"Bent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there is a still further departure in the first six than in the last six books from the method pursued by Tacitus: greater attention is paid to acts of individuals than to events of State: the writer seems to have been emboldened by his first success to follow more closely the bent of his genius, and that was, to make of history a school of morals for imparting instruction by means of revealing the springs of human action and the workings of the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... same, losse of office and life. The due execution whereof by your vertuous and careful industry procured, wil manifest to all the world, especially to her maiesty, and me her ambassador, your true Christian mind and English heart, intentiuely bent to Gods honor, and the libertie of the poore men, for which I trust you be ordained another Ioseph, to folow his example in true pietie, in such sort that notwithstanding your body be subiect to Turkish thraldom, yet your vertuous mind free from those vices, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... in the street in summer, I wear a straw hat of peculiar shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards and the side pieces of which hang downwards (the description became here obstructed), and in such a fashion that one is lower than the other. I am cheerful and in a confidential mood, and as I pass a troop of young officers I think ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... that England had lost the moral leadership of the world. Lured by the ideals of Rhodes, the country that gave to mankind Magna Charta seemed now bent only on its own aggrandizement and preservation. Germany's colonies were seized, and anything that threatened the permanence of the dominant system, especially unrest on the part of the native African, was throttled. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... introduced him to Livy, Cicero, and Horace. A little later the great debate over American rights burst forth and became with Marshall, as with so many promising lads of the time, the decisive factor in determining his intellectual bent, and he now began reading Blackstone. The great British orators, however, whose eloquence had so much to do, for instance, with shaping Webster's genius, came too ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... present one day when a military party came from Fort Bent, on the head of the Arkansa, to offer presents and make proposals of peace to the Comanche council. The commander made a long speech, after which he offered I don't know how many hundred gallons of whisky. One of the ancient ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, with hymn and apothegm and endless epic; Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in flashes of lightning, conscience like red-hot iron, plaintive songs and screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslavement; Christ, with bent head, brooding love and peace, like a dove; Greek, creating eternal shapes of physical and esthetic proportion; Roman, lord of satire, the sword, and the codex;—of the figures, some far off and veil'd, others nearer ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the bending of a ray passing obliquely from a rarer into a denser medium. This may be observed when a rod is placed slantingly in a vessel of clear water; the part immersed will appear bent or broken. This is ordinary refraction. Terrestrial refraction is the same thing, occurring whenever there is a difference of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... legitimate prey, but in point of fact when the trappers determined to take the animals from the aborigines, they became thieves and robbers. However, it is not to be hoped that a single member of the company felt the slightest twinge of conscience when he rode at full speed, yelling to the highest bent, and helped scatter the terrified red men to the winds. The entire herd fell into the hands of the whites, and, congratulating themselves on their good fortune, they kindled a huge fire and ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... thankfully, and, to my utter astonishment, the little boy raised his tiny hand, and caressingly stroked the fur collar of my coat. I bent down to kiss him, and he smiled sweetly on me; and when I got up and signed to him that he could now occupy both seats and stretch himself upon the little sofa, he shook his head, and crept into the corner which I had ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... also a man, in this, that the gods of Greece are far less moral than Buddha, but far more interesting. They are not trying to save their souls, they are by no means ascetic, they have no intention of making progress through the universe by obeying the laws of nature, but they are bent on having a good time. Fighting, feasting, and making love are their usual occupations. If they can be considered as governing the world, it is in a very loose way and on a very irregular system. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... was now evidently bent upon being heard. After charting for a time with some humour on the President's successes as a man of fashion, he changed the subject to the merits of the President as a statesman, and little by little as he spoke he ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... every need, and grants A rich supply to all our wants; No good withholds from those whose mind Is bent with earnest zeal to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... bent down and peered under the cushioned seat of the lift, and drew forth an object that resembled in shape a ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... in November, when they heard a ring at the front door. They both started, and showed symptoms of nervous disturbance. They both said aloud that no doubt it was a parcel or something of the kind that had rung at the front door. And they both bent their eyes again on the respective books which they were reading. Then they heard voices in the lobby—the servant's voice and another voice—and a movement of steps over the encaustic tiles towards the door of the drawing-room. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... separate and independent existence in the fifteenth century B.C., and not only so, but they must have by that time attained so much distinction as to be thought worthy of mention by a writer who was only bent on affiliating the more important of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... wooding and the watering of the ship were completed, the rigging was refitted, the sails repaired and bent, and the ship unmoored. Our friends, the natives, continued to visit us; and the old man with several others being at the tents this morning, I ordered a party of marines on shore to be exercised in their presence. The red coats and white crossed belts were greatly admired, having ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... thirty feet in height, and represented a figure crouched upon its knees, its head bent very low and at the same time tilted at a grotesque angle so that the face smiled heavenward; the hands, palms upward, extended invitingly just ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... diplomatist's move to win the game by diplomatic methods. Compromise was the one result Swift was determined to render impossible; and the Drapier's second letter, "To Mr. Harding the Printer," renews the conflict with yet stronger passion and with even more satirical force. It is evident Swift was bent now on raising a deeper question than merely this of the acceptance or refusal of Wood's halfpence and farthings. There was a principle here that had to be insisted and a right to be safeguarded. Mr. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... the iron is such that after being submitted to a tension of about thirty thousand pounds to the square inch it will return to its original dimensions; while it is so tough that the bars, as large as two inches in diameter, can be bent double, when cold, without showing any signs of fracture. Having stood these tests, the parts of the bridge are considered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... the scholars, libraries, lectures, galleries of art, museums of science, antiquities, and historic scenes of Europe, Margaret bent her powers to use such opportunities of culture as she could command in her solitary country-home. Journals and letters thus bear witness to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... invented story, had been kept from me with entire success. I therefore implicitly believed the tale in the lid of the trunk to be a true account of the sorrows of a lady of title, who had to flee the country, and who was pursued into foreign lands by enemies bent upon her ruin. Somebody had an interview with a 'minion' in a 'mask'; I went downstairs and looked up these words in Bailey's 'English Dictionary', but was left in darkness as to what they had to do with the lady of title. This ridiculous fragment ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the idlers stiffened to attention. King's figure was seen to turn the corner of Merchant Street into Montgomery. Head bent, he walked toward the corner of the Bankers' Exchange, the men on the corner watching him. When nearly at that point he turned to ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... first took to be long horizontal layers of fleecy cloud. On a nearer approach, these turned out to be the long branchy arms of the vine. The vine-stock is made to lean against the cut trunk of a chestnut or poplar tree, and its branches are bent horizontally, and extended till they meet those of the neighbouring vine-stock, which have been similarly dealt with. In this way, continuous lines of luxuriant foliage, with pendulous blood-red clusters in their season, may be made to run for miles ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... speaking to a creature without ears, for all the consciousness she exhibited that Claire might possibly wish to take part in the fray. When the green gate was reached, the plump mamma was seen standing outside the drawing- room window and recognising the identity of her daughter's companion, she bent her head in a courteous bow, but she made no attempt to approach ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... swift patter of feet; they were approaching. Then suddenly a form bent over me close; I could see nothing, but I felt a pressure against my body and an ill-smelling odor, indescribable, entered my nostrils. I felt a sawing movement at my wrists; the thongs pulled back ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... ditch, there a deep sandy patch. And still the music grew louder and louder—and at length came in his face the driving spray: it was the flying touch of the wings on which the tones went hurrying past into the depths of awful distance! His feet were now wading through the bent-tufted sand, with the hard, bare, wave-beaten sand in front of him. Through the dark he could see the white fierceness of the hurrying waves as they rushed to the shore, then leaning, toppling, curling, self-undermined, hurled forth at once all the sound that was in them in a falling roar of defeat. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... opposite, and to do me honour she filled a glass and offered it to me. Already identified with my part in the comedy, I put forth my hand to take the glass, but seeing that my hand was somewhat bent, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Augustines, used often to say: "Whence, then, proceeds so much darkness and such horrible superstitions? O my brethren! Christianity needs a bold and a great reform, and methinks I see it already approaching.... I am bent with the weight of years, and weak in body, and I have not the learning, the ability, and eloquence, that so great an undertaking requires. But God will raise up a hero, who by his age, strength, talents, learning, genius and eloquence, ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... Three Legs of Man emblem (Trinacria), in the center; the three legs are joined at the thigh and bent at the knee; in order to have the toes pointing clockwise on both sides of the flag, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Helen bent her face upon his hands; he felt the sacred tears of so pure a compact upon them; and while he looked up, as if he thought the spirit of his Marion hovered near, to bless a communion so remote from all infringement of the sentiment ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... father-in-law waiting for her, and at a glance she saw that he was in a savage humour. His bronzed face was paler than usual and his movements more sudden and nervous, while his dark eyes gleamed angrily beneath his bent and shaggy brows. Corona, on her part, was silent and preoccupied. In spite of the tragic events of the night, which, after all, only affected her indirectly at present, and in spite of the constant ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... wonderous! sate In silence; grief her rising words repress'd: Indignant, chok'd, her throat refus'd to breathe, The angry accents to her plaining tongue. To weep she waits not, in turmoil confus'd, Justice and flagrance undistinguished lie; Her mind sole bent for vengeance ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... new charges were preferred, and he was condemned to a still heavier fine, which he was unable to pay; but he found sureties. On the next day still heavier charges were made, and new fines inflicted, which would have embarrassed the temporalities of his See. He now perceived that the King was bent on his ruin; that the more he yielded the more he would be expected to yield. He therefore resolved to yield no further, but ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... my eyes as I listened to this little prayer—and I bent my face down and kissed Charley's white forehead to hide them—and whispered to him that I would tell it to the children outside in the world, and perhaps this little prayer might be learned by ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... zone the milky breasts are clasped; down fallen from her body everything is scattered, hither, thither, and the salt waves toy with them in front of her very feet. But neither on fillet nor floating veil, but on thee, Theseus, in their stead, was she musing: on thee she bent her heart, her thoughts, her love-lorn mind. Ah, woeful one, with sorrows unending distraught, Erycina sows thorny cares deep in thy bosom, since that time when Theseus fierce in his vigour set out from the curved bay of Piraeus, and ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... half-deliriously, all day. Life ebbs, runs now with the speed of a mill race; his splendid neck, as it lays all open, works still, slightly; his eyes turn back. A religious person coming in offers a prayer, in subdued tones, bent at the foot of the bed; and in the space of the aisle, a crowd, including two or three doctors, several students, and many soldiers, has silently gather'd. It is very still and warm, as the struggle goes on, and dwindles, a little more, and a little more—and then welcome oblivion, painlessness, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... contemptible. True, a great European Commander has said that soldiers will become attached to any General; a remark true of the times perhaps—true of the troops of that day,—but far from being true of volunteers, who are in the field from what they consider the necessity of the country, and whose souls are bent upon a speedy, honorable, and victorious termination ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... He bent low over her, looking closely into her unwilling face. And then—it was the merest touch—for the fraction of a second his lips were on ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... form it generates will be that of a cylinder. You have, perhaps, thought that pure Early English Architecture depended for its charm on visibility of construction. It depends for its charm altogether on the abstract harmony of groups of cylinders,[111] arbitrarily bent into mouldings, and arbitrarily associated as shafts, having no real relation to construction whatsoever, and a theoretical relation so subtle that none of us had seen it, till Professor Willis worked ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and women will live in society is determined principally by the bent of their characters in the social order of the family. Their attitude to the world follows the attitude of the family, especially of the parents. They interpret the larger world by the lesser. The home is the great school of ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... who contributed much to the fun created by Dick Harness. He was an American black, who had served as cook in the Majestic, and had been wounded in the battle of the Nile; he had received a bullet in the knee, which had occasioned a stiff joint; and, as his leg was bent, he wore a short wooden stump. He also could play his fiddle and sing his songs, but in neither case so well as Dick Harness, although he thought otherwise himself. We used to call him Opposition Bill, but his name was Bill White, at least that was the purser's name ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... to tears my grief and pity moves. But tell me, in the time of your sweet sighs, By what and how Love granted that ye knew Your yet uncertain wishes.' She replied: 'No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when misery is at hand. Yet so eagerly If thou art bent to know the primal root From whence our love gat being, I will do As one who weeps and tells his tale. One day For our delight, we read of Lancelot, How him love thrall'd. Alone we were, and no Suspicion ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... there was no light visible, nor was any movement perceptible on board her. We pulled on steadily, hoping to get up to her without being discovered. We fancied that the Frenchmen must be keeping a bad look-out. On and on we glided, like spirits of evil bent on mischief, when, as we were within a cable's length of the brig, suddenly a flame of fire burst from her ports, with the loud reports of six heavy guns, followed by the rattle ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... steed's neck the Tartar fell, Bent by the weighty blow Zerbino sped; And, had the helmet been unfenced by spell, The biting faulchion would have cleft his head. The king, without delay, avenged him well, "Nor I for you till other season," said, "Will keep this gift"; ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; 170 They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. Nothing of Europe here, 175 Or, then, of Europe fronting morn-ward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface; Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 180 I praise ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... chin in the palm of one hand, watching him from beneath the shadow of lowered lashes, but his eyes were bent downward at ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... more enthusiastic as the musician warmed to her work. Miss Hoag stirred uneasily in her chair. Captain Jethro bent ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes. And the other, a form hovering dark and mother-like, her awful face black with the mists of centuries, had aforetime bent in love over her white master's cradle, rocked his sons and daughters to sleep, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife to the world; ay, too, had laid herself low to his lust and borne a tawny man child ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... upon the plain in the morning, we saw two emus on a patch of burnt grass. Brown and Charley gave chase to them; but Brown's horse stumbled and threw him, and unfortunately broke the stock of the double barrelled fowling piece, and bent the barrels. Spring took hold of the emu, which dragged him to the lagoon we had left, pursued by Charley on foot. The emu plunged into the water, and, having given Spring and Charley a good ducking, made its escape, notwithstanding its lacerated thigh. Three ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... was that he remained as nominal sub-editor, while Cairns deputed Desmond O'Connor to do the work. Gifford, recognising the slight, bore his chief and subordinate no love, but, being unable to injure Cairns, bent himself to take his ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... I was seated in the boxes, and found a crowded audience in full enjoyment of the quiet waggery of Keeley, who was fooling them to the top of their bent, accoutred from top to toe as Mynheer Punch the Great, while his clever little wife—who, by the way, possesses, I think, more of the "vis comica" than any actress of the day—caused sides to shake and eyes to water by her naive and humorous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... wine is thrown on the ground, and from the nature of the numbers, whether even or odd, when one lets fall a handful of nuts. In a dispute the Yoruban priest holds in his hand a number of grass stalks, one of which is bent, and the person who draws the bent stalk is adjudged to be in fault.[1629] The Hebrews had the official use of objects called "urim and thummim" (terms whose meaning is unknown to us), which were probably small cubes, to each of which was somehow attached an answer "yes" or "no," or the name ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... on deck, as he had been the first aloft, handed down the ensign, bent it again to the signal halliards, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... next morning she got up early, and after she had cleaned her house, and fed her chickens, and put everything in its place again, she bent over the kitchen table, and the sound of her big scissors might be heard snip! snap! as far as the garden. Her husband could not see anything to snip at; but then he was so stupid that was ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... known to her friends as "Grandma" Smith, spending the remaining days with her grandchildren. Small of stature, tipping the scales at about 100 lbs. but alert to the wishes and cares of her children, this old lady keeps posted on current events from those around her. With no stoop or bent back and with a firm step she helps with the housework and preparing of meals, waiting, when permitted, on others. In odd moments, she like to work at her favorite task of "hooking" rag rugs. Never ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... bright diadem, Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem, Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns, The ever-smitten Hermes empty left His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft: From high Olympus had he stolen light, On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight 10 Of his great summoner, and made retreat Into a forest on the shores of Crete. For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt; At whose white ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... 'Young, or bent with many winters; rich, or poor, whate'er thy guest, Honor him for thine own honor—better is ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... curved into a flat spiral, the volutions of which are in contact; and it further agrees with both Goniatites and Ammonites in the fact that the septa or partitions between the air-chambers are not simple and plain (as in the Nautilus and its allies), but are folded and bent as they approach the outer wall of the shell. In the Goniatite these foldings of the septa are of a simply lobed or angulated nature, and in the Ammonite they are extremely complex; whilst in the Ceratite there is an intermediate state of things, the special feature of which ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... effort and device to appease the Queen's anger and suspiciousness, and to bring Essex to a wiser and humbler mind. The picture is indeed a vivid one, and full of dramatic force, of an unrelenting and merciless mistress bent on breaking and bowing down to the dust the haughty spirit of a once-loved but rebellious favourite, whom, though he has deeply offended, she yet wishes to bring once more under her yoke; and of the calm, keen-witted ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... being 26 degrees 15 minutes 46 seconds. The country in general scrubby, with occasional reaches of open forest land. The rosemary-leaved tree of the 23rd was very abundant. An Acacia with spiny phyllodia, the lower half attached to the stem, the upper bent off in the form of an open hook, had been observed by me on the sandstone ridges of Liverpool Plains: and the tout ensemble reminded me forcibly of that locality. The cypress-pine, several species of Melaleuca, and a fine ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... and the demands of the world, keeping her hands in his, he bent and kissed her, as from the foundation of the world it was his right to do. And Love's Young Dream, not bought with pain, as mother love is bought, nor wrought out with prayer and sacrificial service, as love for all humanity ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... hold of the two middle pillars upon which the building rested, one with his right hand and the other with his left, and leaned against them. And Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines." Then he bent over with all his strength, and the house fell upon the rulers and upon all the people who were in it. So those whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... ambition of the American is from circumstances mostly directed to but one object—that of rapidly raising himself above his fellows by the accumulation of a fortune; to this one great desideratum all his energies are directed, all his thoughts are bent, and by it all his ideas are engrossed. When I first arrived in America, as I walked down Broadway, it appeared strange to me that there should be such a remarkable family likeness among the people. Every man I met seemed to me by his features, to be a brother or a connection ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... laughed triumphantly. "I don't want to marry you," he answered, "I want to love you and make you for a little love me, and this is how I begin the lesson." He bent his face to hers quickly, kissing her passionately, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... than half of the year that dream-like and translucent haze which spread like a pearl tinted veil over the romance-filled woodland tract, was a veritable shadow of death. In the earlier days men bent on sport, on prospecting or on adventure, pure and simple, climbed light-heartedly down the steep mountain stairs at all times and seasons little reckoning that it would have saved them much needless ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... conversation. The career of the great Napoleon had been the study and the absorbing admiration of young American soldiers, and it was perhaps not strange that when real war came they should copy his bulletins and even his personal bearing. It was, for the moment, the bent of the people to be pleased with McClellan's rendering of the role; they dubbed him the young Napoleon, and the photographers got him to stand with folded arms, in the historic pose. For two or three weeks his dispatches ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... For "toffee" read flattery, adulation, and abject deference, carried to such a pitch that I began, at last, to think that man was born bent at an angle of forty-five degrees! Great heavens, what is there to adulate in me? Am I particularly intelligent, or remarkably studious, or excruciatingly witty, or ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... brilliant rooms were to her as an enchanting scene of dreamland, for her heart was in its springtide of early freshness, and the satiety of experience had not come. How could she remember trouble, even the broken cross, as she bent to the homage offered her and drank in the honeyed words ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... when he himself would have given up everything so that he might not miss them! Ah, if that were the truth! The captain felt an immense void opening in the depths of his lonely soul. He apologised in a low voice, hurriedly, with bent head, humbly, and Bobinette listened with curled lip and haughty air: She bore no malice, she declared. Then, a few moments later, for she was really much upset and did not wish to show it, she hurried away, dropping a hasty ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... to make your hair stand up, for the room would be so full of steam that you could not make anything out five feet in front of you. To be sure, the steer was generally blind and frantic, and not especially bent on hurting any one; but think of the chances of running upon a knife, while nearly every man had one in his hand! And then, to cap the climax, the floor boss would come rushing up with a rifle and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... said the hermit tenderly, as he bent down to see the sweet face that had been restored to him. "I greatly fear that there is soon to be another explosion, and it may be His will that we shall perish, but comfort yourself with the certainty that no hair of your dear head can fall without His permission—and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... feather. Lawyer Wilson always took a hand himself if signs of rain appeared, and Mark occasionally visited the scene of action when a crowd in the field made a general jollification, or when there was an impending thunderstorm. In such cases even women and girls joined the workers and all hands bent together to the task of getting a load into the barn and covering ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wayfarer would catch the spirit of devotion from the soil and air. The hour of prayer might be past,—I know not; but I saw no one in these oratories. Little shrines were perched upon the trees, formed sometimes of boards, at others simply of the cavity of the trunk; while the boughs were bent so as to form a canopy over them. Little images and pictures had been stuck into these shrines; but the rooks,—these black republicans,—like the "reds" at Rome, had waged a war for possession, and, pitching overboard the little gods that occupied them, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... like a rose years ago, holding still its sweetness like old rose leaves. She removed the telltale fly-leaf; and late on the night before Sylvia's birthday, the Old Lady crept, under cover of the darkness, through byways and across fields, as if bent on some nefarious expedition, to the little Spencervale store where the post-office was kept. She slipped the thin parcel through the slit in the door, and then stole home again, feeling a strange sense of loss and loneliness. It was as if she had given ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... noiselessly down the steep slant toward the shutter. He had no sense of intrusion, for he was often one of the merry blades wont to congregate at the forge at night and take a hand at cards, despite the adverse sentiment of the cove and the vigilance of the constable of the district, bent on enforcing the laws prohibiting gaming. As Wyatt stood at the crevice of the shutter the whole interior was distinct before him—the disabled wagon-wheels against the walls, the horse-shoes on a rod across the window, the great hood of the forge, the ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... at his frown Ida trembled, pieces of rock began to roll with a great noise toward the sea, and the trees bent like ears of wheat. ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... "we shan't get Roger to move before then. He's bent on seeing the tennis tournament through. When did you want to ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... her friend to be earnestly bent on it, did as she was desired. The box was brought and placed before her, and Mrs Smith, sighing over it as she unlocked ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... live four or five days without meat or drink. And this all the Frenchmen used for this purpose; yet do they hold opinion withal that it causeth water and steam to void from their stomachs.' The other 'commodities of the land' were 'more than are yet known to any man.' But Hawkins was bent on trade, not colonizing. He sold the Tiger, a barque of fifty tons, to Laudonniere for seven hundred crowns and sailed north on the first voyage ever made along the coast of the United States by an all-English crew. Turning east off Newfoundland ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... precisely who was there. You would have been aware at once that she was an actress. She entered the room with a little stride, and then crossed it quickly, the train of her morning gown—it cried out of luxury with the cheapest voice—taking folds of great audacity, as she bent her face in its loose mass of hair over Laura Filbert, sitting on the edge of a bamboo sofa, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... life did he display such miserable vacillation as at the opening of the civil war.[117] We find him first accepting a commission from the Republic; then courting Caesar; next, on Pompey's sailing for Greece, resolving to follow him thither; presently determining to stand neuter; then bent on retiring to the Pompeians in Sicily; and, when after all he had joined their camp in Greece, discovering such timidity and discontent as to draw from Pompey the bitter reproof, "I wish Cicero would go over to the enemy, that he may ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... from the shelter of the clearing along the creek in the direction of the bridge. From one source and another he had learned of a score of men of the vicinity joining Morgan's Raiders, and he felt certain now that these fellows would be found among those bent on the looting of his ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... Lord have spoken accordingly. They have spoken of the strife of the chiefs of the city of Simyra. (He has vanquished my fears?) of being made to perish by the city of Simyra, of our perishing by these chiefs; and lo! they have allotted decrees, they are creating a memorial. Have I not been bent upon the decrees? and decrees of the King have followed. And unless they have destroyed everything, the King makes sure to show them their master. For the King is imposing decrees. The decrees ...
— Egyptian Literature
... waist the fingers clutched vainly in a sharp spasm, and all involuntarily flew up and gripped at the vise under his chin. Yet another ounce of pressure, and it seemed his neck must snap like a dry twig. Suddenly his spine bent limp. Muscles relaxed. The whole body capitulated. Then the man behind stooped a little, and Rodrigo began to rise. Slowly at first, and next, as from a catapult, the brigand shot backward over the man's shoulder and struck his length on ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the foliage had not yet wilted from its moist, bright greenness; the atmosphere was a wave of light, and the earth seemed no longer dust, dross, and atoms of decay, but surcharged and palpitating with sunshine. A dead calm pervaded the air, not a leaf fluttered, not a blade bent; nature was in a trance of heat and light. As we ascended the mountains, we were sensible of a slight motion in the vapors, and a cool murmur in the trees; it was the first breath of the mountain air, swelling as we advanced to a spicy, exhilarating ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... and thick, iron-shod, old boots and brown leggings, with a soft felt hat thrust jauntily on the back of his head, coming along towards me with that half-slouching, half-swinging gait peculiar to the men of the downs, especially when they are in the town on pleasure bent. Decidedly he was there on pleasure and had been indulging in a glass or two of beer (perhaps three) and was very happy, trolling out a song in a pleasant, musical voice as he swung along, taking no notice of the people stopping and turning round to stare ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... saith the Lord,'" answered the young wife, not with solemn, preaching accent, as though bent on reproof, but with the softest whisper into his ear. "Leave that to Him, Mark; and for us, let us pray that He may soften the hearts of us all;—of him who has caused us to suffer, and of our own." Mark was not called ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... is, or was, a small green opposite the Government House, over which no one was permitted to pass. Not a creature was allowed to approach, save the General's cow. One day old Lady D——, having called at the General's, in order to make a short cut, bent her steps across the lawn, when she was arrested by the sentry calling out, and desiring her to return. "But," said lady D——, with a stately air, "do you know who I am?"—"I don't know who you be, ma'am," replied the immovable ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... going?" When Rouletta made no response the man continued in an even friendlier tone, "Well, I can see; my eyesight's good, and it tells me you're about the best-looking dame I've run into to-night." Still laughing, he bent his head as if to catch the girl's answer. "Eh? I don't get you. Who d'you say you're ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... and, as he looked at her, the reserve of the held-in, self-contained man was broken. He bent ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... rest when he seeth the other come towards him with his own spear all burning. The King smiteth his horse with his spurs as hard as he may, and meeteth the knight with his spear and the knight him. And they melled together so stoutly that the spears bent without breaking, and both twain are shifted in their saddles and lose their stirrups. They hurtle so strongly either against other of their bodies and their horses that their eyes sparkle as of stars in their heads and the blood rayeth out of King Arthur ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... pile high the fire on the hearth, and to hear the blast roaring outside, and shaking the window-boards, as if some rude hand were striving to unfasten them. I lighted my little heap of moss fir on the projecting stone that serves the poor Highlander for at once lamp and candlestick, and bent me over your fourth page, to scan the Sabbath returns of a Scottish railroad. But my rugged journey and the beating of the storm had induced a degree of lassitude; the wind outside, too, had forced back the smoke, until it had filled with a drowsy, umbery atmosphere, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... until she overshadowed the whole world. She filled the skies. She bent over him and mocked him. She became a mystery of passion and dark beauty. She was the sin of the world. One breathed her in the winds of the sea. She had taken to herself the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... his duty. I do not criticise his action, but only state the facts, He would only maintain the peace. He would not recognize Packard as governor, but I know, what is now an open secret, the strong bent of his mind, and at one time his decision was to withdraw the troops, to recognize Nichols and thus end this dangerous contest. He did not do ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... in this latitude, as every one knows, is extremely short, having already begun, it was necessary to prepare for our return. The two Indians rolled together the straw mats which they had brought, and bent them in front so as to form a sort of sledge. We sat down upon these, and stretching out our legs, allowed ourselves to glide down on this vehicle. The rapidity with which we were precipitated increased to such a degree, ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... himself a statesman bent on organization and social improvement. There was a system of local officers. The border districts of the kingdom were made into Marks, under Margraves or Marquesses, for defense against the outlying tribes. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came veiling all the lightnings ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... This came about partly by reason of the peculiarities of the country, and partly through the methods of war. The term war is rather a misnomer in this connection, as it does not express the idea. The result was not brought about by armed bodies of men animated by hostile intentions or bent on extermination, although forays of this kind are too common in later pueblo history, but rather by predatory bands, bent on robbery and not indisposed to incidental killing. The pueblos, with their fixed habitations and their stores of food, were the natural prey ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... and effectiveness. This educational committee was, and is, the correlative upon the mental and spiritual side of the redistribution committee. And prominent upon it, and indeed for a time quite dominating it, was a Russian named Karenin, who was singular in being a congenital cripple. His body was bent so that he walked with difficulty, suffered much pain as he grew older, and had at last to undergo two operations. The second killed him. Already malformation, which was to be seen in every crowd during the middle ages so that the crippled beggar was, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... called the "ship-duffle" was one prolonged adventure. At first they made little progress; for all five of them gathered over each important find, chattering like girls. Each man followed the bent of his individual instinct for acquisitiveness. Frank Merrill picked out books, paper, writing materials of every sort. Ralph Addington ran to clothes. The habit of the man with whom it is a business policy to appear well-dressed maintained itself; even in their Eveless ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to detest the business; he regretted even the defiant brutality of Scannel, a rascal, but none the less keeping his head high. The more the fellows cringed ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... did not take a minute. The first movement of the mutineers was to turn and flee, but their leader yelled at them savagely, and dashed at us with his levelled bayonet, when a shot from Brace's pistol rang out, and the man threw up his piece, bent back, fell, and clutched at the broken twigs upon which he had fallen, while, uttering a fierce yell of ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... said, "he may come into this hospital, and if he does tell him that there were two who never gave him up." When the night came and the doctor standing beside her said, "It is now but a question of a few minutes," the nurse bent over her to say, "Tell me the names of the two and I will tell your son if I see him." With trembling lips and eyes overflowing with tears she said, "Tell him that the two were God and his ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... consisted of two horns and three drums. Of the latter one was sheathed in leopard-skin and rubbed, not struck, with two curved sticks. A second was hourglass-shaped; the sticks were bent to right angles, and the drummer carried, by way of cymbal, a small round iron plate adjusted to the fingers with little rings loosely set in the edge. The horns were scrivelloes, elephant-tusks of small size. At times a horrid braying denoted the royal titles, and after every blast the liege lord ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... myself, when I learnt that one of the inhabitants had been very troublesome and insolent. This man being pointed out to me, completely equipped in the war habit, with a club in each hand, as he seemed bent on mischief, I took these from him, broke them before his eyes, and, with some difficulty, forced him to retire from the place. As they told me that he was a chief, this made me the more suspicious of him, and occasioned me to send for a guard, which till now I had thought ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... spent clay waits a little Before the churchyard has it, and the worm. Not long ago, late in an afternoon, I came on him unseen down Lambeth way, And on my life I was afear'd of him: He gloomed and mumbled like a soul from Tophet, His hands behind him and his head bent solemn. "What is it now," said I,—"another woman?" That made him sorry for me, and he smiled. "No, Ben," he mused; "it's Nothing. It's all Nothing. We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done; ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... to me, and give up the mad errand on which ye are bent; for the bloodhound is snuffing the air and gnashing its teeth, and the hooded crow clapping its wings for a feast, and the owl has looked east, west, north, and south, from the auld turret—it has screamed wi' joy, and its eyes ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... Lilian bent her head down on Mrs. Barrington's shoulder and cried softly, touched to the inmost heart by the affection she had hardly ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... encourage him on to be an ass, and send him forth again, not merely contemned for the moment, but radically more contemptible than when he entered. But if I have a flushed, blustering fellow for my opposite, bent on carrying a point, my vanity is sure to have its ears rubbed, once at least, in the course of the debate. He will not spare me when we differ; he will not fear to demonstrate ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... things connected with the new departure. Wardlaw, for instance, a conscientious Comtist, refusing stoutly to admit anything more than 'an unknowable reality behind phenomena,' was distressed and affronted by the strongly religious bent Elsmere was giving to the work he had begun. Lestrange, who was a man of great though raw ability, who almost always spoke at the meetings, and whom Robert was bent on attaching to the society, had times when the things he was half inclined to worship one day he was much more ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her from this direction either, the Goodwife stepped quickly toward a hollow stump which stood a short distance from the cabin. Beside the stump a slender birch tree bent beneath the weight of a large circular piece of wood hung to its top by a leather thong. This was the samp-mill, where their corn was pounded into meal. Seizing the birch tree with her hands, she brought the wooden pestle down into the hollow stump with a resounding thump. ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of Juan de Navarese is well known. Burning and sacking and murder were the sad lot of Alost and its unfortunate citizens, who had hardly recovered, ere the Duke d'Alencon arrived before the walls with his troops, bent upon mischief. The few people remaining after his onslaught died like flies during the plague which broke out the following year, and the town bid fair ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... and praying, and working, to keep the home bright and comfortable for the soldier when he should come back. And many fair, smooth faces, grew pale and seamed with care and anxiety, many brown heads turned to gray, and erect forms became bent as with years; and, alas! many hearts broke when the list of "dead and wounded" reached the Northern homes. Oh! history makes record of the heroes who fell fighting bravely, and of those who survived; of great deeds of daring done and suffering endured; but there were ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... rang out like a cathedral bell, above the babel. Still he held her, and when the cheers came, she scarcely understood that they were for her as well as for Leopold the Emperor. Afterwards, the necessity for public action over, he bent his head close enough to whisper, "Thank you"; and then for Virginia ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... evening, just as daylight was fading, from Miss Simmonds', with her shawl held up to her mouth, and her head bent as if in deprecation of the meeting wind. So she did not perceive Margaret till she was close upon her at the very turning ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... no reply for near a minute, but bent his fierce looks on the countenance of Cora, in such wavering glances, that her eyes sank with shame, under an impression that for the first time they had encountered an expression that no chaste female might endure. While she was shrinking within herself, in dread of having her ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... painfully—she did not fail to observe that two laughing eyes had fixed themselves with a momentary triumph on her face; then, snatching up a book, which happened to lie close, she seated herself with her back to all the girls, and her head bent over the page. It is quite doubtful whether she saw any of the words, but she was at least determined not ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... But soft, sir, see where my two fathers are Busily talking; let us shrink aside, For if they see me, they are bent to chide. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various |
