"Writhe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out, and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes, that served them instead of hair, seemed likewise to be asleep; although, now and then, one would writhe, and lift its head, and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Androvsky, "Now you can pray," she had passed into a region where self had no existence. Her whole soul was intent upon this man to whom she had given all the treasures of her heart and whom she knew to be writhing as souls writhe in Purgatory. He had spoken at last, he had laid bare his misery, his crime, he had laid bare the agony of one who had insulted God, but who repented his insult, who had wandered far away from God, but who could never be happy in his wandering, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... rule he maintains complete silence, and merely makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance becomes sheerly that of a magician ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... see what she means. All that company has fallen asleep. The men lie back with open mouths, the goblets still in their hands. Golden cascades of wine fall glittering upon the marble. The women writhe in these pools of wine. But even in the intoxication of their dreams they try to guard their elaborate hair dress. The whole mad band, musicians and animals, lies there with limbs dissolved, panting for air, overwhelmed by ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Many crippled lay flat for hours, not daring to rise for succour. If any one asked a comrade for a drink of water, he saw the bottle, or the hand passing it, pierced by a Dum-Dum or a one-pounder shell. If he raised his head to writhe in his pain, he felt his helmet ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... clinging with naked, dead feet to the sliding beach, lean more and more out of the perpendicular. As the sands subside, the stumps appear to creep; their intertwisted masses of snakish roots seem to crawl, to writhe,—like ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... move, and the leaves (such of them as are left), which in summer made a music as pleasant as that of windbells, rattle in their branches like the laughter of a skeleton. The oak and the thorn-bush could scarcely writhe more if they were crippled by rheumatism. Every leaf on the sycamore is spotted as if with some ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... certainly in the prime of life and energy as concerned the school. Her keen eyes noticed everything, and woe betide the slacker who thought to escape her, and dared bring an unprepared lesson to class. Her sarcasms on such occasions made her victims writhe, though they were apt to be witty enough to amuse the rest of the form. Though, like John Gilpin's wife, she was on pleasure bent to-day, she never for a moment forgot she was in charge, and kept turning to see that everybody was following, and nobody ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... counting the strokes on his fingers, and never left off smoking cigarettes, while several officious persons hastened on every opportunity to offer him a burning match to light them. When more than fifty strokes had been given, the peasant ceased to shriek and writhe, and the doctor, who had been educated in a government institution to serve his sovereign and his country with his scientific attainments, went up to the victim, felt his pulse, listened to his heart, and announced to the representative of authority that ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Publius, "I should writhe in my chains far more rebelliously than you, and I fancy it must do you good to rage and storm sometimes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that she could be of use in the world. She even smiled in her solitude at the picture she drew of herself, reforming Ratcliffe, and Krebs, and Schuyler Clinton. The ease with which Ratcliffe alone had twisted her about his finger, now that she saw it, made her writhe, and the thought of what he might have done, had she married him, and of the endless succession of moral somersaults she would have had to turn, chilled her with mortal terror. She had barely escaped being dragged under the wheels of the machine, and so coming to an untimely end. When she thought ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... fight with you once more, and I will leave you so maimed and so disfigured that you can woo no woman to ruin again and jest at her shame and agony with no man—for none can bear to look at you without a shudder—and you will lie and writhe to be given the coup de grace." He lifted the hilt of his sword and kissed it. "That I swear," he said, "by this first ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the bees." And then a hive she gently lifts,— Oh, foolish, foolish child,— Down, down it falls—out swarm the bees Buzzing with fury wild. With fright she shrieks, and tries to run, But ah! 'tis all in vain; Upon her light the angry bees, And make her writhe with pain. ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... I will not be bound! I will be still. Still as a lamb—nor even draw my breath! But if you bind me, I can not be still. Then I shall writhe and struggle ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... townships of Judah; Like the guards on her fields 17 They are round and upon her, For Me she defied!(211) Thy ways and thy deeds have done 18 These things to thee. This evil of thine how bitter! It strikes to the heart. O my bowels! My bowels, I writhe! 19 O walls of my heart! My heart is in storm upon me, I cannot keep silence.(212) For the sound of the trump thou hast heard, O my soul, The uproar of battle. Ruin upon ruin is summoned, 20 The land is undone! Suddenly undone my tents, In a moment ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... will fight openly and fairly, I will not hate him. If I wanted to touch an adder with my hand I would not catch him by the tail so that it could curl around and sting my hand; I would catch it just behind the head. It might writhe and wriggle, but I should know that it could not bite me. That is how I want to treat the Tresidders. You despise me," I went on; "you see me now a thing that has to hide like a rabbit in burrow. Well, perhaps it is natural—you live ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... He began to writhe again in his chair. Even under the all-powerful fascination of his wife the parting with his money on paper had not been accomplished without a pang. He had endured the pang; he had resigned himself to the sacrifice. And now here was the dreaded ordeal again, awaiting ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... personal violence on the hated wretch who had snatched away Helen from his hopes—no, personal violence could produce suffering but feeble compared with that under which the victim would writhe as Guzzy poured forth the torrent of scornful invective which he had compiled from the memories of his bilious brain and the pages of his ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... outward formality. Remorse in the sense of gnawing shame and unavailing regret is only understandable to me when some wrong had been done to a fellow-creature. But why she, that girl who existed on sufferance, so to speak—why she should writhe inwardly with remorse because she had once thought of getting rid of a life which was nothing in every respect but a curse—that I could not understand. I thought it was very likely some obscure influence of common forms of speech, some traditional or inherited ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... conducts Beowulf to the charmed lake: the wildness of the way, and the strange nature of the scenes, are all in keeping. The armed followers sit them down in a place where they command a view of the dismal water. Monstrous creatures writhe about the crags; the men shoot ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... with their superior might she fought for freedom like a mad woman. But this abnormal strength could not continue. Suddenly, as Anstice had foreseen, the inevitable collapse occurred. Nature could stand no more, and with a last wild writhe the woman slipped through the hands which held her, and uttering a sharp cry fell to the floor in a ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... know? You'd rather continue to writhe on the gridiron than to turn over and fall into the fire ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... hesitating about leaving the camp unguarded to go to the rescue. Jerry's shouted command brought him galloping across the field with a pail of water, and the two boys made good speed on the way back. They found the man still unconscious but beginning to writhe about ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... the accusing angel of such men, prayed for and adored her husband as if he had been the best and tenderest of gentlemen. Providence has its mysteries; but if there be one that taxes faith and staggers patience more than another, it is the long misery that makes a good woman cringe and writhe and agonize in silence under the utter rule and life-long sovereignty of a bad man. Perhaps such women do not suffer as we fancy; for after much trial every woman learns that it is possible to love where neither respect nor admiration can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... 'tis from Wallabout. 'Tis glory hoarse with calling: "Raise those hulks Where writhe my faithful." See! the tory skulks Behind the sun who, stooping to fill out Their throats with his god-breath, to swell the shout Of a free people, finds the brave in bulks, Strewn and held fast where Darkness, beaten, sulks That thrall has ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... after that; they saw at last how I had deceived them, and put the very worst construction upon everything. Even now I writhe impotently at times, and my cheeks smart and tingle with humiliation, as I recall that scene—the colonel's very plain speaking, Lilian's passionate reproaches and contempt, and her aunt's ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... you who spoiled my appearance for the rest of my days!" cried Barbemouche. "May you writhe in the ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... round the bent brows of Semiramis Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead, Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice, The steely snows of Russia, for the tread Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss The snaky lines of blood violently shed. Like living creeping things That writhe but have no stings To scare adulterers from the imperial bed Bowed with its load of lust, Or chill the ravenous gusts That made her body a fire from heel to head; Or change her high bright spirit and clear, For all its mortal stains, from taint ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... present we have no means of ascertaining. The letters giving them the miss-in-baulk in no uncertain voice were only despatched yesterday. But it cannot affect us how they writhe beneath the ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... colors. A closer inspection of one of the marvelous tapestries showed that it also was of metal, its threads numbering thousands to the inch. Woven of many different metals, of vivid but harmonious colors in a strange and intricate design, it seemed to writhe as its colors changed with every variation in the color of the light; which, pouring from concealed sources, was reflected by the highly-polished metal and innumerable jewels of ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... to the darkest corner of the veranda. A four-hour vigil lay before him, and he derived no calm from the still stars that faintly shadowed the quiet waters below. He was assailed by torments reserved for those who, having long made others writhe without caring that they suffered, hear the swish of the lash over their own heads. He had only lately been conscious of his growing irritability. He hated men who yield to irritation; it was a sign of weakness, a failure of self-mastery. He had been carried on by a strong tide, imagining ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... us in chains, and then, when we writhe in our agony, you say we don't behave prettily!" These words, which did not lessen Ransom's wonderment, were the young lady's answer to his deprecatory speech. She saw that he was honestly bewildered ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... wring a mighty ransom from your people would I but return you to them unharmed, but a thousand times rather would I watch that beautiful face writhe in the agony of torture; it shall be long drawn out, that I promise you; ten days of pleasure were all too short to show the love I harbor for your race. The terrors of your death shall haunt the slumbers of the red men through all the ages to come; they will shudder in the shadows of the night as ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... must her lifeblood feel The fang that stung her sleeping, the foul germ Even when she wakes of hell's most poisonous worm, Though now it writhe beneath her wounded heel. Turn yet, she will not fade nor fly from thee; Wait, and see hell yield ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... caused the mishap, and who, knowing the effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr. Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr. Lawley, too exhausted to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! it had missed its aim, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... cords only sink into the bloating flesh, and she lies there crisping like a log, and as powerless to move. The dense, black smoke hangs over her like a pall, but prostrate as she is, it cannot sink low enough to suffocate and end her agony. How the bared bosom heaves! how the tortured limbs writhe, and the blackening cuticle emits a nauseous steam! The black blood oozing from her nostrils proclaims how terrible the inward struggle. The whole frame bends and shrinks, and warps like a fragment of leather thrown into a furnace—the flame ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... have seen thee happy with me. I am no fool To poll stupidly into iron. I have heard your quick breaths And seen your arms writhe toward me; At those times —God help us— I was impelled to be a grand knight, And swagger and snap my fingers, And explain my mind finely. Oh, lost sweetheart, I would that I had not been a grand knight. I said: "Sweetheart." ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... half-remembered notes. Woods and fields are tremulous at twilight with the shimmering of white saltant forms, and immemorial Ocean yields up curious sights beneath thin moons. The Gods are patient, and have slept long, but neither man nor giant shall defy the Gods forever. In Tartarus the Titans writhe, and beneath the fiery Aetna groan the children of Uranus and Gaea. The day now dawns when man must answer for his centuries of denial, but in sleeping the Gods have grown kind, and will not hurl him to the gulf made ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... knowing how this youth Would shine, if love could make him great, When caught and tortured for the truth Would only writhe and hesitate; While she, arranging for his days What centuries could not fulfill, Transmutes him with her faith and praise, And has him shining where ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... was horrified to see the Yaqui writhe and raise a feeble hand. The action brought renewed and more savage cries from the Mexicans. The ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... length of time, and severe application, to the fools who think time given to be so wasted. Roses grow for me to gather: rivers roll for me to lave in. Let the slave dig the mine, but for me let the diamond sparkle. Let the lamb, the dove, and the life-loving eel writhe and die; it shall not disturb me, while I enjoy the viands. The five senses are my deities; to them I pay worship and adoration, and never yet have I been slack in the performance of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... and cedar bend and writhe When roars the wind through gap and braken; But 'tis the tenderest reed of all That trembles first when Earth ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... be cuddled, she retreated to the hearth, and when I pursued her, meaning to catch and pet her, she took a distracted skip right into a bed of hot coals. One wild howl, and another still more distracted skip brought her out again, to writhe in agony with four burnt paws and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... heard the breakers clash and boom; We saw them plunge and writhe and rise, And toss great flakes of ashen spume ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... into the old face—then it began to writhe, and from each eye oozed scant tears, seeking a channel amid the seams and wrinkles of the ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... fighting dogs as these frenzied myriads with their half-crazed generals. They lay, these armies, across the fair bosom of the earth like dying monsters, crimson in their own blood, yet still able to writhe upward and deal death to any other that might approach. They were at a deadlock, yet each feared to make the first overtures for peace. There was, in actuality, no longer even an English or a German nation. It was an orgy of homicide, in which the best of mankind were wantonly ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... his sorrows to himself, but the recollection of them will make him "yerk," i.e., writhe, or start with pain—applied ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... udal-man, I know, Has cause to wish my head laid low; And many an angry udal knife Would gladly drink of Eina's life. But ere they lay Earl Einar low,— Ere this stout heart betrays its cause, Full many a heart will writhe, we know, In the wolf's fangs, or ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... loathe your ways, You writhe at these my words of warning, In agony your hands you raise." (And so they ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... free from military tyranny from abroad. The work of the peace advocate is not negative. It is not enough for him to cry peace, peace! He must first lay the foundation for peace. To cry peace while the people writhe under injustice is like trying to heal the carbuncle without ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... sombre evenings when the sighing of the wind recalls the moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... for no better revenge upon thee than to be able to paint to thy soul, in the glittering colours of Paradise, all that thou hast lost, and then see thee writhe in despair. Knew I more than I know, can the tongue formed of flesh make intelligible to the ear of flesh what lies beyond the bounds of sense, and the disembodied ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... warm-hued life; a soul and body rich with Oriental splendor. There she stood, her hair flowing dark and silky from beneath her twisted turban, her eyes,—black melted loadstones; the broad Egyptian pendants gleaming and glowing from temple to shoulder. The golden serpent seemed to writhe on her bosom, informed from its wearer with a subtile vitality. Through all dominated a grand repose, like the calm of nature, which storms may prove but ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... rebel, I wonder if I ought to be good to him," thought Nelly, watching the reptile writhe with pain. "Will said there were sick rebels in his hospital, and one was very kind to him. It says, too, in my little book, 'Love your enemies.' I think snakes are mine, but I guess I'll try and love him because ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... then, disease, as if enraged that he should have borne up so long, that his spirit had mastered even her, convened the whole powers of suffering, and compelled him not alone to acknowledge, but to writhe beneath her sway. His whole frame was shaken; intolerable pains took possession of him, and though the virulence of the complaint was at length so far abated as to permit him a short continuance of life, he could never sit his horse again, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... burdens behind them? Are there not others toiling, with panting efforts, through the sluggish waters; others again, imprisoned in lofty pillars, from which the smoke of their breath ascendeth even unto Heaven? Doth not the air throb and quiver with their restless struggles as they writhe below in darkness and torment? And thou hast the shamelessness to pretend that these things are done in the Lord Mayor's own realms without his knowledge! Verily thou must take ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... indescribable something which men have agreed to call genius. No man could ever tell us precisely what it is, and yet there is none who is not inevitably aware of its presence and its power. Let talent writhe and contort itself as it may, it has no such magnetism. Larger of bone and sinew it may be, but the wings are wanting. Talent sticks fast to earth, and its most perfect works have still one foot of clay. Genius claims kindred with the very workings of Nature herself, so that a sunset shall seem ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... life sadder than the discovery that our own affairs are really only our own affairs? We had thought that they were our friends', as well as our own. We had supposed that our griefs were theirs also, but when Grethsemane comes into our lives, and we writhe and twist among the gnarled and knotted roots, when we turn with blanched, tear-sprinkled faces to our chosen James and trusted Peter and beloved John to gasp in their ears the story of our agony, we hear only the heavy ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... well as the other meals. And then there were eggs—eggs hard boiled, eggs soft boiled, eggs medium, eggs poached—until, at the end of the season, the mere mention of eggs caused Joel's stomach to writhe in disgust. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... to kill them. There was something disagreeable in the flashing thought that he might kill them from where he stood. He would not fire from the dark. He wanted to experience the exquisite sensation of that one first moment when they would writhe back from him, and see in him the presence of death. He would give them that one moment of life—just that one. Then he ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... covered with kid, she did not blaze, but did what was worse, she squirmed. First one leg curled up, then the other, in a very awful and lifelike manner; next she flung her arms over her head as if in great agony; her head itself turned on her shoulders, her glass eyes fell out, and with one final writhe of her whole body, she sank down a blackened mass on the ruins of the town. This unexpected demonstration startled every one and frightened Teddy half out of his little wits. He looked, then screamed and fled toward the house, roaring "Marmar" ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... perplexing darkness that so pitifully limits man's vision is the indifference of the forces that govern his destiny. The wrongs he suffers may cry aloud to heaven, but heaven does not hear him. Whether he writhe in agony or be prostrated in the dust (against all reason and justice), he has no appeal, societies, the bulk of mankind, may be plunged in misery—who or what cares? Man is surrounded by indifference ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... would he strive to cover up his faithlessness. But he hath been untrue to thee in this—that he shares a thought with the witch when his whole mind should be full of thee. Bide thy time till he emerges from the spell, then make him writhe. Meantime, save thy tears. Never was a man worth one ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... otherwise, provided in those days for serious-minded youth, answered all questionings with blunt brutality. If you did wrong you burnt in a fiery furnace for ever and ever. Were your imagination weak you could turn to the accompanying illustration, and see at a glance how you yourself would writhe and shrink and scream, while cheerful devils, well organised, were busy stoking. I had been burnt once, rather badly, in consequence of live coals, in course of transit on a shovel, being let fall upon me. I imagined these burning coals, not ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... and Termagant. I saw a blackamoor last week behind his master, a merchant of Genoa, in Paul's Walk. He looked like the devils in the Miracle Play at Christ Church, with blubber lips and wool for hair. I marvelled that he did not writhe and flee when he came within the Minster, but Ned Burgess said he ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... any thing which makes the joyless, taciturn American speak to his fellow whom he does not know, is for the time being a blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness. Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless, dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open spaces, surrounded by blue-lipped women, in different ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... long risen, looked over the ragged crest of the ridge, and sent long shadows down the sparsely wooded slope. Though there was no wind, and every tree was as motionless as if carved of ice, these spare, intricate shadows seemed to stir and writhe, as if instinct with a kind of sinister activity. This confusion of light and dark was increased by the patches of snow that still clung in the dips and on the gentler slopes. The air was cold, yet with a bitter softness in it, the breath of the thaw. The sound of running water ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... particular nation. Courage is not only common, but cosmopolitan. But such are the apparent contradictions of life, that this virtue, which so many seem to possess, all hold the highest. There is probably no man, however miserable, who would not writhe at being exposed a coward. Why should the common be precious? What is ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... Green our Laidly Worm Hath made a loathly den, And there hath fed for a weary term On the bodies and souls of men. There doth it writhe, and ramp, and slower, Whilst in its coils close prest Are the things it thrives on—"Landlord ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... continued, "an' presently about a hundred yards away, an' a little to the right of the sled, the snow began to move. I couldn't feel a breath of wind. But the snow seemed to writhe an' stir as though some monster from the Arctic night was wakin' from his winter sleep, an' a wisp of snow hurled upwards; then, with a heave the snow crust broke an' fell apart an' a column of snow shot up like a geyser swirlin' into a ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... could not know that he was only her unconscious instructor in painting, paid solely in the coin of false smiles and delusive hopes. At times, though, she would torture him dreadfully. Selecting one of her many admirers, she would seem to smile upon his suit, and poor Dennis would writhe in all the agonies of jealousy, for he was very human, and had all the normal feeling of a strong man. She would then watch his face grow pale and his manner restless, as quietly and critically as an entomologist regards the struggles of an ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... evident the disintegrator rays were useless here. When they struck into the horde of crescent-shaped things coming so hungrily toward us, the things changed from red to a sickly, yellowish pink, and seemed to writhe, as though in some ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... writhe, get loose, escape: inf. wīdre ge-windan (to flee further), 764; pret. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... my love of the hope of the second birth! Could he clear my vision to see the sword creeping out of the sheath Inch by inch as we writhe in the toils of our living death! Could he but strengthen my heart to know that we cannot fail; For alas, I am lonely here—helpless and feeble and frail; I am e'en as the poor of the earth, e'en they that are now alive; And where is their ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... came faintly from the edge of the amphitheatre, and wondering what it meant, Murray, as he looked round, was just in time to see the big black giant of a negro spring high in the air, come down with a crash upon the coffin-shaped chest, roll over, and writhe for a few moments ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... the arts of war: he wielded in his clasp the ruddy-flashing wood, and victoriously with noble stroke made their fallen captain writhe. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the devotees to divide their ritual duties into two classes, the devotions of the free men being addressed to the saint who died in his bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simulate his horrid end. And this is the reason why most of the white caftans simply rock and writhe, while the humble blue ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... worked with her, and at length subdued the convulsions of pain which distorted the beautiful face and made the childlike body writhe. He had a resentment against the crime which had been committed. Marriage had not made her into a woman; it had driven her back into an arrested youth. It was as though she ought to have worn short skirts and her hair in a long braid down her back. Hers was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... first emotion, which he attributed to an unforeseen advantage he himself had gained over the Hungarian; but seeing him, in the sequel, bite his lip, roll his eyes, groan, writhe his body, ejaculate incoherent curses, and neglect his game, the Huguenot concluded that he was mad, and being seized with terror and dismay, got up and scampered ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and found he was mistaken. He wrote, "I am in receipt of your last, which is very encouraging. You were quite right to do as you did. Give Rudd & Carleton no loop-hole. They will soon owe us a good round sum, and will writhe like Proteus to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... he corrected her, trying not to writhe under her hot contempt. "The enemy-to-man hunt, if you like. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Its columns were filled with the most virulent attacks upon him. His denunciation of the spurious letters made the calumniators writhe, and, with the fiendish malice of assassins, they thrust his character with weapons of foulest form. Three days after his retirement one of the most violent of these attacks appeared in the Aurora, attributed to Doctor Lieb, a republican member ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... infirmity, man is justified in inflicting—nay, more, is compelled to inflict—so much suffering upon his fellow-creatures, how much more is God justified in His severest moral discipline, which has as its object our eternal health. Though we shrink from the sorrow, though we writhe under the pain, though our hearts break a thousand times, He will not waver in His calm, steadfast purpose. He sees eternity; the present is as nothing to Him. He will break our grasp from all earthly idols, even though ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... any time its owner fancied that I was turning my toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... back and jumped into the boat and pushed it clear of the roof. And none too soon, for as the fire burned deeper into the heart, the monster felt the burn of it and began to writhe and twist. Then he gave a great cough that sent the waters surging back out of his body and into the sea again in a ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... face was like nothing I have seen before. Its voice was like nothing I have heard. Those other rapids are not to be compared to it; they are wild, headstrong, and malignant enough, but the Alemba is not as they. It does not struggle, and writhe, and brawl among the rocks, but comes in a majestic springing dance, a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... remember how I cudgelled thee, and thou didst grin and nimbly writhe, and catch hold of ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... It was with a view to laugh at his fellow-guests, as well as to mortify the lawyer, that he had emptied the bottle, when it came to his turn, and he had laughed accordingly: but now his mirth gave way to his apprehension — He began to spit, to make wry faces, and writhe himself into various contorsions — 'Damn the stuff! (cried he) I thought it had a villainous twang — pah! He that would cozen a Scot, mun get oope betimes, and take Old Scratch for his counsellor —' 'In troth mester what d'ye ca'um (replied ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... at the enactment, that the charge must be paid by senders. "Proprietors of journals," says the Quebec Chronicle, "find it hard enough at present to collect the simple subscription, without demanding postage in advance. People who writhe at present under the payment of their bare paper account, will find forwarding postage, in advance, an excruciating sacrifice." The 2 cents is no doubt primarily intended for soldiers' letters. The 3 cents pays the new single rate ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... possible issue out of it, through blood and sacrifice. But they knew and felt that Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must be death—and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the foul-mouthed rowdies would make me writhe with disgust. As a rule they were ostensibly addressed to some of the other fellows or to nobody in particular, their real target being the nearest girls. These would receive them with gestures of protest or with an exclamation of mild repugnance, or—in the majority ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... too good to explain this phenomenon, which is harder to me than any implied in the turning tables or involuntary writing. By the way, a lady whom I know here writes Greek without knowing or having ever known a single letter of it. The unbelievers writhe under it. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... pool below the falls. The salmon would come up the creek from the ocean and the finest ones found their way into the pool, and on Friday the cook and his men supplied the tables with fresh fish. How many times have I seen those fine fish, caught on the prongs of a spear, writhe and wriggle to get off. At first I could not taste them, I felt so sorry to see them killed in that way. I would not go out on Friday until after the fishing was done. The lamper eels crawled up the stream and the men gathered ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... tones of thunder with everlasting damnation for persecuting the servants of God. The Iroquois shrieked with laughter. Such spirit in a man was to their liking. Then, to stop his voice, they cut away his lips and rammed a red-hot iron into his mouth. Not once did the giant priest flinch or writhe at the torture stake. Then they brought out Lalemant, that Brebeuf might suffer the agony of seeing a weaker spirit flinch. Poor Lalemant fell at his superior's feet, sobbing out a verse of Scripture. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... a surprise. With a quick writhe the Netop broke loose, and bolted headlong, fairly into Captain Church himself, among the baggage and the horses. This was a surprise for the captain, too. He grabbed him but could not keep him, because he was a naked Indian and as ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... serve you now, as I had always meant to serve you some day. Ey, yes, I think I always meant to give you back to Perion as a free gift. Meanwhile to see, and to writhe in seeing your perfection, has meant so much to me that daily I have delayed such a transfiguration of myself until to-morrow." The man grimaced. "My son Orestes, who will presently succeed me, has been summoned. I will order that he conduct you ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... from its circle and its privileges, was an Eden in his imagination, simply on that account. The love of Edith Colleton grew more desirable from her scorn;—and the defeat of hopes so daring, made his fierce spirit writhe within him, in all the pangs of disappointment, only neutralized by his hope of revenge. And that hope was now gone; the dungeon and the doom were all that met his eyes;—and what had she, his victim, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... antagonist; but that day his thoughts were wandering, and I won the game twice following. Full of insolent delight, I jumped up and kissed his great handsome forehead, and cried 'The sublime God, the hero, under whose feet the strange nations writhe, to whom the priests and the people pray—is beaten by a girl!' He smiled gently, and answered 'The Lords of Heaven are often outdone by the Ladies, and Necheb, the lady of victory, is a woman. Then he grew graver, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Porch some Girl whose Father was not interested in the First National Bank would peer out through the Morning Glories at the Show-off and then writhe like an Angle-Worm. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... and I've tried scolding. Perhaps I'm the wrong mother for you—" A long pause, during which Roger's slender body did not cease to writhe in sobs. Then his mother continued: "Poor little Elschen, that was an awful knock you gave her! I shall have to apologize to Mrs. Wolf again. She's ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... tropical sea, from our vast battle-fields. They will read of Cats' Homes, and Anti-Vivisection Societies, and Homes of Rest for Horses, and a hundred such institutions, and they will find contributors to these institutions stirring not one finger when hundreds of thousands of men writhe under hails of shrapnel, and crowds of homeless women and children fly in terror before the unavoidable calamities or the superfluous brutalities of war. They will see a generation shaken and shuddering as the ghastly picture is daily unfolded before it, and they will see that ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... very proud, and it made him writhe with anguish when he thought how heavily such a blow would fall upon his parents. For a moment ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... about that, in this year of grace 1877, two persons may be charged with cruelty to animals. One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that condition for hours; the other has pained the animal no more than one of us would be pained by tying strings round his fingers and keeping him in the position of a hydropathic patient. The first offender says, "I did it because I find fishing very amusing," ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... a convulsive spring, and fell back on the edge of the bulwarks, where he seemed to give a writhe, and then, before a hand could reach him, there was a loud splash, and he ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... the ZX-2 wallow in her death throes, writhe in the fiery doom that had struck her in seconds, that was devouring her with awful rapidity while thousands of men, blanched and trembling, gazed on helplessly. He saw her plunge, a blazing inferno, into the ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... into the fire, stamps it down with his foot, watches it writhe and blacken. Then suddenly clutching his head, he turns to the bodies on the couch. Panting and like a man demented, he recoils past the head of the couch, and rushing to the window, draws the curtains and throws the window up for air. Out in the darkness rises the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his natural sons, they, "men professing meekness, took the matter somewhat more angrily than befitted men so pious in the opinion of the people." So Buchanan himself puts it: but, to do the poor friars justice, they must have been angels, not men, if they did not writhe somewhat under the scourge which he had laid on them. To be told that there was hardly a place in heaven for monks, was hard to hear and bear. They accused him to the king of heresy: but not being then in favour ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... like ice on flame. Jack swore a muffled oath and turned away. There was no one in the world who possessed the power to humble him as did Dick, who with a few scorching words could make him writhe in impotent fury. For there was no gainsaying Dick. He was always unassailable in his justice, since in a fashion inexplicable but tacitly acknowledged by both he occupied a higher plane altogether. Ignore ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... have been in irons at the present moment. McDowell had been right after all. Miriam Kirkstone was fighting for something that was more than her existence. The thought of that "something" made Keith writhe and his hands clench. Shan Tung had triumphed but not utterly. A part of the fruit of his triumph was still just out of his reach, and the two—beautiful Miss Kirkstone and the deadly Shan Tung—were locked ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... a straight line, write a sentence correctly, build a cob-house on just proportions, nor keep the key through 'Yankee Doodle,' I long to insist upon his making a practical trial in such things before daring to make a criticism. Yet it is a fact that artistic people of every grade and type have to writhe under the criticisms of ignoramuses, who could not accomplish the piece of work they scathingly denounce if their lives depended upon it. I pick up a book and fling it aside with the comment, 'It's not worth reading!' or ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... framed to feel A yearning nature's strong appeal Should writhe on this eternal wheel ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... not practised at all times that grand self-denial. Who comes up to that teaching? Do you not wish for, nay, almost demand, instant pardon for any trespass that you may commit,—of temper, or manner, for instance? and are you always ready to forgive in that way yourself? Do you not writhe with indignation at being wrongly judged by others who condemn you without knowing your actions or the causes of them; and do you never judge others ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... pleased God to place him; next he had to show how well he could bear pain. In all his trials he had been cheerful, forcible, natural, and straightforward. In this deep one he preserved the same character. Forced to throw himself down and writhe upon the floor in his paroxysms of pain, he rose up, livid with exhaustion, and with the sweat of anguish on his brow, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the verge of the sea, where they have stood for ages, defying the elements. The shadows that gather under their locked branches are like caverns and dungeons and lairs. The fox steals stealthily away as you grope among the roots, that writhe out of the earth and strike into it again, like pythons in a rage. The coyote sits in the edge of the dusk, and cries with a half-human cry—at least he did in my dead day. And here are corpse-like trees, that have been naked for ages; every angle of their lean, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of my faults, appeared to flow towards me from out of the temptations with which he was encircled. During this time my eyes were fixed upon my Heavenly Spouse; with him I wept and prayed, and with him I turned towards the consoling angels. Ah, truly did our dear Lord writhe like a worm beneath the weight of his anguish ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... house in England if a back door were left open." In the civilly phrased letter she received in answer to her own, Lady Mallowe read between the lines the point of view taken, and writhed secretly, as she had been made to writhe scores of times in the course of her career. It had happened so often, indeed, that it might have been imagined that she had become used to it; but the woman who acted as maid to herself and Joan always knew when "she had tried to get ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... land, Trod by the Turk and by strangers scorned thou wert; Even thy child beholding thee in ruins, As if the waters of Oblivion In dark Oblivion's Dale had touched his lips, Left thee; and thou didst writhe like a whole world Engulfed in sounds of woe: Hair-tearings and Breast-beatings, groans of sad despair, night-bats Wandering restlessly, unheeded prayers Of souls condemned, loud thunder peals, fierce glares Of lightnings, and ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... more in length. They are composed of many, often several hundred, rings or segments. Between these the body-wall is thin, so that the segments move easily upon each other, and thus the animal can creep or writhe. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... "So, let him writhe! How long Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now! What a fine agony works upon his brow! Ha! gray-haired, and so strong! How fearfully he stifles that short moan! Gods! if I could but paint a ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in which I can see and kiss her brow, the smile on her lips, the shape of her face, can breathe the whiteness of her skin; which enables me almost to feel, to play with the black masses of her curling hair?—Could you see me when I leap with hope—when I writhe under the myriad darts of despair—when I tramp through the mire of Paris to quell my irritation by fatigue? I have fits of collapse comparable to those of a consumptive patient, moods of wild hilarity, ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... spend an afternoon than to go to the graveyard in the autumn, when the maples are clad in pink and gold, when the little scarlet runners come like poems out of the breast of the earth—go there and sit down and look at that photograph and think of the flesh, now dust, and how you caned it to writhe in pain ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... by an hour, or a word, that stringency of the legal obligation from which there is in a certain sense no redemption. Tie up your drinker under the pour of his nine gallons, and in two minutes he will moan and writhe (as you perfectly know) like a Brinvilliers under the water-torture. That he asked to be tied up, was unwise on his own principle of loving ale. And you sha'n't be 'chained' up, if you were to ask twenty times: if you have found truth or not in ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Brennan howled again; the pain was too much for him and he toppled sidewise to writhe in ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith |
