitous shelves which needed all his skill. He had to bring his long stride down to a very slow and cautious pace, and, since he was too old a climber to venture rashly, he must needs curb his impatience. He suffered the dull recoil of his earlier vigour. While he was creeping on this accursed cliff the minutes were passing, and every second lessening his chances. He was in a fever of unrest, and only a happy fortune kept him from death. But at length the place was passed, and the mountain shelved down to a plateau. ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... again. Awake, ye drowned powers. Ye sprites, for-dull with toil: Resign to me this care of yours, And from dead sleep recoil. Think not upon your loathsome luck, But arise, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... evening dress which she had chosen for this and most important evening from its tissue-paper nest in the upper tray of her trunk. Its daintiness comforted and cheered her, as a friend's face might have done, and under its impetus she found calm enough to rearrange her hair, and, with many a shy recoil and shy caress, to lay out John's evening things for him, as she had often laid out her father's. How surprised, she smiled, he would be. How delighted, when he came, to find everything so comfy and domestic. Surely it was ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... title of American citizen is held in the highest respect, and when pronounced in a foreign land it causes the hearts of our countrymen to swell with honest pride. Surely when we reach the brink of the yawning abyss we shall recoil with horror from the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... was applauded by the liberal-minded Englishmen; but the confiscation of property, executions, and ensuing reign of terror soon made England recoil from this Revolution. When France executed her king and declared her intention of using force to make republics out of European powers, England sent the French minister home, and war immediately resulted. With only a short intermission, this lasted from 1793 until 1815, the contest ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... son of Priam hit the breastplate of Menelaus's corslet, but the arrow glanced from off it. As black beans or pulse come pattering down on to a threshing-floor from the broad winnowing-shovel, blown by shrill winds and shaken by the shovel—even so did the arrow glance off and recoil from the shield of Menelaus, who in his turn wounded the hand with which Helenus carried his bow; the spear went right through his hand and stuck in the bow itself, so that to his life he retreated under cover of his men, with his hand dragging by his side—for the spear weighed it ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... flank, served to increase the consternation which was beginning to pervade their unwieldy body. In about twenty minutes after the settlers had taken their stand, the front of the enemy began to recoil. But from the numerous obstructions in their rear, the entire absence of discipline, and the extreme difficulty of giving a reversed motion to so large a body, a small part only of which was directly exposed to danger, and the delay occasioned ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... your good name and your freedom lie. If he but takes a fancy, he can drag you in the mud. You can count on no happiness, no security, without his consent. Remember, too, there is a woman with him who has smitten you in the face and made you recoil, who is perhaps even now laughing at you, who is the object of my deadly hatred, and during whose lifetime the door is closed to me into the world I wish to enter. So long as that woman lives the sun does ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... acquisition, while she, as she took the cheque out of the glove into which it had been slipped, and looked again at the satisfactory figure, was thinking What a delightful man!' She had no remorse, not even the slight recoil which comes from the mere fact that the thing is done. A woman has not these feelings. She wears natural blinkers, which prevent her from, seeing anything but the thing which she desires at the moment, and keep her from the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... an eye-witness to form a just idea of the tremendous scene of carnage, wreck, and ruin that everywhere appeared. Humanity cannot but recoil from the prospect of such finished horror, and lament that war should ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... our faces turned to the plain. More than three-quarters of the rope had passed from us, and we were congratulating ourselves that the trial would soon be over, when, to our dismay, the strain ceased with a suddenness that caused both of us to recoil upon our backs! At the same instant, we heard the "twang" of the snapping rope, followed by a sharp cry ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... which were fine bulls. Our revenge was complete, and I had proved that the four-ounce was perfectly irresistible if held straight with the heavy charge of twelve drachms of powder. Since that time I have frequently used sixteen drachms (one ounce) of powder to the charge, but the recoil is then very severe, although the effect upon an animal with a four-ounce steel-tipped conical ball ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... his shoulder; and as he insisted upon putting immense loads in his gun, the results were sometimes disastrous to him and ridiculous to us. He often sprang back after a shot, as if he had been kicked by a horse, or wrung his hands, which had borne the recoil. His misses and misfortunes, however, never made him angry or dejected. After each failure, out came the red bandanna to wipe his brow, and as a shout of laughter greeted the performance, he would say calmly, with only a gleam of a smile, ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... to this great interest, and of doing so great a wrong to his neighbors and fellow-citizens, and that, too, from the base and fraudulent motive of selling dirt and tags as fine wool—for be assured that any imposition of this sort, practiced upon manufacturers, will recoil upon our own heads; and where one cent will thus be saved, thousands, yes, tens of thousands of dollars, will, as a necessary consequence, be indirectly lost to the farmers of Michigan. And the loss they have sustained from this cause during the last ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... the King would not give Bismarck up. In this regard, William was as cold as ice. He saw that should Bismarck be asked to go, at that time, the Liberals would be irresistibly strengthened. The recoil of the mighty wave against kingcraft might even end by forcing ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... temptation to which he yielded, we ought to remember how much he may have resisted: I invite them to apply this rule to myself; they can have no idea of the feeling with which I {264} contemplate all attempts to repress freedom of inquiry, nor of the loathing with which I recoil from the proposal to be art and part. They have asked me to give a public opinion upon a certain point. It is true that they have had the kindness to tender both the opinion they wish me to form, and the shape in which they would have it appear: I will let them draw me ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... discouraged her; but she could not reconcile her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... out of twenty cases of infidelity in wives, the crimes have been fairly ascribable to the husbands. Folly or misconduct in the husband, cannot, indeed, justify or even palliate infidelity in the wife, whose very nature ought to make her recoil at the thought of the offence; but it may, at the same time, deprive him of the right of inflicting punishment on her: her kindred, her children, and the world, will justly hold her in abhorrence; but the husband must ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... fortified retreat, whence she issued only under escort and upon service strictly obligatory. Succour from Arnold doubtless reached her by the post; and Lindsay felt it an anomaly in military tactics that the same agency should bring back upon him with a horrid recoil the letters with which he strove to assault her position. Nor could Alicia induce any sortie to Middleton street. Her notes of invitation to quiet teas and luncheons were answered on blue-lined paper, the pen dipped in reticence and the palest ink, always with the negative of a formal excuse. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... half-naked men heaved at the huge guns. Everywhere, from stem to stern, was exhibited in full swing the active processes of sponging out, passing along powder and ball, ramming home the charges, running out, working the handspikes, stepping aside to avoid the recoil—and the whole operation of working the guns, as only British seamen know how to work them! All this was done in the midst of smoke, flame, crashing shot, and flying splinters, while the decks were slippery with human blood, and strewn with dead men, from amongst whom the wounded were raised ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... oaths. If doors and windows had not of late been strengthened with bars of iron in anticipation of some such occasion, they would have been broken in with the onset of the fierce and now yelling crowd who rushed against them with the force of a battering-ram, to recoil in baffled rage from the vain assault. No sign, no sound from within, in ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... a voice so loud It seemed as it would shatter heaven! The bravest quailed; it swept so near, It made the ruddiest cheek to blanch, While look replied to look in fear, "The avalanche! The avalanche!" It forced the foremost to recoil, Before its sideward billows thrown,— Who cried, "O God! Here ends our toil! The path is overswept ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... already existent spiritual union, is the normal one. I believe that, however incapable she may be of explaining it, and however her power of reasoning may be vitiated by wrong ideas about the sexual relation, she does instinctively recoil from its use when its reason for existence is not there. She may attribute her reluctance to the fact that she is too womanly (sic), too spiritually minded to have any desire for sexual relations at all; her husband may attribute it to coldness of temperament or "modesty." ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... hand, his skill to try, Amid the chords bewildered laid, And back recoil'd, he knew not why, E'en at the sound himself had made. Ode to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... you see them, the lares and lemures? Look, there is Cleopatra with the asp at her breast! That bosom was once beautiful, and see now what a loathsome spectacle death has made it—the very worms recoil from that corruption. See, there is Canidia, the sorceress, who buried the boy alive! Look at her hair flying loose about her head! hair, no, those locks are living vipers! and Sagana, with hair erect, like the bristles of a wild boar! See, Ida, how she rushes about, sprinkling the room with water ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... muscles, and the diaphragm (dia.) contracts and becomes flatter; the air is consequently sucked, in as the lungs follow the movement of the thorax wall. In expiration the intercostals and diaphragm relax and allow the elastic recoil of the lungs to come into play. The thoracic wall is simultaneously depressed by the muscles of the abdominal area, the diaphragm thrust forwards, as the result of the displacement and compression of the alimentary ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... been satisfaction to him to see how I was staggered by this. I had never thought that what I had done to-day might recoil on the head of my own brother. However, I affected not to be ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... leaped into being in front of him. Jimmie stared, and saw out of a little clump of bushes a long black object thrust itself out, like the snout of a gigantic tapir from some prehistoric age. It was a ten-inch gun, coming back from its recoil; and Jimmie, smelling its fumes, struggled back to the road with his machine, before the monster should speak again ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... make you understand how different it really is. I am no Jephthah's daughter,—he wants no sacrifice, and I make none. Duty, the hardest word to learn, is not leading me. You heard my father's words; but not holding him as I do, his face could not recoil upon your heart like ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... thousands of sparks and exciting the tempest with whistling and fiendish laughter in the storm; but the appearance of the shining swords of the two knights and the extended hand of the saintly personage made them recoil ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... worthy the sacrifice grand, The heritage noble we took at their hand, The peace and the comfort, the fruits of the land; And, sunk in a torpor as hopeless as base, Recoil from the shock of the Sodomite band, That would ruin the realm ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Miss Althea Balbian redoubled her efforts to form Lilla according to her most exalted ideas; and, as a result, she implanted in that little charge still more complexities of impulse—a greater sensitiveness to the lures of mortal beauty, together with something of her own recoil from all the ultimate consequences of ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... lay the houseboat, a thing so soiled by the tears of the overhanging willows, so grown upon with parasites, so decayed, so battered, so neglected, such a haunt of rats, so advertised a storehouse of rheumatic agonies, that the heart of an intending occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... it had indeed been. His memory glanced lightly over the long monotonous years with a sort of shuddering recoil. He thought of his father's frequent absences, and of his return from one of them in the middle of a winter's night, propped up in an invalid carriage, with a surgeon in attendance, and blood-stained bandages around his leg. And he thought of a night when he had ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the penalty itself. The consequence is that in Europe political tribunals are invested with rights which they are afraid to use, and that the fear of punishing too much hinders them from punishing at all. But in America no one hesitates to inflict a penalty from which humanity does not recoil. To condemn a political opponent to death, in order to deprive him of his power, is to commit what all the world would execrate as a horrible assassination; but to declare that opponent unworthy to exercise that authority, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... to himself. This was what had made him uneasy, he was pretty sure. What was the thing in the brush, then? Innocent bystander? He got stiffly to his feet, conscious now of the ache in his wrist that had taken most of the recoil of the first shot, the torn web between his right thumb and forefinger where the hammer spur had bitten in; and walked over to ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... individual ever seems to arrogate to himself the credit of having done more than his neighbour for the general good. Nor do I conceive there is reason to doubt their personal courage, though they are too good-natured often to excite others to put that quality to the test. It is true, they will recoil with horror at the tale of an Indian massacre, and probably cannot conceive what should induce one set of men deliberately and without provocation to murder another. War is not their trade; ferocity ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... disclosure of the cross is the incomparable sympathy of the Victim. How shall we account for His recoil from the thought of dying, for His shrinking from this death as from something which sickened Him, for the darkness and anguish of His soul in Gethsemane at the prospect, and for the abysmal sense of forsakenness on the cross? His sensitiveness ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... his imagination alight; his own recoil from the conjunction, overborne by immediate concern for Dyan. Unable to forget her—who could?—he had thrust the pain of remembering into the dark background of his mind; and there it remained—a hard knot of soreness and bitterness—as ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... up Ladd muttered low and deep, and swung the heavy rifle around to the left. Far along the slope a figure moved. Ladd began to work the lever of the Winchester and to shoot. At every shot the heavy firearm sprang up, and the recoil made Ladd's shoulder give back. Gale saw the bullets strike the lava behind, beside, before the fleeing Mexican, sending up dull puffs of dust. On the sixth shot he plunged down out of sight, either hit or frightened into ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... and story-books—you know that no sane man alive would tie himself to one woman save for the law's demand that his heirs shall be lawfully born. You are no shrinking maid in her teens, that you should start and recoil or blush, at the truth of the position, and it is the merest affectation on your part to talk about 'love lasting forever,' for you are perfectly aware that it cannot last very long over the honeymoon. The natural state of man ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... amused, and once, suddenly moved and wrung by his pleading, she bent down rather shamefacedly and gave him a freckled, tennis-blistered little paw to kiss. And she looked into his eyes and suddenly felt a perplexity, a curious swimming of the mind that made her recoil and stiffen, and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... to see how such a contrivance could carry guns of any calibre unless they fired from the rear in the line of flight. The problem of recoil becomes a very difficult one in aerial tactics. It would probably have at most a small machine-gun or so, which might fire an explosive shell at the balloons of the enemy, or kill their aeronauts with distributed bullets. The thing would be a sort of air-shark, and one may even venture to picture ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... concealment, where, unseen himself, he had seen and watched from the first, with keen interest, all the movements of the other, whom, at length, he seemed to recognize, with recollections which caused him to recoil, and his whole countenance to contract and darken with angry and disquieting emotions. He was not allowed much time, however, for indulging his disturbed feelings; for scarcely had the object of his annoyance disappeared, before his attention was attracted by a slight rustling ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of Weimar told his friends always to be of courage; this Napoleonism was unjust, a falsehood, and could not last. It is true doctrine. The heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest. I am not sure but he had better lost his best park of artillery, or had his best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... share the comfortable assurance; to her it seemed more than likely Lulu had been too venturesome, and that a swiftly incoming wave had carried her off her feet and swept her in its recoil into the ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... The instinct of recoil came stronger now. He stepped back with folded arms, saying again, 'God help me! God forbid that I should ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... answered, drawing nearer, "take care, Miss Mason. It always makes me nervous to see a gun in a woman's hands. Don't pull the trigger, please; the charge is heavy and the recoil will ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... show you those pistols," said Musard. "They carry as true as a rifle up to fifty yards. Their only drawback is that they are a bit clumsy, and have a heavy recoil." ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... hand, in movements of withdrawal or of recoil from other persons, characteristic of fear and embarrassment, there is a heightening of self-consciousness. The tendency to identify one's self with other selves, to lose one's self in the ecstasy of psychic union with ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the accursed crown of the Spark. But I grieve to tell you, yet one of my name cannot lie—if the Princess mistake the false for the true, if she flashes her fire upon stone, or ice, or embers, either the Spark will recoil and burn her to ashes, or it will die where she placed it and turn her to stone, or—worst fate of all, yet likeliest to befall the tenderest and best—it will reenter her at her lips, and turn her whole nature to the bitterness of gall, so that neither food shall refresh her, sleep ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... no refuge. She had been too much tired to hear anything the night before, but to-night there was scratching, nibbling, careering, fighting, squeaking, recoil and rally, charge and rout, as the grey Hanover rat fought his successful battle with his black English cousin all over the floors and stairs—nay, once or twice came rushing up and over the bed—frightening its occupant almost out of her senses, as she cowered ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the end, behold her in the room that I described. Very likely and very naturally, in some fling of feverish misery or recoil of thwarted love, she has quarrelled with her old employers and the children are forbidden to see her or to speak to her; or at best she gets her rent paid and a little to herself, and now and then her late charges are sent up (with ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their guns upon cider barrels, with allowance of roll for recoil, and charged them to the very best of their knowledge, and pointed them as nearly as they could guess at the dwellings of the outlaws in the glen; three cannons on the north were of Somerset and the three on the south were of Devonshire; but these latter ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... it that, as I reached the bedside and had just begun my little greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me recoil a step or two from before ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... apprehensive, Father Omehr was pleased to learn from Linda that the knife had not been poisoned. Gilbert's eye brightened at the intelligence, though he had not given utterance to his fears—fears they were—for even the young and brave recoil in terror from death, when it assumes a form and hovers near in a detested shape. Having informed the youth that a messenger had been despatched to his father, the priest left Gilbert in charge of the sacristan, and proceeded on his daily errand of mercy through the neighborhood. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... proclaimed; but it is very likely to have indisposed them towards listening. Meantime, so far as I am acquainted with these Roman Catholic demurs, the difference between them and my own is broad. They, without suspecting any subtle, fraudulent purpose, simply recoil from the romantic air of such a statement—which builds up, as with an enchanter's wand, an important sect, such as could not possibly have escaped the notice of Christ and his apostles. I, on the other hand, insist not only ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear. He was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly. It was all very simple. The same strung-up force which had given twenty-four men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of recoil, crushed ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... faith from them must direct The judgment, conscience, understanding too, Or there will be no cure, whate'er you do. When men are caught in immoralities, Nature will start, the conscience will arise To judgment; and if impudence doth recoil, Yet guilt, and self-condemnings will embroil The wretch concerned, in such unquietness Or shame, as will induce him to confess His fault, and pardon crave of God and man, Such men with ease ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pleasant to see their benign exultation in her powers of mischief, and the delight with which they exhibited the circumvolutory movement of the tower, the quick thrusting forth of the immense guns to deliver their ponderous missiles, and then the immediate recoil, and the security behind the closed port-holes. Yet even this will not long be the last and most terrible improvement in the science of war. Already we hear of vessels the armament of which is to act entirely beneath the surface of the water; so that, with no other external ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... supposed,' resumed the doctor, with the same measured utterance. 'You recoil from this arrangement. Do you expect me to convince you? You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view of women. Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left the slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel among ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson |
