"Distorted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stream and land-slip expose good sections. The carbonaceous beds dip north 60 degrees and 70 degrees, and run east and west; much quartz rock is intercalated with them, and soft white and pink micaceous sandstones. The coal-seams are few in number, six to twelve inches thick, very confused and distorted, and full of elliptic nodules, or spheroids of quartzy slate, covered with concentric scaly layers of coal: they overlie the sandstones mentioned above. These scanty notices of superposition being collected in a country clothed with the densest tropical forest, where ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... match on the heel of his slipper, "the resources of Dr. Fu-Manchu are by no means exhausted. Before we quit this room it is up to us to come to a decision upon a certain point." He got his pipe well alight. "What kind of thing, what unnatural, distorted creature, laid hands upon my throat to-night? I owe my life, primarily, to you, old man, but secondarily, to the fact that I was awakened, just before the attack, by the creature's coughing—by its ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... account, poor shrivelled vestiges of once noble calves and thighs; and whose entire significance will be a noseless, hairless head, in shape and size like an idiot's, which the scientist, gloating over the ugly duckling of his distorted imagination, describes as a 'beautiful, glittering, hairless dome!' A sad period one fears for Gaiety burlesque. In that day a beautifully shaped leg and a fine head of hair will be rather a disgrace than a distinction. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... of a woman who had been savagely mangled by her murderers. The upturned and distorted face proved it to be Yohama, the grandmother of little Obo. Near to her lay the body of a grey-haired negro, who might to judge from his position, have fallen ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... that he had been suffering from his throat, and had overtired himself by walking over the common. Then, recognising from a distorted vision of himself in a Venetian mirror hanging by that something of his natural colour had returned to him, he rose and bade Vincent ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... other hand, sir," roars Cuff to his little schoolfellow, whose face was distorted with pain. Dobbin quivered, and gathered himself up in ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at about six o'clock, as they were going through a wood of mastic trees, where fat quail, made lazy by the heat were jumping up from the grass, Tartarin thought he heard... but so far off... so distorted by the wind... so faint, the wonderful roar which he had heard so many times back home in Tarascon, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... climate, that within eight months from the commencement of the improvements, a great change had already taken place. The grounds bore a park-like appearance; broad shady walks had replaced the narrow winding paths that ran in distorted lines over the ground, and a large Palmetum, or collection of tall and graceful palms of various kinds, occupied several acres at one side of the garden; whilst a still larger portion of ground was being appropriated to a picturesque assemblage of certain closely allied families of plants, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the Countess. Evan was skinned alive. Fly, wretched young man! Summon your pride, and fly! Fly, noble youth, for whom storms specially travel to tell you that your mistress makes faces in the looking-glass! Fly where human lips and noses are not scornfully distorted, and get thee a new skin, and grow and attain to thy natural height in a more genial sphere! You, ladies and gentlemen, who may have had a matter to conceal, and find that it is oozing out: you, whose skeleton is seen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beauty throughout nature; for this may be largely attributed to the agency of selection. That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not universal, must be admitted by every one who will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at certain hideous bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most brilliant colours, elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and sometimes to both sexes of many birds, butterflies and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... was trembling from head to foot. Under Mrs. Batholommey's distorted glare and threatening noiseless mouthings his puny courage had gone to pieces. Big tears began to roll down his cheeks. And noting the child's terror, Grimm ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... pain broke from Nell's lips, and wildly she tore away the gripping fingers. Her face was distorted with pain, and her right hand ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... this. They are a fierce, morose, and intractable people, though capable of forming most devoted friendships when their confidence has once been gained.' Mark that, Watson. Now, then, listen to this. 'They are naturally hideous, having large, misshapen heads, small, fierce eyes, and distorted features. Their feet and hands, however, are remarkably small. So intractable and fierce are they that all the efforts of the British official have failed to win them over in any degree. They have always been a terror ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... set her face in this direction, she was on the lookout for everything unfavorable; and everything, pretty nearly, was turned into something unfavorable, so perverted and distorted had her vision become. It was "Dora, did you notice this?" and "Amy, did you see that?" until the two began to find the incessant harping upon one subject rather wearisome, especially as the particular details thus ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... roared. All his suavity dropped away from him, his face was distorted and puckered with anger and grew a shade darker. "Married, you lying little beast! He couldn't have been married! It was only a few minutes after eight, and the parson didn't come till nine. I'll break your neck if you try to scare me! I've told ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... be a true one," I returned. "People find it hard to believe grand things; but why? If there be a God, is it not likely everything is grand, save where the reflection of his great thoughts is shaken, broken, distorted by the watery mirrors of our unbelieving and troubled souls? Things ought to be grand, simple, and noble. The ages of eternity will go on showing that such they are and ever have been. God will yet be victorious over our ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... distorted, that it was an extreme difficulty to drag her up stairs. The demons would pull her out of the people's hands, and make her heavier than, perhaps, three of herself. With incredible toil (though she ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... history; they eat out the poetry of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... shouted a voice near me, as if in mockery of my thought. It was more like that of a fiend than a man. I turned quickly. It was Andre Yanovitch, his young and handsome face distorted with a look of furious triumph as he wiped his bloody sword after killing the last of the Bashi-Bazouks who had failed to escape into the neighbouring woods. "These brutes at least won't have another chance of drawing blood from women and children," he cried, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... anatomy is the type of the pedestrian, man returned to first principles, in direct contact and intercourse with the earth and the elements, his faculties unsheathed, his mind plastic, his body toughened, his heart light, his soul dilated; while those cramped and distorted members in the calf and kid are the unfortunate wretches doomed ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... attention vacillated from one side of the ballroom to the other, as she searched for a well-known, graceful figure and a small, sleek black head. All the time, too, she was fearful of seeing a square-jawed face that kept recurring to her memory as she had last seen it that afternoon—distorted, with mouth open, and eyes protruding from their sockets. Vivid pictures of the terrible incident flashed before her as she tried to listen to her partners; now she was swept with horror and revulsion, and again she felt a strange ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... "offenses not enumerated and not cognizable under the regular process of law." Such arrests gave the enemies of the Administration another handle against it. As we shall see later, the use that Davis made of martial law was distorted by a thousand fault-finders and was made the basis of the charge that the President was aiming ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... consuming fire of impotent rage. He wished that he might run away somewhere where he could hide and tear things and swear. For a moment only he entertained the thought, and then a look into the determined face of the woman at his side drove the thought away. To his childish eyes, distorted by resentment, she was an implacable and relentless monster who would follow him with ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... against the purpose of God is still more evident in his direct hindering of the unsaved. Not only are they constantly blinded to the Gospel, but, when the Spirit would draw them, their minds are often filled with strange fears and distorted visions. Their inability to cast themselves upon Christ is a mystery to themselves, and nothing but the direct illuminating power of the Spirit in conviction can open their eyes and deliver them ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... kept his vigil . . . there the chair . . . and there the dab of yellow in the rug that the sun struck into faded gayety in the morning . . . and there the crack across the mirror, the wriggling, distorted, foolish crack that seemed alive for all its sameness. And there was always the noise of wind which became a corollary of his pain, pulsing with it, never quiet, an overtone that tragically ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the muscles of the cheeks and throat evinced the fearful strength of the convulsions which had preceded his dissolution. It was evident, indeed, that throughout his whole person above the waist, the nervous system had been utterly shattered; the arms, especially, appeared to have been awfully distorted, for when crossed on his breast, they had to be forcibly fastened down at the wrists by a band of spun—yam to the buttons of his jacket. His right hand was shut, with the exception of the forefinger, which was extended, pointing ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... seems as large as a horse; and a raven sitting upon a swell of the plain, has been mistaken for a buffalo. A peculiar state of the atmosphere is the magnifying cause, and it is only the experienced eye of the trapper that can reduce the magnified proportions and distorted form to their ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... clenched, his small, distorted eyes twinkling viciously through the apertures of the wind-mask, his harsh, black eyebrows lowering under the narrow, contracted forehead, drove the expedition to its work relentlessly. Not Muck Tu, the dog-master, had his Ostiaks ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... an hour we had reached the extremity of the "Salt Mountain," with all its distorted, sometimes even perpendicular stratification. By this time we were convinced that the whole of the mountain is not salt, but that a good deal of the upper length of it is a mixture of salt and marl or sand. Between it and the water's edge we frequently saw blocks and spires ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... facts removes all mystery respecting the greatest political phenomenon of all history, and makes of it an essential outcome of previous conditions. The French people were grossly ignorant of government. The long period of misrule had distorted every form of legitimate government. One school of political philosophers gave their attention to pointing out the evils of the system; another to presenting bright pictures of ideal systems of government which had never been put ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... found it delicious to trace the screaming and smarting of Little Eyes in the distorted writing of this epistle. She laughed over it and jeered at it in a convenient corner (to the great astonishment of the messenger) while the old man got his few goods together in a black bag. That done, the shutters of the upper windows closed, and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... always hung, and the cavern was belching forth deep mists, like the breathing of some prehistoric monster. He glanced up at the birdless rock above, and into the broken outlines of it he read the distorted features of some baleful, living creature, or some savage idol. But there was no answer here to the questions of his mind, any more than there had been on the rest of the plateau, so he rode on along the edge ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... freedom in the child's growth has been emblazoned to the kindergarten by the Montessori System.—Also by participating in the play as one of the characters, the teacher may help to a better form. Literature will be less distorted by dramatization when teachers are better trained to see the possibilities of the material, when through training they appreciate the tale as one of the higher forms of literature, and respect it accordingly. Also it will be less distorted by dramatization when the tales selected for ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... size, its shrunk limbs distorted and fleshless, and its lank body covered with filthy rags; its head, of enormous size, was entirely devoid of hair; and the unnatural shape as well as the prodigious dimensions of that bald cranium, betokened beastly idiocy. Its features, ghastly and terrible to look upon, bore a strange resemblance ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... had his wish. Moreover he had it given to him even as he desired, which does not usually happen. We are given a part, or the whole, so distorted that we ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... and watching her beautiful face distorted out of all loveliness, secretly congratulated himself upon the fact that he was not her prospective bridegroom. He wondered how Sir Frank, who was a mild, good-tempered man himself, could dare to make such a ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... a distorted Cupid supported pictures of Blakely and me, while beneath our pictures, a most fulsome chronicle of untruths was presented. "Mr. Porter first met his fiancee on shipboard..... Being of that fine old New York stock which never takes 'no' for an answer, he followed her ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... composed largely of animal matter, being pliable and easily moulded. For this reason the limbs of young children bend under the weight of their bodies, and unless care is taken they become bow-legged and distorted. Whenever there is a continued deficiency of the earthy constituents, disease of the bones ensues. Therefore, during childhood, and particularly during the period of dentition, or teething, the food should be nutritious ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... perhaps not quite so distant? It is undoubted that the Canary Islands were never really altogether forgotten, and the same is probably true of the Madeiras and all three groups of Azores, though the knowledge that lingered in Ireland was a distorted glimmering tradition of old voyages, occasionally inciting to new ventures ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... I have enjoyed hugely one notable evidence of his persuasive eloquence to be seen in a Lebanon Valley town, inhabited by the quaint folk known as Pennsylvania Germans. All along the line of the railroad traversing this valley may be seen these distorted willows decorating the prim front yards, and they are not so offensive when used with other shrubs and trees. In this one instance, however, the tree agent evidently found a customer who was persuaded that if one Kilmarnock willow ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... practising his penmanship in such impromptus. Tradition also relates that he added to his list of stories and jokes humorous imitations from the sermons of eccentric preachers. But tradition has very likely both magnified and distorted these alleged exploits of his satire and mimicry. All that can be said of them is that his youth was marked by intellectual activity far beyond that of ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and the vivid imagination. But he lacked the spirit of the investigator and had not a sufficient reverence for the naked fact. History interested him for the sake of his theories and his pictures, and rhetoric was his element. This being so it is not strange that we get from him now and then a distorted image. Great movements and prominent characters are depicted by him in accordance with his freedom-loving, cosmopolitan preconception; and his study was not to correct this preconception by a survey of all the evidence, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light, Rebuild it in the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, perfidious ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... laughed bitterly to himself when Dick was gone. These good people, because he was a parson, because the child's blood, by some accident, was not on his head, were banded to keep his self-respect for him, to cover over his cowardice with some distorted theory of courage. Perhaps they did not know, but he knew, about that last thought of determined egotism, that shout of "I won't! I won't!" before the car caught him. He knew, and never as long as he lived could he look the world in ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... appease the lust of power and the ravenings of state encroachment! A "compromise," forsooth! that sinks the general government on its own territory into a mere colony, with Virginia and Maryland for its "mother country!" It is refreshing to turn from these shallow, distorted constructions and servile cringings, to the high bearing of other southern men in other times; men, who in their character of legislators and lawyers, disdained to accommodate their interpretations of constitutions and charters to geographical lines, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fixed the skulls of the victims sacrificed on the death of their chiefs. At one end was a kind of scaffold, and on the opposite side, towards the sea, two small houses with a covered communication. At the entrance were two large wooden images, with features violently distorted, and on the head of each was a large piece of carved wood, of a conical form, inverted. The lower part was without form, and wrapped round with a red cloth. Not far off, in a retired grove by the side of a pool, was a collection of huts, inhabited by priests who attended this temple, of which ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... knowledge. In La Saisiaz he states that man's love is God's too, a spark from His central fire; but man's knowledge is man's only. Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with sense. The truth we reach at best is only truth for us, relative, distorted. We are for ever kept from the fact which is supposed to be given; our intellects play about it; sense and even intellect itself are interposing media, which we must use, and yet, in using them, we only fool ourselves with semblances. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... His features were distorted; he beckoned Camillo to step within. As he entered, Camillo could not repress a cry of horror:—there upon the sofa lay Rita, dead in a pool of blood. Villela seized the lover by the throat and, with two bullets, stretched ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... to think and act, a nervous system true as a dial in its response to the truth about you? Will you, boy of the Twentieth Century, let him come as a man among men in his time, or will you throw away his inheritance before he has had the chance to touch it? Will you turn over to him a brain distorted, a mind diseased, a will untrained to action, a spinal cord grown through and through with the devil grass of that vile harvest we call wild oats? Will you let him come, taking your place, gaining through your experiences, hallowed through your joys, building on them his own, or will you fling ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... the lips; they shook the head: He trusted in the Lord, let Him deliver Him since He desires Him;' this likewise He foretold should happen to Him. For they that saw Him crucified shook their heads each one of them, and distorted their lips, and, twisting their noses to each other, they spake in mockery the words which are recorded in the Memoirs of His Apostles, 'He said He was the Son of God: let Him come down; let God save ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... his own flier, a small two-seater ornithopter finished in dull gray—Smith's favorite color, incidentally—and in a minute or two he was well under way. Smith had a chance to watch, at close range, the distorted S-motion of the machine's wings. But the flight lasted only a few minutes, and presently the craft ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... flitted across the igarape, revealing the foliage on either side, amid which sometimes it seemed as if gigantic figures were stalking about, to seize us as we passed. They were, however, only the stems of decayed trees, or distorted ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... horrible illusions. But I had reason to modify my opinion in that respect a few years afterward, although I am still unable to make up my mind definitely as to just how much of his story was true and how much was due to an imagination that had become warped and distorted ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... true reason to have lapsed. Of whom, chief leader to do battle, comes That Heraclitus, famous for dark speech Among the silly, not the serious Greeks Who search for truth. For dolts are ever prone That to bewonder and adore which hides Beneath distorted words, holding that true Which sweetly tickles in their stupid ears, Or which is rouged in finely finished phrase. For how, I ask, can things so varied be, If formed of fire, single and pure? No whit 'Twould help for fire to be condensed or thinned, If ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... in the middle of a great desolate heath he began to feel tired, and sat down under an ancient hawthorn, through which every now and then a lone wind that seemed to come from nowhere and to go nowhither sighed and hissed. It was very old and distorted. There was not another tree for miles all around. It seemed to have lived so long, and to have been so torn and tossed by the tempests on that moor, that it had at last gathered a wind of its own, which got up now and then, tumbled itself ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be allied to genius, when they took the form of personal temptations;—it is surely, I say, sufficient warning against so mean a folly, to discern, as you may with little pains, that, of all human existences, the lives of men of that distorted and tainted nobility of intellect are ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... it is the earliest dated Arabic manuscript of the surgical treatise known to exist. The surgical illustrations therein add weight to the belief that the Arabic manuscripts show more originality in the drawings than do the later copied versions, which often were inaccurate and possibly distorted. About ten other illustrations from the Arabic manuscript in Istanbul indexed as "Topkapi MS. No. 1990" (which contains 215 beautifully illustrated figures) were presented by A. S. Aoenver and HA1/4seyin Usman in an extract titled "Me[s,]hur Arab Cerrahi ElbA1/4lkasimi Zehravi ve onum ...
— Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical Treatise • Sami Hamarneh
... right of the coach, some fifty feet away, was the only depression, a shallow gully leading down from the bluff, but this slight advantage was unavailable. The sun had already dropped from view, and the gathering twilight distorted the figures, making them almost grotesque in their savagery. Yet they could be clearly distinguished, stealing silently forward, guns in hand, spreading out in a wide half-circle, obedient to the gestures of Roman Nose, who, still mounted upon his pony, was traversing the river bank, his every ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... and his sayings too often found their way into print. In this way great injustice was done to the life and character of Robert Toombs, and Northern men who read these quaint sayings and redolent vaporings formed a distorted idea ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... discovered the form of the young man suspended by one foot to a branch of juniper that grew ten feet down: thus dreadfully did he hang over the gulph from the branch bent with his weight. His features were distorted, his eye-balls glared with agony, and his screams became so shrill and terrible, that I lost all power of assistance. Fixed, I stood with my eyes riveted upon the criminal, who incessantly cried out, 'O God! O Father! save me, if there be yet ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... the Jew noticed that his face had changed, and in place of the sardonic good-humor which had before possessed it, was now distorted by a devilish malice. His eyes gleamed coldly, and he snapped them quickly ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... sensuality. The apostle traces back the horrible depravity of the heathen world, which he depicts with a pen as sharp as that of Juvenal, but with none of Juvenal's bitterness and vitriolic sarcasm, to a distorted and false conception of the being and attributes of God. He does not, for an instant, concede that this distorted and false conception is founded in the original structure and constitution of the human soul, and that this moral ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... department-store. A certain downtown section of New York City is monopolized by the publishers and binders of "yellow-backs," which are turned out in bales and cart-loads daily. Girls fed upon such mental trash are bound to have distorted and false views of everything. There is a broad field awaiting some original-minded philanthropist who will try to counteract the maudlin yellow-back by putting in its place something wholesome and sweet ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... groan came from behind the stove. Young Jamieson came out, his features distorted with grief and shining with tears. "Think of it! think of it! Not till spring! Are they well? How are ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... to what we also do with mountains, statues, towns, and so forth. Our living individuality lends individuality to them. I might here digress to discuss whether this habit of the mind were not a distorted reflection of some truth, and whether, indeed, there be not such beings as demons or the souls of things. But, to leave that, we take our authority—this thing "Science," for instance—we clothe it with a creed and appetites and a will, and all ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... tenderness, and not without touches here and there of genuine Irish humour, lie buried now, to all save antiquaries, in the folios of the Bollandists and Colgan: but the memory of their virtue and beneficence, as well as of their miracles, shadowy and distorted by the lapse of centuries, is rooted in the heart and brain of the Irish peasantry; and who shall say altogether for evil? For with the tradition of their miracles has been entwined the tradition of their virtues, as an enduring heirloom for the whole Irish race, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... forest for the golden eye of a lizard or the indrawn movement of the green frogs' flanks. In particular, he saw her outlined against the deep green waters, in which squadrons of silvery fish wheeled incessantly, or ogled her for a moment, pressing their distorted mouths against the glass, quivering their tails straight out behind them. Again, there was the insect house, where she lifted the blinds of the little cages, and marveled at the purple circles marked upon the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... chagrin," as he nicknamed this wretched retina of his, after Balzac's famous story. He could still see with the left of it and at the bottom, but a veil had come over the middle and all the rest; by daylight he could see through this veil, but every object he saw was discolored and distorted and deformed—it was worse than darkness itself; and this was so distressing, and so interfered with the sight of the other eye, that when the sun went down, the total darkness in the ruined portion of his left retina came ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... as he wandered here and there, he saw groups of people smelting the gold under the shadow of the trees, and he observed that a dancing, quivering vapor rose up from it which dazzled their eyes, and distorted everything that they looked at; arraying it also in different colors from the true one. He observed that this vapor from the gold caused all things to rock and reel before the eyes of those who looked through it, and also, by some strange affinity, it ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... said, an imitation of characters of a lower type, not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... sunlight upon the mountain ahead. The darkness had been paling. Now day suddenly burst upon us. The sun, smaller than on Earth, mounted swiftly up. It was a flattened, distorted, dull-red disc, blurred by Wandl's strange atmosphere. We were in a ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... time had the execrable succession lasted, for fifteen generations (as I may call them)[374] had already passed in this wickedness. And to such a point had an evil and adulterous[375] generation[376] established for itself this distorted right, rather this unrighteousness worthy of punishment by any sort of death, that although at times clerics failed of that blood, yet bishops never. In a word there had been already eight before Cellach, married men, and without orders, albeit men of letters.[377] ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... with them the passion for perpetuation remains a mere passion. But man has developed imagination. The pure sexual passion is glossed over and obscured by a cloud of fancies, mistaken yearnings, and distorted dreams. And so well is the real intent of the function obscured, that it is actually lost to him, especially during the period of love madness, so that there seems an apparent divorce between the parts which go to make up ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... over to us men swaddled, distorted, stuffed with prejudices and principles, heavy as paving-stones; all of which are the more difficult to dislodge since you look upon them as sacred; you are started on the matrimonial journey with so much luggage reckoned as indispensable; and at the first station your husband, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... arrival here. And as I write this for your personal satisfaction, I rely that my letter will, under no circumstances, be communicated to any mortal, because you well know how every syllable from me is distorted by the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... influence was at work among the orthodox, an influence that tended to the same great result, no longer an accident, but a necessity of the age. The Biographia Literaria and The Friend of Coleridge, embodying a dwarfed but not distorted version of the metaphysical system of Kant, which had created a profound sensation in England, met with an even more enthusiastic reception in this country. The Christian character of their author was beyond ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he had promised himself to inquire of her calmly, he pressed his head with his hands again, and said, with a face distorted by pain and anger,—"She is gone. She was taken ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Corridor Four. Her freckled countenance was distorted by a scowl. "Hey, Mike, wait a minute," she said, low and hurriedly. "Have ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... rudiments of this story are so very hard to decipher—though in truth they are hard enough—but rather that the men who made the attempt had all along viewed the subject through an atmosphere of preconception, which gave a distorted image. Before this image could be corrected it was necessary that a man should appear who could see without prejudice, and apply sound common-sense to what he saw. And such a man did appear towards the close of the century, in the person of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... John's face was distorted with agony. He darted toward Paul, fell on him, and gripped him closely. Paul yelped and Miss Bussey observed, in an indignant tone, that John need not throttle the dog. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Tudor uttered the question, yet something of the habitual sneer which he always kept for Piers distorted his mouth as he spoke. He was not an easy man to beat, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... protect his son. Oscar seemed much moved. I think it was about this time that Bosie Douglas came in. At Oscar's request, I repeated my argument and to my astonishment Douglas got up at once, and cried with his little white, venomous, distorted face: ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... and, in truth, a very distorted sketch of the dragons, she gathered up her colours and portfolio, and prepared to search farther afield for objects on which to expend her genius. She followed Susy into the octagon hall, but, seeing the wide front doors open, went out, and, crossing a by no means well-kept ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... at least express the view of the United States and justify the course which our nation would unquestionably follow if the basic purpose of the League were at any time distorted. It would also appear to be a simple matter to provide against any misunderstanding in the future and at the same time to meet the objections of those who believe that we might be inviting a controversy over our constitutional ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... its outward expression. But history does not record a heavier responsibility than that which rests upon the decaying Church. She set up as absolute truth, and by the most violent means, a doctrine which she had distorted to serve her own aggrandizement. Safe in the sense of her inviolability, she abandoned herself to the most scandalous profligacy, and, in order to maintain herself in this state, she levelled mortal blows against the conscience ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... incident in the captain's mind was so completely finished that when the three of them sat at dinner he chaffed Bananas on his appearance. He was eating with difficulty and, his swollen face still more distorted by pain, he looked ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... strictest integrity, the most self-sacrificing honesty, are beginning to be looked upon as marvels, and we have won for ourselves among the nations of the world the unenviable title of worshippers of the 'almighty dollar.' Religion itself is twisted and distorted into every imaginable shape to bring it into harmony with our all-absorbing pursuit: all our ideas of public policy and of social progress are made to depend upon and modified by this unworthy motive. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... however, injurious to the healthy growth, strength, and permanent beauty of the nails. The common practice of scraping the surface of the nails cannot be too strongly censured, as it causes them to become weak and distorted. Blows on the nails, and, indeed, violence to them in any form, also distorts ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... against the wall behind, had opened his eyes fully, had dragged back his legs beneath him and balanced himself for his leap. And, in distorted perspective, his actions were reflected on ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... trailed, broken and bruised by the fierce rush of the current. The trees themselves seemed centuries old, bent and gnarled and twisted into grotesque and ghostly forms. In the dim twilight reigning here one could fancy one stood in some hideous torture-chamber, surrounded by writhing and distorted figures. There an elbow, there a withered arm, a fist clenched in agony, seemed protruding from the sombre, sad-clothed trees, so weirdly knotted and twisted ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... could express this alliance with complete logic if called on. But behind the casually blowing sand she sensed a depth. The shimmering atmosphere, hostile to man, which sealed the red desert was a lens that distorted and concealed by its intervention. The groundcar was a mechanical bug, an alienness with which timorous man had allied himself; allied with it against reality, she and Nuwell were hastened by it through reality, unseeing, toward the goal of ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... frequently applied them to feelings and thoughts with which they had no natural connexion whatsoever. A language was thus insensibly produced, differing materially from the real language of men in any situation. The Reader or Hearer of this distorted language found himself in a perturbed and unusual state of mind: when affected by the genuine language of passion he had been in a perturbed and unusual state of mind also: in both cases he was willing that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... King, down all the glorious reaches of river, glistening in the sunlight, that wind through the length of the Pahang valley. The people of the villages came out upon the river banks, and watched the procession file past them with silent, unmoved countenances, and all the long way the distorted head of him, whose eyes had looked with longing on a throne, shook gently from side to side, with the motion of the boat, as though he still was musing sadly on the schemes which had brought ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... served by this harshness? He perceived that his nerves were overstrung. And in a swift rush of insight he saw the whole situation from her point of view. She was exhausted by gestation; she lived in a world distorted. Could she help her temperament? She was in the gravest need of his support; and he was an ass, a blundering fool. His severity melted within him, and secretly he became tender as only a man ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... things—well, all that's come. There are, perhaps, ten million men dead of this war and, perhaps, one hundred million persons to whom death would be a blessing. Add to these as many millions more whose views of life are so distorted that blank idiocy would be a better mental outlook, and you'll get a hint (and only a hint) of what the continent has already become—a bankrupt slaughter-house inhabited by unmated women. We have talked of "problems" in our day. We never had a problem; for the worst task ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... shaking her head, thinking over the vanished splendor. Illiterate enough, unimaginative enough on all other subjects, her distorted wits called up this picture with marvellous distinctness. It was plain she saw the plate clearly. Her description ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... against Nature. Hence we find in sculpture and painting those revolting subjects—martyrdoms, crucifixions, dying saints, and the flesh crushed in every form. Such themes were martyrdom for sculpture; and when I contemplate those distorted images in which Christian asceticism and renunciation of the senses are expressed by distorted, pious heads, long thin arms, starveling legs, and awkwardly fitting garments, I feel an indescribable compassion for the artists of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... is clearly of such a nature as to convulse the country. To what meanness will not these Tories stoop, for the furtherance of their barefaced schemes of oppression and pillage! The facts they have so grossly distorted with their tortuous ingenuity and demoniac intentions, are simply these:—A saveloy was ordered by one of the upper servants (who is on board wages, and finds his own kitchen fire), the boy entrusted with its delivery mistook the footman for his lordship. This is very unlikely, as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... o'clock, so I dozed and nodded and swore to myself during the two hours' ride. I wanted to get there, but I dreaded it, too. Stories I had heard traveling men tell about poor beds, mean men, dirty food, and unprincipled competitors all came back to me in a distorted fashion, and if I didn't have a nightmare I must have experienced a slight ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... and she blessed heaven that she could truly say so, "which could possibly be distorted ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... causes the roots to become greatly thickened and distorted, is difficult to manage if cabbages or allied plants are grown continuously on land in which diseased plants have been raised. Changing the location of the cabbage or cauliflower patch is the best procedure. ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... wistfully. "A Singhalusi would have wasted an hour telling me half-truths—distorted enough to confuse, but not sufficiently inaccurate to anger me if I had a spy-cell ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... persons were of course in the secret, but their interests kept them silent, and the two accomplices had at last persuaded themselves that they were perfectly safe. One evening, however, Perregaud came home, his face distorted by terror and trembling in every limb. He had been warned while out that the suspicions of the authorities had been aroused in regard to him and La Constantin. It seemed that some little time ago, the Vicars-General had ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... civilized they grow the more they will let their bodies deteriorate. They will let their shoulders stoop, their lungs shrink, and their stomachs grow fat. No other species will be quite so deformed and distorted. Athletics they will watch, yes, but on the whole sparingly practise. Their snuffy old scholars will even be proud to decry them. Where once the simians swung high through forests, or scampered like deer, their descendants will plod around farms, or mince along ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... of a man, a fat woman, the head of the average woman, the young woman, &c. Short Profession of Faith (see page 130). Scale for Human Proportions, &c. Fragments of the Preface of Essay on Aesthetics, &c. Grimacing and distorted faces. Use of measurements. On the characters of faces, thick, thin, broad, narrow, &c. Sketches of a dragon and of an angel for Maximilian's Triumphal Procession. List of Luther's works (see page 130). Drawings of human bodies ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... which means fish-eaters, or eaters of food from the salt water. Many of the young men and women were handsome in feature below the forehead, having fine eyes, aquiline noses and good mouths, but, in conformity with a long-standing custom, all had flat heads, which gave them a distorted and hideous appearance, particularly some of the women, who went to the extreme of fashion and flattened the head to the rear in a sharp horizontal ridge by confining it between two boards, one running back from the forehead at an angle of about forty ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and distorted, her breast heaving, her every nerve quivering, and her eyes were like balls of fire ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... yourselves; and most of all note well Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel. Not every blossom ripens into fruit; Minerva, the inventress of the flute, Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed Distorted in a fountain as she played; The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate Was one ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was dry. She did it up with a care she had not had time to give it in many a week. She put on the dark-blue serge skirt of the between seasons dress she had brought with her from Forty-fourth Street; she had not worn it at all. With the feeble aid of the mirror that distorted her image into grotesqueness, she put on her hat with the care that important detail of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... presented Moselekatsi with a coveted uniform. It was of the old- fashioned kind, with bulky epaulettes on the shoulders; and what must Moselekatsi do, but remove them from there and add them to the tails! A humorous picture he must have made, in his distorted white ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... even here, of coarse superstition, bloody sacrifices, and foolish adoration of perishable stone idols and beasts without understanding; and in other places by the false and delusive arts of Magians and sorcerers. Even the dim apprehension of true salvation was darkened and distorted by the subtleties of a vain and inconsistent philosophy, which held a theory as immutably true one day and overthrew or denied it the next. Thus, by degrees, the temple of the idol of Sinope degenerated into a stronghold of deceit and bloodshed, of the basest superstition, the pleasures ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on the pile of kindling wood upon the kitchen hearth and stared at the poor black creature shivering in the warmth, his face distorted with the toothache, and a dirty rag about his jaw. He heard Aunt Rhody snorting indignantly as she basted the turkeys, and he watched his grandmother bustling back and forth with whiskey ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... armature of the dynamo is rotated the field becomes distorted, and the lines of force are bent out of their natural shape. The new directions of the lines of force are a resultant of the lines of force of the armature proper and of the field magnet. For when the dynamo is started ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... unsteadily. His face flushed, grew pale, and something like a grimace distorted his features, as he said, "The sale is not ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... tossed by the stormy billows, and for many days they travelled on till they arrived at the dreary precincts of the Black Forest. Boldly plunging into it, they reached a dense part of the wood, composed of withered, hollow, and distorted trees, whence proceeded sounds the most unearthly and terrific. The dismal croaking of the night raven, the hissing of serpents, the hoarse bellowing of wild bulls, the roaring of lions, the laughing ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... distorted the countenance of Max Graub, but he quickly buried his nose and his expression together in a ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... that arose from the four blank walls about me as my feet alighted on that rough, uncarpeted floor, that struck a vague chill through my blood, and I actually hesitated for the moment whether to pursue the investigations I had promised myself, or beat a hasty retreat. A glance at the huge distorted limbs swaying across the square of the open window decided me. It was easy to enter by means of that unsteady support, but it would be extremely unsafe to venture forth in that way. If I prized life and limb I must seek some other method of egress. I at once put ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... shrieked one Jew, tall and thin as a stick, thrusting his sorry visage, distorted with terror, from among a group of his comrades, "gracious nobles! suffer us to say a word, only one word. We will reveal to you what you never yet have heard, a thing more important than ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... his words have already lost half their value by repetition. His manner is aped by those who find an easy path to notoriety in imitation; the belief he held near his heart is worn as a creed like a badge; the truth he promulgated is distorted in a room of mirrors, half of it is a truism, the other half a falsism. That which began as a denunciation of tea-table morality, is itself the tea-table morality of the next generation: an outcry against cant may become the quintessence of cant; a revolt from tyranny ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... wounded in battle present a scene well calculated to move the most callous. Men shot and lacerated in every conceivable manner; some are expressionless; some just as they appeared in life; while others are pinched and drawn and otherwise distorted, portraying agony in her most distressful state. Of the wounded, in their anguish, some are perfectly quiet; others are heard praying; some are calling for their mothers, while others are giving out patriotic utterances, urging their comrades ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... could conceive of nothing to take the President there I set the story down as a canard, and went to bed without giving it further thought. Next morning, however, an official telegram confirmed the fact of the assassination, though eliminating the distorted circumstances that had ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... occur only in Florida, where it is sometimes common enough to require remedial treatment. The affected portions of the foliage are more or less distorted and covered with an ashy white fuzz. The general vigor and fruitfulness of the plants are greatly reduced. The name applied to this trouble denotes its cause, an extremely small mite (Phytoptus calacladophora Nal.), which by its presence on the leaves or stems so irritates ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... prodigiously humorous in a drawing. But so only when he is quite young. The Japanese keeps, apparently, his sense of this kind of humour. It amuses him, but not perhaps altogether as it amuses the child, that the foreshortened figure should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, seem distorted and dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more derision in it than the simple child. The distortion is not without a suggestion of ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, but not precisely scorn. He does not hold himself superior to his hideous ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... English and French journalists have not been slow in following the German example. It is said that after the fall of Antwerp the Koelnische Zeitung announced that "as soon as the fall of Antwerp was known the church bells in Germany were rung," a harmless message which was successively distorted by the Matin, the Daily Mail, and the Corriere della Sera, until it finally reappeared in the Matin in the following form: "According to the information of the Corriere della Sera from London and Cologne it is confirmed ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... tray on the table in front of some books; and you will see it reflects the objects beyond it as in a little black rippled pond; its own color mingling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw these reflections of the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the luster to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects in general practice; only you should do one or two in order to understand the aspect of any ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... silence which ensued, and no doubt seemed longer than it actually was, I suppose that he collected some half of the truth, and in the manner of him who sees but half, distorted it to be greater than the whole. His manner towards me altered very materially; he resumed ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Wigs and white Girdles make love at the side of a Coach, and cry, Madam, this is dainty Weather. Thus she described the Diversion; for she went only to pray heartily that no body might be hurt in the Crowd, and to see if the poor Fellows Face, which was distorted with grinning, might any way be brought to it self again. She never chats over her Tea, but covers her Face, and is supposed in an Ejaculation before she taste[s] a Sup. This ostentatious Behaviour is such ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... like a pool with ripples on it, the light reflects unevenly, and you see a distorted image; your face seems to be rippling ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... to see what is the final outcome of this moral code, of this one-sided and distorted ethic, we have only to turn our eyes to France. On the one hand we have "la jeune fille" in her white Communion robe, kept so pure and ignorant of all evil, that "une societe ecclesiastique," I am told, exists for the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... when great lumps, dark and burning with inflammation, stood out upon her forehead, and heavy sashes of black circled her eyes, while all the rest of her face was white and bloodless and cruelly distorted with pain—even now there was a kind of beauty about her that gave her rank above the class to which conditions, more ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... existence. There is evidence that it was connected with the mainland by solid earth in the early or Middle Tertiary. For a long geologic time the land was low and swampy. At the end of the Eocene a great upheaval occurred; there were foldings and crumplings, igneous rock was thrust into the distorted mass, and the islands were considerably elevated above the sea. During the latter part of the Tertiary period the lands seem to have subsided and to have ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... position of the British Government more difficult than already it was, could have glanced at some Prisoners' Camps, for instance, they would very quickly have recognised that an unbalanced sentimentality had exaggerated facts, and even in some cases distorted them. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... at the figure of the young white man, slumped in stupor against the flag-pole. . . . A look of unutterable scorn distorted her face. Then she looked up at the White Chief shaking her head in ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... most remarkable stories in English literature, and is worthy to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one bright ray redeems it. It deals with the most evil characters and the most evil phases of human experience. But it fascinates. Heathcliff, the chief figure ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... due to the door of the study, which great age had distorted and bereft of sense, and, in fact, almost unhinged. It unlatched itself, paused, and then calmly but firmly swung wide open. When it could swing no farther it shook, vibrating ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... great guns, and Helen began to hear, above all the sound of human voices, cries and shouts of command. Dark figures, perfectly black like tracery, began to appear against a background of pallid smoke, or ruddy flame, distorted, shapeless even, and without any method in their motions. They seemed to Helen to fly back and forth and to leap about as if shot from springs like jumping-jacks and with as little of life in them—mere marionettes. The great pit of fire and smoke in which ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... population did not amount to four thousand at the end of the reign of Charles the Second. The effects of a species of toil singularly unfavourable to the health and vigour of the human frame were at once discerned by every traveller. A large proportion of the people had distorted limbs. This is that Sheffield which now, with its dependencies, contains a hundred and twenty thousand souls, and which sends forth its admirable knives, razors, and lancets to the farthest ends of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... call 'syncopation' of a very intricate and highly developed order. The peculiarity of this syncopation is best explained to the layman by drawing attention to the way in which the natural rhythms of the English language are distorted to fit the rhythm of Negro music: where the white man would sing, 'Go down Moses,' the Negro chants, 'Go down, Moses,' while a phrase like 'See my Mother,' becomes in the mouth of the colored singer 'See my Mother.' These identical accents are found in even the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... but the musical rendition differs with the individual, each Mid[-e] chanting notes of his own, according to his choice or musical ability. There is no set formula, and such songs, even if taught to others, are soon distorted by being sung according to the taste or ability of the singer. The musical rendering of the words and phrases relating to the signification of mnemonic characters depends upon the ability and inspired condition of ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... mortals, Cuticle was subject at times to these fits of passion—at least under outrageous provocation—nothing could exceed his coolness when actually employed in his imminent vocation. Surrounded by moans and shrieks, by features distorted with anguish inflicted by himself, he yet maintained a countenance almost supernaturally calm; and unless the intense interest of the operation flushed his wan face with a momentary tinge of professional enthusiasm, he toiled away, untouched by the keenest misery coming under a fleet-surgeon's ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the face of his friend was distorted beyond recognition. The words his lips had framed to speak died upon his tongue, as with a furious heave Gard shook him off, entered the cab and slammed the door. Denning stood for a moment surprised into inaction, then, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... silent. To Min's face had returned something of its girlhood's innocence. The hard, unlovely lines were all smoothed out. The little cripple crept timidly up to Telford, with the silky head of the dog pressed against his cheek. Telford gathered the distorted little body to his side and looked earnestly into the small face—Min's face, purified and spiritualized. He would have it near him always. He bent and reverently kissed the cold face, the closed eyelids and the blood-stained brow of the dead woman. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... chilly stare, . . at her feet lay the body of the King her lover, dead and wrapped in a ring of flames! ... Alone—all, all alone, she confronted Death in its most appalling shape.. her countenance was distorted, yet beautiful still with the beauty of a maddened Medusa, . . white and glittering as a fair ghost invoked from some deadly gulf of pain, she stood, a phantom-figure of mingled loveliness and horror, circled on every ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of ashes into those of the bad. It is a night of fearful joy for all the little ones. When they hear her bell ring, they shake in their sheets; for the Bifana is used as a threat to the wilful, and their hope is tempered by a wholesome apprehension. It is supposed to be a distorted image of the visit of the kings and wise men with their presents at the Nativity, as Santa Claus may be of the shepherds, and the Christ-kindchen of Christ himself. However this may be, it is curious to observe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Peter stood still. What had gone before had robbed him of his courage. He thought now that all was over with him. With his hair standing up on end and his pale face distorted ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... mind which kept her features in a continual placid form, though enchanting at the first glance, upon a second or third, fatigued the sight for want of variety; and to have seen her distorted with rage, convulsed with mirth, or in deep dejection, had been to her advantage. But her superior soul appeared above those emotions, and there was more inducement to worship her as a saint than to love her as a woman. Yet Dorriforth, whose ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... church. But in truth there is nothing surprising about it. Catholicism was and remained a unit, while its opponents were eventually broken up into hundreds of warring and politically impotent organizations. Religious faith became distorted into a weapon for selfish and greedy territorial aggrandizement in the hands of Protestant princes. "Cujus regio ejus religio" was the taunt hurled in the face of the imploring Calvinists of France and the Low Countries by the arrogant Lutherans of Germany. Such ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it their business to conceal the facts, and politicians violently denounce the politicians of other countries. There is a long beating of tom-toms by the press and all other agencies for influencing public opinion. Facts are distorted and lies invented until the common people cannot get at the truth. Yet, when the war is over, if not before, we always find that "a place in the sun," "a path to the sea," "a route to India" or something of the sort is at ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... counting with safety on a considerable interval before Aaron could descend, started once more toward Anna and Blanka. Only twenty paces now intervened between him and them. His eyes glowed and his face was distorted with a horrid expression, more brutal than human. His appearance might well have made the boldest recoil. Anna planted herself before her companion, as if to shelter her, while Blanka felt only a mad desire to run and throw herself over the precipice. But suddenly, when the man was only ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... at any rate, I was not a remarkable child! It is the average record which has most value. The remarkable child is not a magnified child, but a distorted one; not a young giant, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... of Dreams", by Mrs. Renshaw, is a graphic and enthralling venture into the realm of nocturnal unreality. The free play of active imagination, the distorted and transitory conceptions and apparitions, and the strangely elusive analogies, all lend charm and color to this happy portrayal of the vague boundaries of Somnus' domain. Mrs. Renshaw's rank as a poet ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... to know what the firing was about. When told the truth—that I had been trying to shoot a dish of doves for breakfast, as I could get neither meat nor drink from his kitchen—the head boy, rather guessing than understanding what was told him, distorted my message, and said to the king, as I could not obtain a regular supply of food from his house, I did not wish to accept anything further at his hands, but intended foraging for the future in the jungles. The king, as might be imagined, did not believe ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Few facts are so encouraging to the student of human development as the desire, which most men and all communities manifest at all times, to associate with their actions at least the appearance of moral right. However distorted may be their conceptions of virtue, however feeble their efforts to attain even to their own ideals, it is a pleasing feature and a hopeful augury that they should wish to be justified. No community embarks on a great enterprise without fortifying itself with the belief that from ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of course, here as everywhere, that one may go too far; and it is entirely conceivable that both soloist and conductor might go to such extremes in their display of emotion that the music would be entirely distorted, losing what is after all its main raison d'etre, viz., the element of beauty. But there seems at present to be no especial danger that such an event will occur; the tendency seems rather to be toward overemphasizing intellectualism in music, and toward turning ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... walking up and down the length of the room, between the black oak bookcases filled with rows of calf-bound volumes. I tried to think, but between my thoughts and myself there obtruded always, like some small, malignant devil, the face of the old woman on the pavement before the bank, with her distorted and twisted mouth. "This will have to go—everything will have to go—when I've sold every last stick I have in the world, I shall still owe a debt of some cool hundreds of thousands. I'll pay that, too, some day. Of course, of course, but when? Meanwhile, we've got to live somewhere, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... struggle" internal rather than external, brought about the rebirth of the Ku-Klux Klan on this side of the waters, and worked against the success of the Nation's arms abroad. In social questions it makes sex "the distorted glass by which the Negro is presented to view." It "lays its fetters upon science" and stifles the truths of anthropology with a blanket of myth. The spread of the habit of thought is in many cases part of a deliberate propaganda, the chief agent of which is the American newspaper, and "the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... leaf occasionally came to grief by reaching the surface amid several large ones floating close together. Such a leaf expanded, as usual, but, like a beached boat, was gradually forced high and dry, hardening into a distorted shape and sinking only with the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... came shambling rapidly forward on powerful bowed legs, and with the tips of their long hairy arms brushing the ground, they looked like grotesquely distorted apes. The crowning horror of those shambling figures, however, lay in the fact ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... customary, I suppose, in reading Martial, to leave out these pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at least, until I found them for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical conception ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to "point a moral and adorn a tale." In all humility I differ from Carlyle in this derivation, my only excuse being that I happen to know the dialect as spoken round about Luxemburg and among the Eiffel people, sufficiently well, and that in their vernacular there is no such word as could be distorted from Luetzel-via Luzzen-into Luxem-and then mean "little." It is really refreshing to be able to differ thoroughly, heartily, unreservedly, with ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... That pictures, on no perishable page, Thy beauties, rescued from the spoils of age, To live and blossom with thy poet's bay: For when remorseless Time brings on decay, When the loath'd mirror shall no more engage Thy smiles, distorted into grief and rage, Alas! to think that youth must pass away— Then in these lines contented shall thou trace, As in a lovelier glass, thy lasting charms, Not as they shall be, but as now they grace, Fresh in the bud ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... answered. If we put them off, they may be tempted to go elsewhere for information, and hear half-truths, or whole truths so distorted, so mingled with what is low and impure that, struggle against it as they may in later years, their minds will always retain these ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... made no mental complaint,—simply toiled on slowly enough for a couple of hours; then, thinking of a certain nook in the mountain just below the snow-line where there was a good-sized clump of dwarfed and distorted pines, he decided to stop there for the night, sheltered from the icy wind with a good elastic heap of pine boughs for their bed and coverlet, and a roaring fire to add ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... table again; and with that stroke the false beard fell from his chin and cheek, and exposed the malignant face, distorted with rage. A feeling of horrible repulsion came over me, and I should have struck at that serpent's head but for a startling occurrence. As he spoke, a wild scream rose upon the air, and as it echoed through the room the ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... Sandy when, in Tanner's library searching for the children's books among the shelves, it showed itself to Truscott's eyes without a certain ring. Mrs. Jack does not fancy Carlyle. He is too crabbed by far, she thinks, and she wonders how and where people get such distorted views of life, but the captain has been reading him a great deal during the past two months, and anything that interests him is food for her. Happy she is beyond all question, happy as woman ever becomes ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King |
