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Vitals   Listen
noun
Vitals  n. pl.  
1.
Organs that are necessary for life; more especially, the heart, lungs, and brain.
2.
Fig.: The part essential to the life or health of anything; as, the vitals of a state. "The vitals of the public body."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vitals" Quotes from Famous Books



... quarrel between us," I said; "but perhaps a straight-out row would be better than forever to be eating our own vitals ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... guards, Rodrigo," he muttered. "He must have got this far before the drug worked into his vitals." ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... the reason of his reticence. Dawes' farm may once have been a comfortable residence, but when I saw it it was a mildewed, rat-haunted ruin. It stood upon a piece of redeemed marsh-land, and the salt damp of the marsh had eaten into its very vitals. The wainscots were discoloured, the walls oozed, and part of the roof was broken. There had once been a garden; that, like the rest, was a ruin. The land was there no doubt, fifty acres said the advertisement, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... Achaians of my glorious arms Despoil me in full prospect[15] of the fleet. 605 Fight, therefore, thou, and others urge to fight. He said, and cover'd by the night of death, Nor look'd nor breath'd again; for on his chest Implanting firm his heel, Patroclus drew The spear enfolded with his vitals forth, 610 Weapon and life at once. Meantime his steeds Snorted, by Myrmidons detain'd, and, loosed From their own master's chariot, foam'd to fly. Terrible was the grief by Glaucus felt, Hearing that charge, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... men suppress their voices on this momentous subject, and turn their eyes from its contemplation, and give the right hand of fellowship to the buyers and sellers of human flesh, is there not cause for lamentation and alarm? The pulpit is false to its trust, and a moral paralysis has seized the vitals of the church. The sanctity of religion is thrown, like a mantle, over the horrid system. Under its auspices, robbery and oppression have become popular and flourishing. The press, too, by its profound ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... him through. On that day the consternation at Harrington was so great that Mrs. Spooner would not go to the meet. She came over from Spoon Hall, and spent a considerable part of the day in the sick man's room. "It's sure to come right if it's above the vitals," she said, expressing an opinion which had come from much experience. "That is," she added, "unless the neck's broke. When poor old Jack Stubbs drove his head into his cap and dislocated his wertebury, of ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... sublimity of the Almighty Builder's beauty and omnipotence was voiced in one stupendous Word, wrought in enduring color in everlasting stone. Cleaving its way westward to some far-off sea, a wide abyss, a dozen miles across from lip to lip, yawned down to the very vitals of the earth. We stood upon the rim of it—a sheer cliff that dropped a thousand feet of solid limestone, in one plummet line, to other cliffs below, that dropped again through furlongs of black gneiss, red ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... how the tortured limbs writhe, and the blackening cuticle emits a nauseous steam! The black blood oozing from her nostrils proclaims how terrible the inward struggle. The whole frame bends and shrinks, and warps like a fragment of leather thrown into a furnace—the flame has reached her vitals—at last, by God's mercy, she ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... his excitement did not observe that the steam man was seething, and apparently ready to explode with the tremendous power pent up in its vitals. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... cups, was eagerly swallowed by the men. None of the women or children appeared to drink the blood, though custom did not forbid them to do so. The liver was cut in small pieces and eaten raw, with salt, the women and children getting their share. The flesh and the rest of the vitals were taken into the house to be kept till the next day but one, and then to be divided among the persons who had been present at the feast. Blood and liver were offered to Dr. Scheube. While the bear was being disembowelled, the women and girls danced the same dance which they had ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... days when he was an actor there was some reason for that custom; actors, being obliged to dine early and very sparingly, have a terrible gnawing at their vitals when they leave the theatre, and usually eat when they go home. Delobelle had not acted for a long time; but having, as he said, no right to abandon the stage, he kept his mania alive by clinging to a number of ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... the boy dodged quickly and responded with a bolt of lightning which stripped the armor from Yeitso's feet. Three more shafts of lightning struck the armor from the hips, body, and head of this fiercest of giants, exposing his vitals to the attack of the boys, who filled him with arrows, killing him instantly. The Big God's blood began to flow down a canon. Naye{COMBINING BREVE}nezgani drew a line across its path with his stone knife, and the blood ceased flowing onward, rising ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... the house, gives him some things to play with on the floor, and gets into bed herself. Her time was come. She is perfectly conscious all the while, keeps an eye on Eleseus, glances at the clock on the wall to see the time. Never a cry, hardly a movement; the struggle is in her vitals—a burden is loosened and glides from her. Almost at the same moment she hears a strange cry in the bed, a blessed little voice; poor thing, poor little thing ... and now she cannot rest, but lifts herself up and looks down. What is it? Her face is ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... together upon the ground, over and over again. The red blood covered us both. I saw it welling from the lips of the fierce monster, and I joyed to think that my knife reached his vitals. I was wild—I was mad—I was burning with a fierce vengeance—with anger, such as one might feel for a ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... man shivered a little, as those shiver who have just swallowed good liquor, while it is permeating their vitals. Yet he seemed to be in a pleasant state of feeling, and, as was frequently the case with this simple soul, in a devout frame of mind. He read a chapter in the Bible, and said his prayers for Pansie and himself, before ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... be inevitably mortal, and he had been told that he might possibly live for two or three days, but that in all probability his sufferings would not be protracted so long. The fatal bullet had passed through his arm into his breast, had perforated his lungs, and there, within the vitals of his body, the deadly missile was still hidden. At some moments, his agony was extreme, but at others, he was nearly free from pain; and as his life grew nearer to its close, his intervals of ease became longer, and the periods of his suffering were shortened. He had confessed, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... Archias, drawing near, desired him to rise up, and repeating the same kind things he had spoken before, he once more promised him to make his peace with Antipater. But Demosthenes, perceiving that now the poison had pierced and seized his vitals, uncovered his head, and fixing his eyes upon Archias, "Now," said he, "as soon as you please you may commence the part of Creon in the tragedy, and cast out this body of mine unburied. But, O gracious Neptune, I, for my part, while I am yet alive, arise up and depart out of this sacred place; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... forward to meet his enemy, with ready jaw to grind them to bits. The captain at the boat-oar, or steering-oar, made a mighty effort and escaped the rush; then sent an explosive bomb into the whale's vitals as he surged past. Struck unto death, the great bull went into his flurry; but in dying he rolled over the captain's boat like an avalanche, destroying it as completely as he had the three others. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... see with her own eyes the conflict between death and life in the body of her father. The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was worse; the nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now more acute; a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment was ordered which necessitated his return to Paris. He was soon so weak that he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne, but the marquise was so insistent as to the necessity for further and better advice than anything he could ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... my dear M., is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But you are laughing at me—'Stap my vitals, Tarn! thou art a very impudent person;' and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to be laughed at. Seriously, what on earth can you, or have you, to dread from any poetical flesh breathing? It really puts me out of humour to hear you ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... his cheer clost to mine, and ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on his knees, then it was that his eyes rolled and he began breathin' hard, and his gallowses kept a creakin and a creakin', I till I thought in my soul somethin' terrible was the matter with his in'ards, his vitals; and that flustered and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin'. Seein' me do that, he creaked worse'n ever, and that made me cry harder; and the harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... brought out a particular sound with a tap on the collarbone, in the attitude of a pointer who has just come on the scent or sight of a woodcock. You remember the Spartan boy, who, with unmoved countenance, hid the fox that was tearing his vitals beneath his mantle. What he could do in his own suffering you must learn to do for others on whose vital organs disease has fastened its devouring teeth. It is a terrible thing to take away hope, even earthly hope, from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and your face has not yet learned the great feminine art of masking misery in smiles, and burying it in dimples. Mind, dear, I do not ask, I do not wish to know what your hidden fox is, preying so ravenously upon your vitals. Sooner or later the punishment of the Spartan thief overtakes us all, and after a while you will learn to bear the gnawing as gaily as I do. I don't want to know your secret wound, I should only lacerate it with my callous policy handling, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... Amrita, I have heard that one should have recourse to these, viz., penances, self-restraint, truth, and subjugation of the mind. Untying all the knots of the heart, one should also bring under one's control both what is agreeable and what is disagreeable.[1576] One should not wound the vitals of others. One should not be an utterer of cruel speeches. One should never take scriptural lectures from a person that is mean. One should never utter such words as inflict pain on others, as cause others to burn (with misery), and as lead to hell. Wordy shafts fall from the lips. Pierced ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... hit the outer fringes of the ionosphere—that upper layer of rarified protons, the rapidly moving current of high velocity ions known as the plasmasphere—she bucked like a kicked horse. From deep within her vitals, the throb began, a strumming, thrumming sound with a somewhat higher note imposed upon it, making a sound like that of a bass viol being plucked rapidly ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... moment the on-coming vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals—the little yacht heeling over the while until she was almost on ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... was our humble lot. As just returning from a house of call, The parson bade us set about his wall. Flush'd with good liquor, cheerfully we strove To place big stones below and big above; We made too quick work—down the fabric came; It crush'd our vitals: people call'd out shame! But we heard nothing, mute as fish we lay, And shall lie sprawling till the judgment day. From our misfortune this good moral know— Never to work too ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... slackening his racing speed; but, turning in the saddle and glancing back, I saw, just back of the cantle, just to the right of the spine in the glossy brown back, that one tiny, grimy, powder-stained hole. I knew the deadly bullet had ranged downward through his very vitals. I knew that Van had run his last race, was even now rushing toward a goal he would never reach. Fast as he might fly, he could not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... pride, his jealous guarding of the domestic privacies, his vigilant pacing up and down forever before the close-drawn curtain of the heart?—was there no Bluebeard's chamber there? No! Pride was all the matter,—pride was the Spartan fox that tore the vitals of Pintal, while he but bit his lips, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... ruined those provinces and that kingdom of Naco and Honduras, which truly seemed a paradise of delight, and was better peopled than the most populous land in the world. We have now gone through these countries on foot and have beheld such desolation and destruction as would wring the vitals of the hardest-hearted ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... tenants had refused to accept him when there certainly had been no cause for their rejection. Mr Apjohn from the first had looked at him with accusing eyes; his servants were spies upon his actions; this newspaper was rending his very vitals; and now this one last friend had deserted him. He thought that if only he could summon courage for the deed, it would be best for him to throw himself from ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... useful in building a tent. There may have been an order issued forbidding the prisoners to touch them, but if so, I had not heard it, and I imagine the first intimation to the prisoner just killed that the boards were not to be taken was the bullet which penetrated his vitals. Twenty-five cents would be a liberal appraisement of the value of the lumber for which the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... F. Why then, ladies, from thence I go to dinner at Lacket's, where you are so nicely and delicately served that, stab my vitals! they shall compose you a dish no bigger than a saucer, shall come to fifty shillings. Between eating my dinner (and washing my mouth, ladies) I spend my time till I go to the play, when till nine o'clock I entertain myself with looking upon the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... emancipating all thus enlisted, whether slaves of loyal or disloyal masters, with the certainty that there is to be no cessation to the grand achievements of our arms short of the completest success, all conspire to assure us that the dreadful disorder hitherto consuming our national vitals is to pass finally away in the convulsive disease of its last throes, so distressing to us all. It being thus certain that this consecrated crime is to be dismantled, dishonored, and abandoned forever, the question is forced upon us: 'What is to be done with the negroes?' Some four millions of ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... afterwards published the dreadful story.[7] "when the fourth night came with renewed terrors. Weak, distracted, and wanting everything, we envied the fate of those whose lifeless corpses no longer needed sustenance. The sense of hunger was already lost, but a parching thirst consumed our vitals. Recourse was had to wine and salt water, which only increased the want. Half a hogshead of vinegar floated up, and each had half a wine-glassful. This gave a momentary relief, yet soon left us again in the same state of dreadful ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... which never fail; and in their stead Convey'st malignant arrows tipt with lead: The heedless God, suspecting no deceits, Shoots on, and thinks he has done wondrous feats; But the poor nymph, who feels her vitals burn, And from her shepherd can find no return, Laments, and rages at the power divine, When, curst Discretion! all the fault was thine: Cupid and Hymen thou hast set at odds, And bred such feuds between those ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... and staggered to the edge of the water, and, plunging their heads into it with hoarse grunts and cries, drank and drank and drank. Indeed, several lost their lives there, for some filled themselves so full that their vitals were ruptured, and some were thrust into the river by the cattle or those pressing behind them, to be carried away by the ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... marching west by north, tore its terrible way straight through the smoking vitals of the Iroquois Empire, leaving behind it nearly forty towns and villages and more than two hundred cabins on fire; thousands and thousands of bushels of grain burning, thousands of apple, peach, pear, and plum trees destroyed, thousands of acres of pumpkins, beans, peas, corn, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... Her desensitized and asphalt palate thrills and throbs beneath the tricklings of Cordon Rouge. Her steel heart flutters at the touch of a wheedling phryne. She, too, can wear the strumpet garb of youth. She, too, in the vitals of her nature, longs for the gay romance of the Boulevard Montparnasse ere the American possessed it. She, too, admires the rhythmic parabolic curve of bare shoulders. Silken ankles and amorous whisperings stir her—if not to deeds of valour, then at least to deeds of indiscretion. ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... he said, as he finished. The idea of anybody passing up a chance like that to enrich himself literally smote him to the vitals. "I see the British Society for Psychical Research checked that case, and got verification from a couple of independent witnesses. If the S.P.R. vouches for a story, it must be the McCoy; they're the ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... to the attack. Could she but pierce the skin, her paralyzing venom would quickly do its work. Then the murderous task would be easy. Eggs would be laid deep in the wound; grubs would hatch from them, and batten luxuriously on their unwilling host, sapping his strength, but cunningly avoiding his vitals, until they were full-fed. As they turned to pupae he would die, and from caterpillar, or may be chrysalis, there would then issue, in place of gorgeous butterfly, a host of dingy hymenoptera. So would the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... mediaeval literature assumed so light and unartistic a form was, that by necessity it could not be full-orbed. Religion could not enter into it as a plastic element, but was fixed, a veiled, external figure, radiating indeed color and fragrance, but not making one of the struggling, independent vitals of the heart. Literature could play about this figure, but could not grasp it, and take it in among the materials to be fashioned. The Church, through its clergy, held jealous command of divine knowledge, beneath divine guidance, and left no developments of it possible to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... of garrisons, the embayed waters full of fleets. With the impunity of a Levanter, Paul skimmed his craft in the land-locked heart of the supreme naval power of earth; a torpedo-eel, unknowingly swallowed by Britain in a draught of old ocean, and making sad havoc with her vitals. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... pride, cannot forego the wonderful conveniences of the "iron road and the fire-carriage"; but in order to avail himself of them, he must sit an hour at a time cheek by jowl with a low-caste—it may be a Pariah—fellow-passenger. The railroad gnaws at the vitals ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... whose power resistless fills The boundless whole, avert those ills We richly merit: purge away The sins which on our vitals prey; Protect, with Thine almighty shield Our conquering arms by flood and field, Wheel round the time when Peace shall smile O'er Britain's highly-favoured Isle; When all shall loud hosannas sing To Thee, the great ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte

... in" and "letting run" being often renewed several times at the taking of a single fish. When the boat can be hauled near enough, the officer at its head darts his lance into the whale, aiming at a vital part. If the creature "spouts blood," it is well; but if not hit in the vitals, away it goes, and the whole business of "letting run," "towing," and "hauling in" has to be ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... I call At this still midnight hour, this awful season, When on my bed in wakeful restlessness, I turn me, weary: while all around, All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness, I only wake to watch the sickly taper that lights, Me to my tomb. Yes, 'tis the hand of death I feel press heavy on my vitals; Slow sapping the warm current of existence; My moments now are few! e'en now I feel the knife, the separating knife, divide The tender chords that tie my soul To earth. Yes, I must die, I feel that I must die And though to me has life been dark and dreary Though smiling ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French

... feet. Nevertheless, we could not help knowing in our hearts that no normal girl could help preferring that celestial peacock to our grey hen, and that Miss Destrey's wish to be kind must have outstripped her obligation to be truthful. This knowledge was turning a screw round in our vitals, when His Highness himself appeared to give it ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... by day Garrison's morality suffered. It is so easy for the well-fed to be honest. But when there is the hunger cancer gnawing at one's vitals, not for one day, but for many, then honesty and dishonesty cease to be concrete realities. It is not a question of piling up luxuries, but ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... to take up Kepler's Optics with some post-graduate students—would young Mr. Newton come in? Isaac begged to be excused until he could examine the book. The volume was loaned to him. He tore the vitals out of it and digested them. When the lectures began, he declined to go because he had mastered the subject as far as Kepler ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... driven by terror to make restitution? Therefore, although, obedient to the will of her master, she left the room in silence, she cast on the old man, as she turned away, a look, which, in spite of the wine he had drunk, and the wine he hoped to drink, he felt freeze his very vitals—a look it was of inexplicable triumph, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... not called, in cases of ordinary illness; the family's grandmother attended to those. Every old woman was a doctor, and gathered her own medicines in the woods, and knew how to compound doses that would stir the vitals of a cast-iron dog. And then there was the "Indian doctor"; a grave savage, remnant of his tribe, deeply read in the mysteries of nature and the secret properties of herbs; and most backwoodsmen had high faith in his powers and could tell ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... whole days amount To three score years and ten; And all beyond that short account Is sorrow toil and pain. Our vitals with laborious strife Bear up the crazy load, And drag these poor remains of life Along ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various

... the Raven is no more. He expired to-day at a few minutes after twelve o'clock at noon. He had been ailing for a few days, but we anticipated no serious result, conjecturing that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last summer might be lingering about his vitals without having any serious effect upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon he was taken so much worse that I sent an express for the medical gentleman (Mr. Herring), who promptly attended, and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. Under the influence of this medicine, he recovered ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... they blame her for esteeming one who visibly, from the most honourable motives, endeavoured to smother a flame in his own bosom, which, like the famous Spartan theft, was preying upon and consuming his very vitals. Thus his backwardness, his shunning her, his coldness, and his silence, were the forwardest, the most diligent, the warmest, and most eloquent advocates; and wrought so violently on her sensible and tender heart, that she soon felt for him all those ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... despair and suffering; a dull, hopeless misery in their sunken eyes, a pathetic patience fit to touch a heart of stone; while others still have grown frantic with that terrible pain, the hunger gnawing at their very vitals, and go staggering about, wildly raving in their ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... well was proved by the frequency with which his guns boomed out, sending shell and solid shot spattering against the heavily-armoured sides of the Chinese battleships, where they splintered and burst, cracking and starring the thick steel, but very seldom penetrating to their vitals, close ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... vale of years beneath, A grisly troop are seen, The painful family of Death, More hideous than their queen: This racks the joints, this fires the veins, That every labouring sinew strains, Those in the deeper vitals rage; Lo! Poverty, to fill the band, That numbs the soul with icy ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... of the awful heat. It seemed without warning to have penetrated my vitals. With a yell I jerked my feet from a boiling rock and flung my ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... him stark on earth (His very vitals were bursting forth, And his brain was oozing from out his head), He took the fair white hands outspread, Crossed and clasped them upon his breast, And thus his plaint to the dead addressed,— So did his country's law ordain:— "Ah, gentleman ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... frenzy,—of society dissolved, industry interrupted, ruined,—of those personal hatreds that will never be suffered to soften, those animosities and feuds which will be rendered immortal, those quarrels which are never to be appeased,—morals vitiated and gangrened to the vitals? I think no stable and useful advantages were ever made by the money got at elections by the voter, but all he gets is doubly lost to the public: it is money given to diminish the general stock of the community, which is in the industry of the subject. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... placate the Left and please the Clerics—it will also consolidate our reputation for liberality and largeness of mind. Also the young man will either be killed or fall a victim to the sinister influences of that corruption which, alas, has so entered into the vitals of ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... lookt down upon the falling of the Rock. And behold! the Great Rock smote the Monster in the humpt part of the back, below of the head, and did enter into the Monster, even as a bullet doth strike, and was gone instant from my sight into the Vitals. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... hole for the right door coming in the midst of the monumental steps is just possible, though not very probable. Not so that for the left door, which, according to the present arrangement, cuts the very vitals out of one of the main groups in the foreground. Is it not to insult one of the greatest masters of all time thus to assume that he would have designed what we now see? It is much more likely that Titian executed his Presentation in the first place in the normal shape, and that vandals ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... If you don't tell, you'll get a bayonet through your vitals," said the soldier sternly, as he demonstrated with the ugly weapon he had fixed on his gun before he began ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... some army cut down in swathes and pitted in the fashion of the Cornal's bloodiest stories. And now they were the foreign invader, dumb because they did not know the native language, pitying this doomed community but moving in to strike it at the vitals. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... the Fisheries, the planting of a harpoon in the vitals of a Right whale gives the planter a pre-emption claim to it. If subsequently appropriated by another party it becomes, so far as that party is concerned, the Wrong whale, and on Trying the case its value may be recovered in a court ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various

... and if the Mystery had heard himself alluded to by her as a "pr-r-opoganda" he would never have forgotten it. As for Mrs. Shuster—she mightn't have minded the Maxim gun of that long-drawn "d-r-r-readful!" but her very vitals would have melted over the "old lady." Despite her largeness and oddness of appearance generally, she considers herself a young widow, with a personal fascination beyond that of her banking account. I, with the mellow leniency of—let me see?—twenty-six, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... incurable enthusiasm of bibliomania. But the development of the passion is not always marked by exhibitions of violence; sometimes, like the measles, it is slow and obstinate about "coming out," and in such cases applications should be resorted to for the purpose of diverting the malady from the vitals; ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... in a pitcher of fresh, cold water, with some ice in it, if you will, Barty," replied the former. "It seems to me as if this inward heat was consuming my vitals, since ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... vigorous youth; and death, when at length it came, approached like sleep, and gently closed the eyes. Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice arose from ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... of thy speech," cried the now angry man, leaping meanwhile to the middle of the road; "soon will I put holes in thy genteel carcass which will leave thy vitals cold for some time to come. Up with thy sword, if thy bravery be not all talk." He unfastened his leather jerkin and stood awaiting Effingston, who loosened the ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... always loved, for his very failings were endearing, was dead or at the point of death, like the gallant young man at his side, and I myself was dying. Tremors shook my limbs; horrible waves of blackness seemed to well up from my vitals, through my breast to my brain, and thence to evaporate in queer, jagged lines and patches, which I realized, but could not actually see. Gay memories of my far-off childhood arose in me, particularly ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... another? KO. (suddenly, and with great vehemence). Here!—Here! KAT. What!!! KO. (with intense passion). Katisha, for years I have loved you with a white-hot passion that is slowly but surely consuming my very vitals! Ah, shrink not from me! If there is aught of woman's mercy in your heart, turn not away from a love-sick suppliant whose every fibre thrills at your tiniest touch! True it is that, under a poor mask of disgust, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... such repentance would be fruitless. And thus, while, to the world, she moved calmly in her proud beauty, and was envied by the miserable, for the apparent happiness and splendor of her lot, a fierce beast was tugging at her heart-strings, more savage than that which tore the vitals of the boy ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... the disease, and his sick soreness of mind lost somewhat of its sharpness. So long as he brooded in silence over his pain and his wrongs, there was little chance of the sting becoming much lighter; it was like the vulture preying upon its own vitals; but that season of silence was past. When once a deep grief can be spoken of, its great agony is gone. I think there is an old saying, or a proverb—"Griefs lose themselves in telling," and a greater truism was never uttered. The ice once broken, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... has perhaps affected the very vitals of mathematical teaching in America still more is the founding of the American Mathematical Society in 1888, called the New York Mathematical Society until 1894. Through its Bulletin and Transactions, as well as through ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... is the power in the arm of Indhlovu. He strikes, and lo! as a falling tree sweeps a passage through the forest, so would he sweep us away. Let him weaken; let hunger fasten on his vitals, and ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... Washington, who could not be induced to risk his army in decisive action against superior numbers, would thus be compelled to scatter and weaken it. But the Commander-in-Chief, knowing how seriously Nature, his great ally, was gnawing at the vitals of the British, bided his time and kept his tried regiments around him. Now and then, a staggering blow filled his enemies with a wholesome fear of him. His sallies were as swift and unexpected as the rush of ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... what ground of nature Doth the pelican, That self-devouring creature, Prove so froward And untoward, Her vitals for to strain? And why the subtle fox, while in death's wounds is lying, Doth not lament his pangs by howling and by crying; And why the milk-white swan doth sing when she's a-dying. Hallo, my fancy, whither ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... very cold feet, and the more he tried to be calm and collected, the more the oyster seemed to walk around among his vitals. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... the two remained as they were half a year's time, whilst every day they redoubled in mutual affection; and love and longing and passion and desire so pressed upon Taj al Muluk, that at last he opened his mind and said to her, "Know, O beloved of my heart and vitals, that the longer I abide with thee, the more love and longing and passion and desire increase on me, for that I have not yet fulfilled the whole of my wish." Asked she, "What then wouldst thou have, O light of my eyes and fruit of my vitals? If thou desire aught beside kissing and embracing ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... are patients in a world hospital. It is plain that they are stricken with death. The foul cancer of militarism has fastened itself upon Germany. The cancer of autocracy is eating into the vitals of Austria. The cancer of polygamy is enmeshed in the life of Turkey. Of late the disease has been spreading. Now these surgeons, named Foch, Haig and Pershing, have been anointed by the ointment of ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... rating the inhabitants of some, dosing the occupants of others, emerging from three or four of the stuffy, ill-smelling places with a heavy frown that boded ill for somebody. For though Famine had not yet begun to gnaw the vitals of those immured in Gueldersdorp, Disease had here and there sprung into active, threatening, infectious being, menacing the crowded community with invisible, maleficent forces. Soon the hospitals were to be crowded to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... to be to eat and consume, and who, besides, by their idleness and habits, keep up a system of detraction, jealousy, and discord among otherwise well-disposed citizens, that, like so many cancers, are eating into the very vitals of the public morals. Let not the American citizen, therefore, bewail the certain decline and rapid decay of the institutions of sectarianism, but rather pray for the dawn of that glorious approaching ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... banishment of important local subjects. She said that the kitchen-boiler was out of order, and yet she had to take part in these highly-cultivated conversations and smile, as she complained, with that kitchen-boiler gnawing at her vitals. She claimed to be set on a level with the Spartan boy, if not above him. Valeria might scoff, as those proverbially did who never felt a wound. Hadria found a certain lack of tender feeling among the happy few who had no ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots Through the wrung bosom of the dying man. His wife, his children, and his friends unseen. On every nerve The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense; And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse, Stretched out, and bleaching in the ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... secret around without any trouble, but the other one, the big one, the splendid one, burned the very vitals of us, it was so hot to get out and we so hot to let it out and astonish people with it. But we had to keep it in; in fact, it kept itself in. Satan said it would, and it did. We went off every day and got ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... for it, y'r gryce," was the reply, and now the lad's glance went eagerly towards the door, for the tension of labour was relaxed, and hunger was scraping hard at his vitals. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... round his temples, whilst all the hammers of the Evil One battered at them. Why had he not been on his guard against Satan's wiles? Did he not know full well that it was his habit to glide up softly with gentle paws that he might drive them like blades into the very vitals ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... expected that thence might fall upon him vengeance for his many sins. A dozen times as he came did I cover him with an imaginary rifle, marking the exact spots where I might have hoped to send a bullet to his vitals, in a kind of automatic fashion, for all my real brain was contemplating my ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... host, when the man had departed on his errand, "they are Andalusians, and are about to make what they call gaspacho, on which they will all sup. Oh, the meanness of these Andalusians! they are come here to suck the vitals of Galicia, and yet envy the poor innkeeper the gain of a cuarto in the oil which they require for their gaspacho. I tell you one thing, master, when that fellow returns, and demands bread and garlic to mix with the oil, I will tell him there is none ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... of this form of Varicocele lies in the fact that thousands of young men are going about to-day not knowing that they have the disease; not knowing that a persistent evil is nestling in this little canal, gnawing at their vitals, and slowly but surely undermining and destroying their ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... me in cold blood for Featherbrain. Since then I've been a blighted being—hiding, like the Spartan chap in the story, the fox that preys on my vitals, and going through life with the hollow mockery of a smile ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... One should never jitter such words as trouble other people or as are inauspicious or are as' sinful. Wordy shafts fall from the mouth. Pierced therewith, the victim grieves day and night. The man of wisdom should never shot them for piercing the vitals of other people. A forest, pierced with shafts or cut down with the axe, grows again. The man, however, that is pierced with words unwisely spoken, becomes the victim of wounds that fester and lead to death.[462] Barbed arrows and Nalikas and broadheaded shafts are capable ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals, we were prepared to renew our ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... with anxiety on his brow, will be apt to step forward, and say, "Will you celebrate the man of the sword, who transfers the blush of his face to his back, and neglect the man of the quill, who, like the pelican, portions out his vitals to feed others? Which is preferable, he who lights up the mental powers, or he who puts them out? the man who stores the head with knowledge, or he who stores it with ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... delay affords a great chance of something turning up in our favour; already the rejection of any reciprocity by M. Guizot has provided us with a grand weapon, which, I trust, you drive well home into * * * *'s vitals; a very short delay would probably bring over similar intelligence from the United States and their Congress. I trust we shall have an important deputation over from Canada, representing that the inevitable results of these free-trade measures in corn and timber will be to alienate the feelings ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... so, nor do I! But you have been faithful to your charge respecting this poor lady within, have you not, dame?" Bigot looked as if his eyes searched her very vitals. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... bustling steam-packet or a floating hotel, but a ship to whose crew England stands for fresh food, women, wine, home.... Who that has so steered the course for England, does not feel a catch at his vitals on hearing the melody, at once plaintive and triumphant, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... intelligent of all animals in the matter of training, have been educated to fight in the arena, usually by pushing each other head to head. A fighting tusker can lord it over almost any number of tuskless elephants, because he can pierce their vitals, and they cannot pierce his. A female fights by hitting with her head, striking her antagonist amidships, if possible. Once when the late G. P. Sanderson was in a keddah, noosing wild elephants, and was ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... blazing arrows, and the latter also, O Bharata, shrouded the two Kaikaya brothers. Those two heroic brothers deeply struck Satyaki in the chest like two elephants striking with their tusks a hostile compeer in the forest. Indeed, O king, those two brothers, in that battle, their own vitals pierced with shafts, pierced Satyaki of true deeds with their shafts. Satyaki, however, O great king, covering all the points of the compass with a shower of arrows and smiling the while, checked the two brothers, O Bharata. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... well contented here,' said Wainamoinen, 'in these roomy caverns. I can eat thy heart and flesh and for drink I will take thy blood. And I will set my forge still deeper in thy vitals, and will swing my hammer still harder on thy heart and lungs and liver. I shall never leave thee until I learn all thy wisdom, and the three lost words, that all thy magic knowledge may not perish ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind

... which continued to deceive itself into believing that a great stretch of mere water rendered the country immune from taking its honest part in its own war. "Oh, my God," he had said in his heart, as all clear-sighted Americans had been saying, "has commercialism eaten into our very vitals? Has the good red blood of the early pioneers turned to water? Are we without the nerve any longer to read the writing on the wall?" And the only times that his national pride had been able to raise its head beneath the weight of shame and foreboding were those ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... indulgent and long-suffering Antoninus. Meantime, to give a color of patriotism to his treason, Cassius alleged public motives; in a letter, which he wrote after assuming the purple, he says: "Wretched empire, miserable state, which endures these hungry blood- suckers battening on her vitals!—A worthy man, doubtless, is Marcus; who, in his eagerness to be reputed clement, suffers those to live whose conduct he himself abhors. Where is that L. Cassius, whose name I vainly inherit? Where is that Marcus,—not Aurelius, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... we plant corn when we had none? For two years our crops have failed, and hunger has eaten our vitals until there is not a man in the village who has the strength to raise ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... battled with the demon fever which was gnawing at the vitals of her beloved George. At intervals her care seemed to get the better of the disorder, and to cause it to loosen its grip. But, alas! after twenty-four hours of unceasing toil and anxiety, poor devoted Agnes ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw

... who preside over this nation, and have brought it up to its present height of power and fame. Their crime were less, I repeat, to deny the authority of Aurelian. This religion of the Galileans is a sore, eating into the vitals of an ancient and vigorous constitution, and must be cut away. The knife of the surgeon is what the evil cries out for and must have—else come universal rottenness and death. I mourn that from the ranks of the very fathers of the state, they have received an accession like this of the house ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... the OLD VAGABOND or JACQUES. Samuel Johnson, although he was very sorry to be poor, 'was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty' in his ill days. Thus it is that brave men carry their crosses, and smile with the fox burrowing in their vitals. ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... His vitals were tortured by this problem. It was a claw within him sharper than the iron one; and as it tore him, the perspiration dripped down his tallow countenance and streaked his doublet. Ofttimes he drew his sleeve across his face, but there was no ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

... to-morrow, would be the greatest curse the white man could inflict upon them. I also trust that I may have shadowed forth some useful idea, to assist my Southern friends in overtaking a gangrene which lies at their heart's core, and which every reflecting mind must see is eating into their vitals with fearful rapidity. My last and not my least sincere hope is, that some one among the many suggestions I have offered for the negro's present benefit, may be found available to mitigate the undoubted sufferings and ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... said he, stopping ever and anon, as if to laugh the more heartily, "stab my vitals, but you are a comical quiz. I wonder what the women would say, if they saw the dashing Edward Pepper, Esquire, walking arm in arm with thee at Ranelagh or Vauxhall! Nay, man, never be downcast; if I laugh at thee, it is only ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton



Words linked to "Vitals" :   organ, vital organ



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