"Breathlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... ran, but how can a man run in his best clothes across soft, new soil when he is getting a bit too stout? And Timmy had seen him first. When Flannery reached the corner of the alley Timmy was gone, and with a sigh that was partly regret and partly breathlessness from his run Flannery turned into the main street. There was the inspector, sure enough, standing on the curb. Flannery had lost some of his dignity, but he made up for it in anger. He more than made up for it in the heat he had run himself ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... one rushed past me. It was the young lady—running, or attempting to run, but with faltering and unequal steps. I followed her. At the first of the flight of steps before the inn, she stumbled and fell. She was trembling and sobbing violently; whether from breathlessness or agony, I could not tell. I raised her, and assisted her to mount the steps. "My brother! my brother!" she exclaimed incessantly. I could get no words but these from her. No time was to be lost. I sat down beside her, and took both ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... Yet it was not the wrong street; the name written on it was the same; the shuttered shops were the same; the lamp-posts and the whole look of the perspective was the same; only it was tilted upwards like a lid. Forgetting any trouble about breathlessness or fatigue I ran furiously forward, and reached the second of my accustomed turnings, which ought to bring me almost within sight of the station. And as I turned that corner I nearly fell on the pavement. For now the street ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... around to consult you about a little business matter, Agnes," he found himself beginning with sudden breathlessness, his perturbation forgotten in the overwhelming charm of her. "The governor's will has just been read to me, and he's plunged me into a ripping mess. His whole fortune is in the hands of a trusteeship, whatever that is, and I'm not even ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... staircase. Sidonie appeared first, in ball costume, gorgeously arrayed and so pale that the jewels that glistened everywhere on her dead-white flesh seemed more alive than she, as if they were scattered over the cold marble of a statue. The breathlessness due to dancing, the trembling of intense excitement and her rapid descent, caused her to shake from head to foot, and her floating ribbons, her ruffles, her flowers, her rich and fashionable attire drooped tragically ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... this time I was ignorant of the rich man's will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had heard only one mention, hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in the breathlessness which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of double death, I realized from my knowledge of her that something more than grief was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the core of my being when ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... think so, doctor!" replied the dying uncircumcised Philistine. But he added at whiles, his breathlessness being grievous, and often broken by a sore hiccup, "I am, however, no saint, as you know, doctor; so I wish you to put in a word for me, doctor; for you know that in these times, doctor, it is the duty of every good ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... holding each other well up, became one irresistible wedge-shaped mass. At times they yelled, not from consciousness nor bravado, but from the purely animal instinct of warning and to combat the breathlessness of their descent, until, reaching the level, they charged across the gravelly bed of a vanished river, and pulled up at Collinson's Mill. The mill itself had long since vanished with the river, but the building that had once stood for it was used as a rude hostelry for travelers, which, however, ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... character, that circulated widely in our neighborhood because subscribers were rewarded with a premium of a diamond ring, warranted I don't know how many karats, occupied me for hours. The stories in this paper resembled, in breathlessness of plot, abundance of horrors, and improbability of characters, the things I used to read in Vitebsk. The text was illustrated by frequent pictures, in which the villain generally had his hands on the heroine's ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... know that very well," she said, with a shade of meaning. "But"— here I thought her voice had a touch of breathlessness—"but who is the officer? I mean, what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with breathlessness they listened, the sounds and disturbance died away to whispers, and there was nothing but ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... holding off five enemies at once with my flashing sword. These visions haunted my dreams when at last I slept, and it was after a bout of especial fierceness that I found myself lying awake, in a great heat and breathlessness. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... motionless, sheltering ourselves behind the battlement as we best might. As the Southron formed their long ranks into lines, each man occupying his place as by magic, and preparing to cover themselves by large shields, called pavesses, which they planted before them, I again felt a strange breathlessness, and some desire to go home for a glass of distilled waters. But as I looked aside, I saw the worthy Kempe of Kinfauns bending a large crossbow, and I thought it pity he should waste the bolt on a true hearted Scotsman, when so many English ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... few more instructions to give. Afterwards he left the place. The night outside was close, and he was conscious of a certain breathlessness, a certain impatient desire for air. He turned down toward the Embankment, and sat on one of the seats, looking out at the sky signs and colored advertisements on the other side of the river, and down lower, where the tall black buildings lost their ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... them; he also was fishing keenly in a little trout lake near the house, and walking about with a gun. His spirits were very equable and good. But he told me that he had gone out shooting in September over some fields lent him by a neighbour, and had had to return owing to breathlessness; and he added that he suffered constantly from breathlessness and pain in the chest and arms, that he could only walk a few paces at a time, and then had to rest to recover his breath. He did not seem to be anxious about it, but he went down one morning to celebrate ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the happy fellow came to his feet, and throwing his arms about his comrade, hugged him into temporary breathlessness. ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... his listening attitude seemed to hush into breathlessness the very night about him, as it did Sylvia. There was not a sound from the trees. They stood motionless, as though carved in wood; not a bird fluttered a wing; not a night-insect shrilled; the brook, dried by the summer heat to a thread, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... hoarse than usual and more uncertain. Though he could not hear the words, the broken sentences gave an impression of breathlessness. When she stopped speaking he heard the voice of the proprietor raised in an emphatic stage-whisper. Yes, Monsieur Poleski was within. Mademoiselle was fortunately in time to find him. If Mademoiselle would give herself the trouble to ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... of sublimity, perhaps, I still adhere to my first opinion, that nothing so great was ever beheld. The atmosphere for this, for the Memnon, was the breathlessness which belongs to a saintly trance; the holy thing seemed to live by silence. But there is a picture, the pendant of the Memnon, there is a dreadful cartoon, from the gallery which has begun to open upon Lord Rosse's telescope, where the appropriate atmosphere for investing it must ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... than wasted. The pulse perhaps larger, but remarkably soft and compressible, and occasionally with a slight jerk, especially under the slightest excitement. There is an increasing indisposition to exertion, with an uncomfortable feeling of faintness or breathlessness in attempting it; the heart is readily made to palpitate; the whole surface of the body presents a blanched, smooth and waxy appearance; the lips, gums and tongue seem bloodless, the flabbiness of the solid increases, the appetite fails, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... alarming attack of breathlessness and giddiness, he returned to London. In Green Street he was happy in the proximity and skill of his son-in-law, Dr. Holland, and "a suite of rooms perfectly fitted up for illness and death." This phrase occurs in the last of his published letters, dated the 7th of November 1844. It was now pronounced ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... snoring at his post; the further one would not be able to reach her in time, even should he see her. Somewhere, far away, a cock was crowing; and it came to her suddenly that the breathlessness about her was the hush that precedes the dawn. There was no time to lose, she told herself feverishly, and moved forward with snake-like stillness. Between the sheltering arm and the neck of the steel shirt there ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was breathlessness induced by fear and by excitement, not by the quick pace at which they ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... askest thou after My Name? Morning may break, as it broke on Jacob by Jabbok with the assurance of blessing or as on Jeremiah with a firmer impression of the Will not his own; but no strength is left to glory in the Nature behind the Will. There is a horrified breathlessness about his lines— ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... round limb and light, Gleamed from beneath the girded gown That, unrebuked, untouched was thrown Hither and thither by the breeze; Shrill laughter smote the thick-leaved trees, Till they, for very breathlessness, With ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... known had he been less excited. In time of riot the place for a Sikh officer would be at the regiment's headquarters, in readiness for the order from a civil magistrate without which interference would cost him his commission. But the babu was beside himself, what with breathlessness and disappointment. He decided it was expedient to strengthen his appeal, and his imagination was ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... sharp gasp, a sudden qualm of breathlessness wrenched through her, to her very finger tips, with a fierce leap of the blood, a ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... recollection she had carried with her, year after year, of a purple faced, cursing figure who leaned over the rickety old fence that bounded the garden, shook his fists in John Anderson's mildly puzzled face and roared threats until he had to cease from very breathlessness. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Mysie recollected that it was too public a place for running, and slackened her pace. Dolores was soon gasping, and with a stitch in her side. Mysie would have exclaimed, 'What were you doing with Miss Constance?' but breathlessness happily prevented it. The way across the paddock seemed endless, and Mysie was chafed at having to hold back for her companion, who panted in distress, leant against a tree, declared she could not go on, she did not care, and then when, Mysie set off running, was seized ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shouted out, in a voice twice as deep as my natural one, and with a queer breathlessness, that sudden fright so often ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... She leaned a little further forward. Her lips were parted. The fire in her eyes had given way to a great wonder, and the breathlessness of her silence was like a thing to be felt. It held us all dumb. We waited—we scarcely knew for what. Only we knew that she had something more to say, and we were impelled to ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her head doubtfully. "There are no words for most of it, but I seem to catch the voices of things that want to be expressed somehow." Then, with sudden breathlessness, "It's a universal ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... realised how mad she looked, how insane the whole scene was, and she gave way to her emotions. Partly through physical exhaustion and breathlessness, and partly through helpless terror, she ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the foot of the companion and looked back. A breathlessness of excitement held the pirates in a vise. From above, the hanging lamp threw strong shadows across their faces, bringing out the deep lines, accentuating the dominant passions. With their rags and blood, their unshaven faces, their firearms, their filth, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... reporter on a Boston paper came out to the college by appointment to interview a group of Wellesley women, alumnae and teachers, grief-stricken by the catastrophe which had befallen them. He came impetuously, with that light-hearted breathlessness so characteristic of young reporters in the plays of Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. He was charmingly in character, and he sent his voice out on the run to meet the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... more happen? Would our sheikh play us false? It was a moment of breathlessness. We crouched and cowered in the shade, holding our hearts with fear, while the Arab drivers pretended to be unsaddling the camels. A minute or two of anxious suspense; then, peering over our beasts' backs, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... transformed in civilized man into awe. Long after man's crouching physical terror of the divine has passed away, he may still live awed by the ultimate power that orders the universe. He may, "at twilight, or in a mountain gorge," at a canon or waterfall, experience an involuntary thrill and breathlessness, a deepened sense of the divinity which so orders these things. He may have the same feeling at the crises of life, at birth, disease, and death. He may sense on occasion that overwhelming and infinite power ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... knew how uncertain her liberties were. Sir Isaac was the victim of an increasing irritability, at times he had irrational outbursts of distrust that would culminate in passionate outbreaks and scenes that were truncated by an almost suffocating breathlessness. On several occasions he was on the verge of quarrelling violently with her visitors, and he would suddenly oblige her to break engagements, pour abuse upon her and bring matters back to the very verge of her first revolt. And then he would break her down by pitiful appeals. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Williams, and in a state of breathlessness. She had been running, perhaps to escape the unseemly embraces of the wind, which had taken great liberties with her skirts,—liberties no less shocking because of the darkness of the evening; for though De la Rochefoucauld has settled it that man's alleged ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in the warm September evening when the twilight was beginning to come earlier than in the August days, and her boy rushed round the corner of the cabin in a boy's habitual breathlessness from running. ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... but, in remembrance, burdened with pain—and looking around on each familiar object with strange emotions. Soon a light step was heard descending the stairs, and moving along the passage. The door opened, and Edith—no, her aunt—entered. The young man had risen in the breathlessness of expectation. ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... potent word which will put a stop to his floodings; that, indeed, seems reserved to the master wizard; while the tiros of life's magic, puffed up with half-science, do not drink, but drown. In this way bicycling has added, methinks, an item to the hurry and breathlessness of existence, and to the difficulty of enjoying the passing hour—nay, the passing landscape. I have only once travelled on a bicycle, and, despite pleasant incidents and excellent company, I think it was a mistake; there was an inn to reach, a train to catch, a meal to secure, darkness to ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Born of a dream, as yonder cloud is born Of water which is born of cloud! I thought I saw the moonlight lying large and calm Upon the unthrobbing bosom of the earth, As a great diamond glittering on a shroud. A sense of breathlessness stilled all the world. Motion stood dreaming he was changed to Rest, And Life asleep did fancy he was Death. A quick small shadow spotted the white world; Then instantly 'twas huge, and huger grew By instants till it did o'ergloom all space. I lifted up mine eyes — O thou just ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to black; In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge, Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest—an ocean-song. Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly, In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios. Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is! To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon, Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bull-fighting coming now; but bull-fighting never palls, even though bigger things are yet in store. For there is always the chance that a horse may be gored to death—even that a man may die horribly. Such things have been and may be again; so the tardy ones climbed and scurried and attained breathlessness and a ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... a breathlessness in his utterance which contrasted with the monstrous hint of mockery in ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... servant's horse, approaching from the direction of Chippenham, broke the stillness of the moonlit country; but round the three men who sat motionless in their saddles, glaring at one another and awaiting the word for action, was a kind of barrier, a breathlessness born of ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... had gotten by the office boy Brown could not conceive, and rolled manuscript usually gave him spasms. The youth, however, presented a letter of introduction from Brown's best friend. He said he had a story to submit, and he said it with a certain appearance of breathlessness at the end of the sentence, which showed Brown that it was his first story. Brown frowned inwardly, and smiled outwardly. He begged the youth to take a seat. As all the seats were filled with unopened papers and unbound books, the youth said ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... was in the church and the seats were all filled. It gratified him, at the same time that it hopelessly abased him to observe all this evidence of her power. As he waited for her to appear that tremor came into his hands again, and that breathlessness, and curiously enough he felt that horrible familiar sinking of the heart which he always felt just before he himself rose ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... five minutes to ten, in the very midst of a duke's speech, the Regent, with dizzy brain, was on his feet: there was a few moments' gasp and breathlessness; and then—all at once—it was as though a wind from hell swept through that House, whirling in its vehemence Regent, lords, Gallery, Black Rod, Clerk, Usher, and all; and every face was marble, and every ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Mr. Audley," he said, with asthmatic breathlessness. "I have great apprehensions. Your fish-plates, they are cleared away with the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... season was unluckily suffering from an attack of old-standing breathlessness, and he also had his hands full; at the same time he did his best in helping Pontius in seeking out the sculptor Pollux. Both men did their utmost, but though they soon were able to find Euphorion and dame Doris, every trace of their son ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gave no trouble to people who were either kinsmen or lived in lazy patriarchal concord. That is the form of division they are trying to reestablish now. Well," he continued, suddenly lifting his eyes to the young man's flushed face, in some unconscious, sympathetic response to his earnest breathlessness, "although my boundary line extends half a mile into that field, my house and garden and corral ARE ACTUALLY UPON THAT TERRACE OR LEVEL." They certainly appeared to Clarence to be on the same line as the long field beyond. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Bob could not force himself to look at her; did not speak. She gazed at him curiously, and when she saw the grayness of his face, the lines about his mouth, and eyes that advanced his age by twenty years, she felt a little catch at her heart, a breathlessness, a ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... the same class, and the women especially make a bolder attempt than ours, if not so well advised, at gayety. They had put on the best and finest they had, in Battersea Park, and if it was not the most fitting still they wore it. The afternoon was sultry to breathlessness; yet a young mother with a heavy baby in her arms sweltered along in the splendor of a purple sack of thick plush; she was hot, yes; but she had it on. The young girls emulated as well as they could the airy muslins and silks in which the great world was flitting and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... quickly from him as she spoke and hurried into the dining-room, filling a goblet with a trembling hand. He drank the water leisurely; thanked her, and strolled with his accustomed deliberation through the hall and out across the piazza, never appearing to notice her breathlessness or agitation. Once outside the steps, however, his deliberation was cast aside, and with rapid, nervous strides he hastened up the walk,—out past the old ordnance storehouse and the lighted windows of the ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... writes Miss Henderson, "has perhaps become obsolete; our national breathlessness cannot brook this paradox of pastoral musings within sight and sound and smell of the busy lure of money making. Within its gates we pass into a new element; and this element is antipathetic to the one-sided development imposed by city life. Instead of resting us, it presents a problem, and the last ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... cyclist can accomplish, and also for his endurance without sleep. In spite of the quickened motion of the heart, rarely have riders been known to grow giddy or show symptoms of cardiac embarrassment. A good rider may climb a hill without trouble, yet be unable to climb a flight of stairs without breathlessness and palpitation. Bicycle riding as a means for acquiring strength and vigor, improving the circulation and developing the respiratory organs, is unexcelled. Fast riding, or "scorching," among those not used to physical exertion, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... her voice keeping its earnest control, "I cannot be happy with you and Tante unless you can enjoy her for yourself. Try to know Tante, Gregory," she went on, now with a little breathlessness; "she wants that so much. One of the first things she asked me when she came back was that I should try to make you care for her. She felt at once—and oh! so did I, Gregory—that something was not ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick |
