"Piercing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Theodora uttered no piercing shriek; neither did sigh or groan escape her; but she silently sank backwards in the tranquillity of horror. She had now nothing else to hope or fear; no throbbing anxiety to forego,—no further perils to dread—the sum of her misery was complete, and dauntless she might ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... in four days at furthest," Lord Newhaven said to him, and turning, went on quickly to the hall, where the piercing night air came in with the stamping of the impatient ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... of their association Tarzan had discovered that he possessed an inexplicable power to govern and direct his mighty friend. At his bidding, Tantor would come from a great distance—as far as his keen ears could detect the shrill and piercing summons of the ape-man—and when Tarzan was squatted upon his head, Tantor would lumber through the jungle in any direction which his rider bade him go. It was the power of the man-mind over that of the brute and it was just as ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... heavy blow and by morning the seas were running high. The air was piercing cold, and everybody was glad enough to remain in the cabins. Dave, returning from the ship's library with a volume on travels in England, found Roger had gone to ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... liquid notes of passionate love, there was a spasmodic, fearful gasp succeeded by a long, deep groan. The music stopped abruptly, and the piercing cry of a woman rang out. I threw open the door and rushed headlong into the room. I heard an oath, an exclamation of surprise, and the muffled cry of the woman. I turned in the direction of that faint cry. My foot caught in something, and I fell ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of the same opinion, followed him. At the same moment a piercing shriek was heard to issue from the house and ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... corner, dazzled the eye with the glare from its powerful lamps, their rays reflected in immense mirrors fastened to the walls, advertising in frosted letters the popular brands of whisky. And it stood alone in the darkening street, piercing the night with an unwinking stare like an evil spirit, offering its warm, comfortable bars to the passer-by, drawing men into its deadly embrace like a courtesan, to reject them afterwards babbling, reeling, staggering, to rouse the street with quarrels, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... found to be between eleven and thirteen thousand feet. He and the Bighorn, ptarmigan, weasels and foxes are mountain-top dwellers throughout the year. Marmots hibernate during the long alpine winters. But the cony I have seen on sunny days in January; his welcome "squee-ek," piercing the roar of the wind, has greeted me on the lonely storm-swept heights when not another living thing was ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... ever on her heart. 'Oh! that this were an omen!' she cried, with clasping hands, as she listened to the howling of the wind upon the lofty staircase leading to their remote apartments. Drawing closer over her bosom the wrapper by which she attempted to exclude the piercing night-air, Amelia smiled at the thought of the chilliness of the grave,—of the grave, where the heart beats not, and the fixed glassy eye ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... Ali, the greatest authority after Abdul on the shahin, took the bird upon his fist, looked at the sunken, piercing eyes which were partially seeled; ran his hand over the narrow body, short tail and black back, and a finger over the large beak and deep mouth; held up the ugly face to the light, examined the flight-feathers and, moving his hand quickly ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... the close nests of time dost peep, And there with piercing eye Through the firm shell and the thick white dost spy Years to come a-forming lie, Close in ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... giving her a very distingue look. Not to be behind, Kit and I gave to We-we and Caubvick three yards of bright-red flannel apiece; also a red-and-black silk handkerchief each to wear over their shoulders, and two massive (pinchbeck) breast-pins. These latter articles did make their little piercing black eyes ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... severity of conventual discipline. Thrice during the day, and once at night, they were called to prayers. They mortified the flesh by fasting and cruel penance, drawing blood from their bodies by flagellation or by piercing themselves with the thorns of the aloe. When their turn of duty was over, they resided with their wives and families ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... cried Trench, and he caught his fellow-captive by the arm. "Ibrahim, help! God, if he were to fall!" and while the crowd swayed again and the shrill cries and curses rose again, deafening the ears, piercing the brain, Trench supported his companion, and bending down his head caught again after so many months the accent of his own tongue. And the sound of it civilised him like the friendship of ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... autumn and generally Sunday, there came suddenly upon the face of all I saw - the long empty road, the lines of the tall houses, the church upon the hill, the woody hillside garden - a look of such a piercing sadness that my heart died; and seating myself on a door- step, I shed tears of miserable sympathy. A benevolent cat cumbered me the while with consolations - we two were alone in all that was visible of the London Road: two poor waifs who had each tasted sorrow - and she fawned upon ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ain trumpet touts, Till a' the hills are rairin', An' echoes back return the shouts: Black Russell is na' sparin': His piercing words, like Highlan' swords, Divide the joints and marrow; His talk o' Hell, where devils dwell, Our vera sauls does harrow[13] Wi' fright ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... have been the man who was engaged to Arthur's first wife; and I have a third idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man in England who could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both those doubtful points. His hair is not black, now, and his eyes are dimmer than the piercing eyes that I remember, but, for all that, he is very like the nameless medical student of my young days—very like him. And, sometimes, when I come home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake him, he looks, in coming to, wonderfully like the ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... needed the eye of the eagle soaring in the clouds, or that of the screech-owl piercing the darkness, to distinguish these men among the gorse and heather and underbrush where they ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... ramparts and in the country round Ferrara with Italian officers. Days were still very anxious, and the news from the Front not always good, and one rather avoided talking about the war. But one evening at dinner I succeeded in piercing the polite reserve of a little Captain who was sitting next to me. "Italy should have made it a condition of her intervention," he said, "that the other Allies should have sent troops to the Italian Front. Also more guns ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... voice was drowned in a piercing scream, as Estrella came to herself and understood. Always the rawhide had possessed for her an occult fascination and repulsion. She had never been able to touch it without a shudder, and yet she had always been drawn to experiment with it. The terror of her doom had now added ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... that would not lead through the quaint old streets. From afar one catches a glimpse of the castle, perched, like that of Edinburgh, on a mighty rock, rising almost sheer from a delightfully diversified plain. It is a many-towered structure, piercing the blue sky and surrounded by an air of sullen inaccessibility, while the red-cross flag flying above it proclaims it a station of the king's army. It is not by any means the castle of the days of Bruce and Wallace, having been rebuilt and adapted to the purpose of ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... day appointed for the marriage of Natalie d'Emiliano and the young Swedish count, Paul S——, when all were in readiness to proceed to the church, and the guests were only waiting the appearance of the bride and bridegroom, a piercing cry was suddenly heard in a room adjoining that in which the bridal party was assembled. The company hurried, in the direction of the sound, and there found the Count lying apparently lifeless on the floor, while the bride was hastily securing the fastenings of her mask. The guests thronged ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... splendid white-skinned fellows with long fair moustaches, and athletic frames scarcely concealed beneath their white drawers and striped silk gauze shirts, sent their mistress's caique flying through the water. She was a tall woman, with piercing eyes and an aristocratic air—always seated between two lovely maids of honour. I say lovely, for the Turkish woman, when she is unobserved, when she knows her own beauty and meets eyes whose admiration she desires to rouse, always finds means of permitting her veil ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... to her right caused her to turn. Then a piercing scream escaped her lips as she saw a door open and beheld the dim outlines of two burly men approaching her. At the sound of her cry of alarm, they dashed forward ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... marked, and his countenance particularly rugged; though the original complexion had certainly been fair, a circumstance somewhat unusual; his sight was near, and otherwise imperfect; yet his eyes, though of a light-grey colour, were so wild, so piercing, and at times so fierce, that fear was, I believe, the first emotion in the hearts of all his beholders.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 297. See post, end of the book, and Boswell's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Caudle; that's only your art—your hypocrisy. A nice person too she'd be for the moon: it would be none the brighter for her being in it, I know. And when you saw the Custom House officers look at me, as though they were piercing me through, what was your conduct? Shameful. You twittered about and fidgeted, and flushed up as if I really ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... him a piercing look, glanced out of the window and saw that there were no other clients, then went to a desk at the farther end of his compartment, and took up some clerical work he had ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... beloved, seeming to call insistently for help, his face distorted until it lost all human semblance; then pitched forward, hanging unconscious upon the thongs just as a priest, thin and gaunt, with knife gleaming in his hand, rushed towards him; and Leonie, with a piercing shriek, sprang straight out of bed, flung herself violently against the wall, and woke up with her hands feebly groping over ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... I repeat again that we saw her there shining in company with the celestial forms; and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and the other ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be equally lovely. But this is the ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... day, have little chance to talk with him. Last night we met M. Voltaire—dramatist and historian—now in the evening of his days. We were at the Academy, where we had gone to hear an essay by D'Alembert. Franklin and Voltaire—a very thin old gentleman of eighty-four, with piercing black eyes—sat side by side on the platform. The audience demanded that the two great men should come forward and salute each other. They arose and advanced ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... crossed stars as it swayed and flashed. It filled the limitless sky like a rainbow. A giant spectre it was, swaying in the unknown depths, crossing clouds, and piercing realms of darkness, and speaking to those who could understand. A sick child, somewhere or other, saw it, and the watchful mother carried the little one to a window the better to ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... turn me and my children out wanderers from the old home where I was born—where I had hoped to die? Can you do this? Even you, whom the world calls rich and prosperous and——charitable!" As she spoke she bent upon him in fine scorn her brilliant eyes dark and piercing. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... sharp report of a rifle from down below, a sudden piercing cry, and one of the defenders fell heavily against our hero. An instant later the wall of bags shook while a German bayonet transfixed one of the upper tier, and tore it from its position. Then the machine-gun opened, deafening all within ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... of making his anger known, but by gloomy sullenness and dumb ferocity. His hatred of a man whom he conceived to have defeated him only by volubility of tongue, was therefore naturally shewn by silence more contemptuous and piercing than any words that so rude an orator could have found, and by which he gave his enemy no opportunity of exerting the only power in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Beltsville, Md., the adults of the large chestnut weevil[8] leave the soil about August 15. The date will vary, of course, with season and locality. Both males and females soon begin to feed by piercing the burs with their long beaks. Mating begins soon after the weevils collect on the trees, and egg laying follows shortly. The eggs hatch within a few days and the worms develop within the nut. A few ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... post I would halt to think of her, and of her loveliness and high sincerity, and forget my duty while I stood with my arms crossed on the muzzle of my gun. In such moments the night, the silence, the moonlight piercing the summer leaves and falling at my feet, made me forget my promise to myself that I would never marry. I used to imagine then it was not the unlicked cubs under the distant tents I was protecting, but that I was awake to watch over and guard ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... will blow the piercing winds of adverse circumstances. Things will come that you can not foresee. Do not shrink before them when they appear. Lift up your head, throw back your shoulders, look them squarely in the face, and with courage born of faith meet them ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... who, before the hour of meeting, was copying the patriotic inscriptions engraved in front of the altar, heard a slight noise at his feet; astonished, he looked around him and saw the point of a gimlet, with which some men, concealed under the steps of the altar, were piercing the planks of the pedestal. He hastened to the nearest guard-house, and returned with some soldiers. They lifted up one of the steps and found beneath two invalids, who had got under the altar in the night, with no other design, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... weight and balance commended themselves most to my purpose, I cleared a small space, and having sent a serving man for a pack of cards, chose a five spot and pinned it to a tree. Standing back some ten to fifteen paces, I cast the four knives at the corner pips in quick succession, piercing them truly, then paused a minute and cast the fifth knife at the center, striking accurately between the other four. It was an act of idle vanity, yet I hated for Jerome to taunt me on ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... nose and chin were shapely and prominent, the mouth firm, the forehead wide and full above, but not very high. It was shaded by dark chestnut hair, just silvered with grey. His most remarkable features were his eyes, which are blue-grey and deeply set, with an intense and piercing expression. When his attention was not aroused, he seemed to retire into himself, as though his mind had drifted far away, and came back slowly to the present. He was pale with nightwork, and his thoughtful eyes had an old look in serious moments. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... me during my stay at Dresden. Let me add to these the other thanks which I owe you for the wonderful moments during which I listened to your melodies, expressive of the fascinating charms of the sirens who dwell on the banks of our imagination, and of those piercing cries wrung from us by the extinction of the perfumes of their enchanted home,—for those thoughts which elevate us in their humility, that despair which throws us "without fear against swords, when the soul is pierced by a very different sword of grief," those elegies which one whispers ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... observed in Chapter XII., that this portion of the arch load might frequently be lightened with great advantage by piercing it with a circle, or with a group of circles; and the roof of the Euston Square railroad station was adduced as an example. One of the spandril decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the "Seven Lamps," Plate VII. fig. 4. It is little more than one of these Euston Square spandrils, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... snore of yours, which I once heard piercing the door of your bedroom ... reverberating along the bell-wire in the hall, so getting outside into the street, playing Aeolian harps among the area railings, and going down the New Road like the blast ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... without a word, but with a more severe compunction of conscience than she had ever felt before in her life. Her father's face and words smote her with a keen reproach, piercing the thick armor of her vanity and selfishness. She saw, for a moment, how unnatural and unlovely she must appear to him, in spite of her beauty, and the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... a sallow-faced, spare-built man of short stature, with dark brown beard and hair, and piercing black eyes. His age was about forty. He had a wiry and terrier-like appearance. A "down-East" Yankey, he had spent some years in Mexico, and then drifted to South Africa during the war-period which, it will be remembered, lasted from 1877 to 1882. He had served in the Zulu war as a noncommissioned ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... like a flame crushed beneath the overwhelming weight of matter that stifles all primitive life. And here and there, in unexpected directions, as though reconnoitring, with timid and sometimes fantastic outbursts, it will succeed in piercing the mass that oppresses it, the pyre that some day shall ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Then, she remembered that the crime was not to be committed until next night, and there was the intermediate time for thinking, and resolving what to do. Then, she was distracted with a horrible fear that he might be committing it at that moment; with a dread of hearing shrieks and cries piercing the silence of the night; with fearful thoughts of what he might be tempted and led on to do, if he were detected in the act, and had but a woman to struggle with. It was impossible to bear such torture. She stole to the room where the money was, opened the door, and looked in. God be praised! ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... eighteen miles, and no amount of rugs and wraps seemed to protect us from the piercing wintry wind, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... who, while they love the altar and delight in the sacrifice, are yet unable to reconcile themselves to the continued absence of fire. They desire God above all. They are athirst to taste for themselves the "piercing sweetness" of the love of Christ about Whom all the holy prophets did write and the psalmists ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... in the roof of the left-side hut. A spot of bright blue light was winking evilly inside it. And, though he could not hear it, Chris knew with terrible certainty that a shrill, impatient whining was piercing from the machinery of a weapon inside that hut—a weapon whose fangs had forked close to him once before—a weapon which the winking eye of ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... across or through, and constraining you to steer a foolishly, really quite inordinately divergent course. Under this obstructive head the two Americas offend direfully, sprawling their united strength wellnigh from pole to pole. The piercing of their central isthmus promised some mitigation of this impertinence of emergent matter; though whether in his, the speaker's lifetime, remained—so he took it—open to doubt. The "roaring forties," and grim blizzard-ridden ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sweet many days sooner. The taking off a circular piece of the bark from a branch of a pear-tree causes the fruit of that branch to ripen sooner by a fortnight, as I have more than once observed. The wounds made in apples by insects occasion those apples to ripen sooner; caprification, or the piercing of figs, in the island of Malta, is said to ripen them sooner; and I am well informed, that when bunches of grapes in this country have acquired their expected size, that if the stalk of each bunch be cut half through, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... breaking across the deep, stirless silence which wrapped them round. Away to their right the golden disc of the sun was sinking royally westward, bathing the mountains in a flood of lambent light, and piercing the darkening blue of the sky with quivering shafts of scarlet and orange and saffron. Across the snow-fields shimmered a translucent rosy glow, so that they seemed no longer bleak and desolate, but lay spread like an unfurled banner ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... on the floor and was amusing herself with it. Again he called the mother, and still there was no answer. He was filled with a sort of horror. He wanted to go over to the dark shadow and assure himself that she was breathing, but a hand seemed to thrust him back. And then, piercing him like a knife, there came again those low, moaning words ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... awakened a strange thought in Philippa's mind. As soon as she reached home she rushed to the nursery, and there, seizing Dorothy, frantically kissed her; then, holding her at arm's length, she gazed with a piercing inquisitiveness into the girl's lineaments. She sighed deeply, abandoned the wondering ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... the southern part of West Virginia was fast drawing to a close; the heat during the day had been almost intolerable under the rays of the piercing sun, and the night was coming on in sullen sultriness. No breath of cooling air stirred the leafy branches of the trees; the stillness was broken only by the chirping of the crickets, and the fire-flies twinkled for a moment, ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... the road we could see the two spires of the churches of Saint Nicholas and Saint Thomas in Leipzig, piercing the sky, while to the right and left, on both sides of the city, rose great clouds of smoke through which broad flashes were darting. The noise increased; we were yet more than a league from the city, but we were forced to almost shout to hear each other, ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... an avalanche slipping from point to point on its disastrous downward way. Through the wreathing vapors the steep, bare sides of the near mountains were pallidly visible, their icy pinnacles, like uplifted daggers, piercing with sharp glitter the density of the low-hanging haze, from which large drops of moisture began presently to ooze rather than fall. Gradually the wind increased, and soon with sudden fierce gusts shook the pine- ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Bible is distinguished from all other books by its power over the human conscience. The apostle says: "The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," Heb. 4:12; and this declaration is confirmed by the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... a mile below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire. The mountain summits around him were things of light and fire, and the little details of the rocks near at hand were drenched with subtle beauty—a vein of green mineral piercing the grey, the flash of crystal faces here and there, a minute, minutely-beautiful orange lichen close beside his face. There were deep mysterious shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into purple, and purple into a luminous ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... In the bright glare of the morning sun, the countenance of every one was distinctly visible, and Jack was impressed by the fact that one heavy, squat redskin was viewing him with peculiar interest. He passed in front of the boy several times, and on each occasion cast a piercing glance ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... course of this march a letter was sent by McClellan to Stanton which has become famous. The vindictive lunge, visibly aimed at the secretary, was really designed, piercing this lesser functionary, to reach the President. Even though written amid the strain and stress of the most critical and anxious moment of the terrible "Seven Days," the words were unpardonable. The letter is too long to be given in full, but ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... performer, a piano should be chosen for softness and richness of tone, instead of brilliancy. For most households the old cottage organ is a more practicable instrument than the "concert grand" often found in a small parlor, where its piercing notes, especially in combination with operatic singing, are so confined that tones and overtones, which should assist each other, mingle in jarring confusion. Indeed, when the parlor is large and high, a genuine pipe-organ built in a ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... surroundings in which he had lived all his days, and the silks and satins and expensive jewellery that adorn the brides of the wealthy had never come within the vision of his dreams. Still Pearl was a pretty girl, and with her piercing black eyes which always seemed to be suffused with laughter, and with a smile which looked like a flash from a summer sky, she needed but little adornment, and would have won the heart of any man who had the soul to appreciate a true woman when he ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... box of a house, that had been made a fool of by being promiscuously trimmed with battlements. Just as my jingle tilted me in backwards against the flight of steps, I heard through the open door a loud and piercing yell; following on it came the thunder of many feet, and the next instant a hound bolted down the steps with a large plucked turkey in its mouth. Close in its wake fled a brace of puppies, and behind them, variously armed, pursued what appeared ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... boys. I bringa you ze flounder for tea. Heh?" In one moment the fat fisher was back in the boat, and in another he had scrambled ashore with a number of fish, strung together through the gills. Above the noise of the traffic on the quay his voice rose, piercing. "I presenta. Flounder, all aliva. I give ze fish. You giva"—with suddenness he comically lowered his voice—"tobacco, rumma—what you like." He lay the gift of flounders on the wooden stage. "Where I get him? I catcha him. Where you ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... thought of that other time three years before when, dragging our gaunt bodies round Cape Rawson on our way from the Greenland coast, I thought the Roosevelt's slender spars piercing the brilliant arctic sunlight as fair a sight as ever I had seen. As we approached the ship I saw Bartlett going over the rail. He came out along the ice-foot to meet me, and something in his face told me he had bad news ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... saw this company Of Cossacques and their prey, turn'd round and cast Upon them his slow brow and piercing eye:— 'Whence come ye?'—'From Constantinople last, Captives just now escaped,' was the reply. 'What are ye?'—'What you see us.' Briefly pass'd This dialogue; for he who answer'd knew To whom he spoke, and made his words ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... governor described how, during the last Russo-Turkish War, one frosty night the division in which he was had stood in the snow without moving for thirteen hours in a piercing wind; from fear of being observed the division did not light a fire, nor make a sound or a movement; they were forbidden to ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... let me explain that Pietermaritzburg stands in a basin of smooth rolling downs, broken frequently by forests of fir and blue gum trees. It is a sleepy, dead-alive place. Even the fact that Colonel Knowle, the military engineer, was busily putting it into a state of defence, digging up its hills, piercing its walls, and encircling it with wire obstructions did not break its apathy. The 'Times of Natal' struggled to rouse excitement, and placarded its office with the latest telegrams from the front, some of which had reached Pietermaritzburg via London. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... his heels rung on the stone as he paced the turret. He felt himself grow old as silence became massive betwixt his wife and him. The moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not propose treason to him. He understood ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... throat which for a cruelly long time I would not cough, till it burst in horrid clamour from my lips, sending crinkles of cold through my inmost blood. For with the words which I read were all mixed up visions of crawling hearses, wails, and lugubrious crapes, and piercing shrieks of madness in strange earthy vaults, and all the mournfulness of the black Vale of Death, and the tragedy of corruption. Twice during the ghostly hours of that night the absolute and undeniable certainty that some presence—some ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... days the weather had been unseasonably warm—almost like summer—and one evening it was not only hot, but so sultry one wondered where all the air had gone. About midnight, however, a terrific wind came up, cold and piercing, and very soon snow began to fall, and then we knew that we were having a "Texas norther," a storm that is feared by all old frontiersmen. Of course we were perfectly safe from the wind, for only a cyclone could tear down these ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... upon him. The tall hunter had just helped Bo off the car. Then Helen looked up into a smooth bronzed face and piercing gray eyes. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... wild outcry outside. Loud cries, the shouts of men, the terrifying trumpeting of an elephant, resounded through the courtyard below and echoed weirdly from the walls of the buildings. A piercing shriek of agony rang high above the tumult of sound and chilled the blood of the listeners in ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... one nature, from the fervent heat. Then first came love upon it, the new spring Of mind—yea, poets in their hearts discerned, Pondering, this bond between created things And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth, Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven? Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose— Nature below, and power and will above— Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here, Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang? The gods themselves came ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... and withered; in spite of her evident years, her twisted hair was still dark and full, and her eyes bright and piercing; her complexion and teeth had long since succumbed to the vitiating effects of frontier cookery, and her lips were stained with the yellow juice of a brier-wood pipe she held in her mouth. The ostler had explained ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... in Gladwin's gaze as he sized up the big man—again from his shining patent leather shoes to his piercing eyes and broad, intellectual forehead. He fairly jumped when the command was repeated to take down the Rubens and hand it to him. As he handed it ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Ye cloud piercing mountains so mighty, Whose age is the age of the sky; No cold blasts of winter affright ye, Nor heats of the summer defy: You've witness'd the world's generations Succeeding like waves on the sea; The deluge you saw, when doom'd nations, In vain ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... you the mayor of Linrock?" interrogated Steele. His voice was so clear and loud, almost piercing, that I saw at once that he wanted all ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... forms I'll show: He that the way to honesty will learn, First what's to be avoided must discern. Thyself from flatt'ring self-conceit defend, Nor what thou dost not know to know pretend. 20 Some secrets deep in abstruse darkness lie: To search them thou wilt need a piercing eye. Not rashly therefore to such things assent, Which, undeceived, thou after may'st repent; Study and time in these must thee instruct, And others' old experience may conduct. Wisdom herself her ear doth often lend To counsel offer'd by a faithful friend. In equal scales two doubtful matters ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... modern residual geographical phenomena of those of a mesozoic age. The differences, however, between the geological past of Africa and her present state are enormous. Since that primeval time, the lands have been much elevated above the sea-level— eruptive rocks piercing in parts through them; deep rents and defiles have been suddenly formed in the subtending ridges through which ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... highest tones, whilst another cannot hear them at all; and it becomes proved that certain men, with perfectly sound organs, never heard the cricket in the chimney-corner, yet did not doubt but that bats occasionally utter a piercing cry; and attention being once awakened to these singular results, observers have found the most extraordinary differences of sensibility between their right ear ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... OPEN FRACTURE OF THE LEG.—This condition may be produced either by the violence which caused the fracture also leading to destruction of the skin and soft parts beneath, or by the end of a bony fragment piercing the muscles and skin from within. In either event the result is much more serious than that of an ordinary simple fracture, for germs can gain entrance through the wound in the skin and cause inflammation with partial destruction or ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... have done, So much to my good comfort, as it is Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood, Even with such life of majesty,—warm life, As now it coldly stands,—when first I woo'd her! I am asham'd: does not the stone rebuke me For being more stone than it?—O royal piece, There's magic in thy majesty; which has My evils conjur'd to remembrance; and From ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... friend, you are a Confederate deserter, are you?" said the doctor, as he placed himself in front of the captain, thrust his hands deep down into the pockets of his pants, and stared at his guest with all the vigor of an active and piercing eye. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... done well, Iddibal! 'Tis well!" Then piercing him, as it were, with his keen gaze: "No ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content; Farewel the plumed troops and the big wars, That make ambition virtue! Oh farewel! Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war: And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, Farewel! Othello's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... unsatiated desire is, tearing your heart with its sharp claws and piercing beak for want of other prey! The punishment of Prometheus pales beside it, for the arrows of Hercules cannot reach this unseen vulture! This is my first unsuccessful love; the first falcon that has returned to me without bringing ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... from me, and though, when I moved, he hid himself in the muddy water, yet I managed to capture and take him home alive. He was a little animal, certainly, not larger than a half-dollar piece, and it was marvellous how a thing so small could make such a loud and piercing noise. I took him to my room, and placed him in a water-tight box, in which I fashioned an artificial bog, in the hope that he would confirm my testimony by his piping. The second evening, as I sat in my room, poring over the recitations of the morrow, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... of one devoted officer, Lieutenant Topping, that rushing on deck in anxiety for his ship, without giving himself time to put on his clothes, 'in fifteen minutes he fell upon the deck a corpse, stricken by the piercing blast and driving ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... necessary to watch him very closely before those sentiments could be detected. The canon's habitual condition was perfect calmness, and his eyelids were usually lowered over his orange-colored eyes, which could, however, give clear and piercing glances when he liked. Reddish hair added to the gloomy effect of this countenance, which was always obscured by the veil which deep meditation drew across its features. Many persons at first sight thought him absorbed in high and ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... the commercial agent of a wealthy widow, Khadija, made journeys for her into Palestine and Syria,—where he may have received religious knowledge and impressions from Christian monks and Jewish rabbis,—and, after a time, married her. He is described as having a commanding presence, with piercing eyes, fluent in speech, and with pleasing ways. Eventually he came into close contact with the hanifs. He followed the custom of retiring for meditation and prayer to the lonely and desolate Mount Hira. A vivid sense of the being of one Almighty God and of his own ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... miracle succulent and spiced. After dinner he strolled over lazily to his bungalow to get a book. He liked the intense stillness, and now that the night had fallen the stars were blazing in the sky. He shouted for a lamp and in a moment the Chink pattered over on his bare feet, piercing the darkness with a ray of light. He put the lamp on the desk and noiselessly slipped out of the room. Mackintosh stood rooted to the floor, for there, half hidden by untidy papers, was his revolver. His heart ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... said Christian, with sympathy in her voice. Piercing her weariness and preoccupation was the feeling that he had something to say that lay under this babble of conversation. He was wrapping himself in a cloak of verbiage, but above the cloak his tormented eyes met hers, and the pain in ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... knowledge could not be of much service to him now. And how different it was from the London of spring, which had lingered in his memory and imagination; when, transformed by the "heavenly alchemy" of the piercing sunbeams that slanted across the streets from chimney-tops to opposite basements, the dust and smoke showed great inclined planes of light, up whose steep slopes one longed to climb to the fountain glory whence they flowed! Now the streets, from garret to cellar, seemed like ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... before the piercing wind, And famine, shelterless, in suffering pined; When sickness drooped in solitary pain, Mid varying misery's relentless reign; Oh, then tumultuous rose the plaints of grief, And loud and strong the clamors for relief! Then active charity, with boundless care, From gloomy faces ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... walls stood—silent and deserted. This constant recurrence of the symbols of separation, desertion, silence, death, produced a strange numbness in his mind, and he walked along in a dream that became deeper and deeper. But he saw everything with the obscurity, and still with the strange, piercing look, of the dreamer. Turning from the houses to the people, he saw as it were in a flash the true meaning of that weary look which he had first observed as the prevalent expression of most faces; he loathed and at the same time he understood the prematurely bloated ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... its two occupants, despite the dull roar of vehicles around them, seemed to be engaged in eager conversation. One of these two was a tall, handsome, muscular-looking man of about thirty, with a sun-tanned face, piercing gray eyes, and a reddish-brown beard cropped in the foreign fashion; the other, half hidden among the voluminous furs of the carriage, was a pale, humpbacked lad, with a fine, expressive, intellectual face, and large, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... stopped. Beyond a certain point there were no footprints. Skip whined, almost getting under our feet in his efforts to keep near us. Suddenly then a piercing scream broke the stillness, and on a jutting rock, fully twenty feet above us, and in the very attitude of springing, we saw a large gray creature, its claws protruding on the ledge, its ears laid back and its long tail switching to and fro! ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... a calculation respecting the portion of a woman's mind which ought to be occupied with her dress—a mental process, the result of which might perhaps have proved of great benefit to herself, and ultimately to Dora and Winifred, had it not been suddenly cut short in the midst by a piercing scream from the latter young lady, who had been playing on the floor with Edward ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a window-sash in the second story of the house was raised, and there, not thirty feet from us, stood an elderly female, wrapped in a gray shawl, with piercing eyes ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... it very awkward for him to handle. Several times he got out of patience with it, and apostrophized it in terms far from complimentary. At last, in one of his awkward maneuvers, he accidentally pulled the trigger. Instantly there was a loud report, followed by a piercing shriek from the road. The charge had entered old Mrs. Payson's umbrella and knocked it out of her hand. The old lady fancied herself hit, and fell backward, kicking energetically, and screaming "murder" at the top of ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... party of strict orthodoxy) and domestic jealousies and perfidies all contributed to this result. Zeno, who had fled twenty months before from the Hippodrome, returned to the Amphitheatre, and there, having commanded that the linen curtain should be drawn over the circus to exclude the too piercing rays of the July sun, gave the signal for the games to begin, while the populace shouted in Latin the regular official congratulations on his elevation and prayers for ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... you, dearest daughter? What have I done? Are you a dream? I thought I was alone. Have you been hunting on the Windy Height? Your hands are not thus gentle after hunting. Or have I heard you singing through my sleep? Stay with me now: I have had piercing thoughts Of what the ways of life will do to you To mould and maim you, and I have a power To bring these to expression that I knew not. Why do you wear my crown? Why do you wear My crown I say? Why do you wear my crown? I am falling, falling! ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... last, the old witch, who had danced for some moments at a distance of ten paces from the spot where I stood, became as one possessed. She made a few dreadful antics, uttered a piercing shriek, and hurled herself almost on me. In that instant I remember seeing the three men with Paolo suddenly rise to their feet, while the others in the room called out in their excitement. But the hag ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... The tearful infant, lost in bitter grief, Thrills forth its plaintive call for tender care; While from a mother's trembling hand relief, Alas! can answer no imploring pray'r. Swift-falling tears! and piercing cries of pain! Maternal passion kindling into glow! Peace banished from its sweet domestic reign! Stricken with grief!—ah! sad and cruel blow! Behold the matron in a fury blue, Beating her screaming ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... acute consciousness of what this letter meant, was the sense of Bessy's inferences and conjectures. She could feel them actually piercing the page in her hand like some hypersensitive visual organ to which matter offers no obstruction. Or rather, baffled in their endeavour, they were evoking out of the unseen, heaven knew what fantastic structure of intrigue—scrawling over the innocent ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Northwestern Sanitary Commission to attend to this work of special field relief in that army. Mrs. Porter says that when she arrived there it was very cold, and the wind which had followed a heavy rain was very piercing, overturning some of the hospital tents and causing the inmates of all to tremble with cold and anxious fear. Mrs. Bickerdyke was going from tent to tent in the gale carrying hot bricks and hot drinks to warm and cheer the poor fellows. It was touching to see the strong ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... with a very thick voice. Once when he had been mumbling worse than usual there was a kind of restrained titter from someone in the crowd at the back. The "Buli" heard it, and slowly turning his head he transfixed the crowd with his piercing gaze for many seconds amid a dead silence. I wondered afterwards if anything ever happened to the unfortunate one who was so easily amused. I learned that besides having an impediment in his speech, the "Buli" was also paralyzed in one leg. I Put up in ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... girl, making a grave, drunken effort to grasp the situation, then the Italian proprietress came into the room humming a cheerful strain, and carrying a burden of fried sausages. She beheld the horror, uttered a piercing scream, and dashed up the narrow stairs. Nickie went up the stairs after her, anxious to explain. The horrified people pressing at the front door and the windows saw him pass out of sight. There was now a large, excited crowd in ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... one thing which makes voyages in balloons dangerous. The higher people go, the more thin and difficult to breathe the air becomes. One celebrated traveller, when he had got as high as seven miles in his balloon, lost his senses, and his companion was nearly frozen to death by the piercing cold. This traveller tells us that about six or seven miles above the earth no sound can reach the ear to break the perfect stillness and silence. This is because the air at this height is so thin. On the top of Mont Blanc a pistol-shot can scarcely be heard even though it is fired ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... I remember everything," and Nina's chest began to heave, her chin to quiver, her white lips, too, but still she shed no tear, and the dry, blue eyes seemed piercing Edith's very soul as the latter continued, rapidly, "Nina came home to Florida; she sent for Miggie, and Miggie came, finding Marie who told her all— told her where the baby was—and the real Miggie fell on her face, thanking the good Father for giving ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim! The shapes of suns and stars did swim Like clouds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... lines of enormous trees, solemn aisles that seemed to lead up to the Queen of the Trees, and down these aisles, piercing the shadows cast by the interlacing branches overhead, shone the lights of that lurid morning. Rachel saw, and something struggled in the darkness of her brain, as the light struggled in the darkness of the forest ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... became the center of attraction, the center of all eyes. The Efficient Baxter fixed it with the piercing glare of one who feels that his brain is tottering. Lord Emsworth looked at it with a mildly puzzled expression. Ashe Marson examined it with a sort of affectionate interest, as though he were waiting for it to do a trick of some kind. Baxter was ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... entered unannounced and mentioned my name. He was seated at the piano and was quite amiable. He inquired whether I did not wish to hear a song that he had just composed. Then he sang, in a shrill and piercing voice, so that the plaintiveness reacted upon the listener, "Knowest thou the land?" "It is beautiful, isn't it, very beautiful!" he cried, enraptured; "I'll sing it again;" and was delighted at my ready applause. "Most people are stirred by something ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... but merciless as a De Medicis. She was a true woman of the world; self was the only shrine at which she worshipped; and if indeed she could feel a momentary sympathetic chord, surely Marguerite was the cause. The piercing black eyes send forth a flash that is electrifying, then fix themselves upon her companion. She is perhaps struggling between pride and duty, and it costs her a heavy sacrifice. As she gazes upon that sweet, soulful face she is almost tempted to become ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... inn (Au Grand Dauphin), smoke like the devil, or rather like his abode. It is a wretched place; the inn opposite, called La Poste, is said to be better. The weather is now as cold here (10th of November), as I have ever felt it in winter at home, and it is a more piercing and searching cold. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... a thousand ancient tombs, till we stood in the shadow of Ur the Great, and gazed at his red heaven-piercing mass. ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... and hurled to the ground helplessly. To gain the mouth of the gully, and then turn on his pursuer, was his only chance. For the first and almost the last time in his life, he struck spurs into his horse, and ran away. As he went, an arrow struck him sharply in the back, piercing the corslet, but hardly entering the flesh. As he neared the mouth, two other knights crashed their horses through the brushwood from right and left, and stood awaiting him, their spears ready to strike. He was caught in a trap. A shield ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to breaking, these clear sharp voices threw into the darkness of the chant some whiteness of the dawn, joining their pure, soft sounds to the resonant tones of the basses, piercing as with a jet of living silver the sombre cataract of the deeper singers; they sharpened the wailing, strengthened and embittered the burning salt of tears, but they insinuated also a sort of protecting caress, balsamic freshness, lustral help; they lighted in the darkness those brief gleams which ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Have become indolent; but touching thine, One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine, One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days. The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze, Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades, Struggling, and blood, and shrieks—all dimly fades 10 Into some backward corner of the brain; Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet. Hence, pageant history! ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... the bed, gripping the camp-stool firmly with his right hand, and slowly turning down the bedclothes with the feet of the chair. Suddenly there was a piercing scream. A huge snake, coiled and quivering for the spring, lifted its head. Even Quest seemed for the moment nerveless. Then from the doorway came the sharp report of a revolver, and the snake fell, a limp, inert thing. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to support his bent figure, and his speech was often interrupted by the little dry cough which came from the tuberculosis that was burning him. But his eyes sparkled with passion behind his glasses, and little by little his voice rose in piercing accents and he drew his lank figure erect and began to gesticulate vehemently. He reminded the Chamber that some two months previously, at the time of the first denunciations published by the "Voix du Peuple," he had asked leave to interpellate the Government respecting that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... him was that of excitement, intuition, inspiration, rather than the contemplative evolution of general principles. The quick, susceptible enthusiast, betraying his temperament even in appearance, by his olive complexion, his deep-seated, piercing eyes, his rapid movements, apprehended the subtlest principles of the Hellenic manner, not through the understanding, but by instinct or touch. A German biographer of Winckelmann has compared him to Columbus. That is not the aptest of comparisons; but it reminds one of [194] a passage in which Edgar ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... day; gray, with bushy eyebrows, piercing brown eyes, heavy, well-trimmed mustache, strong chin and nose, with fine determined lines about the mouth. A man in perfect health, his full throat browned with many weathers showing above a low collar caught together by a loose black cravat—a handsome, rather dashing sort of ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... gildest gladdened joy, dear God, Give risen power to prayer; fan Thou the flame Of right with might; and midst the rod, And stern, dark shadows cast on Thy blest name, Lift Thou a patient love above earth's ire, Piercing the clouds ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... all over for to-day?" asked the novelist as he stood looking down upon the young man with that peculiarly piercing, baffling gaze. ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright |
