"Twist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laughed when the brainless walrus put my question. There is one little boy—the son I think of Blackbeard—who laughed more than all the rest. He lay down on the ice to laugh, and rolled about as if he had the bowel-twist." ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... was making his preparations also for the sermon. "After rummaging the leathern purse which hung in front of his petticoat, he produced a short tobacco-pipe made of iron, and observed almost aloud, 'I hae forgotten my spleuchan—Lachlan, gang doon to the Clachan, and bring me up a pennyworth of twist.' Six arms, the nearest within reach, presented, with an obedient start, as many tobacco-pouches to the man of office. He made choice of one with a nod of acknowledgment, filled his pipe, lighted it with ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... animating the youthful hero of his drama, devised and undertook the perilous enterprise of escaping from his prison. He inspired his companions with his sentiments, and when every attempt at open force was deemed hopeless, they resolved to twist their bed-clothes into ropes and thus to descend. Four persons, with Home himself, reached the ground in safety. But the rope broke with the fifth, who was a tall, lusty man. The sixth was Thomas Barrow, a brave young Englishman, a particular friend ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... standing safe on the sands and shaking hands warmly with everybody present. When he came to Mr Tom Sowton and Billy Burnaby, it might have been supposed from the way in which they wrung each other's hands, that there was a wager pending as to which should first twist off his ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... first contrary wind or tide they turn about and sail in the opposite direction? Death and destruction are concomitants of constitutional changes and revolution, no doubt; but you are such an impersonation of change, that, as you twist and turn and double, you deal destruction on all sides. At one swoop you are the ruin of a thousand oligarchs at the hands of the people, and at another of a thousand democrats at the hands of the better classes. Why, sirs, this is the man to whom the orders were given ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... to get better, I suppose. Well, used you to hit it and twist it and prod it, or did you leave it alone to try and heal? I won't talk any more about Derek! I simply won't! I'm all smashed up inside, and I don't know if I'm ever going to get well again, but at least I'm going to give myself ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... another survey of himself in the glass, used his comb and brushes again, added a studied twist to his tie, shot his cuffs, and walked out of the room with the solid deliberation which characterised his carriage at ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... his legs as he went along: when he approached her, he made a sort of salaam, and then retreated. Another would go softly up to a lady, and then suddenly seizing her by the waist, would turn and twist her round and round some fifty times till both were evidently giddy with the motion: this was sometimes performed by a few chosen dancers, and sometimes by several hundreds at once—all embracing each other in what, to our notions, would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... grip of the two great hands that raised him clear of the ground and shook him before he was slammed down on his face ten feet away by a straight-arm thrust. His deadly temper flared and the swift move for his gun was simultaneous with the twist which brought him to his feet, but his hand fell away from the butt of it as he looked into the twin muzzles of a sawed-off shotgun which ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... my dear captain," said a voice, Cleek's voice, from the other end of the tent; and with a twist and a snarl the "senor" screwed round on his heel in time to see that other intruders were putting in an appearance as well as this ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... was a determination to make him obey. He did not, therefore, make any excuses, but went out and took up the net. He carefully folded it, doubled and redoubled it, forming it into a roll, and then with an easy twist of his hands wrung it short off, with as much ease as if every twine had been a thin brittle fibre. Here they at once saw the secret of his reluctance. ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... before him laughing. The dog, seeing that Free Joe was asleep, had grown somewhat impatient, and he concluded to make an excursion to the Calderwood place on his own account. Lucinda was inclined to give the incident a twist in ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... uttered. Out from the surrounding gloom of underbrush a hatless, dishevelled individual on foot suddenly dashed into the centre of that hesitating ring of horsemen. With skilful twist of his foot he sent a dismounted road-agent spinning over backward, and managed to wrench a revolver from his hand. There was a blaze of red flame, a cloud of smoke, six sharp reports, and a wild ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... see it come and go! the white and the red! the tugging at the hair! the tears and the oaths, and the cries and the curses! To know that you have the man's heart-strings stretched on your violin, and that with one dash of your bow, one tiniest twist of a peg, you ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... to say that what the world is aching for is not a special reform embodied in a particular statute, but a way of going at all problems. The lasting value of Darwin, for example, is not in any concrete conclusion he reached. His importance to the world lies in the new twist he gave to science. He lent it fruitful direction, a different impetus, and the results ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... "A new twist on the old change-up. Ben, boy, it's going to go. I feel it. It's in the air, things are just ripe for a new, super-soft-sell pitch. Selling you've got to do by feel, eh Ben? By sales genius and the old seat of the pants. Good. After tonight I'm going all out, a hemisphere-wide, ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... "Simple twist of the wrist—presto visto, as the feller'd say. Don't worry. I'll leave it in the door when I depart. And say, while we're exchanging compliments, allow me to hand you one. You're something of a wizard, too. I don't wonder you always win at poker if you can see through an oak ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... would want to leave his money to some one or other; an absurd notion, but it is only human nature, and he is not likely to have any more children, as I know. Victorine is gentle and amiable; she will soon twist her father round her fingers, and set his head spinning like a German top by plying him with sentiment! She will be too much touched by your devotion to forget you; you will marry her. I mean to play Providence ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... poor sort of lover," she flung at him, and freed herself from his arms with a quick twist of her body. Her breast heaved. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... keep in temper to see the cruelty with which these women use their children, even while at the breast. They give them great blows with their fist upon the back, to make them sleep; and, to prevent their crying, pinch them unmercifully, and twist their skin with their fingers. I have seen these inhuman mothers set out with them the same day they were delivered, to go to an encampment fifteen or twenty leagues distant. They place them without care in a kind of cradle, which is set on the top ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... why, twist it how you will, Thy chaplet must be foolscap still. When next you visit Delphi's town, Enquire amongst your fellow-lodgers, They'll tell you Phoebus gave his crown, Some years before your birth, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... incident is brilliant and amusing, in spite of our feeling that it is maliciously exaggerated: "Strolling one morning in the Graben with Casanova, I suddenly saw him knit his brows, squawk, grind his teeth, twist himself, raise his hands skyward, and, snatching himself away from me, throw himself on a man whom I seemed to know, shouting with a very loud voice: 'Murderer, I have caught thee.' A crowd having gathered as a result of this strange act and yell, I approached them with some disgust; ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Disraeli's "Sibyl," while I built a sand fortress round her; or she read "Venetia," "Oliver Twist," "The Life of Mary II.," "Romany Rye," and "The Lives of the Last Four Popes." She remembered Pio Nono with unflagging interest, and mentions his serious illness, and then his recovery. She read "a queer biography of Wordsworth by Hood," and she regarded ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... looking-glass from the wall and puts it on the back of a chair; then sits down in front of it and begins washing his face.) Didn't I know rightly I was handsome, though it was the divil's own mirror we had beyond, would twist a squint across an angel's brow; and I'll be growing fine from this day, the way I'll have a soft lovely skin on me and won't be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung. ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... these strangers' skill and strength in games and wrestling, but one by one they failed. At last there were only two left, Hercules, who could hold the sky on his great shoulders, and Acheloues, the river-god, who could twist and twine through the fields and make them fertile. Each thought himself the greater of the two, and it lay between them which should gain the princess, by his ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... "if you can find that old rooster that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we'll take him along. There's no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda could n't have got hens from her neighbors last fall and had a henhouse going by now. I reckon she was confused and did n't know where to begin. I've come strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... while, Ben and Miss Campbell, having waited an incalculable time at the second bridge, had gone on for half a mile. Few people can stand the test of being kept waiting. Their patience may be inexhaustible but their judgments are apt to take a bad twist and bring them right about face in the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... the wet towel around the Phoenix's neck. "You're doing better and better, Phoenix. I especially like that part where you twist over on your back and loop and plunge, all at the ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... have one already hewn) a staff To lean on, for ye have described the road Rugged, and ofttimes dang'rous to the foot. So saying, his tatter'd wallet o'er his back He cast, suspended by a leathern twist, Eumaeus gratified him with a staff, And forth they went, leaving the cottage kept 240 By dogs and swains. He city-ward his King Led on, in form a squalid beggar old, Halting, and in unseemly garb attired. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... to be pleased and grateful. But the existence of a wound was incontestable. Sophia, then, could do more with Cyril than she could! Sophia had only met him once, and could simply twist him round her little finger. He would never have done so much for his mother. A fine sort of an obstacle it must have been, if a single telegram from Sophia could overcome it ...! And Sophia, too, was secretive. She had gone out and ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Edmund, springing to the window, and then darting to one of his knobs and beginning to twist ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... of vivid green ribbon and the bunch of imitation shamrock that old Mary O'Grady had given her as a parting present. Then she set to work on a piece of amateur millinery. There was little time to use needle and thread, but with the aid of pins she managed to twist the ribbon into several loops, and to fasten the shamrock conspicuously in front. She looked at the result of her labours with ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... other sign of irony than a slight involuntary twist of the lips, Jules answered: "Madame sends word that she is not going home; and she places her carriage at the gentlemen's disposal if they will allow me to drive ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... lectured Buckhurst—as a requital for his successful efforts to bring about a more wholesome condition of affairs—she gave the envoy a parting stab, with this postscript;—"There is small disproportion," she said "twist a fool who useth not wit because he hath it not, and him that useth it not when it should avail him." Leicester, too, was very violent in his attacks upon Buckhurst. The envoy had succeeded in reconciling ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he actually said the word—then; but not till then.... What time was it? After eleven! She would go into the garden, where she could look down the road and have the first glimpse of Eddy Minns climbing the hill. With her thoughts in galloping confusion, she put on her flat hat with its twist of white lace about the crown, and went out into the heat. From the bench under the big poplar she looked across at the girdling hills, blue and hot in the still flood of noon; below her was the valley, now a sea of treetops islanded with Old Chester ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... ma'am," responded master Dick, taking one of the coils from his pocket; "the best riding-switch in the world. All the whips that ever were made are nothing to it. Only see how strong it is, how light, and how supple! You may twist it a thousand ways without breaking. It won't break, do what you will. Each of these, now, is worth half-a-crown or three shillings, for they are the scarcest things possible. They grow up at a little distance from the root of an old tree, like a sucker ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... nothing. He stood, the impersonation of silent obstinacy, digging the end of his stick into the earth, or striking at the blue bells and the brambles within reach, resolved to utter no word which Brian could twist into any sort of promise for the future. He knew that his silence might injure his prospects, by lowering him in Brian's estimation—Brian being now the arbiter of his fate—but for all that he could not bring himself to make submission or to profess penitence. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... river ran and where we used to go constantly to fish. There was a remarkably beautiful cedar tree whose black boughs spread far over the river, and whose powerful roots, knotted in every variety of twist, formed a cradle from which the water had gradually washed away the earth. Here I used to sit, or rather lie, reading, or writing sometimes, while the others pursued their sport, and enjoying the sound and sight of the sparkling water which ran undermining my bed and singing treacherous ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Uitlanders. There it is fully appreciated that there is but one man in it, and that man President Kruger. Dr. Leyds and others may be and are clever and willing tools. They may lend acidity or offensiveness to a hostile despatch, they may add a twist or two to a tortuous policy, but the policy is President Kruger's own, the methods are his own, all but the minor details. Much as the Hollander-German clique may profit by their alliance with Mr. Kruger, it is not to be believed that he is deceived. He regards them as ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... life she leads, to come and live in a dungeon in the Highlands? A single day like to-day would kill her, she is so fine and delicate—like a rose leaf, I have often thought. No, no, Ogilvie, I have thought of it every way. It is like a riddle that you twist and twist about to try and get the answer; and I can get no answer at all, unless wishing that I had never been born. And perhaps that would ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... for the fairies and nymphs; she managed to fix upon their tiny heads, about as big as the end of a little finger, blond wigs made of light silk thread, this thread she twined upon the finest wires and thus she was able to twist it ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... there was present at every turn and twist of the dance an idea that he was there for other work than that. He was tracking a head of game after which there would be many hunters. He had his advantages, and so would they have theirs. One of his was this,—that he had her there with him now, ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... portion of New York, is from its very nature odious to me. I know that much may be said in its favor—that drainage and gas- pipes come easier to such a shape, and that ground can be better economized. Nevertheless, I prefer a street that is forced to twist itself about. I enjoy the narrowness of Temple Bar and the misshapen curvature of Picket Street. The disreputable dinginess of Hollowell Street is dear to me, and I love to thread my way up the Olympic into Covent Garden. Fifth Avenue ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... the end our course was straightforward and in absolute accord with the highest of standards of international morality. Criticism of it can come only from misinformation, or else from a sentimentality which represents both mental weakness and a moral twist. To have acted otherwise than I did would have been on my part betrayal of the interests of the United States, indifference to the interests of Panama, and recreancy to the interests of the world at large. Colombia had forfeited every claim to consideration; indeed, this is not stating the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... dimly-lit street. The public houses across the way were filled up with guests. All the front parlors and front bedrooms had been let at fat prices, and suppers were spread in them for the edification of their tenants. Do you remember the thrilling chapter of "The Jew's last night alive," in "Oliver Twist?" Well, this was the scene! These were the same beams and uprights. There, huge, massive, and blackened with smoky years, rose the cold, impervious stones; and yonder, casting its sharp pinnacles into the sky, is the tower of St. Sepulchre's ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... echo, for, having acted the great lie of espousing the anti-vaccination cause, I felt that it was not worth while to hesitate in telling other lies in support of it. Moreover, I knew my subject thoroughly, and understood what points to dwell upon and what to gloze over, how to twist and turn the statistics, and how to marshal my facts in such fashion as would make it very difficult to expose their fallacy. Then, when I had done with general arguments, I went on to particular cases, describing as a doctor can do the most dreadful which had ever ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... of the drawing frame, the sliver passes to the fly frame or slubber, which not only continues the drawing and doubling, usually between three pairs of rollers, but through the aid of a device which gives the sliver a slight twist and winds it, for the first time, upon a spindle. This device is known as the flyer, and is, roughly, a U-shaped piece of metal, which, revolving, inverted, over the spindle, gives the thread a slight lateral twist as it coils upon the spindle. ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... Terence obediently shipped his oars; with a deft twist of one oar, Murphy straightened the boat and shot neatly in alongside the submarine, the deck of which was less than three feet above the water. As Cappy Ricks had anticipated, the men on that deck promptly snagged the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... "I'll twist up a birch-bark basket, to bring 'em down in," he decided. And the first thing either of them knew, there was Polly shaking their arms and laughing. "You lazy little things, you—get up! I've been calling and calling and ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... always so kind, you could fairly twist me round your finger. You can do anything with ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... wheel a desperate twist to get out of the way. The motor-cyclist tried to do the same, but the machine he was on appeared to want matters its own way. He came straight for Tom, and a disastrous collision might have resulted ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... 'What if I twist the song awry, and give thee good cause to limp the sorrowful way? What if for my aching belly I give thee an aching heart? Eh, if my fingers scratch my side, there are worse talons at thine. Watch for the Lion's ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... sometime us hongry. Us sees no battlin' but de cannon bang all day. Once, dey bang two whole days 'thout hardly stoppin'. Dat am when missy go tech in de head, 'cause massa and de boys in dat battle. She jus' walk 'round de yard and twist de hands and say, 'Dey sho' git kilt. Dey sho' dead.' Den when extra loud noise come from de cannon, she scream. Den word come Willie am kilt. She gits over it, but she am de diff'rent woman. For her, it am ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Belville was their home. A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache,— Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache. From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat, With every trick of twist and kick, a master of savate. And Gigolette was tall and fair, as stupid as a cow, With three combs in the greasy hair she banged upon her brow. You'd see her on the Place Pigalle on any afternoon, A primitive and strapping wench as brazen ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... room drifted others that turned into the drollest of droll pipers—with kilt and brata and cap. It made him feel as if he had been dropped into the center of a giant kaleidoscope, with thousands of pieces of gray smoke turning, at the twist of a hand, into form and color, motion and music. The pipers piped; the figures danced, whirling and whirling about him, and their laughter could be heard ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... the problem by adopting the "gaining twist," in which the grooves start from the breech nearly parallel to the axis of the barrel, and gradually increase the spiral, until, at the muzzle, it has the pitch of one revolution in three to four; the pitch being greater as the bore is less. This gives, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... so charmingly mysterious in this little anecdote, that I would not for the world add a syllable of explanation. Leaving you, therefore, in full possession of it, to turn and twist it as you please, consider me ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... possible to reach. The cords are then drawn tight and fixed around the handle of the instrument; then, by using the cross handle as a lever, the fetus and womb may be rotated in a direction opposite to that causing the obstruction. During this process the hand must be introduced to feel when the twist has been undone. This method may be supplemented, if necessary, by rolling ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... of such a possibility—and widows are not altogether different from widowers—it was hardly fair in the folks of Egypt to twist every act of Widower Britt to his discredit and to make him out a renegade of a relict. He did go through all the accepted motions as a mourner. He took on "something dreadful" at the funeral. He placed in the cemetery lot ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... your dear girl's part would have froissed him. Men with that immense wealth are always suspicious, ready to imagine mercenary motives, on their guard against being trapped. But Lesbia had me at her back, and she managed him perfectly. He is positively her slave; and you will be able to twist him round your little finger in the matter of settlements. You may do what you like with him, for the ground has been thoroughly prepared ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... boy. "Those are higher priced, because they require individual attention, and the material put into them is more expensive. To make those the girls take the centers and submerge each one in melted chocolate with a dipping-fork, finishing the pieces with a certain little twist or decoration on top; it requires no small amount of skill to make this top-knot, which not only serves to render the candy more attractive but to distinguish one variety of filling from another. Each kind has its own particular decoration. After some practice any of us might, I suppose, ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... my dear, but it's that, As the Public insists upon knowin', Missis MATHEW 'as told me so, pat, Wich likeways 'as good Missis BOWEN. You can't floor their argyments, quite, 'Owsomever you twirl 'em or 'twist 'em; They say, and I fear they are right, There is somethink all wrong with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... politicians he would not be seen dead with them at a pig fair. Asked whether he had read Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD'S account of his lion-hunting exploits, in The Daily Chronicle, he professed ignorance and even indifference. Speaking as an aristocrat he thought that a Labour leader was not worthy to twist his tail. As for the conduct of Mr. BERNARD SHAW in bringing lions on the stage, he thought it little short of an outrage for an anaemic vegetarian to take liberties with the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... Friedrichstadt and Jacobstadt to a point just west of Kalkuhnen, a little town on the bend of the Dvina, opposite Dvinsk. There it continued, generally speaking, in a southerly direction, at some points with a slight twist to the east, at others with a similarly slight turn to the west. It thus passed just east of Lake Drisviaty, crossed the Disna River at Koziany, then ran through Postavy and just east of Lake Narotch, crossed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... pose. They must hold their paws up, down, sideways or behind, according as they were told. They must stand or kneel, for a long time, in awkward positions. They must stick out their tongues to full length, walk on their hind legs, twist their necks, to one side or the other, look forward or backward, and in many tiresome ways do just as they were ordered. They must also make of their tails every sort of use, whether to wrap around posts or bundles, to stick out of their cage, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... "It got on the Branch 'stead of the Mountain Special, by mistake. It's a lunger bound for the lakes, and some one gave him a twist as to the track an' we caught 'im. But shure, the rale thing, the parson, when I was after tellin' 'im of the job what was at this end of the game, he up and balked—divil take 'im!—an' said he wasn't goin' to tie for time and eternity, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... in Greece and Rome, she was not allowed to eat with her husband and sons. She waited on them as a servant. Now they in every country serve her, if they are gentlemen. But, owing to a curious twist in the way of looking at things, she is now undoubtedly the tyrant, and in fashionable society she is often imperiously ill-bred, and requires that her male slaves be in a state of servitude to which the Egyptian bondage ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... caught his right in front, feeling for his knife. The advantage would have been all Dan's except that the Yankee suddenly loosed his wrist and gripped him tight about the body in an underhold, so that Dan could not whirl him round; but he could twist that wrist and twist it he did, with both hands and all his strength. Once the Yankee gave a smothered groan of pain and Dan heard him grit his teeth to keep it back. The smoke had lifted now, and, when they fell, it was in the light of the fire. The Yankee had thrown him ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... confess that I have not the means to fight her in a land where her father's millions count for so much. I am a poor man. My estates are heavily involved through litigation started by my forbears. You understand my position?" He said it with a rather pathetic twist of his lips. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... very singular faces; very odd wigs, very much pulled over their brows; and very large cravats, very much raised above their chins. Besides this, each had a large black patch over his right eye, and a very queer twist at the left side of his mouth, so that if their object had been disguise, they could not have adopted better precautions. Mrs. Wood thought them both remarkably plain, but Mr. Smith decidedly the plainest of the two. His complexion was as blue ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... caustic, or lay a piece of lint soaked in the extract of lead over the bites; and if all these tried in succession fail, pass a fine needle through a fold of the skin so as to include the bite, and twist a piece of thread round it. Be sure never to allow any one to go to sleep with leech-bites bleeding, without watching them carefully; and never apply too many to children; or place them where their bites can be compressed if necessary. In other words, never ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... consulted delighted Janet; and Wilkie, or Allan, would have made a capital sketch of her, as she sat upright in her chair, instead of her ordinary lounging posture, knitting her stocking systematically, as if she meant every twist of her thread and inclination of the wires to bear burden to the cadence of my voice. I am afraid, too, that I myself felt more delight than I ought to have done in my own composition, and read a little more oratorically than I should ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Authorities which your opponent fails to understand are those of which he generally thinks the most. The unlearned entertain a peculiar respect for a Greek or a Latin flourish. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something which you have invented entirely yourself. As a rule, your opponent has no books at hand, and could not use them if he had. The finest illustration ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... picture, the lotus imagery is retained but is given a subtle twist—the lotus-leaves themselves, rather than the lover's inmost heart, being shown as mounting ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... his gullet. At length his words found vent, and for three days he kept up a constant discharge, anathematising the Yankees, man, woman, and child, for a set of dieven, schobbejacken, deugenieten, twist-zoekeren, blaes-kaken, loosen-schalken, kakken-bedden, and a thousand other names, of which, unfortunately for posterity, history does not make mention. Finally, he swore that he would have nothing more to do with such a squatting, bundling, guessing, questioning, swapping, pumpkin-eating, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... condition or fit of perplexed anxiety; probably connected with the word "kink" meaning in sea phrase a twist in an rope — and, as a verb, to twist ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... lacquer which the Japanese and Chinese make are formed of this; but it has many much humbler uses than these. Paper screws are employed in ornamental wood work, and if a hole is begun for such a screw, it will twist its way into soft wood as well as steel would do. Barrels of paper reinforced with wire are common. Gear wheels and belt pulleys are made of papier mache, and even the wheels of railroad coaches; at least the body ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... the tortoise on its feet. But the Indian refused to assist in this good work, for he asserted that it was equivalent to leaving a rattlesnake alive. Two or three times the animal was very nearly repaying our kindness by a bite; for, as soon as we came near, it managed to twist round on its upper shell. We were about to abandon it to its fate, when suddenly, the slope of the ground helping us, we managed to set it on its feet; as soon as it was turned over, it rushed at Lucien. The enormous rolls round its neck, being all distended, made it carry its head very forward, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... meant to leave his prisoner loose. But there were those in Gilbert's train who told him, and with truth, that if he did so, no man's life would be safe. That to brain the jailer with his own keys, and then twist out of his bowels a line wherewith to let himself down from the top of the castle, would be not only easy, but amusing, to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... twist And twine, twist and twine, A riotously beautiful design Whose elements consist Of eloquent spirals, fair and fine, Embracing cranes and lions, who exist Seemingly free, yet tangled in that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... didn't sit there, waiting for that dog to catch him, either. No, indeed, and a bag of popcorn besides! Up jumped Uncle Wiggily, with his crutch and his valise, and he hopped as hard and as fast as he could run. My! How his legs did twist in ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... door to Geneva." Coligny accepted; and the marriage took place at La Rochelle on the 24th of March, 1571. "Madame Jacqueline wore, on this occasion," says a contemporary chronicler, "a skirt in the Spanish fashion, of black gold-tissue, with bands of embroidery in gold and silver twist, and, above, a doublet of white silver-tissue embroidered in gold, with large diamond-buttons." She was, nevertheless, at that moment almost as poor as the German arquebusiers who escorted her litter; for an edict issued by the Duke of Savoy on the 31st ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... death-cold hand. She died, and the same reluctant charity which consigned her to a pauper's grave, gave to her boy a dwelling in the parish poor-house. With the tender mercies of such institutions the author of Oliver Twist has made the world acquainted. They were such in the present case, that the poor little Edward Hallett welcomed as the first glad words that had fallen on his ears for two long, weary years, the news that he was to be bound apprentice to a captain sailing ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... carry sail. Again, as if he read my mind, he exclaimed: "Yonder is the Pinta ahead; we must overtake her. Give her sail; give her sail! Vale, vale, muy vale!" Biting off a large quid of black twist, he said: "You did wrong, captain, to mix cheese with plums. White cheese is never safe unless you know whence it comes. Quien sabe, it may have been from leche de Capra ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... You'll find it too true. 25 Och! the hallabaloo! Och! och! how you'll wail, When the offal-fed vagrant Shall turn you as blue As the gas-light unfragrant, 30 That gushes in jets from beneath his own tail;— 'Till swift as the mail, He at last brings the cramps on, That will twist you like Samson. So without further blethring, 35 Dear mudlarks! my brethren! Of all scents and degrees, (Yourselves and your shes) Forswear all cabal, lads, Wakes, unions, and rows, 40 Hot dreams and cold salads, And don't pig in styes that would suffocate sows! Quit Cobbett's, O'Connell's and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... vacantly for a while. His spirits simultaneously were swept away; his countenance changed colour; and clinging to old lady Chia, he readily wriggled her about, just as one would twist the sugar (to make sweetmeats with), and could not, for the very death of him, summon up courage to go; so that her ladyship had no alternative but to try and reassure him. "My precious darling" she urged, "just you go, and I'll stand by you! He won't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... come no more, save on state and formal occasions, until now, when they flocked to it and to his brother, but not to him. Nor could he like the way the young women petted his brother, and called him Tom, while it was intolerable to see them twist and pull his buccaneer moustache in mock punishment when his sometimes too-jolly banter sank home ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... odd triviality of the last detail, its unworthiness of the sentiment of the passage, leaves the reader checked, what sets out as a fine stroke of imagination dwindles down to a sort of literary conceit. And this puerile twist, by the way, is all the poorer, when it is considered that the native writing is really from left to right, and only takes the other direction in a foreign, that is to say, a Persian alphabet. And ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... a good idea. If we hear a hail, I will at once cut a good length of rope, and twist it round a barrel for us to hold on by. But I don't think there is any ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... patients. To my mind, not only were the doctors and attendants detectives; each patient was a detective and the whole institution was a part of the Third Degree. Scarcely any remark was made in my presence that I could not twist into a cleverly veiled reference to myself. In each person I could see a resemblance to persons I had known, or to the principals or victims of the crimes with which I imagined myself charged. I refused to read; for to read veiled charges and fail to assert my innocence was to incriminate both ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... chair, his head fell back between his shoulders and his mouth opened, with his nose pointed toward the zenith. Just then Spooner came in. As he passed by the Major, the temptation was irresistible. He seized the venerable nose of the old patriarch between his thumb and finger, and gave it a vigorous twist. The Major was awakened and sprang to his feet, and in a moment realized what had happened. He was, as may be well supposed, intensely indignant. No Major in the militia could submit to such an insult. He seized his chair and hurled it at the head of the offender, but missed, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... shoe; these longitudinal bars are wound spirally with a -in. rod wire tied to the bars at every intersection. This spiral rod has a pitch of only a few inches, but to bind it in place and give rigidity to the skeleton it is wound by a second spiral with a reverse twist and a pitch of 4 or 5 ft. As thus constructed, the reinforcing frame is sufficiently rigid to bear handling as a unit. The piles used at Bristol were 14 to 15 ins. in diameter and 52 ft. long, and weighed ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... use your trunk just like a hand," she says. "So you must bend your trunk, or turn it, or twist it, to get the thing you are holding exactly ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... said Tom. "You may suppose you are a favorite with Aunt Church, but you are nothing at all to me; I can just twist her round my fingers. It's a fine time I mean to have. I won't worry you at all when you are having your commotion in the yard. For the matter of that, I'll creep into the pig-sty with Brownie, and we can ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... man; the wrest is twist so sore, For as soon as they have said In manus tuas once, By God, their breath ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise she wrenched from his grasp; was a flight of stairs away before he had recovered his wits; across the hall and running—shaking, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... it held up his chin in front like a whitewashed fence. His necktie was of a pale-blue satin, with little pink roses painted on it, yes sir, painted! mind you, by hand! It was not one of those troublesome things that come in a single long piece and take you hours before the glass to twist and turn over and under before you can get them to look like a necktie; no indeed; it was far better than that; it was tied already, by somebody who could do it better than you ever could, and when you bought it, all you had to do was to put it on; fasten those two rubber bands behind ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... maliciously. Their thin faces were painted in stripes and patterns of indigo. Silver necklets covered their throats, long earrings dangled under the wool-embroidered kerchiefs bound about their temples with a twist of camel's hair, and below the cotton shifts fastened on their shoulders with silver clasps their legs were bare to the knee, or covered with leather leggings to protect ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... the less delightful. Awnings, fronting the garden, stretch over the flowerbeds; vines twist their necks, the blossoms peeping curiously as you ...
— A Gentleman's Gentleman - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... reason I am such a go-between for Uncle Peter and the League, I am making votes for my man, so I consider it all right for me never to deliver any of their messages to each other as they are given to me, but to twist them ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to her feet again, and with slow unspeakable dignity walked back and forth across the end of the room with the child at her breast. Each time she turned she swung the trailing blanket round with a sudden twist of her body ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... power of the novel in social reform! The novels of "Oliver Twist," and "Dombey and Son," were what roused the English people to a realization of the woes and wrongs of chimney sweeps, of children in the factories and mines of Great Britain. It was a novel, "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," that later built ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... through this miniature forest of vegetation, by the labour of your arms and the weight of your body. Tangled branches and thorny bushes press against you in front and behind, meet over your head, knock off your cap, flap in your face, twist about your legs, and tear your coat skirts; so obstructing you in every conceivable manner and in every conceivable direction, that they seem possessed with a living power of opposition, and commissioned by some evil ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... from the land of dreams, had no great difficulty in freeing himself from the claw-like grasp. With a quick gesture of his own powerful hands, he had in a moment succeeded in dragging the gaunt fingers from off his throat, and, holding the thin wrists with a firm grip, he gave them a sudden sharp twist, which elicited two cries of pain and brought two pairs of knees in hard ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Pere Lactance uttered the sacred words the convulsions of the superior recommenced; but it seemed as if Duncan had more strength than his six predecessors together, for twist and writhe and struggle as she would, the superior's wrist remained none the less firmly clasped in Duncan's hand. At length she fell back on ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... end of which had been beaten out into a longish tapering spike, with a handle something longer than usual. He drew stealthily to the window, and seemed to examine this hurriedly, and tested its strength with a twist or two of his hand. And then he adjusted it very carefully in his grasp, and made two or three little experimental picks with it ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... we fell over the hill togither. If it's a very long shot, it requares four to take the baste in the flank, or four an' a half if ye want to hit the shoulder, besides an allowance o' two feet above its head, to make up for the twist I gave it the other day in the forge, in tryin' ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... discovered that, no matter how the wheel is turned, the Karma or merit is equal. It is the turning it that counts, not the personal exertion. There were wheels and bells in convenient situations all over the village, and whoever passed one gave it a twist as he went by, thus piling up Karma for all the inhabitants. Reflecting upon these facts, I was seized with an idea. I got Hilda to take instantaneous photographs of all the monks during a sacred procession, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... thing for these impostors to give the rope between their hands a twist while those limbs are being bound; and that movement, if dexterously made, while the attention of the committee-men is momentarily diverted, is not likely to be detected. Reversing that movement will let the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... ye forever ply, Life's nervous thread with care to twist, Till sound the clanging shears, and fruitlessly The tender web would ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... hastens slowly in unison with the quickening pulse, the body palpitates, seems to flash invitation like the eyes, it turns, it twists, the neck is thrust forward, it is drawn in, while the limbs move still slowly, tentatively; suddenly the body from the waist up seems to twist round, with the waist as a pivot, in a flash of athletic vigor, the music quickens, the arms move more rapidly to the click of the heated castenets, the steps are more pronounced, the whole woman is agitated, bounding, pulsing with physical excitement. It is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... might be termed the necessaries and luxuries of life; and the duties were reduced on some to the amount of one hundred per cent. The articles enumerated in the resolution were agates, or cornelians; ale and beer; almonds; amber (manufactures of); arrowroot; band-string twist; bailey, pearled; bast-ropes; twines, and strands; beads: coral; crystal; jet; beer or mum; blacking; brass manufactures; brass (powder of); brocade of gold or silver; bronze (manufactures of); bronze-powder; buck-wheat: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... each the other viewed With sullen glance, and swift the fight renewed; Clenched front to front, again they tug and bend, Twist their broad limbs as every nerve would rend; With rage convulsive Rustem grasps him round; Bends his strong back, and hurls him to the ground; Him, who had deemed the triumph all his own; But dubious of his power to keep him down, Like ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... acquaintance would have been—so far from home, and right under the Line in the blaze o' the sun. Of the two, indeed, he was the more wretched and shattered in spirit, for he loved her deeply, and (there being a foreign twist in his make) had been tempted to this crime by her exceeding beauty, against which he had struggled day and night, till he had no further resistance left in him. It was she who came first to a decision as to what should be done—whether a ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... dog, a pointer. He whimpered and tried to gambol, but could not manage it; he was too weak. However, he contrived to let her see, with the wagging of his tail and a certain contemporaneous twist of his emaciated body, that she was welcome. But, having performed this ceremony, he trotted feebly away, leaving her very much startled, and not knowing what to think; indeed, this incident set her trembling ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... or not, it is certain that the Prince's death was a matter of extreme importance. Henry was one of those characters who are capable of giving history a twist that shall last forever. He had a fondness for active life, was very partial to military pursuits, and was friendly to those opinions which the bigoted chiefs of Austria and Bavaria were soon to combine to suppress. Henry would have come to the throne ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... light nor too dark, but rather light than dark. There are no ends or corners of the fingers which are not well filled; there are no creases indicative of the gloves being of a wrong size, nor are they put on crooked with a twist given to the fingers, so that the seams of the glove do not appear straight. In short, a Frenchwoman does not put on her glove anyhow as an Englishwoman does. To her it is a matter of great importance; to ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... with a view to effect, either political or literary. Moralising historians belong to this school, as well as those philosophers who worship evolution. They sketch every situation with malice and twist it, as if it were an argument, to bring out a point, much as fashionable portrait-painters sometimes surcharge the characteristic, in order to make a bold effect at a minimum expense of time and devotion. And yet the truly ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... jarred as you might think. She don't even drop the fork that she's usin' to twist up a gob of spaghetti on. All she does is to lift her eyebrows in a kind of annoyed way, and shoot a quick look at the copper tinted ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... was nothing difficult in the navigation; and Twist, the quartermaster, was at the wheel, steering the course which had been given out, south south-west half west. The pilot knew the mountains as though they had been old friends of his for a lifetime. It did not take the commander ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... People would answer him from this point and that—every one would join in.... They would both abuse him and laugh.—Ivan danced marvellously—especially 'the fish.'—The chorus would thunder out a dance tune, the young fellow would step into the middle of the circle, and begin to leap and twist about and stamp his feet, and then come down with a crash on the ground—and there represent the movements of a fish which has been thrown out of the water upon the dry land; and he would writhe about this way and that, and even bring his heels up to his neck; and then, when ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Ezra Mudge, as he slowly filled his Missouri meerschaum with Virginia twist,—"I've offen noticed thet nerve is the most vallyble asset in the credit items of human life. The pore man thet's got a plenty of it is an uncrowned king with pears's an' di'monds at his command, but the king thet ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... bended part or Index of it lay horizontal, I have observ'd it always with moisture to unwreath it self from the East (For instance) by the South to the West, and so by the North to the East again, moving with the Sun (as we commonly say) and with heat and drouth to re-twist; and wreath it self the contrary way, namely, from the East, (for instance) by the North to the West, and ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Pole, making a bright ring about it, were hundreds of little fires, and the flames of them did not flicker and twist, but went up blue and green and rosy and straight like ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,—to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part! What we want to get at is the thought the man had, if he had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... talisman." So indeed it was, and by its enchantment he became a young man once more, and walked through the moonlight to meet an angel, and with her enter their kingdom of heaven. Truly it was a talisman; yet if you had looked at it, you would have seen nothing in it but a little twist of golden hairs tied together with ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... homesickness and desolation; then gradually, as the marvellous healing properties of youth began to stir, a new feeling awakened in his mind—a sense of curiosity concerning the strange old man whom fate, by a twist of the wheel, had made the arbiter of his life. Even to one so young and inexperienced, it was impossible to know Andrew Henderson and not to feel that some strange peculiarity set him apart from other men. In his ascetic face, in his large, light-blue eyes, in his extraordinary air ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... do drink too much one day, I pinch for it the next. But go to bed, I say—I mean no harm to the young man. Think you I would twist myself a rope?—no, no; go ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the exposure to wet, cold, fear, and hunger, had permanently weakened his constitution; and when his youth seemed to be triumphing over these dangers, another became more threatening. His leg never mended; he had both sprained the knee badly, and given the tibia an awkward twist, so that the least motion was agony ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... self-possession; and the thought that Bartley, in spite of his personal splendor, was a friend of Ben's, was a help, and she got home with her guests without any great chasms in the conversation, though she never ceased to twist the window-tassel ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... a comet's tail, far up in the sky; only the cloud is white, and the hair dark as night. And they say it will go on growing till the Last Day, when the horse will falter and her hair will gather in; and the horse will fall, and the hair will twist, and twine, and wreathe itself like a mist of threads about him, and blind him to everything but her. Then the body will rise up within it, face to face with him, animated by a fiend, who, twining her arms around him, will drag him down to ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... For the rod began to twist in my hand and when I stared at it, lo! it was a long, yellow snake which I held by the tail. I threw the reptile down with a scream, for it was turning its head as though to strike me, and there in the dust it twisted and writhed away from me and towards Ki. Yet an instant later it was only ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... which all the birds are born that become baby boys and girls. No one who is human, except Peter Pan (and he is only half human), can land on the island, but you may write what you want (boy or girl, dark or fair) on a piece of paper, and then twist it into the shape of a boat and slip it into the water, and it reaches Peter ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... banks. He heard them shout the moment after as a signal that they had halted and were waiting for him. Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed the stream where they had crossed it, and was within one step of the opposite bank, when his foot slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle gave a twist outwards, a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at the same moment, and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... himself in the chair and Doret slowly, thoroughly, covered his lower face with lather, through which the blade drew with a clean smooth rip. A fever burned in the standing man's brain, he fought constantly against a stiffening of his employed fingers—a swift turn, a cutting twist. Subconsciously he called noiselessly upon the God that had sustained him and, divided between apprehension and the increasing lust to kill, his lips held the form in which they had pronounced that impressive name. He had the sensation of battling against a terrific wind, a remorseless force ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... issue written instructions concerning the use of this means of warfare. What hypocrisy when the same people grow 'indignant' because the Germans much later followed them on the path they had pointed out! Very characteristic is the twist of the French official direction: 'The vapors spread by the shells with asphyxiating gases are not deadly, at least not when used in small quantities.' It is precisely this limitation that contains the unequivocal confession that the French asphyxiating gases work ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... liberty was a sort of aristocratic anarchism in Byron and Shelley; but though in Victorian times it faded into much milder prejudices and much more bourgeois crotchets, England retained from that twist a certain odd separation and privacy. England became much more of an island than she had ever been before. There fell from her about this time, not only the understanding of France or Germany, but to her own long and yet lingering disaster, the understanding ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... themselves by me as I eat my noonday meal. The one, red-eyed, furtive, lies on his side with restless, clutching hands that tear and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips mutter incoherently. The other sits stooped, bare- footed, legs wide apart, his face grey, almost as grey as his stubbly beard; and it is not long since Death looked him in the eyes. He tells me querulously of a two hundred miles tramp since ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... in miniature, careful work is necessary to bring out the effect: and, above all, there is abundant room for study of manners, for proverbial and popular wisdom and witticism, for "furniture"—to use that word in a wide sense. Above all, the Italian mind, like the Greek, had an ethical twist—twist in more senses than one, some would say, but that does not matter. Manners, morals, motives—these three could not but displace, to some extent, mere incident: though there was generally incident ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... filled beyond all ideas of the young foresters, for it was hung with tapestry, representing the history of Joseph; the bed was curtained, there was a carved chest for clothes, a table and a ewer and basin of bright brass with the armourer's mark upon it, a twist in which the letter H and the dragon's tongue and tail were ingeniously blended. The City was far in advance of the country in all the arts of life, and only the more magnificent castles and abbeys, which the boys had never seen, possessed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
