"Whirlpool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cure' to all complainers, stranger or friend, gentle or simple. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and how I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to which I was drawing, just when the current was beyond my strength to stem. The state of my mind is truly portrayed in the following effusion, for God knows! that from that time I was the victim of pain and terror, nor had I at any time taken the flattering poison as a stimulus or for any craving ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... is just as much lost as when it enters the swirling, swinging wrath of waters, unless some strong hand head it up stream and out of danger. A flirtation to-day is a ripple merely, but to-morrow it will be a breaker, and then a whirlpool, and after that comes hopeless loss of character. Girls, I have seen you gather up your roses from their vases at night and fold them away in damp paper to protect their loveliness for another day. I have seen you pluck ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... rioting sea, Driving her onward like a mighty stag Chased by the wolves. Off the dark Firth of Forth At last, Drake signalled and lay head to wind, Watching. "The chariots of God are twenty thousand," He muttered, as, for a moment close at hand, Caught in some league-wide whirlpool of the sea, The mighty galleons crowded and towered and plunged Above him on the huge o'erhanging billows, As if to crash down on his decks; the next, A mile of ravening sea had swept between Each of those wind-whipt straws and they were gone, With all their tiny shrivelling ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... read bitter scorn or withering hate; but in his eyes resided a magnetic influence of attraction or repulsion. Sybil underwent the former feeling in a disagreeable degree. She was drawn to him as by the motion of a whirlpool, and involuntarily ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... who from being plunged deep in the wealthy whirlpool of the South-Sea, are in hopes of rising to such seats of fortune and dignity, as would best suit with their mounting and aspiring hopes, may imagine that this new fund, in the sister nation, may prove a rival to theirs; and, by drawing ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... to go to her hotel, wishing to see her once more. There were things to be said for the first and last time and then be buried for ever. She must leave the country at once. In this sick, mad land, in this whirlpool of secret murder and conspiracy, no one could tell what plot was hatching, what deeds were forward; and he could not yet be sure that no one save himself and herself knew who had killed Foorgat Bey. Her perfect safety lay in instant flight. It ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... till it appeared to snarl, and the ropes of pearls leaping wildly on her lean purple stomacher. And over all the grave oak walls and the bright sconces and the taper flames blown about by the eddying gusts from the whirlpool beneath. ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... safety. The high banks on both sides of the river extend to Queenston and Lewiston, eight miles lower, confining the waters to a channel of no more than a quarter of a mile in breadth, between steep and lofty cliffs; midway is the whirlpool,[135] where the current rushes furiously round within encircling heights. Below Queenston the river again rolls along a smooth stream, between level and cultivated banks, till it pours ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... as though it were all settled, to get out his black order book and open it briskly for business. He drew his fountain pen, capped it, and looked up at me expectantly. My feet actually seemed slipping into some irresistible whirlpool. How well he understood practical psychology! I struggled within myself, fearing engulfment: ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... books, which told in glowing words of poor lads who had forsaken the country to become rich and famous in the cities, but they never repeated, for they had never read the stories of those unaccountable numbers who had "moved to town" and who had been swallowed up by the city's whirlpool, to become slaves of the mills and the factories, serfs of the bars and the counters, and who had been forced to toil from dawn to dusk to barely eke out an existence that meant residing high up in the simmering, sweltering tenements, or in ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... close to the Lofoden Islands, the current runs so strong north and south for six hours and then in the opposite direction for a similar period, that the water is thrown into tremendous whirls. This is the far-famed Maelstrom, or whirling-stream. The whirlpool is most active at high and low tide, and when the winds are contrary the disturbance of the sea is so great that few boats can live in it. In ordinary circumstances, however, ships can sail right across the Maelstrom without much danger, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... a few seconds a calm ensued; then there blew another gust, which swept along with such mighty strength that the ocean of roofs seemed convulsed, tossing about in waves, and then disappearing in a whirlpool. For a moment chaos reigned. Some enormous clouds, like huge blots of ink, swept through a host of smaller ones, which were scattered and floated like shreds of rag which the wind tore to pieces and carried off thread by thread. A ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... rapid and the whirlpool that fed it, distinguishing the roar of scoring gravel and grind of broken rock from its vibratory booming, and though he was a daring man, his ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... emptiness and loneliness that at moments it seemed to her as though she were all alone in the world and that something had pinned her to the earth with an immense weight and was crushing her down, that she was falling with lightning speed to the bottom of some deep abyss where a grayish-green whirlpool was dimly roaring. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... foundation was suffocated with bugles. A shrill scent of cherry-blossom ran with her like a crowd, and in her hand she carried an umbrella and a plush bag with a steel snap. Her face, in the midst of this whirlpool of finery, peeped out anxiously, covered as it was with a smear of paint and powder, and when she saw Valentine standing alone to receive her, her nervous eyes ranged uncomfortably about in obvious quest of an acquaintance ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... small kettle of water heated almost to boiling, and with a wooden spoon, stir it rapidly round and round in the same direction until a miniature whirlpool is produced. Have ready some eggs broken in separate cups, and drop them carefully one at a time into the whirling water, the stirring of which must be kept up until the egg is a soft round ball. Remove with a skimmer, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... walls immediately seethed into a whirlpool of excitement. It eddied there for a moment, then poured through the gateway into the long drainlike entrance passage and spread over ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the tail of the Great Bear, and wore, in Sir J. Herschel's instruments, the aspect of a split ring encompassing a bright nucleus, thus presenting, as he supposed, a complete analogue to the system of the Milky Way. In the Rosse mirror it shone out as a vast whirlpool of light—a stupendous witness to the presence of cosmical activities on the grandest scale, yet regulated by laws as to the nature of which we are profoundly ignorant. Professor Stephen Alexander of New Jersey, however, concluded, from an investigation (necessarily founded on highly ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... greeting, turning over on his back and propelling himself by a whirlpool motion of his arms. "Thought you'd give us the slip, did ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... the spirits of earth and air united in one solemn choral chant of praise to the Creator; the rocks vibrate to the living harmony, and the shores around seem hurrying forward, as if impelled by the force of the descending torrent of sound. Yet, within a few yards of all this whirlpool of conflicting elements, the river glides onward as peacefully and gently as if it had not received into its mysterious depths this ever-falling avalanche ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the child, and swam back with it to some steps, where they were both assisted out. Another boy, W. W. Haynes, aged twelve, saved the life of a child who had fallen from a bridge into the river at Llanberis, near a whirlpool. E. S. Deacon, a girl, twelve years old, rescued a lad from drowning at Blackpool, near Dartmouth. The boy had slipped off a rock and become unconscious, when Miss Deacon jumped into the water fully dressed, and succeeded in holding him ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... back the shut-in pool had been a scene of beauty; now it was like a black hollow of misery and despair, as the water dashed down and then swirled and eddied in the hideous whirlpool. ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... orders; but, fortunately, friend Rippingille, the painter, was drinking pale ale at Bristol for the season, so that Clare, having nobody to lead him through his favourite taverns and concert-rooms, and being still afraid to hazard alone into the whirlpool of London life, was almost compelled to stop at home. For the first few days the sojourn at Mr. Taylor's house in Fleet Street appeared to him somewhat dreary, though it was not long before he came to like it, and at last got into a real enjoyment of his new mode of existence. He spent the ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... of the hole and went back to the cleft. I lit a candle and looked down at the pool. It was no longer stagnant now, but seething and eddying like a whirlpool. I beckoned to Tupac, who was standing a little way behind me, and as he came and looked over my shoulder I pointed down into the dark gulf, out of which the bottom was rapidly falling, ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... were bent upon the youth struggling with strong heart and hope amid the dizzy sweep of the whirling currents far below. Now it seemed as if he would be dashed against a projecting rock, over which the water flew in foam, and anon a whirlpool would drag him in, from whose grasp escape would seem impossible. Twice the boy went out of sight, but he had reappeared the second time, although frightfully near the most dangerous part of the river. The rush of waters here was tremendous, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Ocean, the stream is as broad as an arm of the sea, which enhances the general impression of gloom and desolation. But in this world everything is comparative, and we little dreamt, when reviling the Lena, that a time was coming when we should look back even upon this apparently earthly Erebus as a whirlpool of gaiety. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... a strange thing is Man! and what a stranger Is Woman! What a whirlwind is her head, And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger Is all the rest about her! Whether wed, Or widow—maid—or mother, she can change her Mind like the wind: whatever she has said Or done, is light to what she'll say or do;— The oldest thing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... leave nothing but a stain. It was our weakness and not our strength that put a rich refuse in the sky. These were the rivers of our vanity pouring into the void. We had taken the sacred circle of the whirlwind, and looked down on it, and seen it as a whirlpool. And then we had used it as a sink. It was a good symbol of the mutiny in my own mind. Only our worst things were going to heaven. Only our criminals could still ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... "Ha, ha, ha—ha, ha, ha! I could never die for laughing," bawled out the Dominie, feeling for his pannikin; but this was his last effort. He stared round him. "Verily, verily, we are in a whirlpool— how everything turneth round and round! Who cares? Am I not an ancient mariner—'Qui videt mare turgidum—et infames scopulos.' Friend ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... vessel ever yet tried that pass without being lost but the Argo, which owed her safety to the sacred freight she bore, the fleece of the golden-backed ram, which could not perish. The biggest of these rocks which you shall come to, Scylla hath in charge. There in a deep whirlpool at the foot of the rock the abhorred monster shrouds her face; who if she were to show her full form, no eye of man or god could endure the sight: thence she stretches out all her six long necks, peering and diving to suck up fish, dolphins, dog-fish, and whales, whole ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... selling or heavily mortgaging the "Lodge" had to be considered. The latter alternative was adopted, and the sum of fifteen thousand dollars raised, and thrown, with a kind of desperation, into the whirlpool which had already swallowed up nearly ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... Dudley, Madame d'Espard, and my sister-in-law Emilie count for something in all this. Those women, against whom I ought to have put you more thoroughly on your guard, have cultivated your curiosity more to trouble me and cause me unhappiness, than to fling you into a whirlpool which, as I believe, you would ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... make a shift if we can repair the broken rudder. We must have struck a powerful cross current, or maybe a whirlpool, that tore the main rudder loose. We've rammed a sand bank, or stuck her nose into the bottom in some shallow place, I'm afraid. We can't go ahead or ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... school; for there ran that part of the river which, with very correct judgment, the urchins had selected as their bathing-place. A little slope, or watering-ground in the bank, brought them to the edge of the stream, where the bottom fell away into the fearful depths of the whirlpool, under the hanging oak on the other bank. Well do I remember the first time I ventured to swim across it, and even yet do I see, in imagination, the two bunches of water flaggons on which the inexperienced swimmers trusted ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Steered his wonder-vessel onward, Steered one day along the sea-shore, Steered the next through shallow waters, Steered the third day through the rivers. Then the reckless Lemminkainen Suddenly some words remembered, He had heard along the fire-stream Near the cataract and whirlpool, And these words the hero uttered: "Cease, O cataract, thy roaring, Cease, O waterfall, thy foaming! Maidens of the foam and current, Sitting on the rocks in water, On the stone-blocks in the river, Take the foam and white-capped billows ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... wrong," said the man in grey; "his name was not Sion Tudor but Robert Vychan, in English, Little Bob. Sion Tudor wrote an englyn on the Skerries whirlpool in the Menai; but it was Little Bob who wrote the stanza in which the future bridge over the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... centre of the eddy, carried by a current growing always stronger. In this centre the water boiled, but it was for the most part because of a lashing of surface currents. There seemed to be no heavy twist of the deep water into anything like a dangerous whirlpool. Still there was a pull, a tugging of the current to a centre. Again I was unable to estimate the power of this drag, as it was impossible to estimate how much resistance was ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... him. Rasper, devilish, was riding on his back; the Venus—well for him!—had struck and missed; but Grip and Grapple had their hold; and the others, like leaping demoniacs, were plunging into the whirlpool vortex of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Mahomedan community, was not completed, nor was the reunion of the Moderate and Extremist parties within the Congress itself, when India was caught up with Great Britain and most of the nations of the world into the whirlpool of the Great War on August ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... contentedly with the spray moistening our faces and the warm sun browning our hands—and the heavy pounding of falling waters sounding in our ears so melodiously and so sweetly. Lazily, drowsily we'll hold a bamboo pole and guide out shiner through the foam-crowned eddies of the whirlpool, awaiting the flash of a golden side or a lusty tug at the line; and dreamily watch a long, narrow stream of shavings and sawdust, loosed from the opposite planing-mill, float away on the current. And here, in the dear dream-days, the conquering of the world will ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... bream, with scales of crimson, "Take the bait of this great boaster, Break the line of Hiawatha!" Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming, Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, Seized the line of Hiawatha, Swung with all his weight upon it, Made a whirlpool in the water, Whirled the birch canoe in circles, Round and round in gurgling eddies, Till the circles in the water Reached the far-off sandy beaches, Till the water-flags and rushes Nodded on the distant margins. But ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was to be drawn into the whirlpool itself. I was still travelling back over the different stages of the adventure which had brought me to this point, when I was rudely awakened by M. de Rosny calling my name in a raised voice. Seeing, somewhat late, that he was beckoning to me to approach, I went forward in a confused ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... once by an eager aspirant, and beset with many a following introduction and petition, was drawn to and kept in the joyous whirlpool of the dance, till she had breathed in enough of delight and excitement to carry her quite beyond the thought even of ices and oysters and jellies and fruits, and the score of unnamable luxuries whereto the young revelers were duly summoned at half ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... he would be dashed against a projecting rock, over which the water flew in foam, and a whirlpool would drag him in, from whose ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... brown houses and red temples half concealed in groves of golden bamboo and the glossy green of orange trees; moments when the boatmen lounged on the deck or hung exhausted over their oars were followed by grief, fierce struggles against the dreadful force of a whirlpool that ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... There were sight-seers and "country customers" from forty-five states; ranchers from Texas, and lumber kings from Maine, and mining men from Nevada. At home they had reputations, and perhaps families to consider; but once plunged into the whirlpool of the Tenderloin, they were hidden from all the world. They came with their pockets full of money; and hotels and restaurants, gambling-places and pool-rooms and brothels—all were lying in wait for them! So eager had the competition become that there was a tailoring establishment ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... of terror and recall, from what had been a dear voice, followed my splashing descent into the deep water, and thrilled my nerves a moment; but I struck out bravely for the whirlpool, where, plunging, yelping, struggling, revolved the wretched beast, to whom my cousin had resolved to sacrifice my life, and for whose sake she was crying on the beach. Much time was lost in reaching, more in capturing the blundering fool, who, mad with fear and fright, dreaded me more than the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... she became the sport of the torrent; in a second she was half-full of water, and I cannot comprehend to this day why she did not go down; luckily the people exerted themselves to the utmost, she got headway, and they pulled through the whirlpool: I being quite in the stern of the canoe, part of a wave struck me, and nearly knocked ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... grades and conditions, mingling in a disgraceful orgie which the pen refuses to depict. How many stories of happy homes wrecked and broken could be related by these painted lizards who now were swimming in this whirlpool of licentious gratification! How many men, whose past careers of honor and reputation had been thrown away, were here gathered in this brothel, participating in so-called amusements, which a few years ago would have appalled them! Ah, humanity is a strange study, and debased ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... zigzag of the broken rock the water glanced from one side, and shot almost at right angles across to the other, to whirl round and round, ever enlarging a great well-like hole, the centre of which looked like a funnel-like whirlpool, with the water screwing its way apparently into the bowels of the earth, and down whose watery throat great balls of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... central avenue appeared the Main, flowing in a broad, calm stream, with here and there a noisy, troubled spot in the midst of its peacefully-gliding waves, where a rock or a sand-bar interrupted the mirror-like expanse, and caused a rushing, foam-sprinkled whirlpool. Beyond the river, amid the light, floating night-mists, were dimly seen the houses of a little village, on whose window-panes a moonbeam often flashed, and at the left of the park rose the indistinct mass of the city of Marktbreit, ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... Ordinarily, the whirlpool of property localizes itself. On the one hand, farm-rent stops at a certain point; on the other, in consequence of competition and over-production, the price of manufactured goods does not rise,—so that the condition of the peasant varies but little, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... when one of his friends said to him, "See you not how many more ships the enemy have got than we have?" answered, "How many do you make me equal to then?" This Homer also seems to have noticed. For he has represented Odysseus, when his comrades were dreadfully afraid of the noise and whirlpool of Charybdis, reminding them of his former ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... days of Kien Lung, the minister Dschou Ling was ordered to install a new king in the Liu-Kiu Islands. When the fleet was sailing by south of Korea, a storm arose, and his ship was driven toward the Black Whirlpool. The water had the color of ink, sun and moon lost their radiance, and the word was passed about that the ship had been caught in the Black Whirlpool, from which no living man had ever returned. The seaman and travelers awaited their end with lamentations. ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... taking the habit, stunned by the blow with which the priest had assailed him as they left the church, he now felt an anguish almost physical, in which everything ended in confusion. He did not know to what reflections he should give himself, and only saw, swimming on this whirlpool of troubled ideas, one clear thought, that the moment had come so dreaded by him in which he ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... broad, well-paved streets, substantial houses, the square towers and crenellated walls of the old Kremlin, and the glittering cupolas of twenty-six churches before us, and a lack of population which contrasted amazingly with the whirlpool of life below. Monsieur D., our new, but most faithful friend, took us to the hotel, every corner and cranny of which was occupied. There was a possibility of breakfast only, and water was obtained with great exertion. While we were lazily enjoying a tolerable meal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... So long as a man keeps his streamer flying, his sails set, and his hull above water, it is pleasant to paddle alongside; but when the sails split, the yards crack, and the keel goes staggering down, by all means paddle off. Why should you be submerged in his whirlpool? Will he drown any more easily because you are drowning with him? Lung is lung. He dies from want of air, not from want of sympathy. When, a poor fellow sits down among the ashes, the best thing his friends can do is to stand afar off. Job bore the loss of property, children, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... heavy on her. And this idea of not paying his debts any more brought it home to her as nothing else yet had. Some richness seemed to have gone out of life. Without her husband, without her pearls, without that intimate sense that she made a brave show above the domestic whirlpool, she would now have to face the world. She felt ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... disturbing emotions had held him lately; Lone was beginning to feel the need of a long, quiet pondering over his problems. He did not feel sure of anything except the fact that the Quirt was like a drowning man struggling vainly against the whirlpool that ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... out straight upon the water. A dead leaf that had been caught in an eddy attracted her attention; it tossed about for a minute, then a tiny whirlpool sucked it down. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... own three nights and days In yon whirlpool of the sea, Or turn thy prow and go thy ways And let ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... stockings. When Annie got a peep of the water, writhing and tumbling in the passage, it looked so ugly, that she shrunk from fording it, especially if she must go in with her bare feet. She could not tell what might be sweeping about in that filthy whirlpool. She was still looking at it as it kept rising, in pale perplexity and dismay, with the forgotten tears still creeping down her checks, when she was caught up from behind by a boy, who, with his shoes and stockings in one hand, now seated her on the other arm. She peeped ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... chair, he crossed a few ranges of mountains in as many strides. In front was one tall blue hill, with a flattened peak, and as they drew near the princess felt a curious kind of wind coming round her and round her. You have heard of whirlpools in water; well, this was just like a whirlpool of air. Even the Giant himself could hardly keep his legs against it; then he tossed Jaqueline up, and the airy whirlpool seized her and carried her, as if on a tide of water, always round and round in narrowing ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... above the chestnut woods. And there Charybdis caught them in its fearful coils of wave, and rolled mast-high about them, and spun them round and round; and they could go neither back nor forward, while the whirlpool sucked them in. ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... my bewilderment, I was further wonderstruck to behold a circling mass of mystical light traveling in the sky. Descending swiftly, the flaming whirlpool neared our group and materialized itself into the body of a beautiful youth who, I understood at once, was Babaji. He looked like Lahiri Mahasaya, the only difference being that Babaji appeared much younger, and had ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... it was one tangled confusion—a locked and swaying mob that moved from right to left and from left to right along the bank; and also ground round and round slowly on its own centre. Here would be a heaving mound, like a water-blister in a whirlpool, which would break like a water-blister, and throw up four or five mangled dogs, each striving to get back to the centre; here would be a single wolf borne down by two or three dholes, laboriously dragging them forward, and sinking the while; here a yearling cub would be ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... buzzing and careless, like the bees and butterflies on the first fine day. The Chevalier d'Harmental had retained his sadness for a week; then he mixed again in the crowd, and was drawn in by the whirlpool which threw him at the feet of a ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... another, nor ever against any man's honour, but, after all, there was nothing therein wherewith to glorify one's self before God." When he had wept a little, he continued, saying, "that the world was a ceaseless turmoil and torment, and shipwreck after shipwreck all the while, and a whirlpool of sins, and tears and pain, and that to all these misfortunes there was but one port, and this port was Death. But, as for him, he carried with him into that port no desire and no regret for life. That he had tried every ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... brasier grew larger and larger—there was first a pool, then a lake of light. The whole vast Place du Rosaire changed at last into a burning ocean, rolling its little sparkling wavelets with the dizzy motion of a whirlpool that never rested. A reflection like that of dawn whitened the Basilica; while the rest of the horizon faded into deep obscurity, amidst which you only saw a few stray tapers journeying alone, like glowworms seeking their way with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... bounding and dancing, like a child; there is the plash of the lighter ripples against the bow, and the thud of the heavier waves, while the same blue water is now transformed to a cool jet of white foam over your face, and now to a dark whirlpool in your lee. Sailing gives a sense of prompt command, since by a single movement of the tiller you effect so great a change of direction or transform motion into rest; there is, therefore, a certain magic in it: but, on the other hand, there is in rowing ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... along the top of the wall and looked down in wonder, to see that a strange whirlpool seemed to have been formed, where twigs of dead wood, bits of grass, and autumn leaves were sailing round and round, before being sucked ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... on in Lancelot's ears long after he had returned to his room. In the utter breakdown and confusion of his plans and his ideas it was the one definite thought he clung to, as a swimmer in a whirlpool clings to a rock. His brain refused to concentrate itself on any other aspect of the situation—he could not, would not, dared not, think of anything else. He knew vaguely he ought to rejoice with her over ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... capacity to supply the demand, the canebrakes of Arkansas and Louisiana were called upon for their knotty specimens of the bovine race, even Mexico responded, and still the insatiable maw of the early West called for more cattle. The whirlpool of speculation and investment in ranches and range stock defied the deserts on the west, sweeping across into New Mexico and Arizona, where it met a counter wave pushing inland from California to possess the new and inviting pastures. Naturally the Texan was the last ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... they are the only people who understand the philosophy of living. Look at the tired faces of the women in your streets," I added, "one never sees that sort of expression down below, and I have made up my mind not to be caught by the whirlpool ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... young, sensitive, throbbing at the old, old wrong, at the black shame of our history; I saw him drawn into that fearful whirlpool of blood and passion, driven mad with the pain and the horror of it; and I saw him drilled and hammered to a grim savageness, saw him fighting, day by day, with his spirit, forging it into an iron sword of war. He was haggard ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... difficult, perhaps, to analyze rightly the feelings and sensations of a young girl, when she is literally being swept off her feet in a whirlpool ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... time to see Joe tottering, and caught at his arm, giving him a sharp snatch which dragged him in through the low archway where the water, though deep, was eddying round like a whirlpool. Then together they extended their hands to Hardock and he was ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... opportunity of communicating his exhortations to his godson, with regard to his conduct abroad: he advised him, now that he was going into foreign parts, to be upon his guard against the fair weather of the French politesse, which was no more to be trusted than a whirlpool at sea. He observed that many young men had gone to Paris with good cargoes of sense, and returned with a great deal of canvas, and no ballast at all, whereby they became crank all the days of their lives, and sometimes carried their keels above water. He desired Mr. Jolter to keep ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... earth to heaven 30 Stands vast, and moves in blackness. Ye too split The ice-mount, and with fragments many and huge, Tempest the new-thaw'd sea, whose sudden gulphs Suck in, perchance, some Lapland wizard's skiff. Then round and round the whirlpool's marge ye dance, 35 Till from the blue-swoln corse the soul toils out, And joins your mighty army. Soul of Albert! Hear the mild spell and tempt no blacker charm. By sighs unquiet and the sickly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... on me, Anna," he said, looking at her in a kind of dogged, uncertain way. "I'll do what you say, only don't be hard. It's come so sudden, that my head is like a whirlpool. Lily, Willie, Willie. The child I saw, you mean—yes, ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... education in elementary schools has long been the centre of a perfect whirlpool of controversial talk. The greater part of this talk is, to speak plainly, blatant cant. Every candidate for a seat in the House of Commons thinks it incumbent upon him to say something about religious education, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... to those who, lightless, grope. Thou house of God, thou garden of sweet shades, Rest without ceasing, refuge of the sad, Bliss without mourning, flow'r that never fades, Alien to death, and shelter in the mad Whirlpool of life, to all who seek thy port. Lady of Heaven, in whom all hearts rejoice, Thou roseate dawn and ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... nightly tread, And leave no traces: o'er the savage sea, The glassy ocean of the mountain ice, We skim its rugged breakers, which put on The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam, Frozen in a moment[140]—a dead Whirlpool's image: And this most steep fantastic pinnacle, The fretwork of some earthquake—where the clouds 10 Pause to repose themselves in passing by— Is sacred to our revels, or our vigils; Here do I wait my sisters, on our way To the Hall of Arimanes—for to-night Is our great festival[141]—'tis ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... him to approach, holding out a yellow, dropsical-looking hand; and as he dropped on one knew and kissed it fervently, the King said, 'Here he is, Madame, the Baron de Ribaumont, the same whose little pleasure-boat was sucked down in our whirlpool. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Thalia looks on Broadway as Marathon looks on the sea. It stands like a gloomy cliff above the whirlpool where the tides of two great thoroughfares clash. Here the player-bands gather at the end of their wanderings, to loosen the buskin and dust the sock. Thick in the streets around it are booking-offices, theatres, agents, schools, and the lobster-palaces ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Companion down to the loathsome haunts of drunkenness; you would hasten the day when no Mother shall have to mourn over a darling son as she sees him launch his bark on the circling waves of the mighty whirlpool. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Macbeth is the most rapid, Hamlet the slowest, in movement. Lear combines length with rapidity,—like the hurricane and the whirlpool, absorbing while it advances. It begins as a stormy day in summer, with brightness; but that brightness is lurid, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... indulgence of his bad temper,—in ministering to his perverse will,—in his Sunday rambling,—in associating with the vile,—in his tippling habits,—and, finally, in throwing off all parental regard and restraint. He had now come to the verge of the whirlpool of destruction, and, in a frenzied moment, he threw himself into the awful vortex! Beware of the first sin! "Enter not into the paths of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... Importance and Value of Human Life.—How could man know that he was more than an atom in a whirlpool of atoms, his life of sense but a transitory thing, if it had not been for the Scriptures which seek to impress upon him the value of his life in the sight of God (John 3:16,17; Matthew 16:26)? Without the pale of the Christian faith men hold life but cheaply, ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... then small; nearer and then more distant. The plot of ground in front of which the children knelt played all manner of pranks—pranks Van Hielen did not at all like. It moved round and round—faster and faster, until it eventually became a whirlpool; which suddenly reversed and assumed the appearance of a pyramid revolving on its apex. Quicker and quicker it spun round—closer and closer it drew; until, without warning, it suddenly stopped and disappeared; whilst its place was taken by an oddly shaped ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... the development of the military situation and upon as yet incalculable economic influences, but it is possible to indicate their broad outlines. Indeed, this is the best means of illustrating the conflicting fears and aspirations which the great conflict has still further intensified in the racial whirlpool of Central Europe. Let us consider the less drastic of ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... passed two hours on a large rock, standing in the middle of the Orinoco, and called the Piedra de la Paciencia, or the Stone of Patience, because the canoes, in going up, are sometimes detained there two days, to extricate themselves from the whirlpool caused by this rock. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... honeysuckle and the acanthus leaf, for example, express the idea of successive impulses, mounting, attaining a maximum, and descending—expanding from some focus of force in the manner universal throughout nature. Science recognizes in the spiral an archetypal form, whether found in a whirlpool or in a nebula. A fret is a series of highly conventionalized spirals: translate it from angular to curved and we have the wave-band; isolate it and we have the volute. Egg and dart are phallic emblems, female and male; or, if you prefer, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Mrs. Schoville's fat wood-burning stove, and St. Vincent told of the great whirlpool in the Box Canyon, of the terrible corkscrew in the mane of the White Horse Rapids, and of his cowardly comrade, who, walking around, had left him to go through alone—nine years before ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... dead—on toward that hideous corner behind the farm of La Haye Sainte where desperate men were butchering others that were more desperate than they—in among that seething crowd of black coats and fur bonnets, of silver tassels and of brass eagles, into a whirlpool of swords and bayonets and gun-fire from the tirailleurs—for there he had seen the man whom Crystal loved—for whose sake she would eat out her heart with ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... measure. After being altered and pruned by both Houses the bill was passed, in spite of Lord Eldon, 'with tears and doleful predictions,' urging the peers 'to resist this first turn of the helm towards the whirlpool of democracy.' Grampound ceased to exist as a Parliamentary borough, and the county of York gained two members. Although Lord John supported the amended bill—on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread—he at the same time announced that 'in a future session he proposed ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... difficulties which abound in these solid writings could only have been written by a master perfectly acquainted with the capabilities of the instrument. Many a tyro who plunges into the stream of Bach's crotchets and quavers soon finds himself encompassed by a whirlpool of seeming impossibilities, and is frequently heard to exclaim that the passages are impracticable. Vain delusion! Bach was himself a Violinist, and never penned a passage the rendering of which is ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... every word bit its way into her consciousness as though it had been scored upon her quivering flesh. Robin had failed her. That ghastly presentiment of hers had come true. She was alone—alone, and sinking in that awful whirlpool of desolation into which for so long she had felt herself being drawn. The great waters swirled around her, rising higher, ever higher. ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... address before I left the ship, but I did not expect him to make any use of it. I thought that I had seen the last of him when I crossed the gangway and got caught in the whirlpool of fuss which eddied round the custom house shed. I was very much surprised when he walked in on me at breakfast time on the second morning after our arrival. I was eating an omelette at the time. I offered him a share of it and a cup of coffee. Gorman refused both; but he helped himself ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... her where the judges sat and said: 'Caesar sits above the Gods, Barbara the maid, Caesar hath made a treaty with the moon and with the sun All the gods that men can praise, praise him every one. There is peace with the anointed of the scarlet oils of Bel, With the Fish God, where the whirlpool is a winding stair to hell, With the pathless pyramids of slime, where the mitred negro lifts To his black cherub in the cloud abominable gifts, With the leprous silver cities where the dumb priests dance and nod, But not with the three windows and ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... pleasures of the epicure—the whole wealth encompassed by the seas. To obey! or to command! To be, or not to be! The space between is as wide as from the lowest depths of hell to the throne of the Almighty. (In an elevated tone.) From that awful height to look down securely upon the impetuous whirlpool of mankind, where blind fortune holds capricious sway! To quaff at the fountainhead unlimited draughts from the rich cup of pleasure! To hold that armed giant law beneath my feet in leading-strings, and see it struggle with fruitless efforts against the sacred ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... who a little while before, through the malevolent persecution of certain of the courtiers, had been termed the whirlpool of the East, and who had been accused of a design to aim at the supreme power for his sons, was now recommended as one who was a most skilful general, who had been the comrade of the great Constantine, and as the only man capable of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... his proof of courage. To shoot the Otter Falls or the Rapids of the Barriere, to carry his canoe down the whirling eddies of Portage-de-l'Isle, to lift her from the rush of water at the Seven Portages, or launch her by the edge of the whirlpool below the Chute-a-Jocko, all this is to be a brave and a skilful Indian, for the man who can do all this must possess a power in the sweep of his paddle, a quickness of glance, and a quiet consciousness of skill, not to be found ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... sentimentalist or satirist does, by way of set-off against the indulgence of personal foibles, but from recognition of his own qualities, of the bounds set to our capacity of life, and of the limits of the world's power to satisfy us. "When my destiny threw me into the whirlpool of society," he wrote in his last meditation on the course of his own life, "I found nothing there to give a moment's solace to my heart. Regret for my sweet leisure followed me everywhere; it shed indifference or disgust over all that might have been within my reach, leading to fortune ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... itself is a gigantic magnet, a fact which makes the compass possible, and it is well known that the earth's magnetism is affected by those great outbreaks on the sun called sun-spots. Now it has been recently shown that a sun-spot is a vast whirlpool of electrons and that it exerts a strong magnetic action. There is doubtless a connection between these outbreaks of electronic activity and the consequent changes in the earth's magnetism. The precise mechanism of the connection, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... fiend, but perhaps you love her still; I can well believe it; she made an impression on me. Perhaps, too, you would rather save your fortune, and keep it for one or two of your children? Well, fling yourself into the whirlpool of society, lose that fortune at play, come to Gobseck pretty often. The world will say that I am a Jew, a Tartar, a usurer, a pirate, will say that I have ruined you! I snap my fingers at them! If anybody insults me, I lay my man out; nobody is a surer shot nor handles a rapier better than ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... into the rear end of the passenger train so as to get out of the way of the flood. A young man who was on the rear end of the train grabbed a young lady who was floating by and thus saved her life. The house of an old man, eighty-two years of age, was caught in the whirlpool, and he and his aged wife climbed on the roof for safety. They were floating down the railroad track to certain death, when their son-in-law, from the roof of the Pennsylvania Railroad station-house, pulled them off and saved their lives as the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... hear that you are so poorly, and wish I could help you to sit down and work quietly at pure science. You have got into a whirlpool, and should stroke vigorously at the proper angle, not attempt to breast the whole force of the current, nor yet give in to it. Do take the counsel of a quiet looker on and withdraw to your books and studies in pure Natural History; let modes of thought ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... world where all is unstable, and nought can endure, but is swept onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change; where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a rope—in such a world, happiness in inconceivable. How can it dwell where, as Plato says, continual Becoming and never Being is the sole form of existence? In the first place, a man ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... busy day in some respects. In the morning the steamer was taken to Queenston, and from thence a special electric car conveyed the Royal couple along the banks of the mighty Niagara, past Brock's monument and the scene of the historic conflict upon Queenston Heights, and on to the famous whirlpool where half an hour of sight-seeing was spent. In Queen Victoria's Park there were crowds of people waiting to see the Duke and Duchess, but only a few minutes' glance at the Falls was taken. A ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... I do not. I believe it originated from nothing but cause and effect. It is the nature of a whirlpool to draw down all substances that come within its vortex. The water pouring into the bottom of the ship is but the vortex of a whirlpool reversed; and the image of the saint, when it was thrown overboard to leeward of the ship, which was pressed down upon it by the power of the wind, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... as the straw might be sucked into the heart of a whirlpool, his soul was drawn down into blackness. It shuddered, it was afraid; this vision of a whirlpool haunted him. He could see the narrow funnel of its waters, smooth, shining like jet, unspecked by foam, solid to all appearances; but, as he was ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... 'em. He was planning and figgering in his mind all the time jest what side to ketch 'em on, and how to split up the one, solid crowd-mind into different minds. But the little bit of a laugh he turned against Billy Harden was only on the surface, like a straw floating on a whirlpool. These men was here ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... ancient memory here is of them, for this is the shore of Charybdis. It is stated in Sallust and other Latin authors, as well as by writers throughout the Middle Ages, that all which was swallowed up in the whirlpool of the straits, after being carried beneath the sea for miles, was finally cast up on the beach ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... unfortunately, the support upon which he so confidently counted had no existence. Instead of landing on solid stone, he dropped into the raging torrent and went spinning down stream like a cork in a whirlpool. ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... northern blast, The shatter'd mast, The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock, The breaking spout, The stars gone out, The ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... over, didn't you! It must have turned over and over a dozen times down there in that whirlpool, even if he had stayed in till she lit. But he couldn't have. And ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... on either side with great violence. There is a narrow lane of clear water; we pull in; a strong current carries the boat along with fearful speed, and several seas break into her. It seems as if we were in a whirlpool. The rudder has lost its power, and we are spun round and round helplessly; about every moment it seems to be hove on the rocks. She violently rises and falls, and then we are cast, as it were, into the smooth water of the lagoon, though still carried ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... eyes she asked in affright: "Who are you? Have you come to steal? How did you get here? Be quick! save yourself from this whirlpool of destruction, for the demons and peris who guard me will wake and ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... said the Clockmaker; "it's nothin' but its power of suction; it is a great whirlpool—a great vortex—it drags all the straw and chips, and floatin' sticks, drift-wood and trash into it. The small crafts are sucked in, and whirl round and round like a squirrel in a cage—they'll never come out. Bigger ones pass through at certain times of tide, and can come in and out with ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... other trees and obstructions were upon every hand, and more than once both were torn and scratched as they sped by in what was little short of a whirlpool. ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... sluice gates opened a sullen roar sounded; on one side the diverted millstream, and on the other the river, rose as two solid walls of water, rushed forward and—met; and in the twinkling of an eye the old water-course was one wild, leaping, roaring, gyrating whirlpool of up-flung froth and twisting waves that bore in their eddying clutch the battling figure of ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... inherent activities by which they are distinguished from not living matter. Each individual living organism is formed by their temporary combination. They stand to it in the relation of the particles of water to a cascade, or a whirlpool; or to a mould, into which the water is poured. The form of the organism is thus determined by the reaction between external conditions and the inherent activities of the organic molecules of which it is ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... agglomeration of incidents, enumerated in the most veracious manner. In one of his papers he describes the Mahlstrom or what he chooses to imagine the Mahlstrom may be, and by dint of this careful and De Foe-like painting, the horrid whirlpool is so placed before the mind, that we feel as if we had seen, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... addressing himself to all the petty northern countries that were trying to drag his own beloved fatherland into the whirlpool of disaster, Isaiah spoke ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... Satyrs howled with mystic voice, Preluding to the Phrygian minstrelsy Of nightly orgies. Earth around them laughed; The rocks reechoed; shouts of revelling joy Shrilled from the Naiads, and the river nymphs Sent echoes from their whirlpool-circled tides, Flowing in silence; and beneath the rocks Chanted Sicilian songs, like preludes sweet, That through the warbling throats of Syren nymphs, Most musical drop of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fulfil a second cycle, and therefore a third, and so on for ever and ever, with no more chance of escape than a circulating decimal has, if the circumstances have been reproduced with perfect accuracy as to draw it into such a whirlpool. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... down and down into a very whirlpool of nothingness. Bending over it, as it were, she saw the face of her aged mother, the faces of some of her dear sisters, the face of the kindly doctor, and lastly the agonised ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard |
