"Backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a very particular person, and Jack was not. He left his pipes about in all sorts of places—sometimes when they were still lighted. When he came to see me he was quite as likely to put his hat over the inkstand as to put it anywhere else. But if Jack lived at a little distance, and we could go backward and forward to see each other whenever we pleased, that would be quite another thing. He could do as he pleased in his own house, and I could do as I pleased in mine, and we might have many pleasant evenings together. This was a cheering idea, ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... his person with the same spirit with which he had vindicated that of his daughter: that others should take care for themselves and their children. While he uttered these words in a loud voice, the multitude responded with a shout that they would not be backward, either to avenge his wrongs or to defend their own liberty. And the civilians mixing with the crowd of soldiers, by uttering the same complaints, and by showing how much more shocking these things must have appeared when seen than when merely heard of, and also by telling ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... are made like lobsters, and, when they are dead, Like lobsters change their colors and turn red; And while they are living, with their backward gait Displace and tangle ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... that another step would have brought them in contact with the man at the wheel; but Gunson gave himself a wrench, swung round, and as he reversed his position the big Englishman forced him a little backward, bearing right over him as it seemed to me; while the next moment, to my intense astonishment, I saw Gunson now lift the great fellow from the deck and literally throw him over his shoulder, to come down on the planks with quite a crash. There ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... once, and places them at a small distance forward; at the same time the thumb of each foot points outward, and the creature catches with the claw at any thing which it can lay hold of; then he stretches behind him his two hind-legs, so that the five toes of each foot are also directed backward; he supports himself on the sole of this foot, and secures himself by means of the claws on his toes; then he raises his body on the front-legs, and throws himself forward by folding the upper arm on the fore-arm, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... places (four bars); petit tour forward with opposite ladies (four bars); right and left (eight bars); advance again; the ladies return to own places, and the gentlemen pass again round each other to their own ladies (four bars); petit tour backward (four ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... are different meanings. The moon is, first, the companion planet, which, each day, passes backward through one mansion of the stars. By watching the moon, the boundaries of the mansion are learned, with their succession in the great time-dial of the sky. But the moon also symbolizes the analytic mind, with its divided realms; and these, too, ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... it is thou," she stammered. Gradually the clasp of her arms relaxed, her head sank backward, and whispering, with a blissful smile:—"Thank God, all is over.... But how weary I am!"—she fell into a ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... down on the arm of his chair. He rose, too, and paced backward and forward, talking as ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... roused. The pulse of anger began to tint her face with a dull crimson. "I should imagine I could distinguish my own reflection from three men—rough-looking men with slouched hats, all running and looking backward over their shoulders." ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... all empire giv'n! [z] Who bears [Footnote 3] Axalhua's dragon-folds to heav'n; [Footnote 4] His flight a whirlwind, and, when heard afar, Like thunder, or the distant din of war! Mountains and seas fled backward as he pass'd O'er the great globe, by not a cloud o'ercast From the ANTARCTICK, from the Land of Fire [Footnote 5] To where ALASKA'S [Footnote 6] wintry wilds retire; From mines [Footnote 7] of gold, and giant-sons of earth, To grotts of ice, and tribes of pigmy birth ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... Gerald," cried the lady fair, Now backward o'er his shoulder gazing, "I see Red Raymond, in our rear, And Owen, Darcy's banner raising— Mother of Mercy! now I see My father, in their company; Oh! Gerald, leave me here, and fly, Enough! ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... cottage, to travel post to Hurricane Hall, for the sole purpose of accelerating the coming of her good fortune, Marah Rocke walked about the house with a step so light, with eyes so bright and cheeks so blooming, that one might have thought that years had rolled backward in their course and made ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... in thought, goes up to the piano, and is about to close it, but changes his mind. Looks round the great empty room, and sets to pacing up and down it from the corner at the back on the right—pacing backward and forward uneasily and incessantly. At last he goes up to the writing-table, listens in the direction of the folding door, hastily snatches up a hand-glass, looks at himself in ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... he thought the King very kind, especially when Louis began to admire his height and free-spirited bearing, and to lament that his own sons, Lothaire and Carloman, were so much smaller and more backward. He caressed Richard again and again, praised every word he said—Fru Astrida was nothing to him; and Richard began to say to himself how strange and unkind it was of Bernard de Harcourt to like to find fault with him, when, on the contrary, he ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and backward by European standards, Albania is making the difficult transition to a more modern open-market economy. The government has taken measures to curb violent crime and to spur economic activity and trade. The economy is bolstered ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of hope and joy wreathed the lips of the soft-eyed dreamer. She paced the floor absently backward and forward, with far-off gaze; then knelt at her bedside and breathed to the kind All Father a prayer for guidance and strength for what might ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... has Vacancies for a limited number of Pupils of good Social Standing. Education classical, on the lines of the best Public Schools, combined with Home Comforts under the personal supervision of Mrs. Stimcoe (niece of the late Hon. Sir Alexander O'Brien, R.N., Admiral of the White, and K.C.B.). Backward and delicate boys a speciality. Separate beds. Commodious playground in a climate unrivalled for ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Backward and forward they run and crawl, Houses and treasures they heap up high, Hither and thither their booty haul, ... Then suddenly drop in their tracks and die! For few are wise enough to repair In time to a ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... automobile that swooped around the corner and dashed forward. But Miss Honey's hand was clutching her apron string, and Miss Honey's weight as she fell, tangled in the skates, dragged her down. Caroline, toppling, caught in one dizzy backward glance a vision of a face in the automobile staring down on her, white as chalk, under a black moustache and staring goggles, and another face, Delia's, white too, with eyes more strained and terrible than ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... was soft, and every lift was attended by a terrific beating to the man who stood near the fore flipper. In vain we struck, lifted, and hauled: the turtle was gaining slowly. Finally, in his war-dance about the animal's head, Sandy stumbled, grasped wildly in the air, and went down backward into the water with a sounding crash, the turtle fairly crawling over his legs, and, despite the boys, who hung on to its hind flippers, it slid into the water and disappeared behind a miniature tidal wave, leaving the Pinckey family—father and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... sky seemed full of fire. He was hurled backward upon the road and lay half-stunned, while the earth discharged itself into the air with a roar like that of ten thousand shells exploding all together. The ground shook, groaned, grumbled, grated, and showers of boards, earth, branches, rocks, vegetables, tiles, ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... Err shall they not, who resolute explore Time's gloomy backward with judicious eyes; And, scanning right the practices of yore, Shall deem ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... eagerly seized it. A subtle thrill ran through his whole frame. There was no delusion here; it was flesh and blood, warm, quivering, and even tightening round his own. He was about to carry it to his lips, when she rose and stepped backwards. He pressed eagerly forward. Another backward step brought her to the pear-tree, where she seemed to plunge into its shadow. Dick Bracy followed—and the same shadow seemed to fold them ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... adventure something for the good of those around us. Do not let us be anxious to drain the cup of prosperity to its last drop, holding it up so that we see nothing but it. Let us carry ourselves forward in imagination, and then look backward on what we are doing now. That is the way to master the present, for the best part of foresight is in the reflex. What matter is it how many thousands of pounds we make, compared to how we ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... Winnie gathered, and the milk measured each day, all valued at the market price. I was resolved that there should be no blind drifting toward the breakers of failure—that at the end of the year we should know whether we had made progress, stood still, or gone backward. My system of keeping the accounts was so simple that I easily explained it to my wife, Merton, and Mousie, for I believed that, if they followed the effort at country living understandingly, they would be more willing to practice the self- denial necessary for success. Indeed, ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... black-eyed little mischief-maker on Sir John's right, who owes her diamonds to Guy Johnson. La! What a gossip I grow! But it's county talk, and all know it, and nobody cares save the Albany blue-noses and the Van Cortlandts, who fall backward ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... the Indian was saying, Ree having told him whither they were bound, when suddenly a rifle cracked behind them and a bullet whistled past Ree's ear. The young Indian at the opposite side of the fire, gasped and fell backward. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... strife, Ah, Salvator, boy! 'tis the race of your life. I press my knees closer, I coax him, I urge, I feel him go out with a leap and a surge; I see him creep on, inch by inch, stride by stride, While backward, still backward, falls Tenny beside. We are nearing the turn, the first quarter is past— 'Twixt leader and chaser the daylight is cast. The distance elongates, still Tenny sweeps on, As graceful and free-limbed and swift as a fawn; His awkwardness vanished, ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fired; and as he was a very good marksman, he shot the creature with two slugs, just in the head. As soon as the leopard felt herself struck, she reared up on her two hind-legs, bolt upright, and throwing her forepaws about in the air, fell backward, growling and struggling, and immediately died; the other two, frighted with the fire and the noise, fled, and were out of sight ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... myself. Through bitter joy, and through sweet pain, Weighted with lead, I rise towards the sky. Necessity withholds, goodness conducts me on, Fate sinks me down, and counsel raises me, Desire spurs me, fear keeps me in check. Care kindles and the peril backward draws. Tell me, what power or what subterfuge Can give me peace and bring me from this strife, If one repels, the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... fiery eyes, and angry roar, And hoofs that stamp, and horns that gore, He tramples on earth, or tosses on high The foremost, who rush on his strength but to die Thus against the wall they went, Thus the first were backward bent;[383] 730 Many a bosom, sheathed in brass, Strewed the earth like broken glass,[qd] Shivered by the shot, that tore The ground whereon they moved no more: Even as they fell, in files they lay, Like the mower's grass at the close of day,[qe] When his work is done on the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... not so much that they ought to declare independence, as that they ought to declare it gladly, ought to cast off lightly their former false and mawkish affection for the "mother country" and once for all to make an end of backward yearning looks over the shoulder at ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... tetragrammaton, the shem hamphorash,—for it is known by all these appellations,—consists of four letters, yod, heh, vau, and heh, forming the word [Hebrew: yod-heh-vau-heh]. This word, of course, in accordance with the genius of the Hebrew language, is read, as we would say, backward, or from right to left, beginning with ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... her ministers Take my last leave of every place I depart from The gods sell us all the goods they give us The storm is only begot by a concurrence of angers Though nobody should read me, have I wasted time Tis said of Epimenides, that he always prophesied backward. Tis then no longer correction, but revenge Upon the precipice, 'tis no matter who gave you the push When will this man be wise," said he, "if he is yet learning? When you see me moved first, let me alone, right or wrong Young are to make their preparations, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... lives, undisturbed by any foreign element. These men now found their country the centre of a vast stream of foreign immigration, and of that most undesirable kind of immigration which gold mines invariably promote. Their laws were very backward, but the part which was most oppressive was that connected with the gold-mining industry which was almost entirely in the hands of the immigrants, and it was this which made it a main object to overthrow their government. The ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... entrance, a waiter reclining against the cash desk sprang into supple life, and with a smile of prospective gratitude sped ahead up the staircase, casting backward glances of invitation like a gustatory siren enticing them to a place of bliss. He led them into a room overlooking the Thames Embankment, hung up their hats, took the wine card from the frame of the mirror over the mantelpiece, wrote down the order for the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... good deal of comment among her friends. Somebody called it, with a rather cruel double entendre, Bertie Willis' last word. In the obvious sense of the phrase, this was true. Eleanor had given him a free hand, and he had gone his limit. He'd been working slowly backward from Jacobean, through Tudor. But this thing was perfect Perpendicular. You could, as John Williamson said, kid yourself into the notion, when you walked under the keel-shaped arch to their main doorway, that you were going to church. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of man, whereby what once was harmless has become injurious, when the necessity for it is removed; moreover, according to the evidence contained in this book, the races of mankind cannot be traced backward to a single pair. But, taking the three great divisions, the Semitic, the Hamitish, and the Japetic, as derived from Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the various Allophyllian and American aborigines would appear to have existed, and to have been spread over the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... point—one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only, but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital forces of nature—we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix, or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth itself. To this inevitable induction ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Laughing gleefully, both of them, the correspondent caught her hands to pull her to her feet. With a bound and a bellow, Borg was upon them. Their hands were torn apart and St. Vincent thrust heavily backward. He staggered for a couple of yards and almost fell. Then the scene of the cabin was repeated. Bella cowered and grovelled in the muck, and her lord ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... complete, his school education. He was born on the twenty-ninth of October, 1795, and he was one of the little fellows who had not wholly emerged from the child's costume upon being placed under my father's care. It will be readily conceived that it is difficult to recall from the "dark backward and abysm" of seventy-odd years the general acts of perhaps the youngest individual in a corporation of between seventy and eighty youngsters; and very little more of Keats's child-life can I remember ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... round as if about to make a wrathful outburst. As he turned, the light from the open door fell full on his face and now for the first time Roberts saw the visitor's features. With a startled exclamation the man fell backward. For a moment he was so surprised that he could not speak. Then, in an ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... knowledge, could watch its post-war proceedings with detachment, and could note that amongst the numberless Government institutions which took "it's never too late to spend" for their motto after the conclusion of hostilities, the War Office was not absolutely the most backward. Only by such formidable competitors as the Munitions Ministry, the Air Ministry, and, last but not least, the Office of Works did it apparently ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... discouragements had been encountered, his cheerfulness was perennial and unfailing. Mirth and good cheer were apparently inborn and organic with him. He could no more suppress them than a fountain could cease bubbling up, or a river turn backward in its course. And what men and women he has had, first and last, at his table; it is impossible to exhaust the list or exaggerate its quality. Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, E. H. Chapin, Bayard Taylor, Mark Twain, and the Cary sisters, were a few among Americans; ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Presently we heard the sound of other wheels behind us. We all craned our necks backward to get a view of the unknown, but by the growing light we could only see that we were followed at a distance by a buggy with two figures in it. Evidently Polly Mullins and her lover! We hoped that they would pass us. But the vehicle, although drawn ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Water-bugs dart backward and forward above the heads of the chimney swallows; and willow-trees seem drooping with shame, because they can not reach so high ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... had it not been for a strange coincidence of time between this circumstance, and a change which introduced itself into my situation. This first manifested itself in a sort of shyness with which I was treated, first by one person, and then another, of my new-formed acquaintance. They were backward to enter into conversation with me, and answered my enquiries with an awkward and embarrassed air. When they met me in the street or the field, their countenances contracted a cloud, and they endeavoured to shun me. My scholars quitted me one after another; and ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... preservation of popular and State rights, which were seriously threatened by the triumph of a sectional party who were pledged to make war on them. I know that some leading men, and even Mississippians, thought him too moderate and backward, and found fault with him for not taking a leading ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... his forefinger upon the table. Upon his lips was a genial and tolerant smile. He had the air of a preceptor devoting special pains upon the most backward member ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that man's face!" she panted. "He will die if I touch him. Take away his hands." It was done, with set teeth, and the face of the football hero was bathed in sweat. He breathed through tense nostrils, and a sickly whiteness spread backward from his lips. Suddenly he loosed his burden. It fell, doubling in a ghastly heap, and he rushed for ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... gone half-way across the narrow clearing, before the man, looking up from his work, saw them. Instantly his face blanched. With a quick step backward, he reached for a rifle that stood by the door. Then the arm ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... work at mention of her grandfather, took Mr. Colbert aside, and gave him a brief history of all that had occurred during the years of their severance, and when she had finished her relation of the old man's derangement, and of Jennie's devotion and love toward him, the minister arose, and walked backward and forward in the room with an absorbed and meditative air, and then stopping so suddenly before the young girl as to startle her, he said abruptly: "Will you give me one moment in the garden? I have a single word to say to you alone." Jennie laid aside ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... in the economic world, the individualist here with his theory, the socialist here with his; theories outlined like those in Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward"; a hundred advancers of these different schemes, each contending for mastery. And we feel that the welfare of civilization is at stake; and we stand for our great principles. Take it in politics. What difference does it make whether the theories embodied in the reign of the Czar of Russia ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... most lasting uses—a self-dedication as complete as the world has ever witnessed.' Your remark with regard to his having outlived many of his contemporaries among the poets, he read with affecting simplicity; his manner being that of one who looked backward to the past with entire tranquillity, and forward with sure hope. I felt that his honoured life was drawing rapidly to a close, and with him there was evidently ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... cause as all cause is effect, which everybody has recognized, but in addition all effect is cause of its cause and in consequence, to speak in common language, all effect is cause forward and backward, and the line of causes and effects is not a straight line ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... when a letter addressed in a bold, free hand came to her, did she seem to cast a backward glance or recall anything to mar ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... is tired and turns slightly on his side; but even yet he is a heavy weight on the line, and it seems a wonder that so slight a thing as the leader can guide and draw him. Now he is close to the boat. The boatman steps out on a rock with his gaff. Steadily now and slowly, lift the rod, bending it backward. A quick sure stroke of the steel! a great splash! and the salmon is lifted upon the shore. How he flounces about on the stones. Give him the coup de grace at once, for his own sake as well as for ours. And now look at him, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... of heaven, methought, was loath to set, But stay'd, and made the western welkin blush, When the English measur'd backward their own ground In faint retire. O, bravely came we off, When with a volley of our needless shot, After such bloody toil, we bid good night; And wound our tattrring colours clearly up, Last in the field, and ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... three army corps were advancing against them, while a fourth was marching against their left along the road from Tournai in a turning movement. General French effected his retreat during the night behind the salient of Mons. Threatened on August 24 by the strength of the whole German army, he fled backward in the direction ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... thrown high into the air, to be followed by a second and a third. Now the animal was through the throng and carrying a poor boy on its horn, whence presently he fell dead; through and through the ranks of the regiments it charged furiously backward and forward. ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... showed what he was made of. He took a step backward and stood with soldierly rigidity, one hand held with the palm toward her, like a shield and defense against her intention to belittle him and his token of homage by a reward. His look said, and said dramatically, that her ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Jacob and Rebecca did to blind old Isaac," Lady Mabel suggested; but even the example of the patriarch could not move him, and Lady Mabel had to make time move backward with her own hand. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... not even a backward glance, and the children felt lonelier than before. But Polly's mind was too full of David for her to think ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... Bedded of old, Sandals were backward thrown, The pair to tell, That ill or well, The act was ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... had never spoken to him. It was one Thursday morning—I remember even the day of the week—when the boat was unusually full. Mr. Clayton was leaning against the side-railing talking to a friend, when all at once the railing gave way, and he fell backward into the water, which immediately swallowed ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... in wooded country, the fighting to a great extent was carried on at close quarters. It was most desperate and confused. Scattered bodies of the enemy who had penetrated into the woods in the rear of our position could neither go backward nor forward, and were nearly all killed ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... with a mighty sweep; the air-ship gave a backward tilt, fluttered for a moment like a bird in a storm—then shot down with ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... said Roy. He took a step backward, looked carefully up and down the road, lest listeners might be in ambush; stretched his neck forward, and in like manner surveyed the field On either side the hedge. Apparently it satisfied him, and he resumed his close ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... thought of the promised reward and taken aim. The bullet had struck Pawnee Brown's shoulder, merely, however, scraping the skin. On the return fire Tucker was hit in the side and nearly broke his neck in a tumble backward into a ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... the Rio Rubio. Some time beyond midnight, if we do not drive farther upon the shoal, the tide will lift us clear. You may not have noticed, Major, that the screw has been driving us forward most of the time, instead of backward. It is doing so now, but with your permission, I will order ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... will be acted upon by the pressure of the water as the ship rolls, and will bend alternately upward and downward at an angle, the effect being that every time the ship rolls the bent fin will force backward a considerable quantity of water, or, what is the same thing, will have a tendency to thrust the ship forward at a rate which I estimate at—well, say about ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... ruin, I am denied to die the death of my fellow-citizens, let me borrow from virtue vengeance on this hated life," and therewithal drawing a short sword he carried concealed about him, he ran it through his own bosom, falling down backward, and expiring at ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... benches whose gold trappings were torn like paper, while the two struggled on the floor in the wreck of drinking horns and costly vessels from the tables, while over all slopped ale from the mammoth tankards. Backward and forward they struggled, sometimes upon their feet and again upon the floor; but with all his fearsome struggles, Grendel could not break that grip of steel. At last, with one mighty wrench, Grendel tore himself free, leaving in the tightly locked hands of Beowulf his strong right ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... take her poker then and rake the ashes back on the top of the cakes and let 'em stay there till the cakes were done. I don't know just how long—maybe about ten or twelve minutes. She knew how long to cook them. Then she'd rake down the hearth gently, backward and forward, with the poker till she got down to them and then she'd put the poker under them and lift them out. That poker was a kind of flat iron. It wasn't a round one. Then we'd wash 'em off like I told you and they be ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... of his anger, and taking up a small stone from the old wall against which he leaned, he threw it at George, hitting him pretty smartly upon the arm. George took no further notice than merely to turn round and walk backward, so as to be able to watch for and avoid future compliments of the same kind. Many such were sent after him without effect. But just as he was getting beyond reach, Alick, in a last violent effort to throw far enough, overbalanced himself, one crutch slipped from under him, and he fell ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous
... and a most interesting sight. Hundreds of natives were squatting on the ground of the village square, and about one hundred men with faces black and in full war paint, swinging war clubs, were rushing backward and forward yelling and singing while large wooden drums were beaten. They were dressed in most fantastic style, some only with fibrous strings round their loins, and others with yards of "tapa" cloth wound around them. Several women were jumping about with fibre aprons on, ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... foot, and broken wing, With bleeding heart, and sore, Thy Dove looks backward, sorrowing, But seeks the ark no more—thy breast Seeks ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... self-righteous in consequence of their religion, they took their slave-trading and their slaveholding as part of their day's work and as part of God's goodness to His elect. In practical effect the policy of colonial Massachusetts toward the backward races merits neither praise nor censure; it ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... door with a friendly backward glance at Franklin. He stands for a moment where she ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... upon a gentle incline of open grassy land to a broad belt of jungle in the middle distance; here the undergrowth and small trees had been newly cleared away, opening out a dim far view across an uncumbered leaf-strewn floor into the backward gloom of the forest. I sat with my eyes fixed upon the trees, drawing the rain on with the whole strength of desire to the parched country lying there faint with the exhaustion of three months of drought. While I watched, the deep ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... for a rigid fist caught him suddenly under the right jaw, and sent him reeling backward upon a small table. Recovering himself as speedily as possible, and wild with pain and rage, he ripped forth a revolver from a hip-pocket. A dead silence pervaded the room, like a calm before a storm. And during that silence something ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... more profusely at that one spot than at any other? There could be but one answer: because here a surprise met him—a surprise so startling to him in his present state of mind, that he gave a quick spring backward, with the result that his wounded foot came down suddenly and forcibly instead of easily as in his previous wary tread. And what was the surprise? I made it my business to find out, and now I can tell you that it was the ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... chance of gettin' on the same car that the feller did. He was game all right an' give a purty jump onto the front platform of the last car, where a big buck nigger was standin' with a white coat on. He give the pup a kick under the chin an' sent him rollin' over backward. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... famous land with the warp and woof of whose history, tradition, and song, his name and fame are linked for all time? Was it Mr. Winthrop who said of Columbus and his compeers: 'They were the pioneers in the march to independence; the precursors in the only progress of freedom which was to have no backward steps.' ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the first arches of the aorta. They rise in the wall of the fore-gut, which they enclose in a sense, and then unite above, in the upper wall of the fore gut-cavity, to form a large single artery, that runs backward immediately under the chorda, and is called the aorta (Figure 1.201 Ao). The first pair of aorta-arches rise on the inner wall of the first pair of gill-arches, and so lie between the first gill-arch (k) and the fore-gut (d), just as we find them throughout life ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... Oh! if there be in retrospection's chain One link that knits us with young dreams again— One thought so sweet we scarcely dare to muse On all the hoarded raptures it reviews; Which seems each instant, in its backward range, The heart to soften, and its ties to change, And every spring untouched for years to move, It is—the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Zama, and on the other side of the Roman camp, should have been so near that the men could hear one another, or even distinctly see the separate charges. [323] Niti corporibus, 'to exert one's self bodily,' inasmuch as the body of the combatants is sometimes moved forward, and sometimes backward. The plural corpora is as common in Latin as animi, when several persons are spoken of. [324] Sine tumultu, 'without disturbance' or 'hindrance.' [325] Astrictus, 'fixed intent,' whose attention ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... looking backward in thought, seeing and hearing things which, for the honour of others, it was kindest not to repeat. The carriage moved slowly, the horse slackening its pace in climbing the last steep piece of hill which leads to the pond on ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... spear with sturdy arm and true: But, powerless as a bulrush frail, It bounded from his coat of mail; And ere I could repeat the throw, My horse reeled wildly to and fro Before his basilisk-like look, And at his poison-teeming breath,— Sprang backward, and with terror shook, While I seemed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... round them; there was a brisk October market; on the other side of the road Elmore Crow dangled his long legs over a cart flap and chewed a cheroot. Elgin was abroad, doing business on its wide margin of opportunity. Lorne cast a backward glance at ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was so astonished that he had to lean out of his box and watch the blasphemer—a quaint figure, bowed as though under a heavy burden, its hands thrust hard into its trousers pockets—stalk away from the great tent and without so much as a backward glance lose itself among ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... fire, she shall blacken thy face with her ordure, of her mourning for thee, and lament and buffet her face, saying, "O frosty-beard, what a ninny thou wast!"'[FN125] The Khalif laughed till he fell backward, and ordered the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... you into my hands," he said in a low voice, with some awe in it. Then he pulled her to the ground, and, sitting down beside her, rocked himself backward and forward, his hands round his knees. She would have bartered the world for power to ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Cumshaw who first discovered the pursuers. Early in the afternoon the two men commenced to ascend the mountains proper. Just before they disappeared into the belt of timber that fringed the slopes the younger man turned in his saddle and cast one last backward glance at the valley they had left beneath them. Far away below them, in among the misty shapes of the distant trees, he caught a glimpse of a collection of dark little dots whose unfamiliar look puzzled him. He called Mr. Bradby's attention to them, and that gentleman ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... jealousy of Carlotta Deschamps was only a minor one. Possibly I had unwittingly stepped into a net of subtle intrigue, of the extent of whose boundaries and ramifications I had not the slightest idea. Like one set in the blackness of an unfamiliar chamber, I feared to step forward or backward lest I ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... with such tardy step that it was evident he was timing his pace to that of his comrade who had so stealthily entered the wood. Convinced that his real peril lay among those trees, Grimcke began a backward movement with such caution that he hoped it would not be noticed by the native who was approaching ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... increased their apprehensions to such a degree, that they obliged the king to keep up with them on foot. He literally marked his path with his blood; his shoes having been torn off in the struggle at the carriage. Thus they continued wandering backward and forward, and round the outskirts of Warsaw, without any exact knowledge of their situation. The men who guarded him at last became so afraid of their prisoner's taking advantage of these circumstances to escape, that they repeatedly called ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... with their lessons, had often coached some of the more backward of them for tests, passing them when otherwise they would have hopelessly flunked, and cheerfully helped them out of ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... us that, if there be utility in the new, there was beauty in the old, leafy Puseyites of Nature, calling us back to the past, but, like their Oxford brethren, calling in vain; for neither in polemics nor in art can we go backward in an age whose motto ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... our fallen house: come to our friends, 150 O Saturn! come away, and give them heart; I know the covert, for thence came I hither." Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went With backward footing through the shade a space: He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist Which eagles ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... she frequently was in her close proximity to our noisy race, she darted off like a flash, forward or backward, upward or downward, never turning, but dashing in any direction opposite to the quarter from which the disturbance came. On the rare occasions when she was not frightened, she seemed unable to tear herself away. She would hover about her nest, five or six ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... Looking backward, I remember many times when I failed in rapidity of utterance, and was "pumped" at moments when swiftness was essential. Pace is the soul of comedy, and to elaborate lines at the expense of pace is disastrous. Curiously enough, I have met and envied this gift of pace in ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Mr. Maltboy," said Miss Whedell, "what makes our friends so backward to-day. I do declare, we have not had a caller for more than—how long is it, Gusty, since Colonel ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... a man who had a son named Jack, who was very simple in mind and backward in his thought. So his father sent him away to school so that he might learn something; and after a year he came ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... Socialism towards backward races, savage and barbaric peoples who are to-day outside the civilised world? The position of Socialism towards these races is one of absolute non-interference. We hold that they should be left entirely alone to develop themselves in the natural order ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... valuable. Bridges was succeeded by ANTHONY COLLINS,[379] the Free Thinker; a character equally strange and unenviable. Book-fanciers now and then bid a few shillings, for a copy of the catalogue of his library; and some sly free-thinkers, of modern date, are not backward in shewing a sympathy in their predecessor's fame, by the readiness with which they bid a half-guinea, or more, for a priced ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the word, and laughter no little therewith. But Christopher stood up, and took Jack by the hand, and said: "Now say I, that if none else follow this man into battle, yet will I; and if none else obey him to go backward or forward to the right hand or to the left as he biddeth, yet will I. Thou, Wilfrid Wellhead, look to it that thou dost no less. But ye ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... but missed. Instantly a pair of powerful arms wound about him, bearing and bending him backward. His right arm lay parallel with the invader's chest. He brought up the heel of his palm viciously against the Chinaman's chin. It was sufficient to break the hold. Then followed a struggle that always remained nightmarish to Warrington. Hither and thither across the room, miraculously ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... to double the Executive Council in Bombay and Madras, and to appoint at least one Indian member in each of those cases, as well as in the Governor-General's Council. Nor, as the Papers will show, shall I be backward in advancing towards a similar step, as occasion may require, in respect of at least four ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... whole chapter of it, and an Old Testament chapter at that, but I laid right into it because I knew ma, and supper was only two hours off. I can repeat that chapter still, forward and backward, without missing a word or stopping to catch ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the motto, 'The Charter. No surrender. Liberty is worth living for and worth dying for.' On the left, 'The voice of the people is the voice of God;' while on the back of the car was inscribed, 'Who would be a slave that could be free?' 'Onward, we conquer; backward, we fall.' Eight banners were fixed (four on each side) to the car, inscribed, 'The Charter.' 'No vote, no muskets.' 'Vote by ballot,' 'Annual parliaments,' 'Universal suffrage,' 'No property qualification,' 'The payment of members,' and 'Electoral districts.' ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... morning, Sally's mother, who had got down early and hurried her breakfast to make a dash for early prayer at St. Satisfax, looked in at her backward daughter and reproached her, and said there was the Major coming down, and no one to get him his chocolate, she spoke to a young lady who was serenely unprepared for any revelations of a startling nature, or, indeed, any revelations at all. Nor did ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... aid was made to the King by the Duke of Burgundy, who offered at the same time his daughter in marriage (p. 268) to the Prince. This was in August 1411; and doubtless, if he found the King backward or unfavourably inclined, he would naturally apply to the Prince for his good offices, who was personally most interested in the result of the negociation; not to induce him to act against his father, but to prevail upon his father to agree to the proposal. This course was, we are ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the subject was painful to him, and glad to dwell no further upon an act of her own that of late had become quite inexplicable to her. Lucy no longer turned her eyes to the wake of the Francis Cadman: she no longer yearned backward to the land where she had left only a grave. Her mind was employed with a most serious duty: she had adopted a mission, and that mission was the regeneration of James Done. The regeneration was not to be so much ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... and of all the unknown joys that would come to them after they had restored the old Chateau d'Hautecoeur. Anyone, to have seen her then, would have considered her saved and regaining her strength in the backward spring, the air of which, growing warmer and warmer daily, entered by the open window. In fact, she never fell back into the deep gravities of her dreams, except when she was entirely alone and was not afraid of being seen. In the night, voices still appeared to be near her: then ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... not as proficient in doing most of the things that they do as are their ten-year-old children! If your people are uncivilized, go into the jungle with them and try to wrest your living from the jungle—try to find or make everything that you need. If they are civilized, but poor and backward, go into their homes, and live their lives with them. See how they grow their own food, and that without the use of modern machinery; how they grind their own grain into flour, salt or dry their own vegetables, butcher their own meat—if they have ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... wouldn't for anything have so exposed himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked hers, yet he HAD none the less not only caught himself in the act—frivolous, no doubt, idiotic, and above all unexpected—of liking it: he had in addition taken it as a starting-point for fresh backward, fresh forward, fresh lateral flights. The manner in which Mrs. Newsome's throat WAS encircled suddenly represented for him, in an alien order, almost as many things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey's was. Mrs. Newsome wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress—very handsome, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... up and rushes for DAVE as the latter starts down the steps. DAVE meets him with his fist squarely in the face and causes him to step backward, confused.) ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... despond. Extreme poverty is a wet damper on the fires of the best genius; but, as was the case with Kit, it does not effectually put it out. Kit saw with sorrow that he must retrace his steps. To obtain means to carry out his ardent desires, in the spring of 1827 he started on a backward trip to Missouri. Every step he took in this direction was accompanied with such displeasure, that had it not been his best and surest policy, he would have mastered any difficulties of another and better course, had such offered. Four hundred and fifty miles from Santa Fe, being about one half ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... anti-social, tend to persist in spite of the effort of law and public opinion to dislodge them. The more rapid the ethical progress of society, the more frequent and the more pronounced will be the failure of the morally backward individuals to meet the requirements of the new social standard. At such a time we always see an increase in crimes, misdemeanors and acts which enlightened public opinion condemns. This is due, however, not to any decline ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... his interference in the clandestine romance, Victor attacked him, in a wild and sudden fury. Grandemont, though of slight frame, possessed muscles of iron. He caught the wrists amid a shower of blows descending upon him, bent the lad backward and stretched him upon the levee path. In a little while the gust of passion was spent, and he was allowed to rise. Calm now, but a powder mine where he had been but a whiff of the tantrums, Victor extended his hand toward the dwelling house ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... is only the poor, rich farmer Whose heart is heavy with dread, When over the smiling valley The mantle of harvest is spread; "For the season," he says, "is backward And the grain is only ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... other folks, to Rotarys, Kiwanis' Clubs, and feel I ain't like other dubs. And then old Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who's always waitin', he gives his tail a lively quirk, and gets in quick his dirty work. He fills me up with mullygrubs; my hair the backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than a hound, on Sunday when the folks ain't round. And then b' gosh, I would prefer to never be a lecturer, a-ridin' round in classy cars and smoking fifty-cent cigars, and never more I want to roam; I simply want to be ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... iron box was fitting the keys into the double locks. Then he drew the lids backward, and the two gasped at a glitter of precious stones that lay beneath a black velvet cloth Hunsa stripped from ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... coal-fields and iron-stone quarries which have made it by far the most populous and wealthiest county of Wales; the S. country—the garden of Wales—is a succession of fertile valleys and wooded slopes; dairy-farming is extensively engaged in, but agriculture is somewhat backward; the large towns are actively engaged in the coal-trade and in the smelting of iron, copper, lead, and tin; some interesting Roman remains exist ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... coward!" and his hands gripped his brother's throat with deadly force, as though the spoken word could be killed so; and as Christian struggled, lifted him clear off his feet and flung him crashing backward. So furious was he, that, as his brother lay motionless, he stirred him roughly with his foot, till their mother came between, crying shame; and yet then he stood by, his teeth set, his brows knit, his hands clenched, ready to enforce silence again violently, as Christian ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... tactics at zero-G, in space. So Nelsen didn't even wait for the man to notice him. He leaped, and sped like an arrow, thudding into the guy's stomach with both of his boot heels. Shovel Teeth was hurled fifty yards backward, Nelsen hurtling with him all the way. Unless Nelsen wanted to kill him, there wasn't any ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... the Nile to stray among the shelves of his monumental folios. Here stands a series of volumes, extending over a considerable number of years, all of which volumes are in his handwriting. But as you go backward there is a break, and you come upon the writing of another person, who was getting old apparently, for it is beginning to be a little shaky, and then you know that you have gone back as far as the last days of his predecessor. Thirty ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... by a very great discharge from it. Some crisis of that sort is unquestionably the only thing to which we can look with any reasonable ground of hope for the recovery both of his health and of his faculties. But this very consideration makes me very backward in giving credit to this report, unless it had more foundation than any which ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... front of the Sperm Whale's head is a dead, blind wall, without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the front of the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad. Finally, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Selah Briggs, how he had found her, how he had brought her home not knowing who she was, and how she had recognised Herbert as her unfaithful lover. Lady Le Breton, when she saw that escape was practically impossible, flung herself back in an easy-chair, where she swayed herself backward and forward gently all the while, without once lifting her eyes towards Ronald, and sighed impatiently from time to time audibly, as if the story merely bored her. As for poor Selah, she stood upright in front of Ronald without a word, looking ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... occurred, but continued to strain and reach up at the toe in an imbecile sort of way. Instead, therefore, of drawing the noose tight, Little Tim dropped a second noose round the monster's neck, and drew that tight. Becoming suddenly alive to its condition, the grizzly made a backward plunge, which drew both ropes tight and nearly strangled it, while the branch on which Tim was perched shook so violently that it was all he could ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... tortured her. So she ran her hand along the dusty books, little dreaming that the key was there all the time; so in the end, and quite by chance, but for the fact that she was dipping into so many, she took out the right book, and started backward ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung |
