"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... injurious to the independence and integrity of the State to which it is applied, because a territory so occupied can scarcely be left by the occupying force in the same state in which it was when the occupation took place. But, moreover, such a practice may recoil upon those who adopt it, and, in the ever-varying course of events, it may be most inconveniently applied to those who, having set the example, had flattered themselves it never could be applied ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... character, or meanly truckled to him, or pampered his master passion for the advancement of his own purposes. He had, therefore, no self-disrespect to avenge; no long-tightened springs to release with a quick recoil. He worked early and late to unravel whatever was complicated or difficult in the records of the transactions of the House; was always in attendance to explain whatever required explanation; sat in his old room sometimes very late at night, studying ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to M'Adam, who still lay gasping on the ground. The shock of the fall and recoil of the weapon had knocked the breath out of the little man's body; beyond that ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... profanities in conversation, even from your lips. All my regard and affection for you, as Mrs. Thorpe's father, shall not prevent me from solemnly recording my abhorrence of such awful infidelity as I believe to be involved in the words you have just spoken! My religious convictions recoil—" ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... evident that they had never before seen any of the white race—from whose complexion, indeed, they appeared to recoil. They believed the Jane to be a living creature, and seemed to be afraid of hurting it with the points of their spears, carefully turning them up. Our crew were much amused with the conduct of Too-wit in one instance. The cook was splitting ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and regaled him. Why should he, whose beliefs were so uncertain, who had grown into doubts of that faith on which all the conventional proprieties about him reposed,—why should he not discard them, and obey a single, strong, generous instinct? When a man's religious sensibilities suffer recoil as Reuben's had done, there grows up a new pride in the natural emotions of generosity; the humane instincts show exceptional force; the skeptics become the teachers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... any concrete form, it would be easier to combat them; but they are unformulated, nebulous. Meanwhile, it is hard to imagine what measure of oppression could possibly be invented by the most malignant Irish Government which would not recoil like a boomerang upon those in whose supposed interests it was framed. I shall have to deal with this point again in discussing taxation, and need here only remind the reader that Ulster is not a Province, any part of which could possibly be injured ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... and did not recoil. He seemed ready himself to catch the beech-tree in his open arms in order to cast it on ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... explications was to give sudden check to that undercurrent of thought which for some time had been setting towards this conception. As soon as it was made clear whither the concession that animals may be changed by their environment must logically trend, the recoil from the idea was instantaneous and fervid. Then for a generation Cuvier was almost absolutely dominant, and his verdict was generally ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... continued to rap Jerry on the nose away from him, and to marvel at the persistence of the vital something within him that impelled him to leap forward always to the stick that hurt him and made him recoil. The valour and motion, the strength and the unreasoning of youth he knew it to be, and he admired it sadly, and envied it, willing to exchange for it all his lean grey wisdom if only ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... are not naturally expert in the water know well the feelings of horror that overwhelm them, when in it, at the bare idea of being held down, even for a few seconds,—that spasmodic, involuntary recoil from compulsory immersion which has no connection whatever with cowardice; and they will understand the amount of resolution that it required in Peterkin to allow himself to be dragged down to a depth of ten feet, and then, through a narrow tunnel, into an almost pitch-dark cavern. But there was ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... agreement with the President. Bostonians gathered in Faneuil Hall and New Yorkers in a great meeting in the Park to shower encomiums upon the proclamation and upon its author. The nullifiers did not at once recoil from the blow. The South Carolina Legislature called upon Governor Hayne officially to warn "the good people of this State against the attempt of the President of the United States to seduce them from their allegiance"; and the resulting counterblast, in the form of ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... powder exerts a much greater pressure than common black powder when burned in a gun, one would naturally think that the recoil of the barrel would be greater, owing to the greater pressure exerted by the smokeless powder on the base of the cartridge case and the breech mechanism. However, such is not the fact; for the barrel actually recoils very much less when smokeless powder is used. This is due to the suddenness ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... But what of the recoil? What would the surf do with them? The surf carried them back. A few minutes later the Matutina was free of the breakers. The Ortach faded from their view, as the Caskets had done. It was their second victory. For the second time the hooker had verged on destruction, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... afraid of Steenie. Her sunny nature shrank from the shadow, as of a wall, in which Steenie appeared to her always to stand. From any little attention he would offer her, she, although never rude to him, would involuntarily recoil, and he soon learned to leave her undismayed. That the child's repugnance troubled him, though he never spoke of it, Kirsty saw quite plainly, for she could read his face like a book, and heard him sigh when even his mother did not. Her eyes were constantly ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... such wild, passionate utterances of Lillie that Harry felt a recoil of mingled conscience, fear, and that disgust which man feels when she, whom God made to be sought, degrades herself to seek. There is no edification and no propriety in highly colored and minute drawing of such scenes of temptation and degradation, though they are the stock and staple ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was again ventured on. After the age of twenty, having meantime studied alone with diligence and perseverance, she went with me to an establishment on the Continent: the same suffering and conflict ensued, heightened by the strong recoil of her upright, heretic and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system. Once more she seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through the mere force of resolution: with inward remorse and shame she looked back on her former failure, and resolved ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... who was the captain of the gun, stood in the rear; Number 2, on the right of the former, but clear of the recoil, as if to teach one that prominent and distinguished positions have their drawbacks as well as their advantages; Number 3 stood close up to the ship's side, by the breeching of the gun on the left; and Number 4 ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... to him quietly. She talked abut herself, and he knew that she did this not because of egoism, but because delicately she wished to give him a full opportunity for recovery. She had seen just where he was, and she had understood his recoil from the abyss. Now she wished, perhaps, to help him to draw back farther from it, to draw back so far that he would no longer see it ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... expense from the depths of the Cimmerian fogs, were heedful never to utter in the presence of Candaules, whether within hearing or beyond hearing, a single word which bore any relation to Nyssia. The bravest, in a question of beauty, recoil before the prospect of a contest in which they can ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... real Hamlet, Horatio's Hamlet, who called his father's ghost old truepenny, who forged his uncle's signature, who fought Laertes, and ranted in a grave, and lugged the guts into the neighbour room. His tragedy, like Hamlet's, was the tragedy of an over-powerful will—a will so strong as to recoil upon itself, and fall into indecision. It is easy for a weak man to be decided—there is so much to make him so; but a strong man, who can do anything, sometimes leaves everything undone. Fortunately Beddoes, though he ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... and the event is memorable, if at all, as a something rather comical and domestic. But to see a grown man spanked for the crime of attempted murder is horrible. Farallone's fury got the better of him, and the blows resounded in the desert. I grappled his arm, and the recoil of it flung me head over heels. When Farallone had finished, the groom could not stand. He rolled in the sands, moaning ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... evident that I must trust to my own ability to pull the matter quickly through as I thought best. But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim to a despondency to which, in his relations with me, he sought to lend a sort of diabolical character. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... hesitate to wreak his revenge on Essex and Manchester, though the blow would probably recoil upon himself.[b]He proposed in the Commons what was afterwards called the "self-denying ordinance," that the members of both houses should be excluded from all offices, whether civil or military. He would not, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... offensive, the moral atmosphere of the Committee Rooms, infected as it was by the candidates, had seemed to him to be even worse—mephitic, poisonous. He had shrunk from realizing the sensations which had been forced upon him there—a recoil of his nature as from unappeasable wild-beast greeds, with their attendant envy, suspicion, and hatred seething like lava under the thin crust of a forced affability, of a good-humour assumed to make deception easy. He did not want to think of it; it was horrible. And perhaps, after ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... bank, but cannot be floated far upon the champaign, because obstructed by the growth of wood. Retaining their situation when the waters subside, they obstruct and detain the leaves and mud, which would else recoil into the stream, and thus, in process of time, form a bank ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... prisoners, and when the eye of no superior authority is on them, or nothing else to deter, they are "hail fellow well met" with such of the convicts as are unprincipled enough to curry favor with and assist them in covering up their peccadilloes from their superiors. They naturally recoil at the hardness and parsimony of the Government toward them, evading the performance of duties when they can, and I have heard more than one say: "Why should we care what prisoners do, so long as we don't get ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... human being upon whom this sort of retribution could have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a consciousness of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the detestation of mankind as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet the imperiousness of his temper and the constant experience he had had of the pliability of other men, prepared him to feel the general and undisguised condemnation into which ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... it. He jerked it from its holster and pointed it at the red throat, emptied all the chambers. He saw the flash of yellow flame, felt the recoil, but the sound of the discharges was drowned in the Brobdignagian tumult. He drew back his arm to throw the useless toy from him. But again that unexplainable, senseless "hunch" restrained him. He reloaded the gun and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... therefore begin to descend, and so a current of air is driven from the cave into the pit C. Owing to the elasticity of the atmosphere, even at a low temperature, this descent, and the consequent rush of air into C, will be overdone, and a recoil must take place, which accounts for the return current into the cave from the pit C. The sun can reach A more easily than B, and thus the air is lighter and more moveable in the former pit, so that the recoil will make itself more felt in A than in B: accordingly, we found that the main currents ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... wishing to soften the effect of his cousin's rather short and haughty letter. It must go, of course, whatever his own and Madame de Sainfoy's disapproval; but there were things that diplomacy might do, without, as it seemed, any serious consequences to recoil on the diplomatists. Madame de Sainfoy might gain imperial favour, Monsieur de la Mariniere might help her and save his foolish boy, and no one in the family, except themselves, need know what they ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise blue, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... sitting in the fireless book-room with a candle flickering while the wind soughed round the house and in through every chink in the worn walls. His fine grey eyes were deep sunken; when he looked up suddenly there was sometimes a little light of madness in them that made her recoil instinctively; his thick hair was greyish, whitening over the temples; his high Keltic cheekbones were gaunter than ever, his forehead and mouth lined with past rages. He had never held a religion—the Lashcairn religion had been a ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... She had been too much tired to hear anything the night before, but to-night there was scratching, nibbling, careering, fighting, squeaking, recoil and rally, charge and rout, as the grey Hanover rat fought his successful battle with his black English cousin all over the floors and stairs—nay, once or twice came rushing up and over the bed—frightening its occupant almost out of her senses, as she cowered under ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and nothing moved but pickets of soldiers and Red Guards grimly intent. In front of the Kazan Cathedral a three-inch field-gun lay in the middle of the street, slewed sideways from the recoil of its last shot over the roofs. Soldiers were standing in every doorway talking in low tones and peering down toward the Police Bridge. I heard one voice saying: "It is possible that we have done ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... he is permanently unhappy, and then coolly and firmly carry out his determination; as may be seen by the way in which the sufferer, when placed under supervision, as he usually is, eagerly waits to seize the first unguarded moment, when, without a shudder, without a struggle or recoil, he may use the now natural and welcome means of effecting his release.[1] Even the healthiest, perhaps even the most cheerful man, may resolve upon death under certain circumstances; when, for instance, his sufferings, or his fears of some inevitable misfortune, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the houses. Then, waving their fans in the direction of the enemy, they run through the village, while they sing, "O golden fans! let our bullets hit, and those of the enemy miss." In this custom the ceremony of anointing stones, in order that the bullets may recoil from the men like raindrops from the stones, is a piece of pure homoeopathic or imitative magic; but the prayer to the sun, that he will be pleased to give effect to the charm, is a religious and perhaps later addition. The waving of the fans seems to be a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Maker, God. In toleration filled With charity for all. In Reason's Ways Profound. In thought, he mounts the throne of power And sways the world. He tries frolic Nature's grasp To lure her secrets still untold till we, Amazed at his bold course, recoil abashed. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the light of the soul, and the demons may recoil before a soul that is dauntless and guiltless. If not, Three are lost!—as it ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... say so?" continued Fouquet, still laughing; "and I would lay a wager there would be people found wicked enough to laugh at it." This sally disconcerted the monarch. Fouquet was skillful enough, or fortunate enough, to make Louis XIV. recoil before the appearance of the deed he meditated. M. d'Artagnan, when he appeared, received an order to desire a musketeer ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... drew back sharply, with a gesture of such instinctive, such involuntary recoil, that in an instant she knew that she had betrayed that which she had sought ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... "the horse was not running when it turned out and it did not stop here in fright. The horse was entirely quiet here. The hoof marks would show any alarm in the animal, and, moreover, if it had stopped in fright there would have been an inevitable recoil which would have thrown the wheels of the vehicle backward out of their track. No moving animal, man included, stopped by fright fails to register this recoil. We always look for it in evidences of violent assault. Footprints invariably ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... barrage. They established machine-gun nests at frequent intervals commanding the zone over which infantry was to advance and by skilful crossfire kept that terrain free from every living thing. The Germans preferred a machine gun, water cooled and of the barrel-recoil type. The English used a Vickers-Maxim and a Lewis gun, the latter the invention of an officer in the American army. The French preferred the Hotchkiss and the Saint-Etienne. The Americans standardized ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... How sometimes nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines Of my boy's face, methoughts I did recoil Twenty-three years; and saw myself unbreech'd, In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzled, Lest it should bite its master, and so prove, As ornaments oft do, too dangerous. How like, methought, I then was to this kernel, This squash, this gentleman.—Mine honest friend, ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... one composed of Huguenot gentlemen and their retainers and another of Germans defended the gate at which they were posted with great bravery, and succeeded in repulsing the attacks of the Spaniards time after time. The latter pressed forward in heavy column, only to recoil broken and shattered from the archway, which was filled high with their dead. The defenders had just succeeded in repulsing the last of these attacks, when some soldiers ran by shouting "All is lost, the Spaniards have entered ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... of Beatty's men had passed through Miller's lines, he commanded the division to rise and open fire on Breckinridge's troops. Miller's fire was so effectively given as to cause the enemy at once to recoil, Breckenridge's command being also under the artillery fire on the left, enfilading his ranks. His division soon wavered, and then began falling back. At this Miller-Negley still not appearing—ordered the division to charge across the river, and ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... his eyes caused him to recoil in horror. There, pressing their shapes against the steel sides, and over the bull's-eyes of the ship were two more ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... Boche dugouts now!" said he; and remembering the dugouts I had seen, I could picture the awful fate of those within, the choking fumes, the fire-scorched bodies! Truly the exponents of Frightfulness have felt the recoil of ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... clouds of smoke and dust, With sword-sway, and with lance's thrust; And such a yell was there, Of sudden and portentous birth, As if men fought upon the earth, And fiends in upper air; Oh, life and death were in the shout, Recoil and rally, charge and rout, And triumph and despair. Long look'd the anxious squires; their eye Could ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... construct a new life for herself? What could be more legitimate? Of having failed to understand the relations of the child who remained to her with the man whom she had chosen? What was more natural? She was more wife than mother, and besides, fanciful and fragile beings such as she was recoil from daily contests; they shrink from facing realities which would demand sustained courage and energy on their part. I had admitted all these explanations of my mother's attitude towards me, at first from instinct and afterwards on reflection. ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... arrows and musquet balls, thrusting them down with pikes, hurling grenades and stink-pots from the tops; while the swivels on both sides poured their grape, and bar, and chain, and the great main-deck guns, thundering muzzle to muzzle, made both ships quiver and recoil, as they smashed the round shot through ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... policy had, with the virtues of democratic government, some of its weaknesses, which in the presence of pressing exigencies were apt to deprive governmental action of the necessary vigor; and his kindness of heart, his disposition always to respect the feelings of others, frequently made him recoil from anything like severity, even when severity was urgently called for. But many of his radical critics have since then revised their judgment sufficiently to admit that Lincoln's policy was, on the whole, the wisest and safest; that a policy of heroic methods, while it has sometimes ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... men were fine marksmen, but it was undoubtedly Jonathan's unerring aim that made the house so unapproachable. He used an extremely heavy, large bore rifle. In the hands of a man strong enough to stand its fierce recoil it was a veritable cannon. The Indians had soon learned to respect the range of that rifle, and they gave the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the hesitation of his antagonist, who, far from advancing, seemed to recoil, and even struggle with his second, he guessed the situation of the painter's thoughts, and, collecting all the manhood that he possessed, seized the opportunity of profiting by his enemy's consternation. Striking his sword and pistol together, he advanced in a sort of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... game, such as elephants and buffaloes, experienced sportsmen mostly prefer guns of immense Bore, carrying round bullets that weigh a quarter of a pound. The recoil is tremendous, and would injure the shoulder if the sportsman did not use a pad against which he rests the gun. The guns must be strong, because very large charges of powder are invariably used where great power of penetration is required. African ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... For an instant the staff officer's sword was actually driven back behind his head; and then with a rearward spring the lieutenant disengaged and brought his edge clean down on his adversary's left shoulder and breast, narrowly missing his ear. The cut itself, delivered almost in the recoil, had no great weight behind it, but the blood spurted at once, and the wounded man, stepping back for a fresh guard, swayed foolishly for a moment and then toppled into ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the countess sold her diamonds and decided on wearing paste; then she resolved to ask the money from Vandenesse on her sister's account; but these were dishonorable means, and her soul was too noble not to recoil at them; she merely conceived them, and cast them from her. Ask money of Vandenesse to give to Nathan! She bounded in her bed with horror at such baseness. Wear false diamonds to deceive her husband! Next she thought of borrowing the money from the Rothschilds, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... adoration; the other, with implacable hate. Never before, probably, in the history of the world, has a woman occupied such a position, and never by a woman will such a position be occupied again. Danton began to recoil from the gulf opening before him, and wished to return to alliance with the Girondists. He expressed the most profound admiration for the talents, energy, and sagacity of Madame Roland. "We must act together," said he, "or the wave of the Revolution will overwhelm us all. United, we can ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... them in their proper place, which is not, if I may be allowed to use an antiquated form of expression, the temple of the Holy Ghost. No doubt you think me behind the times; but I rejoice in my enlightenment; and I recoil from your ignorance, your blindness, your imbecility. Humanly I pity you. Intellectually ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... following items for my own share of the portage: a cane, a quart flask, a pilot-jacket heavily weighted in the pockets, two pounds of black bread, and an open basket full of meats and bottles. I believe I may say I am not devoid of greatness of soul; for I did not recoil from this infamous burden. I disposed it, Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length; and, encumbered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Medicis, was appointed regent during his minority. Catharine was a woman of great strength of mind, but of the utmost depravity of heart. There was no crime ambition could instigate her to commit from which, in the slightest degree, she would recoil. Perhaps the history of the world retains not another instance in which a mother could so far forget the yearnings of nature as to endeavor, studiously and perseveringly, to deprave the morals, and by vice to enfeeble the constitution of her ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... recipient to recoil, yet he instantly returned, so that Carson was kept busy pounding the noses as if he was an old fashioned farmer ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... ground, with the gun on top of him. His cousin had some difficulty in persuading him that the gun had not gone off at the wrong end and that he was not shot instead of the bird. It was one of the old-fashioned shot-guns known as "kickers," and the recoil had sent him flying backwards at the moment of the noise of the discharge—a combination which so frightened him that he avoided guns ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... With a recoil in every fibre of her nature, Diana turned to take up her life burden. She felt as if she had had none ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... justify my actions; but of all dangers, those allied to pestilence, by being mysterious and unseen, are the most formidable. To disarm them of their terrors requires the longest familiarity. Nurses and physicians soonest become intrepid or indifferent; but the rest of mankind recoil from the scene ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the weight of its fruit. Bacon seems to have written his essays with Shakspeare's pen. There is a certain want of ease about the old writers which has an irresistible charm. The language flows like a stream over a pebbled bed, with propulsion, eddy, and sweet recoil—the pebbles, if retarding movement, giving ring and dimple to the surface, and breaking the whole into babbling music. There is a ceremoniousness in the mental habits of these ancients. Their intellectual garniture is picturesque, like the garniture ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... passed by, most of which time I spent lying down to rest and get rid of a headache caused by the continual, rapid firing and the roar of the gale, or both; also in rubbing my shoulder with ointment, for it was sore from the recoil of the guns. Then Scroope appeared, as, being unable to find my way about the long passages of that great old castle, I had asked him to do, and we descended together ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... to tell you what I think of you, and I am going to do so. Davis has been reared like a gentleman, and it is but natural that he should recoil from contact ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... dread of such a catastrophe, certain it is that he behaved to her more as a pedagogue than a cousinly tutor, insisting on a precision in all she did that might have gone far to rouse resentment and recoil in the mind of a less childlike woman. Just as surely, notwithstanding all that, however, did the sweet girl grow into his heart: it could not be otherwise. The idea of her was making a nest for itself in his ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... had not given a tiny movement, an almost imperceptible movement of recoil, Lupin might have thought that his presence on board was known to him, so great was the mastery which Shears retained over himself and so natural the ease with which he held out his hand to ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... mosquito bar and roll up my bedclothes every morning, so that the bed becomes by day a divan. A great part of the floor is knee-deep in books, yet nearly all the shelves are filled, alas! It is a place to make a pig recoil, yet here are my interminable labours begun daily by lamp-light, and sometimes not yet done when the lamp has once more to be lighted. The effect of pictures in this place is surprising. They give ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cocked her weapon, shut both eyes, and pulled the trigger. The recoil jerked the barrel up, and the bullet lodged in the ceiling. Before she could recover from the shock, there came another crash, the shattered door swung inward, and Tex Lynch sprang across ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... too, is Kue Pih-yuh! When the land is being rightly governed he will serve; when it is under bad government he is apt to recoil, and brood." ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... an army of their insatiable foes arrived and besieged the town, and treachery at a postern one stormy night made them masters of it, when scenes of horror followed under the mask of religion that even at this distance of time make one recoil with terror and disgust at the dogmas of the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... majority of accidents, particularly in navigation; and such appreciation will touch its highest point under Socialist order. In numberless instances human life, or the safety of limb, is sacrificed to misplaced economy on the part of employers, who recoil before any outlay for protection; in many others the tired condition of the workman, or the hurry he must work in, is the cause. Human life is cheap; if one workingman goes to pieces, three others are at hand to ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... his hand upon my arm. Was it my fancy, or did he really recoil a little as he touched me? "Let us go home!" he said hoarsely. "I have—something ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... finger wanders unrestrained With its fantastical embellishment; The mind is riveted, the gaze is spent Where lavish Nature pours her richest spoil, The tongue is voiceless with bewilderment, Far, far below the ocean's ceaseless toil Makes bosoms inly shudder and all eyes recoil. ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... murders, the frightful punishment of climbing that tower, of touching those skeletons, of undressing them and burying them. That will be enough. We will not ask for more. We will not give it to the public to batten on and create a scandal which would recoil upon M. d'Aigleroche's niece. No, let us leave ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... clouds lay banked together in the west, black with the remnant and recoil of tempest; between these, through rifts and breaks, poured down the sunlight across bright spaces into the bosoms of the hills lighting them up with revelations. The sloping outlines shone golden green with lingering summer color, and discovered ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Heaven, for the purpose of continually confounding the local vestiges of popular reverence which might have gathered round stocks and stones, so obstinate is the hankering after this mode of superstition in man that his heart returns to it with an elastic recoil as often as the openings are restored. Agreeably to this infatuation, the temple of the true God—even its awful adytum—the holy of holies—or the places where the ark of the covenant had rested in its migrations—all were conceived ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... till your loyalty is free from stain. Not while you fight for your king with a cruelty from which your king would recoil." ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... grave, still find a voice to chill the marrow in your bones: the dead shall rise from their graves and confront you—the hidden perfidy of years shall be disclosed, base tool of a baser master—all your machinations against the wronged and the humble shall fail, and recoil upon yourselves. Repent ere it will be too late; you will never more ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... Paul Colbert himself. His own manner was quiet and calm, showing none of the irritation which he felt at William Pressley's negligence. He lost none of his graciousness through seeing the young doctor's involuntary recoil. His intuitions were unerring; he knew instantly that this newcomer was already acquainted with the stories told about himself, but he cared little for that. He was considering the interference with his plans which might come from ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... she would beat him. Her fixed female soul, her wound-up female will would solidify into stone—whereas his must break. In him something must break. It was a cold and fatal deadlock, profitless. A life-automatism of fixed tension that suddenly, in him, did break. His will flew loose in a recoil: a recoil away from her. He left her, as inevitably as a broken spring flies ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm! Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom save from rage and pain, So talks as it's ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the sacrifice grand, The heritage noble we took at their hand, The peace and the comfort, the fruits of the land; And, sunk in a torpor as hopeless as base, Recoil from the shock of the Sodomite band, That would ruin the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... altogether, greater vitalizing properties than that in ourselves, since on the severest day in winter he will frequently scorn any covering beyond his shirt, and the nether garments usually suggested by its mention, and, so apparelled, will not recoil ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... 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 of rheumatic agonies, that the heart of an intending occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the abhorred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could win from him; and looking back to their conversation at the Glacier House, she realised, night after night, in the silence of wakeful hours, the fulness of his confession, together with the strength of his recoil from any ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... through Robin. Since he had given this girl the arrow which he had denied to her, the Sheriff's daughter, there could be no doubt that strong friendship, at the least, existed between them, so that any blow at Robin must recoil ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Belgian coast. It is not easy to understand why, before the war, when Zeebrugge and Ostend were made into fortified harbours, a clause was inserted in the contractors' orders that the mole at Zeebrugge should be fit to carry hundred-ton guns and to withstand heavy gun recoil; also, that the Zeebrugge and Ostend locks and basins should be capable of accommodating a flotilla of torpedo-boats. These things were not done in the interests of England, nor had the Belgian Government any reason to fear naval aggression from the west. The plans which had this ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... rage, and, raising his foot, struck out therewith at a man who advanced to seize him in front. The kick not only tumbled the man over a low bench and drove his head against the wall, but it caused the kicker himself to recoil on his foes behind with such force that they all fell on the floor together, when by their united weight the slavers managed to crush the unfortunate Disco, not, indeed, into submission, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... horrors from my kingdom," exclaimed Isabella, indignation flashing in her eye, and flushing on her cheek. "Once we have been insulted—once deceived; but never to us can such occur a second time. Fearfully shall this deed of infamy recoil upon its perpetrators! Tremble not thus, my poor girl, no one shall injure thee; no one can touch thee, for we are warned, and this fearful tale shall be sifted to the bottom! Child of a reprobate ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... inexpressible pang, that she had set foot in the midst of some domestic tragedy, the like of which had never come within her ken before. She was conscious of a little recoil from it, such as is natural to a young girl who has not learnt by experience the meaning of sorrow; but the recoil was followed by a rush of that sympathy for which she had always shown a great capacity. Her instinct led her instantly to comfort and console. She knelt down beside ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... all, touching Lucy with a most unreasonable conviction and bringing a rush of warm feeling to her heart, Baby's adoption of the girl and recommendation of her to his mother. Was it not the voice of nature, the voice of God? Lucy had no instinctive sense of recoil, no horror of the discovery. She did not realise the guilt involved, nor was she painfully struck, as some women might have been, by this evidence of her husband's previous life "If it is so," she said quietly, "there is more reason ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... up that rapid fire, with a scant gun detachment, in plowed ground, and under a hot sun, for an hour, we were nearly exhausted. After Hardy was wounded, and left us, it was still worse. The hardest labor, and what took most time, was running up the guns from the recoil. We had stopped a moment to rest, and let the gun cool a little, and were discussing the difficulties, when the idea occurred to us. There was an old rail fence near by. Somebody said "let's get some rails ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... felt the man's obscure moment of recoil; she gently withdrew herself from his arms. "I'm tired," she said, rather plaintively, "the train sways so, Laurence. I wonder if ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the toppling of the thrones, so threw this war into the ring to give the toilers opportunity for their heated passions, but this war will be like blood to a tiger, it will quicken up the fighting spirit of the animal, and on those who forced this war it will recoil with awful effect. They saw the labor storm approach and put off the evil day. It was like neglecting to physic the human body—the longer deferred, ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... assailants rushed to the assault, not intimidated by their horrible and unnatural yells, nor yet dispirited by the [146] presence of a force so far superior to their own, they received them with a fire so steady and well directed, as forced them to recoil; leaving one of their slain on the field of attack. This alone, argued a great discomfiture of the Indians; as it is well known to be their invariable custom, to remove, if practicable, those of their warriors who fall in battle. Their subsequent movements, satisfied the inmates ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... theatre; and ranting, and raving, and stabbing, and drowning, and poisoning; for with them there is no love without murder. Love, in their representations, is indeed a distorted, ridiculous, horrid monster, from whom common sense, taste, decency, and nature recoil. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... harshness when he dashed his bulk against them. He had too lively a memory of past discomfitures to risk a fresh one now in the face of this insolent foe. His matted front came against the wire with a force so cunningly moderated that he was not thrown back by the recoil. And the keen points of his horns went through the meshes with a vehemence which might indeed have done its work effectively had they come in contact with the adversary. As it was, however, they but ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Lord's recoil from the tumult. He had retired before cunning plotters; He withdrew from gaping admirers, who did not know what they were crowding to, nor cared for His best gifts. It was no fastidious shrinking from low natures, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... looking down on him and it. Chevalier de Belleisle judges that, however difficult, it can and must be possible to French valor; and storms in upon it, huge and furious (20,000, or if needful 30,000);—but is torn into mere wreck, and hideous recoil; rallies, snatches a standard, 'We must take it or die,'—and dies, does not take it; falls shot on the rampart, 'pulling at the palisades with his own hands,' nay some say 'with his teeth,' when the last moments came. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... three times. Then he flung open the door and leaned out and, from his backward recoil, Raven knew he had hoped unreasonably to find his wife, knocking at her own door. Raven kicked his feet against the step, with an implication ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... am wrong here. Individually, I may have begun to recoil from them, but only in a purely selfish, personal way, beyond which I had evolved neither theory nor conscience; much less the smallest tendency towards sympathy with any ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... Hang like an interdict upon her hopes. 260 This is my lot; for either still I find Some imperfection in the chosen theme, Or see of absolute accomplishment Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself, That I recoil and droop, and seek repose 265 In listlessness from vain perplexity, Unprofitably travelling toward the grave, Like a false steward who hath much received And renders nothing back. Was it for this That one, the fairest ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... for Ireland than those that apply to England and Scotland. They find themselves forced to sympathize with acts of violence in Ireland which they would condemn in Great Britain, because these acts seem the only way of resisting harsh and unjust laws. When the recoil comes, it will be more violent than in former days. The wish to discover some other course will be very strong, and the obvious other course will be to leave it to an Irish authority to enforce social order in its own way—probably a more rough-and-ready way than ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... enough to wrestle with facts such as these? which one of us can look them long in the face and live? In the desperate recoil, some of us find ourselves recklessly striving to forget and ignore them, and some find a surer refuge in facts that are stronger still than they; but to one and all, in kindly compassion to human weakness, each new emotion, each passing interest and trivial incident, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Shanklin alluded to his blunders, and he scowled all the more viciously now because he felt that, after all, he could do little against his two patrons which would not recoil with twofold violence on his own head. No, he had better confine his reprisals to the Crudens by Mr Shuckleford's assistance, and meanwhile make what he could out ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... believe appearances against a Clifford." With these words he took two steps toward his niece and held out his arm. She moved toward him. Percy came forward radiant to congratulate her. She drew up with a look of furious scorn that made him recoil, and she marched proudly away with her uncle. He bestowed one parting glance of contempt upon the discomfited Bartley, and marched his niece proudly off, more determined than ever that she should be his daughter. But for once he was wise enough not to press that ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... this, she whirled herself round in a magical way, striking poor Morakanabad in such a way as caused him to recoil. Then she ordered her great camel, Aboufaki, to be brought, and, attended by her two hideous and one-eyed negresses, Nerkes and Cafour, set out to surprise the lovers. She burst in upon them, foaming with indignation, and said to Vathek: ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various |
