"Vortex" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prospect of success, hazard any expedition of consequence against Great Britain, or any part of her dominions, while the ocean was covered with such powerful navies belonging to that nation; and that if one-third part of the money, annually engulphed in the German vortex, had been employed in augmenting the naval forces of England, and those forces properly exerted, not a single cruiser would have been able to stir from the harbours of France; all her colonies in the West Indies would have fallen an easy prey to the arms of Great Britain; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Into the vortex of Quebeccian society I threw myself with all the generous ardor of youth, and was keenly alive to those charms which the Canadian ladies possess and use so fatally. It is a singular fact, for which I will ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... to be deputed, Provost Pawkie," replied my friend, somewhat puzzled by what I had said; "it's no to be deputed, that we live in a gigantic vortex, and that every man is bound to make an energetic dispensation for the good of his country; but I could not have thought that our means had come to sic an alteration and extremity, as that the reverent homage of the Michaelmas dinners could have been ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... of his life in the public service before his elevation. Yet even he, with all his experience and ability, could not resist the blandishments of power. How, then, could a giddy and weak young man, without redeeming qualities? He fell into the vortex of pleasures, and reeling in the madness which excesses caused, was soon guilty of the wildest caprices, and the most cruel atrocities. He was corrupted by flattery as well as pleasure. He even descended into the arena of the circus as a charioteer, and the races became a State ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... impossible to think deaths and mutilations in terms of millions. Even those who stand in the immediate presence of it and suffer most terribly become calloused to it: much more must we who stood so long apart and have not yet felt the brunt of it. Even our entrance into the whirling vortex, drawing ever nearer our shores, has failed to waken us to a realizing sense of it. Nevertheless, these years through which we are now living are the most important in the entire history of the world. It is probable that the future will look back upon ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... True, I might make you believe that I no longer thought marriage between you wrong; but that would not remove the fact that the world, which so easily makes us happy or otherwise, did not see as I saw. In this vortex I was stricken ill. All the while I wanted to hasten to you, to tell you how it was with me, and it seemed as if I never could get to you. 'Is this Nemesis,' I thought, 'or divine interposition?' So I struggled till Louis came. Then all was easier. I told him everything and said, ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... of this common cry is found in Buddhism, and therein is found also a doctrine of peace that seeks to answer it. From the turmoil of the street and market-place, from the atomic vortex of public meetings, ballot stations, and motors decked with flags, let us turn to the "Psalms of the Sisters," those Buddhist nuns whose utterances Mrs. Rhys Davids has edited for the Pali Text Society. In this inextricable error of existence—this charnel-house ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... like the clouds, towards that tiny spring of passion in his own life. He felt that he could have forgiven it—and himself—if he had been swept into the vortex of a headlong mountain torrent leaping down its own wild water-way, carrying all before it. Other men he had seen who had been wrested off their feet, swept out of their own keeping by such a torrent on the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... them in Charleston, to which city they removed. Her antecedents seemed to follow her wherever she went, like haunting spirits seeking her betrayal. She was homeless; and without a home there was nothing open to her but that vortex of licentiousness the world seemed pointing her to. Back she went to the house in Mercer street-was glad to get back; was at least free from the finger of scorn. Henceforward she associated with various friends, who sought her because of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Convention; not such as, like the present, were of a local nature. Georgia was decided on this point. That State has always hitherto supposed a General Government to be the pursuit of the central States, who wished to have a vortex for every thing; that her distance would preclude her, from equal advantage; and that she could not prudently purchase it by yielding national powers. From this it might be understood, in what light she would view an attempt to abridge one of her favorite prerogatives. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in giving you a full account of this last revolutionary commotion, that your prudence may still keep you at a distance from the vortex. Continue where you are, and tell your man servant how much I am obliged to him, and, at the same time, how much I am grieved at his being wounded! I knew nothing of the affair but from your letter and your faithful messenger. He is an old pensioner of mine, and a good ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was incredible, dare-devil beyond belief—and yet in its very audacity lay success. He finished the letter, read it once more—and his fingers mechanically began to tear it into little shreds. His brain was in a whirl, a vortex of conflicting emotions. Had Whitey Mack and Lannigan left Bristol Bob's yet? Where were they now? Was there time for—this? He was staring at the little torn scraps of paper in his hand. He thrust them suddenly into his pocket, and jerked out his watch. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... into a multitudinous commotion of shouts, went up from the gazing mob, ever on the verge of a tumult. At the same time there was a resistless swaying on all sides—the two lines of soldiers gave way for a few minutes, and people far and near rushed into the middle of the street. The vortex of St. Marcellese, at the Pont Notre Dame, already filled with winey purpose, pushed forward with a sudden bound towards their leaders and the death-cart, triumphing over their old enemies, the gendarmes, and preparing for ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... chequered life, I never had a task so painful to my mangled feelings as the present one, of addressing you from this doleful spot—my sea-girt prison, on the beach of which I stand a monument of destruction, driven by the adverse winds of fate to the confines of black despair, and into the vortex ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... that came before the cabinet after the re-election, rendered more decided the differences which already existed. The European parties, of which the court of England and the French republic were the representatives, were eager to draw the United States into the vortex of their struggle. The president and his cabinet were unanimous in their determination to preserve neutrality, but the aristocratic and democratic sections of the cabinet could not refrain from displaying their respective biases and their jealousy of each other. Foreign affairs were mingled ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... bed came rocking down the river, now shooting straight for a short distance, now slowly wheeling, now shivering, struck by some swifter thing, now whirling giddily round in some vortex. The soaked curtains were flacking and flying in the great wind—and—yes, the telescope revealed it!—there was a figure in it! dead or alive the farmer could not tell, but it lay still!—A cry burst from them all; but ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... class to make myself a party in the system by which they were allowing themselves (under temptation enough, God knows) to be enslaved. But now I looked with horror on the gulf of penury before me, into the vortex of which not only I, but my whole trade, seemed irresistibly sucked. I thought, with shame and remorse, of the few shillings which I had earned at various times by taking piecework home, to buy my candles for study. I whispered my doubts to Crossthwaite, as he sat, pale and determined, watching ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the deep studies of the Middle Ages—nowhere more remarkable than in Paris, which was at that time the centre of the activity of Catholic Europe—the French mind, first thrown by Protestantism into the vortex of controversy, gradually declined to the consideration of mere philosophical utopias, until, rejecting at last its long-received convictions, it abandoned itself to the ever-shifting delusions of opinions and theories, which led finally to skepticism and unbelief in every ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... world knows, by practice or print, Is famous for making the most of a hint. Not a murmur of shame, Or buzz of blame, Not a flying report that flew at a name, Not a plausible gloss, or significant note, Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listened to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky head of an ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... it out of the window into the roar of London, it disappears in a deep brown slush, the omnibus and the growler pass over it, and by and by it turns up again somewhere uninjured, with all the pure fire lambent in its facets. No doubt thoroughly good specimens of prose do get lost, dragged down the vortex of a change of fashion, and never thrown back again to light. But the quantity of excellent verse produced in any generation is not merely limited, but keeps very fairly within the same proportions. The verse-market is never really glutted, and while ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... actions of loading and aiming take the shape of huge writhing, convulsing, monstrous, grappling—come quick-moving lines of help. They rush through them, over them. The thirteen cannon behind the struggling hydra of gray seem one vortex—sulphurous, flaming, spitting, as from one vast mouth, scorching fire, huge mouthfuls of granite venom. Back—back, the gray masses break in ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... to inquire what he meant. They reached the station, and in a few minutes he was shooting along towards London, that social vortex, which draws everything towards ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... lures that are thrown in his way to ensnare his feet, be they disposed to walk ever so warily. You do not know that your holy image, rising up before me, shining upon the path I trod, and beckoning me into the right road when I swerved aside, has alone saved me from falling into that vortex of follies and vices by which men are daily swallowed up, and from which they emerge sullied and debased. You do not know that, while I am here beside you, listening to the sound of your voice, holding ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... only four days gone by, Aleema came to her with a dream; that the spirits in Oroolia had recalled her home by the way of Tedaidee, on whose coast gurgled up in the sea an enchanted spring; which streaming over upon the brine, flowed on between blue watery banks; and, plunging into a vortex, went round and round, descending into depths unknown. Into this whirlpool Yillah was to descend in a canoe, at last to well up in an inland ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Macbeth has sounded the depths of mighty character. True, on the whole, to fact, it is another side of kingship which he has made prominent in his English histories. The irony [186] of kingship—average human nature, flung with a wonderfully pathetic effect into the vortex of great events; tragedy of everyday quality heightened in degree only by the conspicuous scene which does but make those who play their parts there conspicuously unfortunate; the utterance of common humanity straight from the heart, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... harpooners still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... lament, 'that we are in some measure cut off from many enjoyments and pleasures of which we might otherwise partake. My public station, as editor of the Eatanswill GAZETTE, the position which that paper holds in the country, my constant immersion in the vortex ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... sight was now grand, and awful in the extreme. Picture to your imagination a vast column of smoke, of inky blackness, reaching from the earth to heaven, gyrating with fearful velocity—bright lightnings issuing from the vortex—the roar of the thunder—the rushing of the blast—the crash of timber—the limbs of trees, leaves and rubbish, mingled with clouds of dust, whirling through the air;—you then have a ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an idea realized for a few moments, a form which passes and disappears? Is it true that my mind is only a harmony, and my soul a vortex? What is the ego? what is God? what is the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... wondering idolatry; the young mother, fair, pale, and smiling, propped up on pillows in order that she, too, might see the wonderful babe; it was astonishing how the doctor could come and go without being drawn into the admiring vortex, and look at this baby just as if babies came into the world ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a lively waltz strikes the ear. In an instant twenty or thirty couples are whirling along, floating, like thistles in the wind, around the central pavilion. Their feet scarce touch the smooth-trodden earth. Round and round, in a vortex of life, beauty, and brilliancy they go, a whirlwind of delight. Eyes sparkling, cheeks flushing, and gauzy draperies floating by; while the crowds outside gather in a ring, and watch the giddy revel. There are countless forms of symmetry ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... out on the table had not drawn his gaze as on the occasion when, in the little Twenty-third Street house, he had kept his eye on it in order not to look at her face. Now his imagination spun about the hand as about the edge of a vortex; but still he made no effort to draw nearer. He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied. His one terror was to do anything which might efface the sound and impression of her words; his ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... name by the voice of the crowd, 35 Whilst to poor humble merit small praise is allowed, As in parliament votes, so in pictures a name, Oft determines a fate at the altar of fame.— So on Friday this City's gay vortex you quit, And no longer with Doctors and Johnny cats sit— 40 Now your parcel's arrived — [Bysshe's] letter shall go, I hope all your joy mayn't be turned into woe, Experience will tell you that pleasure is vain, When it promises sunshine how often comes rain. So when to fond hope every blessing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... epistles—a fig for other correspondents, with their nonsensical apologies for "knowing nought about it"—you send me a delightful budget. I am here in a perpetual vortex of dissipation (very pleasant for all that), and, strange to tell, I get thinner, being now below eleven stone considerably. Stay in town a month, perhaps six weeks, trip into Essex, and then, as a favour, irradiate Southwell for three ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... with sad eyes, and called to them in pleading and terrified tones, as they were carried on and on by the rushing waters. At last, it was too late even for mother's love to save, and they were drawn into that terrible vortex, from which there is so seldom escape, despairing hands have reached out for help, the cry of the soul has been an appeal for mercy, and another loved one has gone down a victim to the nation's greed and a ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... I have endeavoured to characterise was now to be thrown into the vortex of the revolutionary wars. The surpassing dramatic interest of the French Revolution has tended to obscure our perception of the continuity of even English history. It has been easy to ascribe to the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... times of warfare, every man expected an attack, and was prepared to meet it. Pistols and dirks were in great demand, and formed a part of the personal habiliments of all those conspicuous for their opposition to the Convention measure. Even the gentler sex came within the vortex of this whirlwind of passion; and many were the angry disputations of those whose cares and interests were usually confined to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... about the chain of beautiful pearls she had picked up somehow on her desolate island. She always wore them; they linked her to that sacred purpose she seemed to be forgetting. Her father drew her with him into the vortex, hiding from her that he embarked in it principally for her sake, and she went down the current with him out of filial duty. Thus unfathomable difficulties thrust her back from her up-hill task. And the world, with soft but powerful ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... this far on the road of war. They seem outcasts—a humble lot in the variegated costumes of the civil world—outcasts from the disciplined world in its pattern garb of khaki. Their excuse for not being in the game is that they are too old or that they are women. For now the war has sucked into its vortex the great majority of those who are strong ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... are made, not in the belief that they will benefit those who are already blinded by fancy or passion, but with the hope that some more fortunate reader may reflect on the probable chances of happiness or misery, and pause before he leaps into the vortex of matrimonial discord. No home can ever be a happy one to any of its inmates, where there is no maternal love, nor any desire for mental or moral improvement. But where these exist, in any considerable degree, and the original attachment was founded on correct principles, there is ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... is so without facing many difficulties created for the most part by folklorists themselves. In the first place it is necessary to overtake some of the earlier conclusions of the great masters of our science. The first rush, after the discovery of the mine, led to the vortex created by the school of comparative mythologists, who limited their comparison to the myths of Aryan-speaking people, who absolutely ignored the evidence of custom, rite, and belief, and who could see nothing beyond interpretations of the sun, dawn, and sky gods in the parallel stories ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... motherly artifices; but not one word came from the boy's locked lips. Dick was possessed by a vivid hallucination; he seemed to be standing in the centre of a whirlwind. Downy and his mother were dim figures beyond, seen through the dust; and like shreds of paper whirled in the vortex, visions of Miss Chris's face, netted in fair hair, passed swiftly before his eyes, and the expression on each face was beseeching and sorrowful. Nothing could have dragged the truth from him at ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... from plunging into riotous and blind commotions, to keep his own judgment and emotions as free as possible from a power that seizes all it can reach, draws them into its current, and sweeps them round and round like the Maelstrom, until they are overwhelmed and buried in its devouring vortex. When others are heated, the only wisdom is to determine to keep cool; whenever a people or an individual is rushing headlong, it is the duty of patriotism and of friendship to check ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... disgustful desperation, she emptied the room and swept it as with fire and sword. Her change of mind, from the passive to the active state, relieved and stimulated her, and she hurried from one needed reform to another. She drew others into the vortex. She inspired the chambermaid to unwilling yet amazing effort, and the lodging-house endured such a blast from the besom that it stood in open-windowed astonishment uttering dust like the breath of a dragon. Having swept and garnished ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Whirligig is a parody of the word "vortex." Vortex itself is used in derision of Socrates, who is represented in the "Clouds" as setting up this non-rational force in the place of Zeus—the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... The pang for the wrecking of all maternal hope passed strangely into a deeper pang for all that the Surrey cottage stood for in her life, all the things that she had left to come to Imogen. She remembered. And, for a moment, the old vortex of whirling anguish almost engulfed her. Only long years could deaden the pang of that parting. She would not dwell on that. Eddy and Rose; to turn to them was to feel almost gay. Jack and Mary;—yes, on these last names her thoughts ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... where it now leaned against the balusters back to the lateral corridor or hall, there were many little details to arrest and stimulate my curiosity. The carpet between these two points plainly showed signs of a recent struggle, and at the western vortex of the angle formed by the balustrade surrounding the stair-well, innumerable drops of congealed paraffin were scattered widely over ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... failure: and thus these, from the Catholic stand-point, are abortive and incomplete Catholicisms. The Bethesda of human faith is world-wide and as old as time; only in one particular spot an angel has come down and troubled it; and the waters have been circling there, thenceforth, in a healing vortex. Such is the sort of claim that the Catholic Church makes for herself; and, if this be so, what she is, does not belie what she claims to be. Indeed, the more we compare her with the other religions, her rivals, the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... highness, I do not. I believe it originated from nothing but cause and effect. It is the nature of a whirlpool to draw down all substances that come within its vortex. The water pouring into the bottom of the ship is but the vortex of a whirlpool reversed; and the image of the saint, when it was thrown overboard to leeward of the ship, which was pressed down upon it by the power of the wind, was forced under the water, until it was taken into the vortex ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... his cousin, he also possessed passions less under control, a will more stubborn, and prejudices that often neutralized his reason. His father had inherited most of the personal property of the family, and with this he had plunged into the vortex of monied speculation that succeeded the adoption of the new constitution, and verifying the truth of the sacred saying, that "where treasure is, there will the heart be also," he had entered warmly and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... who at first encouraged them only for show. Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who, while he was chill, was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison. You know a gentleman, who, when first he set his foot in the gay world, as he prepared himself to whirl in the vortex of pleasure, imagined a total indifference and universal negligence to be the most agreeable concomitants of youth, and the strongest indication of an airy temper and a quick apprehension. Vacant to every object, and sensible of every impulse, he thought that all appearance of diligence would deduct ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... strife broke out within the party itself; Adams and Hamilton became alienated, and members of Adams's own cabinet virtually looked to Hamilton rather than to the president as their political chief. The United States was, at this time, drawn into the vortex of European complications, and Adams, instead of taking advantage of the militant spirit which was aroused, patriotically devoted himself to securing peace with France, much against the wishes of Hamilton and of Hamilton's adherents in the cabinet. In ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... it had been thus planned to give me such opportunity, I stood at the very vortex of canal interest and fame, with nearly an entire day before the evening train should carry me back to Corozal. I descended to the "observation platform." Here at last at my very feet was the famous "cut" known to the world by the name of Culebra; a mighty ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... one moment of Correggio at Parma. Before the macchinisti of the seventeenth century had vulgarised the motive, Correggio's bold attempt to paint heaven in flight from earth—earth left behind in the persons of the Apostles standing round the empty tomb, heaven soaring upward with a spiral vortex into the abyss of light above—had an originality which set at nought all criticism. There is such ecstasy of jubilation, such rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain our eyes from below, feel we are in the darkness of the grave which Mary left. A kind ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... not at war because the Emperor, as war lord, has sent out word to his legions to begin a war of world-wide aggression, carrying into its vortex intellectual Germany, notwithstanding ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... raft! to the raft!" was the cry, for the ship had sunk so low that the water was already running through the scuppers. Gradually she went down; the raft was slightly agitated by the vortex formed as the waters closed over her, and then it floated ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... by the elevation of Mr. Muzzy six feet in the air. From this altitude he was let down into a vortex of strong-handed fellows, who whirled him about horribly, and then transmitted him to a more equable current, which pitched him forward at a steady rate towards the door. Sometimes he landed among a party of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... strong enough to leap after and try to save him. In all probability, the effort would have been idle, and worse; for the mad fancy that seemed urging him to self-destruction might still influence his mind, and carry another victim into the same vortex with himself. Restrained by this thought, they stood up in the boat, and watched for his coming ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... was borne as a prize into the harbor of Tadoussac, and passed for the present into the vortex of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... glance at the river. Reggy could scarcely believe that it was the same stream he had seen the day before, as it now went foaming and rushing by, carrying huge trunks of trees and dead cattle in its vortex, while it appeared four times as ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon me, sir, in the Lodge, this day, more as if a Upas tree had been made a capture of than a private defendant, such mingled streams of feelings broke loose again within me, that everything was for the first few minutes swept away before them, and I was going round and round in a vortex. I got out of it. I struggled, and got out of it. If it was the last word I had to speak, against that vortex with my utmost powers I strove, and out of it I came. I argued that if I had been rude, apologies was due, and those apologies ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... now described, as existing only for its own benefit; without right, except possession; and now also without might. "It foresees nothing, and has no purpose, except to maintain its own existence. It is wholly a vortex in which vain counsels, falsehoods, intrigues and imbecilities whirl like withered rubbish in the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... went home—cogitating much. This boy, this cousin of his, made a vortex of good about him into which whoever came near it was drawn. He seemed at the same time quite unaware of anything worthy in his conduct. The good he did sprung from some inward necessity, with just enough in it of the salt of choice to keep it from losing its savour. To these cogitations ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... in any gauge would show the thickness of the stellar system in the direction in which the telescope was pointed. At each pointing, the field of view of the instrument includes all the visible stars situated within a cone, having its vortex at the observer's eye, and its base at the very limits of the system, the angle of the cone (at the eye) being 15'. Then the cubes of the perpendiculars let fall from the eye, on the plane of the bases of the various ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... weaken their nursery, prejudice in favour of the Religion in which they were bred, and by removing them from all means of public worship, to relax their practical habits of Religion. They return home, and commonly are either hurried round in the vortex of dissipation, or engage with the ardour of youthful minds in some public or professional pursuit. If they read or hear any thing about Christianity, it is commonly only about those tenets which are subjects of controversy: and what reaches their ears of the Bible, from their occasional attendance ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Alphingham, callous to every better and softer feeling, might have been happy, but not such was the fate of Annie. Bitterly, ere she died, did she regret her folly and disobedience; remorse was sometimes busy within, though no actual guilt dimmed her career: she drowned the voice of conscience in the vortex of frivolity and fashion. But the love she bore for Alphingham was the instrument of retribution, her husband neglected, despised, and frequently deserted her. Let no woman unite herself with sin, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... was settling into a bruise. Her eyes were puffed with crying until they were almost closed. Her breast rose with short, exhausted, but still convulsive sobs. Margery felt as if she was drawn into a vortex of agony. She could not resist it. She went to the bed, stood still a second, trembling, and then sank upon her knees and put her face down upon the wretched hand nearest and kissed ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her eyes on the ground, the withered leaves caught up every now and then in a wild dance by the frolicsome wind, she was suddenly aware of something among them which she could not identify, whirling in the aerial vortex about her feet. Scarcely caring what it was, she yet, all but mechanically, looked at it a little closer, lost it from sight, caught it again, as a fresh blast sent it once more gyrating about her feet, and now regarded it more steadfastly. ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... still be left enough to him of the money which he had realised to enable him to live in comfort and luxury, should he be doomed to live in obscurity, or even in infamy. He had sworn to himself solemnly that under no circumstances would he allow this money to go back into the vortex of his speculations, and hitherto he had been true to his oath. Though bankruptcy and apparent ruin might be imminent he would not bolster up his credit by the use of this money even though it might appear at the moment that the money ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... firm but not markedly so; eyes that were reflective rather than compelling; earnest to the point of an absorbed seriousness—we did right to note him well. He was destined to win great glory in the vortex of flame and smoke and agony and panic into which we were to be swept within the next thirty-six hours. My chief recollection of him that night was of his careful attentiveness to everything said by our own colonel on the ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... themselves. She was therefore exactly the person to select a little library of the latest reading for an old gentleman who was so behind the times as her grandfather; but before she plunged into the mad vortex of new publications she thought she would delicately find out his preferences, or if he had none, would try to inspire him with a curiosity concerning ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... literal to Christ, and to any mind that has Christ's love for mankind, become parables to lesser natures. There are in every generation people who, beginning innocently, with no predetermined intention of becoming saints, find themselves drawn into the vortex by their interest in helping mankind, and by the understanding that comes from actually doing it. The abandonment of their old mode of life is like dust in the balance. It is done gradually, incidentally, imperceptibly. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... around as we moved forward at less than one Lume through Cth. More would have been fatal for had we been forced to resort to a quick breakout to avoid enemy action, and if we were travelling above one Lume when we hit threespace, we'd simply disappear, leaving a small spatial vortex ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... the vortex I have not been hurled. If experience breeds such a mental disease, I am glad I have lived with the birds and the bees, And the winds and the waves, and let people alone So far in my life but good women ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... religious habit, and as she looked at me in eager inquiry, and yet with modest demeanour, I felt that I had already fallen into a veritable vortex of mystery. ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... which threatened his friend now drew him into their vortex like an invincible magnet. His conscience accused him; but he followed Cinq-Mars wherever he went without even, from excess of delicacy, hazarding a single expression which might resemble a personal fear. He had tacitly given up his life, and would have deemed it unworthy of both to manifest ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... but I will not sap the foundations of order and of public right by unsettling rules, common to all parties, under which criminal justice has been continuously administered, and dragging for the first time the prerogative of mercy within the vortex of party conflict.' I dare say I may have said too much in the way of argument on a matter which seems to me hardly to call for argument, but a naked suggestion would have appeared even less considerate than ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... passed. From the first morning of my arrival I found myself at once in the vortex of gayety; invitations poured in upon me—thanks to the black-bearded Titeroff—cards for dances here and there and receptions and dinners, while I spent each afternoon with Titeroff and a wandering Englishman named Mayhew, who told me he was ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... borne along in the swift current of humanity that was swept down the street, like the water in a mill-race, to turn the wheels of workshop and factory. Before Springer's a great arm of this human mill-stream eddied inward, to be lost in another moment in the vortex of the wide black doors, whence issued muffled sounds of the pandemonium within. At the last moment I hesitated, obsessed once more with the indefinable horror of it all. Again there was the strong impulse to run away—far, far away from Springer's and ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... nothing of sufficient interest in the passage of the canal to be worthy of record save the giving way of a lock-gate, near Troy, and the precipitating of a canal-boat into the vortex of waters that followed. By this accident my boat was detained one day on the banks of the canal. On the fourth day the Mayeta ended her services by arriving at Albany, where, after a journey of four hundred miles, experience had taught ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... vortex of existence, can the Son of Time not pretend: still less if some Spectre haunt him from the Past; and the future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... within easy reach of the shore, yet she shot ahead. Five minutes later, we could see the first trees of Goat Island. The current became more and more irresistible. If the "Terror" did not stop, the destroyers could not much longer follow her. If it pleased our accursed captain to plunge us into the vortex of the falls, surely they did not mean to follow ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... journalistic attention was thus eulogistically concentrated upon the loss of America's greatest capitalist, not a reference was made in church or newspaper to the deaths every year of a host of the lowly, slain in the industrial vortex by injury and disease, and too often by suicide and starvation. Except among the lowly themselves this ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... just been reading Cuvier, to see whether he believed in the Harveian theory of the circulation. I found he did not. "The circulation vortex," says he, "is sometimes simple, sometimes double and even triple (including that of the vena porta); the rapidity of its movements is often aided by the contraction of a certain fleshy apparatus denominated hearts." Thus ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... them, made up a spectacle sufficient to appal the stoutest heart; and Roland gasped for breath, as he beheld the little canoe whirl into the narrow chasm, and then vanish, even before the light was over, as if swallowed up in its boiling vortex. ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... minds, strong in the north of Europe but still weak in France where, however, many facts called marvelous by superficial observers, were happening, but falling, alas! like stones to the bottom of the sea, in the vortex of ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... of the towns of the Border States, and more early energetic action in affording these classes protection would have secured us the aid of their strong hands. As it was, these resources were in great measure frittered away—gradually drawn by what appeared an irresistible influence into the vortex of the Rebellion—or scattered wanderingly through the Loyal States, and worn down and exhausted in the support of dependent ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... and somehow I have been listlessly contented to let them tell you about home matters, and wait until my strength returned. But you must not doubt where every waking memory of mine has centred; my thoughts have circled always around that central vortex from which, since I first laid eyes on you, they ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... but inert, but that its particles were a thrill under the action of multitudinous forces that were playing on it. The lecturer was at this time constrained to choose whether to go on with the practical applications of his work, the success of which appeared to be assured, or to throw himself into a vortex of conflict for the establishment of some truth the glimmerings of which he was then but dimly beginning to perceive. It is very curious that the human mind is sometimes so constituted that it rejects lines of least resistance in favour of the more difficult path. Dr. Bose chose ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... explained by a settling down of bodies toward the centre of each vortex; and cohesion by an absence of relative motion tending to separate particles of matter. He "can imagine ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... incident altered the whole current of my life. From the most obscure of little towns in the most remote of provinces I was thrust without preparation into the vortex of all that is most sprightly and alert in Parisian society. The world stood revealed to me, and my self became a double one. The Gascon got the better of the Breton; there was no more custodia oris mei, and I put ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... think a doctrine dear to so many saintly men, maintained with an erudition so vast and exemplified by sacrifices so great, should have disappeared in the vortex of present-day conflict. It may some day reappear in Convocation. Kettlewell, who was a precise writer and accurate thinker, defined sovereignty as supremacy. 'Kings,' he said, 'can be no longer sovereigns, but subjects, if they have any superiors'; and he points out with ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the railroad yards below, the great eyes of the locomotives glared though the March dusk. As the suburban trains pulled out from minute to minute, thick wreaths of smoke shot up above the white steam blasts of the surrounding buildings. The smoke and steam were sucked together into the vortex ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... prepared to forget his distress by flinging himself, as people say, into "the vortex of pleasure." Alas, he was a very sorry guest and, leaving his brother early, found himself, by ten o'clock in the evening, in a ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... objective and relative. This is the universal method of Nature on every plane. Some of the most advanced thinkers in modern physical science, in the endeavour to probe the great mystery of the first origin of the world, have postulated the formation of what they call "vortex rings" formed from an infinitely fine primordial substance. They tell us that if such a ring be once formed on the minutest scale and set rotating, then, since it would be moving in pure ether and subject to no friction, it must according to all known laws of physics ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... cause celebre the girl's life would henceforth be shadowed and smirched by an awful memory. And then there rose before her mind another dread possibility. Was it not possible—nay, probable—that she, Blanche Farrow, would be sucked into the vortex? ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... of CHINGFORD, in Essex, may be called a vignette of the topographer's "rus in urbe," it being only nine miles distant from the heart of London, and consequently almost within its vortex. It stands on the banks of the river Lea, and derives its name from the Saxon word Cing and ford, (signifying the king's ford,) there having formerly been a ford here; the adjoining meadows being designated the king's meads, and the Lea, the king's stream. There appears to have been two manors ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... . the only visible last hope and chance of safety, . . and he now leaned against its cold stone arch, trembling in every limb, clasping the dead Sah-luma close, and looking back in affrighted awe at the tossing vortex of fury from which he had miraculously escaped. And,—as he looked,—a host of spectral faces seemed to rise whitely out of the flames and wonder at him! ... faces that were solemn, wistful, warning, and beseeching by turns! ... they drifted through the fire and smiled, and wept, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... week to have a show of mourning goods in the left- hand window, and refusing to let Maggie outside on any pretext. Therefore the dazzling social success of the elephant, which was quite easily drawing Mrs. Baines into the vortex, cannot imaginably be over-estimated. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... began. Men rose, trying their best to achieve self-control, and to speak judiciously and judicially, but they were hurled, one after another, into the vortex of indignation, and cheer upon cheer shook the hall as they gave vent to the real feeling that ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... very various, seen from different points: from the middle, where the river rushes from the vortex of the great fall to plunge into another, the stream appears to be painted with a broad layer of divers colours, never broken or mixed till they are tossed up in the cloud of spray, and mingled with it in a thousand variegated sparkles. Above, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... apply to Professor Flint's theistic argument drawn from recent scientific speculations as to the vortex-ring construction of matter. If these speculations are sound, their only influence on Theism would be that of supplying a scientific demonstration of the substantial identity of Force and Matter, and so of supplying a still more valid basis for the theory as to the natural genesis of matter ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... Chinese waters a simoom, as in the Sahara, or a tornado, as on the western coast, such a storm is always a gyratory one, and most dangerous for any ship caught in the current which increases from the circumference to the center, and has only one spot of calm, the middle of the vortex. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... and detaining influence against which he rebelled, and which he wished to repudiate. He was, as he had said so terribly, "home-sick for hell." He would go, and he would most inevitably be caught in the whirlpools; the naturalist, the scientist, the Butterfly Man, would be sucked into that boiling vortex and drowned beyond all hope of resuscitation; but from it the soul of Slippy McGee would emerge, with a larger knowledge and a clearer brain, a thousand-fold more deadly dangerous than of old; because this time he knew better and had deliberately chosen the evil and rejected the good. By the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... and he is induced to think that he has been hitherto misled and deceived in regard to such men. He then cultivates their acquaintance, and finally, through his own depravity, he becomes worse and worse, until he is at last swallowed up in the vortex of degradation. This is the result of employing dishonourable measures to prevent him from visiting such places, or to carry out ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... or four assembled there besides those belonging to Mrs. Arbuthnot, were by no means inclined to agree with Mr. Graham's strictures as to the amusements of Christmas-day. To them it appeared that they could not hurry fast enough into the vortex of its dissipations. The dinner was a serious consideration, especially with reference to certain illuminated mince-pies which were the crowning glory of that banquet; but time for these was almost begrudged in order that the fast handkerchief might ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... principal people of the city began to arrive for the ball, which proved worthy of the almost classic splendor of the restored House of Claes. The three marriages followed this happy day, and gave occasion to many fetes, and balls, and dinners, which involved Balthazar for some months in the vortex of social life. His eldest son and his wife removed to an estate near Cambrai belonging to Monsieur Conyncks, who was unwilling to separate from his daughter. Madame Pierquin also left her father's house to do the honors of a fine mansion which Pierquin had ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... shining and forever pure. But honor him! could that be done? What respect or trust was it possible to keep for a self-degraded man like that? And where honor goes down, obedience is sucked into the vortex, and the wreck flies far over the lonely sea, historic and prophetic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... led by domiciled aliens without a fatherland, may be truly said to have been wending steadily toward the revolutionary vortex long before the outbreak of hostilities. Her progress was continuous and perceptible. As far back as the year 1906 the late Count Witte and myself made a guess at the time-distance which the nation still had to traverse, assuming the rate of progress to be constant, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... has been said to show that what we have here is only the absorption of even the profoundest religious meanings into the vortex of an all-dissolving metaphysical system. The most obvious meaning of the phrase 'Son of God,' its moral and spiritual, its real religious meaning, is dwelt on, here in Hegel, as little as Hegel claimed that the Nicene trinitarians had dwelt upon it. Nothing marks more clearly the distance we ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... of the leading ideas? Hold them fast, to appropriate as you advance into the vortex of deeper action. See how the steepled church is in evidence. Not so wonderful. Many things photograph themselves for further reading by observation. We are yet in the very infancy of ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... they clung to their water-swept tree-trunk by a dark object whirling about in the boiling pool. It was swept dizzily round and round in ever decreasing circles toward the middle of the fatal vortex. Suddenly it shot downward out of sight, but as it did so Frank had seen something that kindled one ray of hope—though a feeble one. Before the canoe had taken the fatal downward plunge it had hesitated for a minute as though ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the Niemen would cut the knot of all these diplomatic difficulties, which he despised, probably too much; that then all the monarchs of Europe, compelled to acknowledge his ascendancy, would be eager to return into his system, and that all those satellites would be drawn into its vortex. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... author wrote the above remarks, the conditions of Indian trade have been revolutionized by the development of roads, railways, motors, telegraph, postal facilities, and exports. The Indian merchant has been drawn into the vortex of European and American commerce. He is, in consequence, not quite so cautions as he used to be, and is more liable to severe loss or failure, though he is still, as a rule, far more inclined to caution than are his Western rivals. The Indian private banker undoubtedly ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... learned in the peerage of words; know the words of true descent and ancient blood at a glance, from words of modern canaille;' but I venture the assertion that I am sufficiently sophisticated to plunge into the vortex of public life, and yet keep my head ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... may happen, and whatever in the body which envelops thee or in the breath [life], which is by nature associated with the body, is attached to thee independent of thy will, and whatever the external circumfluent vortex whirls round, so that the intellectual power exempt from the things of fate can live pure and free by itself, doing what is just and accepting what happens and saying the truth: if thou wilt separate, I say, from this ruling ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... frightened. She had not yet reached that stage of confidence familiar to all who cross the open seas. The first period of a gale is terrifying. Later there comes an indifference born of supreme trust in the ship. The steady onward thrust of the engines—the unwavering path across the raging vortex of tumbling gray waters—the orderly way in which the members of the crew follow their duties—these are quietly persistent factors in the gradual soothing of the nerves. Many a timid passenger, after lying awake through a night of terror, has gone to sleep when the watch began ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... valley where the cacique lived is called Magona. It is traversed by auriferous rivers, is generously productive and marvellously fertile. In the month of June of this same year occurred a frightful tempest; whirlwinds reaching to the skies uprooted the largest trees that were swept within their vortex. When this typhoon reached the port of Isabella, only three ships were riding at anchor; their cables were broken, and after three or four shocks—though there was no tempest or tide at the time—they sank. It is said that in that year the sea penetrated more deeply ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... similar to drift is observable at tennis, golf, base-ball and cricket; but this effect is explainable by the inequality of pressure due to a vortex of air carried along by the rotating ball, and the deviation is in the opposite direction of the drift observed in artillery practice, so artillerists are still awaiting theory ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Chinese territory? In this she was backed up by Great Britain; the other powers fell into line and the integrity of the Empire was assured. Again, when China was in danger of being drawn into the vortex of the Russo-Japanese war, who but America secured for her the privileges of neutrality—thus a second time protecting her national life? And now you turn [Page 250] against us! Is not such conduct condemned by your ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... battle-field. The road was filled with straggling and wounded soldiers. All who could travel on foot—multitudes with slight wounds of the upper limbs, the head or face—were told to take up their beds—a light burden, or none at all—and walk. Just as the battle-field sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so does it drive everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce centripetal forces have met and neutralized each other. For more than a week there had been sharp fighting all along this road. Through the streets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... and make me drunk with the beast that is in me, that I am ready to sacrifice truth, honesty, duty, and purpose for the sake of possession. She is not the woman ever to make me swamp honour and poise and right conduct in the vortex of blind sex passion. She is not the woman to arouse in me such uncontrolled desire that for gratification I would do one ill deed, or put the slightest hurt upon the least of human creatures. She is not the most beautiful woman God Almighty ever planted on His footstool. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... line, whence the bride had started from home a maiden. Yet she had positively declared, without doubt or reservation, that she had, "with her own eyes," seen the trunk on the various stages of her tour; this can only be accounted for by the peculiar flustration of a young lady just plunged into the vortex of matrimony. The husband paid the whole of ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... roaring gulf! Yes, yes, down through that awful water-way, with more than the swiftness of an arrow, shot the boat, or skiff, right into the jaws of the pool. A monstrous breaker curls over the prow—there is no hope; the boat is swamped, and all drowned in that strangling vortex. No! the boat, which appeared to have the buoyancy of a feather, skipped over the threatening horror, and the next moment was out of danger, the boatman—a true boatman of Cockaigne, that—elevating one of his skulls in sign of triumph, the man hallooing, and the woman, a true Englishwoman ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... office to get the night's receipts. Alas! they were already in the hands of the deputy sheriff. Another opera manager had gone down into the vortex which had swallowed up Ebers, and Taylor, and Delafield, and others of their tribe in London, and Montressor and Rivafinoli in New York. Palmo, it is said, had literally to return to his pots and kettles; after serving as cook and barkeeper in the hotels ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... bodies, that there are now, directed to the welfare of the people under them. It would, no doubt, have been a great easement of the present difficulty. Any body who does his duty to his dependents keeps a certain number out of the vortex; and his example is nearly sure to be followed, if he acts in an inoffensive, modest fashion. Dr. Arnott has shown what great things may be done in the way of ventilation by individual employers. See ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... at the turn of the tide, the waters confined between the Faroe and Lofoten Islands rush out with irresistible violence. They form a vortex from which no ship has ever been able to escape. Monstrous waves race together from every point of the horizon. They form a whirlpool aptly called "the ocean's navel," whose attracting power extends a distance of fifteen kilometers. It can suck down not only ships but whales, and even ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... sprang up, and he took to a fit and a vortex and an exasperation of running for which no description may be found. The thumping of his big boots grew as con-tinuous as the pattering of hailstones on a roof, and the wind of his passage blew trees down. The beasts that were ranging beside his path ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... eighteen dollars, when Madame Caradori showed them those lovely ones, like the Misses Sibthorpe's, for forty-five; and how they go home descanting on virgin simplicity, and resolving that they will not allow themselves to be swept into the vortex of extravagance, whatever ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the rising blast; Dark cloven clouds drive to and fro By peaks pre-eminent in snow; A sounding river rushes past, So wild, so vortex-like, and vast. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... strife and the oppression which engendered strife. A feeling of fierce anger succeeded his day dream. The sun shone around him, the fields were fair to see. Life ought to be like the sun and the fields—simple and good and beautiful. Instead it was difficult and cruel. He was being dragged into a vortex of hate and battle. He loathed the very thought of it. He wanted peace and love. And yet, what escape was there for him? Did he even want to escape if he could? The wrong and tyranny he was to resist were real, insistent, horrible. He would be less than a man, unworthy of the love ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... the vortex of fight he raised his violin to his chin, and instantly a piercingly sweet call penetrated the wild uproar. The Call filled it, drained through it, wrapped it, overcame it; so that it sank away at last like the outwash of an ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... extent of cultivation. The principal towns through which you pass are Laun and Schlan, neither of them large or very prosperous; the rest are mere villages. By degrees, however, as you come within what may be described as the vortex of Prague, a great change is perceptible. The country becomes much more broken and undulating, while here and there, from the summit of a hill, elevated above the rest, the view which you command is both striking and extensive. At last, the White Mountain, as it is called, lies before you, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... came, from the heart of the swiftly piled up, lowering clouds, the blinding flash which shattered the peace of the world and started the overwhelming conflagration into the seething, bloody-tongued vortex into which nation after nation was sucked irresistibly. The world had become the plaything of the ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... my sailor agility together and just as the little vessel was going bow up over the edge I leapt from her—came down blinded with spray on the ledge, rolled over and over, clutched frantically at the frozen soil, and was safe for the moment, but only a few inches from the vortex below! ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... table, but, after gulping a mouthful, and using it as a gargle, squirts it into the basin standing before him, and the company, who may see the charybdis or maelstrom he has made in it, and the floating filth he has discharged, and which is now whirling in its vortex. In England this practice is unknown, except to those whose taste and stomach are too strong for offence. It has been stupidly borrowed from the Oriental nations, who use no knives and forks, and where, though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam Pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangor of the trumpets of the armies of God, blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white light of the new Heaven, until the great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat; the Firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls into the interminable, inevitable light; the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow, currents ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... department and favored a strong executive to guard against it. He declared in the "Federalist" that the legislative department was "everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex,"—that the people "never seem to have recollected the danger from legislative usurpation which by assembling all power in the same hands must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpation." Washington in his Farewell Address, after much experience ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... thatched ones. Great lumps of ice, all of the same shape, but of various sizes, began to rain out of the sky. The shape was that of a full-blown rose; it suggested that each had been formed in a tiny vortex-mould. Some of the lumps measured four inches across. Dr. Egan, at the Grey Hospital, secured one monster which weighed ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... notice-board requested us to walk around the silent square on the outside pavement and not across it. The German sausage balloon had not been up for days; it had probably gone off to the Somme; the Somme was a terrible vortex just then which was sucking away the resources of the whole German line; but still discipline is discipline. The sausage might come peeping up at any moment over the station roof, and so we skirted the square. Arras was fought ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... the little towns of Germany can be!), I find myself taking no thought for the future, but living under the influence of passing moods, and of my recollections of the tempest which recently drew me into its vortex, and then cast me out again. At times I seem still to be caught within that vortex. At times, the tempest seems once more to be gathering, and, as it passes overhead, to be wrapping me in its folds, until I have lost my sense of order and reality, and continue whirling and whirling ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with malice—for the result swept Linda herself into the vortex of excitement and peril that followed; but the railroad president's daughter shrieked at the loudest pitch ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... the American states, which were, (like England,) out of the vortex of danger, and secure, increased in fully ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... I carry bride of mine, to make her home in a fashionable hotel. I would as soon plunge her in the roaring vortex on Norway's coast." ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... at least nothing effectual is done, to avert the dangers: every one shuts his eyes to them, or opens them only to take measures to avert an assessment; and meanwhile crime advances with the steps of a giant, sweeping whole classes of society into its vortex, and threatening to spread corruption and vice, in an incredible manner, through the densest and most dangerous classes of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... spent our evenings at home; truly enjoying the greatest of earthly blessings, domestic felicity. How it is possible for those who have once tasted this, the sweetest of all human delights, how it is possible for any rational mind afterwards to submit to be whirled round in the vortex of dissipation, to tolerate, to endure, the empty, vain, comfortless, nothingness of fashionable amusements, now appears to me to be almost inexplicable. The real felicity imparted and received in a happy domestic circle, in one evening, far, very far ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... when back in the London vortex, the curious soft beauty she won from casting up her eyes to watch the descending feathers, and the brilliant direct beam of those thick-browed, firm, clear eyes, with her frown, and her set lips and brave figure, when she was in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exception had heard dreadful accounts of their pernicious effects, when they happened to break over a ship. We prepared, indeed, for the worst, by clewing up our top-sails; but it was the general opinion that our masts and yards must have gone to wreck if we had been drawn into the vortex. It was hinted that firing a gun had commonly succeeded in breaking water-spouts, by the strong vibration it causes in the air; and accordingly a four-pounder was ordered to be got ready, but our people, being, as usual, very dilatory about it, the danger was past before we could try the experiment. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl; [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the ultimate atoms of matter are vortex rings, which Professor Clifford describes as being more closely packed together (finer grained) in ether than in matter. And he says, "whatever may turn out to be the ultimate nature of the ether and of molecules, we know that to some extent at least they obey the same dynamic laws, and that they ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... vexation to Mons. le G——, who was deeply injured. Before his suit had passed through its last forms, the father of his wife, who at the time of their marriage lived in great affluence, became a bankrupt. In the vortex of his failure, all the means of supporting his family were swallowed up. The generous le G——, disdaining to expose to want and ignominy the woman who had once been dear to him, would proceed no further. She is still his wife; she bears his name, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... had hitherto lived, and gave way to a more dissipated mode of life. His rank was discovered; attentions which he was obliged to return, etiquettes for which he was indebted to his rank, drew him imperceptibly within the vortex of the great world. His rank, as well as his personal attractions, opened to him the circles of all the beaux esprits in Venice, and he soon found himself on terms of intimacy with the most enlightened persons in the republic, men of learning ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... John William Hebblethwaite took the hat from his footman, stepped into his car, and was driven rapidly away. He leaned back among the cushions, more thoughtful than usual. There was a yellow moon in the sky, pale as yet. The streets were a tangled vortex of motorcars and taxies, all filled with men and women in evening dress. It was the height of a wonderful season. Everywhere was dominant the note of prosperity, gaiety, even splendour. The houses ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... poet descended in imagination to the underworld, which he pictured reaching in wide circles from a vortex of sin and misery to a point of godlike ecstasy. With Vergil as a guide, he passed through the dark portals with ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... the Maia vortex, the Paris photographs depicted a series of nebulous bars on either side of Merope, and a curious streak extending like a finger-post from Electra towards Alcyone . . . Streamers and fleecy masses of cosmical fog seem almost to fill ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... rather attempted to say than actually said. And it has only said one thing, because it has only seen one point: and that was not so much vision as contact; this contact supplied an impulse, this impulse a movement, and if this movement, which is a kind of vortex of a certain particular form, is only visible to our eyes by what it has picked up on its path, it is no less true that other dust might equally well have been raised, and that it would still have been the same vortex." ("Philosophic ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... approximately an even chance, but as soon as they reached the legal working age only a scanty moiety of those who became self-supporting could endure the strain of long hours and bad air. Thus the average human youth, "With all the sweetness of the common dawn," is flung into the vortex of industrial life wherein the everyday tragedy escapes us save when one of them becomes conspicuously unfortunate. Twice in one year ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... concerning which I was consulted; I could no longer express myself with lucidity. Outwardly sedate, reliable, I sat at my desk dizzied by such visions as pursued St. Anthony to his cell. No sooner was I free than I fled from Vernon, dined in Paris, bought a false beard, and plunged wildly into the vortex of a dancing-hall. Scoundrel! This is past pardon! My sensibilities revolt, and my prudence shudders. Who shall say but that one night I may be recognised? Who can foretell to what blackmail you may expose me? I, Maitre Lapalme, forbid your profligacies, which ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick |
