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Thorn   Listen
noun
Thorn  n.  
1.
A hard and sharp-pointed projection from a woody stem; usually, a branch so transformed; a spine.
2.
(Bot.) Any shrub or small tree which bears thorns; especially, any species of the genus Crataegus, as the hawthorn, whitethorn, cockspur thorn.
3.
Fig.: That which pricks or annoys as a thorn; anything troublesome; trouble; care. "There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me." "The guilt of empire, all its thorns and cares, Be only mine."
4.
The name of the Anglo-Saxon letter. It was used to represent both of the sounds of English th, as in thin, then. So called because it was the initial letter of thorn, a spine.
Thorn apple (Bot.), Jamestown weed.
Thorn broom (Bot.), a shrub that produces thorns.
Thorn hedge, a hedge of thorn-bearing trees or bushes.
Thorn devil. (Zool.) See Moloch, 2.
Thorn hopper (Zool.), a tree hopper (Thelia crataegi) which lives on the thorn bush, apple tree, and allied trees.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thorn" Quotes from Famous Books



... show us old England all silver and gold, With the flame o' the gorse and the flower o' the thorn; We long for lush meadow-lands where we were foaled And boast of great runs with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... Williams himself was not long in coming to the Baptist position and passing beyond it. The Quakers found Rhode Island a safe asylum from persecution, whether Puritan or Dutch. More disorderly and mischievous characters, withal, quartered themselves, unwelcome guests, on the young commonwealth, a thorn in its side and a reproach to its principles. It became clear to Williams before his death that the declaration of individual rights and independence is not of itself a sufficient foundation for a state. The heterogeneous population failed to settle into ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... right man, and the concentrated and structural style has also its higher province. It would not do to employ either style in the wrong place. In a rambling discursive essay, for example, a mere straying after the bird in the branches, or the thorn in the way, he might not take the safest road who imitated Mr. Pater's ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... then had the damsel full great joy, and showed him greater semblance of love than she had ever before made, and they sojourned together a long while. At length it fell out that, as they were going one day hand in hand through the forest of Breceliande, they found a bush of white-thorn, which was laden with flowers; and they seated themselves under the shade of this white-thorn, upon the green grass, and Merlin laid his head upon the damsel's lap, and fell asleep. Then the damsel rose, and made ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... would have cut herself with knives, and have swallowed ashes whole, could she have believed that by doing so she could have been nearer her object. And she had no end of her own in view. That Peter, as master of the house, would be a thorn in her own side, she had learned to believe; but thorns in the sides of women were, she thought, good for them; and it was necessary to Linda that she should be stuck full of thorns, so that her base human desires might, as it were, fall ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... were the other inhabitants of this land and his clothing only differed from theirs in being bright yellow. But he had no hair at all, and all over his bald head and face and upon the backs of his hands grew sharp thorns like those found on the branches of rose-bushes. There was even a thorn upon the tip of his nose and he looked so funny that Dorothy ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... on her dressing-gown and hurried out; thinking by the way that she had got into a thorn forest of difficulties, and wishing the daylight would look through. Karen was sitting before the fire, wrapped up ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... QUICKSET, or WHITE-THORN.—This is in great request for making fences, and is the best plant we know for such purposes if properly managed. It is readily propagated by sowing the hips, or fruit, which does not readily grow the first season; it is therefore usual to bury them mixed with saw-dust, or sand, one ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... amid the forest gray, To save himself, pursued the youth forlorn; But all his schemes were marred by the delay Of that sore weight upon his shoulders born. The place he knew not, and mistook the way, And hid himself again in sheltering thorn. Secure and distant was his mate, that through The greenwood shade with ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... craggy hillside, Through the mosses bare, They have planted thorn-trees, For pleasure here and there. Is any man so daring As dig them up in spite, He shall find their sharpest thorns In ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... the banks of the river Kamtschatka, and of those that fall into it, but no where else; and that there are firs in the neighbourhood of the river Berezowa; that there is likewise the service-tree (padus foliis annuis;) and two species of the white thorn, one bearing a red, the other a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... gallant Highlanders. Afraid lest dawn should find his Brigade too far away from the position to rush it, he hesitated to deploy, and when at last he was about to give the order, a further delay was caused by a line of thorn bushes. The Brigade passed through or avoided the obstruction and was at the halt on the point of changing formation when the Boers in the advanced trenches, which had been so stealthily excavated that no one in the British Army seems to have been aware of their ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... barrow in Yorkshire—a woollen plaited shroud. This fabric was an advance upon the original northern savage costume—a sheep-skin fashioned and sewn with a fish-bone for a needle, sinews for thread, and a thorn for a pin. But we must imagine that some use was made, besides plaiting, of the spun wool, of which the early northern women have left us evidence, in the whorls of their spindles, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... great price, in which all our wealth may be invested. We need that One to be an undying and perpetual possession. There is One to whom our love can ever cleave, and fear none of the sorrows or imperfections that make earthward-turned love a rose with many a thorn, One for whom it is pure gain to lose ourselves, One who is plainly the only worthy recipient of the whole love and self- ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... chamber of death, and every where bones—human bones covered the rocky floor; but no sign of art or trace of religious obsequies rewarded my scrutiny. "Bless me!" said I, "what a journey I have had for nothing! This is merely the ordinary HOTTENTOT-HOLE style, with a stone instead of a thorn-bush to exclude wild beasts!" So I hastened forth, blaming the easy credulity that drank in traditionary tales of aboriginal tombs. At the entrance I found a negro standing, leaning on his musket; a brace of pistols were stuck in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... agents were indeed destined to be a thorn in Cicero's side as a provincial governor himself. When called upon to rule Cilicia in 51 B.C. he found the people quite unable to pay their taxes and driven into the hands of the middleman in order to do so;[122] his sympathies were thus divided between ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... say, the boughes were so broad. Of straw first there was laid many a load. But how the pyre was maked up on height, And eke the names how the trees hight*, *were called As oak, fir, birch, asp*, alder, holm, poplere, *aspen Willow, elm, plane, ash, box, chestnut, lind*, laurere, *linden, lime Maple, thorn, beech, hazel, yew, whipul tree, How they were fell'd, shall not be told for me; Nor how the goddes* rannen up and down *the forest deities Disinherited of their habitatioun, In which they wonned* had in rest and peace, *dwelt Nymphes, Faunes, and ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... the mosses bare, They have planted thorn trees For pleasure here and there; Is any man so daring, As dig them up in spite? He shall find their sharpest thorns In his bed ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... lustre shines, An' hangs her golden ear, An' nature's voice fra every bush Is singing sweet and clear, 'Neath some white thorn to song unknown, To mortal never seen, 'Tis there with thee I fain wad be, Mi ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... rose has its thorn. The thorn of the Parisian holiday-maker is the perpetual necessity of handing out small gratuities to a set of overgrown flunkies too ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... objective of the Russians was Berlin, there were many reasons why a bee-line course could not be followed. Germany had prepared an elaborate defense system to cover the direct approaches to Berlin, and the fortresses of Danzig, Graudenz, Thorn, and Posen were important points in this scheme. The nature of the country also adapts itself to these defensive works and would make progress slow ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... we owned, with looks forlorn, "Too well the scholar knows There is no rose without a thorn "— But peace is made! we sing, this morn, "No thorn without a rose!" Our Latin lesson is complete: We've learned that Love ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... is in a tantrum to-night, and would not come. That piece of his at Beaumanoir is a thorn in his flesh, and a snow-ball on his spirits. She is taming him. By St. Cocufin! ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... ideals for the sake of his own gain. From the length of his own experience, from the present weariness of his soul, he looked upon Alec more than ever as a boy to be shielded from the shock of further disillusion with regard to himself. He had not had Alec's weal a thorn in his conscience for ten months without coming to feel that, if merely for the sake of his own comfort, he would not shoulder that burden again. Now this conception he had of Alec as a weaker man, and of his ideals as crude and yet needing tender dealing, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... with respect to the fieldfare (turdus pilaris) which I think is particular enough; this bird, though it sits on trees in the daytime, and procures the greatest part of its food from white-thorn hedges, yea, moreover, builds on very high trees, as may be seen by the fauna suecica; yet always appears with us to roost on the ground. They are seen to come in flocks just before it is dark, and to settle ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... Gough is said to have suffered from an appetite for alcoholic drink until his death; yet he saved many a drunkard from this fatal appetite. Paul [5] had a thorn in the flesh: one writer thinks that he was troubled with rheumatism, and another that he had sore eyes; but this is certain, that he healed others who were sick. It is unquestionably right to do right; and heal- ing the sick is a very ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence [41] The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the army ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... rather than as diversions from the laws of nature. His allegory of the burning bush, which Moses saw at Horeb is typical, and presents a truth to which the whole history of Israel bears witness. The weak thorn-bush, which was not consumed by the fire, is the image of the idea of Israel, which almost cries to the people in their misfortune: "Do not despair! Your weakness is your strength, and by it you shall wound race after race. ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... hour—not a minute—not an instant, or—for ever! Young sir, you have already stayed too long, if you stay not always. Leave me to dream of you, and to die. The thorn is in my heart; it may kill me gradually. Go. Why, sir, have you looked upon me as man never before looked? Why, why have you mingled your false tears with mine, that were so true—and, oh, so loving! But what am I, who thus speak so proudly to a being whom, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... to their Christian hearts, and while the holy emblem filled them with hope and consolation, and seemed an omen of refuge from their Moslemin oppressors, a venerable Eremite, with a long white beard descending over his dark robes, and leaning on a staff of thorn, came forth from an adjoining cavern to breathe the evening air and ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli

... glacier on the top which needed some kind of clearness in the weather. Hearing all this I said I would remain—but it was with a heavy heart. Already I felt a shadow of defeat over me. The loss of time was a thorn. I was already short of cash, and my next money was Milan. My return to England was fixed for a certain date, and stronger than either of these motives against delay was a burning restlessness that always takes men when they are on ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... the Bombardon; Ophicleide, you're too far in front. Keep it going, Clarinets. Now then, all together! What are you up to, Cymbals? Let 'em have it!' And thus they came banging and booming and blowing through the covert. The bassoon tripped into a thorn-bush, the big-drum rolled over the trunk of a tree and smashed his instrument, the hautboy threw his at an escaping rabbit, while the flute-man walked straight into a pool of water, and had to be pulled out by the triangle. But the rest of them got through ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various

... lost faith in any one who had ever commanded it. Indeed I did not believe the story. I did trust Mr. Thorold. Nevertheless the cold chill of a "What if?" - fell upon me sometimes. Could I say that it was an impossibility, that he should have turned from me, from one whom such a thorn hedge of difficulties encompassed, to another woman so much, - I was going to say, so much more beautiful; but I do not mean that, for I do not think it. No, but to one whose beauty was so brilliant and whose hand was so ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... of half-clear light that came about four o'clock in the afternoon, I was roused to see a motion in the snow away below, near where the thorn-trees stood very black and dwarfed, like a little savage group, in the dismal white. I watched closely. Yes, there was a flapping and a struggle—a big bird, it must be, labouring in the snow. I wondered. Our biggest ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence

... of the forest now, and, high noon as it was, it was grey as twilight. Here, as we eased up for a moment, a dog-wolf crossed our path, and with snarling lip and shining fangs slunk into the thorn. Oh, for a leash of hounds now! But on we went, catching a glimpse of a grim head peering after us through the thorn—a head with blazing, angry eyes, that almost seemed to speak. It was lucky it was not winter-tide, or that gentleman ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... your largesses to the fair Greeks than a friend of mine was, who resided in Athens to acquire the language. He assured me that beauty there was in bud at thirteen, in full blossom at fifteen, losing a leaf or two every day at seventeen, trembling on the thorn at nineteen, and under the tree ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... field of battle, saw the Prince's Park, Cope's Loan, marked by slaughter in his disastrous retreat, the thorn-tree which marks the centre of the battle, and all besides that was to be seen or supposed. We saw two broadswords, found on the field of battle, one a Highlander's, an Andrew Ferrara, another the dragoon's sword of that day. Lastly, we came to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... — N. sharpness &c adj.; acuity, acumination^; spinosity^. point, spike, spine, spicule [Biol.], spiculum^; needle, hypodermic needle, tack, nail, pin; prick, prickle; spur, rowel, barb; spit, cusp; horn, antler; snag; tag thorn, bristle; Adam's needle^, bear grass [U.S.], tine, yucca. nib, tooth, tusk; spoke, cog, ratchet. crag, crest, arete [Fr.], cone peak, sugar loaf, pike, aiguille^; spire, pyramid, steeple. beard, chevaux de frise [Fr.], porcupine, hedgehog, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... through Camlin groves the live-long summer day; The waters run by mossy cliff, and banks with wild flowers gay; The girls will bring their work and sing beneath a twisted thorn, Or stray with sweethearts down the path among the growing corn; Along the river-side they go, where I have often been, Oh, never shall I see again the happy days I've seen! A thousand chances are to one I never may return,— Adieu to Belashanny, ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham

... lighted off his horse, And tied him to a thorn: Carry me over the water, thou curtal friar, ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... Nero! Follow us!" called Mr. Lion to the boy cub who was shot. "You will have to run on three legs, but you have done that before. You did it once when you got a big thorn in your paw. Come along, follow us and we will hunt in ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum

... Baltimore, Md., and the Lutherische Kirchenzeitung, published by Prof. Schmidt, at Easton, Pa., as able advocates of the cause of evangelical religion in our Church, and that we recommend them to the cordial support of our people." (16.) But the German paper soon proved a thorn in the flesh of the liberals. In 1841 "a Lutheran of Ohio" wrote in the Kirchenzeitung: "It is astounding that the Lutheran Church should support a paper like the Observer and nurse an enemy in its midst; the editor [Kurtz] himself ought to be honest enough to leave the Church ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... the witnessing we're sent to do. And the crowds crowd to listen, when it's given. This is the way the Witness did. He followed the clear Father-voice, though the road led straight across the regular roads through thorn hedges and thick underbrush. Should not the ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... to John Parkin wife towards her travell to London to get cure of his Majestie for the disease called the Evill, which her s. d. Sonen Thorn is visited ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... pleasure, give me pain, Give me wine of life again! Death is night without a morn, Give the rose and give the thorn." ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... began to tell me some other little mishaps to horses that could not be explained, bustling about the while. And before long I left the stables and went to my own quarters, with the thorn yet in my hand. It had been cut from the bush, and not broken, just as if it had been chosen. Now, if these hidden plotters wanted to frighten me, I am bound to say that they succeeded more or less. ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... erecting each and every of the above departments, according to modern taste and the most approved plans; the Ornamental Planting of Pleasure Grounds, in the ancient and modern style; the cultivation of Thorn Quicks, and other plants suitable for Live Hedges, with the best methods of making them, &c. To which are annexed catalogues of Kitchen Garden Plants and Herbs; Aromatic, Pot, and Sweet Herbs; Medicinal Plants, and the most important Grapes, &c., used in rural economy; with the soil ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... the middle of a thorn-thicket. But the thorns had died and rotted away; and now the apple-tree stood quite alone in a little ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... dog? If so, does the skunk have personality, the mouse, the flea, the worm, the tadpole, the microscopic animal? If so, do our other cousins have personality,—the trees, the vines, the flowers, the thorn and the brier, the cactus and the thistle, and the microscopic disease germs? If so, when did personality begin? With the first primordial germ? If so, were there two personalities when the germ split ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... said he, and stooping towards the fire showed me a middling-sized black thorn upon his open palm. "Not much to look at, master—no, but 'tis death sure and sarten, howsomever. I've many more besides; I make 'em into darts and shoot 'em through a blowpipe—a trick I larned o' the Indians. Aye, I spits 'em through a pipe—which ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... differ entirely from Mr. Whistler. An Artist is not an isolated fact; he is the resultant of a certain milieu and a certain entourage, and can no more be born of a nation that is devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a thistle.... The poet is the supreme Artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts; and so to the poet beyond all others are these mysteries known; to Edgar Allan Poe ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... a rugged ravine, has enabled the flora of north and south so to be brought together that, twined about with sinuous hop-tendrils, the oak, the spruce fir, the wild pear, the maple, the cherry, the thorn, and the mountain ash either assist or check one another's growth, and everywhere cover the declivity with their straggling profusion. Also, at the edge of the summit there can be seen mingling with the green of the trees the red roofs of a manorial homestead, while behind the upper stories ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... the river in good spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty. Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid thorn good-bye. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... that is thine have I kept for thee. And the Beloved to know and to have peace in the remembering. But what doth be the peculiar sorrow of they that have gone over-lightly, when that they shall meet the Beloved; for then shall there be a constant and inward regret, as a thorn in the heart, that they not to have observed alway that holy care of all which doth pertain unto love; and they nigh to moan in the spirit, if they had but known, if they had but known. Yet, in the end, of their pain, shall they grow unto all loveliness, if that now they have ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... sides are shagged with thorn, Where springs, in scattered tufts, the dark green corn, Towers wood-girt Harden far above ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... are still planted round houses to keep off witches, or sprigs of rowan are placed over doorways—a survival from the time when they were believed to be tenanted by a beneficent spirit hostile to evil influences. In Ireland and the Isle of Man the thorn is thought to be the resort of fairies, and they, like the woodland fairies or "wood men" are probably representatives of the older tree spirits and ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... chair and stood with his hand upon the back of it, looking down upon her as the fit of crying wore itself out. Poor little girl! he had seen her cry often enough before. A girl cries for anything, for a thorn in her finger, for a twist of her foot. He had seen her cry and laugh, and dash the tears out of her eyes on such occasions, oh! often and often: there was that time when he rushed out of the bushes ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... with tears incredible; but the Cardinal of Lorraine, fearing lest his Majesty should be moved with compassion, drove away the princess most rudely, saying that, if she had her due, she would herself be placed in the lowest dungeon." For them of Guise the princess was a thorn in the flesh, for she lacked not wits, or language, or courage, insomuch that they had some discussion about making away with her. [Memoires de Castelnau, p. 119; Histoire de l'Etat de France, Cant de la Republique que de la Religion, sous Francois II., ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... rose; cypress and orange; thorn and olive—the plants in which the buried lovers of ballad romance live again and intertwine their limbs, vary with the clime and race; and just as the 'Black Douglas' of the Yarrow ballad—'Wow but he was rough!'—plucks up the brier, and 'flings it in St. Mary's Loch,' ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... agitated and distracted country are doomed; but if they know not our griefs, neither can they dream of our consolation. We move like the delineation of Faith, over a barren and desert soil; the rock, and the thorn, and the stings of the adder, are round our feet; but we clasp a crucifix to our hearts for our comfort, and we fix our eyes upon the heavens ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... song, Voluptuous soul of the amorous South! Oh! whence the wind, the rain, the drouth; The dews of eve; the mists of morn; The bloom of rose; the thistle's thorn; Whence light of love; whence dark of scorn; Whence joy; whence grief; Death, born of wrong— Ah! whence is life ten-thousand passions throng?— Thence is ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... says he, "alcohol is classed among the stimulants, and opium and tobacco among the narcotics, whose ultimate effect upon the animal system is to produce stupor and insensibility." He says, "Most of the powerful vegetable poisons, such as hen-bane, hemlock, thorn-apple, prussic acid, deadly night-shade, fox-glove and poison sumach, have an effect on the animal system scarcely to be distinguished from that of opium and tobacco. They impair the organs of digestion, and may bring on fatuity, palsy, ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... don't want it? Are you worrying about a handful who think because they have been trained to like subservience everybody else ought to like subservience, too? The very existence of a movement like this is a thorn in their sleek sides. We are a reproach and a menace to such women. But this isn't a movement to compel anybody to vote. It is to give the right to those who do want it—to those signatories of the second largest petition ever laid on ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... hosts of the Rose display * Red hues and yellow in rosy field? I compare the Rose and her arming thorn * To emerald lance piercing ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... great marsh and the tumbling sea. From a distance the bare stems and velvet crowns of the pine-trees stand up like palms that cover an oasis on Arabian sands; but at a nearer view the trunks detach themselves from an inferior forest-growth of juniper and thorn and ash and oak, the tall roofs of the stately firs shooting their breadth of sheltering greenery above the lower and less sturdy brushwood. It is hardly possible to imagine a more beautiful and impressive scene than that presented by these long alleys of imperial pines. They grow ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... wonderful thought that perhaps she might do something for him. But what? She looked straight at him, and the innocent appeal sent a tiny thorn of doubt through his armour of complacency. Was she—after all? No, no novice could play the ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... picquet on the plain, the old cordon of pacing Grenadiers, the old camp-fire with the drifting smoke and arms piled beside it; and further North, from beneath a thorn, the flash of a bayonet told of an outlying sentry posted there to watch for the ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... great gifts, art using them for State and not for Church, Paolo mio, not for our Holy Church—I could not stay, because I love thee! I must have been ever chiding thee had I remained, as if God had made me for no use but to be a thorn in thy flesh—which ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... thorn or brier Make me a fire Close by whose living coal I sit, And glow like it. Lord, I confess too, when I dine, The pulse is thine, And all those other bits that be There placed ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... would be less blameworthy to take a bunch of thorns and draw them across your sister's cheek, or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across your brother's hand till the blood spurts, for that would damage only the body, but teasing is the thorn and the knife, scratching and lacerating the disposition and the soul. It is the curse of innumerable households that the brothers tease the sisters, and the sisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the shape of the features, or an affair of ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... and shall we fear The cross with all its scorn? Or love a faithless, evil world That wreathed his brow with thorn? ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz

... thorn trees break in two high over Cummen Strand Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand; Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies, But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes Of ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats

... had been a thorn in the flesh of her stepmother—a well-meaning, unimaginative, ambitious, and rather common woman. Coming into the Prim home as house-keeper shortly after the death of Abigail's mother, the second Mrs. Prim had from the first looked upon Abigail ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and the path is narrow and lined by thorn bushes, so the going is not easy; but the youth seems to float on ahead with mysterious ease, and we pant after him feeling as if our lives depended on not losing sight of him. At last the bushes get so thick that we have to push our way through, and we suddenly see him a good ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... visit to Mrs. Gaskell formed a cheering break in the journey. Haworth Parsonage is rather a contrast, yet even Haworth Parsonage does not look gloomy in this bright summer weather; it is somewhat still, but with the windows open I can hear a bird or two singing on certain thorn-trees in the garden. My father and the servants think me looking better than when I felt home, and I certainly feel better myself for the change. You are too much like your son to render it advisable I should say much about your kindness ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... was sick and in prison, was she not visited by Fenelon? Ah, 'twas worth the cost. Sympathy is the first attribute of love as well as its last. And I am not sure but that sympathy is love's own self, vitalized mayhap by some divine actinic ray. Only a thorn-crowned, bleeding Christ could win the adoration of the world. Only the souls who have suffered are well loved. Thus does Golgotha find its recompense. Hark ye and take courage, ye who are in bonds! Gracious spirits, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... feeble hold his hopes had upon him; how they were only stimulants to which he had recourse in an extremity. The conflict between his aspirations and his partial or total inability to realise them, tormented him like a thorn in the flesh. Infuriated by constant privations, his imagination lapsed into the dissipated, whenever the state of want was momentarily relieved. Life grew ever more and more complicated for him; but the means and artifices that he discovered in his art as ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... slaughter now; he lusted blood—the blood of the Anthropoid pack which from the beginning had hung upon his flank and been as a thorn unto ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... as thou wouldst pluck a thorn From out thy flesh; for why shouldst thou be born To bear a life so wasted ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... fresh footprints, and even seemed to obliterate them. For a few yards around the actual dwelling there was an unsavory fringe of civilization in the shape of cast-off clothes, empty bottles, and tin cans, and the adjacent thorn and elder bushes blossomed unwholesomely with bits of torn white paper and bleaching dish-cloths. This hideous circle never widened; Nature always appeared to roll back the intruding debris; no bird nor beast carried ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... me yesterday that some people fancy St. Paul was little and misshapen, and that that was his thorn in the flesh." ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... regained her feet in a flash, to find herself facing a dark beast, with a huge, bushy, white tail, held up straight like a pleased cat's—but this was a sign of warning, not pleasure—that shone ghostily in the gloom of the mysterious, dread thorn-scrub. And the face of the beast was the face of a black and grinning devil, and its eyes ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... thee yet again; but it shall be the last time; therefore take heed to what I say. Between Stargard and Pegelow there stands an old thorn upon the highway; there, to-morrow evening, by seven of the clock, my servant Caspar, whom thou knowest, shall bring thee three hundred florins; but on this one condition, that thou dost now swear solemnly to abandon this villainous ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... so said, the head of a huge black-thorn stick was half protruded across the table, causing renewed mirth; for, among other regulations, every cane, however trifling, is always demanded at the door; and thus a new subject of astonishment arose as to how he had ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... along the pond until they came to some small thorn bushes that grew on the bank. Bob showed her how to cast the bait by whirling it round and round and then let it fly out into the water. She tried several times until she got the knack of doing it, then threw in both lines and tied them fast to ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... love were suffered to cast gleams of light upon the saint's gloomy and thorn-strewn path. But nevertheless the text of which we are most often reminded in reading his pages is the verse of Amos: "Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?" ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... sessile, widest at the base and tapering to an accuminated point, an inch and a quarter the greatest width, and 3 inches & a 1/4 in length. each point of their crenate margins armed with a subulate thorn or spine and are from 13 to 17 in number. they are also veined, glossy, carinated and wrinkled; their points obliquely pointing towards the extremity of the common footstalk.- The stem of the 2nd is procumbent abot the size of the former, jointed and unbranched. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... succeeded badly, and stood before her, with downcast eyes, poking his thorn-stick into the mass of pebbles. Annie waited in silence, and that ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... there, her head fallen back against the closed door, her small hands lying half open in her lap. Under her closed eyes the dark circles of fatigue lay; a faint trace of rose paint still clung to her lips; and from the ragged skirt of her thorn-rent gown one small foot was thrust, showing a silken shoe and ankle stained ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... satisfactorily, at any rate for the old man and for her family. The Vavasors were relieved from all further trouble, and were as much surprised as gratified when they heard that she did her duty well in her new position. Arabella had long been a thorn in their side, never having really done anything which they could pronounce to be absolutely wrong, but always giving them cause for fear. Now they feared no longer. Her husband was a retired merchant, very rich, not very strong in health, and devoted to his bride. Rumours ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... repeating again with clumsy iteration the stale jest which seems to them so exquisite. Then their mood changes, and naked ferocity takes the place of ironical reverence. Plucking the mock sceptre, the reed, from His passive hand, they strike the thorn-crowned Head with it, and spit on Him, while they bow in mock reverence before Him, and at last, when tired of their sport, tear off the purple, and lead him ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... death of doctor; such a terrible amount of brag and big talk, always about himself; always dread his calls; can never get so far as to return; a regular thorn in the flesh. ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.

... latter's accomplices seated in solemn gravity, but not returning his salute as he was led along, for the sufficient if not immediately perceptible reason that they sat upon thorns, each upon one thorn a foot or so long, of iron. We may suppose the father of Frederick the Great to have had in mind this passage of Oriental life when he forced the prince to witness the execution of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... Lady Arthur said. "That reaping-machine does its work very well, but it will be a long time before it gathers a crust of poetry about it: stopping to clear a stone out of its way is different from a lad and a lass on the harvest-rig, the one stopping to take a thorn out of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... have three points in common,—they are all founded on resemblance. "Ireland is like a thorn in the side of England;" this is simile. "Ireland is a thorn in the side of England;" this is metaphor. "Once a great giant sprang up out of the sea and lived on an island all by himself. On looking ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... a log hut, where Colonel Wheeler used to shelter his corn. It sat in a lot behind a rail fence and thorn bushes, near the sweetest of springs. There was an entrance where a door once was, and within, a massive rickety fireplace; great chinks between the logs served as windows. Furniture was scarce. A pale blackboard ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... birth, Aphrodite, a mother of strife; For before thee some rest was on earth A little respite from tears A little pleasure of life; For life was not then as thou art, But as one that waxeth in years Sweet-spoken, a fruitful wife; Earth had no thorn, and desire No sting, neither death any dart; What hadst thou to do amongst these, Thou, clothed with a burning fire, Thou, girt with sorrow of heart, Thou sprung of the seed of the seas As an ear from a seed of corn As a brand plucked forth of a pyre, As a ray shed forth of the moon ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... policy of France is clear and definite; the French know what they want: it is to skin those German sausages, but the Germans must sing another song; France is not the only thorn in their flesh. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov

... was full of curiosity, wanting to hear and see everything, and made herself hated exceedingly. Her husband was a decent man, and for his sake many held their tongues; but had he not been there, it would have gone hard with her. This woman was a thorn in the eyes of us all.' His delight was great, when she was left behind at Rhodes, having strayed away to some church outside the town. 'Except her husband, no one was sorry.' But their peace was short-lived, for this active lady procured ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... settlers came to the country west and south of New England, they found another kind of crab-apples in the woods, truly native. The fruits were hard and sour, but they could be buried to ripen. The trees are much like a thorn-apple,—low, spreading, twiggy, thorny; but the pink-white large fragrant flowers are very different. The wild crab-apple was called Pyrus coronaria by Linnaeus, the "garland Pyrus." On the prairies is another species, Pyrus ioensis; it yields a charming double-flowered form, "Bechtel's crab." ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... Savoys Saxifrage Scarlet Runner Beans Seeds Sea Daisy or Thrif Seakale Select Flowers Select Vegetables and Fruit Slugs Snowdrops Soups Spinach Spruce Fir Spur pruning Stews Stocks Strawberries Summer-savory Sweet Williams Thorn Hedges Thyme Tigridia Pavonia Transplanting Tree lifting Tulips Turnips Vegetable Cookery Venus's Looking-glass Verbenas Vines Virginian Stocks Wallflowers ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various

... and Dakhala. One or another of the numberless deserted mud villages was usually chosen for headquarters and offices. With these for a nucleus, the battalion or brigade encampment was pitched in front and the quarters were fenced about with cut mimosa thorn-bush, forming a zereba. All along the Upper Nile, wherever there is a strip of cultivable land, or where water can be easily lifted from the river or wells for irrigation, there the natives had villages of mud and straw huts. In many places, for miles following miles, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... finger-tips, was all but complete and perfect now. Only Miss Quincey remained. St. Sidwell's in the weeding time had not been a bed of roses for Miss Cursiter, and Miss Quincey, blameless but incompetent, was a thorn in her side, a thorn that stuck. Impossible to remove Miss Quincey quickly, she was so very blameless and she worked ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... woods. Forest as a topographical suffix denotes a wild uncultivated tract of hilly or common land, more often than not quite bare of trees. The great expanse of Radnor Forest is well known to the writer and not even a thorn bush comes to the mind in picturing its miles ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... himself in a little, gray, shingled house down on Lonely Lake Road. It was a supreme moment to Athalia. She had expected an intense parting from her husband when they left their own house; and she was ready to press into her soul the poignant thorn of grief, not only because it would make her FEEL, but because it would emphasize in her own mind the divine self-sacrifice which she wanted to believe she was making. But when the moment came to close ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland

... cheered, but at the same time none ran away. Few in Thrums cared a doit for Charlie, but some hung on behind this troop till there was no turning back for them, and one of these was Buchan. He forced his wife to give Captain Body a white rose from her bush by the door, but a thorn in it pricked the gallant, and the blood from his fingers fell on the bush, and from that year it grew ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... to be shady cloister mew'd, To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon. Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood To undergo such maiden pilgrimage: But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies, ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... Oxted almost on the county border the track of the old Way and of the Pilgrims' Ways, sometimes coinciding, sometimes running parallel to each other, runs along the crest and the southern slopes of the chalk ridge. Yews and wind-bent thorn mark the ways, sometimes, as east of Gomshall, by a clear cut ridge in the hill, lined with ancient trees; sometimes, as under Denbies by Dorking, you can only pick out the path by solitary yews studding grass fields ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... in the homeward voyage was the first hundred miles west of Gibraltar; and it was a greater thorn in Nelson's side, because of a French seventy-four, the "Aigle," which had succeeded in entering Cadiz just after he got off Toulon. For the ordinary policing of that locality he assigned a division of three ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... flight it could have been righted in an instant. In one flight, in 1905, while circling round a honey locust-tree at a height of about 50 feet, the machine suddenly began to turn up on one wing, and took a course toward the tree. The operator, not relishing the idea of landing in a thorn tree, attempted to reach the ground. The left wing, however, struck the tree at a height of 10 or 12 feet from the ground and carried away several branches; but the flight, which had already covered a distance of six miles, was continued to the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... shoulder-straps were deserving of more respect, even by the President, than were mere Acts of Congress. This was a mistaken notion, but Fremont never could see that he had been in error, and from this time forth he became a vengeful thorn in the side ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... all. Other people drifted down—Marion Page who looked like a school-marm and rode like a demon; Eileen Shannon, pink and white as a thorn blossom, with the deuce to pay lurking in her grey eyes; Kathryn Tassel and Mrs. Vendenning whom he did not know, and finally his hostess Grace Ferrall with her piquant, almost boyish, freckled face and sweet frank eyes and the figure of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... like that of a rolling prairie farm in Illinois. Not one of the little, irregular morsels of land half swallowed by its broad-bottomed hedging, which one sees so frequently in an English landscape, could be found on this great holding. The white thorn fences were new, trim, and straight, occupying as little space as possible. The five amalgamated farms are light turnip soil, with the exception of about 200 acres, which are well drained. The whole surface resembles that of a heavy ground ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... me, my daughter, for I am not religious myself, and he was always too fond of holy words, which I thinks brings ill-luck. But his voice was as sweet as a thrush that sits singing in a thorn-bush, and between that and a something in the verses which had a tendency to make you feel uncomfortable, I feels more disturbed than I cares to show. But oh, my ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... rough, but little more than the gables and the outline of two broken walls remain, overshadowed by the ash trees that have planted themselves among the stones, the existing trees growing out of the remains of roots, all gnarled and weather-worn, of immensely greater age. In every crevice thorn, rowan, ivy, and fern have fastened themselves, softening and concealing the sanctuary's decay." ("St. Modan," by ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett

... to the wood and got it; I sat me down and looked at it; The more I looked at it the less I liked it; And I brought it home because I couldn't help it. [A thorn. ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown

... contentment that is more than climatic. There are no hard times on the Zone, no hurried, worried faces, no famished, wolfish eyes. The "Zoner" has his little troubles of course,—the servant problem, for instance, for the Jamaican housemaid is a thorn in any side. Now and then we hear some one wailing, "Oh, it gets so—tiresome! Everybody's shoveling dirt or talking about the other fellow." But he knows it isn't strictly true when he says it and that he is kicking ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... the splendid period of Arab rule reaches our ears. We are reminded that twelve centuries have passed away since the Prophet's chosen people conquered the Iberian Peninsula. The sons of Islam were a thorn in the sides of the Christians. Little by little they were forced back southwards. Only Cordova and Granada still remained in the possession of the Arabs, or Moors as they were called, and when Ferdinand the Catholic married Queen Isabella of Castile in the year 1469, only Granada was ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... and he raised a prophetic finger, "wait until Clip sails under her own colors. Then take note of her friends. This is the thorn in her side, as it were. She speaks of ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose

... of himself, in his great hunting-boots splashed with swamp mud, his buckskins marred with woodland thorn and thicket, but not a mark of honest toil about him. Had he been in fine broadcloth he would not have felt so humiliated; for the useless labor of play cuts a sorrier figure in the face of genuine work for the great ends of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... whatever of any man. And Alderon first returned to the encampment; but Rodriguez searched on into the night, searching and calling through the darkness, and feeling, as every minute went by and every faint call of Morano, that his castle was fading away, slipping past oak-tree and thorn-bush, to take its place among the unpitying stars. And when he returned at last from his useless search he found Morano standing by a good fire, and the sight of it a little cheered Rodriguez, and the sight of the firelight on Morano's face, and the homely ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... occurrence, for something of the same sort once happened to me. I am very well to do, and I am fond of what I believe is vulgarly called "globe-trotting." I do not care to be encumbered with too much luggage, and if there is a thorn to the rose of my sweet content it is the objection that my wife makes to my personal appearance. She will have it that a suit of thoroughly comfortable dittos is not the proper garb for a stroll on the Boulevards des ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various

... heart oppressed with a new and more bitter emotion. The company thought him happy in exclusive possession of the lovely girl's society—his side was pierced with a cruel, rankling thorn. ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... Spring, who was sorely distressed by the heat and the want of water on the downs. Every now and then he lay down, panting distressfully, with his tongue hanging out, and his young masters always waited for him, often themselves not sorry to rest in the fragment of shade from a solitary thorn or juniper. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... of the Monacans. They had discovered a trail which led towards the north, and that two white men were with the party, they were from the first certain. That this was the case was confirmed by a slip of paper which had been found fastened to a tree by a thorn. It contained but a few words, signed by Gilbert; Vaughan eagerly took it. "We are both alive, but our captors glance at us unpleasantly. We will try to escape; follow if you ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston

... Beauty, Modesty, or Fame. Divide thyself in four, and be His offspring by these noble three. Man's nature take, and slay in fight Ravan who laughs at heavenly might— This common scourge, this rankling thorn Whom the three worlds too long have borne. For Ravan, in the senseless pride Of might unequalled, has defied The host of heaven, and plagues with woe Angel and bard and saint below, Crushing each spirit and each ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... bonny may Was on the flow'ring thorn; And she waked him till the forest grey Of every leaf ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... keeper art of this my rural seat,[4] Kept at my charge to keep my garden neat; To train the woodbine and to crop the yew— In th' art of gard'ning equall'd p'rhaps by few. O! could I cultivate my barren soul, As thou this garden canst so well control; Pluck up each brier and thorn, by frequent toil, And clear the mind as thou canst ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... "Love hath sometimes the thorn alone, the rose being blasted in bud," uttered a sweet and sonorous voice with a little nasal accent, out of the myrtle-boughs that starred with bloom her hair, and swept the hem ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... a thorn in Gresham's side as long as he held office. If Finn should be acquitted, you ought to do something handsome for him." Whereupon Mr. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... wondered," said Penfentenyou, "whether it would puzzle a monkey?" He had forgotten the needs of his Growing Nation, and was earnestly parting the white-thorn stems with his fingers. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... Come among my folk. Take in thine hand the alms I set aside, and give it with kind words; hear their sorrows: they shall show you life is full of troubles, and as thou sayest truly, no man or woman without their thorn this side the grave. Indoors I have a map of Gouda parish. Not to o'erburden thee at first, I will put twenty housen under thee with their folk. What sayest thou? but for thy wisdom I had died a dirty maniac,' and ne'er seen Gouda manse, nor pious peace. Wilt profit ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... and shorn Of all thy primal glory, All leafless now, thy piercing thorn Reveals a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... so artfully concealed as to be found with difficulty, the last is very often seen. The Wren does not appear to be very careful in the selection of a site for these cock-nests, as they are called in Yorkshire by the schoolboys. I have frequently seen them in the twigs of a thick thorn hedge, under banks, in haystacks, in ivy bushes, in old stumps, in the loopholes of buildings, and in one instance in an old bonnet, which was placed among some peas to frighten away ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett

... birth, and I could not picture a more enjoyable way of spending it. I am here, out in the wilds, with three troopers.... We are nearly eighty miles from Buluwayo and thirty from the nearest troops. I have rigged up a shelter from the sun with my blanket, a rock, and a thorn-bush; thirteen thousand flies are, unfortunately, staying with me, and are awfully attentive.... I am looking out on the yellow veldt and the blue sky; the veldt with its grey hazy clumps of thorn-bush is shimmering in the heat, and its vast expanse is only broken by the gleaming white sand ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... bramble,—leaping, dodging, tearing, crashing. Leonorine the Timid uttered a cry, as her horse slid down a bank with his feet bunched under him; and the Lady Elfgiva dropped her reins to press her hand where a thorn had scratched her cheek. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... over it. There were two or three other people about, and some starved-looking horses. The dog was lying beside the fire, and there was a baby rolling about on the ground. A little pig was tied by one hind leg to a thorn-bush. ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... passed, and the occasional whiteness of a face at the back of a window indicated an interest in his affairs on the part of the fairer citizens of Seabridge. At the gate of the first of an ancient row of cottages, conveniently situated within hail of The Grapes, The Thorn, and The Swan, he paused, and walking up the trim-kept garden path, ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... in the moon who is a sort of aquarius. Grimm says: "Water, an essential part of the Norse myth, is wanting in the story of the man with the thorn bush, but it reappears in the Carniolan story cited in Bretano's Libussa (p. 421): the man in the moon is called Kotar, he makes her grow by pouring water." [256] The Scandinavian legend, distilled into ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... been awakened—shall I sleep? The World's at war with tyrants—shall I crouch? The harvest's ripe—and shall I pause to reap? I slumber not; the thorn is in my Couch; Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... undoing the lacing which confined one side, he drew out a flaccid bladder. "This is the sort of football we use here," he said, holding it up to Selby. "It cannot be easily rendered unserviceable by thorn, nail, or spike of any sort. If the bladder is injured, its place can be supplied for a few pence, and the leather casing will last for years. This is my blow-pipe," he added, producing a piece of tobacco-pipe. Undoing the mouth of the bladder, round which a piece of string ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... loved children, and best for their sakes are beloved of us here, In the world of your life everlasting, where love has no thorn and desire has no fear, All else may be sweeter than aught is on earth, nought dearer ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... up around his hard face like thorn-bushes around a rock in winter!" said Herbert, bluntly, for it enraged his honest but inexperienced boyish heart to hear this ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... permutation could not well be made, But scandal would such practices upbraid; In country villages each step is seen; Thus, round the whisper went of what had been, And placed at length the thorn where all was ease; The pow'rs divine alone it could displease. 'Twas pleasant them together to behold; The wives, in emulation, were not cold; In easy talk they'd to each other say: How pleasing to exchange from day to day! What think you, neighbour, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... to Ilion's city came by stealth A spirit as of windless seas and skies, A gentle phantom-form of joy and wealth, With love's soft arrows speeding from its eyes— Love's rose, whose thorn doth pierce the soul in ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... and hours which are devoted to the celebration of eminent BOOK-COLLECTORS! Let the sand roll down the glass as it will; let "the chirping on each thorn" remind us of Aurora's saucy face peering above the horizon! in such society, and with such a subject of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... door, he turned to say, 'Remember, you would not hear.' He was gone, having left a thorn with Honor, in the doubt whether she ought not to have accepted his confidence; but her abstinence had been such a mortification both of curiosity and of hostility to the Charterises that she could not but commend herself for it. She had strong faith in the efficacy of trust upon ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... things to consider, whether or no they should insist upon confining their operations henceforth to their own country. Some were for making a raid into Kansas, some for forming an alliance with the Indians of the Plains,[918] who, during this year of 1864, were to prove a veritable thorn in the flesh to Kansas and Colorado.[919] As regarded some of the work of the general council, Samuel Garland, the principal chief of the Choctaws, proved ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... but the first time that she looked at him be became as red as a carrot; for nothing in the world would he have looked a second time—he wriggled on his chair for an hour afterward as if he had been seated on a thorn; he told me afterward that the look had recalled to his mind all the histories of that impudent Bradamanti about the savagesses, which made him blush so much, my old ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... factiousness, and were especially kind to a poor little brown baby, which they handed round and nursed by turns, but the heat, the filth, and the stench of the ship defied description. At Mahar, one of the places where they landed, Burton injured his foot with a poisonous thorn, which made him lame for the rest of the pilgrimage. Presently the welcome profile of Radhwa came in view, the mountain of which the unfortunate Antar [119] sang ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... party on the height? With no token of her adventures but the pink wreath round her hat and the pink flush under it, Miss Hazel sat there a la reine; Mr. Kingsland at her feet, a circle of standing admirers on all sides; her own immediate attention concentrated on a thorn in one of her wee fingers. Less speedily Mr. Falkirk had followed her and now stood at the back of the group, silent and undemonstrative. Rollo had gone another way and was not ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... presented in the Assembly a petition signed by 5,931 men and women, praying for the just and equal rights of women, which, after a spicy debate, was referred to the following Select Committee: James L. Angle, of Monroe Co.; George W. Thorn, of Washington Co.; Derrick L. Boardman, of Oneida Co.; George H. Richards, of New York; James M. Munro, of Onondaga; Wesley Gleason, of Fulton; Alexander P. Sharpe, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... kept faith with the lion, or the lion with the fox, is not to be looked for. New disputes broke out, new battles were fought,—not now in alliance,—and the happiest day in the life of Louis XI. was that in which he heard that Charles of Burgundy, the constant thorn in his chaplet, had fallen on the fatal field of Nancy, and that France was freed from the threatening presence of the bold ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris



Words linked to "Thorn" :   thorn apple, common thorn apple, prickle, cockspur thorn, aculeus, fire thorn, pain in the ass, runic letter, bother, irritant, annoyance, pricker, rune, pain, hedge thorn, thorn-tipped, botheration



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