"Convulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... irresponsive hands, she looked down upon her in a convulsion of grief, which included not a shadow of regret, not a gleam of pity for anything or any one else in the world but this bone of her bone and flesh of her ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stooped over him, grasping him by the collar. Candle-light across the street and stars in a steel-blue sky did not reveal faces distinctly, but his shaking of the cobbler was an outcome of his own inward convulsion. He belonged to a class in whom memory and imagination were not strong, being continually taxed by a present of large action crowded with changing images. But when his past rose up it ...
— The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... treat as a servant. At the battle of Sedan, before the Calvary d'Illy, where the French were almost exterminated by the Prussian artillery, Adolphe fell, killed by a wound in the chest; in a last convulsion he clasped in his arms Louis, who had fallen at the same moment, killed by the same ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... become to all appearance idiots, weeping or fixing their hollow eyes stedfastly on the ground. There were others whose hair had become stiff, erect, and ropy, and who, amidst a torrent of blasphemies, a horrid convulsion, or a still more frightful laugh, had ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... less than forty voters. Forty-four members sat for Cornish seats; Middlesex, London and Westminster together only returned eight. Chatham at one time seemed to think that the corrupt boroughs might be got rid of, but finally feared that such a change would cause a "public convulsion," and proposed to counteract their effects by adding one member to each of the county constituencies. After much hesitation he also advocated a ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... comfortably upon his bed with his eyes closed; no one would have imagined there had been any outburst or convulsion of passion in his mental or emotional organism. He breathed easily; there was a pale tint of red in his cheeks, above his close, brown beard; his forehead was slightly moist, and his pulse, on which the surgeon laid his finger with professional instinct, beat quietly ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... food undigested is so far from yielding nourishment, that it only serves to debilitate the whole system, and to occasion a variety of diseases. Amongst these are obstructions, distention of the body, rickets, scrophula, slow fevers, consumptions, and convulsion fits. Another pernicious custom prevails with regard to the diet of children, when they begin to take other nourishment besides their mother's milk, and that is by giving them such as their stomachs are unable to digest, and indulging them also in a mixture of such things at their ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... was a cleft, though one invisible even from a few paces away, since its outer edge projected over the inner wall of rock. Moreover, this opening was not above four feet in width, a mere split in the huge mountain mass caused by some titanic convulsion in past ages. For it was a definite split since, once entered, far, far above could be traced a faint line of light coming from the sky, although the gloom of the passage was such that torches, which were stored at hand, must be used ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... of current events it must seem strange that in the present worldwide convulsion we should be fighting vigorously on the same side as Russia, who has long been regarded as one of our natural enemies. Some worthy people may even feel qualms of conscience at finding themselves in such questionable company, and may be disposed to inquire how far we are politically and morally ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... were about to turn away his body stirred with a slight convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak. A red froth came on his lips. He made another desperate effort, and twisting himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped: "McGurk—God!" and dropped. He was dead before his head ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... belief by which his abandonment is not destructive to himself, or he is converted, which is simply a convulsion of nature for the same end, to preserve his life and make it seem valuable ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... moment of happiness, though it carries every element of change in it, almost invariably brings. It felt as if it might go on for ever, and yet the very sentiment that inspired it made separation and convulsion inevitable—one of those strange paradoxes which occur ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... on Mr. Thoburn, standing and holding his glass to the light, "how we are at the mercy of this little spring! A convulsion in the bowels of the earth, and its health-giving properties may be changed to the direst poison. How do we know, you and I, some such change has not occurred overnight? Unlikely as it is, it's a possibility that, sitting here calmly, we may be ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... war which destroyed slavery the two races emerged together into the midst of vast changes. The old social structure had been disrupted in the civil convulsion, and the old political order likewise. The slave half of the national house had tumbled about former masters and slaves. The slave race possessed no more and knew no more as freedmen than they had possessed or known as slaves. Yes, they possessed themselves and the hard hands which God had ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... occasion—there were some twenty of them—did so, to a man; even the ladies, who made about a third of the number, walked. The distance to Loch Katrine is about a mile and a half, between lofty mountains, along a glen filled with masses of rock, which seem to have been shaken by some convulsion of nature from the high steeps on either side, and in whose shelves and crevices time had planted a thick wood ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... movements must stop, and when we talk of a remedy, is that any other than the formidable one of a revolutionary one of the people? And is this, in the judgment even of my opposers, to execute, to preserve the constitution and the public order? Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulsion, which they can have the courage to contemplate and to brave, or beyond which their penetration can reach and see the issue? They seem to believe, and they act as if they believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty, are invulnerable and immortal—as ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... fluted golden tongues of sombre sheen, Like four flames joined in one, around the head And by the outstretched arms, their glory spread. The statue is of wood; of natural size Tinted; one almost sees before one's eyes The last convulsion of the lingering breath. "Behold the man!" Robust and frail. Beneath That breast indeed might throb the Sacred Heart. And from the lips, so holily dispart, The dying murmur breathes "Forgive! Forgive!" O wide-stretched ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... mercy," saith Father of his thoughtful fashion. "If the brothers Zeni told truth (as I mean to signify no doubt), there was One that saw it, from the time when He pronounced all things very good, to the day when some convulsion of nature, whatso it were, by His commandment engulfed that fair isle in the waters. 'Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He,—in heaven, and in earth, and in the sea, and in all deep places.' Not one hair from the head of those unknown Christians, that ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... rose up like a monstrous tongue from the earth, connected on one side by a narrow natural bridge with the main cliff, the castellated building being protected on all sides by a huge rift fully a couple of hundred feet deep, the tongue being merely a portion of the cliff split away during some convulsion of nature; or perhaps gradually separated by subsidence, the top affording sufficient space for the ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... was of a merry disposition, but her laughter was always noiseless, an internal convulsion which made her actually writhe with pain. "And does your thinking bring you any money?" asked she, as soon as ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... of some writers, there have been in the past history of the planet alternate periods of tranquillity and convulsion, the former enduring for ages, and resembling the state of things now experienced by man; the other brief, transient, and paroxysmal, giving rise to new mountains, seas, and valleys, annihilating one set of organic beings, and ushering in the creation ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... tolerable good landing on shingle beach, and a little to the right of this place, at the upper edge of the cliffs is a volcano, from which we observed the smoke issuing. There are recent marks of convulsion having happened in the island. Some parts of it appear to have fallen in, and other parts to be turned upside down. This part of the island is the most barren land we have seen in the country.[58-7] At nine o'clock thought we saw a large island bearing N. by W. and I made sail towards ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... and other topics of scandal of the court of Flora, has fallen upon a theory worthy of his combustible imagination. According to his opinion, the huge mass of chaos took a sudden occasion to explode, like a barrel of gunpowder, and in that act exploded the sun—which, in its flight, by a similar convulsion, exploded the earth, which in like guise exploded the moon—and thus, by a concatenation of explosions, the whole solar system was produced, and set most systematically ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Van again—terribly. Her fingers felt like iron rods, pressing into his flesh. As if to complete her renunciation she dropped his hand abruptly. She mastered some violent convulsion that left the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... 1918.—The first plenary session has been held. There is no doubt that the revolutionary happenings in Austria and in Germany have enormously raised the hopes of the Petersburgers for a general convulsion, and it seems to me altogether out of the question now to come to any peace terms with the Russians. It is evident among the Russians themselves that they positively expect the outbreak of a world-revolution within the next few weeks, and their tactics now are simply to gain time and ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... fire, and knelt before it—though she had no need of warmth. Starts and shudders indicated her mental anguish. Yet no sound escape her, until, in a sudden convulsion of her frame, she gave a cry of terror, and threw herself at full length upon the ground. There she lay, struggling with hysterical passion, half choked by sobs, now and then uttering a hoarse wail, at length weeping with the self-abandonment ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... arrival upon the edge of a ravine, which, on first thought, he supposed to be the very one for which he was making. But a second glance convinced him of his error, for it was nothing more than a yawn, or chasm, that had probably been opened in the mountains by some great convulsion of nature. ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... of even English history. It has been easy to ascribe to the contagion of French example political movements which were already beginning in England and which were modified rather than materially altered by our share in the great European convulsion. The impression made upon Englishmen by the French Revolution is, however, in the highest degree characteristic. The most vehement sympathies and antipathies were aroused, and showed at least what principles were congenial to the various English parties. To praise or blame the revolution, as if ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... statement of object. I think"—slowly—"a disinterested observer would have put the question you ask into my mouth." He stared his tall visitor up and down critically, menacingly. Of a sudden, irresistibly, a very convulsion shot over his face. "God, man, you're ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... altogether the enigmatic and frivolous sex and disregarding it, at any rate during the hours of convivial session. The Club is troubled to note that in the intolerable rabies and confusion of this business life men meet merely in a kind of convulsion or horrid passion of haste and perplexity. We see, ever and often, those in whose faces we discern delightful and considerable secrets, messages of just import, grotesque mirth, or improving sadness. In their bearing and gesture, even ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... hate tobacco ash on my carpet; every room in the house is an arsenal of ash trays. In normal mood Adrian punctiliously observed the little laws of the establishment. This scattering of cigar ash was a sign of spiritual convulsion. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... reason from the late wars or from those menacing symptoms which now appear in Europe, it is manifest that if a convulsion should take place in any of those countries it will proceed from causes which have no existence and are utterly unknown in these States, in which there is but one order, that of the people, to whom the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... Wichter and Joyce dropped their guns to cling more tightly to the bole of the drooping branch that was their only security. The guns glanced off the mountainous body—and, with a last convulsion of the mighty legs, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... encouragement to speak—I saw none. I then strove to read there the sentiment then passing in her mind, and to my confusion, to my dismay, it seemed to me that she was endeavouring to conquer in her countenance the expression of pain. I watched intently—I was not deceived—a sudden convulsion passed over her features, succeeded by the paleness of an instant, and then a gush of tears—I was moved, almost to weeping, yet dared not advance. Her tears were hurried off instantly; and then again her dear smile of former ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... many races to the northward which we consider as Caffre races. You may have observed, in the history of the world, that the migrations of the human race are generally from the north to the south: so it appears to have been in Africa. Some convulsion among the northern tribes, probably a pressure from excessive population, had driven the Zoolus to the southward, and they came down like an inundation, sweeping before them all the tribes that fell in their path. Chaka's force consisted of nearly 100,000 warriors, of whom ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... symptom. After the entrance of typhoid germs into the bowels and before the recognized onset of the disease, there may be lassitude and disinclination for exertion. The disease begins with headache, backache, loss of appetite, sometimes a chill in adults or a convulsion in children, soreness in the muscles, pains in the belly, nosebleed, occasional vomiting, diarrhea, coated tongue, often some cough, flushed face, pulse 100, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... Gale's voice rang out like a trumpet. "The baby is not dead. It is in a convulsion. Give it to me and run back to your apartment and bring me some ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... quivering and broken in the midst of its dying guards, was a viscid mass of loathsome gray jelly. Blake's shot had apparently struck home squarely in the center of that vulnerable blob. Even as he watched, the gelatinous mass shuddered in a last convulsion, then became quite still. At the same instant the last sign of life vanished from the writhing ape-things on ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... exceptions, has for the past year been well preserved, and under their free and wise institutions the United States are rapidly advancing toward the consummation of the high destiny which an overruling Providence seems to have marked out for them. Exempt from domestic convulsion and at peace with all the world, we are left free to consult as to the best means of securing and advancing the happiness of the people. Such are the circumstances under which you now assemble in your respective chambers and which should lead us to unite in praise and thanksgiving to that great Being ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... still. The eyelids were gradually opening—the blind white was horrible to see. Each breath was a convulsion that ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... because he prefers his natural elements to glory, I knew but few persons at Marseilles. I wished to make no acquaintances and sought isolation and leisure, leisure and study. I wrote the history of one revolution, without a suspicion that the spirit of another convulsion looked over my shoulder, hurrying me from the half finished page, to participate not with the pen, but manually, in another of the great ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... presents a most imposing aspect, and is situated upon a peak of rock 600 feet high, which stands isolated in a beautiful plain, and appears to have been separated from the adjoining mountains by some violent natural convulsion. The circumference of this rock amounts to about a mile. It is cut round perpendicularly to a height of 130 feet and thirty feet below the top of the moat by which it is surrounded, which cutting is equally perpendicular, so that the whole height of the escarpment is 160 ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... vast mass of volcanic rock that in long ago prehistoric times was poured out in molten sheets over the region, and that formed the range we shall shortly see at the north end of the Lake—the Mount Pluto range. At some later period either earthquake convulsion started the break which ultimately eroded and disintegrated into the great gorge through which the railway has brought us, or grinding glacier cut the pathway ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... before it new and enlarged facilities of service to the kingdom of heaven among foreign nations. From the first feeble beginnings of foreign missions from America in India and in the Sandwich Islands, they had been attended by the manifest favor of God. When the convulsion of the Civil War came on, with prostrations of business houses, and enormous burdens of public obligation, and private beneficence drawn down, as it seemed, to its "bottom dollar" for new calls of patriotism and charity, and especially ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... skies grew darker and the political and social atmosphere so thick with doubt and discordant counsels that the horizon narrowed about even those on the mountain-top of power. All breathed heavily and felt the oppression that precedes some convulsion ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... of an extinct volcano," the captain answered me, "a volcano whose interior was invaded by the sea after some convulsion in the earth. While you were sleeping, professor, the Nautilus entered this lagoon through a natural channel that opens ten meters below the surface of the ocean. This is our home port, secure, convenient, secret, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... or indirectly. The great desideratum of a government, after settling its principles in conformity with controlling facts, is to secure to itself the means of progressive change, without the apprehension of convulsion. Such is not the case with France, and further revolutions are inevitable. The mongrel government which exists, neither can stand, nor does it deserve to stand. It contains the seeds of its own destruction. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... break out" when it did. The theorists aimed at reform, not at political revolution; and it was the stimulus of the Declaration of Rights of 1774 and the subsequent victory of the Colonies that precipitated the convulsion, at a time when the country had a better prospect of improvement than it ever had before 1774, when Louis XVI. came to the throne. But the theories had prepared France for radical changes, and they guided the phases of ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the rich. Many of these are now striving to kill time with fancy-work and fiction, with flirtation and flaunting. Some are destitute of aspiration for anything better. These could be moved only by some convulsion in the social system, like the earthquake, or like the volcano that opens the ground at our feet and shows us our danger. But there are others whose convictions lead them to desire something better; who feel that they are living to no purpose; who know that their own powers, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... tells us of the physical benefits of laughing. There is not the remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the convulsion occasioned by good hearty laughter. The life principle, or the central man, is shaken to the innermost depths, sending new tided of life and strength to the surface, thus materially tending to insure good health to persons who indulge therein. The blood ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... burnt human face: and with the odious writhings of a wasp creeping out of a rotten apple there clambered forth an appearance of a form, waving black arms prepared to clasp the head that was bending over them. With a convulsion of despair Humphreys threw himself back, struck his head against a hanging lamp, ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... she next tried venomous animals, and watched with her own eyes whilst they were applied, one creature to the body of another. This was her daily practice, and she pretty well satisfied herself that nothing was comparable to the bite of the asp, which, without convulsion or groaning, brought on a heavy drowsiness and lethargy, with a gentle sweat on the face, the senses being stupefied by degrees; the patient, in appearance, being sensible of no pain, but rather troubled to be disturbed or awakened, like those that are ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... cites the following case, related by Dr. Charlton, as belonging, he says, to the class of Shaking Palsies. "Mary Ford, of a sanguineous and robust constitution, had an involuntary motion of her right arm, occasioned by a fright, which first brought on convulsion fits, and most excruciating pain in the stomach, which vanished on a sudden, and her right arm was instantaneously flung into an involuntary and perpetual motion, like the swing of a pendulum, raising ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... not return. The whole island had been explored. It was found not to be more than a couple of miles long, and scarcely half a mile in width, the greater portion consisting of black volcanic rocks thrown up by some mighty convulsion of nature. No other harbour was discovered; indeed, there was not a spot besides the bay they had entered on which a landing could be effected without danger. They probably were the first people who had entered the bay, for there were no signs ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... difficulty in the way of their identification with these tiny creatures, the largest of which found on Hawaii is 144 millimeters. By a plausible analogy, then, the earthquake which rends the earth is attributed to the god who clothes himself in the form of a lizard; still further, such a convulsion of nature may have been used to figure the arrival of some warlike band who peopled Hawaii, perhaps settling in this very Hilo region and forcing their cult upon the older ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... legs, and carry halberds like those which are usually shouldered by those theatrical supernumeraries, who never CAN get off the stage fast enough, and who may be generally observed to linger in the enemy's camp after the open country, held by the opposite forces, has been split up the middle by a convulsion of Nature. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... dared not tell the brother of the deceased, that, perhaps, a less rash blow would have aroused, without having killed her; therefore I began to sever the head entirely—but once again the dying one groaned, stretched herself out in a convulsion of pain, and breathed her last. Then terror overpowered me, and I rushed shivering ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... husband, goading him on to bestir himself. The first rumours of the Revolution that had overturned King Louis Philippe had terrified Pierre. When his wife, however, made him understand that they had little to lose and much to gain from a convulsion, he soon came round to her way ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... their commerce, and the genius of their institutions, so unsuited to schemes of warlike aggrandizement. The government of the United States is in the hands of the mob, which has as little to lose there as elsewhere, by convulsion of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... for training conscripts; we shall get the dismallest results from the worst of them; and so even if it were a vital necessity for our country to have an army of all its manhood now, we could not have it, and it would be a mere last convulsion to attempt to make it with the means ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... one caper of repulsion Broke that hawse's back in two. Cinches snapped in the convulsion; Skyward man and saddle flew. Up he mounted, never laggin', While we watched him through our tears, And his last thin bit of braggin' Came a-droppin' ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... assume one character; if coming in contact with air, another. A breaking of the bed of the ocean, and bringing its waters in contact with the liquid mass beneath, might produce consequences extending in their action to districts of the globe, the most remote from those in which the convulsion occurred; for the water, rising into vapour, would tend to extend itself in one uniform atmosphere over the whole surface of the globe, and might be precipitated in unusual abundance wherever causes of condensation existed. Thus, partial, or even total deluges, may have occurred, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... examined, Carlier, a Calvinist doctor, suddenly drew from his pocket something which was averred to be a most violent poison, which he threw into her mouth, and she kept it on her stomach whilst the convulsion lasted, but she threw it up of herself when she came ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... massy pillars, With horrible convulsion, to and fro He tugg'd, he shook, till down they came, and drew The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder Upon the heads of all who sat beneath— Samson, with these immixt, inevitably Pull'd down the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... cell, originally formed by two portions of marly rock fallen together in some ancient convulsion or dropped upon each other from a floating iceberg. In some former age the cleft had been a lair of wild beasts, or the couch of some hairy savage hammering flint arrowheads for the chase, and drawing with a sharp point upon polished bone the yet hairier mammoth he hunted. But this solitary ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... bowels into utter revolt; but knowing Aunt Keziah's touchiness with regard to this concoction, and how sacred she held it, he made an effort of real heroism, squelched down his agony, and kept his face quiet, with the exception of one strong convulsion, which he allowed to twist across it for the sake ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other great mountain masses. From its foot seems to steal the river Pelice, now a quiet rivulet, though in winter a raging torrent. Right in front, lower down the valley, is the rocky defile of Mirabouc, a singularly savage gorge, seemingly rent asunder by some tremendous convulsion of nature; beyond and over which extends the valley of the Pelice, expanding into that of the Po, and in the remote distance the plains of Piedmont; while immediately beneath our feet, as it were, but far below, lies a considerable breadth of green pasture, the Bergerie of Pra, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... curtal jibes, by one who makes sentences by the statute, as if all above three inches long were confiscate." Later on in the Apology he returns to this grievance, and describes how his adversary "sobs me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies." The men of the Renaissance despised the homely savour of the native English syntax with its rude rhetoric and abrupt logic and its lore of popular ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... of punishing the revolt of the Belgians, suffered the dismemberment of the kingdom of the Netherlands; a measure of the most shortsighted policy, which has now placed Belgium in the most serious hazard of being absorbed by its all-swallowing neighbour France, on the first convulsion of the continent. But, as England has no inclination to disturb her neighbours, and is never guilty of that last atrocity of nations, breach of treaties; the great colony is still left in Dutch hands, and will be left, until some new folly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... discordant chorus. After that, Mr. Riley rolled up his sleeves and his eyes, flung his arms about, wept and shrieked unknown tongues for twenty minutes. Then the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker had a combined convulsion on the floor, rolling over each other and upsetting furniture. By this time the hotel was roused and the landlord made us ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... flashed, and his brow grew as red as fire. It was but a momentary fierceness; the next instant he clasped his hands over his face, and wept in a violent convulsion of grief and shame. Little Elsie clasped her arms about him, kissing his brow and chin, which were all that her lips could touch, under his clasped hands; but Ned turned away uncomforted, and was blindly making ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Walcotts, had valuable farms, and appear, from the records and documents, to have been respectable, energetic, and intelligent people. Daniel Andrew was one of the strong men of the village; had been a deputy to the General Court, and acted a prominent part before and after the witchcraft convulsion. But the great family of the village—greater in numbers and in aggregate wealth than any other, and eminently conspicuous on both sides in the witchcraft ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... she said very little, and her cheeks were like two roses. Then her father took the bottle and the cork-screw into his hands. What a strange sensation it was to have the cork drawn for the first time! The bottle could never after that forget the performance of that moment; indeed there was quite a convulsion within him as the cork flew out, and a gurgling sound as the wine was poured forth ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... stupid awe—then turn to the window, and attempt to repress his sobs—return again—and refuse to credit his bereavement. Surely the hand moved? No! of its free will shall it never move more! The eye! was there not a slight convulsion in that ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... character of the natural convulsion that took place about 80,000 years ago, will be apparent from the fourth map. Daitya, the smaller and more southerly of the islands, has almost entirely disappeared, while of Ruta there only remains the relatively small island of Poseidonis. This map was compiled ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... he sank back he gave a sharp cry. He had practised that cry in more than one cabin, and along with it a convulsion of his features to emphasize the impression he labored ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... was quite dark before we could find a sheltered spot in which to bivouac. At last we reached a deep hollow, which at one period of the world's history had been probably part of a watercourse, but owing to some convulsion of nature, it was now perfectly dry. Trees grew on the upper edges, and the sides were covered with brushwood. It appeared, as far as we could judge in the uncertain light of the evening, to be a place well ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... smoke, that will obscure the sky. You see the trickling of lava from the crevices in the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava may become a river of fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain. That muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of violent convulsion, that may shake half a continent. You know that at your feet is the grave of great cities, for which there is no resurrection, as histories tell us that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away, and their names have ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... continuously. Sometimes, as we looked ahead, it seemed to have been broken off short just in front of the car, by some dreadful earth convulsion; but it always turned out to be only a sudden dip down, or a sharp turn like the curve of an apple-paring. At last we had reached the highest peak of the Roof of France—a sloping, snow-covered roof; ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... believe this,—if we will look on each convulsion of society, however terrible for the time being, as a token, not of decrepitude, but of youth; not as the expiring convulsions of sinking humanity, but as upward struggles, upward toward fuller light, freer air, a juster, simpler, and more active life;—then we shall be able to look calmly, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... at night as they had been in the morning. But the greatest crises of life steal on us imperceptibly, and have sometimes occurred and wound us in their consequences before we know. The memorable things in a man's career are not always marked by some sharp convulsion. The youth does not necessarily marry the girl whom he happens to fish out of a mill-pond: his future life may be far more definitely shaped for him at a prosaic dinner-table, where he fancies he is only thinking of the wines. We are indeed but as children seated on the shore, watching ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... or confining his limbs, instant removal from office, and transportation to the skies. Truly this is a great undertaking and if the learned manager can only get over the obstacles of the laws of nature, the Constitution will not stand in his way. He can contrive no method but that of a convulsion of the earth, that shall project the deposed President to this infinitely distant space; but a shock of nature of so vast energy and for so great a result on him, might unsettle even the footing of the firm members of Congress. ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... to trouble you," she said,—"but I would rather you left me to myself to-night"; but even as she spoke, a quick convulsion of muscles about her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... support him in his wildest demands? It was the spirit of the time that brought about these things. . . . A thousand Atlantic Cables and Pacific Railroads would not have contributed cause for so earnest self-gratulation as was afforded by this one feature in our recent political convulsion."* ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... vast grass-slopes of this great valley, on a gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge ruins ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... these, nature hath formed passes, that are less difficult than might be expected from a view of such huge piles. The aspect of these cliffs is so wild and horrid, that it is impossible to behold them without terror. The spectator is apt to imagine that nature had formerly suffered some violent convulsion; and that these are the dismembered remains of the dreadful shock; the ruins, not of Persepolis or Palmyra, ...
— The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone • John Filson
... returned to his native country. A natural yearning to see the community he had established led the discoverer to revisit, after a few months, the scene of his trials. He sailed to the spot but he could not find it. A convulsion of nature similar to that which had raised the reef above the level of the (p. 258) waves had sunk it again out of sight. Ungrateful colonists, clergymen, editor, and lawyer, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... small collection of ice-forms, not nearly so large as the other groups of this kind, but most dainty and lovely nevertheless. They showed as the heads of trees might to my ascent, and when I had got a little higher I observed that they were formed upon the hither side of the hollow, as though the convulsion which had wrought that chasm had tossed up those exquisite caprices of ice. However, I was too eager to view the prospect from the top of the cliff to suffer my admiration to detain me; in a few minutes I had gained the brow, and, clambering on to a mass of rock, I sent ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... absolute reversal of European and, in especial, of English policy for the last hundred years. No crime that the Ottoman Government could commit, no act of barbarism, would ever persuade us to do away with the anachronism of Turkey's existence in Europe; but at last the seismic convulsion of the war has knocked this policy into a heap of disjected ruins, and it can never be rebuilt again on the old lines. For among our other avowed objects in prosecuting the war to its victorious end, ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... a man came for me in haste. The baby was dying and the doctor was drunk. I found the little one in a convulsion lying across Mrs. Mavor's knees, the mother kneeling beside it, wringing her hands in a dumb agony, and Slavin standing near, silent and suffering. I glanced at the bottle of medicine upon the table and asked Mrs. Mavor the dose, and found the baby had ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... predicted. The "great earthquake" stands closely associated with the time of the resurrection and exaltation of the witnesses. The principles of interpreting symbols would lead us to identify this earthquake as a mighty political convulsion destructive in its nature, and yet one that would be overruled for the furtherance of Christ's kingdom—a convulsion that would also terminate the destructive reign of the "second woe." I can not here digress to give proofs, but there is no doubt that the second woe of Revelation (see chap. ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... were present, and when the unfortunate prisoner, tired and sick, bent her head, they began to scream and bent their heads also. When she gazed at Abigail Williams, the girl was seized with a convulsion, and so were the others, so that the trial had to be suspended for a few ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... depth, presenting that appearance which so often astonishes and appals travellers who frequent the Grampian Mountains, and indicates that these stupendous chasms were not the silent work of time, but the sudden effect of some violent convulsion of the earth. Down one of these rugged and almost perpendicular descents, the dog began, without hesitation, to make his way, and at last disappeared into a cave, the mouth of which was almost on a level with the torrent. The shepherd with some difficulty ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... people; and every individual has an equal right to his share in the general determination, whether his opinion be signified viva voce, or by a representative whom he appoints and instructs for that purpose. It may be suggested, that the prince of Orange was raised to the throne without any convulsion, or any such difficulties and inconveniencies as we have affirmed to be the necessary consequences of a measure of that nature. To this remark we answer, that, since the Revolution, these kingdoms have ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... American continent to the bleak shores of Bathurst Island, is to suppose a savage capable of voluntarily quitting a land of plenty for one of gaunt famine: on the other hand, it seems unreasonable to attribute these signs of a by-gone people's existence to some convulsion of nature, or some awful increase of cold, since no similar catastrophe has occurred in any other part of the world. Contrary to such opinions, we opined that the traces were those of a vast and prolonged emigration, and ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... place to digress a moment to illustrate the moral effect of such a convulsion. Several weeks after this great mine explosion, the 18th Army Corps, to which I then belonged, was holding a line of works recently captured from the rebels, about six miles from Richmond, when one night the colonel commanding Fort Harrison, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... for the roads of the Cordilleras,—were formidable to the man-at-arms encumbered with his panoply of mail. The tremendous fissures or quebradas, so frightful in this mountain chain, yawned open, as if the Andes had been split asunder by some terrible convulsion, showing a broad expanse of the primitive rock on their sides, partially mantled over with the spontaneous vegetation of ages; while their obscure depths furnished a channel for the torrents, that, rising in the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the throats of seven brahmins! Another equally respectable and intelligent Native friend, when I mentioned the fact, threw himself back in his chair to give vent to a hearty laugh. When he had recovered himself a little from this risible convulsion he observed that his father and his grandfather had cut down cocoa-nut trees in considerable numbers without the slightest remorse or fear. And yet again, I afterwards heard that one of the richest Hindu families in Calcutta, rather ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... of the most confirmed delirium. They listened to Hamlet, and Lear, and Othello, and did not discover that his inspiration was the effect of over-excitement; that his energy was the preternatural strength bestowed on him by convulsion; and that, in fact, instead of being a swan of Avon, he was neither more nor less ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the free and equal companion of the victorious Moslems. Every sin was expiated, every engagement was dissolved: the vow of celibacy was superseded by the indulgence of nature; the active spirits who slept in the cloister were awakened by the trumpet of the Saracens; and in the convulsion of the world, every member of a new society ascended to the natural level of his capacity and courage. The minds of the multitude were tempted by the invisible as well as temporal blessings of the Arabian prophet; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... could have driven a respectable yeoman like Robin Hood, along with so many others, apparently not much below him in rank, to the fastnesses of the forest? It is evident that only a great civil convulsion could have made, in one district, so large a number of outlaws of this peculiar character. Now, the rising of the discontented barons under the Earl of Lancaster, provoked by the king's favouritism and misgovernment, took place in the early part of the year 1322. By the battle of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... badinage and flattery that would be accorded a debutante, but here all that seemed banned. One young man after getting well started on the subject of Sally Carrol's eyes and, how they had allured him ever since she entered the room, went into a violent convulsion when he found she was visiting the Bellamys—was Harry's fiancee. He seemed to feel as though he had made some risque and inexcusable blunder, became immediately formal and left her at ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the world!' replied Mrs. Corney. 'I couldn't,—oh! The top shelf in the right-hand corner—oh!' Uttering these words, the good lady pointed, distractedly, to the cupboard, and underwent a convulsion from internal spasms. Mr. Bumble rushed to the closet; and, snatching a pint green-glass bottle from the shelf thus incoherently indicated, filled a tea-cup with its contents, and held ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... just a phase of world convulsion. It made the first rent in the universal structure. For years the trend of civilization was toward a super-Nationalism. It is easy to trace the stages. The Holy Roman Empire was a phase of Nationalism. That was Catholic. Then came the development ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... who inhabited the balance of the globe at that time must also have perished from the effects of the awful convulsion which no doubt shook the earth to its core. And so it was, I presume, the upset atmospheric conditions of the earth resulting from this catastrophe, forty-two hundred and thirty years ago, that is responsible for the legend by which the Apeman blames the Creator for sending a flood to destroy ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... of the life and the presence of the Master: all this would have been no sensuous miracle—no break in the course of Nature. But we have to bear in mind how times of strong religious agitation and [p.192] convulsion are so little qualified to judge concerning external phenomena, and how easily a psychic state solidifies into a supposed percept! Within and without Christianity there are numerous examples of the sensuous appearance of a dead ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... been clouded by fallacies and sealed by illusions at last had been opened to the truth." It required a European War on the vastest scale that the world had ever known to shake him out of his fallacies and illusions, and many of us felt that it would have been better if a less terrible convulsion had sufficed to awaken him, but still, now he was awakened, he was prompt in owning he had been in the wrong and therefore no more was to be said. The subsequent stages of this Representation of the People Bill were a series of triumphs for the suffrage cause. The second reading ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... was next discussed, in the course of doing which Mark communicated to Bob, somewhat in detail, the circumstance of the recent convulsion, and the changes which it had produced. After talking the matter over, both agreed it would be every way desirable to bring the whole party, and as much of the property as could be easily moved, up to windward at once. Now, that the natives knew of the existence of Rancocus ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... 'Royal Society of British Artists' as shown by its very name, tended perforce to this final convulsion, resulting in the separation of the elements of which it was composed. They could not remain together, and so you see the 'Artists' have come out, and the 'British' remain—and peace and sweet obscurity are restored to ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler |
