"Writhing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "And the writhing tentacles composed themselves once more to stillness upon the bottom, awaiting the next careless ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... staring as wide and horribly with their eyes as they could open them. After this mummery had continued some minutes, the men separated for them to pass, and the boys were now led over the bodies lying on the ground. These immediately began to move, writhing as if in agony, and uttering a mournful dismal sound, like very distant thunder. Having passed over these bodies, the boys were placed before the second figures, who went through the same series of grimaces as those who were ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... with another of dark cyanus in the middle: this last was made to show a Gorgon's head, fierce and grim, with Rout and Panic on either side. The band for the arm to go through was of silver, on which there was a writhing snake of cyanus with three heads that sprang from a single neck, and went in and out among one another. On his head Agamemnon set a helmet, with a peak before and behind, and four plumes of horse-hair that nodded menacingly above it; then he grasped two redoubtable bronze-shod spears, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... choked, holding the mare firmly headed toward the writhing, crackling wires. "Ida! Get up! You ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... picture of Warren at Bunker-Hill, writhing in his death-agony on one wall of the kitchen, and General Marion feasting from a potato, in his tent, on the other, did not in the least attract the attention of Mopsey. She saw nothing on the whole horizon of the glowing apartment but the pies and the turkey, and even for the moment neglected to ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... and shoot, all at the same time; but, spurred by necessity, I somehow did it. I fired three shots in quick succession. My first bullet missed; my second knocked the man over; my third grazed the horse. With a ringing shriek, the Matabele fell in the road, a black writhing mass; his horse, terrified, dashed back with maddened snorts into the midst of the others. Its plunging disconcerted the whole party for ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... built Sant' Ambrogio[4] and San Miniato a Monte, who carved the stone nightmares, the ravening lions, the squashed and writhing human figures of the early Lombard and Tuscan churches, were the contemporaries of that Manichean priest of Milan, who, although a saint, had believed in the triumph of the Devil and the wickedness of the Creator. And among his fellow-heretics—those heretics ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Ramona!" loudly cried Jose; "there is no cholera here!" He hastened to the bedside of the writhing Pedro. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the dogs, he recoiled, clasping his hands upon his breast and boldly thrusting out his elbows to ward off their ferocious attacks. With a sudden tightening of the muscles he repulsed the Danish hounds, which rolled over writhing on the ground, and then, with formidable baying, returned more furiously ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... from the effects of the blow, he found himself lying on the cold earth in total darkness, and firmly bound hand and foot. It is impossible to describe the agony of that bold spirit as he lay writhing on the ground, in the vain effort to burst the cords that bound him. He thought of Aneetka and his own utter helplessness, while she was, no doubt, in urgent need of his strong arm to deliver her. The thought maddened ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... mingled pain and rage, Farrington endeavoured to free himself from this human wild-cat. He struggled and fought, and at length succeeded in tearing away that writhing, battering form. With one hand he held him at arm's length and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. Dan struggled, squirmed and bit, but all in vain; he was held as in a vice. Not satisfied with shaking the lad, Farrington reached ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... attempt to study it until the burden is lifted. The slave is unknown to all, even to himself, while the bondage lasts. Nature is ever a kind mother. She soothes us with her deceits, not in surgery alone, when the sufferer, else writhing in pain, is transported with the sweet delirium, but she withholds from the spirit the sight of her divinity until her opportunity has come. Not even Tocqueville or Olmsted, much less the master, can measure the capacities and possibilities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that corner, Eive," as I opened the door and called sharply the other members of the household. When they entered, unable to stand, I had fallen back upon a chair, and called Eive to my side. As I laid my hand on her arm she threw herself on the floor, screaming and writhing like a terrified child rather than a woman detected in a crime, the conception and execution of which must have required an evil courage and determination ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... puzzled at her lover writhing at her feet, his face haggard and drawn, waiting for the words he was trying ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Chasidism is the extreme expression of Jewish optimism. The Chasidim are the Corybantes or Salvationists of Judaism. In England their idiosyncrasies are limited to noisy jubilant services in their Chevrah, the worshippers dancing or leaning or standing or writhing or beating their heads against the wall as they will, and frisking like happy children in the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... emetic had failed, and that nothing remained but the drug store. He looked toward the door and drew himself to his feet. There he saved himself from falling by clutching the chair. Another paroxysm had begun. And in the midst of the paroxysm, with his body and all the parts of it flying apart and writhing and twisting back again into knots, he clung to the chair and shoved it before him across the floor. The last shreds of his will were leaving him when he gained the door. He turned the key and shot back one bolt. He fumbled for the second bolt, but failed. Then he leaned his ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... black fingers, curled around the naked bodies, made the young man so that he did not sleep, but lay carving the biographies for these men from his meagre experience. At times the fellow in the corner howled in a writhing ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... not be made a very good translation[1127].' Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain, came next in review; the bard [1128] was a lank bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing himself in agitation, while Johnson read, and shewing his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, 'Is that poetry, Sir?—Is it Pindar?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, there is here a great deal of what is called poetry.' Then, turning to me, the poet cried, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... him inside the airlock. In her arms snuggled a pile of writhing radiance, like glowing worms. Moonpups. A ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... hot fire burning in Jan's brain, a blazing, writhing contortion of things that brought a low moaning from his lips. He ran tirelessly and swiftly until he sank down upon the snow in a silent place far from where he had left John Cummins. His eyes still blazed with their strange fire ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... light of the moon went across the green in the direction of the sound. He reached the hedge bordering the widow's garden, when he stood still. The faint click of the trap as dragged about by the writhing animal guided him now, and reaching the spot he struck the rabbit on the back of the neck with the side of his palm, and it stretched ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... automatically to the direction and speed that had been established. The hand of the master-pilot found it quickly. They were in dangerous territory now—a vast void under a ceiling of black, star-specked space. No writhing, darting wraith-forms caught the rays of the distant ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the grip of a sinful past, or paralysed beyond writhing, and indifferent, because hopeless, or because they have come to like their captivity, comes one whose name is 'the Breaker,' whose mission it is to proclaim liberty to the captives, and whose hand laid on ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... footsteps, we have been routed night after night from our warm quarters, in the dead of winter, to kindle fires and fill frosty kettles from water-pails thickly crusted with ice, that we might get the writhing pedal extremities of our little heir into a tub of water as quickly as possible. But lately we have learned that all this work and exposure is needless. We simply wring a towel from salted water—a bowl of it standing in our sleeping ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... dwarf, writhing his face grievously, and laughing forsooth: "I know it all: I asked thee to see what wise thou wouldst lie. I was sent forth to look for thee; and I have brought thee loathsome bread with me, such as ye aliens must needs eat: ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... to learn the future comes from the old system of augury from sacrifice. Who sees in the nuts thrown into the fire, turning in the heat, blazing and growing black, the writhing victim of an old-time sacrifice to ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... breastwork spears in hand. It was thus that the conflict commenced in dread earnest, and the revolvers now did fearful execution. The Indians were hurled back again and again, and finally they broke and sought cover in the bush. Their wounded lay writhing and crying out close beneath the rampart, and among these were also many who would never move more in ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... bitter pain, of writhing, agonized love did Josephine now endure! How courageous, yet how difficult, the struggle against the wretchedness of a rejected love! How angrily and scornfully she would rise up against her cruel fate! How lovingly, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... Spanish-speaking population of the eastern part of the island of Santo Domingo, writhing under the despotic yoke of Haiti, had seized a favorable occasion to regain their freedom. But the magic word "independence" could not give stability to the new state any more than it had done in the case of its western foes. The Haitians had lapsed long since into ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... rolling horribly, quite mad, as he flung himself upon me and tried to tear me down. To add to the horror, the Indian soldiers brought their torches to the windows in order to gloat on this scene. I heard them laugh like devils as the red light flashed on the naked heap of infuriated Englishmen writhing and ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... excellence a colorist; and would you not have expected that—before all things—the first thing he would have seen in a peacock would have been gold and blue? He sees nothing of the kind. A peacock, to him, is essentially a dark bird; serpent-like in the writhing of the neck, cloud-like in the toss and wave of its plumes. He has dashed out the filaments of every feather with magnificent drawing; he has not given you one bright gleam of green or purple ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... into a coiled mass. There was no trace of an investing membrane; the constituent parts were related to each other simply as the two separating parts of an ordinary fission; and they now commenced a quick, writhing motion like a knot of eels, and then, in the course of from seven to thirty minutes, separated, and fully endowed with flagella swam freely away, minute but perfect forms, which by the rapid absorption of pabulum attained speedily to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... had never believed it possible to fear. His face rose before her clearly with all the expressions she had learned to know and dread. She tried to banish it, striving with all her might to put him from her mind, twisting this way and that, writhing on the soft sand as she struggled with the obsession that held her. She saw him all the time plainly, as though he were there before her. Would he pursue her always, phantom-like? Would the recollection of the handsome brown face haunt her for ever with its fierce eyes and cruel mouth? She buried ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... therefore for the Jews thus oppressed, and reading in their sacred books, that they should be delivered from their oppressors by the appearance of their great deliverer when their sufferings were at the heighth; was it extraordinary that the Jews, writhing under the lash of tyrannical conquerors, and considering their then circumstances, to expect this deliverer at that time? And to conclude, does it, after all, appear that this rumour prevailed in the life time of Jesus, or not till about thirty ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... the next Sabbath sun rose upon the home of his youth, he was tossing rapidly over the waves of the wide, deep, trackless ocean, one moment longing to be again amid scenes so long dear and familiar, and the next writhing, as he thought of the anger of his father, the reproaches of his mother. On he went, often vexed at the services he was called to perform, in working his passage out, for which his previous habits had poorly prepared him. On went the stanch vessel, and in due time landed safely her precious freight ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... attempting to escape with its prize, the rattle-snake, though it could not use its venomous fangs, which would have given it an advantage over its opponent, whose teeth were unprovided with a poison-bag, advanced to the encounter. In an instant the two creatures had flown at each other, forming a writhing mass of apparently inextricable coils. In vain the rattle-snake attempted to get down the squirrel so as to use its fangs, the animal sticking in its throat could neither be swallowed nor ejected. The struggle was truly fearful to look at. Round and round they ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... came back more quickly that he went, so that the horse died under him in the courtyard. He rushed into the room where Bertha, believing her last hour to be come, was kissing her son, and writhing like a lizard in the fire, uttering no cry for herself, but for the child, left to the wrath of Bastarnay, forgetting her own agony at the thought ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... it hastily on his shoulder and went with a quick step out of the woods. In doing so he put his foot upon the head of a small snake, which wriggled up round his ankle and leg. If there was anything on earth that Barney abhorred and dreaded it was a snake. No sooner did he feel its cold form writhing under his foot, than he uttered a tremendous yell of terror, dropped his bundle of sticks, and fled precipitately to the beach, where he did not hall till he found himself knee-deep ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... it is to the effect that the enemy is before our troops, a native insurrection behind. Malta has fallen, and our outlying positions are passing from our hands. Food is contraband, and may not be imported. Amid the jeers of Europe 'the nation of shopkeepers' is writhing in ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... still, her big eyes wide with wonder and swift rising anger. Twisting, struggling, writhing, cursing, two men lay upon the ground held in a fierce embrace, much in the manner of two wildcats. Beyond them, huddled upon the ground, her face covered with her hands, a picture of abject terror, crouched her ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... violent wind; they wear helmets and partial suits of armour, and hold in their right hands something between a monarch's sceptre and a priest's staff. They have goggle eyes and open mouths, and their faces are in distorted and exaggerated action. One, painted bright red, tramples on a writhing devil painted bright pink; another, painted emerald green, tramples on a sea- green devil, an indigo blue monster tramples on a sky-blue fiend, and a bright pink monster treads under his clawed feet a flesh- coloured ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... air, while the central mass hurries downward by its concentrated weight. The general appearance is that of numerous spearheads with serrated edges, feathered with light, thrust from some celestial armory into the writhing pool of agonized waters below. In the geyser one gets this effect both in the ascending ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... and, lifting her handkerchief, disclosed for a moment a great wound in her breast, deep in which Gertrude saw darkly the head of a snake writhing. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... dripping wet. The poor brute was so grateful and would keep touching my arm with his nose. Mrs. Maxwell sat under the trees fanning herself and laughing at me, but I didn't care. How could I enjoy myself with a dumb creature writhing in pain before me? ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... and saw a huge storm cloud rising out of the north-west and spreading like a great gray dust curtain from horizon to zenith. With the sun blotted out, a brazen light filled all the upper air, and in the heart of the cloud fleecy masses of vapor were writhing and twisting ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... eyes in the blackness he saw it—the lifted arms, the bare torso of the man, writhing under the agony of realisation—the tools, symbols of a life's toil, lying as they had dropped for ever from the hands that should work no more. It had sent a shudder through him, even amid the gaiety ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pox o'this Congee; 't shalbe thus, no thus; That writhing of my body does become me Infinitly. Now to begett an active Complement that, like a matins sung By virgins, may enchant her amorous ear. The Spanish Basolas[63] manos sounds, methinks, As harsh as a Morisco kettledrum; The French boniour is ordinary as their Disease: hees not ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... bill towards the brook, man after man falling and dotting the green sward of the hill with struggling, writhing bodies. ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... his immediate antagonists hailed from across the Sonora line. Who and what they were mattered little, however. The fact that after hours of repulse in open attack, the foe had all on a sudden carried their castle by a damnable ruse was only too forcibly apparent. Writhing, struggling in miserable effort to free himself from his bonds, poor Harvey's burning eyes were maddened by the picture before him only a couple of hundred yards away. There in the fierce light of the flames now bursting ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... Land there came a sort o' greenish yellow cloud. No man there knew what it meant. There was a hissing and a writhing, as of snakes, and like a snake the gas came toward them. It reached them, and men began to cough and choke. And other men fell doon, and their faces grew black, and they deed, in an agony such as the man ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... until it became a yellow line, and then, without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared, a white, almost womanly hand, which felt about in the center of the little area of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark, which marked ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... as Alf Joblin went writhing to the floor, and Thomas Blake's voice was raised afresh in a universal challenge, Walter Greenway ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... mistake; the groaning came from the old well, and it was a human cry of distress. "Who's there?" cried the sergeant, throwing his light down upon a writhing figure. "It's me—it's Ned Taylor. Lord help me! I've done for myself. Oh, help me out for pity's sake!" With great difficulty, and with terrible suffering to the poor wretch himself, they contrived at last to draw him up, and to place him with his back against ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... ourselves that there was but one person near we walked forward and found a large Indian sitting by the fire, both hands spread before the flame to protect his eyes from the light, that his keen gaze might rest unmolested upon us. As soon as he saw us a writhing grin spread over his painted features, and rising he offered us each his hand in a very friendly manner. The Indian drew from his belt a large pipe, gaudily painted, and from which depended a profusion of wampum, beads, and eagles' feathers. He lighted the pipe, and after ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... forthwith to put this determination in practice, by inflicting a kind of bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the boy's arm, which, during the operation, was twisted round with some degree of technical skill, to render the pain more acute. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel writhing under them, Byron saw and felt for the misery of his friend; and although he knew that he was not strong enough to fight —— with any hope of success, and that it was dangerous even to approach him, he advanced to the scene of action, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... restrain their mirth, that portion of the choir that was in the bay-window now whooped with delight. And Sue, turning, beheld ten figures writhing with joy. ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... serene—retired to repose. He had that night rather a singular dream; it was of a snake encircling a monkey, as if in gentle and playful embrace. Suddenly tightening its folds, a crackling sound was heard; the writhing coils were then slowly unwound—and, with a shudder, he beheld the monster licking over the motionless figure, till it was covered with a viscid slime. Then the serpent began to devour his prey; and, when gorged and helpless, behold, it was immediately fallen upon by two other ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... he feared he saw something hostile in the manner of the other, he commenced grunting dismally again, and writhing as if in pain. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... of boiling water all over my legs. I put down my hand and my leg was full of holes and the blood was literally streaming from it. The pain was awful and I couldn't stand up any longer. I was half fainting, and I dropped into the dugout on a pile of writhing bodies. But I still had sense enough to know that if I stayed there the next bomb that came down those stairs would land on my back, so I managed to scramble off, and then I crawled along the dugout floor till I came ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... of Actual Human Life— If thou could'st see the serpent strife Which the Greek Art has made divine in stone— Could'st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek, Note every pang, and hearken every shriek Of some despairing lost Laocoon, The human nature would thyself subdue To share the human woe before thine eye— Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be true ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... Scherzi Chopin is often prophet as well as poet. He fumes and frets, but upon his countenance is che precious fury of the sibyls. We see the soul that suffers from secret convulsions, but forgive the writhing for the music made. These four Scherzi are psychical records, confessions committed to paper of outpourings that never could have passed the lips. From these alone we may almost reconstruct the real Chopin, the inner Chopin, whose conventional ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... corners, pouring libidinous tales into his furry ears, tempting him with descriptions like Suetonius's account of the Roman circuses. Automobiles with megaphones and placards summon him from the street corners. Electric signs—debauches of writhing colour—intoxicate his mind and point the way to ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... corner into which it may squeeze or narrow the quarters into which it may be driven, and though head and tail may be close together and in the midst of a complication of coils, and the twisting and writhing may appear to be without method, yet the snake emerges a triumph of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... helplessness. Subdued screams and struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, "Mr. Fitzpiers, will ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... growing confidence he practised day in, day out. Mogg's had faded into the limbo of forgotten things; his horizon consisted of a foetid shell hole, a panting, writhing Hun fighting for his life in the darkness of the night, a cracking arm and then . . . His imagination never took him beyond that point. Sufficient of the old Adam of gentility still remained to prevent him ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... stand, In their black and dismal bearing, Of the gloomy pit of terrors; Gloomy, like a loathsome dungeon. Now before the gate he standeth, Worn, and weary, and dejected; And the lurid glares break through it Of the flames for ever burning; And he sees the shames, the tortures, And the writhing objects in them, Suffering and enduring anguish. They who once on bounty feasted, Now enclosed in pangs of hunger; They who were the poor's oppressors, Now oppressed and trodden under. Now destroyers are destroyed, Scoffers are with scoff betaken, And the lofty are ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... was at the back of the house, looking out on fields and trees, doomed but not yet destroyed by the builder. Horrible objects in brass and leather and glass, twisted and turned as if they were sentient things writhing in agonies of pain, filled up one end of the room. A great book-case with glass doors extended over the whole of the opposite wall, and exhibited on its shelves long rows of glass jars, in which shapeless dead creatures of a dull white color floated in yellow liquid. Above ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of this remarkable sovereign that he was ever wont to accomplish his darkest crimes, whether murders or stratagems, as if they were acts of virtue. Perhaps he really believed them to be such, for a man, before whom so many millions of his fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust, might ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... strapped him, hand and foot, and writhing, foaming, like the untamed wild beast that he was, they thrust him ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... cry broke from Beryl, but she never knew that she uttered it. All she was aware of was the ghastly struggle that ensued in front of her, the fierce writhing of the snake, the convulsive movements of the old native, and, curiously distinct from everything else, an impression of some stringed instrument thrumming somewhere at the ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and legs were pierced; every inch of the poor writhing body that did not cover a vital organ became the target ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... faded splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only in the depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to excite our loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are not there, poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered spirit, of the writhing agonies within. Milton was too magnanimous and open an antagonist to support his argument by the bye-tricks of a hump and cloven foot; to bring into the fair field of controversy the good old catholic prejudices ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... broken and twisted pillars of iron. The cavity of the broken ledge where Richelieu had prospected was a hideous chasm of bluish blackness, over which a purple vapor seemed to hover; the "brush dump" beside the house showed a cavern of writhing and distorted objects stiffened into dark rigidity. She had often looked upon the prospect: it had never seemed so hard and changeless; yet she accepted it, as she had accepted ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... passed the girl's writhing lips she clutched at her throat: she seemed to fight a moment for breath, for life: then with a stifled shriek fell in a ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the panhandle of Idaho into Washington, through Spokane, through the writhing lava deposits of Moses Coulee where fruit trees grow on volcanic ash. Beyond Wenatchee, with its rows of apple trees striping the climbing fields like corduroy in folds, she had come to the famous climb of Blewett Pass. Once over that ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... mysterious apparition drew nearer, and Geronimo recognized the servant of Simon Turchi; but why was Julio writhing in such horrible convulsions? Why was his face so horribly contorted? Why did he threaten and rage in ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing soul. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the "fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to give him a fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student is never met at the station with a brass band, whatever may happen in more emotional ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... circumstances, already known to the reader; but the question put by Diaz had brought the red colour into the face of the outlaw, for it recalled to him how his cunning had been outwitted by the young man, and also how he had been made to tremble a moment under Tiburcio's menace. Writhing under these remembrances, he was now determined to make his vengeance more secure, by enlisting his associates as accomplices of ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... if a lock had given way, then brief scuffling mingled with the loud creaking of a bed. Scarcely a minute later the marshal appeared on the landing above, one hand firmly gripped in the neck-band of an undershirt, thus securely holding the writhing, helpless figure of a man, who swore violently every time he could catch ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... feeble hand, and putting up his mouth to kiss her. But Angus, utterly scandalized at the proceeding, and restored to energy by seeing that the boy was alive, caught her up suddenly and carried her off—struggling, writhing, and scratching like a cat. Indeed she bit his arm, and that severely, but the man never even told his wife. Little Missie was a queen, and little Gibbie was a vermin, but he was ashamed to let the mother of his children know that the former ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... she could see that the point of this joke was directed against Mrs. Stanley, and she laughed rather more heartily than good breeding required. In her mirth, she even bent forward in her chair, writhing slightly to and fro, while her silken linings hissed like angry snakes. Suddenly she realized that she had prolonged her mirth beyond the limits of the others, and she ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... eyes; the other struck it with the hammer, and drove it into his head. The throat was pierced in the same way with the second nail; and thus the guilty soul, stained throughout its career with crimes of violence, was in its turn violently torn from the body, which lay writhing on the floor where it ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the gray prairie, on a windless day with the smoke from the engine clinging to the fields in giant cotton-rolls, in a low and writhing wall which shut off the snowy fields, she did not look out of the window. She closed her eyes and hummed, and did not know that ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... She heard the drip, drip of the rain; the fast-running stream from the overcharged eaves trough; then the thunder of the wind sweeping over the house in a great gust; and the whistle of the elm branches as they swung through the air like tremendous lithe switches, beating and writhing and straining in the fury of the blast. Looking into the clear, glowing flames, Diana heard it all, with a certain sense of enjoyment; when in the midst of it she heard another sound, a little thing, but distinguishable from all the rest; the sound of a foot upon the little stone before the door. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... would do his utmost to turn the table on end, or side, with the legs out in the room. Before the "grabber" could get the lay of things and get past it, the spooks would have gone through the trap, closed it, pulled up the ladder, and the "grabber" would have found the medium writhing and groaning and bleeding from the mouth. The bleeding was for effect, and was caused by sucking very hard on ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... much like a crowded branch as his supple, shining form would admit, the old vengeance overtook him. I exercised my prerogative, and a well-directed missile, in the shape of a stone, brought him looping and writhing to the ground. After I had completed his downfall and quiet had been partially restored, a half-fledged member of the bereaved household came out from his hiding-place, and, jumping upon a decayed branch, chirped vigorously, no doubt ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... is said he lived for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably, with Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black, against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,—deeper, because more natural, than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance: ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... writhing and lifting, rolling and bending, came across the ocean slowly, with majestic stealth, hiding the swinging waves on which it rode so lightly, shrouding the rocks, enfolding the men and women, wreathing the cypresses, rushing onward to ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... toss about on the hard, straw-filled mattress in the stuffy little best room. Tossing, writhing under the bludgeoning of his brother's accusing inflections, a dozen times he said, with a ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the unhappy young nun lay expiring in her room. She had taken poison, although the report was spread in the capital that failure of the heart had caused her death. How she came into possession of the poison no one ever discovered. While she was writhing in terrible agony her half-crazed mother put a cup of milk to her lips as an antidote. She dashed it passionately aside and the spilt milk left stains ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... scrub and in an instant the wild dog lies flat again. Did he not see one of the men move? No, all is quiet, and once more he creeps forward. Then from beneath the tree there comes a flash and a report and a bullet flies and the night prowler leaps in the air with a snarling yelp and falls writhing in his death agony, as from the sand flats in the river arises the clamour of startled wild fowl and the rush and whirr of a thousand wings. Then silence again, save for the long-drawn wail of ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... me obscured for thirty years, will vanish before my breath, and I shall become visible, I shall assume definite shape and begin to be somebody. My enemies—which means all who would like to do what I have done—will be writhing in pains that shall be my pleasures, for they will be suffering all ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... of the cave, and with the most dignified stride that I could command I followed after him. But I felt that it was more or less of a failure. To begin with, it is not possible to look dignified when you are following in the wake of an old man writhing along on his stomach like a snake, and then, in order to go sufficiently slowly, either I had to keep my leg some seconds in the air at every step, or else to advance with a full stop between each stride, like ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... self-tailored grotesque attire, a brown stuff tunic girt at the waist by a leathern belt, shapeless trousers of the same material, and sandals. He had long yellow hair and untrimmed chicken fluff grew casually about his face. A sombre genius, he used to paint dark writhing horrors of souls in pain, and in his hours of relaxation to drink litres of anisette. At first he disliked and scoffed at me because I was an Englishman, which grieved me sorely, for I regarded him as the greatest genius, save Paragot, of my acquaintance. I found him ten years afterwards a sous-chef ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... horse, which was now useless. The youth now hastened to fasten down the chains to the ground by means of the enormous iron pegs which he had provided. The death struggle of the monster lasted three days and three nights; in his writhing he beat his tail so violently against the ground, that at ten miles' distance the earth trembled as if with an earthquake. When he at length lost power to move his tail, the youth with the help of the ring took up a stone which twenty ordinary men could not have moved, and beat the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... was growing up a feeling that at the top there were a set of giants—Titans—who, without heart or soul, and without any understanding of or sympathy with the condition of the rank and file, were setting forth to enchain and enslave them. The vast mass, writhing in ignorance and poverty, finally turned with pathetic fury to the cure-all of a political leader in the West. This latter prophet, seeing gold becoming scarcer and scarcer and the cash and credits of the land falling into the hands of ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... he was not yet entirely above the fog. Land was blotted out. Above him, gray sky and thin writhing filaments of vapor. Beneath him, only the fog-bank, erupting here and there like the unfolding of great white flowers as warm currents of air burst up ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the Northern Army. His master did not go to war but remained on the plantation. One day at noon during the war the gin house was seen to be afire, one of the slaves rushed in and found the master badly burned and writhing in pain. He was taken from the building and given first aid, but his body being burned in oil and so badly burned it burst open, thus ended the life of the kindly master ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... thin, and Camille, whose hand trembled, had some difficulty in detaching the leaves from one another. He succeeded, however, at last, and went on reading and writhing. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... than it does now. I dismounted from the chair and my innocent little cousin was installed in my place. As I now recall she made no protest. The barber ran his clippers conscientiously and painstakingly over her tender young scalp, while I stood admiringly by and watched the long yellow curls fall writhing upon the floor at my feet. It seemed to me that a great and manifest improvement was produced in her general appearance. Instead of being hampered by those silly curls dangling down all round her face, she now had a round, slick, smooth dome decorated with ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks—like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... river, a sudden dullness seized me. I lifted my eyes to see Beverly free and Rex directing the charge; cattle, mules, and ponies turned back toward safety, and something crawling and writhing about my feet; Jondo's great shout of victory far away, it seemed, miles and miles to the north; a cloud of dust sweeping toward me; the crimson east aflame like the Day of judgment; the dust cloud rolling nearer; ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... sickening spectacle which a hard fought battle yields, was protracted in this instance by the vast vista of the plains. Wherever the eye could reach there were prostrate bodies of men and horses, whose only claim to life was the writhing agony of their wounds; on a stage dyed red with blood and strewn with the furniture of shattered weapons little moving groups could be seen. The figures of these puppets showed all the phases of helpless flight, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... did not know that I saw these things; it was all one writhing, struggling, bloody horror; but afterward the eyes of ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... all manner of odd delicious scraps and jags of architecture, where one building has crowded upon its neighbour in its growth, like trees in a forest. There are old gardens also, long sunny walls with old fruit-trees that look like hoary serpents writhing up them, until the spring comes and the delicate, exquisite forms of plum or peach blossom break out of the gnarled boughs; there are wallflowers and lavender and rosemary, for the sweet scent and the "remembrance" of them, and tall ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... of Milo, whose charms have defied time and mutilation. Surprised, moved, almost terrified, he reeled to a chair, tears, hot and bitter, coursing down his cheeks. A smile was hovering on the beautiful lips of the goddess, parted as if by living breath, and at her feet a luckless victim was writhing. A single moment revealed a world of misery. Driven by a consciousness of his fate, Heine wrote in his "Confessions": "In May of last year I was forced to take to my bed, and since then I have not risen. I confess frankly that meanwhile a great change has taken place ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... wrestling match between them was arranged for a free quarter of an hour. For the boys, who were all judges, it was a fine sight to see two such fighters wrestle, especially when the Lollander flung himself down on the other and the West Indian struggled vainly, writhing like a very snake to twist himself ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... map of the country and not the beloved nest, the home itself. The Bembex-wasps (Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 16 to 19.—Translator's Note.) have already led us to a like conclusion. When the nest is laid open, these Wasps become wholly indifferent to the family, to the grub writhing in agony in the sun. They do not recognize it. What they do recognize, what they seek and find with marvellous precision, is the site of the entrance-door of which nothing at all is ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... old-fashioned thunderstorm, such as I used to lie awake and listen to when a boy, wondering all the while if the angels were keeping a Fourth of July in heaven. In the midst of it, when the earth and the sky appeared to have met in true Waterloo fashion, and the dark branches of the pines seemed writhing and tossing in a sea of flame, a loud knock came at the hall-door (bells are not the fashion in Dixie), and a servant soon ushered into the room a middle-aged, unassuming gentleman, whom my host received with a respect and cordiality which indicated that he was no ordinary guest. There ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... myself were smoking on deck about nine o'clock, we heard four shots in rapid succession fired from the wreck. Knowing that something was wrong, I called a couple of hands, and in a few minutes was pulled on board, where I found the old carpenter lying writhing in agony, his features presenting a truly shocking and terrifying appearance. His revolver lay on the deck near him—he had fired it to bring assistance. I need not here describe the peculiarly drastic remedies adopted by the natives to save the man's life. They at first thought the case was a ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Senhor. He will have them. When you observe your hands writhing at the ends of your wrists, you will enter his service, through me. Of course. And he will reward you richly. Money, much money, such as I have. And slaves—such as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... half-open, and this is what we saw: A man—tall, strong, powerful, with a face purple with passion—bending over the crouching form of a girl, whose slender body was quivering, shrinking, and writhing as the man's hand, armed with a short stick, fell, smiting her ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... transfixed with hate Of such disease, cries, as in Herod's time, Pointing its finger at her festering state, "Room for the leper, and her leprous crime!" And France, writhing from years of torment, cries Out in her anguish, "Let this Jew endure, Damned and disgraced, vicarious sacrifice. The honour of ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... Catholic" was circulated. It assailed Brown fiercely for the support he had given to Russell, and for the general course of the Globe in regard to Catholic questions. Russell was described as attempting "to twine again around the writhing limbs of ten millions of Catholics the chains that our own O'Connell rescued us from in 1829." A vote for George Brown would help to rivet these spiritual chains round the souls of Irishmen, and to crush the religion for ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the passage grew fouler. She leaned back faint and shuddering. He did not heed her. The passion of the man, the terrible pity for these people, came out of his soul now, writhing his face, and dulling ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... murmured, writhing. The baroness was a woman fair to see in the days twenty years back, though Clotilde might think it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... elements in the darkness of a polar night, and the blizzard is presented in a severer aspect. A plunge into the writhing storm-whirl stamps upon the senses an indelible and awful impression seldom equalled in the whole gamut of natural experience. The world a void, grisly, fierce and appalling. We stumble and struggle through the Stygian gloom; the merciless blast—an incubus of vengeance—stabs, buffets and freezes; ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... with his horrible task, and, breaking the leg once more at the thigh, proceeded to go through the same process with the other leg, and also with the arms. When twelve blows had thus been delivered, the writhing of the wretched victim proved that he was still alive, though his labouring chest was now incapable of giving vent to his ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the forest emerged about forty warriors painted and decorated in a wildly fantastic manner and wearing headdresses of feathers. The drums beat again, furiously now, and the men began to dance, swinging to and fro and writhing. At the same time they sang a war song of fierce, choppy words, and those who were ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... begging to be allowed to have his way with the weasel. But I knew what he did not: I knew that in anything like a fair encounter the weasel would get the first hold, would draw the first blood, and hence probably effect his escape. So I carried the animal, writhing and scratching, to a place in the road removed from any near cover, and threw him violently upon the ground, hoping thereby so to stun and bewilder him that the terrier could rush in and crush him before ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... dust, whilst I spurn him with my foot, the reprobate!—Not the first!—Woe! Woe! By no human soul is it conceivable, that more than one human creature has ever sunk into a depth of wretchedness like this, or that the first in her writhing death-agony should not have atoned in the sight of all-pardoning Heaven for the guilt of all the rest! The misery of this one pierces me to the very marrow, and harrows up my soul; thou art grinning calmly over the doom ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... presents them as a mob of hopping figures, he throws douches of cold water on the imagination of the listeners. Later he spoils enjoyment of the music utterly by making it the accompaniment of some utterly irrelevant pantomime by Marguerite, who goes into the street and is seen writhing between the conflicting emotions of love and duty, symbolized by a vision of Faust and the glowing of a cross on the facade of a church. To learn the meaning of this, one must go to the libretto, where he may read that ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... what would be the quick, convulsive writhing motion with which one would shrink aside and endeavor to get instantaneously away from it, when told that an asp, a centipede or a young rattlesnake was lying on the shoulder, and ready to strike ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... round, flourished the rag in the air with a shout of defiance, and hit his opponent between the eyes with such force as to lay him a second time flat on the floor. A fierce struggle now ensued, during which the light was extinguished. The alarmed neighbours found them there, a few minutes later, writhing in each other's arms, and punching each other's heads desperately; Coleman, ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... not prayers against sudden death a tendency to interfere with or obstruct that daily walk with God, which alone can fit us to meet the king of terrors? When heart and strength fail; when the body is writhing in agony, or lying an insensible lump of mortality; is that the time to make peace with God? Such persons must he infatuated with strange notions of the Divine Being. No, my reader, life is the time to serve the Lord, the time to insure the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Reformed Presbyterian Synod and Church in America. For a series of years, and chiefly through the influence of leaders in that faction which separated from the body in 1833, high-handed measures of tyranny had transpired: and some of the subjects of that tyranny were yet writhing under a sense of accumulated wrongs; others had, by death, been released from this species of persecution. Some thought it dutiful to call Synod's attention to these matters, and a petition was laid before them, from Rev. Robert Lusk, requesting ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all, that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... bloodless young man, with pale blue eyes and an incredulous grin; another, a gigantic full-bearded animal in spectacles; the third an infamous plump little creature, in absurdly tight pantaloons, with a cast in his eye, and a habit of sucking his teeth at table. When this wretch was not writhing in the agonies of sea-sickness, he was on deck with his comrades, lecturing them upon various things, to which the bloodless young man listened with his incredulous grin, and the bearded giant in spectacles attended with a choked look about the eyes, like a suffering ox. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... moment of chaos. The liquid before Dan's eyes clouded suddenly white, and formless sounds buzzed. He moved to tear the device from his head, but emerging forms in the mistiness caught his interest. Giant things were writhing there. ...
— Pygmalion's Spectacles • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... or for business, he was not incapable of being amused. He shot, hawked and hunted. He enjoyed with the delight of a true Spaniard two delightful spectacles, a horse with its bowels gored out, and a Jew writhing in the fire. The time came when the mightiest of instincts ordinarily wakens from its repose. It was hoped that the young King would not prove invincible to female attractions, and that he would leave a Prince of Asturias to succeed him. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and staring eye-balls, were approached close to the writhing features of his redoubted principal—as I think I have seen honest Sancho Panza's, in one of Tony Johannot's sketches, to that of the prostrate Knight of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the Court of the Universe they are white, the colorless brilliance of the stars; in the Court of Seasons they are green, the color of nature; in the Court of the Ages they are red, with clouds of rosy steam rising around them. Writhing serpents spout leaping gas flames on the altars set around the pool of the Ages, and from other altars set by the entrances of the Court rise clouds of steam given the semblance of flame by concealed red lights. By the high altar on the Tower of Ages the same ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... attended his father, the painter, on a visit, when one of Cibber's pamphlets came into the hands of Pope, who said, "these things are my diversion." They sat by him while he perused it, and saw his features writhing with anguish; and young Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had been that day the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... certain glass or paste beads attained great celebrity as amulets under the name of serpents' eggs; it was believed that serpents, coiling together in a wriggling, writhing mass, generated them from their slaver and shot them into the air from their hissing jaws. If a man was bold and dexterous enough to catch one of these eggs in his cloak before it touched the ground, he rode off on horseback with it at full speed, pursued by the whole pack of serpents, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... across the country to the sea-coast, and there compelled to embark on board his ships to make his escape, was cruel enough to cut off the hands and the feet of some hostages which Ethelred had previously given him, and leave them writhing in agony on ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of his numbing sleep, reaching for the rifle that he had laid near his hand. It was gone, and across the two yards intervening he saw young Reid writhing in the grip of the monster who was strangling ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... saw the almost invisible beam of the thin-faced policeman's heatgun strike Dark directly in the stomach, burning away the cloth, burning a great gaping hole in his abdomen. Dark slid to the floor, writhing, gasping, ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... were rising slowly; but they dropped again; and there came a little faint babbling from the writhing lips; but no words were ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... into mere creamy foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave; and where one curls over to break, form a festoon like a drapery from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white, and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making them ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... chanced that bound beside the king Lay one whom Nature, more than other men Framing for delicate and perfumed ease, Not yet, along the happy ways of Youth, Had weaned from gentle usages so far To teach that fortitude that warriors feel And glory in the proof. He answered not, But writhing with intolerable pain, Convulsed in every limb, and all his face Wrought to distortion with the agony, Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal, The secret half atremble on his lips, Livid and quivering, that waited yet For leave—for leave to utter it—one ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... their red eyes, and shot their forked tongues,— 345 —Two daring Youths to guard the hoary fire Thwart their dread progress, and provoke their ire. Round sire and sons the scaly monsters roll'd, Ring above ring, in many a tangled fold, Close and more close their writhing limbs surround, 350 And fix with foamy teeth the envenom'd wound. —With brow upturn'd to heaven the holy Sage In silent agony sustains their rage; While each fond Youth, in vain, with piercing cries Bends on the tortured Sire his dying eyes. 355 "Drink deep, sweet youths" seductive ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Scotland, called a polonie (i. e. polonaise), is a very ancient modification of the Highland garb. It was, in fact, the hauberk or shirt of mail, only composed of cloth instead of rings of armour.] He observed great ceremony in approaching Edward; and though our hero was writhing with pain, would not proceed to any operation which might assuage it until he had perambulated his couch three times, moving from east to west, according to the course of the sun. This, which was called making ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... brush the sounds of the struggles and the snarls and screams were intermixed with the loud commands of the Indian to the dog. Rand raised his rifle as he burst through the brush after the guide, and saw the dog and a mass of gray fur mixed up in a writhing rolling combat that tore up the grass and raised a cloud of dust and mold and leaves. Before he could get a chance at a shot the Indian had dashed in and with a single blow of his axe ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... of mine,' said Wackford Squeers, pointing to the little boy on the trunk and the two little boys on the floor, who had been staring at each other without uttering a word, and writhing their bodies into most remarkable contortions, according to the custom of little boys when they first become acquainted. 'This gentleman, sir, is a parent who is kind enough to compliment me upon the course of education adopted at Dotheboys Hall, which is situated, sir, at the delightful ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the most delightful of all Boer customs was the custom of flogging by pipes. If a Hottentot proved a trifle unruly, he was thrashed, while his master, looking on with a gluttonous eye, smoked a fixed number of pipes; and the wreathing smoke and the writhing Hottentot brought balm unto ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... disdain; Dismounted now, our horses slain, Yet we advance—more courage show, Though stricken, seek to overthrow The victor-knights who tread in mud The writhing slaves who bite the heel, While on caparisons of steel ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of the years 1883 and 1884 showed that even the army, on which the Czar was bestowing every care, was permeated with Nihilism, women having by their arts won over many officers to the revolutionary cause. Poland, also, writhing with discontent under the Czar's stern despotism, was worked on with success by their emissaries; and the ardour of the Poles made the recruits especially dangerous to the authorities, ever fearful of another revolt in ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was nothing to the horror to come. When I looked again, he was still writhing and crying, and fighting blindly for his life, and I cried out on her to leave him alone, for I saw that in a few minutes he would be dead. I even made an effort to crawl to them, that I might drag her away from him, but my knee gave at the movement and I fell back half-fainting. And ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... break against the footlights, time and time again, and how he had believed his colleague to be glorying in that triumph. What was his surprise, then, on the way to the hotel in the carriage, when Clemens groaned and seemed writhing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... have devised a more intolerable situation. So thought Steele Weir as he strode away from the dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... before engulfing her and to divide, passing on either side, but the "Sister Sue" wallowed in a smother of foam, creaking and groaning, giving in every joint, and threatening to fall to pieces with each new twist and turn forced upon her by the writhing seas. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... his wound deep; though it was done with an honest desire to cure. After wiping the perspiration from his face, and writhing on his chair, however, he recovered a little of his self-command, and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and grain, and the little store of gold coin which had been hidden under the great kitchen hearth. His house was the last to be fired, and even now, as Pierre and his mother stood watching, long red horns of flame were pushed forth, writhing, from the low gables. The two were silent, save for the woman's occasional heavy sobs. Presently the roof fell in, and then the boy's wet eyes flashed. A body of the English troops could be seen pitching tents in the orchard. "Mother!" said the boy, "what if we had ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hysterically, "look at it now," for the hand was writhing in agonized contortions, squirming and wriggling upon the nail like ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... things. Felicity might charm the palate, and the Story Girl bind captive the soul; but when pain and sickness wrung the brow it was Cecily who was the ministering angel. She made the writhing Dan go to bed. She made him swallow every available antidote which was recommended in "the doctor's book;" and she applied hot cloths to him until her faithful little hands were half ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Rogero overhand, not in the rest Carries his lance, and beats, with downright blow, The monstrous orc. What this resembled best, But a huge, writhing mass, I do not know; Which wore no form of animal exprest, Save in the head, with eyes and teeth of sow. His forehead, 'twixt the eyes, Rogero smites, But as on steel ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... draperie, their corners bearing out and inanulated or turned in like a curled locke of hayre, or the vpper head of a base Viall aboue the pinnes, which straine the stringes of the instrument to a musicall concord; with their subiect Astragals, writhing and hanging heere and there, making the capitall thrise so big as the bottom thereof of the columne, wherevpon was placed the Epistile or streight beame, the greatest part decayed, and many columnes widowed and depriued of their ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna |
