"Writhe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't want to know? You'd rather continue to writhe on the gridiron than to turn over and fall into the fire and ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... easy job. The pig did writhe and twist, while the frantic mother danced up and down in the pen behind, and drove the surgeon nearly crazy with her noise. But he toiled bravely on, and when at last the operation was done, the heart of Romeo Augustus was knit unto ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... crawling worms that in corruption breed, And on corruption batten, till at last Mistaken honour the proud victim cast Out to their spite, to writhe, and ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... the boy who had caused the mishap, and who, knowing the effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr. Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr. Lawley, too exhausted to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! it had missed its aim, and, striking the ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... the finest ones found their way into the pool, and on Friday the cook and his men supplied the tables with fresh fish. How many times have I seen those fine fish, caught on the prongs of a spear, writhe and wriggle to get off. At first I could not taste them, I felt so sorry to see them killed in that way. I would not go out on Friday until after the fishing was done. The lamper eels crawled up the stream and the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... sea, mountain or stream, or Muses' spring or grove, is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off Phoebus' beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a Nile flow ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... on my imagination, Tristan and Die Sieger; with these I was constantly occupied from this time onwards, together with my great work, the Nibelungen, the unfinished portion of which was still of gigantic dimensions. The more these projects absorbed me, the more did I writhe with impatience at the perpetual interruptions of my work by these loathsome attacks of illness. About this time Liszt proposed to pay me a visit that had been postponed in the summer, but I had to ask him not to come, as I could not be certain, after my late experiences, of ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the sight that he leaned up against the wall with his hand to his throat to stifle his inclination to call out. His first thought was that the prostrate figure was that of some wounded or dying man, but as he watched it he saw it writhe along the ground and into the hall with the rapidity and noiselessness of a serpent. Once within the house the man sprang to his feet, closed the door, and revealed to the astonished farmer the fierce face and ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... oak and cedar bend and writhe When roars the wind through gap and braken; But 'tis the tenderest reed of all That trembles first when Earth ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... General Markow, Brigadier, Insisting on removal of the Prince Amidst some groaning thousands dying near,— All common fellows, who might writhe and wince, And shriek for water into a deaf ear,— The General Markow, who could thus evince His sympathy for rank, by the same token, To teach him greater, had ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of stones and rocky fragments, and a very shower of fiery arrows, each one a deadly comet as it falls! They descend on the swift-rowed boats. They fall as they will without mercy on man or thwart. The devils shriek out and drop their oars, and writhe horribly when they are hit. And some with bold hands sweep them out of ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... the block, the quick tramp of feet, a strangling cry, and Job the quartermaster was snatched aloft to kick and writhe and dangle against ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... insecure nest in our trees is that of the little social sparrow, or "chippie." When the sudden summer storms come, making the tree-tops writhe as if in agony, I think of this frail nest amid the tossing branches. Pass through the grove or orchard after the tempest is over, and you are pretty sure to find several wrecked nests upon the ground. "Chippie" has never learned the art of nest-building ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing, ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I dreamt again and again of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... of the lip is responsible for my being here; it kept sending me constant telegrams; but what I want to know is, do I come for the pleasure of the thing or for the pain? Do I like your disdain, Alice, or does it make me writhe? Am I here to beg you to do it again, or to ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... took the matter somewhat more angrily than befitted men so pious in the opinion of the people." So Buchanan himself puts it: but, to do the poor friars justice, they must have been angels, not men, if they did not writhe somewhat under the scourge which he had laid on them. To be told that there was hardly a place in heaven for monks, was hard to hear and bear. They accused him to the king of heresy: but not being then in favour with James, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... laughing in the shop fronts of the innumerable curio-shops; in the grotesque figures, the playthings, the idols, cruel, suspicious mad;—it is even found in the buildings: in the friezes of the religious porticos, in the roofs of the thousand pagodas; of which the angles and gable-ends writhe and twist like the yet dangerous remains ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... said, "there is no respectable conclusion to be drawn. It is tragic, but prosaic. She has been governess or companion in some great house. She may be a well-born woman. It is ten times more hideous for her than if she were a girl. She has to writhe under knowing that both her friends and her enemies are saying that she had not the excuse of not having been old enough to ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and Termagant. I saw a blackamoor last week behind his master, a merchant of Genoa, in Paul's Walk. He looked like the devils in the Miracle Play at Christ Church, with blubber lips and wool for hair. I marvelled that he did not writhe and flee when he came within the Minster, but Ned Burgess said he was ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... come a wave of hate for his enemy and wipe out all other thoughts, and he would wrestle in his heart with the desire to kill Wainwright—yes, and the captain, too. As some poor wretch near him would writhe and groan in agony his rage would boil up anew, his fists would clench, and he would half rise to go to the door and overpower that guard! If only he could get up to where the officers were enjoying themselves! Oh, to bring them down here and bind them in this loathsome atmosphere, ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... Helen's arm from her with a violence that made her writhe with pain—while her eyes flashed ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... beneath one, horses on top of one; to struggle in vain, since one's bones have been broken by some kick in the darkness; to feel a heel which makes one's eyes start from their sockets; to bite horses' shoes in one's rage; to stifle, to yell, to writhe; to be beneath, and to say to one's self, "But just a little while ago I ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... girl stepped on some stone more sharp than usual—and, with a sudden writhe and shriek, sank to the ground. Raphael lifted her up, and she tried to proceed, but sank down again.... What ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... brand, A week ago, upon my steed, With Forrest and his warrior band, I made the hell-hounds writhe and bleed. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... very nearly offensive, but was at the same time so polished, that it would indicate a want of good breeding to be annoyed at it. It was thus a real treat for Uncle Richard to see the magistrate, with all his aplomb, writhe under Delphin's adroit and sarcastic rejoinders. Aalbom, on the other hand, was not so well bred, and often, therefore, broke through conventionalities, to the great delight of both ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... He could not tell how far he was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and writhe to restore ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... an air of mock politeness, which made Winter writhe. He did not, however, reply. I think he was ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... the back or the belly at random. The furry skins are gaping with wounds; their contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment, the needles of the pine-tree; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet unwounded are digging desperately in the attempt to take refuge underground. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... intoxicated with power, was counting the strokes on his fingers, and never left off smoking cigarettes, while several officious persons hastened on every opportunity to offer him a burning match to light them. When more than fifty strokes had been given, the peasant ceased to shriek and writhe, and the doctor, who had been educated in a government institution to serve his sovereign and his country with his scientific attainments, went up to the victim, felt his pulse, listened to his heart, and announced to the representative of authority that the man undergoing ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... in a tortured frame of mind which their arrival brought a necessity for masking and the things which had made him so writhe had been the reviews in these papers of "The Longest ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... great merits of homoeopathic magic is that it enables the cure to be performed on the person of the doctor instead of on that of his victim, who is thus relieved of all trouble and inconvenience, while he sees his medical man writhe in anguish before him. For example, the peasants of Perche, in France, labour under the impression that a prolonged fit of vomiting is brought about by the patient's stomach becoming unhooked, as they call it, and so falling down. Accordingly, a practitioner is called in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and wavering layers of heat—heat from the orange sun edged red by the Desert dust of the atmosphere—heat from the wind off some white flamed furnace—heat from the ochre shifting sands panting to the loom and writhe of the blue-flamed air, and over all a veil, was it blue or lilac or lavender? tinted as of rainbow mists. For a little while, neither spoke. Each knew what the dusty dead orange earth, the smoking sand hills, the sifted volcanic ash, the burnt oil ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... splendor. There she stood, her hair flowing dark and silky from beneath her twisted turban, her eyes,—black melted loadstones; the broad Egyptian pendants gleaming and glowing from temple to shoulder. The golden serpent seemed to writhe on her bosom, informed from its wearer with a subtile vitality. Through all dominated a grand repose, like the calm of nature, which storms may prove but ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... were no longer made a torment by the acute rheumatic pains. The parched mouth and throat craved no more perpetually for the cooling drinks that had not allayed their misery. Light could be borne without any grave discomfort, and the agonizing abdominal pains, which had made the victim writhe and almost desire death, had entirely subsided. From the face, too, the dreadful hue which had even struck those who had only seen Nigel casually had nearly departed. Though still very thin and pale, it did not look unnatural. It was now the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... word, Brennan howled again; the pain was too much for him and he toppled sidewise to writhe ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... sorry they let me go down to the brook, I'm sorry they gave me the line and the hook, And I wish I had stayed at home with my book. I'm sure 'twas no pleasure to see That poor, little, harmless, suffering thing, Silently writhe at the end of the string; Or to hold the pole, while I felt him swing In ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... well known to our readers through the so-called Bulgarian atrocities. A sharpened pole was forced into the body of the victim, and the other end was then driven into the earth, the unfortunate man, woman, or child being left to writhe in agony until relieved ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... delicately chiselled cups; those glasses and bottles which Vesuvius has preserved for us; that jug, the handle of which is formed of a satyr bending backward to rub his shoulders against the edge of the vase; those vessels of all shapes on which eagles perch or swans and serpents writhe; those cups of baked clay adorned with so many arabesques and inviting descriptions. "Friend," says one of them "drink ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... steel-clad age Find life alone within the storied page, Iron is worn, at heart, by many still— The tyrant Custom binds the serf-like will; If the sharp rack, and screw, and chain be gone, These later days have tortures of their own; The guiltless writhe, while Guilt is stretched in sleep, And Virtue lies, too often, dungeon deep. Awake the Present! what the Past has sown Be in its harvest garner'd, reap'd, and grown! How pride breeds pride, and wrong engenders wrong, Read in the volume Truth has held so long, Assured that where ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... yours—doubt, distrust, despondency. I have health, mental and physical activity, and a "mounting spirit" of indomitable enjoyment that buoyantly protects me from sufferings under which others wince and writhe; nevertheless, I have the sufferings proper to my individuality, and I needs must suffer, if it were only that I may be said to live, in the fit and proper sense of the term. Our lots are just; by ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... man, together with a feeling of eager curiosity, calmed Savinien's anger. He fixed his eyes on Goupil with a look which made that moral deformity writhe. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... up in long coils of Red Tape, She's the butt for each Jeremy Diddler's coarse jape, Every filthy Paul Pry's ghoulish giggle. JOHN BULL, my fine fellow, wake up, and determine To stamp out the lives of the venomous vermin Who round your home-hearth writhe and wriggle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... understand that feeling of mad panic terror that drove him through the thicket and down the steep hillside; yet, he had experienced so clearly the physical shame and reluctance of the flesh; he recollected that for a few seconds after his awakening the sight of his own body had made him shudder and writhe as if it had suffered some profoundest degradation. He saw before him a vision of two forms; a faun with tingling and prickling flesh lay expectant in the sunlight, and there was also the likeness of a miserable shamed boy, standing with trembling body and ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your work! Who wants ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... Rather would he strive to cover up his faithlessness. But he hath been untrue to thee in this—that he shares a thought with the witch when his whole mind should be full of thee. Bide thy time till he emerges from the spell, then make him writhe. Meantime, save thy tears. Never was a man worth one ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... that so pitifully limits man's vision is the indifference of the forces that govern his destiny. The wrongs he suffers may cry aloud to heaven, but heaven does not hear him. Whether he writhe in agony or be prostrated in the dust (against all reason and justice), he has no appeal, societies, the bulk of mankind, may be plunged in misery—who or what cares? Man is surrounded by indifference ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... the door, avoiding his outstretched arm with an artless art which made me writhe; for once I had been the willing victim of ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... went up the barge's mast, and the tightly corded roll of dark canvas began to struggle for liberty, and writhe and flap with throttling noises above our heads, and when Mr. Rowe wrestled with it and the driver helped him, and Fred and I tried to, and were all but swept overboard in consequence, whilst the barge-master ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... up quietly, one shoulder in the lead and his left leg bending under him, straightening out then, with half a writhe to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to engulph the vast majority of the world's miserable sinners. If the Atheist has no heaven, he has also no hell, which is a most merciful relief. Far better were universal annihilation than that even the meanest life should writhe for ever in hell, gnawed by the worm which never dieth, and burnt in the ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... the constant intonations Of the waves as they recoil With their soughing and deep moaning For a momentary rest, Tell of liquid matter only That bespeaks itself distressed, Than to live where human bodies Bend and writhe for freedom's air, Till the heart breaks in deep sorrow, And ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... with both hands thrust deep in his pockets. "We'll go to that trial—it's over an affair of his, and he's fair in the wrong. We'll go and watch his discomfiture—and we'll see him writhe. We'll see him carry things his own way—the only way he can ever see—and then we'll watch him—man, we'll watch him—Oh, my boy, my boy! I doubt it's wrong for me to exult over his chagrin, but that's what I'm going for now. It ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... that Perdition which does not hover indeterminate in the inane limboes of dogmatic theology, but hath a well-defined latitude and longitude; is visual, tactual,—in which untold millions of mankind writhe and shriek from the cradle ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... very proud, and it made him writhe with anguish when he thought how heavily such a blow would fall upon his parents. For a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... each of my faults, appeared to flow towards me from out of the temptations with which he was encircled. During this time my eyes were fixed upon my Heavenly Spouse; with him I wept and prayed, and with him I turned towards the consoling angels. Ah, truly did our dear Lord writhe like a worm beneath the weight of ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... as powerless to move. The dense, black smoke hangs over her like a pall, but prostrate as she is, it cannot sink low enough to suffocate and end her agony. How the bared bosom heaves! how the tortured limbs writhe, and the blackening 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 ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Christine had gone! It made his soul writhe to think of it. It had hurt enough to be jilted; but this—well, this struck at his ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... mortify the lawyer, that he had emptied the bottle, when it came to his turn, and he had laughed accordingly: but now his mirth gave way to his apprehension — He began to spit, to make wry faces, and writhe himself into various contorsions — 'Damn the stuff! (cried he) I thought it had a villainous twang — pah! He that would cozen a Scot, mun get oope betimes, and take Old Scratch for his counsellor —' 'In troth mester what d'ye ca'um (replied the lawyer), ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... spirit, Who hath worse punishment," so spake my guide, "Is Judas, he that hath his head within And plies the feet without. Of th' other two, Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe And speaks not! Th' other Cassius, that appears So large of limb. But night now re-ascends, And it is time ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... chorus of friends to the tragedy, to witness and sing how the body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is no sense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under the free sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take half the burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth without reproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearing myself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner or later ensue the indifference brought by time. Sometimes a flock of small brown sandbirds watched me curiously from a sodden ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... like them (or like they) of Rheims, cry out, "That's him!" Usus loquendi has made that as mellifluous as "that's me." It don't make you writhe, do it? Besides, we are all sinners, like McCoosh. And as a gentleman writes to the Scott County, Ind., Journal, "Let he that is without fault ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... who, knowing the effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last, by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr Lawley, too much tired to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! it had ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... lived in sties, between men who were fed on bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between men who spoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride, boasted that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise Lost were written. [163] Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed by the government, all distinctions ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the peace. There is a story in Tiverton of one man who went remorsefully mad after his wife's death, and whose mind dwelt unceasingly on the things he had denied her. These were not many, yet the sum seemed to him colossal. It piled the Ossa of his grief. Especially did he writhe under the remembrance of certain blue dishes she had desired the week before her sudden death; and one night, driven by an insane impulse to expiate his blindness, he walked to town, bought them, and placed them in a foolish ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... I said; "the charms work ill before so many. Now behold!" and, gazing at the twain, I cast my wand upon the marble and murmured a spell. For a moment it was still, and then, as I muttered, the rod slowly began to writhe. It bent itself, it stood on end, and moved of its own motion. Next it put on scales, and behold it was a serpent ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... picture by Retsch, which represents angels showering roses on devils; to the angels they are roses, but the devils writhe under them as under fire. On sinful souls the words of women fall as coals from the altar of God. And here let me offer my humble gratitude to the women who have borne the brunt of the test with the calm courage which women alone can exhibit; to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... you, la chatte la plus noire, inside and out. And why don't you write? Are you so exhausted with the effort you made in sending two letters at a time on Friday of last week? Ten days have gone by since then—time enough to rest yourself. Or do you want to let me writhe, while you feast your eyes on my anxiety, tigress! after speaking to me in your last letters about scarlet and nervous fevers, and after I had laid such stress on my maxim of never believing in anything bad before it forces ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... world, of many and various peculiar colors. A closer inspection of one of the marvelous tapestries showed that it also was of metal, its threads numbering thousands to the inch. Woven of many different metals, of vivid but harmonious colors in a strange and intricate design, it seemed to writhe as its colors changed with every variation in the color of the light; which, pouring from concealed sources, was reflected by the highly-polished metal and innumerable jewels of the ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... some time, till he felt that midnight could not be far off, when suddenly there arose in the middle of the moor a brilliant glow, as if a star was shining over one of the hillocks. At the same moment all the hillocks began to writhe and to crawl, and from each one came hundreds of serpents and made straight for the glow, where they knew they should find their king. When they reached the hillock where he dwelt, which was higher and broader than the rest, and had a bright light hanging over the top, they coiled ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... even of that moment made him writhe on his bed years after; for a mental and bodily wound are alike in this, that after there is but the scar of either left, bad weather will revive the torture. His face fell. Kate saw it, and did him some ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... risen, looked over the ragged crest of the ridge, and sent long shadows down the sparsely wooded slope. Though there was no wind, and every tree was as motionless as if carved of ice, these spare, intricate shadows seemed to stir and writhe, as if instinct with a kind of sinister activity. This confusion of light and dark was increased by the patches of snow that still clung in the dips and on the gentler slopes. The air was cold, yet with a bitter softness in it, the breath of the thaw. The sound of running water was everywhere—the ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... strangulation made the youth writhe, and once as his friend rolled his eyes, he saw something in them that made him sink wailing to the ground. He raised his voice in a ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Their brazen claws, horrible to look at, were thrust out and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... tread. She did not turn or move; she would see him soon enough, hear him soon enough. Presently his black eyes would look into hers; it would be bird and snake over again, and the bird was tired of fluttering. The bird was so tired that when a hand was laid on her shoulder she did not writhe herself from under its touch; instead only shuddered slightly, and stared with wide eyes at the flowing river. But the hand was white, with a gleaming ring upon its forefinger, and it stole down to clasp her own. "Audrey," said a ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... was all new and fresh to him, and he was listening eagerly to every word, when suddenly Dick Hunt ran a long pin deep into his leg. The pain made him start and almost cry out, but he suppressed the cry as he turned and gave Dick a savage pinch that made him writhe, as he exclaimed in a threatening tone, ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... man will fight openly and fairly, I will not hate him. If I wanted to touch an adder with my hand I would not catch him by the tail so that it could curl around and sting my hand; I would catch it just behind the head. It might writhe and wriggle, but I should know that it could not bite me. That is how I want to treat the Tresidders. You despise me," I went on; "you see me now a thing that has to hide like a rabbit in burrow. Well, perhaps it is natural—you ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... destination, and felt instinctively that something extraordinary had happened. For a moment all was silence; then inquiries arose from all sides, as to what was the matter. The engine seemed to be in a great state of commotion; and the vessel began to writhe with a heavy, laborious movement, as if attempting to free herself from the grasp of some monster. We dressed hastily, and went into the cabin, where we found a good many of the passengers, and learned that the vessel had struck on a coral-reef. ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... began, the pupils dilating, as if she were just becoming aware of some new agony in store for her. I have seen such a look of terror on a poor dumb animal's countenance, and once or twice on human faces. I pray I may never see it again on either! Jemima felt the hand she held in her strong grasp writhe itself free. Ruth spread her arms before her, clasping and lacing her fingers together, her head thrown a little back, as if ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... standing corpses of the oaks, ever clinging with naked, dead feet to the sliding beach, lean more and more out of the perpendicular. As the sands subside, the stumps appear to creep; their intertwisted masses of snakish roots seem to crawl, to writhe,—like the ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... staring, his hand shielding his gray eyes from the sun. Across the pond, the boys were doubled up with laughter, watching the minister's son writhe and tear at his naked body. Suddenly, Jim shot round the edge of the pond, followed by Phil. A dozen naked boys hopped joyfully around the twisting Charlie. They were of all ages, from eight ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... again. Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft. He was dragging Karamaneh by the wrists. He seated himself on the cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him. Now, I could see her face—and the expression in her beautiful eyes made me writhe. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... you can!" Tom shouted back. "But be careful. Don't get shocked! Wow! I got a touch of it myself that time!" and he could be seen to writhe in ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... time, the mines were fired and then ensued the most appallingly magnificent sight I have ever witnessed. There was little noise but the very earth appeared to writhe and tremble in agony. Then, slowly, it seemed in the dim light, the ground heaved up and up until, finally, bursting all bonds, earth, trees, buildings, trenches and men went skyward. Immediately followed ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend of the Mississippi or cut-off ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... valour of the gods; then turns His long-sought foe to meet ... Great Conn Sweeps, stooping in a boat, alone. Shoreward, with rapid blades and bright, That shower the foam-rain pearly white, And rip the waters, bending lithe, In hollowing swirls that hiss and writhe Like adders, ere they dart away Bright-spotted with the flakes ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... some poor soul will stand and face its Creator with just this sort of cry;—some soul which has grievously sinned will bend, and writhe, and implore with hot, glassy eyes, to be heard. Jane felt this in all its varicolored meaning. Until now she had been speaking as the teacher, as the humanitarian. But with his torture-stricken eyes pouring their prayer into her own, with the storm bending his powerful frame before its ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... moderation of sincerity peculiar to Lessing in the epithet of the following sentence: "How dearly must I pay for the single year I have lived with a sensible wife!" Werther had then been published four years. Lessing's grief has that pathos which he praised in sculpture,—he may writhe, but he must not scream. Nor is this a new thing with him. On the death of a younger brother, he wrote to his father, fourteen years before: "Why should those who grieve communicate their grief to each other purposely to increase it?... Many mourn in death what they loved not ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... sensitive, he rather enjoyed his colleague's discomfort. He was known to go into Blake's office on a short winter's afternoon, and, standing with his back to the fire in a free and easy attitude as though perfectly at home, to say, 'Well, mon cher collegue' (here Blake would visibly writhe, to the equally apparent delight of the intruder), 'I have called for you to come for a walk with me.' 'My good sir,' Blake would tartly reply, 'I have work here that will keep me for the next two hours.' 'But it will be dark then,' objected the caller. ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... the sharp rock his mangled carcase lie, His entrails torn, to hungry birds a prey; May he convulsive writhe his bleeding side, And with his clotted ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... laughed: "Jamadar," he said, "what matters to a dead man the manner of his killing? Indeed it is a merciful way. Such as Bhowanee herself decreed—in a second it is over. But with the spear, or the sword—ah! I have seen men writhe in agony and die ten times ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... spirits—I dreamed not of the frost—'the killing frost,' to which you were destined to be exposed.—But I lose all patience—and execrate the injustice of the world—folly! ignorance!—I should rather call it; but, shut up from a free circulation of thought, and always pondering on the same griefs, I writhe under the torturing apprehensions, which ought to excite only honest indignation, or active compassion; and would, could I view them as the natural consequence of things. But, born a woman—and born to suffer, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... itself to discover one certain cure or preventive for the distemper which yearly robs thousands of homes of their loved canine pets and guards. Apparently it is pleasanter for scientists to watch a screaming dog writhe under the knife in a research laboratory than to trouble about finding a way to abolish distemper; and thus of ridding the dog ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the neck of the rabbit. Simultaneously, there came the unearthly abhorrent scream of a rabbit in the fear of death. It made one immense writhe, tore his wrists and his sleeves in a final convulsion, all its belly flashed white in a whirlwind of paws, and then he had slung it round and had it under his arm, fast. It cowered and skulked. His face was ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to place him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions—intruding upon his moments of dalliance—and interweaving itself with his very flashes of merriment—like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... tyrant with love of the land, Some touch of the heart, some remorse, refraining the grip of the hand. But John's was blackness of darkness, a day of vileness and shame; Shrieks of the tortured, and silence, and outrage the mouth cannot name. —O that cry of the helpless, the weak that writhe under the foe, Wrong man-wrought upon man, dumb unwritten annals of woe! Cry that goes upward from earth as she rolls through the peace of the skies 'How long? Hast thou forgotten, O God!' . . . and silence ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... kind man, who hated any injustice, but when his wife awoke he said many unpleasant things to her, opening his mouth with difficulty, and he complained that he was left alone, like a jackal, to groan and writhe for pain. His wife met the undeserved reproaches patiently, for she knew that they came not from an angry heart—and she brought him numerous good remedies: rats' litter to be applied to his cheek, some strong liquid ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... evil requiter of hospitality. Yonder from Point Levi the laden ships go gayly up the sparkling river, a festive foe. Night drops her mantle, and silently the unsuspected squadron floats down the stealthy waters, and debarks its fateful freight. Silently in the darkness, the long line of armed men writhe up the rugged path. The rising sun reveals a startling sight. The impossible has been attained. Now, too late, the hurried summons sounds. Too late the deadly fire pours in. Too late the thickets flash with murderous rifles. Valor ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... poor Susan writhe with pain under these harsh words. But she merely heaved a sigh, and let fall a tear on the babe, which she had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... unlike Sir Snail, had no snug little fortress to take refuge in; I might writhe, but I ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... pity, declaring that there is none like him in charm, that he is endlessly fascinating and that in all of them he has aroused extremities of passionate love. But the night is empty, their cries go unanswered, and moaning for the Krishna they adore, they toss and writhe on the ground. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... that he was only her unconscious instructor in painting, paid solely in the coin of false smiles and delusive hopes. At times, though, she would torture him dreadfully. Selecting one of her many admirers, she would seem to smile upon his suit, and poor Dennis would writhe in all the agonies of jealousy, for he was very human, and had all the normal feeling of a strong man. She would then watch his face grow pale and his manner restless, as quietly and critically as an entomologist regards the struggles of an insect beneath his microscope. Again, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... ameliorating his institutions, of improving his laws, of advancing the progress of science, of perfectioning his morals. Vain and gloomy ideas have absorbed his attention: he consents to groan under fanatical tyranny—to writhe under political inflictions—to live in error—to languish in misfortune—in the hope, when he shall be no more, of being one day happier; in the firm confidence, that after he has disappeared, his calamities, his patience, will conduct him to a never-ending felicity: he has believed ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... whole hour he worked with her, and at length subdued the convulsions of pain which distorted the beautiful face and made the childlike body writhe. He had a resentment against the crime which had been committed. Marriage had not made her into a woman; it had driven her back into an arrested youth. It was as though she ought to have worn short skirts and her hair in a long ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... axe to see them writhe, Bellow like calves, fall dead like flies; Such bonny sights, and sounds so blithe, With rapture fill our ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... had a right to make him suffer. I have made him suffer a little, it seems to me. Wait—I have more to say. Shall I make him suffer more? I have punished you through him; shall I punish him through you? For he would not like you to be maimed and disfigured through life: his sensitive soul would writhe, would it not? to know that you were suffering pain. Do you know what this magic water is? It stings and bites and eats away the flesh—it will blind you so that you can never see him again; and it will mar your white face so that ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the discontented masses writhe in their despair and seek redress! What wonder that Nihilism should flourish and the service of dynamite be enlisted to accomplish what moral suasion failed to achieve! The years beginning with 1879 were disastrous for Russia. They marked the decadence of those reforms which ten years before ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... down among them and began to tear them from their connection with the devilish forces that only awaited a signal to burst forth and destroy him. The fiery serpents bit at him as he flung them, to writhe in impotent rage, where they could do no harm; but he heeded not the pain, and after a little they expired, one by one, hissing ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... appearance. His features, when in repose, were usually marked by an expression of contemptuous indifference; he seldom laughed, but his smile conveyed an indication of such bitter sarcasm that I have seen men, whom he chose to make a butt for his ridicule, writhe under it as under the infliction of bodily torture. He was dressed, as was his wont, entirely in black; but his clothes, which were fashionably cut, fitted him without a wrinkle. He bowed slightly to the assembled company, and then seated himself in a chair which ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... but the word made Scotty writhe. Then he did not scold or rave as the boys half-wished he would. He quietly dismissed all but the three culprits, and saying he would give them that afternoon and the next day to bring the school back to the condition in which they had found it, and that done, he would prefer ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... so calm was she. Her nerves had reached the point at which nerves refuse to writhe, or even to record sensations of pain. As she came into the dingy, stuffy little courtroom she didn't note the throng which filled it to the last crowded inch of standing-room; did not note the scores of sympathetic faces of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... let him writhe! How long Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now! What a fine agony works upon his brow! Ha! gray-haired, and so strong! How fearfully he stifles that short moan! Gods! if I could but ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... point of death. Such a spear should be 2 feet long, with a blade 3 inches wide, and extremely sharp. There should be a short cross-bar about 22 inches from the point, to prevent the spear from running completely through an animal, which could then writhe up the handle, and attack. The socket should be large and long, to admit a very thick male bamboo, as the mistake is too frequently made that the spear is strong, but the handle is too weak. It is very important that a trustworthy ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... and the lot he shifts! Oh! unfortunate miser Jew! What use is your gold, now your time is told, And your moments in life are few? You may writhe where you sit Like an eel in a fit, But you'll die like the Jews of old! You may struggle a lot, And get awfully hot, But you'll have to lie stiff and cold! You may wriggle no end, But you're a dead 'un, my friend— Till ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... his knees into the man's ribs, and held on. For some moments the advantage of position was on his side, but it was like trying to ride a mad bull. For the man heaved and twisted, and Gwyn had hard work to maintain his place as long as he did. This was till the man gave a tremendous writhe, sending his rider over sidewise, and then dashing after Joe, who was running as hard as he could go, trailing ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where Boardman Robinson ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... insult, a shudder will run along his spine, he'll do a few steps of our ancient war dance—forward, back, forward again. But I'll stand—motionless as the statue of a Cat. The green witchcraft of my gaze will strike terror and madness into my rival and soon I'll see him writhe, utter false cries, and, as a last resource, try to balance himself on the nape of his neck, like a forked pear tree, only to roll over ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... her lips, the shape of her face, can breathe the whiteness of her skin; which enables me almost to feel, to play with the black masses of her curling hair?—Could you see me when I leap with hope—when I writhe under the myriad darts of despair—when I tramp through the mire of Paris to quell my irritation by fatigue? I have fits of collapse comparable to those of a consumptive patient, moods of wild hilarity, terrors as of a murderer who meets a sergeant of police. In short, my life is a continual paroxysm ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... rapid explanation of the most complex rule to make it clear as crystal. After twenty years spent in teaching, he still professed to be prostrated with horror at each fresh exhibition of feminine obtuseness, and would groan, and writhe, and push his fingers through his hair, until it stood up round his head like a halo. He was Dreda's special bete noire, for, like many girls who excel in literature and composition, she detested the sight of a sum and had ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the nails, the spear, tore the Lord's flesh, and all his blood gushed out—it was shed to save him; and he raised his eyes, lifted his clasped hands, turned his whole face up towards heaven, saying, "Jack loves, loves, very loves good Jesus Christ!" When another violent pang made him start and writhe a little, he recovered in a moment, nodded his head, and said, "Good pain, make ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... I've been there before. I can find consolation in seeing you carry the leading part. One set of men passes away, and another set comes on; but the Princess goes on conquering, regardless of the moans of her victims as they writhe on the bloody battlefield. O, I'm used to being shoved aside, and feeding on my woes in silent patience. The flowret fades when day is done, and so does every mother's son Who thinks his course is just begun, And knows not that his race is run—How does it go ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... departed, a penniless swain; With esquires and henchmen now comes he again. What would he? Comes he, forsooth, to see My bitter and gnawing misery? Would he try how long, in my lot accurst, I can writhe and moan, ere my heart-strings burst— Thinks he that—? Ah, let him only try! Full little joy shall he reap thereby. [She beckons through the doorway on the ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... the womb" of the cloud that crosses it; Shelley's Moon, in keeping with the ways of his more tender-hefted universe, merely broke its woof. So the gentle wife of James Lee sees in a vineyard "the vines writhe in rows ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... vengeance fire! Who doubts the glorious issue! To our foes A tenfold strength and spirit we oppose. In them no god protects his mortal sons, Or speaks, in thunder, from their roaring guns. Nor come they children of the radiant sky; 100 But, like the wounded snake, to writhe and die. Then, rush resistless on their prostrate bands, Snatch the red lightning from their feeble hands, And swear to the great spirits, hovering near, Who now this awful invocation hear, That we ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... that message!—the message that the true wrath of God, necessary, inevitable, is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men. How they writhe under it! How they shut their ears to it, and cry to their preachers, 'No! Tell us of any wrath of God but that! Tell us rather of the torments of the damned, of a frowning God, of absolute decrees to destruction, ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... that taketh away sin. Behold the Supreme Sacrifice that makes us clean. Give up your pleasures; give up your wants; give up all to the weak and wretched of our people. Go down to Pharaoh and smite him in God's name. Go down to the South where we writhe. Strive—work—build—hew—lead—inspire! God calls. Will you hear? Come to Jesus. The harvest is waiting. Who will cry: 'Here ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... rage, And raise before my path swelling barriers Of hatred soul'd in water, yet will I strike My purpose, and God's purpose, clean through all The ridges of thy power. And I will show This mask that the devil wears, this old shipman, A thing to make his proud heart of evil Writhe like a trodden snake; yea, he shall see How godly faith can go upon the huge Fury of forces bursting out of law, Easily as a boy goes on windy grass.— O marvel! that my little life of mind Can by mere thinking the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various |
