"Pricking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was pricking on the plaine, Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, The cruell marks of many a bloody fielde; Yet armes till that time did he never wield. His angry steede did chide his foming bitt, As much ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... of this ring," she said: "it is more precious than diamonds; every time you do a bad deed it will prick your finger, but if, in spite of its pricking, you go on in your own evil way, you will lose my friendship, and I shall become ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... Tea, and vomiting it up again, as clear as they drink it. This is a Custom amongst all those that can procure that Plant, in which manner they take it every other Morning, or oftner; by which Method they keep their Stomachs clean, without pricking the Coats, and straining Nature, as every Purge is an Enemy to. Besides, the great Diuretick Quality of their Tea carries off a great deal, that perhaps might prejudice their Health, by Agues, and Fevers, which all watry Countries are addicted to; for which reason, I believe, it is, that the ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... to the coat of each bridegroomsman a wedding favour, which he returns by pinning one also on her shoulder. Every "favour" is carefully furnished with two pins for this purpose; and it is amazing to see the flutter, the coquettish smiling, and the frequent pricking of fingers, which the performance of this piquant and pleasant duty of the wedding bachelors and ladies "in waiting" ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... many others, even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... stood low and red in the north, and sent its feeble light obliquely across the broken ice-surface. I looked out sharply in all directions over the hummocks, which cast long, many-shaped shadows; but I could distinguish nothing in this confusion. We went on, 'Caiaphas' first, growling and barking and pricking his ears, and I after him, expecting every moment to see a bear loom up in front of us. Our course was eastward along the opening. The dog presently began to go more cautiously and straighter forward; then he stopped making any noise except a low ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... classical warrant than this method, a favourite one, it appears, of Mother Demdike, but in which Anne Redfern had the greatest skill of any of these Pendle witches, of victimizing by moulding and afterwards pricking or burning figures of clay representing the individual whose life was aimed at. Horace, Lib. i. Sat. 8, mentions ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... it is for me. The Mother Prioress wants me. Good, now I am pricking myself on the tongue of my buckle. Monsieur Madeleine, don't stir from here, and wait for me. Something new has come up. If you are hungry, there is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the painful prayers that he made upon the cross, where, for all the torment that he hanged in—of beating, nailing, and stretching out all his limbs, with the wresting of his sinews and breaking of his tender veins, and the sharp crown of thorns so pricking him into the head that his blessed blood streamed down all his face—in all these hideous pains, in all their cruel despites, yet two very devout and fervent prayers he made. One was for the pardon of those who so dispiteously put him to his pain, and the other about his own deliverance, ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... him, crying, "Whoa! Whoa!" It seemed that the faster he ran the faster Twinkleheels drew away from him. So Johnnie soon fell into a walk. At last Twinkleheels stopped and waited for him, pricking up his ears at Johnnie's whistle. Now, however, he wouldn't let Johnnie get within a ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... his head and pricking forward his great ears, Harry Mule opened his eyes, and looked at the girl for a moment so earnestly that she almost thought he was going to speak to her. Then the big, wondering eyes were closed again, and the shaggy head sank ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... season for collecting and drying herbs came, Georgia and I had opportunity to be together considerably. It was after we had picked the first drying of sage and were pricking our fingers on the saffron pods, that grandma, in passing, with her apron full of Castilian rose petals, stopped and announced that if we would promise to work well, and gather the sage leaves and saffron tufts as often as necessary, she would let us go to a "real school" which was ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... holding a spear; or a lady with dogs, in the costume of the day; and in one place she is a nymph, if not Diana herself, gazing at her naked feet before her attendants loosen her tunic for her to take the bath, and her hounds are pricking their ears, and you see antlers of a stag behind a block of stone. She was a wonderful swimmer, among other things, and one early morning, when she was a girl, she did really swim, they say, across the Shannon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the gardens behind Curzon Street, was more actively effervescent, and the "bare, leafless choirs" of the trees, which had been empty of song all winter, were once more resonant with feathered worshippers. Through the tussocks of the grey grass of last year were pricking the vivid shoots of green, and over the grove of young birches and hazel the dim, purple veil of spring hung mistlike. Down by the water-edge of the Penn ponds they strayed, where moor-hens scuttled out of rhododendron bushes ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... lady sat pricking a framed canvas in the drawing-room of Kent Villa, a mile from Gravesend; she was making, at a cost of time and tinted wool, a chair cover, admirably unfit to be sat upon—except by some severe artist, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... she cannot wait. She wants to be shown at every moment that some one is thinking kindly of her, is making little, kind plots and plans for her, is wishing to ward off from her the chill winds, to keep from pricking her the thorns of the roses, to shut out from her the shadows of life and let in the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... fair, fat baby; and while her teeth were pricking through, like little pointed pearls, Susy's front teeth were dropping out. Then she grew to be a toddling child; and while she was learning to walk, Prudy was beginning to sew patchwork. For time does not stand still; it passed, minute by minute, over the heads of Susy, Prudy, and Alice, as ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... price, no matter when, no matter whom, no matter where, was a matter of duty. Every member of the Mohawk Club was bound to possess an accomplishment. One was "a dancing master;" that is to say he made the rustics frisk about by pricking the calves of their legs with the point of his sword. Others knew how to make a man sweat; that is to say, a circle of gentlemen with drawn rapiers would surround a poor wretch, so that it was impossible for him not to turn his back upon some one. The gentleman behind him chastised him for ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... well as her family, he had previously known. On the twenty-eighth of January, in the presence of the curate of Saint Martin and of the chaplain of the Bellesme hospital, the following incident occurred. As the child could not sew without pricking herself with the needle, nor use scissors without wounding her hands, they set her to shelling peas, placing a large basket before her. As soon as her dress touched the basket, and she reached her hand to begin work, the basket was violently repulsed, and the peas projected upwards ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... shaft cannot be found, then give it up with good grace, remembering that after all it is pleasant work to make one. Dedicate it to the cause of archery with the hope that in future days some one may pick it up and, pricking his finger on the barb, become inoculated with the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... next evening after he came on board, Dag Daughtry talked it over with him. Michael sat on his haunches, the length of his lower jaw resting on Daughtry's knee, the while his eyes dilated, contracted and glowed, his ears ever pricking and repricking to listen, his stump tail thumping ecstatically on ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the helpless terror of London, is scarcely credible in modern days. Wild bands of drunken men nightly infested the streets, attacking and ill-using every passer-by. A favourite pastime was to surround their victim with drawn swords, pricking him on every side as he endeavoured to escape. Many persons were maimed and dangerously wounded. Gay, in his Trivia, has noted some of their more innocent practical ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... blinded snails to prowl the soggy, slimy night, With a feeler pricking out at every pore For the death that stalks in darkness, or the blinking stab of light, And the other ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... a full hour before he was conscious that he lived. At first he felt nothing but a dull quickening throb within his body. His feet and hands were ice-cold, and he swayed from side to side, feeling for his strength. Then came the pricking of ten thousand tiny needles in his limbs. His heart beat as though it would burst its prison. His whole frame quivered. His bristles stood stiff-pointed from their roots. As the heart-throb slowed, his muscles slackened and obeyed his will, but yet he felt that something was ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... under the white foam of the fall, and for a brief space there was heavy silence emphasized by the song of hurrying water and the drumming of a blue-grouse on the summit of a fir. Helen Savine fancied she could hear the assembly breathing unevenly, and felt a pricking among the roots of her hair, while she struggled with an impulse which prompted her to cry aloud or in any wild fashion to break the torturing suspense. Jean Graham, whose eyes were wide with apprehension, noted that her ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... metatarso-phalangeal articulation, and then bifurcating so as to surround the base of the toe at the normal fold of the skin. The soft parts are then to be cleared from the metatarso-phalangeal joint, and the toe still being retained on the metatarsal bone, it should be carefully dissected up, avoiding any pricking of the soft parts below, till the joint is reached, or the spot at which the bone-pliers are to be applied ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... was enjoying a morning nap, a pair of little feet went pricking over the floor, towards the girls' room, but soon returned, and ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... cannot be too careful about examining your bed before venturing to lie down, and your clothing before you dress;—for various disagreeable things might be hiding in them: a spider large as a big crab, or a scorpion or a mabouya or a centipede,—or certain large ants whose bite burns like the pricking of a red-hot needle. No one who has lived in St. Pierre is likely to forget the ants.... There are three or four kinds in every house;—the fourmi fou (mad ant), a little speckled yellowish creature whose ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... sadness reserved for the one who is left behind. For the one who sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though the new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely a bed of thornless roses, the pricking of the thorns provides distraction to the mind from the sheer, undiluted ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... was not precisely the same among all the Indian tribes. The Pawnee sign for "wolf" was the first finger of each hand stuck up alongside the head, like ears pricking. But it was a sign easily read. All the signs were sensible and initiative. When the "future" was meant, the finger was thrust ahead with a screwing motion, as if boring; when the "past" was meant, the hand and finger were ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... go on; but less for your sake than my own:—my skin is hot, And there's an arid pricking in my veins; their currents clot: Tears sometimes soothe such fever, where the letting of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... superstitious practice called envoutement, which, according to M. Leon de Laborde, was well known in France in 1316, and subsisted until the sixteenth century. In 1330 the famous Robert d'Artois, upon retiring to Brabant, occupied himself with pricking waxen images which represented King Philip VI., his brother-in- law, and the Queen, his sister. (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, vol. xv. p. 426.) During the League the enemies of Henri III. and the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... being angry, fell into a merry mood, and began to frisk about in divers directions, first running under the bed, then springing upon some diminutive object on the floor as it would upon a mouse, and finally pricking again the ear of the fawn. The fawn then rose up, and creeping gently about the room, touched the cheeks or hands of the slumbering inmates with its velvet tongue, but so softly that none were awakened. The kitten, no longer able to annoy its companion by its mischievous pranks, now paced ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... conscience pricking a bit for thus visiting the house of honest folks when they are away, for you know how all good housewives dislike to have people prying about, especially in the upper chambers—at ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... waited for it, listened for it—longed for it, I know now. I heard the passing of its feet upon the bridge, the tapping of its hand upon the door, three times—tap, tap, tap. I felt my loins grow cold, and a pricking pain about my head; and I gripped my chair with both hands, and waited, and again there came the tapping—tap, tap, tap. I rose and slipped the bolt of the door leading to the other room, and again I waited, and again there came the tapping—tap, tap, tap. Then I opened ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... which a moment before had been all indignation, suddenly sprang into the most alert attention. There was a visible pricking up of ears as the preacher entered into his subject. He spoke first of the benefits of sleep, what it did for the worn human body and the weary human soul, then turning off into a half-humorous, half-quizzical strain, which was often ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... once more of the fact that my horses had not yet forgotten their panic in that river drift of two hours ago. There was a strawstack in the centre of the field; at least the shape of the big, white mound suggested a strawstack; and the trail led closely by it. Sharp shadows showed, and the horses, pricking their ears, began to dance and to sidle away from it as we passed along ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... inflammation thus induced; next, when the pain had somewhat subsided, creating a sore on the back by removal of the skin; and then, after comfortably seating himself in his physiological laboratory by the side of his victim, scientifically picking, and piercing, and pricking the wound, without respite— constantly, without ceasing—until the blinded and deafened and tortured creature is driven into frenzy by torments which it felt continually, which it could not comprehend, and from which, by no exertion, it was able to ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... Roberts bitterly. "We shall have the enemy behind us, stirring us up, and we shan't be able to get on without pricking up the ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... home he did not like to work. It must be judged that his mind was affected by a certain indolence, that he was capable enough when he addressed himself to any particular task, but not self-disposed to exertion. He felt no constant, pricking incitement to do his best; but was content to do fairly well, as well as was necessary for the immediate occasion. One of his comrades in the academy said in later years that he remembered him as "a very uncle-like sort ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... took no notice whatever. He was not guilty, therefore he provoked no curiosity; he was not handsome, therefore he attracted no attention. As lonely and heart sick his head reclined amid the velvet cushions, whose silken threads seemed each a pricking thorn to give him pain, Eugene's resolves of vengeance deepened into vows, and he swore an oath of enmity against his mother's enemies, which long ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... became at once an additional point from which light streamed. There was no thunder, but a low hissing and a crackling which did not amount to noise, although distinctly audible to all. Sensations most unpleasant of pricking and general irritation were felt by every one, according to ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... of the strength of a giant in Isabelle's behalf. Making a prodigious effort, he suddenly increased his speed, and coming up with the two horsemen, who were a little behind the other one, quickly disposed of them, by vigorously pricking their horses' flanks with the point of his sword; for, what with fright and pain, the animals, after plunging violently, threw off all restraint and bolted—dashing off across country as if the devil were after them, and carrying ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... dissected the philosophy of mirth in the same style and with the same effect that the boy in the story dissected his grandmamma's bellows to see how the wind was raised. I agree with Spout that wit and humor are glorious; that satire, pricking the balloons of conceit, vain glory, and hypocrisy, is invaluable; that a good laugh can come only from a warm heart; that the man in motley is often wiser than the judge in ermine or the priest in lawn. These qualities are goodly in literature. We all love the kindly humorist ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... utmost rigour. He could appeal to a great invisible cruel brain and demand assistance for his own limited desire for revenge, knowing that it was an attribute of those whose help he sought, but he went in fear, with pricking nerves, because his belief was strong in the power of the monsters ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... behind the tea-table with a little inward pricking of conscience for wishing him gone. She wondered if he deemed her inhospitable, but if he did he disguised it very carefully, for his eyes held nothing but friendliness as ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... HUDIBRAS, whose stubborn blows Deny'd his bones that soft repose, Lay still expecting worse and more, Stretch'd out at length upon the floor; 1330 And though he shut his eyes as fast As if h' had been to sleep his last, Saw all the shapes that fear or wizards Do make the Devil wear for vizards, And pricking up his ears, to hark 1335 If he cou'd hear too in the dark, Was first invaded with a groan And after in a feeble tone, These trembling words: Unhappy wretch! What hast thou gotten by this fetch; 1340 For all thy tricks, in this new trade, Thy holy brotherhood o' th' blade? By sauntring still ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... lions, so it was with considerable difficulty that they were led past the rock which was blackened with a puddle of blood. The horses snorted, dilating their nostrils and stretching their necks towards the blood-stained stones; nevertheless, when the donkey, only pricking his ears a little, passed by calmly, they also passed on. Night had already fallen; they nevertheless rode over half a mile, and halted only in a place where the ravine widened again into a small amphitheatrical vale, overgrown with dense thorns and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... references to money-matters have been designedly slight throughout these pages. It is not my habit to keep accounts. I have never found that you get any money back by knowing just how you have spent it, and a conscience-pricking record of expenses is very ungrateful reading. So, when a certain beautiful evening came, I felt that I had to look upon it as my last. Being too early for the train, I bid the man drive about in the early summer dark for three-quarters ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... brow, as she sat leaning her head on her hand, and looking away off, as if over thousands of miles. Her pretty pale fingers were purple with working on hospital shirts and drawers, and bloody with pricking through the slipper soles for the wounded men. She was the most untiring and energetic of all the young people; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and drew his revolver. The bullet would do quickly what the cold would accomplish after lingering hours of torture, yet, facing those pricking ears and the trust of the eyes, he was blinded by a mist and could not aim. He had to place the muzzle of the gun against the roan's temple and pull the trigger. When he turned his back he was the only living thing within the ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... alliance, it was agreed that Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis in marriage to Ishtuvigu, or, as the Greeks called him, Astyages, the son of Cyaxares.** According to the custom of the times, the two contracting parties, after taking the vow of fidelity, sealed the compact by pricking each other's arms and sucking the few drops of blood which oozed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... disgust sat on almost every countenance. The figures passing and repassing, rendered more ghastly by the pallid lights, and who in a slow, sepulchral voice pronounced only the word—Death; others calculating if they should have time to go to dinner before they gave their verdict; women pricking cards with pins in order to count the votes; some of the deputies fallen asleep, and only waking up to give their sentence,—all this had the appearance rather of a hideous dream than ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Nor would it be fair to call him even a sceptic, for that implies a dogma of hopelessness and definite belief in unbelief. But it would be strictly just to describe him at this time, at any rate, as a merely destructive person. He was one whose main business was, in his own view, the pricking of illusions, the stripping away of disguises, and even the destruction of ideals. He was a sort of anti-confectioner whose whole business it was to take the gilt off ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... tightened on the reins ever so little, and the pony pricking up its ears moved away with scarcely a sound, as if realizing that extreme caution were ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... take the kitten off my back!" she said, laughing and squirming. "She's tickling me with her whiskers. Oh, ow!" She was reduced to helpless mirth, stooping her head, reaching up futilely for the kitten, who had retreated to the nape of her neck and was pricking sharp little pin-pointed claws through to the skin. The children danced about chiming out peals of laughter. The dog barked excitedly, standing on his hind-legs, and pawing first at one and then at another. Then Paul looked at the clock, and they ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... to feed our half-starved horses and give us some breakfast. My noble Selim sorely needed food and grooming, and I could not but wish for a few days of rest for him. He had been my companion in many a wild dash, and had learned to respond to my patting of his finely-arched neck with a pricking up of his ears and a toss of his head, as much as to say, "I am ready." When first I formed Selim's acquaintance he was wild and self-willed, and, as already related, gave me a blow upon the knee from which I have not yet entirely recovered. But I had long ago forgiven him this unkindness, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times of the Regency, "boxed the Charlies," broke windows, and stole knockers—used to find a cruel pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound citizen and pricking him with their swords. Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de Coverley as much afraid of these night-birds as Swift himself; and the old baronet congratulates himself on escaping from the clutches of "the emperor and his ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sentiments which lurk like moles underneath the visible surface of manners, and may have been kept alive by Eustacia's entreaty to the captain, at the time that he had intended to prosecute Susan for the pricking in church, to let the matter drop; which he accordingly ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... to-day I insist upon his bringing them along at once. In fact, my hobby in life is other people's feet; I have fitted a hundred pairs of them with socks and with boots, and I have assisted personally at the pricking of their blisters and the trimming of their excrescences. What a fall from our intellectual heights! But so it is with us, Bill; if we can once get those boys' feet in sound marching order, all the nice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... soon"—was Miss Clairville's inward thought, as with new fears pricking at her heart she kept silence, so unusual a thing with her that the garrulous Renaud observed it and endeavoured to correct ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... in shades of the night, His ears pricking up, and his hoofs striking light, And his tail whisking round, in ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... book itself. There are those who think that the precious time of so remarkable a writer, and profound a thinker as George Plechanoff is simply wasted in pricking Anarchist wind-bags. But, unfortunately, there are many of the younger, or of the more ignorant sort, who are inclined to take words for deeds, high-sounding phrases for acts, mere sound and fury for revolutionary activity, and who are too young or too ignorant to know that ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... foresight. In the work of unhitching the mate, he should have encountered, and had expected, trouble from the black. But he did not. The mare sounded another friendly nicker when arranged beside him, and the black, pricking up his ears sharply, turned to her and proceeded to establish his friendship by licking her. So Felipe did not meet with difficulty from that direction; nor did he have trouble in the direction of the team-mate ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... in connection with the cord be pricked, the pain which arises will appear to have its seat in the finger just as distinctly as before. Nay, if the whole arm be cut off, the pain which arises from pricking the nerve stump will appear to be seated in the fingers, just as if they were still connected with ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... pricking up his ears like an ancient hunter at the cry of the hounds, would gladly have scoured the Strand, with the charitable purpose, now he saw himself so well supported, of knocking the London knaves, who had insulted him, into twiggen bottles; but he ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... we sat smoking by the fire, we noticed that the two horses were extremely nervous, pricking their ears and snorting as they cropped the dry grasses a few yards away ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... curiosity you are, my good friend!" said de Jars, leaning one elbow on the table, and twirling the points of his moustache with his hand; "but if I were to wrap my secret round the point of a dagger would you not be too much afraid of pricking your fingers ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not hold hate, yet the thought of divorce from Josephine was palliated in his own mind by the thought that she had first suggested it. "I took her at her word," he once said to Bertram, as if the thing were pricking him. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... grown involuntarily restless, and when her last tragic whisper ceased all his body seemed shaken with a terrible violence of his joy. He strode to and fro in the dark shadow of the stone. The receding blood left him cold, with a pricking, sickening sensation over his body, but there seemed to be an overwhelming tide accumulating deep in his breast—a tide of passion and pain. He dominated the passion, but the ache remained. And he returned to the quiet figure on ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... declared his determination not to marry in the presence of several venerable matrimony-mongers, and the result was, that so many slanders were got up against him, that his church became a bed of thorns continually pricking him. "My heart, which heaven can bear witness, is tender enough, became overburdened with grief," said he, his eyes filling with tears, as he wiped the sweat from his sun-burned brow, "for it seemed as if the whole ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... believed that I should be unable to endure the torture and retain my reason. A peculiar pricking sensation which I now felt in my brain, a sensation exactly like that of June, 1900, led me to believe that I might again be thrown out of touch with the world I had so lately regained. Realizing the awfulness of that fate, I redoubled my efforts to effect my rescue. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... d'Alcacer's arm and led him to the side of the Cage furthest from the corner in which Mr. Travers' bed was placed, while Lingard busied himself in pricking up the wick of the Cage lantern as if it had suddenly occurred to him that this, whatever happened, should not be a deed of darkness. Mr. Travers did nothing but turn his head ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of these that had no hole in them, I carefully opened with my Knife, and found in them a good large round white Maggot, almost as bigg as a small Pea, which seem'd shap'd like other Maggots, but shorter. I could not find them to move, though I ghess'd them to be alive, because upon pricking them with a Pinn, there would issue out a great deal of white mucous matter, which seem'd to be from a voluntary contraction of their skin; their husk or matrix consisted of three Coats, like the barks of Trees, the outermost being more rough and spongie, and the thickest, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... one her articles of dress Were laid aside; but not before she offer'd Her aid to fair Juanna, whose excess Of modesty declined the assistance proffer'd: Which pass'd well off—as she could do no less; Though by this politesse she rather suffer'd, Pricking her fingers with those cursed pins, Which surely were invented ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... pricking quills," they called. "Blackbanded father, we seek your aid. Look now! The Mother-maidens of Seed whose substance is the food alike of thy people and our people, have fled away. Neither our grandfather the Eagle, nor his younger ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... which lived under the dead leaves of the prickly 'Spaniard,' and possibly fed on the roots. The Spaniard leaves forked into stiff upright fingers about 1 in. wide, ending in an exceedingly stiff pricking point." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... explosives about the size of a musket cartridge. To each of these explosives is fastened a barbed needle which serves the purpose of attaching them to the bull by running the needle into the skin. Before the animal is turned loose a lot of these explosives are attached to him. The pain from the pricking of the skin by the needles is exasperating; but when the explosions of the cartridges commence the animal becomes frantic. As he makes a lunge towards one horseman, another runs a spear into him. He turns towards his last tormentor when a man on foot holds out ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... from his father, he seemed to have made others share it with him. He was riding onward abstractedly, with his head sunk on his breast and his eyes fixed upon some vague point between his horse's sensitive ears, when a sudden, intelligent, forward pricking of them startled him, and an apparition arose from the plain before him that seemed to sweep all other ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... had come. Splinters of glass, sharp splinters of glass, first pricking, then piercing, then tearing her heart. Her heart closed down on the splinters of glass, cutting itself ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... languidly. It needs The pricking of a vein to make the heart Beat, and the sluggish rivers flow. I have brought A lance for it. I'll let a little blood. Not over-much; enough, enough to set ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... sudden wild inclination to use his own arms and legs in a way he had never before known or dreamed of, yet that seemed curiously familiar. The balance and adjustment of his physical frame sought to shift and alter; neck and shoulders, as it were, urged forward; there came a singular pricking in the loins, a rising of the back, a thrusting up and outwards of the chest. He felt that something grew behind him with a power that sought to impel or drive him in advance and out across the world at a terrific gait; and the hearing of his ears ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the rent clouds. Her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and her country instincts, a little overlaid by the urban experiences of the last few years, came again to the surface. She felt the fresh, cool radiation from outlying, upturned fields, the faint, sad odors from dim stretches of pricking grain and quickening leaf, and wondered if at Los Cuervos it might be possible to reproduce the peculiar verdure of her native district. She beguiled her fancy by an ambitious plan of retrieving their fortunes by farming; her comfortable ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... a bit of a slim thing"—he made an odd embracing gesture with his arm—"the size that you could pick up with one hand and set on your knee as if she was a child"—the duke remained still, knowing this was only the beginning and pricking up his ears as he took a rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the "Ladies" in the neighborhood, and as hastily waved them aside—"a bit of a thing that some way seems to mean it all to you—and moves the world?" The conclusion was one which brought the incongruous ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his music picturesque and colorful. The childish, absurd Tsar in "Le Coq d'or," who desires only to lie abed all day, eat delicate food, and listen to the fairy tales of his nurse, is, after all, something of a portrait of the composer. For all its gay and opulent exterior, its pricking orchestral timbres, his work is curiously objective and crystallized, as though the need that brought it forth had been small and readily satisfied. None of Rimsky's scores is really lyrical, deeply moving. The music of "Tsar Saltan," for instance, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... enough, it was at that moment expressing itself in regret and compunction. Since the dawn, that morning, she had been unable to sleep. The strong light, the pricking air, had kept her wakeful; and she had been employing her time in writing to her mother, who was also ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from the end of the pole of a wagon, with her children tied dangling at her heels. The men, for want of trees, tied themselves, some to the horns of the oxen, others by the neck to their legs, that so pricking them on, by the starting and springing of the beasts, they might be torn and trodden to pieces. Yet for all they thus massacred themselves, above sixty thousand were taken prisoners, and those that were slain were said to be ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... near dropping the lamp. Strange and weird it sounded, gradually growing shriller and more terrible to hear! It was the voice of my stepmother. Was she dreaming? And had Rayel seen the vision that affrighted her? Was that dagger pricking her brain? In a moment the swelling cry broke into a sharp scream, such as might come from one exposed to sudden peril, and ceased. Then the sound of a bell rang sharply through the house, followed by loud knocking at the ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... our yellow friend, the cat, lay upon the hearth-rug, basking in the warmth of the fire, pricking up her ears, and turning her head from the children to Grandfather, and from Grandfather to the children as if she felt herself very sympathetic with them all. A loud purr, like the singing of a tea-kettle ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the same adventitious matter could do upon a Body not so contrived: Representing, I say, an Animal in this manner, and thence inferring, how it may be alter'd for the better or worse by motions or impulses, confessedly Mechanicall, observes, How some are recover'd from swouning fits by pricking; others grow faint and do vomit by the bare motion of a Coach; others fall into a troublesome sickness by the agitation of a Ship, and by the Sea-air (whence they recover by rest, and by going a shore.) Again, how in our Stables a Horse well-curried is half-fed: ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... is what his wife tells him he is. At any rate, she manages him as easily as the keeper does the elephant, with only a bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end. Usually she flatters him, but she has the means of pricking clear through his hide on occasion. It is the great secret of her power to have him think that she thoroughly believes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... struck Ishmael, who had turned his head away, upon the cheek, just pricking it and causing the blood to flow, no more. Ishmael was still also, paralysed almost, or so he seemed, for even the pain of the cut did not make him move. He stared at the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Dove; he stared at the dead Zulu, and in his heart a voice cried: ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... in your place, I don't know that I should do so; but as you say that you could do it, without your conscience pricking you, I certainly should not put pressure upon you to say 'yes.' However, I hope you may never be asked the question, and that we shall meet with no more interruptions until we get to Nerac There can be little doubt that, at present, the Catholics ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the insect population of an old green wall; fancies the fancies of the crickets and the flies, and the carousing of the cicala in the trees, and the bee swinging in the chalice of the campanula, and the wasps pricking the papers round the peaches, and the gnats and early moths craving their food from God when dawn awakes them, and the fireflies crawling like lamps through the moss, and the spider, sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... so arranged that it cannot be stepped over or circumvented—one must in consequence walk through it and be pricked, unpleasantly. Camels and horses suffer rather severely sometimes, the constant pricking causing sores on their legs. So long, however, as a camel does not drag his hind legs he will be no worse treated than by having all the hair worn off his shins. The side of the foot is an easily affected spot, and a raw there, gives them great pain ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... cousins should be plain to be perceived Or what the Heirs of Carrion as at that time achieved. And he beheld them coming, and heard them say their say, But they did not espy him, nor thought of him had they. Be it known death he had not scaped, had they on him laid eye. And the two Heirs rode onward, pricking fast the spur they ply. On their trail Felez Munoz has turned him back again. He came upon his cousins. In a swoon lay the twain. And crying "Oh my cousins!" straightway did he alight. By the reins the horse he tethered, and ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... never be delivered. A galley-slave who has broken ship and won sanctuary does not advertise his whereabouts with a light heart. He may be beyond pursuit, yet—he and the galley are both of this world; things temporal only keep them apart, and if the master came pricking, with a whip in his belt.... You must remember that Anthony had been used very ill. At first, bound to the oar of Love, he had pulled vigorously and found the sea silken, his chains baubles. Then a storm had arisen. In his hands the docile oar had ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... conception and execution of His great work are independent of man's desires, but He seeks us each in a thousand ways. He longs to have each of us for His disciples. He seeks each of us for His disciples, by the motion of His Spirit on our spirits, by stirring conviction in our consciences, by pricking us often with a sense of our own evil, by all our restlessness and dissatisfaction, by the disappointments and the losses, as by the brightnesses and the goodness of earthly providences, and often through such agencies as my lips and the lips of other men. The Master ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... going on in full swing, and the performance was one that made the act of eating seem as gross as the munching of apples at an oratorio—the music being, indeed, of a highly refined order of perfection. One's ears needed to be highly attuned to hear the pricking of the locusts in the leaves; even the breeze kept uncommonly still, that the brushing of the humming-birds' and bees' wings against the flower-petals might be the more ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... our attention. Looking up, we saw fully a score of wild shaggy heads thrust out from the clustering foliage; but before we had time to collect ourselves, another fusilade of feather-like missiles descended upon us, penetrating our thin clothing, and pricking us ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... to see her down on her knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the rest of us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her kitchen the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering, nostril-pricking smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying, tantalising, divinely sticky odour that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, from her side of the fence, often used to peer through the pickets, gazing in the direction of the enticing smells next door. Early one ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float in it and give it its colour, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... followed their commander, being for the moment dazed by their success, so that Cap'n Bill was all alone among the Blueskins when he stepped his wooden leg into a hole in the ground and tumbled full length, his sharp stick flying from his hand and pricking the Boolooroo in the leg ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... bores?" said Daventry, unable to refrain from pricking a bubble, although he guessed the reason why ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... "He is below pricking out the coat-armor of his mother's uncle. 'Pester me not with such small matters!' was all that I could get from him. Then there is Sir Oliver. 'Fry them in oil with a dressing of Gascony,' quoth he, and then swore at me because I had not been the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his revolver. The bullet would do quickly what the cold would accomplish after lingering hours of torture, yet, facing those pricking ears and the brave trust of the eyes, he was blinded by a mist and could not aim. He had to place the muzzle of the gun against the roan's temple and pull the trigger. When he turned his back he was the only living thing within the ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... their names," said Buck Denham quietly, as he went on filling his pipe very slowly; and the two boys sat down one on either side, pricking up their ears at the ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... hare that has been well soaked, put it on the spit, and rub it well with Madeira, pricking it in various places that it may imbibe plenty of wine; cover it entirely with a paste, and roast it. When done, take away the paste, rub it quickly over with egg, sprinkle breadcrumbs, and baste it gently ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... edges of the room, bayonets pricking up among the delegates; the Military Revolutionary Committee was arming everybody, Bolshevism was arming for the decisive battle with Kerensky, the sound of whose trumpets came up the south-west wind.... In ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Austen, it sufficed him for the moment that he had been lifted, by another seeming caprice of fortune, to a seat of torture the agony whereof was exquisite. An hour, and only the ceaseless pricking memory of it would abide. The barriers had risen higher since he had seen her last, but still he might look into her face and know the radiance of her presence. Could he only trust himself to guard his tongue! But the heart on such occasions will cheat language ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... twain. For Dion his son, on grievance unknown, if it were not rather the hostility of Heaven, hanged himself; and be sure he was a dead man, had I not been there, and dislocated and loosed him from his implication. Long time I squatted a-knee, pricking and rocking, and sounding him, to see whether his throat was still whole. What profited most was compressure of the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Mesnil, a small ruined village 1 mile behind the line, very much in the dark. As they moved in, many smelt for the first time the curious fragrant odour of lachrymatory gas, which seemed to come from the flowers of some wayside garden until the pricking and watering at the eyes proved otherwise. The Company Commanders went forward into the trenches to find out what they could; to their right loomed a great black mass, and they debated whether it was a hill or a cloud. Suddenly an array of lights and a flicker of rifle-fire ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... who had been with us in the Pemberton building at Richmond. He was a very skilful tattoo artist, but, I am sure, could make the process nastier than any other that I ever saw attempt it. He chewed tobacco enormously. After pricking away for a few minutes at the design on the arm or some portion of the body, he would deluge it with a flood of tobacco spit, which, he claimed, acted as a kind of mordant. Piping this off with a filthy rag, he would study the effect for an instant, and then go ahead with another series ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... stretched out before him, with its million lights twinkling in the early dusk, and its sharp spires here and there pricking the sky, it seemed to Philip as if years had elapsed since he left the city. On reaching Paris he drove to his hotel, where he found several letters lying on the table. He did not trouble himself even to glance at their superscriptions as he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... unbalanced me, and only an exaggerated sense of responsibility as nurse and housekeeper kept back the tears that were pricking like ten thousand needles at my eyes. Savagely I reproached myself for having been away, and for having no foreknowledge of the coming blow. In one of his bags my father had a flask of brandy, and, guided by his directions, I unearthed this and administered a little to the patient. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... liked Supplehouse. He means mischief; but then mischief is his trade, and he does not conceal it. If I were a politician I should as soon think of being angry with Mr. Supplehouse for turning against me as I am now with a pin for pricking me. It's my own awkwardness, and I ought to have known how to ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... is delighted to be distinguished by you in any way. But, by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked"—and Colonel Colquhoun came out on to the terrace through the drawing room behind us. He shook hands with us all, his wife included, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a cigarette and puffed at it impatiently. His particular "code" of morality had been completely upset;—things seemed to have taken a turn for general offence, and the simplest thoughts became like bristles in his brain, pricking him uncomfortably in various sore and sensitive places. Then, added to his general sense of spleen was the unpleasant idea that he was really in love, where he had never meant to be in love. "In love", is a wide term nowadays, and covers ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "Quietness"—it was his own expression—"stunned him." He rushed to the theatre, to balls, concerts, wherever there was noise, talk, excitement, crowds of people; wherever there was release from his own pricking conscience and miserable thoughts. And then to parties; of course there was no lack of them, for their society was in great request, and every one was eager for an invitation in return to Eden—such being the strange misnomer of their magnificent prison-house. And, oh, rare entertainments were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... stop you, man; I could leap a platoon through, boot and thigh, without pricking with a single spur. Pshaw! I have often charged upon the bayonets of infantry, over greater difficulties ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the distance, we saw another cavalcade pricking over the plain. Our two white warriors spread to the right and left, and galloped to reconnoitre. We, too, put our steeds to the canter, and handling our umbrellas as Richard did his lance against Saladin, went undaunted to challenge this caravan. The ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the river lies very solitary. On the opposite shore the trees of a private park enclose the view, the chimneys of the mansion just pricking forth above their clusters; on the near side the path is bordered by willows. Close among these lay the houseboat, a thing so soiled by the tears of the overhanging willows, so grown upon with parasites, so decayed, so battered, so neglected, such a haunt of rats, so advertised a storehouse ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... dead than alive, sank into a Voltaire armchair. Hermann peeped through a chink. Lizaveta Ivanovna passed close by him, and he heard her hurried steps as she hastened up the little spiral staircase. For a moment his heart was assailed by something like a pricking of conscience, but the emotion was only transitory, and his heart became ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... geese calling.... There are lots of them here too. One often comes upon a string of cranes or swans.... Snipe and woodcock flutter about in the birch copses. The hares which are not eaten or shot here, stand on their hindlegs, and, pricking up their ears, watch the passer-by with an inquisitive stare without the slightest misgiving. They are so often running across the road that to see them doing so is not considered a ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... right!... Now let this sapphire sparkle on my brow. You're pricking me, you careless thing! That's good! I love you, Anna dear. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... learnt to obey, and they hurried past the matron to their sleeping-quarters. Perpetua, a woman scarcely past fifty, whose face wore a pleasant expression of mingled shrewdness and kindness, stood pricking up her ears and listening; she heard from the water-shed a peculiar low, long-drawn Wheeuh!—a signal with which she was familiar as that by which the prefect Thomas had been wont to call together his scattered household from the garden of his villa on Mount Lebanon. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Pricking his ears forward, he turned his head half way round, so that he saw the crouching figure directly at his heels. Then he turned his head still further, and gathered himself for a leap. But Ned was expecting this; and, as quick as a flash, he leaped forward and caught the tuft of ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... Pagans, when they mark how few the French, Are filled with pride and comfort, and they say One to the other:—"Their King Carle is wrong!"— Upon his sorrel steed sits Marganice; Urging him hard with pricking spurs of gold, Encounters Olivier—strikes him behind, Drives his white hauberk-links into his heart, And through in front came forth the pointed lance. The Kalif cries:—"That blow struck home! Carlmagne, For thy mishap, left you to guard the Pass! That ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... out of the ground, She put out her thorns, and scratched ev'ry thing 'round. "I'll just try," said she, "How bad I can be; At pricking and scratching, there ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... of the little meeting-house were up to let in the pleasant sunshine; and the very horses who were within hearing of his voice, seemed by the pricking up of their brown ears to relish and approve of his discourse. The Captain's city nag, as wide awake as any, seemed to address himself to an acquaintance of a heavy bay plougher, who stood at the same post, and laying their heads together for the better part of the ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews |
