"Headlong" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on mad, rushing horses; heard the whirr of arrows about him; ran and hid in a cleft of the great rocky cliff, out of sight but not of seeing; saw his mother scalped and thrust back into the burning tepee and his father pushed headlong over the cliff; heard the death-cries of the Yosemites; saw the meadow bathed in blood; saw the end of the Yosemites; and crept down with a few survivors late that night to the valley and escaped to the whites. ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... a headlong dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself. Harz lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement. Mr. Treffry let out a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail. But ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... without drawing a sword, should the North make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is certain, England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No Power on earth dares to make war ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... was the second. When he got back there, he fell headlong into the extra session of Congress called to repeal the Silver Act. The silver minority made an obstinate attempt to prevent it, and most of the majority had little heart in the creation of a single gold standard. The banks alone, and the dealers in exchange, insisted upon it; the political ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... dinner, or return from a cricket match, in an almost "beastly" state of intoxication; and "cold punch" is not very constantly drunk through the day. There are no elopements now in chaises and four, like Miss Wardle's, with headlong pursuit in other chaises and four; nor are special licenses issued at a moment's notice to help clandestine marriages. There is now no frequenting of taverns and "free and easies" by gentlemen, at the "Magpie and Stump" and such places, nor ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... traitors on your fiery backs, And mount aloft with them as high as heaven: Thence pitch them headlong to the lowest hell. Yet, stay: the world shall see their misery, And hell shall after plague their treachery. Go, Belimoth, and take this caitiff hence, And hurl him in some lake of mud and dirt. Take thou this other, drag him through ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... managed to stop the negative current, and succeeded in falling towards Mars, I could not regulate the positive current so as to temper our fall and make a safe landing. It was equally dangerous to remain fixed in space, or to fall headlong upon a planet and be smashed, or be buried miles deep if the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... tying both bamboos to three or four of the pegs. When this was also nearly ended, a third was added, and shortly after, the lowest branches of the tree were reached, along which the young Dyak scrambled, and soon sent the Mias tumbling down headlong. I was exceedingly struck by the ingenuity of this mode of climbing, and the admirable manner in which the peculiar properties of the bamboo were made available. The ladder itself was perfectly safe, since if any one peg were loose or faulty, and gave way, the strain ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... consequence of real or pretended illness, resigned the command to M. Petreius, a skillful soldier. The battle was obstinate and bloody. The rebels fought with the fury of despair; and when Catiline saw that all was lost, he charged headlong into the thickest of the fight and fell ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... Father," cried the councillors in encouragement, as for the second time he paused. While they still spoke, the veins in the king's neck were seen to swell suddenly, foam flecked with blood burst from his lips, and he fell headlong to ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... the dusky figure of the unwelcome intruder. The man made a headlong dive for the open window through which he evidently must have entered the room of the inn. It was all of ten feet, perhaps twelve, to the ground, and he went plunging through space like ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... front of the first squad, of whom they made a similar demand. One of the cavalrymen, who was in advance of the others, surrendered without attempting to make any resistance, while the others turned quickly to the right and rode headlong into a deep sluit. Le Roux shot the horse of one of the men before he reached the sluit, loaded the unhorsed man on one of the other prisoner's horses, and then pursued the fleeing cavalrymen almost to the ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... weary. Albert, moreover, was made of sterner stuff than Ted. Though now a peaceful tender of cows, there had been a time in his hot youth when, travelling with a circus, he had fought, week in, week out, relays of just such rustic warriors as Tom. He knew their methods—their headlong rushes, their swinging blows. They were the merest commonplaces of life to him. He slipped Tom, he side-stepped Tom, he jabbed Tom; he did everything to Tom that a trained boxer can do to a reckless novice, except knock the fight out of him, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... wants to sell has to do is to throw a plank, any little rotten plank, across the chasm of future litigation and ten buyers will walk it with nerves of steel." He patted Steering's shoulder. "My boy, it's this headlong impetus that assures the success of the Canaan Company. If I get that thing started once, all I have to do is to advertise it down here a week. The stock will go like hot-cakes. People don't care what they buy, just so they buy. They've got no sense of value left. Why, a man found an outcrop of ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... table, pushed aside a half-written page of his novel, and his pen raced over the paper in a headlong letter to Jeffers:—an outlet, merely, for his pent-up sensations; and a salve to his conscience. He had neglected Jeffers lately, as well as his novel. He had been demoralised, utterly, these last few weeks: and to-day, by way of crowning demoralisation, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... from under the kettle, nipped hold of her frock, and in a moment she was in a blaze. With a wild scream she sprang back and turned to fly, but before she had gone more than a single step Ranald, dashing the crowd right and left, had seized and flung her headlong into the snow, beating out the flames with his bare hands. In a moment all danger was over, and Ranald lifted her up. Still screaming, she clung to him, while the women all ran to her. Her aunt ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... thou? The kings must come to Jerusalem, Jezebel. Thy chamber companions will shortly, notwithstanding thy painted face, cast thee down headlong out at the windows. Yea, they shall tread thee in pieces by the feet of their prancing horses, and with the wheels of their jumping chariots (2 Kings 9:30-33). They shall shut up all bowels of compassion towards thee, and shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to appear as one of the characters in Roscoe's pretty poem. Never was anything more delightful to the imagination of the little cousins, and they could not marvel enough at her seeming so little uneasy about anything so charming, and quite ready and eager to throw herself headlong into all their present enjoyments, making wonderful surmises as ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... retaining our seats in the low, springless lineika; fortunately, for we were all three quarters asleep at intervals, with excess of fresh air. Even when the moon had gone down, and a space of darkness intervened before the day, our headlong pace was not slackened for a moment. As we drove up to the door, in the pearl-pink dawn, Tulip, the huge yellow mastiff with tawny eyes, the guardian of the courtyard, received us with his usual ceremony, through which pierced a petition for a caress. We heeded him not. By six o'clock we were ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... experience fresh upon us, we declined, preferring to choose our own ground and pitch our first encampment. The ground we selected was almost at the foot of a noble waterfall, formed by a huge cleft in a mass of rugged rock. The water, dashing headlong down, was hidden in the recess of rock below, but the spray, as it rose up like vapour and again fell around us, plainly told the history of its birth and education. Even had we not seen the snowy peaks before us from the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... concerts, picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners, expeditions to Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau. And time fled—one of those full months without past to it or future. What in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry—arrested in his veins at least so long as she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and candid man, was deputed by the constitutional party to ascertain Napoleon's sentiments and intentions. Constant was a lover of constitutional liberty, and an old opponent of Napoleon, whose headlong career of despotism, cut out by the sword, he had vainly endeavoured to check by ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... In fact, he rushes headlong up the stairway and knocks impatiently at the alferez's door. The latter puts in his appearance, scowling, followed by his better half, who smiles like one ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... retreat. They resolved to win the spoil or die, and at dawn the Constable, clad in a white cloak, led the assault and set up the first scaling ladder, close to the Porta San Spirito. In the very act a bullet struck him in a vital part and he fell headlong to the earth. Benvenuto Cellini claimed the credit of the shot, but it is more than probable that it sped from another hand, that of Bernardino Passeri; it matters little now, it mattered less then, as ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the morning mist. As yet, nature is but half awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing from the shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused clatter of hoofs, comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried onward at the same headlong, restless rate, all through the quiet night. The bridge resounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on without a pause, merely affording the toll-gatherer a glimpse at the sleepy passengers, who now bestir their torpid limbs, and snuff a cordial in the briny air. The morn breathes ...
— The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... most alert faces; noses—it seems to one—with more and sharper edge, and eyes smaller and brighter and with less distance between them than one notices in other streets. It is there that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and run together promiscuously—the cunning and the simple, the headlong and the wary—at the four clanging strokes of the Stock Exchange gong. There rises the tall facade of the Cotton Exchange. Looking in from the sidewalk as you pass, you see its main hall, thronged but decorous, the quiet engine-room of the surrounding city's most far-reaching occupation, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of Europe: it is the belief or want of belief, the religious or irreligious views, the grasping ambition, the headlong desire of an impossible or unholy happiness, the reckless sway of unbridled passions, which try to spread themselves among all nations, and bring them all up, or rather down, to the level of intoxicated, tottering, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... sacrilege terror Of sleep, have gone by. The blood of young Richard Cries on him in vain, In the heart of the Lindwood By arbalest slain. And he plunges alone In the Serpent-glade gloom, As one whom the Furies Hound headlong ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... call at a moment when Fitzpiers was at the spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a necessity of his existence. The sudden pressure of her form upon his breast as she came headlong round the bush had never ceased to linger with him, ever since he adopted the manoeuvre for which the hour and the moonlight and the occasion had been the only excuse. Now she was to be sent away. Ambition? it could be postponed. Family? ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... had relied upon refused to march any further, declaring that they would defend what they had already gained from the enemy but that under no circumstance would they attack again. This made it necessary for the Battalion of Death to make a headlong retreat, for while they waited for support they had nearly been surrounded by ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... be happy that by Reason can rule his wyttes, not suffering hym selfe to be caried into vayne desires: in whiche pointe wee do differ from beastes, who being lead onely by naturall order, doe indifferently runne headlong, whether their appetite doth guide them: but we with the measure of Reason, ought to moderate our doinges with suche prouidence, as without straying we may choose the right way of equitie and iustice: and if at any time, the weake fleshe ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... of Tarentum, was attacked by Kilidge-Arslan with two hundred thousand Turks, and was on the verge of defeat when Godfrey, at the head of a small body of knights, rushed to the rescue and put the Turks to headlong flight. The conquerors found the camp of the enemy near by, and took possession of large stores of provisions, tents, horses, camels, and treasures of all kinds. Rejoicing, the leaders divided the spoils, and after a short rest took up the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... and ran, his terrified red face turned over his shoulder. He tripped, fell headlong, scrambled to his feet, picked up a stick, and faced about like a little cave man. The dog still advanced wagging his tail, throwing his ears far back, crawling contritely on his belly, begging in every way he could beg to be allowed to serve this ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... felt himself going through the air with a different motion. He realized that he was falling. The pony had stumbled and with its rider was plunging headlong to the ground. The cattle were ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... us, beyond which a melancholy twilight prevailed. Every moment we approached nearer and nearer to the sounds which had alarmed us; and, suddenly emerging from the woods, we discovered several mills and forges, with many complicated machines of iron, hanging over the torrent, that threw itself headlong from a cleft in the precipices; on one side of which I perceived our road winding along, till it was stopped by a venerable gateway. A rock above one of the forges was hollowed into the shape of ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... frightened, backward glances of the hard-riding, red-haired lancers, Nelson suddenly discovered a new and terrible cause for this headlong flight, for, issuing from an unbarred gateway, came perhaps a dozen of the terrible and enormous allosauri, which, spying the fleeing cavalry, ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... earliest dream of human flight.(1) Clinging to the pinions of his friend the Eagle he beheld the world and its encircling stream recede beneath him; and he flew through the gate of heaven, only to fall headlong back to earth. He is here duly entered in the list, where we read that "Etana, the shepherd who ascended to heaven, who subdued all lands", ruled in the city of Kish ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... under the slaves of their fathers; and offered to their hopes the dominion of their new, or the liberty of their ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet the cuirassiers of Europe charged with faithful hearts and irresistible arms; but these men of iron were soon broken by an artful flight and headlong pursuit; and the janizaries, alone, without cavalry or missile weapons, were encompassed by the circle of the Mongol hunters. Their valor was at length oppressed by heat, thirst, and the weight of numbers; and the unfortunate Sultan, afflicted with the gout in his hands and feet, was transported ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... day. Meanwhile the housewife urges all her care, The well-earned feast to hasten and prepare. The sifted meal already waits her hand, The milk is strained, the bowls in order stand, The fire flames high; and as a pool (that takes The headlong stream that o'er the mill-dam breaks) Foams, roars, and rages with incessant toils, So the vexed caldron rages, roars and boils. First with clean salt she seasons well the food, Then strews the flour, and thickens well the flood. Long o'er the simmering fire she lets ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... their guns, all in a mad rush to put the stream between themselves and the dreaded "gray-backs." Cannon were abandoned, men mounted the horses and fled in wild disorder, trampling underfoot those who came between them and safety, while others limbered up their pieces and went at headlong speed, only to be upset or tangled in an unrecognizable mass on Stone Bridge. The South Carolinians pressed them to the very crossing, capturing prisoners and guns; among the latter was the enemy's celebrated "Long Tom." All semblance ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... ponderous globe could fly a thousand miles in a minute, and no body feel the motion; and with Deacon Homespun, in the dialogue, "why, if this world turned upside down, the water did not spill from the mill ponds, and all the people fall headlong to ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... of nausea swept over me, my senses swam, my knees gave beneath me and I pitched headlong to the ground upon the very verge of the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... justice is a circumspect, cautious, scrutinizing, balancing principle, full of doubt even of itself, and fearful of doing wrong even to the greatest wrong-doers, in the nature of things its movements must be slow in comparison with the headlong rapidity with which avarice, ambition, and revenge pounce down upon the devoted prey of those violent and destructive passions. And indeed, my Lords, the disproportion between crime and justice, when seen in the particular acts of either, would be so much to the advantage ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was all glorious with conflagration and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed man strode like all that, we know of wicked valor, stern in the face of death. A shock, a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if to overtip the stature God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong to the floor, lying there in a heap, a little ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... and inequality. A sublime imagination is always reaching at something great and astonishing. Sometimes it seizeth the object of its pursuit, and at others, like a person dizzy with the heighth of his station, it staggers and falls headlong. When the mind of such a person ripens, and his judgment arrives at its full maturity, we have reason to expect that the strain of his competition will be more confident and masterly; but his imagination, cramped by the rules which ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... had not held Gaspare tightly the boy would have flung himself down headlong on the ground, to burst into one of those storms of weeping which swept upon him when he was fiercely wrought up. But Maurice would not let him have ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the trail of a murderer, shoved with his whole strength against a little door of the House-of-the-Eight-Half- brothers. It yielded suddenly. He shot in headlong, and the door slammed behind him. As he fell forward into pitch blackness he was conscious of shooting bolts behind and of the squeaking of a beam swung ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... Johnny's father was a physician, adopting modern methods of surgery and prescription, yet his mind harked back to cupping and calomel, and now and then he swerved aside from his path across the field of the present into the future and plunged headlong, as if for fresh air, into the traditional past, and often ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hand from the bridle, struck him roughly on the head with the butt end of his whip, and galloped away; dashing through the mud and darkness with a headlong speed, which few badly mounted horsemen would have cared to venture, even had they been thoroughly acquainted with the country; and which, to one who knew nothing of the way he rode, was attended at every step ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... his hand, red and dripping, glanced wildly about, staggered a few steps, and crashed headlong, with a rustling sound, into the thick ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... guards, but the day was hot, and on reaching his place of execution he begged for some water. A pail was brought, and he, crying 'Emperor, all hail! seek for me in Sicily,' jumped headlong into the pail, and vanished ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... to classify his collection, and Helen had gone to Inverness with the professor's family. She saw something then of the glories of Scotland, and her memories of the purple hills, the silvery lakes, the joyous burns tumbling headlong through woodland and pasture, were not dimmed by the dusty garishness of the Swiss scenery. True, Baedeker said that these pent valleys were suffocating in midsummer. She could only await in diminished confidence her first ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... stood quite still, staring out to where the Sunderbunds lay hidden under mist; then she put one bare foot upon the lower rail, and swinging herself up, sat sideways, leaning far over; in such a position that the slightest lurch of the ship would have sent her headlong into the water. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... him, 'the butler was not going up the stairs, but was coming down. When he fell headlong he must have made a fearful clatter. Shuffling along with his burden, his slipper was impaled by this sliver, and the butler's hands being full, he could not save himself, but went head foremost down the stair. The startling point, however, is ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beauty would be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions, was telling its story to Jesse the man of God as it was to the men about him. The greedy thing in him wanted to make money faster than it could be ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... And Modred brought His creatures to the basement of the tower For testimony; and crying with full voice, 'Traitor, come out, ye are trapt at last,' aroused Lancelot, who rushing outward lion-like Leapt on him, and hurled him headlong, and he fell Stunned, and his creatures took and bare him off, And all was still; then she, 'The end is come, And I am shamed forever;' and he said, 'Mine be the shame; mine was the sin; but rise, And fly to ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the sides of his tub with both hands. Wad, intending to jump, plunged into the deepest part of the river. Link made a snatch at the barrel, and, playing at leap-frog over it (very unwillingly), went headlong into the deep hole. ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... made, or new disposition, of forces. Never was so critical a measure pursued with so little provision against its necessary consequences. As if all common prudence had abandoned the ministers, and as if they meant to plunge themselves and us headlong into that gulf which stood gaping before them; by giving a year's notice of the project of their Stamp Act, they allowed time for all the discontents of that country to fester and come to a head, and for all the arrangements which factious men could make towards ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... terrene and grovelling mediocrity. This sanity, among other things, kept Emerson in line with the ruling tendencies of his age, and his teaching brings all the aid that abstract teaching can, towards the solution of the moral problems of modern societies. Carlyle chose to fling himself headlong and blindfold athwart the great currents of things, against all the forces and elements that are pushing modern societies forward. Beginning in his earlier work with the same faith as Emerson in leading instincts, he came to dream that the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... express my desperate resolve to rid the world of his presence. All I could do was to fling him out. The Casa Riego was all my world—a World full of great pain, great mourning, and love. I saw him pitch headlong under the wheels of the bishop's enormous carriage. The black coachman who had sat aloft, unmoved through all the tumult, in his white stockings and three-cornered hat, glanced down from his high box. And ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... afraid. The probability is, that the least danger to his mental independence will proceed from any apprehension he may entertain of what are irreverently styled the "old fogies"; for if Young America goes on at its present headlong rate, there is little doubt that the old fogy will have to descend from his eminence of place, become an object of pathos rather than terror, and be compelled to make the inquiring appeal to his brisk hunters, so often made to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... to themselves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. Omne ignotum pro mirifico. How do we admire at the antique world striving to crack those oracular nuts from Delphi, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... even followed, in our headlong career, by a crowd, for the public had ceased to interest itself in frenzied research for hidden pins ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... disadvantage on his knees. Before he could scramble up for a plunge into the thickets the enemy was upon him. Yet, even in this moment of shock, the old scoundrel's cunning sought and found a ruse. He stood swaying for seconds, and then tumbled limply headlong to the ground, in a drunkard's fall, familiar to his muscles by experience through three-score years. So he lay inert, seemingly sodden from the kettle's brew. His captors, if resolved to hold him prisoner, would ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... gentleman in the present instance. Knock, indeed, he did at the door, but not with one of those gentle raps which is usual on such occasions. On the contrary, when he found the door locked, he flew at it with such violence, that the lock immediately gave way, the door burst open, and he fell headlong ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... flew back and I fell headlong, face downward, on the floor, the bundle flying ahead of me clear to the hearth. I picked myself up, rubbed my smarting palms and, in a vile humor, recovered the detestable cause of all the trouble. I boxed the lop-ears of the bonnet, and gave the apron a vicious shake, in restoring them to ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... pierced the brain and killed the brute instantly, but did not stop the headlong flight of it, and before Ted could step out of its way, it struck him with the force of a locomotive. As he went to the ground, the dead steer fell on top ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... leaped clean off the ground. Striking it again, he reared, but received a stinging cut over the ears that brought him down. Then furiously he kicked and plunged, catching the whip all over his glossy body, till with a furious squeal he flung himself forward and galloped headlong away. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... at the window just as the fire swept through. Howe shut his eyes to shield them, and braced himself on the hook for a last effort. It broke; and the man, frightened out of his wits, threw himself headlong from the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... The men backed their oars with all their might, in order to avoid the flukes of the wounded monster of the deep, as it plunged down headlong into the sea, taking the line out perpendicularly like lightning. This was a moment of great danger. The friction of the line as it passed the loggerhead was so great that Parr had to keep constantly pouring water on it to prevent its catching fire. A hitch in the line at that time, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... take the right steps in time we can certainly avoid the disastrous excesses of runaway booms and headlong depressions. We must not let a year or two of prosperity lull us into a false feeling of security and a repetition of the mistakes of the 1920's that culminated ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... shadowy and stiff, in a prudent silence, which his wide-open eyes by their fixed gleam seemed to command Byrne to respect. But Byrne was too startled to make a sound. Amazed, he stepped back a little—and on the instant the seaman flung himself forward headlong as if to clasp his officer round the neck. Instinctively Byrne put out his faltering arms; he felt the horrible rigidity of the body and then the coldness of death as their heads knocked together and their faces came into contact. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... forced his way through the shrubbery, it was positively marvelous to see how the foliage turned yellow behind him, as if the autumn had been there, and nowhere else. On reaching the river's brink, he plunged headlong in, without waiting so much as to pull off ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... woman plays a very sober game; drops a ten-franc piece here and there. The girl is more headlong. But ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... thunder-god; more and more frequently flashed the lightning as the earth rang, and rifts cleft by the blue glare disclosed, amid the obscurity, great trees that were rustling and rocking and, to all appearances, racing headlong before the scourge of a cold, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... I cocked, presented in a sort of charge-bayonet attitude, the only one possible, and pulled trigger. The old weapon went off with a deafening report, sending out a blinding sheet of flame in the darkness. One thief fell headlong at my very feet; the other, turning, fled blindly towards the staircase. I ought to have caught him; but, in the unreflecting anger of the moment, coming up with him at the stair-head, I struck at him with such good will and good effect, that he fell down stairs faster ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... then rose the deadly reek of war; The dusky ranks were thinned; the chieftain slain by young Dunbar, Rolled headlong and their phalanx broke, but formed as soon as broke, And with a yell the furies that avenge man's ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... proceeded very cautiously, for he thought it possible that the passage might lead to the edge of a precipice to be descended only by a ladder, and an incautious step in advance might send him tumbling headlong down; and he had the sense to know that people even when engaged in the best of enterprises must guard against accidents and failure, and that they have no right to expect success unless they do their best to secure it. Tom wanted ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... walked in his deep, green garden, one morning, we three watched him enviously over the brick wall, that separated us. We were balanced precariously on a board, laid across the ash barrel, and The Seraph, losing his balance, fell headlong into a bed of clove pinks, almost ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Felton: I don't know where to begin, but plunge headlong with a terrible splash into this letter, on the chance of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... our opportunity, and firing away as quickly as we could load, we killed five of the poor beasts, and no doubt should have bagged the whole herd, had they not suddenly given up their attempts to climb the bank and rushed headlong down the nullah. We were too tired to follow them, and perhaps also a little sick of slaughter, eight elephants being a pretty good bag for ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... of the hogs before they came up; and just as he raised his head above its summit, two little pigs, which had outrun their companions, rushed over the top with the utmost precipitation. One of these brushed close past Peterkin's ear; the other, unable to arrest its headlong flight, went, as Peterkin himself afterwards expressed it, "bash" into his arms with a sudden squeal, which was caused more by the force of the blow than the will of the animal, and both of them rolled violently down to the foot of the mound. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... hunting and ready to perish for Endymion? But I had rather they should hear these things from Momus, from whom heretofore they were wont to have their shares, till in one of their angry humors they tumbled him, together with Ate, goddess of mischief, down headlong to the earth, because his wisdom, forsooth, unseasonably disturbed their happiness. Nor since that dares any mortal give him harbor, though I must confess there wanted little but that he had been received into the courts of princes, had not my companion Flattery reigned in chief there, with ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... be waiting? Otherwise he was now bolting headlong upon the waiting knives of the Gray Dragon's men. No sampan in the whole of Victoria Harbor was safe to-night, but one. Would the one be waiting? Upon that single hope he was staking his safety, his dash ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... into Red River at Grand Forks, some twelve or thirteen miles below Fisher's Landing. It is much the narrower stream, with so many bends that when we were not running headlong into the left bank we grounded on the right. The boat frequently formed a bridge from one bend to the other, and heads were ducked down or drawn back suddenly to avoid having eyes scratched out by the spreading boughs of beech and hazel which stretched ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... professorships become poorer, the professors will become less competent. As the professors become less competent, the classes will become thinner. As the classes become thinner, the professorships will again become poorer. The decline will become rapid and headlong. In a short time, the lectures will be delivered to empty rooms: the grass will grow in the courts: and men not fit to be village dominies will occupy the chairs of Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart, of Reid and Black, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cheeks and filled him with a certain sense of shame he could not defend. For there were three of his old friends, no others than Sarah and the Archbishop of Bloomsbury with the boy "Betty," the latter close in the custody of the police who dragged him headlong, regardless of the girl's shrieks and the ex-clergyman's protests upon their cruelty. For an instant Alban was tempted to flee the place, to deny his old friends and to surrender to a base impulse of his pride; but ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... his huge and infuriate elephant with trunk upraised. But when the beast came near, Nakula with his sword severed from his head both trunk and tusks. And that mail-clad elephant, uttering a frightful roar, fell headlong upon the ground, crushing its riders by the fall. And having achieved this daring feat, heroic son of Madri, getting up on Bhimasena's car, obtained a little rest. And Bhima too, seeing prince Kotikakhya rush to the encounter, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... abruptly downward and across the rocky bed of Indian Creek. Just above the crossing, so near that a passing vehicle must be sprinkled with the spray of its headlong leaping waters, was a waterfall flashing in white and crystal down a cliff of black rock ten feet high. On either side the stately pine-trees, their lowest limbs forty feet above the ground, marched in patriarchal dignity to the edge of the stream. And above the waterfall, farther ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... cleets, each poising his lance, waiting only to get near enough to strike. The men were now at the oars, and without pausing for any thing, both crews sprung to their ashen instruments, and drove the boats headlong upon the fish. Daggett, perhaps, was the coolest and most calculating at that moment, but Roswell was the most nervous, and the boldest. The boat of the last actually hit the side of the whale, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... desperate characters of those with whom she had now to deal. Ashamed of their momentary hesitation, Stephano and Piero rushed on the abbess and Sister Alba, and dragged them, in spite of their deafening screams, into that fatal cell, where they threw them headlong over the lifeless ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... only the committee talked; they gave the candidate scarcely a chance to say a word. They treated him with increasing arrogance. They said that if he declared himself upon this great issue they would bolt the party and let him go headlong ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Ethereal mirth, Wherwith the stage of Ayr and Earth did ring, And joyous news of heav'nly Infants birth, My muse with Angels did divide to sing; But headlong joy is ever on the wing, In Wintry solstice like the shortn'd light Soon swallow'd up in dark and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... some serious injury upon the fellow, Rodman rushed to his assistance. He had just seized hold of Smiler, when a kick from the struggling tramp sent his feet flying from under him, and he too pitched headlong. There ensued a scene which would have been comical enough to a spectator, but which was anything but funny to those who took part in it. Over and over they rolled, striking, biting, kicking, and struggling. The tramp was the first to regain ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... experienced eye saw signs of the hunters in two furrows where a pair of heels had plowed down a bank of dirt. The canyon, as he knew, ended abruptly in a perpendicular wall, and he soon saw that the frightened sheep must have run headlong into the trap. He found the prints of their tiny, flying hoofs, the indentations where the sharp points had dug deep as they leaped. Empty shells, more shells—they must have been bum shots—and ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day? To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, And warms the nations with redoubled ray. Enough for me: with joy I see The different doom our fates assign. Be thine despair, and sceptred care; To triumph, and to die, are mine." He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height Deep in the roaring tide he plunged ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... mystery of nature, which can, from the deep power of domestic affection, cause to spring a determination to crime of so black a dye. Would to God that our peasantry had a clearer sense of moral and religious duties, and were not left so much as they are to the headlong impulse of an ardent temperament and an impetuous character; and would to God that the clergy who superintend their morals, had a better knowledge of human nature, and a more ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... abundantly showed; held a post in the India House, his predecessor being James Mill and his successor John Stuart Mill; was an intimate friend of Shelley and the father-in-law of George Meredith; he made his first literary appearance as a poet in two small volumes of poems, and his first novel was "Headlong Hall" as his latest was "Gryll Grange," all of them written in a vein of conventional satire, and more conspicuous for wit than humour; Thackeray owed not a little to him, little as the generality did, he being "too learned for a shallow ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... double danger: the swift headlong river, and the sudden rush of rocks and stones, which must be loosed on the side of the narrow ravine opposite the little house. Macavoy had nothing to say to the head-shakes of the others, and they did not try to dissuade him; for women and children were in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... occurred to disturb our harmony, and fill good men's hearts with sorrow. For how, without grief, could we behold a man fighting by our side to-day like a hero, for the rights of bleeding humanity; to-morrow, like a headstrong child, or a headlong beast, trampling them under foot! And oh! how sad to see nature's goodliest gifts, of manly size, and strength, and courage, set off, too, in the proudest ornaments of war, the fierce cocked hat, the flaming regimentals, and golden shoulder-knots, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... ocean of wool aflame with the gold and purple and crimson splendors of the setting sun! And so firm does this grand cloud pavement look that you can hardly persuade yourself that you could not walk upon it; that if you stepped upon it you would plunge headlong and astonish your friends at dinner ten thousand ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... meant to go through this adventure, now that I had begun it. So down I crept cautiously, clinging to the wall, feeling with my feet as I went, lest there should be no step, suddenly, but a black pit, far down, into which a man might fall headlong, on to who knows what horrors. I counted the steps. I thought that they would never end. There were thirty-seven altogether. They brought me to a dark sort of room, with damp earth for its floor, upon which water slowly dropped from some unseen ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... great height, they folded their wings and dropped headlong, like three rocks, on the lake, crashing its surface, and scattering a ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... the sinner's soul. Wretches! while still they course the glittering prize The law of God eludes their ears and eyes. Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey; But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray. Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame; Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame; Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease, And the sweet pleasures of the body please. With eager haste they rush the gulf within, And their whole souls are ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... that daily paper was familiar. I had not expected it, and it came with a shock. Not only the compulsion, but the bewildering inconsequence of war was suggested by its activities. Reason was not there. It was ruled by a blind and fixed idea. The glaring artificial light, the headlong haste of the telegraph instruments, the wild litter on the floor, the rapt attention of the men scanning the news, their abrupt movements and speed when they had to cross the room, still with their gaze fixed, their expression that of those who dreaded something worse to happen; the suggestion ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... membership of Congress. Yet to the proslavery element and the conservative Unionists, Lincoln's proposal of gradual compensated emancipation was a daring innovation upon practical politics. "In point of fact," say Nicolay and Hay, "the President stood sagaciously midway between headlong reform and blind reaction. His steady, cautious direction and control of the average public sentiment of the country alike held back rash experiment and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... making very intelligible to anybody, even from a distance, that whoever attacks him will be likely to meet with a stout resistance; and in this way he and his companion escaped—for these are the sort of persons who are never touched in war; they pursue only those who are running away headlong. I particularly observed how superior he was to Laches in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... of all!' 'Not so,' answered the gold-crest, as, leaving the eagle's back, he fluttered upwards, until suddenly he knocked his head against the sun and set fire to his crest. Stunned by the shock, the little upstart fell headlong to the ground, but, soon recovering himself, he immediately flew up on to the royal rock and showed the golden crown which he had assumed. Unanimously he was proclaimed fuglekongen (king of the birds), and by this name," concludes the legend, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... looked like a sea wraith come to life. The big gongs clanged again, and the Puncher drifted rather than drove down on the smaller craft. A hand line caught the pilot precisely in the face. He grabbed it frantically, fell headlong in the ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... the mill-pool's dangerous brink The headlong party drove; The boy alone had power to think, While ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... appeared to be a normal man, energetically devoted to his business, his pleasures, his friends, and comfortably in love with his wife. And if some considered his vigour in business to be lacking in mercy, that vigour was always exercised within the law. He never transgressed the rules of war, but his headlong energy sometimes landed him close to the dead line. He had already breakfasted, when the earliest risers entered the morning room to saunter about the sideboards and investigate the simmering contents of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of it," said the girl. "Now listen to me! It is thoughtless to offer a gift headlong, without considering a ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge, That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high.—I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of blocks farther on, however, he stepped on the dragging string, caught his toe on a loose board in the sidewalk, and sprawled headlong. But Bob was game. Up he jumped, gave Sure Pop the Scout salute, and said, with a grin, "Sir, I stand corrected." Then he tied the shoe string by the light of a street lamp, winked at Betty, and ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... bending beneath his weight, when from beneath his hand a gigantic liffa, the most venomous kind of serpent in the country, rose from its coil in the very act of striking. Horror-struck, Denham let slip the branch, and tumbled headlong into the water, but fortunately the shock revived him, he struck out almost unconsciously, swam to the opposite bank, and climbing it, found ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Surely Oedipus was pure of heart; it was the natural sequence of events—the cosmic process—which drove him, in all innocence, to slay his father and become the husband of his mother, to the desolation of his people and his own headlong ruin. Or to step, for a moment, beyond the chronological limits I have set myself, what constitutes the sempiternal attraction of Hamlet but the appeal to deepest experience of that history of a no less ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the National Bank had opened its coffers to the always hard-pressed twins, she could not have been more completely confounded. Carol was in a condition nearly as serious, but grasping the gravity of the situation, she rushed into the breach headlong. ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... you looked up, it seemed to come flowing from the horizon itself, and when you looked down, it seemed to have suddenly found it could no more return to the upper regions it had left too high behind it, and in disgust to shoot headlong to the abyss. There was not much water in it now, but plenty to make a joyous white rush through the deep-worn brown of the rock: in the autumn and spring it came down gloriously, dark and fierce, as if it sought the very centre, wild with ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... in Gallien. The people loudly prayed for the damnation of Gallienus. The senate decreed that his relations and servants should be thrown down headlong from the Gemonian stairs. An obnoxious officer of the revenue had his eyes torn out whilst under examination. Note: The expression is curious, "terram matrem deosque inferos ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... which Allister and Clune made their attack. For Allister had run slowly straight for the door, while Clune skirted in close to the cars, going more swiftly. As the gun barrels went up Allister plunged headlong to the ground, and the volley of shot missed him cleanly; but Clune the next moment leaped out from the side of the car, and, thereby getting himself to an angle from which he could deliver a cross fire, pumped two bullets through the door. Andrew saw a figure throw ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... the French centre, breaking through with sheer force. They had thus reached high ground when some cannonading halted them. It was at this moment of gravest peril to the French that the Irish regiments with unshotted guns charged headlong up the slope on their ancient enemies, crying, "Remember Limerick and British Faith!" The great English column, already roughly handled by the cannon, broke and fled in wild disorder before that irresistible onslaught, and France ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... this consideration that a handle has been given to the sceptics, and that even in theology Francois Veron and some others, who [108] exacerbated the dispute with the Protestants, even to the point of dishonesty, plunged headlong into scepticism in order to prove the necessity of accepting an infallible external judge. Their course meets with no approval from the most expert, even in their own party: Calixtus and Daille derided it as it deserved, and ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... instinctively, he shook himself free from Muckluck, and rushed down to the scene of the tragedy. Muffled screams and yells issued with the smoke. Muckluck turned sharply to the Colonel, who was following, and said something that sent him headlong after the Boy. He seized the doughty champion by the feet just as he was disappearing in the tunnel, and ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... his unimpaired energies and rude health. Also, Duke Gustave of Maasau was superstitious, and it struck him as an ill omen that the representative of Selpdorf should have failed him at the critical moment, and thus flung him headlong into ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... the more a man is impelled to sin, the less grievous his sin, as is clear with regard to a man who is thrown headlong into sin by a more impetuous passion. Now he that sins through certain malice, is impelled by habit, the impulse of which is stronger than that of passion. Therefore to sin through habit is less grievous than to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... was at the club, and surrounded by a host of the most abandoned profligates he joined in the ribaldry and obscene jests with a zeal that betrayed the utter depravity of his habits, and also shewed that he had taken a headlong plunge into the vortex and must soon become a hopeless wreck. And yet a short time ago, so fair to look upon, Hubert Tracy had been indeed prepossessing in appearance. His neat, well built figure, graceful but manly carriage, agreeable address and fine manners gave him a significant tone ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour |
