"Writhe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Green our Laidly Worm Hath made a loathly den, And there hath fed for a weary term On the bodies and souls of men. There doth it writhe, and ramp, and slower, Whilst in its coils close prest Are the things it thrives on—"Landlord ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... houses and men who lived in sties, between men who were fed on bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between men who spoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride, boasted that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise Lost were written. [163] Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fuse alight, and he started to work in another direction. He left the baron after a few more words of warning, and enjoyed seeing the young man writhe in terror. ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... The slave husband must submit without a murmur, to see the form of his cherished, but wretched wife, not only exposed to the rude gaze of a beastly tyrant, but he must unresistingly see the heavy cowhide descend upon her shrinking flesh, and her manacled limbs writhe in inexpressible torture, while her piteous cries for help ring through his ears unanswered. The wild throbbing of his heart must be suppressed, and his righteous indignation find no voice, in the presence of the human monster who holds dominion ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... home, and free from military tyranny from abroad. The work of the peace advocate is not negative. It is not enough for him to cry peace, peace! He must first lay the foundation for peace. To cry peace while the people writhe under injustice is like trying to heal the carbuncle ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... serpent brooch, and Aaron's lips were fastened together with the stout pin. On his mouth and across his agonised face in which the one eye gleamed with terrific meaning the jewelled serpent seemed to writhe. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... its grandeur. Its face was like nothing I have seen before. Its voice was like nothing I have heard. Those other rapids are not to be compared to it; they are wild, headstrong, and malignant enough, but the Alemba is not as they. It does not struggle, and writhe, and brawl among the rocks, but comes in a majestic springing dance, a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... whilom sweetheart to have her look upon a new one. Rather would he strive to cover up his faithlessness. But he hath been untrue to thee in this—that he shares a thought with the witch when his whole mind should be full of thee. Bide thy time till he emerges from the spell, then make him writhe. Meantime, save thy tears. Never was a ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... sorrows to himself, but the recollection of them will make him "yerk," i.e., writhe, or start with pain—applied ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Trevison's hands clench, and he laughed in grim amusement. It pleased him to see his enemy writhe and squirm before him; the grimness came because of a mental picture, in his mind at this minute, of Trevison confiding in the girl. He looked up, the smile freezing on his lips, for within a foot of his chest was the muzzle of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... over the tapers burning yellow on the carved marble balustrades with the Rovere arms, with a luminous grey vagueness; the blue background of the Last Judgment grows into a kind of deep hyacinthine evening sky, on which twist and writhe like fleshy snakes the group of demons and damned, the naked Christ thundering with His empty hand among them; the voices moving up and down, round and round in endless unended cadences, become strange instruments (all ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... fighting dogs as these frenzied myriads with their half-crazed generals. They lay, these armies, across the fair bosom of the earth like dying monsters, crimson in their own blood, yet still able to writhe upward and deal death to any other that might approach. They were at a deadlock, yet each feared to make the first overtures for peace. There was, in actuality, no longer even an English or a German nation. It was an orgy of homicide, in which the best of mankind were ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... reason why he did not breathe a word to her of his suspicions, and that was the slow dread that was laming him—the dread of her contempt. She made no further attempt to drape it; and he had learned to writhe before it, to cringe and go softly. Weeks had passed now, since the night on which he had made his last stand against her weeks of increasing torture. Just at first, incredible as it had seemed, his horrible treatment of her had brought about ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe amazingly; and threaten 'sacred right of Insurrection;'—and, as we saw, get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit, dexterity, and light graceful poignancy, Camille, translating 'out of Tacitus, from the Reign of Tiberius,' pricks into the Law of the Suspect itself; making it odious! ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... repugnant, captive in such hair! What hope along the hillside, what far bliss Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss Those lucid shoulders? Must a morn so blithe Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe Its victim, thou unerring Artemis? Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark, Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed With novel births of wonder? Not one ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... I think of these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... And it shall be amended, if I may." "Amended!" quoth this knight; "alas, nay, nay, It will not be amended, never mo'; Thou art so loathly, and so old also, And thereto* comest of so low a kind, *in addition That little wonder though I wallow and wind;* *writhe, turn about So woulde God, mine hearte woulde brest!"* *burst "Is this," quoth she, "the cause of your unrest?" "Yea, certainly," quoth he; "no wonder is." "Now, Sir," quoth she, "I could amend all this, If that me list, ere it were dayes three, *So well ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... have made him suffer a little, it seems to me. Wait—I have more to say. Shall I make him suffer more? I have punished you through him; shall I punish him through you? For he would not like you to be maimed and disfigured through life: his sensitive soul would writhe, would it not? to know that you were suffering pain. Do you know what this magic water is? It stings and bites and eats away the flesh—it will blind you so that you can never see him again; and it will mar your white face so that he will never ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the sharp rock his mangled carcass lie, His entrails torn, to hungry birds a prey! May he convulsive writhe his bleeding side, And with his clotted gore ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... wise, and cruel," and the "amaranthine" Louis Sherwin, who understands better than anybody else how to plunge the rapier into the vulnerable spot and twist it in the wound, making the victim writhe, have been having some fun with the art of acting lately, or to be exact, with the art of actors. Now actor-baiting is no new game; as a winter sport it is as popular as making jokes about mothers-in-law, decrying the art ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... said, "you loathe your ways, You writhe at these my words of warning, In agony your hands you raise." (And so they did, for they ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... through the interview had been patent to each of us. When she delivered his sentence in tones so determined, a cry that was a groan escaped his colorless lips. To say that I did not writhe under her just scorn would be false. Tears, few, but hot and bitter, blinded my eyes. She took no further notice of any of us, but sat waiting ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... others with his own insights and convictions. With bitter discouragement and chagrin, he saw that the spiritual man must forever lift the dead weight of all the indolence and indifference and animal sensuality that surround him,—that the curse of Cassandra is upon him, forever to burn and writhe under awful visions of truths which no one around him will regard. In early life the associate only of the cultivated and the refined, Father Francesco could not but experience at times an insupportable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Remorse in the sense of gnawing shame and unavailing regret is only understandable to me when some wrong had been done to a fellow-creature. But why she, that girl who existed on sufferance, so to speak—why she should writhe inwardly with remorse because she had once thought of getting rid of a life which was nothing in every respect but a curse—that I could not understand. I thought it was very likely some obscure influence of common forms of speech, some traditional or inherited feeling—a ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... toil of a City, worn unto death! Alas for my father's worship before the citadel, The flocks that bled and the tumult of their breath! But no help from them came To save Troy Towers from falling as they fell!... And I on the earth shall writhe, my heart aflame. ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... On the sharp rock his mangled carcase lie, His entrails torn, to hungry birds a prey; May he convulsive writhe his bleeding side, And with his clotted gore the stones ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... crowd to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again? Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... long legs and writhings of his arms and shoulders, still beating the drum and playing the flute or crying and raging at intervals, ever accelerating his movements until at last with pallid face and bloodshot eyes he fell on the snow, where he continued to writhe and give out his incoherent cries. In this manner the doctor treated his patients, frightening with his madness the bad devils that carry disease. Another witch doctor gave his patients dirty, muddy water, which I learned was the water from the bath of the very person of the Living Buddha ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... to writhe its body down a fissure in the rock, keeping its head elevated more than a foot from the ground. Its rattle made very little noise. It every moment darted out its forked tongue, its eyes became reddish and inflamed, and it moved rather quicker than at first. It was now within two yards ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... convinced there would be no hanging back that night; but to-morrow, or, rather, Monday, when he returned to London he would be able to report that the heart of Polpier was sound and fired with a resolve to serve our common country. Mr Boult proceeded to make the Vicar writhe in his seat by a jocular appeal to "the young ladies in the audience" not to walk-out with any young man until he had clothed himself in khaki. He wound up with one of his most effective perorations, boldly enlisting John Bright and ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... what savage joy his Moon "rips the womb" of the cloud that crosses it; Shelley's Moon, in keeping with the ways of his more tender-hefted universe, merely broke its woof. So the gentle wife of James Lee sees in a vineyard "the vines writhe in rows each ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Yonder from Point Levi the laden ships go gayly up the sparkling river, a festive foe. Night drops her mantle, and silently the unsuspected squadron floats down the stealthy waters, and debarks its fateful freight. Silently in the darkness, the long line of armed men writhe up the rugged path. The rising sun reveals a startling sight. The impossible has been attained. Now, too late, the hurried summons sounds. Too late the deadly fire pours in. Too late the thickets flash with murderous rifles. Valor is no substitute ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... hatred soul'd in water, yet will I strike My purpose, and God's purpose, clean through all The ridges of thy power. And I will show This mask that the devil wears, this old shipman, A thing to make his proud heart of evil Writhe like a trodden snake; yea, he shall see How godly faith can go upon the huge Fury of forces bursting out of law, Easily as a boy goes on windy grass.— O marvel! that my little life of mind Can by mere thinking the unsizeable Creature of sea enslave! I must believe ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... no respectable conclusion to be drawn. It is tragic, but prosaic. She has been governess or companion in some great house. She may be a well-born woman. It is ten times more hideous for her than if she were a girl. She has to writhe under knowing that both her friends and her enemies are saying that she had not the excuse of not having been ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... of the sea, where they have stood for ages, defying the elements. The shadows that gather under their locked branches are like caverns and dungeons and lairs. The fox steals stealthily away as you grope among the roots, that writhe out of the earth and strike into it again, like pythons in a rage. The coyote sits in the edge of the dusk, and cries with a half-human cry—at least he did in my dead day. And here are corpse-like ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... me? No, I will not be bound! I will be still, Still as a lamb—nor even draw my breath! But if you bind me, I cannot be still. Then I shall writhe and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... bed. My desk was broken open. Over it was spread all my letters, and private papers, a diary I kept when twelve years old, and sundry tokens of dried roses, etc., which must have been very funny, they all being labeled with the donor's name, and the occasion. Fool! how I writhe when I think of all they saw; the invitations to buggy rides, concerts, "Compliments of," etc.—! Lilly's sewing-machine had disappeared; but as mother's was too heavy to move, they merely smashed ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... cringe and cower and bring a shrine a forced and faithless faith Is far more futile than to fling your laughter in the face of Death. For writhe or whirl in dervish rout, they are not flattered there on high, Or sham belief to hide a doubt—no gods are mine that love a lie! Nor gods that beg belief on earth with portents that some seer foretells— Is life itself not wonder-worth that we must ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... he maintains complete silence, and merely makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance becomes sheerly that of a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... I wonder if I ought to be good to him," thought Nelly, watching the reptile writhe with pain. "Will said there were sick rebels in his hospital, and one was very kind to him. It says, too, in my little book, 'Love your enemies.' I think snakes are mine, but I guess I'll try and love him because God made him. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... left cheek lovingly on his instrument, and has just run his bow across the discordant strings, when suddenly a loud crash is heard in the gorges of the mountain. It is the roar of the storm. The maple tops writhe and twist in the sweep of the winds that come up in eddies from the river far beneath. The sky is suddenly darkened. The snow falls thick and fast. These portents are sufficiently significant to startle the whole party. The dance is broken up and every one prepares to depart ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... writhing in a tortured frame of mind which their arrival brought a necessity for masking and the things which had made him so writhe had been the reviews in these papers of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... gentleman, and perhaps even of a good husband, of Avory. But his wife—timid, and all too gentle—could only wince under the things he said, or let her big eyes suddenly brim over with tears. Toffy began to writhe under the cruel speeches which Avory made to her; he never saw for an instant that there was a fault anywhere save with the husband. She was one of those women who invariably inspire sweeping and contradictory criticisms on the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... harmony of musical instruments, as well as the Apologia in which he afterwards convicted the Bologna school of its errors. 'My work,' he says in his later book, 'is sound enough if soundly understood'; and he tells his rival that, though he may writhe with rage, the harmony of Gafori and the fame of Jean Grolier will live for ever. The introduction to his work upon harmony contains a few interesting details about Grolier's way of living at Milan. Gafori addresses his book in a dialogue, and vows that it shall never ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... the truth out of your drivelling spy, The maniac whom you set to swing death's scythe. Nay; torture not the torturer—let him lie: What need of racks to teach a worm to writhe? ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... outset confiding in the testimony of others.' 'The more you set yourself to argue and prove, in order to discover truth, the less likely you are to reason correctly.'[87] The amazing crudity of this avowed obscurantism is likely to make the orthodox apologist writhe, and to move the rationalist to contemptuous laughter. In this and many other cases, Newman seems to love to caricature himself, and to put his beliefs in that form in which they outrage common sense most completely. We can imagine nothing ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... swarmings, crepitations; sounds of incessant, infinitely subtle urging, of agony and recoil. Sounds they were of the invisible things unborn, driven towards birth; sounds of the worm unborn, of things that creep and writhe towards dissolution. She knew what she heard and saw. She heard the stirring of the corruption that Life was; the young blades of corn were frightful to her, for in them was the push, the passion of the evil which was Life; the trees as they stretched out their arms and threatened her ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... lay without a ripple and shimmering in the moonlight. The great ship glided on, casting upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black smoke. Behind us the dazzling white water, stirred by the rapid progress of the heavy bark and beaten by the propeller, foamed, seemed to writhe, gave off so much brilliancy that one could ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... very proud, and it made him writhe with anguish when he thought how heavily such a blow would fall upon his parents. For a moment he was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... less would not be to love my brother:—that the soul capable of such deeds shall be compelled to know the nature of its deeds in the light of the absolute Truth—that the eternal fact shall flame out from the divine region of its own conscience until it writhe in the shame of being itself, loathe as absolute horror the deeds which it would now justify, and long for deliverance from that which it has made of itself. The moment the discipline begins to blossom, the moment the man begins to thirst after ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... pitying Son of Mary, before Whom the Scribes and Pharisees brought the woman taken in adultery, forgive her, pardon her! If a soul must writhe in those eternal fires they preach of, in justice let it be mine! Thou Who didst pity that woman of old time, standing white and shameful in the midst of the evil, jeering crowd, with the wicked fingers pointing at her, say to this other woman, lifting ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... from the Tweed border, begging their food by the way. Their clothes hang from them. Their flesh is often caked with dirt. They do not smell sweet. Their manners are crude: I think they must all have studied Guides to Good Society. They spit when and where they will. Some of them writhe in a manner so suggestive as to give you the itch. This writhe is known as the Spitalfields Crawl. There is a story of a constable who was on night duty near the doors of one of the doss establishments, when a local doctor passed ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... river-surface. Our homeless, irrelevant, tiny steamer seemed to hang between two abysms. One became suddenly aware of the miles of dark water beneath. I found that under a prolonged gaze the face of the river began to writhe and eddy, as if from some horrible suppressed emotion. It seemed likely that something might appear. I reflected that if the river failed us, all hope was gone; and that anyhow this region was the abode of ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... diplomatic education, except that he found rich veins of jealousy running between every chief and his staff. His social education was more barren still, and more trying to his vanity. His little mistakes in etiquette or address made him writhe with torture. He never forgot the first two or three social functions he attended: one an afternoon at Miss Burdett Coutts's in Stratton Place, where he hid himself in the embrasure of a window and hoped that no one noticed him; another was a garden-party given by the old anti-slavery ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... actions, exclamations, and contortions. They would creep into holes, and under benches and chairs, put themselves into odd and unnatural postures, make wild and antic gestures, and utter incoherent and unintelligible sounds. They would be seized with spasms, drop insensible to the floor, or writhe in agony, suffering dreadful tortures, and uttering loud and piercing outcries. The attention of the families in which they held their meetings was called to their extraordinary condition and proceedings; and the whole neighborhood and surrounding country soon ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... to her indignation, and constantly calling on the name of her father, and struggling to speak. The extreme root of the tongue {still} quivers. {The tongue} itself lies, and faintly murmurs, quivering upon the black earth; and as the tail of a mangled snake is wont to writhe about, {so} does it throb, and, as it dies, seeks the feet of its owner. It is said, too, that often after this crime (I could hardly dare believe it) he satisfied his lust ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... All of us together, You flash forth sudden utterance Of buried things That writhe in obscure life Within our minds' last darkness. That which we think and say not You say and think not. In us these thoughts Like worms stir vilely. But from you they depart as sudden butterflies Crimson and ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... her in her arms to ward off the threatened attacks, and thus she could stimulate herself to her heart's content. As she reports, at the height of the orgasm she expelled a secretion, her body began to writhe convulsively, her face became red as fire, her eyes rolled about and she almost lost herself in ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... in the arms of one has been seized by the limbs, she hurls herself over the edge, and falls head downmost, dragging the child out of the grasp by her weight;—she will be dashed dead in a second:—close to us is the great struggle; a heap of the mothers, entangled in one mortal writhe with each other and the swords; one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child just torn away from a death grasp, and clasped to her breast with the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... sect in Africa, not far from Algiers, which eat the most venomous serpents alive; and certainly, it is said, without extracting their fangs. They declare they enjoy the privilege from their founder. The creatures writhe and struggle between their teeth; but possibly, if they do bite ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... I said; "the charms work ill before so many. Now behold!" and, gazing at the twain, I cast my wand upon the marble and murmured a spell. For a moment it was still, and then, as I muttered, the rod slowly began to writhe. It bent itself, it stood on end, and moved of its own motion. Next it put on scales, and behold it was a serpent that ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... have throttled his dad. It was like Tom to do it. Lance could not doubt that he had done it. He could picture the whole wretchedly cheap retaliation for the slight which Mary Hope had given them, and the picture tormented him, made him writhe mentally. But he could picture also Mary Hope's prim disapproval of them all, her deliberate omission of the Lorrigans from her list of invited guests, and toward that picture he felt a ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Jackson," said he, "you wrong me. You make me writhe. I'm surprised at you. I never thought to hear ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... literature, and art. This world does not dwell within the very marrow of life, but parting from it creates a separate circle; in consequence withers within itself and does not help in softening down the animalism of those millions which writhe and surge below. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... First one, then the other, seemed to have the advantage. She would catch him in her powerful grasp, and, lifting him off his feet, swing him in the air as if about to slam him to his final resting-place, when by some inexplicable manoeuvre he would writhe from between her fingers or wriggle himself to the back of her neck and mash her nose flat against her breast as if bent on suffocating her or breaking her neck. In a moment she would reach back with both hands and pull him over her head very much as men doff a shirt. Likely as not, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... thou not remember how I cudgelled thee, and thou didst grin and nimbly writhe, and catch hold ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... man be better than nature? Soothing and restful flows the Nile, though underneath its placid surface finny tribes wage cruel war, and the stronger eat the weaker. Shall the gazer who would read the secrets of the stars turn because under his feet a worm may writhe? ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... befallen her. The first, and, for the time, dominant emotion was a stinging sense of shame, an agony of rage and humiliation which tingled hotly through her, and caused her cheek to flame, and her body to writhe as from the lash of a whip. She had been degraded; an insult had been put upon her. Her eyes blazed, and her hands clinched. Oh, for strength to hurl the insult back—for a man's arm and a man's power to avenge the foul affront! He—a married man—to ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... mishap, and who, knowing the effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr. Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr. Lawley, too exhausted to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! it had missed its aim, and, striking the wall ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... let him writhe! How long Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now! What a fine agony works upon his brow! Ha! gray-haired, and so strong! How fearfully he stifles that short moan! Gods! if I could but ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... not kill you, but—so help me God!—I will fight with you once more, and I will leave you so maimed and so disfigured that you can woo no woman to ruin again and jest at her shame and agony with no man—for none can bear to look at you without a shudder—and you will lie and writhe to be given the coup de grace." He lifted the hilt of his sword and kissed it. "That I swear," he said, "by this first ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wrench itself by forceful thought from the shuddering, encumbering frame! Even now, do I seem to behold the finger of scorn pointed at me;—ay,—at ME! whilst bound to the firm stake with thongs, strong as the iron bands of death, I cannot even writhe under the anguish of shame, wrath, and apprehended bodily torture! The pile is lighted,—the last words of the reckless priest have died upon mine ear, and his figure and countenance, with the myriad forms and faces, of the insulting multitude around me, are lost in suffocating volumes of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... more quiet, his muscles stiffened and relaxed—he was no longer conscious. A few more convulsive quivers, as a serpent might writhe and jerk, then he hung, a limp dead thing, in my hands. My outstretched arms seemed made as a gibbet, feeling no fatigue, so lightly did they sustain him. Cords of brass could be no more tense than mine; his weight was as nothing. Softly I eased him down, and composed his limbs ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... horrible to look at, were thrust out and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among its ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... something disagreeable in the flashing thought that he might kill them from where he stood. He would not fire from the dark. He wanted to experience the exquisite sensation of that one first moment when they would writhe back from him, and see in him the presence of death. He would give them that one moment of life—just that ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... shocked, nor mortified, that the unceremonious departure of the master of the house stabbed her heart with pangs that made her firm lips writhe, for she had long been cognizant of the growth of feelings whose discovery had so ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... not the gaze of her tender eyes stolen into your senses long before you woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and love, and fresh springing joy?) Some such influence had Catherine's looks upon her husband: for, as he slept under them, the man began to writhe about uneasily, and to burrow his head in the pillow, and to utter quick, strange moans and cries, such as have often jarred one's ear while watching at the bed of the feverish sleeper. It was just upon six, and presently the clock began to utter those dismal grinding sounds, which issue from clocks ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Delphin was quite a treasure. He had just that irritating manner which sometimes became very nearly offensive, but was at the same time so polished, that it would indicate a want of good breeding to be annoyed at it. It was thus a real treat for Uncle Richard to see the magistrate, with all his aplomb, writhe under Delphin's adroit and sarcastic rejoinders. Aalbom, on the other hand, was not so well bred, and often, therefore, broke through conventionalities, to the great delight of both the attache ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... luscious manner, all the while the inner folds of her tight fitting sheath kept me prisoner, and treated my Cock to the most delicious contractions and pressures, till I was so inflamed, Cupid's charger plunged on his mad career once more, making my dark beauty writhe and squirm in the excess of her ecstatic emotion; several times we seemed to stop by mutual consent, and lay for a while enjoying those heavenly sensations. After thus delaying the final crisis to the uttermost, the moment came when the life flood could no longer ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... are spawned In magic broth To coil and wriggle, Writhe and twist; Till their froth Becomes a mist, Till the mist An egg shall form— Charm ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... humming ropes, roaring water, screaming wind, sets every pulse bounding. Should the moon shine out from the charging clouds, then earth has not anything to show more fair; the broad track of light looks like an immeasurable river peopled by fiery serpents that dart and writhe and interwind, until the eye aches with gazing on them. Sleep seems impossible at first, and yet by degrees the poppied touch lulls our nerves, and we slumber without heeding the harrowing groans of the timbers or the confused cries ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... clutch of an hysteria that made her writhe beneath Gale's hand, choking and sobbing, until he loosed her; then she leaned exhausted against a post and wiped her eyes, for the tears were ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... from the line of sharpshooters; and the little stabs of smoke, drifting out across the river, blent in a thin blue haze. Every moment or two, one of the Horde would writhe, scream, fall—or hang there twitching, to the cliff, with terrible, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... thanks the good devil who has made her without conscience and virtue so that she may take her happiness when it comes. Her soul seeks but blindly, for nothing answers. How her happiness will seethe, quiver, writhe, shine, dance, rush, surge, rage, blare, and wreak with love and light when ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... he reclined upon the sofa in their house, that priest began to moan and writhe as if in agony. His wife, in great ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... what she means. All that company has fallen asleep. The men lie back with open mouths, the goblets still in their hands. Golden cascades of wine fall glittering upon the marble. The women writhe in these pools of wine. But even in the intoxication of their dreams they try to guard their elaborate hair dress. The whole mad band, musicians and animals, lies there with limbs dissolved, panting for air, ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is no sense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under the free sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take half the burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth without reproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearing myself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner or later ensue the indifference brought ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... have turned somebody away, because I felt out of sorts or because too many came, it wasn't a very great misfortune for him, because I was sure to call him back and give him twice as much. Oh, what does it all amount to? People dread the last hour when it threatens to come, writhe like a worm over it, and implore God to let them live, just as a servant implores his master to let him do something over again that he has done poorly, so that he may not come short in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... savage force that has made the contemplative soul of spiritual inquiry writhe under the startling contradictions of history. When this force has been aroused with fear it has snarled and roared defiance; when it has been enraged by opposition or the lash of mastership it has ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... her death! His surprise and remorse made him jump to his feet, wave his arms in angry protest, writhe, as if a pair of invisible hands had just laid him bare with a ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a supernatural gift, certainly, Sir Horace," he made reply. "Look here. Could any man resist the temptation to use it when he was endowed by Nature with the power to do this?" His features seemed to writhe and knot and assume in as many moments a dozen different aspects. "I've had the knack of doing that since the hour I could breathe. Could any man 'go straight' with a fateful gift like that if the laws of Nature said that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... it is less dreary, for then the sky gleams with a lurid light, and out of the darkness the red flames leap, and high up in the air they gambol and writhe—the demon spawn of ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... gratify his appetites, he did not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of creeping things to satisfy the intellectual needs of humanity. Even this he did with characteristic tenderness, never leaving a grasshopper to writhe on a pin for two days, but kindly giving him a drop of chloroform to pass him into the Buddhist's heaven of eternal repose. In the course of an hour or two he had adorned his hat with a variety of orthoptera, coleoptera, and all the other opteras known to the ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... balustrade which broke. Wogan heard it crack. He had just time to loose his hands and step back, and the railing and the man poised on the rail fell outwards into the courtyard. Wogan stepped forward and peered downwards. The soldier had not broken his neck, for Wogan saw him writhe upon the ground. He bent his head to see the better; he heard a report behind him, and a bullet passed through the crown of his hat. He swung round and saw the leader of the four with one of his own ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... thought came into my head: for I said to myself: 'If now I be here alone, alone, alone... alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth have a spread of 25,000 miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what kind of creature shall I writhe and change? I may live two years so! What will have happened then? I may live five years—ten! What will have happened after the five? the ten? I may ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... whether they followed his banner under an Asian or a Northern sky, or opposed his violation of their chartered rights! Could a nation, which would only pay a constitutional obedience to a Beauclerk or a Coeur de Lion, which served, not submitted to, the heroes of Cressy and of Agincourt, long writhe under the scorpion-lash of despotism wielded by a low Usurper, whose manners and sentiments were inimical to the general tone of the English character—a man pre-eminent in fraud and hypocrisy, and ignorant of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... frying-pan has awful sins to answer for. What untold horrors of dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like the ghosts from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is as a warning knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not burn and writhe!" ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he'll do a few steps of our ancient war dance—forward, back, forward again. But I'll stand—motionless as the statue of a Cat. The green witchcraft of my gaze will strike terror and madness into my rival and soon I'll see him writhe, utter false cries, and, as a last resource, try to balance himself on the nape of his neck, like a forked pear tree, only to roll over shamefully into the ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette |
