"Rending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed to be in the way of some huge body that rushed the camp, scattering the fire, and rending the branches of the tree under which the exploring party had ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... they had finished hanging the presents on the Tree; but then an interruption had followed: the children had broken profanely in upon them, rending the veil of the house mysteries; and for more than an hour the night had been given up to them. Now the children were asleep upstairs, already dreaming of Christmas Morn and the rush for the stockings. The servants ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... fearful night of darkness and destruction, and who all have piteous tales to tell of relations killed and houses shattered. The English landlady of the Piccola Sentinella, who herself had an almost miraculous escape on the occasion, gave us a most vivid and heart-rending description of how her hotel and most of its inmates were overwhelmed on that awful July night, and how the existing inn is literally built upon foundations that are filled with many unrecovered bodies of victims. It was on a dark sultry night after ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... that he had sold them. But one morning, the outside door was thrown open, and Malinda thrust in by the ruthless hand of Garrison, whose voice was pouring forth the most bitter oaths and abusive language that could be dealt out to a female; while her heart-rending shrieks and sobbing, was truly melting to the soul of ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... shore, and to be rushing, head on, upon the beach; her broad sail was blown straight out over her bow, and flapped there like a banner, while the heavy boom hammered the water as she rose and fell. A jagged line of red seamed the breast of the dark wall behind; a rending crash came, and as if fired upon, the boat flung up her sail, as a wild fowl flings up its wing when shot, and lay tossing keel up, on the top of the waves. It all looked scarcely a stone's cast away, though it was vastly farther. A figure was seen to drag itself up out of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... eating orifice and inspected it carefully. Ah! The creature was omnivorous, judging by its teeth. There were both rending and grinding teeth. That certainly argued for intelligence, since it showed that the being could behave in a gentlemanly fashion. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... dilapidated temple, whose smoking shell threw up a sable column in the background. The effigies of Apollo and the Muses had been dragged forth, and were being diligently broken up with mallets and hammers. Others of the sacrilegious throng were rending scrolls, or dividing vestments, or firing the grove of laurel that environed the shrine, or pelting the affrighted birds as they flew forth. The sacred vessels, however, at least those of gold and silver, appeared safe in the guardianship ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... workers will again be in attendance, the gentleman in the top-hat and white-tie will again make his fiery oration of welcome, his audience will again pay no attention but will weep softly—the tediously heart-rending scene will be rehearsed throughout in every detail by an entirely new batch of actors. Twice a day, summer and winter, the same tragedy is enacted at Evian. It ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the charge; with this party was Henry Wharton, who had volunteered to assist in dispersing the guides. A ball struck his bridle arm, and compelled him to change hands. As the dragoons dashed by them, rending the air with their shouts, and with trumpets sounding a lively strain, the charger ridden by the youth became ungovernable—he plunged, reared, and his rider being unable with his wounded arm, to manage the impatient animal, Henry Wharton ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... and both smelling equally musty, were the two pontiffs of official history, Astier-Rehu and Schwanthaler, whom a singular fatality had brought face to face on the summit of the Rigi, after thirty years of insults and of rending each other to shreds in explanatory notes referring to "Schwanthaler, jackass," ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... needing help—one should balance the other. Those facts seesawed back and forth in Drew's aching head, and he held his muttering burden close as Kirby found them a path away from the rending guns and the blaze of ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... never forgot that last look on Black Boy's face, never lost the rending horror of his scream as his forelegs gave and he sank out of sight, never forgot the hideous sound of his fall as he rolled down the cliff to ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... you?" I asked; but Dick's answer, if, indeed, he gave me any, was lost in a chorus of ear splitting yells rending the silence of the night like demon cries. Then a single ululation, long drawn and fair blood chilling, answered back, and Jennifer swept the pirogue stern to strand with a ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... is prepared for it; that other world where there is no sin, and God is all in all! Such is the Philosophy of Christianity. It was worn and old when Luther found it. Our posterity will care less to respect Luther for rending it in pieces, when it has learnt to despise the miserable fabric which he stitched together ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... shade The eyes of King Sugriva strayed, And, as on grass and tree he gazed, The fires of wrath within him blazed. Then like a mighty cloud on high, When roars the tempest through the sky, Girt by his friends he thundered out His dread sky-rending battle-shout Like some proud lion in his gait, Or as the sun begins his state, Sugriva let his quick glance rest On Rama whom he thus addressed: "There is the seat of Bali's sway, Where flags on wall and turret play, Which mighty bands of Vanars ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... forget, madame," replied the girl and she was already stepping toward the door when the baroness threw herself at her feet, crying, in a heart-rending tone: "Have pity, Marguerite, I am your mother. One has no right to ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... caused by the death of the Bishop and his brethren, as well as the Helmores in the Makololo country, and still more by the removal of Mrs. Livingstone, and the thought of his motherless children; the most heart-rending scenes had been witnessed everywhere in regions that a short time ago had been so bright; all his efforts to do good had been turned to evil, every new path he had opened having been seized as it were ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... and entered farther. He took note of the switches, saw the deadly chair, and was about to test the apparatus to see if it could be possible that a practical electric chair existed in the heart of a peaceful city, when he heard Eva shriek in heart-rending terror. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... now believe that these accumulations were made by ice, at some remote period when a very cold climate prevailed in the northern hemisphere, and great glaciers slowly made their way southward, grinding and rending as they went, and burying the land under their mountain-like heaps, which sometimes were a mile or more in depth. In North America the glacial ice pushed southward to the 40th degree of north latitude. In Europe it extended to the Alpine region, but failed to reach the ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... other," answered Sister Anne. "Poor, poor Mr. Sly! He made a will leaving you all, except five pounds a year to his laundress: he made his will, locked his door, took heart-rending leave of his uncle at night, and this morning was found hanging at his bedpost when Sambo, the black servant, took him up his water to shave. 'Let me be buried,' he said, 'with the pincushion she gave me and the locket containing her hair.' Did you give him a pincushion, sister? ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... through to the gates, and at that they fled from the breastworks. [67] The women, seeing the rout in the camp, fell to wailing and lamentations, running hither and thither in utter dismay, young maidens, and mothers with children in their arms, rending their garments and tearing their cheeks and crying on all they met, "Leave us not, save us, save your children and yourselves!" [68] Then the princes gathered the trustiest men and stood at the gates, fighting on the breastworks themselves, and urging their troops to make a ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... journey and ill-health, he had not been able to wait on them, as became him, at their respective houses. The moment that he began to speak, even this rude rabble became all as quiet as the raging sea after a storm, only every now and then rending the air with the parliamentary cry of "Hear him! hear him!" and as soon as he had done speaking, they again vociferated aloud an universal "huzza," every one at the same time waving ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... fully, that the woman element is greatly needed in the present crisis of our affairs for the right reconstruction of our suffering Government. We have had, and still have, not men but too many brutes making a very "bear garden" of our congressional halls, rending and tearing this poor "body politic" of ours till, like the raving demoniacs of old, it is now foaming and wandering crazily around its own preconstructed tomb! while at the head of the Government we have only a surly, self-conceited ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... infant from house to house, and from lodging to lodging, as their necessities drove them, rather than ask the parish to bear the expense of its interment:—the poor creatures lived in the hope of one day being able to bury their child at their own cost. It must have been heart-rending to see and hear the mother, who had been called upon to account for the state in which the body was found, make this deposition. By some, judging coldly, if not harshly, this conduct might be imputed to an unwarrantable pride, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... pierce below the dark experiences of life, who is not aware, as he reckons back the days of his life, of hours when the seals of the book have been opened. It has been so, I know, in my own life. Sometimes, at the rending of the seal, a gracious thing has gone forth, bearing victory and prosperity. Sometimes a dark figure has ridden away, changing the very face of the earth for a season. Sometimes a thunder of dismay has ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and break my mother's heart? You know she would mourn for you with the rending of garments and the seven days' sitting on the floor. Go! You have cast off the God of ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... Oh, my heart! my heart! They forced me into that marriage, Waldemar! They forced me into that marriage! I was as helpless as an infant in the hands of my father and my mother!" she panted, in a voice that was the more heart-rending from ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... succeeded in expelling several thousands of Catholics from the county. During the latter part of this year and the commencement of the next, the roads leading from the city of Armagh presented the most heart-rending scenes: groups of miserable families were seen endeavouring to escape from their persecutors into the south and western districts of the country. So strife and tumult ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that he would be with me on the 20th, and as the vessel could not be sooner ready to sail, I determined not to risk this packet by a private hand, or by the public post; he is now arrived and takes charge of it in person. Were it possible, I would attempt to paint to you the heart rending anxiety I have suffered in this time, through a total want of intelligence; my arrival here, my name, my lodgings, and many other particulars have been reported to the British administration, on which they sent orders to the British ambassador ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... stern of the dying 'Endurance'. Hussey had left this light switched on when he took a last observation, and, like a lamp in a cottage window, it braved the night until in the early morning the 'Endurance' received a particularly violent squeeze. There was a sound of rending beams and the light disappeared. The ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... morning, looking into each other's faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the protecting ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... few feet. We were skimming the ridge. The grapnel touched, and, in the time it takes you to wink, had ploughed through a kitchen garden, uprooting a regiment of currant bushes; had leaped clear and was caught in the eaves of a wooden outhouse, fetching us up with a dislocating shock. I heard a rending noise, and picked myself up in time to see the building collapse like a house of cards, and a pair of demented pigs emerge from the ruins and plunge across the garden-beds. And with that I was pitched off my feet again as the hook caught in an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... room was overhead; its thin floor of planks was the ceiling of the workshop. Ere Dooble Sanny was well laid by the side of his sleeping wife, he heard a frightful sound from below, as of some one tearing his beloved violin to pieces. No sound of rending coffin-planks or rising dead would have been so horrible in the ears of the soutar. He sprang from his bed with a haste that shook the crazy tenement to ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... upon the roof. They fell down, down, as minute followed minute, till at length they rested like a sword of flame upon the statue of Amon-Ra. Once more that statue seemed to move. I thought that it lifted its stone arms to protect its head. Then in a moment with a rending noise, its mighty mass burst asunder, and fell in small dust about the throne, almost hiding ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... those passages in your last, which evince so powerfully the superiority of that understanding, which, if I mistake not strangely, is formed to combat, in all its Proteus forms, the system of social slavery? With what soul-rending eloquence does my Angelina describe the solitariness, the isolation of the heart she experiences in a crowded metropolis! With what emphatic energy of inborn independence does she exclaim against the family phalanx of her aristocratic persecutors!-Surely—surely ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... rebels thinking if the letter would improve by baking it might be well to improve it at once, accordingly held it over the fire. This brought to light four closely written pages of the tenderest and most heart-rending sentiment." ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... cheerful influence which had immensely assisted the growth of Fulbert's character. For some years past, Sister Angela had been not a care, but a trusty helper to the Bishop; and the later trials and difficulties, especially the sore rending of the tie with the being she had come to love with all the force of her strong nature, had been borne in a manner that bore witness to the subduing of that over-rebellious ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sentiments, in that immodesty of a malicious man tasting the voluptuous delights of violence, in that shameless nudity of a repulsive soul, in that conflagration of all sufferings combined with all hatreds, something which was as hideous as evil, and as heart-rending as ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... old woman. 'You set too much store by the dog, and imagine such things. He's too old to ever be of service to us any more, and he eats a deal. The storm will be over by morning. Hear the showers of the leaves! The fall wind is rending the forest. 'Tis seventy falls that we have seen, and we will not see many more. We must live while we do live, and the dog must be put out of the way. You must take Faithful out into the forest in the ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... had fulfilled her months, Her firstborn son (came forth) like a lamb. There was no bursting, nor rending, No injury, no hurt; Showing how wonderful he would be. Did not God give her the comfort? Had he not accepted her pure offering and sacrifice, So that thus easily ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... said he could not tell—that he was wounded in the shoulder—that a carriage would be sent for and the wounded man taken to his house. Here a heart-rending groan came from Smith, and Culkins, with a Donnybrook shriek, burst from his seconds, knocked over the doctor's lantern, and fled towards the town like greased lightning amidst a ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... With a rending, riving sound the ship split in two where the terrible, serrated back of the Hansel reef was sawing into her keel. The after-part, with the broken mizzen and the three Orientals, sank backwards into deep water and vanished, while the fore-half oscillated helplessly ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... some commonplace vulgar woman whom, but for that, nobody would have called beautiful. But sometimes the divine thing chooses some morsel of humanity like Mrs. Nevill Tyson, struggles with and overpowers it, rending the small body, spoiling the delicate beauty; and where you looked for the illuminating triumphant glory of motherhood, you find, as Tyson found, a woman with a pitiful plain face and apathetic ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... vanished: pain and grief had made her simple. "Then," I thought with myself, "she did love him!" But I could say nothing. She took my silence for the sympathy it was, and smiled a heart-rending smile, so different from that little sad smile she used to have; really pathetic now, and with hardly a glimmer in it of the old self-pity. I rose, put my arms about her, and kissed her on the forehead; she laid her head ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... a veil fell. Whether it were that the hidden force which held the Seers had momentarily annihilated their physical bodies, or that it raised their spirits above those bodies, certain it is that they felt within them a rending of the ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... A woman's heart-rending shriek rang through the cabin of the steamer Huntsville one afternoon, as she lay taking in wood. I was standing on the guards watching the jolly, happy negroes as they seized the huge sticks and ran to ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... misery on a night, Fresh wonders burst on our awe-struck sight; For the stars were raining out of the sky, In a fiery shower, falling thick and fast; Yea, and horrible sounds were on the blast, Of crash and jar, and shivering moan, As of rending earth; and all nature's groan Were sent to warn us the end was nigh. With awe-struck gladness we looked around, Waiting to hear the last trumpet sound. From living death in that desolate Bay, We had sprung to welcome the judgment day; Although in the ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... and Wednesday the patient was calm, but on the morning of Wednesday she had vomitings with intense stomach pains. From this time on, said the witness, the life of Rose, which was to last only thirty-six hours, was nothing but a long-drawn and heart-rending cry of agony. She drew her last breath on the Thursday evening at half-past five. During her whole illness, added M. Bidard, Rose was attended by none save ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... only, but at the very hearing of cruelties shown to a little child, and why so? for the same two reasons, because it was so innocent, and because it was so unable to defend itself. I do not like to go into the details of such cruelty, they would be so heart-rending. What if wicked men took and crucified a young child? What if they deliberately seized its poor little frame, and stretched out its arms, nailed them to a cross bar of wood, drove a stake through its two feet, and fastened them to ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... and the fierce northern winds swept through the forests, creaking the leafless limbs of the trees as they swayed them to and fro, anon rending them in twain, and scattering the fragments over the white mantled earth. The wanderers now spent most of their time within the temple, by their glowing fire that blazed so cheerfully, the window and door closed tightly by skins, shutting out the cold air. Here they amused ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... go away from you bravely, mother, as you wish it. I have never been disobedient, have I? I will try and not forget till you come that you wish me to be brave—that it is a noble thing to be brave." Then, with a heart-rending sob, "Mother, oh mother, do not be very long ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... the point of her golden spurs in the flank of her steed, and urged it towards the spot where the most frantic of the maenads stood fighting with the mounted odalisks, tearing some from their horses, rending their clothes, and then by way of mockery remounting them with their faces to ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... me eagerly in my efforts to calm the sufferer, and by degrees we managed to extract the cause of her singular conduct and unseasonable visit. My brother—alas!—had lost all he possessed, and even more! His wife's story was heart-rending; but its conclusion filled us with more anxiety for her husband than his losses; for, overcome by the certainty of a dishonored name, haunted by the reflection that law and justice would soon overtake him, ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... traced through the whole of her frantic scene: it is grief only, a mother's heart-rending, soul-absorbing grief, and nothing else. Not even indignation, or the desire of revenge, interfere with its soleness and intensity. An ambitious woman would hardly have thus addressed the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Ben. "I'll get it off." He raised his heavily booted foot, as Frank drew back, and brought it down with a crash on the massive brasswork. With a rending and tearing of the worm-eaten wood the lock ripped loose and the lid, operated by some ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the rending lightnings rage, Till, in the furious elemental war Dissolved, the whole precipitated mass Unbroken floods and solid torrents pour. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... It reads an awful, and it is hoped, a useful lesson, as to the operations of a mind like his, endeavoring to grapple with things beyond its reach. How it first became bewildered and confounded, and finally corrupted and led to the conception and perpetration of the most atrocious and heart-rending deeds. It is calculated also to demonstrate the policy of our laws in restraint of this class of our population, and to induce all those entrusted with their execution, as well as our citizens generally, to see that they are strictly and ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... muttering: "Ye-es! Qui-ite! Ye-es!" and gazing at Phyllis over his collar. And, on the window-sill, as far as she could get from all this noise, the little dog Carmen was rolling her eyes. At sight of their visitor Jock blew one rending screech, and bolting behind the sofa, placed his chin on its top, so that nothing but his round pink unmoving face was visible; and the dog Carmen tried to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... seemed to me inexorably long, but which, as I found afterwards, could only have occupied a few seconds, elapsed in this preliminary state, which, however powerless, was not without a vague luxurious sense of delight. And then suddenly came pain,—pain, that in rapid gradations passed into a rending agony. Every bone, sinew, nerve, fibre of the body, seemed as if wrenched open, and as if some hitherto unconjectured Presence in the vital organization were forcing itself to light with all the pangs of travail. The veins seemed swollen to bursting, the heart labouring ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... introduction was not to be effected that night, at any rate. Driving the car as though it were a monoplane in a clear sky, with an open throttle that awoke the echoes, Oldershaw charged into Fifth Avenue and caught the bonnet of a taxicab that was going uptown. There was a crash, a scream, a rending of metal. And when Martin picked himself up with a bruised elbow and a curious sensation of having stopped a punching bag with his face, he saw Oldershaw bending over the crumpled body of the taxi driver and heard a girl with red lips ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... like Jimmie Higgins, who was wearing himself out, half-starving himself in the effort to bring enlightenment to his class, listened to these controversies with bewildered distress. He saw them as echoes of the terrible national hatreds which were rending Europe, and he resented having these old world disputes thrust into American industrial life. Why could he not go on with his duty of leading the American workers into ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... immeasurably beneath and behind them. I have never been able to join in such a notion. It often seems to me that we lose quite as much as we gain by our lengthened sojourn here. I should not at all wonder if the thoughts of our childhood, when we look back on it after the rending of this vail of our humanity, should prove less unlike what we were intended to derive from the teaching of life, nature, and revelation, than the thoughts ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... started into wakefulness, to find that the deafening rush and roar had ceased, and that a peculiar weird light was forcing its way into the cabin; while at intervals there came a curious grinding, cracking sound, followed every now and then by a loud, rending crash. The ship was rolling slowly upon a heaving sea, and steaming slowly, for the vibration of the screw made the things in the cabin quiver. Then there was more light in the cabin, for the door was opened with a crackling sound, as of moving ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... jingle of metal, a crashing and rending from within the shop, caused Phil to halt sharply after he had once more ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... circling in the opposite direction to Tam, which meant that the object passed him at the rate of one hundred and forty miles an hour. But he had seen the German coming.... Something dropped from the fuselage, there was the rending crash of an explosion and Tam dropped a little, swerved to the left and was out in clear daylight ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... in the bottom lands beside us. Further down it swept the valley clean, and the bluff about the cave had not one shrub on its rough sides. The lightning, too, played strange pranks. The thunderbolts shattered trees and rocks, up-rooting the one and rending and tumbling the other in huge masses of debris upon the valley. It broke even the rough way we had traversed to the Hermit's Cave, and a great heap of fallen stone now shut the cavern in like a rock tomb. Where O'mie had lain was sealed to the world, and it was ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... hand on the quiver and a doe by her side, and the unfortunate Laocoon and his two little sons, struggling in the fearful coils of two huge serpents, and stretching their arms to the skies with heart-rending cries. I also saw Apollo Belvidere. He had just slain the Python and was standing by a great pillar of rock, extending his graceful hand in triumph over the terrible snake. Oh, he was simply beautiful! ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... safety; and he had plead generously for the young South American republics and for struggling Greece. He had become the perpetual candidate of his party for the Presidency, and had gone down again and again in unforeseen and heart-rending defeat. Yet he could say honorably: "If any one desires to know the leading and paramount object of my public life, the preservation of this union will furnish him the key." One could wish that the speeches of this fascinating American were ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... dearth and doubt, Calling the plan of the Maker out, Work, the Titan; Work, the friend, Shaping the earth to a glorious end, Draining the swamps and blasting hills, Doing whatever the Spirit wills— Rending a continent apart, To answer the dream of the Master heart. Thank God for a world where none may shirk— Thank God for ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... heroic task of witnessing to the truth by their death; but if indeed base alloy did mingle with their great and conscientious sacrifice, let us hope that the pangs of physical torture, the anguish of injustice and ignominy, and the rending asunder of all the ties of earthly affection, may have been some expiation for the imperfection of their ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... only this advice, according to my small model. Men ought to take heed, of rending God's church, by two kinds of controversies. The one is, when the matter of the point controverted, is too small and light, not worth the heat and strife about it, kindled only by contradiction. For, as it is noted, by one of the fathers, Christ's ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell—what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... meal; and by the light of a blazing fire, their condition looked less desperate. Mrs. Vickers had set the pannikin on a flat stone, and dispensed the tea with an affectation of dignity which would have been absurd had it not been heart-rending. She had smoothed her hair and pinned the white shawl about her coquettishly; she even ventured to lament to Mr. Frere that she had not brought more clothes. Sylvia was in high spirits, and scorned to confess hunger. When the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... hope that vengeance would be served out upon the orcas, but he was not prepared for the next turn in the tragedy. Like a pack of ravening wolves the killers hurled themselves at the mother whale, three of them at one time fastening themselves with a rending grip upon the soft lower lip, others striking viciously with their rows of sharp teeth at her eyes. The issue was not in doubt for a minute. No creature could endure such savage ferocity and such united attack. The immense ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... choristers and I.C.U. enlivened each station along the route by rending sacred songs and solos as The Kano Express drew in."—Lagos ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... presence." It was 11 o'clock at night when the unfortunate man left the town-hall, escorted by gens-d'armes, and carrying, attached to his back and breast, a writing in large characters, in these words, "Traitor to his country," which was read by light of flambeaux. This heart-rending assembly advanced towards the market-place, appointed for the execution of criminals. There they wished to bind the eyes of the accused;—he refused, and said, with a firm voice, that he knew how to die for his King. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... moved away, there was a wild shriek among the crowded passengers, and Mrs. O'Donnell flung her arms above her head and cried in the most heart-rending tone I ever heard—"Oh, my babies, ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... at the door, Obadiah's voice became lower and lower, until at last it ceased entirely. Not a step, not a deep breath, not the movement of a hand disturbed the stillness of the little room. By inches Nathaniel drew himself inside the door. His heavy boot caught in a sliver on the step but the rending of wood brought no response. It was the quiet of death that pervaded the cabin, it was a strange, growing fear of death that entered Nathaniel as he now hurried across the room and peered through the narrow aperture. The old councilor was half stretched upon the table, his arms reaching out, ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... country; it had immense influence, but that influence was exactly what it ought not to have been. Instead of stimulating it checked, instead of expanding it stereotyped. Even for the church it had failed to bring unity, for it was from Oxford that the opinions had sprung that seemed to be rending the church in twain. The regeneration introduced by this momentous measure has been overlaid by the strata of subsequent reforms. Enough to say that the objects obtained were the deposition of the fossils and drones, and a renovated constitution on the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... out of their windows, and, recognizing Ducklow's wagon and old mare in such an astonishing plight, and Ducklow himself, without his hat, rising from his seat and reaching forward in wild attitudes, brandishing the reins, and at the same time rending the azure with yells, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... rapid as its fall. Only a few years after Penda's defeat the Mercians threw off Oswin's yoke and set Wulfhere, a son of Penda, on their throne. They were aided in their revolt, no doubt, by a religious strife which was now rending the Northumbrian realm. The labour of Aidan, the victories of Oswald and Oswin, seemed to have annexed the north to the Irish Church. The monks of Lindisfarne, or of the new religious houses whose foundation followed ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... He thanked God, when God had done nothing for him. He thanked God, when the way that he was in was not of God's prescribing, but of his own inventing. So the persecutor thanks God that he was put into that way of roguery that the devil had put him into, when he fell to rending and tearing of the church of God; "Their possessors slay them (saith the prophet), and hold themselves not guilty: and they that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich;" Zech. xi. 5. I remember that Luther used to say, "In the name of God begins ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... it, and began rending it with all her might, the tears resounding through the house ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... I know, which lives on coconuts, enjoying the scientific name of Birgus latro, the Burglar; but it seems to be a special invention, as big as a cat and armed with two fearful pairs of pincers in front for rending the outside casings of the fruits, and a more delicate tool on its hind-legs for picking out the meat. Other animals have to do without it, as had man, I opine, in the stone and copper ages. With the iron age came a chopper, called in Western India a "koita," with which he can hack ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... than a horse's shoulders, which had evidently been diverted from its original uses by an ingenious but unprejudiced Turkish soldiery for the purpose of suspending their washed shirts. Rip! rip! Z—z—z—z! as I ducked to the saddle-bow, and something scraped across my back with a sound as of rending garments. When I was able to reflect, I found the horse standing almost asleep in the yard, with my soldier-servant respectfully holding my stirrup in his hand. "Shall I sew up the back of the Effendi's jacket?" he placidly remarked; and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... passed away. The rupture between the royal pair was such that they could scarcely endure each other. Louis himself was the first to inform the queen of the news so satisfactory to him, so heart-rending to her, that a dagger had pierced the heart of Buckingham. After this they met only at unfrequent intervals. All confidence and sympathy were at an end. It was a bitter disappointment to the queen that she had ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... rarely cry are likely to do so with great violence when they once give themselves up to it, and Charlotte's rending sobs drove poor Melina to the verge of distraction. At last she gathered the girl's slender figure into her arms and sat down ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... unspeakable and human torture beyond all computation, justified by Christian men and sanctioned by governments, at length rending the nation asunder in civil war and bequeathing a problem still unsolved—all this followed in the wake of those first voyages in search of labor which could be bought and sold as merchandise. It belonged to the dark ages with piracy and witchcraft, better forgotten than recalled, save ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... it came to pass that when Moroni had proclaimed these words, behold, the people came running together with their armor girded about their loins, rending their garments in token, or as a covenant, that they would not forsake the Lord their God; or, in other words, if they should transgress the commandments of God, or fall into transgression, and be ashamed to take upon them the name of Christ, the Lord should rend them even as they ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... he worked the weapon loose and, jumping down, turned to the desk, thrust the point of the sword between the writing-pad and the edge of the roll-top, forced the blade well in, and bore all his weight upon the haft of this improvised jimmy. Promptly, with a sound of rending wood, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... crying for food, all that those dockers had character enough to do, up on Tower Hill, was to make a polite, smooth, Anglican prayer to God—a prayer like a kind of blessing before not having any meat, and not that awful, fateful, husky cry to Heaven, a roar or rending of their hearts up to the black and empty sky—what would such men have been good for? What hope or courage could any one have for them, for such men at such a time, if they would not, if they could not, come thundering ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... then?)—Almost the only exception I have yet reached is his Account of Mrs. Siddons, whom he worshipped: whom he acted with in her later years at Country Theatres: and who was as kind to him as she was even then heart-rending on the Stage. He was her Mr. Beverley: {71} 'a very young husband,' she told him: but 'in the right way if he would study, study, study—and not marry till thirty.' At another time, when he was on the stage, she stood at the side scene, called out 'Bravo, Sir, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... the inscription over the doorway, after the reading of which Dante's ears were assailed by words of agony and heart-rending cries. "This," said Vergil, "is the home of those melancholy souls who lived without infamy and without praise. Cowards and selfish in life, they are denied even entrance to hell." As they looked, a long train passed by, stung by gadflies and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... the Norse mythology "the god of thunder; the thunder was his wrath, the gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of Thor's angry brows; the fire-bolt bursting out of heaven is the all-rending hammer flung from the hand of Thor; he urges his loud chariot over the mountain tops—that is the peal; wrathful he 'blows in his beard'—that is the rustling of the storm-blast before the thunder begin"; he is the strongest of the gods, the helper of both gods and men, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the decaying Roman empire. That old classic world, the history of which occupies so large a portion of our early studies, lay, in the eighth century of our era, utterly exanimate and overthrown. On the north the German, on the south the Arab, was rending away its provinces. At last the spoilers encountered one another, each striving for the full mastery of the prey. Their conflict brought back upon the memory of Gibbon the old Homeric simile, where the strife of Hector and Patroclus over the dead body ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... out, backed by the mightiest of all the mighty converters and generators of Triplanetary's super-dreadnaught. That beam, a pipe-like hollow cylinder of intolerable energy, flashed out, and there was a rending, tearing crash as it struck Roger's hitherto impenetrable wall. Struck and clung, grinding, boring in, while from the raging inferno that marked the circle of contact of cylinder and shield the pirates' screen radiated scintillating ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... But the mischievous Puk-Wudjies, They the envious Little People, They the fairies and the pygmies, Plotted and conspired against him. "If this hateful Kwasind," said they, "If this great, outrageous fellow Goes on thus a little longer, Tearing everything he touches, Rending everything to pieces, Filling all the world with wonder, What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies? Who will care for the Puk-Wudjies? He will tread us down like mushrooms, Drive us all into the water, Give our bodies to be eaten By the wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs, By the Spirits of the water! So ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the low bridge, rending the air with vicious toots. Unwieldly cascos are poled down the river, laden heavily with cocoanuts and hemp. Small floating islands whirl along in the swift current, and are carried out to sea. At the Muelle del Rey—the "King's Dock"—lie the inter-island ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... lowering its horns, made straight for the intruders. Shrieking with fright, Honor and Lettice plunged into the hedge, scrambling anyhow through quickset and brambles, scratching their hands and faces and rending their dresses in the struggle, their one object being to escape from the horror behind them. With torn blouses and fingers full of thorns they issued from the opposite side, and rolled down a bank before they ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... built—stood grim and desolate, long dismantled, and waiting only to be torn down for the behoof of speculative dealers in old material. What aforetime was a tree-bordered drive, now curved between dead stumps, a mere slushy cartway; the stone pillars, which had marked the entrance, damaged in the rending away of metal with a market value, drooped sideways, ready at a touch to bury themselves ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... represented in the wealthy classes; in Russia an overwhelming portion of them are proletaries, "free like birds," poverty-stricken people who literally do not know to-day by what they are going to live to-morrow. Heart-rending pictures are painted by impartial observers of the life of the Jewish poorer classes, of all these tradesmen, factory workers, petty merchants and peddlers. They literally starve and cripple both mind and body in the slums ...
— The Shield • Various
... the major back into his chair. There was a crashing, rending sound as Stover's huge body struck it. The wood collapsed and the dazed land agent found himself sitting on ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... forever It trembles, but it cannot pass away! The voices of thy bards and sages thunder With an earth-awaking blast Through the caverns of the past; Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast; A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, Which soars where Expectation never flew, Rending the veil of space and time asunder! One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew; One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, As Athens doth the world with her delight ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... long, heart-rending strain it had been! His mind went back to the golden August day when the telegram was laid on his desk announcing that the old civilization of Europe had fallen into fragments. He remembered the first meeting thereafter, when his ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... viewpoint to the alien who seeks a citizenship among us. There is need to magnify the national viewpoint to Americans throughout the land. More there is a demand for every living being in the United States to respect and abide by the laws of the Republic. Let men who are rending the moral fiber of the Republic through easy contempt for the prohibition law, because they think it restricts their personal liberty, remember that they set the example and breed a contempt for law which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was a great crashing, rending sound from without. Instantly a chorus of wild yells arose on the air, and shots were fired as ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... they had been ordered to appear this day in full new costume: "O vanity! O vanity!" said Friedrich Wilhelm, at sight of the ornamented plush. "Pray for me, pray for me; my trust is in the Saviour!" he often said. His pains, his weakness are great; the cordage of a most tough heart rending itself piece by piece. At one time, he called for a mirror: that is certain:—rugged wild man, son of Nature to the last. The mirror was brought; what he said at sight of his face is variously reported: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... all about with steel and fast-falling axes, when husbandmen emulously strain to cut it down: it hangs threateningly, with shaken top and quivering tresses asway; till gradually, overmastered with [631-662]wounds, it utters one last groan, and rending itself away, falls in ruin along the ridge. I descend, and under a god's guidance clear my way between foe and flame; weapons give ground before me, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... I'll break thy neck: Christians to the lions!" But the arbiter's nerves had had enough of those shouts. From the time that he had left the Palatine they had been stifling him like a nightmare, and rending his ears. So when he saw the fist of the giant above him, the measure of his ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the dishes back into the basket when there came an extra heavy flash of lightning, followed immediately by a rending clap of thunder which almost paralyzed Marion and Jack. There was a strange smell in the air, and both found their blood tingling in a manner that was ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... screeching across the open and striking the walls of the fort with a mighty impact, that structure was shaken to its very foundations. Even untouched, one felt shaky and uncertain on that hillside, and one would have felt his body rending to pieces as he looked where a shell burst in the midst of a trench, and heard the filthy squelch and sharp cries above the roar, and saw the awful faces through the red glare and curtain of smoke, and the mangled corpses of dead bodies hurled ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... wallowing majestically through long, dead black swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the peak and glanced overside. Broad, phosphorescent swords broke smoothly with a rending, rushing gurgle over the steep cut-water. His eyes darted here and there over the void as his mind struggled to straighten out this ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound, When rock'd the mountains, and when groan'd the ground, 250 She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray, To Power unseen, and mightier far than they: She, from the rending earth and bursting skies, Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise: Here fix'd the dreadful, there the blest abodes; Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods; Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes were rage, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... rather be slain suddenly, than lie still and await the change. The growing weakness, ushered in, it may be, by long agony; the alienation from things about me, while I am yet amidst them; the slow rending of the bonds which make this body a home, so that it turns half alien, while yet some bonds unsevered hold the live thing fluttering in its worm-eaten cage—but God knows me and my house, and I need not speculate ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... claim? Was it for him, unless after straining every nerve against it, to forfeit a portion of his birthright and a jewel of his crown? Was it for him, though the clearest case of necessity, to allow the rending asunder his empire—to array for all time to come of several millions of his people against the rest? After calling on his loyal subjects in the colonies to rise, after requiring and employing their aid, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... restore me to the light of the sun by rending asunder the huge arches of rock which united over my head, buttressing each other with impregnable strength? Who could place my feet on the right path, and bring me ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne |
