"Vitals" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Senate Chamber, with the steel point of his cane ringing on the marble flags as though he were thrusting it through the vitals of the weakling who had sneaked and hedged and trimmed at ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... was the familiar instance of the Spartan youth who having stolen a fox and hidden it inside his robe calmly stood up and let the animal gnaw his vitals rather than be caught with it in his possession. But, why? I ask you, why? What was the good of it all? What object was served? To begin with, the boy had absconded with somebody else's fox, or with somebody's else fox, which is undoubtedly the way a compiler of school readers would phrase ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... much as Florence itself by the plague. In the year 1334 the city was almost depopulated by this dreadful pestilence. It was in the nature of a dry leprosy; the skin peeled off in white scales, and the body wasted till the disease reached the vitals. In fourteen years afterwards the city was again attacked, and the beautiful Laura became its victim. It is stated to have swept off upwards of one hundred thousand inhabitants. The reigning pope contrived to escape the contagion by shutting ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... dragged on it seemed to him that he had been walking for ages. His motion became mechanical. He was faint from hunger and his mouth parched with thirst. The bitter wind was reaching to his very vitals in spite of the exertion, and at last he did not feel it much. He stumbled and fell now and again and each time it was more difficult ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... It's the same reason that's been urging me to pick a quarrel with you so that I might have the satisfaction of slipping a couple of feet of steel into your vitals. When I accepted your commission, I was moved to think it might redeem me in the eyes of Miss Bishop—for whose sake, as you may have guessed, I took it. But I have discovered that such a thing is beyond accomplishment. I should have known it for a sick man's dream. I have ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... the very earth than be forced to submit to these endearments in my and other people's presence. Nevertheless she submits, with a forced smile. I smile too, but as a diversion I mentally plunge my hands into my vitals and tear them to pieces. At times the thought crosses my mind that this priestess of Diana is more at ease and less reticent when alone with her husband. But I do not often indulge in thoughts like these, for I feel that one drop more and I ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Never again could the hunt call lure him or the voice of the pack rouse the old longing. In him there was a thing newborn, an undying hatred for the wolf, a hatred that was to grow in him until it became like a disease in his vitals, a thing ever present and insistent, demanding vengeance on their kind. Last night he had gone to them a comrade. Today he was an outcast. Cut and maimed, bearing with him scars for all time, he had learned his lesson of the wilderness. Tomorrow, and ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Phantom-like, as in a mirror, Rise the griesly scenes of death— There before me, in its wildness, Stretches bare Culloden's heath: There the broken clans are scattered, Gaunt as wolves, and famine-eyed, Hunger gnawing at their vitals, Hope abandoned, all but pride— Pride, and that supreme devotion Which the Southron never knew, And the hatred, deeply rankling, 'Gainst the Hanoverian crew. Oh, my God! are these the remnants, ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... gods. It is played on bloody fields. The crafty antagonists grapple in every cunning of the art of war. Rivers of human blood make easy the way. The serpent of the Western army writhes itself into the vitals of the torn and bleeding South. Everywhere the resounding crash of arms. Alas, steadfast as Maxime Valois' nature may be, tried his courage as his own battle blade, the roar of battle from east to west tells him of the day of wrath! The yells and groans of the trampled ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to the proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind in the vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question of that nature, can be so showy and ostensive to a stranger as that which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past vote recording a scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing, though for the moment suppressed. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... passed wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals, we were prepared to renew our ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... civil on Emathian (1) plains, And crime let loose we sing; how Rome's high race Plunged in her vitals her victorious sword; Armies akin embattled, with the force Of all the shaken earth bent on the fray; And burst asunder, to the common guilt, A kingdom's compact; eagle with eagle met, Standard to ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... person that is low and vulgar. One should never jitter such words as trouble other people or as are inauspicious or are as' sinful. Wordy shafts fall from the mouth. Pierced therewith, the victim grieves day and night. The man of wisdom should never shot them for piercing the vitals of other people. A forest, pierced with shafts or cut down with the axe, grows again. The man, however, that is pierced with words unwisely spoken, becomes the victim of wounds that fester and lead to death.[462] Barbed arrows ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... coming down the street, She by your side in bonnet bloo, The stuns that grated 'neath thy feet, Seemed crunching on my vitals, too. Oh, Josiah, It seemed ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... plain battle between factions cannot boast, but which, notwithstanding, are very suitable to the fierce and gloomy silence of that premeditated vengeance which burns with such intensity in the heart, and scorches up the vitals into such a thirst for blood. Not but that they come by different means to the same conclusion; because it is the feeling, and not altogether the manner of operation, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... secretly nursed the worm of grief that preyed upon his vitals, the alteration in his countenance and conduct did not escape the eyes of that discerning young lady. She was alarmed at the change, yet afraid to inquire into the source of it; for, being ignorant of his distress, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... with literary men, that I found it almost impossible to avoid altogether without cutting very valuable connections, gave me a dreadful dyspepsia. I became livingly sensible of the agonies of Prometheus with the daily vulture gnawing at his vitals. At once I started with all my family for a year's sojourn in Germany, which, in fact, proved three years. But the fiend had left me the very first day. The moment I quitted the British shore, the tormentor quitted me. I suppose he preferred staying behind, where he was aware ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... was wandering, reckless where he trod, So mad a passion on his vitals preyed: While Hylas had become a blessed god. But the crew cursed the runaway who had stayed Sixty good oars, and left him there to reach Afoot bleak ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... anxiety on his brow, will be apt to step forward, and say, "Will you celebrate the man of the sword, who transfers the blush of his face to his back, and neglect the man of the quill, who, like the pelican, portions out his vitals to feed others? Which is preferable, he who lights up the mental powers, or he who puts them out? the man who stores the head with knowledge, or he who stores ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... in three years, and naturally humour broke out all over me. When joy spreads its wings in my vitals, I sound like a boy with a stick running past a picket-fence. Not so Morrow. He slopped over the sides of his seat, like he'd been spilled ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... men in these mountains, like lice on mammoths' hides, fighting them stubbornly, now with hydraulic "monitors," now with drill and dynamite, boring into the vitals of them, or tearing away great yellow gravelly scars in the flanks of them, sucking ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... sufficiently understood by the right honourable gentleman, and that, in my opinion, no remedy can be applied to the present distemper of the nation, a distemper by which it is hourly pining away, by which its vitals are impaired, and the necessary nourishment withdrawn from it, that will operate with sufficient efficacy and speed, except an embargo ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... and give the right hand of fellowship to the buyers and sellers of human flesh, is there not cause for lamentation and alarm? The pulpit is false to its trust, and a moral paralysis has seized the vitals of the church. The sanctity of religion is thrown, like a mantle, over the horrid system. Under its auspices, robbery and oppression have become popular and flourishing. The press, too, by its profound silence, or selfish neutrality, or equivocal course, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... mouth in that goggling face, came a scream. It pierced the heavy tense silence of the hall, ghastly in its timbre, like nothing any of us had ever heard before. And in it was conveyed agony as though Brayley had not merely pinched that flabby arm, but had thrust a red-hot knife into its vitals. ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... boy," said Cappy amiably, yet with a queer sinking feeling in his vitals, for he did not like the look in Skinner's eye; and something told him there was blood ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... is as a stag to me. Had he not broken silence, he were safe, And yet I surely knew that could not be. If one's transparent as an insect is, That looks now red, now green, as is its food, One must beware of any mysteries, Lest e'en the vitals show the secret forth! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... and lay still by Orme. Yes; he, the friend whom I had always loved, for his very failings were endearing, was dead or at the point of death, like the gallant young man at his side, and I myself was dying. Tremors shook my limbs; horrible waves of blackness seemed to well up from my vitals, through my breast to my brain, and thence to evaporate in queer, jagged lines and patches, which I realized, but could not actually see. Gay memories of my far-off childhood arose in me, particularly those of a Christmas party where I had met a little girl dressed like an elf, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... him, they beacon him, they flash out upon him in the dark, so that he falls prone as Saul (who got up with a new name and an honourable addition); they are lodestones, swords, lamps, torches, fires, fixed and ambulatory stars, the sun, the moon, candles. They hold lurking a thief to prey upon the vitals of Cino; they are traitors, cruel lances; they kill him by stabbing day after day. You can picture the high-spirited young lady from his book—her noble bearing, her proud head, her unflinching regard, again the sparks in her grey-green eyes, and so on. He plays upon her forte ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the head which has made him senseless for so many days was the worst of his wounds, but the bone was but bruised, not shattered or driven in upon the brain. The flesh cuts on his arms are healing well, and the mail he wore protected his vitals from being pierced." ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... and the round space deprived of the eye, and his limbs, and his beard matted with human blood. Death was before my eyes, {and} yet that was the least of my woes. I imagined that[20] now he was about to seize hold of me, and that now he was on the very point of swallowing my vitals within his own; in my mind was fixed the impress of that time when I beheld two bodies of my companions three or four times dashed against the ground. Throwing himself on the top of them, just like a shaggy lion, he stowed away their entrails, their flesh, their bones with the white ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of a day that is dead." The thought would be maddening if we did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The knowledge that we cannot recall one lost day, nor alter one past page in our life's story, would bring a remorse cruel as the fabled vulture which ever fed upon the vitals of the chained Prometheus. But thanks be to God, Jesus says, "He that sitteth upon the throne saith, Behold, I make all things new." Dear brothers and sisters, some of us need to turn over a new leaf, to make a fresh start, how ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... minutes after twelve o'clock at noon. He had been ailing for a few days, but we anticipated no serious result, conjecturing that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last summer might be lingering about his vitals without having any serious effect upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon he was taken so much worse that I sent an express for the medical gentleman (Mr. Herring), who promptly attended, and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. Under the influence of this ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... hour Agnes battled with the demon fever which was gnawing at the vitals of her beloved George. At intervals her care seemed to get the better of the disorder, and to cause it to loosen its grip. But, alas! after twenty-four hours of unceasing toil and anxiety, poor devoted Agnes was forced to endure the mental agony of seeing Harkness die. The last thing ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... spurs to his horse and, accompanied by only seven dragoons, with his sabre flashing in the air, plunged into the very thickest of the Indians. Soon they were put to flight. An Indian arrow, however, pierced his saddle and its housings, and reached the vitals of his horse. The noble steed dropped dead beneath him. Porcallo was quite proud of his achievement, and boasted not a little that his arm had put the infidels, as he called the Indians, to flight, and that his horse was the first ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... most uninventive and slow-witted Chang-ch'un!" he cried in a dreadful and awe-compelling voice. "As a reward for your faithless and traitorous behaviour, learn how such avaricious-minded incompetence turns and fastens itself upon the vitals of those who beget it. In spite of many things which were not of a graceful nature towards him, this person has unassumingly maintained his part of the undertaking, and would have followed such a course conscientiously to the last. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... of hills on which the French at this writing obstinately hold an intrenched position, checking the point of the German wedge, while the French forces from north and south beat upon the sides of the triangle, trying to force it back across the Meuse and out from the vitals of the French ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... between death and life in the body of her father. The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was worse; the nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now more acute; a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment was ordered which necessitated his return to Paris. He was soon so weak that he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne, but the marquise was so insistent as to the necessity for further and better advice than anything he could get away ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the point of completion? Oh, where shall I find another? KO. (suddenly, and with great vehemence). Here!—Here! KAT. What!!! KO. (with intense passion). Katisha, for years I have loved you with a white-hot passion that is slowly but surely consuming my very vitals! Ah, shrink not from me! If there is aught of woman's mercy in your heart, turn not away from a love-sick suppliant whose every fibre thrills at your tiniest touch! True it is that, under a poor mask of disgust, I have endeavoured to conceal a passion ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... responsibility in part lies at the door of Protestantism. Unamuno remarks that Catholicism knew little of that anxious preoccupation with sin, so destructive of heroic greatness, which has gnawed at the vitals of the Protestantism which we have inherited, if only in the form of a barren Freethought spreading its influence far beyond ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the steamship offices appeared rejoiced to see Jimmy once more. With a sunny smile he snatched a pencil from his ear and plunged it into the vitals of ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... well-preserved, and owed much to the arts of the toilet. I saw her lavishing her smiles and blandishments on my dear master; I saw that he was not insensible to the power of her charms, artificial as they were; and a cruel jealousy fastened, like the vulture of Prometheus, on my vitals. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... works. Luther rightly estimated the virulence of this abysmal heresy when he said that those who attacked his teaching of justification by grace through faith alone were aiming at his throat. Rome's teaching on justification is an attempt to strike at the vitals of Christian faith and life. It sinks the dagger into the heart ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... a jolt of whiskey in yer vitals," suggested one. "Slivers is a regular expert with a ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... would be worse than death by torture. Rather would I drown in the Dvina than a drop of the baptismal water should touch my forehead. To be forced to kneel before the hideous images, to kiss the cross,—sooner would I rush out to the mob that was passing, and let them tear my vitals out. To forswear the One God, to bow before idols,—rather would I be seized with the plague, and be eaten up by vermin. I was only a little girl, and not very brave; little pains made me ill, and I cried. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... faith and oath, Peace with you be! * Quoth ye not I shall meet you you meet me? I'll chide you softerwise than breeze o' morn, * Sweeter than spring of coolest clarity. I' faith mine eyelids are with tears chafed sore: * My vitals plain to you some cure to see. My friends! Our union to disunion changed * Was aye my fear for 'twas my certainty. I'll plain to Allah of all ills I bore; * For pine and yearning misery ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections—for a drunkard is not fit for an elector—and preparing her for subjection to the most merciless tyranny that ever scourged ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... boots of the earth, shades of some army cut down in swathes and pitted in the fashion of the Cornal's bloodiest stories. And now they were the foreign invader, dumb because they did not know the native language, pitying this doomed community but moving in to strike it at the vitals. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... bed, in wakeful restlessness, I turn me wearisome; while all around, All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness; I only wake to watch the sickly taper Which lights me to my tomb.—Yes, 'tis the hand Of Death I feel press heavy on my vitals, Slow sapping the warm current of existence My moments now are few—the sand of life Ebbs fastly to its finish. Yet a little, And the last fleeting particle will fall, Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented. Come then, sad Thought, and let ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... envelope of rocks nearly 6 miles above sea-level.... The higher you get up ... the rougher and more difficult becomes the climbing; the valleys are deeper and more cut into ravines, the rocks more fantastically and rudely torn asunder, and the very vitals of the earth exposed; while the heights above tower to the skies. The torrents rushing from under the glaciers which flow from the snow-clad summits roar and foam, eating their way ever ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... between us," I said; "but perhaps a straight-out row would be better than forever to be eating our own vitals with suppressed rancor." ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... and ended in the complete defeat of the French, who were only saved by the darkness from utter destruction. Had the bold project of Marlborough to march into France forthwith been carried out, a deadly blow would have been delivered against the very vitals of the enemy's power and Louis XIV probably compelled to sue for peace on the allies' terms. But this time not only the Dutch deputies, but also Eugene, were opposed to the daring venture, and it was decided that Eugene should besiege Lille, while Marlborough with the field army covered ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... crushed him. In hearing of the death of Napoleon, he swore that he would eat the heart of England; the slow agony of the pale and interesting heir of the Empire inspired him with a passion to tear the vitals out of Austria. When the drama was over, and the curtain fell on Schoenbrunn, he dashed away his tears and said, "It is well. I have lived in a moment a man's entire life. Now show me the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... have never looked down, with confusion of face and heartfelt bitterness, on the dirty rags that scarcely suffice to conceal the emaciation of your wasted limbs. You have never felt hunger gnawing at your vitals, or shuddered at the cries of famishing children, sobbing around your knees for bread. You have dainties to satiety every day, and know nothing of the agonies of sacrificing your virtue for the sake of a meal. If ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... national and State, we have shunned all the defects which unceasingly preyed on the vitals and destroyed the ancient Republics. In them there were distinct orders, a nobility and a people, or the people governed in one assembly. Thus, in the one instance there was a perpetual conflict between ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... heard nothing. And it was doubted whether he had not sente [75] over shuch a company in y^e former ship, for shuch an end. Yet they tooke compassion of those 7. men which this ship, which fished to y^e eastward, had kept till planting time was over, and so could set no corne; and allso wanting vitals, (for y^ey turned them off w^{th}out any, and indeed wanted for them selves,) neither was their salt-pan come, so as y^ey could not performe any of those things which M^r. Weston had apointed, and might have starved if y^e plantation had not ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... the unfortunate orderly, shaken with a palsy of fear. Without a quiver, the Arab would rush a machine-gun position or face a bayonet-charge; but this betrayal of his kin struck at the vitals of his faith. Still, the Master's word was law even above Al Koran. With trembling lips he ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... fool. Strong, able muscles, steady nerves (and let us remember that nerves depend for their tone on the muscular condition), a clean skin open at all its pores and doing its eliminative work thoroughly, and clean strong vitals make up the kind of beauty within the reach of all womanhood, and the physical beauty which she should most desire. The day is coming when our ideal of what is physically perfect—not spiritually, for Christianity has carried us beyond anything that Greece ever knew—will be more like the Greek ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... wind may still be cold, but there is a briskness in the air that stirs good blood. People do not all look equally sour and downcast. They fall into two divisions: one, the knight of the blue face and hollow paunch, whom Winter has gotten by the vitals; the other well lined with New-year's fare, conscious of the touch of cold on his periphery, but stepping through it by the glow of his internal fires. Such an one I remember, triply cased in grease, whom no extremity of temperature could vanquish. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... across his mind, while he deftly parried, feinted, longed, giving his dark antagonist all he could do to meet the play. Priest or devil, he thought, he cared not which, he would reach its vitals presently. Yet there lingered with him a haunting half-fear, or tenuous awe, which may have aided, rather than hindered his ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Jack, as well as all others on the Queen Mary, gazed in that direction. The battle cruiser Invincible suddenly sprang into a sheet of flame and parted in half. A German shell had struck her vitals. ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... naught save a flitting breath * And an eye whose babe ever wandereth. There remains not a joint in his limbs, but what * Disease firm fixt ever tortureth. His tears are flowing, his vitals burning; * Yet for all his tongue still he silenceth. All foemen in pity beweep his woes; * Ah for freke ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... tap-room beneath, these commingled now and then with oaths and scraps of discordant song bellowed out above the hubbub. His wounded head beat with tremendous and straining painfulness, as though it would burst asunder, and he was possessed by a burning thirst that seemed to consume his very vitals. He called aloud, and in reply a fat, one-eyed woman came, fetching him something to drink in a cup. This he swallowed with avidity, and thereupon (the liquor perhaps having been drugged) he dropped off into ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... mine. Bob, I hope you'll fall desperately in love some day, and that you will have a devil of a time winning the girl. You need something to stir up your vitals. By George! and I hope she won't have a ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... deck, gentlemen?" It was the mate who spoke, and the man was shaken—I could see that—to the very vitals of him. We started and stared at one another, and I watched little Ally Bazan go slowly white to the lips. And even then no word of the ship, except as it might be ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... Dieu Protege la France!,—(You see, something like this.)—I would make you a soup so hot that it would burn your mouth! It would be unpleasant,—(no worse in any case than what you are doing now):—but I vow it would warm your vitals, and that you would have to set out ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... that any reason why we should falter now? 'New occasions teach new duties.' Let us not be satisfied with a supetficial view. While fresh loam is being scattered on the surface, commercial interests and the suburban greed to get home quick are striking at the vitals of the Common. Citizens of ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... that what was to me so plain and so all-important was to them meaningless, and that I was powerless to make it other. So hot had been my heart that I had thought to melt an iceberg with its glow, only to find at last the overmastering chill seizing my own vitals. It was not enmity that I felt toward them as they thronged me, but pity only, for them and ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... sense instinctively came to the rescue as I approached the earth. I felt a strong gravity wrenching at my vitals and so instead of trying reverse levitation, I spread my processes so that the atmosphere caught in the folds of my skin and I came floating gently down ...
— Lonesome Hearts • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... that a great stretch of mere water rendered the country immune from taking its honest part in its own war. "Oh, my God," he had said in his heart, as all clear-sighted Americans had been saying, "has commercialism eaten into our very vitals? Has the good red blood of the early pioneers turned to water? Are we without the nerve any longer to read the writing on the wall?" And the only times that his national pride had been able to raise its head beneath the weight of shame ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... y'r gryce," was the reply, and now the lad's glance went eagerly towards the door, for the tension of labour was relaxed, and hunger was scraping hard at his vitals. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... leanings and had taken considerable trouble to convert him to her own way of thinking. She used to say, in her flowery language, that his contumacious attitude towards the true Faith gnawed at her vitals—meaning, presumably, that it annoyed her. Often she pointed out how many social and other advantages they would gain—living in a Catholic country—if he, too, could bring himself to enter the field of believers. In vain! The Commissioner ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... affected the very vitals of mathematical teaching in America still more is the founding of the American Mathematical Society in 1888, called the New York Mathematical Society until 1894. Through its Bulletin and Transactions, as well as through its meetings and colloquia lectures, this society has ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... academic accuracy of Borrow's researches in the Romany language: but such frettings are beside the mark; Borrow is the only genuine expounder of Gipsyness that ever lived. He laid hold of their vitals, and they of his; his act of brotherhood with Mr. Jasper Petulengro is but a symbol of his mystical alliance with the race. This is not to say that he fathomed the heart of their mystery; the gipsies ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... to come like this," he went on. "You see that the old enemy has a grip on me. He pinches, he pinches. He'll get at my vitals one of these days, no doubt. And I've not even the satisfaction of having got my gout in an honourable way. If it had come to me from a fine old three-bottle ancestor! But I, who never had a grandfather, and hardly tasted wine till I was thirty ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... that it was high time literature should, regardless of merely dilettante aestheticism, address itself to exposing, by depicting it, the extent to which the evil genius is gnawing at and corroding the vitals of society; and it is not for a moment to be supposed he has done so from any pleasure he takes in gloating over the doings of the ghoul, or that he is in sympathy with those who do; of his works suffice it to mention here some recent ones, as the story ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the papers that morning. To many a bud and belle it was a thunder-clap, a bolt from a cloudless heaven. They whispered about it, lifted their eyebrows, and shrugged their shoulders. But their mamas gave no sign. If the fox of disappointment ate into their vitals, they determined, Spartan-like, that none should know it. An actress! Men might marry actresses in England, but Herculaneum still clung to the belief ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... what's with me the Matter, For I look like Death, and am as weak as Water, For several Days I loath the sight of Meat, And every Night I chew the upper Sheet; [*?]e such Obstructions, that I'm almost moap'd, And breath as if my Vitals all were stop'd. I told a Friend how strange with me it was, She, an experienc'd Bawd, soon grop'd the Cause, Saying, for this Disease, take what you can, You'll ne'er be well, till you have taken Man. Therefore, before with Maiden-heads ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... friends, because they enlarged the happiness of his wife; and, strange as it may appear, I believe that he had as little cause to complain as Othello, and therefore never permitted his repose to be disturbed by those suspicions which preyed upon the vitals of the hapless moor. The french Benedict ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... that we easily hauled up close alongside of him, holding the boats in that position without the slightest attempt to guard ourselves from reprisals on his part, while the officers searched his vitals with the lances as if they ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... my vitals froze, Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem; When suddenly a star arose,— It was the Star ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... none of them was able to assume alone. These were the public-spirited men of their age—that is, patriots for their own interest. The commonwealth looked with a florid countenance in their management; spread in bulk, and all the while was wasting in the vitals. Not to trouble your lordship with the repetition of what you know, after the death of Crassus Pompey found himself outwitted by Caesar, broke with him, overpowered him in the senate, and caused many unjust decrees to pass against him. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... me in cold blood for Featherbrain. Since then I've been a blighted being—hiding, like the Spartan chap in the story, the fox that preys on my vitals, and going through life with the hollow mockery of ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... some of the pipes leading up from the engine well. It seemed like a dying groan from the very vitals of the stricken ship. Clouds of white and black smoke rolled up from the giant grey funnels that towered ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... came a distinct recollection of his violated pledge; but all after that was only dimly seen, or involved in wild confusion. His bodily sensations told him but too plainly how deep had been his fall: and the intolerable desire, that seemed as if it were consuming his very vitals, was to him a sad evidence that he had fallen, never, he feared, to rise again. All this passed through his mind in a moment, and he closed his eyes, and turned his face away from the earnest, and now tearful gaze ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... was, of course, the plan of those sympathetic characters who had volunteered to help Mike and his gang win the status of spacemen by firing the Platform's rockets. There were not many of them, and they had lost heavily. They'd had thermite bombs to destroy the Platform's vitals. Ultimately the survivors talked freely, if ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... we know: At about half-past nine those on the "Maine" who lived to tell the tale heard a sudden dull explosion, with a slight shock, then a prolonged, deep, furious roar, which shook the ship to its very vitals. The people on the other ships in the harbor saw the whole forward portion of the "Maine" suddenly become a flaming volcano belching forth fire, men, huge pieces of steel, and bursting shells. Portions of the ship's hull rained down on decks a thousand yards away. When the first fierce ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... near—fire at him from an ambush, and with a lucky shot stretch him out. A single bullet sometimes kills the rhinoceros—but only when correctly placed, so as to penetrate the heart, or some other of the "vitals." ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... effort to preserve myself. However it matters but little, the mere manner of one's death," he pursued with increased despondency. "It is easy for you, Henry, whose mind is at peace with itself and the world, to preach fortitude and resignation, but, felt you the burning flame which scorches my vitals, you would acknowledge the wide, wide ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the face of a stranger. While the imposing Mrs Elton quivered inwardly, Mrs Ranyard—for all her 'creeps' and her fluffiness—knew no flicker of fear. In any case, there were few who would confess to it, though it gnawed at their vitals; and Roy's quick eye noted that, among the women, as a whole, the light-hearted courage of Anglo-India prevailed. It gave him a sharp inner tweak to look at them all and remember that nightmare of seething, yelling rebels at Anarkalli. He wished to God Rose had not seen it too. It was the kind ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... terrors. Weak, distracted, and wanting everything, we envied the fate of those whose lifeless corpses no longer needed sustenance. The sense of hunger was already lost, but a parching thirst consumed our vitals. Recourse was had to wine and salt water, which only increased the want. Half a hogshead of vinegar floated up, and each had half a wine-glassful. This gave a momentary relief, yet soon left us ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... it, you will find some over the way. It is as I suspected," continued the host, when the man had departed on his errand, "they are Andalusians, and are about to make what they call gaspacho, on which they will all sup. Oh, the meanness of these Andalusians! they are come here to suck the vitals of Galicia, and yet envy the poor innkeeper the gain of a cuarto in the oil which they require for their gaspacho. I tell you one thing, master, when that fellow returns, and demands bread and garlic to mix with the oil, I will ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... under Stoneman, numbering about four or five thousand cavalry; one from Eastport, Mississippi, ten thousand cavalry; Canby, from Mobile Bay, with about eighteen thousand mixed troops—these three latter pushing for Tuscaloosa, Selma and Montgomery; and Sherman with a large army eating out the vitals of South Carolina—is all that will be wanted to leave nothing for the rebellion to stand upon. I would advise you to overcome great obstacles to accomplish this. Charleston was ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... too late,' said Thornton, deliberately, and taking the knife from my hands, he plunged it into Sir John's side, and as the blade was too short to reach the vitals, Thornton drew it backwards and forwards to widen the wound. Tyrrell was a strong man, and still continued to struggle and call out for mercy—Thornton drew out the knife—Tyrrell seized it by the blade, and his fingers were cut through ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the world in spiritual as well as material regeneration, and this is the only real and dispassionate America, with no foreign pull on its vitals. You must wake up; the cry has been heard to 'Come over and help.' Why do ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... chest stop all at once, as he brought out a particular sound with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy, who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened its devouring teeth. It is a terrible thing to take away hope, even earthly hope, from a fellow-creature. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in vain to speak comfortably to him; the wound had sunk too deep; it was a stab that touched the vitals; he grew melancholy and disconsolate, and from thence lethargic, and died. I foresaw the blow, and was extremely oppressed in my mind, for I saw evidently that if he died I ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... doom'd by me to lose his place again To-morrow morning when he wakes from out His hoggish slumber. Yet I care not. [Re-enter GAOLER with a leathern bottle and two glasses.] Ho! This is the stuff to warm our vitals, this The panacea for all mortal ills And sure elixir of eternal youth. Drink, bonniman! [GAOLER drains a glass and shows signs of instant intoxication. SAV. claps him on shoulder and replenishes glass. GAOLER drinks again, lies down ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... relation to true piety the same binding force. And these no one will gainsay, at least no one who is versed even moderately in the institutions of the Church. For were we to reject such customs as are unwritten as having no great force, we should unintentionally injure the gospels in their very vitals; or, rather, reduce our public definition to a mere name and nothing more. For example, to take the first and most general instance, who is there who has taught us in writing to sign with the cross those who have ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... another's mouths. I have sat by crying because I felt it mockery to bring so little; yet had I sold everything we possessed, I could not have appeased the hunger of our village for a single day. I wondered how those men who literally murdered the poor, who kept the granaries full, and saw unmoved the vitals of the multitude quivering for want, could have borne the sight! Surely it will be more tolerable for the cities of the Plain in the day of ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... straying of stamps and the ring of change over the counter, the people she had fallen into the habit of remembering and fitting together with others, and of having her theories and interpretations of, kept up before her their long procession and rotation. What twisted the knife in her vitals was the way the profligate rich scattered about them, in extravagant chatter over their extravagant pleasures and sins, an amount of money that would have held the stricken household of her frightened childhood, her poor pinched mother and tormented father and lost brother and starved sister, ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... journey, particularly in such a climate. Therefore the burden of his recent fall certainly must be laid to Ringfield, who had lifted neither voice nor hand to hinder; for while pursuing an evil course the latter seemed powerless to cast out the emotions of blinding hate and jealousy that tore at his vitals and rendered him a changed and miserable creature. The next morning he visited Crabbe again and found him, as he had hoped, absolutely sodden and useless; his elasticity and nerve, his good looks, his air of authority, having all ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison |
