"Writhe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like the ghost from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is a warning knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not burn and writhe!" ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the block, the quick tramp of feet, a strangling cry, and Job the quartermaster was snatched aloft to kick and writhe ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... call her to account. "Look, oh look!" cried Bertalda, eagerly and angrily, "how the poor bright water curls and writhes, because you would deprive it of every gleam of sunshine, and of the cheerful faces of men, whose mirror it was created to be!" In truth, the spring did writhe and bubble up wonderfully, just as if someone were trying to force his way through; but Undine pressed them the more to dispatch the work. Nor was there much need to repeat her commands. The household ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... beheld each of my faults, appeared to flow towards me from out of the temptations with which he was encircled. During this time my eyes were fixed upon my Heavenly Spouse; with him I wept and prayed, and with him I turned towards the consoling angels. Ah, truly did our dear Lord writhe like a worm beneath the weight of ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... hawk-bells, golden harp notes through the forest; and the usurping wistaria assumes the purple, reigning imperial and alone, flaunting its palidementum in a cascade of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses. Its sleek, muscular vine-arms writhe round the clasped bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept beneath a cloak, and the cloisonne pavilion of their dalliance drips ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... grim old story, Preached from pulpits, is not so, For no God could sit in glory And see sinners writhe below. ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... good example, are more typical. They are often quite large, a foot or even more in length. They are composed of many, often several hundred, rings or segments. Between these the body-wall is thin, so that the segments move easily upon each other, and thus the animal can creep or writhe. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... terror that drove him through the thicket and down the steep hillside; yet, he had experienced so clearly the physical shame and reluctance of the flesh; he recollected that for a few seconds after his awakening the sight of his own body had made him shudder and writhe as if it had suffered some profoundest degradation. He saw before him a vision of two forms; a faun with tingling and prickling flesh lay expectant in the sunlight, and there was also the likeness of a miserable ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... despised to the grave, but they made money at every step, and they cared for nothing else; but I never, in all my life, and in all my wanderings—and I have not travelled about this watery ball, nor so far through life, with my eyes and ears shut—I never knew a man who did not wince and writhe under the hatred and contempt of the other sex. I am not a profound believer in innate ideas, if they are such ridiculous ones as metaphysicians talk of—namely, that two and two make four, and such sort of nonsense—but I do believe in certain innate principles ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... to madness; loves him with like fury. As hates he thee.—Oh! glorious field for vengeance: Think how 'twill writhe his haughty soul to hear, This son, this darling, perished on the scaffold, Branded, disgraced, a traitor, a foiled traitor. Joy, joy, Alfonso; ere 'tis night thy wrath Shall gorge ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... filled and emptied during this as well as the other meals. And then there were eggs—eggs hard boiled, eggs soft boiled, eggs medium, eggs poached—until, at the end of the season, the mere mention of eggs caused Joel's stomach to writhe in disgust. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... gold mine." Then: "I wish you would read to me. No; nothing recent or superficial. Something from the old, cast-iron writers who knew how to use thumb screws and rack. There's something wholesome in them; something you buck up against. They make you writhe and groan, but they leave you with the ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... goose!" she said, but not disrespectfully. "They're much too large to crawl through these holes. I wish I could catch hold of one of their tails and—Look!" She held her finger close to the hole and a long, thin black tongue darted through and began to writhe about in a ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... classes, and the still sterner haughtiness of their footmen. He had now abandoned Alice in Putney. And a mysterious demon seized him and gripped him, and sought to pull him back in the direction of the simplicity of Putney, and struggled with him fiercely, and made him writhe and shrink before the brilliant phenomena of London's centre, and indeed almost pitched him out of the car and set him running as hard as legs would carry to Putney. It was the demon which we call habit. He would have given a picture to be in Putney, instead of swimming past Hyde Park Corner ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... when this great laughing and generous sage comes forth into the sunshine with his noble companies of amorous and happy people, these Shadow-lovers, these Leut-lovers, these Fleshly Sentimentalists, writhe in shame, and seek refuge in a deeper darkness. How strained and inhuman, too; and one might add, how mad and irrelevant—that high, cold, disdainful translunar scorn with which the "moral-immoralism" of Nietzsche scourges our poor flesh and blood. ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... foolish child,— Down, down it falls—out swarm the bees Buzzing with fury wild. With fright she shrieks, and tries to run, But ah! 'tis all in vain; Upon her light the angry bees, And make her writhe with pain. ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... overpowered her with their superior might she fought for freedom like a mad woman. But this abnormal strength could not continue. Suddenly, as Anstice had foreseen, the inevitable collapse occurred. Nature could stand no more, and with a last wild writhe the woman slipped through the hands which held her, and uttering a sharp cry fell to the floor in a state ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe amazingly; and threaten 'sacred right of Insurrection;'—and, as we saw, get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit, dexterity, and light graceful poignancy, Camille, translating 'out of Tacitus, from the Reign of Tiberius,' pricks into the Law of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... favour," she said, with quivering lip, and letting her cold hand remain in mine. "Stay away from her to-day. I couldn't bear to think of you and her together, happy, love-making, after what I've said this morning. I should writhe with the shame and the torture of it. Give me your thoughts to-day. Wear a little mourning for the dead. It is all I ask ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... with an earthquake shook Both sea and land. Around on all sides crashed Caphereus' cliffs: beneath the Sea-king's wrath The surf-tormented beaches shrieked and roared. The broad crag rifted reeled into the sea, The rock whereto his desperate hands had clung; Yet did he writhe up round its jutting spurs, While flayed his hands were, and from 'neath his nails The blood ran. Wrestling with him roared the waves, And the foam whitened ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... absolute heel which grates And grinds them flat from all attempted height. You kill worms sooner with a garden-spade Than you kill peoples: peoples will not die; The tail curls stronger when you lop the head: They writhe at every wound and multiply And shudder into a heap of life that's made Thus vital from God's own vitality. 'T is hard to shrivel back a day of God's Once fixed for judgment: 't is as hard to change The peoples, when they rise beneath their loads And heave them from ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... accusing stare at the speaker that made the fat boy writhe, for he knew what was passing in the ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... thrust out, and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep; although, now and then, one would writhe, and lift its head, and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... to witness and sing how the body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is no sense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under the free sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take half the burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth without reproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearing myself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner or later ensue the indifference brought by time. Sometimes a flock of small brown sandbirds watched me curiously ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... who, knowing the effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr. Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr. Lawley, too exhausted to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! it had missed its aim, and, striking the wall above the lintel, fell ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... the Slave Squadron. The Psyche, from her phenomenal lack of speed, and general unsuitability for the service upon which she was employed, had, with her crew, become the butt and laughing-stock of every stupid and scurrilous jester on the coast, and many a time had we been made to writhe under the lash of some more than ordinarily envenomed gibe; but now the laugh was to be on our side; we were going to demonstrate to those shallow, jeering wits the superiority of brains over a ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... like ice on flame. Jack swore a muffled oath and turned away. There was no one in the world who possessed the power to humble him as did Dick, who with a few scorching words could make him writhe in impotent fury. For there was no gainsaying Dick. He was always unassailable in his justice, since in a fashion inexplicable but tacitly acknowledged by both he occupied a higher plane altogether. Ignore it as he might, deep in his inner soul Jack knew ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... hands was Leif. In sheer strength no two in both ships were his match in a close wrestle. None could strike a keener blow. Yet was he hugely delighted when, one afternoon in friendly fray, Ulf again and again slipped within his guard and with a lithe writhe of his slender form twined a bear's hug around his bulky friend and dashed him earthward. And to give Ulf one spear's length advantage in a hot scurry across country was never to come ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... man left at Key West who did not writhe with envy and anger when he heard of it. When the wire was closed for the night, and they had gathered at Josh Kerry's, Keating was the storm-centre of ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... Act; and at last a passage of Wagner at his theatrical best is reached when he solemnly warns her again—"Greatest of trusts, Elsa, I have shown thee." To another most lovely theme he tries again to soothe her: she will not listen, and the Ortrud theme begins to writhe in the orchestra, and we know that Elsa's soul is fast bound in the spell of suspicion which Ortrud put upon her. She gets nearer and nearer to the fatal question, and suddenly in the impotent rage of a fretful woman who cannot get her way—a woman ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... are gaping with wounds; their contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment, the needles of the pine-tree; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet unwounded are digging desperately in the attempt to escape underground. Not one succeeds. They are scarcely half buried before some ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... ESSENIAN. Three crosses in this noonday night uplifted, Three human figures that in mortal pain Gleam white against the supernatural darkness; Two thieves, that writhe in torture, and between them The Suffering Messiah, the Son of Joseph, Ay, the Messiah Triumphant, Son of David! A crown of thorns on that dishonored head! Those hands that healed the sick now pierced with nails, Those feet that wandered homeless through ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... with which the journalist avoided all hint of unpleasant memories. That Earwaker should refrain from a single question concerning that abrupt disappearance, nearly ten years ago, sufficiently declared his knowledge of the unspeakable cause, a reflection which often made Godwin writhe. However, this difficulty was overcome, and the two met very frequently. For several weeks Godwin enjoyed better spirits than he had known since the first excitement of his ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... willingly linger on the hideous details of such a scene? Sorrowful that man should come, with his evil ambitions and his fierce revenges, to stain and to spoil such wonders of beauty as the hand of the Creator has here moulded. Sorrowful that man, in league with the serpent, should writhe into such scenes as these, and poison them with the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... after a bare look at Diggory Venn, that the man had come on a strange errand, and that he was not so mean as she had thought him; for her close approach did not cause him to writhe uneasily, or shift his feet, or show any of those little signs which escape an ingenuous rustic at the advent of the uncommon in womankind. On his inquiring if he might have a conversation with her she replied, "Yes, walk beside me," ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Statesman, struggling in the nightmare's grip, Fears he has let Time's scanty forelock slip, And lost a great occasion Of self-advancement. How that mouth's a-writhe With hate, on platforms oft so blandly blithe In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... don't read the Bible an' preach the word, nor talk with sperits, but thar's worse men than me in the world—old Red in thar' for instance"; and then he would cackle like a fiend and the Red Fox would writhe in torment and beg to be sent to another cell. And always he would daily ask the Red Fox about his trial and ask him questions in the night, and his devilish instinct told him the day that the Red Fox, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... and be as the waning moon in the heavens. And my heart cried out in an agony. But my will sought to comfort my heart, and said, Cry not out, for, in spite of old age as in spite of death, I will love her still. Then something began to writhe within me, and to hiss out words that gathered themselves unto this purpose: But she will grow unlovely, and wrinkled, and dark of hue, and the shape of her body will vanish, and her form be unformed, and her eyes will grow small and dim, and creep back into her head, and her ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... and laughed to exhaustion over them. Not less did the mentally exhausted business man writhe abdominally over their appeal. Spread across the top of three pages they wrung the profitable belly-laugh from growing thousands of new readers. If Banneker sometimes had misgivings that the educational influence of The Patriot was not notably improved by all this instigation of crime and immorality ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... man will fight openly and fairly, I will not hate him. If I wanted to touch an adder with my hand I would not catch him by the tail so that it could curl around and sting my hand; I would catch it just behind the head. It might writhe and wriggle, but I should know that it could not bite me. That is how I want to treat the Tresidders. You despise me," I went on; "you see me now a thing that has to hide like a rabbit in burrow. Well, perhaps it is natural—you live ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... of us are uttering may be ignored. The squandering may go on, the vulgar bacchanalia may be prolonged, the poor may have to writhe under the iron heel of the iron lord—the dance of death may go on until society's E string snaps, and then the Vesuvius of the underworld will belch forth its lava of death and destruction."—Hearst's ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... said, "there is no respectable conclusion to be drawn. It is tragic, but prosaic. She has been governess or companion in some great house. She may be a well-born woman. It is ten times more hideous for her than if she were a girl. She has to writhe under knowing that both her friends and her enemies are saying that she had not the excuse of not having been old enough to ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... would he strive to cover up his faithlessness. But he hath been untrue to thee in this—that he shares a thought with the witch when his whole mind should be full of thee. Bide thy time till he emerges from the spell, then make him writhe. Meantime, save thy tears. Never was a man ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Green our Laidly Worm Hath made a loathly den, And there hath fed for a weary term On the bodies and souls of men. There doth it writhe, and ramp, and slower, Whilst in its coils close prest Are the things it thrives on—"Landlord ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... rooms roofed with rough and grimy timbers and walled with bare or whitewashed brick. Imagine the floor so crammed with machinery for economy of space as to allow bare room for the workers to writhe about among the flying arms and jaws of steel, a false motion meaning death or mutilation. Imagine the air space above filled, instead of air, with a mixture of stenches of oil and filth, unwashed human bodies, and foul clothing. Conceive a perpetual clang and clash of machinery like the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... us in chains, and then, when we writhe in our agony, you say we don't behave prettily!" These words, which did not lessen Ransom's wonderment, were the young lady's answer to his deprecatory speech. She saw that he was honestly bewildered and that in a moment more he would laugh at her, as ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... claws, horrible to look at, were thrust out and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... Helium, I might wring a mighty ransom from your people would I but return you to them unharmed, but a thousand times rather would I watch that beautiful face writhe in the agony of torture; it shall be long drawn out, that I promise you; ten days of pleasure were all too short to show the love I harbor for your race. The terrors of your death shall haunt the slumbers of the red men through ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with the greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by necromancy—for it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like a duck, nor wings like the seashell which is blown along in the manner of a vessel; nor yet did it writhe itself forward as do the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike, only, not far from the latter, were two small holes that served for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed out its thick breath with prodigious ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... stript of all its skin. "That upper spirit, Who hath worse punishment," so spake my guide, "Is Judas, he that hath his head within And plies the feet without. Of th' other two, Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe And speaks not! Th' other Cassius, that appears So large of limb. But night now re-ascends, And it is time for parting. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... child, a mother's hope when all other pleasures are gone! Are you some day to be torn from me, and, like myself, sent to writhe under the coarse hand of a slave-dealer, to be stung with shame enforced while asking God's forgiveness? Sometimes I think it cannot be so; I think it must all be a dream. But it is so, and we might ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Dick gave another writhe as he watched the two riders out of sight, and then muttering in an ill-used way, "Pick 'em out with a pin indeed!" he half turned in his seat, lolling in his saddle, and patting and playing with his horse, when lazily ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... from the bite of this animal, I could not help shuddering with horror. Conseil and the sailor of the Nautilus awoke at this moment. Captain Nemo pointed out the hideous crustacean, which a blow from the butt end of the gun knocked over, and I saw the horrible claws of the monster writhe in terrible convulsions. This incident reminded me that other animals more to be feared might haunt these obscure depths, against whose attacks my diving-dress would not protect me. I had never thought of it before, but I now ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... yet if there is any better," with a vague look. "A man shifts for himself in the next chance as well as now, I suppose. Did you believe what you preached, Stephen?" with an abrupt change. "God! how you used to writhe under it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... glided on, casting upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black smoke. Behind us the dazzling white water, stirred by the rapid progress of the heavy bark and beaten by the propeller, foamed, seemed to writhe, gave off so much brilliancy that one could have called ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... constantly; he was like "a tree without leaves, streaming with rain." At the end of 1861, the disease was in an acute stage. He had attacks of pain sometimes lasting thirty hours, during which he would writhe in agony in his bed. "I live in the midst of my physical pain, overwhelmed with weariness. Death is ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... of the sea, where they have stood for ages, defying the elements. The shadows that gather under their locked branches are like caverns and dungeons and lairs. The fox steals stealthily away as you grope among the roots, that writhe out of the earth and strike into it again, like pythons in a rage. The coyote sits in the edge of the dusk, and cries with a half-human cry—at least he did in my dead day. And here are corpse-like trees, that have been naked for ages; every angle of their ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... neither startled, nor shocked, nor mortified, that the unceremonious departure of the master of the house stabbed her heart with pangs that made her firm lips writhe, for she had long been cognizant of the growth of feelings whose discovery had so completely astounded ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... The overflowing field,— Over the glimmering field, And bleeding furrows with their sodden yield Of sheaves that still did writhe, After the scythe; The teeming field and darkly overstrewn With all the garnered fulness of that noon— Two looked upon each other. One was a Woman men called their mother; ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... hearts. Go! let Oblivion's curtain fall upon the stage of men! nor with thy rising beams recall life's tragedy again! Its piteous pageants bring not back, nor waken flesh upon the rack of pain anew to writhe, stretched in Disease's shapes abhorred, or mown in battle by the sword, like grass beneath the scythe! Even I am weary in yon skies to watch thy fading fire: test of all sumless agonies, behold not me expire! My lips, that speak thy dirge of death, their rounded gasp and gurgling breath to ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... of these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your work! Who wants ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... case of cruelty before referred to. In 1820 or 21, while the public works were going forward on Dauphin Island, Mobile Bay, a contractor, engaged on the works, beat one of his slaves so severely that the poor creature had no longer power to writhe under his suffering: he then took out his knife, and began to cut his flesh in strips, from his hips down. At this moment, the gentleman referred to, who was also a contractor, shocked at such inhumanity, stepped forward, between the wretch and his victim, and exclaimed, 'If you touch that slave ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... but to his rascally refusal to obey the Golden Rule. How long is it since we were all clamoring for the Australian ballot law, which was to make a new Heaven and a new earth? We have the Australian ballot law and the same old earth smelling to the same old Heaven. Writhe upon the triangle as we may, groan out what new laws we will, the pitiless thong will fall upon our bleeding backs as long as we deserve it. If our sins, which are scarlet, are to be washed as white as wool it must be in the tears of a genuine ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... back, I guess," she sighed ruefully, as a sharp twinge of pain recalled her to her surroundings and caused her to writhe in agony, "and a pair of legs to match. You are a sure-enough doctor, ain't you? Can't you mend me up again? The other doctors' job didn't last ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... black women's heads, over the tapers burning yellow on the carved marble balustrades with the Rovere arms, with a luminous grey vagueness; the blue background of the Last Judgment grows into a kind of deep hyacinthine evening sky, on which twist and writhe like fleshy snakes the group of demons and damned, the naked Christ thundering with His empty hand among them; the voices moving up and down, round and round in endless unended cadences, become strange ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... pitying Son of Mary, before Whom the Scribes and Pharisees brought the woman taken in adultery, forgive her, pardon her! If a soul must writhe in those eternal fires they preach of, in justice let it be mine! Thou Who didst pity that woman of old time, standing white and shameful in the midst of the evil, jeering crowd, with the wicked fingers pointing at her, say to this other woman, lifting up Thyself ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... I crouch, and writhe my fawning tayle, To some great Patron for my best avayle. Such hunger-starven trencher-poetrie, Or let it never ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... mountain or stream, or Muses' spring or grove, is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off Phoebus' beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a Nile flow back and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... "Kermesse" in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal boulevard-jollification, a "Mardi-gras" composed of lean and haggard scapegraces.—In the great nave of the Cathedral, "the dancers, almost naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings down at the heel," writhe and stamp, "howling the carmagnole." In the side chapels, which are "shut off by high tapestries, prostitutes with shrill voices" pursue their avocation.[3222]—To descend to this low level so barefacedly, to fraternise with barrier sots, and wenches, to endure ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Queen did, set the fashion for all the courtiers, to the profit and prosperity of merchants and craftsmen. Earls might secretly writhe at the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with suitable magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors rubbed their hands. When a company of Flemings was employed for four years on the carving of the beams and panels of the Middle ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... until the mother would take her in her arms to ward off the threatened attacks, and thus she could stimulate herself to her heart's content. As she reports, at the height of the orgasm she expelled a secretion, her body began to writhe convulsively, her face became red as fire, her eyes rolled about and she almost lost herself ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... wildness. Where water takes its first leap from the top, it is cool, and collected, and uninteresting, and mathematical, but it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape, and has farther to go than it thought for, that its character comes out; it is then that it begins to writhe, and twist, and sweep out zone after zone in wilder stretching as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like, lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides, sounding for the bottom. And it is this prostration, this hopeless abandonment of its ponderous power to the air, which is ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... sanity. The poor devils that are left—well—they'll be camaradas, peons, laborers, without the intelligence to know what they can do. They'll wait patiently for their masters to come back. And presently their hands will writhe.... And the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... he said, "you loathe your ways, You writhe at these my words of warning, In agony your hands you raise." (And so they ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... they had already taken. Here, then, disease, as if enraged that he should have borne up so long, that his spirit had mastered even her, convened the whole powers of suffering, and compelled him not alone to acknowledge, but to writhe beneath her sway. His whole frame was shaken; intolerable pains took possession of him, and though the virulence of the complaint was at length so far abated as to permit him a short continuance of life, he could ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... quiet, his muscles stiffened and relaxed—he was no longer conscious. A few more convulsive quivers, as a serpent might writhe and jerk, then he hung, a limp dead thing, in my hands. My outstretched arms seemed made as a gibbet, feeling no fatigue, so lightly did they sustain him. Cords of brass could be no more tense than mine; his weight was as nothing. Softly ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... a snake. Do not writhe like a snake. My swing is a big snake. Do not turn and twist. My swing is a lizard. Do ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... patient study, length of time, and severe application, to the fools who think time given to be so wasted. Roses grow for me to gather: rivers roll for me to lave in. Let the slave dig the mine, but for me let the diamond sparkle. Let the lamb, the dove, and the life-loving eel writhe and die; it shall not disturb me, while I enjoy the viands. The five senses are my deities; to them I pay worship and adoration, and never yet have I been slack in ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... concealed the greatest of dangers. To go shooting through roads and canals was man's work. A stab could be returned; one bullet could answer another; but ah! that frothing mouth which killed with a bite!... that incurable disease which made men writhe in endless agony, like a lizard sliced by ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the ZX-2 wallow in her death throes, writhe in the fiery doom that had struck her in seconds, that was devouring her with awful rapidity while thousands of men, blanched and trembling, gazed on helplessly. He saw her plunge, a blazing inferno, into ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... daft with admiration of his pa. He've lifted his pa above God Almighty. When he finds out the truth, he'll fall down and scream in agony, an' he'll die squirmin', too. I can fair hear un now—an' see un writhe in pain." ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... quite certain that the curl of the lip is responsible for my being here; it kept sending me constant telegrams; but what I want to know is, do I come for the pleasure of the thing or for the pain? Do I like your disdain, Alice, or does it make me writhe? Am I here to beg you to do it again, or to ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... suddenly sit up on the edge of the bed, rest her bare feet on the cold floor, and remain there, wild-eyed, listening to the things that breathe in a sleeping-chamber. And little by little the obscurity of the place and hour seemed to envelop her. She seemed to herself to fall and writhe helplessly in the blind unconsciousness of the night. Her will became as naught. All sorts of black things, that seemed to have wings and voices, beat against her temples. The ghastly temptations that afford madness a vague glimpse of crime caused a red light, the flash of murder, to pass ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... gloomy, savage force that has made the contemplative soul of spiritual inquiry writhe under the startling contradictions of history. When this force has been aroused with fear it has snarled and roared defiance; when it has been enraged by opposition or the lash of mastership it has cooled its ferocity in the blood of countless wars, pillages and sacrifices; when satiated ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... beings, don't you believe there's only one of them. There are barrels of 'em in every depot, that hang on and writhe when their time comes to go, and they say, 'I'm not going,' and they don't go, and they never succeed in driving them ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... group of jars which stood On a distant shelf, it seemed the sky Had lent the half-tones of his blazonry To paint these porcelains with unknown hues Of reds dyed purple and greens turned blues, Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen Their colours are felt, but never seen. Strange winged dragons writhe about These vases, poisoned venoms spout, Impregnate with old Chinese charms; Sealed urns containing mortal harms, They fill the mind with thoughts impure, Pestilent drippings from the ure Of vicious thinkings. "Ah, I see," Said I, "you deal in pottery." The old man turned and looked at me. Shook ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... was all the greater for the contrast with the spell of peace which he had just enjoyed; and, almost paralysed in every sense, he stood and watched the fatal vision and the wrinkly, crawling quicksand that seemed to writhe and yearn for something that lay between. There could be no mistake this time, for though the moon behind threw the face into shadow he could see there the same shaven cheeks as his own, and the small stubby moustache of a few weeks' ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... comes up to that teaching? Do you not wish for, nay, almost demand, instant pardon for any trespass that you may commit,—of temper, or manner, for instance? and are you always ready to forgive in that way yourself? Do you not writhe with indignation at being wrongly judged by others who condemn you without knowing your actions or the causes of them; and do you never judge others ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... writhe and scream, babble and plead and sob. Perhaps there have been men who have endured torture with dignity, but Jimmie was not one of these. Jimmie was abject, Jimmie was frantic; he did anything, everything he could think of—save one thing, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... boom went up the barge's mast, and the tightly corded roll of dark canvas began to struggle for liberty, and writhe and flap with throttling noises above our heads, and when Mr. Rowe wrestled with it and the driver helped him, and Fred and I tried to, and were all but swept overboard in consequence, whilst the barge-master ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... addressed to the saint who died in his bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simulate his horrid end. And this is the reason why most of the white caftans simply rock and writhe, while the humble blue ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... political freedom of the cultivators of the soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States, it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain torrent, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... they knew and felt that Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... speak to his fellow whom he does not know, is for the time being a blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness. Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless, dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open spaces, surrounded by blue-lipped women, in different ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to move, Omega and Thalma watched it and could not understand its writhings. But as it continued to writhe and groan they understood at last—the stone had lodged firmly in its throat and was ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... soon as it was on the floor it began to writhe and roll and bite itself, with all its fur on end, like a mad cat. Then it flew to the door and tried to get out, and again began to spit furiously. I thought that it would awaken the King, and ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... and then pronounced sentence of penal servitude for a term of years that then seemed eternity to me. I was removed from the court to the prison, stripped of my clothes, clad in the garb of the convict, and turned into a cell, there to writhe in tearless agony, and to indulge in ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... thrusts the paper into the fire, stamps it down with his foot, watches it writhe and blacken. Then suddenly clutching his head, he turns to the bodies on the couch. Panting and like a man demented, he recoils past the head of the couch, and rushing to the window, draws the curtains and throws the window up for air. Out in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... then, in his limbs the meaning of the word "writhe," and he was glad that he had not had his bath, because even if he had had his bath he would have needed another one. His attitude towards his fellow men had a touch of embittered and cynical scorn unworthy of a philosopher. He turned, in another ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... me. He launched me into a world where all my appetite for luxury was developed, then suddenly he sent me to a prison. You remember all the tortures he inflicted on you. Now it is in our power to heap on this man a vengeance so terrible that he will writhe at our feet. This vengeance I mean to have. Danglars, do you wish to see this man suffer? Then give me your hand, and ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina |
