"Paroxysm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mastakovich was seized with a paroxysm of agitation. He looked round and said in a tone faint, almost ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... greatness of soul which raised the poor despised creature so far above himself. That she should have been able to conceal her sorrow so long out of tender consideration for him whom she loved! How great that love must be! When the paroxysm was over she looked smiling at Timar, like the sun through ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... not a little surprising to behold this paroxysm of rage evaporate before the happy presence of mind displayed by Mr. Fitzmaurice, in immediately beginning to dance and shout, though in momentary expectation of being pierced by a dozen spears. In this he was imitated by Mr. Keys, who was assisting in the observations, and who at the moment ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... lead back his wife to the upper air, provided only he will not look upon her on the way. But love has overcome him. He has turned and looked, and the doom of an irrevocable parting is sealed. In no unseemly paroxysm of grief, but tenderly, sadly, they look their last at one another, while Hermes, guide of departed spirits, makes gentle signal for the wife's return. In the chastened pathos of this scene we have the quintessence of the temper of Greek art in dealing ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... more, your joy at my first act had brought you so near to my innermost heart that I thought I might, at such a moment, make the most outrageous demand on you. That feeling I expressed, if I remember rightly, in the words, "For my paroxysm of joyous excitement your delight at 'Tristan' is responsible." Dearest friend, at that moment I could not even think of the possibility of a misunderstanding. Everything being so certain and infallible between us, I went to the opposite extreme of reproaching you because you had ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... mourners have but just received the news of their bereavement, and are under the operation of a paroxysm of grief, anger and revenge; or, unless the prisoner is very old, sickly, or homely, they generally save him, and treat him kindly. But if their mental wound is fresh, their loss so great that they deem it irreparable, or if their prisoner or prisoners do not meet their approbation, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... into the fire; and, if she did evil in it, she was very sorry for it, and desired he would be friends with her, or forgive her. This was the very day before she died." That night her distemper returned, and, in a paroxysm of insanity, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... does," she reiterated, and seemed disposed to fly at her tooth and nail. "She knows she is a bold and wicked creature,—she, she, she; she is a, a,—I don't know what she is;" she cried, spurting out the last words in a paroxysm of sorrow and vexation, and flung herself into a chair sobbing hysterically, with toilet and temper ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... to his lips, and sounded its loudest note: the men gave him three cheers, and Mr Vanslyperken in a paroxysm of fury, ran ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hear a sound behind her. Glancing round she beheld a little white figure distinct against an oak bookcase, and could just discern two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. The next moment the child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not what, but, as his paroxysm subsided, whispering with ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... courage and heroism may be displayed. The martyr will die rather than submit; there have been many to whom Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me death," was something more than rhetoric. The self for which we will fight, of course, varies. A spoilt child will go into a paroxysm of rage if its toy is taken away. Older people will fight for smaller or larger points of social position. There is the familiar citizen who will insist on his rights, often of a petty sort, in a hotel, theater, or department store. Or a man may display the last extremity of courage in defense ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... paroxysm of the Bohemian had reached its height; from an incarnate devil, in demeanour and language, he rapidly dropped into childish helplessness, and finally into a deep uncontrollable slumber. This was a state of things which, at first, threatened more danger than his open madness; but then it was the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... if some pent-up force had rent its way out, she fell into a paroxysm of weeping. Lassiter held her in silent sympathy. By degrees she regained composure, and she was rising, sensible of being relieved of a weighty burden, when a sudden start on ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... if she wished to appear companionable than because she really saw the joke. When the silence of exhaustion followed the uproar, and the girls were wiping their wet eyes and each avoiding the glances of her neighbor, for fear of going off into another paroxysm, Aunt Abigail made a remark which helped to explain her failure ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... two or three times wearing around, providing they didn't come to mending before that," mused the "Pet," with a speculative look in her blue eyes, but with a quiver of the dimples that evoked another paroxysm of laughter from her audience. "But I say, Sadie," she went on with the next breath, "Miss Minturn is a downright sweet-looking girl, and I'll wager a- -a darning needle against a pair of those silk stockings you'll find her O. K. Maybe ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the door, as we have said, Marston ran down to the edge of the lake and yelled with delight—usually terminating each paroxysm with the Indian war-whoop, with which he was well acquainted. Then he danced, and then he sat down on a rock, and became suddenly aware that there were other hearts there, close beside him, as glad as his own. Another mother ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the rising of the curtain—how she nursed the wounded Tristan, found him to be the slayer of her betrothed, took his sword and was about to kill him, when he opened his eyes, and the sword dropped from her listless fingers. Brangaena is sufficiently astonished; Isolda works herself up into a paroxysm of fury; and now the drama is indeed on foot. Brangaena has a long, lovely, soothing passage to sing, and in her over-anxiety to serve her mistress she accidentally suggests to Isolda the very means of revenging herself on Tristan, and terminating at the same ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... one of these asthmatic attacks. It had come on in the middle of the night, and she remembered well how she had prayed to God that it should not be her fate to see her husband die before her eyes. She knew now that death was not to be apprehended—the paroxysm would wear itself out—but she knew also of the horrors that would have to be endured before the time of relief came. She could count them upon her fingers—she could see it all as in a vision—a nightmare that would drag out its long changes until the dawn ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... In fact, the paroxysm had passed, and the poor fellow's brow was covered with a fine perspiration, his breathing easier, and he was evidently sinking ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... B., a convert of Nettleton's, being brought to an acute paroxysm of conviction of sin, ate nothing all day, locked himself in his room in the evening in complete despair, crying aloud, "How long, O Lord, how long?" "After repeating this and similar language," he says, "several times, I seemed to sink away into a state ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... round his neck, and kissed him soothingly. He laid his burning temples on her bosom, and nestled himself to her, as he had been wont to do, after some stormy paroxysm of his passionate and wayward infancy. So there they remained—their lips silent, their hearts speaking to each other—each from each taking strange succour and holy strength—till Philip rose, calm, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him. In a paroxysm of joy, he flung himself upon the motionless figure and cried his heart out. This, too, he soon conquered. Jim had just so much show—any delay might wipe it out. He searched the man's pockets until he found a match. By its light he saw the candle stuck into the post, and lit ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... that his soul was tossed from top to bottom, and in the madness of the storm, she knew it was folly to ask "why?" But she went to the door, closed it, slipped forward the bolt, and then came back to his side, waiting there patiently until the first paroxysm of his grief was over. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... the girl passed from one paroxysm of pain to another with brief intervals of drug-induced sleep. During the quiet moments the nurse snatched what rest she could; but old Jeb Hawkins stuck to his post in the straight-backed chair, never nodding, never relaxing the vigilance ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... more serious, wire me at once. Periodical insanity can be readily proved. He has just recovered from a paroxysm at this writing. He is subject to these attacks whenever his wishes are crossed, having been raised a pet. Therefore, you will be doing yourself a great favor by acceding to any request he may make, however unreasonable it may seem. It is unlucky ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... treatment must also be employed to develop the bodily resistance, and fortify the system against disease. The morning cold bath, followed by vigorous rubbing, is a most excellent measure for this purpose, but the old-fashioned German wet-sheet pack is one of the best remedies known. The paroxysm itself can generally be avoided by means of the dry pack, begun before the chill makes its appearance; but this requires the services of an expert nurse. In not a few cases it is wise for a person who suffers frequently ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... who had suffered another paroxysm on the way, was slowly assisted to the ground by his awestruck and curious friends, and entered the house with a groan, and roared for Judy Carroll with a curse, and invoked Jerome, the cokang modate, with ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... paroxysm the expirations are made with such violence, and repeated in such quick succession, that the child cannot breathe, and seems in danger of suffocation. The face and neck become swollen and purple from suffusion; and the eyes prominent, injected, arid full of tears. The little ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... presence of carbonic acid in the lower bronchial tubes and cells, existing in quantities sufficient to prevent the natural combustion by breathing, was brought to my mind in March, 1847, while searching for the cause of an agonizing paroxysm of sick headache. The distressed feelings of obstructed life with which I was tossing and struggling, together with the agonizing pain in the head and pressure on the stomach, might well arise from such ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... the paroxysm would have lasted it were hard to say, had not the impatient whinnying of his horses, still exposed to the storm, caught his attention. The lifelong habit of caring for the dumb animals in his charge asserted itself. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... of the poor wretch's suffering, we could not help joining his vocal expression of it, and thus we sat, in the darkness, our peals of laughter bursting forth at every fresh paroxysm. Tears of ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... greater. It must also be taken into account, that some of the accidents recorded may have occurred in the rutting season, when elephants are subject to fits of temporary fury, known in India by the term must, in Ceylon mudda,—a paroxysm which speedily passes away, but during the fury of which it is dangerous even for the mahout to approach those ordinarily ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... soon be her old self," was the reply. For Harriet, after a short paroxysm of illness and remorse, was quickly returning to her normal state. She had been "thoroughly upset" as she phrased it, but she soon ceased to realize that anything was wrong beyond the death of a poor little ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... thought itself frivolous, and submitted meekly to hearing itself decried as vain, fluttered through the Paris Exposition, jogging the futilities of St. Gaudens, Rodin, and Besnard, the world that thought itself serious, and showed other infallible marks of coming mental paroxysm, was engaged in weird doings at Peking and elsewhere such as startled even itself. Of all branches of education, the science of gauging people and events by their relative importance defies study most insolently. For three or four generations, society has united ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... blasphemy a certain discharge of power which solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his watch, gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is certain that it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy. It was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial powers; it was a poor wretched creature squirming under the foot that was crushing him; it was a loud cry of pain. And who knows? In the eyes of Him who sees all things, it ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... he himself fell upon the deck, putting his hands to his stomach and rolling about doubled up almost in two in his agony; although, when the paroxysm of pain had ceased for the moment, he got up on his feet once more and began lashing away at ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... energy. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter-point and the heart loses its life for ever. Had Robert's marriage been impossible, had he decided, on that account, to go away from Brigit's influence, had he vowed, in some paroxysm of despair, to see her no more, to pluck out his eye—to forget her—what would have happened? Would he have been able to say to himself at the end of three years, seven years, nine years, "I did my duty. I have my reward"? Is it so easy even to acquiesce in the great ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... a death so certain. M. Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick that one would gladly see them always as justly directed, reads the case most truly. Joanna had a two-fold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called home-sickness; the cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness, and in chains, (for chained she was,) to Domremy. And the season, which was the most heavenly period of the spring, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Seaver Jones lay beneath her lace covered with features contorted, mouth half open and eyes staring wildly. A paroxysm of pain had carried her off, the good doctor well knew; the pain, and the excitement of the moment. Very tenderly he bent down and closed the eyes and pressed the lips together. He smoothed the lines ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... but it was powerful and vengeful, and it was full of purpose. Billy quivered, yet his adroit senses caught at a straw in the words, "as rob me!" Charley was counting it a robbery of himself, not of the widows and orphans! That gave him a ray of hope. In a paroxysm of fear, joined to emotional excitement, he fell upon his knees, and pleaded for mercy—for the sake of one chance in life, for the family name, for Kathleen's sake, for the sake of everything he had ruthlessly dishonoured. Tears came readily to his eyes, real tears—of excitement; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bulwarks. I stood holding on by the railrope, and every now and then addressing a few incoherent and rather guttural, not to say pectoral, remarks to the green and gloomy sea, as I leaned over the rail. After every paroxysm of communicativeness, (for in seasickness the organ of secretiveness gives way,) I regained my perpendicular, and faced the foe, with a determination that I would stand it through—that the grinning, howling ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... period of it. And then again that cough from above—a prolonged paroxysm of it this time that ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... was most rudely interrupted: for Nisida's eyes suddenly fell upon the manuscript page on the table; and she started up in a paroxysm ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... with an eager hand, tore it open, read it at one glance, and flew into such a paroxysm of passion that he quite forgot those around him, and began to tear the letter, and utter a string of oaths which would have astonished a cab-driver. But suddenly realizing his imprudence, he mastered his rage, and exclaimed, with a forced ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... that we have been, with all our deeply-laid plots and subtle scheming," he cried, as he paced up and down the room in a paroxysm of mad rage, "She triumphs in spite of us—she can laugh us to scorn! And Victor Carrington, the man whose intellect was to conquer impossibilities, what a shallow fool he has shown himself, after all! I thought there was something superhuman ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... such lavish presents, and presents which he had no right to give! And when the artful Cleopatra feigned illness on the approach of Octavia, pretending to be dying of love, and wasting her body by fasting and weeping by turns, and perhaps tearing her hair in a seeming paroxysm of grief,—for an actress can do even this,—Antony was totally disarmed, and gave up his Parthian expedition altogether, which was treason to the State, and returned to Alexandria more submissive than ever. This abandonment of duty ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... knees by the side of the coffin, his frame shaken by tearless sobs. Enid bit her lips to keep back the words that rose to them. She would have given much to have spoken the truth. But at any hazard she must remain silent. She waited till the paroxysm of grief had passed away, then she touched the intruder gently on ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... little lemon juice or brandy is often useful in overcoming a malarial chill or a paroxysm of asthma. It is a useful temporary cardiac stimulant for ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... into prison. This double cruelty completed the despair of the unhappy mother. She came to me fairly frenzied, and "commanded" me to go at once into the presence of the king and demand her stolen child; and then, in a sudden paroxysm of grief, she embraced my knees, wailing, and praying to me to help her. It was not in human nature to reject that maternal claim. With no little trouble I procured the liberation of her son; but to keep him out of harm's way I had to take him into my own home and change ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... chemist, who was still venturing the hypothesis, "It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm," Canivet was about to administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of a whip; all the windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three horses abreast, up to their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round the corner of the market. It was ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... through the trap door that communicated with the rooms below. Leaving his work, John hastened to his friend, and with some difficulty persuaded him to return to his bed; but no sooner had he got him into it and covered him up, than a new paroxysm came on, and the sick man arose in the strength of his agony and hurled his friend to the other side of the apartment. John sprang up, and grappled with him while he was rushing towards the door. It was an ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ferdinand and Caroline in Naples—for these last, be it always remembered, began as humane and enlightened sovereigns, patronising liberal opinions, and labouring to ameliorate the condition of the poor, till they were driven by the murder of Marie Antoinette into a paroxysm of rage and terror—why, above all, Louis XVI., who attempted deeper and wiser reforms than any other sovereign, failed more disastrously than any—is not the answer this, that all these reforms would but have cleansed the ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... in a paroxysm of rage, as he clenched his fist and struck his captor on the chest ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... came too quick, And whirled her brain to madness; she arose As one who ne'er had dwelt among the sick, And flew at all she met, as on her foes; But no one ever heard her speak or shriek, Although her paroxysm drew towards its close;— Hers was a frenzy which disdained to rave, Even when they smote her, in the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... enough of the intensity of his sufferings. Great as they were, they did not, however, produce in him any feeling of hatred. To forgive was his only revenge; and not only did he forgive, but, the paroxysm of passion over, there was only room in his soul for those nobler feelings of patience, of toleration, of resignation, and of abnegation, of which no one in London can have formed a notion. The storms to which his soul was at times a prey only purified it, and discovered a host ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... would not be comforted, would not respond to her entreaties or caresses. The better part of an hour went by; Page, knowing her sister's nature, in the end held her peace, waiting for the paroxysm to wear itself out. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the rear guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk with twenty thousand men to defend the town against Napoleon's whole army. In Smolensk, at the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the bombardment of the town—and Smolensk held out all day long. At the battle of Borodino, when Bagration was killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank had fallen and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and night settled in. Fitful snorings and groans and incoherent mutterings broke the stillness. At intervals a man near the door would jump to his feet, proclaiming the end of the world. Sometimes his paroxysm was brief, but again he would keep up his leaping and solemn chanting until he fell to the floor in sheer exhaustion... Gradually even he became quiet, and nothing was audible except heavy breathing and the sound of the watchman in the corridor as he passed ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... been terrifying Dolby out of his wits, by setting in for a paroxysm of sneezing, and it would be madness in me, with such a cold, and on such a night, and with to-morrow's reading before me, to go out. I need not add that I shall be heartily glad to see you if you have time. Many thanks for the Life and Letters ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... everybody was rich; and everybody was growing richer. The community, however, was torn to pieces by new doctrines in religion and in political economy; there were camp meetings, and agrarian meetings; and an election was at hand, which, it was expected, would throw the whole country into a paroxysm. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... she repeated to herself. 'His mother is an old, unbroken wolf.' And then she experienced a keen paroxyism, a transport, as if she had made some incredible discovery, known to nobody else on earth. A strange transport took possession of her, all her veins were in a paroxysm of violent sensation. 'Good God!' she exclaimed to herself, 'what is this?' And then, a moment after, she was saying assuredly, 'I shall know more of that man.' She was tortured with desire to see him ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... minutes I was startled by his seizing me by the shoulders and leaning against me in a paroxysm of laughter. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... passionate forgiveness were always ready for the paroxysm in which she was violently pushed away and combated with struggling feet and hands, before came the period of exhaustion in which he nestled close, panting from weakness. Then she carried him into the church, where, kneeling before the Mother of Sorrows, whose outstretched ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... life is too deeply rooted ever to be uprooted; reason will ever remain powerless to harm it. Very seldom, if ever, has a man committed suicide for purely intellectual reasons. It nearly always takes the form of a sudden paroxysm of mind. The will to live is an almost unassailable fortress, and it ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... legends, and the like, have been freely indulged in. But it may at least be suggested as a possible explanation of the seeming discrepancy, that when Saul had passed out of his moody madness it is not wonderful that he should have forgotten all which had occurred in his paroxysm. It is surely a common enough psychological phenomenon that a man restored to sanity has no remembrance of the events during his mental aberration. And as for Abner's profession of ignorance, an ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... been tempted to jump into it. There are some persons who have a convenient ecclesiastical cough. It does not trouble them ordinarily; but when in church you get them thoroughly cornered with some practical truth, they smother the end of the sentences with a favorite paroxysm. There is a man in our church who is apt to be taken with one of these fits just as the contribution box comes to him, and cannot seem to get his breath again till he hears the pennies rattling in the box behind him. Cough by all means, but put on the brakes when you come to the down grade, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... conflagration from the arms of his nurse, standing outside, expressed nothing but the liveliest delight at its brilliancy. But, when the bell of the fire engine was heard approaching, the child was thrown by the sound into a paroxysm of fear, strange sounds being, as you know, very alarming to young children. In what opposite ways must the child's parents have apperceived the burning house and the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... indifference that the end had come. Then with a thrill which for a moment aroused all his energies he recognized that it was the glow of a lantern. He was aware that rescuers were close above him, climbing down through the windows over his very head. He cried to them in a paroxysm of appeal:— ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... after the paroxysm of your anger had subsided, you came in, and threw your arms around my neck, and said, 'My dear father, I am sorry I abused you so. It was not your loving son that did it. I was very angry. Won't ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... during her absence Lyveden was subjected was only less trying than the open secrecy with which it was conducted. Heads were thrust into the passage to be withdrawn amid a paroxysm of giggling. Somebody was pushed into full view to retire precipitately amid an explosion of mirth. Preceded by stifled expressions of encouragement, a pert-looking lady's maid strolled leisurely past the newcomer, opened the back door, closed it, and returned as haughtily as she had gone. She ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... that he was obliged to sit down on the sofa, where Madeleine fanned him with a sheet of music. He had been seized by a kind of paroxysm, and laughed on and on, in a mirthless way, till Avery Hill said suddenly and angrily: "Stop laughing at once, Heinz! You will ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... boot fearfully and lit the awful pipe with shaking fingers. But he had taken but a few puffs when it went over the side, and it seemed to Josiah that the larger half of himself went with it. The Captain watched the paroxysm grimly. ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... notwithstanding the fact that he knew even the hardiest old seadogs are not proof against mal-de-mer under certain extraordinary conditions. Captain Kjellin, coming up on the bridge during Matt's watch, found the latter doing the most unseamanlike thing imaginable. Caught in a paroxysm at the weather end of the bridge, Matt, in his agony, was patronizing the weather rail! The captain heard him squawk, and ducked to avoid what instinct told him the gale would bring ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... before turning in for the night. He took out his tinder-box, in order to get a light, when he happened to look up, and to seaward. And there, before his astonished gaze, he saw a vessel riding at anchor about two miles from the shore. In the first paroxysm of his joy, Roger was about to call aloud, imagining the craft to be one of the vessels of Cavendish's squadron; but on looking again, and studying the craft more closely, he saw that she was altogether different from any of the vessels in the fleet. ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... within the past ten years to "nag" those officials who were above me into a paroxysm of fury and have them excommunicate me, as I tried to make myself believe that it would be better to have them throw me out of the church than to leave it on my own free will, but it appeared as ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... what he had forgotten in his paroxysm of grief. His father was rich, and there must surely be some money about the place. Not wishing to prosecute his search in the presence of a stranger, however, he said carelessly: "Tell the man to wait, ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... what Mariana would have done had there been no interference, for she had worked herself into one of those furies which women of her type can attain when they feel the occasion demands it, a paroxysm none the less dangerous because its foundation is histrionic. But Rameau threw his arms about her; Mr. Percy came hastily to his assistance, and Ward and I sprang in between her and the too-fearless lady she strove to reach. Even at that, the finger-nails of Mariana's right hand touched the pretty ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... for me?" asked he. Tantaine held the note towards the boy, who shuddered at the touch of the crisp paper and kissed the precious object in a paroxysm of pleasure. He then started from his seat, and regardless of the astonishment of the passers-by, executed a wild ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... me! I'm 'kilt!'" cried Cap, falling back in her chair in an inextinguishable fit of laughter, that shook her whole frame. She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes and looked at Old Hurricane, and every time she saw his confused and happy face she burst into a fresh paroxysm that seemed to threaten her ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... many lukewarm friends of their cause to withdraw from all connection with it. Egmont denounced the proceedings as highly flagitious, and busied himself with punishing the criminals in Flanders. The Regent was beside herself with indignation and terror. Philip, when he heard the news, fell into a paroxysm of frenzy. "It shall cost them dear!" he cried, as he tore his beard for rage; "it shall cost them dear! I swear it by the soul of my father!" The Reformation in the Netherlands, by the fury of these fanatics, was thus made apparently ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Rada, the half-breed woman, had undressed Louise and put her to bed; and he found her white as snow at the end of a paroxysm of pain, her long eyelashes lying on a cheek as smooth as a piece of Satsuma ware which has had the loving polish of ten thousand friendly fingers over innumerable years. When he came and stood beside her bed, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... did wake soon—and the paroxysm of anger which seized her on discovering that she had intruding guests, caused Olive to retire almost to the staircase. But brave little Miss Vanbrugh did not so easily give ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... he prayed fervently; prayed against his infirmity; prayed that his chains might be broken. Then he would grow calm for awhile. One thing recurred constantly: he had sold his honor, betrayed his cause. This was the order again and again, and each time the paroxysm of frightful fury came on, and it took all of us to hold him. He was covered with snakes: they were chains on his wrists and around his body. He tried to pull them from around him. At last, toward morning, came one of those fearful spells, worse than ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... from the traiteur, is cooling; and the bucket of the draw-well hangs suspended while a history is finished, of which the relator knows as little as the hearer, and which, after all, proves to have originated in some ambiguous phrase of our keeper, uttered in a good-humoured paroxysm while ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... to whose name I have reverted, was a French Creole. So perhaps my natural instincts come nearer to those of our savage ancestry than do yours. Whether or not you will understand me I do not know, but I can tell you that even now, in cold blood—for my paroxysm has exhausted itself and me—it seems to me that it would be my duty, not to say my sacred duty, to tear that man to pieces with my hands whenever and wherever I could put them on him! My old passions may have slept, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... business, and why he didn't foller us, suspectin' suthin', and I've always acted square to him. All the same, I'd like ter hev seen his face when that box was opened! Lordy!" Here Bill again collapsed in his silent paroxysm of mirth. "Ye might tell ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... dismal, despairing energy you would look for in a dethroned spirit, baffled, like Mephistopheles, at the very moment his arm is outstretched, and his long, lean fingers are clutching at the shoulder of his victim. Being about to cross blades with his adversary, in a paroxysm of rage he plucks at the hilt of his sword, and stops suddenly, as if struck with paralysis, pale, and gasping for breath, and says,—in that far-off, moaning voice we all remember in his famous farewell to the "big wars that make ambition virtue,"—"The widow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... down again in a paroxysm of shivering, and they got no more from him. Enough there was, however, to make the Vicar a very silent and thoughtful man, as he sat watching the sick man in the close ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... after, his brother was arrested and detained at Hotel Talaru with the other Farmers-General. His mother, in a paroxysm of terror, had foolishly sold the Hotel du Petit-Charolais, where he was living, for the value of the mirrors: she was paid in assignats, and died of despair over the constant depreciation of the paper. Luckily Monsieur de Varandeuil obtained from the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... fell into a long and uncontrollable paroxysm of laughter, during the intervals of which he said, in broken language, as he walked about the room endeavoring to get breath and recover his self-control, that it was the best thing he had heard since he landed at Liverpool. The idea ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... when he left this country'—Here I was going to add that the last words he said to me were words of thanks for the invariable urbanity and liberality of my conduct and the personal kindness which he had uniformly received from me. But I could not finish the sentence. Mr. Canning, in a paroxysm of extreme irritation, broke out: 'I stop you there. I will not endure a misrepresentation of what I say. I never said that Mr. Bagot took offence at anything that had passed between him and you; and nothing that I said imported any such thing.' ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... had passed from his fit of anger to a paroxysm of despair. He seemed to be addressing some person invisible, but in the room: "Look here, ma'am, you've really been coming it too strong. A hundred thousand in six months, and now a thousand more! The 'ouse can't stand it; it WON'T stand it, I say! ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... led Mrs. Bardell, who said she was better, downstairs. "I cannot conceive what has been the matter with the woman. I merely told her of my intention of keeping a manservant, when she fell into an extraordinary paroxysm. Very remarkable thing." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... little 2x6 handkerchief out of the window, said "good-bye," allowed a fresh zephyr from Cape Sabine to come in and play a xylophone interlude on my spinal column, and then burst into a paroxysm of damp, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... he was speaking to the corner of the turret whence flew the giant kite, and from which the runners ascended. Mimi looked on, appalled and afraid to speak lest she should precipitate some calamity. Within the niche Lady Arabella cowered in a paroxysm of fear. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... His paroxysm was only one of the great spasms of madness which sometimes come over the innocently witless. He had heard close by him the cries of Winsome Charteris, whom he had worshipped for years almost in the place of the God ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... In a paroxysm of wrath, and terror, and the fear of death, he broke from her, and rushed into the darkness of his cell, where he cast himself jangling down upon the stone floor, and smote it with his ironed hands. The man returned to lock ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... standing and turned very pale, then suddenly her face flamed and she fell into such a paroxysm of rage that she could not speak. At last she burst out: "You can tell that scoundrel—that low scum of a Prussian—that I won't—and I never ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... strictly impartial observer of human nature. Nevertheless he was deeply and genuinely moved, and possibly human nature could have shown nothing more human than Mr. Povey at the moment when, unable any longer to restrain the paroxysm which had so surprisingly overtaken him, he fled from the parlour, passionately, to the retreat of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the effect which these words produced on the intoxicated youth. He rose half way from his seat, raging like a fiend, then fell back again white and crouching, as if I had been about to deal him a blow, then passed into a fresh paroxysm of rage, and so from one state of mind to another in a way at once alarming and ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... conversation that passed between us and the fatigue of the journey, his nerves have broken down. We were not half-way on the road, and as we had the railway-carriage to ourselves, I was talking to him with imprudent earnestness, when he began to tremble all over, and went into an hysterical paroxysm of mingled tears and laughter. I wished to stop at the next station, but he was not long recovering, and insisted on coming on. Still, as we approached Fawley, after muttering to himself, as far as I could catch his words, incoherently, he sank into a heavy state ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grew purple in the face and clutched at his collar as if about to strangle. After a little the paroxysm passed away, and Mantel determined once more to try ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... with pain, God knows, like a man whose thumbs are ground between the screws, and his body drawn out and out on the rack to tenuous length, and his flesh massacred with pincers: and I fell upon the floor of the bridge contorted with anguish: for I could not go to her. But after a time that paroxysm passed, and I rose up sullen and resentful, and resumed my place at the wheel, steering back for England: for a fixed resolve was in my breast, and I said: 'Oh no, no more. If I could bear it, I would, I would ... ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... alone!" was the reproachful rejoinder. "But you always loved him best; never cared particularly for me; and never will I suppose," she added, going into a stronger paroxysm ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... had then undertaken this vast responsibility, entailing heavy expenditure, till at last, after selling all her diamonds and lace, she had fled to Holland to avoid arrest. Her husband killed himself at Vienna in a paroxysm caused by internal pain—he had cut open his stomach with a razor, and died tearing ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... recurring suspicion of Courtenay's motives harder to bear than the preceding paroxysm of unreasoning rage. She had heard the shooting, bellowing, and tramping on deck, and she knew that some terrible scene was being enacted there, while the mere fact that the captain himself placed the female passengers in his cabin ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... emotions which her lover, in his moody humors, was wont to accuse her of not possessing. She kissed the forehead, the cheeks, the pallid, stern lips of the dead; and, for a time, there was the danger that her own spirit might pass away in the paroxysm of her grief. But it was morally impossible for Ghita to remain long under the influence of despair. Her gentle spirit had communed too long and too closely with her Heavenly Father, not to resort to his support in all ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... where they had delved the day before, was now in plain view to the treasure seekers. They saw the hillside yawn there in an awful paroxysm, till the aperture was several yards wide. Then, from beneath, there shot into the open, smoking rocks, debris of many kinds, and—something else! Drew, seeing this final object, shrieked aloud. His voice could not be heard above the uproar, but the others saw his mouth agape, ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... such a woman as you are and know so little? Or is it true about women that they don't know love, or want love, but only something tame, something quiet, what you call affection?" He stopped with his voice full of scorn, notwithstanding the paroxysm of passion, and looked up at her, though on his knees, in the superiority which he felt. "You want a friend that will be tame and live in peace and quiet; and I, you think, want a fresh girl, like myself. Do you mean to insult ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... declared that Edith should be his, and had in some degree recovered from the paroxysm of sorrow which had first oppressed her. But Edith had refused altogether to look at the matter in that light. "It was quite out of the question," she said, "and so Captain Clayton would feel it. If you ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... coughing and stamping, we elicited the shyster, who came timorously forth, for all the world like a man in fear of bodily assault, and then, recognising his guests, suffered from what I can only call a nervous paroxysm of courtesy. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In a paroxysm of despair, he started up and looked distractedly around him. Ulpius still stood motionless at the window. At the sight of the ruthless Pagan he trembled in every limb. All those infirmities of age that had been hitherto spared him, seemed to overwhelm him in an instant. He ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... seed? Did you see Abner's face when he spoke 'bout that man as seed me in Sonora? Warn't it good as the minstrels? Oh, it's too much!" and, striking his leg with the palm of his hand, he almost threw himself from the bed in a paroxysm of laughter,—a paroxysm that, nevertheless, appeared to be ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... of 1803, a girl at Amiens—some say a real enthusiast of Bonaparte's, but, according to others, engaged by Madame Bonaparte to perform the part she did demanded, upon her knees, in a kind of paroxysm of joy, the happiness of embracing him, in doing which she fainted, or pretended to faint away, and a pension of three thousand livres—was settled ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a paroxysm of rage. The bamboos fell, and I received a dozen blows. I bore them without a cry; I was too much choked by ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... for his victim to get over the first paroxysm of grief, and watched him as closely as a ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... pierced the screen of jasmine on the projecting porch at her right, and threw leafy shadows on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather to be searching for something that was not disclosed by the sunshine. It had been a more miserable day than usual; her father, after a visit of Wakem's had had a paroxysm of rage, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the boy who served in the mill. Once before, since his illness, he had had a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his horse, and the scene had left a lasting terror in Maggie's mind. The thought had ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... favourable for the development, not of the higher, but of the lower sentiments, and of the propensities of the new being, the result will necessarily be a mean type of brain. Here, it will be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being, than he decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments. Our perplexity is in considering the ill-disposed being by himself. He is only a part of a series of phenomena, traceable to a principle good in the main, but which admits of evil as an exception. We have seen that it is for wise ends that God leaves our moral ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... what I was a villain. Think of what I did for myself by that one piece of wickedness! Master of hounds! member of the club! And the horse would have run in my name and won the Leger! And everybody knew as your Lordship and me was together in him!" Then he burst out into a paroxysm ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... glorious!" And again Marjorie was seized with a paroxysm of joy, and this time she caught Kitty, and led her off for a mad dance round the room. "Just think of it, Kit," she cried, "we'll be at Grandma Sherwood's together, and you can see the lovely room she fixed up for me, and the house in the tree, ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... edge of the morning sky. He wanted them—he wanted them alone—he wanted to leave himself and be identified with them. They did not move, they were still and soft, with white, gentle markings of snow. He stood still, mad with suffering, his hands crisping and clutching. Then he was twisting in a paroxysm on the grass. ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... important to the support of his parents and sister. They lived together in lodgings near Holborn; and in the spring of 1796, Miss Lamb, (having previously shown signs of lunacy at intervals,) in a sudden paroxysm of her disease, seized a knife from the dinner table, and stabbed her mother, who died upon the spot. A coroner's inquest easily ascertained the nature of a case which was transparent in all its circumstances, and never for a moment indecisive as regarded the medical symptoms. ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... negro cried in a paroxysm of rage, as Omar was brought up. "This is because I was fool enough to allow your white-faced friend to accompany you. Our country is no place for whites, but he will make a good sacrifice to Zomara when our journey is ended. You have both refused to accompany us, therefore we must use ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... in the arm-chair, and puffed complacently at his cigar. Then suddenly he slapped his thigh in a paroxysm of amusement. ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now; her eyelids, her shoulders, her mouth seemed never in repose when she was alone. Her hand shook uncontrollably as she refilled a whiskey glass and rolled and smoked another cigarette. It was no new thing, this nervous paroxysm, being nearly always the climax to a night of exaggerated fear. The necessity for self-possession and outward calmness in public made it a relief to let her ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... not signify; that he would explain how it happened to Macquoid, and assure him that the gesture was one which he frequently made when suffering from a paroxysm of pain. ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the psychic began to toss and writhe and moan pitifully. Her suffering mounted to a paroxysm at last; then silence fell for a minute or two—absolute stillness; and in this hush the table took life, rose, and slid away toward us as if shoved ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... weight of despair, as distinct from a violent paroxysm as starvation from a mortal shot, filled him and wrung him body and soul. The discovery had not been altogether unexpected, for throughout his anxiety of the last few days since the night in the churchyard, he had been inclined to construe the uncertainty unfavourably for himself. His hopes for ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... confounded, and after proffering in vain to concede everything she could ask in exchange, for the particulars relating to the murder, she became the suppliant in her turn. But the unaccountable culprit, exulting in her advantage, laughed her to scorn; and finally, in a paroxysm of pride and impatience, called in the jailor and had her expelled, ordering him in her hearing not to grant her admittance a second time, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... got back into the house she never knew. She fell on her bed half-unconscious. The strain upon her had been terrible, and the effect might have been serious if tears had not come to her relief. After a violent paroxysm of sobbing, she grew calmer, and tired nature asserted ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... put his head in his hands, shaken with a silent paroxysm of grief. It wrung the doctor's heart, as if in the person that sat opposite him, all that was noblest and most gracious in humanity were ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... when she heard the good news, she almost fainted with joy. It might yet be in time. Cleer might be married now before poor Michael broke forth in that inevitable paroxysm. ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... the paroxysm of tears which, once they came, she could in no way stop, disquieted him. He shook her hands from him. "And because you were afraid," he said stiffly, "I suppose you had the other man here to protect you." Then ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... on, uncomprehending, a little touched, though rather against his will, by Janetta's tears. He knew that she did not often cry. He waited for the paroxysm to pass—waited grimly, but with "compunctuous visitings." And presently he was rewarded for his patience. She dried her eyes, lifted up her ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... funny to watch the stampede, after the loud "One—two—three—and away!" The plunges, the waddles, the skelter of flying heels! One might have thought the gold of Klondyke was hidden in the kitchen garden. I laughed, and laughed, in a good old Irish paroxysm of merriment, until the tears rolled down my cheeks. Mr Maplestone stared, turned on his heel, and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... followed by a ragged coolie bearing a plethoric basket, lashed with a stout rope, but bulging in all directions. Little Willie sniffed once at the basket and stiffened. "Good dog," said Philip; "is that opium you have found?" The hound's tail wagged furiously, and he scratched at the basket in a paroxysm of excitement. The coolie dropped it and ran away. The amah waxed voluble and attacked Little Willie with the family umbrella. The hound grew more and more enthusiastic for the quest. Philip issued the fiat, "Open that basket, it contains opium," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... at Lyons, however, he was informed that the Bishop had departed from Avignon for Rome. In the first paroxysm of his disappointment he wrote a letter to his friend, which portrays strongly affectionate feelings, but at the same time an irascible temper. When he came to Avignon, the Cardinal Colonna relieved him from his irritation ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... bitterly, and one thin hand, white as a snowflake, fell upon her bowed head, and softly stroked her black wrinkled face. After some minutes, when the paroxysm of weeping had spent itself, Dyce took the hand, kissed it reverently, and pressed into ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... was a little forced as she said, "You have a delightfully cool way of taking things for granted. I'm no longer a little sick girl, but, to vary Peggotty's exultant statement, a young lady 'growed.' You forgot yourself, sir, in your greeting; but that was pardonable in your paroxysm of surprise. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... and he went off into another paroxysm of crying, as he caught hold of her dress; and when he spoke again his mood was changed; he was very miserable, nobody cared for him, he did not know what to do; he wanted to do right, and to please her, but ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sorrow for the anguish he must have been privately enduring while he endeavoured to dress his face with tranquillity and to converse with his accustomed cheerfulness and ease. Smothered grief is one of the most deadly inmates; and it is reasonable to believe that a paroxysm of violent emotion in a moment when solitude gave an opportunity for giving a loose to reflection, operating upon a plethoric habit, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... paralyzed Magdalena's reason. It was to be expected of her temperament that her anguish should be in proportion to her former rapture. At first stunned, she roused to the paroxysm of wild despair. Henceforth, if she lived, her life, she felt, would be an utter blank. Passion completely overmastering her reason, she resolved to destroy herself. This fearful resolution adopted, her excitement ceased. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... rhythm and motion. Perfectly she understood those who, having reached the breaking point, dashed madly through the fire scattering embers and coals, or who darted forward to kiss ecstatically the white man's feet, or who reached a wild paroxysm of nerves to collapse the next instant into exhaustion. She was brought to herself by ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... When this violent paroxysm had somewhat subsided M. Collot withdrew; but before he went away Bonaparte invited him to breakfast on ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... obliged to take part, prevented her from seeing anything of Caroline till the evening, and then as soon as Clara was out of the way Caroline rose up, caught hold of her hand, and exclaimed, "O, Marian, what have you made me do?" then walked about in a paroxysm of ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... upon us, when the keen anguish born of the sight of human suffering appals and benumbs us, when we are frozen to terror, and our manhood flies at the sight of the Medusa-like head of the world's unappeased and unappeasable agony; then we too are torn by the paroxysm of anguish; we would flee to the Nirvana of oblivion and unconsciousness, turning our back upon what we cannot alleviate, and longing to lay down the burden of life, and to escape from that which has become insupportable."[195] ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... sprung back, reared up, and then thrown himself forward upon me with such force and fury, that, as I got out of his way, his fore feet went completely through the bottom of the boat. I never in my life saw an animal in such a paroxysm of rage. He curled up his lip till his whole range of teeth was visible, his eyes literally shot fire, while the foam flew from his mouth, and he gave a wild screaming neigh that had something quite diabolical in its sound. I was standing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... out, and Joy, hastening into the room, found her mother in a wild paroxysm of tears. Late that night Mrs Irving called for writing materials; and for many hours she sat propped ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... at times great agony from suffocation, until the afternoon of the 23d, when she was seized with the most severe paroxysm she had yet had. Her family gathered about her bed, relieved her as far as it was possible, and saw her sink exhausted into an unconscious state, from which, two hours later, she crossed the threshold of Eternity. Her "precious Nina" ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterwards asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... rose and began to make preparations for departure. But all at once the tender good-night of the preceding evening rushed on Rosa's memory, and she sank down in a paroxysm of grief. After weeping bitterly for some minutes, she sobbed out, "O, this is worse than it was when Mamita died. Papasito was so tender with us then; and now we are ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... American streets the epidermis is vital: what strength and mutual reliance in the cobbles as they stand together in serried ranks, like so many eye-teeth! How they are perpetually sinking into prodigious ruts, along which the ponderous drays are forced to dance on one wheel in a paroxysm of agony and critical equipoise! But the perpetual state of street-mending, that is the crowning interest. What would I not sometimes give to exchange the Swiss sweeping-girls, plying their long brooms ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... present time he was in a state of acute suffering, and, under its paroxysm, he bethought him again of Cornelius's advice, which he had rejected, to betake himself to Polemo. He had a distant acquaintance with him, sufficient for his purpose, and he called on him at the Mercury after the latter's lecture. Polemo ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... bull had killed three horses offhand, and had received eight banderillos in his neck and shoulders, when, upon a given signal, the picadores and matadores suddenly withdrew leaving the infuriated beast alone in his wild paroxysm of wrath. Presently a soft musical note, like the piping of a lark, was heard, and directly afterwards a girl of not more than fifteen years of age, an the tasteful garb of an Andalusian peasant, and with a pretty face, sprang lightly into the arena, approaching the bull fearlessly, at the same time ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... kindness; she never injured any human creature in thought or deed. She was a saint upon earth. Respect her memory! Let the martyr rest in her grave!" He covered his face again with his hands, and shook and shuddered under the paroxysm of emotion that I had roused ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... short. The heavy gun had twitched into the hand of Terry, exploded, and the gleaming quartz puffed into a shower of bright particles that danced toward the earth. El Sangre flew into a paroxysm of educated bucking of the most advanced school. The steady voice of Terry Hollis brought him at last to a quivering stop. The rider was stiff in the saddle, his ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Watson, there's my report of a failure. And yet—and yet—"—he clenched his thin hands in a paroxysm of conviction—"I KNOW it's all wrong. I feel it in my bones. There is something that has not come out, and that housekeeper knows it. There was a sort of sulky defiance in her eyes, which only goes with guilty knowledge. However, there's no good talking any more about it, Watson; but unless ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... leisure; who take up a book to pass the time; who saunter in gardens because there are no morning visits to make; who exaggerate the writing of a family letter into important business. Such have their own enjoyments: but they know nothing of the paroxysm of pleasure of a really hardworking person on hearing the door shut which excludes the business of life, and leaves the delight of free thoughts and hands. The worst part of it is the having to decide how to make the most of liberty. Miss Young ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... shuddered with the thought of parting; you have trembled even at the leave-taking of a year, or of months, and have suffered bitterly as some danger threatened a parting forever. That danger threatens now. Nor is it a sudden fear to startle you into a paroxysm of dread: nothing of this. Nature is kinder,—or ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... come to him now. Until dawn he knew he must struggle with his grief, torn with memories, his imagination assaulted with visions of a vanished happiness. If this paroxysm of sorrow was to assail him again that night, there was but one place for him to be. He would go to the Mission—he would see Father Sarria; he would pass the night in the deep shadow of the aged pear trees ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... almost mechanically and drank, then lay back with closed eyes and burning head, sick and blinded by her paroxysm ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... variety of the malarial organism, the different types differing in the length of time it takes for their growth and sporulation. There is one variety, the most common one, which requires two days for its growth, thus giving rise to the paroxysm of the disease about once in forty- eight hours; another variety appears to require three days for its growth; while still another variety appears to be decidedly irregular in its period of growth and sporulation. These facts readily explain ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... lifted her gently, and waited for the paroxysm to pass. When, with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs the mea culpa of childish penitence—that "she'd be good, she didn't mean to," etc., it came to him to ask her why she ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... humanity in general was not instilled into me without considerable trouble. I was a sore torment, no doubt, to poor Madame Faudier, who, on being once informed by some alarmed passers in the street that one of her "demoiselles" was perambulating the house roof, is reported to have exclaimed, in a paroxysm of rage and terror, "Ah, ce ne peut etre que cette diable de Kemble!" and sure enough it was I. Having committed I know not what crime, I had been thrust for chastisement into a lonely garret, where, having nothing earthly to do but ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... alane!—let me alane!" said the poor young woman, as her paroxysm of sorrow began to abate—"Let me alane—it does me good to weep. I canna shed tears but maybe ance or twice a year, and I aye come to wet this turf with them, that the flowers may grow fair, and the grass ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... lying upon a sofa in her private cabinet, in order to recruit her strength against the evening, which was, as we have shown, to have been one of gaiety and gala, when her affrighted attendants hastened to convey to her the fatal tidings of her widowhood. In a paroxysm of uncontrollable anguish she rushed towards the door of the closet, and was about to make her way to the chamber in which the royal body had been deposited, when she was met by the Chancellor, to whom the fearful news had already ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... car was out of earshot then he lay back on the down cushions and abandoned himself to a paroxysm of ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace |
