"Torrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better than others, but—as between his Maker and himself—he had forfeited the right to wed, they all knew how. But the Fusiliers had become very angry and Numa, finding strife about to ensue just when without unity he could not bring an undivided clan through the torrent of the revolution, had "nobly sacrificed a little sentimental feeling," as his family defined it, by breaking faith with the mother of the man now standing at Joseph Frowenfeld's elbow, and who was then a little toddling ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... tray and bending it down to him. Result: a cascade of mingled orgeat, negus, and syrups; and happy would it have been had the young author of this mischief been the only sufferer from the sugary torrent; but, alas! nearly a dozen innocent victims were splashed and spattered by the disastrous accident,—among them four or five bacchantes, who were furious at seeing their toilets injured, and would fain ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... he's dead!" wailed Mary, taking the little fellow from Jupp and lifting him up in her arms, preparing to start off at a run for the vicarage, while the little girls burst into a torrent ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... qu'humilie, si la, comme partout dans les regions illuminees par la foi, la misericorde et l'esperance ne se laissaient entrevoir a travers les tenebres. "C'est du Rhin aujourd'hui que nous vient la lumiere." L'Allemagne a ete choisie pour opposer une digue a ce torrent de fanatisme servile que menacait de tout ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... months Dinah was acclimatized; she had reveled in the music at the Italian opera; she knew the pieces "on" at all theatres, and the actors and jests of the day; she had become inured to this life of perpetual excitement, this rapid torrent in which everything is forgotten. She no longer craned her neck or stood with her nose in the air, like an image of Amazement, at the constant surprises that Paris has for a stranger. She had learned to breathe that witty, vitalizing, teeming atmosphere where clever people feel ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... as the worst assassins could desire, the two men sallied forth to seek a convenient place for disposing of the body. Neither had they much difficulty in finding what they wanted: there was not only a mountain torrent hard by, but there was also a deep mysterious hole in a neighbouring field, that looked very much as if the body of the young traveller would not be the first that had found ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... strange house, the unfamiliar food, the new inscrutable people—everything has to be observed, dealt with, if possible accounted for, and if unaccountable, then inflexibly faced and recollected. A torrent of impressions has poured in upon me—to say nothing of the anxious consideration beforehand of topics of conversation, and modes of investigation! To stay in a new house crushes me with fatigue—and even a little party like ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... danger attacked them. The stream swelled and swelled till the boat rose feet higher and was forced in among the low-hanging branches, while the great risk now was that they might be swept out and along the furious torrent into which the ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... for a couple of children, who, starting to run across the road, doubled back like rabbits. Miss Herron caught just a glimpse of their white faces, and the end of their father's torrent of imprecation. Now it was the horse of a baker's wagon that climbed the bank by the roadside in two leaps and pranced shiveringly. Some boys ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the avalanche of rock and rubble and soil. It happened to be the exact spot where Colonel Gilbert's heavy horse had stumbled months before, where the footpath crossed the bed of a small mountain torrent. A few loosened stones had come bowling down the slope, set free by the landslip. These had fallen on to the pathway, and there shattered themselves into a thousand pieces. Mademoiselle stood among the debris. She looked down ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... and after that a whole torrent of gushing music, with an undertone of rolling sounds, and out of the noise came these words that seemed to catch up one's heart and ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... rabble at a respectful distance for a while, but they crowded closely upon me, and I should have been compelled to kill some of them had I not been reenforced by two men who came to my help and laid about them most joyfully with their quarterstaffs. A few broken heads stemmed for a moment the torrent of religious enthusiasm, and during a pause in the hostilities I hurriedly retreated with Madge, ungratefully leaving my valiant allies to reap the full reward of victory should the fortunes of war ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... so cruel that Mahr's worst fears were confirmed. But the torrent of accusation that burst from Gard's lips bore him down with the consciousness of the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... highly bred and nobly father'd, Dash'd proudly like the rapid flowing river. But in these confines against Nature pent, I must remain a stagnant torpid lake; Or else marking my wild course with ruin, Till my force is spent and all is over, Burst forth a mad, ungovernable torrent. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... flowed in a rough torrent over Southern Europe they effaced civilization. But this Saracen wave of conquest bore on its crest—but only on its crest—art, refinements, and culture of a type unknown to Europe. The twilight of the ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... up as if electrified, saw who spoke, and was about to burst into a torrent of angry abuse, when he followed the direction of Dexter's pointing hand, caught the approaching danger, and seized ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... figure in white—his wife, just as he used to see her before he married her! That was the way her hair would break loose as she ran down the stair to meet him!—only then there was no baby in her lap for it to full over like a torrent of unlighted water over a white stone! It ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... Tom, almost reeling. His weakness and the fear of collapsing before he could speak gave him courage, but he forgot the little speech which he had prepared, and poured out a torrent which completely swept away any little advantage of self-possession that Roscoe ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... her breath sharply. Then she burst into a furious torrent of abuse. She shouted at the top of her voice. She called him every foul name she could think of. She used language so obscene that Philip was astounded; she was always so anxious to be refined, so shocked ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... valley below. Here the streams which have flowed over the surface above, and descended into the mass through countless crevices and chasms, into which the traveler looks down with terror, concentrate and issue from under the ice in a turbid torrent, which comes out from a vast archway made by the falling in of masses which the water has undermined. This lower end of the glacier sometimes presents a perpendicular wall hundreds of feet in height; sometimes it crowds down into the fertile valley, advancing in some unusually cold summer into ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... second, that beyond it lay prosperous times, when the prophetic visions of a flourishing Israel should be realised in fact. For two seed-times only field work was to be impossible on account of the Assyrian occupation, but it was to foam itself away, like a winter torrent, before a third season for sowing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... backing up before it a moment, turned aside in its course, and flung the muddy torrent of its water roaring ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... above my reach, where efficiency in driving oxen was one of the most valued of accomplishments. I keenly felt my inability to acquire even respectable mediocrity in this branch of the agricultural profession. It was mortifying to watch the dexterous motions of the whip and listen to the torrent of imperatives with which a young farmer would set a team of these stolid animals in motion after they had failed to respond to my gentle requests, though conveyed in the best ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... had a vague sense that he ought to correct both the spirit and language of this insurrectionary speech, but Pansy pulled him along, and then swept him quite away with a torrent of prattle of the school, of her friends, of the teachers, of her life and its infinitely small miseries and pleasures. Pansy was voluble; never before had the colonel found himself relegated to the place of a passive ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... much danger, for he tried to stay behind and stem the torrent of fugitives; but he failed, being swept forward by the crowd, and when he attempted to ride to the front to rally them, he failed again, for his horse could not be pricked out of a walk. The packer, Van Cleve, in his journal, gives a picture of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... with accident is like a wintry torrent, for it is turbulent, and foul with mud, and impassable, and tyrannous, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... contemplation in heaven; and in like manner the delight of the wayfarer's contemplation is imperfect as compared with the delight of contemplation in heaven, of which it is written (Ps. 35:9): "Thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of Thy pleasure." Yet, though the contemplation of Divine things which is to be had by wayfarers is imperfect, it is more delightful than all other contemplation however perfect, on account of the excellence of that which is contemplated. Hence the Philosopher says (De Part. Animal. i, 5): "We may ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Once more he had got the palm of his hand beneath that stubborn chin and was lifting it from its shelter. As he put forth his huge strength, he roared out a torrent of Scandinavian oaths, interspersed with the more hardy varieties ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... girl, consider! Why should I tempt a severe attack of inflammation of the lungs by driving ten or twelve miles through this unrelenting torrent? We are very well out of it here. This Mrs.—er—Connor—Connolly seems a very respectable person, and is known to you. I shall tell her to make you as comfortable as her 'limited liabilities,'" with quite a laugh at his own ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... and pouring down into the great lava plain; while, almost at the captain's feet, the Green River, or Colorado of the West, set forth on its wandering pilgrimage to the Gulf of California; at first a mere mountain torrent, dashing northward over a crag and precipice, in a succession of cascades, and tumbling into the plain where, expanding into an ample river, it circled away to the south, and after alternately shining out and disappearing in the mazes of the vast landscape, was finally lost ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... lead, and, in five more minutes, they reached the bank of the stream, in the glen, at a point where a curvature hid the rivulet from those at the mill. Here an enormous pine had been laid across the torrent; and, flattened on its upper surface, it made a secure bridge for those who were sure of foot, and steady of eye. Nick glanced back at his companion, as he stepped upon this bridge, to ascertain if she were equal to ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... in front of her. Something in the interrogative yet fearless beauty of her upward gaze checked the torrent of indignant eloquence under which he was labouring, and, presently, left him even mentally mute, ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... has happened, and we have survived it pretty well. The Democratic Almanacs predicted a torrent, a whirlwind, and we know not what meteoric phenomena,—but the next day Nature gave no sign, the dome of the State-House was in its place, the Monument was as plumb as ever, no chimney mourned a ravished brick, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... suggests the vastness of the sea swallowing up all that it meets. Or we speak of a "storm of anger," because what takes place in a person's soul in such a state is similar in some way to the confusion and force of a storm in Nature. Again, an expression like a "torrent of words" is made possible by our familiarity with the quick pouring forth of water in a torrent. By this expression, of course, we wish to suggest a similar quick rushing of words. Other expressions of this kind are "a wave of anguish," the ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... Begins so slowly, and from such slight source, An infant's hand might stem its breach with clay; But let the stream get deeper, and philosophy— Ay, and religion too—shall strive in vain To turn the headlong torrent. Old Play. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... So soon, however, as she had regained her freedom, and had passed beyond the influence of this spear, she undertook to avenge herself by opening the gates of the mountain and letting loose a deluge of lava. Again with his spear-point Kaululaau drew lines on the ground, beyond which the deadly torrent could not pass, and through the hot air, amid the rain of ashes and the belching of sulphurous steam, he regained his ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... begun speaking with a forced calmness that gave a monotony to his voice, but the sincerity of his plea had brought a fire into it that mingled persuasively with the soothing softness of the voice itself. Conscience felt herself perilously swept by a torrent of thoughts that were all of the senses; the stifled senses of which he had just spoken, straining hard for release from their curbing. His splendid physical fitness; the almost gladiatorial alertness of his ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... tones of the instrument rolled up from its recesses, and filled the apartment with a torrent of majestic sounds, as the musician swayed to and fro in the enthusiasm of his sublime inspirations, and enhanced the divine symphony by the crash of many thrilling and abrupt discords, the Rosicrucian gazed with awe upon the responsive grandeur of his countenance. The impetus of his superb ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... setting sun fell upon her countenance, from which the play of the young heart and warm fancy had fled, and in its deep and still repose the ravages of disease were darkly visible. What were then his emotions! His heart was like stone; but he felt a rush as of a torrent to his temples: his eyes grew dizzy,—he was stunned by the greatness of his despair. For the last week he had taken hope for his companion; Gertrude had seemed so much stronger, for her happiness had given ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tom's horse—"It's winning," and Tom's head swam at the sound. On still nearer, and now they have passed. In the retreating, straggling crowd he can see his horse still, but it seems to be going back instead of forward. Like a torrent the others overhaul and pass it. Then a louder shout than usual proclaims the race over, and the favourite beaten, and Tom staggers down to his seat ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... encouraged further invaders; and Kent, east of the Medway, and the Isle of Wight may have been the next morsels they swallowed. These early comers were Jutes, but their easy success led to imitation by their more numerous southern neighbours, the Angles and Saxons; and the torrent of conquest grew in volume and rapidity. Invaders by sea naturally sailed or rowed up the rivers, and all conquerors master the plains before the hills, which are the home of lost causes and the refuge of native states. Their ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... gorge round the S. Scolastica hill (the other side behind Nero's ruins is a hill covered with pale green scrub, beech, or more likely alder), down below Subiaco. In the ever-widening valley it is an impetuous stream, but not at all a torrent; pale green filling up a narrow bed between pale green willows, here and there slackening into pools with delicate green waving plants: a very unexpected and (to me) inexplicable sight among those mountains which are more arid than ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Pyrenees, and through the passes of the Pyrenees perpetually cavalcaded the high adventurers of Christendom. The Basques—a strange and very strong small people—were the pivot of that reconquest, but the valley of the torrent of the Aragon was its channel. The life of St. Gregory is contemporaneous with that of El Cid Campeador. In the same year that St. Gregory died, Toledo, the sacred centre of Spain, was at last forced from the Mohammedans, and their Jewish allies, and firmly held. All ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... the Feldberg tears a raging Foaming torrent through the forests To the Rhine—its name is Wehra. In the narrow valley standeth 'Midst the rocks a single fir-tree; In the branches sat the haggard Wicked wood-sprite Meysenhartus, Who to-day behaved quite badly: Showing his sharp teeth and grinning, Tore a branch off from the fir-tree, And kept ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... M'Ginnis stirred, groaned, opened swollen eyelids and, aided by some ready arm, sat up feebly. Then he glanced up at the ring of peering faces and down upon his rent and dusty person, and fell to a sudden, fierce torrent of curses; cursing thus, his strength seemed to return all at once, for he sprang to his feet and with clenched fists drove through the crowd, and lifting a flap in the bar, opened a door beyond ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... Bradley, leaning forward to absorb the speaker's torrent of impassioned utterance. When he ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... plainely. I haue in equall ballance iustly weigh'd, What wrongs our Arms may do, what wrongs we suffer, And finde our Griefes heauier then our Offences. Wee see which way the streame of Time doth runne, And are enforc'd from our most quiet there, By the rough Torrent of Occasion, And haue the summarie of all our Griefes (When time shall serue) to shew in Articles; Which long ere this, wee offer'd to the King, And might, by no Suit, gayne our Audience: When wee are wrong'd, and would vnfold our Griefes, Wee are ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... corpuscles of my blood. Up and down their rippling billows my memory runs. For always I see them,—green and blossom-starred in the Springtime; or drenched with the driving summer deluge that made each draw a brimming torrent; or golden, purple, and silver-rimmed in the glorious Autumn. I have seen them gray in the twilight, still and tenderly verdant at noonday, and cold and frost-wreathed under the white star-beams. I ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... in thick forest, and the track was much narrower, so that it had become worn into a hollow, as if it were the dry bed of a torrent. The horses and the carters were weary, yet they were obliged to plod on, as the arms had to be delivered before the morrow. They spoke little, except to urge the animals. Felix soon dropped into a reclining posture (uneasy as it ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... enemies, darkly hinted at, and the consequences clearly threatened. He saw Caroline was no common thief, and Franklin no common man. There were moments when he actually believed the fact really was as Franklin represented—and, thus quailing under the torrent of eloquence to which the voice and manner gave something absolutely irresistible, half suffocated with rage and fear, he said with ill ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... "nor'-wester," had done much towards softening the snow. It took us a long time to get down to where the bathing-place had been, for the sod wall was quite carried away, and there was now only a heap of ruin, with a muddy torrent pouring through the large gap and washing it still more away. Close to this was a very sunny sheltered down, or rather hill; and as the snow was rapidly melting off its warm sloping sides we agreed to climb it and see if any sheep could be discovered, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... very little room for self-congratulation; some who affirm, that books have no influence upon the publick, that no age was ever made better by its authors, and that to call upon mankind to correct their manners, is, like Xerxes, to scourge the wind, or shackle the torrent. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... you. I have come to spend the days of respite that my very conscientious and very devoted collaborator allows me. I am taking up again a novel on the THEATRE, the first part of which I had left on my desk, and I plunge every day in a little icy torrent which tumbles me about and makes me sleep like a top. How comfortable one is here with these two little children who laugh and chatter from morning till night like birds, and how foolish it is to go to compose and to put on MADE UP THINGS when the reality is so easy and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... case forced Jack to raise his head until both ears were above the surface, and thus, while he employed his eyes to follow the movements of the couple, he sought to use his ears to discover the approach of the trio, though the rushing torrent forbade full ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... opposed to trammels and scruples of any kind in such respect; and poured round the painter dense showers of versified adulation, so infused with ideality and Platonism that the simple rules of right and wrong were quite washed away by the harmonious and transcendental torrent. Romney, weak, vain, selfish, suffered himself to be led down paths which, however flowery and pleasant, were yet mean and contemptible enough, and listening to the twanging of Hayley's lyre, turned a ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... enough to be indifferent to the measure proposed, quietly sat down. Sally produced the formidable pair of scissors that always hung at her side, and began to cut in a merciless manner. She expected some remonstrance or some opposition, and had a torrent of words ready to flow forth at the least sign of rebellion; but Ruth was still and silent, with meekly-bowed head, under the strange hands that were shearing her beautiful hair into the clipped shortness of a boy's. Long before she ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I had never seen before. He was young and ragged, with one eye blank, but the other ablaze with some fell excitement. And straightway he burst into a low torrent of words, of which all I knew was that they were Italian, and therefore news of Raffles, if only I had known the language! But dumb-show might help us somewhat, and in I dragged him, though against his will, a new alarm ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... of time were of a sudden flung open. In the space of a few years something like five centuries poured over the land. Nikola stood on the rocks with his sons hoping to escape the devastating torrent. But there was no way of escape. They must swim with the ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... seriously of this one beautiful afternoon as he lay on the side of a deep ravine beneath a big weather-beaten fir tree. Below, a brook gurgled, now very small owing to the dryness of the season, but at times swollen by floods into a raging torrent. Across this ravine the mountain rose steep and rugged. Along its side a narrow trail wound, worn smooth by the feet of Indians, mountain sheep, and other denizens of the wild. Reynolds idly wondered whither ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... long thy power hath blessed me, sure it still Will lead me on O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the morning we were at the foot of the rapid under the bank on the opposite side of the river from the town of Hsintan. It was an exciting scene. A swirling torrent with a roar like thunder was frothing down the cataract. Above, barriers of rocks athwart the stream stretched like a weir across the river, damming the deep still water behind it. The shore was strewn with boulders. Groups of trackers were on the bank squatting ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... of waiting, and then the fusillade began again, pitifully weak from the sheepmen. When the horsemen had whirled out of sight Lem and Newt lay groaning on the ground, while Tip O'Niell lay strangling in a torrent of blood that rushed from what ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... innate, indelible, and irremediable load of folly and inconstancy?" "What, wretched man (I say to myself) is it given to you, as if you were an illustrious and learned teacher, to oppose the force of so violent a torrent, and keep the charge committed to you against such a series of inveterate crimes which has spread far and wide, without inter- ruption, for so many years? Hold thy peace: to do otherwise, is to tell the foot to see, and ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... touching the edges of the watery clouds, and drew dull sparks from a thousand bayonets. Bayonets—they were everywhere, cleaving the fog or flowing beneath it in rivers of steel. High on the wall of masonry and earth a great gun loomed, and around it figures moved in silhouettes. Below, a broad torrent of bayonets swept through the iron barred gateway, out into the shadowy plain. It became lighter. Faces grew more distinct among the marching masses ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Missouri, its water is clear and its banks are broken and picturesque. After it joins the Missouri the scene changes. The latter stream is of a chocolate hue, and its current is very rapid. All its characteristics are imparted to the combined stream. The Mississippi becomes a rapid, tortuous, seething torrent. It loses its blue, transparent water, and takes the complexion of the Missouri. Thus "it goes unvexed ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... The torrent of vilification died on the man's lips. He stared past the constable with bulging eyes. From the rocks three figures had come. Two of them carried rifles. All three of them he recognized. His astonishment paralyzed the scurrilous tongue. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... fact as the city contained—that to himself he was far from being swallowed, that he was, in fact, so real to himself that the rest of the city was rather shadowy and unreal, and that he was immensely concerned in a thousand-flashing torrent of thoughts, in a mix-up of appetite and desires, and in the condition and apparel of his body. That as he sat at his desk, for instance, it was important to him to discover how he could break himself of a new habit of biting the end of ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... sad drooping bellwort, and no more The snowy trilliums crowd the forest's floor; The purpling grasses are no longer young, And summer's wide-set door O'er the thronged hills and the broad panting earth Lets in the torrent of the later bloom, Haytime, and harvest, and the after mirth, The slow soft ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... of Hovig after this span of time to be particularly offensive. The generator lay in a lower corner, half buried under other molded and unrecognizable debris. Dasinger uncovered it, feeling as if he were drowning in the invisible torrent pouring out from it, knelt down and placed the light ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... such a horror of terrible suffering, mental and physical, as never swept over the body and soul of mortal man. I felt my heart thumping and beating as though it would burst forth from my bosom; the hot, hissing blood rushed to my aching, fevered brain, and a torrent of sweat burst forth on my icy forehead. I could not have suffered more physical agony had a thousand swords been driven through my quivering body, nor would my miserable soul have been in more insufferable pain had it been ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... civil authorities during all this commotion? is the natural question that suggests itself to one who knows how in London, under any disturbance, they would oppose themselves to check such proceedings. And why, if the civil authorities are too weak to resist the torrent, is there not a sufficient military force to stem it? is the next question that presents itself. No one seems to know where the blame lies, but every one foretells a dangerous result from this unaccountable ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... you mistake in my character, and imagine that to be coldness which is just the contrary. For, when I am hurt by the person most dear to me, I must let out a whole torrent of emotions, in which tenderness would be uppermost, or stifle them altogether; and it appears to me almost a duty to stifle them, when I imagine that I ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... their fastnesses; and then in the light of early dawn, in single file they climbed the ladder, up through the scuttle. And straddling the ridgepole with daggers between their teeth, alas, they became dizzy and toppled down the steep shingles to the gutter, to be whirled away in the torrent of an April shower. Ah me! Had only the roof been flat! Then it would have been for them a reservation where they might have lived on and waited for the sound of children's feet to come again. Then when those feet had come and the old life ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... retribution was at hand, and the wicked city met with sudden destruction, for one night Dahut stole the silver key for the purpose of opening the city gates to admit her lover, and in the darkness by mistake opened the sluices. King Gradlon was awakened by St Gwennole, who commanded him to flee, as the torrent was reaching the palace. He mounted his horse, and, taking his worthless daughter behind him, set off at a gallop, the incoming flood seething and boiling at his steed's fetlocks. The torrent was about to overtake and submerge him when a voice from behind called out: ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... crossing the Potomac, though not without much trouble and difficulty. When he stated his intention of wearing his uniform, I explained to him the invariable custom of the Confederate soldiers, of never allowing the smallest peculiarity of dress or appearance to pass without a torrent of jokes, which, however good-humoured, ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... and nearer every day the torrent of invasion rolled on—sweeping before it, from post to post, the various corps which had been left to watch the Rhine. Marmont, Mortier, Victor, and Ney, commanding in all about 50,000 men, retired of necessity before the enemy. It had been ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... hither for a few days, to repose myself after a torrent of diversions, and am writing to you in my charming bow-window with a tranquillity and satisfaction which, I fear, I am grown old enough to prefer to the hurry of amusements, in which the whole world has lived for this last week. We have at last celebrated ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... rushed like a torrent over Glaris and Miltodi; there he learnt that Molitor had told him the truth, and that Jallachieh and Linsken had been beaten and dispersed, that Massena was advancing on Schwitz, and that General Rosenberg, who had been given the defence of the bridge of Muotta, had been ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... follows the torrent of that terrible criticism. Pope was not such a fool as to try to make out that Addison was a fool. He knew that Addison was not a fool, and he knew that Addison knew it. But hatred, in Pope's case, had become so great and, I was almost going to say, so pure, that ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... they only gave them a good trouncing in their own pond." He choked here, out of pity for her, keeping back the torrent of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the spot and looked carefully over. A tiny stream was just beginning to run through the path they had occupied, which was increasing each moment, and would speedily reach the proportions of a torrent. But, although he saw this, there was something which interested him still more, and that was a party of five Indians attentively examining the remains of the antelope, and the signs around it, as if they were ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... a measure—pass, or dream they pass, on the swift torrent of animal desire; but women are more clairvoyant in these things, and their love being more diffused, and, in a sense, more spiritual, is not so easily satisfied by mere ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the sentimentalists Mackenzie and Sterne; and his sense of rhythm and melody had been trained by his emulation of earlier Scotch lyricists, whose lilting cadences flow towards him as highland rills to the gathering torrent. Sung to the notes of his native tunes, and infused with the local color of Scotch life, the sentimental themes assumed the freshness of novelty. Giving a new ardor to revolutionary tendencies,—Burns revolted against the orthodoxy of the "Auld Lichts," depicting its representatives ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Fan, with the jets shot forth in rays, the Fortress, which seemed to be defended by waterspouts, the Faithful Friend, with her plume crowned with the rainbows, the Giant, spurting forth a vertical torrent twenty feet round and more ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the service of the empire—Boniface and Aetius, the former of whom was governor of Africa. They were, unfortunately, rivals, and their dissensions and jealousies compromised the empire. United, they could have withstood, perhaps, the torrent which was about to sweep over Africa and Italy. Aetius persuaded the emperor to recall Boniface, while he advised the Count to disobey the summons, representing it as a sentence of death. Boniface put himself in the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... hand, speaks of the Grande Chartreuse as 'one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes.... I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, nor a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry.' 4. The same passionate appreciation extends with the Romanticists to all full and rich beauty and everything grand and heroic. 5. This is naturally connected also ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... dwarfish, fairy-like Italian girl, in love with Wilhelm, her protector. She glides before us in the mazy dance, or whirls her tambourine like an Ariel. Full of fervor, full of love, full of rapture, she is overwhelmed with the torrent of despair at finding her love is not returned, becomes insane, and dies.—Goethe, Wilhelm ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... way-side inn, amusing themselves with looking out upon their surroundings. They were environed by a scene of universal white. Above them towered vast Alpine summits, where the wild wind blew, sweeping the snow-wreaths into the air. In front was a deep ravine, at the bottom of which there ran a torrent that foamed and tossed over rocks and boulders. It was not possible to take a walk to any distance. Their boots were made for lighter purposes than plunging through snow-drifts; and so they were forced to remain indoors, and pass the ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... he had flung off a mask. From soft and cat-like that he had been during the past few moments, he grew of a sudden savage as a tiger. He leapt to his feet, his face crimson, his eyes seeming to blaze, and the words he spoke came now in a hot, confused, and almost incoherent torrent. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... ninth century to Pomponatius in the sixteenth, protests or suggestions, more or less timid, had been made by thoughtful men against this system. Medicine had made some advance toward a better view, but the theological torrent had generally overwhelmed all who supported a scientific treatment. At last, toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men made a beginning of a much more serious attack upon this venerable superstition. The revival of learning, and the impulse to thought on material matters ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the "Notes on Virginia." His opposition to slavery is as fierce here as of old, but it takes various phases,—sometimes sweeping against the hated system with a torrent of facts,—sometimes battering it with a hard, cold logic,—sometimes piercing it with deadly queries and suggestions,—and sometimes, with his blazing hate of all oppression, biting and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... and to ease myself with making water; which I very plentifully did, to the great astonishment of the people; who, conjecturing by my motion what I was going to do, immediately opened to the right and left on that side, to avoid the torrent, which fell with such noise and violence from me. But before this, they had daubed my face and both my hands with a sort of ointment, very pleasant to the smell, which, in a few minutes, removed all the smart of their arrows. These circumstances, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... vain thing: that the mantle of dignity in which he wrapped himself successfully cloaked his sense of injury. Iff smiled a meaningless smile up at the inscrutable skies. And the moonlit miles slipped beneath the wheels like a torrent of moulten silver. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... things the drowsy snail. Seated upon a log, and enjoying greatly a circumstance which gave him all the pleasure of travel without its fatigue, our lazy ancestor drifted down many a day's journey, till the torrent, subsiding, left him and his log upon the bank of the River of Fish. He mow found himself in a strange country, but there was plenty of slime, both on ground and leaf, and there was no occasion for rapid motion; then what cared he? It was in the middle of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... crawfish. Why we weren't seen I don't know, but we had gone all of one hundred feet before they spotted us. Fortunately we were on the edge of a shallow shell hole when the sentry caught our movements and Fritz cut loose with the "typewriters." We rolled in. A perfect torrent of bullets ripped up the dirt and cascaded us with gravel and mud. The noise of the bullets "crackling" a yard ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... glory; years of bitter disappointment, seasons when the Championship had been missed by a scant margin, a drop-kick striking the cross-bar, Butch Brewster blindly crashing into an upright. But now, all their pent-up joy flowed forth in a mighty torrent! Singing, yelling, dancing, howling, the Bannister Band leading them, the Gold and Green students, alumni, Faculty, and supporters, snake-danced around Bannister Field. A vast, writhing, sinuous line, it wound around the gridiron, everyone who possessed a hat flinging it over the cross-bars. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... have it straight; so that he can't wriggle out of it!" exclaimed Newall, as Paul paused, unable to get out the words that came as a torrent to the lips. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... God! Beatrice! why is not thy succour lent To him, who so much lov'd thee, as to leave For thy sake all the multitude admires? Dost thou not hear how pitiful his wail, Nor mark the death, which in the torrent flood, Swoln mightier than a sea, him struggling holds?" "Ne'er among men did any with such speed Haste to their profit, flee from their annoy, As when these words were spoken, I came here, Down from my blessed seat, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... wiser course, and finding it impossible to stem the torrent, determined to turn the eagerness of the multitude to some account. A licence-fee of 30s., or half an ounce of gold, per month was imposed, which, with few exceptions, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... of Mr. Davies's round face was above the bulwarks when this torrent of abuse descended upon him; and it rose inch by inch as the shower continued: blank amazement, bewilderment, rage, and injured pride chasing each other across it till he saw his superior officer's left eyelid flutter ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... recognize him. You deceived me at first when you spoke of meeting him—I thought you had a message from Jim—but this talk of merrymaking is beneath you." He shrugged his shoulders in disgust. He felt the torrent of grief that rent her. No sob escaped her lips; there was no convulsive movement of shoulder. She rode beside him, still as the desert before the sand-storm breaks, her soul seared with white-hot ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... the brother's heart was as quick in taking measures for his safety. As the ice on which the younger lad stood parted, the elder sprang into the hollow box of wood which helped to support the arch of the bridge, and which was filled with great stones. As the torrent swept his brother past him and under the bridge, the drowning youth gave a spring from the ice on which he still stood, and the other bending at the instant from his perch above, caught him by the collar, and lifted him bodily from his perilous situation. All was the work of a moment; ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... not move, but kept on looking straight in front of him, his chin and his lips trembled as if he were keeping back by force a torrent of tears. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... bottom. The glen descended into a mountain basin, in which lay the lake of Yemouni, cold and green under the evening shadows. But just opposite us, on a little shelf of soil, there was a rude mill, and a group of superb walnut-trees, overhanging the brink of the largest torrent. We had sent our baggage before us, and the men, with an eye to the picturesque which I should not have suspected in Arabs, had pitched our tents under those trees, where the stream poured its snow-cold beakers beside ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... proceeding as a weapon against insomnia. The patient, he says, should rapidly repeat the phrase, "I am going to sleep," letting his mind be swept away by a torrent of words. Once more the objection arises that the phrase "I am going to sleep" is not such as we can rapidly repeat. But even if we substitute for it some simple phrase which can be easily articulated it is doubtful whether it will succeed in more than a small percentage ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... reluctant, disgraced, that she may be dependent utterly on the man stooping to pick her up! He was equal to the projecting of a scheme socially infamous, with such fanatical intensity did the thought of his losing the woman harass him, and the torrent of his passion burst restraint to get to her to enfold her—this in the same hour of the original wild monster's persistent and sober exposition of the texts of the law with the voice of a cultivated modern gentleman; and, let it be said, with a modern gentleman's design to wed a wife in honour. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... croaking of the near-by frogs attracted his attention and, imitating their shrill notes, he boldly told them that it would be better to cease their cries and help him mend his spear. He continued his course up the rocky torrent, but noticed that a multitude of little stones began to follow behind in his path. Surprised at such a happening he hastened his steps. Looking back, he saw bigger stones join in the pursuit. He then seized his dog and in fear began to run ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... night in our usual unsuspecting frame of mind, and awoke next morning to hear above the dull reverberation of the rain the booming of a torrent. The arroyo near the ranch was no longer an arroyo, but a stream fifty feet wide; and on the hither side of the pecan-trees of the creek could be seen a silver line: the water had already surpassed the banks. Before noon there was neither creek ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... side while he, standing close under the extemporized tent, held the other side, leaving an opening in front for air, and so they managed to keep tolerably dry, while two storms met overhead and poured down a torrent upon them. ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... resounded with the triumph. Old and young, both sexes and all ages, came running forth with shouts of jubilation, till it seemed as if a mountain torrent was hurrying to meet the travellers. Rob Roy took Frank by the hand, and he did not allow any to come near him till he had given them to understand that his companion was to be well and ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... unlike her former habit, was unmistakable. She had been watching my approach from some hiding-place among the bushes, ready no doubt to lead me a dance through the wood with her mocking voice, as on previous occasions, when my attack on the serpent caused that outburst of wrath. The torrent of ringing and to me inarticulate sounds in that unknown tongue, her rapid gestures, and, above all, her wide-open sparkling eyes and face aflame with colour made it impossible to mistake the nature ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson |
