"Giddiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... description of an earthquake at Lisbon. "At the first shock the inhabitants rushed into the streets; the earth yawned at their feet and the houses tottered and fell on every side." I staggered past the Captain into the street; a giddiness came over me; the earth yawned at my feet, and the houses threatened to fall in on every side of me. How distinctly I remember that momentary sense of confusion when everything in the world seemed toppling over ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... course, sir," said the sergeant confidently. "The colonel would be sure to send out to see why we didn't come back. There's a lot of our fellows out yonder that the enemy is firing at, and we can't see them for the haze. It is haze, and not giddiness ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... Yes, sir. (Unable to restrain his tears.) You in a false nose, Walter! (He sinks faintly into a chair at the table.) I beg pardon, ma'am, I'm sure. A little giddiness—- ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... race, for all that is mortal. Like Buddha, I feel the great wheel turning—the wheel of universal illusion—and the dumb stupor which enwraps me is full of anguish. Isis lilts the corner of her veil, and he who perceives the great mystery beneath is struck with giddiness. I can scarcely breathe. It seems to me that I am hanging by a thread above the fathomless abyss of destiny. Is this the Infinite face to face, an intuition of the last ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... add that the explorers testified to the brilliancy of the stars, as seen from the summit of the peak, the clearness of all sounds, and also to the giddiness and headache known as mountain sickness. Whilst part of the staff were engaged in this scientific excursion, several other officers visited the town, where they noticed nothing special except a narrow walk called the Alameda, and the church of the Franciscans. The neighbourhood, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... mark the condition of things however, until I was again dispatched to the commander-in-chief. I had but fairly started, when I was struck on the right side by a piece of a shell almost spent, which yet came near ending my earthly career. My first feeling after the shock was one of giddiness and blindness, then of partial recovery, then of deathly sickness. I succeeded in getting off rather than falling from my horse, near the root of a tree, where I fainted and lay insensible for nearly an hour. ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... of giddiness," said Sumichrast. "If since we set out we had walked blindly on without looking where we went, long ere this we should have found ourselves at ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... was working in the field at a little distance from Mr. Mudge, he became conscious of a peculiar feeling of giddiness which compelled him to cling to the hoe for support,—otherwise he must ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... had swollen the waters, which swept along, dashing over the irregular pieces of rock that formed the only means of crossing over. But danger was as nothing to her now—the first few steps were taken—the rapid stream was rushing wildly round her—a sensation, of giddiness and exhaustion made her limbs tremble—her footing slipped on the wet and slimy stone—in another moment the ruthless ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... hours; the proportion [Symbol: dram]iss. to eight ounces of water and [Symbol: ounce]i. of aq. n. m. sp.—7th Day, The infusion had neither purged, nor vomited him: he only complained once or twice of giddiness. His belly was now very hard, rather black on the right side the navel, and his legs amazingly swelled. Ordered a bolus with rhubarb and calomel, to be taken in the morning, and [Symbol: ounce]ii. julep salin. cum tinct. canthar. ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... so quiet and self-possessed, had now grown abrupt and variable. Sometimes, when he joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly stop before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur something, in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm and giddiness, and leave the room. These fits of illness had something in their nature of the same secrecy which distinguished everything else connected with him: they produced no external signs of distortion, no unusual paleness ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... is immense, and has been said to equal that of tobacco by Western peoples. It is prepared for chewing by inclosing in the leaves a slice of the areca nut, and a small portion of lime. It is thought to act as a stimulant to the digestive organs, but causes giddiness and other unpleasant symptoms to those not accustomed to ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... murmured, still faintly; "the giddiness is passing off. . . . Do not heed me, Sir Andrew; I assure you I ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... their mother, after a few minutes, and went out to breathe the outside air, where at least there was quiet and freedom. To think as she went out into the red morning sunshine that her old life was over, made Nettie's head swim with bewildering giddiness. She went up softly, like a creature in a dream, past St Roque's, where already the Christmas decorators had begun their pretty work—that work which, several ages ago, being yesterday, Nettie had taken the ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... too much. The giddiness from which he was suffering mastered him, and he fell over sidewise on to the fast-heating sand, but with his left foot fast in the stirrup-iron, while the pony kept on a few feet before stopping short and turning to gaze down in his ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... wandered in the regions of the thousand and one nights, the wonderful lamp in his hand. The fairy reality cast into the shade his wildest dreams. He was dazzled by the count's words, and had need of all his reason to struggle against the giddiness which came over him, on realising his great good fortune. Touched by a magic wand, he seemed to awake to a thousand novel and unknown sensations. He rolled in purple, and ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... I?" repeated the boy, sluggishly. That odd giddiness was increasing, and he scarcely knew whether he were asleep or awake. Who was he, indeed? What had happened? Who was that young woman in front of ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... Ireland he contracted a disorder, as he thought, by eating too much fruit. The original of diseases is commonly obscure. Almost every boy eats as much fruit as he can get, without any great inconvenience. The disease of Swift was giddiness with deafness, which attacked him from time to time, began very early, pursued him through life, and, at last, sent him to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to pull it out; but, slippery with blood, it afforded a poor hold for his fingers. Violently exerting himself, with both hands he wrenched away the weapon. The flint-head lacerating his flesh and scraping his shoulder bones caused sharpest agony. The pain gave away to a sudden sense of giddiness; he tried to run; a dark mist veiled his sight; he stumbled and fell. Then he seemed to sink into a great darkness, and ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... No one ever knew precisely what had happened, nor would know. Whether a sudden giddiness seized him, or whether he leaned too far forward, misled by the fog which makes things look so different; certain it is that he had disappeared—not even ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... proceeded, she was warned by increasing giddiness, and a tremulousness that defied her efforts to control it; and she rushed on toward the close, fighting desperately with ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... assured. I hoped, indeed, to derive no little advantage from the quickness of wit; which had attracted M. de Rosny's attention; although I did not fail to take into account at the same time that the lad was wayward and fitful, prone at one time to depression, and at another to giddiness, and equally uncertain in ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... themselves made no mystery of the matter. They explained with whom Fanny was, and where and when she might be seen. Ah! and this was much more than mere giddiness; it was shamelessness, jealousy, hatred! Matilda could not forgive Fanny for avoiding her in the street, and the others could not pardon her for possessing a treasure which they possessed no longer—innocence! What a dish for the fine palate of a connoisseur! What a ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... recognised as being of a different class from his own, a class of which he knew nothing. All his own feints and passes were known, while those of his antagonist had been strange and new, and he might well have even others. The stranger's giddiness did not alter the situation, for Rodriguez knew that his handicap was fair and even generous. He believed he was near his grave, and could see no spark of light to banish that dark belief; yet more chances than we can see often guard us on such occasions. The absence ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... upon his more tractable pupils; and the only share that his measures can claim in the successful issue of the war, is that of having produced the grievance that was then abated—of having raised up the power opposed to him to the portentous and dizzy height, from which it then fell by the giddiness of its own ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... said. "Gloody's name ought to be Glutton. An attack of giddiness, thoroughly well deserved. I have relieved him. You remember, Mr. Roylake, that I was once ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... was, Mr. Taynton had one moment of physical giddiness, so complete and sudden was the revulsion and reaction that took place in his brain. A moment before he had known, he thought, for certain that his own utter ruin was imminent. Now he knew that it was not that, and though he had made one ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... mitraille from Mont Valerien; Neuilly, with her bridge taken and re-taken, her barricades abandoned and re-conquered, has been for the last few days like a vast abyss, into which the Federal battalions, seized with mortal giddiness, are precipitated one after another. Each house is a fortress. Yesterday, the gendarmes had advanced as far as the market of Sablonville; this morning they were driven back beyond the church. Upon this church, a child; the son of Monsieur Leullier, planted ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... for a pace or two and turned for Russell. Seeing her walk thus far with ease and in safety, he ventured after her. The ledge was wide enough to walk on without difficulty; and, although the chasm was deep, yet the side did not run down steeply enough to make him feel anything like giddiness. The pathway was easy enough when one had a guide to show the way; and thus Russell, following closely behind Rita, reached the bottom. Then, crossing the brook, she led the way up on the opposite side by the path already ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... in my hands, slid down into the abyss. When I saw myself hanging over the dark pool, when I saw the sky lessening above my head, a cold shudder came over me, a chill fear got the better of me, I was seized with giddiness, and the hair rose on my head; but my strong will still reigned supreme over all the terror and disquietude. I gained the water, and at once plunged into it, holding on by one hand, while I immersed the other ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not understand. In her giddiness they seemed to be moving in a wide, empty space among many fires, nor had she an idea which was the real one. His ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... overtook another procession of pilgrims; but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playful ways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. Yet both were here, both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong men and women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boys and girls, and three babies at the breast. Even the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... may occur in the neck as a result of stabs or bullet wounds. The communication is usually between the common carotid artery and the internal jugular vein. The resulting interference with the cerebral circulation causes headache, giddiness, and other brain symptoms, and a persistent loud murmur is usually a source of annoyance to the patient and may be sufficient ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... fibre. This produced a transition to Flanagan—the contemplation of whose perfidious vengeance made him spring from his seat in a paroxysm of indignant but intense hatred, so utterly furious that the swelling tempest which it sent through his veins caused him to reel with absolute giddiness. ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... day of fog, and this day hunger awoke in him again. He was very weak and was afflicted with a giddiness which at times blinded him. It was no uncommon thing now for him to stumble and fall; and stumbling once, he fell squarely into a ptarmigan nest. There were four newly hatched chicks, a day old—little specks of pulsating life no more than a mouthful; and he ate them ravenously, thrusting ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... Egypt was governed for a short time in the name of Gallienus; but the fickle Alexandrians soon made a rebel emperor for themselves. The Roman republic, says the historian, was often in danger from the headstrong giddiness of the Alexandrians. Any civility forgotten, a place in the baths not yielded, a heap of rubbish, or even a pair of old shoes in the streets, was often enough to throw the state into the greatest danger, and make it necessary to call out the troops to put down ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... VESSELS.—Symptoms: General inflammation of the alimentary canal, suppression of urine; hiccough, a disagreeable metallic taste, vomiting, violent colic, excessive thirst, sense of tightness of the throat, anxiety; faintness, giddiness, and cramps and convulsions generally precede death.—Treatment: Large doses of simple syrup as warm as can be swallowed, until the stomach rejects the amount it contains. The whites of eggs and large quantities of milk. Hydrated peroxide ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... put his signature to the bottom of the document, when suddenly, without the least warning, a strange giddiness, followed by intolerable pain, seized him. It passed off, leaving him very faint. He raised his hand to his brow and looked around him in ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... over his horse's neck, and looked narrowly at the man Barto Rizzo. He himself was eyed as in retort, and with yet greater intentness. At first Barto's hand was sweeping the air within a finger's length of his forehead, like one who fought a giddiness for steady sight. The mist upon his brain dispersing under the gaze of his enemy, his eyeballs fixed, and he became a curious picture of passive malice, his eyes seeming to say: 'It is enough for me to know your features, and I know ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Tackleton. 'Giddiness, frivolity, fickleness, love of admiration! Not considered! All left ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize you, this mighty "Loreley" of the heights, this evil-genius from the land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... had caused my feet to swell enormously, my ankles being about three times their normal size, so swollen were they. I experienced an unbearable pain in my heart, with continuous heart-burning and sudden throbbings, succeeded by spells of exhaustion. Giddiness in my head was constant, and I was so weak that it was all I could do to move. Even the exertion of shifting from one side to the other of the boat on which I was travelling was enough to make me ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... differences, and even contradictions, as to what theorizers have considered desirable and necessary. There is scarcely an important point which the highest authorities may not be cited for or against. We must not close our eyes to this fact. "The giddiness that comes from contemplating the depths of knowledge is the beginning of philosophy, as the god Thaumas was, according to the fable, the father of Iris." (Plato.) In a precisely similar manner, the student of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... entered, those present made place for them, and Rouletabille, who for some moments had been showing marks of fatigue and of a giddiness natural enough in a young man who isn't in the habit of drinking the finest champagnes, profited by the diversion to get a corner of the sofa not far from Prince Galitch, who occupied the place at ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... Through the numbness and giddiness that gradually came into his head like a poisonous murk he saw one thing clearly: It was gone—his art was gone, the one thing that could save him. That, too, like all the other good things of his life, he had destroyed. At some time during those years of debauchery it had died, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... coffee came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive friend handed me one of the cups with a bow. I was parched with thirst, and drank it off at a draught. Almost instantly afterwards, I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing up and down before me like the piston of a steam-engine. I was half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a feeling ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... made him so dizzy that he sank down on a boulder, resting his head on his hands until the humming and throbbing should pass. As he sat there came a sound to his ears which made him start to his feet, forgetful of the giddiness, forgetful of everything save the sound ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... that Augustine was waiting for her downstairs and that in little more than an hour her husband would be with her. And suddenly the agony lightened. A giddiness of relief came over her. He was kind: he did not judge her: he knew all, yet he respected her. Augustine was like the bleak, stony moor; she must shut her eyes and stumble on towards the firelight. And as she thought of that nearing brightness, of her husband's eyes, ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... equally sure and easy proof of the disease? For its scent is commonly used as a test of the soundness or infirmity of slaves even in the slave-market. Again, the spinning of a potter's wheel will easily infect a man suffering from this disease with its own giddiness. For the sight of its rotations weakens his already feeble mind, and the potter is far more effective than the magician for casting epileptics into convulsions. You had no reason for demanding that I should produce these slaves. I have good reason for asking ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... upon a chasm, where a shaft had been lately sunk in a mining speculation (then projecting, but abandoned soon after, as not answering the promised success, by Sir Ralph Shepperton, Knight, and member for the county). The old clergyman leaning over, either with incaution or sudden giddiness, (probably a mixture of both,) suddenly lost his footing, and, to use Mr. Listen's phrase, disappeared, and was doubtless broken into a thousand pieces. The sound of his head, etc., dashing successively upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... may not improbably have had a bewildering effect on the mind of the reader. To keep the mental eye, like the bodily eye, for any time intently fixed on one object is apt to produce a feeling of giddiness. And in the case of a subject like illusion, the effect is enormously increased by the disturbing character of the object looked at. Indeed, the first feeling produced by our survey of the wide field of illusory error might be expressed ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... language about his leaving her at such a crisis, with her gripping his arm till I bet it showed for an hour. But finally they broke and he loosened her horse's sash, as she kept quaintly calling it, and she recovered completely and said it had been but a moment's giddiness anyway, and what strength he had in those arms, and yet could use it so gently, and he said she was a brave, game little woman, and the picnic was served to one and all, with looks of hearty suspicion and rage now ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... me if I could," I said, looking at him with pleased eagerness. Mrs. Flaxman entered the room then, ready for church. My head was aching severely, and a distressing giddiness occasionally seized me; but I was so eager for this long coveted privilege, I kept silent about my feelings. Sickness and I were such strangers to each other, I scarcely understood ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... away from Wittenberg. He remained there, actively engaged in this work, during the following months, and with some few intervals, up to the spring. From the end of January 1529 he again suffered for some weeks from giddiness and a rushing noise in his head; he knew not whether it was exhaustion or the buffeting of Satan, and entreated his friends for their prayers on his behalf, that he might continue steadfast in ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... it I noticed something which I may truly describe as extraordinary. I have had young men present themselves to me who turned out to be notoriously unfit, either from giddiness, from being profane or intemperate, or from some bad quality or other. But I never remember a case which equalled the cool culpability of this. While infringing the first principles of social decorum you might at least ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... functions. I was not the only one to observe it, for the doctor who came to see me every week found me much better, and finally there came recovery, since I could get up after having been in bed eleven months. I got up without any discomfort, not even the least giddiness, and in a fortnight I could go out. It is indeed thanks to you that I am cured, for the doctor says that for all that the medicines did me, I might just as ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... in my room is very close, and I suffer more from giddiness than I did at home," was ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... finding himself unable to rise again. He looked about, but could see no vacant place on any bench. Had he found one he would have dropped asleep there, even at the risk of being awakened by the police. Then, as giddiness nearly blinded him, he leaned for support against a tree, with his eyes closed and his ears ringing. The raw carrot, which he had swallowed almost without chewing, was torturing his stomach, and the glass of punch which he had drunk seemed to have intoxicated ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... giddiness of being a land-owner for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent one night ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... interrupted by Grimes, who persisted in vague rushes at them, exclaiming loudly against their supposed treachery in leaving him at the mercy of the mutineers. Bates also complained of the pain caused by the wound in his forehead, and that he was afflicted with a giddiness which he knew not how to avert. By dint of frequently bathing his head at the spring, however, he succeeded in keeping on his legs, until the work of dragging together the boughs was completed, when he threw himself on the ground, and declared that he ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... whose last molars have not been a great while cut, meets an experienced and noted physician in consultation. This is the case. A slender, lymphatic young woman is suckling two lusty twins, the intervals of suction being occupied on her part with palpitations, headaches, giddiness, throbbing in the head, and various nervous symptoms, her cheeks meantime getting bloodless, and her strength running away in company with her milk. The old experienced physician, seeing the yellowish waxy look which is common in anaemic patients, considers ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... discern. The floor of it descended in ridges, like a rough staircase. He stood for a few moments peering into the gloom, tempted by curiosity to advance, but restrained partly by the gathering darkness, and partly by the oppressiveness of the atmosphere, which produced a sensation of giddiness. Something white gleamed on the threshold of the crypt. He picked it up. It was a human skull; but even as he lifted it it came apart in his hands and crumbled into fragments. Freeman's nerves were ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... the results of experiments, so many to writing and reading, and an hour or two to exercise in his grounds or a ride, and playing with his children. Frequently he was stopped for days and even weeks from all intellectual labor by attacks of vomiting and giddiness. Great, as were his sufferings on account of ill health, it is not improbable that the retirement of life which was thus forced on him, to a very large extent determined his wonderful assiduity in study and led to the production by him of so many ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... cried Mrs. Cohen, and could have killed him. Up at four o'clock next morning, rewashing, starching, ironing, she retched with sick fatigue and something more—that sense of giddiness, of being hit on the head which had oppressed her of late. It was as though that laugh of Ben's had stuck like a bone in her chest, so sharp that she could scarcely draw breath; driven all the blood ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... away, for I knew the sensation and its danger well. It has nothing to do with physical giddiness. Those who are cliff- bred, and who never were giddy for an instant in their lives, have often felt themselves impelled to leap from masts, and tree-tops, and cliffs; and nothing but the most violent effort of will could break the fascination. ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the mountains around begin to stand on their heads, while the red-tiled roofs of Ilsenburg were dancing, and green trees flew through the air, until all was green and blue before my eyes, and I, overcome by giddiness, would assuredly have fallen into the abyss, had I not, in the dire need of my soul, clung fast to the iron cross. No one who reflects on the critically ticklish situation in which I was then placed can possibly find fault with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... breakfast with Alma and her mother when I was suddenly seized with giddiness, and, after staggering for a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... he answered, as he sipped the brandy which Grooton had produced. "I am subject to fits of giddiness, and one came over me as I stood there looking down. I felt the ground sway, and remember no more. I am very sorry to give you tall this trouble, but indeed I fear that ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nevertheless, against reasonable judgment, I did. Noticing some tufts of artemisia in a cleft of rock, I filled my mouth with the leaves, hoping their bitter taste might help to keep caution keen and prevent giddiness. In spite of myself I reached the little ledge, got my heels well set, and worked sidewise twenty or thirty feet to a point close to the out-plunging current. Here the view is perfectly free down into the heart of the bright irised throng ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... sin. The man, in such a case, is no more smitten with a genuine love of Art than Malvolio was with a genuine love of Virtue: like that hero of conceit, he is merely "sick of self-love, and tastes with a distempered appetite." And his giddiness of self-love will take from him the power of seeing things as they are; and because he sees them as they are not, therefore he will think he sees them better than they are. A man cannot find Nature by gazing in a looking-glass; and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... strove to put such thoughts behind me. My brain was awhirl, nay, even aflame, for gradually there crept over me a strange, uncanny feeling of giddiness such as I had never before experienced, a faint, sinking feeling, as though the chair was giving ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... the third time, Gracieuse bites the same place, and shows again the little tip of her tongue, he bends over, vanquished by the irresistible giddiness, and bites also, takes in his mouth, like a beautiful red fruit which one fears to crush, the fresh lip which the mosquito ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... ears from time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned by soldiers, so that they were about to become mothers. They seemed to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight. The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough. When the babies were born, and came to his notice, he consulted a Committee he had formed, of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sometimes so far apart that I remained stationary, fearing to let myself go until, urged downward by Kona, I held my breath, and, steadying myself, dropped upon the narrow ledge below. Dreading a recurrence of giddiness I dared not to look down at my companions. My bare feet and hands were blistered and cut by the sharp edges of the rocks, and my movements were seriously hampered by the musket slung at ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... finding himself almost encompassed, not being able to make speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge tile, and made his escape. Here I sat for some time, three hundred yards from the ground, expecting every moment to be blown down by the wind, or to fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over and over from the ridge to the eaves; but an honest lad, one of my nurse's footmen, climbed up, and, putting me into his breeches pocket, brought ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... detected in one position of the head, and served to give a prettier archness to the sweet flexile lips, which, from the gentleness of their repose, seemed to smile unconsciously, but rather from a happy constitutional serenity than from the giddiness of mirth. Such was the character of this fair child's countenance, on which Maltravers turned and gazed involuntarily and reverently, with something of the admiring delight with which we look upon the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... To think this is giddiness and vertigo to human limbs, and even vomiting to the stomach: verily, the reeling sickness do I call it, to conjecture ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... must be looked for wherever parental example is expected to be held in reverence among children. A father may venture to the brink of a precipice, and stand without giddiness upon the margin of the torrent that rushes by and plunges into a deep abyss; but will he trust his child to occupy the same position? But if the child see him there, is there no danger that when the parent's eye is away, he too will venture, and go and play upon the frightful verge, and be amused ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... Nemo was still mounting. I could not stay behind. I followed boldly. My stick gave me good help. A false step would have been dangerous on the narrow passes sloping down to the sides of the gulfs; but I walked with firm step, without feeling any giddiness. Now I jumped a crevice, the depth of which would have made me hesitate had it been among the glaciers on the land; now I ventured on the unsteady trunk of a tree thrown across from one abyss to the other, without looking under my feet, having only eyes to admire the wild sites ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... could I think you knew him even?" interrupted the old woman. "I beg your pardon. Kate says he's not so cruel as he seems, and that if he were here this minute, he'd be as kind and generous to her as ever.—It's all forgetfulness just, and giddiness, she says—or, may be, as to the money, that he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... supposed by all who know me, that I was taken hereupon with such a giddiness in my head and noisiness in my ears, that I was forced to hold by the crook driven in below the thatch for holding of the hay-rakes. There was scarcely any sense left in me, only that the thing was come by power of Mother Melldrum, because I despised her ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... there, and they had left her to see where it really was. They said they would soon be back, but they had not come, and she had got first anxious and then terrified about them, and then fearful for her own safety. At last when faintness and giddiness had come upon her, and she could get no answer to her repeated shouts, her spirit had altogether given way; and unless Wendot had really come to her rescue, she was certain she should have fallen down the precipice. She did not know now how she should ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... battle—the most splendid battle that has ever been painted in music. At its first performance in Germany I saw people tremble as they listened to it, and some rose up suddenly and made violent gestures quite unconsciously. I myself had a strange feeling of giddiness, as if an ocean had been upheaved, and I thought that for the first time for thirty years Germany had found a ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... disturbed by black vapours which clog the finer vessels thro' which the animal spirits ought freely to pass, and the whole mass of blood, being disordered, either overloads the small veins of the brain, or by too quick a motion, causes a hurry and confusion of the mind, from which ensues a giddiness and at length a fury. The abundance of bile, which is rarely found to have any tolerable secretion in such patients, both begets and carries on the disorder." Again, it will be seen that there is nothing more than the fashionable classic humoral pathology, without any original observations, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... crossing the higher parts of the Andes not one of the party suffered from the rarity of the air. Many travellers experience sickness, giddiness, and extreme exhaustion from this cause in those regions. Some have even died of the effects experienced at the greater heights, yet neither Manuela, nor Lawrence, nor Quashy was affected in the slightest degree. We can assign no reason ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... in a state of exhaustion, unable either to stir for weakness and giddiness; or to read, for dazzling in his eyes; or to listen, for a whizzing sound in his ears—all indications of too much brain-work and mental worry. Yet, as soon as he was able to resume his labours, we find him characteristically employed in helping ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... line of the Capets had succeeded to the temporal administration of the kingdom of Charlemagne, it had not succeeded to the apostolic benediction, which appertained to none but the posterity of the said Charlemagne, and that, the line of Capet being some of them possessed by a spirit of giddiness and stupidity, and others heretic and excommunicated, the time had come for restoring the crown to the true heirs," that is to say, to the house of Lorraine, which claimed to be issue of Charlemagne. This case was passed on, it is said, from Rome to Philip II., King of Spain, and M. de Saint-Goard, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... came and ministered to him. Thankfulness came softly, gently, to take his shaking hand in hers. The awful past was over. A false step, a momentary giddiness on the part of his enemy, and the hideous strangling meshes of the past had fallen from him at a touch, as if they had never wrapped him round. Lord Newhaven was gone to return no more. The past went with him. Dead men tell no tales. No one knew of the godless compact between ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... through infinite gulfs, a rebirth for a man who had died a hundred times and might die a thousand times more as the years piled up and became centuries. It was a spinning, whirling, flashing ascent from blackness to coruscating colors, brightness, giddiness. ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... he reached Verner's Pride, he overtook Mr. Bitterworth, who was leaning against a roadside gate. He had been attacked by sudden giddiness, he said, and asked Lionel to give him an arm home. Lionel proposed that he should come in and remain for a short while at Verner's Pride; but Mr. Bitterworth preferred ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... turmoil the sight of these signs caused in him. He dreaded POSSESSION by any spirit but the one. Whatever he did now he must do calmly. Therefore to bed he went. But before he gave himself up to sleep, he prayed God to watch him, lest the commotion in his heart and the giddiness of hope should make something rise that would come between him and the light eternal. The man in whom any earthly hope dims the heavenly presence and weakens the mastery of himself, is on the by-way through the meadow to the castle of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the end of October, 1828, that the signs of serious illness made themselves apparent in attacks of giddiness, accompanied by a marked loss of strength. Schubert was at this time living with his brother Ferdinand at the latter's house in the Neue Wieden suburb—the house is now known as No. 6, Kettenbruecken Gasse—having ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... wild moody whims to design his blooming foster-daughter for the wife of the gloomy Eleazar. A shudder came over him to think with what dark and perplext spirits he was so closely linkt; his head went round with the giddiness of all about him, and he seemed almost to lose his hold on himself. This made him still more regret the loss of young William: at the same time his annoyances were increast by the robberies of the warehouse, which instead of ceasing were carried on ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... times more than he was wont to be heated. He so seldom argued with anybody, still less with his ministers: and here he had been arguing with one or another of them for half the morning. He almost felt as if something had happened to him; a touch of giddiness seized him as he turned to retire to his private apartments; and the thought struck him—if he was as much upset as this over a small side-issue, what would he be like when he had done adding that luster to the constitutional ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... successively raised from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. [71] In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross, but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... woman in your situation. You began with every advantage—birth, a suitable marriage—quite pretty too—and see what you have come to! My poor girl! to think of it! But there is nothing that does so much harm," observed the Countess finely, "as giddiness of mind." And she once more unfurled the fan, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of self-consciousness enhanced her state of giddiness. A titter seemed to run just a scratch beneath the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... giddiness. It would be very easy to lose control, to tumble over and be swallowed up in what might well be a bottomless chasm. And what was the purpose of this well? Was it a trap to entice a prisoner into an unwary climb and then let gravity drag him ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... were out of season, or perhaps there was something wrong in the sea about my island. But at least I had no sooner eaten my first meal than I was seized with giddiness and retching, and lay for a long time no better than dead. A second trial of the same food (indeed I had no other) did better with me and revived my strength. But as long as I was on the island, I never knew what to expect ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory grew DAZED.' Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: 'and a dimness and giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn't seem to mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a little water brought him out of his DAZE.' Mr. Tope repeats the word and its emphasis, with the air of saying: 'As ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... were fixed upon her. He tried to answer her question, which he had only half heard. But he could not form an intelligible sentence. There was a giddiness in his brain which he had never felt before; he trembled, and the victim of an impulse which forced him toward her, he threw his arms about ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... water daily, without feeling any bad consequences; yet the same quantity of tea will make their hands shake for twenty-four hours. That tea affects the nerves is likewise evident from its preventing sleep, occasioning giddiness, dimness of the sight, ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... filled me with alarm. The reflection that upon me depended in no small degree the successful commencement of a work which we all had come to regard as the most important and far-reaching in its consequences of any in the history of human development, produced in me a sensation of giddiness. But my despondency did not last long. I had no right to refuse a responsibility which my colleagues had declared me to be the most fitted to bear; and when my fatherly friend Strahl asked me whether I thought failure possible on the supposition ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which, in the brains of some people, wrought a singular giddiness,—new truth being as heady as new wine. Never was a poor little country village infested with such a variety of queer, strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet were simply bores of a very intense water. Such, I ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was the movement which began in me as I read this. All at once I felt myself dazzled by a thousand sparkling lights; crowds of vivid ideas thronged into my mind with a force and confusion that threw me into unspeakable agitation; I felt my head whirling in a giddiness like that of intoxication. A violent palpitation oppressed me; unable to walk for difficulty of breathing, I sank under one of the trees of the avenue, and passed half an hour there in such a condition of excitement, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... of bitter poverty, privation, ceaseless and incredible toil. The magnitude of the latter task appalled him; fact and figure whirled in his confused mind. He was standing, and he suddenly felt dizzy, and sat down. The giddiness vanished, but left him with twitching fingers, a clouded vision. He might get them all together, explain, persuade.... Goddy! it was for their good. They needn't be cross-grained. There it would be, the offer, for them to take or leave. But, if they delayed, watch out! Railroad people couldn't ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... unutterable degradation of the Oriental slave. To use a homely image, if you put your leg in the way of a cannon ball which seems spent, but is still rolling, you will suffer by the experiment. This is exactly what Caesar, in the giddiness of victory and supremacy, did, and the consequence was as certain as it was deplorable. The republican sentiment seemed to him to have entirely lost its force, so that he might spurn it with impunity; whereas, it had in it still enough of the momentum gathered through centuries ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... "things are too serious for giddiness. Send me my coffee; I'll take it in bed, where I'll think over what we had better do. Come back at nine o'clock, and we'll talk about it. Meanwhile, behave as if you ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the second year they mostly give up flying, on account of their tumbling so much and so close to the ground. Some fly round with the flock, throwing a clean summersault every few yards till they are obliged to settle from giddiness and exhaustion. These are called Air-tumblers, and they commonly throw from twenty to thirty summersaults in a minute, each clear and clean. I have one red cock that I have on two or three occasions timed by my watch, and counted forty summersaults in the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace |
