"Throes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was a "seeck" man all right! So sick that he could not raise his flushed, hollow-cheeked young face from the pillow to salute his comrades with his customary impious bonhomie. Now, gabbling away to himself in the throes of delirium, ever his feverish eyes stared beyond the ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... Japanese theater. Otherwise the acting has always been done by men. Sadi's husband performs also, and in a dreadfully realistic manner. He stabbed himself with a sword, and with such vigor that real blood, so It looked, ran down in bucketfuls over the stage, and he groaned and writhed in his death-throes. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... he felt himself hurled with gigantic force from the quay wall. Before the base, cheating, faithless scoundrel could make one exclamation, he was plunged into the Liffey—even before one mental aspiration for mercy, he was in the throes of suffocation! The heavy splash in the water caught the attention of those whose approach had alarmed the murderers, and seeing a man and woman running, a pursuit commenced, which ended by Newgate having two ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... of time," Frank assured her calmly. "I left the fellows in the first throes of cleaning up—they won't be through for half ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... before me now: In thy calm dignity, and sweet repose, Alas! sad memory re-invests thy brow, With death's stern agony, and pain's last throes. ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Roland felt the throes of death approach, and turning his face toward Spain and toward his enemies he placed his sword and horn beneath him, and lifting his weary hands to heaven he closed his eyes. Death and silence brooded o'er the valley; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... dreadful butchery! Round the top Of the entrenched summit, parked and aimed, Blazed like Vesuvius when he bellows fire And molten lava into the midnight heavens, An hundred crashing cannon, and the hill Shook to the thunder of the mighty guns, As ocean trembles to the bursting throes Of submarine volcanoes; and the shells From the embattled gun-boats—fiery fiends— Shrieked on the night and through the ether hissed Like hell's infernals. Line supporting line, From base to summit round the blazing hill, Our infantry was posted. Crowned with fire, And zoned ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... sought expression for his physical faculties in other ways. On the contrary, the whole history of the mechanical era is a persistent struggle for more pay and less work, and to-day it has culminated in world-wide ruin; for there is not a nation in civilization which is not now in the throes of economic distress, and many of them are on the verge of ruin. In my judgment, the economic catastrophe of 1921 is far greater than ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... to the prayer on the wind, which seemed to offer it for him, listened and was gravely touched. But he himself was far from the throes of supplication. He was looking for the forces of his soul; and by the time he reached Dr Drummond's door we may suppose ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... his assistants, informs us that for ten years he worked on an average eighteen hours a day, and that he has been known to continue an experiment for three months day and night, with the exception of a nap from six o'clock to nine of the morning. In the throes of invention, and under the inspiration of his ideas, he is apt to make no distinction between day and night, until he arrives at a result which he considers to be satisfactory one way or the other. His meals are brought to him in the laboratory, and hastily eaten, although ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... however, went the speculator. It has been remarked that "from the time when Joliet and La Salle first found their way into the heart of the great West up to the present day when far-off Alaska is in the throes of development, 'big business' has been engaged in western speculation." * In pre-revolutionary days this speculation took the form of procuring, by grant or purchase, large tracts of western land which were to be sold and colonized at a profit. Franklin was interested ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... person who experienced and survived the throes of the different stages of the war, and of the different gas surprises, mainly German, which were sprung upon us, finds it difficult to think out, or express, a cool and balanced view on the question ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... off. But then he is like the very genius or demon of theological controversy personified. He has neither airs nor graces at command; he thinks nothing of himself; he has nothing theatrical about him (which cannot be said of his successor and rival); but you see a man in mortal throes and agony with doubts and difficulties, seizing stubborn knotty points with his teeth, tearing them with his hands, and straining his eyeballs till they almost start out of their sockets, in pursuit of a train of visionary reasoning, like a Highland-seer ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... history, for a professor who had gone abroad for his health. This he continued, speaking for any absentee on any subject, and tutoring rich laggards for a consideration. Good boys, low on phosphorus, used to get him to start their daily themes, and those overtaken in the throes of trigonometry he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... in the throes of a great religious upheaval. At all the meetings there were awakenings and conversions. The people seemed to find what they had been seeking. Yet among all those whom Karin had heard preach, not one could give her ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... and making durable in this the evanescent dreams of youth. "Learn the master-rules in good season," Sachs adds, "that they may be faithful guides to you, helping you to preserve safely that which in the gracious years of youth spring-time and love with exquisite throes bred in your unconscious heart, that you may store and treasure it, and it may not be lost!"—"But who—" Walther asks, inclined to cavil where anything is concerned which relates to the master-singers, "Who created these rules which stand in such high honour?"—"They were sorely-needy masters," ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... France was in the throes of the Dreyfus affair. Chekhov began studying the Dreyfus and Zola cases from shorthand notes, and becoming convinced of the innocence of both, wrote a heated letter to Suvorin, which led to a ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... unkindly hot, My garden makes a desert spot; Sometimes a blight upon the tree Takes all my fruit away from me; And then with throes of bitter pain Rebellious passions rise and swell; But—life is more than fruit or grain, And so I sing, and ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... reached their journey's end. The return journey was a failure, on account of gradients and curves, but the possibility of success was demonstrated; and from this run on the Merthyr tramway the railway age—marked with throes and suspense, delays, accidents, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... inflammable, that he was an unfailing source of merriment, especially to the Neil boys and their friends. There was not a kinder or tenderer heart in all the Ontario Highlands than poor Catchach's, but he was always in the throes of a feud with someone, for he loved a fight and might be said never to be at peace except when he ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... under concern, not only for the child, but on account of the great happiness that was to come to him also. However, the mother's labor was such as afforded a confirmation to what was foretold by God; for it was not known to those that watched her, by the easiness of her pains, and because the throes of her delivery did not fall upon her with violence. And now they nourished the child at home privately for three months; but after that time Amram, fearing he should be discovered, and, by falling under the king's displeasure, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... threatening clouds have long been visible. As at the dawn of Christianity, the whole world has seemed to be rent by torturing doubts and by the menace of an approaching end. After having been preserved from destruction by Christ for two thousand years, it suddenly found itself in the throes of the most appalling upheaval yet experienced, with the majority of its inhabitants engaged in a murderous war. The dream of human brotherhood, glimpsed throughout the centuries, seemed to be irretrievably threatened, and once more arose the age-old question as to how the Reign of Love ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... earth—her people are defeated in battle, and worse than all, the ark of God is fallen into the hands of the uncircumcised Philistines—who doubtless glory as if Dagon had conquered the invincible Jehovah. What to her are the pangs and throes under which her tortured body labors? She heeds them not. Pitying friends endeavor to rouse her from her dying lethargy, by the most glad tidings a Hebrew woman could learn, "Fear not; for thou hast ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... first he tried to hammer an excuse, To which the sole reply was tears and sobs, And indications of hysterics, whose Prologue is always certain throes, and throbs, Gasps, and whatever else the owners choose: Alfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job's; He saw too, in perspective, her relations, And then he tried ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... had as yet no strength but to shatter and destroy; Spain, lured on by France and then abandoned by her; England, disturbed at home by parliamentary agitation, favorably disposed to the court of Russia and for a long while allied to Frederick; Sweden and Denmark, in the throes of serious events; there was nothing to oppose the iniquity projected and prepared for with so much art and ability. It was in vain that the King of Prussia sought to turn into a joke the unscrupulous manoeuvres of his diplomacy when he wrote to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... not all sunshine for the lovers. Paris was in the throes of famine and plague and flood. Poverty and discontent stalked through her streets, and there were scowling and envious eyes to greet the King and his lady when they rode laughing by; or when, as on one occasion we read of, they returned from a hunting excursion, riding ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... delicately treated in our Constitution, brought that Republic, in less than three quarters of a century, to the throes of death, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... the town was in the throes of a panic. Long before midnight throngs of refugees had begun to arrive, followed later by soldiers. By 11 o'clock the Belgian rear guard was engaging the enemy at the railroad bridge at the entrance to ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... fatal blow, not only to his love for her, but to his honor of her; and both love and honor were in their death-throes! ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... doctored, shrived, and buried should go like clock-work on the enemy's soil, and that the people should submit not only without a murmur, but with enthusiasm, to sacrifices such as have never before been exacted of any nation except in the very throes of despair, show that something far more serious has taken place in Prussia than the transformation of the country into a camp. In other words, we are not witnessing simply a levy en masse, nor yet the mere maintenance of an immense force by a military monarchy, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... crawled from that tiny golden cylinder and upon the smooth white paper distilled its subtle venom. I, poor fool, exulting in the splendid throes of accomplishment, never dreamed that the real christening of my bantling was the toast the Master of Hell drank as the name "Amalgamated" was slowly traced upon the pad before my eyes; never dreamed that this cherished offspring on whose rearing I had lavished all I possessed of dollars, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... acute, penetrating, and luminous, cannot discover by its own force. It is remarkable, that at this time his fancied activity was for the moment so vigorous, that he promised his work should be published before Christmas, 1757. Yet nine years elapsed before it saw the light. His throes in bringing it forth had been severe and remittent; and at last we may almost conclude that the Caesarian operation was performed by the knife of Churchill, whose upbraiding satire, I dare say, made Johnson's friends urge him ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... might by his revolts, they won him a certain respect; it is likely that they warded off many an indignity, many an outrage. The Assyrians knew that his endurance could not be reckoned on beyond a certain point, and they knew that in his death-throes he was dangerous. The Phoenicians probably suffered considerably less than the other subject nations under Assyrian rule; and the maritime population, which was the salt of the people, suffered least of all, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... I cried excitedly; "wounded, wounded!" and I set off in chase, but approaching cautiously and preparing my bow again, for I had read that the tiger was most dangerous when in the throes of death. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... unhappy prominence in America as in our own police-courts. A worthy aim, I doubt not. One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not enough another is "out of her head," while a third, Dr. Callandar, the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown. This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a precis) which is the designedly central but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... prophet Elijah ran to the Patriarchs and to the other prophets, and to the saints in Israel, and addressed these words to them: "O ye fathers of the world! Angels, and the sun and the moon, and heaven and earth, and all the celestial hosts are weeping bitterly. The whole world is seized with throes as of a woman in travail, by reason of your children, who have forfeited their life on account of their sins, and ye sit quiet and tranquil." Thereupon Moses said to Elijah: "Knowest thou any saints in the present generation of Israel?" Elijah named Mordecai, and Moses sent the prophet to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... when the budding author was supposedly to be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were no throes. Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bloodthirsty nation. We seek territory. We need new lands—fruitful lands, trade, the command of the seas. If we cannot get what we want by peaceful means, then it must be war. England for the present is weakly governed. She is in the throes of labor troubles. Her political parties are ill-balanced. There is a puppet at the Foreign Office. Now ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from the artist's fondness for attitude. He seems to have regarded posture-making as a peculiar attribute of genius. His figures are always in a constrained and over-studied pose: twisting about in the throes of giving birth to a great idea: filled with the divine afflatus, even to the bursting of their buttonholes and the snapping of their braces. His Handel is in a state of exceeding perturbation: his clothes in staring ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... custom, often several times a day. I found him surrounded with visitors, all of whom appeared to be affected while in his presence. He needed sympathy. His mind was tortured. His whole life seemed made up of successive throes of excitement and desperation. His heart was torn by conflicting passions. His confidence and affection for former friends were evidently waning. If any remained, it hung like the tremulous tones of music uncertain and discordant upon its shivered strings. After the principal visitors had retired, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... know what great lesson we should learn from this, and stammered his ignorance pitiably, but Winona, in the throes of some mysterious prepossession, forgot to reprove him, and merely allowed the more gifted Merle to purvey the desired information. So the Wilbur twin was practically free to wriggle on his hard chair, to exchange ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... had little interest for Science and Art; and the great achievement of the fifteenth century, the Reformation, called for word and deed to reckon with a thousand years of old traditions and the slavery of intellectual despotism. The new time was born amid bitter throes. The questions at issue—religious and ecclesiastical questions concerned with the liberty of the Christian—were of the most absorbing kind, and though Germany produced minds of individual stamp such as she had never known before, characters ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... figure still, his garb in a fashion long forgotten, his clumsily hacked hair brushing the collar of his ancient coat. Magee and the girl found the check room, and after he had been relieved of the burden of his baggage, set out up the main street of Reuton. It was a typical up-state town, deep in the throes of the holiday season. The windows of the stores were green with holly; the faces of the passers-by reflected the excitements of Christmas and of the upheaval in civic politics which were upon ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... took his sword and other valuables. The dying man made signs for water, and the rebel held a canteen to his mouth, but, poor man! he could not drink. After this, other rebels from their works shot at him, but he did not budge, and believing him really in the throes of death, they did not bother him any more. The day was extremely hot; it was one of those warm summer days peculiar to the South. He lay on his back in the burning sun—an impossible thing under other circumstances. Flies and ants swarmed his face, and ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... beyond flight Of modern thought, with great intention staunch, Though unobliged until that binding pact. Whether She kept her word, or He the mind To hold her, wavering, to his own restraint, Answer, ye pleasures faint, Ye fiery throes, and upturn'd eyeballs blind Of sick-at-heart Mankind, Whom nothing succour can, Until a heaven-caress'd and happier Eve Be join'd with some glad Saint In like espousals, blessed upon Earth, And she her Fruit forth bring; No numb, chill-hearted, shaken-witted ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... Glandules called prostata. These are signs preceding the labour; but when she is presently falling into labour, the signs are, great pains about the region of the reins and loins, which coming and retreating by intervals, are answered in the bottom of the belly by congruous throes, and sometimes the face is red and inflamed, the blood being much heated by the endeavours a woman makes to bring forth her child; and likewise, because during these strong throes her respiration is intercepted, which ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... summer of 1793, and on the eve of the Reign of Terror, when Paris, from early in October until the end of the year, was in the deadliest throes of revolution. The dull thud of the guillotine, placed in front of the Tuileries, in the Place de la Revolution, which is now the Place de la Concorde, a little to the east of where the obelisk of Luxor now stands, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... itinerary for a day, Set forth in graphic phrase by skilful pens, With pictures of its face, its favourite dens, Its knife or bludgeon, pistol, paramour, Will swell the swift editions hour by hour, More than high news of war or of debate, The death of heroes or the throes of state. From club-room to street-corner runs the cry After the newest fact, or latest lie: The hurrying throng unfolded broad-sheets grasp, And read with goggled eyes and lips a-gasp, Blood! Blood! More ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... extinguished, never to reappear in the same form. Finally, it was believed that this feverish activity ultimately died out, and that the ancient peace once more came to reign upon the earth. As the abnormal throes and convulsions began to be relieved, the dry land and sea once more resumed their relations of stability, the conditions of life were once more established, and new races of animals and plants sprang into existence, to last until ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... subterranean force the earth's foundation shakes; The city quivers in the throes of fierce, successive quakes, And massive structures thrill like giant oaks before the blast; Into the streets with deafening crash the frailer ones are cast. Half garbed, the multitude rush out in frantic ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... with a thud to observe that it was quarter of two o'clock, and the dining-room was cold with the dying down of the Latrobe, and the excellent reading-lamp in the death-throes of going out. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that cannot be again, And pleasures too that never can be more: For loss of pleasure I was never sore, But worse, far worse is to feel no pain. The throes and agonies of a heart explain Its very depth of want at inmost core; Prove that it does believe, and would adore, And doth with ill for ever strive and strain. I not lament for happy childish years, For loves departed, that have had their day, Or hopes ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... prayers, knelt down, and meekly laid his head upon a pillow where neither care nor fear nor sickness would ever vex it more. Many a spectacle of sorrow had been witnessed on that tragic spot, but never one more sad than this; never one more painful to think or speak of. When a nation is in the throes of revolution, wild spirits are abroad in the storm; and poor human nature presses blindly forward with the burden which is laid upon it, tossing aside the obstacles in its path with a recklessness which, in calmer hours, it would ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... unison, a distance of scarce twenty yards intervening between the marksmen and their prey. Peter's mark, the largest and most beautiful of the two, fell dead, with its head transfixed with the arrow, which waved feebly above the crimsoned surface, as the huge body trembled with the throes of dissolution. La Salle's aim was less sure, and the novel missile tore through the neck, just below the ear. A fountain of blood sprang ten feet into the air as the dying animal fell back, spurning the bloody pool with tail and flippers; but the mighty heart sent forth its wasted life-tide, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... was engaged in wondering how Mr. Brown had discovered his identity. He decided that Tuppence, in the throes of anxiety, had gone to the police, and that his disappearance having been made public the gang had not been slow to put two ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... servant a dog?" says he, and stalks indignantly away, leaving Miss Maliphant in the throes of uncertainty. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... welfare), the deities of fire become glad; and if he is offered a seat, it is the god of a hundred sacrifices, who is gratified. If his feet are washed, it is the Pitris who are delighted; and if he is fed it is Prajapati that is pleased. One should with collected soul, give a cow when (during her throes) the feet and head of her calf are visible, before her delivery is complete. A cow with her calf in the air in course of falling from the uterus to the earth, is to be regarded as equal to the earth herself. He, therefore, that giveth away such a cow, reapeth the merit of giving away the earth. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... evernigh 45 The hateful picture forces on my sight. There, Death of every dear delight, Frowns Poverty of Giant mien! In vain I seek the charms of youthful grace, Thy sunken eye, thy haggard cheeks it shews, 50 The quick emotions struggling in the Face Faint index of thy mental Throes, When each strong Passion spurn'd controll, And not a Friend was nigh ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Freedom wander forth forlorn, Forsaking her false kingdom in the West, Quitting a world too sunk in crime To heed that glorious light sublime— No longer shall she hide her burning crest— No more her children's cries In vain appeal shall rise, While ruthless War's fierce earthquake shocks With throes convulsive thy dominion's rock, And tyrants, in their proud halls, celebrate The anguish of a nation tottering ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... back nothing, on my honour," he assured her. "If you want the impression which still exists in the county—only an impression—I must make plain to you at the start (for the events happened when the State was in the throes of reconstruction, when each man was busy rebuilding his own fortunes, and when tragedies occurred without notice and were hushed up without remark)—if you want merely an impression, I repeat, then you may have it, my dear lady, straight ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... is at hand," she said, "though not for a moment do they relax their preparations. We are their real enemy, don't you see? They can fight France with one hand and Russia with the other; and in a few months' time now they expect we shall be in the throes of an internal revolution over this Irish business. They may be right, but there is just the possibility that they may be astoundingly wrong. The fact of the great foreign peril—this nightmare, this Armageddon ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... seems constantly to be worse, as his labour is more. The effusions of passion which exigence forces out are for the most part striking and energetick; but whenever he solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... again in Europe. All the newspapers contained accounts of the discoveries made on the expedition. Last autumn Arab dealers in ivory had found him in the land of Niam-Niam, taken an interest in him, and finally brought him, then seemingly in the throes of imminent death, back to the Nile. In England he was celebrated as a hero and a bold pioneer; the Royal Geographical Society had made him an honorary member; and the incidents of his journey were the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the door, and there, with the salutary instinct of the brave, turned and faced the danger. There was no pursuit. The sounds continued; below the table a crouching figure was indistinctly to be seen jostled by the throes of a sneezing-fit; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on concluding each of the foregoing short sentences, could be surpassed by nothing but the exultation with which he fell back and eyed him when he had finished this brilliant display of eloquence and sagacity; his great blue waistcoat heaving with the throes of such a masterpiece, and his nose in a state of violent inflammation ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... it could not but produce agitation. Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature; opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks, throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history,—you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the spot, knelt down by the dead mother, tenderly kissed her cheek, lifted the sleeping child, and with all the awe, and nearly all the tremulous joy of first motherhood, bore him to her husband. The throes of the earthquake had slain the parents, and given the child into their arms. Without look of consultation, mark of difference, or sign of agreement, they turned in silence and left the terrible church, with the clear summer sky looking in ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... ineffectual efforts, gasping in the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became more convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old fisherman sniffed it eagerly, as we smell ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... had perceived that it was bound. With great heavings and throes, with snortings and bellowings, with scratchings and tearings of its great claws and lashings of its terrible tail, it writhed and fought to be free, and the light of thousands of ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... so busy in the last throes of my "Syrian Howadji," which is to be born on Tuesday, that I have not sent you an intended letter about the Philharmonic and the Quartette; and I presume from to-day's number that you have other notes of them. I ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... evidence of a greater imagination to make us live so familiarly as Scott does amidst the political and religious controversies of two or three centuries' duration, to be the actual witnesses, as it were, of Margaret of Anjou's throes of vain ambition, and Mary Stuart's fascinating remorse, and Elizabeth's domineering and jealous balancings of noble against noble, of James the First's shrewd pedantries, and the Regent Murray's large forethought, of the politic craft of Argyle, the courtly ruthlessness of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... loaded with 12,000 pounds of powder, was to be the signal of attack. At eight o'clock this mine was fired, and the effect was terrific; the ground trembled as if agitated by an earthquake, and after it had heaved up with several convulsive throes, the volcanoes burst forth. The whole of the salient angle and the stone cavalier in its rear were lifted into the air, and, after the smoke and clouds of dust had passed away, the bastion with three hundred men were seen precipitated below. The two grand divisions of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... her lorgnette and examined the menu while the small maid backed away and disappeared, in the throes of extreme shyness ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... life in the gloom"—for more than two thousand years before Waverley. Of its earlier attempts to get into full existence we cannot say much here:[18] something on the more recent but rather abortive birth-throes has been promised, and is now due. It is not improbable that considerable assistance was rendered to the kind by the heroic romance of the seventeenth century in prose and verse, which often attempted historic, and almost always ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonized spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... glance passed to the roof of the mill there was no perceptible change in her expression; and she observed dispassionately that the shingles which caught the drippings from the sycamore were beginning to rot. While she stood there she was in the throes of one of the bitterest sorrows of her life; yet there was no hint of it either in her quiet face or in the rigid spareness of her figure. Her sons had resisted her at times, but until to-day not one ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Calvin went to Geneva, which was then in the throes of a revolution at once political and religious, for the townsfolk were freeing themselves from the feudal suzerainty of the duke of Savoy and banishing the Catholic Church, whose cause the duke championed. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... supplication,—if, in the terrible game of honesty with political corruption, when 'Check' is said to the adverse power, I cannot wish and pray that 'Checkmate' may follow,—when some huge evil, sorely wounded, in its fierce throes spreads destruction about, as the dying monster in Northern seas casts up boat-loads of dying men who fall bruised and bleeding among the fragments into the waves with the threshing of its angry tail, if then I cannot hope that the struggle may be short, and the ship of the Republic gather back ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... of the eyes was nothing but a boy, in spite of his length: so much of a boy that a slight crack in his voice showed that it was just past the throes of "changing," but those black eyes burned on without swerving—except once when they flashed at the little girl who, with her chin in her hand and one foot on the top rung of her chair, was gazing at the stranger ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... my neck with his arm, grasped my throat with his teeth. Those were fearful moments. I struggled to disengage my hand from his vice-like grip. The blood gurgled from my mouth, my tongue protruded, and I was gasping for breath in the last throes of strangulation, when we came to the ground with ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Congress of December, 1862, he proposed payment for the slaves, elaborating a scheme in detail and urging it with copious and cogent argument. "The people of the South," said he, addressing a Congress at that moment in the throes of a bloody war with the South, "are not more responsible for the original introduction of this property than are the people of the North, and, when it is remembered how unhesitatingly we all use cotton and sugar and share the profits of dealing in them, it may not be quite safe to say that ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... is yet in distress and anguish. He is yet in the throes of birth, in the pains of growth. Our world is as my brother Hebbel said: a wound of God. But as I add: a healing wound; therefore not less painful. And what distinguishes the true marriage from the untrue is this very quality of pain. Never did I suffer ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... manifestly as night obscures the day. As for my part, gentlemen, there are two things which I love equally—liberty and France. Well, then, as I believe in God, do I believe that both must perish in the throes of some convulsive catastrophe if all the life of the nation shall continue to be concentrated in the brain, and the great reform for which I call is not made: if a vast system of local franchise, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... of the earth, this experience gave no immediate promise of cessation. The world rocked on in awful throes—as though it really was, as the black man feared, the end of all material things. Jack and Mark rolled upon the ground in the grove of huge trees, clinging to each other's hands, but unable to rise, or to find their ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... life, Fox's chief delight was almost wholly in his garden, and in country sights and sounds. It was with the greatest difficulty that he could be dragged to London. On one occasion, in the throes of a political crisis, he was induced to leave St. Anne's Hill on the understanding that he would have to remain only two nights in town. When he heard that the debate was postponed owing to Pitt's indisposition, he was, Lord Holland relates, "silent and overcome, as ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... preached. And while the agents of evil were busy, the good cures of France sounded no trumpet of alarm, but dreamed themselves into the comforting delusion that all would blow over, till the ground under their feet began to rock and heave in the convulsive throes ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... I am in the throes of an overwhelming sorrow. My Alene has been foully murdered. A mystery surrounds the case. We cannot fathom the motive of the crime. To-day (rather yesterday now, for it is two o'clock in the morning) a man accused of murdering her was lynched. To-night the man who was ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... "but I am caught up in the throes of a great reaction. I have been studying events, which it is quite true may change the destinies of the world, so intently that I have almost forgotten that, after all, the greatest thing in the world, my world, is the happiness or ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... foulest birth of the revolution, whose licentious heat generated venom and rascality, as a dunghill out of its own filth produces adders' eggs—Marat was no more. Carnot, whose genius for war enabled the French nation, amidst all its poverty and intestine contests, even in the pangs and throes of that labour in which it strove to bring forth a constitution, to repulse the forces of the allied nations, and prepare the way for future conquests, was a member of the all-powerful Committee, and we ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... and more near as life's last period draws, Which oft is hurried on by human woe, I see the passing hours more swiftly flow, And all my hopes in disappointment close. And to my heart I say, amidst its throes, "Not long shall we discourse of love below; For this my earthly load, like new-fall'n snow Fast melting, soon shall leave us to repose. With it will sink in dust each towering hope, Cherish'd so long ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... this, it became essential to him to feel that the sentinel stood guard in his own heart. He felt a strange unease the moment he was off his guard. Asleep or awake, in the midst of the deepest passion or the suddenest love, or in the throes of greatest excitement or bewilderment, somewhere, some corner of himself was awake to the fact that the sentinel of the soul must not sleep, no, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... the rugged features before her, and her gaze was of an intensity such as Ralph could not support in silence. Words blundered unbidden to his lips, uncontrolled, and he spoke as a man who scarce knows what he is saying. His mind was in the throes of a fever, and his speech partook of ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the two men now was to turn their gold-dust into food. The current price for flour and beans was a dollar and a half a pound, but the difficulty was to find a seller. Dawson was in the throes of famine. Hundreds of men, with money but no food, had been compelled to leave the country. Many had gone down the river on the last water, and many more, with barely enough food to last, had walked the six hundred miles over the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... chain must have been caused by the giant's falling down the underground passage when the chain gave way so suddenly. The giant's dwelling, indeed, was right under the palace, and the terrible shakings must have been caused by him in his death throes. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... were thronged with ladies in sun-bonnets, which had originally been black but were now somewhat off-colour with age and weather, and all the ladies' faces were as full of importance as if they had been Cabinet ministers in the throes of a crisis. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... had been a staunch supporter of the very conditions against which the striplings, Joseph Mazzini and Joseph Garibaldi, had made war twenty years previous. But nations, like men, sometimes have experiences that make them grow by throes and throbs, by leaps and bounds. The writings of Mazzini had been constantly distributed and circulated, and the fact that they were tabued by the government added to the joys of the illicit. A well-defined wave of republicanism swept the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... a material sense, might have been as prosperous as Corrill pictured, Smith, on his arrival, found it in the throes of serious internal discord. The month before he reached Far West, W. W. Phelps and John Whitmer, of the Presidency there, had been tried before a general assembly of the church,* and almost unanimously deposed on several charges, the principal one being a claim on their part to $2000 ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the resignations of the two ministers were in the Times; there were communications between the Queen and the Premier, and London plunged with such ardor as is possible in late July into the throes of cabinet-making. Kitty insisted petulantly that of course all would be well; William's services were far too great to be ignored; though Lord Parham would no doubt slight him if he dared. But the party ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... line, and Capt. R. D. Pryce, presiding, in the absence of the Marquess, concluded the proceedings on a happy note of assurance that directors and shareholders were "of one mind," and full of sanguine expectations as to the future of their undertaking. The throes of consolidation are sometimes not less severe than those of birth itself, but they ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... in the throes of that sophomorical philosophy of life which believes that it is, from the point of view of sophistication, of age, when it is free to be befuddled with wine and befooled by women. But the German mind has no sympathy with hypocrisy. They may be brutal in their ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... weeks went on—in his efforts to cast off his old slough and become a travesty of me, as he had been a travesty of my uncle. I am willing to believe that they caused him pain. A crust of habit so inveterate as his cannot be rent without throes, to the severity of which his facial contortions bore witness whenever he attempted a witticism. Warned by them, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... themselves of a large part of the area now vested in their ownership. At that very time an army of workers, estimated at 2,000,000, was out of employment. Yet it was not considered a panic year; certainly the industrial establishments of the country were not in the throes of a commercial cataclysm such as happened in 1873 and previous periods. The cities were overcrowded with the destitute and homeless; along every country road and railroad track could be seen men, singly or in pairs, tramping from place to place ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... throes has a wonderful effect on women;[22] and somehow the whole race of women have strong affection toward ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Eternity, around Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise Of the earth's immemorial sacrifice To Brahma in whose breath all lives and dies; O Hierarch enrobed in timeless snows, First-born of Asia whose maternal throes Seem changed now to a million human woes, Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound One sigh of all ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... thousandth part Of the horrors and crimes and sins and woes That arise, when with palpitating throes The graveyard in the human heart Gives up its dead, at the voice of the priest, As if he were an archangel, at least. It makes a peculiar atmosphere, This odor of earthly passions and crimes, Such as I like to breathe, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... speculating just how many thousands of men there were among these hundreds of thousands, whose spirits were in rebellion against all these ancient traditions of flag and empire. Weren't we, perhaps, already in the throes of the last crisis, in that darkest moment of a nightmare's horror before the sleeper will endure no more of ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Duret's definitive biography of Manet appeared, Histoire de Edouard Manet et de Son Oeuvre. No one was better qualified to write of the dead painter than Theodore Duret. A critic of perspicacity, his enthusiasm was kindled during the birth throes of impressionism and has never been quenched. Only a few years ago, after a tribute to Whistler, he wrote of Manet in the introduction to his volume on Impressionism, and while no one may deny his estimate, yet through zeal for the name of his dead friend he attributed ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... knowing as if by instinct friend from foe. And fearful was it to watch the mighty struggles from figures gleaming as gigantic shadows in the darkness; now and then came a deep smothered cry or bursting groan, wrung from the throes of death, or the wild, piercing scream from a slaughtered horse, but the tongues of life were silent; the clang of armor, the clash of steel, the heavy fall of man and horse, indeed came fitfully and fearfully on the night breeze, and even as the blue ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... chorus of laughter when the young wretch exhibited my battered pencil, bought in Princes Street yesterday, its gay Gordon tints sadly disfigured by the destroying tooth, not of Time, but of a bard in the throes of composition. ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the coronation of Henry the Eighth, and who was the first Englishman, perhaps, who ever set foot on the soil of the New World. There he sits, like an old Druid Tor of primeval granite amid the tall wheat and rich clover crops of a modern farm. He has seen the death of old Europe and the birth-throes of the new. Go to him, and question him; for his senses are quick as ever; and just now the old man seems uneasy. He is peering with rheumy eyes through the groups, and seems listening for ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... sitting-room, and Paul and his father had to be received in one of the long public parlours, between ladies seated at rickety desks in the throes of correspondence and groups of listlessly conversing residents ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... went on the sounds increased, and I listened to them with a trembling fear for the unfortunate woman who was still aboard. Black of heart as those men undoubtedly were in their sober moments, and under the influence of the lust of gold, what would they be when inflamed by spirits and in the throes of angry chagrin? ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... gigantic confederation of Spaniards and Austrians. It is complicated by the rise of a Calvinistic and commercial power in the Netherlands, logical, defiant, defending its own independence valiantly against Spain. But on the whole we shall be right if we see the first throes of the modern international problems in what is called the Thirty Years' War; whether we call it the revolt of half-heathens against the Holy Roman Empire, or whether we call it the coming of new sciences, new philosophies, ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... probably owe their present isolation, if not their actual existence, to mighty earthquake throes in remote ages of terrestrial history beyond the memory of man. But man's memory is not a very extensive affair, and at best probes the past to the extent of a mere rind of a few thousand years. For the rest he has to read the word of God, written in fossil ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... not; but to-night, Harmachis, Fate is in labour of a great event, and in her painful throes mayhap she'll crush me in her grip—me or thee, or the twain of us, Harmachis. And if that be so—well, I would hear from thee, before it is done, that 'twas naught but a dream, and that ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... to the day, Pledge began to work, and Templeton put down the Bishop's scholarship to him, without further parley. Only two men were against him—Cartwright, who, fine fellow as he was, could not desert the cricket field and gymnasium even in the throes of an examination, and Freckleton, the hermit, whom half of Templeton didn't know by sight, and the other half put down as a harmless lunatic, who divided his time between theological exercises and plodding, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... lays him down to ease his heaving lungs, Quaking, and of his safety scarce convinced. Soon as the panic leaves his panting breast, Down to the Muse's sacred rites he sits, Volumes piled round him; see! upon his brow 130 Perplex'd anxiety, and struggling thought, Painful as female throes: whether the bard Display the deeds of heroes; or the fall Of vice, in lay dramatic; or expand The lyric wing; or in elegiac strains Lament the fair; or lash the stubborn age, With laughing satire; or in rural scenes With shepherds sport; or rack his hard-bound brains For the unexpected ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... she found Bruce still in the throes of an agitated toilet. Having lost his collar-stud, he sat down and gave himself up ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... arms short of the completest success, all conspire to assure us that the dreadful disorder hitherto consuming our national vitals is to pass finally away in the convulsive disease of its last throes, so distressing to us all. It being thus certain that this consecrated crime is to be dismantled, dishonored, and abandoned forever, the question is forced upon us: 'What is to be done with the negroes?' Some four millions of human beings, doomed to ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... life, of requital hereafter, of the smile of a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here, and what becomes of patience? But without patience, what is man?—and what a people? Without patience, art never can be high; without patience, liberty never can be perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous, aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nation to struggle into Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the President would not receive it. I cast about in my own mind for a possible reason, but could imagine none. I went to the State Department with it, but was told that they were too busy to see me. Remember that at that very moment Korea was in her death throes; that she was in full treaty relations with us; that there was a Korean legation in Washington and an American legation in Seoul. I determined that there was something here that was more than mere carelessness. There was premeditation in the refusal. There was no other answer. ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... length on what they designate an inconsistency if not a contradiction in these versions; and yet both accounts embodied in the three records are plainly true. The maid was seemingly breathing her last, she was in the very throes of death, when the father hurried away. Before he met Jesus he felt that the end had probably come; nevertheless his faith endured. His words attest his trust, that even had his daughter actually died since he left her side, the Master could recall her to life. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... had dispersed, we saw that on the battle-field horses, struggling in deadly convulsions, and men in the throes of death, were strewn thickly around. We hastened thither to save whom we could, but, oh! what an awful sight it was! Man and beast piled in confusion and crushing each other. The neighing of the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... what fun would it be for him? None. And it's only a question of degree. Soothe yourself ever so little with alcohol, and you don't get QUITE the full sensation of gambling. You do lose just a little something of the proper tremors before a coup, the proper throes during a coup, the proper thrill of joy or anguish after a coup. You're bound to, you know," he added, purposely making this bathos when he saw me smiling at the heights ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... jar, the cries to buy and sell, The flapping of the landed shoals, the canvas crackling free, And through all varied notes and cries, the roaring of the sea, The noise of little lives and brave, of needy lives and high; In gathering all the throes of earth, the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... summer and the fact that the boys were in the throes of their examinations may have helped to make the majority of them seem pale and thin; they certainly complained of their food, and the cook was the only prosperous-looking person whom I could discover in the establishment—his percentages, one suspects, being considerable. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... thing as plain's thing can be: the cure o' a' ill 's jist mair life! That's it! Life abune an' ayont the life 'at took the stroke! An' gien throu' this hert-brak I come by mair life, it'll be jist ane o' the throes o' my h'avenly birth—i' the whilk the bairn has as mony o' the pains as the mither: that's maybe a differ 'atween the twa—the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... gentleman himself appeared, looking somewhat the worse for the labor he had gone through with, and all the happier, that the throes were over, and the offspring ready for exhibition. "Here," said he, "tell me what you think of these two lines,"—handing me a paper on which was written, with the clearness and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... his arithmetical sense to extremes. He insisted that figures had personality, just as people have, and it was a favourite method of his to nickname his friends and pupils according to a numeral. He was watching the death-throes of a slug, with scientific indifference, as his son-in-law approached him, ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... useful character in the lap of ease and indulgence. There needs privation and hard struggle, to develope the soul and the body. Even Zion, the city of our God, is represented in Scripture as recruiting her inhabitants only by throes and agonies. ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the floor above the stand, and it was there she brought her little girls to womanhood. Good-looking, harum-scarum Dave Cable saw Frances Coleman one evening as he dropped in to purchase a newspaper. It was at the end of June, in 1876, and the country was in the throes of excitement over the first news of the Custer massacre on ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... a half-scared manner and some of 'em went down to help the newcomers climb out. Then Ben had words with Bush Jones because he wanted him to wait there and take 'em back to town when the party was over and Bush refused to wait. After suffering about twenty seconds in the throes of mental effort I reckon he discovered that he had business to attend to or was hungry or something. Anyway, Ben paid him some money finally and he drove off after calling out 'Good-night, all!' just as if nothing ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... we blame for the awful thing— For the blood that flows and the heart-wrung throes? Kaiser or Czar; statesman or King? Och, leave it to ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of able writing and pen-craft, books are cunningly compiled, and have their run and success even among the learned, as if they were the result of a new man's thinking, and their birth were attended with some natural throes. But in a little while their covers fall off, for no binding will avail, and it appears that they are not Books or Bibles at all. There are new and patented inventions in this shape, purporting to be for ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... humiliation is this! What an utter failure to appreciate the issues of life! For her there was no revolution, no upheaval of world-old theories, no struggle for freedom, no great combat of the heroisms. All the passion and pain, the mortal throes of error, the glory of sacrifice, the victory of an idea, the triumph of right, the dawn of a new era,—all, all were hidden from her behind a lump of wax. And what was true of her is true of all her class. Having eyes, they see not; with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sufferers I have seen, She was indeed the prime, That of a deeply wounded heart, Most keenly felt the throes: 'Twas agony to see her grief; And even at this time, My foolish eyes grow full of tears In ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... talk and to tell her tales which were likely to terrify her weak and dying mind. Some minutes before one died the Devil appeared, she said, to all who were in their death throes. He had a broom in his hand, a saucepan on his head, and he uttered loud cries. When anybody had seen him, all was over, and that person had only a few moments longer to live; and she enumerated all those to whom the Devil had appeared that year: Josephine ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... in the throes of difficulties concerning baptism by immersion and might possibly have seen a connection, it must be admitted that he did not. He considered feminine bathing an immoral subject, and gave her some of his ideas on the depravity of ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... direction of the trooper, but the gunner was obstinate and insisted that his was the correct way. In a frame of mind too horrible to contemplate, the Arab disappeared once more in pursuit of the trooper, only to find he had entirely evaporated. In the throes of the greatest dilemma of his life he returned, to learn that the worst had come to pass and the gunner and his donkey also ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Haverly in the throes of Mastodon-making. Always solicitous of the family interest, he asked him if he had engaged a treasurer. When Haverly replied that he had not, Gustave ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Master Mervale here desisted, his voice trailing into inarticulate vowels. After many angry throes, a white-lilac bush had been delivered of the Marquis of Falmouth, who now confronted Master Mervale, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... Republicanism, which was to display such alacrity at bursting, is not the childish thing it was deemed, but granitic, with a fiery, throbbing core; its outward form no mere flashy film, blown out of chimeras and dreams, but a creation from the solid strata of human experience, upheaved here by the birth-throes of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... be put in mind of it. Mountains in labor were not so frequent then as now, when the Penny Newspaper has got charge of them; though then as now to practical people they were a nuisance. Mountains all in terrific travail-throes, threatening to overset the solar system, have always a charm, especially for the more foolish classes: but when once the birth has taken place, and the wretched mouse ducks past you, or even nothing at all can be seen to duck past, who is there but ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... house and passed in at the big bronze doors. The butler must have particularly admired the way he tossed aside his coat and hat. As soon as he was in the presence of his fiancee he saw that she was again in the throes of some violent agitation. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... in a life-long struggle, throws the foe, And binds on hoary locks the laurel crown. Each is a high exemplar. One with concentrate vigour strikes a blow That rings around the world; the other draws The world round him—his mighty throes And well-contested standpoints win its praise And force its verdict, though bleak indifference— A laggard umpire—long neglect his post, And often leaves the wrestler's best unnoted, Coming but just in time ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... together by the workmen to hold their tools, on a heap of sacks and blankets, Swan lay as he had dropped the night before. Pilchard had found him there, and the full moon coming in at the wide opening had revealed a fearful sight—Swan in the throes of terrific fever, his face scarlet, his eyes ferrety and congested, and his swollen tongue lolling between his lips. When he saw Pilchard he asked in a strange voice for water. Pilchard brought him some and felt his forehead. It seemed ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Wagner's. But the realism is a trifle clouded. Here is the duality of Chopin the suffering man and Chopin the prophet of Poland. Undimmed is his poetic vision—Poland will be free!— undaunted his soul, though oppressed by a suffering body. There are in the work throes of agony blended with the trumpet notes of triumph. And what puzzled our fathers—the shifting lights and shadows, the restless tonalities—are welcome, for at the beginning of this new century the chromatic is king. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Jarvist Arnold's sons never recovered the strain of those awful hours on the bridge of the Sorrento in her death-throes, and, to use his father's words: 'He never was a man no more.' But Jarvist himself did many a subsequent good deed of rescue, and stuck to his arduous post as long as, and even beyond, what health and strength and ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... presently quite by accident. A cousin of Mrs. Darcy's, one of your strong, thorough, energetic women, came to spend the winter with them; and Jack's mother, watching the throes of her son's soul, a little afraid of socialism, materialism, and all the other isms, proposed that Jack should take a journey West or South, and have a glimpse of the men and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... the entrance of the hotel, after having given up all attempt to sleep during the commotion in the street, the thoroughfare was already in the throes of its regular commercial hurly-burly, a multitude of people, the inhabitants of the entire town plus the crews and the passengers of the vessels anchored in the harbor. Aguirre plunged into the bustle of this cosmopolitan population, walking from the section of the waterfront to the palace of ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... there into heaps, hollowed here and there into valleys, and broken everywhere with angry lines and areas of white. In such trouble, for, after its own fashion, his heart was troubled, some temperaments might have found a kind of consolation in this sight, for while we witness them, at any rate, the throes and moods of Nature in their greatness declare a mastery of our senses, and stun or hush to silence the petty turmoil of our souls. This, at least, is so with those who have eyes to read the lesson written on Nature's face, and ears to hear the message which day by day she delivers ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... of the wind.[41] If Nature has aught to teach, it is the sterner doctrine, that nothing endures; that Love, like the genial sunlight, has to glorify base things, to raise the low nature by its throes, sometimes divining the hidden spark of God in what seemed mere earth, sometimes only lending its transient splendour to a dead and barren spirit,—the fiery grace of a butterfly momentarily obliterating the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... spat a yard of fire, which almost scorched the creature's breast. The impact of the bullet really drove the cat backward—or else the agony of its death throes turned the heavy body from its victim. It threw a back somersault and landed again in the snow, tearing it up for yards around, the crimson tide from its wounds ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... harbor of San Francisco at noon on July 14th, and, after the usual delay with the health officer, we were soon in the throes of the custom house, and it was an ordeal never before experienced. We had been told by the steward on the steamer that we must strictly follow the regulations laid down in the circular issued by the Government, December, 1907. I paid the penalty of my honesty, and the law was strictly ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... necessary to answer. It was no business of his, after all. He lit a cigar and leaned back in his seat, letting his eyes take their fill of indolent pleasure. In the throes of invention she had pushed back her hat, loosening the stray lock which had invited his touch the night before. After looking at it for a while he stood up and ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton |
