"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Thaumacia dwelt, In Meliboea and Olizon's rock; These Philoctetes, skilful archer, led. Sev'n ships were theirs, and ev'ry ship was mann'd By fifty rowers, skilful archers all. But he, their chief, was lying, rack'd with pain, On Lemnos' sacred isle; there left perforce In torture from a venomous serpent's wound: There he in anguish lay: nor long, ere Greeks Of royal Philoctetes felt their need. Yet were his troops, their leader though ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... society may find a way of doing without the question by hunger as we have done without the question by fire. It is equally possible, for the matter of that, that a future society may reestablish legal torture with the whole apparatus of rack and fagot. The most modern of countries, America, has introduced with a vague savor of science, a method which it calls "the third degree." This is simply the extortion of secrets by nervous fatigue; which is surely uncommonly close to their extortion by ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... hope to withstand the final rush of ten big-jawed and active animals. Even if he could keep them off in that open space, he could not stay there another day; and if they tackled him in the reeds, he would have no chance. He began to rack his brain for a scheme; but while he thought, the circle closed in until quite plainly he could distinguish the staring eyes all centered upon him. He piled on more fuel, and as the flames sprang up they fell back. As the flames died down, they advanced as ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... unknown sea all this insubstantial pageant had faded like the baseless fabric of the vision that it was and left not a rack behind. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... compunction over the methods I am sometimes obliged to use to make an individual, whom I know deserves no consideration, speak. With a knave like Burke I would as lief resort to thumb-screws, the boot, the rack, or even to choking the words from him, as to trust to persuasion alone. To tell the truth, my preference lies with the means first enumerated: they are much more prompt and direct. The worst indictment that one may bring against the old-time ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... the bright Queen who rules the tide Now forward thrown, now bridled back, Smile o'er each answering smile, then hide Her grandeur in the transient rack, And yield her power, and veil her pride, And move along ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... de Castelnau, liv. vi., c. iv., c. v.; La Noue, c. xi.; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlii.) 5, 6. Davila, l. iv., p. 110, alludes to the accusation, extorted from Protestant prisoners on the rack, that "the chief scope of this enterprise was to murder the king and queen, with all her other children, that the crown might come to the Prince of Conde," but admits that it was not generally credited. The curate of Saint Barthelemi ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... his dear bishops, but by a Non-conformist. They were made to like but not to convert each other; in matters ecclesiastical they saw the opposite sides of the shield. Each wrote a masterpiece. It is too late to praise "The Complete Angler" or the "Pilgrim's Progress." You may put ingenuity on the rack, but she can say nothing new that is true about the best romance that ever was wedded to allegory, nor about the best idyl of ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... I experienced on this solemn occasion, I have come to the conclusion that the man who is led to death is not as unhappy as the public imagines him to be. Fifty ideas presented themselves nearly simultaneously to my mind, and I did not rack my brain for any of them; I only recollect the two following, which have remained engraved on my memory. On turning my head to the right, I saw the national flag flying on the bastions of Figueras, and I said to ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... saying, 'We've got one of those in the east bed,' or 'Wouldn't that look nice in the south orchid house?' and you and I will be quite, quite out of it." I sighed, and helped myself from the west toast-rack. ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... is Tuesday evening. It will be impossible for you to stay on here with those four children and no one responsible to look after them. You appear half dead with grief and depression, and you want a thorough change. The place is going to rack and ruin. Your rent-roll, how much ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... a familiar voice brought Drew's head around. Kirby waved to him vigorously from a doorway, and the scout obediently rehitched King to another rack, joining the Texan in what proved ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... monarchs of the earth on the occasion of the great Rajasuya. O Sanjaya, the thunder-bolt falling on the mountain top, leaveth a portion unconsumed; but the shafts, O child, that are shot by Kiriti leave not a rack behind. As the rays of the sun heat this mobile and immobile universe, so will the shafts shot by Arjuna's hands scorch my sons. It seemeth to me that the Chamus of the Bharatas, terrified at the clatter of Arjuna's chariot-wheels, are already broken through in all directions. Vidhatri hath created ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in Ireland is yet somewhat worse: For the absentees of great estates, who, if they lived at home, would have many rich retainers in their neighbourhoods, have learned to rack their lands, and shorten their leases, as much as any residing squire; and the few remaining of these latter, having some vain hope of employments for themselves, or their children, and discouraged by the beggarliness and thievery of their own miserable farmers and cottagers, or seduced by the vanity ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... fatal. . . to his character as a man. Has she not flung suspicion over his bones interred, that they are the bones of a—monster? . . . If Byron's sins or crimes—for we are driven to use terrible terms—were unendurable and unforgivable as if against the Holy Ghost, ought the wheel, the rack, or the stake to have extorted that confession from his widow's breast? . . . But there was no such pain here, James: the declaration was voluntary, and it was calm. Self- collected, and gathering up all her faculties and feelings into unshrinking strength, she denounced before ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for a while. But the armor-bearer was glad for himself and for her words. For he said to himself: "At least it shall not be said that she has been fed with ingratitude." He also began to rack his brains for something more of the same nature to tell her; and after ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... hung with faded paper of an indeterminate pattern and even more indeterminate color. To-day it was in greater confusion than usual, with white dust thick on table and chair, a window-shade askew, the music-rack disarranged, and a plate of grape-skins which Allison had left last night on the piano still standing there. But it was not the disorder which irritated Allison most, nor the signs of poverty, but the fact that the poverty was so genteel, so self-respecting, so determined to make the best of things ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... devil does he want to keep me on the rack for seven hours more?" thought Skinner on his way back to his cage. "Why could n't he say 'yes' ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... are expressions of genuine feeling, which he was simply incapable of assimilating to the prevailing tone of the book, that of a novela picaresca. His determination to be original and to tell the truth, to avoid all padding and second-hand ideas, kept him on the rack; yet he persevered, working hard at the Life with intervals of discouragement for no less than six years. "Lavengro" eventually appeared, in three volumes, in February, 1851, and was received not merely with coldness and unconcern, but with hostile carping and even derision. The critics and ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... burden on his back. Work! He remembered the enlargement of the town water-system—how he had manoeuvred and financed, persuaded small loans at ruinous interest, and laid pipe and made joints by lantern light while the workmen slept, and then been up ahead of them to outline and direct and rack his brains over the raising of the next week-end wages. For he had carried on old Isaac's policy. He would not let go. The ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... sound Father Griffen bounded from his chair, rushed and took his gun down from a rack placed in his bedroom, and precipitated himself out of doors, crying, "Jean! Monsieur! Take your guns! Follow me, my children! follow me! The ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the chicken business a specialty, believing that the profits were large enough to pay well. Mr. Keefer loaned me a horse, and after building a chicken-rack on my wagon, I started out ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... power and at your mercy," he said, "but though you torture me on the rack I shall never tell you what you want to know. That safe contains valuable papers which belong to others; they are secure in my keeping. You can kill me, but the secret of the safe combination will die ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... vanity is on the rack. Though some troubles may seem petty indeed, I have learned, unfortunately, that in the home there are no petty troubles. For everything there is magnified by incessant contact with sensations, with desires, with ideas. Such then is the secret of that sadness which you have ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... in a livelier manner than when he was doing day-work; and I rested the mouth on a cross rack-piece, and felt a warm sort of surety that I could hit the door over opposite, or, at least, the cobwall alongside of it, and do no harm in the orchard. But John would not give me link or fuse, and, on the whole, I was glad ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... do not let your purpose fall, good Asper; It cannot but arrive most acceptable, Chiefly to such as have the happiness Daily to see how the poor innocent word Is rack'd and tortured. ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... over by the feed rack in the corral, and Mary V's eyes strayed often that way while she was clothing her feet for the ride. Tango was a good little horse, but he was not the horse for a heroine to ride when she went out across the desert at midnight to rescue—er—a good-for-nothing, ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... don't." She caught the preacher's hands, and the two leapt about the kitchen. "I can dance higher than mis'ess!" Farmer Joll looked on with a dazed face. "Hallelujah!" "Amen!" he said at intervals, quite mechanically. The pair stood under the bacon rack and began to whirl like dervishes—hands clasped, toes together, bodies leaning back and almost rigid. They whirled until Taffy's brain ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for young Branghton, who did not appear for some time; and during this interval it was with difficulty that I avoided Sir Clement, who was on the rack of curiosity, and dying to ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... him; merely for the purpose of continuing their species. In wild, tropical countries, at the first glance there appears to be some consideration for him, but it is on the surface only. The lion pounces on him, the rhinoceros crushes him, the serpent bites, insects torture, diseases rack him. Disease worked its dreary will even among the flower-crowned Polynesians. Returning to our own country, this very thyme which scents my fingers did not grow for that purpose, but for its own. So does the wheat beneath; we utilise it, but its original and ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... really need this treatment its importance cannot be overestimated. Each sufferer can answer to himself how very different life would be if free from his infirmity. Would you not be better capacitated for business, labor or pleasure? Is not your mind on the rack often—perhaps always? Have you not at this time, and in consequence of this deficiency, a tendency to misanthrophy, a bitter feeling that you are the victim of an unkind Providence, or else bowed by humiliation due to your own ignorance or vices? Does not your very ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... other race, or white or black, When bound as thou wert, to the rack, So seldom stooped to grieving; No other race, when free again, Forgot the past and proved them men ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... and a house to house search made for his accomplices. This method failing to reveal anything except that Gruet had written on one of Calvin's tracts the words "all rubbish," his judges put him to the rack twice a day, morning and evening, for a whole month. The frightful torture failed to make Gruet incriminate anyone else, and he was accordingly tried for heresy. He was charged with "disparaging authors like Moses, who by the Spirit of God wrote the divine law, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... his destruction DESIRABLE! The discipline of suffering, of GREAT suffering—know ye not that it is only THIS discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto? The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon the soul—has ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his back! Look! as Prometheus in my picture here! Quick, or he faints! stand with the cordial near! Now—bend him to the rack! Press down the poisoned links into his flesh, And tear agape that ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... leg against an adjoining type-rack leaned a tall youth with fair curling hair, a weak tremulous mouth, and an almost girlish physiognomy. This youth had been drummed out of the army, the discipline of which he had found too severe, for feigning illness, since when he had passed his time between the bosom of his family, the ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... such a child! You might as well talk to the wind! I'm in despair! I'll give up! Humph! clothes-pins, indeed! Pretty playthings to give a child! Every thing goes to rack and ruin! There!" ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... turning this highly developed intelligence to good account, they bound it hand and foot on the rack of an everlasting drill which could not have been more soullessly mechanical in the days of Frederick. It held them together as an iron hoop holds together a cask, the dry staves of which would fall asunder at the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... virtue sat becomingly upon her. Her mood was in a measure contagious, and he talked gently and gaily about herself, and the day when the world would listen to her with delight and approbation. But while he talked, he was like a man on the rack. He was dragged from different sides, and the questioner ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... sacrificed the lives of thousands to their false gods, that their wealth might increase, and peace and prosperity be theirs throughout the generations. And now the true God has answered them. For wealth He has given them desolation, for peace the sword of the Spaniard, for prosperity the rack and the torment and the day of slavery. For this it was that they did sacrifice, offering their own children on the altars of Huitzel ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... with a large tag pinned across his little dress played with railroad-owned blocks; the matron, a sort of stout Lachesis, with a string of keys at her belt, gray with years and the rather sweet tiredness of service, sorted towels at a rack. It was to her that Lilly spun out a ready tale, reddening as she ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... was fully aware of this noisy intrusion, the intruder had disappeared. He lost no time, however, in setting the usual machinery in motion. By a continuous series of movements of the receiver rack on the telephone he aroused Miss Dolly Bobbitt, the night operator, from the depths of the novel she was reading, and notified the Police Department in East Ketchem across the lake to be on watch for the car. The police department over there said that he would be glad to do that. The ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the receiver, raced from the library, and grabbing a cap from the rack in the hall, ran down the steps and bounded into the waiting car, shouting ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... persuaded themselves that the earthquakes, inundations and pestilences were attributable to it. To these incitements was added a desire to seize the property of the faithful confiscated by the law. Of this the early Christians unceasingly and bitterly complained. But the rack, the fire, wild beasts were unavailingly applied. Out of the very persecutions themselves advantages arose. Injustice and barbarity bound the pious but feeble communities together, and repressed ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the rack in the companion and, slinging it over his shoulder, mounted the ratlines to ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... the wet dress, the underwear, and the petticoats, and spread them over a drying rack of willow wands which I had put up by the fire. I had never seen such things before; and it seemed as if it would be very hard for me to meet Virginia in the open day afterward—and yet as I watched by the clothes I had a feeling of exaltation ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... succeed in this, they went into the stable to visit Star, when, with a quick motion, Jacko twitched the chain from Minnie's hand, and running up the rack above the manger, began to laugh and chatter ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... market here to try to find out what we talk about? What a prying, malicious set they are! Did anyone ever hear before of crumbed cutlets and 'assortments' being bought at five o'clock in the afternoon? But then they'd rack themselves with indigestion rather than not find out! Upon my word, though, if La Saget sends anyone else here, you'll see the reception she'll get. I would bundle her out of the shop, even if she were ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... to receive our old friend, the Continental Times, here, and through it first learned of the Skager-Rack or Jutland battle, in which, the paper claimed, over thirty major British ships had been sunk, in addition to a larger number of smaller ones. The Times said it was a great victory for the Germans. The last we doubted and the first we knew to ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... any writer of our age or nation has exercised." Such is the opinion held of this great poet in 1835; but what were those of 1805-15,—nay, of 1825? For twenty years after the date of that letter to Mr. Wordsworth above referred to, language was exhausted, ingenuity was put on the rack, in the search after images and expressions vile enough—insolent enough—to convey the unutterable contempt avowed for all that he had written, by the fashionable critics. One critic—who still, I believe, edits a rather popular journal, and who belongs to ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... A "Walker" is a fuller of cloth. "She curst the weaver and the walker." Boy and Mantle, Percy Rel., iii., 5.] Rowing, and Burling and in Racking [Footnote: Stretching. "Two lutes rack's up / To the same pitch." The Slighted Maid, p. 53.] the Clothes aboue measure vpon the Teintors: all which faults may be learned of honest men, which faults are to be knowen to the merchant, to be shunned and not to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... death he died. Because at Rome, the proud mistress of the world, they thundered out the terrors of the law upon that idolatrous, war-making, and slaveholding community. Why were the martyrs stretched upon the rack, gibbetted and burnt, the scorn and diversion of a Nero, whilst their tarred and burning bodies sent up a light which illuminated the Roman capital? Why were the Waldenses hunted like wild beasts upon the ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... or three napoleons, he had but a word to say; and he said it often. Thus, after a while, he became an excellent billiard-player; he kept his colored meerschaum in the rack of a popular brewery; he took absinthe before dinner, and spent his evenings in the laudable effort to ascertain how many mugs of beer he could "put away." Gaining in audacity, he danced at Bullier's, dined at Foyd's, and at last had ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... is the matter, ma'am. Hope twenty live geese inside it's enough-eh? Bed, do you call it? It's the rack! It's damnation! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... minds, just as the driver must wait upon his stubborn donkey. For you can never move one by reason or by threats. He would die and go to the wrong place rather than give up his point. This is why you will see some churches going to rack, antiquated and out of touch with the life about them. Look inside and you will find some old mule steward stalled in the amen corner, with his ears laid back at the pulpit or ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... cases absentees, led to the abominable "middleman" system by which the owner leased great stretches of land to some one who undertook to "manage" it for him, and who in turn sub-let it in smaller patches at rack-rents to those who, to get back their money, had to sub-let again at still higher rents. The result was, as an official report in the eighteenth century states: "It is well known that over the most part of the country, the lands are sub-let six deep, so that those who actually ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... when he let himself into the shop. The first object he sought was his metal pipe. Two puffs, and the craving was satisfied. He took up his counting rack and slithered the buttons back and forth. He had made three sales at the Astor and two at the Palace, which was fair business, considering ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... name," Sartoris said. "What has it done for me? You have been a good sister to me, but your attentions have been a little embarrassing sometimes. And if you had hoped to change me, you had your trouble for your pains. You may put me on the rack and torture me, but not one word ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... congesting your cerebrums about problems you can't settle? I say let a fellow go it while he's young—moderately you know—and when he is old he will not regret the same. You fellows swot, and I sit in the orchestra chairs. You read your digestions to rack and ruin—or else you've got to be so mighty careful,—while I put in a fine gourmand's dinner every day, attended with the comforts of civilization. I dance while you are working up unsuccessful essays. The world owes nothing to fellows who do that. If you're fools enough to ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... mainly of a stalk and two round slabs not much bigger than dinner-plates. There were holes in the centre of these slabs for the stalk to go through, and the one slab stood two feet from the floor, the other a foot higher. The lower slab was fitted with a walnut tobacco-jar and a pipe-rack, while on the upper slab were exquisite little recesses for cigars, cigarettes, matches, and ashes. These held respectively three cigars, two cigarettes, and four wax vestas. The smoking-table was an ornament to any room; and the first night I had it I raised ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... Dubois, the prefect of police, the reproduction, or rather the invention, of new tortures and improved racks; the oubliettes, which are wells or pits dug under the Temple and most other prisons, are the works of his own infernal genius. They are covered with trap-doors, and any person whom the rack has mutilated, or not obliged to speak out; whose return to society is thought dangerous, or whose discretion is suspected; who has been imprisoned by mistake, or discovered to be innocent; who is disagreeable to the Bonapartes, their favourites, or the mistresses of their ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... make way for her was the tall, thin-faced young man in the straw hat and pepper-and-salt suit. He rose and offered her the inner half, which she accepted gratefully, then thanked him in broken English for stowing her various bundles in the rack above. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the captain, setting the example of taking his double gun from the rack and slinging ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... U.S.S. Plymouth, at that moment lying idle in a British port, that the landsman would commonly associate with sailing orders to a great destroyer. Blowers began to hum in the fire rooms. The torpedo gunner's mates slipped detonators in the warheads and looked to the rack load of depth charges. The steward made a last trip across to the depot ship. Otherwise, things ran on ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... dark hill with its twisted back Two wings of flame from the green cloud rack, A sprawling flank overlaid with leaf Glitter and gleam and shine like steel, Crackle and lash ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... [8] it is said the Price of Wood was raised in England, by reason of the Executions that were made in Smithfield. These Disputants convince their Adversaries with a Sorites, [9] commonly called a Pile of Faggots. The Rack is also a kind of Syllogism which has been used with good Effect, and has made Multitudes of Converts. Men were formerly disputed out of their Doubts, reconciled to Truth by Force of Reason, and won over to Opinions by the Candour, Sense and Ingenuity of those who had the Right ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... or rack-rock or TNT; so that in the total it were safer for an insect to have labored in Pharaoh's time. The Company doctor—himself a returned major—stationed there by reason of the eccentricities of dynamite, rack-rock and other high explosives, was ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... time-piece and a framed copy of signal regulations. There was a diminutive stove in one corner, and a chest in another. In front of the box facing the clock were two telegraphic instruments, and a row of eight or ten long iron levers, which very much resembled a row of muskets in a rack. These levers were formidable instruments in aspect and in fact, for they not only cost Sam a pretty strong effort to move them, but they moved points and signals, on the correct and prompt movements of which depended the safety of the line, and the ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... assistant-examiner is capable of devouring him alive. At last they send him away and mark him a nought. You would think, 'Now, at least, he will go.' Not a bit of it! He goes back to his place, sits just as immovably to the end of the examination, and, as he goes out, exclaims: 'I've been on the rack! what ill-luck!' and the whole of that day he wanders about Moscow, clutching every now and then at his head, and bitterly cursing his luckless fate. He never, of course, touched a book, and the next day the ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... lens about 30 inches from the negative and rack the camera out to about 11 inches, we shall have an image on the ground glass which merely requires a little adjustment of the camera screw to be sharp and of the right size. In focusing, it is always advisable to temporarily affix to the outside of the focusing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost, Why then we rack ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... the black And hideous structure of the guillotine; Beside the haloed countenance of saints There hangs the multiple and knotted lash. The Christ of love, benign and beautiful, Looks at the torture-rack, by hate conceived And bigotry sustained. The prison cell, With blood-stained walls, where starving men went mad, Lies under turrets ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a warm and muggy one threatening rain awhile Jane was resting in the court, a horseman clattered through he grove and up to the hitching-rack. He leaped off and approached Jane with the manner of a man determined to execute difficult mission, yet fearful of its reception. In the gaunt, wiry figure and the lean, brown face Jane recognized ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... he rose on his elbow in one of the fifty positions he was wont, for very restlessness, to assume. 'Misfortune! I should think I do: nothing much worse could have happened. Look at the farm, without a hand on it, going to rack and ruin'— ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... was a steel grating, firmly embedded in the sides of the tunnel, and on one of the bars the muzzle of the sniper's rifle was laid, its stock resting on an ingenious wooden fork, which could be raised or lowered by a rack and pinion. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... hung from a rack in the hearth, and, his face set like a mask, Paul took the crude weapon in his hand, and slowly raised his head until he was looking up at the oil-painting above the mantelpiece. The sound of a dry and discreet cough close behind him drew his attention to the presence ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... prisoner with so much care and curiosity as I did him. Nay, I did more; for, contrary to the laws of this country, I gave him in some manner, the QUESTION ordinary and extraordinary; and I have infinite pleasure in telling you that the rack which I put him to, did not extort from him one single word that was not such as I wished to hear of you. I heartily congratulate you upon such an advantageous testimony, from so creditable a witness. 'Laudati a laudato viro', is one of the greatest pleasures and honors a ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... neighbor, even to the "Rooms" sign in the windows, and up the steps of one she could have recognized only by counting from the corner. They entered the murky and stereotyped atmosphere of a boarding-house hallway, with its inevitable hat-rack and the uncollected letters of the homeless on a table. Mrs. Norton came breezily forth ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... puckering his brows, "there are two roads open. One, to yield thyself to Monceux and the rack—for not even your uncle at Gamewell should save you, even did he so wish; the other—to join with these honest fellows and live a free life. What else is left to you? If you would be as dutiful to the laws as the earth to summer sun, it should not avail you. Your lord the Sheriff ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... be friendly, Mr. Winthrop," I half sobbed, with an impulsive gesture stretching out my hands, but remembering myself, as quickly I drew them back, and without waiting for a reply fled from the room. Once in the hall I took down my hat from the rack and slipped out into the night, my pulses throbbing feverishly, and with difficulty repressing the longing to find relief in a burst of tears. The short twilight had quite faded away into starlight, but the autumn air was still warm enough to permit a stroll after ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... them. "You're a pretty young man!" she said, severely, to complacent Mr. Crane, when, one morning, he came late to breakfast. "I always knew that," returned he, reaching self-satisfiedly for the toast-rack. "Well, I'm sure your glass never told you so!" was the withering retort. Mr. Crane did not lift his neck so high after that. The grin that went round the table was ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... to do in Ireland, and we have been too long away from it already. My husband has his business, and I have my home, and they are both going to rack and ruin. Besides," she added slyly, "it is just possible that if we did come to the States we might not find ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strange books were crowding out the old, on the little table drooped a few faded flowers in an awkward vase. On the mantlepiece, where she would never have more than one or two good ornaments, and the old gilt clock, were now stacks of papers, a rack bulging with packing materials—something like that—an ink-bottle, a candlestick, the candle trailed over with sealing-wax, and an untidy ball of string. And right in the centre of the room a great clumsy writing-table, an office table, piled with papers again, ledgers, a portable typewriter, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... from the land Irak * And from their corners whoso cry 'Wak! Wak!' Bear news of me to friends and say for me * I've tasted passion-food of bitter smack. O dearlings of my love, show grace and ruth * My heart is melted for this severance-rack." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the open window, but to see him dismayed me. He rose with an uneasy look as I went toward him. He was so wasted that his large features stood out gaunt and prominent. His clothes hung about him in folds, and his vast, bony frame was like a rack from which ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... a crack; enough to discover a dozen blacks stretched upon their silks in profound slumber. At the far side of the room a rack held the swords and firearms of the men. Warily I pushed the door a trifle wider to admit my body. A hinge gave out a resentful groan. One of the men stirred, and my heart stood still. I cursed myself for a fool to have thus jeopardized our chances for escape; but there was nothing for ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... followers rack their miserable brains over this comforting passage in an effort to save Christ from the fancied insult of being called a curse. They say: "This quotation from Moses does not apply to Christ. Paul is taking liberties with Moses by ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... little all zot down At bwoth zides, an' bevore, all roun'. An' when I zot among em, I Could zee all up ageaen the sky Drough chimney, where our vo'k did hitch The zalt-box an' the beaecon-vlitch, An' watch the smoke on out o' vier, All up an' out o' tun, an' higher. An' there wer beaecon up on rack, An' pleaetes an' dishes on the tack; An' roun' the walls wer heaerbs a-stowed In peaepern bags, an' blathers blowed. An' just above the clavy-bwoard Wer father's spurs, an' gun, an' sword; An' there wer then, our girtest pride, The settle by the vier zide. Ah! gi'e me, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... despoiled, is amusingly different from the manner of our village populations when summer visitors (whom they look upon as natural enemies) appear on the scene. Abroad the entire town, together with the surrounding villages, hamlets, and farmhouses, rack their brains and devote their time to inventing new amusements for the visitor, and original ways of enticing the gold from his pocket—for, mind you, on both continents the object is the same. In Europe the rural ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... visitor's face. "Nada!" cried Dan Anderson. "Me go back there and work on a salary for you? Me check my immortal soul on your hat-rack? Me live scared of my life, like all the rest of the slaves in that infernal system of living, that hell? If I should do that, I'd be giving you some license for the opinion of me you once expressed, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... thou rack'st the souls of men; Thou tossest girls to lions and boys to flames; Thou hew'st Crusader down by Saracen; Thou buildest closets full of secret shames; Indifferent cruel, thou dost blow the blaze Round Ridley or Servetus; all thy days ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... in possession or expectance, and that these are its proper and only good, can you forbear thinking they make use of the soul but as a funnel for the body, while they mellow their pleasure by shifting it from one vessel to another, as they rack wine out of an old and leaky vessel into a new one and there let it grow old, and then imagine they have performed some extraordinary and very fine thing? True indeed, a fresh pipe may both keep and recover wine that hath thus been drawn off; but the mind, receiving but ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... death as a malefactor. Could good by any possibility rise out of such an abyss of wrong? The salvation of the world came out of it; all that is noblest in history came out of it. This is the supreme lesson to God's children never to despair. All may be dark; everything may seem going to rack and ruin; evil may seem to be enthroned on the seat of God; yet God liveth; He sits above the tumult of the present; and He will bring forth the dawn from the womb ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... assistants whispered each other; one of them rose, and disappeared behind the canvas at the back of the tent. Presently the hangings were withdrawn; and the prisoner beheld an interior chamber, hung with various instruments the nature of which was betrayed by their very shape; while by the rack, placed in the centre of that dreary chamber, stood a tall and grisly figure, his arms bare, his eyes bent, as by an instinct, ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dominican Railway will have to be widened, but the change will cost a considerable sum and require a complete renovation of the rolling stock. In view of the steepness of the slopes to be surmounted, the plans contemplated the construction, on several portions of the road, of a rack-line or cremaillere, a third track provided with cogs, between the other two, and the use of special mountain-climbing locomotives having a cogwheel by means of which the ascent was to be accomplished and the descent regulated. The Belgian engineers ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... sudden, dark and drear; The bells were silent, not an echo stirred. The flags were drooping sullenly, the men forgot to cheer; We waited, and we never spoke a word. The sky grew darker, darker, till from out the gloomy rack There came a voice that checked the heart with dread: "Tear down, tear down your bunting now, and hang up sable black; They are coming — it's the Army ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... for rick-rack work, Em, I see," she murmured in a faint whisper. "Do you remember how surprised Aunt Su was when you ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... sailors on us, and your uncle's yard 'll go to rack and ruin; and there was two screws out o' one o' the shutter hinges as I were going to put ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... was much more anxious than she was. He would rather have done without that paragraph in the newspapers. All his senses were on the rack; and yet he could make out absolutely nothing of his whereabouts in this formless void of a world, with its opaque atmosphere, its distant calls, inquiries, warnings, its murky lamp-lights that only became visible when they ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... himself. And he discovered something right away. It had four legs like Tdariuk, the reindeer. But it was ever so much larger than Tdariuk, and its legs were straighter. Little Black Bear wasn't long in finding out that this was not really any one at all, but just a rack Omnok had made on which to keep his meat. And there was meat up there! Oh! strips and strips of it! But it was all high out of reach. Little Black Bear sniffed and sniffed, and My! It did smell good! But even when ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... the bow-window I observed a tribe of them standing with tiny valises and carpetbags in their hands, as though about to depart on a journey. On my writing-table another set stood around my inkstand and pen-rack, who, pointing to those on the floor, seemed to debate some question among themselves; while others of them appeared to be collecting and packing away in tiny trunks certain fairy treasures, preparatory to a general departure. When I looked at the social ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "nothing is wrong, and I have not been crying; have I, Jack? But, Grace, was it fair to give me no hint, and thus permit Jack to surprise me into giving away something that I ought to have kept him on the rack for a month at ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... and read a thoughtful treatise on Industrial questions. The latch-string is always out for people who care to listen to a lecture on economics or similar subjects. Inside the hall there is usually a long reading-table littered with books, magazines or papers. In a rack or case at the wall are to be found copies of the "Seattle Union Record," "The Butte Daily Bulletin," "The New Solidarity," "The Industrial Worker," "The Liberator," "The New Republic" and "The Nation." Always there is a shelf of thumb-worn books on history, science, economics and socialism. ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... him without a glance, and, seating himself at the piano, threw back his head with an impatient gesture. He turned swiftly the leaves of music that stood on the rack before him. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... entrance to the receiving hall they halt. The Medical Officer bends over the patient, glances at the label which is attached to him, and assigns him to a ward. (Certain types of cases go to certain groups of wards.) The attendant sergeant promptly picks a metal ticket from a rack and lays it on the stretcher. The ticket has, punched on it, the number of the patient's ward and the number of the patient's bed in that ward. This ceremony completed, the orderlies proceed, with their burden, up the aisle between the beds ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... see SCORES of devils in your dreams! Merely out of Christian charity he had come to you to say, 'I perceive a poor widow going to rack and ruin, and likely soon to stand in danger of want.' Well, go to rack and ruin—yes, you and all ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... brother, and make it possible to keep Alexander's hiding-place a secret. The soldiery would be certain to penetrate as far as this, and other lives would be endangered if they should bear off the faithful servant and force him on the rack to disclose where Melissa's father and relatives ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those children, she found it impossible. Despite the fact that her attention had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the farther wall, the music rack. Evidently the girl was learning to play. She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the woman who had been her mother had possessed—that in her, Janet, had lacked the advantages of development. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... breakfast were all so good that they reconciled Frances and Bettina to the payment of the extraordinary admission fee, and when we left the next morning, curiosity prompted them to pass near the garter rack in the tap-room, where garters were hanging which had been taken from maids whose great granddaughters had become great grandmothers. The garters that had belonged to Frances and Bettina, being the latest contributions, hung at the bottom of the rack, neatly dated and labelled, and, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... the world below, soon pierced a white cloud, and disappeared; then emerging, the balloon looked like a moon, black on one side, silver on the other; then like a dark bubble; then less and less, and now only a speck is seen; and now the fleeting rack obscures it. Never did I feel the full merit of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Tunis, whom he was sailing to meet. He knew they were glowing with pride because of their triumphs over the Crusaders in Palestine. He knew they were blazing with anger because their brother Moors had been slaughtered and tortured in Spain. He saw ahead of him the rack, the thumb-screw, and the boot; the long years in a slimy dungeon—at the best the executioner's scimitar. He simply dared ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews |
