"Thorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out his beard That ev'n so white as thorn in blossom seems; He'll no way hide, whateer his fate may be, Then to his mouth he sets a trumpet clear, And clearly sounds, so all the pagans hear. Throughout the field rally his companies. From Occiant, those men who bray and bleat, And from Argoille, who, like ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... the little whirling Dun, the early bright Brown, the whitish Dun, the Thorn-tree fly, the blue Dun, the little black ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... a visitor in the night, as evidenced by a scrawled warning, on a dirty piece of paper, fastened to a stubby tree by a long, sharp thorn. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... took seven years in the doing—Ely would be won at last. To hold out doggedly as long as he could was his plan: to obtain the best terms he could for his comrades. And he might obtain good terms at last. William might be glad to pay a fair price in order to escape such a thorn in his side as the camp of refuge, and might deal—or, at least, promise to deal— mercifully and generously with the last remnant of the English gentry. For himself yield he would not: when all was over, he would flee to the sea, with Torfrida ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... said, "I will screw up my courage and kill that spider dead. I will take a thorn from the gooseberry ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... Constable took his departure with a curious smile. Langholm began to feel uneasy; his unforeseen sympathy with Steel assumed the form of an actual fear on his behalf. Severino was another thorn in his side. He knew that Rachel had been written to, and fell into a fever of impatience and despair because the morning did not bring her to his bedside. She was not coming at all. She had refused to come—or her ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... to whom their low estate was a thorn in the flesh, admonished Mosu to be sure to study hard. They hoped that he would make a name for himself and thus reflect glory on their family as well. They bought books for him, old and new, at the highest prices, and they always ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... something is, it will be advisable, familiar to many though the facts must be, to recapitulate, as briefly as possible, the history of the movement. Old as the story is, it is necessary to have some knowledge of it, for Social Democracy is the great, perhaps the only, domestic political thorn in the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... thorn bush growing just beside the place. The edge of the canvas caught on the thorns and when they pulled it away it left these threads. See, here are ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that is found in old manure heaps, straw stacks and hog lots carries eggs containing embryos of the Thorn-headed Worm. The white grub is eaten by the hog. The larvae of the Thorn-headed Worm is liberated by the process of digestion and becomes a parasite in the intestines of the hogs, where it develops into ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... much longer in this strain. We might give, likewise, the mythological cause assigned for the imputed melancholy, and add that some, not content with this, represent the bird as leaning its breast against a thorn— ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... drifts in a mountain pass to see how the Canuck saved flour gold. Once more he was on the trail, scuffling rocks which rolled a mile without a stop. Before him were the purple blotches which the violets made and he could smell the blossoms of the thorn and service berry bushes that looked like fragrant banks of snow. He felt again the depression of the silence in the valley below—the silence in which he heard, instead of barking dogs and laughing children, the beating of his own heart. He never had ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... 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 laughed ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... and deemed it a goodly forest for the greatest king on earth. At last he came to where another road crossed the way he followed, and about the crossway was the ground clearer of trees, while beyond it the trees grew thicker, and there was some underwood of holly and thorn as the ground fell off as towards ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... such pretty things now, it seems a pity not to wear them. It wasn't the fashion to wear them when you were young. I mean younger than you are now," she added, patting my cheek. "I am glad, Fred, that you are reconciled to the house. I know that I have been a thorn in your flesh for the last eighteen months on account of it. I didn't mean to be irritating about the moving, but I was, and my soul has been wearing sackcloth and ashes ever since because I was so nasty. You see, Fred, in the first place, though I pretended to be pleased at your selecting ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... word was given, the horses all got off well and Dexter immediately took the lead,—buzzing through the air like a humming-top,—followed closely by Lady Thorn, her nose just lapping his off jaw. For the first few seconds Mr. P. fell behind, owing to his fires not yet being properly under way, but the water soon bubbled merrily in his boiler, and his wheels began ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... Poland between them, which, after a desperate resistance on the part of the Polish Diet, was carried out in 1775. Austria secured Galicia, Prussia a part of Great Poland and, with the exception of Thorn and Danzig, what has since been known as "Prussian" Poland, while to Russia fell the ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... said Bent-Anat, pointing out the little yard of the hut which stood only a few paces from them. "That is where the fair, white girl lives, whom I ran over. But she is much better. Turn round; there, behind the thorn-hedge, by the little fire which shines full in your (her? D.W.) face—there she sits, with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... before we could have the pony-chaise and go together to Harold's grave. The great, massive, Irish granite cross was not ready then, and there was only the long, very long, green mound, at my mother's feet. There lay two wreaths on it. One was a poor thorn garland—for his own Hydriot children had, we heard, never left it untended all the winter—the other was of a great white-flowered rhododendron that was peculiar ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blindness, which had not appeared the day before. He hears perfectly, and he eats, and with appetite, when the food is put into his mouth. Gave him two large spoonfuls of the castor-oil mixture daily; this consists of three parts of castor-oil, two of syrup of buck-thorn, and one of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Parys and that of Costantynoble: for thei were bothe on, made of russches of the see. But men han departed hem in two parties: of the whiche, o part is at Parys, and the other part is at Costantynoble. And I have on of tho precyouse thornes, that semethe licke a white thorn; and that was zoven to me for gret specyaltee. For there are many of hem broken and fallen into the vesselle, that the croune lythe in: for thei breken for dryenesse, whan men meven hem, to schewen hem to grete lords, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... of Kingston, from whom we received much valuable information. The colored population are opposed to the apprenticeship, and all the influence which they have, both in the colony and with the home government, (which is not small,) is exerted against it. They are a festering thorn in the sides of the planters, among whom they maintain a fearless espionage, exposing by pen and tongue their iniquitous proceedings. It is to be regretted that their influence in this respect is so sadly weakened by ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... yon widow'd, solitary thing That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; 130 She, wretched matron, forc'd in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn; She only left of all the harmless train, 135 The sad historian of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... great powers in its neighborhood as it was when the Assyrian armies first penetrated its recesses. Nature seems to have constructed it to be a nursery of hardy and vigorous men, a stumbling-block to conquerors, a thorn in the side of every powerful empire which arises in this part of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... not yet lost in the high twilight, to be forgotten when love's sun should rise, in peace, or storm, as rise he must. Under her feet, low, virgin flowers still bloomed in dusk, such as she should find not again in the rose gardens or the thorn-land that lay before her. In maidenhood's tender eyes the greater tenderness of woman awaited still ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... a garden alley, between a row of quince-trees and a hedge of Christ's-thorn; at one end was a fountain in a great basin of porphyry, at the other a little temple, very old and built for the worship of Isis, now an oratory under the invocation of the Blessed Mary. The two young men made a ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... he was on his way to his cross, a bird, pitying the weary sufferer bearing his heavy burden, flew down, and plucked away one of the thorns that pierced his brow. As it did so, the blood spurted out after the thorn, and splashed the breast of the bird. Ever since that day the bird has had a splash of red on its bosom, whence it is called robin-redbreast. Certainly the love of the Bethany home drew from the breast of Jesus many a thorn, and blessed his ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... but nature in harmony produces living things; so man when first conceived within the womb, his hands, his feet, and all his separate members, his spirit and his understanding, of themselves are perfected; but who is he who does it? Who is he that points the prickly thorn? This too is nature, self-controlling. And take again the different kinds of beasts, these are what they are, without desire on their part; and so, again, the heaven-born beings, whom the self-existent (Isvara) rules, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... common very well. It was, for the most part, very uneven ground, covered with heather and dark-green bushes, with here and there a scrubby thorn tree. There were also open spaces of fine, short grass, with ant-hills and mole turns everywhere—the worst place I ever knew for a ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, who had been a thorn in the flesh of Davis from the beginning in his advocacy of foolish and impossible measures of compromise now took his position for war to the death. In a fiery speech in North Carolina following ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... waters of bitterness. annoyance, grievance, nuisance, vexation, mortification, sickener[obs3]; bore, bother, pother, hot water, "sea of troubles" [Hamlet], hornet's nest, plague, pest. cancer, ulcer, sting, thorn; canker &c. (bane) 663; scorpion &c. (evil doer) 913; dagger &c. (arms) 727; scourge &c. (instrument of punishment) 975; carking care, canker worm of care. mishap, misfortune &c. (adversity) 735; desagrement[Fr], esclandre[Fr], rub. source of irritation, source of annoyance; wound, open sore; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to me, a thorn in the flesh. Contagiously you bring to me mistrust Of all my landmarks, when, as here to-night, Out of the midst of every pleasant gift The world can offer you, you raise your voice In scoffing irony against each face, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... and shrubs are the white thorn, maple-leaved or Virginia thorn (suitable for hedging), hawthorn, wild May cherry, or service berry, water beech, fringe tree, red bud, black alder, common alder, sumach, elder, laurel, witch-hazel, hazel-nut, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... hills whose sides are shagged with thorn, Where springs, in scattered tufts, the dark green corn, Towers wood-girt Harden far above ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... of ragged stubble, wrangled With rank weeds, and shocks of tangled Corn, with crests like rent plumes dangled Over Harvest's battle-piain; And the sudden whir and whistle Of the quail that, like a missile, Whizzes over thorn and thistle, And, a ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... lovely dame Like 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 maid Who ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... bits of almost pure plasm, and, as they live in crowds, dividing and subdividing, but never dying, make excellent mouthfuls for a small feeder. Those with the more flint in their skins were the more apt to survive and "breed." The threads of flint increase until they form a sort of thorn-thicket round a little social group, or a complete lattice round an individual body. Next, spikes or spines jut out from the lattice, partly for additional protection, partly to keep the little body afloat ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... the following passage from a letter written by Darwin, Aug. 7, 1868, to G.H. Lewes; "That Natural Selection would tend to produce the most formidable thorns will be admitted by every one who has observed the distribution in South America and Africa (vide Livingstone) of thorn-bearing plants, for they always appear where the bushes grow isolated and are exposed to the attacks of mammals. Even in England it has been noticed that all spine-bearing and sting-bearing plants are palatable to quadrupeds, when ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... recognized as King of Poland again after the defeat of the Swedish King at Poltava, as Stanislaus retired, knowing that he could expect no further support from Sweden. Peter renewed his alliance at Thorn with ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... brother, holy Mecca is ahead, and the profane robber behind; if you come forward you escape, but if you stay here you die!" During the night journey of the caravan, and in the track of the desert, it is fascinating to dose under the acacia-thorn tree; but, on this indulgence, we must resign all thoughts ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... demands pressure to appear, and great gulps of ale. Vastly does she swell the chests of her island children, but with the modesty of a maid at the commencement. Precedence again disturbed the minds of the company. At last the red-faced young farmer led off with 'The Rose and the Thorn.' In that day Chloe still lived; nor were the amorous transports of Strephon quenched. Mountainous inflation—mouse-like issue characterized the young farmer's first verse. Encouraged by manifest approbation he now told Chloe that he 'by Heaven! never would plant in that bosom a thorn,' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... looked upon the river, which was not more than a couple of hundred yards from the terrace or platform on which it stood. The ground here sloped rapidly to the banks, and, like that in the front, was a wilderness with rock and patches of tall fern and thickets of thorn and bramble, with a few trees of great size. Nor was wild life wanting in this natural park; some deer were feeding near the bank, while on the water numbers of wild duck and other water-fowl were disporting ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... so many Christian men so little joy in their lives? Because they look for it in all sorts of wrong places, and seek to wring it out of all sorts of sapless and dry things. 'Do men gather grapes of thorns?' If you fling the berries of the thorn into the winepress, will you get sweet sap out of them? That is what you are doing when you take gratified earthly affections, worldly competence, fulfilled ambitions, and put them into the press, and think that out of these you can squeeze the wine of gladness. No! No! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... flowers. He is a prophet of the rain, and the country people call him the rain crow. All his notes are harsh and verge on the weird. His nesting-instincts seem to lead him, or rather her, to the thorn-bushes as inevitably as the grass finch's ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... nearer to the browny fence they saw that it was a great hedge about eight feet high, made of piled-up thorn bushes. ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... in that way which alone seemeth to me right—and thou, with thy 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 I ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Joseph W. Thorn, Iuka, Miss., assignor to himself and M.W. Beardsley, of same place.—In this machine there is a new construction of the brush drum for simplifying the same, and facilitating the application of the brush wings, so that they can be readily taken off and put on; also, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... Alsace-Lorraine, but no one yet has dared to think of what our existence would be if today a new kingdom of Poland were founded. Formerly it was a passive power. Today it would be an active enemy supported by the rest of Europe. As long as it would not have gained possession of Danzig, Thorn, and West Prussia, and I know not what else the excitable Polish mind might crave, it would always be the ally of our enemies. It indicates, therefore, insufficient political skill or political ignorance if we rely in any way on the Polish nobles for the safety of our eastern frontier, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... hand and looked kindly on him, and the Sea-eagle followed him, murmuring an old song of the harvest-field, and they went together by a path through a thicket of white-thorn till they came unto a grassy place. There then they sat them down, and ate and drank what they would, sitting by the lip of the pool till a waning moon was bright over their heads. And Hallblithe made no semblance of content; but the Sea- eagle and his damsel were grown merry ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... grew with my growth, till, as we reached years of maturity, the consciousness that he, my senior by only a few hours, was yet to take precedence over me—to possess all that I coveted—became a thorn in my side whose rankling presence I never for a single waking hour forgot; it embittered my enjoyment of the present, my hopes and plans ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... fires. Edward had never seen her look so handsome; but his attention was distracted from her at that instant by some rough, prickly shrubs, near which they were passing. He put out his hand instinctively to keep them from touching his companion, and a sharp thorn pierced his palm. He immediately affected ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... thorn, What his attire? 'Lo! it was torn, Marred with the mire, And but the eyes of him ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thicker than the thinnest wafer. The back was marked with curved lines, exactly in the manner I have represented. It shrank instantly when touched. The two last joints of the long legs were furnished with thorn-like spikes. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... scheme for a time. Your cousin did the Fronde an ill turn when he advised you to go to Paris; you have proved a thorn in our side from the very ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... seems but yesterday, so fresh is that scene in my memory; and, I doubt not, were the period ten times multiplied, it would be as vivid still to us—the surviving actors in that drama! The touch of time, which blunts the piercing thorn, as well as steals from the rose its lovely tints, is powerless here, unless to give darker shades to that picture engraven on our souls; and tears—ah, they only make it ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... Thorwald, that instead of the thorn there came up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier there came up ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... in the Peninsula nor persecution in the Colony itself could totally extinguish. No Filipino, at that period, dreamed of absolute independence, but the few who had been taught by their masters to hope for equal laws, agitated for their promulgation and became a thorn in the side of the Monastic Orders. Only as their eyes were spontaneously opened to liberty by the Spaniards themselves did they feel ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... was careful; he was a warm man; but he had no one to leave his money to. There it was! He didn't know! And there was that fellow Chamberlain! For James' political principles had been fixed between '70 and '85 when 'that rascally Radical' had been the chief thorn in the side of property and he distrusted him to this day in spite of his conversion; he would get the country into a mess and make money go down before he had done with it. A stormy petrel of a chap! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with the lifted hands and thorn-crowned head, Still conquers Death, though life itself be fled;— HIS CROSS ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... Of autumn sunset on eternal snows: And His deep eyes within, Such nameless beauties, wondrous glories dwelt, The monk in speechless adoration knelt. In each fair hand, in each fair foot, there shone The peerless stars He took from Calvary: Around His brows, in tenderest lucency, The thorn-marks lingered, like the flush of dawn; And from the opening in His side there rilled A light, so dazzling, that the room was filled With heaven: and transfigured in his place, His very breathing stilled, The friar held his robe before his face, And heard the angels singing! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... feeble homage, Witness to the Truth, Thou art the King, crowned by thy witnessing!" I die in soul, and fall down worshipping. Art glories vanish, vapours of the morn. Never but Thee was there a man in sooth, Never a true crown but thy crown of thorn. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... heard nothing, and he waded on again, until the water grew deep. At this point he marked a little below him a clump of trees on the farther side; and reflecting that that side—if he could reach it unseen—would be less suspect, he swam across, aiming for a thorn bush which grew low to the water. Under its shelter he crawled out, and, worming himself like a snake across the few yards of grass which intervened, he stood at length within the shadow of the trees. A moment he paused to shake himself, and then, remembering that he was still within a mile ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... 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 any stable polity. After two generations ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... expect you to go to the man whose happiness I have endangered, if not destroyed. I should expect you to tell Don Orsino Saracinesca enough of the truth to make him understand my action. But I know you far too well to imagine that you would willingly take from my life one thorn of the many you have planted in it. I will write to Don Orsino myself. I think you need not fear him—I am sorry that you need not. But I shall not tell him more than is necessary. You will remember, I hope, that such discretion as I may show, is not ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... is a man that he should not run with his brothers?" said Mowgli. "I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... careless as a beggar; but walking, walking ever, till I fairly walked myself off my legs,—dying walking! The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing), with my breast against this thorn of a desk, with the only hope that some pulmonary affliction may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's report of the clerks in the War-office (Debates in this morning's "Times"), by which it appears, in twenty years as many clerks have ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... a thorn? Then count it not a whit! Man is well done with it; Soon as he's born He should all means essay To put the plague away; And I, war-worn, Poor captured fugitive, My life most gladly give - I might have ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Lincoln, which fitted him to cope with the most expert politicians, albeit their vanity would not let them always or promptly acknowledge it. When Chief Justice Taney died, the President had already planned to fill up the vacancy and at the same time shelve that thorn in his side, Salmon P. Chase. But always keeping his own counsel, he was mute on that head, when an important deputation attended to recommend Chase. After hearing the address, the President asked for the engrossed memorial to be left ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... nation, and coax or compel the Japanese to be more sociable and more human. All were in vain until the peaceful armada, under the flag of thirty-one stars, led by Matthew Calbraith Perry,[10] broke the long seclusion of this Thorn-rose of the Pacific, and the unarmed diplomacy of Townsend Harris,[11] brought Japan into the brotherhood of commercial and ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... irritable, is the conditional tax laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of internal imagery makes him hasty, quick, nervous as a haunted hunted man: minds of coarser web heed not how small a thorn rends one of so delicate a texture; they cannot estimate the wish that a duller sword were in a tougher scabbard; the river, not content with channel and restraining banks, overflows perpetually; the extortionate ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... grass-grown monticule, backed by a row of elms, which amid their dark foliage showed here and there a single bough of verdigris-green or lemon-yellow—first harbingers of autumn. Into the open now, small rough fields dotted with thorn bushes and bramble-brakes on the one side; and on the other the shining waters of the Haven. Through the hamlet of Lampit, the rear of whose dilapidated sheds and dwellings abut on reed-beds and stretches of unsightly slime and ooze. A desolate spot, bleak and wind-swept ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of peace, and comfort, and calm preparation for the change to which he was hastening;—instead of this, that a son, who had always professed respect and affection for his father, should thrust the most painful thorn of all into the side of a sinking, broken down, dying man, is so abhorrent from every feeling, not only of a truly noble and generous spirit, but of mere ordinary humanity,—is so utterly "unprincipled," ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... year comes this period to every company—the time when the accounts department becomes, instead of an active thorn in the company's flesh, the real, essential hub of the whole wheel; the time when the adding machines are never still and the rooms resound with the rustle and stir of a thousand sheets of figures, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... infrequent case in modern biography. A man of genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of physical laws, self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a "discomfortable cousin," a thorn to himself ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... miracle could reform the wayward girl; but the miracle had been wrought, as was fully proved during the remainder of Fanny's stay at Woodville. It did not seem possible that the gentle and obliging girl, who was a blessing to all in the house, had ever been the grief and the sorrow of her friends, a thorn and a torment to all who ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... remembered the picture of Christ which the good man in the pulpit had drawn, sitting in a mockery of purple, receiving the open-palmed blows of cowards. In his extremity the story recurred with sharp insistence and all night he had been haunted by this thorn-crowned remembrance. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... hundred miles from Boston is a gravestone the epitaph upon which, to all who knew the parties, borders strongly upon the burlesque. A widower who within a few months buried his wife and adopted daughter, the former of whom was all her life long a thorn in his flesh, and whose death could not but have been a relief, wrote thus: "They were lovely and beloved in their lives, and in death were not divided." Poor man! Well he knew how full of strife and sorrow an evil woman can ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... rather jealous of Amy because the latter was a greater favorite than herself, and just at this time several trifling circumstances occurred to increase the feeling. Amy's dainty pen-and-ink work entirely eclipsed May's painted vases—that was one thorn. Then the all conquering Tudor had danced four times with Amy at a late party and only once with May—that was thorn number two. But the chief grievance that rankled in her soul, and gave an excuse for her unfriendly conduct, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new, And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... friends he has brought out against us," said the steed. "If they catch us it will go ill with us. Throw the thorn whip behind us, but be sure you throw it clear and do not let it touch even ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... the rocks and caves, was the cave bear, as his slighter brother, the grizzly, was lord of the thick woods below, and as the dappled lion—the lion of those days was dappled—was lord of the thorn-thickets, reed-beds, and open plains. He was the greatest of all meat-eaters; he knew no fear, none preyed on him, and none gave him battle; only the rhinoceros was beyond his strength. Even the mammoth shunned his country. This invasion perplexed him. He noticed these new beasts were shaped ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... experience of one man will often come in opportunely where that of another falls short. The experiences of several will supplement each other, and form something like a perfect whole; this is what I hoped to obtain. But there is no rose without a thorn; if it has its advantages, it also has its drawbacks. The drawback to which one is liable in this case is that someone or other may think he possesses so much experience that every opinion but his own is worthless. It is, of course, regrettable when experience takes ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... xii. I, "I will praise Thee, O Lord, because Thou wast angry with me: Thine anger will depart and Thou wilt comfort me." "The text applies," he says, "to two men who were going abroad on a mercantile enterprise, one of whom, having had a thorn run into his foot, had to forego his intended journey, and began in consequence to utter reproaches and blaspheme. Having afterward learned that the ship in which his companion had sailed had sunk to the bottom of the sea, he confessed his shortsightedness and praised ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... and say, All 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, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... shale wall and took to the fields. A little footpath lay among the trees at the meadow end and Anthony Barraclough made for it with all possible dispatch jumping a brook and forcing his way through a fringe of thorn and bramble. There had been no rain for some weeks and the going was dry, a circumstance he noted with satisfaction, for your average Cornish footpath is as much a waterway as a thoroughfare for pedestrians. ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... the West Indies, which his friends put him upon for his health's sake, the little schooner in which he was embarked was suddenly attacked by some monstrous fish, probably a thorn-back whale, who gave it such a terrible stroke with his tail as started a plank. The frightened crew flew to their pumps, but in vain; for the briny flood rushed with such fury into their vessel, that they were glad to quit her, and tumble as ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... elect before conversion are no more, if quite so much) cannot do this, how shall they attain thereto, being now not only corrupted and infected, but depraved, bewitched and dead; swallowed up of unbelief, ignorance, confusion, hardness of heart, hatred of God, and the like? When a thorn by nature beareth grapes, and a thistle beareth figs, then may this thing be (Matt 7:16-18). To lay hold of and receive the gospel by a true and saving faith, it is an act of the soul as made a new creature, which is the workmanship of God: 'Now he that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... black snails, which are to be found during summer in every hedgerow, rub it over the wart, and then hang it on a thorn. This must be done nine nights successively, at the end of which times the wart will completely disappear. For as the snail, exposed to such cruel treatment, will gradually wither away, so it is believed the wart, being impregnated with its matter, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... cling to the thorn, Shrivelled and red; The limbs long dead Clutch at a leaf long torn— It taps all day on the spikes As the spume licks ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... the character of being "a terrible place," and amongst its swamps and thickets the huge red deer, with his immense antlers, and the wild ox found a refuge. When it received a name, it became known as Thorn-Ey, that is, Isle of Thorns; in later days people called it Thorney Island. Tradition says that in the midst of the wilderness there was erected, in the year 154 A.D., a Temple of Apollo. We are next told that King Lucius, who was said to have been ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in the tangled thorn The new-moon hangs a horn, Or, 'mid the sunset's islands, Guides a canoe, The brown owl in the silence Calls, and the dew Beads here its orbs of damp, ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... thorn-scarred, sun-blistered hands clasped together almost convulsively. But she met his look of concern with ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... thorn with inoculated good fruit is signified those natures which of themselves were not disposed towards virtue, but by the aid of their preceptors they have the repudation of ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... of the country called Red Russia, the palatinate of Belz, and a portion of the province of Volhynia. But even this did not satisfy the spoliators. The treaty was scarcely signed when Frederick extended the limits of his acquisitions in the neighbourhood of Thorn, and to the east of the Devenza, while Austria seized on Casimir, part of the palatinate of Lublin, and some lands lying on the right bank of the Bog. Were not these three powers actuated by a spirit of revenge ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... establishment in the country to which they have given their name the Bulgars became a thorn in the side of the Greeks, and ever since both peoples have looked on one another as natural and hereditary enemies. The Bulgars, like all the barbarians who had preceded them, were fascinated by the honey-pot of Constantinople, and, though they never succeeded in taking it, they never grew ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... more malignant breed than Shakspere's elves. Yet in Allingham's poem they stole little Bridget and kept her seven years, till she died of sorrow and lies asleep on the lake bottom; even as in Ferguson's weird ballad, "The Fairy Thorn," the good people carry off fair Anna Grace from the midst of her three companions, who "pined away and died within the year ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... kissed the ground. Mary looked at the stony mountain with a thrill of awe. Little Jesus slept in the shade of the thorn-bush. The threatening rock and the lovely child. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... with his trumpet and horn! Farewell now, forest and flower and thorn! Farewell, my valley; you have cramped me too long, The whole world is calling with laughter and song! Tomorrow attired in gold I shall ride Away to the church as Olaf's bride! We shall sit on the throne of honor within— Ah, now shall my life ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... been a thorn in the old man's flesh. Horse-racing, gambling, theatres, and music-halls were, in the old pork-butcher's eyes, so many deadly sins which his son committed every day of his life, and all the Fitzwilliam Place household could testify to the many and bitter quarrels ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... the Pharisee in the temple," said Andrew, "but 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' and we're not gathering any figs off of Mr. Craigie, nor grapes from that thorn of an Auld Laird that ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins |
