"Vitals" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and I ran along it, the dirt lane that led to The Briers was an intoxicating joy. The wet earth, the drenched cedars, the oak buds, the spongy moss, the reddening blackberry-bushes, and the sprouting grain, all mingled in a queer creation odor that went right through the pores of my skin into my vitals and made me feel as strong as an ox, or rather, as Sam's new mule. I caught a glimpse of that mule through a vista before I came out of the lane, plodding along before Sam and the plow with a great splendid ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fearful sight and the adventurers gazed at it in wonder, mingled with terror. The bears would seek to enfold the lions in their strong fore-paws, while the lions would try to sink their long tusks into the vitals of the enemy. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... his. You approach still closer, and a feeling of horror flashes through you—you see that the beautiful arms of the woman end in hairy claws. The claws embrace the man in deadly grasp, and are digging deep into his vitals. On his face is a look of fearful pain, and every splendid muscle is tense ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... spurts of flame jet out from between the writhing pages of my manuscript, watched the sheets coil up in their fiery anguish and start one from another. I helped the fire to the very vitals of the mass by poking the brittle heap, and at last the sacrifice was over, the flames turned from pink to blue and died out, the red glow gave place to black, little luminous red streaks coiled across the charred sheets and vanished ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... inclined, retired to a short distance from the shore, and prepared to settle all our disputes in a "bout at fisticuffs," an ungentlemanly method of settling a controversy, but one which may afford as much SATISFACTION to the vanquished party as a sword-thrust through the vitals, or pistol bullet ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... accept him when there certainly had been no cause for their rejection. Mr Apjohn from the first had looked at him with accusing eyes; his servants were spies upon his actions; this newspaper was rending his very vitals; and now this one last friend had deserted him. He thought that if only he could summon courage for the deed, it would be best for him to throw himself ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... sway men's hearts and mystify their moral sense. Here let them pause in the investigation of the past. They have discovered the mainspring, the life, the very essence of the system that had wrought itself into the vitals of mankind, and choked their original nature in its deadly gripe. Yet how powerless over these young inheritors of earth's hoarded wealth! And here, too, are huge, packages of back-notes, those talismanic slips of paper which once had the ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an oaken beam over his shoulder, his own shot in straight for the pit of the other's stomach. It was a bull's-eye blow with the force of a pile-driver behind it, and the groan that forced its way out of St. Pierre's vitals was heard by every ear in the cordon of watchers. His weight stopped, his arms opened, and through that opening Carrigan's fist went a second time to the other's jaw, and a second time the great St. Pierre Boulain sprawled out upon the sand. And there he lay, and ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... Robert Fitzhildebrand's perfidity, a worm grew in his vitals which, gradually gnawing its way through his intestines, fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... accorded with her sense of right and justice. It was barely possible that it might be required to please her inclinations. Eileen's mind worked with unbelievable swiftness. She tore at her subject like a vulture tearing at a feast, and like a vulture she reached the vitals swiftly. She prefaced her question with a dry laugh. Then she leaned forward and asked softly: "Linda, dear, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... have scarcely noted them. Perhaps the responsibility in part lies at the door of Protestantism. Unamuno remarks that Catholicism knew little of that anxious preoccupation with sin, so destructive of heroic greatness, which has gnawed at the vitals of the Protestantism which we have inherited, if only in the form of a barren Freethought spreading its ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the keynote of Hugo's poetry. In the darkest days of 1871, when France was tearing out her own vitals and Paris was destroying itself, he could ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... go for your theology! I was puzzled to understand you, but now all is plain! Young man, you are on the brink of perdition. That book will poison your very vitals!" ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's trunk, and down it comes, like a musquito's proboscis, right through the deck, in at the open aperture of the hole, and so into the very vitals and bowels of the ship. When there, it goes to work upon its food with a greed and an avidity that is disgusting to a beholder of any taste or imagination. And now I must explain the anatomical arrangement by which the elevator still devours and continues to devour, till the corn within its ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots Through the wrung bosom of the dying man. His wife, his children, and his friends unseen. On every nerve The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense; And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse, Stretched out, and bleaching ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... constitution triumphed over the disease, and his sick soreness of mind lost somewhat of its sharpness. So long as he brooded in silence over his pain and his wrongs, there was little chance of the sting becoming much lighter; it was like the vulture preying upon its own vitals; but that season of silence was past. When once a deep grief can be spoken of, its great agony is gone. I think there is an old saying, or a proverb—"Griefs lose themselves in telling," and a greater truism was never ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections—for a drunkard is not fit for an elector—and preparing her for subjection to the most merciless tyranny that ever scourged any nation under ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... Williams was hidden from the view of the old judge he began to gesture and talk to himself. An elation had evidently penetrated to his vitals, and caused him to dilate as if he had been filled with gas. He snapped his fingers in the air, and whistled fragments of triumphal music. At times, in his progress towards his shanty, he indulged in a shuffling movement that ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... essential vacuity. It is possible for a nation, through subtle delusions, to get such an attack of the big head that it bends over backwards, and it is liable, in this exposed position, to get a thrust in its vitals. ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... with feathers in his hair and bangles on his feet. Before she reached the station her veil and hair were in streamers, and her scalp was almost torn from her head, but the serpent jaune which had gnawed her vitals all night had ceased from troubling, and joy of living glowed in her once more. She could not help it; there was something in the air and the wind and the blaze of Africa that made for life, and thrust out despair. It swept away misery as the south-easter ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... cheery, helpful creature is what I want to make life pleasant. Every thing else is used up; why not try this, and make the most of my last chance? She does me good, and I don't seem to get tired of her. I can't have a long life, they tell me, nor an easy one, with the devil to pay with my vitals generally; so it would be a wise thing to provide myself with a good-tempered, faithful soul to take care of me. My fortune would pay for loss of time, and my death leave her a bonny widow. I won't be rash, but I ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... to go back to his room, a ripping, tearing, grinding sound came to his startled ears. It was followed by a sudden swishing noise. Grant knew what that meant. A meteor had ripped into the vitals of the space-flier, and the precious air was rushing through the fissure into outer space. He whirled without an instant's hesitation and sprang down the long corridor toward the captain's quarters. If caught in time, the hole could ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... I do, for I trust in you. Moreover there is no drawing back, what with these cursed horses and this marriage, which has eaten up my vitals. So let them do with me as they will; I yield my body to them. Come blows, come hunger, thirst, heat or cold, little matters it to me; they may flay me, if I only escape my debts, if only I win the reputation of being a bold ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... 11, 1708, and ended in the complete defeat of the French, who were only saved by the darkness from utter destruction. Had the bold project of Marlborough to march into France forthwith been carried out, a deadly blow would have been delivered against the very vitals of the enemy's power and Louis XIV probably compelled to sue for peace on the allies' terms. But this time not only the Dutch deputies, but also Eugene, were opposed to the daring venture, and it was decided that Eugene should besiege Lille, while Marlborough with ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... had only a meagre measure of rations, less of grain in proportion, and there was no military depot to which we could resort. The maps were all wrong, and in the trackless wastes and silent sand-dunes of the Cimarron country gaunt Starvation was waiting to clutch our vitals with its gnarled claws; while with all our nakedness and famine and peril, the winter blizzard, swirling its myriad whips of stinging cold came raging across the land and caught ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... it was not external—was even then, all unsuspected, gnawing at the great ship's vitals. In a locked and shielded compartment, deep down in the interior of the liner, was the great air purifier. Now a man leaned against the primary duct—the aorta through which flowed the stream of pure air supplying the entire vessel. ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... pursued with increased despondency. "It is easy for you, Henry, whose mind is at peace with itself and the world, to preach fortitude and resignation, but, felt you the burning flame which scorches my vitals, you would acknowledge the wide, wide difference between theory ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... but the Dule Water seepin' and sabbin' doon the glen, an' yon unhaly footstep that cam' plodding' doun the stairs inside the manse. He kenned the foot ower-weel, for it was Janet's; and at ilka step that cam' a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper in his vitals. He commended his soul to Him that made an' keepit him; "and, O Lord," said he, "give me strength this night to war against the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... lay, a white upturned face. That was himself, lying there with face illumined by the fire, and men would call him dead! But he would not be dead! He would be living on with that inward fire, gnawing at his vitals, telling him continually what he might have been, and showing him what high heaven was that he had had, and lost. He saw it now. He had deliberately thrown away that heaven that had been his. He saw that hell was hell because he made it so, it was not God that put ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... pocket— to the steward, who waited upon him. I could not but feel a pity for him, especially when I saw him by the side of his fellow-passenger and townsman, a fat, coarse, vulgar, pretentious fellow of a Yankee trader, who had made money in San Diego, and was eating out the vitals of the Bandinis, fattening upon their extravagance, grinding them in their poverty; having mortgages on their lands, forestalling their cattle, and already making an inroad upon their jewels, which ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... His idea of ventilation was to leave a hole in the wall about the size of a lima bean and let the thing go at that. If our friend does not arrive shortly, I shall pull down the roof. Why, gadzooks! Not to mention stap my vitals! Isn't that a trap-door up there? ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Emathian (1) plains, And crime let loose we sing; how Rome's high race Plunged in her vitals her victorious sword; Armies akin embattled, with the force Of all the shaken earth bent on the fray; And burst asunder, to the common guilt, A kingdom's compact; eagle with eagle met, Standard to ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... his duty well was proved by the frequency with which his guns boomed out, sending shell and solid shot spattering against the heavily-armoured sides of the Chinese battleships, where they splintered and burst, cracking and starring the thick steel, but very seldom penetrating to their vitals, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... do most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear, without the least hesitation, mental reservation, or self-evasion of mind in me whatever; binding myself under no less penalty than to have my left breast torn open, and my heart and vitals taken from thence and thrown over my left shoulder, and carried into the valley of Jehosaphat, there to become a prey to the wild beasts of the fields, and vultures of the air, if ever I should prove wilfully guilty of violating any part ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... lazy body of men, women, and children, whose only object in existence seems to be to eat and consume, and who, besides, by their idleness and habits, keep up a system of detraction, jealousy, and discord among otherwise well-disposed citizens, that, like so many cancers, are eating into the very vitals of the public morals. Let not the American citizen, therefore, bewail the certain decline and rapid decay of the institutions of sectarianism, but rather pray for the dawn of that glorious approaching day when, as we are but a one people and a united nation, we may have but one religion, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... others and cherishes [1] his own, can neither help himself nor others; he will be called a moral nuisance, a fungus, a microbe, a mouse gnawing at the vitals of humanity. The darkness in one's self must first be cast out, in order rightly to discern [5] darkness or ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... as good—or as bad—as all that—money?" questioned Mr. Vandeford. "You'll have to show me," he added calmly, though in the vitals of his heart he was relieved that Howard still spoke of "The Purple Slipper" as a carcass on ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... nine roods, lies Tityos accursed, The vulture at his vitals feeding slow; There Tantalus, whose bitter, burning thirst The fleeting waters madden ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... upon me numerous arrows of excessive sharpness, furnished with golden wings. And those fierce arrows of tremendous impetus, resembling snakes, or fire, or poison, coming at me from all sides, pierced my very vitals and caused me to tremble. Summoning all my coolness I then addressed myself for the encounter, and filled with rage I pierced Rama with a hundred arrows. And afflicted with those hundred blazing shafts resembling either fire, or the sun or looking ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... bayonet," said Peter. "We both saw it, but didn't speak until now. He was churning the bayonet around in the great paunch as if feeling for the vitals. The bear looked ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... perfection. He was young, in spite of his fifty-five years, and this tussle against odds, reminding him of other tussles during his first seasons in business, aroused his energies and, as he expressed it, "stirred up his vitals and made him hop round like ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pain is there Where bodies of matter, by some force stirred up, Through vitals and through joints, within their seats Quiver and quake inside, but soft delight, When they remove unto their place again: 'Tis thine to know the primal germs can be Assaulted by no pain, nor from themselves Take ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... muchacho appears); Haste! For the inner man refreshments bring, For vino and cigars may clear our minds. (Exit muchacho) Reflectively: My firm insistence did one cancer cure But when my mem'ry speaks of vandal hand Which once did throttle me in vulgar strife My vitals gripe me with a righteous wrath. I did presume that Seldonskip would feel A proper rev'rence for officials high, And fear on God's anointed, to bestow A mighty kick upon his nether parts But these Americanos know not fear ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... said he, stopping ever and anon, as if to laugh the more heartily, "stab my vitals, but you are a comical quiz. I wonder what the women would say, if they saw the dashing Edward Pepper, Esquire, walking arm in arm with thee at Ranelagh or Vauxhall! Nay, man, never be downcast; if I laugh at thee, it is only to make thee look a little merrier thyself. Why, thou lookest like a ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... potential internal grief! Whenever anything had happened to his Ford auty-mo-bile between Pinnacle and Lund, Casey never failed to trace the direct cause, which had always been external rather than internal, save that time when he had walked in and bought a new car without out probing into the vitals of ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... "letting run" being often renewed several times at the taking of a single fish. When the boat can be hauled near enough, the officer at its head darts his lance into the whale, aiming at a vital part. If the creature "spouts blood," it is well; but if not hit in the vitals, away it goes, and the whole business of "letting run," "towing," and "hauling in" has ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... grunted, irritated by Blodgett's free use of the word "nigger," "and Ah's tellin' you he'll have a Malay kris what'll slit yo' vitals and chop off yo' head; and nex' time when you gwine come to say howdy, you'll find yo' ol' skull a-setting in de temple, chockfull of dem rubies and grinnin' like he was glad to see you back again. Ah ain't gwine on no such promulgation, no sah! What Ah wants is a good, cool ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... nourishment he is to them. Even as when we keep a roaster of the sucking-pigs, we choose, and praise at table most, the favourite of its mother. Fifty times have I seen this, and smiled, and praised our people's taste, and offered them more of the vitals. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the day when he awoke again and hunger was gnawing his vitals; but the slow stupor was gone, he was himself again and the cramps had gone out of his limbs. He rose up luxuriously and cut a can of tomatoes, drinking the juice and eating the fruit, and then he lit a fire and boiled some strong coffee and cooked up a great mess ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... faithful auxiliaries he would instantly have been slain, but they rushed in and, fastening their teeth in the belly of the serpent, caused it to writhe and twist in its anguish. Instantly Gozon was upon his feet again, and, watching his opportunity, plunged his sword into the exposed vitals of his enemy. Mortally wounded, the serpent flung itself high in the air with a convulsive effort, and falling backwards pinned the knight to the ground beneath its enormous bulk. The servants, who had been the horrified spectators of this terrific conflict, now rushed to ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... cuticle emits a nauseous steam! The black blood oozing from her nostrils proclaims how terrible the inward struggle. The whole frame bends and shrinks, and warps like a fragment of leather thrown into a furnace—the flame has reached her vitals—at last, by God's mercy, she ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... world thought only of the sufferings he had inflicted on others; no one dreamed of the pangs he had to endure—no one but herself, to whom Galenus had spoken of them. And had not his features and his look betrayed to her that pain was gnawing at his vitals like the vulture at those of Prometheus? Hapless, pitiable youth, born to the highest fortune, and now a decrepit old man in the flower of his age! To pray and sacrifice for him must be a pious deed, pleasing to the gods. Melissa besought the marble images over the altar from the very bottom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... support me in calamities, * When fail all cures and greater cares arise? Exile hath worm my heart, my vitals torn; The World to foes hath turned my firm allies. O folk, will not one friend amidst you all * Wail o'er my woes, and cry to hear my cries? Death and it agonies seem light to me, * Since life has lost all joys and jollities: O Lord of Mustafa,[FN73] that Science-sea, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... called him effeminate, and faint-hearted, and coward. And Archias, drawing near, desired him to rise up, and repeating the same kind things he had spoken before, he once more promised him to make his peace with Antipater. But Demosthenes, perceiving that now the poison had pierced and seized his vitals, uncovered his head, and fixing his eyes upon Archias, "Now," said he, "as soon as you please you may commence the part of Creon in the tragedy, and cast out this body of mine unburied. But, O gracious ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... then, ladies, from thence I go to dinner at Lacket's, where you are so nicely and delicately served that, stab my vitals! they shall compose you a dish no bigger than a saucer, shall come to fifty shillings. Between eating my dinner (and washing my mouth, ladies) I spend my time till I go to the play, when till nine o'clock I entertain myself with looking upon ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... handsome and that she was not a hypocrite, no more than a pirate is a hypocrite who comes aboard with his cutlass in his teeth. Mrs. Almar's cutlass was always in her teeth, when it was not in somebody's vitals. ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... fashion of the Cornal's bloodiest stories. And now they were the foreign invader, dumb because they did not know the native language, pitying this doomed community but moving in to strike it at the vitals. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the foremost kine had seized a loud-roaring bull that bellowed mightily as they haled him, and the dogs and the young men sped after him. The lions rending the great bull's hide were devouring his vitals and his black blood; while the herdsmen in vain tarred on their fleet dogs to set on, for they shrank from biting the lions but stood hard by and barked and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... were men in these mountains, like lice on mammoths' hides, fighting them stubbornly, now with hydraulic "monitors," now with drill and dynamite, boring into the vitals of them, or tearing away great yellow gravelly scars in the flanks of them, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... whom I had always loved, for his very failings were endearing, was dead or at the point of death, like the gallant young man at his side, and I myself was dying. Tremors shook my limbs; horrible waves of blackness seemed to well up from my vitals, through my breast to my brain, and thence to evaporate in queer, jagged lines and patches, which I realized, but could not actually see. Gay memories of my far-off childhood arose in me, particularly those of a Christmas party where I had met a little girl ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... Philadelphia Commission of Inspection issued a fair-price list, setting an arbitrary price of eleven pence per pound on coffee in bag lots. Persons found violating this price were to be "exposed to public view as sordid vultures preying on the vitals of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... tares grew together in the soil. When the tares began to choke out the wheat, the uprooting of the foul growth became inevitable. Perhaps the Civil War was a necessity,—for this reason, the disease of slavery had struck in upon the vitals of the nation and the only cure was the surgeon's knife. Therefore God raised up soldiers, and anointed them as surgeons, with "the ointment ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... is on fire-come Clarence, drive your delicious pego into my vitals-see, I open the door for ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... We need not stain our hands with innocent blood. If we but sit passive, and leave their fate to time, they will die away in discouragement and despair. Already disease is sapping their vitals. Like other weak races, they will vanish from the pathway of the strong, and there is no place for them to flee. When they go hence, it is to go forever. It is the law of life, which God has given to the earth. To coddle them, to delude them with false hopes of an unnatural equality which ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... through, sometimes revealing the face of a stranger. While the imposing Mrs Elton quivered inwardly, Mrs Ranyard—for all her 'creeps' and her fluffiness—knew no flicker of fear. In any case, there were few who would confess to it, though it gnawed at their vitals; and Roy's quick eye noted that, among the women, as a whole, the light-hearted courage of Anglo-India prevailed. It gave him a sharp inner tweak to look at them all and remember that nightmare of seething, yelling rebels at Anarkalli. He wished to God Rose ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... stood for everything that he despised, a way of life that had made a mockery of everything he had been taught to believe in. The menace that had eaten at the world's vitals like a cancer, the menace whose existence had been enough to drive some men to hysteria and others to the brink of suicide. His ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson
... the spiritual, all degrees of backsliding sinners may be found, each branded with a mark of infamy according to its deserts. We have seen how the dodder vine lost both leaf and roots after it consented to live wholly by theft of its hardworking host's juices through suckers that penetrate to the vitals; how the Indian pipe's blanched face tells the story of guilt perpetrated under cover of darkness, in the soil below; how the broom-rape and beech-drops lost their honest green color; and, finally, the foxgloves show us plants with their faces so newly turned toward the path of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... church. This soul is—is far from grace; it is in a lost condition; a stranger to God, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel. But that is not all. No. It is—ah—spreading its own disease of sin in the vitals of the church. It is not only going down to hell itself, but it is dragging others along with it. It is to consider the welfare of that soul, Brother Ward, that this Session has been convened. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... tea or chocolate resolved themselves into a lump of chocolate out of one's haversack and a pull at one's water-bottle. The mess-president proved himself a man of resource on this trying occasion. With hunger gnawing at his vitals he saw a beautiful dinner laid out in a waiting-room for some staff officers. Unable to satisfy his comrades he saw no reason why he himself should go unsatisfied, and in the three or four minutes occupied by the engine in watering ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... accustomed impassibility. Thinking that he saw the expression of insulting triumph in Morok's glance, Jacques raised his elbow abruptly, and drank with avidity a few drops more. But his strength was exhausted. A quenchless fire devoured his vitals. His sufferings were too intense, and he could no longer bear up against them. His head fell backwards, his jaws closed convulsively, he crushed the neck of the bottle between his teeth, his neck grew rigid, his limbs writhed with spasmodic action, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Prometheus Bound, and composed by the Greek poet AEschylus, was played at Athens 500 years before the beginning of the Christian era. To show that this sin-atoning saviour was not chained to a rock, while vultures preyed upon his vitals, as popularly taught, but was nailed to a tree; we quote front Potter's translation of the play, that passage which, readily recognized as the original of a ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... ice, and the whalers had returned with scantier fares year after year; but here was light for the world. The solid ground itself was echoing with the cry: "Here she blows!" and "There she blows!" and the long harpoons went down to its vitals, and were fairly lifted out by the pressure of the treasure ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... after she had both clipped and kissed him amain, heaving the heaviest sighs in the world, she said to him, 'I know not who could have brought me to this pass, other than thou; thou hast kindled a fire in my vitals, little dog of a Tuscan!' Then, at her instance, they entered the bath, both naked, and with them two of the slave-girls; and there, without letting any else lay a finger on him, she with her own hands washed Salabaetto ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... key, but that, under all the conditions of his life, we hear from him so much of the higher music as we do. The memory comes to us as we write of a man who preached the Gospel for years with the cruel disease of cancer gnawing at his vitals. We can recall others who came to proclaim the golden year from domestic circles blighted by the debauchery and vice of children but too well beloved. Did these men sometimes speak falteringly, and with hesitation, the message in which they asked and promised glorious things? Did they, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... vigorous and striking war. France therefore stood on the defensive; England was always the attacking party. On two sides, in Flanders and in Brittany, France had outposts which, if well defended, might long keep the English power away from her vitals. Unluckily for his side, Philip was harsh and raw, and threw these advantages away. In Flanders the repressive commercial policy of the Count, dictated from Paris, gave Edward the opportunity, in the end of 1337, of sending the ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... unexplored mine of satisfaction in the refreshing fact, that the Thames is fostering in his bosom an entirely new navy, calculated to bid defiance to the foe—should he ever come—in the very heart and lungs, the very bowels and vitals, the very liver and lungs, or, in one emphatic word, the very pluck of the metropolis. There is not a more striking instance of the remarkable connexion between little—very little—causes, and great—undeniably great—effects, than the extraordinary origin, rise, progress, germ, development, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... time. One was, of course, the plan of those sympathetic characters who had volunteered to help Mike and his gang win the status of spacemen by firing the Platform's rockets. There were not many of them, and they had lost heavily. They'd had thermite bombs to destroy the Platform's vitals. Ultimately the survivors talked freely, if morosely, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... try to cut to the vitals of the subject, and proceed with the post-mortem of this carcass of death. It is time to speak on this subject. All the indignation of the community upon this subject is hurled upon woman's head. If, in an evil hour, she sacrifice her honor, the whole city goes howling after her. She shall ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... to exist without the nourishment best suited to them. They are nature's miserable castaways, parasitical tribes lost in a great dry wilderness where no blood is; and every marsh-born mosquito, piping of the hunger gnawing its vitals, and every forest tick, blindly feeling with its grappling-irons for the beast that never brushes by, seems to tell us of a world peopled with gigantic forms, mammalian and reptilian, which once afforded abundant pasture to the parasite, and which ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... rest near the spot where those lov'd ones were sleeping, Was the last earthly wish of her desolate heart; And she pray'd whilst disease to her vitals was creeping, That God would his grace ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... characteristic of the speaker, Castell seemed to shrink like a pin-pricked bladder, or some bold fighter who has suddenly received a sword-thrust in his vitals. All courage went out of the man, his fiery eyes grew tame, he appeared to become visibly smaller, and to put on something of the air of those mendicants of his own race, who whine out their woes and beg alms ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... and left their miserable followers and servants, who in that country are infinitely numerous, without protection and without bread. The monthly instalment of Mr. Hastings's bribe was become due, and his rapacity must be fed from the vitals of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Dean reascend the kitchen steps, and make a statement of which the words "drink" and "Dora" alone reached us. The drawing-room door closed, and in the release from tension I sank heavily down upon a heap of potatoes. The wolf of laughter that had been gnawing at my vitals broke loose. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... has learned how to kill sheep since the sheep-herders came to New Zealand. The kea darts out of the air, fastens its talons in the side of the sheep, and quickly makes a gaping hole into the animal's vitals. Thousands of sheep ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... opportunity; his chance for a rescue. He would snatch her from the clutches of the Romish Brute. A few stabs in the monster's vitals might accomplish wonders. So he answered, sadly, in a ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... recover, it will not be his fault. The isolation of my position is too great; all my social intercourse has died away; I was fated to survive and cast from me everything. I stand in a desert, and feed on my own vitals; I must perish. Some people will be sorry for this one day, perhaps even the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... instance of the Spartan youth who having stolen a fox and hidden it inside his robe calmly stood up and let the animal gnaw his vitals rather than be caught with it in his possession. But, why? I ask you, why? What was the good of it all? What object was served? To begin with, the boy had absconded with somebody else's fox, or with somebody's ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... to weave the carpet for the support of the chrysalis, an appearance of emaciation at last points to the evil that is at their vitals. They spin nevertheless. They are stoics who do not forget their duty in the hour of death. At last they expire, quite softly, not of any wounds, but of anaemia, even as a lamp goes out when the oil comes to an end. And it has to be. The living caterpillar, capable of feeding ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... that this sacred relationship is neglected, and its obligations disregarded, in any nation, do we find woman degraded, and ignorance, barbarism, sensuality and vice, in every shape, prevailing and preying on the vitals of society. ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... you? It's the same reason that's been urging me to pick a quarrel with you so that I might have the satisfaction of slipping a couple of feet of steel into your vitals. When I accepted your commission, I was moved to think it might redeem me in the eyes of Miss Bishop—for whose sake, as you may have guessed, I took it. But I have discovered that such a thing is beyond accomplishment. I should have known it for a sick man's dream. I have discovered also ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... produced a bottle of witch-hazel from the bathroom with which she insisted on bathing the bump till Ted remarked disgruntledly that he smelt like a hospital. Oliver watched the domestic scene with frantic laughter tearing at his vitals—this was so entirely different and unromantic an end to the evening from that from which Oliver had set out to rescue Ted like a spectacled Mr. Grundy and which Ted in his gust of madness had so bitterly ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... is easy and to keep that promise is often hard, as Shadrach observed when he and Zoeth were alone in the sitting-room that evening. "I feel as if the whole vitals of this place had gone away on that afternoon train," the Captain admitted. "And yet I know it's awful foolish, 'cause she'll only be gone a ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... weight of the great monster carried it down the mountain side. Before the bear could make the turn, the brave was beside his Aggretta in the tree. But no sooner had he cleared the ground than the monster was underneath the tree, tearing at the lower limbs, while the shaft remained buried in his vitals. ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... on deck while Boyd descended to the fiery vitals of the steamer. It is not an easy matter to smuggle a grimy stoker from his furnace to the upper passenger decks, but ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... of his work. Large deft hands, a good deal like the hands of a surgeon, square, blunt-fingered, spatulate. Indeed, as you saw him at work, a wire-netted electric bulb held in one hand, the other plunged deep into the vitals of the car on which he was engaged, you thought of a surgeon performing a major operation. He wore one of those round skullcaps characteristic of his craft (the brimless crown of an old felt hat). He ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... followed was enough to curdle one's blood, but the young man only uttered an exclamation of disgust. He had driven a ball through the vitals of a South American cougar, instead of through one of the natives, a score of whom he gladly would have wiped out of existence ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... of the Huns in Africa ran cold in their veins, and the fear that the advancing Belgians would wreak vengeance for the crimes of Germany in Belgium and to the Belgian consuls in prison in Tabora, gripped their vitals. Hastily they sent their women and children at all speed east along the line to Tabora, the new Provincial capital, and planned to put up the stiff rearguard actions that should delay the enemy, until the English might take Tabora and save ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... parentage. Italy was then not merely the stronghold of Popery. That in itself would have been a fair reason for others beside Puritans saying, 'If the root be corrupt, the fruit will be also: any expression of Italian thought and feeling must be probably unwholesome while her vitals are being eaten out by an abominable falsehood, only half believed by the masses, and not believed at all by the higher classes, even those of the priesthood; but only kept up for their private aggrandisement.' But there was more than hypothesis in favour of the men who ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... incorrigibly flippant about the banishment of important local subjects. She said that the kitchen-boiler was out of order, and yet she had to take part in these highly-cultivated conversations and smile, as she complained, with that kitchen-boiler gnawing at her vitals. She claimed to be set on a level with the Spartan boy, if not above him. Valeria might scoff, as those proverbially did who never felt a wound. Hadria found a certain lack of tender feeling among the happy few who had no such ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... in cases of ordinary illness; the family's grandmother attended to those. Every old woman was a doctor, and gathered her own medicines in the woods, and knew how to compound doses that would stir the vitals of a cast-iron dog. And then there was the "Indian doctor"; a grave savage, remnant of his tribe, deeply read in the mysteries of nature and the secret properties of herbs; and most backwoodsmen had high faith in ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Then came a distinct recollection of his violated pledge; but all after that was only dimly seen, or involved in wild confusion. His bodily sensations told him but too plainly how deep had been his fall: and the intolerable desire, that seemed as if it were consuming his very vitals, was to him a sad evidence that he had fallen, never, he feared, to rise again. All this passed through his mind in a moment, and he closed his eyes, and turned his face away from the earnest, and now tearful gaze of ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... with which it was menaced. Of the social reforms it had pledged itself to it had not been able to accomplish a single one, and it was now quite certain that it would leave behind it no great work to perpetuate its name. But what more than all beside was gnawing at its vitals was the rivalries by which it was distracted, the corroding suspicion and distrust in which each of its members lived. For some time past many of them, the more moderate and the timid, had ceased to attend its sessions. The others shaped their course day ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... aunt!" he whispered. "It was she who took the vial out of the box; who put it to her own lips; who shrieked when she felt her vitals gripped. Had you stayed you would have known this. Can't you say so? Don't you think so? Why do you look at me with ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... first night on Luzon's soil; but their sleep was not easy. Visions of gore and midnight slaughter passed in review before their drowsy eyes; and just as a black-faced little rebel had them by the throat and was plunging a great long knife into their vitals, they would awaken with a start, feel under their heads for their fire-arms, to reassure themselves, pat the trusty weapon a time or two, call it "good old Bets," and again doze off to sleep, ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... of the same hellish selfishness which eats the vitals out of everything. Get out of yourself, get into the lives of others, and the smoke-hunger will quit you. You could n't go down where you 've been and made a beast of yourself if you cared more about others than yourself. The power that drove you down there would n't mean anything if a stronger ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and long-suffering Antoninus. Meantime, to give a color of patriotism to his treason, Cassius alleged public motives; in a letter, which he wrote after assuming the purple, he says: "Wretched empire, miserable state, which endures these hungry blood- suckers battening on her vitals!—A worthy man, doubtless, is Marcus; who, in his eagerness to be reputed clement, suffers those to live whose conduct he himself abhors. Where is that L. Cassius, whose name I vainly inherit? Where is that Marcus,—not ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... world," whispered my lord, "neither him nor the black deil that serves him. I have struck my sword throughout his vitals," he cried; "I have felt the hilt dirl[12] on his breastbone, and the hot blood spirt in my very face, time and again, time and again!" he repeated, with a gesture indescribable. "But he was never dead for, that," said ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and giving way to his passion, reprimanded him very severely for his insolence; for which the villain being now wrought up to the highest degree of fury, took an opportunity to stab him with his dagger through the back into the vitals, of which wound he instantly died, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... bibliomania. But the development of the passion is not always marked by exhibitions of violence; sometimes, like the measles, it is slow and obstinate about "coming out," and in such cases applications should be resorted to for the purpose of diverting the malady from the vitals; otherwise ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... scratch like a man, though, and sent one of his ponderous fists crashing through his opponent's ribs and in among his vitals, and instantly afterward he hauled out poor Stanford's left lung and smacked him in the face ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... mouth, and that hour was such as maketh a man to forget his father and his mother. So he clasped her in his arms and strained her fast to his breast and sucked her lip, till the honey-dew ran out into his mouth; and he laid his hand under her left-armpit, whereupon his vitals and her vitals yearned for coition. Then he clapped her between the breasts and his hand slipped down between her thighs and she girded him with her legs, whereupon he made of the two parts proof amain and crying out, "O sire of the chin-veils twain[FN50]!" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... me in cold blood for Featherbrain. Since then I've been a blighted being—hiding, like the Spartan chap in the story, the fox that preys on my vitals, and going through life with the hollow mockery of a smile on ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Famine gnawed incessantly at her stomach; walk though she might, turn upon her tracks up and down the streets, back to the avenue again, incessantly and relentlessly the torture dug into her vitals. She was hungry, hungry, and if the want of food harassed and rended her, full-grown woman that she was, what must it be in the poor, starved stomach of her little girl? Oh, for some helping hand ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... terrible teeth could not close upon him, nor do him the least harm in the world. Thus, though the struggle was a tremendous one, and though the dragon shattered the tuft of trees into small splinters by the lashing of his tail, yet, as Cadmus was all the while slashing and stabbing at his very vitals, it was not long before the scaly wretch bethought himself of slipping away. He had not gone his length, however, when the brave Cadmus gave him a sword thrust that finished the battle; and creeping out of the gateway of the creature's jaws, there he beheld him still wriggling ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the morning, now burst into an agony of tears; and the vehemence of her feelings tearing so delicate a frame (now rendered weak unto death by a consuming sickness, which her late exertions and present griefs had made seize on her very vitals), seemed to threaten the immediate extinction of her being. Bruce, aroused by her smothered cries, as she lay almost expiring, upheld by Gloucester, hurried to her side. By degrees she recovered to life and observance; but finding herself ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... whose importunities there is no denying for any length of time, and so it fell out that, in spite of their brave and manful efforts at keeping up each other's pluck and spirit, he gnawed at their vitals in a way which reduced not only their stamina, but ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... vitals!" answered the Duke. "Tell him to postpone his recovery, or I will put him to death ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... he drank freely of that poison which his own mother had prepared. Then when he had drunk his fill, Tristram took the chalice and would have drunk too; but the other said, "Stay, Tristram, there is great bitterness in that chalice"; and then he said, "Methinks I feel a very bitter pang within my vitals," and then he cried out, "Woe is me! I am in great pain!" Therewith he fell down upon the ground and lay there in a great passion of agony. Then Tristram cried aloud for help in a piercing voice; but when help came ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... her influence all the more affectionately over her home. Wounded deeper and ever deeper, she will toil on, hiding from the world the pangs of wounded affection, "as the wounded dove will clasp its wings to its side and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals." But the shafts of continuous neglect will pierce her heart at last—a husband's continuous neglect extinguish, at last, the sacred flame upon the domestic hearth. She, too, finds home irksome. She, too, learns to find more pleasure abroad than in her home. She, too, thinks light of liberties ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... danger of this form of Varicocele lies in the fact that thousands of young men are going about to-day not knowing that they have the disease; not knowing that a persistent evil is nestling in this little canal, gnawing at their vitals, and slowly but surely undermining and destroying their sexual vigor ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... confounded and he wounded all around him in every direction and on all sides [9]and they wounded him in like manner.[9] And then [10]Cethern[10] left them, [11]and it was thus he went, and the front-guard of the chariot pressed up against his belly to keep his entrails and vitals within him,[11] [12]and his intestines were wound about his legs.[12] He came to the place where was Cuchulain, to be healed and cured, and he demanded a leech of Cuchulain to heal and to cure him. [13]Cuchulain had compassion ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... honor and national interest is confined to no party. Neither is it confined to party leaders; but it controls the people on whom the leaders rely for support. Here is the seat of the disease which is gnawing at the vitals of the republic. The man who now refuses to cater to the depraved tastes of the masses, can not, as a rule, be promoted to office. How many men can sit in the halls of legislation, or even on our benches of justice, who persistently refuse to influence men's votes by ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... it money, dear?—I have, and while ever I've one shilling to throw down to ould Matthew McBride's guinea, I'll go on; and every guinea he parts will twinge his vitals: so I'll keep on while ever I've a fiv'-penny bit to rub on another—for my spirit ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... monoplane, too, was with them. The huge enemy was approaching slowly: was it damaged? McGuire hardly dared hope ... yet that raking fire might well have been deadly: it might be that some bullets had torn and penetrated to the vitals of this ship's machinery and damaged ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... "Thank'ee, But we cannot stand the Yankee O'er our scars and fissures poring, In our very vitals boring, In our sacred caverns prying, All our secret problems trying,— Digging, blasting, with dynamit Mocking all our thunders! Damn it! Other lands may be more civil, Bust our lava crust if ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... one spoken word his life and health might flow back upon him with new and refreshing vigor? The risk was too great. It might banish forever from his sight the only object that made that life endurable; and so it remained unsaid, preying upon the vitals and pressing him onward to the blessed haven of rest—rest from all doubts, rest from all infirmities and sufferings, rest from all painful labor, both physical and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... been gorging themselves upon the crocodile's vitals since daybreak, and a perfect flock of them flew sluggishly away as the boys made sure that the reptile was not where it had been left, and then went back to ask ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... Peri, my dear M., is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But you are laughing at me—'Stap my vitals, Tarn! thou art a very impudent person;' and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to be laughed at. Seriously, what on earth can you, or have you, to dread from any poetical flesh breathing? It really puts me out of humour to hear you ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... at him from an ambush, and with a lucky shot stretch him out. A single bullet sometimes kills the rhinoceros—but only when correctly placed, so as to penetrate the heart, or some other of the "vitals." ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... secret around without any trouble, but the other one, the big one, the splendid one, burned the very vitals of us, it was so hot to get out and we so hot to let it out and astonish people with it. But we had to keep it in; in fact, it kept itself in. Satan said it would, and it did. We went off every day and got to ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the Anthrax, the Leucopsis does not eat the Chalicodoma-grub, that is to say, he does not break it up into mouthfuls; he drains it without opening it and digging into its vitals. In him again we see exemplified that marvellous art which consists in feeding on the victim without killing it until the meal is over, so as always to have a portion of fresh meat. With its mouth assiduously applied to the unhappy creature's skin, the lethal grub fills itself and waxes fat, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... so, nor do I! But you have been faithful to your charge respecting this poor lady within, have you not, dame?" Bigot looked as if his eyes searched her very vitals. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The malaria has travelled in the paths worn by her destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of her empire. A mortal disease was upon her vitals before Csar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns,—the swarms of the North,—completed only what was already begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... counsels without fear of calumny, and while beholding everything with the eyes of his spies, he should take care to conceal his own emotions before the spies of his enemies. Like a fisherman who becometh prosperous by catching and killing fish, a king can never grow prosperous without tearing the vitals of his enemy and without doing some violent deeds. The might of thy foe, as represented by his armed force, should ever be completely destroyed, by ploughing it up (like weeds) and mowing it down and otherwise afflicting it by disease, starvation, and want of drink. A person ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... harsher still, the tyrant maid, whose scorn, In league with savage Love, inflamed the war Of all my passions.—Love himself more tame, With pity soothes my ills; while that cold heart, Insensible to the devouring flame Which wastes my vitals, triumphs in my smart. One thought is comfort—that her scorn to bear, Excels e'er prosperous love, with ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... a long and eloquent speech, complained of a breach made in the constitution. There was a capital mischief fixed at home, which corrupted the very foundation of our political existence, and preyed upon the very vitals of the state. "The constitution," he exclaimed vehemently, "has been grossly violated—the constitution at this moment stands violated! Until that wound be healed, until the grievances be redressed, it is in vain to recommend ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Feodor during an evening call he interned him in the vitals of a tuneless Baby Grand, and for three hours played on him CHOPIN'S polonaise in A flat major, with the loud pedal down. On his release Feodor had lost his reason and rushed to the nearest police-station ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... of the malady and see with her own eyes the conflict between death and life in the body of her father. The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was worse; the nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now more acute; a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment was ordered which necessitated his return to Paris. He was soon so weak that he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne, but the marquise was so insistent as to the necessity for further and better advice than anything ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... wounds, it was discovered that none of the balls from the small pistols had, after passing through his thick and tough hide, penetrated deeper than about an inch into the flesh, but that the two balls from the large pistol had gone into the vitals and killed him. This test was to my mind a decisive one as to the relative efficiency of the two arms for frontier service, and I resolved thenceforth ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... in our hearts that no normal girl could help preferring that celestial peacock to our grey hen, and that Miss Destrey's wish to be kind must have outstripped her obligation to be truthful. This knowledge was turning a screw round in our vitals, when His Highness himself appeared to give ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the end. First one, then another, yakunin thrust a spear into his belly, seeking least injury and greatest torture. As he approached the utter prostration of a dissolution the yoriki gave sign. The spear point thrust into the vitals showed through the left ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... that the nation recoiled and bowed itself for a time, beaten and crushed—both North and South—and vultures gathered at the seat of conflict and tore at its vitals and wrangled over the spoils. Then it was that they who had sowed discord stooped to reap the Devil's own harvest,—a woeful, bitter, desperate time, when more enmity and deep rancor was bred and treasured up for future ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... vitals airs and sub-airs are forces which harmonize the interior man with his surroundings, by adjusting the relations of the body to external objects. They are the five ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... intolerant, and Hugh was haunted by the text, "The zeal of Thine house hath ever eaten me." Maitland seemed to be literally devoured by an idea, which, like the fox in the old story of the Spartan boy, appeared to prey on his vitals. Hugh became gradually nettled by the argument, but he was no match for Maitland in scholastic disputation. Maitland felled his arguments with an armoury of texts, which he used like cudgels. Hugh at last said that what he thought was the weak point in Maitland's argument was this—that ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... His vitals were tortured by this problem. It was a claw within him sharper than the iron one; and as it tore him, the perspiration dripped down his tallow countenance and streaked his doublet. Ofttimes he drew his sleeve across his face, but there was no ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... me through the window. I guess that was so. The door was shut, but unfastened. I didn't dare keep it fast, working in there. Well, I heard a sound. The door was pushed wide and he jumped in on me with a loaded gun at my vitals. He'd got me plumb set. Sure. But the dope. It didn't give him a chance. It got a strangle-holt right away, and he dropped dead at my feet. He's—he's your step-father? The man you came ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Agnes battled with the demon fever which was gnawing at the vitals of her beloved George. At intervals her care seemed to get the better of the disorder, and to cause it to loosen its grip. But, alas! after twenty-four hours of unceasing toil and anxiety, poor devoted Agnes was forced to endure the mental agony of ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... despite my cheeks wax white, My doddering brain gets weak and giddy, My eyes o'erflow with tears which show That passion melts my vitals, Liddy! ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... nothing he could admire himself, but a second cup of coffee put warmth into his vitals and he recovered sufficiently to pay the breakfast check. If it was Congdon he had shot there was still the hope, encouraged by the newspaper, that the wounded man was in no haste to report his injury to the police. But Archie found ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... waggon-dwelling and cave-refuge, rating the inhabitants of some, dosing the occupants of others, emerging from three or four of the stuffy, ill-smelling places with a heavy frown that boded ill for somebody. For though Famine had not yet begun to gnaw the vitals of those immured in Gueldersdorp, Disease had here and there sprung into active, threatening, infectious being, menacing the crowded community with invisible, maleficent forces. Soon the hospitals were to be crowded to the doors, to remain crowded for many months ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a great boy!" he said with a sort of quizzical solemnity. "A great boy. This damned, God-forsaken, pestilential, demoralizing, brutalizing factory for enriching a few with the very life blood and vitals of thousands that will suffer and starve and never be heard of" (all his language cannot be recorded), "will make two or three reputations by the way. Mine will be one, although I'll get nothing else. Shelikov is safe; but you will have a ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... drove the boats headlong upon the fish. Daggett, perhaps, was the coolest and most calculating at that moment, but Roswell was the most nervous, and the boldest. The boat of the last actually hit the side of the whale, as its young commander drove his lance through the blubber, into the vitals of the fish. At the same instant Daggett threw his lance with consummate skill, and went to the quick. It was now "stern all!" for life, each boat backing off from the danger as fast as hands could urge. The sea was in a ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... come on deck, gentlemen?" It was the mate who spoke, and the man was shaken—I could see that—to the very vitals of him. We started and stared at one another, and I watched little Ally Bazan go slowly white to the lips. And even then no word of the ship, except as it might be ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... but undesigning activity seized him. He rose from his place and strode across the floor, tottering and at random. His eyes were without moisture, and gleamed with the fire that consumed his vitals. The muscles of his face were agitated by convulsion. His lips moved, but ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... quarrel between us," I said; "but perhaps a straight-out row would be better than forever to be eating our own vitals with ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... only for his country, and yet the insulting vehemence and unfeeling words of the king have rendered it impossible for him ever to reenter the Prussian service. He sees that his country is sinking every day, and that she is ruined not only by foreign enemies, but by domestic foes preying at the vitals of her administration. He would like to help her—he feels that he has stored up the means to do so in his experience—and yet he cannot. I ask you, therefore, my friend, where is the balm for his ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... it never lightened or thundered, but I expected the next flash would penetrate my vitals, and melt the sword (soul) in this scabbard of flesh; it never blew a storm of wind, but I expected the fall of some stack of chimneys, or some part of the house, would bury me in its ruins; ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... but a few whole days amount To three score years and ten; And all beyond that short account Is sorrow toil and pain. Our vitals with laborious strife Bear up the crazy load, And drag these poor remains of life Along ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various
... two ugly looking guns in Maclin's bag all packed with papers and pictures of the mines and bits of our own rock—what showed iron. Peter, I ain't a bloodthirsty woman and the Lord knows I don't hunger for my fellow's vitals, but I'm willing to give Maclin up to a righteous God. The Lord knows we couldn't deal with the like ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... it was to me as I looked at the monster angrily lashing the water with its fins and flukes! The next instant we were beside the whale, and as it rolled on its side Captain Coffin transfixed him with a thrust of his lance that seemed to pierce his very vitals. The next moment the blood poured in gallons from his spout-holes. Having slackened the line from the boat, we rested on our oars at a safe distance and watched the monster circling around ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... recovered enough of presence of mind to use the lance in his hands. Turning the point of the weapon to the jaguar's mouth, he thrust it in with such tremendous force that it passed right down its throat and into its very vitals. With a gasping snarl the monster fell back into the stream, and was quickly ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... we safely digest the prosperity that the happy accident of our temporary isolation and the prudent policies of our Government have given us? Are we not feeding a cancer that will take another war to cut from our vitals? ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... was the organ, And hushed the vespers loud, The Sacristan approached the sire, And drew him from the crowd— "There's something in thy visage, On which I dare not look; And when I rang the passing bell, A tremor that I may not tell, My very vitals shook. ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... said Wainamoinen, 'in these roomy caverns. I can eat thy heart and flesh and for drink I will take thy blood. And I will set my forge still deeper in thy vitals, and will swing my hammer still harder on thy heart and lungs and liver. I shall never leave thee until I learn all thy wisdom, and the three lost words, that all thy magic knowledge may not perish with thee from ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind |
