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Palpitating   /pˈælpəteɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Palpitating

adjective
1.
Having a slight and rapid trembling motion.  Synonym: palpitant.  "My palpitating heart"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Palpitating" Quotes from Famous Books



... bath, a shave, fresh clothes and breakfast began to improve the situation, but he was still desperately depressed. The adoring solicitude of his aunts—more tender after their night of prayerful and palpitating ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... ears, too, the occasional rumble that told of some palpitating soul being at that moment hurled and twisted and joyously thrilled, as ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... days have graced the brow Of some, who lived and loved, and sang and died; Leaves that were gathered on the pleasant side Of old Parnassus from Apollo's bough; With palpitating hand I take thee now, Since worthier minstrel there is none beside, And with a thrill of song half deified, I bind them proudly on my locks of snow. There shall they bide, till he who follows next, Of whom I cannot even guess the name, Shall by Court favour, or some vain pretext ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... immaterial. The god Amen himself, the procreator, drawn often with an absolute crudity, would seem chaste compared with the hosts of this temple. For here, on the contrary, the figures might be those of living people, palpitating and voluptuous, who had posed themselves for sport in these consecrated attitudes. The throat of the beautiful goddess, her hips, her unveiled nakedness, are portrayed with a searching and lingering realism; the flesh seems almost to quiver. She and her spouse, the beautiful ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... changed to the face of a devil; the lips thinned, and shrinking, left the strong white teeth bare in a wolf's snarl. Under the black eyebrows the eyes gleamed like fire-lit amber; the thin-chiselled nostrils spread and through them the palpitating breath rasped a whistling note of ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... closer and closer to his, until their lips nearly touched, and she hung upon his neck, and with strength almost spent pressed and still pressed her palpitating body to his. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... were Jane, Dozia, Velma, Winifred, Janet and Inez, six palpitating girls, each taking inventory of her possible beauty spots that might need touching up. Even Dol Vin would succumb to such ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... both of ear and scent, shot like small electric volts from Stonie's couch, hurled themselves through the hall and sprang almost waist-high against Everett's side in a perfect ecstasy of welcome. They yelped and barked and whined and nosed in a tumbling heap of palpitating joy until he was obliged to hold Rose Mary in one arm while he made an attempt to respond to and abate their enthusiasm with ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... discouragement from the presence and activity of those little people who insist upon "looking it out in the Lexicon." Their brutal methods will upset in two minutes the nice calculations of months. Your logic, your taste, your palpitating sense of style, your exquisite ear for rhythm and cadence—what do these avail against the man who goes straight to Stationers' Hall or the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... stood looking and listening with a palpitating heart. She could see that a large branch had broken from a tall tree, and lay upon the ground and—yes, something else lay beside or on it, half concealed from her view by the green leaves and twigs; ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... everything else— forgot that the Widow Canby's house had been robbed and that I was on the track of the robber— and drawing close to the feeble light the lantern afforded, strove with straining eyes and palpitating heart to decipher the contents of ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... heels, directly she was out of sight of the Royal Palace Hotel, and ran like one possessed. She stood for a moment in the brilliantly lighted, traffic-crowded Avenue Wagram, shaking with excitement and with palpitating heart, and then mechanically hailed a passing cab and told the driver to take her towards the Bois. There she gave another heedless order to go to the boulevard Saint-Denis, but as the cab approached the place de l'Etoile she realised that she was once more near the Royal Palace Hotel, ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... on his drumming-log and defied the forest rider, all unseen; rabbit and squirrel sat bolt upright with palpitating flanks and moist bright eyes at gaze; overhead the slow hawks sailed, looking down at him as ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... the age of Louis XIV. The huge, almost infinite building, so stately and so glorious, with its vast elaborate gardens, its great trees transported from distant forests, its amazing waterworks constructed in an arid soil at the cost of millions, its lesser satellite parks and palaces, its palpitating crowds of sumptuous courtiers, the whole accumulated mass of piled-up treasure and magnificence and power—this was something far more significant than the mere country residence of royalty; it was the summary, the crown, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... breast. For a few moments she fought like a mad thing for freedom. He felt her teeth set in his arm, and laughed aloud. Then very suddenly her struggles ceased. He became aware of a change in her. She gave her whole weight into his arms, and lay palpitating against his heart. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... ones; this explains his occasional touches of repulsive morbidness. But the repulsive strain is exceptional. No other poetry is crowded in the same way as his with pictures glorious and delicate in form, light, and color, or is more musically palpitating with the delight which they create. To Shelley as a follower of Plato, however, the beauty of the senses is only a manifestation of ideal Beauty, the spiritual force which appears in other forms as Intellect and Love; and Intellect and Love as well are equal objects of his unbounded devotion. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... theatre, too. Upon the board Gaze on the actor—paralyzed and dumb, Till, like one man, ten thousand hands applaud, From the palpitating auditorium. See from the boxes all the purses come! How riveted admirers pause aghast! Hear the excitement in the stifled hum! And see the tears of each enthusiast! Look! ere the actor ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... walked up and down with that superb creature panting and palpitating almost upon my heart; I poured into her ear I know not what extravagant vows; and before the slow-handed sailors had fastened their cable to the buoy in the channel, we had knotted a more subtile and difficult noose, not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... consciousness of her pupils. If there are dry bones when she arrives, she has but to touch them with the magic of her humanity, and they become things of life. Whether long division or calculus, it is to her a part of the living, palpitating truth of the world, and she causes it to live before the minds of the pupils. The so-called dead languages spring to life in her presence, and, like Aaron's rod, blossom and bring forth at her touch. Wherever ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... his heel, his heart palpitating, his nerves shaken, but his face as serene as ever. It had come, then. After all, what did it matter? He would have preferred to have reached his comrades but at least they would know he had tried. And no man should have reason to say that he had not taken whatever happened like a man. At the time ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... brain set on the mazy flight. It led him through a country where all was promise of milk and honey. He followed, sure that the alluring spirit would soon choose a flower; then he would capture it. Often it seemed to settle. He approached with palpitating heart; but lo! when the net was withdrawn it ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... nation's finding, to prove weak The "glorious arms" of military kings. And so with wide embrace, my England, seek To stifle the bad heat and flickerings Of this world's false and nearly expended fire! Draw palpitating arrows to the wood, And twang abroad thy high hopes and thy higher Resolves, from that most virtuous altitude! Till nations shall unconsciously aspire By looking up to thee, and learn that good And ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... across the curtained veranda and in at the open windows, under the general clamor, came a soft palpitating rumble. Did Hilary hear it, too? ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... elevations of houses and trees, and depressions of fields and roads, all golden and floating like atmospheric majolica. Never had the common ugliness of Woodhouse seemed so entrancing. She thought she had never seen such beauty—a lovely luminous majolica, living and palpitating, the glossy, svelte world-surface, the exquisite face of all the darkness. It was like a vision. Perhaps gnomes and subterranean workers, enslaved in the era of light, see with such eyes. Perhaps that is why they are absolutely blind to conventional ugliness. For truly nothing ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... rose, and they began the sacred march, the lad could hardly stand for trembling. He dreaded the moment when the lines of Believers would meet, and he and Hetty would walk the length of the long room almost beside each other. Could she hear his heart beating, Nathan wondered; while Hetty was palpitating with fear lest Nathan see her blushes and divine their meaning. Oh, the joy of it, the terror of it, the strange exhilaration and the sudden sensation of ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the saints! I mean it," said he. But he did not deceive her. His professions were not all true, but how far they were true was a question that again and again tormented her, and set her bosom palpitating as he left her room ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the first time in his life he realized that ideal beauty was but the pale phantom of the real and founded on something more than imagination and thought; on something of vaster import than fancy and taste and technical skill; that it was founded on Life itself—on breathing, living, palpitating, tremulous Life!—from which all true inspiration ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... simple colors—glaring whites and limpid blues, with here and there a dash of red to indicate a scarf or sash—astonished his old teachers. Here were pictures painted in an hour that outmatched any of the carefully worked out, methodical attempts of the Academy! It was all life, life, life—palpitating life. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... seen them in danger, and there they shine first of any, and one is proud of them. They should always be facing the elements or in action.' She glanced at the minuet, which had become a petrified figure, still palpitating, bent forward, an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that when the use of the knife is habitual, the flinching which men naturally feel at the idea of driving it into a fellow-creature, is overcome; and a man who is accustomed to dissect the still palpitating carcasses of animals, has very little compunction in resorting to the knife in the event of collision with his own race.) This fellow looked a butcher; his face and head were all animal; he was by no means intelligent. He was working at a loom, and had already been confined for seven years and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... nature are blurred and distorted; the high-minded, honourable racing men can do nothing or next to nothing, and the scum work their will in only too many instances. Every one knows that the ground is palpitating with corruption, but our national mental disease has so gained ground that some regard corruption in a lazy way as being inevitable, while others—including the stay-at-home horse-racers—reckon it as ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... eastern side of them, and had soon also found, at some distance, the marked-out stone. He seated himself on it; and the sun had hardly gone down when he observed the moon riding like a golden ship through the blue of the obscure sky. He waited with palpitating heart and anxious impatience for the moment when it should seem to stand on the mountain-ridges on the western horizon. Then he called out quickly and loudly, "Haschanascha!" He expected that at this call a guide would immediately appear to him; but nothing appeared. The moon was, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... skinned the red body, but the sight of the blood which she was touching, and which covered her hands, and which she felt cooling and coagulating, made her tremble from head to foot, and she kept seeing her big boy cut in two, bloody, like this still palpitating animal. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... as the first flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap and broom in hand, already counting over in imagination the silver quarters he would receive for his first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden snow to allow the trap to sink below the surface. Then, carefully sifting the light element over it and sweeping his tracks full, he quickly withdrew, laughing exultingly over the little surprise he had prepared for the cunning rogue. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... who sits And looks out on the palpitating world, And feels his heart swell within him large enough To hold all men within it, he is near His great Creator's standard, though he dwells Outside the pale of churches, and knows not A feast-day from a fast-day, or a line Of Scripture even. What God wants of ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... into the sand at length, her head thrown back from the full brown throat so that she could gaze into the unstained sky of blue. Presently the claims of this planet made themselves heard, for she, too, was elemental and a creature of instinct. The earth was awake and palpitating with life, the low, indefatigable life of creeping things and vegetation persisting even in this waste of ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... school is like a shell on the shore of a creek, always rumbling with the rumour of the little sea it lives under; and by noon the girls, who had been palpitating with curiosity, thought they knew everything that had happened—how at four in the morning Father Giovanni and Sister Angela had been seen to come out of the little door which connected the garden with the street; ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... able to distinguish objects clearly in gloom which no ordinary eye could penetrate; and now he walked fearlessly forward and stirred up the smouldering embers, whose dull red glow all could see, into a quick, bright, palpitating flame which illumined every corner of the strange place ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... on one particular occasion, when the oft-ruffled serenity of my step-mother's temperament was wonderfully agitated, that she reproached him most touchingly for the utter absence of this tender, palpitating organ; and turning towards her with a smile of the blandest amusement, he explained to her, in a tone of remonstrative sarcasm, laying two rigid fingers of one hand argumentatively in the open palm of the other, "that no man could live without a heart," that it was an essential element ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... was quiet. We stood with our heaving chests touching. I felt his breath in my face, and his heart palpitating against my breast. There was a lull in the battle. I felt safe, as far as the revolver was concerned, for he had emptied that, but the deadly knife was still poised over my head. My life depended entirely on the strength of my wounded hand and wrist, which ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... looking through the skeleton supports at the bay before the plaster was drying on the solid walls; that we had hardly ceased walking on the great naked flooring beams before the smooth floor itself was palpitating under the feet of ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... times, after which they arose and tendered two magnificent necklaces. She was prepared for the proposal, but this action disconcerted her; she gasped and looked about in perplexity. Her friends were smiling broadly and the sheik had placed his hands over his palpitating heart. ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... astonishment, wondering what this new move could mean. The descent accomplished, Jenkins was conducted by his wife through the passage to the office. He went straight to his old place at his desk, and sat down on his stool, his chest palpitating, his breath coming in great sighs. Laying his hat beside him, he turned respectfully to Mr. Galloway, who had followed him in, speaking with ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... flowers of noble lineage like the orchid, so delicate and charming, at once cold and palpitating, exotic flowers exiled in the heated glass palaces of Paris, princesses of the vegetable kingdom living in solitude, having absolutely nothing in common with the street plants and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... was a joyous part Of that strong palpitating ocean heart; Its little dream of loneliness was done; It woke to find, Self, and Cause, were one. So shalt thou wake, sad mortal, when thy course Has run its karmic round, and reached the Source, And even now thou dost reflect the whole ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... peeped in and saw the sun shining on Rosaleen's primrose head. She was stringing beads, while Bobby, Pat and Aaron knelt beside her, palpitating for ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... effort to assure himself that she was still near to him he gathered her up in his strong hands. Yes, she was there, breathing, wondering, palpitating. He folded her closely to his breast, and, yielding to the passionate longings of his ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... some of the younger clerks ventured to come and speak to him. At length Mr. Snape appeared, and desired the acolyte to follow him. Charley, supposing that he was again going to the awful Secretary, did so with a palpitating heart. But he was led in another direction into a large room, carrying his manuscript neatly rolled in his hand. Here Mr. Snape introduced him to five other occupants of the chamber; he, Mr. Snape himself, having a separate ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... this sheet smeared and blotted with ink, in my hands. It was still stamped, still palpitating, so to speak, with the fever of the moment. The words hurriedly scribbled were scarcely formed. Appelee ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... spring that seem to bathe earth and heaven with an Elysian softness; and from her little lonely nook shrouded in dusky shadows by its orange-trees, Agnes looked down the sombre gorge to where the open sea lay panting and palpitating in blue and violet waves, while the little white sails of fishing-boats drifted hither and thither, now silvered in the sunshine, now fading away like a dream into the violet vapor bands that mantled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... On them too was the drowse of blood-intimacy, calves sucking and hens running together in droves, and young geese palpitating in the hand while the food was pushed down their throttle. But the women looked out from the heated, blind intercourse of farm-life, to the spoken world beyond. They were aware of the lips and the mind of the world speaking and giving utterance, they heard the sound ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... bid; she stepped back into the moonlight and unwound her veils from about her, standing, palpitating, trembling under the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... scene, he forgot himself, the play, the audience, everything but her, the forlorn gypsy child, the shy and lonely little girl whom long years ago he had taken on his knee, and smoothed down her tangled black hair, as he might have smoothed the plumage of an eaglet, struggling and palpitating under his hand, and glancing up sideways, with fierce and frightened eyes,—and now, when he saw her about to plunge the cruel blade into her breast, he leaped to his feet and electrified the house by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... traced along the sill of the secret door guided Montefiore to the place; he scratched the panel softly and Juana opened to him. Montefiore entered, palpitating, but he recognized in the expression of the girl's face complete ignorance of her peril, a sort of naive curiosity, and an innocent admiration. He stopped short, arrested for a moment by the sacredness of the ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... the dome through which Earth's swinging, spun of palpitating air, Angel artists fresco vapors into ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... critic; so, at least, he had always believed. He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul; he was Brown Dog to himself. His weaknesses, his absurdities—no one knew them better than he did. Indeed, in a vague way he imagined that nobody beside himself was aware ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... dressed accordin', to the grounds around the tarven. We put Tommy into a hammock and sot down peaceful nigh by him. The sun shone down gloriously out of a clear blue sky, but we sot in the shade and so enjoyed it, the bammy air about us seemed palpitating with langrous beauty and fragrance, and I sez ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... I was lying and on my bed, and yet space opened on every side with pale, clear light. A slight wavering figure caught my eye, a figure that swayed to and fro; I was struck with its utter feebleness, yet I understood it was its own will or some quality of its nature which determined that palpitating movement towards the poles between which it swung. What were they? I became silent as night and thought ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... was one sparkling shining display of beauty. The fish were still alive and flopping in the baskets. Rock-salmon, like palpitating carnation petals, lay there wriggling their soft vermilion and gasping frantically for breath. Slimy devil-fish crooked their backs in agony or drew together in masses of squirming, crawling suckers. Flounders, as thin and flat as the sole ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... intrusive vicar with no very friendly eyes; but Holmes took his pipe from his lips and sat up in his chair like an old hound who hears the view-halloa. He waved his hand to the sofa, and our palpitating visitor with his agitated companion sat side by side upon it. Mr. Mortimer Tregennis was more self-contained than the clergyman, but the twitching of his thin hands and the brightness of his dark eyes showed that they shared ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle

... three cow-boys were lounging about the Cloverdale ranch-house on a blazing summer afternoon when a queer figure came into sight upon the palpitating plain. The spectacle of a man on foot was so uncommon in those days that they had a hard time making themselves believe that this form, which at times took distorted shapes in the wavering overheated air, was that of a human being. Then they set forth to meet him, ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... by generations of German peasants until at last it reached the ears of Richard Wagner, giving birth to a classic. As he sang Denis Donohoe raised his swarthy face, his profile sharp against the pale sky, his eyes, half in rapture like all folk singers, ranging over the hills, his long throat palpitating, swelling and slackening like the throat of a bird quivering in song. Then a light from the sash-less windows of Mrs. Deely's cabin shone faintly and silence again brooded over the place. When he reached the cabin Denis Donohoe dismounted and walked into the kitchen, his eyes bright, ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... not battled with, the Black's stride lengthened, his nostrils spread wider, the hoofs pounded quicker and quicker until the earth echoed with their palpitating beat. The other horses heard the turmoil, and they, too, became more afraid, and ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... of the bed, and made one end fast to one of the bed-posts, near a window at the end of the house, which he opened without noise. Dropping the sheet out, he retreated to the closet, and with the pick-lock secured the door. They were in darkness now, and seating themselves on the floor, with palpitating hearts they waited the issue. For more than an hour they waited the expected alarm. They could occasionally hear a movement on the part of the sentinel in the entry; but he probably thought it was foolish to be very vigilant over a man so sick as Somers. But the demonstration ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... up with a sudden ruddy glow. The room had been dark before; now it was suddenly flooded with a brilliant palpitating light. As Rachel turned back to the bed, she saw that her father's eyes had opened. The mists of weakness no longer seemed to cloud his sight. He was looking round him ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... when he began to read the Bible with the idea that it was the Word of God. Things flashed out at him that fairly dazzled his thoughts; living, palpitating things, as if they were hidden of a purpose to be discovered only by him who cared to search. Hidden truths came to light that filled his soul with wonder. Gradually he understood that Belief was the touchstone by which all these treasures were to be revealed. Everywhere he found ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... herself, with a fearfully-palpitating heart, for her last resource; but as she hesitated, Andree said, "But, madame, tell me the name of the man who is willing to think of me as his ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... gesture, meaning haste and secrecy, and separation from her brother Rice. Maria laughed and shook her head wistfully. The girlish pastimes of Midsummer Night were all done for her. She thought of nights in her own wild county of Merionethshire, when she had run, palpitating like a hare, to try some spell or charm which might reveal the future to her; and ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... her tweed gardening costume, walk unchallenged into the garden and from the garden into the wood and up the hillside and over the crest and down to the high-road and past that great advertisement of Staminal Bread and so for four palpitating miles, to the railway ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... della Signoria, and across the Ponte Vecchio to the Porta San Frediano—the gate that looks towards Pisa. There, near the gate, a platform and canopy had been erected for the Signoria; and Messer Luca Corsini, doctor of law, felt his heart palpitating a little with the sense that he had a Latin oration to read; and every chief elder in Florence had to make himself ready, with smooth chin and well-lined silk lucco, to walk in procession; and the well-born youths were looking at their ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... with Istra and picnics with Nelly. There was an undertone of pleading in his voice which made Nelly glance at him and even become kind. With quiet insistence she dragged Istra into a discussion of rue de la Paix fashions which nearly united the shattered table and won Mr. Wrenn's palpitating thankfulness. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... the upas tree to all other sense;—for whom it is no compensation to feel, with the first breath of morning air, the dull, leaden weight of life lifted, or no happiness to watch the sea heaving and palpitating with delight under the rays of the noon-day sun, and to know that the stars at night droop down lovingly and confidingly to the embrace of warm Tropical earth. With an insensibility to these influences, there can be but little sympathy or appreciation of the works of Mr. Gottschalk; for all that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... saw the things on the floor! His foot crushed one with a slippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous, risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! Sodden, gray-black and green-slimed monsters of the deep; palpitating masses of pulp! One lay rocking, already as large as a football with streamers of ooze hanging from it, and squirting a black inky fluid. Others were rods of red jelly-pulp, already as large as lead pencils, quivering, twitching. Disease germs, these ghastly things, enlarging ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... biography, were we weak enough to enrich ourselves by pandering to the morbid and often depraved longings of modern literary taste, we might fill a couple of volumes with scenes of excitement, of "hair-breadth 'scapes," and with heart-palpitating suspenses of misplaced love. We could not draw a picture more interesting or strange than those two sweet maidens in their disguise. We see them in the salons of the wealthy, in the clubs of the politicians, and at the billiard-tables ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... palpitating with rage, and when they got there he followed her into the lift and up ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... with a start. A rush of wind, a sudden plash of water were followed by the whizzing of an arrow through the air. He was close to the water. Softly peering through the reeds he saw, palpitating and stricken with fear, a snowy swan. The arrow had missed the stainless breast and it was unhurt. The wild creatures of his mountain home were dear to Atma, and he would fain ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... nest. The bird seldom makes any effort to escape, seeing how hopeless the case is, and keeps her place on the nest till she feels your hand closing around her. I have looked down into the cavity and seen the poor thing palpitating with fear and looking up with distended eyes, but never moving till I had withdrawn a few paces; then she rushes out with a cry that brings the male on the scene in a hurry. He warbles and lifts his wings ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... evident that he was going out to dinner, for his dark blue brougham was waiting at the inner entrance. The horse, a fine sleek animal, was stamping impatiently, with ringing shoes, on the paved court. A flowering magnolia tree against one corner filled the thickening dusk with a heavy palpitating sweetness. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... foundered on seas of vichy and buttermilk, and I show them the joys of alcoholism—without cost. We share each other's pleasures and perplexities, at my expense. They are my brothers. I am optimistic; I laugh; I play cards for money; I turkey-trot. I become a living, palpitating influence for good, spreading happiness and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... After our palpitating hearts were quiet and the world seemed peaceful, we got out of our blind and skinned the female by flashlight. She was a magnificent specimen, just right in color and size for the Museum, not fat, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... for her sole and only sister. I want to know if it's so! You could have knocked me down with a broom-straw when I see her settin' there in her gray silk dress, for all the world as if we'd come to sewin'-circle instead of a funeral. I don't know when I have had such a turn; I was palpitating all through the prayer. Now I want you to tell me just how 'tis, girls, for, of course, you know—unless she sent over to Cyrus for her things, and they been delayed. I shouldn't hardly have thought she'd have done that, though some say that new dressmaker over there has all the styles straight ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... can produce the compositions of Chopin in the spirit of their author, no words are necessary. They follow with the heart the poetic and palpitating emotions so exquisitely wrought through the aerial tissue of the tones by this "subtle-souled Psychologist," this bold and original explorer in the invisible world of ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... be best given in the words of Thackeray. "I am angry," he says, "with Jones. Too much of the plum-cake and the rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without a proper sense of decorum; the fond, foolish, palpitating little creature. 'Indeed, Mr. Jones,' she says, 'it rests with you to name the day.' ... And yet many a young fellow, no better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has carried by a coup-de-main the heart of many a kind girl who was a great ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... life, or it does not move me, I do not feel it. The cooling zephyr and the morning sunbeam, the wind blowing through the trees, and the fragrant carpet of flowers, must cool, warm, pervade us—then we feel Nature. The poet does not say he feels her, unless he feels her intensely, living, palpitating and pervading him, like the wild Nature of Ossian, or the soft luxuriant Nature of Theocritus and the Orientals. In Nature, the more varieties the better; for instance, in a beautiful country I rustle with the wind and become alive (and give life—inspire), I inhale fragrance and exhale ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... quite dark; and with a heart palpitating so violently that she felt at times almost suffocating, she watched the hardly discernible outline of the building from which the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... and full of tears; her cheeks had paled out of their sweet colour, her red lips were pressed tightly together. Passion and shame had set their marks upon the child's forehead—lightly, it is true, but still the traces were there; but beyond all other sentiments, anxiety, restless, breathless, palpitating, had possession of Mr Wentworth's all-important witness. It was very clear that, whatever might be the opinion of her judges, Rosa's case was anything but hopeless in her own eyes. She came in drooping, shrinking, and abashed, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... gazed and dreamed In melancholy silence, till it seemed His very soul was pouring from his eyes And melting in that mirror, where the skies Were glassed in all their purity, and where No ripple reached the surface from the fair White bosom of the palpitating sand,— A constant flowing breast o'er Nature's grand, Tender, never weary heart! 'Twas life Of her life which I quaffed; 'twas sweet, and rife With flavor ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... with all its verdure and wealth, there were huge pyramids of skulls. The priests were ferocious creatures, whose long black locks, never combed, were matted with blood, as they sacrificed to their awful war-god human hearts, still palpitating, torn from the victims a moment since alive. Fiske thus describes the temple pyramid and chief shrine ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... But its hollowness and falseness they feel at times most keenly. Else why their perpetual unrest, their longing, dissatisfied condition of mind? Oh, if we could pull off the false glitter that lays like a gorgeous mantle over the fashionable world, we should see such an aching void, such a palpitating heart of woe, as would make the very stones cry out for sympathy. Look at a fashionable woman—one woman, a poor, weak mortal, apprenticed to earth to learn the work of the skies, pupiled here to be schooled in the great lessons of beauty and goodness written on all the ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... kept opponents waiting for him when he had a duel on hand. To-night, however, he hoped for a glimpse of Marguerite, and this made him prompt to keep his appointment. He scanned the windows as he passed along the opposite side of the street, but no one appeared to meet his eager gaze. With a heart palpitating like a schoolboy's, on whom some fair girl has smiled or frowned, he slowly retraced his steps to the heavy oaken door. His knock was answered by the same old servant who had admitted him in the morning, and he was shown into a large but very plainly furnished room, where De ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... unsoiled by the dust and heat of reality. It came to me with a positive shock, as a terrifying thing, that there should be in this world of strife and wickedness any young thing that took life with such intensity, that was so palpitating with eagerness, with hope, with sympathy. Such was the impression that one got of her, even when her words most denied it. She might be saying world-weary and cynical things, out of the maxims of Lady Dee; but there ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... as it sometimes is elsewhere, watered out by too much talk, though there is enough of this to carry out the author's usual system (v. inf.). Nothing happens sufficiently extravagant or improbable to excite disgust or laughter, though what does happen is sufficiently "palpitating." If this is melodrama, it is melodrama free from most of the objections made elsewhere to the kind. And also if it is melodrama, it seems to me to be melodrama infinitely superior, not merely in degree, but in kind, to that of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... he said then, a quick, palpitating note of pure joy in his cry. "Blind as I was, I put it over for you! Here's ten thousan', Steve. An' the chance to get ol' ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... with interrupting her better feelings; but after a while you may see the blooming cheek beginning to droop and fade, her intelligent eye no longer sparkles with the starry light of heaven, her vibrating pulse long since changed its regular motion, and her palpitating bosom beats once more for the midday of her glory. Anxiety and care ultimately throw her into the arms of the haggard and grim monster death. But, oh, how patient, under every pining influence! Let us view the matter in bolder colors; see her when ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... the flesh, what rigid fasts, What terrible privations may suffice To cleanse me in the sight of God and man?" Ill-omened silence followed his appeal. Patient and motionless he lay awhile, Then sprang unto his feet with sudden force, Confronting in his breathless vehemence, With palpitating heart, the timid priest. "Answer me, as you hope for a response, One day, at the great judgment seat yourself." "I cannot answer," said the timid priest, "I have not understood." "Just God! is this The curse Thou layest upon me? I outstrip The sympathy and brotherhood of men, So far removed is ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... the Indre and its isles, the valley and its slopes, of which I seemed so passionate an admirer. But once there, thanks to a swiftness of foot like that of a loose horse, I returned to my punt, the willows, and Clochegourde. All was silent and palpitating, as a landscape is at midday in summer. The still foliage lay sharply defined on the blue of the sky; the insects that live by light, the dragon-flies, the cantharides, were flying among the reeds and the ash-trees; cattle chewed the cud in the shade, the ruddy earth of the vineyards ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... stale bread and cigarettes. Over our heads dusty palm-fronds trembled in occasional faint gusts off the sea. The rings on Don Antonio's thin fingers glistened in the light of the one tired electric light bulb that shone among palpitating mottoes above us as he explained to me ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... to her,—to call upon her, reproachfully, to come back to it,—to open its slimy arms and invite her to the palpitating bosom that had soothed the sorrows of so many thousands of the children ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... feel his breast palpitating against the limb, drawn tight against it by the dead weight. Yet he could not put his desperate purpose ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... scattered stones among the flowering broom. He learned also that a bark had been seen far out at sea, and that, like a bird of prey, a royal vessel had pursued, overtaken, and devoured the poor little bird that was flying with such palpitating wings. But there D'Artagnan's certainties ended. The field of supposition was thrown open. Now, what could he conjecture? The vessel had not returned. It is true that a brisk wind had prevailed for three ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... and husband and wife, still palpitating, walked slowly away together; while "Golden Sally," once more standing aloft on her sandy pinnacle, wrung the moisture ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... but it is the Gurth, the thrall of the first,—the vassal of inherent impulses; and even the most ossified natures contain some soft palpitating spot that will throb against the hand that is sufficiently dexterous to find it. In every man and woman there lurks a vein of sentiment, which, no matter how heavily crushed by the super-incumbent mass of utilitarian, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... spencer, the stuff, the embroidery, the corset, the chemise, and plunged her savage hand into the bosom where, as she well knew, a letter lay hidden. In doing this her jealousy so bruised and tore the palpitating throat of her rival, taken by surprise at the sudden attack, that she left the bloody marks of her nails, feeling a sort of pleasure in making her submit to so degrading a prostitution. In the feeble struggle which Marie made against ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... to meet Rose Lawrence the day she came. When I went home from school Mrs. Lindsay told me she was in the parlour and took me in to be introduced. I was bitterly disappointed. Somehow, I had expected to meet, not indeed a young girl palpitating with youthful bloom, but a woman of ripe maturity, dowered with the beauty of harmonious middle-age—the feminine counterpart of Uncle Dick. Instead, I found in Rose Lawrence a small, faded woman of forty-five, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and left me standing upon the platform, with my anxious heart apparently palpitating in the throat. At first I scarcely knew which way to turn. But it soon occurred to me that the good God, who had been with us thus far, would not forsake us at the eleventh hour. So with renewed hope I stepped into my master's carriage, ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... hand, and put his finger lightly to her pulse; it was palpitating, and a fallacious test. Oh, how that beating pulse, by love's electric current, set his own ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... dangers she has escaped. And when she observes the spot, and the altered appearance of the tree, she doubts if it is the same, so uncertain does the color of the fruit make her. While she is in doubt, she sees palpitating limbs throbbing upon the bloody ground; she draws back her foot, and having her face paler than box-wood,[23] she shudders like the sea, which trembles[24] when its surface is skimmed by a gentle breeze. But, after pausing a time, she had recognized her own lover, she smote her arms, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... great eyes leaped, a ray of pure fire seemed to dart from them. She looked for a moment as if she meant to strike Simpson, but then, thinking better of it, she turned and rushed like a little fury from the room. Downstairs, with her heart choking, her breath coming fast, her whole little body palpitating with the most ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade

... amber made a tender background to the dull gold of her hair. Trailing sprays of the rose that ran riot over the house drooped towards her; and a pine branch, striking in abruptly, made an effective splash of shadow in an atmosphere palpitating with the promise of fuller light. The only intense bit of colour in the picture was the violet blue of Elsie Mayhew's eyes—eyes that looked into you and through you to some dream-world unsullied by the disconcerting realities of life, which seemed only awaiting the given moment to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... at the baby. For the first time in his life he looked at a new-born baby, and at a baby to whom he was linked by ties of paternity, and his heart went out towards the little palpitating prophecy of life—so long expected, and perfected at such a price. And he took it in his arms, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... according to the principles of variation, heredity and environment, but to stellar influence intent upon securing the fulfillment of the law of individuality, was the difference attributed by the medieval mind, which regarded the stars and planets not as soulless spheres, but as orbs palpitating with the life of angelic intelligences and radiating their influence upon the people of ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... With a palpitating heart, Eudora resigned herself into the hands of her Persian tire-women, who so loaded her with embroidery and gems, that she could scarcely ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... The palpitating Elsewhere shrinks Before that glamorous host, Eftsoon, aye, now, good friend, methinks That thou would'st ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh

... intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. This peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting different sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... repass through his pictures in an atmosphere of pure sensuousness. They appeal to us not religiously, not historically, not intellectually, but sensuously and artistically through their rhythmic lines, their palpitating flesh, their beauty of color, and in the light and atmosphere that surround them. He was less of a religionist than Andrea del Sarto. Religion in art was losing ground in his day, and the liberality and worldliness of its teachers appeared clearly enough in the decorations of the Convent of St. Paul ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... he did most of this work under the surface. Every time he hit the leader it seemed likely to crack my neck. The rod bent, then the line slackened so I could feel no weight, the rod flew straight. I had an instant of palpitating dread, feeling he had freed himself—then harder came the irresistible, heavy drag again. This batting of the leader and consequent slacking of the line worried Dan, as it did me. Neither of us expected to hold the fish. As a performance it was wonderful. But to endure it was terrible. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... looked not human—with her ashen cheeks, and darkened brow, and flaming eyes—with her whole face and form heaving, palpitating, flashing ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... life was one of sacrifice and abnegation, who died for its manifestation—they are immediately touched, interested, because you have left the unsympathetic region of abstract formulas; you have given law a visible, palpitating, feeling, suffering, and rejoicing Body—you awaken their love, their gratitude—they adore their godlike Brother, and now feel themselves members of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... bed on which he lay the night before he heard of Gian Battista's marriage, he goes on to say that a few nights after the first manifestation, he was once more conscious of a strange movement; and, having put his hand to his breast, found that his heart was palpitating violently because he had been lying on his left side. Then he remembered that a similar physical trouble had accompanied the first trembling of the bed, and admits that this manifestation may be referred to ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... materials of which the population here is composed. There had been an altercation between a sergeant of the Line and a citizen, in which the latter had offered some violence and had been shot on the spot; his body was still palpitating on the pavement as I came suddenly and unexpectedly upon it, and we were warned, by an angry cry of "au large" from a sentry, that it would be a very simple matter in the then temper of the soldiery to meet the same fate. It is easy to imagine the scowling looks and stifled curses of the men ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... die, draw forth the barbed steel from hence, Allay thy fears, no Brahmin I, not thine of Brahmin blood the offence. My sire, a Brahmin hermit he, my mother was of Sudra race.' So spake the wounded boy, on me while turned his unreproaching face. As from his palpitating breast I gently drew the mortal dart, He saw me trembling stand, and blest that boy's pure spirit seemed to part. As died that holy hermit's son, from me my glory seemed to go, With troubled mind I stood, cast down t' inevitable endless woe. That shaft that seemed his life ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... to another village; it belonged to the Bulgarians; and the Abarian heroes had treated it in the same way. Candide, walking always over palpitating limbs or across ruins, arrived at last beyond the seat of war, with a few provisions in his knapsack, and Miss Cunegonde always in his heart. His provisions failed him when he arrived in Holland; ...
— Candide • Voltaire

... with the double eagerness of a boy and an artist, sweeping one hand outward in an argumentative gesture. It was a gesture which seemed to submit in evidence all the palpitating colors of Capri sunning herself among her rocks: all the sparkle and glitter of the Bay of Naples spreading away to the nebulous line where Ischia bulked herself in mist against the horizon: all the majesty of the cone where the fires of ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... said he, as he ardently pressed her form in his arms and kissed her. She had continued stretched on the bed, exactly facing me, with legs widely extended, so as to show me the whole of her lovely cunt, which I could see still panted under its late excitement. My charming mistress told me it was palpitating not for what had passed, but for what it was waiting for. She rose at last and closed the door, turning the key upon her husband. She then approached the bidet to purify herself, but I bounded from the closet, seized her in my ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... for their appointed food, the tenacity with which they clutch and the ravening anxiety (caused by the dread of losing their prey) with which they tear the flesh of their victims, is portrayed to the life. We speak of a death-grip, but here is a death and life grip—death to the victim whose palpitating body furnishes life to its destroyer. It is the hot-cold-bloodedness of nature, the disregard for suffering of the tornado, the earthquake and the avalanche shown in little in the fangs and claws ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... With palpitating hearts, Captain Dan, Clearemout, and old Donnithorne ran up the ladders as fast as they could. In a few minutes they reached the thirty-fathom level, and here, to their great relief, they found Spankey supported in the arms of stout ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... when the greed was beginning to irritate, in its folly hastening to seize whatever came to hand, like an old woman caught in a conflagration, here you come with your cries of Hispanism, with chants of confidence in the government, in what cannot come to pass, here you have a body palpitating with heat and life, young, pure, vigorous, throbbing with blood, with enthusiasm, suddenly come forth to offer itself again as ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... which only boasted of a mattress, stuffed with tussock-grass by the way, on the floor. Here I should have slept very well after my long journey, if Prince would have permitted it. In vain I put him out of the window, not always very gently; he returned in five minutes, bringing a palpitating, just-caught bird or mouse, which he softly dropped on my face, and purred loudly with delight at his own gallantry. Twenty times did I strike a match that night and try to restore the victims to life; only one recovered sufficiently to be released, and Prince ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... entered the room Joyce, with a palpitating heart, said: "Father, let me introduce you to Mr. Calhoun Pennington, of Danville, Kentucky. He is the young officer whom we cared for when wounded. He has come to thank us for the ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... with joy. But she also is affected, she also trembles, and beneath her palpitating breast, he seems to hear the beatings of her heart. What passed? What avowal did this maiden of ardent feeling make to this hot-passioned man? There is one of those mysteries which remain for ever buried between priest and woman, between penitent and confessor. What they said to one another ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... snow, or sugar, so finely spun and glistening. Then its air of arrogance captivated him—the creature was so fully aware of its charms. He spoke to it and the bird came on nonchalantly; then gracefully executed a wide turn, carrying that shining palpitating tail with it and walked back to the house. At the same moment he old woman with the dish reappeared and commenced driving the ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... I knew Nancy Stair for all time. The sight of suffering seemed to put her past herself, and, dashing toward me, she climbed up on the seat. I could feel the warmth of her body and the clinging of her dimpled arm as she drew my head against her naked, palpitating little breast as though to defend me from suffering ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... itself. The lives of uncounted generations had passed it by, and the multitudes of seafowl, urging their way from all the points of the horizon to sleep on the outer rocks of the group, unrolled the converging evolutions of their flight in long somber streamers upon the glow of the sky. The palpitating cloud of their wings soared and stooped over the pinnacles of the rocks, over the rocks slender like spires, squat like martello towers; over the pyramidal heaps like fallen ruins, over the lines of bald bowlders showing like a wall of stones battered to pieces and scorched by lightning—with ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... every one thought me so cunning, that not one would trust me. Thus I was at last obliged to turn sharper in my own defence, and have lived ever since, my head throbbing with schemes to deceive, and my heart palpitating with fears of detection. ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... then, remembering his articles: now so soon to go to the "Chronicle" office and the print that cried aloud. And the girl's case, had he but known it, was like his own, only more so. Beneath the cover of her casual talk, she was aware of thought coursing like a palpitating vein under a fine skin, threatening to break ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... nostrils playing in trembling dilation. In her eyes he saw open gates and a long vista of a fair highway in a glorious land; and the splendor of her was something near and yielding. He sank down beside her. Her hands stole into his; her head dropped on his shoulder; and he felt a warm and palpitating union with the very breath of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... the teacher's eyes, and not the teacher. She gazed up in that roseate face with the wide mouth set in an inverted bow of smile, curtained, as it were, with smoothly crinkled auburn hair clearly outlined against the cheeks, at the palpitating curve of shiny black-silk bosom, adorned with a festoon of heavy gold watch-chain, and thought that here was love, and beauty, and richness, and elegance, and great wisdom, calling for reverence but ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... anticipated, at length comes to pass; the lover returns—he flies to his mistress—she receives him with blushing cheek and palpitating heart. I shall not attempt to describe the scene, but throughout the day and night that succeeds that interview the lover seems like one distracted. In the city, in the fields—alone, or in company—he hears nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various

... towards his protege with an expression of kindly interest. What better debut could there be for a young man warmly attached to an eminent patron who had been coarsely assailed,—for a political aspirant vindicating the principles which that patron represented? The Blues, palpitating with indignant excitement, all prepared to cheer every sentence that could embody their sense of outrage, even the meanest amongst the Yellows, now that Dick had concluded, dimly aware that their orator had laid himself terribly ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... gazed, stricken. The ball was palpitating, breathing! I saw convolutions of inner tissue under the transparent skin of membrane; a little tentacle, like an arm with a flat-webbed hand, was holding up the lid of the box. The lid rose a trifle higher; the colored lights ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... When move in a sweet body fit for life, And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!" The God, dove-footed, glided silently Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed, The taller grasses and full-flowering weed, Until he found a palpitating snake, Bright, and cirque-couchant in a ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... the family were relegated to the kitchen, and Sukey, with palpitating heart, waited in the ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... hall arrested her attention, and she stood palpitating, with her hand upon her heart. It passed, leaving only silence; but it had been a useful warning to her. Suppose, in her present mood, Horace should make his way to her sitting-room and knock for admittance. Would she—could she—send him away, with her heart crying out for the relief ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... strength I could not combat. The slight, dark-haired girl, younger than myself, mastered and drew me as if my spirit was a stream, and she the ocean into which it must flow. Darkness like that of Ste. Pelagie dropped over the brilliant room. I was nothing after all but a palpitating boy, venturing because he must venture. Light seemed to strike through her blood, however, endowing her ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... higher, With a desperate desire And a resolute endeavor Now—now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells, What a tale their terror tells Of despair! How they clang and crash and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells, Of the bells, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... in his ill-fitting uniform and his leather helmet. First of all, we observe that he smokes a great deal. According to some of us, the "tobacco demon" ought by this time to have left him a thin, puny, hollow-eyed fellow, with trembling knees and palpitating heart and listless gait, with shaking hands and an intense craving for ardent spirits. You perceive, however, that a burlier, broader-shouldered, ruddier, brighter-eyed, and heartier-looking man you never set eyes on; and as he swings along in column, with his rifle, knapsack, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... child with a sensitive, nervous organization and vivid imagination should have grown up with an unworldly and spiritual character, and that a poetic mist should have enveloped all her outward perceptions similar to that palpitating veil of blue and lilac vapor that enshrouds ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... fear I shall grow sulky and impatient. It is not improbable Captain Sutton may relieve me in the charge of this squadron, as I doubt Sir Edward Pellew being yet ready. I fear the second return of the fleet will have again set your heart palpitating, and caused you another disappointment at the Caesar not ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... its hue as distinctly as those of the marble busts that surrounded him. He looked scarcely less hueless and cold, and his hand, that lay embedded in his dark wavy hair, gleamed white and transparent as alabaster. I stood just within the door, with suspended breath and wildly palpitating heart, praying for courage to break the spell that bound me to the spot. All my strength was gone. I felt myself a guilty intruder in that scene of self-humiliation, penance, and prayer. Though reason condemned ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... thou love Acis? And why prefer Acis to my embraces? Yet, let him please himself, and let him please thee, too, Galatea, {though} I wish he could not; if only the opportunity is given, he shall find that I have strength proportioned to a body so vast. I will pull out his palpitating entrails; and I will scatter his torn limbs about the fields, and throughout thy waves, {and} thus let him be united to thee. For I burn: and my passion, {thus} slighted, rages with the greater fury; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... waved the officer back. Joe lifted a hand to his forehead in thoughtful gesture and stroked back his hair, standing thus in studious pose a little while. A thousand eyes were bent upon him; five hundred palpitating brains were aching for the relief of his reply. Joe lifted his head and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... palpitating silence. No one moved. Eyes were fixed on her as if ears had not heard aright. The heads of some leaned forward, the bodies of others leaned back, then the clearing of throats and the shuffling of feet broke the pause that followed ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... sunset. The sky was suffused with the richest carmine. The waters lay quivering beneath the palpitating, rosy light. The spires and domes of the town caught the ethereal hues and the emerald hills were bathed in ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... recruited with a peculiarly dangerous element by all the acts of violence, legal and illegal, which wrench the physical body from the soul and send the latter into Kamaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred, passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with unsatiated lusts. A murderer in the body is not a pleasant member of society, but a murderer suddenly expelled from the body is a far more dangerous entity; society may protect itself against the first, but in its present state of ignorance ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant



Words linked to "Palpitating" :   palpitant, unsteady



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