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More "Harrowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... designs, does not seem to have been taken into consideration by him. He depicts the Devil as a strange mixture of stupidity and remorseless animosity. But this, undoubtedly, was the then general opinion. The bard revels in harrowing descriptions of the tortures of the damned in Gehenna—the abode of the Arch-fiend and his angels. This portion of his work was in part the offspring of his own fervid imagination; but in part it might have been suggested to him by what had been written already on the subject; and from the people ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... Market Drayton to his last encounter with him at the Battle of the Carts, he had been the mark of his enmity, malice, spite, trickery. But Desmond thought less of his own wrongs than of the sorrow of his friend, Mr. Merriman, and the harrowing wretchedness which must have been the lot of the ladies while they were in Diggle's power. The man had brought misery into so many lives that it would be a good deed if, in the fortune of war, Desmond's sword could rid the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Before that court was held, and during the doubtful days which intervened between it and your escape from the terrible perils that attended your return, the hope that all would, all must turn out right, in some measure relieved my harrowing fears and anxieties; though even then the latter was to the former as days of cloud to minutes of sunshine. But, when I heard what occurred at the trial,—the bitter crimination and recrimination, the open rupture, the menaces exchanged, and the angry parting,—and, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... after some conversation, which must of course be of a very local description, although it is brightened with many a quiet touch of wit, of which the natives possess a great original fund, and Melancthon, having finished in the forenoon harrowing in his buck-wheat, has now gone with his axe to hew at a house-frame which he has in preparation, and Sybel and I having settled our affair of warp and woof, it is now time for me to proceed. She with her large Swiss-looking sun-hat, ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... determined to utter no sound, to give no sign; but when the horrible rope fell on him, griding across his back, and making his body literally creak under the blow, he quivered like an aspen-leaf in every limb, and could not suppress the harrowing murmur, "O ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... condemnation of the play is not that it is dull, but that it is too harrowing; that scene after scene passes beyond the due limits of tragic art. There are points to be pleaded against this criticism. The very beauty of the most fearful scenes, in spite of their fearfulness, is one; the quick comfort of the lyrics is another, falling like a spell of peace when the strain ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... him, early in life, his brilliant position as one of the recognised pioneers of the new School of Surgery, as an admitted authority on Clinical Medicine, whose wedding-bells—the handkerchiefs came out at this—had rung to-morrow but for this harrowing and bitter stroke of adverse Destiny. Which would they have? Let the Jury decide for Christ or Barabbas! He spoke in all reverence, because the upright, innocent, charitable, self-denying life of a diligent healer of men would support the analogy of Christ-likeness beside ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... was a man and she a woman, young and kindly, clear-skinned and joyous-eyed. She touched him with warm elbow and plump hip, leaning against his chair as he gave his order. To that he looked forward from meal to meal, though he never ceased harrowing over what he ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... I had read once. It was by Gertrude Atherton, and at the time I had thought it the most harrowing story ever written. A woman had gone to sleep, young, beautiful, beloved. She had waked to find her hair grey, her hands old and veined. Twenty blank years of madness she had spent in a lunatic asylum, after being driven mad by a shock, waking ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... see just enough of Miss Harding to insure a place in her mind at all times; but not enough to suggest that he was forcing himself upon her. Rightly, he assumed that she would appreciate thoughtful deference to her comfort and safety under the harrowing conditions of her present existence more than a forced companionship that might entail too open devotion on his part. And so he raised his cap and left her, only urging her to call upon him at any time that he might be ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beings, clamorous with the distress of cries for help. There was no help. He imagined what would happen perfectly; he went through it all motionless by the hatchway with the lamp in his hand—he went through it to the very last harrowing detail. I think he went through it again while he was telling me these things he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Bosko is giving her maid a hand in the packing, I must look after my own traps. Nesimir's servants would talk, which is just what I want to avoid. The two days in the train will give you plenty of time to learn the harrowing details. I have a pretty story for you; but it must wait. I am not cracked, nor sprung, nor trying to be funny; so you need not look at me in that way. I am out of business as a King, for good and all, and the sooner I cross the frontier, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... two ways in which this story might be told. It might be told as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile administration to subject women to martyrdom in order to hasten its surrender. The truth is, it has elements of both ruthlessness and martyrdom. And I have tried to make them appear ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... to Gwen a wonderful old woman, this Granny Marrable. Her untiring patience and strength, at her great age; her simple theism, constantly in evidence; her resolute calmness in facing a second time the harrowing grief of a twin sister's death—for that she saw it at hand, Gwen was convinced—were surely the material of which heroism is made, when heroism is in the making. To Gwen's thought, the miraculous news that had ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... stillness and quiet of Olney were very acceptable to him, and then he began to long for more excitement—something to divert his mind from the harrowing fear, daily growing more and more certain, that Ethie would never come back. It was four years since she went away, and nothing had been heard from her since the letter sent to Andy from New York. "Dead," he said to himself many a time, and but for ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... accept as the area to be excluded from the Home Rule Act. The question now to be decided was whether this same area should still be accepted, or an amendment moved for including in Northern Ireland the other three counties of the Province of Ulster. The same harrowing experience which the Council had undergone in 1916 was repeated in an aggravated form.[106] To separate themselves from fellow loyalists in Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal was hateful to every delegate ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... usual, absorbed by the pathos of his coming renunciation. He determined to make his preparations for the final act during the night, when Mrs. Petty would be prevented by Joe's snoring from hearing the necessary sounds; and at supper he undertook the delicate and harrowing task of saying good-bye to, his devoted housekeeper without letting her know ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... then swooped down upon me like the genius of destruction. The first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from my face and lifted me out of the chair. I stormed and raved, and the other boys enjoyed it. Their beards are not strong and thick. Let us draw the curtain over this harrowing scene. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... English troopers over their native moors and among the wild recesses of their mountains, whither they secretly retired for prayer and worship. The tales of the suffering of the Scotch Covenanters at the hands of the English Protestants form a most harrowing chapter of the records of the ages of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... before the audience, and looking so exhausted and tearful that you fancied she would faint with sensibility, she would gather up her hair the instant she was behind the curtain, and go home to a mutton-chop and a glass of brown stout; and the harrowing labours of the day over, she went to bed and snored as resolutely and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that can alter the state of things? And you are a follower of a learned man who withdraws from his chief; had you not better be a follower of such as have forsaken the world?" And he went on with his harrowing, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Lawrence, and wished to exchange him for me; and if I had loved and reverenced her less to begin with, the preference might have gratified and amused me; but now the contrast between her outward seeming and her inward mind, as I supposed,—between my former and my present opinion of her, was so harrowing—so distressing to my feelings, that it swallowed up ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Penn to permit me to make an extract from his journal in this place. It is less harrowing to copy than to recall. I omit the pious observations and reflections which grace the original. Comforting as they are to me, it seems a profanity to make them public; besides, it is his wish that I should withhold them, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the day in idleness, for the adventures of the preceding night were too harrowing to allow our minds to become settled on any kind of work. It is true that we had many questions to answer, and that numerous visitors thronged our store from sunrise until dark; but after repeating our story to our friend Charley, he took ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... remained longer in the fields than Mikolai. He had still to sow some clover seed in a piece of fallow-land, when the latter led the horse home with which he had been harrowing. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... agree in what you say of tuition and intuition; the two must act and react upon one another, to make a man, to form a mind. Drudgery is as necessary, to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth. And besides, the growths of literature and art are as much nature as the trees in Concord woods; but nature ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Hone's Ancient Mysteries; in T. Sharpe's Dissertaion on the Pageants.. . anciently performed at Coventry, Coventry, 1828; in the publications of the Shakespearean and other societies. See especially The Harrowing of Hell, a miracle-play, edited from the original now in the British Museum, by T. O. Halliwell, London, 1840. One of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid for keeping a fire burning in hell's mouth. Says Hase (as above, p. 42): "In wonderful ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... restoration, exhausted himself in detailing Dante's distribution of torture, and brings into successive prominence every expedient of pain; the prong, the spit, the rack, the chain, venomous fang and rending beak, harrowing point and dividing edge, biting fiend and calcining fire. The objects of the two great painters were indeed opposed, but not in this respect. Orcagna's, like that of every great painter of his day, was to write upon the wall, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... wearing anxiety, and harrowing chagrin that I had been left here forgotten, waxed to a fever that drove me all day restlessly from field to field, from house to barn, and back to the tavern, to sit watching the road for sign of a messenger to set me free ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... but had to delay the return for they had to go out to sea for gunnery practice. Thus, Nelka must have remained on the destroyer for four or five days before returning. This was a very harrowing and needless expedition which could have very easily ended ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... he seemed especially to solicit the Queen's sympathy; but, unless I am egregiously mistaken, her Majesty lent her attention rather with the calm of courtesy than the earnestness of interest. This gentleman's state of mind was very harrowing, and I was glad when he wound up his musical exposition ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... man!' shouted Barrett, as the injured person rose to his feet. 'Run! Cut, quick! Keeper!' There was no time to say more. He ran. Another second and he was at the top, over the railing, and in the good, honest, public high-road again, safe. A hoarse shout of 'Got yer!' from below told a harrowing tale of capture. The stranger had fallen into the hands of the enemy. Very cautiously Barrett left the road and crept to the railing again. It was a rash thing to do, but curiosity overcame him. He had to see, or, if that was impossible, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... fatigues of the long day of battle, and after the night of retreat more painful still! We rested in the little copse till noon, and sate there watching the wrecks of our army defile along the road before us. It was a soul-harrowing sight! Yet the different arms of the service had resumed a certain degree of order amid their disorder; and our General, feeling his strength revive, resolved to follow a strong column of cavalry which was taking the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... May number, 1870. In his Introductory he outlined what the reader might expect, such as "exhaustive statistical tables," "Patent Office reports," and "complete instructions about farming, even from the grafting of the seed to the harrowing of the matured crops." He declared that he would throw a pathos into the subject of agriculture that would surprise and delight the world. He added that the "Memoranda" was not necessarily a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... celebrated Vale of Iverah, where the O'Connells held property, and exercised an almost absolute sway:—"The prospects of the people of this very poor barony, and all along from the River Kenmare, Sneem, Darrynane, to Cahirciveen, and thence towards Killorglin, is harrowing and startling. The whole potato crop is literally destroyed, while over a very wide surface the oat crop presents an unnatural lilac tinge to the eye; at the same time, in too many instances, the head is found flaccid to the touch, and possessing no substance. The barley crop, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in my seat my reflections were anything but pleasing. It was harrowing to think of Charlie Robson so completely in the power of these desperadoes, his probable fate, and the grief of his family and friends. And what could I do to save him? ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... Calamity which befell BANGMAN DONELEY and Family" was advertised as the current attraction in the "West ——th Street United Presbyterian Church," a Sunday or two since. A fine theme! Full of nicely harrowing details. It must have drawn well. We are not informed whether the reverend sensationist had a "real house" made with which to illustrate the overwhelming incident; and some "real people," including children, to be (apparently) crushed when ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... to his feet. His gaze wandered about the room. Gradually he collected his scattered wits. The details of his recent harrowing experience returned to him. ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... brig into all the holes and corners of the Archipelago where Morrison picked up most of his trade. Far from it; but he would have consented to almost any arrangement in order to put an end to the harrowing scene in the cabin. There was at once a great transformation act: Morrison raising his diminished head, and sticking the glass in his eye to looked affectionately at Heyst, a bottle being uncorked, and so on. It was agreed that nothing should ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... swallow the tale without the proverbial grain of salt caused them to watch closely for the slightest sign that might reveal to them the always-to-be expected and seldom successful duplicity so common in those harrowing days when all men were objects of suspicion. From time to time they glanced inquiringly at each other, but the stranger's story was so straightforward, so lacking in personal exploitation, so free from unnecessary detail, that they were finally convinced that he was all that he represented himself ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... swiftly away. In a very few minutes shells from a concealed battery began dropping into that field at the rate of several a minute. Every foot of it was torn up, and the French soldiers from their retreat in the woods saw their equipment being blown to pieces in every direction. The spectacle was harrowing, but the reflection that the aviator undoubtedly thought that he had turned his guns on a field full of men was cheering to them ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... follow; but it's a good thing all the same. Now you've got to go for a walk in a place where you've nothing earthly to do. I've been accustomed all my life to walk a great deal, but then it was doing something, ploughing or harrowing, spreading manure or cutting corn, and there I'd no occupation whatever. While walking you are expected to drink ever so many tumblers of water, ever so many. Some of the people were exactly like sieves, they were always at it, and they used to gasp out 'What splendid water it is!' Don't ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... harrowing vigil which had lasted from the moment of bidding General Laurance good-night, on the previous evening, had left its weary traces in the beautiful face; but rigid resolution had also set its stem seal on the compressed mouth, and the eyes were relentless as those of Irene, waiting ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... with a desperate effort she flew to her lover; a dismal, harrowing shriek quivered through the inmost fibres of her heart; and then she spoke not, but clung to Gomez Arias with the fearful might arising from despair. Her face was hidden in his bosom, her pulse beat not, and the spark of life seemed extinct. Gomez Arias gently endeavoured to extricate himself ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... meant for a compliment," she returned, with the straightforward sincerity which Blount had always been fond of likening to a cup of cold water on a thirsty day. "Consider a moment. You come to me with a really harrowing story of your new experiences, and just as I am beginning to get interested we are interrupted. In the morning, at some perfectly impossible hour, off you go, and we hear no more of you for weeks and weeks. What have ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... which preceded, and the bad wounds which so many of my friends got in trying to kill a lot of them. You do not think of the fact that those dead men had parents, brothers, and sisters whom they loved. And you have not seen the harrowing destruction of the villages and towns—how the poor, hunted-down population is running away, leaving everything they had behind them to be consumed by the flames.... And then, remember, we are not fighting in order to cheer you up—we are not lying about in the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter. Siga died on the eighth day ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... within the reach of medical aid, but that all would depend upon speed) had availed, even at that late hour, to gather a small mob about the house. The pawnbroker threw open the door. One or two watchmen headed the crowd; but the soul-harrowing spectacle checked them, and impressed sudden silence upon their voices, previously so loud. The tragic drama read aloud its own history, and the succession of its several steps—few and summary. The murderer was as yet altogether unknown; not even suspected. But there were reasons ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... his lucky stars for his indigestibility and the illness of his rescuer. His story was published. Still causes some comment. Tradition also says that J. never could look a fish in the face after the harrowing incident. Ambition: Dry land. Recreation: Mountain climbing. ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... prayer for her, and ultimately wrung her salvation by self-sacrifice from Divine Justice. Here and there are passages that we could have wished modified, but surely such a terrific fantasy was never before penned! It is as harrowing as The Ancient Mariner, and appeals to one more forcibly than Coleridge's "Rime," because it seems actual truth. Other volumes, containing impassioned ballads, lyrics, narrative poems and sonnets, came from Mr. Payne's pen. His poems have the rush and bound of a Scotch ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... finally taught by her example how to adjust chairs, books, and mats in straight lines, to fold articles without making odd corners and wrinkles; at last I improved so much that I could find what I was seeking in a drawer, without harrowing it with my fingers, and began to see beauty in order. Alice had a talent for housekeeping, and her talent was fostered by the exacting, systematic taste of her husband. He examined many matters which are usually left to women, and he applied his business ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the implements of these man-of-war barbers out of keeping with the rude appearance of their shops. Their razors are of the simplest patterns, and, from their jagged-ness, would seem better fitted for the preparing and harrowing of the soil than for the ultimate reaping of the crop. But this is no matter for wonder, since so many chins are to be shaven, and a razor-case holds but two razors. For only two razors does a man-of-war barber have, and, like the marine sentries at the gangway in port, these razors ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... cheerfulness. Sometimes, in the midst of the stillness, a sudden yell or scream will startle one. This comes from some defenceless fruit-eating animal, which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor. Morning and evening howling monkeys make a most fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's buoyancy of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness which the forest is calculated to inspire, is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar. Often, even ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... necessary portmanteau and Mary when unable to walk; and so they started on their journey in 1814, across a country recently devastated by the invading armies of Europe. They were not to be deterred by the harrowing tales of their landlady, and set out for Charenton on the evening of August 8, but soon found their ass needed more assistance than they did, which necessitated selling it at a loss and purchasing a mule the next day. On this ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... describing in as few words as possible the harrowing days preceding the death of the boy, Delafield's attempts to soothe and control the father, the stratagem by which the poor Duke had outwitted them all, and the weary hours of search through the night, under a drizzling rain, which had resulted, about dawn, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... actual occurrences as seen by my own eyes are solely for the purpose of screening living descendants of those whose lives are here portrayed from prying curiosity; but, in truth, many experiences during the thrilling days of the fur companies were far too harrowing for recital. I would fain have tempered some of the incidents herein related to suit the sentiments of a milk-and-water age; but that could be done only at the cost ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... his conditions and methods of turning and fining the land. Sow 40 pounds per acre in drills 3 feet apart, and cultivate as long as you can without injuring the vines too much. Sowing must of course be done late, after the ground is warm and danger of frost is past, though the plowing and harrowing should be done earlier ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... accompanied her represented the corps d'armee; I formed the rear guard; balls whistled by, battalions struggled, we heard the cries of the wounded and were stifled by the smell of powder; wishing to avoid the harrowing sight of such dreadful carnage, I slackened my pace and was agreeably surprised to find, at a turn in the path, that I had deserted my colors; I listened and heard only the song of the bulfinch; I took a long breath ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... one day and a half that gentleman returned to the maternal apron-strings, laden to the ground with the most harrowing legends of the horrors of war. Leader was not a warrior of this stamp—far from it; he had vindicated his manliness at Ladon outside Orleans, where Ogilvie, of the British Royal Artillery, had met his fate by his side, and ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... me, borne on the sunny air, came the sound of a whistle that brought me to my feet eager for action, for conflict or death itself—anything rather than the harrowing torment of my thoughts. Very cautiously I crossed the uneven floor and lifting the trap as silently as possible, I set the ladder in place and descended. The whistling had stopped, but in its stead I caught a sound of stealthy ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... were plainly revealed to Hiram's observing eye. Where corn had grown once, it should grow again; and the pine timber would more than pay for being cut, for blowing out the big stumps with dynamite, and tam-harrowing ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... incoherent—a queer jumble of mental impulses which seemed to lead her always back to the harrowing realization that she had lost her father. That was the gigantic axis around which her whole mental structure revolved. It was staggering, stupefying, and her brain ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a week it rained, and from the patch of back yard, two stories beneath her window, began to mount the moist smell of living earth. Beside this open window, after the harrowing mornings of dentistry, with a soft rain falling from a sky swift and low with clouds, she wrote, her pencil dabbing constantly at the well of her tongue, a short story of some six thousand words composed out of the fabric of an idea that suddenly presented itself. She copied it in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... his wife and children. What pen can describe that terrible interview! They knelt in prayer, their wobegone countenances suffused in tears, and with hands clasped convulsively together. The scene was too harrowing and sacred for the eye of a stranger. I rushed from the cell, and buried myself in my lodgings, whence I did not remove till all was over. Next day James Harvey, a victim of circumstantial evidence, and of a barbarous criminal code, perished ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... President; it was perhaps additionally incumbent on him at this time. When in the course of nature the number of office-seekers abated, they were succeeded, as will be seen, by supplicants of another kind, whose petitions were often really harrowing. The horror of this enduring visitation has been described by Artemus Ward in terms which Lincoln himself could not have improved upon. His classical treatment of the subject is worth serious reference; for it should be realised that Lincoln, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... naturally a modest man, made more so by my extreme sensitiveness to personal criticism; and to be obliged to stand apparently unconscious, when I know I am being looked at and commented upon, is harrowing to my feelings. I feel sometimes as if I should drop down on the floor, but then folks would never stop laughing if I did, at what they would be pleased to term my extreme ladylikeness! I have actually prayed that I might get ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had long since passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to desperation, might incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an incorrigible by a harrowing reference to one or to another; yet to the incoming swarms of land-hungry settlers they were mere supplanted play actors, fit heroes for fiction, for romance perhaps; but like the bison to be kept in small herds safe ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... these forms of misery; but never had they seemed to him so depressing, so harrowing ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... insolent soldiers, had been long labouring under all the distressing effects of espionage—greatest enemy to the charm of every society—the overbearing haughty Spaniards, either with taunts or sneers, harrowing the very souls of the Americans, who suspected their very oldest friends and often their nearest relations. In this way they were forced to drain the cup of bitterness to the last dregs, without daring by participation or condolence to ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... camp I found it deserted by the two younger native boys, whilst the scattered fragments of our baggage, which I left carefully piled under the oilskin, lay thrown about in wild disorder, and at once revealed the cause of the harrowing scene ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... turn away. Walking back by her side, Felix was surprised by her composure. The reality of death had not been to her half so harrowing as the news of it. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... signal agreed upon in case the young sentry caught sight of the missing ones. It came after a wearing night and a still more harrowing day. Following the non-arrival of Peggy and Roy in camp from their hunting excursion a search had at once been commenced, ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... don't the days seem lank and long, When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't our life extremely flat, When we've nothing whatever to grumble at." The Irish farmer is with the poet, who hits his harrowing anguish to a hair. He folds his hands and looks about, uncertain what to do next. His rent has been lowered by 35 per cent., he has compensation for improvements, fixity of tenure, and may borrow money to buy the land outright at a percentage, which will amount to less than his ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... moving-picture fan at that, Mawruss," Abe said, "because if such a moving-picture fan would see one of these here harrowing William S. Hart and Mary Pickford incidents in real life, Mawruss, when it reached the point where the moving-picture fan's heart is going to break unless there would be a quick happy ending, y'understand, ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... suicide. He used his lawyer's training for dubious enough purposes, advising the Earl of Somerset in the dark business of his divorce and re-marriage. And, in a mournful pause in the midst of many harrowing concerns, he writes to a friend: 'When I must shipwreck, I would fain do it in a sea where mine own impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen, weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming. Therefore I would fain do something, but that ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... taken vast enough to fill the whole horizon of his mind, of any human mind perhaps;—ay, so vast and compelling that every day with wrenches and torsion that horizon must be pushed back and back to contain them,—a harrowing painful process, as we may read on his busts... As to the proscriptions, Dio, a writer, as Mr. Baring-Gould says, "never willing to allow a good quality to one of the Caesars, or to put their conduct in other than an ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... steaming ones were a goodly fraction of the family—the timid, the apathetic, the "conservative." The conservatives found ease better than exactitude, the trouble of thinking great, the agony of deciding harrowing, and the alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal so much easier—and the warm weather coming on with a ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the South, than "beast Butler himself, for the latter is only charged with persecuting and oppressing the avowed enemies of his Government, while Hindman, if guilty as charged, has practised cruelties unnumbered" on his people. Other representatives spoke in the same vein. Baldwin of Virginia told harrowing tales of martial law in that State. Barksdale attempted to retaliate, sarcastically reminding him of a recent scene of riot and disorder which proved that martial law, in any effective form, did not exist in Virginia. ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... artillery, which was half buried in the mud. "Fortune," he exclaimed, "I perceive is indeed a woman; she prefers a young king to an old emperor." The spectacle that met the eyes of the victorious defenders of Metz, on issuing forth in pursuit of the enemy, is said to have been one of so harrowing a nature that even rough soldiers, accustomed to the horrors of war, looked on the misery around them with emotions of deepest pity. There lay the dying and the dead heaped up together; the wounded and those who had been stricken down by fever stretched side by side on the gory, muddy earth. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... came running, and his valor for once proved remarkable. He showed no fear of the crabs, and darted around so quickly that he caught every one in the room. The one-legged one that Harvey had thrown out of the window was never found. Perhaps it made its way back to the river, and told of its harrowing experiences on land, and especially how ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... in a hole made with a hoe, then push back the soil with the foot. One weeding alone is required before the grain comes to maturity. This simple process represents all our subsoil plowing, liming, manuring, and harrowing, for in four months after planting a good crop is ready for the sickle, and has been known to yield a hundred-fold. It flourished still more at Zumbo. No irrigation is required, because here there are gentle rains, almost like mist, in winter, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... he was busy harrowing, disking and rolling the old race-track; he repainted the weather-beaten poles and reshingled the judge's stand; he repaired the fence and installed an Australian starting-gate, dug a pit for the barbecue and brought forth, repaired ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... honoured; other farmers indulged in the one, or suffered from the other, yet were prosperous. His want of success arose from other causes; his heart was not with his task, save by fits and starts: he felt he was designed for higher purposes than ploughing, and harrowing, and sowing, and reaping: when the sun called on him, after a shower, to come to the plough, or when the ripe corn invited the sickle, or the ready market called for the measured grain, the poet ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... procession to kiss our poor dear head-master's cold forehead as he lay dead in his bed, with sprigs of boxwood on his pillow, and above his head a jar of holy water with which we sprinkled him. He looked very serene and majestic, but it was a harrowing ceremony. Merovee stood by with swollen eyes and deathly ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... is the way that Nature wages war—a civil war, that is the worst, the most harrowing of all. She fights her own kith and kin; she gives battle to the very conditions which she herself has made. There is very seldom a hand-to-hand encounter. Only your French Revolutions and your Russian ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... now appealed to me so little, that I was conscious of struggling to rise above indifference. I reproached myself for lack of patriotism. I had read the morning's Dispatch and had been shocked at the relation of some harrowing details of pillage and barbarity on the part of the Yankees; yet I felt nothing of individual anger against the wretches when I condemned such conduct, and my judgment told me that my passionless indignation ought to be hot. But this peculiarity seemed so unimportant in comparison with the greater ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... instantly, and a torrent of words was spilled upon the dramatic critic. He held the attention closely, in an impassioned plea for thoughtful drama, not necessarily didactic, but the serious handling of vital problems in comedy, if necessary, or even in farce. It need not be such harrowing work as Brieux makes it, but if the man who had things to say could and would conquer the technique of dramatic writing, he would reach the biggest audiences that could be provided, which ought to pay him for the severity of ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... eight acres, very rough, tough, and stony. He informed his young companions of his mother's conditional promise, and several of them readily agreed to help him. For the next two weeks the field presented the spectacle of a continuous "bee" of boys, picking up stones, ploughing, harrowing, and planting. To say that the work was done in time, and done thoroughly, is only another way of stating that it was undertaken and conducted by Cornelius Vanderbilt. On his birthday he claimed the fulfilment ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... finding no resting place there for the sole of my foot, I journeyed as far as Hyannis, where I was entertained with hospitality and kindness. On the evening of the fourteenth day, I again preached on the soul-harrowing theme of Indian degradation; and my discourse was generally well received; though it gave much offence to some illiberal minds, as truth always will, when it speaks in condemnation. I now turned my face toward Marshpee, to ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... wait until she is composed; the doctor is just administering an opiate," replied Whitney hastily. "Kathleen has been through a most harrowing experience." ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... acknowledged to Boswell, when in a placid humour, that happier days had come to him in his old age than in his early life, he would probably have added that though fame and friendship and freedom from the harrowing cares of poverty might cause his life to be more equably happy, yet their rewards could represent but a faint and mocking reflection of the best moments of a happy marriage. His strong mind and tender nature reeled ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... I raised his head, my fingers encountered a smooth, round stone, buried in the grass, and the touch of that stone thrilled me from head to foot with sudden dread. Hastily I tore open waistcoat and shirt, and pressed nay hand above his heart. In that one moment I lived an age of harrowing suspense, then breathed a sigh of relief, and, rising, took him beneath the arms and began to half drag, half carry him towards ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Gresham was glad to have some reading matter which might divert her mind from the memories of her mournful past, and also furnish them both with interesting themes of conversation in their moments of relaxation from the harrowing scenes through which they were constantly passing. Without any effort or consciousness on her part, his friendship ripened into love. To him her presence was a pleasure, her absence a privation; ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... foot beyond the township line again," I vowed to my secret soul. I had a harrowing sorrow preying upon me all the remainder of the winter. I was given to understand that Belle Marigold was actually engaged to Fred Hencoop. And she might have been mine! ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... at him and, perceiving that he was quite serious, proceeded to explain that during the spring's work he had taken his place in the plowing and harrowing with the "other" men, that he expected to drive the mower and reaper in haying and harvest, that, in short, in almost all kinds of farm work he was ready to take the place of a grown man; and all this ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... stunned, undemonstrative pain in the first days of the bereavement; the cables had supplied all essential information. Her quiet, now, seemed to intimate that the letter contained no harrowing details. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the daily papers is familiar with the harrowing accounts which are there given of ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... distorted himself as many did. Some curled their trunks about till they looked like huge writhing snakes. One kept curling up his proboscis and letting it fly open again with the greatest rapidity. It was almost harrowing to our feelings to see the whole ground below us covered with such huge, struggling, writhing masses. I made a remark to that effect ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... well it has nothing to do with harvesting nor harrowing," he cried; "I said kirtles, didn't I! And you needn't be so coy about the matter; surely to God you never learned modesty at your trade of sacking towns. Many ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... these attacks of wandering. His absences were a great grief to Ramona, not only from the loneliness in which it left her, but from the anxiety she felt lest his mental disorder might at any time take a more violent and dangerous shape. This anxiety was all the more harrowing because she must keep it locked in her own breast, her wise and loving instinct telling her that nothing could be more fatal to him than the knowledge of his real condition. More than once he reached home, breathless, panting, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... people also found an appreciative echo in his heart. When at last he handed me a long box with a gorgeous medal and ribbon, and bade me good-bye, I vowed I could sing "God save the King" louder than ever if I could do so without harrowing the feelings of my ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Girdwood had sufficient self-command to listen with unmoved countenances to Mr. Mole's account of the adventure, and even to express great surprise and alarm at the harrowing details. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... This work was begun before his imprisonment, and it was not finished until the year after his liberation; but the greater part of it was composed in the wretchedness of his cell at Ferrara. The story upon which it is founded is a very harrowing one, a king of the Ostrogoths marrying his own sister, mistaking her for a foreign princess; but it is treated with very inadequate tragic power, and, like the Aminta, displays no real action. Its beauty chiefly consists ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... rested. Mrs. Smilk was the first witness called by the defense. She told a harrowing tale of Smilk's unparalleled efforts to obtain work; of his heart-breaking disappointments; of her own loyal and cheerful struggle to provide for the children,—and for her poor sick husband,—by slaving ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... famous book, The Jesuits in North America, the historian Parkman gives many harrowing details of Indian cruelty toward prisoners; harmless women and children being subjected to the same fiendish tortures as the men. On one occasion he relates of the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... heart." This poet offers a striking instance of the little alliance existing between the literary and personal dispositions of an author. CREBILLON, who exulted, on his entrance into the French Academy, that he had never tinged his pen with the gall of satire, delighted to strike on the most harrowing string of the tragic lyre. In his Atreus the father drinks the blood of his son; in his Rhadamistus the son expires under the hand of the father; in his Electra, the son assassinates the mother. A poet is a painter of the soul, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... a few minutes' delay for all to have ended happily. Why did not the poet take the opportunity offered and spare us the harrowing scenes at the end? Why could he not have lowered the curtain on the lovers united with Marke's full approval? Dramatically there was no reason why he should not have done so, but poetically it was impossible. The whole of the story is brought ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... are strange! That this should be, even this, The patient head Which suffered years ago the dreary change! That these so dewy lips should be the same As those I stooped to kiss And heard my harrowing half-spoken name, A little ere the one who bowed above her, Our father and her very constant lover, Rose stoical, and we knew that she was dead. Then I, who could not understand or share His antique nobleness, Being unapt to bear The insults which time flings us for our proof, Fled ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... her was demoniacal, harrowing as a dream of hell. All else stopped—words, thoughts, even hearts. Miss Mallory craned down to see. The Sorenson woman panted as one dying of thirst. The Senora shrank back. Her face seemed dim, fallen, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... seized me. When I look back over the months I spent at Sunnyside, I wonder that I survived at all. As it is, I show the wear and tear of my harrowing experiences. I have turned very gray—Liddy reminded me of it, only yesterday, by saying that a little bluing in the rinse-water would make my hair silvery, instead of a yellowish white. I hate to be reminded of unpleasant things and ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... us, are, as a rule, brief and discreet enough; but, after the Restoration, epilogues acquired greater length and much more impudence, to say the least of it, while they clearly had gained importance in the consideration of the audience. And now it became the custom to follow up a harrowing tragedy with a most broadly comic epilogue. The heroine of the night—for the delivering of epilogues now devolved frequently upon the actresses—who, but a few moments before, had fallen a most miserable victim to the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... that we, who have borne the pains, shall also learn the lesson which they were intended to convey. If we do not learn it and proclaim it, then when can it ever be learned and proclaimed, since there can never again be such a spiritual ploughing and harrowing and preparation for the seed? If our souls, wearied and tortured during these dreadful five years of self-sacrifice and suspense, can show no radical changes, then what souls will ever respond to a fresh influx of heavenly inspiration? ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unrivalled prosperity, this distinction of genius, and public and private honor, on the ninth of July, 1861, there came one of the most harrowing tragedies that has ever befallen a man's domestic life. Longfellow was widowed for the second time, and five children were left without a mother. It seemed as if Providence had set a limit beyond which human happiness ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... long. Issy had been seized with a desire to try quahauging once more, hence his holiday. The rake was broken and he had put in at Denboro to have it fixed. While the blacksmith was busy, Issy laboriously spelled out the harrowing chapters of "Vivian, the Shop Girl; or ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... must hide from the tender gaze of the young and the innocent the harrowing scenes that brought misery on his home, ruin on his financial condition, and a deeper hue to the moral depravity ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... remarkable talent for dramatic song, living in the unworthy and mean circumstances which the Halle Theatre offered to him and his family. The realisation of conditions into which I myself had once nearly sunk now filled me with indescribable abhorrence. Still more harrowing was it to hear my brother speak of this state in tones which showed, alas, only too plainly, the hopeless submission with which he had already resigned himself to its horrors. The only consolation I could find was the personality and childlike ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... different from the design you would work on a curtain, for the one will always be straight, the other broken into folds; and the use too one puts the object to should guide one in the choice of design. One does not want to eat one's terrapins off a romantic moonlight nor one's clams off a harrowing sunset. Glory of sun and moon, let them be wrought for us by our landscape artist and be on the walls of the rooms we sit in to remind us of the undying beauty of the sunsets that fade and die, but do not let us eat our soup off them and ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... 'Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber (formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best indulgence. Mr. T. can form no adequate idea of the change in Mr. Micawber's ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... ex, out, and clamare, to cry), is a figure by which the speaker instead of stating a fact, simply utters an expression of surprise or emotion. For instance when he hears some harrowing tale of woe or misfortune instead of saying,—"It is a sad story" he exclaims ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
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