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Headlong   /hˈɛdlˌɔŋ/   Listen
Headlong

adjective
1.
Excessively quick.  Synonym: hasty.  "A headlong rush to sell"
2.
With the head foremost.  Synonym: headfirst.  "A headlong dive into the pool"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Headlong" Quotes from Famous Books



... his arrogance. "Because," I said, "this young man appears to me to be very much out of the common. Hitherto, whatever he has said he would do, he has done. You remember Crillon? Well, I trace a likeness. St. Mesmin has much of his headlong temper and savage determination. If you will take my advice, you will proceed ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... body like that of a man ABOUT to run, and moves off using the gestures of a man who IS running; after which he proceeds to his destination at an exquisite leisure. Remembering this old habit of his, it was with joy that I noted his headlong departure. Some ten feet of his progress accomplished, he halted (for no purpose but to scratch his head the more luxuriously); next, strayed from the path to contemplate a rose-bush, and, selecting a leaf with careful deliberation, placed it in his mouth and continued ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... part and the centre of this year's operations. The mass of the heap, though closely compacted, was fibrous, and a stick could be easily thrust into it, exposing the eggs. No sooner was such an opening made, and the stick withdrawn from the gap, than the ants swarmed into it, falling headlong over upon each other, and filling the bottom with their struggling bodies. Upon leaving the spot, to follow the footpath, I stamped my feet to shake down any stray insects, and then took off my coat and ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... slithering across his path and fear-struck beasts fleeing before his coming. He paused for neither path nor way but went straight for the school, running in mighty strides, yet gently, listening to the moans that struck death upon his heart. Once he fell headlong, but with a great wrench held her from harm, and minded not the pain that shot through his ribs. The yellow sunshine beat fiercely around and upon him, as he stumbled into the highway, lurched across the mud-strewn road, and panted up ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... the direction of the object of his ardent affections, with a most comic uncertainty in every step he took towards her. His claws felt the threads as he moved with anxious care; and it was clear he was ready at a moment's notice to jump away and flee for his life with headlong speed to his native obscurity if Eliza showed the slightest disposition, by gesture or movement, to turn and rend him. Now and again, as he approached, Eliza, half coquettish, moved her feet a short step, and seemed to debate within her own mind in which spirit she should meet ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... Jurgis. He stared; and little by little he made out the great apartment, with a domed ceiling from which the light poured, and walls that were one enormous painting—nymphs and dryads dancing in a flower-strewn glade—Diana with her hounds and horses, dashing headlong through a mountain streamlet—a group of maidens bathing in a forest pool—all life-size, and so real that Jurgis thought that it was some work of enchantment, that he was in a dream palace. Then his eye passed to the long table in the center of the hall, a table black as ebony, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... and climbed the cairn. He knelt on the brink of the hole and leaned over to see the discovery. A quick, strong push from Geoffrey sent him headlong into Featherstone's arms, and before he knew what had happened the Duke had gagged him with his own woollen gloves and handkerchief, and Sydney had ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... entered the lists against a legion of formidable rivals for the guerdon of Betty Gunning's hand. It was at a masquerade that he first seems to have set eyes on her; and at sight of her this jaded, worn devotee of pleasure fell headlong in love. Within an hour of being ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... never forget that bonnet," continued Miss Wealthy, pensively, "nor that dress. In getting out of the carriage her skirt caught on the step, and part of a row of braid was ripped; this made a loop, in which she caught her foot, and tumbled headlong to the ground. I mended it in the evening, after she was in bed, as it was the frock she was to wear every morning. My dears, I mended that frock every day for a month. It is the truth! the braid caught on everything,—on latches, on brambles, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... he brought forth his mother, and his brethren, and set them upon the wall, and beat them with rods in every body's sight, and threatened, that unless he would go away immediately, he would throw them down headlong; at which sight Hyrcanus's commiseration and concern were too hard for his anger. But his mother was not dismayed, neither at the stripes she received, nor at the death with which she was threatened; but stretched out her hands, and prayed her son not to be moved with the injuries that she suffered ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... sea-base for his great French campaign. Then Fontarabia, at the Bidassoa mouth; and far off, the cove within which lies the fatal citadel of St. Sebastian; all backed up by the fantastic mountains of Spain; the four-horned "Quatre Couronnes," the pyramidal Jaysquivel, and beyond them again, sloping headlong into the sea, peak after peak, each one more blue and tender than the one before, leading the eye on and on for seemingly countless leagues, till they die away into the ocean horizon and the boundless west. Not a sail, often for days together, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... Virginia had engaged them, General Evans ordered up the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Mississippi, and the three regiments made such an impetuous attack as to drive back the enemy to the bluff, and their leader, Colonel Baker, having fallen, a panic seemed to seize the command, so that they rushed headlong down the bluff, and crowded into the flat-boats, which were their means of transportation, in such numbers that they were sunk, and many of the foe were drowned in their attempt to swim the river. The loss of the enemy, prisoners included, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... by spearing, amid much excitement, the eager sportsmen often overbalancing themselves and falling headlong into the water to the great amusement of the more lucky ones. I remember reading an account of a dignified representative of Her Majesty once joining in the sport and displaying a pair of heels in this way to his admiring subjects. The tuba does not affect the ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody's life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... which he had just retreated. It tottered for two or three seconds, as if uncertain which way to fall; and had it taken a sidelong direction, must have dashed the adventurer from his place of refuge, or borne both the tree and him headlong down into the river. After a moment of horrible uncertainty, the power of gravitation determined a direct and forward descent. Down went the huge fragment, which must have weighed at least twenty tons, rending and splintering in its precipitate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various

... judge me too severely. Edgar's own headlong passions destroyed him. I merely urged him to do as others of his years and station, without foreseeing such fatal results. My love for you would have prompted me to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... see? After all his mother's airs and graces and running away with him when they were a pair of babies—as if Robin had the plague. I was the plague—and so were you. And here the old Duchess throws them headlong at each other—in all their full bloom—into each other's arms. I did not do it. You didn't. It was the stuffiest old female grandee in London, who wouldn't let me sweep her front door-steps ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... was broad and beautiful at first, and so they sailed away down towards its mouth. Then they came to great cliffs, which gathered round and closed over them. But the river ran on beneath these, and ever on far underground, deeper and deeper in the earth, till it dashed headlong into rapids, among rocks and ravines, and under cataracts which were so horrible that death seemed to come and go with every plunge of the canoe. And the water grew narrower and the current more dreadful, and fear came upon Marten and ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... cry and a loud splash he was plunged headlong into the narrow space of water between ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... well-educated lady, when she has once surrendered herself to the power of her confessor, becomes, as a general rule, at least as vulnerable to the arrows of the enemy as the poorer and less educated. Nay, I must say that, once on the down-hill road of perdition, the high-bred lady runs headlong into the pit with a more deplorable rapidity than ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... has left deep influence, if not a school. The younger Lytton, George Meredith, Buchanan, here and there Swinburne and William Morris, seem to break loose from the graceful harmony which the Tennysonians affect, and to plunge headlong into the obscure, the uncouth, the ghastly, and the lurid. No one denies originality and power in many of these pieces: but they are flat blasphemy against the pellucid melody of the Tennysonian idyll. Our poetry seems to be under two contrary spells: it is enthralled at one time by the ravishing ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... pinnacles, leaving us no hope of making our way along it; so we sought the most broken part of the eastern descent, and began to climb down. The heavy knapsacks, besides wearing our shoulders gradually into a black-and-blue state, overbalanced us terribly, and kept us in constant danger of pitching headlong. At last, taking them off, Cotter climbed down until he found a resting-place upon a cleft of rock, then I lowered them to him with our lasso, afterwards descending cautiously to his side, taking my turn in pioneering downward, receiving the freight of knapsacks as before. In this manner ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... the axe, redoubling strokes on strokes; On all sides round the forest hurls her oaks Headlong. Deep echoing groan the thickets brown, Then rustling, ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... went; but as the crater-side was pretty steep we had to descend with some caution; whereas the water, having no neck to break, went down headlong. The consequence was that the stream beat us to the canyon by a hundred yards, and by the time we arrived it was pouring over the edge in a ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... perfunctorily accorded. Bent, however, on running through the whole gamut of extravagance, Mr. Chapman—by interpreting official impunity into implying a direct license for the wildest of his caprices—plunged headlong with ever accelerating speed, till the deliverance of the Naparimas became the welcome consequence of his own personal action. On one occasion it was credibly reported in the Colony that this infatuated dispenser of British justice actually stretched his official complaisance so far as to ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... unextinguishably behind it, awaiting the necessity or the opportunity of a fresh eruption. The volcano was not permitted to slumber. Shere Singh, liberated from the imminent oppression of the soldiery, plunged headlong into a slough of detestable debauchery. But in our annals ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... giving advice to a young man who is over head and ears in love? He will never listen to it, and will only resent interference. Dick must take his chance. I have already pointed out the danger to him, and if he chooses to run headlong into the pit, why, I cannot hinder him. After all, I am not much surprised. Alizon's beauty is quite irresistible, and, were all smooth and straightforward in her history, there could be no reason why—pshaw! I am as foolish as the lad himself. Sir Richard Assheton, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these leadings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think of it—I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory-door, give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had always standing ready; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Diving headlong through the opening in the deck, he experienced a dizzying shift of gravity as he passed through the plane of the main deck. When he had his bearings again, he scrambled "up" the ladder toward the belly turret. By the time he got the airtight hatch open, he was beginning ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe

... shaft ascended like a flash of light into the air—struck the bird in full flight; and, tumbling headlong, the fowl fell toward Verty, who, with hair thrown back, and outstretched arms, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... the height with pain: "High in mid heaven arriv'd, to view beneath "Ocean and earth, oft strikes even me with fear, "And with dread palpitation shakes my breast. "Prerupt the end, and asks a firm restraint; "Tethys herself who nightly me receives, "Beneath the waves, fears oft my headlong fall. "Nor all;—the skies a constant whirling bears "In rapid motion, and the heavenly orbs "Sweep with them swift; I strive the adverse my; "Nor can th' impetuous force which whirls the rest "Bear with them me; I stem the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... Willes—even if quite another man was the model—never understood how it was possible for people to be bored. Flaubert once said in a letter, "Life is so hideous that the only way of enduring it is to avoid it." But Harland believed in plunging into it headlong and getting everything that is to be got out of it. He had eyes to see that "life is just one sequence of many-coloured astonishments", and the colours were the gayer when he came to our Thursday nights because he ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... to hell!' shouted Captain N——; at the same time seizing the astounded waiter by the shoulder, he hurled him headlong into the passage, and flung the door to with a crash that shook the walls. 'Sir,' continued he, addressing himself to O'Mara, 'I did not hope to have met you until to-morrow. Fortune has been kind to me—draw, and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... landing, and Mandy Ann, waving her hand, was calling out, "Hol' on dar, you cap'n. I'se sometin' berry 'portant for de gemman. Hol' on, I say," and she dashed across the plank, nearly knocking Ted down in her headlong haste. "Whar is 'ee?" she gasped, and continued, "Leg-go, I tell ye. Le' me be," as Ted seized her arm, asking what she wanted, and if she ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... his brother scout, Dick told the whole story from the moment he saw the startled rabbit until they had run upon the sergeant in their headlong flight. Then Chippy handed over the boot, which underwent the most careful examination at the hands of the colonel. The latter spread out on the table the tiny sheets of paper from the cavity, and studied them ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... which enveloped the end of the hall. Then they rushed with a wild cry at the door, which they unbarred with eager hands, and issued into the darkness. He heard a heavy fall, as if one, perhaps two, had missed the steps and gone headlong into the courtyard. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... Graham's sleeve, and incontinently the two were running headlong down the arcade of ironwork beneath the wind-wheels. Graham, running blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on him suddenly. He found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm. It extended as far as he could see ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... affectionate to those frail single-masters drifting between a double ultramarine of sky and water, tomorrow bad-tempered and turbulent, agitated by the winds, demolishing the strongest ships beneath sudden waves that smash down with a headlong wallop. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... society. What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master of the world then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh at such ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... out word upon word, hoping to get it over and done with once and for ever. But letting his eyes drop for an instant to the girl's face, he saw on it a look of such unutterable amazement that he stopped short in his headlong speech. ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards

... afterwards proclaimed by M. Gambetta, and since prosecuted by M. Jules Ferry. Out of that speech grew the policy of the Third Republic. Yet what did he say in 1888? He plainly declared his belief that the policy of the Government was driving the Republic headlong to its ruin. He spoke as a Republican, passionately reaffirming his faith in the Republic, and his desire to see it solidly founded in France. 'I conjure you, therefore,' he said, 'to take order, that the Republic ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... by some great conqueror, and we poor human beings let loose, defiant of its thralls! But no such conqueror comes, and Time flies swiftly as of yore, and drags us headlong, whether we will or not, ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford

... of making our land-fall in the night, and the greater the need of knowing the ship's position. I have often thought, Sir, that the ocean was like human life,—a blind track for all that is ahead, and none of the clearest as respects that which has been passed over. Many a man runs headlong to his own destruction, and many a ship steers for a reef under a press of canvas. To-morrow is a fog, into which none of us can see; and even the present time is little better than thick weather, into which we look without getting much information. Well, as I was observing, here lay our course, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... in 1790 and 1791, seeing things chiefly through the rosy spectacles of the young Oxford Republicans. On his second visit he joined the Girondists, or the moderate Republicans, and only the decision of his relatives, who cut off his allowance and hurried him back to England, prevented his going headlong to the guillotine with the leaders of his party. Two things rapidly cooled Wordsworth's revolutionary enthusiasm, and ended the only dramatic interest of his placid life. One was the excesses of the Revolution itself, and especially the execution of Louis XVI; the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... by his own selfish and solitary longing for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the absorbing spell of ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... The headlong haste of both sections was in the year 1850 halted for a time by the sage counsels of such leaders as Clay, in the South, even Webster, in the North. The South claimed, after the close of the Mexican War and the accession of the enormous Spanish territories to the southwest, ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... his hands were tied before him. The shooting pain of a prodding spear brought him from the paralyzing numbness that held him, and he came dizzily to his feet. Again the walls whirled, and he would have fallen headlong but for a lithe, soft body that sprang close to throw white arms ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... through the driving snow, and, eager for the shelter of the trading room, bolted pell-mell through the gathering at the doorway, upsetting several spectators before the driver could halt the runaways by falling headlong upon the foregoer's back and flattening him ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... into a little boat, and standing on the side to take my M.Y. down, the man not holding the boat secure to the ship, our weight pushed it from us, and we plunged headlong into the sea. My dear M.Y.'s clothes prevented her from sinking, and she was first assisted again into the boat. I went overhead, and had to swim several turns before I could reach the boat. The salt water ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... opposite tree, the momentum acquired by their descent being sufficient to cause a rebound of the branch that carries them upwards again till they can grasp a higher and more distant one, and thus continue their headlong flight." ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... wall. Blanco Sol settled into his graceful, beautiful swing. He gained steadily, though he was far from extending himself. By Gale's actual count the raider fired eight times in that race down the valley, and all his bullets went low and wide. He pitched the carbine away and lost all control in headlong flight. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... inwardly with stifled vexation because he would have to encounter a general by no means like Flaminius and Sempronius; and because the Romans, then at length schooled by their misfortunes, had sought a general a match for Hannibal; and that now he had no longer to fear the headlong violence, but the deliberate prudence of the dictator. Having not yet experienced his constancy, he began to provoke and try his temper, by frequently shifting his camp and laying waste the territories of the allies before his eyes: and one while ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... he thereby, most probably, for ever deprived her of that protection, by preventing her marriage, which even among such rakes as himself, is deemed, he owns, inviolable; and so casts the poor creature headlong into ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... such a nature as his should have been dangerously open to disaster. The guilelessness resulting from such a simplicity of life ought surely to have fitted him for a headlong rush into the pitfalls which are ever awaiting the unwary. This might have been so in a man of less strength, less reckless purpose. Therein lay his greatest safeguard. His was the strength, the courage, the resource of a mind trained in the hard school of the battle for existence ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... able in her headlong course to do more than glance at the implications that whizzed past. 'Gerald and I made the mistake, I think; we believed ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... appellation of Muggers! We had been warned against them by kindly disposed guards, and were not wholly unprepared. They attacked us with clubs, fists, and knives, but were repeatedly driven off, pitched headlong ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... so In the close-curtained court Those causes are deferred Which most import; These wait man's leisure. These daily matters elbow; Merely because His panic meanness Jibs blindly ere it hear What wisdom has prepared, Bolts headlong ere it see Her face unfold its smile. Man after man, race after race Drops jaded by the iterancy Of petty fear. Even as horses on the green steppes grazing, Hundreds scattered through lonely peacefulness, If shadow of cloud or red fox breaking earth Delude but one with dream of a stealthy ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... cadets of the Polaris unit raced down the Academy field toward the mercuryball, a plastic sphere with a vial of mercury inside. At the opposite end of the field, three members of the Arcturus unit ran headlong in a desperate effort to ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... of the bushes and looked at him—and said "Woof!" too—Johnnie Green did not bellow as the Muley Cow had. But he turned and ran. Once he tripped on a root and fell headlong. But he was on his feet again in a jiffy and running faster than ever. And though he had only half as many legs as the Muley Cow, he reached the pasture fence not far ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... cooler for a drink. Not one of them noticed the slippery banana skins spread out on the floor, and on the instant Bill Glutts went sliding along and came down flat on his back. Carncross did likewise, Codfish tripping over him and pitching headlong. ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... be worse? The King, if a rising of loyal people took place, ought to be amongst them; and that he will never consent to." "The King, God bless him! is a philosopher," he had said, repeating an expression of Lady Hamilton's, referring to the disasters which caused the headlong flight from Rome, through Naples, to Palermo; "but the great Queen feels sensibly all that has happened." The Queen also was extremely fearful, and Nelson intimated to St. Vincent that a request would be made for British troops to protect the sovereigns. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... coward, for, although the britchka pursued its headlong course until Nozdrev's establishment had disappeared behind hillocks and hedgerows, our hero continued to glance nervously behind him, as though every moment expecting to see a stern chase begin. His breath came with difficulty, and when he tried his heart with his hands ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... move his placid might? Not the headlong thunder's light, Nor all the shapes of slaughter's trade, With onward lance or fiery blade. Safe, with wisdom for his crown, He looks on all things calmly down, He welcomes Fate when Fate is near, Nor taints his dying breath ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... strife of things. One ever-during law still binds the whole, Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul. Wretches! while still they course the glittering prize The law of God eludes their ears and eyes. Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey; But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray. Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame; Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame; Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease, And the sweet pleasures of the body please. With eager haste they rush the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... to the writers of the present day, neither play nor farce has ever been presented to Englishmen, in which, when an irishman is introduced, he is not drawn as a broad, grotesque blunderer, every sentence he speaks involving a bull, and every act the result of headlong folly, or cool but unstudied effrontery. I do not remember an instance in which he acts upon the stage any other part than that of the buffoon of the piece uttering language which, wherever it may have been found, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... darkness shrouded the heavens, and there arose a violent storm. The vessel was hurled hither and thither by the towering billows; the hurricane tore the sails and dashed the mast against the pilot's head, crushing the bones, and he was cast headlong ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... might bathe, now in the flaws of fine weather, that we pathetically call our summer, now in a gale of wind, with the sand scourging your bare hide, your clothes thrashing abroad from underneath their guardian stone, the froth of the great breakers casting you headlong ere it had drowned your knees. Or you might explore the tidal rocks, above all in the ebb of springs, when the very roots of the hills were for the nonce discovered; following my leader from one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in this little study to escape those innumerable pitfalls into which contemporary criticism always stumbles. It is impossible to-day to view Mr. Belloc and his work in that due perspective so beloved of the don. No doubt we shall crash headlong into the most shocking errors of judgement, exaggerating this feature and belittling that in a way that will horrify the critic of a decade or two hence. Mr. Belloc himself may turn and rend us: deny our premises: scatter our syllogisms: ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... cliffs overhanging the sea, and fine woods crowning them. On one of the most inaccessible of these crags there was a hawk's nest, about half-way down, so that looking from the top of the precipice, we could see the old birds fly in and out. Well, what does Master Guy do, but go down this headlong descent after the nest. How he escaped alive no one could guess; and his grandfather could not bear to look at the place afterwards—but climb it he did, and came back with two young hawks, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... may be seen in the potrait of Paul Dudley to-day. There were few of what we consider the typical Englishmen among these Puritan soldiers and gentry. Then, as now, the reformer and liberal was not likely to be of the warm, headlong Saxon type, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and open to every suggestion of pleasure loving temperament. It was the dark-haired men of the few districts who made up Cromwell's regiment of Ironsides, and who from what Galton calls, "their ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... screamed, as he found himself going into the water, with a sort of confused consciousness of the truth; and Spike called out to Simon to "catch hold of his brother-nigger." The cook bent forward to obey, when a similar assault on his legs from beneath the thwart, sent him headlong after Josh. One of the younger seamen, who was not in the secret, sprang up to rescue Simon, who grasped his extended hand, when the too generous fellow was pitched headlong from ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... our engineers threw themselves headlong toward a cave across the valley, where they had rigged out a powerful electrono plant operating from atomic energy. And a few moments later the little portable receiver, the Intelligence Boss used to pick up the enemy ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... easily. Once, and he had thought it a passing light mood, when he had let down the bars for her to come in. Now that recklessly he flung open the flood gates which had dammed his own emotions, allowing the headlong torrent to sweep away everything with it. It was madness; it was folly; it was insanity for a man like David Drennen to let his heart be snared out of him by the girl upon whom he had looked so few times. And yet, be it what else it might be, it was ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... he be after? The woman? There are thousands of women,—all to be had for the asking—they pitch themselves at men headlong—no hesitation or modesty about them nowadays! Jack's asking would never have been refused by any one of them. But the millions of Morgana Royal are not to ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... larger than themselves, and sometimes so ponderous, that half-a-dozen of them would put their strength together, and pull them from one corner of their dominions to the other! I observed a sturdy mechanic, hurrying, like a thief, along the summit of this mound, fall headlong to the very base; but immediately recovering his senses, seized his load again, and mounted valiantly to ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... tangled bushes and trees that he could see nothing distinctly. Suddenly he put his right foot on a mass of twigs, which gave way under his weight, and he made a frantic effort to recover himself. Next moment, he fell headlong into a deep hole or pit at the bottom of which he lay stunned for some time. Recovering, he found that no bones were broken, and after considerable difficulty, succeeded in scrambling out of the hole. Just as he did so, the wail was again raised; but it sounded so strange, and so unlike ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne

... girl might be safe enough, for she was evidently an excellent horsewoman; but he also knew that if there should be a sharp turn to the left ahead, the horse in his blind fright would in all probability dash headlong into ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... animals was of a very pleasant nature, except on one occasion, when he thrust his arm into a hollow tree, in search of squirrels, and pulled out a large black snake. He was so terrified, that he tumbled headlong from the tree, and it was difficult to tell which ran away fastest, he or the snake. This incident inspired the bold boy with fear, which he vainly tried to overcome during the remainder of his life. There was a thicket of underbrush between his father's farm and the village of Woodbury. Once, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... desperately, and as he did so he heard the window within flung open, and the voice of a woman yelling for the police. The man inside sprang forward with an oath, the door yielded, and Philip plunged headlong into the room. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... missionary. Her mind was of superior order, and reason held even balance. Her zeal for the truth was not a blind, headlong enthusiasm, which sparkles, and glitters, and comes to an end, but a zeal founded on the wants and woes of a perishing world. She measured the depths of heathen degradation and estimated the worth of souls, and went to work ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... it, they neglected the recommendation of their general, and without reflecting that they were imitating the imprudence by which they had just profited, they precipitated themselves upon the flying footsteps of the Russians. They proceeded, headlong, in this manner for two leagues, and were only reminded of their temerity by finding themselves alone in presence of the Russian army. Verdier, forced to engage in order to support them, was already compromising ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... Donald's, of which, of course, not a word was understood, the only reply was a more fierce flourishing of brands, and a greater volubility and vehemence of abuse; the effect of which was at once to arouse Donald's choler, and to urge him headlong ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... higher up, to ford the Elster. The banks on each side are of considerable height, soft and swampy; the current itself narrow, but in this part uncommonly deep and muddy. How so expert a rider should have lost the management of his horse, I cannot imagine. According to report, the animal plunged headlong into the water with him, so that he could not possibly recover himself. He fell a victim to his temerity, and was drowned. His body was found several days afterwards, and interred with all the military honours ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... galloping like mad for home. A door in the high board fence at the rear of his house shot open just as he was darting through the lane that led to the stable. A woman's form appeared in the gap—the last thing that he saw for a dozen hours, for the horse shied violently, hurling the rider headlong to ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... smocks; the Invalides without disguise; their arms all piled against the wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstacy that the death-peril is passed, 'leaps joyfully on their necks;' but new victors rush, and ever new, also in ecstacy not wholly of joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlong; had not the Gardes Francaises, in their cool military way, 'wheeled round with arms levelled,' it would have plunged suicidally, by the hundred or the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Every man had gnawed through his cord with his teeth during the darkness, and at the concerted cry in a language that no one understood, the entire party, of upwards of eighty men, knocked down the astonished guard, also the sentries, and rushed headlong over the rocks in the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... of the objects that immediately surrounded her, the mountain-region towering above, the deep precipices that fell beneath, the waving blackness of the forests of pine and oak, which skirted their feet, or hung within their recesses, the headlong torrents that, dashing among their cliffs, sometimes appeared like a cloud of mist, at others like a sheet of ice—these were features which received a higher character of sublimity from the reposing beauty of the Italian landscape below, stretching ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... Ryan, tough as hickory and wont to drive headlong to his destination, Casey did not remain in town to loiter a half a day and sleep a night and drive back the next day, as most desert dwellers did. He hurried through with his business, filled up with gas and oil, loaded on an extra ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... have spared him; but he was true to his promise,— as soon as the song was finished, he threw himself headlong ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin

... perfume floats from out the world,— Wild tales were told of how the brothers loved The self-same maid, whom neither one would wed Because the other loved her as his life; And that the two, at midnight, in despair, From one sheer cliff plunged headlong in the sea. And when, at night, the hoarse east-wind rose high, Rattled the lintels, clamoring at the door, The children huddled closer round the hearth And whispered very softly with themselves, "That's Master Regnald looking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... mischief, did not observe the coming of the watchman. He was a little man, but must have been of some mettle in his day, for, perceiving what is afoot, he toddles up in his odd headlong gait, and laying his hand on the arm of one of the roisterers, formally arrests him in the name ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... and cliffs of various form; Abysmal depths, and dire profundities; Chasms so deep and awful that the eye Of soaring eagle dare not gaze below, Lest, dizzied, he should lose his aerial poise, And headlong ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... about him, hugging and kissing him; then stood back with a solemn stillness, their wings lying close to their shoulders. The little fellow looked round on them once with a smile, and then shot himself headlong through the star-hole. Diamond, as privileged, threw himself on the ground to peep after him, but he saw nothing. "It's no use," said the captain. "I never saw anything more of ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... grew still quieter as the march of events became headlong. "I can live without a maid for a while. Tonight I won't dress for dinner, this will do very nicely for the train; and come as soon after as I can pack a bag. There will be literally nothing in it; my summer things are all out of reach. Washington will be convenient ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... sun, he shouted out, 'Well, here I am, the highest of all!' 'Not so,' answered the gold-crest, as, leaving the eagle's back, he fluttered upwards, until suddenly he knocked his head against the sun and set fire to his crest. Stunned by the shock, the little upstart fell headlong to the ground, but, soon recovering himself, he immediately flew up on to the royal rock and showed the golden crown which he had assumed. Unanimously he was proclaimed fuglekongen (king of the birds), and by this name," concludes the legend, "he has ever ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... Church," cried Juve to the driver. "And, now, my dear Fandor, you must be thinking me crazy, as less than two hours ago I sent you off to write an article, and here I come taking you from your paper and carrying you away in this headlong fashion. But just listen to the tale ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... Yet on I went, though wondering that the path along which I groped my way led upward, until the lightning showed me that, by mistake, I had taken the road to Greifenstein. I turned back, and while feeling my way through the gloom the earth seemed to vanish under my feet, and I plunged headlong into a viewless gulf—not through empty space, however, but a wet, tangled mass which beat against my face, until at last there was a jerk which shook me from head ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... markings on the neck. For its tiny neck is girdled and crowned with a slender band of crimson like a collar of gold, which is of equal brilliance through all its extent. Its beak is extraordinarily hard. If after it has soared to a great height it swoops headlong on to some rock, it breaks the force of its fall with its beak, which it uses as an anchor. Its head is not less hard than its beak. When it is being taught to imitate human speech, it is beaten over the head with an iron wand, that it may ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... right steps in time we can certainly avoid the disastrous excesses of runaway booms and headlong depressions. We must not let a year or two of prosperity lull us into a false feeling of security and a repetition of the mistakes of the 1920's that culminated in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... and those of timber would be swept away like wisps of straw. You must now trust to the sagacity of your mules or horses. You descend the precipitous side of the cliff, seeming to yourself as if about to fall headlong into the torrent; but after a painful and perilous jaunt, you reach its level. Its roar now confuses and nearly stuns you. Each side is more or less precipitous, and you seem at the mercy of the furious tide, while jutting rocks above seem just ready to be loosened by some convulsion, and to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... monstrous vulture, bearing down on me. I could feel it gaining and gaining. The heavy drone of the engines seemed to fill the air with its noise. A pitiful sense of helplessness gripped me. I knew I was going to die like a rat in the jaws of a fox terrier. I screamed aloud in my terror and pitched headlong on the turf. With a roar, and a rush of wind that almost lifted me from the ground, the aeroplane passed over me, its wheels no more than ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... no man knoweth, but happen it did. Thaddeus Perkins was snatched from the arms of Peace and plunged headlong into the jaws of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... the camp and ships. Then the Wanderer bade the horsemen ride through the pass and stand in the plain beyond, and there await the foe. But when the hosts of the barbarians charged them, they must reel before the charge, and at length fly headlong down the pass as though in fear. And he himself would lead the flight in his chariot, and where he led there ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... had caught, and we turned, panic-stricken, running headlong across the plains, our feet burning, not knowing where we were going so long as we could escape the explosion of the oil. Inside the firebreaks the grass was burning. Listening for the explosion of the oil was like waiting for the crack of doom. Then we remembered. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... Alenon, and which is known as Little Switzerland. Steep hills compelled her frequently to moderate her pace, the more so as she had to cover some six miles before reaching her destination. But, though the speed at which she rode became less headlong, though her physical effort gradually slackened, she nevertheless persisted in her indignation against Prince Rnine. She bore him a grudge not only for the unspeakable action of which he had been guilty, but also for his behaviour to her during the last three ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... could not take another bite—not even a bite of pancake on which his mother in her upsetting had sprinkled salt instead of sugar—that poem came to an end, and by way of a change Aunt Jeanne plunged headlong into— ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... and you get a race of "intelligent" women, delightful companions, tricky courtesans, clever prostitutes, noble idealists, devoted friends, interesting mistresses, efficient workers, brilliant managers, women as good as men at all the manly tricks: and better, because they are so very headlong once they go in for men's tricks. But then, after a while, pop it all goes. The moment woman has got man's ideals and tricks drilled into her, the moment she is competent in the manly world—there's an end of it. She's had ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... talk with his guards, ordered him to his feet and led him to one of the huts. The door was of rude boards, hung on wooden hinges, and now held in place by a short log. One brave kicked away the log, and Menard was thrown inside with such force that he fell headlong. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... to do; still I cannot help thinking you distress yourself unnecessarily. As I said to the wife when I first heard of it, it's suicidal. One can only feel pity for such poor ignorant creatures, rushing headlong on their ruin. Depend upon it, they will very soon come to their senses and deplore their own rash action. A very few weeks will see the finish of it all. I only hope there will not be much bloodshed first, for of course ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... Things that we admire in Europe are punishable in Asia, and a vice in Paris becomes a necessity when you have passed the Azores. There are no such things as hard-and-fast rules; there are only conventions adapted to the climate. Fling a man headlong into one social melting pot after another, and convictions and forms and moral systems become so many meaningless words to him. The one thing that always remains, the one sure instinct that nature has implanted in us, is the instinct of self-interest. ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... his life. He opened his eyes in terror, and saw the man of the photograph, in the costume of the photograph. His hair stood on end, his eyes grew as big as saucers, he uttered a loud cry, and flung himself headlong between the seats among the legs of ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... sword was no insignificant weapon, wielded by the thews and sinews of a Triboulet. Crouching like an animal, the king's buffoon sprang with headlong fury, uttering hoarse, guttural sounds that awakened misgivings regarding the fate of his too ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... saw that the postillion was slackening his speed, I increased the amount of the present I was going to make him, and once more we rushed along at a headlong pace. I felt perishing with the cold; while the postillions seeing me so lightly clad, and so prodigal of my money to speed them on their way, imagined that I was a prince carrying off the heiress of some noble family. We heard them talking to this effect while they changed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... marvellous, the way we rose nearly 7,000 feet by a zigzag over the Marshall Pass, or the Great Divide, going down nearly as many feet on the other side and then through these canyons, which are only narrow gorges for a raging torrent to rush through on its headlong career. ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... and the horses being again in motion, and rapidly quickening their pace to a gallop, Gabriel ran by the side, tugging vainly at the door, until one of the mounted attendants, spurring beside, seized him by the collar, and flung him headlong upon the road. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... of the ordinary course of events; and that if, as his lordship supposed, it was indeed his shadow that he had seen approaching him through the mist, then, from the cowering and cautious manner that it advanced, there was no little doubt that his brother's design had been to push him headlong ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... I said," Gifkin continued, rushing headlong to his destruction. "Pincus Lubliner, which honestly, Mr. Polatkin, there's nothing that feller wouldn't do—a regular Rosher ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... nourishment. They make their way up by keeping close to the bank, and are able, even in that milky current, to perceive and snatch the unfortunate worm or grub which has been washed into the flood and is being hurried along at headlong speed. Only the trout has the courage, strength, and love of nearly freezing water necessary for such a life—no other fish ventures into such conditions. Trout are actually caught in some mountain pools at a height of 8,000 ft., edged by ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... the uncertain light, she saw some dark gap open before her as a grave. She would have fallen headlong into it had she not arrested her foot in time. Then, with a gasp of relief she recognized ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... hall, simply because she did not know where to go next, Margaret came to a pause in her headlong flight, and, sinking on to a chair, covered her face with her hands. Even though the length of the whole house separated her now from the billiard-room, she had not escaped from the sound of the shouts and squeals to which her remarks had given rise, for fresh peals were ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... and serried rows, till the shriek of an incoming train arouses them. Then, whether it be their train or not, there is a din of yelling voices, a frenzied rush up and down the platform, and, even before those who want to get out have had time to alight, a headlong scramble for places—as often as not in the wrong carriages and always apparently in those that are already crammed full, as the Indian is essentially gregarious—and out again with fearful shouts and shrill cries if a bundle has gone astray, or an agitated mother has ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... to be gained in reviewing that unhappy affair," continued the other. "Your mother's family are headlong, impulsive, fiery, unstable, emotional. There was a last shameful and degrading scene. I offered her a separation; but she was unwisely persuaded to ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... Ithaca. "And in token that what I tell you is true," said Ulysses, "if your king come not within the period which I have named, you shall have leave to give your servants commandment to take my old carcass, and throw it headlong from some steep rock into the sea, that poor men, taking example by me, may fear to lie." But Eumaeus made answer that that should be small ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... annihilated in an instant. According to Wadakimba, the end had indeed come in that fashion. It was as if the mountain had suddenly given a deep sigh. The blast had carried away solid rock. A sheet of flame had licked the spot where Farquharson had been hurled headlong, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the dining-room to coffee. But they had hardly sat down, when the downstairs Masha rushed headlong in, saying with horror, "The singers!" And ran back again. They heard some one blowing his nose, a low bass cough, and footsteps that sounded like horses' iron-shod hoofs tramping about the entry near the hall. For half a minute all was hushed. . . . The singers burst out so suddenly ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Protestant, a zealous admirer of the constitution of 1688, as all Irish Protestants were in his day, whether old or young; and yet he feels an unequivocal, as it was a just compassion for the brave men, who, under an impulse of misapplied loyalty, and in obedience to a mistaken sense of duty, went headlong to their ruin, for a prince who was a Papist, and thus would have been, like his father, a most hazardous sovereign to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... should become of him, were, indeed, matters of indifference to me, except so far as they concerned her. I was well enough pleased that he should go, but there was something unusual in the manner of his going; it was a headlong flight. To tell the truth, I had looked for further trouble with him. What would the girl do now? And where was Captain Pendarves? She met me with eyes at once ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... knowing what was coming, I caught a glimpse of our descent, and found that only the first plunge from the brink was threatening. The lower part of the curve, which is nearly a parabolic line, is more gradual, and the seeming headlong fall does not last more than the tenth part of a second. The sensation, nevertheless, is very powerful, having all the attraction, without the reality, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... looking at two horses rolling in the snow near a farmhouse, I suddenly felt a great jerk and we were pitched out headlong! Our horse wanted to have some fun! So he fell on his side and was about to roll over and enjoy himself, taking the sleigh with him; but we did not see the joke. We succeeded in putting him on his legs. The driver gave the animal a good scolding: "Shame on you, ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... indeed the Widder was. It came sweeping dark and deep and begreened and full with the early autumnal rains, actually against the lower walls of the house itself, and in the middle suddenly swerved in a black, smooth arch, and tumbled headlong into a great pool, nodding with tall slender water-weeds, and charged in its bubbled blackness here and there with the last crimson of the setting sun. To the left of the house, where the waters floated free again, stood vast, still trees above the clustering rushes; and in glimpses ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... moment, eye to eye, the anger gone out of her face, the flash of scorn no longer glinting in the dark well of her eye. But if she recognized him she did not speak of it. Almost at once she turned away, as from the face of a stranger, looking back over the way that she had ridden in such headlong flight. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... to locate the missing electric torch, and shaking the shrieking figure from him, plunged toward the window by which he had entered. It was not alone the surprise, the nameless terror of the thing, that sent Duvall headlong from the room. He fully realized that the noise of the encounter, the shrieks of his assailant, would quickly bring the other inmates of the house to the room. He had no wish to be discovered there—his ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks

... Elsie?" he said, kindly, as he stopped the headlong child; "are you in mischief, and running away ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare

... crowd!" cried Jamie; "There's Brindle! I'll teach them now!" And with headlong stride, at the captain's side, He ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... leagues in the reckoning. On the 1st of July, they entered the tropics; and there, with a childish disregard to danger, and knowing that she was surrounded by all the unseen perils of the ocean, her crew performed the ceremony usual to the occasion, while the vessel was running headlong on destruction. The captain, presided over the disgraceful scene of merriment, leaving the ship to the command of a Mons. Richefort, who had passed the ten preceding years of his life in an English prison—a few persons on board remonstrated in vain; though it was ascertained ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... despairing reporter kills himself by falling on his own steel pen; a broken telegraph wire hints at the weight of the thoughts to which it has found itself inadequate; while the Army and Navy of the United States are conjointly typified in a horse-marine who flies headlong with his hands pressed convulsively over his ears. I think I shall be able to have this ready for exhibition by the time Mr. Wise is nominated for the Presidency,—certainly before he is elected. The material to be plaster, made of the shells of those ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... way of escape, turned their weapons upon their own comrades and leaders, speedily inducing a state of abject panic in them also. The result was that very soon the rear attack, like that in front, ceased and became converted into a headlong flight, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... chopping character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed—to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... finger on her lips to enjoin him to be silent. He, however, informed me of this act of friendship of the little heroine, who had not told me of it herself." I admired the Countess's virtue, and Madame de Pompadour said, "She is giddy and headlong; but she has more sense and more feeling than a thousand prudes and devotees. D'Esparbes would not do as much most likely she would meet him more than half-way. The King appeared disconcerted, but he still pays her great attentions."—"You will, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... personal honour, is the sole noteworthy influence. He finds no worth in a religion which seeks to work from within to without, which aims at transforming character, and thus transforming the world. In its headlong quest of tangible results his eager spirit scorns so tardy a method: he will "compel men to be happy," and for this result there is but one practicable means, the Social Contract, the State. Everything which mars the unity of the Social Contract shall be shattered, so that the State ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... plashed to his ankles, and this brought his headlong race to an abrupt termination. What could it mean? Then he remembered, with a sudden chill, what, in his eagerness and anxiety, he had entirely forgotten,—the tide was coming in, and was already over the path which Uncle ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... the position. In front of his lines he dug deep trenches, covered over with green sods, supported by twigs and branches. The pass leading into this plain was lined by 500 kerne, whose Parthian warfare was proverbial. He had reckoned on the headlong and boastful disposition of his opponent, and the result showed his accurate knowledge of character. Bagnal's first division, veterans from Brittany and Flanders, including 600 curassiers in complete ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... diagonal to that of the latter, and, striking him with tremendous force just before he reached the ring, he threw him against the rail with such violence that the momentum given to his head and body carried them completely over it, and his legs following, the man went headlong ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... Stefan an ideal lover. Their marriage, entered into with such, headlong adventurousness, seemed to unfold daily into more perfect bloom. The difficulties of his temperament, which had been thrown into sharp relief by the crowded life of shipboard, smoothed themselves away at the touch of happiness and peace. No woman, Mary realized, could wish for a fuller cup of joy ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... self preservation was vigorous enough to counter-balance his headlong impulse, and brought them ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... The hands are alternately clenched and opened, often with a twitching movement. The arms may be protruded, as if to avert some dreadful danger, or may be thrown wildly over the head. * * * In other cases there is a sudden and uncontrollable tendency to headlong flight; and so strong is this that the boldest soldiers may be seized with a sudden panic. As fear rises to an extreme pitch, the dreadful scream of terror is heard. Great beads of sweat stand on the skin. All the muscles of the body are relaxed. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... a long prepared mine was sprung beneath the Porcupine. It did its work effectively, and the 29 May assailants did theirs no less admirably, crowding into the breach with headlong ferocity, and after a long and sanguinary struggle with immense lose on both sides, carrying the precious and long-coveted work by storm. Inch by inch the defenders were thus slowly forced back toward ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... swords to sway, When timeless night laid hold of heaven, and took With its great gorge the noon as in a gulf, Strangled; and thicker than the shrill-winged shafts Flew the fleet lightnings, held in chase through heaven 1500 By headlong heat of thunders on their trail Loosed as on quest of quarry; that our host Smit with sick presage of some wrathful God Quailed, but the foe as from one iron throat With one great sheer sole thousand-throated cry Shook earth, heart-staggered from their shout, ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the figure of a man bounded down the stairs from the gallery, and with a cry of "Die, villain!" struck Rupert with a dagger with all his strength, and then bounded back into the gallery. Rupert fell headlong amid his ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... familiar expression, Joe's heart felt as if it were in his mouth, and he trembled with apprehension, dreading lest the rope should come untwisted or the hemp give way, the result of either of these accidents being that Gwyn must fall headlong on to the sea-washed rocks below. Consequently, Joe's eyes were constantly turning from the ascending figure to the rough pad over which the rope glided, and back again, while his heart kept on beating with a slow, heavy throb which was ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... the vastest tragedies are performing in every act; nations pitching headlong to their final catastrophe; others, raising their youthful forms to begin the drama of existence. The world of society is as full of exciting interest, as nature is full of beauty. The great dramatic throng ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... and brighter and with less distance between them than one notices in other streets. It is there that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and run together promiscuously—the cunning and the simple, the headlong and the wary—at the four clanging strokes of the Stock Exchange gong. There rises the tall facade of the Cotton Exchange. Looking in from the sidewalk as you pass, you see its main hall, thronged but decorous, the quiet engine-room ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... of achievement was spread out before her. She could see nothing beyond. She could see nothing to give her pause, nothing even to bestir a belated caution. So she left her office for the interview Peterman had demanded without suspicion, and with a heart and mind ready to plunge her headlong into any labours which the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... at him, incredulous, an awful thing happened. With an appalling roar and a rending of steel and iron, the submarine halted abruptly in its headlong flight, reared upward at an acute angle and then fell forward with a tremendous crash. The adventurers were thrown violently against a steel bulkhead, and ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg



Words linked to "Headlong" :   rashly, hurried, hasty, forward, headfirst, precipitately



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