"Backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Squinty, looking up at the farmer with his comical eyes, one half shut and the other wide open. "Ugh! Ugh!" And with his odd eyes, and one ear cocked forward, and the other flopping over backward, Squinty looked so funny that the farmer had to laugh ...
— Squinty the Comical Pig - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... knees; he fell back against the hand-rail, which was just high enough for him to sit on. lit was what, for one ridiculous moment, he seemed to be doing. The next, his booted feet swayed up and he fell over backward, amid the confusion of splashing water that leaped down the main-deck. Conroy heard him strike something below ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... I would not think it was fun to trip a lame boy up. I would not think it fun to see him splash down backward into a pool, and when he soused under and wet his lame back ice-cold, I ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... and he remembered a day when his sister, who was recovering from a severe attack of fever, was first allowed to go out into the open air. She had gone out, clinging to his arm into the peristyle of his father's house; as he walked backward and forwards with poor, weary, abandoned Sirona, his neglected figure seemed by degrees to assume the noble aspect of a high-born Greek; and instead of the rough, rocky soil, he felt as if he were treading the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and whom, by their unprecedented bounty, they had made what he was. At these words Cromwell put on his hat, and, springing from his place, exclaimed, "Come, come, sir, I will put an end to your prating." For a few seconds, apparently in the most violent agitation, he paced forward and backward, and then, stamping on the floor, added, "You are no parliament. I say you are no parliament: bring them in, bring them in." Instantly the door opened, and Colonel Worseley entered, followed by more than ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... them be ashamed and confounded together, that seek after my soul to destroy it: let them be driven backward and put to rebuke, ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... bees and ants. In human societies we find only imitations of this system. And here, again, there is a lesson necessary for us to remember. Any ideal that takes the father from the child, and the child from its father, giving it only to the mother, is a step backward and ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... acted on the presumption that the trail had been made plain for a good reason, and that not far ahead at some suitable place,—and there were any number of such within a hundred yards,—the maker of the plain trail lay in wait. Smiling savagely he worked backward and turning, struck off in a circle. He had no compunctions whatever now about shooting the other player of the game. It was not long before he came upon the same trail again and he started another circle. A bullet zipped past his ear and cut ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... from the supper-table, he well-nigh fell backward when Fagon, coming forward, cried in great trouble that all was lost. It may be imagined what terror seized all the company at this abrupt passage from perfect security to hopeless despair. The King, scarcely master of himself, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... voice of thunder came, And, shook in glistening beams around, Burst out the lightning flame. The chiefs breathed free, and, at the sign, Trusted in the power divine. Hinting sweet hopes, the seer cried Forthwith their oars to ply, And swift went backward from rough hands The rowing ceaselessly. —PINDAR. Trans. by Rev. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... buried in the ground changed the pattern of the day. Ross's heel scraped against it, and the resulting pain triggered his rebellion into explosion. He threw himself backward, his bruised heel sliding between the feet of his captor, bringing them both to the ground with himself on top. The other expelled air from his lungs in a grunt of surprise, and Ross whipped over, one hand grasping the hilt of the tribesman's dagger while the other, free of ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... steeped in purple shades already prophesying night; while the other, separated from the first by a gap, yet grouping with it, ran slanting away to the northwest, offering to the eyes only a series of lovely foreshortened planes, rising from the valley, one behind the other, sweeping upward and backward to the central peak of Skiddaw, and ablaze with light from ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... towards the unravelment of the tangled web of stellar movements was taken when Herschel established the reality, and indicated the direction of the sun's journey. But the gradual shifting backward of the whole of the celestial scenery amid which we advance accounts for only a part of the observed displacements. The stars have motions of their own besides those reflected upon them from ours. All attempts, however, to grasp the general scheme ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... to come, if he had betrayed the least uncertainty as to whether she would come, Hazel would have swung down from the saddle and set her face stubbornly southward in sheer defiance of him. But such is the peculiar complexity of a woman that she took one longing glance backward, and then fell in behind the packs. She was weighted down with dread of the unknown, boiling over with rage at the man who swung light-footed in the lead; but ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... her backward, she tried to cry out, but he had anticipated that, and already he had grasped her so that he could press one of his hands for an instant over her mouth, and at the same moment he ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... Seth, and, mounting the doorstep, peered within. As I did so, a shiny, round, black face, with whitened eyes and huge red lips, seemed to float directly toward me through the inner darkness. It was so startling an apparition that I sprang back in such haste as nearly to topple over backward from the steps. Heaven alone knows what I fancied it might be; indeed, I had little enough time in which to guess, for I had barely touched the ground,—my mind still filled with memories of Seth's grotesque horrors,—when ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... unbroken. It is often, as one has said, a spiral rather than a straight line. It is not an unceasing advance: there are backward movements, or what appear to be such. Of particular nations it is frequently evident, that, intellectually and morally, as well as in power and thrift, they have sunk below a ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the history of woman suffrage in Utah one must turn backward to 1870, when the Legislature of the Territory passed a bill conferring the franchise upon women, to which acting-Governor S. A. Mann affixed his signature February 12. From that time women voted at all elections, while some ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... long wished for lighthouse of Abaco (built by the English) showed her charitable and revolving radiance. But our ship, Penelope-like, undoes by night what she has performed by day, and her course is backward and crabbish. A delicious smell of violets is blowing ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... to get to the cabin I scarcely know. I faintly remember working my way along the bridge on my hands and knees, and going backward down the steps in the same fashion for fear of falling; and of trying to walk upright when I got to the deck, so that I should not get wet above my knees in the water there, and of falling souse into it and getting soaked all over; and then of crawling aft very slowly—stopping ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... dreamily from the casement of her turret-chamber—hers, only because nobody else liked the room? Her eyes were fixed earnestly on one little spot of ground, a few feet from the castle gate; and her soul was wandering backward nineteen years, recalling the one scene which stood out vividly, the earliest of memory's pictures—a picture without text to explain it—before which, and after which, came blanks with no recollection ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... breathed Andy. There was no time to be lost. But the backward movement was most painfully slow. The men tramping in the bushes, feeling the thing but ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... cleanliest, as Marston is beyond comparison the coarsest writer of his time. In this as in other matters of possible comparison that "vessel of deathless wrath," the implacable and inconsolable poet of sympathy half maddened into rage and aspiration goaded backward to despair—it should be needless to add the name of Cyril Tourneur—stands midway between these two more conspicuous figures of their age. But neither the father and master of poetic pessimists, the splendid and sombre creator of Vindice and his victims, nor any other third ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... shore turn tearfully into church to pray; and those aboard watch the dim outline of Palos fade away; by and by they notice that the reddish Tinto has become the blue ocean sparkling in the early sunshine; but no sparkle enters their timid souls. They can only keep looking longingly backward till the last tawny rocks of Spain and Portugal are left behind, and then there is nothing to do but sigh and mutter a dismal prayer. But Christopher's prayer ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... smile of rage and a laugh, letting me go and shoving me backward at the same time, so that I had ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... singing. For myself I prefer to hold in hand a small book containing the words of my songs, for it seems to be more graceful and Jess obtrusive than the other ways I have mentioned. I never refer to this little book, as I know the words of my songs backward; I could rise in the middle of the night and go through the program without a glance at words or music, so thoroughly do I know what I am singing. Therefore I do not need the book of words, but I shall always ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... road the crowds were yet denser and the din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped, traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their faces that they despaired of the possibility of checking ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... may move forward, backward or sideways in a straight line along a path not obstructed by a man of the same color. In other words, he may move to any square of the rank or file on which he stands unless another man of his own color is in the way. If there is a hostile man ...
— Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership • Edward Lasker
... ruthless, then. He wrenched away the other arm. He battered at the unseen torso. The feet of the desperate mech smashed at his knees and thighs, staggering him. Then he bore the armless torso of the mech backward and ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... Maurice was no backward lover. He made his way to Lesley that very day, and found her in the library—not, as usual, bending over a book, but standing by the window, from which could be seen a piece of waste ground overgrown ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... grave courtesy, and gave his hand to Patricia. For one moment she looked at Landless with wide, dark eyes, then, her spirit obedient to his spirit, she turned and went from him without one word or backward look. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the plays of his French prototype, Racine, they reveal their full merit only to connoisseurs. They are the work of a man who was better able than most men of his generation to prove all things, and who held fast to that which he found good. His art is not forward-looking, like that of Kleist, nor backward-looking, like that, say, of Theodor Koerner. It is in the strictest sense complementary and co-ordinate to that of Goethe and Schiller, a classicism modified by romantic tendencies toward individuation and localization. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... dizziness. The place seemed to spin around and I felt that I was falling. Next, a great weight seemed to press me down like some horrid nightmare. I endeavored to groan, to cry out and struggle from under it, but it held me fast. After this I seemed to be falling backward through a blackness—an inky blackness. It came close to me, and pressed close upon my lips and my eyes. It smothered me; I ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... huge log from beside the hearth and sat on the driest end of it, while their guest occupied the stool. The young man, without turning away from his discontented, peevish brooding over the fire, vaguely reached backward for the whiskey-bottle and Uncle Billy's tin cup, to which he was assisted by the latter's hospitable hand. But on setting down the cup his eye ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some other contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... and clutched the basket. A mighty crash rang up. The jam had started—was moving—going down—madly splintering—thundering into the glut-hole! The wet splinters all along the rapids went up a hundred feet in air. On both sides the gangs were running backward, hoisting the "basket." It rose twenty feet a second! A hundred and fifty strong men pulled with might and main! As he rose he waved ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... again to lean his back against an out-cropping mass of rock and pass the back of his hand across his eyes, that at first were bloodshot with fury. He had a great desire to kill Policeman Rat-it-all. As his passion died down and he limped forward, to pause and again limp forward, his gait and the backward cast of his eye were not unlike those of ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... looks are not everything. Art simply didn't exist for her. Revue might have been her real line; or, better still, a strong-woman turn on the Halls. There was the episode, for instance, where, having to prostrate herself before the Baron, she insisted upon a backward exit (with the usual result) and then made an acrobatic re-entrance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... in the same city? never see the sun rise or set in so many years, but be as they were watching a corpse by torch-light; would not sin the common way, but held that a kind of rusticity; they would do it new, or contrary, for the infamy; they were ambitious of living backward; and at last arrived at that, as they would love nothing but the vices, not the vicious customs. It was impossible to reform these natures; they were dried and hardened in their ill. They may say they desired to leave it, but do not trust them; and they ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... place at the foot of a high palm without side branches, surrounded the trunk and himself with a circular rope which resembled the hoop of a barrel. Then he raised himself on the tree by his heels, his whole body bent backward, but the hoop-like rope held him by squeezing his body to the tree. Next he shoved the flexible hoop up the trunk some inches, raised himself by his heels again, then shoved the rope up. In this way he climbed, exposed meanwhile to the peril of breaking his neck, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... shoved out into the lake; the wind caught the sails, and away went the canoe like a bird. It was wonderful going with the wind, but when they decided it was time to turn around and come home they found that the sails absolutely refused to work backward, so they lowered them and paddled. As the canoe leaped forward under the steady, even strokes, the ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... he should pass his hands over every inch, as he had said. The difficulty was to be sure, in the darkness, that he did not miss an inch. Sometimes he was not sure enough, and then he went over the ground again. He crawled backward and forward, and he crawled forward and backward. He crawled crosswise and lengthwise, he crawled diagonally, and he crawled round and round. But he did not find the key. If he had had only a little light, but he had none. He was so absorbed in his search that he did not know he had been engaged ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nearly parallel, and are from a mile to a mile and a half asunder. Their course is not a direct line but curving. The ridge on which our forces are posted, bend outward and backward, so that the line is in the form of a half circle, fronting from the center, while the rebels were forced to occupy an exterior ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... had trodden upon soft soap, like lightning his heels glided forward from under him. The whole of Uncle Ivar fell backward upon Constantinople, his legs beat the air, and the crown of his head struck the floor with a boom that resounded through ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... his suit. It was the dark-blue serge he had worn at the dance five months before. What those five months had been to Dickie, through what abasements and exaltations, furies and despairs he had traveled since he had looked up from Sheila's slippered feet with his heart turned backward like a pilot's wheel, was only faintly indicated in his face. And yet the face gave Sheila a pang. And, unsupported by anger, he was far from formidable, a mere youth. Sheila wondered at her long and sustained persecution of him. She smiled, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... his approach and disappearance. Although familiar with the use of a bridle, he despises such a troublesome article of luxury, and guides his horse with his voice, hands, and feet—nay, it almost seems as if he directed it by the mere exercise of the will, as we move our feet to the right or left, backward or forward, without its ever coming into our head to regulate our movements by a ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... much meanness of conception; much wealth, but also much poverty. A struggle between greatness and littleness; intelligence and ignorance; light and darkness. Sometimes we feel as if going forward, sometimes as if backward. One day, we seem as if about to start a hundred years in advance; on the next, all is wrong somewhere, and we feel as if hurriedly retreating to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... is not secured until the figure standing in the background is added. This produces from the foreground figure, through one of the seated figures, the transitional line which pulls the composition forward and backward and makes a circular composition of what was commenced upon a line ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... backward, after such precipitate steps as they had formerly taken, is not easily explained. It is probable, that in the extreme distress of his party consisted the present safety of the king. The parliament hoped that the royalists, sensible of their feeble condition, and convinced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... for what is merely a modification of the Flemish coil, both being extremely good for the object, that is, when a rope has to be let go suddenly, and is required to run freely. Fake, in contradistinction to long coil is, run a rope backward and forward in one-fathom bends, beside each other, so that it may run free, as in rocket-lines, to communicate with stranded ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... in the first instance was directed in such a manner as to compass the lagoons, which after travelling about three miles and a half to the south-west, we accomplished, and again came upon the stream; the country thence backward bore the marks of being at some periods near three feet under water, and was covered with small box-trees: the country from our rejoining the river, to the place at which we stopped for the evening, consisted of barren plains, extending on both sides ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... Henry's to be anything but wroth at his exclusion. Many's the time I have seen him make an obvious resolve, quit the table, and go and join himself to his wife and my Lord Durrisdeer; and on their part, they were never backward to make him welcome, turned to him smilingly as to an intruding child, and took him into their talk with an effort so ill-concealed that he was soon back again beside me at the table, whence (so great is the hall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to come in. The poor beast was heavy loaded—his legs seemed to tremble under him—he hung rather backward, and, as I pulled at his halter, it broke in my hand. He looked up pensive in my face: 'Don't thrash me with it: but if you will you may.' 'If I do,' said I, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but I think her intentions are always right. Once when she was a little creature of three or four years she suddenly brought her tiny foot down upon the floor in an apparent outbreak of indignation, then fetched it a backward wipe, and stooped down to examine the ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... lays Her golden wealth upon the forest floor, And all the days 15 Look backward at the days that went before, A pensive company, the asters, stand, Their blue eyes brightening ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... of science, the fact was, that Mr. Ben Waterford had tumbled over backward into the creek. In substance, he had repeated the experiment at the stern of the boat which I had tried at the bow, only he had fallen into the water, and I had fallen upon the land. In spite of preferences for the water, I must acknowledge that ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... made a step backward. "It is certain," thought he, "that he has made up his mind. He alone who cannot go back can show such obstinacy. Not to see the danger now would be to be blind indeed; not to shun it would be stupid." He resumed aloud, "Did your majesty send for ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the head are, the great width and elongation of the face, the depth of the molar region, the branches of the lower jaw being very deep and extending far backward, and the comparative smallness of the cranial portion; the eyes are very large, and said to be like those of the Enche-eko, a bright hazel; nose broad and flat, slightly elevated towards the root; the muzzle broad, and prominent ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... came up he struck Nic a back-handed blow across the chest, forcing him backward and making Tomlins utter a cry ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... to do something splendid for him. And he was doing so well now that the time was not far off. But Gilbert was honest with himself. He knew well that when the two years' work which he had laid out for himself in this little backward place were ended it was not the neglected duty he would consider, but a city practice, and a fine home worthy of Rosalie. For the first time in his life the ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... folio, covered with hieroglyphics which mark the progress of finding the cipher which he thinks the plays contain—such sample page is certainly a marvel, even to the generation which has read with avidity "Robert Elsmere" and "Looking Backward." A peculiarity in it all is, that his explanation makes marvelous doubly so. To believe that a man should have hidden his authorship of such works as the plays of Shakespeare makes a draft on the credulity of men too great to be ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the foulest fashion.' When the Khalif heard what I said and knew that I was a man of exceeding generosity and few words and no meddler (as this young man would have it, whom I rescued from horrors and who has so scurvily repaid me), he laughed so immoderately that he fell backward. Then said he to me, 'O silent man, are thy six brothers like thee distinguished for wisdom and knowledge and spareness of speech?' 'Never were they like me,' answered I; 'thou dost me injustice, O Commander of the Faithful, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... his effort, not an inch did Damis yield. His face grew as pale as the Jovian's grew red and his breath came whistling through his lips, but the strength he had inherited from his mighty sire stood him in good stead. Inch by inch he bent the huge form of his opponent backward. With a sudden effort, the Jovian raised one of his huge misshapen feet and strove to bring his mighty thighs to aid him in thrusting away his enemy. Damis' knee came up and the Jovian dropped ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... immoderately. Why, if Ponce de Leon had found the fountain of youth and drunk of it as bibulously as we are apt to guzzle the cup of achievement, he would not only have arrested the forward march of time, but would have over-reached himself and slipped backward through the years of his age to become a chronic infant in arms. Even traveling hopefully would pall if one kept at it twenty-four hours a day. Just feast on the rich food of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... pleasantest apartment in Rome, where the apartments of passing strangers were not so proud under Pius IX. as they are under Victor Emmanuel III. I do not know why it should have been called the Street of the Lobster, but it may have been in an obscure play of the fancy with the notion of a backward gait in it that I came to believe that, in the many improvements which had befallen Rome, Via del Gambero had disappeared. Destroyed, some traveller from antique lands had told me, I dare say; obliterated, wiped out by the march of municipal progress. At any rate, I had ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... and were pouring streams of canister into the invaded wood. The infantry rose in masses, springing into line. Our threatened regiments stood like a wall, their loaded rifles at "ready," their bayonets hanging quietly in the scabbards. The right wing of my own regiment was thrown slightly backward to threaten the flank of the assault. The battered brigade away to the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... to boil at howso small a fire. Yet, culled with caution, proved with patient toil, These have I seen degenerate, did not man Put forth his hand with power, and year by year Choose out the largest. So, by fate impelled, Speed all things to the worse, and backward borne Glide from us; even as who with struggling oars Up stream scarce pulls a shallop, if he chance His arms to slacken, lo! with headlong force The current sweeps him down the hurrying tide. Us too behoves Arcturus' sign observe, And ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... which both impelled him to become all things to all men, with a view to their salvation, as he has been saying, and urged him to effort and self-discipline, with a view to his own, as he goes on to say. 'For the Gospel's sake' seems to point backward; 'that I may be a joint partaker thereof points forward. We have not only to preach the Gospel to others, but to live on it and be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... snapped, impressing upon her brain the scene, sharp, clear-cut, and vivid. The shaggy back of the large man almost brushing her, the rage-drunken, white shirted man in the derby hat, the crowd sweeping backward like rushes before a blast, men with arms flexed and feet raised in flight, the glaring yellow sign of the "Gold Belt Dance Hall" across the way—these were stamped upon her retina, and then she was jerked violently backward, two strong arms crushed her down upon her knees ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... writing the equation, he wrote the solution. Bors asked suspicious questions. Logan answered absently. He knew nothing about overdrive. He didn't understand anything but numbers and he didn't know how he did what he did with them. But he'd worked backward from observed errors in calculation and found a way to keep them out of the answer. And he'd done it all in his head. It ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the man threw up his hands, fell backward, and disappeared. After a second's hesitation, both lads ran to the wall, climbed up, and looked over. In an unmistakable fit, the man was writhing on the ground. Johnny and Albert ran quickly across lots ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... that a great black hand struck him in the face and flung him backward. He lay for a moment, half-stunned; then he sat up, and, behold! the sun had gone out and he was ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... lady, who was seen walking a long time at evening beside the Rhine, had been found the next morning, on the bank, among the willows. She had filled her handkerchief with stones, and tied it about her neck, probably intending to sink in the river; but, as she stabbed herself to the heart, she fell backward; and they found her thus lying under the willows by the Rhine, in a spot where the water was deepest. It was ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... imagine I am afraid of you! I wear an armour, against which all your weapons are impotent. I have dug a pit for you; and, whichever way you move, backward or forward, to the right or the left, it is ready to swallow you. Be still! If once you fall, call as loud as you will, no man on earth shall hear your cries; prepare a tale however plausible, or however ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... age—may she continue like her! Pretty creature, she can hardly be more charming than at present. Aubrey, the moon-faced, is far from reconciled to his disposition from babyhood; he is a sober, solemn gentleman, backward in talking, and with such a will of his own, as will want much watching; very different from Blanche, who is Flora over again, perhaps prettier and more fairy-like, unless this is only one's admiration ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... not shrink from him now, but would answer his questions submissively, and give him her hand mechanically at meeting and parting. Saxham had not the magnetic influence over shy and backward children that another man possessed. She would smile and brighten when she saw the Colonel coming, upright and alert as ever, though bearing heavy traces now in the haggard lines and deep hollows of his face, to the greying hairs above his temples and to the close-clipped brown ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... other corner, and turned, without any revelation of an opening. The leopard walked leisurely, but steadily. Softly the footsteps of Timokles and the beast sounded in the room, one footfall answering another. Backward, backward, went Timokles—now a turn of a corner—backward, backward. Another corner. This was the wall by which the leopard had slept. Backward, backward! The lad could not pause, but now, as he neared the end of the wall and looked ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... if he was to stretch out one of his long arms, he might again grasp Oliver and draw him towards him. Oh, what would I not have given for a loaded gun at that moment! In vain I attempted to load mine while I stepped backward. Oliver was attempting to escape; but just then his heel caught in the root of a tree, which grew at the base of the cliff, and down he fell, rolling in the sand. His fate appeared to be sealed. I cried out in terror and alarm. The mias, uttering a shout of mocking laughter, seemed ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, and you stand in the heart of a valley and beyond signs of habitation. The southern slope is beautifully wooded, showing every range and variety of green, from the light vivid green of larches to ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... secure In Troy, while they to Argos shall return And to Achaia praised for women fair. He spake, and Priam, shuddering, bade his train 310 Prepare his steeds; they sedulous obey'd. First, Priam mounting, backward stretch'd the reins; Antenor, next, beside him sat, and through The Scaean gate they drove into the plain. Arriving at the hosts of Greece and Troy 315 They left the chariot, and proceeded both Into the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... other impulses. When the controller is set for reverse, by this adequate stimulus the machine is integrated to back, and the battery is closed to all other impulses. Whether integrated for going forward or backward, if the battery be discharged at a proper rate until exhausted, the cells, though possessing no more power (fatigue), have sustained no further impairment of their elements than that of normal wear and tear. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... further remov'd asunder, the weaker pulse will yet lagg behind much further, and not onely be coincident with the second, cd, but lagg behind that also, and that so much the more, by how much the thicker the Plate be; so that by degrees it will be coincident with the third cd backward also, and by degrees, as the Plate grows thicker with a fourth, and so onward to a fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth; so that if there be a thin transparent body, that from the greatest thinness requisite to produce colours, does, in the manner of a Wedge, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... me, and that was, there were no journeyings backward and forward, no visits to Ingram Park: to be sure it was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county; but what was that distance to an ardent lover? To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning's ride. I began to cherish ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... I have been backward to begin my canvass. The dissolution of the Parliament was uncertain; and it did not become me, by an unseasonable importunity, to appear diffident of the effect of my six years' endeavors to please you. I had served the city of Bristol honorably, and the city of Bristol had no reason ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and as little as it is, with what troubles, with what manner of dispositions, and in the society of how wretched a body must it be passed! Let it be therefore unto thee altogether as a matter of indifferency. For if thou shalt look backward; behold, what an infinite chaos of time doth present itself unto thee; and as infinite a chaos, if thou shalt look forward. In that which is so infinite, what difference can there be between that which liveth but three days, and that ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... another wave was upon him. This one beat him down, and it was only by clinging to the seaweed that he escaped being sucked back by the retreating surge. Bold and frenzied though he was, he had to start back from the fury of such an assault as this. He rushed backward and waited. ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... made a movement backward to her chair, and laid her hand upon its arm, and then Madam Mucklegrand decided ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... trying time—it ranges above mere party—and this movement to call a halt and turn our steps backward needs all the help and good counsels it can get; for unless popular opinion makes itself very strongly felt, and a change is made in our present course, blood will flow on account of Nebraska, and brother's hands will be raised ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... walked backward and forward slowly for some minutes without speaking. Then he sat down on a sofa by the fire, telling Mr. Lear to sit down. To this moment there had been no change in his manner since his interruption at table. Mr. Lear now perceived emotion. This rising in him, ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... doubtful. With a cool and practised eye, the youth sought a victim; but as he discharged his musket, an object glanced near his own visage, as though the bullet had recoiled on him who had given it a very different mission. Stepping backward a little hurriedly, he saw the stranger pointing through the smoke at an arrow which still quivered ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... face. Grey hair arranged with art and science, curl on curl. Three-cornered eyelids, hutches for small, malevolently watching eyes. A sharp, insolent nose. Fish's mouth peering out above the backward ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... faintest idea. But to such a girl who knows all, the surroundings appear in the new glamour. She understands now how her body is the object of desire, she learns to feel her power, and all this works backward on her sexual irritation, which soon overaccentuates everything which stands in relation to sex. Soon she lives in an atmosphere of high sexual tension in which the sound and healthy interests of a young life have to suffer by the hysterical ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... a solitary look, as if it were very remote from hurry or turmoil, with the green, silent hills rising high towards Haldon's moorlands on one side, and to Dartmoor on the other. But when the tides of the Civil War surged backward and forward, the valley of the Teign had its full share of trouble. Those who lived there were too near Exeter for their peace and comfort, and must have been repeatedly harassed by the troops of one side or the other while they were clattering ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... well-rope about his neck and the crowd yelled excitedly. This was something like—it had a taste for the man-hunt! The sheriff snatched away the rope and dealt the officious gentleman a savage blow on the chin that sent him staggering backward into the arms ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... size, by which an opening is obstructed, a door held fast, etc. A bar may be movable or permanent; a bolt is a movable rod or pin of metal, sliding in a socket and adapted for securing a door or window. A lock is an arrangement by which an enclosed bolt is shot forward or backward by a key, or other device; the bolt is the essential part of the lock. A latch or catch is an accessible fastening designed to be easily movable, and simply to secure against accidental opening of ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... clawing her backward, and the port engine driving her ahead, the Montana swung her huge bulk when she was free of the penning piers. The churning propellers, offsetting, turned her in her tracks. Then she began to feel her way out of the maze ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... sound, vague as the beat of waves along the shore, the stallion lurched down on all fours and leaped ahead, but the two on the halter ropes drove all their weight backward and checked the first plunge. A bright-coloured scarf waved from a nearby box, and the monster swerved away. So, twisting, plunging, rearing, he was worked down the arena. As he came opposite a box in which sat a tall young ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... done with Bertran de Born, that lagging fox; but the dogs of my art must make a backward cast if they are to kill him in the open. I beg the reader, then, to remember that when Richard left him half-throttled in his own house, and when he had recovered wind enough to stir his gall, he made preparations ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... and establish rights,—to give every man lot and part in shaping the government under which he lives. These republican ideas and principles have, on the whole, notwithstanding repeated reverses, gained ground; for revolutions never move backward. There may be eddies and counter-currents in a river, but the steady and powerful sweep of the stream is ever onward towards the sea. Not otherwise is it with the great political and ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... is what is dearest to man—his own life—and it sometimes seems that safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and these men who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward and backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops. All their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the harm of disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that flew over the fields ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of species, there is no occasion to enter on the present occasion. It is enough to state that in the earlier part of the seventeenth century bands or collars—bands stiffened and standing at the backward part, and bands falling upon the shoulder and breast—were articles of costume upon which men of expensive and modish habits spent ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... reproach themselves afterwards for not having consulted him while still among them. The brethren, however, are silent, though addressed again and again in the same way. In the whole assembly there is not one who has any doubt or misgiving. Even the most backward of these brethren has become converted (lit. "entered into the current"); he is no longer liable to be born to a state of suffering, but is ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... little longer to the men the Gen. rode away; and I was glad to see that his advice had a good effect on the men; they all seemed anxious to try their hand at shooting instead of being backward as they had been before, and I heard one of them remark to another, "Say, man, we have got to learn to shoot from our horses for that General knows what he is talking about, and now let's get in and learn as quick ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... sentiments, must be excited. The gratification even of curiosity alone might have formed a sufficient apology for the author; but he has seen too much of virtue even among the vicious to be indifferent to the sufferings, or backward in promoting the felicities ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... was well-grown, strong, and quite in advance of her years, in her speech and brightness of intellect. Little Jamie, while he possessed much of his mother in his face, in body was under-sized and weakly, and his mind and speech, backward of development, smacked of his father. He was absolutely dominated by his sister, and followed her lead in everything ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... forfend that ever other victual should follow upon such noble meat the heart of so valiant and so courteous a gentleman as was Sir Guillaume de Guardestaing!' Then, rising to her feet, without any manner of hesitation, she let herself fall backward through a window which was behind her and which was exceeding high above the ground; wherefore, as she fell, she was not only killed, but well ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... one shot, offhand. The charging horse reared, stood so a moment as rigidly as if fixed by bronze in that pose, its rider leaning forward over its neck. Then, in whatever terrible pang that such sudden stroke of death visits, it flung itself backward, the girths snapping from its distended belly. The rider was flung aside, where Morgan saw him lying, head on one extended arm, like a dog ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... till the last. Gerald at first supposed that he must be Thurot, but a second look convinced him that he was a much taller and darker man. Just as the British crew sprang on board a rifle bullet struck him on the chest, and, throwing up his sword-arm, he fell backward on the deck, when the rest of the crew, retreating, shouted out that they yielded. One of the men aft immediately hauled down ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... And never in his life had he experienced such a burst of thankfulness as he did at that moment. His heart was too full to speak. Prudence smiled gravely as she watched this whole-hearted token of her mother's loyalty to a friend. Nor was Sarah backward in ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... separate them on the mere ground of an unproved probability, or what might perhaps be called the hallucination of an idiot. Edward himself, however, was as firmly convinced as the rector had been of the truth of the man's story, and paced backward and forward the solitary compartment as the train wound through the dark heathery plains, the mazy woods, and moaning coppices, as resolved as ever to pounce on Manston, and charge him with the crime during the critical interval between the reception of the telegram and the hour at which Owen's ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... corner, jerking her hat, and her hand flew up to it. There was a fair stream of passers-by even here, and occasionally one turned for a backward glance at her standing there ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the sight of this man, whose licentious passion she considered as the root of her misfortunes, Rebecca drew backward with a cautious and alarmed, yet not a timorous demeanour, into the farthest corner of the apartment, as if determined to retreat as far as she could, but to stand her ground when retreat became no longer possible. She drew herself into an attitude not of defiance, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... ending equally quick and conclusive. They were surprised, therefore, to note that Bill put up a very weak struggle, once he had come to close quarters. He made only the feeblest resistance, before permitting himself to be borne backward to the floor, and then as he lay pinned beneath his opponent he did not even try to guard the blows that rained upon him; as a matter of fact, he continued to laugh as if ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Making that festal day, that through every land shall be honored, My anniversary, too, henceforth of domestic rejoicing! But I observe with regret, that the youth so efficient and active Ever in household affairs, when abroad is timid and backward. Little enjoyment he finds in going about among others; Nay, he will even avoid young ladies' society wholly; Shuns the enlivening dance which all young ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... was the general comment, after the message had been printed in the various papers of our country. "He is looking ahead, and he knows exactly what this country wants and needs. We are prosperous now, and if we want to continue so, we must keep our hands on the plough, and not look backward." ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... passed, or rather ran, at this hour a shy form. Arriving at the dwelling of the rabbi, she glanced backward to see whether any one was following her. But all was silent and gloomy enough about her. A pale light issued from one of the windows of the synagogue; it came from the "eternal lamp" hanging in front of the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... vocation choosing begins to make itself felt far down in the grammar school, first among the retarded and backward children who are old for their grades and are merely waiting and marking time until the law will allow them to leave school and go to work. These children are usually either mentally subnormal or handicapped by foreign birth and ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... erection in Edmund Street, at the corner of Congreve Street. The "Forward Liberal Club," opened in Great Hampton Street, October 30, 1880. A "Junior Liberal Club" celebrated their establishment by a meeting in the Town Hall, November 16, 1880. The Conservatives, of course, have not been at all backward in Club matters, for there has been some institution or other of the kind connected with the party for the last hundred years. The Midland Conservative Club was started July 4, 1872, and has its head-quarters now in ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... moment we reached the pike Gen. Quarles began to take an intense interest in the surroundings. He would lean forward, and look to the right, to the front, to the left, and occasionally throw a hasty glance backward,—but said nothing. Finally we passed through our works, near the historic "cotton-gin," and the general drew a deep breath, leaned back against his seat, and said: "Well, by God, the next time I fight at Franklin, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... regretfully consented to it, as a political necessity for the preservation of popular and State rights, which were seriously threatened by the triumph of a sectional party who were pledged to make war on them. I know that some leading men, and even Mississippians, thought him too moderate and backward, and found fault with him for not taking a leading ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... of an administrative year is naturally a time for retrospection rather than for announcement and planning, and seldom may we derive more satisfaction from such a backward glance than ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Her next backward step brought her close to Peter Grimm. And the Dead Man, with a swift motion of his hand, waved her forward into her lover's ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... posing before his train of plainly clad wives, who, no doubt, looked upon him as the greatest "catch" of the lake. Unlike most ducks, in swimming this haughty major carries his head erect, and even bent backward at a sharp angle; and his short tail is cocked up and bent forward, so that his glossy back forms a graceful half-circle or more, and does not slope downward, as do the backs of most ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... antagonists lower their weapons, and return the way they had come, with fearful backward glances, lest their boy foe should be following them. But he had no wish to do that. He was spent and exhausted and maimed. He turned backwards towards the safer shelter of the little alcove, and sank down beside the ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... vol. iv. p. 215. There is a curious letter of the queen's written to a bishop of Ely, and preserved in the register of that see. It is in these words: "Proud prelate, I understand you are backward in complying with your agreement: but I would have you know, that I, who made you what you are, can unmake you; and if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement, by God I will immediately unfrock you. Yours, as you demean yourself, Elizabeth." ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for fish, and other commodities. The ibex, or mountain goat, frequents, like the sheep, the top and the declivities of the rocks: it differs from the sheep in having hair instead of wool, and straight horns projecting backward, instead of curved ones. The color is also different. The natives soften the horns of these animals by boiling, and make platters, spoons, &c., of them, in ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... no fear that thou shouldst die; Albeit I ask no fairer life than this, Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle kiss, While Time and Peace with hands enlocked fly; Yet care I not where in Eternity We live and love, well knowing that there is No backward step for those who feel the bliss Of Faith as their most lofty yearnings high: Love hath so purified my being's core, Meseems I scarcely should be startled even, To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone before; Since, with thy love, this knowledge too was given, Which each calm day ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... imaginations are untrammelled, the denizens of the wilderness, having their mental faculties put to but few uses, and all are concentrated on the object of obtaining food for themselves and their offspring. Whatever ideas they possess, and they are by no means dull or backward in learning new ones, are ever keen and young, and Nature has endowed them with an undying mental youth, until their career on earth is ended. As says a poet, speaking of savages or men in ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... lodging-house, and trying to keep up socially with his contemporaries. He is loyal to his friends, and in particular to his friend Smith, whom he had met at school, which had been a school for troublesome and backward boys. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed |
