"Vitals" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... petrified blood of victims which stained a ledge of porphyry when it ran down the mountain side in torrents, an awful sacrifice to the ancient idols of lust and ignorance. A kindly warning to you, fellow-prospectors and miners, who delve in the vitals of Mother Earth! Beware Thumb Butte, beware the district of the Sphinx! Have a care, for you know not what you may encounter in this mystic neighborhood! Shun strange gods and set up no idols in your hearts, as you value the salvation of your souls. But if your mine lies in ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... bleeding for another woman, to whom he would willingly sacrifice the world; but, because he must sacrifice her interest as well as his own, never durst even give her a hint of that passion which was preying on his very vitals? 'Do you believe, Miss Fanny, there is such a wretch on earth?' I answered, with an assumed coldness, I did not believe there was. He then took me gently by the hand, and, with a look so tender ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... that any reason why we should falter now? 'New occasions teach new duties.' Let us not be satisfied with a supetficial view. While fresh loam is being scattered on the surface, commercial interests and the suburban greed to get home quick are striking at the vitals of the Common. Citizens of ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... N. interiority; inside, interior; interspace[obs3], subsoil, substratum; intrados. contents &c. 190; substance, pith, marrow; backbone &c. (center) 222; heart, bosom, breast; abdomen; vitals, viscera, entrails, bowels, belly, intestines, guts, chitterings[obs3], womb, lap; penetralia[Lat], recesses, innermost recesses; cave &c. (concavity) 252. V. be inside &c. adj.; within &c. adv. place within, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... branches of one tree; you are the sons of one mother. Is this goodly land not wide enough for you, that you should rend each other's flesh at the bidding of those who will wet their beaks within both your vitals?—Look up, see, they circle in ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the window. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Prosperity is a more severe ordeal than adversity, especially sudden prosperity. "Easy come, easy go," is an old and true proverb. A spirit of pride and vanity, when permitted to have full sway, is the undying canker-worm which gnaws the very vitals of a man's worldly possessions, let them be small or great, hundreds, or millions. Many persons, as they begin to prosper, immediately expand their ideas and commence expending for luxuries, until in a short time their expenses swallow up their income, and they become ruined in their ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... bull that sees red, the nations had rushed madly at each other, thirsting to gore each other's vitals with their horns. Men of peaceful vocations were at that very moment slaughtering their brother-men. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... and highly strungness, and that it was just one more proof to him of the loftiness of her soul and her shrinking horror of any form of deceit. In fact, he gave me the impression that, though the affair was rending his vitals, he took a mournful pleasure in contemplating ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... throat, because there is a law against the private use of deadly weapons? The clutch of a parricidal rebellion is grappling at the national existence, and what shall we think of those men who would stay the arm of Government from stabbing at its vitals by interposing constitutional scruples? Even if the Constitution did stand in the way, who but a fool or a traitor would hesitate to go around it or over it to save the national existence? Salus reipublicae suprema lex. Was the nation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Nevertheless, we could not help knowing in our hearts that no normal girl could help preferring that celestial peacock to our grey hen, and that Miss Destrey's wish to be kind must have outstripped her obligation to be truthful. This knowledge was turning a screw round in our vitals, when His Highness himself appeared to give it a ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stirred. Not an eye followed him. No matter what curiosity was burning in their vitals, etiquette demanded that they ask no questions. If in no other wise, the Indian has left his stamp on the country in the manners of ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Thus society had come to resemble the lofty mountain, whose crown of white snows and robe of fresh verdure but conceal those hidden fires which are smouldering within its bowels. Under the appearance of robust health, a moral cancer was all the while preying upon the vitals of society, eating out by slow degrees the faith, the virtue, the obedience of the world. The ground at last gave way, and thrones and hierarchies came tumbling down. Look at the Europe of our day. What is the Papacy, but ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... fox that was nibbling my vitals by inquiring, in a rather natural accent, what he ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... they take him for a madman? Did they imagine he made war from inclination? Had they not heard him say that the wars of Spain and Russia were two ulcers which ate into the vitals of France, and that she could not bear ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... and State, we have shunned all the defects which unceasingly preyed on the vitals and destroyed the ancient Republics. In them there were distinct orders, a nobility and a people, or the people governed in one assembly. Thus, in the one instance there was a perpetual conflict between the orders in society for the ascendency, in which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... power resistless fills The boundless whole, avert those ills We richly merit: purge away The sins which on our vitals prey; Protect, with Thine almighty shield Our conquering arms by flood and field, Wheel round the time when Peace shall smile O'er Britain's highly-favoured Isle; When all shall loud hosannas sing To Thee, the great ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... every day on this very account. Sometimes a man or woman dropped down dead in the very markets, for many people that had the plague upon them knew nothing of it till the inward gangrene had affected their vitals, and they died in a few moments. This caused that many died frequently in that manner in the streets suddenly, without any warning; others perhaps had time to go to the next bulk or stall, or to any door-porch, and just sit down and die, as I have ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... so little; yet had I sold everything we possessed, I could not have appeased the hunger of our village for a single day. I wondered how those men who literally murdered the poor, who kept the granaries full, and saw unmoved the vitals of the multitude quivering for want, could have borne the sight! Surely it will be more tolerable for the cities of the Plain in the day of judgment than ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... to have rheumatism too, but she had never screamed like that, and I remember wondering whether poor Sister Marie-Aimee's legs were swollen to three times their size, like those of Bonne Justine. Her cries got worse and worse. One of them was so terrible that it seemed to come right out of her vitals. Then we had heard her moaning, and that was all. A few moments afterwards Madeleine had come up and whispered to Marie Renaud, Marie Renaud had put on her dress, and I heard her go downstairs; Directly afterwards ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... Feodor during an evening call he interned him in the vitals of a tuneless Baby Grand, and for three hours played on him CHOPIN'S polonaise in A flat major, with the loud pedal down. On his release Feodor had lost his reason and rushed to the nearest police-station to ask ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... this manner he secretly nursed the worm of grief that preyed upon his vitals, the alteration in his countenance and conduct did not escape the eyes of that discerning young lady. She was alarmed at the change, yet afraid to inquire into the source of it; for, being ignorant ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... chocolate resolved themselves into a lump of chocolate out of one's haversack and a pull at one's water-bottle. The mess-president proved himself a man of resource on this trying occasion. With hunger gnawing at his vitals he saw a beautiful dinner laid out in a waiting-room for some staff officers. Unable to satisfy his comrades he saw no reason why he himself should go unsatisfied, and in the three or four minutes occupied by the engine in watering he hastily bolted a fine ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the priority of the first hen or the first egg. I, with never a murder or a seduction or a robbery on my conscience, could not sleep last night. I doubt whether I shall sleep to-night. I feel as if I shall remain awake through the centuries with a rat gnawing my vitals. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... The warlike Mysians; next Antilochus From Mermerus and Phalces stripp'd their arms; Meriones Hippotion gave to death, And Morys; Teucer Periphetes slew, And Prothoon; Menelaus, through the flank Smote Hyperenor; as the grinding spear Drain'd all his vitals, through the gaping wound His spirit escap'd, and darkness clos'd his eyes. But chiefest slaughter of the Trojans wrought Oileus' active son; of all the Greeks No foot so swift as his, when Jove had fill'd Their souls with fear, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... about on hands and feet, lying or sitting in every attitude of despair and suffering; a dull, hopeless misery in their sunken eyes, a pathetic patience fit to touch a heart of stone; while others still have grown frantic with that terrible pain, the hunger gnawing at their very vitals, and go staggering about, wildly raving ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... king have rendered it impossible for him ever to reenter the Prussian service. He sees that his country is sinking every day, and that she is ruined not only by foreign enemies, but by domestic foes preying at the vitals of her administration. He would like to help her—he feels that he has stored up the means to do so in his experience—and yet he cannot. I ask you, therefore, my friend, where is the balm for ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to the proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind in the vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question of that nature, can be so showy and ostensive to a stranger as that which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past vote recording a scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing, though for the moment ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay, Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Cau'casus— The vulture at his vitals, and the links Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh; [Footnote: Vulcan; the Olympian artist, who, when hurled from heaven, fell upon the Island of Lemnos, in the AEgean. He forged the chain with which Prometheus was bound.] And, as the painter's mind felt ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... cave-refuge, rating the inhabitants of some, dosing the occupants of others, emerging from three or four of the stuffy, ill-smelling places with a heavy frown that boded ill for somebody. For though Famine had not yet begun to gnaw the vitals of those immured in Gueldersdorp, Disease had here and there sprung into active, threatening, infectious being, menacing the crowded community with invisible, maleficent forces. Soon the hospitals were to be crowded to the doors, to remain crowded for many months to come; ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... tap-room beneath, these commingled now and then with oaths and scraps of discordant song bellowed out above the hubbub. His wounded head beat with tremendous and straining painfulness, as though it would burst asunder, and he was possessed by a burning thirst that seemed to consume his very vitals. He called aloud, and in reply a fat, one-eyed woman came, fetching him something to drink in a cup. This he swallowed with avidity, and thereupon (the liquor perhaps having been drugged) he dropped off ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... I tiptoed on alone. From within I heard the crash of one pot and then another on the brick floor of the kitchen, as the villain, searching for hidden money, smashed them to the ground. Bitten to the vitals by his want of success, he yelled, "I'll burn the sow's eye out! ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... men in these mountains, like lice on mammoths' hides, fighting them stubbornly, now with hydraulic "monitors," now with drill and dynamite, boring into the vitals of them, or tearing away great yellow gravelly scars in the flanks of them, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... to hear that the Raven is no more. He expired to-day at a few minutes after twelve o'clock at noon. He had been ailing for a few days, but we anticipated no serious result, conjecturing that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last summer might be lingering about his vitals without having any serious effect upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon he was taken so much worse that I sent an express for the medical gentleman (Mr. Herring), who promptly attended, and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. Under the influence of this medicine, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Heaven; which wears The nearest, best resemblance we can show Of God above, through all his works below. To still the voice of Discord in the land; To make weak Faction's discontented band, Detected, weak, and crumbling to decay, With hunger pinch'd, on their own vitals prey; 70 Like brethren, in the self-same interests warm'd, Like different bodies, with one soul inform'd; To make a nation, nobly raised above All meaner thought, grow up in common love; To give the laws due vigour, and to hold That secret balance, temperate, yet bold, With such an equal hand, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... to say, "are victims to a sort of 'spleen' peculiar to the government clerk; they die of a checked circulation; a red-tapeworm is in their vitals. That little Poiret couldn't see the well-known white carton without changing color at the beloved sight; he used to ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Phantom-like, as in a mirror, Rise the griesly scenes of death— There before me, in its wildness, Stretches bare Culloden's heath: There the broken clans are scattered, Gaunt as wolves, and famine-eyed, Hunger gnawing at their vitals, Hope abandoned, all but pride— Pride, and that supreme devotion Which the Southron never knew, And the hatred, deeply rankling, 'Gainst the Hanoverian crew. Oh, my God! are these the remnants, These the wrecks of the array That around the royal standard Gathered on the glorious ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... there cannot be, except there be first innate richness and breadth of feeling. Imagination being simply the tensest action of intellect, is ever, like intellect in all its phases, an instrument of feeling, a mere tool. Height implies inward depth. The gift to touch the vitals of a subject is the test-gift of literary faculty; it is the soul-gift, the gift of fuller, livelier sympathy. Compare Wordsworth with Southey to learn the difference ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... old man burnt them on cleft wood and made libation over them of gleaming wine; and at his side the young men in their hands held five-pronged forks. Now when the thighs were burnt and they had tasted the vitals, then sliced they all the rest and pierced it through with spits, and roasted it carefully, and drew all off again. So when they had rest from the task and had made ready the banquet, they feasted, nor was their heart aught stinted of the fair banquet. But when they ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... the right was about fifteen yards away, he to the left was not more than ten. On they came, their fierce eyes almost starting out of their heads, and I felt, with a cold thrill of fear, that in another three seconds those broad "bangwans" might be buried in my vitals. On such occasions we act, I suppose, more from instinct than from anything else—there is no time for thought. At any rate, I dropped the reins and, raising my gun, fired point blank at the left-hand man. The bullet struck him in the ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... capacity of the least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to forsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle. Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals of men, but to encourage ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... ruined those provinces and that kingdom of Naco and Honduras, which truly seemed a paradise of delight, and was better peopled than the most populous land in the world. We have now gone through these countries on foot and have beheld such desolation and destruction as would wring the vitals of the hardest-hearted ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... guests who were come to feast: to indulge appetites they had never been able to subdue, though their appetites were vipers that were eating away their vitals. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... positive hatred for windows. His idea of ventilation was to leave a hole in the wall about the size of a lima bean and let the thing go at that. If our friend does not arrive shortly, I shall pull down the roof. Why, gadzooks! Not to mention stap my vitals! Isn't that a trap-door up there? Make a ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Miss Barrace quite rose to it. "That's the way we ARE in Paris." She was always pleased with a new contribution to that queerness. "It's wonderful! But, you know," she declared, "it all depends on you. I don't want to turn the knife in your vitals, but that's naturally what you just now meant by our all being on top of you. We know you as the hero of the drama, and we're gathered to ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... His lordship enraged at his presumption, and giving way to his passion, reprimanded him very severely for his insolence; for which the villain being now wrought up to the highest degree of fury, took an opportunity to stab him with his dagger through the back into the vitals, of which wound he instantly ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... you? It's the same reason that's been urging me to pick a quarrel with you so that I might have the satisfaction of slipping a couple of feet of steel into your vitals. When I accepted your commission, I was moved to think it might redeem me in the eyes of Miss Bishop—for whose sake, as you may have guessed, I took it. But I have discovered that such a thing is beyond accomplishment. I should have known it for a sick man's dream. I have discovered also ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... vulture whose claws are hard to unloose from the vitals of the spirit, I think it is jealousy. I found it had got hold of me, and was tearing the life out of me. I knew it in time. O sing praise to our King, you who know Him! he is mightier than our enemies; we need not be the prey of any. But I struggled and prayed, more than one night through, ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... arm, and sank back on the chair; and whether the poison had now reached to the vitals, or whether so unwonted a passion in so frail a frame sufficed for the death-stroke, Beck himself, with a low, suffocated cry, slid from the hand of Ardworth, and tottering a step or so, the blood gushed from his mouth over Lucretia's robe; his head drooped an instant, and, falling, rested ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is turn'd to ice, and all my vitals Have ceas'd their working. Dull stupidity Surpriseth me at once, and hath arrested That vigorous agitation, which till now Exprest a life within me. I, methinks, Am a meer marble statue, and no man. Unweave my age, O time, to my first thread; ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... had volunteered to help Mike and his gang win the status of spacemen by firing the Platform's rockets. There were not many of them, and they had lost heavily. They'd had thermite bombs to destroy the Platform's vitals. Ultimately the survivors talked freely, if morosely, and that ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... the familiar instance of the Spartan youth who having stolen a fox and hidden it inside his robe calmly stood up and let the animal gnaw his vitals rather than be caught with it in his possession. But, why? I ask you, why? What was the good of it all? What object was served? To begin with, the boy had absconded with somebody else's fox, or with somebody's else fox, which is undoubtedly the way a compiler of school readers would ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... vigils keep; Their eyes are fixed on heaven's starry steep; The ravening billows hunger for their lives; And oft each shivering wretch, constrained to weep, With suppliant hands to move heaven's pity strives, While many a direful qualm his very vitals rives." ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... to see you fellers for," Charley said, after a slight pause, and an exchange wink with Ben, "is to know how you stand in regard to this 'ere mining tax, which is crushing the life blood out of the vitals of us honest working men, and making us think of Bunker Hill and the American Eagle, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... surface he set off at his best gait, but that was so slow that we easily hauled up close alongside of him, holding the boats in that position without the slightest attempt to guard ourselves from reprisals on his part, while the officers searched his vitals with the lances as if they ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... fact that they immediately laid down a frigate—Dupuy de Lome—in which four-inch armor is used, not only on the side, but about the gun stations, to protect the men; this thickness having been found sufficient to keep out melenite shell. In most armorclads, the armor is very heavy about the vitals, but the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... is on fire-come Clarence, drive your delicious pego into my vitals-see, I open the door ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... prospect[15] of the fleet. 605 Fight, therefore, thou, and others urge to fight. He said, and cover'd by the night of death, Nor look'd nor breath'd again; for on his chest Implanting firm his heel, Patroclus drew The spear enfolded with his vitals forth, 610 Weapon and life at once. Meantime his steeds Snorted, by Myrmidons detain'd, and, loosed From their own master's chariot, foam'd to fly. Terrible was the grief by Glaucus felt, Hearing that charge, and troubled was his heart 615 ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... lingered out the best part of their lives in the service of their master. Able then to do but little, they were sold for little! and the remaining substance of their sinews was to be pressed out by another, yet more hardened than the former, and who had made a calculation of their vitals accordingly. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... things you ever wrote, though that dog Power wanted you to omit part of it. They are all regretting your absence at Chatsworth, according to my informant—'all the ladies quite,' &c. &c. &c. Stap my vitals! ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... reflection. "A miserable wretch, a friendless dog, and Peregrine, I tell you she stooped to trust this scoundrel, to touch this wretch's hand, to speak gentle words to this homeless dog. She's a saint, begad—a positive angel and—oh, stab my vitals—she's ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... resentment against the woman. It did not matter that the man's suspicion was vain. To Aristide the woman's blank amazement at the preposterous charge was proof enough; to the man the thing was real. For nearly twenty years the man had suffered the cancer to eat away his vitals, and he had watched and watched his blameless wife, until now, at last, he had caught her in this folly. No wonder he could not rest at home; no wonder he was driven, Io-wise, on and on, although he hated ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Roger, if you had to answer this question on oath, "Whom do you think you are most like in this world?" I don't mean superficially, but deep down in your vitals, what would you say? Your mother, your uncle, one of your friends ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... refused to accept him when there certainly had been no cause for their rejection. Mr Apjohn from the first had looked at him with accusing eyes; his servants were spies upon his actions; this newspaper was rending his very vitals; and now this one last friend had deserted him. He thought that if only he could summon courage for the deed, it would be best for him to throw ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... the embayed waters full of fleets. With the impunity of a Levanter, Paul skimmed his craft in the land-locked heart of the supreme naval power of earth; a torpedo-eel, unknowingly swallowed by Britain in a draught of old ocean, and making sad havoc with her vitals. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... and life in the body of her father. The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was worse; the nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now more acute; a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment was ordered which necessitated his return to Paris. He was soon so weak that he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne, but the marquise was so insistent as to the necessity for further and better advice than anything he could get ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the other way, and that it was high time literature should, regardless of merely dilettante aestheticism, address itself to exposing, by depicting it, the extent to which the evil genius is gnawing at and corroding the vitals of society; and it is not for a moment to be supposed he has done so from any pleasure he takes in gloating over the doings of the ghoul, or that he is in sympathy with those who do; of his works suffice it to mention here some recent ones, as the story of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... cried, 'but the stench of these filthy wretches is enough to stap one's breath. It is, by the Lard! Smite my vitals if I would venture among them if I were not a very rake hell. Is there a danger of prison fever, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reply, 'but the country's at stake, the Empire's at stake! Truth, righteousness, liberty are at stake! If we don't win in this war, German devilry will rule the world, and shall the country allow the Trade, as it calls itself, to batten upon the vitals of the nation? That's why I am bewildered. I told you just now that perhaps I look at things differently from what I ought to look at them. I have lost all memory of my past life, and I judge these things by their face value, without any preconceived notions or prejudices. I have to begin ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the terrible strain upon his mind which disposed him to give violent and hyperbolical expression to the mood of the moment. The unhappy passion which he could at times smother, but never subdue, went boring away into his heart like a subterranean fire, consuming his vitals, and occasionally breaking forth into a wild blaze. The following reference to it, in his letter to Franzen (November ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... though evasive arts will, it is feared, prevail so long as distilled spirits of any kind are allowed, the character of Englishmen in general being that of Brutus, Quicquid vult valde vult [whatever he desires he desires intensely]. But why should such a canker be tolerated in the vitals of a State, under any pretense, or in any shape whatsoever? Better by far the whole present set of distillers were pensioners of the public, and their trade abolished by law; since all the benefit thereof put together ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... majesty of heaven; the religion of the people of New England and the court's pleasure cannot consist together. By submission Massachusetts will gain nothing. The court design an essential alteration, destructive to the vitals of the charter. The corporations in England that have made an entire resignation have no advantage over those that have stood a suit in law; but, if we maintain a suit, though we should be condemned, we may bring ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... master of on this occasion; but, in spite of his efforts, nature got the upper hand, and rendered him inconsolable:—he burst not into any violent exclamations, but the silent sorrow preyed on his vitals, and reduced him, in a short time, almost to the shadow ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... physician's third visit, he took him to one side, and had a private confabulation. What it was, exactly, we could not tell; but from certain illustrative signs and gestures, I fancied that he was describing the symptoms of some mysterious disorganization of the vitals, which must have come on within the hour. Assisted by his familiarity with medical terms, he seemed to produce a marked impression. At last, Johnson went his way, promising aloud that he would send ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... for I trust in you. Moreover there is no drawing back, what with these cursed horses and this marriage, which has eaten up my vitals. So let them do with me as they will; I yield my body to them. Come blows, come hunger, thirst, heat or cold, little matters it to me; they may flay me, if I only escape my debts, if only I win the reputation of being a bold rascal, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... landing he put spurs to his horse and, accompanied by only seven dragoons, with his sabre flashing in the air, plunged into the very thickest of the Indians. Soon they were put to flight. An Indian arrow, however, pierced his saddle and its housings, and reached the vitals of his horse. The noble steed dropped dead beneath him. Porcallo was quite proud of his achievement, and boasted not a little that his arm had put the infidels, as he called the Indians, to flight, and that his horse was the first to ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... development of the passion is not always marked by exhibitions of violence; sometimes, like the measles, it is slow and obstinate about "coming out," and in such cases applications should be resorted to for the purpose of diverting the malady from the vitals; otherwise serious ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... and Mrs. Stanford had to keep up appearances, and smiles, though the serpents of envy and regret gnawed at her vitals. It was very gay there! Life seemed all made up of music, and dancing, and feasting, and mirth, and skating, and sleighing, and dressing, and singing. Life went like a fairy spectacle, or an Eastern drama, or an Arcadian dream—with care, and trial, and trouble, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... household and farm and business accounts, which in their order and method and long use were eloquent of his provident and farseeing father, his heart was hot within his breast. Grief and resentment alike gnawed at his vitals. They had received vivid reports, even in the little town in which they dwelt, of the wild doings of the wanderer, but they had enjoyed no direct communication with him. After a while even rumour ceased to busy ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... edge of the grass impinging directly on the salt was sullenly retreating. The central bulk remained, a vast, obstinate mass, but most people thought it would somehow end by consuming itself, if indeed this doom were not anticipated by fresh scatterings of salt striking at its vitals as soon as ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... rhetorical plays. The great dramatic talent of this mathematician and politician drew upon the cheap tricks of Scribe and the appalling situations of Sardou, and combined them with a few dashes of Ibsenian thesis and the historical pundonor, to form a dose which would harrow the vitals of the most hardened playgoer. Only a gift of sonorous, rather hollow lyrism and a sincere intention to emphasize psychology saved the work of this belated Romanticist from being ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... Among loves foolish Martyrs: Can you see Delia brought so low, And make her no Requitals? Delia may to the Devil go, Delia may to the Devil, Devil go, to the Devil, Devil, Devil, Devil, Devil, Devil go for Strephon; Stop my Vitals, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... pallid skin due to the nature of his work. Large deft hands, a good deal like the hands of a surgeon, square, blunt-fingered, spatulate. Indeed, as you saw him at work, a wire-netted electric bulb held in one hand, the other plunged deep into the vitals of the car on which he was engaged, you thought of a surgeon performing a major operation. He wore one of those round skullcaps characteristic of his craft (the brimless crown of an old felt hat). He would deftly remove the transmission case and ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... book of business "horse sense," containing 130 pages of boiled-down, successful, practical experience. It treats of the vitals of business—from the inside; of expense; fixed charges; overhead; buying; selling; advertising; credit; debt; employer and employee. It is suggestive, simple in language and systematic in arrangement. It embodies little theory but much tried-out truth. It ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... voices on this momentous subject, and turn their eyes from its contemplation, and give the right hand of fellowship to the buyers and sellers of human flesh, is there not cause for lamentation and alarm? The pulpit is false to its trust, and a moral paralysis has seized the vitals of the church. The sanctity of religion is thrown, like a mantle, over the horrid system. Under its auspices, robbery and oppression have become popular and flourishing. The press, too, by its profound silence, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... off, I turned back to New York with an awful wander-thirst gnawing at my vitals. I, too, wanted to be starting off on my travels in a new blue hat and a new blue suit with a big bunch of violets in my hand. For five minutes I would cheerfully have said good-by forever to poor dear Gordon in return for the wide world to wander in. I suppose you are thinking they are not entirely ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... city, and Anthe'mius was slain in the tumult. The unhappy Romans were again subjected to all the miseries that military licentiousness could inflict; for forty days Ricimer exulted in the havoc and ruin of the imperial city; but a disease, occasioned by excessive intemperance, seized on his vitals, and death ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... have pity upon me! You think yourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is. Oh! to love a woman! to be a priest! to be hated! to love with all the fury of one's soul; to feel that one would give for the least of her smiles, one's blood, one's vitals, one's fame, one's salvation, one's immortality and eternity, this life and the other; to regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, God, in order that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet; to clasp her night and day in one's ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... preservation of a sound state of public opinion and a judicious administration here? The sympathy is instantaneous and universal. To attempt to remedy the evil of the deranged credit and currency of the States while the disease is allowed to rage in the vitals of this Government would ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... see all the truth now—could see himself, through the whole long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and tortured him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face. Ah, God, the horror of it, the monstrous, hideous, demoniacal wickedness of it! He and his family, helpless women and children, struggling to live, ignorant and defenseless ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... of a mad dog, your most strenuous efforts will not bring desired results, and fatal disease may be clutching at your vitals. If a mad dog succeeds in biting you, it is a sign that you or some loved one is on the verge of insanity, and a deplorable tragedy ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... might trouble her conscience little; that she might consider it in the light of an execution, and not as a murder. Bah! he could not bear to think of it. What would it be to drink his wine one day and then feel a hand of fire gripping at his vitals because poison had been set within the cup; or, worse still, if anything could be worse, to wake at night and find a stiletto point grating against his backbone? Little wonder that Montalvo slept alone and was always careful to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... large numbers of a certain large variety of gray lizard, which emits considerable glow; very few who ate them are living. Land crabs also were eaten which caused some to go mad for a day after partaking of them, especially if they had eaten the vitals. At the end of seven months, the hunger that had caused us to go to Sarragan withdrew us thence." The booty of the island was but little, for the natives had carried away and hidden the greater part of their possessions. The vessel of Villalobos and two small ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... eyes, are ornaments which a plain battle between factions cannot boast, but which, notwithstanding, are very suitable to the fierce and gloomy silence of that premeditated vengeance which burns with such intensity in the heart, and scorches up the vitals into such a thirst for blood. Not but that they come by different means to the same conclusion; because it is the feeling, and not altogether the manner of operation, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the spot where those lov'd ones were sleeping, Was the last earthly wish of her desolate heart; And she pray'd whilst disease to her vitals was creeping, That God would his grace ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... M., is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But you are laughing at me—"Stap my vitals, Tam! thou art a very impudent person;" [3] and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to be laughed at. Seriously, what on earth can you, or have you, to dread from any poetical flesh breathing? It really puts me out of humour to hear you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... by the text, "The zeal of Thine house hath ever eaten me." Maitland seemed to be literally devoured by an idea, which, like the fox in the old story of the Spartan boy, appeared to prey on his vitals. Hugh became gradually nettled by the argument, but he was no match for Maitland in scholastic disputation. Maitland felled his arguments with an armoury of texts, which he used like cudgels. Hugh at last said that what he thought was the weak point in Maitland's argument was ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... plane and could counter-balance one another, was manifestly absurd; but that did not affect the essence of the question. Ignoring desire, which to-night so sensibly and disconcertingly gnawed at his vitals, let him work to restore the former harmony and sweet strength of their relation. If in the process he could obtain for Damaris—without unseemly revelation or invidious comment—that on which her innocent soul was set he would have his reward.—A ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... engrossing of estates in the hands of the rich—the ruin of its mighty dominion. But it is not generally known how wide-spread had been the desolation thus produced; how deep and incurable the wounds inflicted on the vitals of the state—by the simple consequences of its extension, which enabled the grain growers of the distant provinces of the empire to supplant the cultivators of its heart by the unrestricted admission of foreign corn, before the invasion of the northern nations commenced. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... living in holes, the earth swalloweth up a king that is peaceful and a Brahmana that stirreth not out of home. O king, none can by nature be any person's foe. He is one's foe, and not anybody else, who hath common pursuits with one. He that from folly neglecteth a growing foe, hath his vitals cut off as by a disease that he cherished without treatment. A foe, however insignificant, if suffered to grow in prowess, swalloweth one like the white ants at the root of a tree eating off the tree itself. O Bharata, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... whispered in his ears by unholy voices; he saw wild beasts of the most ferocious character, which were not there, and imagined them grinding their teeth in anxiety to devour him; he alternately yelled and whispered that rats, weasels and wild cats were crawling over his body and gnawing at his vitals. In the paroxysm of frenzy he lay down on the cabin floor and tried to bury his head from the sight of the demons that he imagined pursued him. He cried out in pitiful accents to be shielded from them, and in the effort lost complete capacity for coherent speech. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... ravages of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections—for a drunkard is not fit for an elector—and preparing her ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... consider the spiritual welfare of the church, and of one especial soul connected with the church. This soul is—is far from grace; it is in a lost condition; a stranger to God, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel. But that is not all. No. It is—ah—spreading its own disease of sin in the vitals of the church. It is not only going down to hell itself, but it is dragging others along with it. It is to consider the welfare of that soul, Brother Ward, that this Session has been convened. It is a very ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... is that everything which has happened since 1848 has exasperated, not calmed, the electric tension of the European atmosphere; that a rottenness, rapidly growing intolerable alike 'to God and the enemies of God,' has eaten into the vitals of Continental life; that their rulers know neither where they are nor whither they are going, and only pray that things may last out their time: all notes which one would interpret as proving the Continent to be already ripe for subjection to some one devouring ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... Providence she was allowed to win the weather berth, imagine her trying, while she rolled down to her middle deck, to damage one of these belted brutes, who meantime would be leisurely picking out the particular plank by which she intended to introduce into her enemy's vitals a weight of explosive metal sufficient in all truth to blow her ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... cases of ordinary public oppression, where the vitals of the constitution are not attacked, the law hath also assigned a remedy. For, as a king cannot misuse his power, without the advice of evil counsellors, and the assistance of wicked ministers, these men may be examined and punished. The constitution has therefore provided, by means ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... hero now is as a stag to me. Had he not broken silence, he were safe, And yet I surely knew that could not be. If one's transparent as an insect is, That looks now red, now green, as is its food, One must beware of any mysteries, Lest e'en the vitals show ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... and servants, who in that country are infinitely numerous, without protection and without bread. The monthly instalment of Mr. Hastings's bribe was become due, and his rapacity must be fed from the vitals of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... me God, I've done it!" he groaned, hoarsely. And he staggered back and sat down. Mind and heart and soul were suddenly and exquisitely acute to the shame of his act. Remorse seized upon his vitals. He suffered physical agony, as if a wolf ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... continental troops from that station, Colonel Hamilton proceeded to Albany for the purpose of remonstrating to General Gates against retaining so large and valuable a part of the army unemployed at a time when the most imminent danger threatened the vitals of the country. Gates was by no means disposed to part with his troops. He could not believe that an expedition then preparing at New York, was designed to reinforce General Howe; and insisted that, should the troops then embarked at that place, instead of proceeding to the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... this work, she says: "We have been almost too busy to look out on the beautiful winter landscape, and have been wrought up by our daily researches almost to a frenzy of justice, intolerance, and enthusiasm to crush the viper that is eating out the vitals of the nation. Oh, what a blessed privilege to be engaged in labor for the oppressed! We often think, if the slaves are never emancipated, we are richly rewarded by the hallowed influence of abolition ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... "Thank'ee, But we cannot stand the Yankee O'er our scars and fissures poring, In our very vitals boring, In our sacred caverns prying, All our secret problems trying,— Digging, blasting, with dynamit Mocking all our thunders! Damn it! Other lands may be more civil, Bust our lava ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... had been brought into the House of Commons in the plague year at Oxford, to have been imposed upon the nation, but there, by the assistance of those very same persons that now introduce it, 'twas thrown out, for fear of a general infection of the vitals of this kingdom; and though it passed then in a particular bill, known by the name of the Five Mile Act, because it only concerned the non-conformist preachers, yet even in that, it was thoroughly opposed by the late Earl of Southampton, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... accomplished. If this man prevail against thee and prove thy master, I will cast thee into a black ship, and send thee to the mainland to Echetus the king, the maimer of all mankind, who will cut off thy nose and ears with the pitiless steel, and draw out thy vitals and give them raw to dogs ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... blame on his shoulders, he said, and would apologise himself later on. For many minutes he harangued, and in the end the officer went away with his eyes glittering, but not too reluctantly. He knew that I could have killed him with my second chamber unless his first shot hit my vitals.... ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... placate the Left and please the Clerics—it will also consolidate our reputation for liberality and largeness of mind. Also the young man will either be killed or fall a victim to the sinister influences of that corruption which, alas, has so entered into the vitals of our ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... class. The computation is, that in a population of 36,000,000, only 800,000 are in easy circumstances. A considerable proportion of this moneyed class are usurers, living in Paris and other large towns. They are the lenders of cash on bonds, which squeeze out the very vitals of the nation—the gay flutterers and loungers of the streets, theatres, and cafes, drawing the means of luxurious indulgence from the myriads who toil out their lives in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... And Archias, drawing near, desired him to rise up, and repeating the same kind things he had spoken before, he once more promised him to make his peace with Antipater. But Demosthenes, perceiving that now the poison had pierced and seized his vitals, uncovered his head, and fixing his eyes upon Archias, "Now," said he, "as soon as you please you may commence the part of Creon in the tragedy, and cast out this body of mine unburied. But, O gracious Neptune, I, for my part, while I am yet alive, arise up and depart ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in spiritual as well as material regeneration, and this is the only real and dispassionate America, with no foreign pull on its vitals. You must wake up; the cry has been heard to 'Come over and help.' Why do you ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sacrifices, and so few belonged to their country. The machine was sure to break up at the first great shock. No state could stand with such an accumulation of wrongs, with such complicated and fatal diseases eating out the vitals of the empire. The house was built upon the sands. The army may have rallied under able generals, in view of the approaching catastrophe; philosophy may have gilded the days of a few indignant citizens; ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... been all run, and has been altogether lost; that the last chance has gone, and has gone in vain; that the end has come, and with it disgrace, contempt, and self-scorn—disgrace that never can be redeemed, contempt that never can be removed, and self-scorn that will eat into one's vitals for ever? Mr. Sowerby was now fifty; he had enjoyed his chances in life; and as he walked back, up South Audley Street, he could not but think of the uses he had made of them. He had fallen into the possession of a fine property on the attainment of his manhood; he had been endowed with ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the spoil the hasty victor falls, And, stript, their features to his mind recalls. The Trojans see the youths untimely die, But helpless tremble for themselves, and fly. So when a lion ranging o'er the lawns. Finds, on some grassy lair, the couching fawns, Their bones he cracks, their reeking vitals draws, And grinds the quivering flesh with bloody jaws; The frighted hind beholds, and dares not stay, But swift through rustling thickets bursts her way; All drown'd in sweat, the panting mother flies, And the big tears roll trickling from ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... after a long, fatiguing session with the vitals of a Ford that refused to be cranked, Casey was busy gathering brush, for his supper fire when Fate came walking up' the trail. Fate appears in many forms. In this instance it assumed the shape of a packed burro that poked its nose around a group of Joshuas, stopped abruptly and backed ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... giving to the Bourbons the title of legitimate King, which was declaring the French people and the armies rebels, proclaiming those emigrants, who for five and twenty years have been wounding the vitals of their country, the only good Frenchmen, and violating all the rights of the people, by sanctioning the principle, that the nation is made for the throne, not ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... guess Trim figure and smart dress Cover and hide, from all but doctor-ken, Disease and threatening death. Oh! men, men, men! You bow, smile, flatter—aught but understand! Long hours lay lethal hand Upon our very vitals. Seats might save From an untimely grave, Hundreds of harried, inly anguished girls; You see—their snow-girt throats ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... blow at the very vitals of Great Britain, a multitude of the wiser inhabitants assembled, and having purchased all the British manufactures they could find, they made thereof a huge bonfire, and in the patriotic glow of the moment, every man present who ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... my cheeks wax white, My doddering brain gets weak and giddy, My eyes o'erflow with tears which show That passion melts my vitals, Liddy! ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... restlessness, I turn me, weary: while all around, All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness, I only wake to watch the sickly taper that lights, Me to my tomb. Yes, 'tis the hand of death I feel press heavy on my vitals; Slow sapping the warm current of existence; My moments now are few! e'en now I feel the knife, the separating knife, divide The tender chords that tie my soul To earth. Yes, I must die, I feel that I must die And though to me has life been dark and dreary Though smiling ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... serious that in January, 1776, the Philadelphia Commission of Inspection issued a fair-price list, setting an arbitrary price of eleven pence per pound on coffee in bag lots. Persons found violating this price were to be "exposed to public view as sordid vultures preying on the vitals of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... scourged him, he neither knew nor cared. He began to drink on the steamer, determined to forget for the present, at least; but the mental condition induced was far more agreeable than those moments of sobriety when he felt as if he were in hell with fire in his vitals and cold terror of the future in his brain. In New York, driven by his pride, he had made one or two attempts to recover himself, but the writing of unsigned editorials on subjects that interested him not at all was like wandering in a thirsty desert without an oasis in sight—after ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... I obey," quavered the unfortunate orderly, shaken with a palsy of fear. Without a quiver, the Arab would rush a machine-gun position or face a bayonet-charge; but this betrayal of his kin struck at the vitals of his faith. Still, the Master's word was law even above Al Koran. With trembling lips he ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Washington, who could not be induced to risk his army in decisive action against superior numbers, would thus be compelled to scatter and weaken it. But the Commander-in-Chief, knowing how seriously Nature, his great ally, was gnawing at the vitals of the British, bided his time and kept his tried regiments around him. Now and then, a staggering blow filled his enemies with a wholesome fear of him. His sallies were as swift and unexpected as the rush of a panther with the way of retreat always open. Meanwhile ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... children, besides yourself and your husband's mother to support! After five years of incessant toil in humility and degradation, why should not your lord and master intrude his loathsome person, like a blood-sucker upon your vitals, never offering you any assistance; and should your precarious life be protracted to that extent of time, for twenty dollars you can buy a divorce from bed and board, and have your property secured to you. Such, Madam, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... backsliding sinners may be found, each branded with a mark of infamy according to its deserts. We have seen how the dodder vine lost both leaf and roots after it consented to live wholly by theft of its hardworking host's juices through suckers that penetrate to the vitals; how the Indian pipe's blanched face tells the story of guilt perpetrated under cover of darkness, in the soil below; how the broom-rape and beech-drops lost their honest green color; and, finally, the foxgloves show us plants with their faces so newly ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... to him naught save a flitting breath * And an eye whose babe ever wandereth. There remains not a joint in his limbs, but what * Disease firm fixt ever tortureth. His tears are flowing, his vitals burning; * Yet for all his tongue still he silenceth. All foemen in pity beweep his woes; * Ah for ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... to the vitals of the subject, and proceed with the post-mortem of this carcass of death. It is time to speak on this subject. All the indignation of the community upon this subject is hurled upon woman's head. If, in an evil hour, she sacrifice her honor, the whole city goes howling after ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Colonel Harcourt with a complaint I'll face you. But now I've other matters." He turned to the trio on the box, and exclaimed as he doffed his hat: "Well, squire, didst ever expect sight of me again? An' how do Mrs. Meredith and Janice? Strap my vitals, if I've seen such beauty since I left Brunswick," he added airily, and making Janice feel very much ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... odious envy; and yet never did any poor wretch lead so miserable a life as I have done; for every blessing they enjoyed was as so many daggers to my heart. 'Tis this envy that has caused all my ill health, has preyed upon my very vitals, and will now bring ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... him like a horde of monkeys. They had got him at last—all for a few pieces of rotten beef! That lean, hungry wolfhound would tear his tongue out by the roots if he even opened his mouth; claw wide open his vitals. And old Tutt was fixing him with the eye of a basilisk and slowly turning him to stone. Somebody sure had welshed! He had once been in a side show at Coney Island where the room simulated the motion of an ocean steamer. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... he said, "you're still hot with your own eloquence. Before you cool off, I want you to write that down word for word as you told it to me. If it twisted my very vitals, it will give a similar pleasure to others. 'Twould be selfish to deny them. When it's done, I'll send it to Tiebout. Now I'll leave you, and if my niggers are still too demoralized to cook supper for you, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... ensconced within its box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's trunk, and down it comes, like a musquito's proboscis, right through the deck, in at the open aperture of the hole, and so into the very vitals and bowels of the ship. When there, it goes to work upon its food with a greed and an avidity that is disgusting to a beholder of any taste or imagination. And now I must explain the anatomical arrangement by which the elevator still devours and continues ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... been the scandalous mismanagement of the affairs of the Colony—especially under the baleful administration of Governor Irving. The Augean Stable, miscalled by him "The Public Works Department," and whose officials he coolly [58] fastened upon the financial vitals of that long-suffering Colony, baffled even the resolute will of a Des Voeux to cleanse it. Poor Sir Sanford Freeling attempted the cleansing, but foundered ignominiously almost as soon as he embarked on that Herculean enterprise. Sir A. E. Havelock, who came ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... on others; no one dreamed of the pangs he had to endure—no one but herself, to whom Galenus had spoken of them. And had not his features and his look betrayed to her that pain was gnawing at his vitals like the vulture at those of Prometheus? Hapless, pitiable youth, born to the highest fortune, and now a decrepit old man in the flower of his age! To pray and sacrifice for him must be a pious deed, pleasing to the gods. Melissa besought the marble images over the altar from the very bottom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... went on very gravely, 'that extravagance of word and conduct is fatal to my country, and having so profoundly experienced its effects upon myself, I am now endeavouring by a shining example to supply a remedy for a disease which is corroding the vitals and impairing the sanity of my countrymen and making them a race of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the gods. Tantalus, for divulging the secrets of Zeus, was condemned to stand tormented by thirst in a lake. Tityus, for an assault on Artemis, was pinioned to the ground with two vultures plucking at his vitals. Typhoeus, a hundred-headed giant, was slain by Zeus' thunderbolt, and buried under Aetna. The gin on which he was tortured was probably the rack of the Middle Ages. Cf. the bed of Procrustes. Theseus, for attempting to carry off Persephone, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... children, whose only object in existence seems to be to eat and consume, and who, besides, by their idleness and habits, keep up a system of detraction, jealousy, and discord among otherwise well-disposed citizens, that, like so many cancers, are eating into the very vitals of the public morals. Let not the American citizen, therefore, bewail the certain decline and rapid decay of the institutions of sectarianism, but rather pray for the dawn of that glorious approaching day when, as we are but a one people and a united nation, we may have but one religion, and ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... sensible of the awful heat. It seemed without warning to have penetrated my vitals. With a yell I jerked my feet from a boiling rock and flung my ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... him stark on earth (His very vitals were bursting forth, And his brain was oozing from out his head), He took the fair white hands outspread, Crossed and clasped them upon his breast, And thus his plaint to the dead addressed,— So did his country's law ordain:— "Ah, gentleman of noble strain, I trust thee unto God the True, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... knowledge; when they selected thee without dissenting thought or voice. If, then, thou feel capable of what they claimed for thee, come thou to the task and understand that a man's son and heir is the very fruit of his vitals and core of his heart and liver. My desire of thee is thine instruction of him; and to happy issue Allah guideth!" The King then sent for his son and committed him to Al-Sindibad conditioning the Sage to finish his education in three years. He did accordingly but, at the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... lying full length behind a bush in the lines of the Palatine regiment, eating a crust of bread; for that strange battle-hunger had been gnawing at my vitals for an hour. Some of the men were eating, some firing; the steaming heat almost suffocated me as I lay there, yet I munched on, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Billy breathed in solemn awe. "Look at it!—presenting his solar plexus to you, his vitals an' his life, all defense down, as much as sayin': 'Here I am. Stamp on me. Kick the life outa me.' I love you, I am your slave, but I just can't help defendin' my bone. My instinct's stronger'n me. Kill me, but ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it looks like PMD." Again: "I do not like women so much as I did. MD, you must know, are not women." "God Almighty preserve you both and make us happy together." "I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may never be asunder ten days together while poor Presto lives." "Farewell, dearest beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has not had one happy day since he left you, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... writhing under the agony of disease, while he held me with a convulsive grasp. With mixed horror and impatience I strove to disengage myself, and fell on the sufferer; he wound his naked festering arms round me, his face was close to mine, and his breath, death-laden, entered my vitals. For a moment I was overcome, my head was bowed by aching nausea; till, reflection returning, I sprung up, threw the wretch from me, and darting up the staircase, entered the chamber usually inhabited by my family. A dim light shewed me Alfred on a couch; ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the terrible storms which sometimes descended upon it, obliterating every landmark, and so blinding and bewildering one that even the sense of direction was lost, while the icy wind that came with it, seemed to freeze the very vitals, and left many lost and frozen ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... she neglected none of those domestic offices, which would probably have proceeded under any conceivable circumstances, just as the world turns round with earthquakes rending its crust and volcanoes consuming its vitals, yet her voice was pitched to a lower and more foreboding key than common, and the still frequent chidings of her children were tempered by something like the milder dignity ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his people. They were no longer of his blood. Never again could the hunt call lure him or the voice of the pack rouse the old longing. In him there was a thing newborn, an undying hatred for the wolf, a hatred that was to grow in him until it became like a disease in his vitals, a thing ever present and insistent, demanding vengeance on their kind. Last night he had gone to them a comrade. Today he was an outcast. Cut and maimed, bearing with him scars for all time, he had learned his lesson of the wilderness. Tomorrow, and the next ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... which the words "drink" and "Dora" alone reached us. The drawing-room door closed, and in the release from tension I sank heavily down upon a heap of potatoes. The wolf of laughter that had been gnawing at my vitals broke loose. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... passed since he left the doctor's office to reel and stagger drunkenly through the slush and the sleet, and the icy blasts, which bit cruelly into his very vitals. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... war. France therefore stood on the defensive; England was always the attacking party. On two sides, in Flanders and in Brittany, France had outposts which, if well defended, might long keep the English power away from her vitals. Unluckily for his side, Philip was harsh and raw, and threw these advantages away. In Flanders the repressive commercial policy of the Count, dictated from Paris, gave Edward the opportunity, in the end of 1337, of sending the Earl ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... tyranny she established over me, was dreadful. I never was so much afraid of anyone. We made a compromise of everything. If I hesitated, she was taken with that wonderful disorder which was always lying in ambush in her system, ready, at the shortest notice, to prey upon her vitals. If I rang the bell impatiently, after half-a-dozen unavailing modest pulls, and she appeared at last—which was not by any means to be relied upon—she would appear with a reproachful aspect, sink breathless on a chair near the door, lay her hand ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... him steadily. He seemed slow beside that flying white figure, but that wheeling amble was deadly sure. He was always on the inner arc, Carpentier on the outer; the long, swarthy arms were impenetrable in front of his vitals; again and again he followed up, seeking to corner his man; Carpentier would fling a shining arm at the dark jaw; a clinch would follow in which the two leaned together in that curious posture of apparent affection; ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... him; and, with Forsythe's bullets whistling around his head, he hoisted the flag of truce and surrender to the flagstaff. But just a moment too late. A shell entered the boat amidships and exploded in her vitals, sending up through the engine-room hatch a cloud of smoke and white steam, while fragments of the shell punctured the deck from below. But there were no cries of pain or calls for help from the three men in the ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... to-day that the right course for the North was to keep the threatening of Richmond and the recurrent hammering at the Southern forces on that front duly related to that continual process by which the vitals of the Southern country were being eaten into from the west. This policy, it has been seen, was present to Lincoln's mind from an early day; the temptation to depart from it was now once for all rejected. On the other hand, the three great Southern victories, the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip; The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne, Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously, 95 And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave, Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave, Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain, Hurried on by the might of the hurricane: The hurricane came from the west, and passed on 100 By the path of the gate of the eastern ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley |
