"Racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Racking my brain for a new start I fell back on those useful fellows, the authors. Presuming that anyone who had lived in that fascinating region—the promised land (if land is the word) of so many of us who are weary of English climatic treacheries—would be familiar with the literature ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... activity and the projectiles rushed ever nearer. Knowing that she had at last encountered a superior force, the sphere turned in mad flight; but, prodigious as was her acceleration, the torpedoes were faster and all three of them struck her at once. There ensued an explosion veritably space-racking in its intensity; a flash of incandescent brilliance that seemed to fill all space, subsiding into a vast volume of tenuous gas which, feebly glowing, flowed about and attached itself to Cantrell's Comet. And in the space where had been the enemy sphere, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... a 'new-thought' tea—a deep, brain-racking, forefinger-on-the-brow function. You could see the thoughts of the ladies and sometimes hear them as a 'professor' with long hair and smiles of fathomless inspiration wrapped himself in obscurity and called unto them out of the depths. He was all depth. They gazed at his soulful ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... searching with an almost unblinking watchfulness, but his ears, too, were busy with that intense, nerve-racking straining which leaves them ever ready to carry the phantom sounds of imagination to the impatient ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... but telegraphy. There is a private apparatus in their Newport home for her father's confidential work, and this she manipulates with the skill of a professional. If the fortunes of her family should go to pieces, she could find a position and support herself without the dismal and health-racking transition which is the fate of so many unfortunate girls suddenly bereft and ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... without a word and he was out of the room. I heard gates bang and knew he had, as he promised, "gone upstairs." I locked the door and waited. I shall never forget the racking torture of that period of inaction. To make real all the terrors I was suffering it would be necessary for me to enter into elaborate details of the wide-spread financial commitment into which I had ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... to the inn, and, after vainly racking my brain over it all for a time, I turned in, but to a miserably ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... tempted by the wily beauty of the devil, so did your mother fall, seduced by that of the cold, false, traitorous De Haldimar." Here the agitation of Wacousta became terrific. The labouring of his chest was like that of one convulsed with some racking agony and the swollen veins and arteries of his head seemed to threaten the extinction of life in some fearful paroxysm. At length he burst into a violent fit of tears, more appalling, in one of his iron nature, than the fury which had ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... consolation themselves, for they were faint and weary after the trying ordeal through which they had passed. It was therefore no wonder that through utter exhaustion they fell into slumber; for youth and weariness will assert themselves against the tyranny of nerve-racking stress. A slumber that was of ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of a tom-tom. "Why, oh why," she said to herself, "does some ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... of a rake, lately; I am racking out my nerves," said I, speaking aloud, with a view to reassure myself. I rang the bell, and, attended by old Martha, I retired to settle for the night. While the servant was, as was her custom, arranging the lamp which I have already stated always burned during ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... The eyes were only half closed, the breathing was loud and labored, now and then the lips moved convulsively, as if in an effort to speak. Something so unnatural and so forboding dwelt on his kind, dear features, that a racking pain seized the girl's heart as she looked, her throat filled up, and hot, blinding ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... from a perfectly cloudless sky, it became almost insufferable. I tried all methods to cool myself, by lying in every position I could think of, sometimes even hanging both legs and arms over the sides of the canoe and trailing them through the water. I had a racking headache, and, to add to my misery, as the sun sank the mosquitoes rose and bit ferociously. The Indians, however, did not appear to suffer much, being accustomed, no doubt, to these little annoyances, much in the same way as eels ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... especially who are usually well and robust are a trial to the flesh and spirit of those about them. Moore was not the wonderful exception. His first few weeks in the hospital were not so bad; but when the actual racking pain was over, and nothing remained but that halting of the physical machinery to which we never give a thought during perfect action—the weakness hanging leaden weights to every limb, the unwonted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... find out what's needed here—" he growled, touching the delicate contrivance. "That's the way! While I'm racking my poor old nut, some other fellow's going to ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... not entertaining the thought, except to assure himself that he could not entertain it, but it was racking him with its suddenness. The King was there—in peril. She was here—safe. Insistently these ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... goat, Toby," he remarked in a perplexed tone of voice; it might be one thing or another, but it sure wasn't thunder. "As for me, now, I'm racking my poor brains to guess whether it could only have been a farmer's bull bellowing away off there; or we sat here and actually, listened to a savage African lion ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... carried on.[68] "You had better tell the truth now, my friend: Was it so and so?" The slave knows that, if he says it was so, there is the cross for him, or the "little horse;" but that, if he will say the contrary, he will save his joints from racking. And yet the evidence went for ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... he sobbed and beat his portly bosom over the grief which was racking the loyal African heart. The Duke of Alva went to the captain to inquire about the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... it was useless to hide that she had been crying, but at least Hal must not know that the crying had been soul-racking sobs. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... so right, in regard to his own performance, at least, that, thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to stand, a speechless figure in the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity lasting forty-five seconds. He made a racking effort, and at the end of this epoch found words again. "In making my argument in this debate, I ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... now I, to whom fortune hath transferred his crown, And given his queen in marriage,—yea, moreover, His seed and mine had been one family Had not misfortune trampled on his head Cutting him off from fair posterity,— All this being so, I will maintain his cause As if my father's, racking means and might To apprehend the author of the death Of Laius, son to Labdacus, and heir To Polydorus and to Cadmus old, And proud Agenor of the eldest time. Once more, to all who disobey in this May Heaven deny ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... hatred of ship and crew, died aboard her and was buried in latitude 8 deg. 20'. The chief-mate, who got the vessel back to port and remained under her new captain, is convinced that the dead man haunts her vengefully; and one desperate accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... that quiet room; for it grew more and more attractive to him, and while he painted the younger sister's changeful face he studied the beautiful nature of the elder and learned to love it. But no one guessed that secret for a long time; and Jessie was so busy racking her brain for a way to earn more money that she was as blind and deaf to much that went on before her as if she had been a ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... miles and felt suddenly tired. Not seeing anything on the station walls to amuse me, I went outside and stood there racking my brains to think of something to do. The street was a kind of boulevard, planted with acacias, and on either side a row of houses of varying shape and different styles of architecture, houses such as one ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... finally, with fearful crash into the rocky bed at the bottom, sending a shower of fragments hurtling in every direction, oft dislodging some section of parapet, yet never reaching the depths of the cave. Add to this nerve-racking siege work the instant, spiteful flash of barbed arrow or zip and crack of bullet when hat or hand of one of the defenders was for a second exposed, and it is not difficult to fancy the wear and tear on even the stoutest heart in ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... this quarter of the world; but, though reasonably ingenious in castle-building, I have never been able to make it out. I believe laziness lies at the bottom of the difficulty. In our moments of enjoyment we prefer being led, to racking the brain for invention. The past is a fact; while, at the best, the future is only conjecture. In this case the positive prevails over the assumed, and the imagination finds both and easier duty, and all it wants, in throwing around ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... found out that she was not nearly so rich as her neighbours were, not nearly so rich as her position in society exacted that she should be. She was still not rich enough to be spared the sordid, nerve-racking effort to make two ends meet without a visible break. Her small economies, to Gabriella's surprise, were as rigid as Mrs. Carr's; and though she lived in surroundings which appeared luxurious to the girl, there was almost as little ready money to spend as there ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... occasionally indulged in irony, pretended to share his opinion. "No doubt, no doubt," said he, "but one must have a natural disposition to remain a child. For my part, unhappily, I'm consumed by a desire to learn and know. It's deplorable, as I'm well aware, but I pass my days racking my brain over books.... I shall never know very much, that's certain; and perhaps that's the reason why I'm ever striving to learn a little more. You must at all events grant that work, like idleness, is a means of passing life, though of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Lad. Holiday-spirits, I suppose. This trip has made a puppy of him. A stately old gentleman like Laddie would never think of rounding up bears and skunks, if he was at home." As he talked, the car got under way; moving at rackety and racking "first speed" over hummock and bump; as it joggled into the faint wheeltrack. By reason of this noise and of the Master's stupid homily, none of the trio heard an amazed little bark, from the knoll-top, a ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... over such an establishment. The younger was fat, and fresh, and fair, and seemed to be always running over with the milk of human kindness. The other was very thin and very small, and somewhat afflicted with bad health;—was weak, too, in the eyes, and subject to racking headaches, so that it was considered generally that she was unable to take much active part in the education of the pupils. But it was considered as generally that she did all the thinking, that she knew more than any other woman in Barsetshire, and that all the Prettyman ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... crash through obstructions regardless; slipping scrambling, literally clawing their way along. Whenever the rope caught, it was the part of the fourth man to slip out of his collar, and disengage it, without stopping the others. It was racking work on the frame of a man; but the feather-headed breeds ceaselessly chattered and shouted, like boys out of school; roaring with laughter when any one of the four came down. In the stern stood the helmsman, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... down there over a word she couldn't at first say, buried her face in her arms and let a deep racking sob or two have their own way with her. But presently she sat erect again and, with a supreme effort of will, forced her voice to ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the complete defeat of my plans, followed perhaps by other consequences of a still more serious character; while to neglect them and attempt flight in the boat, just as she was, would be madness—an expedient only to be resorted to under stress of the direst extremity. Hour after hour I sat there racking my brains in quest of some practicable plan offering a reasonable prospect of success; but could think of nothing; the scheme upon which I finally settled being only one degree less mad than that of venturing ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... be?" Dave asked himself, racking his brain. "And of what nationality? The word 'Monsieur' is French in itself, though Dalny is hardly a French name. Perhaps it makes little difference, though, for men who sell their time and services as I am afraid this Dalny fellow is doing, ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... his teeth clinched tightly to repress the pain racking him, stifled his resentment with an evident effort. "You may be less light-hearted when you learn that the last of our ammunition is already in the guns," he ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... idea that belongs to an age that is past. Good health is not necessary to achievement. It is not even a positive influence for achievement. It is merely a negative blessing. With good health you may hope to reach your highest mental and spiritual development free from the harassment of soul-racking pain. But without good health men have reached the summit of Parnassus and have dragged their ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... a racking cough ever since I had known him, but I don't think I ever remembered his having a spasm of ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... center of the crank-shaft is a large reversing friction clutch, which drives, through miter gear, a vertical shaft placed just in front of the post; from the latter the slewing, racking, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... could not bear the thought that my friend Marcia Raynor should sacrifice herself in this way. I went back to Arden in the hope that something might suggest itself; that a gleam of sense might be shown by the one or the other of the lunatics in gray for whose good I was racking my brains. But I found things worse than I had left them. Sylvia had stirred herself into a spirit of combativeness of which no one would have supposed her capable, and had actually endeavored to brow-beat her Mother Superior ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... Lived in a two-room cabin—it was little more—with his wife and his five children; lived meanly and pitiably, grovelling in the soil for daily bread, sweating life out of the earth—life and no more. A thin man, racking thin; a forward-thrusting neck and a bony face and a sad and drooping moustache about his mouth. His ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... as with their escorts they dodged the horses' hoofs, the trolleys clanged their gongs, electric-signs blinked their pictorial designs, noisy boys yelled hoarsely "final extras!" The din was nerve racking. One had to shout to be heard, yet no one seemed to object. Everybody was happy. New ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... workman, offered to Jocquelet by Amedee, obtained only a grimace of displeasure from the actor. However, it ended by his being reconciled to the part, studying it, and, to use his own expression, "racking his brains over it," until one day he ran ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the salt water made them very sick, while the hot stones restored their suspended circulation. Still, I would advise no one to depend on such remedies under similar circumstances. They got better; but still for many days were subject to racking pains, and remained weak and ill. While they were in this state, one morning, as Tom and I were at the top of the peak taking our usual survey of the horizon, in the hopes of a vessel appearing in ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... was intense. That endless, racking pursuit had brought out all the hardness the desert had engendered in him. Almost hate, instead of love, spoke in Slone's words. He hauled on the lasso, pulling the stallion's head down and down. The action was the lust of capture as well as the rider's instinctive ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... in casks of several hundred gallons, and be racked off by taps at successive intervals when clear. The first deposit of tannin and fixed albumen would remain at the bottom of No. 1 vat, the second deposit after racking in No. 2; and the wine which is now an astringent, cloudy, and muddy mixture of impurities, would leave the vine-grower's store bright, and fit for the merchant's vats in Limasol, and command a more than double price. This is a matter of certainty and not conjecture. Should the black ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... appealing, as it always was to her. The long respite from nerve-racking misunderstandings had allowed her to see more clearly the real beauty of his faulty character, and a wave of compunction came over her as she thought how little she, with her bad qualities of jealousy, selfishness and cruelty, deserved this ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... shuddered violently. The metal board was wired. Thenceforth every move in the game he must play with the metal men would complete the circuit and send the biting needles through his frame. It was delicately gauged, a nerve-racking discomfort without definite pain, a thing to snap the dreadful tension of a man's endurance at ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... sofa again, the swaying walls to steady, the angry man to be her father, quiet in the armchair. She forgot her promise to Crowder, her pledged word, everything, but that there was a way to end the racking scene. Holding to the hand that thrust her ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... thou'rt destined, if he spare thy life. And were I seen to enter here alone, And at so late an hour... Alas, what fears Harrow my bosom when I think of thee! Soon will the dawn of day deliver thee From racking doubt; that dawn I ne'er shall see: I ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... for the mutineers, and we were soon in possession again. John was taken up from the fore-peak (he was far through) and carried aft. The mutineers, such as were fit, were put down below to dig coals till they could dig no more; and again the work went on—weary, body-racking work. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... despite the nerve-racking experiences of the momentous day, Alan, Bob and Elmer were wrapped in their blankets and sound asleep on the bridge deck ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... beside his house in the muddy clothes in which he had labored on the roads, and Mrs. Braley and Hannah came eagerly forward. Behind them sounded Susan's racking cough. Sentimental tears rolled dustily over Phebe's cheeks as she kissed and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not long after, and we ate it on deck, in a grim silence, each privately racking his brain for some solution of the mysteries. I was, indeed, so swallowed up in these considerations that the wreck, the lagoon, the islets, and the strident sea-fowl, the strong sun then beating on my head, and even ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Herrenhausen, which had been the home of the Electress Sophia, and where George I. was residing when he was summoned to be king of England. At five o'clock, in the heat and the dust, her Majesty resumed her journey, "with a racking headache." At Magdeburg Prince Frederick William appeared, "radiant," with the welcome intelligence that his Princess was at the Wildpark station. "There on the platform stood our darling child, with a nosegay in her hand." The Queen ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... cameras and three-gram electroscopes or balances capable of measuring the pressure of electronic impacts. As a laboratory assistant he was unbeatable. If only he wouldn't answer every statement or question with that nerve-racking 'yeah'! ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... night, he started up from the easy chair in which he had been smoking and dreaming and racking ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... write, with such a turmoil outside, the hut shaking until we begin to wonder how long it will stand such winds. Most of the time the wind is averaging about sixty miles an hour, but the gusts are far greater, and at times it seems that something must go. Just before lunch I was racking my brains to write an Editorial for the South Polar Times, and had congratulated ourselves on having the sea-ice which is still in North Bay. As we were having lunch Nelson came in and said, 'The thermometers have gone!' ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... met and suddenly there descended on Ashe confidence. He felt cool and alert, sure of himself, as in the old days he had felt when he ran races and, the nerve-racking hours of waiting past, he listened for the starter's gun. Subconsciously he was aware he had always been a little afraid of Joan, and that now he ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... was nerve racking. Would it never end? Yes, she felt it would end—certainly, inevitably. And the conviction produced a fresh shudder in her slight body. Three hours ago she had seen Jim Thorpe and his jaded horse return to the village. She had longed to seek him out—he had gone to Peter Blunt's hut ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the garage where he had found the cord tires, when the quiet of the night was split with the shrill, nerve-racking shriek of the fire whistle, four or five blocks away. In spite of himself, he was startled with its suddenness, and he stood tensed and waiting for the dismal hoots that would tell what ward the fire was in. One—two—three, croaked the siren ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... consciousness, his first distinct sensation was that of racking, sickening, splitting headache, accompanied by a feeling of acute soreness and smarting. He also felt dazed, confused, and harassed by a vague but intense anxiety about something, he knew not what. Then he became aware that he was lying recumbent on his back, with his head propped high by pillows; ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... scowled, racking his brains, while the young lieutenant watched respectfully, waiting for Joe to have an inspiration. Had Joe known it, the lieutenant was deeply impressed by his attempt at concentration on the problem it had not been Major Holt's intention for Joe to consider. When Joe temporarily ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... a tempest of racking coughs that, whoever welcomed the Europeans here or there, it was no credit that the Lenape should be so forward to appropriate it! The white people were not the friends of the red man. They wanted the whole country. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Anglo-Saxon roots, a list of words derived from ancient British, and some account of the Norman-French period. The second and shorter question was simply a sentence to be parsed. No one in the class had a good memory for derivations. Fourteen out of the fifteen members spent the half-hour racking their brains and biting the ends of their pens in vain endeavours to complete their answers to Question 1, so that when it was time to hand in their exercise books, they had written very little, and that little was mostly wrong. The exercises were corrected ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... to himself the patronage and countenance of a person of Mannering's wealth and consequence. He was aware, from his knowledge of mankind, that Mannering, though generous and benevolent, had the foible of expecting and exacting a minute compliance with his directions. He was therefore racking his recollection to discover if everything had been arranged to meet the Colonel's wishes and instructions, and, under this uncertainty of mind, he traversed the house more than once from the garret to the stables. Mrs. Mac-Morlan ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... her out on to the platform like a blind woman, and so got her into the fly. The half-hour crawl to Holmescroft was the most racking experience of the day. M'Leod had obeyed my instructions. There was no one visible in the house or the gardens; and ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... moving fitfully; strange, racking gasps came from her throat. The other two were similarly affected. Almost frightened, held motionless by the weirdness ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... by himself, and even seriously racking his brain to find a direction for this single force four times multiplied, with which he did not doubt, as with the lever for which Archimedes sought, they should succeed in moving the world, when someone tapped gently at his door. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that the man who had been there before would not suddenly dash in upon him unawares and stab him in the back with a stiletto to make sure of his not talking, nor that the restaurant-keeper might not put some poison in his coffee. Take it all in all, it was the most nerve-racking meal ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... may I venture to call your attention to what a brain-racking job the office of Governor is. There are so many matters he has to give his mind to just in connection with keeping the town clean and repairs and alterations. In a word, it is enough to upset the most competent person. But, ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... into the front-door lock, but his hand trembled so that it would not turn; and for a racking moment he stood there vainly pushing a weak knee against the panel, and his breath came out of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Yes, of course. Aline, I've been racking my brain—I still am—and my heart—to divine what it is that separates us. I had come to believe you loved me. I can't quite stifle the conviction yet. I believe that in refusing me you're consciously refusing that ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... that other gentleman?" said the Colonel, racking his brains. "The one who used to be so much in his house, and was so much ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... all his tremours, all his incredulities must end here. He felt a distinct surprise at his collected coolness, his almost amused grasp of the situation. Except for the tense, guarded muscles that a month's racking, overworked strain had left conscious of their possible ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... is easily upset. On the other hand, brandy-drinking is very wholesome, for thereby the volume of spiritual essence in man is at any rate increased. Work on an empty stomach is also dangerous, as also are too much reflection and brain-racking. On the other hand the eating of roast meat and as little walking about in the sun ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... penances, energy, beauty, effulgence, and his dear spouse by his side. The puissant Maheswara, with his spouse by his side, shone in the midst of that cloud. The appearance seemed to be like that of the Sun in the midst of racking clouds with the Moon by his side. The hair on my body, O son of Kunti, stood on its end, and my eyes expanded with wonder upon beholding Hara, the refuge of all the deities and the dispeller of all their griefs. Mahadeva was adorned with a diadem on his head. He was armed with his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... for examination. If they would not confess where they had hidden their gold, nor where the gold of their neighbours lay, the pirates used them as they had used their prisoners at Porto Bello. "Woolding," burning with palm leaves, and racking out the arm-joints, seem to have been the most popular tortures. Many who had no gold were brutally ill treated, and then ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too; della bella persona, che mi fu tolta; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that he will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these alti guai. And the racking winds, in that aer bruno, whirl them away again, to wail forever!—Strange to think: Dante was the friend of this poor Francesca's father; Francesca herself may have sat upon the Poet's knee, as a bright ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... busy with disturbing thoughts. Even Miss Clifford did not know to what an extent Roger was concerned over this matter of Esther's whereabouts. The complete uncertainty, linked as it was with the doctor's guarded implications, had strung him up to a pitch of nerve-racking apprehension. Moreover, not until this had happened did he fully realise what Esther meant to him, how differently he regarded her from any other girl he had ever known. Could it possibly be true that she was in some obscure way slightly unbalanced? If he shut out the thought from his mind, he felt ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... sped on his horses out of town, But there again! what an ungainly sight! A man lay on the road-side, weak and helpless, With trembling frame and feverish cramps. I shut mine eyes to so much racking pain, Still I could hear his groaning and his moaning. "Oh, Channa," said I to the charioteer: "Why does this happen? How deserves this man The wretchedness of his great agonies?" "How do I know?" said Channa, "for we all Are subject to distemper and disease. Sometimes the best are stricken—and ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... of all diseased: all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heartsick agony, all fev'rous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic-pangs Demoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... the first day is imperishably engraved upon my memory. It was about a week previous to the day appointed for my debut in my new character as an attorney's clerk; and when I arose, I was depressed in mind, and a racking pain to which I had lately been subject, was maddening me. I could scarcely manage to crawl into the breakfast-room. I had previously procured a drachm of opium, and I took two grains with my coffee. It did not produce any change in my feelings. I took two ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... were grand follies in Angelique's estimation, which she was less capable of appreciating than even her maid; but flirtation and coquetry, skin-deep only, she could understand, and relished beyond all other enjoyments. It was just now like medicine to her racking thoughts to listen to Fanchon's ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to the last supreme eventful moment of our adventure. As I was racking my brain as to how I should best describe it, my eyes fell upon the issue of my own Journal for the morning of the 8th of November with the full and excellent account of my friend and fellow-reporter Macdona. What can I do better than transcribe his ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pans being spilled, and one of our chimneys badly cracked, we escaped with nothing but a bad scare, but I can assure you it was a terrific and terrifying experience to feel that old house rocking, jolting and jumping under us, with the most terrible roar, dull, deep and nerve-racking. It calmed down after that and we went back to bed, only to get up at six o'clock to find that neighbors had suffered by having vases knocked from tables, bric-a-brac knocked around, tiles knocked out of grates and scarcely a chimney left standing. We thought that ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... probable that there would be such a thing as an artist's colourman. And yet, without white, my absurd little pictures would be as pointless as the world would be if there were no good people in it. I stared stupidly round, racking my brain for expedients. Then I suddenly stood up and roared with laughter, again and again, so that the cows stared at me and called a committee. Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for his hour-glass. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... asked, with an assumption of carelessness, as he poured out a wine-glassful. "It's a capital thing for the headache; and this nasty lowering weather has given me a racking headache all day." ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... nothing but my duty, sir," she said. "That is the myrrh and balsam to a racking 'ed. Not but what I owns to a shrinking like unto death over the thought of what lays before me this very morning. Rest and quiet is needful, but it's little I shall get of either out of a kitching fire in the dog days. And what would you fancy ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... at a tremendous pace. It would soon be near enough to single out its prey—and still the old Fairy stood there, racking her memory ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... while the seething foam was blown over us in showers from the curling manes of the roaring waves. But overhead, all this while, it was as clear as a lovely winter moon could make it, and the stars shone brightly in the deep blue sky; there was not even a thin fleecy shred of cloud racking across the moon's disc. Oh, the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... with her quite unspecialised knowledge of history can now and then put her finger upon something vital. I have been racking my brain and searching my library for the past two or three days for an illustration of just that nature. I had not thought of it. Here is Tomaso da Sarzana, a quiet, retired schoolmaster, like ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... couldn't! After dinner he said he had a lot of work to do, and came into this room. At ten o'clock I sent him coffee. I wished to take it myself—O God! if only I had done so! I wished to take it, and speak to him, but still I couldn't. And I knew he was in torture; I saw at dinner that pain was racking him. But I kept away, and went to my own bed, and slept—whilst he ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... asked I was racking my brain to remember. I have a good eye and a trained memory for faces; and this was one I had seen several times. The features were so familiar that I suspected the man of being a courtier in disguise, for he was shabbily dressed; and I ran over the names of several persons whom I knew to be ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... instances a scratch of the pen sufficed, and the deliberations which preceded the agreement were conducted in a decorous and businesslike manner. But to invoke Samiel and obtain his gifts was a body, mind, and nerve-racking business. In some particulars the details differed a little from those testified to by the Bohemian clerk. In the first place, the Devil's customer had to repair to a crossroads of a Friday between midnight and one o'clock when the moon was in an eclipse ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the awfulness of the situation, Dolly burst into tears, and though not as violent as Dotty's, her sobs were deep and racking ones. ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... ship at Cape Town, just a year before. He had come out from England, trained to the inflexibly formal tactics of the British army. Again and again he had seen those tactics proved of no avail in the face of an invisible enemy and an almost inexpugnable country. He had learned the nerve-racking tension of being exposed to a storm of bullets that came apparently from nowhere to cut down the British lines as the hail cuts down the standing grain; he had learned the shock of seeing the level veldt, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... at two dollars each! Why, that would amount to two hundred dollars, and there would be no racking his brains ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... another, and so, adding age to age, and thousands to thousands, in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth; with your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, with your bodies and every member full of racking torture, without any possibility of getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him.... How dismal will it be, when you are under these ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... ready for our journey to Town, all the time racking my brain feverishly for some odd atom of incident that ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... mission was something I could accomplish, for I was still in the dark as to its nature. I knew that intruding into the private affairs of ducal and princely houses is often a most unthankful business. I have ever found it more satisfactory and less nerve racking to undertake a mission into some foreign country than to become involved with some petty local affair of royalty. For some such affair I judged to be the dilemma ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... we should have: 1st a large brass faucet. 2d. Pails of a peculiar shape, wider at the top, to prevent wastage. 3d. A wooden funnel, as shown in Fig. 31, to hold about six gallons. In racking—first carefully lift the bung of the cask, as the exclusion of air from above would cause a gurgling motion in the cask, if tapped below, which would stir up the lees in the bottom. Then, after having loosened with a hammer the wooden peg, closing the tap hole, let your assistant hold ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... initiative; he supplied these things. His work might grow even beyond his expectations; but if it did not he should not worry. He felt that, unfatigued, he could and would contribute to the mass of the national resolution in the latter and more racking half of ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... sat almost doubled up, feeling that she would never get warm. Her body would be still a minute, and then a racking spasm took her and her teeth chattered. A purple-faced woman beside ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... Dombey, and worked at it all day. It was, as it has been since last Tuesday morning, incessantly raining regular mountain rain. After dinner, at a little after seven o'clock, I was walking up and down under the little colonnade in the garden, racking my brain about Dombeys and Battles of Lives, when two travel-stained-looking men approached, of whom one, in a very limp and melancholy straw hat, ducked, perpetually to me as he came up the walk. I couldn't make them out at all; and it wasn't till I got close up to them that I recognised A. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... young man took up his valise and hat and struck off down the road to intercept the freighter of this prairie product, hoping for an invitation to ride, better pleased by the prospect of resting living bones on dead dry ones than racking them in that strain to reach the town on the railroad, his journey's ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... a girl's life has she a greater right to work out her own salvation in fear and trembling than during the period known among girls as "making up her mind." If she is the right kind of a girl, honest and delicate minded, it is nerve-racking to be talked about, and sacrilege to be talked to. Then the bloom is on the grape, which a ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... spell of nerve-racking silence. Then the outlaw said slowly, "I reckon yo' speaks ther truth. Yo' haint smart ernough fer er revenuer. One er them wouldn't come er still-huntin' 'thout er rifle-gun, an' ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... suppose so," Eleanor said somewhat absently. She was deep in consideration as to which opera she should study first with Madame Martelli. The latter would probably wish to take one in which she had scored a success herself, and Eleanor was racking her brain to remember the particular one in which she had read that the gifted singer of past days had made ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... o' yours," he faintly said when he reached the fireside again, "is right nerve-racking. It's like one of them ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... suddenly Light descendeth from above Which my darkness doth remove. Now thy shadowed truth I see, Now the Christian's faith profess. Let thy bloody lictors press Round me, racking every limb, Let me only die with him, Since I openly confess That the gods are false whom we Long have worshipped, that I trust Christ alone—the True—the Just— The One God, whose power I see, And who died ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Holy and Revered Father, tell me, am I wrong in not listening to the monitions that are racking my inmost being? May I hope the love that is growing within my soul will be surely recognized and reciprocated by Nu-nah on her return to physical health? Is this love a vain delusion on my part, an imagination born from sympathies that will vanish ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... young henchman along the west trail, past Rodman's and up the canyon toward the first shoulder of Lost Chief Peak. The Moose did not approve of the trip. He showed his disapproval by plunging and side jumping with nerve-racking persistency. Ginger and Democrat gave him ample turning room, biting or kicking him if he drew too near them. Midway in the canyon Charleton left the trail and turned abruptly to the left, up the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... almost criminal. From this moment I abandon all my ideas of nursing your estate, of providing comfortably for our future. Henceforward we must drift towards insolvency, like other people. It would be worse than useless for me to go on racking my brains in the endeavour to secure a given result, when behind my back your thoughtless extravagance is ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... along his own, and coined an excuse for their blackness; not aware that the direction of his mind toward Clara pushed him to a kind of clumsy double meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving wrath, as he said: "By the way, I have been racking my head; I must apply to you, sir. I have a line, and I am uncertain of the run of the line. Will this pass, do ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... prairie folk huddled trembling in their homes, a mute agony of fear racking their small bodies. Only the creek and the lazy, wide-mouthed coulee and the trailing clouds and the soft wind seemed ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... the futility of hoping, and he was noble enough to respect her plea for silence on the subject that seemed distasteful to her. He went as one conquered and subdued; he went with the iron in his heart for the first time—deeply imbedded and racking. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... he was coaxed home and got upstairs, but then, in a gush of politeness, he insisted on seeing the chairmen out; after which he retired with self-complacency to bed. The next morning, in spite of headache the most racking, Steele sent the tolerant bishop the following exquisite couplet, which covered a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of his kind, he did not enjoy music. It gave him exquisite anguish, racking him nerve by nerve, and ripping apart every fibre of his being. It made him howl, long and wolf-life, as when the wolves bay the stars on frosty nights. He could not help howling. It was his one weakness in the contest with Leclere, and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... What racking fear, what painful grief Ensue a pleasant sin! In vain the world proffers relief For maladies within. Its blandishments and smooth deceit No real succor bring; Its remedies but irritate And pleasure leaves a sting. Confusion, shame, and slavish fear ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... lives and great tables of the nobility, which no longer nourished veins that would bleed for them, were fruitless and loathsome till they changed the air, and of princes became courtiers; where their revenues, never to have been exhausted by beef and mutton, were found narrow, whence followed racking of rents, and at length sale of lands, the riddance through the statute of alienations being rendered far more quick and facile than formerly it had been through ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... near him, an action of which Ferrers was quite aware, and though he pretended not to notice it, he availed himself presently of the convenience. A racking headache, however, almost disabled him from thinking, and though he was really unwell, there was only the boy he had so cruelly injured who felt any sympathy ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... some fortuitous chance you happened to hit upon an article she thought she might happen to need, and it suited her, she would buy it. But it never occurred to her to thank you for your help, or to apologize for the nerve-racking strain to ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... venom'd stang, That shoots my tortur'd gums alang; And thro' my lugs gies mony a twang, Wi' gnawing vengeance; Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang, Like racking engines! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... folly. If a word be destined to represent to him an object that has not the capacity to act on any one of his organs; of which, it is impossible for him to prove either the existence or the qualities; his imagination, by dint of racking itself, will nevertheless, in some measure, supply him with the ideas he wants; he composes some kind of a picture, with the images or colours he is always obliged to borrow, from the objects of which ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... to be taken over again—a costly and nerve-racking experience. Like Ruth herself, Helen and Jennie were glad now when the work was finished and they ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... clear'd up, I therefore drew up a Memorial stating the whole case and sent to the Vice Roy this afternoon; and thus a Paper War commenced between me and His Excellency, wherein I had no other Advantage than the racking his invention to find reasons for treating us in the manner he did, for he never would relax the least from any ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... had brought her face into order, a sharp racking trot came down a cross-road, and Kitty Fisher ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... exposition at the last Brewers' Convention in Detroit, of the racking device, devised by J. E. Siebel in 1872, and used at that time in the brewery of Messrs. Bartholomae & Roesing, in Chicago. The object of the apparatus is to retain as much carbonic acid in the beer as possible while racking the same off into smaller packages from the storage ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... Sunday, and he rose at twelve with a racking headache. He had promised to take a chop with his friend at two, and at that hour he presented himself, with difficulty, at Mrs. Poppins's room. She was busy laying the cloth as he entered, but his friend was seated, ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... upon?—So many cares Entangle me at once, and rend my mind, Pulling it diff'rent ways. My love, compassion, This urgent match, my rev'rence for my father, Who yet has ever been so gentle to me, And held so slack a rein upon my pleasures. —And I oppose him?—Racking thought!—Ah me! I know not what ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... any good at invention?" Gladys asked, "I know he wants some one who is—some one who can help him devise fresh tricks. This everlasting racking of the brains to think of something new is beginning to be ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... up the collar of her gray tweed coat, painfully climbed out—the muscles of her back racking—and examined the state of the rear wheels. They were buried to the axle; in front of them the mud bulked in solid, shiny blackness. She took out her jack and chains. It was too late. There was no room to get ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... vigor to embody them in deeds." Thus wrote the educator, Horace Mann. And his words apply with special force to the worker in the arts. One should bear in mind that the latter is in a peculiar dilemma. His nerve-racking, confining, exhausting work always tends to enfeeble and derange his body. But the claims of the work are so exacting that it is no use for him to spare intensity. Unless he is doing his utmost he had better be doing nothing at all. And to do his utmost he must ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler |
