"Undertow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sort at the door of Congress that the head of the government, harassed by overwork, distracted by diverse trifles—each one too vital to entrust to feeble subordinates; buffeted by the gathering surge without and dragged down by the angry undertow within, lost his influence, and with ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... not happy, sees a great commonwealth grow up around him. Looking under the tides of the political struggles, he can feel the undertow of the future. It seems to drag him back to the old Southern land of his ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... discovered that life was too much for him to understand. He was ashamed of himself for his vain endeavor to envelop Charity Coe and absorb her into the deeps of his love. He was most ashamed because he had failed and must slither back into the undertow with the many other men whom Charity had refused ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... was running, and evidently with a strong undertow. When Manasseh returned with the hot water, Captain Vyell announced that he would bathe before taking ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... strong one, even when the water is black mountain ranges, foam-ridged Sierras coming on to crush us, appalling us, even though we know they are sure to die in time. Stones were thrown on this occasion by Sally and her stepfather, who was credulous enough to suppose that his pebbles passed the undertow and reached the sea itself. Sally was prevented by the elements from misusing an adjective; for she wanted to say that the effect of a stone thrown into such a sea was merely "homoeopathic," and abstained because her ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... eastward lying several fathoms deep along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time each flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the bay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work higher, an undertow runs still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the action of this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that part so deep. Nothing is to be seen out of Sandag Bay but one small segment of the horizon and, in heavy weather, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with hatred's undertow Doth the Love Eternal flow; Every chain that spirits wear Crumbles in the breath of prayer; And the penitent's desire Opens ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... said to her; "the undertow is strong, and the man who has charge of the bathing is ill and not here. The tide is changing—in fact, running out already, I believe." But she would not even look at him, much less answer. As there were ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... tempting the swimmer toward its borders and the light pleasure craft toward its depths. And then, in mid-afternoon, a sudden disastrous change; a quick gale from the north, with a wide whipping-up of white caps; and the morrow's newspapers told of bathers drowned in the undertow, of frail canoes dashed to pieces against piers and breakwaters, and of gay, beflagged steam-launches swamped by the newly-risen sea miles from shore: the toll of fickle, superheated August. But in the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... it, neither could afterwards tell; but they must have struck out so vigorously with their arms and legs at this perilous moment, in the agony of desperation, that, somehow or other, they succeeded in getting beyond the downward suction of the undertow immediately under the overhanging headland. Otherwise, they would have shared the fate of the boat, for their bodies would have been dashed to ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... emotions and are inspired to deeds of courage, of service, and of solace. For every flower plucked from his garden another grows in its stead more beautiful and more fragrant than its fellow, and he is reinspired as he inspires others. And thus in this transfusion of life there is an undertow that carries back into his own life and makes his spirit ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... all unite to illustrate the single fact of the South's steady increase of power, her tightening grasp about the throat of government, and her buffets of threat to the North when a weedling palm failed to palsy fast enough. It warns northern voters of the undertow that is drawing them, and adjures them, by every consideration of political common sense, not to cast their ballots for either of the pro-slavery candidates presented. The conclusion of this address is ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still |
