"Unwind" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a thread, which, like the clue in the old story, can conduct a searcher safely through the dark recesses of the great labyrinth. He tied it, the dauntless youth in the tale, to the ancient thorn-tree that grew by the cavern's mouth; and then he stepped boldly in, and let it unwind within his hand. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... speaking I felt my soul carried out into the light of God's face, and my grave clothes were taken off one by one as Janet would unwind my plaid, and I stood a living ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... take, we unwind the jewels, the blue flowers are woven over the yellow ones, that we may give them to ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... forms a little mainspring or instinct of its own, like a parasite; so that an elaborate mechanism is gradually developed, where each lever and spring holds the other down, and all hold the mainspring down together, allowing it to unwind itself only very gradually, and meantime keeping the whole clock ticking and revolving, and causing the smooth outer face which it turns to the world, so clean and innocent, to mark the time of day amiably for the passer-by. But there is a terribly complicated labour going on beneath, propelled ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... several times observed, both in Silk-worms and Spiders. Next, because that I find that water does easily dissolve and mollifie the substance again, which is evident from their manner of ordering those bottoms or pods of the Silk-worm before they are able to unwind them. It is no great wonder therefore, if those Dyes or ting'd liquors do very quickly mollifie and tinge the surfaces of so small and so glutinous a body. And we need not wonder that the colours appear so ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... and butterflies scattered; the paper dried rapidly in the hot sun, as the kite lay on the grass while the string was fastened, Tizzy having the delightful task of rolling the ball along the grass to unwind enough for the first flight; and then, after Ned had thrown a stray goose-feather to make sure which way the wind blew, this being towards the tall poplars, Tizzy was set to hold up the kite as ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... Ann!" said Amelia, beginning to unwind the visitor's wraps, "what makes you keep houndin' Amos that way? If he hasn't spoke for thirty-five years, it ain't likely ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... cause, a manipulator of nature, a miracle worker. Hence the vacant lots are often lighted up; barrels, boxes, and fences disappear; and one almost believes that part of the charm of smoking is in the very making of the smoke and seeing it unwind into greater mystery as did incense from thousands of ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... on the North Pole an' go whirlin' round it, he'll be cuttin' meridians as fast as a hay-chopper? Won't he see the sun gettin' left behind an' whirlin' the other way from what it does in nature? An' ef the sun goes the other way round, ain't it sure to unwind all the time thet it's ben ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... The generative idea of a poem is developed in thousands of imaginations which are materialized in phrases that spread themselves out in words. And the more we descend from the motionless idea, wound on itself, to the words that unwind it, the more room is left for contingency and choice. Other metaphors, expressed by other words, might have arisen; an image is called up by an image, a word by a word. All these words run now one after another, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... the words may fall, And yet the heaven-taught mind May learn the sacred air, and all The harmony unwind. ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... by this time had formed a close and deeply interested circle around the dramatic characters in the little drama that was here being enacted, watched with tense and grim faces, the foreman, aided by a couple of his fellow jurymen, slowly unwind the bandages from Skoonly's arm. If they had been fooled, if they had been led by false testimony almost to hang two innocent men, nay, boys, their wrath against the false accusers would ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... of any uncommon feeling had passed away; and yet, with the restlessness of female curiosity, she felt quite sure that she had laid hold of the end of some skein of mystery, could she only find skill enough to unwind it. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... miles unwind behind the regiment the character of the country begins to change. There are fewer women and children to be seen now; there are more roofless buildings, more house-fronts gaping doorless and windowless, more walls with ragged rents, and tumbled heaps of brick lying under ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... of these sketches are well known and well beloved—women whose deeds have been recorded in high places in denominational history; and we deem it no impropriety to take them down, unwind the peculiarity of sect, and weave these honored names in one sacred wreath, that we may dedicate it to all who love the ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... if her delusions were humored, they would unwind from her like the cloud which she felt them to be. The family had long fallen into the habit of treating her as a child, playing some imaginary character. She seemed less demented than walking in a dream, her faculties asleep. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... religion, gathered caste into their garners, and endeavoured to increase and extend it, still there is fair evidence for asserting that these two institutions have no necessary connection, and that, as it was perfectly possible to wind them up together, so it is perfectly possible to unwind them and produce again an entire separation. In a word, it is perfectly possible for a man to retain caste, not as believing it to be part of his native idolatrous religion, but as believing it to be (what it really was till the Brahmins seized hold of it and attached it to their ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... things, and never suspects that the Devil goes around in the night, thrusting the square men into the round places, and the round men into the square places. It never notices that the reason why the rope does not unwind easily is because one strand is a world too large, and another a world too small, and so it sticks where it ought to roll, and rolls where it ought to stick. It makes sweet, faint efforts, with tender fingers and palpitating heart to oil the wheels and polish up the machine, and does ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... attention to the attempts made to receive the luminous impression upon a band prepared with gelatino-bromide of silver. In practice this band would unwind uniformly at the focus of the receiving telescope, which would be placed in a box, forming a camera obscura. The velocity of this band prepared for photographing the signals would be regulated by clockwork. The experiments that have been made have not given results that are absolutely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... simplest-minded idiot who ever stammered through his address, can get an innocent prisoner off if he knows enough of the facts and the law. To my mind, the real triumph in our profession is to be able to unwind the meshes of damning facts and force a verdict for an ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the coming unsped days, and that new order in them—marking the endless train of exercise, development, unwind, in nation as in man, which life is for—we see, fore-indicated, amid these prospects and hopes, new law-forces of spoken and written language—not merely the pedagogue-forms, correct, regular, familiar with precedents, made for matters of outside ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the broider'd weft with flowery dyes, 70 Quick beat the reeds, the pedals fall and rise; Slow from the beam the lengths of warp unwind, And dance and nod the massy weights behind.— Taught by her labours, from the fertile soil Immortal Isis clothed the banks of Nile; 75 And fair ARACHNE with her rival loom Found undeserved a melancholy doom.— Five Sister-nymphs with dewy ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... haven't let out all my string yet," Russ answered. "I can make mine go up a lot higher than yours when I unwind some more ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... know of the leafy paths that the witches take, Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool, And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake; And of apple islands where the Danaan kind Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams; No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind, The boughs have withered because I have told them ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... and the hand in position (N 1), modified by palms being downward and hand horizontal. From the chest center the hand is then passed spirally forward toward the one addressed; the hand's palm begins the spiral motion with a downward and ends in an upward aspect. (Oto I.) "To unwind or open." ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... his sides in his vexation at being thus baffled, he touched the soft substance of his silken sash, and instantly an idea kindled at the touch. "Perhaps this will do," he thought, and hurriedly proceeded to unwind it. It was a long sash, for it went from his shoulder to his waist and then three times round his middle, where it was tied in a large bow with long ends. It was at least fifteen feet long, and as tough as any hemp that was ever twisted. He fastened one ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... taken far aback by the girl's sudden onslaught. His immediate impulse was to unwind Kathy and set her back on her own feet, some little distance away, after which he could start again on a more leisurely basis. After all, he told himself, people ought to spend more time getting ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the fountain, health flows in the rills, As their ribbons of silver unwind from the hills; They breathe not the mist of the bacchanal's dream, But the lilies of innocence float on ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... saw her reach up, slowly unwind the coronal of her tresses, shake them loose, and let them fall like a ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... a rope ladder, but a ball of silk cord, with a narrow board which was to pass between the legs, the ball to unwind itself by the weight of the person who sat ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The brown men were like dead men. But inch by inch he had drawn the rope slack until he was able to unwind it from his wrists. Then by half inches he moved his hands free, slipping one of them from behind him to his side. It seemed to him as though Nature herself had paused to watch and listen. He turned now with his free hand beneath ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... for their Majesties, the King and Queen, and all the Royal Court." And the pageant began to unwind its sinuous length along the campus lawn, and all the rustic players who formed the rabble fell in behind the royal personages ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... the walls. There were no mirrors here, not one, to reflect one's figure; and it was only when I had taken off my hat that I discovered what a wreck it was, crushed absurdly out of shape; and my hair was half down. The nun helped me to unwind and brush it out, and I heard her murmuring at my back, "When I was young my hair was as long ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... coming, when the disciple himself, all tutored in the art of their tradition, bringing with him the key of its delivery, shall be there to unlock those locked-up meanings, to spell out those anagrams, to read those hieroglyphics, to unwind with patient loving research to its minutest point, that text, that with such tools as the most watchful tyranny would give them, they will yet contrive to leave there. They know that their buried words are seeds, and though they lie long in the earth, they will yet spring up with their ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... been here, creating worshipers on all hands. He is a marvelous talker on a deep subject. I do not see how even Spencer could unwind a thought more smoothly or orderly, and do it in cleaner, clearer, crisper English. He astounded Twichell with his faculty. You know that when it comes down to moral honesty, limpid innocence, and utterly blemishless ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... roasted very leisurely and often basted with claret wine and anchovies and butter mixed together, and also with what moisture falls from him into the pan. When you have roasted him sufficiently you are to hold under him, when you unwind or cut the tape that ties him, such a dish as you purpose to eat him out of, and let him fall into it with the sauce that is roasted in his belly; and by this means the pike will be kept unbroken and complete. Then to the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... called after him just as far as they could see him, and when they were sure he was gone they thought they would come down and celebrate. But they didn't do it—not just yet. There wasn't one of them that could unwind himself from his limb, except old Mr. Waters, who had got only a teaspoonful of the medicine, which very likely was just about the right amount. Mr. Waters swung quite loose and free from his limb, and got down without much trouble, and it took him all the afternoon to go ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the process of excavation remained, and round it was a portion of the chain so old and rusty as to be worthless for any purpose whatever. Lengths had from time to time been broken off by boys, who would unwind a portion, and then, three or four pull together until the rust-eaten links gave way; and the boys came to the ground with a crash. It was a dirty game, however, dirty even for pit boys, for the yellow rust would stick ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... railway or royal road to the knowledge which we are anxious to gain, but which we are inevitably doomed to wait for and to work for. The different branches of science are Gordian knots, the threads of which we can only hope to unwind and evolve by cautious assiduity, and slow, patient industry. Their secrets cannot be summarily cut open and exposed by the sword of any son of Philip. But, in our daydreams, it is not unpleasant sometimes to imagine the possibility ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... unfastened two safety-pins that were hidden in Louis' untidy hair. Then she began to unwind a long strip of linen. It stuck to a portion of the cheek close to the ear. Louis winced. The inner folds of the linen were discoloured. Rachel had a ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett |
