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Tear   Listen
noun
Tear  n.  
1.
(Physiol.) A drop of the limpid, saline fluid secreted, normally in small amount, by the lachrymal gland, and diffused between the eye and the eyelids to moisten the parts and facilitate their motion. Ordinarily the secretion passes through the lachrymal duct into the nose, but when it is increased by emotion or other causes, it overflows the lids. "And yet for thee ne wept she never a tear."
2.
Something in the form of a transparent drop of fluid matter; also, a solid, transparent, tear-shaped drop, as of some balsams or resins. "Let Araby extol her happy coast, Her fragrant flowers, her trees with precious tears."
3.
That which causes or accompanies tears; a lament; a dirge. (R.) "Some melodous tear."
4.
(Glass Manuf.) A partially vitrified bit of clay in glass. Note: Tear is sometimes used in the formation of self-explaining compounds; as, tear-distilling, tear-drop, tear-filled, tear-stained, and the like.
Tears of St. Lawrence, the Perseid shower of meteors, seen every year on or about the eve of St. Lawrence, August 9th.
Tears of wine, drops which form and roll down a glass above the surface of strong wine. The phenomenon is due to the evaporation of alcohol from the surface layer, which, becoming more watery, increases in surface tension and creeps up the sides until its weight causes it to break.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tear" Quotes from Famous Books



... o'er the hills of the heather so green, And down by the Corrie that skips in the sea, The bonny young Flora sat weeping her love— The dew on her plaid, and the tear in her e'e. She looked at a boat with the breezes that swung, And ay as it lessened she sighed and she sung, 'Farewell to the lad I shall ne'er see again! Farewell to my hero, the gallant and young! Farewell to the lad I shall ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... great length of its fore legs as compared with its hinder ones. Carnivorous animals, in like manner, have had their organs modified in correlation with their desires and habits. Some climb, some scratch in order to burrow in the earth, some tear their prey; they therefore have need of toes, and we find their toes separated and armed with claws. Some of them are great hunters, and also plunge their claws deeply into the bodies of their victims, trying to tear out the part on which they have seized; ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... flinging out his hands). Oh, my God! The box-office! Have I got to slaughter my artistic instincts to feed the greed of a box-office? For God's sake, Peggy, take this play and write it to suit the taste of Broadway! Or shall I tear up the darned ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair

... in those conquests of Flanders, thirty years ago: but so it no longer is. Alas, much more lies sick than poor Louis: not the French King only, but the French Kingship; this too, after long rough tear and wear, is breaking down. The world is all so changed; so much that seemed vigorous has sunk decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to be!—Borne over the Atlantic, to the closing ear of Louis, King by the Grace of God, what sounds are these; muffled ominous, new in ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... you write what Jack has been doing." Then she put out her hand and he held it. "I wonder whether you will ever remember—" But she did not quite know what to bid him remember, and therefore turned away her face and wiped away a tear, and then smiled as she turned her back on him. The carriage was at the door, and the ladies flocked into the hall, and then not another ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... sprung farther ahead than the nobility of service. It saw a place of comparative safety, far from the range of shells; there would be no charging over parapets, no bullets would come ploughing through his stomach, no shrapnel would tear shreds from his face! He thought much of that face. He could actually be in France and come home a hero! Besides all these considerations, he would ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... mankind; to cloak with meaningless words obsolete rites, to stand in the way of human progress, because it does not permit men to think boldly and logically. Science, on the other hand, does not hesitate to tear down old conceptions, and has only one motive, the ultimate truth. Religion has the purpose of keeping the masses in the narrow and false path of only accepted doctrines. The true scientist is the man with the open mind, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... all strangers to each other—we only fell in together on the road. The one lying under the wagon was on a tear in the last town; most ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... seal of the Vatican, is safely placed among my most precious documents. You have but destroyed the result of an hour's careful work. I rose betimes this morning to make this copy. I should not have allowed you to tear it, had not the writing been my own. But I took pains to reproduce exactly the peculiar style of lettering they use in Rome, and you will do ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... there was roguish March with his rosy cheeks, and his curly hair flying in the winds that blew all about him. Next came Baby April with her apron full of violets, daffodillies, and green grasses. Part of the time she smiled sweetly, and part of it she frowned till the big tear drops chased each other down her cheeks. Last came May, playing tag with the sunbeams, wandering knee-deep in flowers, and calling to the ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field

... a year younger than Cecil, was his special friend and ally, and the other long-haired lassie considerately left them together, and went off to do some gardening; while little Lewis followed at a respectful distance, not able to tear himself quite away from Cecil, and yet not presuming to interrupt the confidential talk between ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford

... sir, there is no hope. She may recover consciousness, but if she does it will only be for a few moments. Doctor Carr will remain till the end;" and giving the young man's hand a sympathetic squeeze, while he brushed away something dangerously like a tear, he ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... you I do not know," was his reply. And he took it up, and examined it well again. One of his riding gloves, scarcely worn, with a tear near the thumb; but there was nothing upon it, not so much as a trace, a spot, to afford any information. He rolled it up mechanically in the two papers, and placed them in ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... understand that I was no longer a fool—that I had wrenched absolutely loose from her and that she could do nothing with me? So in wrath renewed by her poor estimate of my common sense I was minded to tear the note to fragments, unread, and contemptuously scatter them. Had she been present I should have ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... it is only dalk, Passil, and it toes me goodt. My parg is worse than my pidte, I cuess. I pring these things roundt bretty soon. Good-bye, Passil, my tear poy. Auf wiedersehen!" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... scarifying mirth, which would have been much worse. 'He jests at scars that never felt a wound,' but he who jests at them after he has felt them is the hero. Observe that I still jest." He put his lips to a bleeding tear on his wrist as he spoke. "My only regret is that the rose haws were not where they are now when I photographed the horses. Only, mine is not a colour camera. I must get one and have it with me when I drive, in case of emergencies like ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... flat to his strongly muscled body, began to dry in the air and fluff out while the sun awoke prismatic lights on the scales which covered his hands and feet. He dispatched the fish and cleaned it neatly, tossing the offal back into the water, where some shadowy things arose to tear ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... the crew who succumbed to the murderous climate, the first to offer up his life, after incalculable sufferings, to the captain's persistent obstinacy. This man had considered him an assassin, but Hatteras did not quail before the accusation. But a tear, falling from his eyes, froze ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... is the Norn's will that we two shall hold together; it cannot be altered. Plainly now I see my task in life: to make thee famous over all the world. Thou hast stood before me every day, every hour of my life; I sought to tear thee out of my mind, but I lacked the might; now it is needless, now that I know thou ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen

... them; they struggle between duty and desire; they gaze, like captive doves and with a sorrowful eye, upon the forbidden region where it would be so blissful to soar; for, in fastening a chain to their feet, the law did not bandage their eyes, and nature gave them wings; if the wings tear the chain asunder, shame and misfortune await them! Society will never forgive the heart that catches a glimpse of the joys it is unacquainted with; even a brief hour in that paradise has to be expiated by implacable social ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... her case was more than anyone could do, and as she stood listening a tear splashed upon her closed hands. The man, by comparison with whom Gregory appeared a mere lay figure, was in all probability lying still far up in the solitudes of the frozen North, with his last grim journey done. This ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... was going like an airship on a high wind, when something happened to tangle its tail feathers, and I can hardly write it for trembling yet. It was a simple little telegram, but it might have been nitro-glycerine on a tear for the way it acted. It was for me, but the nephew handed it to Tom, and he opened it and, looking at me, he solemnly read it ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... no practical relation to gardening; but it occurs to me that, if I should paper the outside of my high board fence with the leaves of "The Arabian Nights," it would afford me a good deal of protection,—more, in fact, than spikes in the top, which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save much fruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But if the fence were papered with fairy-tales, would he not stop to read them until it was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... odd coincidence, then, that the yacht yonder has a tear in her foresail exactly where our bowsprit tore the Speedaway's jib ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton

... we are?" He answered the unspoken question: "Above the library, between the outside wall and the chimney-stacks. You'd have to tear the house down to find it, without the Key." As he spoke, he was lighting two of the candles Achmet had provided us with, and although his hand was quite steady, he had become frightfully pale. I, too, felt myself growing paler, felt again the cold grue, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... he, wringing my hand with a grip that made it wince again, a tremble the while in his voice and something suspiciously like a tear in his eye. "Keep honest, and do your duty, and never forget your father, laddie, nor old Sam Pengelly, who'll be right glad to see you again when ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... trouble here?" asked the man in a deep, pleasant voice that carried even through the clamor into Jerry's consciousness. He raised his head and looked up through swollen and tear-drenched ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell

... of high disdainful beauty, pain-stricken on the fair brow, which Irene for a moment turned upon him. As he withdrew, the smile that lurked behind her scorn glimmered forth for an instant, and passed in the falling of a tear. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... turn back in pity and give the poor wretch half a handful of silver. When Taquisara once knew that he loved Veronica, he never reverted to a state of doubt. He fought against it, because his friend had loved her first, and rooting himself where he stood, as it were, he would have let the passion tear him piecemeal rather than be moved by it. But he never had the smallest doubt as to what the passion was in itself and might be, in its consequences, if he should be weak for one moment. Simple struggles, when they ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... months the number of the colonists was reduced to sixty, and when relief arrived it was reckoned that in ten days' longer delay they would have perished to the last man. With one accord the wretched remnant of the colony, together with the latest comers, deserted, without a tear of regret, the scene of their misery. But their retreating vessels were met and turned back from the mouth of the river by the approaching ships of Lord de la Warr with emigrants and supplies. Such were the first three unhappy and unhonored years of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... accompanied with the sound of a drum and rattle. The spiritualist then commenced chanting in a low, melancholy tone, gradually raising his voice, while the lodge, as if keeping time with his chant, vibrated to and fro with greater violence, and seemed at times as if the force would tear it to pieces. ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... ambition and hypocrisy." It is very easy for any one to charge a fellow-creature with immoral and unchristian motives; and it may carry with it the appearance of honest indignation, and of an heroic love of virtue, religion, and truth, when one can tear off the veil of conquest and martial glory from the individual, and expose his naked faults to pity, or contempt, or hatred. But a good judge, in forming his own estimate of the motives which may have given birth to ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... transportation. Now the enemy has destroyed our railroad tracks, our railroad equipment, and our rolling stock, which in the first month of the war, in 1914, was reduced by 50,000 cars, has undergone the wear and tear of fifty months ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... alike; that is, they all wore the same colored clothes. The loons and the geese and the ducks were there and playing in the sunlight. The loons were laughing loudly and the diving was fast and merry to see. On the hill where OLD-man stood there was a great deal of moss, and he began to tear it from the ground and roll it into a great ball. When he had gathered all he needed he shouldered the load and started for the shore of the lake, staggering under the weight of the great burden. Finally the Duck-people saw him coming with his load of moss and began to ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman

... fate: An empire from its old foundations rent, And ev'ry woe the Trojans underwent; A peopled city made a desart place; All that I saw, and part of which I was: Not ev'n the hardest of our foes could hear, Nor stern Ulysses tell without a tear. And now the latter watch of wasting night, And setting stars, to kindly rest invite; But, since you take such int'rest in our woe, And Troy's disastrous end desire to know, I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell What in our last ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... I must,—it's the first time I've been refused admittance to a lady's house in all my life! What have I done to deserve this thing?—If you keep me waiting long I'll tear that infernal ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... French wit can always justify it, being admirably ready to defend either side of any case. And conscience counts for so little, these bravi have so little value for their own words, that they will loudly praise in the greenroom the work they tear ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... the heroine of Palermo. The payment to their human help is no subject of jest to them. A woman whom they once called in was roundly told: "If it be a boy you shall be happy; but if it be a girl we will tear you in four parts, and hang you in this cave." The unhappy midwife of course determined that it should be a boy; and when a girl arrived she made believe it was a boy, swaddled it up tightly, and went home. When, eight days afterwards, the child was unpacked, the Nereids' rage ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... on their voyage home with cargoes of timber. One passed us so close that the captains spoke, and when the homeward captain shouted he was for the Clyde there were passengers who wished they were on board her, and the tear came to their eyes when they thought of Scotland and of those who were there. The Bird Rocks were quite a sight to us, but the Ayrshire folk held they were not to be compared with Ailsa Craig. On the Gulf narrowing until we could see land on both sides, a white yacht bore down to us and ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... these little enemies to the constitution had contrived and abetted Monsieur de Fleury's escape. Of their having rejoiced at it in a most indecent manner, he said he could produce irrefragable proof. The boy who saw Babet tear down the placard was produced and solemnly examined; and the thoughtless action of this poor little girl was construed into a state crime of the most horrible nature. In a declamatory tone, Tracassier reminded his fellow-citizens, that ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth

... second reign. But awful charms on her fair forehead sit, Dispensing what she never will admit: Pleasing, yet cold, like Cynthia's silver beam, The people's wonder, and the poet's theme. Distemper'd Zeal, Sedition, canker'd Hate, No more shall vex the Church, and tear the State: 40 No more shall Faction civil discords move, Or only discords of too tender love: Discord, like that of music's various parts; Discord, that makes the harmony of hearts; Discord, that only this dispute shall bring, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... names and addresses on the outside sheet of this pad, then tear it off and keep it?" asked the attendant. "We ask all visitors to do that simply as a guarantee of good faith. Then if you will write under it what you wish to find out from the professor I think it will help you concentrate. But don't ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, had made in exact imitation of the standard weight established by the deified Dungi, an earlier king." The stone now weighs 978.309 grammes, which, making the requisite deductions for the wear and tear of time, would give 980 grammes, or rather more than 2 pounds 2 ounces avoirdupois. The Babylonian maneh, as fixed by Dungi and Nebuchadnezzar, thus agrees in weight rather with the Hebrew maneh of gold than with the "royal" maneh, which was equivalent ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... trestle, during the stretching, she said several times, 'O God, you tear me to, pieces! Lord, pardon me! Lord, have ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... you do say things to me!" Mrs. Brookenham blandly broke in. She had sunk back into her chair; her hands, in her lap pressed themselves together and her wan smile brought a tear into each of her eyes by the very effort to be brighter. It might have been guessed of her that she hated to seem to care, but that she had other dislikes too. "If one were to take up, you know, some of the things ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... sublime smile and then knelt on his knees over the white cloth and before the missionary's tear-misty eyes wrote across the immaculate cloth in his own blood the words: "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei! Korean Independence ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... dog, and then languish on a sickbed for weeks, and repent and become good. Oh, no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange —nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 'I have served you faithfully—I who was brought up—Ah! my mother, my poor mother! didst thou dream I should come to this?' She dashed the tear from her eyes, and proceeded: 'Command me in aught else, and I will obey; but I tell you now, hard, stern, inexorable as you are—I tell you that I will go there no more; or, if I am forced there, that I will implore the mercy of the praetor himself—I ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... And Rome again is free! Is aught so fair 500 In all the dewy landscapes of the Spring, In the bright eye of Hesper, or the morn, In Nature's fairest forms, is aught so fair As virtuous friendship? as the candid blush Of him who strives with fortune to be just? The graceful tear that streams for others' woes? Or the mild majesty of private life, Where Peace with ever blooming olive crowns The gate; where Honour's liberal hands effuse Unenvied treasures, and the snowy wings 510 Of Innocence and Love protect the scene? Once more search, undismay'd, the dark profound ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... singer still sang on; She would not, would not go; She sang a song of the year before last That struck me as rather low. She followed with one that was high, That made the tear-drops start, That was "Hi-tiddly-i-ti! Hi!-ti!-hi!" The song that ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... Scottish hamlet, and to make me Minister of Cauldkirk, on a stipend of seventy-four pounds sterling per annum. I and my surroundings have grown quietly older and older together. I have outlived my wife; I have buried one generation among my parishioners, and married another; I have borne the wear and tear of years better than the kirk in which I minister and the manse (or parsonage-house) in which I live—both sadly out of repair, and both still trusting for the means of reparation to the pious benefactions of people richer than myself. Not that I complain, be it understood, of the humble position ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... not sending you any address, for I don't want you to know where I am, dear. I shan't write to you again unless I scribble things and tear them up without posting. This is final. When a woman makes such a break she must do it once and for all. Oh, Simon, when you kissed me two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are and how ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... black moire with an old-fashioned fan-waist. Flowers, too badly imitated to deserve the name of artificial, give a gloomy aspect to a head of hair which the chambermaid has carelessly arranged. Caroline's gloves have already seen wear and tear. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... eminent order which the king conferred on him—"it is almost incredible that I have always seen showers of prosperity fall upon all who surrounded me, and that not a drop ever reached me! If I were a jealous man it would be enough to make one tear ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the lustrous beaming of his eye, and from that time he looked at all things on the 'bright side.' His very love could think upon its object without a tear, and look forward to a pure and eternal re-union. At last the hour of dissolution came. I knew it by its unerring symptoms; yet still I listened to his passionate, poetic converse. It was for the last time; I was in the chamber of death. What observer can mistake it; the darkened ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... in time to see her unlock the closet door, and poor Mell tumble out, tear-stained, white, frightened almost out of her wits. She clutched her step-mother's ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... inflict fresh and worse tortures on their victims. It is as if victory could only be reached through the country's willing sacrifice. But every cry which the Germans provoke in the Belgian prison is heard throughout the world, every tear shed there fills their bitter cup, every drop of blood they shed falls back on their own heads. The world looks on, and its burning pity, its ardent sympathy, brings warmth and comfort to the Belgian slave. ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts

... you The object of my watches, when the night Wanted a spell to cast me into slumber; Yet when the weight of my own thoughts grew heavy For my tear dropping eyes, and drew these curtains, My dreams were still of thee—forgive my blushes— And in imagination thou wert then My ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... fled, but he followed and beat her even more. Then the woman wept. In her anger she turned and flung her basket at the man. And even then they were changed into stone. The woman's basket lies upturned beside the man. The woman's face is tear-stained, with ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson

... honest old, HONEST old idiot, there are scores of families here in this parish, within a stone's throw, that squabble, wrangle, all but politely tear each other's eyes out, every day of their earthly lives. It's perfectly natural. Where should we poor old busybodies be else. Peace on earth we bring, and it's mainly between husband ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... opposites are wont to be, however their exteriors may be restrained and kept quiet for the sake of tranquillity. The collision and antagonism of the interiors of such are disclosed after their death, when commonly they come together and fight like enemies and tear each other; for they then act in accordance with the state of the interiors. Frequently I have been permitted to see them fighting and tearing one another, sometimes with great vengeance and cruelty. For in the other life everyone's interiors are set at liberty; and they are no longer restrained ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... Robert loved his mother, he would not yield to Hugh Price. He would have suffered torture rather than caused his mother a single tear; but to yield to the ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... "There, there she is!" Young Jonathan Walcot, exasperated by his sister's sufferings, struck at the spot with his sword; whereupon Mary cried out, "You have hit her, you have torn her coat, and I heard it tear." This story had been brought to Hathorne's ears; and abruptly, as if to take her off her guard, he said, "Is not your coat cut?" She answered, "No." They then examined the coat, and found what they regarded as having been "cut or torn two ways." It was probably the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... my nice, new mud guard," spoke Cora. "See how it hangs down, like a dog's broken leg. Isn't it a shame? I guess we'll have to tear it off, so we ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose

... it is. Great sorrows are uppermost in the mind, and though every word brings a tear to the eye, and sends a pang to the heart, ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... to the floor. He bent to grasp it. Cochise dropped upon him and seized his throat. The slender sinewy hands tightened with frightful force. A few seconds of that throttling pressure would have brought unconsciousness to Lennon. In vain he sought to tear ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... girls hastened to the side of their father. They flitted helplessly about him for a moment, like pretty, distressed birds. As for Mr. DeVere, his hand went to his aching throat as though to clutch the malady that had so suddenly gripped him, and tear it out. For none realized as keenly as he what the attack meant. It was as though some enemy had struck at his very life, for to him his voice was his ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope

... (Getting up.) Torvald—it was then it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children—. Oh! I can't bear to think of it! I could tear myself into ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... his cabinet, He went from his own chamber straight Unto his only parents dear, Beseeching them with many a tear ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... and Martin tear through the quadrangle carrying a sponge, and arrive at the scene of action just as the combatants are beginning ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... against them seemed the more credible. After refreshing themselves, they consigned themselves to rest, and being roused without noise, about the fourth watch, took arms. Axes are distributed among the servants following the army, to tear down the rampart and fill up the trench. The line was formed within the works, and some chosen cohorts posted close to the gates. Then, a little before day, which in summer nights is the time of the profoundest sleep, the signal being given, the rampart was levelled, and the troops rushing ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... "The tear down childhood's check that flows Is like the dew-drop on the rose; When next the summer breeze comes by, And waves the ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... irregular passions, corrupt the understanding, which is the source of all virtue and morality. The passions, then, if properly regulated, are the gentle gales which keep life from stagnating; but, if let loose, the tempests which tear every thing before them. Too fatal observation will evince the truth ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... are in black, not such a rusty black either, and you may be sure she is the one who knows what to do with his hat. Their faces are gnarled, I suppose—but I do not need to describe that pair to Scottish students. They have come to thank the Senatus for their lovely scroll and to ask them to tear it up. At first they had been enamoured to read of what a scholar their son was, how noble and adored by all. But soon a fog settled over them, for this grand person was not the boy they knew. He had many a fault well known to them; he ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie

... think you that the company of women and children will save you, when the mightiest spirits (angels they call themselves) cannot now rend you from our grasp? As soon as we choose, we will tear your silly soul out of your carcase; and then we will make a veritable Lucifer of you. 'Lucifer! LUCIFER! star of the morning! how art thou fallen, and become as one of us!' Ha! ha! ha! yes! yes! you must go with us. We fancy you. For a callow priest, you ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... have much time to visit the Mappin Terraces, and it is of course very important that you should go there because of the bears. The bears by rights should be fed on umbrellas, because they suck the stick and the ribs of the frame for all the world as if they were pieces of asparagus, and tear the silk part very carefully into tiny little shreds. But umbrellas are very expensive just now and the keeper does not think they are very good for the bears either. It is better to give them oranges, but oranges are expensive too, so you must make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various

... given with respect to horned and hornless cattle, it is probable that the horns and skull would immediately act on each other through the principle of correlation. Lastly, the growth and subsequent wear and tear of the augmented muscles and bones would require an increased supply of blood, and consequently an increased supply of food; and this again would require increased powers of mastication, digestion, respiration, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... nine times, and found her the tenth behind a garbage barrel. Many fancied the secret marks on the "enumerated" tag—date, and initials of the enumerator—were intimately concerned with their fate. So strong is the fear of the law imbued by the Zone Police that they dared not tear down the dreaded placard, but would sometimes sit staring at it for hours striving to penetrate its secret or exorcise away its power of evil, and now and then some bolder spirit ventured out—at midnight—with a pencil and put tails and extra flourishes ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... didn't expect you'd give me the chance in just this way. I'm warning you that the next time you shove your coyote nose into my business I'll muss it up some. That applies to Miss Sheila. If I ever hear of you getting her name on your dirty tongue again I'll tear you apart. I reckon that's all." He drew his pistol and balanced it in his right hand. "It makes me feel some reckless to be talking to you," he added, a glint of intolerance in his eyes. "You'd better travel ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... life in Germany to declare that the Empire could not conquer by the sword alone. He did this in an address to the Upper Chamber in Baden, of which he was President, on December 15, 1917. "Power alone can never secure our position," he said, "and our sword alone will never be able to tear down the opposition ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... To negate everything, to kill one's desires and passions, to tear out of oneself illusions and whims that is the way to attain it. It means to hold fast your soul in the grip of self-knowledge and prevent it from dissipating ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... despondence, and pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in sunshine and rain; And the smile, and the tear, and the song and the dirge Still follow each other ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... making a public confession of one's faith, if it causes a disturbance among unbelievers, without any profit either to the faith or to the faithful. Hence Our Lord said (Matt. 7:6): "Give not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine . . . lest turning upon you, they tear you." Yet, if there is hope of profit to the faith, or if there be urgency, a man should disregard the disturbance of unbelievers, and confess his faith in public. Hence it is written (Matt. 15:12) that when the disciples had said to Our Lord ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... have liked them to be unhappy, but a few natural tears would have been a pleasing tribute. Not a tear was shed. Even the little Eva skipped joyously on the doorstep as the phaeton drove away. The idea of the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... deprived of armour, an elephant might be seen attacking him in the chest and crushing his head. Elsewhere might be seen elephants crushing numbers of men fallen down on the field. And many elephants, piercing the earth with their tusks (as they fell down), were seen to tear therewith large bodies of men. Many elephants, again, with arrows sticking to their trunks, wandered over the field, tearing and crushing men by hundreds. And some elephants were seen pressing down into the earth fallen warriors ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... The weasel is small, and any scar made upon its snow-white coat is doubly conspicuous. If the pelt is torn or injured it is rejected; so the trapper must take his captive clean and scarless. The weasel will not enter a cage trap, and the much used snap-jaw steel trap would tear the skin. But the weasel likes to lick a smooth surface, especially if it is the slightest bit greasy; so the trapper smears with grease the blade of a large knife and lays it on top of the snow, secured by a chain attached to the handle, ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... unaccountably, all these gentle or genial influences were scattered as if by something hellish, something diabolic. The face of the sweet little woman became fiendish in line. Her lips snarled, her hands clawed like those of a cat, and out of her mouth came a hoarse imprecation. "I'll tear your heart out!" she snarled. "I'll kill you soul and body—I'll rip you limb from limb!" We all recoiled in amazement and wonder. It was as if our friend ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... to me!' he stuttered out. 'I know not what I can do.' He began to tear the fur of his cloak and toss it over the battlements. 'The woman is my wife—wed by a friar. If this were a Protestant realm now—or if I pleaded pre-contract—and God knows I ha' promised marriage to twenty women before I, in an evil day, ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... to them from the stoop with wet eyes as they drove away in a carriage hastily ordered up from a livery stable. While they drove down town, the Magistrate's wife went up to the nursery and hugged her sleeping little ones, one after the other, and tear-drops fell upon their warm cheeks that had wiped out the guilt of more than one sinner before, and the children smiled in their sleep. They say among the simple-minded folk of far-away Denmark that then they see ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... turn over in his side. He had never known she had had a line of handwriting in her possession. This must be some scrap of paper, some last, last words she clung to with such anguish of desperation that she could not tear herself from them, and so had died leaving them in their secret hiding-place. The thought was a shock. The effort it cost him to regain his self-control was gigantic. But ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... reaction, or the coatin's of the stomach. Affectin' the action of the heart.... No, there's nobody else in the smoking-room. Party with the 'ook instead of a hand's watching of 'em play penny-pool in the billiard-room." Surely a tale to bring a tear to the eye of sensibility! But not to one that sees in mankind only a thing that comes and goes and pays its bill—or doesn't. The lady in the bureau appears to listen slightly to the voices that come afresh from the smoking-room, but ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... Gemini- Crimini! Nimini- Pimini Representatives of the Tartan hero, Who wildly tear a passion into rags More ragged than the hags That round about the cauldron go! Murderers! who murder Shakspeare so, That 'stead of murdering sleep, ye do not do it; But, vice versa, send the audience ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the lovely refrain of her tear-choked voice, "are standing on the wonderful threshold of life, waiting in dreamland for the dawn. And it will come, and with it the fairy prince, with whom you shall wander hand in hand through all its fairy rose-gardens; but I, dear ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... or fled under a hail of bullets from enemies commanded by generals without a tenth of his ability or prestige, we find him disguised as a postillion, cowering abjectly behind the door of a carriage whilst the French people whom he had crammed with glory for a quarter of a century were seeking to tear him limb from limb. His success had made him the enemy of every country except France: his failure made him the enemy of the human race. And that was why Europe rose up finally and smashed him, although the English Government which profited by that operation oppressed ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... cease, and Bok had the grim experience of seeing his magazine, hitherto proclaimed all over the land as a model advocate of the virtues, refused admittance into thousands of homes, and saw his own friends tear the offending pages out of the periodical before it was allowed to find a place ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... is overwork of the most disastrous kind; it means to drive the mental machinery at an unreasonable and dangerous rate. Worry gives the brain no rest, but rather keeps the delicate cells in constant and continuous action. Work is wear; worry is tear. Overwork, mental strain, and worry lead to a diminution of nerve force and to a prostration of the vital forces and causes a degeneracy of the ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... not to disparage the genius of Yeats and Synge; it is merely a statement of fact and an illustration of the eternal dualism of the Irish temperament, which Moore himself realized when he wrote of "Erin, the tear and the smile ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... confused, but he instinctively acknowledged that Graves was far his superior. After all his hopes and the kind interest of the coach it was a most bitter blow. Ken had never played so poor a game. The ball blurred in his tear-wet eyes and looked double. He did not field a grounder. He muffed foul flies and missed thrown balls. It did not occur to him that almost all of the players around him were in the same boat. He could think of nothing but the dashing away of his hopes. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... heart," said the old man, a shake in his own voice. Frances, looking up with her great pity into his stern, set face, saw a tear creeping down his cheek, toughened by the fires of thirty ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... him his seal and ring, To the Laird o' Cessford has ridden he - I trow when Sir Robert had heard his word The tear it stood ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... down a bit, we're almost at the house. You don't want to go in looking like a—a weeping willow! You'll spoil the effect of that red frock, if your eyes are red, too, and your cheeks all tear-stained. Here, ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells

... they do with the house, Margaret?" he asked, over and over, a furtive gleam of anxiety in his eyes. "They didn't tear it ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... staid groom behind her, to her brother's summer residence, not far distant. Clive had been with us in the morning, and had brought us stirring news. The good Colonel was by this time on his way home. "If Clive could tear himself away from London," the good man wrote (and we thus saw he was acquainted with the state of the young man's mind), "why should not Clive go and meet his father at Malta?" He was feverish and eager ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... perhaps the only town in France wherein the ancient custom of which we are about to speak still exists. When a death occurs, an individual, robed in a mortuary tunic, adorned with cross-bones and tear-drops, goes through the streets with a small bell in either hand, the sound of which is sharp and penetrating; at every place where the streets cross each other, he rings his bells three times, crying out in a doleful voice: "Such-a-one, belonging to the Confraternity of ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... possibilities to the young and the innocent, were thus published in their most odious details. At first, it is true, the decent draperies of a dead language were suspended before these abominations: but sooner or later some knave was found, on mercenary motives, to tear away this partial veil; and thus the vernacular literature of most nations in Southern Europe, was gradually polluted with revelations that had been originally made in the avowed service of religion. Indeed, there was one aspect of such books which proved even more extensively ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... of his alma mater were now closed to Sumner, not only during his life but even long after that. Such is the fate of revolutionary characters, that they tear asunder old and familiar bonds in order to contract new ties. In Washington he found a broader and more vigorous life, if less cultivated, and the Free-soil leaders with whom he now came in contact in his own State were much more akin to his own nature than Story, and Felton, and Hillard. ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... than his own. He played cards carefully; ate moderately at home, but consumed enough for six at parties. Of his wife there is scarcely anything to be said. Her name was Kalliopa Karlovna. There was always a tear in her left eye, on the strength of which Kalliopa Karlovna (she was, one must add, of German extraction) considered herself a woman of great sensibility. She was always in a state of nervous agitation, seemed as though she ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... folded the hands across his breast, and the limp fingers were delicate as the fingers of a sick child. Buck Daniels lay prone by the dead man weeping aloud; and Lee Haines stood with his face buried in his hands; but there was no tear on the face ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... mistress to her heart, and poured forth, with passionate vehemence, her prayers and tears and blessings. It seemed as if she could never cease, and Della twined her fair arms, jeweled, and white, and beautiful, beneath the thick black curls, which covered Minny's neck, and gave her kiss for kiss, and tear ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... full of lies and robbery." In the emblematic language of prophecy, the lion is taken as the fittest among animals to symbolize Assyria, even at this late period of her history. She is still "the lion that did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lioness, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin." The favorite national emblem, if it may be so called, is accepted as the true type of the people; and blood, ravin, and robbery are their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... presumed that the sagacious creature had been fired at before; but you observe, that he did not wish to harm the man. He appeared to say—You are in my power; you shall not go away: you shall not take your musket to shoot me with, or I will tear you to pieces." ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... Cannibal Islands," but to his amazement the Frenchman advertised it as the embalmed body of a South Sea man-eater, "secured at immense expense." Powers declared to his employer that the audience would discover the cheat and tear down the museum; but the "man-eater" drew immense crowds, and was regarded as the most wonderful natural curiosity ever seen in the West. The Frenchman was so well pleased with it that he employed the artist permanently ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... fright she had received in the morning, and, above all, after the threats addressed to her by the receiver. He continued, "It is a cheat; you had no more a bag of silver than a bag of gold; you don't want to pay me the postage, hey? Good! all the same; when you pass before my door, I will tear off your old black shawl from your shoulders; it is very threadbare, but it is ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... was now out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and Sonya, who had a tear-stained face, but ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... position into which we are drawn by a long course of detestable policy—policy arising at first out of circumstances, and eventually adhered to from those powerful prejudices which struck their roots so deep into the soil that the force of reason and philosophy has not yet been sufficient to tear them up. Peel, in one of his speeches on Catholic emancipation, bade the House of Commons not to deceive itself, and to be aware that if that Bill was carried, we must have Episcopal (or Protestant) England, Presbyterian Scotland, and Catholic Ireland. He prophesied ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... quarreling between us, bitter quarreling, and we said things to one another—long pent-up things that bruised and crushed and cut. But over it all in my memory now is an effect of deliberate confrontation, and the figure of Marion stands up, pale, melancholy, tear-stained, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... that you won't be happy till you've muddled your intellectual salvation according to your own notions. If that's the fact, the sooner you go about it, the better. Your hanging on at Saint Peter's is only so much wear and tear upon your nerves. Ours, too, when it comes to that. One doesn't get much sanctification out of a sermon couched in glittering generalities and delivered by a rector with a crumpled brow. Therefore the trustee of the college has told tales to the doctor, and the doctor is hinting the gist ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... was not a pleasant spectacle. I bought several hundred live carp—a cheap, bony fish—and put them in a ditch where I could take them with a net as I wanted them. The eagle would spring upon a fish, take one of her long hops into a corner, and tear off its head with one stroke of her beak. While I was curing her broken wing the creature tolerated me after a fashion, but when she was well she grew more and more savage and dangerous. Once a Dutchman, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... Persons is contrived with great Delicacy. Sin is the Daughter of Satan, and Death the Offspring of Sin. The incestuous Mixture between Sin and Death produces those Monsters and Hell-hounds which from time to time enter into their Mother, and tear the Bowels of her who gave them Birth. These are the Terrors of an evil Conscience, and the proper Fruits of Sin, which naturally rise from the Apprehensions of Death. This last beautiful Moral is, I think, clearly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... linger and linger; in winter this room was closed and seemed always bare and cold when she peeped into it; there was no temptation to stay one moment; and now she had to tear herself away. It must be Miss Prudence's spirit that brooded over it and gave it sweetness and sunshine. This was the way Marjorie put the thought to herself. The child was very poetical when she lived alone with herself. Miss ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... half-year of their married life. There was nothing to show for rent, nothing for Marion's wages, nor for the interest on capital represented by the plant, the license, and the ink; nothing, finally, by way of allowance for the host of things included in the technical expression "wear and tear," a word which owes its origin to the cloths and silks which are used to moderate the force of the impression, and to save wear to the type; a square of stuff (the blanket) being placed between the platen and the sheet ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... highly individualized and richly-coloured life of the Irish peasants in the mountains of Wicklow and of the West, a life, so the dramatists believed, still unspoiled by the deepening influences of a false system of education and the wear and tear of a civilization whose values are commercial and not spiritual or artistic. The school founded its own theatre, trained its own actors, fashioned its own modes of speech (the chief of which was a frank restoration of rhythm in the speaking of verse and of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... fate, to lose you now, And tear this bleeding heart asunder! Will you forget your tender vow? I can't believe it—no, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... Saturday, the 8th July, the Speaker himself, whilst being escorted to his coach by a company of soldiers, had been insulted by one in the ranks, who cried out to the surrounding mob "that now he was out of their charge they [the mob] should tear him in pieces."(881) A few days later (12 July) some prisoners of war were rescued in the streets of London by the mob, and the lord mayor received a sharp reprimand for not keeping better order in the city.(882) The Commons, in consequence, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe



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