"Paroxysm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... began to make preparations for departure. But all at once the tender good-night of the preceding evening rushed on Rosa's memory, and she sank down in a paroxysm of grief. After weeping bitterly for some minutes, she sobbed out, "O, this is worse than it was when Mamita died. Papasito was so tender with us then; and now ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... entreaty the Dooty allowed me to come into his baloon, to avoid the rain, but the place was very damp, and I had a smart paroxysm of fever during the night. Worn down by sickness, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, half naked, and without any article of value, by which I might procure provisions, clothes, or lodging, I began to reflect seriously on my situation. I was now ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... slight, and of his mirth as cheaply bought. Yet we know that beneath this blithe surface there was something of the fateful domestic horror, of the beautiful heroism and devotedness too, of old Greek tragedy. His sister Mary, ten years his senior, in a sudden paroxysm of madness, caused the death of her mother, and was brought to trial for what an overstrained justice might have construed as the greatest of crimes. She was released on the brother's pledging himself to watch over her; and to this sister, from the age ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... over its contents. Kathinka saw the deadly pallor that spread over his countenance, watched his quivering lip and darkening brow. He read to the end, and crumpling the letter in his hand, he threw himself upon the sofa in a paroxysm of grief. The girl who had never before seen her father so affected ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Annette, always courteous and considerate, has shed a few tears in the way of sympathy, you ought not to imagine that I have been altogether so stoical as not to betray some feeling, dear father. But the paroxysm is past, and I am beginning to philosophize. I hope, cousin Jack, you have not forgotten that the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... gives us further remedies for colic which Alexander prescribed. "Thus for colic, he guarantees by his own experience, and the approval of almost all the best doctors, dung of a wolf, with bits of bone in it if possible, shut up in a pipe, and worn during the paroxysm, on the right arm, or thigh, or hip, taking care it touches neither the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... in all my limbs, and ah—ah, my God, I am a dead man! I have a burning here—a pain like hot coals in my vitals!" And, leaning against the wall, the unfortunate man clasped his arms round his body and bent himself up and down in a paroxysm of suffering. ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... does," she reiterated, and seemed disposed to fly at her tooth and nail. "She knows she is a bold and wicked creature,—she, she, she; she is a, a,—I don't know what she is;" she cried, spurting out the last words in a paroxysm of sorrow and vexation, and flung herself into a chair sobbing hysterically, with ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... should do the same thing again, Phil Brian, for love of you!' "She started from the bed in her delirium; there came a rattling sound in her throat—a sudden choking cry—and in a moment her breast and pillow and quilt were deluged with a crimson stream! In her paroxysm she had burst a blood-vessel. I sprang forward to catch her as she fell prone upon the brick floor; raised her in my arms, and gazed at her distorted features. There was no breath from the reddened lips. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... convenient ecclesiastical cough. It does not trouble them ordinarily; but when in church you get them thoroughly cornered with some practical truth, they smother the end of the sentences with a favorite paroxysm. There is a man in our church who is apt to be taken with one of these fits just as the contribution box comes to him, and cannot seem to get his breath again till he hears the pennies rattling in the box behind him. Cough by all means, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... actually as though in the presence of the Evil One, so completely had the frenzy of this poor deluded idiot developed itself in this short interval. Some violent paroxysm was evidently approaching; and her object was, if possible, to procure the liberation of Egerton before her guide should be rendered either unwilling or incapable. He suddenly assumed a more calm and consistent demeanour, while, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... friend, it was in a paroxysm of madness that I wrote you the above lines; a strain of work, wakefulness, and those violent desires (for which you know me) had set my poor head aflame; I went from right to left, then from left to right (like a sentinel ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... Liegoise of her attire, and publicly flogged her on the terrace of the Tuileries, on the 31st of May. This punishment, more terrible than death, turned her brain, and she was conveyed to a mad-house, where she lived twenty years, which were but one long paroxysm of fury. Shameless and blood-thirsty in her delirium, she refused to wear any garments, as a souvenir of the outrage she had undergone. She dragged herself, only covered by her long white hair, along the flags of her cell, or clung with her wasted hands to the bars of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... paroxysm that compressed his throat he could find no other words to assuage his rage or to pour forth his woe. His hair, which the storm had flattened, rose on his head, the marrow of his bones was chilled, and he felt his tears rush back upon his heart. It was a terrible moment; he forgot ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... he raged up and down the apartment for some moments, while Leta watched him from her obscure corner. When would it be time for her to advance and try her art of soothing? Not yet; for while that paroxysm of rage lasted, he would be as likely to strike her as to listen. Once he approached within a few feet of her, and, as she believed herself observed, she trembled and crouched behind a vase. He had not seen her, but his eye fell upon the vase, and with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... yet, I am unable to give any satisfactory account of the progress of the disease. The first stage seems to be one of sullenness, and which would probably last to death; but from that sullenness it is dangerous to rouse the animal. It probably would not, except in the paroxysm of rage, attack any one; but during that paroxysm it knows no fear, nor ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... readers have no sympathy; but the sad fact is, Britannic Majesty has NOT got out his sword; this second paroxysm of his proves vain as the first did! Those laggard Dutch, dead to the Cause of Liberty, it is they again. Just as the hour was striking, they—plump down, in spite of magnanimous Stair, into their mud again; cannot be hoisted by engineering. And, after all that filling and emptying of water-casks, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of Keats that in reading Spenser he was thrown into a paroxysm of delight over the expression "sea-shouldering whales." The churl would not give a second thought to the phrase, or, indeed, a first one; but the man of appreciation finds in it a source of pleasure. Arlo Bates speaks with enthusiasm of the word "highly" as ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... eldest daughter of the Marquis and Marquise Victor d'Aiglemont; born in 1817. She and her brother Gustave were neglected by her mother for Charles, Abel and Moina. On this account Helene became jealous and defiant. When about eight years old, in a paroxysm of ferocious hate, she pushed her brother Charles into the Bievre, where he was drowned. This childish crime always passed for a terrible accident. When a young woman—one Christmas night—Helene eloped with a mysterious adventurer ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... was only exceeded by the chagrin with which he perceived his exposure, and anticipated the odium in consequence. He leaped about the hall, among the company, in a restless paroxysm—now denouncing the pedler, now deprecating their dissatisfaction at finding out the double game which he had been playing. The trick of the runaway almost gave him a degree of favor in their eyes, which did not find much diminution when Pippin, rushing forth from the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Opposition Bench. While we read it, we can almost fancy that we see and hear the great English debater, such as he has been described to us by the few who can still remember the Westminster scrutiny and the Oczakow Negotiations, in the full paroxysm of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by the rushing multitude of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... speechless—having seen her face when she thought he had not seen; and she stood thus—radiant—defiant—until there was no longer an echo of footsteps back through the long vaulted corridor of the castle. Then the mocking smile died on her lips and eyes and she threw herself on her couch in a bitter paroxysm of passion. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... paroxysm the expirations are made with such violence, and repeated in such quick succession, that the child cannot breathe, and seems in danger of suffocation. The face and neck become swollen and purple from suffusion; and the eyes prominent, injected, arid full of tears. The ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... language Italy sanctions, pampered by caresses, and honoured by homage on every side, little knew by what dreary torpor of heart and mind that joyous ecstasy they witnessed had been preceded, nor by what a bound her emotions had sprung from the depths of brooding melancholy to this paroxysm of delight; nor could the worn-out and wearied followers of pleasure comprehend the intense enjoyment produced by sights and sounds which in their case no fancy idealised, no soaring imagination had lifted to the heaven ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... by squealing angrily, spitting at the Missing Link, and clawing for him in a paroxysm of ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... said Polly in a paroxysm of fear lest Joel, who was crowding up between them, should catch a word; "do be still," she whispered. "Bring anybody; ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... at that moment the humiliation was too great and too public; her face contracted, her eyebrows knit, flames darted from her eyes, her mouth was all twisted. Her whole appearance was horrible; the devil was once more in possession. During this paroxysm, which lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, Lebrun, who stood near, got such a vivid impression of her face that the following night he could not sleep, and with the sight of it ever before his eyes made the fine drawing which—is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... spoke some words of condolence, but after a time he looked up and said, 'There are thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives, mothers and children are dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is past, I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the Corn Laws are repealed.' "I accepted his invitation," added Bright, "and from that time we never ceased to labour hard on behalf of the resolution which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... set free, such a raging-bear-struggle to get at the nearest of his fellow-prisoners would have ensued, as must soon have torn to shreds the partition between them. For he was a beast-bedlamite, an animal volcano, a furnace of death, an incarnate paroxysm of wrath. The inspiration of the creature, so far as one could see, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Eden is the ugliest and most vicious of all serpents—jealousy. He has never shown his green eyes and obnoxious claws so palpably before, and as Sir Victor looks at her bending over her baby, his fierce paroxysm of jealousy gives way to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... her eyes to him and laughed again. He was moved to the quick and, extending his arms in a paroxysm of love, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... with an altogether new docility; and on arriving in her own room gave conclusive proof of her happiness by flinging herself on the bed in a paroxysm ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... drag my craft into the open sea. Although the water covered the reefs at high tide it was never of sufficient depth to allow me to sail the boat over them. I tried every possible opening, but was always arrested at some point or other. After the first acute paroxysm of despair—beating my head with my clenched fists—I consoled myself with the thought that when the high tides came, they would perhaps lift the boat over that terrible barrier. I waited, and waited, and waited, but alas! only to be disappointed. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the cell clanged to, shutting him in, and the noise reverberated through the dimly-lighted corridors, he clutched wildly at the bars, and with a paroxysm of frenzy seemed as though he would rend them from their fastenings; then, realizing how fruitless were his efforts, he sank upon the narrow bed in a state ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the mourners have but just received the news of their bereavement, and are under the operation of a paroxysm of grief, anger and revenge; or, unless the prisoner is very old, sickly, or homely, they generally save him, and treat him kindly. But if their mental wound is fresh, their loss so great that they deem ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... conduct from my mind."[312] A flash of manly anger like this is very welcome to us, who have to thread a tedious way between morbid egoistic irritation on the one hand, and sly pieces of equivocal complaisance on the other. The effect on Rousseau was terrific. In a paroxysm he sent Grimm's letter back to him, with three or four lines in the same key. He wrote note after note to Madame d'Houdetot, in shrieks. "Have I a single friend left, man or woman? One word, only one word, and I can live." A day or two later: ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... prison-house to doubt that sympathy would fail before the revelation of the secret the consciousness of which oppressed her at that time like a nightmare. It was not strange that Rena, thus isolated, should have been prostrated by homesickness for several weeks after leaving Patesville. When the paroxysm had passed, there followed a dull pain, which gradually subsided into a resignation as profound, in its way, as had been her longing for home. She loved, she suffered, with a quiet intensity of which her outward demeanor ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... for the destruction of Jerusalem, to the feast of the Great Hosannah when they whipped away willow-leaves on the Shool benches in symbolism of forgiven sins, sitting up the whole of the night before in a long paroxysm of prayer mitigated by coffee and cakes; from the period in which nuts were prohibited to the period in which ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in a paroxysm of wild terror and pain, he awoke again; and behold, the ghastly white daylight was in the room—the cold glare of a day he would fain have never seen! It was all in a sort of dream that this haggard-faced man dressed, and drank a cup of tea, and got outside into the rain. The ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... death of Racine, the disgrace of Fenelon. Hence, in the reign of Louis XV., orgies that Messalina would have blushed to share; while cruelties[A] of which Suwarrow would hardly have been the instrument, were employed to lash into a momentary paroxysm nerves withered by debauchery. Here let us pause for a moment, to remark upon the effect which false opinions may produce upon the happiness and well-being of distant generations. Nothing is so common as for trivial superficial men—the class to which the management of empires is for the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... business." Again he was seized with a paroxysm that left him shivering and his lips colorless. The blankets were soaked and soggy with blood, and his feet ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... by the bed in such a paroxysm of grief that her husband, coming in unshod that he might not disturb the girl, apprehended that she had ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wide wet grin, smoothed my hand, and patted my cheek, and would in the excess of her conciliatory paroxysm have kissed me; but I withdrew, and she commented only with a little laugh, and a 'Foolish little thing! but you will be quite ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... mountain pass heard also, and felt at that moment a sudden thrill of premonition. The guerdon; the quittance; could it be possible after all, the end was not far? He could not believe it, yet a paroxysm of fury seized him; his strength became redoubled; wherever his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... at times great agony from suffocation, until the afternoon of the 23d, when she was seized with the most severe paroxysm she had yet had. Her family gathered about her bed, relieved her as far as it was possible, and saw her sink exhausted into an unconscious state, from which, two hours later, she crossed the threshold of Eternity. Her "precious Nina" bent over her, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... with German-American keen-sighted hostility did the rest. The rivalry of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft aided, and the effort (for the time at any rate) has been wrecked, thereby plunging England into a further paroxysm of religious despondency and grave concern for German morals. This mood eventuated in Lord Haldane's "week end" trip to Berlin. The voice was the voice of Jacob, in spite of the hand of Esau. Mr. Churchill at Glasgow, showed the real hand ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... haze of blinding rain, of which the drops were scalding hot, and heavy as lead,—and occasionally he found that he was trying to get out of bed, uttering cries of inexplicable anguish, while at such moments, something cool was placed on his forehead, and a gentle arm was passed round him till the paroxysm abated, and he fell down again among his pillows exhausted. Slowly, and as it were grudgingly, after many days, the crisis of the illness passed and ebbed away in dull throbs of agony,—and he sank into a weak ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... shock sets free forces unsuspected, transcendental, supernatural in the deepest sense; forces which we can no more stop, by shrieks at their absurdity, from incarnating themselves in actual blood, and misery, and horror, than we can control the madman in his paroxysm by telling him that he is a madman. And so the fair vision of the student is buried once more in rack and hail and driving storm; and, like Daniel of old when rejoicing over the coming restoration of his people, he sees beyond the victory some darker struggle still, and lets his ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... country'—Here I was going to add that the last words he said to me were words of thanks for the invariable urbanity and liberality of my conduct and the personal kindness which he had uniformly received from me. But I could not finish the sentence. Mr. Canning, in a paroxysm of extreme irritation, broke out: 'I stop you there. I will not endure a misrepresentation of what I say. I never said that Mr. Bagot took offence at anything that had passed between him and you; and nothing ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... and stress of the fever paroxysm, nature is quietly at work elaborating her antidote. In some marvelous fashion, which we do not even yet fully understand, the cells of the body are producing in ever-increasing quantities an anti-body, or antitoxin, which will unite with the toxin or ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... independent glances upon Eva, and reject at once her appeal and offer. Instead of that—instead of coldness and haughty independence—they saw her, they heard her, suddenly give a shuddering, sobbing sigh, and then, dropping her face into her hands, break down utterly in a paroxysm of tears,—not tears of anger, of violence of any kind, but tears that, like the shuddering, sobbing sigh, seemed to come from a sore heart ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... That was right," was the rejoinder. "Lor! how I wish I'd a been there to see; but I heard ye though—I heard ye a giving it to him," and again he relapsed into a paroxysm of delight. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of England, in which the second-hand abstract of my Essay figures largely, and not without favorable comment, in an important appended paper. These testimonies, half forgotten until this circumstance recalled them, are dragged into the light, not in a paroxysm of vanity, but to show that there may be food for thought in the small pamphlet which the Philadelphia Teacher treats so lightly. They were at least unsought for, and would never have been ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Gradually the paroxysm passed and she grew quieter; but she still clung closely to him, and at length with difficulty she began ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... given painfully, Joan drew a weighted breath, another, then, pushing herself up as though oppressed beyond endurance, she caught at Prosper's arm, clenched her fingers upon it, and bent her black head in a terrible paroxysm of grief. It was like a tempest. Prosper thought of storm-driven, rain-wet trees wild in a wind ... of music, the prelude to "Fliegende Hollander." Joan's weeping bent and rocked her. He put his arm about her, tried to soothe her. At her cry of "Pierre! Pierre!" he ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... evidently his waking was a pleasant one. But suddenly the unfamiliar aspect of the room attracted his attention: he looked eagerly round, a shadow swept across his face, and he turned and saw Hardwicke. "It's true!" he said, and flung out his arms in a paroxysm ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... "Mahomet! Mahomet! Mahomet! always Mahomet! D—n Mahomet! I wish he were dead, or back in Cairo, this brute Mahomet!" The irascible dragoman would then beat his own head unmercifully with his fists, in a paroxysm of rage. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... In a paroxysm of despair, he started up and looked distractedly around him. Ulpius still stood motionless at the window. At the sight of the ruthless Pagan he trembled in every limb. All those infirmities of age that had ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the cold paroxysm of intermittents; afflicts inebriates the day after intoxication; and many people who remain too long in the cold bath. In all which cases there is a general inaction of the whole system, and as these membranes about the head have been more exposed ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... perspiration breaks out on his forehead, and his lips turning black are convulsed; at length tears start in floods from his eyes, his breast heaves with great emotion, and his utterance is choked. These symptoms gradually subside. Before this paroxysm comes on, and after it is over, he often eats as much as four hungry men under other circumstances could devour. The fit being now gone off, he remains for some time calm and then takes up a club that is placed by him for the purpose, turns ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... private retreat, sound through the vaults, and pierce the grates and iron doors of the seraglio. Democracy seems to revive in a scene of wild disorder and tumult; but both the extremes are but the transient fits of paroxysm or languor ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... knees by the side of the coffin, his frame shaken by tearless sobs. Enid bit her lips to keep back the words that rose to them. She would have given much to have spoken the truth. But at any hazard she must remain silent. She waited till the paroxysm of grief had passed away, then she touched the intruder gently on ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... Pauline with extreme dejection in her tone, and as if for a guarantee of her veracity Max was seized with a paroxysm then and there, and ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... power claimed by my brother, as an attribute inalienable from primogeniture in certain select families, of conferring knightly honors? The red ribbon of the Bath he certainly did confer upon me; and once, in a paroxysm of imprudent liberality, he promised me at the end of certain months, supposing that I swerved from my duty by no atrocious delinquency, the Garter itself. This, I knew, was a far loftier distinction than the Bath. Even ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... his hand on her heart when Gladwin was seized with a paroxysm of coughing. The thief straightened up and turned scowlingly ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... to forgive, as you will some day confess. You will thank and forgive me for what I have done." A fit of coughing caused him to lean against the stair rail, a paroxysm of pain crossing his face as he sought to temper the ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Doctor came. Rada, the half-breed woman, had undressed Louise and put her to bed; and he found her white as snow at the end of a paroxysm of pain, her long eyelashes lying on a cheek as smooth as a piece of Satsuma ware which has had the loving polish of ten thousand friendly fingers over innumerable years. When he came and stood beside her bed, she put out her hand slowly towards him. As he took it in his firm, reassuring grasp, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... either event, its doom is fixed. Like one of those reptiles, which, in the supreme act of hostility, extinguish their own lives inflicting a mortal wound upon their victims, slavery, roused to the final paroxysm of its hate and rage, injects all its venom into the veins of the Union, exhausts itself in the effort, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... certain. M. Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly. Joanna had a two-fold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called home-sickness; the cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness, and in chains, (for chained she was,) to Domremy. And the season, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... experiment. Of such eyes there are plenty; and who is able to predict what may befal a MANUSCRIPT, which is almost more difficult to guard than spoken language? Like a person seized with vertigo, therefore, who, in the paroxysm of his feelings, leaps into the abyss, I commit the ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... appeared to enjoy very irksome to me. I, however, mustered courage, took my horse, and reached home in the afternoon of the fifth day. At the door I met my father, who received me in the most hostile manner. He lavished his imprecations upon my head, and as he burst out of the room, he, in a paroxysm of passion, ordered me to quit his house, and see his face no more. Springing by me in a menacing manner, he repeated his denunciations, declaring that I should not remain under his roof. He then went to the stable, took his horse, which I had just brought home, mounted it, and rode away ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... thus forlorn, and in imminent danger of visiting the inside of a prison, was seized with a paroxysm of rage, during which he inveighed against the bench, reviled the two adventurers errant, declared that he believed, and would lay a wager of twenty guineas, that he had more money in his pocket than e'er a man in the company; and in the space of a quarter of an hour swore forty ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... himself to a promise of far greater magnitude than this gift of his surplus. In the paroxysm of rapture which his Duchess had given him from two to four—he gave this fine title to Madame de Marneffe to complete the illusion—for Valerie had surpassed herself in the Rue du Dauphin that ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... or three crack regiments. Such frantic excesses of this disgusting neurosis provoked a reaction against it; but the clamor for it by depraved persons never ceased, and was tolerated by a nation trained to it from childhood in the schools until last year (1913), when in what must be described as a paroxysm of sexual excitement provoked by the agitation concerning the White Slave Traffic (the purely commercial nature of which I was prevented from exposing on the stage by the Censorship twenty years ago) the Government yielded to an outcry for flagellation led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... equally indifferent to war and to power, and only survived his son a few months. This revolt of an old despot against the progress of time has in it something grand and solemn, and the melting tenderness which succeeds to the paroxysm of rage in that ferocious soul, represents man as he comes from the hand of nature, now irritated by selfishness, and ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... said he, and hurried nimbly out of the room so that she would not hear the chattering of his teeth. Mrs. Single was enjoying the paroxysm of a luxurious, comfortable yawn when she heard a shout of alarm from the sitting-room. She sat straight up ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... lessening lights diminished Strove the twin-lamps of the sky. 'Twas of all the sun's eclipses The most dreadful that it suffered Since the hour its bloody visage Wept the awful death of Christ. For o'erwhelmed in glowing cinders The great orb appeared to suffer Nature's final paroxysm. Gloom the glowing noontide darkened, Earthquake shook the mightiest buildings, Stones the angry clouds rained down, And with blood ran red the rivers. In this frenzy of the sun, In its madness and delirium, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... lay down, and refused to move another foot. The threats and chiding of their escort were in vain. Then some one rode forward and informed De Wet. The guerilla captain galloped back to the tail of the column, and, worked up into a paroxysm of rage, demanded the senior officer amongst the British prisoners. A tall English gentleman stepped forward.[31] In a moment the guerilla's arm was raised, and the cruel sjambok of rhinoceros-hide fell across the Englishman's face, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... went to consult him as to the proper redress for an intolerable insult and wrong he had just suffered. He had been in a dispute with a waiter at the hotel, who in a paroxysm of rage and contempt told the client "to go to ——." "Now," said the client, "I ask you, Mr. Choate, as one learned in the law, and as my legal adviser, what course under these circumstances I ought to take to punish this outrageous insult." Choate looked ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... her eyes blazing. The youth, still convulsed, did his best to quiet the paroxysm which had seized him, and at last ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... fierceness of wild beasts, I reasoned to myself, is nothing else but a paroxysm of fear why should we consider the fierceness of the savages caused by other motives? Man, however wild may be his state, has been endowed with intelligence although in some cases this intellectual faculty is possessed ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... girl passed from one paroxysm of pain to another with brief intervals of drug-induced sleep. During the quiet moments the nurse snatched what rest she could; but old Jeb Hawkins stuck to his post in the straight-backed chair, never nodding, never relaxing the ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... Tertiary eras than to the recent period. It is quite possible, however, that,—as on parts of the western shores of our own country, where recent marine deposits lie over marine deposits of the Pleistocene age, while a terrestrial deposit, representative of an intervening paroxysm of upheaval, lies between,—it is possible, I say, that in this great depressed area, the region covered of old by a Tertiary sea, which we know united the Sea of Aral with the Caspian, and rolled over many ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... answered Alick; "but cheer up—many have been as bad as you are, and have recovered; hold on bravely." The man seemed to grow calmer; again, however, there came over him a fearful paroxysm of pain. "Don't leave me, sir, don't leave me!" he exclaimed, as soon as he could speak. Alick, who was about to go on to another man, again held his hands, pouring some cordial down his mouth, which the doctor handed him. He was soon quiet, but it was the quiet of death; and the commander ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... the paroxysm of the nervous system produced by the sexual spasm, that its immediate effect is not always unattended with danger, and men with weak hearts have died in the act. Every now and then we learn that men are found dead on the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... have been, with all our deeply-laid plots and subtle scheming," he cried, as he paced up and down the room in a paroxysm of mad rage, "She triumphs in spite of us—she can laugh us to scorn! And Victor Carrington, the man whose intellect was to conquer impossibilities, what a shallow fool he has shown himself, after all! I thought there ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling,—that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt fell into a state of coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... and one thin hand, white as a snowflake, fell upon her bowed head, and softly stroked her black wrinkled face. After some minutes, when the paroxysm of weeping had spent itself, Dyce took the hand, kissed it reverently, and pressed into it ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... confined. One would naturally have expected that towards these he would have exercised a humanity, the value of which he had been so thoroughly taught to appreciate in his own person; but he treated them with harshness and caprice; and a paroxysm of rage, in which he broke out against one of his prisoners, laid him in his coffin, in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... expected that all should have such ill-luck, and accordingly, when the brig yawed a third time and fired, down came our fore-topsail by the run. If the crew had been in a fright before, when they were not hit, it must be supposed that they were now in a complete paroxysm of terror; their first impulse was to let fly all the tacks and sheets, and to jam down the helm, so as to let the vessel fly up into the wind; their next was to rush below to put on their best clothes, and the very little money they had in their pockets, and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... determines to try and cure him, and induces the girl to appear to him, disguised as St. Cecily herself, while he sits brooding at the organ. Thinking her at first to be indeed the Saint he had worshipped, Melchior falls in ecstasy at her feet, but soon discovering the trick kills her in a sudden paroxysm of madness. The horror of the act restores his reason; but, with the return of sanity, the dreams and visions of the artist's nature begin to vanish; the musician sees the world not through a glass but face to face, and he dies just as the world is awakening ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... hysterical. She controlled herself just long enough to answer with decent gravity, and escaped upon the platform to burst into a silent quivering paroxysm of laughter that brought her overcharged feeling delicious relief, and produced an answering smile on the face of a large, good-looking policeman. Her laugh rested her, calmed her, and restored something of her moral tone. She was at least able to resist the temptation ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... from a dark foreboding sky, dread announcer of a cruel Arctic winter. Soon the houses were roaring flames. The women sat upon hand-fashioned crates wherein were all their most prized household goods, and abandoned themselves to a paroxysm of weeping despair, while the children shrieked stridently, victim of all the realistic horrors that only childhood can conjure. Most of the men looked on in silence, uncomprehending resignation on their faces, mute, pathetic figures. Poor moujiks! ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... Mrs. Pat, with a certain alarm, having, after the manner of her kind, explained to herself the incomprehensible with the all-embracing formula of madness. Yes, she thought, he was undoubtedly mad, and as soon as the paroxysm was past she would have another try at bribing ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... aside. The iron-ringed hoofs flashed past him, one biting along his cheek and ripping it an eighth of an inch deep. Phil staggered to the wall, as the horse continued to plunge and rear in a paroxysm of madness. Her owner tried to pacify her, but he made ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... despair. His soul was writhing in a body from which life had fled. Intelligence, mind, and will were fast bound in a corpse which they could not electrify. The consciousness of his own powerlessness caused him a paroxysm of frantic rage; his hands clinched, the veins in his throat swelled, his eyes almost started from their sockets, and in a harsh, shrill voice that had nothing human in it, he exclaimed: "Marguerite!—despoiled!—take ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... from pains in the legs, and owned that even when crossing Africa during his three years of wild life he remembered nothing more severe. In my own case there was a severe tussle between Dr. Warburg and Fever-fiend. The attacks had changed from a tertian to a quotidian, and every new paroxysm left me, like the 'possessed' of Holy Writ after the expulsion of 'devils,' utterly prostrate. During the three days' struggle I drained two bottles of 'Warburg.' The admirable drug won the victory, but it could not restore ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... room up and down. There was no gleam of humour in it for him. When her paroxysm had passed, she sat ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... shortcomings, but he saw his present position, and blamed Mme. de Bargeton for it. She was to have lighted his way; instead she had ruined him. He grew indignant, he grew proud, he worked himself into a paroxysm of rage, and set himself to compose ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac |
