"Contortion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is immediately felt, and detracts from the merit of the performance. Every step or motion that is not natural, or has any thing of stiffness, constraint, or affectation, is instinctively perceived by the spectator. The body must constantly preserve its proper position, without the least contortion, well adjusted to the steps; while the motion of the arms, must be agreeable to that of the legs, and the head to be ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... clearer idea of what I am seeking to convey if I suggest a concrete image for the whole world of a man's thought and knowledge. Imagine a large clear jelly, in which at all angles and in all states of simplicity or contortion his ideas are imbedded. They are all valid and possible ideas as they lie, none incompatible with any. If you imagine the direction of up or down in this clear jelly being as it were the direction in which one moves by analysis or synthesis, if you go down for example from matter ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... situation. They cast at one another a glance of appreciation trenching on a smile, and the abashed questioner drew out a plug of tobacco, and with a manner of preoccupation gnawed a bit from it; then replaced it in his pocket, with a physical contortion which caused the plank on which the jury were seated to creak ominously, to the manifest anxiety of the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... suffered doubly—every pang, spasm, and contortion that shook and wrung the body of her beloved, racked her own frame, and her mind was tortured by fear, doubts, and agony. "Oh, please go away, dear people," she moaned. "It is a touch of sun. He is a little subject to slight fits—very ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Mademoiselle Reisz's front room door and entered, she discovered that person standing beside the window, engaged in mending or patching an old prunella gaiter. The little musician laughed all over when she saw Edna. Her laugh consisted of a contortion of the face and all the muscles of the body. She seemed strikingly homely, standing there in the afternoon light. She still wore the shabby lace and the artificial bunch of violets on the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... dinner—Alfred had been placed upon a diet of squab broth, none of the flesh, just the broth—Alfred quietly arose and, with the aid of the big looking glass, (mirrors had not been discovered as yet, in Brownsville), and a contortion feat such as he had never attempted previously, he scanned the bruised parts. Lin's worst fears seemed confirmed; all his person reflected in the looking glass was black as ink, as he ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... he stepped airily out to the camera and bade his victim "look pleasant." Failing to get the impossible response the artist bade his sitter to smile. Then the old farmer with a wrathful and torture-riven contortion of his mouth ejaculated, "I ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... elderly Mexican senator, who was the essence of politeness of the good old school. Every morning he stood smiling, hat in hand, while he inquired how each of us had slept. I shall never forget the cholera-like contortion of horror he displayed, when the clerical militant (poking his fun at him), declared that Texas was within the natural boundary of the State, and that some morning they would make a breakfast of ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... clustered about the worn capitals of pillars, or craning forth over the church-leads with the open mouths of gargoyles. About them all there is that sort of stiff quaint unreality, that conjunction of the grotesque, and even of a certain bourgeois snugness, with passionate contortion and horror, that is so characteristic of Gothic art. Esmeralda is somewhat an exception; she and the goat traverse the story like two children who have wandered in a dream. The finest moment of the book is when these two share with the two other leading characters, Dom Claude and Quasimodo, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on Karl's part, as Frau Schmidt, with the same extraordinary contortion of the mouth—half smile, half sneer—brought Sigmund to his father, to say good-night. That process over, he was brought to me, and then, as if it were a matter which "understood itself," to Karl. Eugen and I, like family men, as we ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... in the forests, Leviathan in the deep, and Typhon in the sewer. You surpass everything. There is the trace of lightning in your deformity; your face has been battered by the thunderbolt. The jagged contortion of forked lightning has imprinted its mark on your face. It struck you and passed on. A mighty and mysterious wrath has, in a fit of passion, cemented your spirit in a terrible and superhuman form. Hell is a penal furnace, where the iron called Fatality is raised to a white heat. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... despair, her cold, white, pointed fingers pressed tight upon those glorious temples, her little palms hiding the misery of that striking face, her knees convulsively closed, that shining foot tucked beneath the other in the contortion of grief. We will leave her there on the ladder, learning that sorry lesson which Great Love only will set its favourites when they have gone a-whoring after false gods ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... this exerted first in one way and then in another was enough to upset the equilibrium of any ordinary man, especially when the jerks were so sudden and unexpected that it was impossible for one to brace himself against them. After a scene of rather undignified contortion I was finally compelled to retire in defeat, but without the slightest evidence of any other force than that exerted by a strong, muscular young woman. I asked that the rod might be made to whirl in my hands in the manner which has been described, but ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... to time by the new workings, especially in those places where the surface is most uneven. Thus its outcrop at Lydney is very imperfectly defined, and at Oakwood Mill the vein is rendered worthless by a fault, whilst on each side of the Lydbrook valley there is a contortion, by which it is thrown down in one instance seventy yards, and in two others ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... fascinated Gladys even while it horrified and almost made her sick. She watched every contortion of the bodies with the most morbid and intense interest, though feeling it to be hideous all the time. It excited her very much, and her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone with unwonted brilliance. When it was over, she rose to ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... a hot fire burning in Jan's brain, a blazing, writhing contortion of things that brought a low moaning from his lips. He ran tirelessly and swiftly until he sank down upon the snow in a silent place far from where he had left John Cummins. His eyes still blazed with ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... a deep blue colour; the strata are nearly horizontal, but dip a little to the S.W. This body of strata is cut across by a granite dyke, at some places forty feet wide, at others not above ten; the strata in the vicinity of the dyke are broken and bent in a remarkable manner; this dislocation and contortion does not extend far from the walls of the dyke, but veins of granite branch out from it to a great distance, varying in width from three feet to the hundredth part of an inch: the dyke is visible from the top of the cliff to the water's edge, but does not re-appear ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... audacity. Waiters, porters, and boys, when asked if they know French, answer with the greatest assurance, "Oui" or "Un peu," and they try in a thousand ways to make themselves understood, laughing themselves sometimes at the eccentric contortion of their speech, and ending every answer with "S'il vous plait" or a "Pardon, monsieur;" which are often said so prettily and yet are so out of place that they make one laugh even against one's will. It is considered such a common thing to know ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... when the clenching commenced, the vision was faint, as if she were looking into a dark room. But, as the struggle proceeded, the room seemed to be gradually lighted up for her; and every grapple, every blow, every facial contortion of this horrible contest, were plainly visible. And yet she was not in the room, but lying in her little bed, bound as in the awful dream of the clashing orbs. She knew she was there, and yet she felt that her eyes, all her faculties of observation, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... The facial contortion which served him for a laugh, and at the same time as a symbol of unfathomable reserve, was repeated, accompanied by a jocose manifestation, in the nature of a sharp and taunting cackle, which seemed to indicate a conviction that he was getting much the best ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... it from yourself, of course," she added with an aggrieved contortion of her features, "but as I was just telling Angela, I would not for worlds intrude ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... and black Caesar was not going to be behind his masters, not he. So he, too, in spite of old Nan's protestations and entreaties, had become a confirmed swearer. It had really grown into so fixed a habit that the words meant nothing: it was no more than a trick of physical contortion of which a man may be utterly unconscious. How to break himself ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... plenty of time last night, after we went to bed and you kept me awake by doing your grand combined kicking and contortion act. You take it from me—every time you get one of your restless fits, you smash all world's records for landing sudden and violent kicks ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... head, the same circular bristle of red hair, the same bloodless countenance. The features were set, however, in a horrible smile, a fixed and unnatural grin, which in that still and moonlit room was more jarring to the nerves than any scowl or contortion. So like was the face to that of our little friend that I looked round at him to make sure that he was indeed with us. Then I recalled to mind that he had mentioned to us that his brother and ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... violins, and is not in itself valuable; it runs the transverse way of the fibres and is probably the effect of the wind upon the tree in its early stages of growth. "Roe," which is said to be caused by the contortion of the woody fibres, and takes a wavy line parallel to them, is also found in the hollow of bent stems and in the root structure, and when combined with "mottle" is very valuable. "Dapple" is an exaggerated form of mottle. "Thunder shake," "wind shake," or "tornado shake" is a rupture of the ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... never satisfied, whose desire to pin on paper the most evanescent movements of the human machine is almost a mania. The French sculptor avoids studied poses. The model tumbles down anywhere, in any contortion or relaxation he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the method adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiver of surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a mere scrawl, a few enveloping ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... on. Yet her voice had not faltered. There was no contortion of sorrow in her face. There was a sort of soft calmness about her almost akin to the calmness of the evening. It was the more remarkable in her because she was not usually a tranquil woman. Artois had never known her before in deep grief. But he had known her in joy, and ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... express canoe," said Mr. Kennedy, with a contortion of the left side of his head that was intended for a wink; "you know they got leave to come by ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... contortion, to mark the moment of dissolution. The face only grew more serene and less death-like, as the soul passed ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... deposits, Mackintosh refers to Darwin's "very suggestive description of the Moel-Tryfan deposits...Under the drift he saw that the surface of the slate, TO A DEPTH OF SEVERAL FEET, HAD BEEN SHATTERED AND CONTORTED IN A VERY PECULIAR MANNER." The contortion of the slate, which Mackintosh regarded as "the most interesting of the Moel-Tryfan phenomena," had not previously been regarded as "sufficiently striking to arrest attention" by any geologist except Darwin. The Pleistocene gravel and sand containing marine shells on ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... shudder—a painful contortion, such as any one might suffer if rudely jerked out ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... are several islands at its mouth and in the interior, but there being no chart, and no motive for entering it, we stood on towards the mountains on the main shore, some of which are very high. In many parts the contortion of the strata, and the confusion of all kinds of materials, are extraordinary. The sides of the mountains on the shore are clad with moss alone, trees of very stunted growth only appearing in the sheltered valleys. No visible portion of the shore seems capable ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... strained my eyes after his every motion. But when he was near the top he lay perfectly quiet, and continued so till I could bear it no longer, and crept up after him. When I came behind him, he looked round angrily, and made a most emphatic contortion of his face; after which I dared not climb to a level with him, but lay trembling with expectation. The next moment I heard him call in a ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... resentment in portraying our richly moneyed, blue-blooded society to the life? How are manners ever to be corrected with a smile if the smile is always suspected of being an agonized grin, the contortion of the features by the throes of a mortified spirit? Was George William Curtis in his amusing ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... did something else in a facial way just as defiant of analysis as his previous contortion and equally effective on Mr. O'Royster's nerves. He moved toward Mr. O'Royster and held up his hand for the money. It was slowly yielded up, and without so much as an acknowledgment, the man thrust it into ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... churned in Bostil's bull neck; a thick and ugly contortion worked in his face; his ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... seemed to have deserted Westover. Adelaide lay in her mother's arms, either awake and restless or in fitful sleep from which she frequently awoke with a muffled scream or a physical contortion. Once, as she nestled closer, her mother heard her murmur: "You ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... with her nose in the air, her mouth wide open, her other features registering the most complete lunacy. Joseph, her brother, at whom they fairly shrieked in order to make him smile, produced the most singular contortion of the mouth that I have ever seen, which denoted an extreme gift for mimicry, rare in ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... by the middle into an arch, and nothing touched the bed but the head and the heels; the toes were turned back in the most extraordinary contortion, and the teeth set by the rigour of the convulsion, and in the man's white face and fixed eyes were the horror and anxiety, that so often show themselves when the body feels itself in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... men, leave also no mark on our poet. The elaborate thought, the metrical harshness of the first, could find no counterpart in Herrick; whilst Marvell, beyond him in imaginative power, though twisting it too often into contortion and excess, appears to have been little known as a lyrist then:—as, indeed, his great merits have never reached anything like due popular recognition. Yet Marvell's natural description is nearer Herrick's in ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... indescribable contortion of his figure, charitably supposed to be intended for a bow, and ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... like all men who believe in their own individual judgment, he doubted collective wisdom. Yet now that his protegee had been accepted by others, he questioned that judgment and became her critic. It struck him that her sudden outburst was strained; it seemed to him that in this mere contortion of passion the sibyl's robe had become rudely disarranged. He spoke to Hamlin, and ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... and covered at each end with a bull's hide, producing a most barbarous noise, accompanied by a baba, or rattle, loud shouts, palaver, songs, and violent gesticulations, forming a system of confused uproar, unmusical, and ungraceful. Their motions are irregular, sometimes in violent contortion, and at others voluptuous and slow. Nothing can be done without a palaver; and at the change of every dance, he from whom the proposition originates, makes a solemn harangue over the musical instruments, ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... with the lower rotundities of her face hastily modelled into the resemblance of an over-benevolent smile a contortion which neglected to spread its intended geniality upward to the ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... down at the delicate little hand, up into the pleading eyes, and over her set square face there passed a contortion,—there is really no other word to describe it,—a contortion of unwilling amusement. The chin dropped, the lips twitched, the red lines which did duty for eyebrows wrinkled towards the nose. Similarly affected, an Irishwoman would have invoked all the saints in her calendar, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the shoes belonging to the cherished suit of clothes. She knew the sacred light in which they were regarded by their owner, and she felt quite sure that if "ole miss" ever attempted, in one of her fits of anger, to exercise her power of limb twisting or back contortion upon her, that the sight of those little blue shoes would create a revulsion of feeling, and, as she put it to herself, "stop her mighty short." The shoes had never been missed, for the box containing the suit was only opened on one day of the year, and then all the ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... was a female named Sutchnimia, and she had been introduced to my notice as infallible, her character as usual being well supported by her mahout; but no sooner did this heroic beast descry the tiger, than she twisted herself into every possible contortion, throwing herself about in the most aimless attitudes, with a vigour that threatened the safety of the howdah and severely taxed the strength ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... sad stories of the death of kings,'" she quoted with a fairy chuckle. She thought that she saw a small contortion pass over his features, only to be banished at once. He had retired within the walls of that impassive and inscrutable reserve which minor railroad officials can at will erect between themselves and the lay public. Only the broken rhythms of the telegraph ticker relieved the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... assembly, not liking to be longer absent from papa. We came out upon the lovely, calm, moonlight night, so sweet, so exquisitely heavenly; and I felt how differently nature looked without, to those distressing sights of bodily agitation and contortion we had witnessed within. I thought of the poor young negro girl's quiet testimony, and gentle voice and manner, and wondered if she, too, would learn in time to become uproarious, and shout, "Glory! Glory!" The probability is, that she will become like her neighbours; for I ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... blow to Jude, who still, however, retained consciousness, though now incapable of even hiss or contortion. He was held over the trap again, and the leader once more commenced speaking. "Spy," he said, "you have been condemned by the Galley-on-Land to the death which now yawns beneath you. Men, lift him up till I give my final order." He paused ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... it. At all events, a bold "header" could not have had for him a more unfortunate ending. Scarce had he sunk between the timber when a wild shriek came forth from his throat,—accompanied by a pallor of countenance, and a contortion of his features, that proclaimed something more than a mere "start" received by suddenly sinking waist-deep ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... forthwith begins to build a home, which is nothing more than a calcareous tube, superficially resembling a corpulent worm, instantaneously petrified while in the act of a more or less elaborate wriggle or fantastic contortion. In this complicated tunnel the creature resides, presenting a lovely circular disc of glowing pink as its front door. A few inches beneath the water this operculum or lid is not unlike a pearl, but as you gaze upon it, it slips on one side, and five animated red rays appear, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... martyrdoms, as with the Germans under Albrecht Duerer; no abominable butcheries, as with the Bolognese of the seventeenth century; no macerated saints and tattered assassins, as with the Spaniards; no mystery, no contortion, no horrors: vigorous and serene beauty, pure and cheerful life, real or ideal, on wall or canvas, in bronze or in marble. The literature is analogous to the art, only less perfect, more tainted ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... seemed to be trying vainly to rise from his reclining position on the veranda, "why do you not disengage yourself from the veranda of our friend? And why, in the name of Heaven, do you attach to yourself so much of this thing, and make to yourself such unnecessary contortion? Ah," he continued, suddenly withdrawing one of his own feet from the veranda with an evident effort, "I am myself attached! Surely ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... languorous drone. But there are also some funny parts, according to the Algerian idea. They are played by a jet black Somauli woman who joins in the dance and a jet black Somauli boy in the orchestra who has a face of India rubber and a gift for "facial contortion" that would make the fortune of an ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Sylvan kept hold of his prize, compressed his sinewy arms, and abode by his purpose of not quitting his hold of the philosopher's throat till he had breathed his last. Two more bitter yells, accompanied each with a desperate contortion of the countenance, and squeeze of the hands, concluded, in less than five minutes, the dreadful strife. Agelastes lay dead upon the ground, and his assassin Sylvan, springing from the body as if terrified and alarmed at what ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... a stroke from the King's whip, he doubled himself up, performed the contortion now called turning a coachwheel, then, recovering himself, put his hands on his hips and danced wildly on the steps; while Henry, shaking his whip at him, laughed at the only too obvious pun, for Anguish was the English version of Angus, the title of Queen Margaret's second ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... these subterranean spurs, as though it were the mould for a new tree instead of the print of an old one. These pitch-pines of Monterey are, with the single exception of the Monterey cypress, the most fantastic of forest trees. No words can give an idea of the contortion of their growth; they might figure without change in a circle of the nether hell as Dante pictured it; and at the rate at which trees grow, and at which forest fires spring up and gallop through the hills of California, we may look forward to a time when there will not be one of them left ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nervous attacks which are violent, before the Pyrrhic dance of married life! Oh! how many hopes for a lover are there in the vivacity of those convulsive movements, in the fire of those glances, in the strength of those limbs, beautiful even in contortion! It is then that a woman is carried away like an impetuous wind, darts forth like the flames of a conflagration, exhibits a movement like a billow which glides over the white pebbles. She is overcome with excess of love, she sees the future, she is the seer who prophesies, but above all, she ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... two-hundred-dollar client to go to the deuce. That's why I've made money. Put your back against the chair, like an Englishwoman. That's it. No, don't talk, I tell you. Now look joyful, hang it! Look joyful.... No, no! Joy isn't a contortion. It's something right ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... naturally," said Bones, with a facial contortion which passed for a wink. "Certainly not. We business men never rob anybody. Ali, bring ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... and handsomely placed upon his shoulders, his features sharply defined and very prominent. His teeth were remarkably white, but so long and narrow, that they gave a peculiarly sinister and malicious expression to his face—which expression was greatly heightened by the ghastly contortion that was meant for a smile, and which was in constant requisition, in order to show off the said teeth, which Theophilus considered one of his greatest attractions. But my cousin had no personal attractions. There was nothing manly or ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... suddenly remembered. For a few moments he stood irresolute, and then, with an extraordinary contortion of visage, dropped into his chair again and ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... gun went off, and instantly blew his red cap some height into the air, and we made up our minds it must be full, as it was before, of our guide's skull, and that he had now gone to that bourn from which no hunter, like no traveller, could ever return. We ran to his assistance. The gun by some contortion of the Norwegian's body, was twisted upside down, and instead of the muzzle being pointed downwards, had been elevated, point blank, towards his head. The poor Norwegian, breathing with great labour, closed eyes, and opened mouth, lay ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... in life than you think. There is at your age, more than..." he had a strange contortion of the body, as though in a sudden access of internal pain; that humorous smile, that abode in the form of his lips, changed into a ghastly, forced grin... "than one love in ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... much over the poor fellow's abortive attempt to say "Am I not a man and a brother?" that his three scholars burst out into a second edition of shouts of laughter at the sight of him, and thus succeeded in waking Robin, who, after a great contortion, sat up on the grass, and, rubbing his eyes, demanded in an injured ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... won her terrible bet that she would ride straight across Manchester and Salford on her bike, hands tied together, feet fastened to the pedals. At the Art Institute in Chicago, Marjutti had given a lecture on the art of contortion. ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... fracture, or displacement naturally in the body of a stratum. But if the strata are cemented by the heat of fusion, and erected with an expansive power acting below, we may expect to find every species of fracture, dislocation, and contortion in those bodies and every degree of departure from a horizontal towards ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... man in a battle-girdle (?), of a red cloak, He puts —— every plain. He smites them, over left chariot wheel (?); The Riastartha wounds them. [Note: The Riastartha ('distorted one') was a name given to Cuchulainn because of the contortion, described later, which came over him.] The form that appeared to me on him hitherto, I see that his form ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... hands. They may lead thee afar from thy original purpose—twisting thee in and out with many a contortion; fixing thee with nail and fastening; trailing thee over the wall, to droop thy clusters to the hands of strangers. Nevertheless, be sure to let Him have His way with thee; this is necessary for ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... yet I only laugh, and the little old lady, with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... figure stretched itself to its full height. There was a slight rending sound. Then it began to swing forward, slow and straight, in the manner of a falling tree. A swift muscular contortion made the left shoulder strike the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... application to the drawing of the figure, made the difficulties of foreshortening and the delineation of brusque attitude mere child's play to this audacious genius. The most rapid movement, the most perilous contortion of bodies falling through the air or flying, he depicted with hard, firmly-traced, unerring outline. If we dare to criticise the productions of a master so original and so accomplished, all we can say is that Signorelli ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... sez he, bein' a profane kind of Chicago doctor, and not bein' ever under conviction. 'Thet man died of strychnine. Look at thet face. Look at thet contortion of them fashal muscles. Thet's strychnine. Thet's risers Sardonikus' (thet's what he said; ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte |
