"Contorted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deafening roar, bringing one chimney with it; and soon all that Wally had to look at was a smouldering heap of coals, in the midst of which one chimney stood, tottering and solitary, with the kitchen stove a glowing mass of red-hot iron, and strangely contorted masses of metal that once were beds. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... wafted by imperceptible breezes on the smooth water; their motion could hardly be heard, and their white sails, stretched out on yards, fell languidly in a thousand horizontal folds like window-blinds, their strangely contorted poops, rising up castle-like in the air, reminding one of the towering ships of the Middle Ages. In the midst of the verdure of this wall of mountains, they stood out ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... him onto my shoulders and find some place to hide him. But to my surprise he started to his feet. I could not see much of him, because of the streams of paint; but I could see enough to realize that his face was contorted with fury. I remembered that gentle, compassionate countenance; never had I dreamed to ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... lecture on the Savoy Alps in 1863 he had referred to a hint of Saussure's that the contorted beds of the limestones might possibly be due to some sort of internal action, resembling on a large scale that separation into concentric or curved bands which is seen in calcareous deposits. The contortions ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... truth the opening picture was effective. Sixteen black-robed, long-bearded Netherland envoys stalking away, discomfited and indignant upon one side; Catharine de' Medici on the other, regarding them with a sneer, painfully contorted into a pathetic smile; Henry the King, robed in a sack of penitence, trembling and hesitating, leaning on the arm of Epergnon, but quailing even under the protection of that mighty swordsman; Mucio, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was suddenly contorted; "but—but, dear me, how fortunate!" she cried in a voice suddenly changed. In one instant there was no trace left of her tears. She underwent an instantaneous transformation, which amazed Alyosha. Instead of a poor, insulted girl, weeping in a sort of "laceration," he ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Mr. and Mrs. Lodge's married experience sank into prosiness, and worse. The farmer was usually gloomy and silent: the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she had brought him no child, which rendered it likely that he would be the last of a family who had occupied that valley for some two hundred years. He thought of Rhoda Brook and her son; and feared ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... his feet and herself and Michael and a dishwasher at his head they had managed to get him up the two short flights of stairs. It developed that it would be necessary to remove him in an ambulance later in the day, but for the time being he lay like a contorted Colossus on the fragile-looking cot that constituted his improvised bed of pain: "Like the great grandfather," to quote Michael again, "of all of them Zeus'es and gargoyles, and other cavortin' gentlemen in ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... fell with strange effect. Enid, inspired by sudden terror, rose to her feet; Bale-Corphew sat gripping the arm of his chair, his face contorted, his mouth working, while a rustle, an audible murmur of excitement passed over the whole chapel, and the Precursor, who all along had been crouching at the foot of the throne, turned quickly and anxiously ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... up frantically. Tom's face was contorted with pain when they finally got him aboard and stripped ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... music, sweep From some deep cave, and bear To us that gasp in this so meagre air Sweet ministerings And consolations of contorted sound, With agonies profound Of nobly warring and enduring chords That lie, close-bound, Unstirred as yet 'neath thy wide, wakening wings; So that our hearts break not in broken words. O music, that hast power This ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... towards him as he lay; so he came and stood beside him, looking down into his white, upturned face. But it was wonderful! What a change had come over it since, only a few moments ago, he looked at that death-contorted countenance! Now there was a high and sweet expression upon it, of great joy and surprise, and yet a quietude diffused throughout, as if the peace being so very great was what had surprised him. The expression was like a light gleaming and glowing within him. Septimius ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... my hand a thrill seemed to dart through her frame; she leaped up and stared wildly in my face. Her features became contorted by terror—as horribly contorted as Winnie's had been in the same spot and under the same circumstances. Exactly the same terrible words fell ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... down a steep hill; through a wealth of tangled grasses; past a grove of live oaks, from whose twisted and contorted limbs the gray moss hangs in long festoons, by Indian paintbrush and scarlet bugler gleaming like sparks of fire amid the green and bronze foliage, it glides at last into a somber canon. There a bridge spans the brook that gurgles ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... flame; and by no means did the Vedas of the twice-born once shine. And, O Janamejaya, the creatures peopling the interior of the earth, on being afflicted, rose and surrounded the Pandava, trembling with joined hands and contorted countenances. And being burnt by those weapons, they besought Dhananjaya (for their lives). Then the Brahmarshis, and the Siddhas, and the Maharshis and the mobile beings—all these appeared (on ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... said the other harshly, gripping his side with his claw-like hand. His face was contorted by pain. After a moment, he went on: "She's better than I thought, and so is that good-for-nothing brother of hers. I shall never forgive this scoundrel Wade though. He has been my servant, my slave for more than thirty years, and I know that he hasn't a shred of a conscience. While I think ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... his face deepened, and a fine, gleaming sweat started out on his brow. His face contorted in a spasm of voiceless suffering, and he drew a stiff hand down either arm. Howat watched him in a species of strained curiosity, with a suspension of breath. Something, he felt, should be done to relieve the oppression of agony gathering on Felix Winscombe's countenance, but a corresponding sense ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Mercury and Argus have all of them three or four black lines across them. What sort of leaf texture is supposed to be represented by these? The stones in the foreground of Turner's Llanthony received from the artist the powdery texture of sandstone; the engraver covered them with contorted lines and turned ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... How this contorted song could have been sung even to the simplest tune by unskilled singers who possessed no guiding notes of music is difficult to comprehend. Small wonder that Judge Sewall was forced to enter in his diary, "In the morning I set York ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... find the sun pouring in at his window, and making a glory all about him. But it was not this that had roused him, he thought as he lay blinking drowsily,—nor the black-bird piping so wonderfully in the apple-tree outside,—a very inquisitive apple-tree that had writhed, and contorted itself most un-naturally in its efforts to peep in at the window;—therefore Bellew fell to wondering, sleepily enough, what it could have been. Presently it came again, the sound,—a very peculiar sound the like of which Bellew had never heard before, which, as he listened, gradually ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... bringing in an array of dishes suitable for a feast. Shark's fins preceded expensive pickled eggs and followed choice bird's-nest soup. What could the change mean? Simply that his complimentary remark, maimed and contorted beyond recognition by ill-informed or mischievous persons, had travelled to Li's ears, and that he had therefore determined to treat his guest with the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... breasts shrivel, The nipples drawn like withered plums To the eyes of the bright young nurse. I am nothing but a dull eye myself, An eye out of a socket, Bursting, Contorted ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... Such a burst of laughter shook the room As might dispel a desert anchorite's gloom. Flushed faces keen and clever Contorted wildly; such mirth-moving shape Was taken by that genial histrion's jape As ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... obtained some with the cavities partially or wholly filled up. The receptacles varied in shape, from a sphere to an oval, and were extremely thin and fragile. They also varied in size from a pea to a nut. Externally they presented an appearance so singularly contorted, that I could not help considering they were moulded from the casts of worms. They did not appear to have any attachment to the surrounding clay, except at the point of junction with the tube; and the clay beneath them ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... follows the west bank, but the bridge above having been carried away, we crossed by a plank, and proceeded along very steep banks of decomposed chlorite schist, much contorted, and very soapy, affording an insecure footing, especially where great landslips had occurred, which were numerous, exposing acres of a reddish and white soil of felspathic clay, sloping at an angle of 30 degrees. Where ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... so covered up that only his face was visible, lay one whom at first I failed to recognize, for the horribly contorted features presented a kind of mottled ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... terrible to see how on every slippery ledge the ranks of horses had broken like waves to fall in heaps like rows of seaweed, tumbled, contorted, and grinning. Their dried skins had taken on the color of the soil, so that I sometimes set foot upon them without realizing what they were. Many of them had saddles on and nearly all had lead-ropes. Some of them ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... desolate still by the shrouded figure of the mummy of Queen Tera which lay on the floor where the great sarcophagus had stood! Beside it lay, in the strange contorted attitudes of violent death, three of the Arabs who had deserted from our party. Their faces were black, and their hands and necks were smeared with blood which had burst from ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... had been struck by paralysis, and thus for a time had been put beyond the reach of his daughters' anger. Sarah Jane was very soon there, but the wretched state in which the old man was lying quieted even her tongue. She did not dare to carry on the combat as she looked on the contorted features and motionless limbs of the poor wretch as he lay on his bed. On her mind came the conviction that this was partly her work, and that if she now spoke above her breath, those around her would accuse her of her cruelty. So she slunk about into corners, whispering now and again with her ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... gruesome spectacle awaited them. The great fire that they had seen in the distance was blazing fiercely, and bending over it was the giant, his cruel and contorted features besmeared with the blood of swine, portions of which he was toasting on spits. Startled at the sight of the knights, the monster rushed to where his club lay. This purpose Arthur deemed he might prevent, and, covering himself with his ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... man stood motionless, glaring at his father. The expression of incredulity which had appeared on his features faded away before the earnestness of the other, and was replaced by a look of such malignant passion that it contorted his whole face. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the fiery mass was subdued and it stood congealed in the varied forms of rugged peaks, contorted ridges, and deep valleys, subsequently to be seamed and further distorted by earthquakes and piled higher by further volcanic outbursts. A new island had ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... swiftly downwards. The retreat was a second too late, for Tom had seized the, harpoon lying athwart the boat, and though the fish appeared through a fathom and a half of water, a vague, fleeting, contorted shadow, he reached it. The barbed point passed through it, carrying a foot or two of the line, and a 30-pounder was added to our catch at one stroke and without a tremor of excitement ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... into silent laughter—hideous laughter that contorted his visage and twisted his body ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... a dreadful oath, sprang for it, his contorted face a drawn snarl. The Harvester caught him in air and sent him reeling. He snatched the revolver from the Girl and put the money ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... which will make us full-grown. There alone is the soul planted in that good soil in which, growing, it becomes as a rounded, perfect tree, with leaves and fruits in their season. All other men are half-men, quarter-men, fragments of men, parts of humanity exaggerated and contorted and distorted from the reconciling whole which the Christian ought to be, and in proportion to his Christianity is on the road to be, and one day will assuredly and actually be, a 'complete and entire man, wanting nothing'; nothing maimed, nothing broken, the realisation of the ideal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... St. Pol even around the last land of France, and so to Brest, yet never see sign of Notre Dame des Eaux; for it clings to a cliff somewhat lower than the road, and between grows a stunted thicket of harsh and ragged trees, their skeleton white branches, tortured and contorted, thrusting sorrowfully out of the hard, dark foliage that still grows below, where the rise of land below the highway gives some protection. You must leave the wood by the two cottages of yellow stone, about twenty miles beyond St. Pol, and go down to the right, around the old stone quarry; ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... the endless controversy and intrigue between the Allies themselves, which at last after some months culminated in the presentation to Germany of the Reparation Chapter in its final form. There can have been few negotiations in history so contorted, so miserable, so utterly unsatisfactory to all parties. I doubt if any one who took much part in that debate can look back on it without shame. I must be content with an analysis of the elements of the final compromise which is ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... cyclone approaches, silent and terrific, visible only in the swift swirling changes of a livid and blackened sky, so the fatal passion in that imperial bosom was known at first only in the gleaming of her black eyes beneath contorted brows and the spasmodic changes that swept ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... expression of infinite goodness, ready for sacrifice; so in his Crucifixions, instead of following the example of his contemporaries, who depicted Christ already dead, with marks of sorrow on His features, and contorted by the spasm of a violent death; he represented Him living, calm and serene, conscious of the sacrifice He completed, and full of joy in ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... handed the articles to her, and then sank down on the foot of her bed with his thin-lipped mouth contorted into a rather mirthless grin. "Don't care much for your old father, ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... say, side by side with some of the things they do, is an impression that can quite truly be conveyed only in the violent paradox of the actual picture. It is exactly like being tortured by a man with an ugly face, which we slowly realize to be contorted in an attempt at an affectionate expression. In those soliloquies of self-praise which have constituted almost the whole of Prussia's defence in the international controversy, the brigand of the Belgian annexation has incessantly said that his apparent ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... not a hair on him that was not as sharp as the thorn of the haw, and a drop of blood was on each single hair. He would recognize neither comrades nor friends. Alike he would strike them before and behind. Therefrom it was that the men of Connacht gave Cuchulain the name Riastartha ('the Contorted One'). ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... growled, as he sat down on the ground, his face contorted with pain; "it'll be a long time before I'll be able to stand, and the boys will have to bring one of the hosses here or else carry ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... interval of four miles. I landed upon the two largest (1 and 3 of the charts) on the first only once. I there found nothing of much interest, except some very thick beds of conglomerate superimposed upon a compact basaltic-looking rock. Number 3, on the other hand, consists of mica slate, much contorted, and altered from its usual appearance, and containing lead ore (galena) with several veins of quartz, one of which, about two feet in thickness, traverses the island ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... to us. They do not care for our humor, surely it would be unfair to deny them their grief. And who shall say that their mode of enjoyment is not as sensible as ours? Why assume that a doubled-up body, a contorted, purple face, and a gaping mouth emitting a series of ear-splitting shrieks point to a state of more intelligent happiness than a pensive face reposing upon a little white hand, and a pair of gentle tear-dimmed eyes looking ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to give a South-East and North-West direction to the needle it hung vertically. The position of the slaty strata of the magnetic ore is also vertical. Their direction is extremely irregular, being much contorted. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... was not afraid: not in the least. I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported me. The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... stage only lasts a few seconds, and is followed by convulsions. The head turns from side to side, the jaws snap, the eyes roll, saliva and blood mingle as foam on the lips, the face is contorted in frightful grimaces, the arms and legs are twisted and jerked about, the breathing is deep and irregular, the whole body writhes violently, and ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude—each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts—Hester Prynne ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the bronzed face of an Apache Indian, smeared with paint and contorted with eager passion, slowly rose in the moonlight. The exhausted warrior, feeling that the critical moment was at hand, when all depended upon prompt and decisive work, made furious efforts to clamber ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... the eastern side, and was soon at the base of the great cone. I made my way by tortuous walking round the erupted masses of lava, and also by portions of the lava streams, which, on losing their original fluidity, had become piled up and contorted into gigantic masses. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... seven, I noticed, were sent back at this stage of the game. Then a cry went up from a group of privates standing near the line of contorted figures. "White, Purvis, white! Number Nine ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... was carried through. The body on it was covered with a mackintosh sheet, but the man's face was visible, and if he had not been so busily occupied, the ashen face might have upset him a little. It was absolutely calm, and its expression was contorted neither by pain nor hate nor fear—the face of one who was indifferent, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... bundle of cast-off clothes, over which her eyes grew gleefully bright in her careworn face. At one of the articles included they widened with almost awe. This was an enormous hat made of white fluffy felt, with vast contorted brims, and great blue velvet rosettes and streamers. Its fabric was very stout and substantial, and withal quite new, for its original owner had speedily found it so stiff and heavy that to wear it gave her ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... she revealed the fact that, besides having contorted her face into an unrecognisable shape, she had soiled it in several places with ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... forget the look on my friend's face. He seemed to be in agony. It might be that he was striving to keep himself from going mad. His eyes burnt with a red light, his features were drawn and contorted. Then suddenly he heaved a deep sigh, and lifted his shoulders, as though he were throwing a ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... that he did not hear the chuckle of two wagons coming up through the sand to the corral. He did not even hear the footsteps of men approaching the house. He did not hear anything at all except a dismal yowl now and then from the darkness. He contorted his long person that he might peer into the gloom. He pushed the prairie dog in as far as he could reach. "Come, kitty-kitty-kitty!" he coaxed. "Doggone your onery soul, I'm gitting tired of this kinda performance! You can tromp on me just so fur and no further, now I'm a-tellin' ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... flat of the sword had been used—but it was enough. The American reeled under the terrific swipe. He had a last glimpse of two inflamed eyes, of a savage, contorted face; then the universal whiteness went black, and he fell, and the whole incredible scene ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... and bristled as he passed closer, but none hindered him and thus he came to the inner circle of bulls. Here bared fangs menaced him and growling faces hideously contorted. "I am Tarzan," he repeated. "Tarzan comes to dance the Dum-Dum with his brothers. Where is your king?" Again he pressed forward and the girl in the tree clapped her palms to her cheeks as she watched, wide-eyed, this madman going to a frightful ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... afterwards through the darkness and, a little later, she came running back to the hotel with that pallid face and the hand clutching her dress over her heart. It can't have been only Bagshawe. Her face was contorted with agony before ever her eyes fell upon me or upon him beside me. But I dare say Bagshawe may have been the determining influence in her suicide. Leonora says that she had that flask, apparently of nitrate of amyl, but actually of prussic acid, for many years and that she ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... of it! His face was pinched and pale, and the lines about the mouth were curiously contorted, like those of a man suffering ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... hell!" cried a wild little man, his face contorted with rage and the lust which finds satisfaction in a blow. He went fiercely on, butting his shoulder against every woman he met. Nobody arrested him; nobody cried "shame." "Give 'em hell!" ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... plodded on, a strange procession of muffled figures, leaving in their wake a dark, contorted track, as though some wounded thing had writhed its way ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... lined and darkly sunburnt. His head, bald no doubt, was tied up in a crimson handkerchief that gave him the value of a rare picture by the hand of some old master. Seeing the cure, the pair stopped under an immense olive tree, a tree so twisted, so contorted that it seemed to have settled down to treehood only after the wild whirl of a maenad dance. Now in its old age, which had been youth in Caesar's day, it was more like a gray, ruined tower than an olive tree. It had divided itself into a few crumbling, leaning walls with sad ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... his overcoat, letting it fall upon the floor, and he strode forward almost to the trough of the footlights; and then for a space he stood there on the rounded apron of the platform, staring out into the troubled, tossing pool of contorted faces and tossing arms below him and about him. Demagogue he may have been; demigod he looked in that, his moment of supreme triumph, biding his time to play upon the passions and the prejudices of this ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... and his features were suddenly contorted as with a strong convulsion, and his teeth gleamed between his ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... smiling; a polka was being played at the moment, and he playfully contorted his figure and balanced his head from side to side in time with the tune, while with his right forefinger he beckoned winningly to Miss Valeyon to join him in the dance. Bressant gave an involuntary shudder of disgust; it seemed to him a grisly caricature of the inspiration ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... jugleors and menestreus at the bottom. The individual rebelled against restraint; society wanted to do what it pleased; all disliked the laws which Church and State were trying to fasten on them. They longed for a power above law,—or above the contorted mass of ignorance and absurdity bearing the name of law; but the power which they longed for was not human, for humanity they knew to be corrupt and incompetent from the day of Adam's creation to the day of the Last Judgment. They were all criminals; ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... attractive than that of Calpurnius. He is a genuine enthusiast, with a real love of the countryside and a charming affection for flowers. And as a stylist he is modest. He makes no attempt at display, no contorted striving after originality. His verse is clear and simple as his tastes. He is content to follow humbly in the footsteps of his great master, the 'starry' Vergil.[371] He imitates and even plagiarizes[372] because he loves, not because it is the ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... ipecacuan of the shops. The plant is met with in the woods of several Brazilian provinces, as Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio Janeiro. It is found growing in moist shady situations, from 8 to 20 degs. south latitude. The roots, which are the officinal part, are contorted, knotty and annulated, and about the thickness of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... us, exploded harmlessly into the air. I head shouts, saw men running toward us. Then I caught sight of Blenheim's face, dark and oddly contorted; he had turned and was leveling his revolver at me, resting one knee on the driver's seat as he ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... End—serving as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine fashion,—lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle, fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of flourishes and ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the library and drawing-room. There lay Kennedy on the floor, his face most terribly contorted. We gathered around him and he tried to raise himself and speak, but seemed ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... formation; but, instead of this, they are found every where disturbed in that order more or less; in many places this order and regularity is so disturbed as hardly to be acknowledged; in most places we find those stratified bodies broken, dislocated, and contorted, and this aqueous theory of mineralists has neither the means for attaining that end, were it required in their theory, nor have they any such purpose in their theory, were that end attainable by the means which they employ. Thus blinded by ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Then, in the semi-darkness she saw him leave the door; watched him as he approached a shelf on which stood a kerosene lamp, lifted the chimney and applied a match to the wick. For an instant after replacing the chimney he stood full in the glare of light, his face contorted with rage, his ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... answer to my cry of pent-up agony came the sharp sound of splintering timber, and before me, revealed by the flare of a torch held aloft in one hand, appeared the dread visage of the Hindu priest, contorted now by his mingled emotions of hate and triumph. For his eyes had lighted on the idol, and it was with a shout of joyful recognition, 'Ganapati! Ganapati!' that the fanatic flung himself upon me, and ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... to the spine. Albeit well accustomed to gaze critically upon the tokens of mortal agony, Tom felt an unusual shudder of horror and repugnance as he glanced on the countenance, so disfigured and contorted that there was no chance of recognition, and turned his attention to the clothes, which lay in a heap on the floor. The contents of the pockets had been taken out, and consisted only of some pawnbroker's duplicates, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the old man and Magde had taken no notice of Carl, who, while he listened to their words, contorted his face in such a manner that it would have been difficult to decide whether he was laughing or crying. He placed his hands over his face; but between his fingers his eyes could be seen peering out with ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... remark was made as he led his companions out of shady gardens into the open. Gale saw an adobe shed and a huge pen fenced by strangely twisted and contorted branches or trunks of mesquite, and, beyond these, wide, flat fields, green—a dark, rich green—and dotted with beautiful horses. There were whites and blacks, and bays and grays. In his admiration Gale searched his memory to see if he could remember the like of these magnificent ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... court room was painful in its intensity. The Elder leaned forward and listened with contorted face, and the prisoner held his breath. A pallor overspread his face and ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... moment both boys were frightened by the effect of those words. The old seaman whirled about, his one black eye blazing weirdly and his face contorted. Then he collected himself ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... vicunas may be seen together. There are essential points of difference in the habits of the two species. The guanacos are dwellers among the rocks, and are most at home when bounding from cliff to cliff, and ledge to ledge. They make but a poor run upon the level grassy plain, and their singular contorted hoofs seem to be adapted for their favourite haunts. The vicunas, on the contrary, prefer the smooth turf of the table plains, over which they dart with the swiftness of the deer. Both are of the same family of quadrupeds, but with this very essential difference—the one is ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... hurriedly to get dressed to go. It was dark; though I tried my best I could not finish dressing quickly. Suddenly I felt a box of matches and a candlestick with a whole candle in it. As soon as the room was lighted up, Liza sprang up, sat up in bed, and with a contorted face, with a half insane smile, looked at me almost senselessly. I sat down beside her and took her hands; she came to herself, made an impulsive movement towards me, would have caught hold of me, but did not dare, and slowly ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... with them their greatness, and equally enjoyed those of their own, but denied to them the rights to infringe upon the South's possessions or rights of statehood. We all loved the Union, but we loved it as it was formed and made a compact by the blood of our ancestors. Not as contorted and misconstrued by demagogueism and fanaticism. We almost deified the flag of the Union, under whose folds it was made immortal by the Huguenots, the Roundheads, the Cavaliers, and men of every faith and conviction ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the sudden spasm that contorted Agony's face at the word "honorable." It suddenly came over Agony that she had no right to be calling other people cheats and liars and taking them to task about their sense of honor, she, who was enjoying honors that did not belong to her. The light of victory ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... mystery and unreality stole over Mr. Chalk. He began to think that he must be dreaming. He turned and looked at Mr. Duckett, and Mr. Duckett, trying to smile at him, contorted his face so horribly that he shrank back appalled. He looked about him and saw that they were now in open water and drawing gradually away from the land. The stillness and mystery became unbearable, and with an air of resolution he cocked his rifle and proceeded ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Basilewski collection is almost unique, but pyxes in cylindrical form were made, the sculpture on them being in relief. In small ivory statuettes it was necessary to follow the natural curve of the tusk in carving the figure, hence the usual twisted, and sometimes almost contorted forms often seen in these specimens. Later, this peculiarity was copied in stone, unconsciously, simply because the style had become customary. One of the most charming little groups of figures in ivory is in the Louvre, ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... Island, but of a pure green color. The veins of minerals are about a half an inch to—in the case of druses of magnesite, which penetrate the rock in all proportions and directions—even six inches in thickness. They lie generally in a perpendicular position, but are frequently bent and contorted in every direction. They are the more abundant where the rock is soft, as veins, but included minerals are more plentiful in the harder rock. There is hardly any one point on the outcrop that may be said to be favored in abundance, but the veins of the brucites, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... cry of pain and rage Captain Ernst Maenck leaped across the table full upon the young girl. With vicious, murderous fingers he seized upon her fair throat, shaking her as a terrier might shake a rat. Futilely the girl struck at the hate-contorted features ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... transcendental manner, with a drawn dagger in his hand; recommending (they say) sheer September-methods, patience being worn out; and that the Jacobin Brethren should, impromptu, work the Guillotine themselves! One sees him still, in Engravings: mounted on a table; foot advanced, body contorted; a bald, rude, slope-browed, infuriated visage of the canine species, the eyes starting from their sockets; in his puissant right-hand the brandished dagger, or horse-pistol, as some give it; other dog-visages ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... made its mark upon Mr. Wilfer's countenance, and contorted his face into a caricature—with its mottled skin and bleary eyes—of the good looks which had won Lucy Goodwin's heart in former times. His language had also degenerated as well as his looks. All trace of German accent had been carefully obliterated, in order that no suspicion should ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... later." Ransome's eyes burned into the crewman's. The latter looked away. Ransome tightened his grip, and pain contorted the gunner's features. ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... were to be taken in the matter. The god's face wore its usually placid look, unmoved by the shifting panorama of human life which ebbed and flowed in front of him from morning till night. The ghastly-looking policemen, with their grinning visages and ferocious scowls and contorted bodies, remained in the same unchanging ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... if stunned, face up and, daring not move, did not see the struggle, but heard the piercing shriek of mad fear, her low angry words; another shriek dying out in a moan. When he got up at last he looked at Aissa kneeling over her father, he saw her bent back in the effort of holding him down, Omar's contorted limbs, a hand thrown up above her head and her quick movement grasping the wrist. He made an impulsive step forward, but she turned a wild face to him and called ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... marshy track full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines, and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in foliage, like willows. On the far side of the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks, shining vividly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in shirt and trousers only, and he sat up with braced arms. For one half-second he stared at them, his face a mask of horrible contorted terror. His upper lip was drawn back so that the gums of the teeth appeared, and his eyes were focused not on the two who approached him but on something quite close to him; his nostrils were widely ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... this awkwardly-constructed stanza, a female, uncomely and ungraceful, is represented as standing in the attitude of a yawn, not indicated by the gaping mouth, but by the contorted person, and arms twisted behind the back. She is close to a stained-glass window, whose gaudy colours are challenged by her own bright blue dress, the object of the artist throughout appearing to be violent opposition, not harmony. The picture, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... crew which took out these bodies are confident that 150 bodies are lying buried in the sand and under the debris on those low-lying bottom lands. Some of the bodies were horribly mangled, and the features were twisted and contorted as if they had died in the most excrutiating agony. Others are found lying stretched out with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... walk on his hands, or to walk not forwards but backwards,—then he would evidently appear to be flying from himself, and to be putting off his manhood, and to hate his own nature. On which account, also, some ways of sitting down, and some contorted and abrupt movements, such as wanton or effeminate men at times indulge in, are contrary to nature. So that even if that should happen through any fault of the mind, still the nature of the man would seem to be changed in his body. Therefore, on the contrary, moderate ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the bedroom, in my turn, and saw a man lying half-dressed on the carpet, with his legs drawn up under him, his arms contorted and his face quite white, an emaciated, fleshless face, with the eyes still staring in terror and the mouth ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... on deck and saw the people she called "Anglo-Indians" (more than two-thirds Scots, Irish, Cornish, and Welsh, with a negligible fraction of possible Angles) all lying like dead men in rows, with no side or show about them as they lay; some in contorted positions, with here and there a powerful limb or well rounded northern head showing in the half dark. Rulers of the Indian Empire, by Odin! or Jove! damp and hot, and in the dark, in a strong draught, without a pick of gold lace, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... on very ancient rocks which extends from the Arctic Ocean to the St. Lawrence River and Lake Superior, with small areas also in northern Wisconsin and New York. Throughout this U-shaped area, which incloses Hudson Bay within its arms, the country rocks have the complicated and contorted structures which characterize mountain ranges. But the surface of the area is by no means mountainous. The sky line when viewed from the divides is unbroken by mountain peaks or rugged hills. The surface of the arm west of ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... back, staring up at the cross-bar, which someone kindly replaced on the pegs, big Butch Brewster, who seemed suddenly to have gone crazy, tried to attract Coach Brannigan's attention. Succeeding, Butch—usually a grave, serious Senior, winked, contorted his visage hideously, pointed at Hicks, and sibilated, "Now, Coach—now ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... upon which I had thus stumbled. The ground rose abruptly on both sides of the stream; that on the opposite side being a rocky precipice, the strata of variously-coloured stone twisted and contorted in the most extraordinary manner, geraniums of various hues growing out from between the interstices of the rock, and the summit of the precipice crowned with a rich profusion of trailing creepers, some of which, notwithstanding the time ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... awhile on the steps outside the church. Kitty and her mother exchanged addresses, Donna Laura opened her mouth once or twice, and produced a few contorted smiles for Kitty's benefit, while Colonel Warington tipped the sacristan, found the gondolier, and ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... saw them enter, received no salutation from him. There was one small lamp on the table, dimly lighted, which threw a faint glow upon the circle of countenances round, into which came wondering the burly big Copperhead, holding fast by the shoulder of Mr. May, whose ghastly face, contorted with wild anxiety, glanced at Tozer over the lamp. But the old man was so much absorbed at first that he scarcely ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... allegories,—one divinity or demon, eternally the same in the repetition of the sculptor, universally visible as though self-multiplied. The huge pillars themselves were symbols, figures, carnalities; the orgiastic spirit of that worship lived and writhed in the contorted bronze of the lamps, the twisted gold of the cups, the chiselled marble of ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... traversed these mountains alone, Have you felt your identity shrink and contract At the sound of the distant and dim cataract, In the presence of nature's immensities? Say, Have you hung o'er the torrent, bedew'd with its spray, And, leaving the rock-way, contorted and roll'd, Like a huge couchant Typhon, fold heaped over fold, Track'd the summits from which every step that you tread Rolls the loose stones, with thunder below, to the bed Of invisible waters, whose ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... satisfied and the Queen will have pride, You will see every Prince use a fork with his mince, And eating his peas like Alcibiades, Who would sooner go mute than play on the flute Lest it made him grimace and contorted his face. ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... place in the nucleus of an epithelium cell, preparatory to division of the cell. (From Quain's Anatomy, after Flemming.) a, resting cell, showing the nuclear network; b, first stage of division, the chromatoplasm transformed into a skein of closely contorted filaments; c to f, further stages in the growth and looping arrangement of the filaments; g, stellate phase, or aster; h, completion of the splitting of the filaments, already begun in f and g; i, j, k, successive stages in separation ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... square, considering, which the minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one evening with young Norton of our gallant ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... between the verses. In a few minutes the song was finished and the people were stamping, whistling, uttering screeching cat-calls, and shouting "Brayvo!" But Glory was sitting at the foot of the stage by this time with a face contorted as in physical pain. After the first thrill of success the shame of it all came over her and she saw how low she had fallen, and felt horrified and afraid. The clamour, the clapping of hands, the vulgar faces, the vulgar laughter, the vulgar ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... necks so hard at one time that the joints could not be moved; at another time their necks were so flexible and supple that it seemed the bone was dissolved. They had violent convulsions, in which their jaws snapped with the force of a spring-trap set for vermin. Their limbs were curiously contorted, and to those who had a taste for the marvellous, seemed entirely dislocated and displaced. Amid these distortions, they cried out against the poor old woman, whose name was Glover, alleging that she was in presence with them adding to their torments. The miserable ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the consul again, very contritely. "I'm very sorry I laughed; but"—here he looked into the colonel's gloomy face with a countenance contorted with agony—"this only makes it the more ridiculous, you know;" and he reeled away, drunk with the mirth which filled him from head to foot. But he repented again, and with a superhuman effort so far subdued his ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... pointed. Two guards were bringing a gibbering, screeching, struggling Moon man with them. Despite his strength, he seemed incapable of making any resistance, but his whole body quivered, and his hideous face was contorted ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... buried in fat to the sick man's face, and his plump little features were convulsed in sympathy with the sufferer's pain. As soon as the courageous old man, fighting hard with the paroxysms of pain, had got the better of them, taking his hands from his contorted face, and drawing a painful breath, he began anew to explain his will. Lobnitchenko dropped his eyes again and became ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the first have caused screams or groans to be uttered, the body to be contorted, and the teeth to be ground together. But our progenitors will not have exhibited those highly expressive movements of the features which accompany screaming and crying until their circulatory and respiratory organs, and the muscles surrounding the eyes, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... floundered a little, not knowing at last quite what he did mean, a great rush of mere memories, a great humming sound as of thick, thick echoes, rising now to an assault that he met with his face indeed contorted. If he didn't take care he should howl; so he more or less successfully took care—yet with his host vividly watching him while he shook the danger temporarily off. "I don't mind—though it's rather that; ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... carry it, Felicity," he replied, with a reproachful look, drawing from his pocket what appeared to be a somewhat contorted meerschaum pipe. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... very long tongue, unusually large for a human being, and this he shot out, turned down, curled up at the end, and wagged from side to side as a dog would his tail. At the same time he contorted and screwed his face up into the most hideous grimaces, elongating, flattening, and working his countenance as easily as if it had been composed of soft wax, till at times his aspect was ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... I know that lady!" And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted her, and sat down. With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from looking. But presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the restaurant; she had been crying. The young foreigner was flushed, his face contorted; he did not touch ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... flatter than cold eggless batter upon a lead platter—as mad as a hatter, and who will relieve me? Can anyone? I tell you it's dreadful to face a whole bedful of spectres and spooks (born of papers and books) with, most horrible looks, limbs contorted in crooks, and bat-wings with big hooks, which haunt all the nooks of tester and curtain, and which, I am certain, will drive me insane if some one can't explain where the mischief we are, 'midst the jumble and jar of factions and fads, of crotchets and cads, of Tolstois and Jeunes, and Ibsens ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... see, I'm conscious, what I feel about Sanchia—but it's certainly not that. My little dear, can't you trust me?" He looked down, and saw her tears slowly dropping; he was very much moved, knelt by her side. She turned her face away, dangerously moved also. She struggled with her tears, her face contorted, her bosom heaving in riot. Senhouse took her hands, but she wrenched them away and covered her face with them. Passion grew upon her, passion of regret, of loss, of rage, of desire—"Oh, leave me, leave me! Oh, cruel, cruel! No man in the ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... shoemaker, opened his eyes to the truth. He was by nature suspicious. He had faith in no man. When the summons came to O'Day, Raffelo quit his bench and made his way to the saloon. His dark, swarthy face, with stubby beard, was twisted and contorted. He gesticulated continuously, sawing the air with his hands. "Ye-s—Joe Ratowsky, he run and tell ze—ze. He ees—one—fool. He ze monkee on ze stick. Mees-ter Ho-bart, ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... Headley really love his trusty foreman too well to expose him to such chances, but Tibble knew too well that there were brutal young men to whom his contorted visage would be an incitement to contempt and outrage, and that if racked with rheumatism, he would only be an incumbrance. There was nothing for it but to put Kit Smallbones at the head of the party. His imposing ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hour of awakening. In their uniform tombs, that, isolated, become nearly transparent, they seem almost like hoary gnomes, lost in deep thought, or legions of virgins whom the folds of the shroud have contorted, who are buried in hexagonal prisms that some inflexible geometrician has multiplied to the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... principal groups, based upon the form of the foliage: (1) Plain varieties, in which the leaves are nearly as they are in nature; (2) moss-curled varieties in which they are curiously and pleasingly contorted; and (3) fern leaved, in which the foliage is not curled, but ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... view of the features of the renegade; whose strange workings, as before noted, served to fix her attention and divide her thoughts between him, as the cause of her present unhappiness, and that unhappiness itself—and she gazed on his loathsome, contorted countenance, with much the same feeling as one might be supposed to gaze upon a serpent coiling itself around the body, whose deadly fangs, either sooner or later, would assuredly give the fatal stroke of death. She noted the sudden start of Girty, and the ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... neighbours, Mrs. Woodford thought it well to begin the acquaintance at Winchester. While knocking at the door of the house on the opposite side of the Close, she was aware of an elfish visage peering from an upper window. There was the queer mop of dark hair, the squinting light eyes, the contorted grin crooking the mouth, the odd sallow face, making her quite glad to get out of sight of the strange grimaces which grew every ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fingers, crooked and contorted, worked nervously for a few minutes, scratching at the rough boards. Then all was quite still ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... Caminha, but larger and richer, and like it, a marvellous example of carving in granite. At the angles are tall pinnacles, and the pinnacles of the corner buttresses are united to the parapet by a curious contorted moulding. ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... squeezing his hands under his armpits, his face contorted with pain; but Stephen knew how hard his hands were because Fleming was always rubbing rosin into them. But perhaps he was in great pain for the noise of the pandybat was terrible. Stephen's heart was beating ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Whatever you like, only let me—alone! I've posed and acted and otherwise contorted myself before at least five thousand feet of film today, and I'm not going to be disturbed now, just for the sake of a hat that is as good as paid for anyhow, so 'please go 'way and let me sleep,'" and Alice murmured the chorus ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... to greater depths and subjected to more intense heat, the strata have been completely fused, and the liquid or pasty mass, invading the contorted strata above it, has formed perfectly crystalline ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... toward the Readilit for a cigarette, then his hand stopped. His face was contorted with pain; he gave a gasp ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire |
