"Spasmodic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... convulsively, anticipating the slash of steel, and my throat closed in spasmodic dread. This was breaking the compact, bound as they were not to inflict physical damage. I opened my lips to protest this breaking of the bond of honor and met her dark blazing stare, and suddenly the sweat broke out on my forehead. I had placed myself ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Christy minstrel with the briefest of intervals between his performances. There were black rims in the orbits of his eyes, as if he gazed feebly out of unglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, already grotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodic experiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice of Lance, he inflicted his protesting and querulous ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... her nose! The wonder is I am not dead; yes, dead by your hand, you brutal black nigger! But where was I in my presentation? O, I recollect! That mad-cap girl, my second jewel, so horrified me. I dare not yet refer to it lest my nerves become spasmodic again. Pray excuse her, Miss Orville, and I will proceed to my youngest, my infant-jewel! Eldora Adelaide Maria Suzette, greet your cousin, love, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... this does not imply that it is an easy or a brief one. The enterprise of beating Colonel Bogey at golf is an agreeable one, but it means honest and regular work. A fact to be borne in mind always! You are certainly not going to realise your ambition—and so great, so influential an ambition!—by spasmodic and half-hearted effort. You must begin by making up your mind adequately. You must rise to the height of the affair. You must approach a grand undertaking in the grand manner. You ought to mark the day in the calendar as a solemnity. Human nature is weak, and has ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... women vote on a property qualification. The Peruvian Minister of Justice has declared that Peru places women on the same footing as men. Thus all over the world is the idea of human rights taking root and cropping out in a healthful rather than a spasmodic outgrowth. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... said after a while, and the risaldar drove to the right, toward where a Hindu temple cast deep shadows, and a row of trees stood sentry in spasmodic moonlight. In front of the temple, seated on a mat, was a wandering fakir of the none-too-holy type. By his side was a flat ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... influence on the excited brain, and must always, sooner or later, prove fatal to inordinate excitement. A few peculiarly constituted individuals may show themselves capable of a lifelong enthusiasm, but the multitude is ever spasmodic in its fervour, and begins to slide back to its former apathy as soon as the exciting ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... at the ravaged face of our brother, convulsed with spasmodic laughter and tears, a feeling ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... plaintive voices. Wings longer than tail; both wings and tails usually drooped and vibrating when the birds are perching. Habits moody and silent when perching on a conspicuous limb, telegraph wire, dead tree, or fence rail and waiting for insects to fly within range. Sudden, nervous, spasmodic sallies in midair to seize insects on the wing. Usually they return to their identical perch or lookout. Pugnacious and fearless. Excellent nest builders and devoted mates. Kingbird. Phoebe. Wood Pewee. Acadian ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... army, was not present at drills. Still, his palace was swarming with nobles, officers, jugglers, and singers, while at night great orgies took place, at which the sound of harps mingled with the drunken shouts of guests and the spasmodic laughter of women. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... might have been expected to have belonged to the 'Spasmodic school,' judging by his parental antecedents. His father was accused of having a share in Babington's conspiracy, but was released because he was godson to Queen Elizabeth. Soon after, however, he was imprisoned ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... taking each other by the shoulders, and then hopping now on the one foot now on the other. When many took part in the dance, they placed themselves in rows, sang a monotonous, meaningless song, hopped in time, turned the eyes out and in, and threw themselves with spasmodic movements, clearly denoting pleasure and pain, now to the right, now to the left "La saison" for dance and song, the time of slaughtering reindeer, however, did not happen during our stay, on which account our experience ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... powers of cordiality, or else Nuttie's stiffness froze him. They were all embarrassed, and had reason to be grateful to Lady Kirkaldy's practised powers as a diplomate's wife. She made the most of Mrs. Egremont's shy spasmodic inquiries, and Mark's jerks of information, such as that they were all living at Bridgefield Egremont, now, that his sister May was very like his new cousin, that Blanche was come out and was very like his mother, etc. etc. Every one was more at ease when Lady Kirkaldy ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spasmodic grip on the riding-crop relaxed; he looked about him with a long, quiet breath, flicked a burr from his riding-breeches, and walked on, head lowered and jaw set. His horse followed at ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... o'clock the policeman in the village joined in the search, and yet nothing was heard of Molly. Mrs. Carteret became really frightened, and Miss Carew was surprised to see her betray so much feeling as almost to lose her self-control. She kept walking up and down, while odd spasmodic little sentences escaped from her every ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... there was no dearth of substantial necessaries and comforts, as well as tobacco and cigarettes galore. Our illustration shows a group of soldiers cooking their Christmas geese in the open, and as intent upon their task as though such conditions were quite orthodox and even such minor alarums as "spasmodic artillery duels, and local fusillades" were ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... cloths bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these spasmodic ravings, but the bystanders frequently relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping and trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... impulsive response to Prime Minister Kerensky's eloquence or the result of isolated local conditions. Gradually the fighting spread over more and more ground. It became more efficient and less spasmodic. Undoubtedly this was partly due to the fact that matters behind the front began to settle down somewhat and that supplies of ammunition and food again flowed more regularly and abundantly. Then too the new commander in chief seemed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... him the thousand forms of opinions for each of which the same internal witness is affirmed. The Mayo peasant, crawling with bare knees over the flint points on Croagh Patrick, the nun prostrate before the image of St. Mary, the Methodist in the spasmodic extasy of a revival, alike are conscious of emotions in themselves which correspond to their creed: the more passionate—or, as some would say—the more unreasoning the piety, the louder and more clear is the voice within. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the tired spirit. I find that every prominent scoundrel known to us pursued his work of sin with an absolute unconsciousness of all moral law until pain or death drew near; then the scoundrel cringed like a cur under the scourges of remorse. Thackeray, in a fit of spasmodic courage, painted the archetypal scoundrel once and for all in "Barry Lyndon," and he practically said the last word on the subject; for no grave analysis, no reasoning, can ever improve on that immortal ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope—for I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to force open the lid: it would not move. I felt my wrists for the bell-rope: it was not to be found. And now the Comforter fled for ever, and a still sterner Despair reigned triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which I had so carefully prepared—and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... probability, of a miserable night. The trio, however, still held on their way; the black boy, during the momentary illuminations caused by the repeated flashes of lightning, continued to discern the, but to him, evanescent path; and with spasmodic starts; and intervals of salient progression, proceeded in ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... followed by vomiting, and the only remedy which is of value in whooping cough is a nerve depressant which will diminish the activity of the nervous system without at the same time interfering with the strength or vigor of the patient. On account of this connection between the lungs, whose spasmodic ejection of air seems to threaten the entire collapse of the little patient, and the stomach, so alarming do the repeated fits of vomiting appear that often this feature of the disease is even more serious than ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... for myself. Until now everything which I had heard spoken in that happy household were simple words of true meaning. If we bad aught to say, we said it; and if any one preferred silence, nay if all did so, there would have been no spasmodic, forced efforts to talk for the sake of talking, or to keep ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... man on our right was too slow in getting on his helmet; he sank to the ground, clutching at his throat, and after a few spasmodic twisting, went West (died). It was horrible to see him die, but we were powerless to help him. In the corner of a traverse, a little, muddy cur dog, one of the company's pets, was lying dead, with his ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... of such moneys as Roger Stapylton had bequeathed to him; for the colonel considered—now—it was a man's duty personally to support his wife and child and sister. And he vigorously attempted to discharge this obligation, alike by virtue of his salary at the Library, and by spasmodic raids upon his tiny capital, and—chief of all—by speculation in the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... temporary it is true, but most harassing to the subordinate, since I was compelled by the circumstances of the situation not only invariably to yield my own judgment, but many a time had to play peacemaker—smoothing down ruffled feelings, that I knew had been excited by Granger's freaky and spasmodic efforts to correct personally some trifling fault that ought to have been left to a regimental or company commander to remedy. Yet with all these small blemishes Granger had many good qualities, and his big heart was so full of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... long, discordant cry could be heard somewhere in the distance, ending in a spasmodic jerk. It was like nothing human. Yet strangely it suggested something human. As if some unearthly ghoul were trying to simulate the wailing of human anguish.... Then again it was quite grotesque, bearing no resemblance to the cry of ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... H——, AEt. 40. A spasmodic asthma, attended with symptoms of effusion. An infusion of Digitalis relieved her very considerably, and she lived four years afterwards without ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... to some persons, and they thrill and stir me so that I have an emission while sitting by them with no thought of sex, only the gladness of soul found its way out thus, and a glow of health suffused the whole body. There was no spasmodic conclusion, but a pleasing gentle sensation as the few drops of semen passed." (In reality, no doubt, not semen, but urethral fluid.) This man's condition may certainly be considered somewhat morbid; he is attracted to both men and women, and the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... belief that other than natural causes were at work. There could be no other reason given that John Louder should miss his mark, than that his gun was "bewitched." It was an age when the last dying throes of superstition seemed fastening on the people's minds, and the spasmodic struggle threatened to upset their reason. The New Englander's mind was prepared for mysteries as the fallow ground is prepared for the seed. He was busied conquering the rugged earth and making it yield to his husbandry. His time was divided between arduous toil for bread and fighting ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... close of the preceding year the Midlands, after several spasmodic struggles, appeared prostrate and helpless at the feet of the Conqueror, who had taken advantage of the opportunity to build strong castles everywhere, and to garrison them with brave captains and trusty soldiers. Warwick Castle was given to Henry de Beaumont, ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... the old footing, without comprehensive plan, developing only the same spasmodic encounters, barren of strategic result, that had marked the course of the earlier ten years' rebellion as well as the present insurrection from its start. No alternative save physical exhaustion of either combatant, and therewithal the practical ruin of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... 1786, a fate which, at a later date, also befell another place of public entertainment, the Circus, in Bradford Street, and the theatrical history of the town, for a long term of years centred round the Theatre Royal, though now and then spasmodic attempts were made to localise amusements more or less of a similar nature. One of these, and the earliest, was peculiarly unfortunate; early in 1778 a wooden pavilion, known as the "Concert Booth," was erected in the Moseley Road, dramatic performances being given ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... his throbbing head upon his crossed arms and sank into a feverish kind of sleep, during which, in a short half-hour, he went through what seemed like an age of trouble, before he started up, and in an excited, spasmodic way, hardly realising what he was doing in his half-waking, half-sleeping state, but under the influence of his troubled thoughts, he roughly selected a few of his under-things for a change and made them up into a bundle, after which ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... a week before. Dr. Ringer's experiment went so far as to give him apparently considerable apprehension. He speaks of the flushed face, the trembling hand, and lips, the laboured breathing, the spasmodic movements ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... as upright as a candle, was conducting an invisible orchestra when Aline returned. The frightened maid tried to hold the lean, spasmodic arms as they traced in the air the pompous rhythm of a march that moved on silent funereal pinions through the chamber. The woman stared threateningly at the picture on the wall, the picture of the skeleton which had come from nothingness to reveal nothingness to the living. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... forth—a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light where fire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted, staring at them fixedly. The same instant it started forward again with the spasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up closer to them, full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then that—it was a man; and apparently that ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... appointment to the Naval School at Annapolis, in the early part of the year 1856, the United States navy was under the influence of one of those spasmodic awakenings which, so far as action is concerned, have been the chief characteristic of American statesmanship in the matter of naval policy up to twenty years ago. Since then there has been a more continuous practical recognition of the necessity ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... mentioned by Moore ('Life', p. 110). Picking up a Turkish dagger on the deck, Byron looked at the blade, and then, before replacing it in the sheath, was overheard to say to himself, "I should like to know how a person feels after committing a murder." In 'Firmilian; a Spasmodic Tragedy' (scene ix.) the sentiment is parodied. Firmilian determines to murder his friend, in order to shriek "delirious at the taste of sin!" He had already blown up a church full of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... The spasmodic lunge of the Shawanoe had overturned the craft, which resembled a huge tortoise, drifting with ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... days, however, we can readily believe that Charles IX. died a natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the sudden development of his faculties, his last spasmodic attempt to recover the reins of power, his desire to live, the abuse of his vital strength, his final sufferings and last pleasures, all prove to an impartial mind that he died of consumption, a disease scarcely studied at that time, and very little ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... appetite, and becomes thirsty and feverish; he vomits in the morning, and is affected with spasmodic pains in the region of the stomach. He is often seized with permanent dyspepsia, and either wastes away by degrees, or dies suddenly of a fit of cramp ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... was unprepared {1736.}. As he made these various arrangements for the Brethren, he entirely overlooked the fact that he himself was in greater danger than they. He was far more widely hated than he imagined. He was condemned by the Pietists because he had never experienced their sudden and spasmodic method of conversion. He offended his own relatives when he became a clergyman; he was accused of having disgraced his rank as a Count; he disgusted a number of other noblemen at Dresden; and the result ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... rehearsal; and sometimes they have not even an idea of the nature of the turn until band parts are put in. This means that they must read at sight, that the conductor must follow every movement of the artist, in order to catch his spasmodic cues for band or patter, and that the boys must keep one eye on music they have never seen before, and the other on ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... peace, the administration of military affairs in the United States is somewhat spasmodic, resulting directly and unavoidably from the fact of our maintaining only the merest skeleton of a standing army compared to the vast territorial extent of the Union. As an incident of this system, Fort Moultrie had been allowed to become defenseless. "A child ten years old can easily ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... less excluded from friendship and free intercourse with their neighbors. Ranald, shy, proud, and sensitive, felt this exclusion, and in return kept himself aloof even from the boys, and especially from the girls, of his own age. His attendance at school was of a fragmentary and spasmodic nature, and he never really came to be on friendly terms with his fellow-pupils. His one friend was Don Cameron, whom the boys called "Wobbles," from his gait in running, whose father's farm backed that of Macdonald Dubh. And though Don ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic, emotional. He had grave domestic troubles, divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort. He was a fanatical Radical—a Socialist—or ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... a great degree limited to such exercises as Mr. Home's elongation, Mrs. Guppy's flight from Highbury to Lamb's Conduit Street, or, more recently still, the voices and manipulations of John and Katie King, the orations of Mrs. Hardinge, Mr. Morse, and Mrs. Tappan. But all this was spasmodic, and not likely to take the world by storm, while Spiritualists had adopted the time-honoured maxim—"Magna est veritas et prevalebit." Therefore they must organize. They have done so, not without protest on the part of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... genuine aid to the actor? Bannister said of John Kemble that he was never pathetic because he had no children. Talma says that when deeply moved he found himself making a rapid and fugitive observation on the alternation of his voice, and on a certain spasmodic vibration which it contracted in tears. Has not the actor who can thus make his feelings a part of his art an advantage over the actor who never feels, but who makes his observations solely from the feelings of others? It is necessary to this art that the mind should have, as it were, a ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... themselves, they sat down and did justice to the meal, with appetites that might have dismayed the waiting throng. Whenever a snake's head came in contact with one wire, while his tail touched the other, he gave a spasmodic leap and fell back dead. If he happened to fall across the wires, lie immediately began to sizzle, a cloud of smoke arose, and lie was reduced to ashes. "Any time that we are short of mastodon or other good game," said Ayrault, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... already upright form, and, by a strong bulging of his muscles, snapped the thongs that bound him. Evidently he had not tried thus to free himself; it was rather a spasmodic expression of savage dignity and pride. One arm and both his legs still were partially confined by the bonds, but his right hand he lifted, with a gesture of immense self-satisfaction, and pointed ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... worshippers take up their quarters mainly on the ground floor—at the back of the central seats and at the sides. The poor have resting places found for them immediately in front of the pulpit and at the rear of the galleries. Very little of that unctuous spasmodic shouting, which used to characterise Wesleyanism, is heard in Lune-street Chapel. It has become unfashionable to bellow; it is not considered "the thing" to ride the high horse of vehement approval and burst into luminous showers of "Amens" and "Halleleujahs." ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... party given by the smaller gentry of the interior is a kind of solemnity, so to speak. It involves so much labor and anxiety,—its spasmodic splendors are so violently contrasted with the homeliness of every-day family-life,—it is such a formidable matter to break in the raw subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and the table,—there is such ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... existed in these small beginnings, in the gorgeous but quaintly formal or fantastic devices of illuminated missals, and in the stiff spasmodic efforts of here and there an artist spirit such as the old Florentine Cimabue's, when a great man heralded a great epoch. But first I should like to mention the means by which art then worked. Painting on board and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... despatch was opened by Talleyrand's agents before it left Paris, and the French Government was thus placed on its guard against the sudden explosion of Prussian wrath. Lucchesini's despatch had indeed all the importance that Talleyrand attributed to it. It brought that spasmodic access of resolution to the irresolute King which Bernadotte's violation of his territory had brought in the year before. The whole Prussian army was ordered to prepare for war; Brunswick was summoned ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... refresh his mind with some agreeable volume provided by his vigilant companion,—the best energies of his mind and the freshest hours of life were absolutely given to Art. This is the great lesson of his career: not by spasmodic effort, or dalliance with moods, or fitful resolution, did he accomplish so much; but by earnestness of purpose, consistency of aim, heroic decision of character. There is nothing less vague, less casual in human experience, than true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder- beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. But the intervening links that connected them, that spread the earthquake of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... presents itself is what is laughter? and our answer must be that it is a change of countenance accompanied by a spasmodic intermittent sound—a modification of the voice—but that we cannot trace its physical origin farther than to attribute it to some effect produced upon the sympathetic nerve, or rather the system of nerves termed respiratory. These communicate ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... way between the clenched teeth. For fully ten minutes he strove to coax a small quantity of the spirit down his chiefs throat, and at length had the satisfaction of seeing that some at least had been swallowed. The almost immediate result of this was a groan and a slight, spasmodic movement of the emaciated limbs; and presently, after a few minutes of further persistent effort, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... these catastrophes, so crushing, so unexpected, filled him with a kind of primeval terror. Mr. Parker was neither a devout believer nor the reverse. He was a fool and liable, as such, under the stress of bodily or mental disturbance, to spasmodic fits of abject fright which he mistook for religion. An attack of indigestion, the failure of some pecuniary speculation, the demise of a beloved stepsister—these various happenings, so dissimilar to one another, had yet ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... with the world beyond the village he had none. His temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence. He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him, but though Mrs. Hall listened conscientiously she could make neither head nor tail ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... against the window-panes, and one could hear how the water was falling to the ground from the roof, sobbing there. This sobbing sound was joined by another sound—a shrill, often interrupted, hasty scratching of a pen over paper, and then by a certain spasmodic grumbling. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... fingers on the glass counter. "He was drunk," he snapped out, and stared sternly off into space. And then as if he felt it becoming of him, he frowned and his adam's-apple moved up and down with quick, spasmodic jerks. But he would not look ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... extraordinary much fraud appeared to be mixed. And if some of the cases upon which designed misrepresentation could not be charged were not at the time satisfactorily accounted for, it was because the efficacy of strong spasmodic affections was not then sufficiently known. Finally, the cause of Jansenism did not rise by the miracles, but sunk, although the miracles had the anterior persuasion of all the numerous adherents of that cause to ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... the order, and paid Paganini the dividend. I told him what it was, thinking, as a matter of course, he would return it. He seemed uncertain for a moment, paused, smiled sardonically, looked at the three and sixpence, and with a spasmodic twitch, deposited it in his own waistcoat pocket instead of mine. Voltaire says, "no man is a hero to his valet de chambre," meaning, thereby, as I suppose, that being behind the scenes of every-day life, he finds out that Marshal Saxe, or Frederick the Great, is as subject to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... WORKERS NOT BEST UTILIZED.—Under the best types of Traditional Management we do find more or less spasmodic attempts at the functionalization of the worker. When there was any particular kind of work to be done, the worker who seemed to the manager to be the best fitted, was set at that kind of work. For example—if there was a particularly heavy piece of work he might say—"Let A do it because ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... intense, and he could no longer bear up against them. His head fell backwards, his jaws closed convulsively, he crushed the neck of the bottle between his teeth, his neck grew rigid, his limbs writhed with spasmodic action, and he ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Paris and had gone to the old house on the Rue de Braque, and he had hastened thither in joyful surprise, a little vexed that he had not been forewarned, and especially that Frantz had defrauded him of the first evening. His regret on that account came to the surface every moment in his spasmodic attempts at conversation, in which everything that he wanted to say was left unfinished, interrupted by innumerable questions on all sorts of subjects and explosions of affection and joy. Frantz excused himself on the plea of fatigue, and the pleasure it had given him to ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... trees. The wet clothing he could not replace, and that would have to be endured. But he rubbed his body to keep him warm and to induce circulation. The night was now far advanced, and the distant firing became spasmodic and faint. After a while it ceased, and the weary combatants lay on ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... even the little crosses that befell in an ordinarily quiet life! How she had lost the so-lately-gained influence over Alfred and Julia by a few cross words! How much reason she had given Sadie to think that her attempts at following the Master were, after all, only spasmodic and visionary! But Ester had been to that little clothes-press up stairs in search of help and forgiveness, and now she clearly saw there was something to do besides mourn over her failures. It was hard to do it, too. Ester's ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... forced final spasmodic effort, he seized the arms of his chair, and rose, lifted up his right arm, and turned ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... said Aunt Emmeline, "you are not in your first bloom. That we can't expect. Your colour is a little harder and more fixed" (the figure in the glass gave a spasmodic jerk. The sulky expression was pierced by a gleam of fear. "Fixed!" Good gracious! She might be talking of those old people who have little red lines over their cheek-bones in the place of "bloom". It's ridiculous to say I am "fixed". It is a matter of indifference to me how I look, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the breaking of a cocoa-nut shell by a hammer; and when Rock let go, the mass of mis-shapen humanity dropped in a dollop upon the flags, arms and legs limp and motionless, in the last not even the power left for a spasmodic kick. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... that statute, were regarded by those interested in silver production as a certain guaranty of its increase in price. The result, however, has been entirely different, for immediately following a spasmodic and slight rise the price of silver began to fall after the passage of the act, and has since reached the lowest point ever known. This disappointing result has led to renewed and persistent effort in the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... glittered a magnificent diamond ring. The other ladies were no better dressed, and none of them had any covering for the head. Their faces bore distinct traces of the sufferings they had undergone. Their eyes were sunken, their cheeks pale, and every now and then a sort of spasmodic twitch seemed to pass over their features. One of them could just stand, but could not walk; the others were comparatively helpless. A gentleman was lying close by the ladies, still suffering grievously in ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... more at his ease, or perhaps less inclined to talk, since he only received curt monosyllabic answers to his pleasant sallies. Five minutes had gone by without any other sound, save the spasmodic creak of Sir Percy's pen upon the paper, the while Chauvelin and Collot watched every ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... seemed to think—with a great deal more to the same effect. In a word, she passed with great decency through all the ceremonies incidental to such occasions; and being supported upstairs, was deposited in a highly spasmodic state on her own bed, where Miss Miggs shortly afterwards flung herself ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... data published in the monthly U. S. Labor Bulletin covers most of the articles which are at all important in the wage earners' budget. The collection of such data, however, has remained spasmodic up to the present. See the article by H. S. Hanna in the October, 1919, issue of the Monthly Review of the U. S. Department of Labor. The Sumner Committee Report on the "Cost of Living in Great ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... rooms were set low in the massive granite walls, and being always wide open, they offered, and indeed invited, easy access to—say, a grave-faced gentlemanly brown dog and a spasmodic rough-coated terrier without a tail, whenever the spirit moved them to incursion, which it invariably did at ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... for food for a short time and means to get animals, farm implements, etc., will end the present conditions and put the people of the island on the road to prosperity. Spasmodic issues of army rations give only temporary relief and tend to ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Barbary ape (Inuus ecaudatus) to an extraordinary degree; and I observed in this monkey that the skin of the lower eyelids then became much wrinkled. At the same time it rapidly moved its lower jaw or lips in a spasmodic manner, the teeth being exposed; but the noise produced was hardly more distinct than that which we sometimes call silent laughter. Two of the keepers affirmed that this slight sound was the animal's laughter, and when I expressed some doubt on this ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... hair was wondrously tousled, and some straggling, moving locks hung over the cloth of the bandage down toward his forehead. His jacket and shirt were open at the throat, and exposed his young bronzed neck. There could be seen spasmodic ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... in flannel shirt and chaps came forward, dragging blanket, saddle and bridle. At sight of him the horse gave a spasmodic fling, then trembled again violently. A blind was coaxed over its eyes and the bridle slipped on. Quickly and warily, with deft fingers, the young man saddled and cinched. He waved a hand jauntily to the ropers. The lariats ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Jess Hogue, with the aid of the twenty-eight army mules which they had acquired in ways that invited research, had started a freight-line from Medora to Deadwood, but its service turned out to be spasmodic, depending somewhat on the state of Medora's thirst, on the number of "suckers" in town who had to be fleeced, and on the difficulty under which both Williams and Hogue seemed to suffer of keeping sober when they were released from their obvious ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... levers with blades or keys attached, forming a keyboard four feet long. The levers, each three feet long, are delicately hung on fine brass centers, and each lever is counterbalanced by a weight hung in a vessel of water, which acts as a hydraulic brake, and checks any spasmodic movement in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... convulsions and rushes of the dishevelled girl were too near. Lady Agnes wore much of the time the countenance she might have shown at the theatre during a play in which pistols were fired; and indeed the manner of the young reciter had become more spasmodic and more explosive. It appeared, however, that the company in general thought her very clever and successful; which showed, to Sherringham's sense, how little they understood the matter. Poor Biddy was immensely struck; she grew flushed and absorbed in ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... exiles relegated to this land of ice, poor creatures who should have been Esquimaux, since nature had condemned them to live only just outside the arctic circle! In vain did I try to detect a smile upon their lips; sometimes by a spasmodic and involuntary contraction of the muscles they seemed to laugh, but ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... lie in the sun, with a wing and a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or relieving their ennui from time to time with a spasmodic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and with quiet self-assurance she utters an occasional series of hoarse and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an astonished brood ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... for suppressing hiccoughs are scarcely superstitions in reality, as they doubtless often do relieve the nervous, spasmodic action of the respiratory muscles, by fixing the attention upon the cure. But in the popular mind some charm, I take it, is attributed to the counting, repeating, or ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... was quiet, after one wild roll of her eyes at him. The colour was returning to Adrianna's cheeks; her mother was drinking hot tea in spasmodic gulps. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... Saviour reigned supreme. And the poor body was suffering, for the overstrained mind was sapping the vigour of all its powers. And then there came a resort to that remedy, the stimulant which spurs up the flagging energies to extraordinary and spasmodic exertion, only to leave the poor deluded victim more prostrate and exhausted ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... sharp crack and the yellow-faced man, reeling, dropped face downwards on the carpet without a sound. In his fall his foot caught a small table on which a vase of chrysanthemums stood, and the whole thing went over with a loud crash. He made a spasmodic effort to rise, hoisted himself on to his knees, swayed again, and then collapsed full length on the ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... Elbow.—The chief obstacle to reduction is the spasmodic contraction of the muscles passing over the joint, and, in the backward variety, the hitching of the coronoid process against the edge of the olecranon fossa. In recent cases, to effect reduction the patient is seated on a chair, while the surgeon grasps the humerus and wrist, and places ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... bespattered with ebon mud—ebon mud that stuck like Jews' pitch. At times the mass, receiving some mysterious impulse far in the rear, away among the coiled thoroughfares out of sight, would, start forward with a spasmodic surge. It seemed as if some squadron of centaurs, on the thither side of Phlegethon, with charge on charge, was driving tormented humanity, with all ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... few feeble and spasmodic attempts to persuade observance of the law, with some ill-advised attempts to enforce individual ideas of propriety ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... In a last spasmodic convulsion the big rabbit doubled up its rear legs and gave a kick that sent Ba-ree sprawling back, yelping in terror. He regained his feet and then, for the first time, anger and the desire to retaliate took possession of him. The kick had completed his first education. ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... advanced in a straight line, Max and Steve being armed, and apparently ready to do fell execution, should there be any necessity for action. But nothing happened. The swinging object continued to move back and forth, but none of them could detect any spasmodic kicking connected with it that would suggest the dying struggles of a wild beast that was being slowly but ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... scherzo in one respect: it has to be given in detached jerks—literary, not musical—and these jerks don't come at any stated intervals at all. The music was bad enough—so Sally and Laetitia thought—but the chronicle is more spasmodic still. However, if you want to know its remaining particulars, you will have to brace yourself up to tolerating an intermittent style. It is the only one our means of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... though but a whisper fell, as with a spasmodic jump of his whole body he flung himself round in his chair, and cowering low against the arm, peered into the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... perspiration, caking with dust, slithering in the slippery, impalpable powder of the road, groggily staggering in a red dusty dream, coughing, snorting, head-tossing; becoming suddenly dejected, with slouching haunch and limp legs on easy slopes, or wildly spasmodic and agile on sharp acclivities, Blue Lightning began to have ideas and recollections! Ah! she was a devil for a lark—this lightly-clinging, caressing, blarneying, cooing creature—up there! He remembered her now. Ha! very well then. Hoop-la! And suddenly leaping out like a rabbit, bucking, trotting ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... cry of the child in suffering with pain of the stomach is loud, excitable and spasmodic. The legs are drawn up and as the pain ceases, they are relaxed and the child sobs itself to sleep, and rests until ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... not answer. His breathing was hard, spasmodic, intensely painful to hear. He had the look of a man stricken ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... run about the room on all-fours in an amusing imitation of a spaniel fetching and carrying for his master. The boss inserted the point of his tongue into his cheek and withdrew it again, repeating the process several times in rapid succession. In response, the Mayor's face went into a series of spasmodic smiles and frowns that aroused general laughter. At the conclusion of the performance, the boss gently clicked his tongue against his palate, and the Mayor promptly stood on his head in the middle ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... himself into the task of turning the wheel, which he did in quick, short, spasmodic jerks, rather than by a steady application ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... year 1539. [Rentsch, p. 452.] To the great joy of Berlin and the Brandenburg populations generally, who had been of a Protestant humor, hardly restrainable by Law, for some years past. By this decision Joachim held fast, with a stout, weighty grasp; nothing spasmodic in his way of handling the matter, and yet a heartiness which is agreeable to see. He could not join in the Schmalkaldic War; seeing, it is probable, small chance for such a War, of many chiefs and little counsel; nor was he willing yet to part from the Kaiser Karl V., who was otherwise ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... short, sharp raid of General Early—penetrating to the gates of the Capital and with possible capabilities of even entering them—can hardly be considered an organized scheme of invasion. It was rather the spasmodic effort by a sharp, hard blow to loosen the tightening and death-dealing grip upon our throat, and give us time for one long, deep breath before the final ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the girl was clinging to him. She was panting with sobs, but she kept her voice down to a whisper. "Speak low, speak low," she said in his ear. "I don't know where he is. Oh, speak low." She clung to him with almost a spasmodic grip of her slender arms. "If you had been ten minutes longer I think I should have died," she whispered. "Don't make a sound. I don't know ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... mining flat, crossed and broken by the burrows and mounds made by the forgotten engines of the early gold-seekers. Johnny, at times hidden by these irregularities, kept closely in their rear, sauntering whenever he came within the range of their eyes in that sidelong, spasmodic and generally diagonal fashion peculiar to small boys, but ready at any moment to assume utter unconsciousness and the appearance of going somewhere else or of searching for something on the ground. In this way appearing, if noticed at all, each time in ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... to Miss Rolleston, he found her still fixed in the attitude into which terror had transfixed her. The poor girl had remained motionless for an hour, under the terrible fascination of the reptile, comatized. He spoke to her, but a quick spasmodic action of her throat and a quivering of her hands alone responded. The sight of her suffering agonized him beyond expression, but he took her hands—he pressed them, for they were icy cold—he called piteously on her name. But she seemed incapable of effort. Then, stooping he raised her tenderly ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade |
