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Torn   Listen
verb
Torn  v.  P. p. of Tear.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Torn" Quotes from Famous Books



... of trouble." That which the gods cannot turn away, they cannot have sent; and if the suffering be sent by the Lord, it is natural that help should be sought from Him also. Compare vi. 1: "Come and let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn and He healeth us, He smiteth ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... torn the envelope; and, as he was reading the first lines, a crimson blush overspread his temples, and his eyes became bloodshot. For Henrietta, sure of the Duke of Champdoce, had not hesitated to open her heart to him, describing ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... excitement, and even of trouble. There came a new revolution in France—only a dynastic revolution, to be sure, and not a national upheaval, but still it was a change which dethroned the newly restored legitimate line of sovereigns. The elder branch of the Bourbons was torn away and flung aside. There were to be no more kings of France, but only kings of the French. Charles the Tenth was deposed, and Louis Philippe, son of Philippe Egalite, was placed on the throne. Charles the Tenth was the last of the legitimate kings of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... elk skin which he wished to exchange for tobacco, and was quite delighted when I gave him a small quantity of the latter. He showed me a scar on his arm where a bear had bitten him two or three years before. The marks of the teeth and the places where the flesh was torn could be easily seen, but I was unable to learn the particulars of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... lovers, and ever since there had been that intimate comradeship that seemed to her to imply the unspoken relation, behind, above, below. All this she had taken for granted, like mother-love and her own dawning womanhood. And now Dick, the chief corner-stone of her edifice, was torn away, and the whole airy ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... which we are discussing earnestly and continually. My heart is torn by conflicting emotions. I wish to perform my duty toward all sections, and I do feel sure that something must be done for our southern friends. They wish to remain in the Union—they do not wish to be driven ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... are falling to the earth, springing in their turn to life at the approach of moisture. The same rapidity of change is exhibited in their decay. The heaps of vegetable putridity upon the banks of rivers, when a swollen torrent has torn the luxuriant plants from the loosened soil, are but the effects of a few hours' change. The tree that arrives at maturity in a few years rots in as short a time when required for durability: thus it is no mystery, that either a house ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... alarm, thrust her head out of window, and perceived by the pale light of the moon that the driver, torn from his seat, was already pinioned in the arms of two men; the next moment the door was opened violently, and a tall figure, masked ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Torn suddenly from his prospective future, but too much dominated by the man beside him to protest, Clarence was silent until a rise in the road, a few minutes later, partly abated their headlong speed, and gave him chance to ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... dumbly pleading with me to accept them and their promises; yet I carelessly passed them by. I see worse. I see the rents in the hedge, where I forced my wilful way into forbidden fields, and only regained my path after weary wandering, brier-torn, and none the better for my folly. Lost faces come before me which I might have gladdened oftener. Voices sound in my ear whose tones I might have made happier if I would. Withheld sympathy rises up before me deploring its wasted treasure. How can any one be happy in looking back? ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... the hurricane fell upon us. Our chainplates, strong fastenings, and clenched bolts, drew like pliant wires, shrouds and stays were torn away, and our masts and spars were blown clean out of the ship into the sea. Had we shown a shred of the strongest sail in the vessel, it would have been blown out of the bolt-rope in an instant. With four men at the wheel, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... had been shown by seekers after invitations, and there was a sad exhibition of bad manners at the supper-table. The lace on ladies' dresses was torn by the trappings of the diplomats and officers, while terrapin and champagne were recklessly scattered. With this exception everything passed off very smoothly, and the hundreds of guests present heartily ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... attention to what is thought of it in your own Kentucky and in your native Virginia. Says the "Address of the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky to the Churches in 1835:"—"Brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, are torn asunder, and permitted to see each other no more. Those acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. The shrieks and the agony often witnessed on such occasions, proclaim with a trumpet tongue the iniquity and cruelty ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... occupants, a woman, was hurled headlong to the pavement; her companion, half in and half out of the coach, was caught in the jam of the door, while his coat was fairly torn from his body, the papers that had been in his breast packet strewing the street. The butler sprang forward to seize the man and save him, but fate ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... the interval in stripping off all unnecessary apparel, and girding ourselves with our bags of "scent," or scraps of torn-up paper, which we are to drop as we run. Then we sit and wait the moment for starting. The turf is crisp under our feet; the sun is just warm enough to keep us from shivering as we sit, and the wind just strong ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... sae, master; an' I can assure you that, should evidence fail, you run a risk o' being torn limb frae limb. They are bringing the corpse here, to gar ye touch them baith afore witnesses, an' plenty o' witnesses ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... result was that only unusually learned men knew the law, and common people stumbled along in the dark. The laws, moreover, were full of injustice and cruelty. An offender might have his hand or ear cut off, or his tongue torn out; he might be burned with red-hot irons or have molten lead poured into his flesh. Hanging was an easy death compared to the lingering torture of having one's bones broken ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... sleep I hang my outside clothes on the screen, which is pasted and thumbtacked all over with the New York City stuff that gives me security: theater programs and restaurant menus, clippings from the Times and the Mirror, a torn-out picture of the United Nations building with a hundred tiny gay paper flags pasted around it, and hanging in an old hairnet a home-run baseball autographed by Willy Mays. Things ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... a mute cry for sympathy. The mob roared like wild beasts, poured out maledictions on their unkempt heads, hurled stones and sticks at them amid furious din and clamour. At times it seemed as if the prisoners would be torn from the hands of their guard by the excited mob. Scarce any name was found too vile with which to execrate these unfortunate gentlemen who had been guilty of no crime ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... Barton's children "did terrify her so, she had no peace." And Betsy Seddon's Janie had torn her frock as there was no bearing, and even the Dan Hewletts were going back. Little Judy had cried to go, and her Aunt Judith had trimmed up the heads of her sisters, for Dora Carbonel had not been a first-rate hair-cutter, and it was nearly the same with every one, except the ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... by the ripe lalobes, the fruit already described of the heglik (Balanites Egyptiaca). The trees, if of medium size, are frequently torn down for the sake of this small production, that would appear too insignificant for the notice ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... with her back to him and took off her long soft gloves, her bracelets making a little jangling sound. Then she saw the torn picture and picked it up and shook her head disapprovingly. The overturned box lay nearer the sofa. She picked that up too, and began replacing its ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... wild women drowned it with their cries. Then they dismembered the singer and threw him to the waves; but the very fragments were melodious and reached the Muses, who buried them where the nightingale still sings "Eurydice." So runs the allegory; even drowned by earthly clamors, slain and torn by wanton hands, the song of Poetry continues, the weeping ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... as mine," said the boy, nodding. He stood erect now, and she noticed that his clothes, originally of fashionable cut and costly material, were torn and stained and shabby. He had a little bundle beside him, tied up in a gaudy shawl; and the broken toy-horse seemed to have fallen out ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... struck into the soil like those of the banyan-tree, and rose again from it. Two of the branches thus inserted themselves twice, which gave to each the appearance of a serpent moving along by gathering itself up in folds. One of the large boughs of this tree had been torn off by the wind before we left Alfoxden, but five remained. In 1841 we could barely find the spot where the tree had stood. So remarkable a production of nature could not have ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Nera's cruel words, and had not risen up and torn out the lying tongue that uttered them! He had sat and heard Enrica torn to pieces as a panting dove is severed by a hawk limb by limb! Even now Nobili's better nature, spite of the glamour of this woman, told him ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... all that you held in reverence is held in scorn by us. Thine idols are overthrown in the dust; fleshless anchorites clad in rags and tatters, martyrs with the blood fresh on them, and their shoulders torn by the tigers of thy circuses, have perched themselves on the pedestals of thy fair desirable gods. The Christ has enveloped the whole world in his winding-sheet.... Oh purity, plant of bitterness, born on a blood-soaked soil, and whose degenerate and sickly ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... fortunes of his friends. Dickson and the Princess should by this time be far inland, out of danger and in the way of finding succour. He was confident that they would return, but he trusted not too soon, for he hoped for a run for his money as Horatius in the Gate. After that he was a little torn in his mind. He wanted the Princess to come back and to be somewhere near if there was a fight going, so that she might be a witness of his devotion. But she must not herself run any risk, and he became anxious when he remembered ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... had been badly scratched, let go of the cook, and at last, catching sight of the gingerbread man, made a bolt for the garden wall. The cook picked herself up, and although her face was also badly scratched and her dress was torn, she was determined to see the end of the chase, and she followed after the dog, ...
— The Little Gingerbread Man • G. H. P.

... breakfast the next morning, when a man, dressed in black, rode up to the door. It was Bob, but so metamorphosed that I scarcely knew him. Instead of the torn and bloodstained handkerchief round his head, he wore a hat; instead of the leathern jacket, a decent cloth coat. He had shaved off his beard too, and looked quite another man. His manner had altered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... midst of a crowd, yet did the animal always find him out, and fly at him. On the day of trial, when the prisoner was at the bar, the dog was let loose in the court-house, and in the midst of some hundreds he found him out (though dressed entirely in new clothes), and would have torn him to pieces had he been allowed; in consequence of which he was condemned, and at the place of execution he confessed the fact. Surely so useful, so disinterestedly faithful an animal, should not be so barbarously treated as I have often ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... somewhat slowly against the western wind Ann Holland spent most of her time on deck, watching, often with dim eyes, the coasts of England, as they glided past her. She could still hardly realize the change that had torn her so completely away from her old life. It made her brain swim to think of Upton, and the old neighbors going about the streets on their daily business, and the church-clock striking out the hours; and the sun rising and setting, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton

... means by which he may earn his livelihood. It is said that Sudras should certainly be maintained by the (three) other orders. Worn-out umbrellas, turbans, beds and seats, shoes, and fans, should be given to the Sudra servants.[182] Torn clothes which are no longer fit for wear, should be given away by the regenerate classes unto the Sudra. These are the latter's lawful acquisitions. Men conversant with morality say that if the Sudra approaches any one belonging to the three regenerate orders from desire of doing menial ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... o'clock we landed at Jamestown. In this old, dilapidated place were yet standing brick walls of three old buildings open to the birds and the bats. The brick of these half-torn down buildings were transported from England more than two hundred years ago. I saw a piece of a marble slab from the graveyard dated 1626, broken in pieces by soldiers for relics. We were soon met by the ambulance-driver, and he took us through a nice field of wheat owned by William ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... a single mutual interest controlled, where one soul found its happiness only in the other. Without such an absolute love, penetrating the whole being, life seemed to me worthless and stale. My mother, whose unbounded love I had enjoyed, was torn from me; my excellent uncle, heartily devoted to me, I saw in the enjoyment of his own family happiness. And an unconquerable desire for the same happiness tortured me as I felt my utter loneliness" (p. 79). So he concluded ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... locked up, and they had to break the window to get into Antonia's bedroom. There everything was in shocking disorder. Her clothes had been taken out of her closet, thrown into the middle of the room, and trampled and torn. My own garments had been treated so badly that I never saw them again; grandmother burned them ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... I carefully destroyed plates, torn up proofs, and burned canvases, that the truth of the quoted word shall prevail, and that the future collector shall be spared the mortification of cataloguing his ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... bewildered her intelligence. She yearned for meridian warmth, for repose in a directing hand; and let it be hard as one that grasps a sword: what matter? unhesitatingness was the warrior virtue of her desire. And for herself the worst might happen if only she were borne along. Let her life be torn and streaming like the flag of battle, it must be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... any defence from, or shelter against the attempts, assaults, and censures of thy ghostly enemies, but art now in thine own eyes, though in the temple, cast forth into the open field stark naked, to the loathing of thy person, as in the day that thou was born, and there ready to be devoured or torn in pieces for thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... off to report himself, and he found Colonel Kendrick nursing a badly wounded arm before a torn and mud-stained tent. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... brothers, come with me Into the wood's hushed sanctity, Where the great, cool branches are heavy with June, And the voices of summer are strung in tune; 25 Come with me, O heart out-worn, Or spirit whom life's brute-struggles have torn, Come, tired and broken and wounded feet, Where the walls are greening, the floors are sweet, The roofs are breathing and heaven's airs meet. 30 Come, wash earth's grievings from out of the face, The ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... change. Of all the people that had seen her after months of such living, Jasper Morena was the only one to find her beautiful. But with his sensitive observation he had seen through the shell to the sweetness underneath; for surely Joan was sweet, a Friday's child. It was good that Jasper had torn the skin from her wound, good that he had broken up the hardness of her heart. She left him and Yarnall that afternoon and went away to her cabin in the trees and lay face down on the bare boards of the floor and was young again. Waves of longing ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... for returning and surrendering to the Spaniards. "They are men," he said; "perhaps, when their fury is over, they will spare our lives; and, even if they kill us, it will only be a few moments' pain. Better so, than to starve here in the woods, or be torn ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... glad enough to get a chance to escape being hanged, and his brother being held as hostage, he set out. He acted his part well. Panting and breathless, with his coat torn in many places by bullets, and a face twisted with fear, he dashed into the enemy camp. There he told his eager listeners that he had barely escaped with his life from the Americans (which was true enough) and that they were marching towards them in vast ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... fact flashed across her mind. She recollected how, early in the grey morning, after her return from the ball at Nice, she had written and addressed a letter to Hugh. On reflection, she had realized that it was not sufficiently reassuring, so she had torn it up and thrown it into the waste-paper basket instead ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... will have it so," he grumbled. "After all, as he threw it away, I do not see that he has much right to it. There it is. If he says anything about that ten-franc note being torn, tell him he tore it himself. Go home, Lucia, and ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... leave them. Their story is, that the three started out upon a hunt; that this man was separated from the Boones, and became entangled in a swamp. The Boones searched for him, but could not find him. Afterward, they found fragments of his clothes, which convinced them that the poor man had been torn to ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip

... put their mother and her lover to death; the subsequent remorse and woful fate of the avenging brother and sister—form so many tragedies, which for centuries entranced the Athenian audience. The sorrows of Andromache, when torn from her home after the death of Hector and sack of Troy, and subjected to the jealousy of the daughter of Menelaus; the deep woes of Hecuba, who saw in one day her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the corpse of her son washed ashore, after having ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... drew herself up and walked more quickly. The boulevard, usually gay with carriages in the late afternoon, was absolutely deserted except for an occasional shop-boy on a bicycle. Sommers, hatless, with a torn coat, walking beside a somewhat bedraggled young woman, could arouse no comment from the darkened windows of the large houses. As they passed Twenty-second Street, Miss Hitchcock slackened ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... him, "I have long been desiring to see you again, that you might comfort me. My torture has been very long and very painful, but this is the last time I shall have to treat with men; now all is with God for the future. See my hands, sir, and my feet, are they not torn and wounded? Have not my executioners smitten me in the same places where ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... saluted Grandier, proceeded to carry out his orders, whereupon a judge said it was not sufficient to shave the body of the prisoner, but that his nails must also be torn out, lest the devil should hide beneath them. Grandier looked at the speaker with an expression of unutterable pity, and held out his hands to Fourneau; but Forneau put them gently aside, and said he would do nothing of the kind, even were the order given by the cardinal-duke himself, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... arms, who defended it gallantly. "There were many rescues, and many a one hurt and cast to the earth, and many feats of armes done, and many gret strokes given, with good axes of steel, that it was wonder to behold." The battle did not cease until the captall's standard was taken and torn to pieces. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... inflexible law. The most perfect harmony exists among all the attributes of God; and as his justice demands the punishment of the sinner, so also doth his mercy. The bosom of God is not, like that of frail mortals, torn and distracted by conflicting principles. Even to the maintenance of his law, that bright transcript of his eternal justice, his mercy is inviolably pledged. Heaven and earth shall sooner pass away, than his mercy shall withdraw from ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... her veil over these august Mysteries. There the sufferings of Dionysus were represented, who, like Osiris, died, descended to hell, and rose to life again; and raw flesh was distributed to the initiates, which each ate in memory of the death of the deity torn ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... study as if I were a marine zoologist, although I might not perhaps have been able to describe them in scientific language; while, should a stiff south-westerly gale cast up, as it frequently did amongst other wreckage and ocean flotsam and jetsam, fresh oysters torn from carefully cultivated beds further down the coast, none were sooner acquainted with the interesting fact than I, or gulped down the savoury "natives" with greater gusto—opening them skilfully with an old sailor's jack-knife, which was a treasure I had picked up amidst ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... feet. All that could be done for them was to give them food and water, bathe their wounds, and render any little service by which their sufferings might be mitigated. Their heroic patience astonished me. Men, torn and mangled, would utter no groan, nor give any vocal expression to the agonies which racked them, except sometimes when sleep or delirium found ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... friendly cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally of the Admiral from the first, gave him information of this plot, and the danger was seen by Colon's acute mind to be desperate indeed. He had only a small force, torn by jealousy and private quarrels, and a defensive fight at this stage of his enterprise would almost surely be a losing one. The territory of Caonaba included the most mountainous and inaccessible part of the island, where that wily barbarian could hold out for years; and as long as he was loose ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... I say, to be my good, obedient little brother, and I will wake in you the heart that my father put in you, the same kind of heart that I have, and it will grow to love the Father, altogether and absolutely, as mine does, till you are ready to be torn to pieces for him. Then you will know that you are at the heart of the universe, at the heart of every secret—at the heart of the Father. Not till then will you ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... catches sight of him in the street; but he immediately runs to meet him, with a smile; and his father does not appear to see him, but seems to be thinking of something else. Poor Precossi! He mends his torn copy-books, borrows books to study his lessons, fastens the fragments of his shirt together with pins; and it is a pity to see him performing his gymnastics, with those huge shoes in which he is fairly lost, in those trousers which drag on the ground, and that jacket which ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... more than 100% to 5%, and foreign exchange reserves jumped to more than $6 billion from $1.4 billion. Burgeoning capital inflows have generated foreign payments surpluses, and the Lebanese pound has remained relatively stable. Progress also has been made in rebuilding Lebanon's war-torn physical and financial infrastructure. Solidere, a $2-billion firm, is managing the reconstruction of Beirut's central business district; the stock market reopened in January 1996; and international banks and insurance companies are returning. The government ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... difficult to make her keep with us, and two or three times, on missing her and looking back, we have seen her seated, native fashion, in a ring in a crowd of several hundred people, receiving a homage and admiration from which she was most unwillingly torn. The Japanese have a perfect passion for children, but it is not good for European children to be much with them, as they corrupt their morals, and teach ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... characteristic when 'passages' were concerned, and any curiosity I had felt about his reticence on the previous night would have been rather allayed than stimulated had I not noticed that a page had been torn out of the book just at this point. The frayed edge left had been pruned and picked into very small limits; but dissimulation was not Davies's strong point, and a child could have seen that a leaf was missing, and that the entries, starting from the evening ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... the egg-chamber, among the torn fibres of the bark, a little cone-shaped body is visible, with two black eye-spots; in appearance it is precisely like the fore portion of the butter-coloured egg; or, as I have said, like the fore portion of a tiny fish. You would think that ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... and were pitted against bulls and dogs in the presence of the King and his court. It was after one of these combats that Charles IX., excited by the sanguinary spectacle, wished to enter the arena alone in order to attack a lion which had torn some of his best dogs to pieces, and it was only with great difficulty that the audacious sovereign was dissuaded from his foolish purpose. Henry III. had no disposition to imitate his brother's example; for dreaming one night that his lions ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... launching of a gold mine the rest is easy. Generous, warm-hearted men, interested in geology, were soon found. There was no stint of money. The great rock was torn sideways from its place, and from beneath it the crumbled, glittering rock-dust that sparkled in the sun was sent in little boxes to the testing laboratories of Plutoria University. There the senior professor of geology had sat up ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... But the particles move in straight lines because the velocity imparted to them is great, and this is due to three causes—to the great electric density, the high temperature of the small point, and the fact that the particles of the lime are easily torn and thrown off—far more easily than those of carbon. With frequencies such as we are able to obtain, the particles are bodily thrown off and projected to a considerable distance; but with sufficiently high frequencies no such thing would occur: in such case only a stress ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla

... then? then maybe ye never tried in parts where the heaviest plows and harrows that can be laid in the thatch of a cabin are flung here and there, like straws, and the strongest timbers torn out of the walls, and scattered for miles along the coast, like ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... searched in the pockets of his voluminous coat, which he opened. I saw that the lining was of silk, but now worn and torn. He brought ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... various matters, of the wars which the rattlesnakes had waged against the black snakes, the copperheads, the hornsnakes, and other warlike tribes of snakes. Again they moved on, the rattlesnake leading the way, till, much fatigued, their mocassins torn, and their wives cross, they spread their tents, and a night's encampment took place[A]. Again their course was onward, and again they encamped for another night. Spies were sent to search out the land, while the Lenapes travelled after at their leisure. At length ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... will do," replied Edith. "But what about Virginia? Her white dress is soiled, her red gauze is badly torn, and she can't borrow from the others because she's so much larger. To be sure she has this pale blue tea-gown I made myself. Do you think it would be good enough?" and ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett

... Belisarius dismissed the assembly. And at that time he heard that the city of Syllectus was distant one day's journey from the camp, lying close to the sea on the road leading to Carthage, and that the wall of this city had been torn down for a long time, but the inhabitants of the place had made a barrier on all sides by means of the walls of their houses, on account of the attacks of the Moors, and guarded a kind of fortified enclosure; he, accordingly, sent one of his spearmen, Boriades, together with some of the guards, ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius

... Old Iceland to New Iceland. It is the way of men from the old to the new in the hope that the new will be better than the old. So Torfi Torfason has sold his sheep and his cows and his horses, torn himself away from his land, and journeyed to America— where the raisins grow all over the place and where a much brighter future awaits us and our children. And he took his ewes by the horn for the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... thou didst fear to taste of happiness when it was within thy reach. Now that the object of thy desires is torn from thee, how bitter will be thy remorse, how ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... voices of the Confederates nearer and nearer, dove into the ditch as the only chance, and dropping on his hands and knees crept swiftly forward to the eastward. In this cramped position his progress was extremely painful, and his hands were torn by the briers and stones; but forward he dashed, fully expecting a shower of bullets every minute. At last he reached the other end of the half-mile ditch, breathless and half dead, but without having once raised his head ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... I fondly hop'd to clasp, A friend whom death alone could sever, But envy with malignant grasp, Has torn thee from my breast ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... feelings of pleasure and pain. When a man in a state of mental depression speaks of having "a load" on his mind it is evident that he is interpreting a mental by help of an analogy to a bodily feeling. Similarly, when we talk of the mind being torn by doubt or worn by anxiety. It would seem as though we tended mechanically to translate mental pleasures and pains into ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... the wind the boat is apt to go too fast. The great point is to keep the net straight and not all tangled and wobbled up. Passing boats bother us, too. Sometimes a float will catch on a paddle-wheel, and like enough half of the net will be torn away. A pilot with any human feeling will usually steer one side, and give a fellow a chance, and we can often bribe the skipper of sailing-craft by holding up a shad and throwing it aboard as he tacks around us. As a rule, however, boats of all kinds ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... do they kiss the morning light, Do they wave in the battle's gale, are their stars bright, Illumining the path of the brave? riddled and torn, With the dead they lay. Soon again they shone, In the first gleam of the rising-sun's ray, Following Butler to New ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... Spires, named from the three chief churches of the town, whose steeples rose high above the roofs of Bardon, was a broad, roomy old craft, and had carried many a good cargo in her time. But she was now past her work, and, her spars, rigging, and raffle all torn away, her hulk lay abandoned in Fuller's Creek, for the breakers-up ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... a hostile force an undivided soul, is not the Shakespearean type. The souls of those who contend with the hero may be thus undivided; they generally are; but, as a rule, the hero, though he pursues his fated way, is, at least at some point in the action, and sometimes at many, torn by an inward struggle; and it is frequently at such points that Shakespeare shows his most extraordinary power. If further we compare the earlier tragedies with the later, we find that it is in the latter, the maturest ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... coldly and treated her visitor with marked reserve, until she learned why she had come; then, indeed, her manner changed, but she could not tell her how, on the night when Graham Thornton had cruelly torn the veil from Maggie's heart, leaving it crushed and broken, she had found her long after midnight out in the tall, damp grass, where, in the wild abandonment of grief she had thrown herself; nor how, in a calmer moment she had told her sad story, exonerating ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes

... the audience were unable to support it to an end; the boxes being all emptied before the third act was concluded. Among all our English plays, there is none more determinedly bloody than "OEdipus," in its progress and conclusion. The entrance of the unfortunate king, with his eyes torn from their sockets, is too disgusting for representation[3]. Of all the persons of the drama, scarce one survives the fifth act. OEdipus dashes out his brains, Jocasta stabs herself, their children are strangled, Creon kills Eurydice, Adrastus kills Creon, and the insurgents kill Adrastus; ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... or summer. The sun and moon will cease to shine and the bright stars will fall from the sky. The earth will be shaken as when there is a great earthquake; the waves of the sea will roar and the highest mountains will totter and fall. The trees will be torn up by the roots, and even the "world tree" will tremble from its roots to its topmost boughs. At last the quivering earth will sink beneath ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.

... beneath the bridge a human being who, clad in a torn, filthy smock, and supported on a pair of thin shanks bare of muscles, thrust an idiotic face, a tremulous, bare, shaven head, and a pair of red, shining stumps in place of hands into ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy

... been torn in the hillside, and another where the improvised gun had stood. The gun itself seemed to ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... peering steadfastly at him. First he laid down a torn letter. Van Dorn shuddered almost imperceptibly as he recognized in the crumpled, wrenched paper his writing, but smiled ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... heard the sob which he had not been sure of. It had come from Lucy's room. Her mother was there with her. The two had been closeted together ever since Rose had gone. Lucy had rushed up-stairs and pulled off her pretty gown with a hysterical fury. She had torn it at the neck, because the hooks would not unfasten easily, before her mother, who moved more ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... us still, but that he can find time and patience to think upon anything else—a story written further to show how terribly despair becomes intensified when a man has lost—or thinks he has lost—a woman whose love was the only light of his world—when his soul is torn from his body, as it were, and whisked off on the wings of the 'viewless winds' right away beyond the farthest star, till the universe hangs beneath his feet a trembling point of twinkling light, and at last even this ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... Torn and his friends had several talks with the "Reverend Josiah Blinderpool," as the pretended clergyman still called himself. But he did not obtrude his company on them, and though he asked many questions as to where Tom and his party were going, the young inventor, ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton

... second edition of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (ante, v. 148), I mention that Rowlandson in one of his Caricatures paints Boswell begging Sir Alexander Macdonald for mercy, while on the ground lie pages 165, 167, torn out. I have discovered, though too late to mention in the proper place, that in the first edition the leaf containing pages 167, 168, was really cancelled. In my own copy I noticed between pages 168 and 169 a narrow projecting slip of paper. I found the same in ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell

... tree and stood on the ground a minute later. She found that her dress was torn and she had lost part of the ribbon from her hat. This troubled her more than anything else, for her frugal mother had told her many a time that she must take the best ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... the fortifying and garrisoning of its citadel with Syrian soldiers and apostate Jews, and the slaughter of all who refused to accede to his demands. Not only was the temple service stopped, but the altar was torn down and desecrated and a heathen altar to Zeus—the abominable desolation of the book of Daniel—was reared in its place. On this swine's flesh was sacrificed, and the presence of harlots in the sacred precincts completed its ceremonial and moral pollution. All ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... it necessary to kill all whom he pretended to think her enemies. It was Marius who had brought on the era of carnage by attempting to deprive Sulla of his command in the war against Mithridates, and accordingly the body of the great plebeian was torn from its tomb and cast into the Anio. A list was drawn up of those whose possessions were to be confiscated, and who were themselves to be executed in vengeance. On this the names of the family of Marius came first. Fresh lists were constantly posted in the forum. Each of these was called a tabula ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd eaves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is torn to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... life, as it manifested heroism beyond their usual test of torture. Martyrs thus sacrificed had this consolation: that their spirits were sure to rise in the mist and follow the bright path above, while bad Indians' spirits passed down in the boiling, crashing current, to be torn and tossed in the whirlpool, there ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah

... effusion upon a sheet torn from her best pad, folded it, sought out Olive and handed it to her, telling her to pass it round the form. The juniors grinned at its contents. They had felt themselves neglected, but were quite ready to forgive past omissions on the strength of a ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... puzzled over. It was impossible for Dr. Leslie to resist teasing his faithful hand-maiden once in a while, but he did it with proper gravity and respect, and their friendship was cemented by these sober jokes rather than torn apart. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... in the least matter about the dress, I assure you," she said in reply to his apology. "My dressmaker, Lois Huntington, can repair it so that you will not know it has been torn. It was only a ruse of mine to attract your attention." She was trying to speak lightly. "I thought you were not going to speak to me at all. It seems to be a way you have of treating your old friends—your oldest friends," ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... with Sir J. Minnes, &c., where he told us among many other things how in Portugal they scorn to make a seat for a house of office, but they do .... all in pots and so empty them in the river. I did also hear how the woman, formerly nurse to Mrs. Lemon (Sir W. Batten's daughter), her child was torn to pieces by two doggs at Walthamstow this week, and is dead, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... jest: but on my repeated assurances took the letter thankfully, and at parting, on our release, pressed on me the end of his sausage wrapped in a piece of newspaper. I ate the sausage moodily and was about to throw the paper away when my eye caught sight of an advertisement in the torn left-hand corner. I read it, and my mind was made up. I am here, and (thanks to you, sir) with a ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... Sobieski!" thought Pembroke, as he closed the paper; "to what art thou doomed! Some friends are torn from thee by death; others desert thee in the hour ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... wretched isolation as an old bachelor, with nobody to care for him, and he also suffered atrocious mental torture, torn by paternal tenderness springing from remorse, longing and jealousy, and from that need of loving one's own children, which nature has implanted into all, and so at last he determined to make a despairing attempt, and going up to her, as she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... small drum from behind the curtain, and, when Galeotti tried to take it, 'John' pulled it out of his hands. Again he offered it, and Galeotti seized it, and the two fought for its possession with such violence that the drum was nearly torn to pieces." ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... making use of creeping tendril or dead branch, daring death along every inch of the way, these two creepers at last attained the opening to the little gulley, and sank down, faint and trembling, their hands bleeding, their clothing sadly torn by the sharp ledges across which they had pulled their bodies by the sheer strength of extended arms. Hampton panted heavily from exertion, yet the old light of cool, resourceful daring had crept back into the gray eyes, while the stern lines about his ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... would have been sacrificed. The men-of-war and the river steamboats did good service, for the course of the tornado, was so restricted that though but a hundred yards from its limit of violence they were untouched. Dom Pedro's junk with others was torn from its moorings and overturned, but not before Adams and Priscilla had jumped from the deck. Even in the awful confusion and the terror of the first plunge which carried them below the surface ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison

... for bed," she declared, "I suppose even this entertainment must have a term." There was no gainsaying it. The lovers were torn apart by the moral force of Olimpia's attendance; but not until it was demonstrated that, though good-night is a word of two syllables, it needs four lips, and is therefore ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... lancerated,' said Mrs Kenwigs, 'my heart has been torn asunder with anguish, I have been thrown back in my confinement, my unoffending infant has been rendered uncomfortable and fractious, Morleena has pined herself away to nothing; all this I forget and forgive, and with you, uncle, I never can ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... sentiments; and it is thus with all the other virtues; the more important these virtues are, and the more strongly they cling to them, because they appear the more essential, the greater is the force with which they are torn from them. ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... place covered with sand and protected against further destruction, and it gradually acquired the physical properties that we now find in it. At the period that channels were formed, the coal was torn from the beds in fragments, and these latter were rolled about for a time, sometimes being broken, and then covered anew, and this too at the same time as were the plants less advanced in composition that we meet with at the same level. These latter, being like them ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various

... had been providently left unremoved over the now foaming torrent, and, more than once, to swim across the current, in which swimmers less strong or less practised would have been dashed down the falls, where loose logs and torn trees went clattering and whirling: for I was in danger of life. A band of the savage natives were stealthily creeping on my track,—the natives in those parts were not then so much awed by the white man as now. A boomerang(1) had whirred by me, burying itself amongst the herbage ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... possible among the inhabitants under insurgent domination this address, printing the same in the English, Spanish, and Tagalog languages. This was done, but scarcely had it been posted in Manila twenty-four hours before it was so torn and mutilated as to be unrecognizable. It suffered the same fate as the proclamation of January 4, set out in pages 113 and 114 of this report, but it produced a marked beneficial influence on the people, especially those outside our lines, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... faded to the east, paled at the zenith; while the dark shapes blotting the low stars astern got outlines, relief became shoulders, heads, faces, features,—confronted him with dreary stares, had dishevelled hair, torn clothes, blinked red eyelids at the white dawn. "They looked as though they had been knocking about drunk in gutters for a week," he described graphically; and then he muttered something about the sunrise ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... the site had appeared in the architectural press. John Orgreave and Lucas were pencilling in turn upon one of these, a page torn out of a weekly. George inserted himself between them, roughly towards Lucas and deferentially towards ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... human bliss. From the sweet things which he had seen he had been hitherto cut off by the record of his own fault, and had spent the greater part of his life in the endurance of a bitter punishment. He had been torn to pieces, too, in contemplating the modes of escape from the position in which his father's very natural will had placed him. He might of course have married, and at least have expected and have hoped for children. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... Balcome halted behind her to look on. "Here is another gift for her wedding! Oh, how pitiful! How pitiful! A present from someone who loves her! Who thought the dear child would be happy! Something sweet and dainty"—the wrapping paper was torn off by now—"to brighten her new ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... bottom of the pond in St. James's Park a patient Scotland Yard official brought up the gold nail-case with its mysterious engravings—and it contained, torn at the root, the incredibly long finger-nail of the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... through a very fine sieve in an English court of justice. Kaffar is not an ordinary-looking man, and from Scotland Yard our police authorities hold communication with all other police authorities in the civilized world. I tell you, man, your trumped-up story would be torn to pieces in five minutes, and in the end you would be safely lodged down at ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... compromising papers, one, a letter to Chirnside, was found by the Rev. Mr. Anderson (in 1902) torn into thirteen pieces (whereof one is missing), wrapped up in a sheet of foolscap of the period. Mr. Anderson has placed the pieces together, and copied the letter. Of all these documents, only five letters (those published by Mr. Pitcairn) were 'libelled,' ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... felt the stirring of love from the moment I saw you there at the ford," he exclaimed. "Last night when I knew that wretch had carried you off to the mountains, I could have torn him limb from limb. That was my love speaking, Janet. If I should have to go through life without you—oh, the thought is too bitter to dwell on!—then I should think life not worth living. But I have imagined that you might have ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... oblations, he shows that very act of his to have been the most impious of all. For he says, that he and his brother Pantoleon contended for the kingdom while their father was yet alive; and that Croesus, having obtained the crown, caused a companion and familiar friend of Pantoleon's to be torn in pieces in a fulling-mill, and sent presents to the gods from his property. (Ibid. i. 92.) Of Deioces also, the Median, who by virtue and justice obtained the government, he says that he got it not by real but ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... their jaws they once in blood do bathe, They, gaining courage,[122] with fierce noise awake The force which Nature in them seated hath, And from their necks the broken chains do shake; Then he that tamed them first doth feel their rage, And torn in pieces doth their fury slake. The bird shut up in an unpleasing cage, Which on the lofty trees did lately sing, Though men, her want of freedom to assuage, Should unto her with careful labour bring The sweetest meats which they can best devise, Yet when ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... repaired the railroad track, which the traitors had torn up, and put in shape again the engine they had disabled. We had men that could do anything; and that very engine was one they had made,—for the South never did its own engine-building, but sent to Massachusetts to have it done. Charley Homans knew every ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... To move compassion: Sir, there is a table, That doth command all these things, and enjoyns 'em, Be perfect in their crutches, their feign'd plaisters, And their torn pass-ports, with the ways to stammer, And to be dumb, and deaf, and blind, and lame, There, all the halting paces are set down, ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... your knees there and behave yourself, Mae! Looka your dress there, all torn. This ain't no barroom. Get up and behave yourself! Ain't you ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst



Words linked to "Torn" :   divided, injured, war-torn



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