"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to get rid of Cornelius; one, Captain, that won't hurt more by the recoil than by ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... becoming too great—there was certain to be a recoil sooner or later. The foundations of the Impeachment were shown to be too slender. There was a future ahead that must be faced, but Senators must preserve their consistency. They could not go before their pro-impeachment constituencies with a record indicating any ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... desire to see the effect of the queerly chosen place on his queerly chosen companion, he now turned to him. And as he saw the effect, every shock of the night seemed to recoil upon him. The feeling of mystery; the foreboding, despite his courage and his conviction that the boy was mad, of the imminent unknown; his recurrent and absorbing curiosity to learn the gruesome secret that he had declared; all rushed one by one ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... His otherwise fruitless visit to England left a deep impression on certain minds, learned and ignorant, and we begin for the first time to hear of examinations and prosecutions for atheism in this country. And this forms the subject of the sixth essay. The recoil that invariably takes place after any great political, social, or religious upheaval was not wanting to the Reformation in England, and in the reign of Charles I. High-Churchism, under Archbishop Laud, was thought to indicate a desire on ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... gun, which we carried forwards. This, Mr Shrapnel, our gunner, trained right across the slaver's bows, and at the word of command, 'Fire!' let drive with a bang that shook the steamer right down to her kelson and seemed to stop her way for the moment, sending her back, as it were, with the recoil. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... corsairs drew back, and the "Africans" shouted that the triumph was theirs; but they little knew Dragut, the sea-hawk who poised to strike anew. A blazing beam dropped across the street, the townsfolk shouted in insult and derision; but the joy which they had experienced at seeing their adversaries recoil was but a short and fleeting emotion. Giving himself and those who had hitherto been engaged time to breathe and recover themselves, Dragut waited while the noise of the strife died down, and nought was heard but the roar of the flames and the crash ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... the man, with his all too light burden, halted. A flame shot through him as Molly turned her head to gaze too: he shook with a brief agony of jealousy—jealousy of the dead! The next instant he felt her recoil, look up pleadingly and cling to him again, and he knew into the soul of his soul that the words spoken by those loyal lips—now clay beneath that clay—were coming true, that, out of his house laid desolate to him was to rise a new and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... accompanied him, and Mesty followed. They opened the door, and beheld a spectacle which made them recoil with horror. There was Mr Easy, with his head in the machine, the platform below fallen from under him, hanging, with his toes just touching the ground. Dr Middleton hastened to him, and, assisted by Mesty and our hero, took him out of the steel collar which was round his neck: but ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... was a matter of no ordinary difficulty, as they apprehended that the Bodagh and his wife would recoil with indignation at the bare notion of even condescending to discuss a topic which, in all probability, they would consider as an insult. Not, after all, that there existed, according to the opinion of their neighbors, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... very simple! Nor did the child recoil any longer from the ugly task which milor, with suave speech and tender voice, was so ardently ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... its excesses. A reaction started in favor of more line and academic training. This was first shown by the students of Delaroche, though there were a number of movements at the time, all of them leading away from romanticism. A recoil from too much color in favor of more form was inevitable, but romanticism was not to perish entirely. Its influence was to go on, and to appear in the work of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... irony of this poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, which is the faith of his whole soul in the excellence of that world whose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... possession of 128 quick-firers, some of them of fairly heavy calibre. The quick-firing gun was then a new weapon. It is really a quick loader, a gun fitted with a breech action that can be opened and closed by a rapid movement, and so mounted that the recoil is taken up by mechanism in the carriage which at once automatically runs the gun back into firing position, while the process of loading is further accelerated (for the smaller calibre guns) by making up the ammunition ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... would have been disastrous on the narrow paths cut into the sides of these chasms, but I walked along with a firm tread and without the slightest feeling of dizziness. Sometimes I leaped over a crevasse whose depth would have made me recoil had I been in the midst of glaciers on shore; sometimes I ventured out on a wobbling tree trunk fallen across a gorge, without looking down, having eyes only for marveling at the wild scenery of this region. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... glimpse behind the scenes, and we observe how the Capitalists in 1894 had already endeavoured to lower and vitiate our public life by methods which did not even recoil before the criminal law of the land, to ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... can express what the recoil of the wave heathenism is, but "when the enemy shall come in like a flood," and it has indeed its own glorious word of Promise. It is like one who was once a drunkard and has left off drinking, and then once more tastes the old deadly poison, and becomes ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blindfold a mother? For a moment I saw her recoil—then turn to her husband with a dumb, piteous, desperate look, as though to say, "Help me—my sorrow is more than ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... enough to wrestle with facts such as these? which one of us can look them long in the face and live? In the desperate recoil, some of us find ourselves recklessly striving to forget and ignore them, and some find a surer refuge in facts that are stronger still than they; but to one and all, in kindly compassion to human weakness, each new emotion, each passing interest and trivial incident, combines to interpose ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... disorder by the fire of Pizarro's arquebusiers, far superior in number to their own—was conducted with such spirit that the enemy's horse were compelled to reel and fall back before it. But it was only to recoil with greater violence, as, like an overwhelming wave, Pizarro's troopers rushed on their foes, driving them along the slope, and bearing down man and horse in indiscriminate ruin. Yet these, in turn, at length rallied, cheered ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... men to fire. A son of an old soldier and settler, living in peace barely forty miles away, was one of the victims, for he had taken sides with Long Nolan, who without rhyme or reason had been discharged, and violently flung from the premises. There had been a wild rush on the guard, a volley, a recoil, a rally in force, and an outcry for vengeance. Then the guard had to shoot in earnest and self-defence, for their lives were at stake. Some of the men had gone to Argenta to plead with the owners, but most had remained ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... tell me!" panted the girl. "Oh! if I have spoken with him, it is a wonder that my tongue was not paralyzed in the act—that my very soul did not shrink and recoil with aversion from him!" she exclaimed, trembling from ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a human being upon whom this sort of retribution could have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a consciousness of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the detestation of mankind as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet the imperiousness of his temper and the constant experience he had had of the pliability of other men, prepared him ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... having schemed to thwart his wager, so he put that accusation by: thinking for an instant, that if the man desired to have his wife with him, and she left the country with her brother, his own act would recoil; or if she stayed to hear of a villany, Carinthia's show of scorn could lash. Henrietta praised my lord's kindness. He had been one of the adorers—as what man would not be!—and upon her at least (he could hardly love her husband) he had not wreaked his disappointment. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... opportunity to try to get back at Fred Fenton. He had played several tricks on the other, and his chosen friends, who also came under the condemnation of Buck; but as a rule the vicious leader of the bad set had had these things recoil on his ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... off and on his feet with the agility of a cat, but he still maintained his hold upon the bridle. A second later there was a heavy thud heard above the screams of women and children and the shouts of those vociferating advice. The horse fell heavily in his recoil from the fence, and in a moment or two was led limping and crestfallen away, while the cadet quietly returned to his comrades on the plain. Johnnie and little Ned were crying from fright, and both Amy and Maggie were pale and nervous; therefore ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... crushed lover Emilie must recoil in terror, and not seem to add the weight of her body to that ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... strange recoil from him, and yet something like admiration, for he was a distinctly handsome man, and had an air and bearing far above good Jack Henderson, or any of her old admirers in her native village. After a moment's pause, while she nervously pinched the corners of the paper ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... turned on furniture for the cottage Gwendolen was not roused to show even a languid interest. She thought that she had done as much as could be expected of her this morning, and indeed felt at an heroic pitch in keeping to herself the struggle that was going on within her. The recoil of her mind from the only definite prospect allowed her, was stronger than even she had imagined beforehand. The idea of presenting herself before Mrs. Mompert in the first instance, to be approved ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... obeyed, in the same spirit it was given; and the sudden discharge of more than a dozen rifles, made the infuriated savages recoil in dismay, and thereby saved many a poor fellow's life. The reaction, however, speedily followed. Many of the savages now swam the river above and below the ford, and gave chase to the fugitives for fifteen and even twenty miles—though ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... there, only dimly conscious of the scene about them, the sight of the boat bringing Phebe to the shore with the covered coffin beside her, extinguished in his heart the last glimmering of the hope which had been little more than a natural recoil from despair. He was not taken by surprise, or hurried into any vehemence of grief. A cold stupor, which made him almost insensible to his loss, crept over him. Sorrow would assert itself by and ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... we could. A musquetoon was discharged, but the shot dropped short; the only person who fell was the man who fired it. To see us he had stood upon the coping bricks of the wall, and the recoil tumbled him over into the river: we saw him fall, and heard the splash; but we pulled on as hard as we could, and in a few minutes the scene of action was far behind us. We then struck across to the other side of the river, and ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... medical societies referred to under Example 2, like many similar actions in life, tends to recoil on its instigators. For instance, a medical woman in another northern town applied for and accepted a post which the local men had decided was unsatisfactory in some particulars, and for which therefore none of them had applied. They were loud in their ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... perceived wisdom in the system of this world, or that a philosopher, who looks into the operations of nature, may not plainly read the power and wisdom of the Creator, without recoiling, as he says, from the abyss? The abyss, from which a man of science should recoil, is that ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... round and grape shot on our brigade, and the fire was extremely hot. Yet Gen. Cadwalader led up the head of the column with the greatest bravery to within 50 yards of the enemy, but this was rashly done, for he was obliged to recoil; and leaving one piece of his artillery, he fell back about 40 yards and endeavored to form the brigade, and some companies did form and gave a few vollies, but the fire of the enemy was so hot, that, at the sight of the Regular troops running ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by side with the penguins, which steal one another's eggs, you have the dotterels, whose family relations are so "charming and touching" that even passionate hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded by her young ones; or the eider-ducks, among which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the Savannahs) several females hatch together in the same, nest. or the lums, which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is variety itself, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... him, when he told me all of it, as with tears in his eyes he did, and ready to be my slave henceforth; I could not forbear from owning that it was a low and heartless trick, unworthy of men who had families; and the recoil whereof was well deserved, whatever it might ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... friendly foe, in the strong scene of the second act—was wonderfully subtle. That appeal, as Genevieve Ward made it, began in artifice, became profoundly sincere, and then was stunned and startled into a recoil of resentment by a harsh rebuff, whereupon it subsided through hysterical levity into frigid and brittle sarcasm and gay defiance. For a while, accordingly, the feelings of the observer were deeply moved. Yet this ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... discovered that it recoiled in a most unaccountable manner, as though it had been loaded with something in addition to a blank cartridge. But he had loaded the gun himself, and was positive that he had placed no shot in the barrel. At that time he was utterly unable to account for the recoil. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... be doing that if they fitted her for the gay world: that she must not forget that she was a baptized child of the Church. If she looked doubtful, or was inclined to urge the matter, we would ask her if she wanted us to break our word to God—which, like any other conscientious child, she would recoil from. When in her sixteenth year, however, while at boarding-school in Mobile, she expressed a greater desire than ever before to take lessons in dancing. They were given in the school, and confined to the pupils; not at night, but in the ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... seem very blest! 1110 Oft must my soul the question undergo, Of—'Dost thou love?' and burn to answer, 'No!' Oh! hard it is that fondness to sustain, And struggle not to feel averse in vain; But harder still the heart's recoil to bear, And hide from one—perhaps another there. He takes the hand I give not—nor withhold— Its pulse nor checked—nor quickened—calmly cold: And when resigned, it drops a lifeless weight From one I never loved enough to hate. 1120 ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... them! kill them!" he screamed, as he rushed across the intervening space, and the bravos, heartened by his frenzy of fight, streamed after him, flinging themselves desperately against the piled-up hay, only to meet again the irresistible weapons of the friends, and again to recoil before them. Nevers held his own on one side; Lagardere held his own on the other. Nevers delivered his thrust at AEsop, and for the second time that day the hunchback felt the prick of steel between his ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and obvious mistakes may be ruled out from the beginning. For example, we agree that we want superior mind; but we need not fall into the football club folly of counting on this as a product of superior body. Yet if we recoil so far as to conclude that superior mind consists in being the dupe of our ethical classifications of virtues and vices, in short, of conventional morality, we shall fall out of the fryingpan of the football club into the fire of the Sunday School. If we must choose between ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... as a mouth-piece of the mere drollery, for I conceive that true humor is never divorced from moral conviction, I invented Mr. Sawin for the clown of my little puppet-show. I meant to embody in him that half-conscious unmorality which I had noticed as the recoil in gross natures from a puritanism that still strove to keep in its creed the intense savor which had long gone out of its faith and life. In the three I thought I should find room enough to express, as it was my plan to do, the popular feeling and opinion of the time. For the names ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... no harm—quite the contrary! After an instinctive recoil, he leaned against a table and wiped his forehead, breathing in gasps, incapable of ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... standing with his back to me, and facing the muzzle of a rifle. I had only time to note that the rifle was braced on two iron brackets and that Mr. Whitney was holding a string which was attached to the trigger; when I saw a flash, the rifle's recoil—and Mr. Whitney still standing just where ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... will arouse from that torpor which, to such a people, is shame; and when France does awaken, when she does open her eyes, when she does distinguish, when she does see that which is before her and beside her, she will recoil with a terrible shudder from the monstrous crime which dared to espouse her in the darkness, and of which she has shared ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy into their language; and in the word miscreant, misbeliever, as the synonym of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... not one of us but might have felt proud to have been the means of doing so great and good a work, with so small a force; and to have saved eight hundred lives, without the loss of a single one; to say nothing of the sharp lesson given to the city mobs, that the work of massacre may sometimes recoil upon those ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Even I, who hold So many dear assurances, who hear Still ringing in mine ears such sacred vows, Am haunted with an unaccustomed doubt, Not wonted to go hand-in-hand with joy. A gloomy omen greets me with the morn; I, who recoil from pain, must strike and wound. What may this mean? Help me, ye saints of heaven And holy mother, for my strength ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... to note, too, how the ebb of this wave of scepticism upon questions relating to the immaterial world is only recoil that adds force to a succeeding wave of cynicism with regard to the physical world around. "Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Othello" give place to "Lear," "Troilus and Cressida," "Antony and Cleopatra," and "Timon." So true is it that "unfaith ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... she said, with a flash of her occasional repugnance to the man; and then after a pause, 'Herr von Gondremark,' she added, 'I recoil ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... war unseen by Thompson and the Hendersons and a countless host of intelligent, well-dressed, comfortable people who bought extras wet from the press to read of that merciless thrust through Belgium, the shock and recoil and counter-shock of armies, of death dealt wholesale with scientific precision, of 42-centimeter guns and poison gas and all the rest of that bloody nightmare—they did not see the dread shadow that hung over Europe lengthening and spreading until its ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... another bomb falling here, there, everywhere; the surging masses rushing from death to death; the wild flight; the barricades a line of fire and bayonets; the awful and continuous rattle of the guns, sounding like the grinding of some dreadful machinery that crunches the bones of the living; the recoil from the bullets to the poison; the wounded stumbling over the dead, now covering the streets in strata several feet thick; and still the bombs crash and the poison spreads. Death! death! nothing but death! Ten million ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... four honest though unfortunate workmen restored to their families from a prison whither petty debts of 250 or 500 francs had driven them; but these sums being tripled by a shameful exaggeration of costs, the most charitable persons often recoil from doing a good deed at the thought of two-thirds of their bounty merely going to sheriffs and their officers. And yet, there are few hardships more worthy of relief than those befalling such unfortunate people as ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... strengthened cross-stay serving as a pillow-block. The cylinder is 8 inches in diameter, and the piston has a stroke of 6 inches, causing the screw (which is 31/4 feet diameter) to make 200 revolutions per minute. The screw, although it has a wide surface of thrust, gives, nevertheless, a recoil of about 30 per cent., because of its location between the hulls and its ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... far-reaching influence of the disappearance of unlimited resources open to all men for the taking, and considering the recoil of the common man when he saw the outcome of the competitive struggle for these resources as the supply came to its end over most of the nation, we can understand the reaction against individualism and in favor of drastic assertion of the ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... around, Exulting in his distance from the ground. The tender speckled moth here dancing seen, The vaulting grasshopper of glossy green, And all prolific Summer's sporting train, Their little lives by various pow'rs sustain. But what can unassisted vision do? What, but recoil where most it would pursue; His patient gaze but finish with a sigh, When musing waking speaks the sky-lark nigh! Just starting from the corn she cheerly sings, And trusts with conscious pride her downy ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... the lightening of the pressure, the slight recoil, which could only be a prelude to another assault upon his last stronghold. He clutched his three facts to him as a shield, groping for others which might have afforded ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... attachment. The appearance, in fact, somewhat suggests what might be expected were a small charge of dynamite introduced into the centre of a small tunnel made across the shaft of the bone. Examination of some of the skiagrams also illustrates another point of interest, viz. that a certain degree of recoil on the part of the bone results from the blow, since in many of them portions of the mantle of the bullet and bone fragments are seen in that portion of the track proximal ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... dead recoil Of weary fibres stretched with toil, The pulse that flutters faint and low When Summer's ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... occasion the shot and shell fell into a fishing village, and that within sight of an English man-of-war lying at anchor in the harbour at Nassau. Surely it is time that some well-understood laws should be made, and rules laid down, or such doings will sooner or later recoil on ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... had something to say about that. Having been placed on guard, and not yet relieved, he would permit no hand but his master's to touch anything in his charge. A frightful growl made the boy recoil and go backwards over the ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... domestic infelicity. The "mistress" sips the sweet nectar that is denied to the deceived wife. Legislators have battled with intemperance, but have done comparatively little to banish from our midst this necessary (?) evil. They recoil with disgust from this abyss of iniquity and disease. Within it is coiled a hydra-headed monster, which invades our hearthstones, contaminates our social atmosphere, and whose very breath is laden with poisonous vapors, the inexhaustible source ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... putting up back-boards to their guns, so that, horrible to relate, at each discharge the recoil threw back pieces of burning flesh, bespattering the men and covering them with ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... four sizes of 32-pounders ranging from 27 to 57 hundredweight. The heavier guns took more powder and got slightly longer ranges. Many naval guns of the period are characterized by a hole in the cascabel, through which the breeching tackle was run to check recoil. The Navy also had a 13-inch mortar, mounted aboard ship on a revolving circular platform. Landing parties were equipped with 12- or 24-pounder howitzers either on boat carriages (a flat bed something like a mortar bed) ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... tortured at the stake. Nor this the worst! In order to augment Your gloomy sway you craftily have played Upon the zeal and frenzy of our tribes, And, in my absence, hatched a monstrous charge Of sorcery amongst them, which hath spared Nor feeble age nor sex. Such horrid deeds Recoil on us! Old Shataronra's grave Sends up its ghost, and Tetaboxti's hairs— White with sad years and counsel—singed by you! In dreams and nightmares, float on every breeze. Ambition's madness might stop short of this, And ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... superior authority is on them, or nothing else to deter, they are "hail fellow well met" with such of the convicts as are unprincipled enough to curry favor with and assist them in covering up their peccadilloes from their superiors. They naturally recoil at the hardness and parsimony of the Government toward them, evading the performance of duties when they can, and I have heard more than one say: "Why should we care what prisoners do, so long as we don't get into trouble? The Government grinds us down to twelve hours' ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the grass behind that followed, beheld the dusky, squat form that it heralded pounce. He watched the snake's head whip round, and drive with all its power in one last desperate stroke; watched it straighten out suddenly, and recoil in an awful quivering spasm, like a severed telegraph-wire, as the hedgehog's razor-sharp teeth cut through skin and flesh and backbone; and, trembling from head to foot, he witnessed, half-fascinated, I think, the awful last threshing flurry of ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... W.A.F.F.'s, in a fight in the bush in South Nigeria, had one of these things fired at him from a distance of fifteen feet. He told me all that saved him was that when the native pulled the trigger the recoil of the gun "kicked" the muzzle two feet in the air and the native ten feet into the bush. I bought a Tower rifle at the trade price, a pound, and brought it home. But although my friends have offered to back either end of the gun as being the more destructive, we have found no one ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... resistless tendencies of the age towards religious liberty. It is our business to guide and to control their application; do this you may, but to endeavour to turn them backwards is the sport of children, done by the hands of men, and every effort you may make in that direction will recoil upon you in disaster and disgrace. The noble lord appealed to gentlemen who sit behind me, in the names of Hampden and Pym. I have great reverence for these in one portion at least of their political ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... discount for friction and the recoil of the gun, the net work realized by the powder-gas as the shot advances AM is represented by the area ACPM, and this is equated to the kinetic energy e ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... clogged the four wheels of the gun carriage; this gave play to the sole and the framework, separated the two platforms, and the breeching. The tackle had given way, so that the cannon was no longer firm on its carriage. The stationary breeching, which prevents recoil, was not in use at this time. A heavy sea struck the port, the carronade, insecurely fastened, had recoiled and broken its chain, and began its terrible course ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... discovered. The plant itself not only recorded its normal rate of growth but the slightest change induced in it by the action of different forces. So delicate was the apparatus that it analysed growth into a series of pulses, a sudden shooting out followed by a partial recoil. It showed how the growth of the plant was retarded by a mere touch, and the time it took the plant to recover from the effect of contact, and all these in course of a few seconds. The effect of different ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creature's attempt to cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to exclaim: "You poor soul, don't double and turn—come straight back to me, and we'll find a way out!" But the words died under the impenetrable ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... kinds of game, such as elephants and buffaloes, experienced sportsmen mostly prefer guns of immense Bore, carrying round bullets that weigh a quarter of a pound. The recoil is tremendous, and would injure the shoulder if the sportsman did not use a pad against which he rests the gun. The guns must be strong, because very large charges of powder are invariably used where great power of penetration is required. African sportsmen ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... dawning behind them, when the dark hull of a ship, rapidly enlarging, seemed to rise out, broad and distinct, from the thin mist towards the west. The loud and incessant moan of the waves, the dash and recoil of their huge tops breaking against the sides of the vessel, with voices from on board, were distinctly heard, and immediately the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... man and woman. What a ground to start from with a husband! The idea was hateful to her. She tried the argument that such a procedure arrogated merely a superiority in social standing, but it made her recoil from it the more. He was so immeasurably her superior that the poor little advantage on her side vanished like a candle in the sunlight, and she laughed herself to scorn. "Fancy," she laughed, "a midge, on the strength of having wings, condescending ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... of collision, slight as it was, caused the two vessels to recoil from each other, and they were barely alongside when they separated again; George's manipulation of the brig's wheel, and a similar manipulation of the Aurora's helm at the last moment before the touching of the two vessels, greatly expediting the separation. By the time, therefore, that George ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... themselves in the most terrific manner: hanging themselves up behind draperies, like bats, and tumbling out in the dead of night with frightful caterwaulings. Hereupon, French borrows Beaucourt's gun, loads the same to the muzzle, discharges it twice in vain and throws himself over with the recoil, exactly like a clown. But at last (while I was in town) he aims at the more amiable cat of the two, and shoots that animal dead. Insufferably elated by this victory, he is now engaged from morning to night in hiding ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... this State, and C—-, as you know is sent upon an expedition which all the world knew, and the event has proved, was not practicable. In a word, I have a good deal of reason to believe that the machination of this junta will recoil upon their own heads, and be a means of bringing some matters to light which, by getting me out of the way, some of ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... determination; as may be seen by the way in which the sufferer, when placed under supervision, as he usually is, eagerly waits to seize the first unguarded moment, when, without a shudder, without a struggle or recoil, he may use the now natural and welcome means of effecting his release.[1] Even the healthiest, perhaps even the most cheerful man, may resolve upon death under certain circumstances; when, for ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... evening from its tissue-paper nest in the upper tray of her trunk. Its daintiness comforted and cheered her, as a friend's face might have done, and under its impetus she found calm enough to rearrange her hair, and, with many a shy recoil and shy caress, to lay out John's evening things for him, as she had often laid out her father's. How surprised, she smiled, he would be. How delighted, when he came, to find everything so comfy and domestic. Surely it was time for him to come. Presently it was late, and yet he did not come. ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... possession of the Belgian coast. It is not easy to understand why, before the war, when Zeebrugge and Ostend were made into fortified harbours, a clause was inserted in the contractors' orders that the mole at Zeebrugge should be fit to carry hundred-ton guns and to withstand heavy gun recoil; also, that the Zeebrugge and Ostend locks and basins should be capable of accommodating a flotilla of torpedo-boats. These things were not done in the interests of England, nor had the Belgian Government any reason to fear naval aggression from the west. The plans which had this beginning ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... interest in Drake's eyes at these questions changed to amazement at her stricken recoil ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... "is too much for even the Sultan of the East to hear. But, may the all-righteous Allah approve of my thoughts and actions; so shall the infernal powers destroy the wretches that employ them, and the dark poisoned arrow recoil upon him that blew it forth. But, O sages, though your numbers are reduced, your integrity is more tried and approved; therefore let your Sultan partake of the sweetness of your counsels, and learn from aged experience the wisdom of the sons of earth. Say, then, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... divides. The first division, as science knows, is a division of recoil. From the perfect oneing of the two parent nuclei in the egg-cell results a recoil or new assertion. That which was perfect one now divides again, and in the recoil ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... at him, and he sat down. At that moment he remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have won her over to my side now. I have power. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... was amused, and once, suddenly moved and wrung by his pleading, she bent down rather shamefacedly and gave him a freckled, tennis-blistered little paw to kiss. And she looked into his eyes and suddenly felt a perplexity, a curious swimming of the mind that made her recoil and stiffen, and wonder ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the walk gave Mary time to recoil from the interview which was to follow; but even if her own resolve to go through with it had failed, there was the steady grasp of Sally Leadbitter, which she could not evade ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of fainting when I heard it. I almost regret I did not, as the secret would thus have been discovered, and my emancipation accomplished. How have you acquired this strange influence over me, to make me so deceive those in whom I should most naturally confide? I am persuaded they believe I really recoil from you. And what is this new business of Doctor Sturk? I am distracted with uncertainties and fears. I hear so little, and imperfectly from you, I cannot tell from your dark hints whether some new danger lurks in those ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... them back by showers of arrows and musket balls, thrusting them down with pikes, hurling grenades from the tops; while the swivels on both sides poured their grape, and bar, and chain, and the great main-deck guns, thundering muzzle to muzzle, made both ships quiver and recoil, as they smashed the round shot ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... now about fifty yards from the neck of ice, tearing through the water like a race-horse. In another moment she was up to it and struck it fair in the middle. The stout little vessel quivered to her keel under the shock, but she did not recoil. She split the mass into fragments, and, bearing down all before her, sailed like a conqueror into the clear ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... a recoil in Beth. "How is it people never expect a girl to do anything?" she exclaimed, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... it is clear that we must not seek too high for Jeremiah's rank as a poet. The temptation to this—which has overcome some recent writers—is due partly to a recoil from older, unjust depreciations of his prophetic style and partly to the sublimity of the truths which that mixed style frequently conveys. But those truths apart, his verse was just that of the folksongs of the peasants among whom he was reared—sometimes ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... professional skill, while depreciating the services of others of the fraternity. Such unscrupulous quacks sought also to win over the patient's friends by little attentions, flatteries and innuendoes. Many, said this philosopher, recoil from a man of skill even, if he is a braggart. "When the doctor," he continues, "attended by a man known to the patient, and having a right of entry into the house, advances into the dwelling of the sick ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... generally did quiet down if one waited: and across her genuine absorption in the story she was telling there flitted, bat-like, a distaste far being known so well as all that! There was something indiscreet and belittling in it, she thought, with an inward fastidious recoil. But this had gone, entirely, in a moment, and she was rushing on, "And, Neale, what do you think? She has worked on him, and he has worked on himself till he's got himself in a morbid state. He thinks perhaps he ought to leave Ashley that he loves ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... are not practical, we are nothing. Now, the one main fault in the Christian Church is separation, repulsion, recoil between the component particles of the Lord's body. I will not, I do not care to inquire who is more to blame than another in the evil fact. I only care to insist that it is the duty of every individual man to be innocent of the same. One main cause, perhaps I should say the one cause of ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... the courage that distinguished his race, and although for a moment startled at the sudden entry he did not recoil, but drawing a sword from his girdle ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... importance of reform in China. He was unfortunate in the time of his visit—it was just after the coup d'etat, in 1898. His hearers were men of light and leading, in sympathy with his views; but reform was on the ebb; a ruinous recoil was to follow; and nothing came of ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... families, that of individuals; it is the cause which concerns our dignity, our happiness; it is the cause of all, even of those who attack it in words of which they do not calculate the import, and who, were they to succeed in banishing God from the public conscience, would, with us, recoil in terror at sight of the frightful abysses into which we all should ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... of his prisoner as he advanced to whisper in his ear, made him recoil involuntarily. But he stopped and listened to him. The words were few, but his own face changed as he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... dislodged them from the man's face, causing him to recoil, giving utterance to a smothered cry ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... twenty, having meantime studied alone with diligence and perseverance, she went with me to an establishment on the continent. The same suffering and conflict ensued, heightened by the strong recoil of her upright heretic and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system. Once more she seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through the mere force of resolution: with inward remorse and shame she looked back on her former ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... twenty cases of infidelity in wives, the crimes have been fairly ascribable to the husbands. Folly or misconduct in the husband, cannot, indeed, justify or even palliate infidelity in the wife, whose very nature ought to make her recoil at the thought of the offence; but it may, at the same time, deprive him of the right of inflicting punishment on her: her kindred, her children, and the world, will justly hold her in abhorrence; but the husband ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... ideal. Now a direction is always far more fantastic than a plan. I would rather have the most archaic map of the road to Brighton than a general recommendation to turn to the left. Straight lines that are not parallel must meet at last; but curves may recoil forever. A pair of lovers might walk along the frontier of France and Germany, one on the one side and one on the other, so long as they were not vaguely told to keep away from each other. And this is a strictly true parable of the effect of our ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... know what you mean," said Northwick, with a recoil deeper into himself after the first flush of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... and removing the traces of the two murders, the frightful punishment of climbing that tower, of touching those skeletons, of undressing them and burying them. That will be enough. We will not ask for more. We will not give it to the public to batten on and create a scandal which would recoil upon M. d'Aigleroche's niece. No, let us leave ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... have no right to recoil from the mention of my love for you. Remember this is a man-talk. From the point of view of the talk, you are a man. The woman in you is only incidental, accidental, and irrelevant. You've got ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... to show you those pistols," said Musard. "They carry as true as a rifle up to fifty yards. Their only drawback is that they are a bit clumsy, and have a heavy recoil." ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... affinity, acting through a certain space, imparts a motion of translation of the one atom towards the other. This motion is not heat, nor is the force that produces it heat. But when the atoms strike and recoil, the motion of translation is converted into a motion of vibration, which is heat. The vibration, however, so far from causing the extinction of the original attraction, is in part carried on by that attraction. The atoms recoil, in virtue of the elastic force ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... uneasily. "Too much of that sort of thing may hurt one, I fancy, as well as too little. He may come to imagine that the balance of virtue is in his favor, and that he may grant himself a little indulgence to make up for lost time. That sort of recoil is a little dangerous, as I sometimes feel, do ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... anxiety. But Elsie had unveiled to him her plans for her marriage, and consulted him on the propriety of placing Agnes immediately under the protection of the husband she had chosen for her; and it was this part of her communication which had awakened the severest internal recoil, and raised a tumult of passions which the priest vainly sought either to assuage ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... being greatly decayed with age, were mangled beyond my power of description; and a person must have been an eye witness to form a just idea of the tremendous scene of carnage, wreck, and ruin that everywhere appeared. Humanity cannot but recoil from the prospect of such finished horror, and lament that war should produce ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... owing to the alleged great drawback of rapid fouling. There can be no doubt that the charge of 70 grains with a small-bore bullet, '303, will have a lower trajectory (higher velocity (equivalent to long range)) than a heavier projectile, '450, with the additional advantage of a minimum recoil. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... ground, and under a hot sun, for an hour, we were nearly exhausted. After Hardy was wounded, and left us, it was still worse. The hardest labor, and what took most time, was running up the guns from the recoil. We had stopped a moment to rest, and let the gun cool a little, and were discussing the difficulties, when the idea occurred to us. There was an old rail fence near by. Somebody said "let's get some rails and chock the wheels to keep them from running back." This struck us all as good, and in an ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... is less complex but not less consistent and convincing. Like the man, her development has been arrested and distorted by the cause which has made him too a wreck. Her love was single-hearted and over-mastering; its very force, in recoil, turned it into hate. Yoked to a soulless husband, whom she has married half in pity, half in despair, her whole nature has frozen; so that when we see her she is, while physically the same, spiritually the ghost of her former self. The subtlety of the picture is to show what she is now while ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... between romance and sobriety, that excites so strong a prejudice against the former: it is associated, in the minds of many, with folly alone. A romantic, silly girl, is the object of their contempt; and they so recoil from this personification of sentiment, that their chief object seems to be to divest themselves altogether of its delusion. Life is to them a mere calculation; expediency is their maxim; propriety their rule; profit, ease, or comfort their aim; and they have at least this advantage, that while minds ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... by nature the children of wrath, even as others'; not of a wrath which is unloving, not of a wrath which is impetuous and passionate, not of a wrath which seeks the hurt of its objects, but of a wrath which is the necessary antagonism and recoil of pure love from such creatures as we have made ourselves to be. To speak as if the New Testament taught that 'reconciliation' was lop-sided—which would be a contradiction in terms, for reconciliation needs ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the first to ask what is his fate. The sybil reluctantly tells him that his life is to be destroyed by the first person who shall touch his hand on this very day. Richard vainly offers his hand to the bystanders, they all recoil from him, when suddenly his friend Rene comes in, and heartily shakes Richard's outstretched hand. This seems to break the spell, for everybody knows Rene to be the count's dearest friend, and now believes the oracle to be ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... was fired, and leaping back on the recoil, as a frenzied horse that breaks its halter, one of the wheels struck him a terrible blow on the body, breaking all the ribs on that side and killing him instantly. His face wore a glad smile, and afterward, when Aladdin found him and took the gold locket from his pocket, and read the inscription ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... election by pledging itself to be thriftlessly wicked, cruel, and vindictive; and it did not find it as easy to escape from this pledge as it had from nobler ones. The end, as I write, is not yet; but it is clear that this thoughtless savagery will recoil on the heads of the Allies so severely that we shall be forced by the sternest necessity to take up our share of healing the Europe we have wounded almost to death instead of ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... inhabitants of Vezelay; but, ere long, an army of their insatiable foes arrived and besieged the town, and treachery at a postern one stormy night made them masters of it, when scenes of horror followed under the mask of religion that even at this distance of time make one recoil with terror and disgust at the dogmas of the corrupt ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... caprice when the king revolted on their first interview from the coarse features and unwieldy form of his new bride. For the moment Cromwell had brought matters "to such a pass" that it was impossible to recoil from the marriage, and the minister's elevation to the Earldom of Essex seemed to proclaim his success. The marriage of Anne of Cleves however was but the first step in a policy which, had it been carried out as he designed it, would have anticipated the triumphs of Richelieu. Charles ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... domestic circle, whose members, all adorned by refinement and literature, were many of them, like himself, distinguished by genius. Yet active life was the genuine soil for his virtues; and he sometimes suffered tedium from the monotonous succession of events in our retirement. Pride made him recoil from complaint; and gratitude and affection to Perdita, generally acted as an opiate to all desire, save that of meriting her love. We all observed the visitation of these feelings, and none regretted them so much as Perdita. Her life ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley |
