"Naked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see with the naked eye the lowering down of a ship's boat over the brig's side, and that made him quickly focus his glass again, and while he was busy scanning the boat as it kissed the water and the oars fell over the side, Joe Cross came up behind him ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. p. 254.) an exactly analogous variation in the hackles of a sub-variety of the game- cock, in which the tips, having a metallic lustre, "are separated from the lower part of the feather by a symmetrically shaped transparent zone, composed of the naked portions of the barbs." The lower margin or base of the dark-blue centre of the ocellus is deeply indented on the line of the shaft. The surrounding zones likewise shew traces, as may be seen in the drawing (Fig. 54), of indentations, or rather ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... been guilty of sorcery by the aid of inspiration furnished during a dance. The whirling dance of the Eastern dervish is well known. Dancing also figures in the Bible. The Jews danced around the golden calf (Ex. xxxii. 19) in a state of nudity. David, too, danced naked before the Lord. Dancing was also part of the religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of Dionysos or Bacchus.[28] Along with the drinking of certain vegetable decoctions, dancing formed an important part of the witches' ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... but you shall, though!" exclaimed Hayraddin. "I swear to you, by all that ever fools believed in, that you have to do with one, who would care little to strip you naked, bind you to a tree, and leave you ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... scoundrel, and he would add,—of the most dangerous kind too,—because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say there was no danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit;—'twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... burnt straw ten thousand brave fellowes, all starke naked, some leaning upon Crownes, some on Miters, some on bags of gold; Glory in another Corner lay like a feather beaten in the raine; Beauty was turn'd into a watching Candle that went out stinking; Ambition went upon a huge high paire of stilts but horribly ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... Consul, and he began to threaten the old hag with the rack if she told such lies; whereupon she answered and said, "List, then, whether I lie! When she went naked into the water she had no mark on her body, but when she came out again I saw that she had between her breasts a mark the size of a silver penny, whence I perceived that the devil had given it her, although I had not seen him about her, nor, indeed, had I seen any one, ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... symmetrical spire, formed of a straight round trunk, clad with innumerable branches that are divided over and over again. Unlike the Yosemite form about one-half of the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all close three-fourths or more is naked, presenting then a more slender and elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods. The bark is mostly arranged in massive plates, some of them measuring four or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... direction more or less east and west. The land all about here was low, and to a great extent swampy, the margin of the creeks being lined with mangroves that presented a very curious appearance as they stood up out of the dark, slimy-looking water, their trunks supported upon a network of naked, twisted roots that strongly suggested to me the idea of spiders' legs swollen and knotted with some hideous, deforming disease. The trees themselves, however, apart from their twisted, gnarled, and knotted roots, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the contrary, a modest style of dressing, more in conformity with modern ideas, was first adopted by the Lacedaemonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate their way of life to that of the common people. They also set the example of contending naked, publicly stripping and anointing themselves with oil in their gymnastic exercises. Formerly, even in the Olympic contests, the athletes who contended wore belts across their middles; and it is but a few years since that the practice ceased. To this day among ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... close, he can see the ruff around their naked necks, bristled up; the skin reddened as with rage, and their beaks, stained with bloody flesh of some other banquet, getting ready to feast upon his. Soon he will feel them striking against his skull, pecking out his eyes. O, heavens! ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... tell us much about them; and also the caves and lake dwellings help us to form some very accurate notions of the conditions of life in those distant days. We shall see that the Britons or Celts were far from being the naked woad-dyed savages described by Caesar, whose account has so long been deemed sufficient by the historians of our childhood. We shall call to mind the many waves of invaders which rolled over our country—the Celts, the Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans—all ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... rope whistled in the air, again it grided across the boy's naked back, and once more the crimson furrow bore witness to the violent laceration. A sharp shriek of inexpressible agony rang from his lips, so shrill, so heart-rending, that it sounded long in the memory of all who heard it. But the brute ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... them on my fingers: the pavilion secretly prepared for guests; the guests landed at the risk of their lives and to the imminent peril of the yacht; the guests, or at least one of them, in undisguised and seemingly causeless terror; Northmour with a naked weapon; Northmour stabbing his most intimate acquaintance at a word; last, and not least strange, Northmour fleeing from the man whom he had sought to murder, and barricading himself, like a hunted creature, behind the door of the pavilion. Here were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plane overhead. So high you can't see it with the naked eye. But I spotted it before it rose too high, and followed it with the glasses. The fellow's up where the sun plays tricks with your eyesight. And, Bob, I've got a hunch he's watching us. There's Starfish Cove below us now. Keep right ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... "India, my child—naked and unadulterated India! The Imperial Commissioners have quite decided that I'm the man for the job. I kept on saying 'Can't!' and 'Won't!' But that didn't make the least difference. Old Reggie Bassett's doing, I'll lay a wager. He will have it that ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... season. Then each slaying the other's steeds and cutting off the other's bow, those car-less combatants encountered each other with swords in a dreadful fight. Taking up two beautiful and large and bright shields made of bull's hide, and two naked swords, they careered on the field. Stalking in circles and in diverse other kinds of courses duly, those grinders of foes excited with rage, frequently struck each other. Armed with swords, clad in bright armour, decked with cuirass and Angadas, those two famous warriors ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... settled, and it was the last chance, for the blacks who departed on the Arangi never came back. As an instance, this very morning Biddy, remembering a secret mauling at the hands of Lerumie, laid teeth into his naked calf and threw him sprawling into the water, trade-box, earthly possessions and all, and then laughed at him, sure in the protection of Mister Haggin who grinned at ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... recommends that in prayer we practice a further stripping down of everything, even of our theology. "For it sufficeth enough, a naked intent direct unto God without any other cause than Himself." Yet underneath all his thinking lay the broad foundation of New Testament truth, for he explains that by "Himself" he means "God that made thee, and ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... circle of Sinai began to open upon us—black, rugged, desolate summits; and, as we advanced, the dark and frowning front of Sinai itself (the present Horeb of the monks) began to appear. We were gradually ascending, and the valley gradually opening; but as yet all was a naked desert. Afterwards, a few shrubs were sprinkled round about, and a small encampment of black tents was seen on our right, with camels and goats browsing, and a few donkeys belonging to the convent. The scenery through which we ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... bear fruits with pulp so scant that the berries are inedible. Vitis is further distinguished as follows: The plants are climbing or trailing, rarely shrubby, with woody stems and mostly with coiling, naked-tipped tendrils. The leaves are simple, palmately lobed, round-dentate or heart-shaped-dentate. The stipules are small, falling early. The flowers are polygamo-dioecious (some plants with perfect flowers, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... the sounds. No sooner had he reached the wood than he saw a horse tied to a tree, and bound to another was a lad of fifteen, all naked above the waist. By his side stood a countryman beating him with a strap, and with every blow calling out, "I'll teach you to keep your eyes open, you young scamp. I'll teach you ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... that illustrious family about the streets. They set fire to different quarters of the city; they stripped about fifteen thousand of the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex, and drove them naked into the castle, that the garrison might be the sooner induced to capitulate. There they remained like cattle in the open air, without food or covering, tortured between the horrors of their fete and the terrors of a bombardment. When they were set at liberty, in consequence of the fort's being surrendered, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... about "dressing the line," than about dressing himself, and the front of his company presented as many inequalities as a "worm-fence." Tall men and short men—beaver hats and raccoon-skin caps—rusty firelocks and long corn-stalks—stiff brogans and naked feet—composed the grand display. There were as many officers as men, and each was continually commanding and instructing his neighbor, but never thinking of himself. At the command "Right dress!" (when the officer ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... cottage, and out rushed a fine tall Arab, with menacing gesture, and more menacing language. I was in his garden. "A glass of water, please," said I, in Italian. Still no effect. I thought he was going to be savage, when, from behind the house popped, or rather rolled out, another little naked, curly-headed, black ball—a triennial by his looks—the Arab's only boy, no doubt. He was so irresistibly comic in appearance, that I burst into a fit of laughter. The man's face changed in a moment. I suppose he thought ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... no man could lie in a literary sense with more self-complacency, and a clearer conception of the business value of the falsehood; but it is wonderful to find people choosing to travesty the palpably obvious, sooner than accept the plain truth as it lies naked on the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... with a ghastly expression of countenance, representing the moment when the last breath has escaped from the body. It is the figure of the Grand SENESCHAL DE BREZE,[51]—Governor of Rouen, and husband of the celebrated DIANE DE POICTIERS—that thus claims our attention. This figure is quite naked, lying upon its back, with the right hand placed on the stomach, but in an action which indicates life—and therefore it is in bad taste, as far as truth is concerned; for the head being fallen back, much shrunken, and with a ghastly expression of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind—Such were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint.... They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals, lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in his native land ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... air is in the night, how near and kind the heavens are, One might a naked hand outstretch and ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... burials—all emanated from, or were accomplished in, this family chamber. Every member was there transmitted from the cradle to the grave. The low wide oaken stairs, to the first bending of which an active individual might have leaped without any such superfluous media. The naked gallery, with its little quaint doors on each side, hatched in the usual fashion, this opening into the store-room, that into the servants' lodging, another into the closet where the choicest confections ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... measurements); tail long, naked; hind foot small; color pale for species, upper parts Kaiser Brown (capitalized terms are of Ridgway, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, Washington, D. C., 1912), bases of individual hairs Plumbeous, ...
— Four New Pocket Gophers of the Genus Cratogeomys from Jalisco, Mexico • Robert J. Russell
... forgotten that the proprietor of her hall, from whom she rented it, had told her that early on the morrow he would take it down section by section, load it on the train, and put it together again for her in the next town. In forty-eight hours Benton would be a waste place of board floors, naked frames, debris and sand, ready to be reclaimed by the desert. It would be gone like a hideous nightmare, and no man would ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... tule swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where the Central Pacific railroad begins to climb the sides of the Sierras; and northward, for what I know, the white head of Shasta looking down on Oregon. Three counties, Napa County, Lake County, and Sonoma County, march across its cliffy shoulders. Its naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred feet above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; and the soil, where it is bare, glows warm ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stark mad—and stark naked—on the spirit-rapping imposition. She was found t'other day in the street, clothed only in her chastity, a pocket-handkerchief and a visiting card. She had been informed, it appeared, by the spirits, that if she went out in that trim she would be invisible. She is now in a ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... weaving are among the earliest arts. In the twisting of fibers, hairs, grasses, and sinews by rolling them between the thumb and fingers, palms of the hands, or palms and naked thigh, we have the original of the spinning wheel and the steam-driven cotton spindle; in the roughest plaiting we have the first hint of the finest woven cloth. The need of securing things or otherwise strengthening them then led to binding, fastening, and sewing. The wattle-work hut with its roof ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... parts, and special tendencies; they may then easily discover and account for the multifarious phases, in which it manifested itself in the various epochs of the universal history of mankind. To supply the deficiencies, to adorn those naked propositions, to provide them with evidence deduced from the sacred text, to enlarge them with appropriate applications, to illustrate them with examples, in fine, to reduce the whole into such a ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... Records: Flanders, 226. "I am in hopes to hear from you on the subject of the French prisoners, as to where I am to apply for the money I advance for their subsistence. They are a great number of them almost naked, some entirely so. It is absolutely shocking to humanity to see them. I would purchase some coarse clothing for those that are in the worst state, but know not how far I should be authorised. They are mostly old men and boys." Consul Harward, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... shield, Under the shadow of whose friendly boughs They sit, carousing where their liquor grows. 20 Figs there unplanted through the fields do grow, Such as fierce Cato did the Romans show, With the rare fruit inviting them to spoil Carthage, the mistress of so rich a soil. The naked rocks are not unfruitful there, But, at some constant seasons, every year, Their barren tops with luscious food abound, And with the eggs of various fowls are crown'd. Tobacco is the worst of things, which they ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... the birth of sorrow! This hour's work Will breed proscriptions! Look to your hearths, my lords For there, henceforth, shall sit for household gods, Shapes hot from Tartarus!—all shames and crimes;— Wan Treachery, with his thirsty dagger drawn; Suspicion poisoning his brother's cup; Naked Rebellion, with the torch and axe, Making his wild sport of your blazing thrones; Till Anarchy comes down on you like night, And Massacre seals Rome's eternal grave. I go; but not to leap the gulf alone. I go; but when ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... with a red nose a foot long, riding on a rocking horse and brandishing a dem great cucumber and a tea-tray made into a shield. There was a thundering great drain-pipe mounted on a bullock-cart and a naked man, painted blue, in a cocked-hat, laying an aim and firing a penny-pistol down the middle of it ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... progress. Thus sometimes truth and errour, and sometimes contrarieties of errour, take each other's place by reciprocal invasion. The tide of seeming knowledge which is poured over one generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave mortals again to ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... company sang a psalm, he sang with them, holding up his hands together, and his body upright, his doublet off. He prayed also with the company, but made no speech to them; nor did any other speak to the people. The executioner stood behind him, with a great naked sword in his hand and a linen apron before him, and while the offender was praying the headsman in an instant, at one back-blow, cut off his head, which fell down upon the sand; and some friends took it from the executioner, and carried it away with the body to be buried. Presently ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... its way out. He heard the splash of the muddy clay until the heaviness of it seemed to descend upon his own heart. The shapes and shadows struggled to and fro in his aching brain until they triumphed. Sergeant Wilson, to the naked eye as sane as any man, was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... they would receive sufficient for their support, this is why I speak. In the presence of God and the Queen's representative I say this, because I do not know how to build a house for myself, you see how naked I am, and if I tried to do it my naked body would suffer; again, I do not know how to cultivate the ground for myself, at the same time I quite understand what you have offered ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... visitors of her solitude had talked—as though heavenly counsels could want polyglot interpreters for every word, or that God needed language at all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. Then came a worse devil, who asked her whether the Archangel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her simplicity that it might be the costliness of suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God, who clothed the flowers ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... the second governor of the colony, Captain Hunter, who continued five years in power, and returned to England in the year 1800, after having seen the colony over which he was placed prospering and thriving enough in worldly matters, though in other more important points it continued poor and naked indeed. It was a great object with the new governor to check and restrain that love of liquor, which he saw working so much mischief among his people; and several private stills were found and destroyed, to the great regret of their owners, who made ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... "saw objects three times as near and nine times enlarged." Continuing his efforts, he presently so improved his glass that objects were enlarged almost a thousand times and made to appear thirty times nearer than when seen with the naked eye. Naturally enough, Galileo turned this fascinating instrument towards the skies, and he was almost immediately rewarded by several startling discoveries. At the very outset, his magnifying-glass brought to view a vast number of stars that are invisible to the naked eye, and enabled the observer ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and that, thus fortified by exercise, they might the better support the pangs of child-birth, and be delivered with safety. In order to take away the excessive tenderness and delicacy of the sex, the consequence of a recluse life, he accustomed the virgins occasionally to be seen naked as well as the young men, and to dance and sing in their presence on certain festivals. There they sometimes indulged in a little raillery upon those that had misbehaved themselves, and sometimes they sung encomiums on such as deserved them, thus exciting in the young men a useful ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... spurts of dust and turf flew up from the prairie sod a dozen yards in front, a rifle bullet went singing off through the sunny air, Rabb, his handsome bay, pawed the ground and switched about, and up on the crest, riding boldly in full view, two lithe, naked, painted warriors, war bonnets trailing over their ponies' croups, yelling shrill insult and derision, went tearing away northward, one of them pausing long enough to wave some ragged object on high, and give one ringing, exultant whoop ere he ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... Aurora, by thy starry eyes, And by those golden locks, whose lock none slips, And by the coral of thy rosy lips, And by the naked snows which beauty dyes; I swear by all the jewels of thy mind, Whose like yet never worldly treasure bought, Thy solid ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... great deal said here to-day of "other kinds," and every description of property. There is a naked, clear proposition. Mr. BROWN says it is needed; that the court and the common law do not give ample protection; and then the Senator from Oregon is called upon; but what is his vote? We find, in the vote upon this amendment, that but three Senators voted for it; and the Senator from Oregon ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... epidemics and emergency measures for destroying contagion. He had more confidence in the primitive sanitary value of fire. It worked, no matter how ancient the process of burning things might be. But very many human beings, these days, never saw a naked flame unless in a science class at school, where it might be shown as a spectacularly rapid reaction of oxidation. But people used electricity for heat and light and power. Mankind had moved out of the ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... wholes, this fierce insistence on design, this willingness to leave bare the construction if by so doing the spectator may be helped to a conception of the plan. Critics of the Impressionist age are vexed by the naked bones and muscles of Post-Impressionist pictures. But, for my own part, even though these young artists insisted on a bareness and baldness exceeding anything we have yet seen, I should be far from blaming a band of ascetics who in an age of unorganised ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... bosom. As I always went to bed before her, I was generally sound asleep when she joined me. I used at first to wonder how when I awoke in the early morning my chemise was drawn up close to my neck, and your mother's was in the same state, and our two naked bodies closely united by the embracing arms of your mother. I even one morning found that my hand was held by hers against that part which you are now feeling so nicely. She had fallen asleep in this position, but I could feel that she was as moist there as you have just made me. I could ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... apprehended the power of that monarch, even though he should make a greater effort against her than that of his Invincible Armada. "But I am informed," added she, "that when he attempted this last invasion, some upon the sea-coast forsook their towns, fled up higher into the country, and left all naked and exposed to his entrance: but I swear unto you by God, if I knew those persons, or may know of any that shall do so hereafter, I will make them feel what it is to be so fearful in so urgent a cause."[*] By this menace, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... refused it insolently too, because the wages offered by the professor, though fully equal to those paid by other employers, were less than they chose to consider themselves entitled to. Their wives and children were, by their own admission, naked and starving, and here was an opportunity to clothe and feed them, yet they rejected it scornfully. And naked, starving though the families of these wretches might be and actually were, almost every man ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... wondrous discoveries of the improved telescopes of modern times, we ascertain that upward of several hundred millions of stars exist, that are invisible to the naked eye—the nearest of which is millions of millions of miles from the Earth; and as we have every reason to suppose that every one of this inconceivable number of worlds is peopled like our own, a consideration of this fact—and that we are undoubtedly as superior to these beings as we are to the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... no delusion; my wits were keen and my eyes sharp; there was no fear to make me see things that were not. Softly I stepped to the bed-rail where I had hung my sword by the baldrick, and as softly I unsheathed it. The door was pushed open, and I caught the advance of a stealthy step. A naked foot shot past the edge of the door into my room, and for a second I thought of pinning it to the ground with my rapier; then came a leg, then a half-dressed body surmounted by a ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... trigonometrical way to the topmost stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... quite jet. Her complexion, too, was very dark and bespoke her foreign blood. She was dressed in the most outlandish and extravagant way in which clothes could be put on a child's back. She had great bracelets on her naked little arms, a crimson fillet braided with gold round her head, and scarlet shoes with high heels. Her dress was all flounces and stuck out from her as though the object were to make it lie off horizontally from her little ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... next morning, I tested one drop of the culture under the microscope. Clear and limpid to the naked eye, it was alive with small objects of a most suspicious nature, when properly magnified. I knew those hungry forms. Still, I would not decide offhand on my own authority in a matter of such moment. Sebastian's character was at stake—the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... fellows six years of age; while in the second bed against the opposite wall was Ambroise, now nearly four and quite a little cherub. And the third bed, a cradle, was occupied by Mademoiselle Rose, fifteen months of age and weaned for three weeks past. She lay there half naked, showing her white flowerlike skin, and her mother had to cover her up with the bedclothes, which she had thrust aside with her self-willed little fists. Meantime the father busied himself with Ambroise's ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... naked, but for a ragged loin-cloth, and each man was chained to his neighbour. The hot sun beat brightly upon them, and the negroes ran up and down the gangway and lashed them with whips of hide. They stretched out their lean arms and pulled the heavy ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... an unfortunate man, stripped almost naked, and tied with his face to the wall, while another man stood over him, grasping a strong cow-hide whip, with which, at intervals, he struck the wretched victim, apparently with all the strength that lay in ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... which even a delicate traveller may cross them. In these prospects, colouring is carried to its utmost point of perfection, particularly at the time I found it, variegated with golden touches of autumnal tints; immense cascades mean time bursting from naked mountains on the one side; cultivated fields, rich with vineyards, on the other, and tufted with elegant shrubs that invite one to pluck and carry them away to where they would be treated with much more respect. ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... is very small and entirely out of proportion to the vast buccal capacity. This is a character that might assimilate the balaeniceps to the pelican. The robust head, the neck, and the throat, are covered with slate-colored feathers verging on green, and not presenting the repulsive aspect of the naked skin of the adjutant. As in the latter, the skin of the throat is capable of being dilated so as to form a voluminous pouch. Upon the occiput the feathers are elongated and form a small crest. The body is robust ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... indefinitely, almost infinitely, from this problem of our destiny, all shadow of uncertainty or of doubt. It brings us squarely to the facts in our character. On the force of this Scripture we are borne up on to a platform where we stand with our hearts uncovered and naked before the eye ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... commencement of the water war; which said war was carried out by supplying about a dozen prisoners with as many buckets, which they would fill with great alacrity, and, in succession, throw the contents with great force over the unyielding, from the outside. The effect of this on naked men, bound with chains to iron bars, may be imagined; but the older Choicewest declares it was a cure. It brought steel out of the "rascals," and made them as submissive as shoe-strings. Sometimes the jolly prisoners would make the bath so strong, that the niggers ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... thought of that narrow square-headed doorway through which we must pass before we could effect anything. And the gate, too, troubled me. It might not be a strong one, but we had neither powder, nor guns, nor any siege implements, and could not pull down stone walls with our naked hands. By seizing the horses we could indeed cut off Bruhl's retreat; but he might still escape in the night; and in any case our pains would only increase the women's hardships while adding fuel to his rage. We ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... rose into the higher levels the aspen shook its yellowish leaves in the breeze, and the purple foot-hills gained in majesty. Great new peaks came into view on the right, and the lofty cliffs of the Bear Tooth range loomed in naked grandeur high above the blue-green of the pines which clothed their ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... bare, cheerless, unknown, the year 1863, about to come in! It stretches before me in imagination like some great, gaunt untenanted ruin of a Colosseum, in which no footstep falls, no voice is heard; and by this night year its naked chambers and windows, three hundred and sixty-five in number, will be clothed all over, and hidden by myself as if with covering ivies. Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... after defeat a man is frank with himself. Whatever he may have pretended before he puts his love to the test, however he may have blinded himself as to his real feelings and beliefs before he offers his heart, after the event has ended unfavourably his real soul stands naked before him and, according to his character, he decides whether himself or the girl is the fool. Grimbal criticised his own audacity with scanty compassion now; and the thought of the tears of Chris made him clench one hand and smash it hard again and again into ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Shoka had joined the party, and no inducement that I could offer brought me more volunteers. I was very unwilling to delay, and I was on the point of subdividing among the men I already had the two extra loads, when two stray shepherds turned up, half famished and naked, with long unkempt heads of hair, and only a coral necklace and a silver bangle by way of clothing. I quickly secured them, and although one was really only a boy, I decided to trust to luck and take Dr. Wilson's assurance that he looked tough enough and ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss her naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself be kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she replied with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous: 'Let ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and desolate her own soil. The proclamation of President Lincoln, however, decided her course. The convention had obdurately refused, week after week, to pass the ordinance of secession. Now the naked question was, whether Virginia should fight with or against her sisters of the Gulf States. She was directed to furnish her quota of the seventy-five thousand troops called for by President Lincoln, and must decide at once. On the 17th of April, 1861, accordingly, an ordinance of secession ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... went down. Half-way her naked feet brushed the needles. She looked over her shoulder, behind and down. Then, teeth clenched, she lowered herself steadily as she had learned to do in the school gymnasium, down, down, until her legs came ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... scattered here and there relieved the eye; a few holly-bushes, singly and in groups, proudly displayed their bright dark leaves and red berries; and one unrivalled hemlock, on the west, threw its graceful shadow quite across the lawn, on which, as on itself, the white chimney-tops, and the naked branches of oaks and elms, was the faint ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in which we found ourselves was the most gloomy and majestic that I have ever seen. On either side naked precipices rose sheer up for a thousand feet or more, converging upon each other so as to leave a very narrow slit of daylight above us, which was further reduced by the feathery fringe of palm trees and aloes which hung over ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it is our profession. So go and die, or get shot to pieces, or lose some arms and legs, as it may happen.' The business of the soldiers is to obey; they must back up the policies of their country, right or wrong. But do those who send them into danger ever get hurt? Not to the naked eye." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, 'love thy neighbour,' what came of it?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. "It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, 'Catch several hares and you won't catch one.' Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... breeze her heavy masses of hair stirred luringly. He felt its silken caress on his half-naked shoulder, and in his ears the blood began to pound with ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... left us bare and naked the next morning; and if the French sharpshooters pick us down now, devil mend them for wasting powder, for if they look in the orderly books, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... difference in the effect upon those who come through. Time after time, for eighteen months, I made my regular trips into hell—into a hell more revolting than mid-Victorian evangelists ever pictured to spellbound, quaking sinners. Never in this world had there been a parallel to the naked dangers and nauseous discomforts of that western front; never so prolonged an agony of head-splitting noises, lacerations of human flesh, smells that turned the body sick, blasphemies that made the soul grow hard, frenzied efforts ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... suggestion. Taking their pistols from the capstern, they rushed down with their cutlasses, and leaving two men to guard the cabin door, they were soon among the crew, who were all naked in their hammocks: the resistance, although the numbers were more than double of the English, was of course trifling. In a few minutes, the Spaniards were all thrown down into the hold of the vessel, and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of less note came one frail form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Aclaeon-like, and now he fled astray, With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts along that rugged way Pursued, like raging hounds, their father ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... up the canal, and finally discovered a naked arm waving frantically from behind a barn that stood near the water. "They must be behind that barn," said Tom. "Why, the mosquitoes will eat 'em alive. I'll take their clothes to them right away." So saying, Tom gathered up the shirts, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... while mercy's gate stands open: remember that the day is coming when thou, though now lusty and well, must lie at the gates of death, as I do; and what wilt thou then do, if thou shalt be found with a naked soul to meet the cherubims with their flaming swords? Yea, what wilt thou then do if death and hell shall come to visit thee, and thou in thy sins and under the ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... work of the whale-boat was to take the "return" boys and their trade-boxes ashore. Thus one danger was removed. While this was being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked savages. And when I say naked, I mean naked. Not one vestige of clothing did they have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and shell armlets be accounted clothing. The head man in the canoe was an old chief, one-eyed, reputed to be friendly, and so dirty that ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... moment's thought for himself, save, as he swears, the thought that he must die to save the Secretary; without a weapon of any description, with a bravery never surpassed in the annals of any country, he opposed his naked hands, his wounded and enfeebled body, to the terrible knife of the gigantic and desperate murderer. He seized the assassin just as the deadly knife was about to bury itself in the throat of the Secretary, and then commenced an unequal struggle which seemingly ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... had probably settled on the slopes or in the valleys of Ararat where he planted a vineyard. On one occasion at least he fell under the intoxicating influence of the fermented wine. This man upon whom God had conferred such great favor and who alone preserved the race alive lay naked and helpless ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... you see, my boy, that your way of living is so much against you that you couldn't really help him? A man's naked word is worth just what his friends and neighbors will allow him for it, and ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... plate that was considered to possess a fine finish, and similar had produced good impressions; these same plates, when subjected to a long and light buffing, would present a surface no finer in appearance to the naked eye; but upon exposure to the solar radiation, would produce a well-defined image in one fourth less time than the plate without ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... jist about give up one half its skin, and wriggle itself slick out of the other, rayther than go for to put our dander up at this present identical out-and-out important critical crisis! I conceit their min'stry have got jist about into as considerable a tarnation nasty fix, as a naked nigger in the stocks when the mosquitoes are steaming up a little beyond high pressure. I guess Prince Albert and the big uns don't find their seats quite as soft as buttered eels in a mud bank! Look here—isn't it considerable clear they're all funking like burnt Cayenne ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... cannot wholly conquer shame. We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more things ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... festival of the rustic god Faunus; and now there was added a sacrifice of goats, which seem to have been his favourite victims (kids in Hor. Odes, iii. 18). The luperci, who had formerly run round the hill quite naked, as in many rites of the kind (see p. 491), now girt themselves with the skins of the goats, in order to increase their "religious force" in keeping away the wolves, with strength derived from ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Constitution itself is the law of the privilege and of the exception to it; that the exception is expressed in the Constitution, and that the Constitution gives effect to the act of suspension when the conditions occur; that the conditions consist of two matters of fact—one a naked matter of fact; and the other a matter-of-fact conclusion from facts: that is to say, rebellion and the public danger, or the requirement of public safety." By these words Mr. Binney intends to imply that the Constitution itself gave the privilege of ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... on deck and line up for review. The fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus, in nature's garb, we gave three cheers for the German flag on the Choising. The men of the Choising told us afterward 'We couldn't make out what that meant, those stark-naked fellows all cheering.' The sea was too high, and we had to wait two days before we could board the Choising on December 16, 1914. We took very little with us; the schooner was taken in tow. In the afternoon ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... released us. They had taken the packs, the rifle and ammunition, our medicine kit and the few instruments we had brought with us down the shaft, even our clothing. They turned us loose stark naked. Ray's face and neck went beet-red when he saw Mildred ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... the soul was taught as a duty; and to make the body beautiful by right exercise and by right life became a science. The sculptor must have models approaching perfection, and the exhibition of the sculptor's work, together with occasional public religious processions of naked youths, kept before the people ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... relations and its rights'—and saying this, as he held the solitary candle aloft in the doorway, he nodded towards the coffin, whose large black form was faintly traceable against the shadows beyond—'you will rejoice; and being clothed upon with your house from on high, you will not be found naked. On the other hand, he that loveth corruption shall have enough thereof. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... cares, they had sunk in deep. 'We speak of life as a journey,' he said, 'but how differently is that journey performed! Some are borne along their path in luxury and ease; while some must walk it with naked feet, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... concert at the Albert Hall they had encountered Mallory in the vestibule of the Mansions, and the naked misery stamped upon his face ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... a slam! And that is the naked truth concerning this celebrated Intercepted Letter. Majesty answered explosively, —his poor heart being in a burdened and grieved condition, not unlike growing a haunted one,—"I have had enough of that stuff before!" ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... suspense, during which Rene dared hardly to breathe, they shot into smooth waters, rounded a point of land, and saw before them the village of which they were in search. On the beach in front of it a crowd of savage figures, nearly naked, were dancing wildly, and ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... native barbarousness and learned to speak with our tongues the mighty things of God. And next we clad you with the goodly garments of philosophy, rhetoric and dialectic, of which we had and have a store, while ye were naked as a tablet to be painted on. For all the household of philosophy are clothed with garments, that the nakedness and rawness of the intellect may be covered. After this, providing you with the fourfold wings of the quadrivials that ye might be winged like the seraphs and so mount ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... to our left in the direction in which the tracks led. We had only been in our new position half an hour when Nikolai, my head hunter, gripped my arm and pointed high up on the mountain in the direction in which we had been watching. There I made out a small black speck, which to the naked eye appeared but a bit of dark rock protruding through the snow. Taking the glasses I made out a large bear slowly floundering ahead, and evidently coming downward. His coat seemed very dark against the white background, and he was unquestionably a bull of great size. Shortly ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... to witness the gradual outer approach between Ulysses and Nausicaa, till it becomes internal, and ends in a strong feeling of friendship if not in a warmer emotion. The wanderer, almost naked, with only "a branch of thick leaves bound about his loins," comes forth from his hiding place, a frightful object to ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... at all but they would make some money. There is a chance when making purchases or hiring horses for his Honour. But thou art capable of scorning every gain—nay, even of bestowing all thy goods!—for the sake of a fine friendship which may leave thee naked." ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... protector should have died. Such a proceeding would have been strictly in accordance with Maori law of muru, and would be understood as a complimentary testimonial to the dead man's dignity. But it would have meant to the white men the loss of all their possessions, and the being left naked and destitute in ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... hours, and battled bravely, but finally had to retire. For fifteen hours he fought the squadron of Seville, five great galleons, with ten more to back them. Crippled by many wounds, he kept the upper deck. Nothing was to be seen but the naked hull of a ship, and that almost a skeleton. She had received 800 shot of great artillery, some under water. The deck was covered with the limbs and carcases of forty valiant men. The rest were all wounded and painted with their own blood. Her masts had been shot overboard. All her tackle was cut ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the boy was hidden at the roadside. So he reeled on and on, and so he came at last to the great pine. There he turned out and crawled as much as walked through the trees and undergrowth to the summit of a low ridge, where he felt the sunshine fall on his half-naked back. It was so luxurious that he paused in the full glare of it, and slowly turned, as one very cold before a warming fire, and reveled in it. With every moment he felt it pouring into him, tingling softly as it ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... as the condition of peace, it be required of us to forego the unquestionable right of treating with an independent power of our own continent upon matters highly interesting to both, and that upon a naked and unsustained pretension of claim by a third power to control the free will of the power with whom we treat, devoted as we may be to peace and anxious to cultivate friendly relations with the whole world, the Executive does ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... room in which the creatures are put to death, scalded, and japanned presents, as may be imagined, a most horrid scene of massacre and blood,—of steaming water and flabby, naked, quivering hogs,—of men in oil-skin suits all shining with wet and grease. The rest of the establishment is perfectly clean and agreeable. The moment the body of the animal is emptied, a boy inundates it from a hose, and then another boy pushes it along the wire from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... of heat. The mob, surprised, then frightened, stared upward. The soft tropical foliage in a great wide swath was dead, with naked sticks of limbs. Black, then turning white. Not with heat—but cold. Ice was forming from the moisture in the humid air. And then the sudden condensation brought snow—a thick white fall of it sifting down into the palm-laden ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings |
