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Thorn   /θɔrn/   Listen
Thorn

noun
1.
Something that causes irritation and annoyance.  Synonym: irritant.
2.
A small sharp-pointed tip resembling a spike on a stem or leaf.  Synonyms: pricker, prickle, spikelet, spine, sticker.
3.
A Germanic character of runic origin.



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"Thorn" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... west coast due north toward Davao. The red glory of the dying sun tinted the waters of the Gulf to the line of palm-fringed beach which edged the distant shoreline. From the shore the land sloped gently to the west and north, mile after mile of primeval jungle broken here and there where brush and thorn and creeper had yielded to man's demand for more and more hemp. Far inland the steady rise persisted, grew more abrupt and more heavily timbered, terminating in the far interior in a dim and mighty mountain whose dark-wooded slopes and misted crest dominated the Gulf: the red ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... only a question of sturdy fighting and squirming one's way through the meshes of a gigantic basketwork of every variety of fantastic branch and stem and stout strangling thorn-set vine, made the denser with snaky roots—not merely twisting about one's feet, but dropping from the boughs in nooses and festoons for one's neck; air-plants too, like birds' nests, further choking up the meshes, and hanging moss, ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... plucked a substantial thorn from between two strong black toes. A warm red tongue touched my restraining fingers in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... valuable of the thorn tribe, for hedge, in this country. It never suffers from those enemies that destroy so much of the hawthorn. This is also used for ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... to the 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

... tender, 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 prude of ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... go to the shop and return in less than half an hour. Now a whole hour went by, and no Elfrida was to be seen. What could be the matter? Had she run a thorn into her foot, and been lamed? Had she stopped to talk with the children on their way home from school? Had she been run over by a ...
— The Nursery, April 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... grateful-hearted, hand in hand Revisit all our tillage land, And marvel at our strange estate, For hooded ruin at the gate Sits watchful, and the angels fear To see us tread so boldly here. Meanwhile, my Eve, with flower and grass Our perishable days we pass; Far more the thorn observe - and see How our enormous sins go free - Nor less admire, beside the rose, How far a ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... dropped when shaken from his pocket by the jerk of his fall. He opened the single blade it contained at once, and went back to the hedge to cut a stick. As he walked along the hedge, he thought the briar was too prickly to cut, and the thorn was too hard, and the ash was too big, and the willow had no knob, and the elder smelt so strong, and the sapling oak was across the ditch, and out of reach, and the maple had such rough bark. So he wandered along a great way through that field and the next, and presently ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... 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

... is a child born That sprang out of Jesse's thorn; We must sing and say thereforn ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... back and forth like a weaver's shuttle weaving fine wefts, has got into my head; not "bee-bonneted," but bird-bonneted, I go. Yes, this day shall be given to the king, as our country-folk say, when they go a-pleasuring. I am off with the little wool-gatherers, to see what thorn and brier and fern-stalk and willow-catkin will give me. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... offered his share to Louis, who was in no mood for frivolities. In spite of his smile he had been hurt to the quick. But Patsy was perfectly calm, and having fixed a large lump of cherry-gum on a thorn, she licked round and round it with relish, occasionally holding it between her eye and the twinkle of the sun to see the effect of the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... hurried forward, but cutting a corner charged full-abreast into the thorn-faggot that old Hobden was carrying home on his back. 'My! My!' said he. 'Have you ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... El Paso we moved up to the crossing of the Rio Grande at Fort Thorn, and prepared to plunge into Apache land. Camping the command on the green-fringed Mimbres I took five men, and with Doctor Steck and his interpreter made a visit to the Apaches in their stronghold ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston

... bore the blush of May, Down towards the dark December Pass'd like the thorn-tree's bloom ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... of Police, respectfully makes known to Parents and others, that of late, several children have very much injured themselves, by eating the seeds of Stramonium, or Thorn-Apple, commonly called Devil's Apple; who must inevitably have died, had they not been speedily relieved by Emetics, &c. As those bushes are in several parts of the town, it would be well, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... his sleep, aye fading with the break of morn, Till every sweet became a sour, till every rose became a thorn; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... this book was written during the lifetime of both Donatello and Brunellesco. The argument against the visit is, in fact, untenable. Artists were influenced by classical motives without going to Rome. Brunellesco himself placed in his competition design a figure inspired by the bronze boy drawing a thorn out of his foot—the Spinario of the Capitol. Similar examples could be quoted from the work of Luca della Robbia, and it would be easy to show, on the other hand, that painters like Masaccio, Fra Angelico, and Piero della Francesca were able ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... adhered long to places as well as persons. A chamber in the decayed tower of Hoghton, in Lancashire, still bears the name of James the First's room. Elizabeth's apartment, and that of her maids of honour, are still known at Weston House, in Warwickshire; her walk "marked by old thorn-bushes," at Hengrave, in Norfolk; near Harefield, the farm-house where she was welcomed by allegorical personages; at Bisham Abbey, the well in which she bathed; and at Beddington, in Surrey, her favourite oak. She often shot with a cross-bow in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various

... reason in common experience. Every man,—mathematician, artist, soldier, or merchant,—looks with confidence for some traits and talents in his own child, which he would not dare to presume in the child of a stranger. The Orientalists are very orthodox on this point. "Take a thorn-bush," said the emir Abdel-Kader, "and sprinkle it for a whole year with water, it will yield nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it will always produce dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab populace is ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... a thorn in Pope's flesh for many a year, and the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse. Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several shrewd critical ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... Mazeppa, an ally of Charles XII, failed in their opposition to the mighty Tsar. Augustus was 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 the Polish sovereign. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... the Knight look'd he, And his blue eyes gleam'd wild and wide; "And, darest thou, Warrior! seek to see What heaven and hell alike would hide? My breast, in belt of iron pent, With shirt of hair and scourge of thorn; For threescore years, in penance spent. My knees those flinty stones have worn; Yet all too little to atone For knowing what should ne'er be known. Would'st thou thy every future year In ceaseless prayer and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... Green Knight rode unto an horn that was green, and it hung upon a thorn, and there he blew three deadly motes, and there came two damosels and armed him lightly. And then he took a great horse, and a green shield and a green spear. And then they ran together with all their ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... pleasing Rose, she followed her into the car, where there was a goodly number of unoccupied seats, notwithstanding Rose's assertion to the contrary. As the train moved rapidly over the long, level meadow, and passed the Chicopee burying-ground, Mary looked out to catch a glimpse of the thorn-apple tree, which overshadowed the graves of her parents, and then, as she thought how cold and estranged was the only one left of all the home circle, she drew her veil over her face and ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... last we went this way, Veiled all her bowsome rods with trembling white; The robin's sunset breast gave forth delight At sunset hour; the wind was warm with May. Armored in ice the sere stems arch to-day, Each tiny thorn encased and argent bright; Where clung the birds that long have taken flight, Dead songless leaves cling fluttering ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... 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. Was the giving of the horn by the Welsh girl to be a signal to the thrall ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... had known what even three days without David would mean to her, he would not have wasted his breath in suggesting that she should give him up! Yet the possibility of such a thing had the allurement of terror; she played with the thought, as a child, wincing, presses a thorn into its flesh to see how long it can bear the smart. Suppose, instead of this three days' trip with Dr. Lavendar, David was going away to stay? The mere question made her catch him in her arms as if to assure ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... quarter of a mile long and somewhat less in breadth. It was a marshy wilderness, and had 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 ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... my ordinary, when no other passage of Scripture attracts my particular attention. This is the third morning I have opened the New Testament on the 14th chapter of John, and have fed delightfully on the first three verses. There is at all times a thorn in my heart, keeping me in continual remembrance of my vile, ungrateful backslidings, so that I eat my sweetest morsels with bitter herbs. It was particularly painful to me this morning; nevertheless; the Lord God, merciful and gracious, repeated on my heart, 'Let not your heart be troubled, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... Rose 'that all admire' transplanted to the conservatories of Rockhold. Wish you joy of her. She is a rose without a single thorn, and with a deadly sweet aroma. Mind what I told you long ago. It contains the wisdom of ages. 'Stillwater runs deep.' Mind it does not draw in and submerge the peace and honor of Rockhold. I shall see you at the exhibition, when we can talk more freely over this complication. If Mrs. Stillwater ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... I will trust 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 robber-band, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... see the birthplace, a very green field, with two thorn bushes growing close together by a stone. The field is called 'Sean Straid'—the old street—for a few cottages had stood there. A man who lives close by told me he had dug up a blackened stone just there, and a stone into which ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... had a pin," muttered Fred, as he kicked and shook again, without effect. "And there isn't a thorn anywhere near. Spurs!" he exclaimed. "No," he added in a disappointed tone—"too blunt. There's no water to rouse him nearer than the lake; and if there was, it would be too bad to let him go about drenched. What shall I do? ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... and 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 ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... year's at the spring, The day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled: The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven— All's right ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... her with kindness, she was in despair, calling herself a lost soul, applying to her own case the woe denounced on those with whom the world is at peace, and complaining that she had no longer "a thorn in the flesh to buffet her." A disconsolate mother implored Dr. Beaumont to interfere and support her authority with her daughter, who, misunderstanding their preacher's encomiums on the sufficiency of faith, abandoned herself to antinomian ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... The old brown 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 Cathleen the ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats

... BOYS ACROSS THE CONTINENT," it will be recalled how Phil and his companion won new laurels in the sawdust arena, and how the former ran down and captured a bad man who had been a thorn in the side of the circus itself for many weeks through his efforts to avenge a fancied wrong. By this time the boys had become full-fledged circus performers, each playing an important part in ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... could never force it out of his hands, and reduced the duke, rather by manage and conduct than by force, to make peace without it; so as annexing it to the crown of France it has ever since been a thorn in his foot that has always made the peace of Savoy lame and precarious, and France has since made Pignerol one of the strongest fortresses ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe

... an end of praying, I looked up and saw standing beside me One, thorn-crowned and with wounded side, Whose features were the features of a man, but Whose face was the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... "These youths who bear along The symbols of their Saviour's wrong, The spear, the garment torn, The flaggel, and the thorn,— ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... arrived, and then how great was my joy! I remember spreading a white cloth on my table, and opening out the tracing-paper upon it; and there was the veritable picture of the Good Shepherd! His countenance was loving and kind. With one hand He was pushing aside the branch of a tree, though a great thorn went right through it; and with the other He was extricating a sheep which was entangled in the thorns. The poor thing was looking up in helplessness, all spotted over with marks of its own blood, for ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... o' this, master!" 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. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... temperate breeze, 30 And moon-beams glimmer through the trembling trees, The rills, that gurgle round, shall soothe her ear, The weeping rocks shall number tear for tear; There as sad Philomel, alike forlorn, Sings to the Night from her accustomed thorn; 35 While at sweet intervals each falling note Sighs in the gale, and whispers round the grot; The sister-woe shall calm her aching breast, And softer slumbers ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... were her maiden thoughts, 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 ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... Apple seed and apple thorn, Wire, brier, limber lock, Three geese in a flock; Along came Tod, With his long rod, And scared them all to Migly-wod. One flew east, one flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.— Make your way ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... seen three of their vessels but could not catch them, because on being pursued they rowed out in the wind's eye, which they are enabled to do by having about fifty oars to each boat. Having had some tea with thorn, I bade them adieu, and turned up a narrow channel which our pilot said would take us to the village of Watelai, on the west side of Are. After going some miles we found the channel nearly blocked up with coral, so that our boat grated along ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... conviction of such a love dawned on the disordered mind, the man would live in spite of his imaginary foes, for he would pray against them as sure of being heard as St Paul when he prayed concerning the thorn from which he was not delivered, but against which he was sustained. And who can tell how often this may be the fact—how often the lunatic also lives by faith? Are not the forms of madness most frequently those of love and religion? Certainly, if there ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... tree On the hill of Calvary, Jesus suffered, death, to be The Saviour of mankind. His brow pierced by thorn, His hands and feet torn, With broken heart He died. I never knew such pain could be, This ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... Derga came to them, with thrice fifty warriors, each of them having a long head of hair to the hollow of his polls, and a short cloak to their buttocks. Speckled-green drawers they wore, and in their hands were thrice fifty great clubs of thorn ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... of the House of Representatives of the 30th of January last, calling for the papers relative to the claim of Owen Thorn and others against the British Government, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State, together with copies of the papers referred to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... Gries, there was a 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

... them, and in most cases their fiefs and rights were preserved or restored to them, the monarch knowing that he could rid himself of them treacherously by poison or the dagger in the case of their proving themselves too troublesome. Megabyzos by his turbulence was a thorn in the side of Artaxerxes during the half of his reign. He had ended his campaign in Egypt by engaging to preserve the lives of Inaros and the 6000 Greeks who had capitulated at Byblos, and, in spite of the anger of the king, he succeeded in keeping his word ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... 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 Lincoln's proclamation ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by; The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear—with cheeks that flush and pale— The passion of ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... topped the knoll and the leading yoke of the team tugging the wagon next behind. The wind, also, was towards me, so that Selinus did not smell the lions till he and I met in the highway and I had mounted him. Like a hunting dog bounding over a fallen tree Selinus had leapt the tall thorn hedge which bordered the highway to keep stock off it and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... much wealth, she was very anxious to obtain the same good luck for the ugly and lazy daughter. She had to seat herself by the well and spin; and in order that her shuttle might be stained with blood, she stuck her hand into a thorn bush and pricked her finger. Then she threw her shuttle into the well, and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... spirits be cut off." Taking the iron knife which Martha handed him, he prayed over it, tied Mary's hair about it, uttered another prayer and turned toward the servant who had appeared with an ax. "Take thou this to the valley. Find there a thorn-bush aside from the pathway and there tie the iron knife by the hair of Mary and repeat the scripture which is on the scroll I give thee, and as the Lord appeared in a thorn-bush to Moses, so shall he appear again. And if thine eyes be holden that ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... have another thing to do with the man Peasley!" he shrilled. "The fellow is a thorn in my side and I want peace! Understand, Skinner? I—want—peace! What in blue blazes do I pay you ten thousand a year for if it isn't to give me ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... cry, papa?" said the boy, for his father's eyes were filled with tears which coursed down his cheeks. Something that aged Benjamin had said about the forge, the nightingale, or the thorn ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... golden Nature, The deeper still beneath it all Lurk'd the keen jags of Anguish; The more the laurels clasp'd his brow, Their poison made it languish. Seem'd it that like the Nightingale Of his own mournful singing[32], The tenderer would his song prevail While most the thorn was stinging. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... cautious action of the Confederates in regard to him did not tend to remove this: for it was very apparent that they really regarded him as a friend, and helped him on his way to Canada in the expectation that he would prove a thorn in Mr. Lincoln's side. The President's proposal to the leading politicians who applied to him to rescind the sentence, that as a condition of this they should make certain declarations of the duty to support the government in a vigorous prosecution of the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... been known where this bird has itself fallen a victim to its own designs. Dead goshawks have been found with their talons hopelessly entangled in thorn and furze bushes, upon which they had pounced with the object of seizing some little rabbit or squirrel which had sought shelter beneath the undergrowth. A hunter once witnessed such an occurrence, the rabbit scampering away in safety across the field, while the great bird remained ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... herself, resolved to find out the truth of the matter; and, at length, came to understand that it was the Raven who had been her counsellor. He, therefore, vowed to be revenged on her, who had now, the second time, hindered him from getting his prey. Not long after, he espied her sitting on a high thorn-tree; and, going to her, began to praise her at a mighty rate,—magnifying her good fortune above that of all beasts, who could neither fly like her, nor tread the ground with so majestical a gait: adding, ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... in its nest, helpless as a baby. See the care given by the mother and father to keep it warm till its down and feathers grow, to feed it till it is able to leave the nest. Watch the parents teaching it to fly by repeated short flights. Olive Thorn Miller in her Bird Ways gives a delightful sketch of the father robin teaching a young robin where to look for worms and how to dig them up. When that task was accomplished, his father began to ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... the 15th this morning; what a cruel thorn it takes from my heart! One gets frantic with anxiety now when one does not receive answers. Let us hope that we can talk soon and tell all about our ABSENCE from each other. I too have had the good fortune ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... as he went Zinti pierced his foot with a large thorn so that he was only able to travel slowly. On the fifth night of his journey he limped into a wood to sleep, which wood grew not much more than two hours on horseback from our farm. When he had been asleep for some hours ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... me nicely within range. But now I shall do no such thing; for I suspect strongly the old boy's in the bushes. He would be on me with a rush if I went that way, and in the thicket there's not a tree big enough to shelter a chased cat. It's all brush and thorn bushes. It won't do; I shan't stalk them from that direction; but how else can I approach them? There's no other cover. Ha! yonder rock will serve ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... a thicket she surveys Gay with the flowering thorn and vermeil rose: The tuft reflected in the stream which strays Beside it, overshadowing oaks enclose. Hollow within, and safe from vulgar gaze, It seemed a place constructed for repose; With bows so interwoven, that the light Pierced ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... 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 ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... looked at the speaker as though he could hardly believe his ears. No doubt his experience with boys had been along quite a different line. He evidently fancied that they were only made to prove a thorn in the flesh of every circus owner, stealing under the canvas of the big round-top, annoying the animals, and throwing decayed vegetables at the clown when he was trying his best to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— All's right ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... voice and eyes. She was appealing to him for pity, but he did not know it. Every man thinks that the world was made for himself alone, and he goes tramping about it, quite careless as to where he plants his heavy feet. When occasionally he gets a thorn in one of his feet, he feels quite aggrieved. He never stops to think of all the things his foot crushes ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... beast in this kind is, as I conceive, done by image or model, made in the likeness of that man or beast they intend to work mischief upon, and by the subtlety of the devil made at such hours and times when it shall work most powerfully upon them, by thorn, pin, or needle, pricked into that limb or member of the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... have to-day the living reality of lawns and woods, and flocks in "the green pasture and beside the still waters," which silently remind them of the Shepherd, under whom they shall not want any real good thing. The quiet of the shady lane is theirs, and the beauty of the blossoming thorn above the pool. Delight steals through them with the scent of the violet, or the new mown hay. If they have hushed the voices of complaint and fear within them, there is the music of the merry lark for them, or of the leaping waterfall, or of a ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... the propriety of the movement. According to La Noue, Chartres in the hands of the Huguenots would have been a "thorn in the foot of the Parisians;" while Agrippa d'Aubigne makes it "a city of little importance, as it was neither at a river crossing, nor a sea-port;" "but," he adds, "in those times places were not estimated by the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... the world to-night? Juno in her court presides, Mirth and melody invite, Fashion points, and pleasure guides; Haste away then, seize the hour, Shun the thorn and pluck the flower. Youth, in all its spring-time blooming, Age the guise of youth assuming, Wit through all its circles gleaming, Glittering wealth and beauty beaming; Belles and matrons, maids and madams, All are ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... blev keen Steen, dar blev keen Pahl, Dat Water schael dat all hendal. Dar weer keen Beest, dar weer keen Hund, De ligt nu all in depen Grund. Un Allens, wat der lev un lach, Dat deck de See mit depe Nach. Mituenner in de holle Ebb So sueht man vunne Hues' de Koepp. Denn dukt de Thorn herut ut Sand, As weert en Finger vun en Hand. Denn hoert man sach de Klocken klingn, Denn hoert man sach de Kanter singn; Denn geit dat lisen daer de Luft: "Begrabt den Leib ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... as the dark-house to lodge all our errors in, and a feather-bed, where all, both errors and unknown sins may be lodg'd, therefore I pull out the Straws out of your bolster, that I may let light into the house, that you ma see you lodge in a thorn-bush instead of a feather-bed. But I find, (God [h]elp us both) that at all final errors are friends of the greater, that neither am I able by these letters to speak, nor you to understand me by Writing. Nay no ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.

... the fallow field, And see the growing corn, Must first remove the useless weeds, The bramble and the thorn. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... first sight of the leading carriage, however, a signal was given—the music suddenly ceased—and the whole party below, with the exception of one individual, proceeded in great state towards an arch, composed of flowers and white thorn, which ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... inherits a soft warm robe of precious memories woven out of her Spring: when she first learns of the heroine's state of mind, the picture of her own May revives to her eye, the treasure of her maiden years blooms afresh; she remembers that "this thorn doth to our rose of youth rightly belong"; and has more than ever a mother's heart towards the silent sufferer, because she holds fast ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... party followed his example, not excepting Harold and Disco, the latter of whom was caught by the leg, the moment he left the track, by a wait-a-bit thorn—most appropriately so-called, because its powerful spikes are always ready to seize and detain the unwary passer-by. In the present instance it checked the seaman's career for a few seconds, and rent his nether garments sadly; while Harold, profiting by his friend's misfortune, leaped ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... properly some serious religious reflections; but there is one remark, in my mind an obvious and just one, which I think he has not made, that Johnson's "morbid melancholy," and constitutional infirmities, were intended by Providence, like St. Paul's thorn in the flesh, to check intellectual conceit and arrogance; which the consciousness of his extraordinary talents, awake as he was to the voice of praise, might otherwise have generated in a very culpable degree. Another observation ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... in his bosom this rankling thorn—the hated Fremont he rode out to bring in a captive, is now "His Excellency John C. Fremont," the first American ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... political apple, at which all were striving for the largest bite. The King of Prussia, wrote the ambassador, had spoken jestingly of the partition of Poland. He had bespoken for himself the district of Netz and Polish Prussia, premising that Dantzic, Thorn, and Cracow were to be left ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... one big solid slapping pain all over me, but it's worst where there's a big thorn ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai. But if he be past the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen." The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he, With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell and the head of the gallows-tree. The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... when I say she says very improper things. What is one to do with such a thorn in the flesh?" ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... close that no one knew anything about the war, therefore it was very dull inside the enclosure, with no news and no newspapers, and just quarrels and monotonous work. As for the hedge, at such points as the prickly thorn gave out or gave way, stout stakes and stout boarding took its place, thus making it a veritable prison wall to those confined within. There was but one recognized entrance, the big double gates with a sentry ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte

... room to him, and stood with her hand on the mantelpiece. She did not laugh, she did not even smile, but there was in her the deep and quiet ecstasy that causes the thorn to blossom in beauty after a winter of reserve. It seemed to him that she was swaying as a rose sways in a gale, yet anchored always to ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... presence was required. At the same time, the two bodies under the generals Dohna and Wedel penetrated by different routes into that country. The former had been left at Custrin, to watch the motions of the Russians, who had by this time retreated to the Vistula, and even crossed that river at Thorn; and the other had, during the campaign, observed the Swedes, who had now entirely evacuated the Prussian territories, so that Wedel was at liberty to co-operate with the king in Saxony. He accordingly marched to Torgau, the siege of which had been undertaken by the Austrian general Haddick, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... Calvinist—and taught Jean to regard everything from the point of view of her own death-bed. I mean to say, the child had to ask herself, 'How will this action look when I am on my death-bed?' Every cross word, every small disobedience, she was told, would be a 'thorn in her dying pillow.' I said, perhaps rather rudely, that Great-aunt Alison must have been a horrible old ghoul, but Jean defended her hotly. She seems to have had a great admiration for her aged relative, though she owned that her death was something of ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... the existence of which was announced at a meeting of the Anthropological Society of Berlin.[228] Many of these defensive works, notably those of Potzrow and of Zabnow, bad been erected on piles. In the district between Thorn and the Baltic are numerous mounds of the shape of a truncated cone, the platform of which is surrounded by an embankment some 590 feet in diameter.[229] Near many of these were picked up many broken human ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... phase of the eastern campaign was therefore opened from a new base—Thorn, where the main army had been gathered ever since Oct. 27, when the Russian danger had become alarming, and the offensive in the west had been abandoned. It was suddenly launched with irresistible force on Nov. 12, and rolled back numerically inferior Russian armies, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... his umbrella and his easel below a ridge on the far slope of the fir plantation. A thorn bush sheltered him from the wind and made him invisible from the ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... unspeakable immigrant was an added thorn. Very often the victim of Continental persecution was assisted on to America, but the idea that he was hurtful to native labor rankled in the minds of Englishmen, and the Jewish leaders were anxious to remove it, all but proving him a boon. In despair, it was sought ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... ever penetrated further, for none has ever thrust the thorn of life deeper into his own heart, and won, by the surrender of it, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... morning, as Dorothy looked out of a window, whose panes were laced with most delicate traceries of frost rime, there was a thorn-prickle of fear in ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... well," answered Sam. "It's better than scratching yourself and tearing your clothing in those thorn bushes." ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer

... darker and more forbidding as He pushed on. But He could not be stopped by that, for He was thinking about us, and about His Father. He pushed steadily on, past crossed logs all overgrown and tangled with thorn bushes and poison ivy vines, bearing the marks of logs and thorns and poison ivy, but He went through to the end of the road, He reached His world; He reached our hearts. And now He is longing to reach through our hearts to the hearts ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... spreads her sable wings, All earthly things to darken, The woodland choir grows mute and still, To thy sweet trill to hearken; Though 'gainst thy breast there lies a thorn, And thou woeworn art bleeding, Yet, till the bright day dawns again, ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... result of unification, of an "all-or-none" response to the religious or philanthropic stimulus. It helps us to understand the cheerful austerities of the true ascetic; the superhuman achievement of St. Paul, little hindered by the "thorn in the flesh"; the career of St. Joan of Arc; the way in which St. Teresa or St. Ignatius, tormented by ill-health, yet brought their great conceptions to birth; the powers of resistance displayed by George Fox and other Quaker saints. It explains Mary Slessor living ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... you will agree that tribulation is every such thing as troubleth and grieveth a man either in body or mind, and is as it were the prick of a thorn, a bramble, or a briar thrust into his flesh or into his mind. And surely, cousin, the prick that very sore pricketh the mind surpasseth in pain the grief that paineth the body, almost as far as doth a thorn sticking in the heart surpass ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... 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, delirium, or apoplexy," ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... like to hear the simply odious storyette of Somebody's Cousin? Well, so you shall. Somebody is by way of being an intimate foe of mine, and Somebody's Cousin has long been a thorn in the flesh and a shaking of the head to his people. Before the War he belonged to the League for Taking Everything Lying Down, the Fellowship for Preventing People from Standing up against Foreign Aggression, and the Brotherhood for Giving up All ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various

... thou warbling bird, That wantons through the flowering thorn; Thou minds me o' departed joys, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... animals! through a lying dream of my father's, which he saw in his sleep, I am shut up on your account in this palace as if I had been a girl. What shall I now do to you?" With these words he stretched out his hands toward a thorn-tree, meaning to cut a stick from its branches that he might beat the lion, when one of its sharp prickles pierced his finger, and caused great pain and inflammation, so that the young Prince fell down in a fainting fit. A violent fever suddenly set in, from which he died ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... Suakim, and in the direction in which Osman Digna lay with his whole army, made a good first halting-place for the English troops. A zereba, it should be mentioned, is an enclosed space surrounded by thorn-covered bushes cut down and packed round it, with old packing-cases, or anything else which will afford cover to those inside. This one was particularly strong, being further protected by a mound of earth ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... to whom these presents shall come that, I Thomas Thorn of the State and County aforesaid being the rightful owner of the Negro man Peter Green and entitled to his service as a slave during his life have this day released and do by these presents release him from any further service as a slave. And I do by these presents from myself, my heirs, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... bad bargain. But, Walters, you could so easily take him with you to America. He has no friends by his mother's side, to make any stir about his disappearance. Under your name his identity will never be recognized, and it would be taking a thorn out of my side." ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... a hundred yards of the path when Holman pounced upon a strip of white bark that waved to us from the thorn of a lawyer-vine crossing the track. A few pencilled words covered the smooth side of the strip, and we absorbed them in a ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes. It spread remoter and remoter, with only a few clusters of sere thorn bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless ravine, to break its desolation of yellow grass. Its purple distances melted at last into the bluish slopes of the further hills—hills it might be of a greener kind—and above them invisibly supported, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... wooden spoon. Having mixed equal weights of the prepared fruit, and of powdered sugar, put these together in pots, and cover the mixture up, setting them in a dry place, and having sifted some powdered sugar over the top of each pot. Among the Italians the Barberry bears the name of Holy Thorn, because thought to have formed part of the crown of thorns ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... and I arose, at the same moment dexterously slipping my hand behind me and withdrawing the thorn ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... 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 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... cote should be provided with 1,000 pigeons, but this number does not appear to have been yet reached except at Thorn, Metz, and Strassburg. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... maid-of-honour), yet there was a tinge of Jacobitism about her, such as made her extremely dislike to hear Prince Charles Edward called the young Pretender, as many loyal people did in those days, and made her fond of telling of the thorn- tree in my lord's park in Scotland, which had been planted by bonny Queen Mary herself, and before which every guest in the Castle of Monkshaven was expected to stand bare-headed, out of respect to the memory and ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... weep, mother of the bride? Weepst thou to be parted from thy daughter? Weep no more. What is life? A reed beat down by every wind that stirs, A flower nipt by the first autumnal blast, A deer that perishes by prick of thorn, Here at morning, Gone at evening. Weep not, tender mother of the bride; Soon thou'lt meet her in the happy vales Beyond the setting sun: Ask the lover, he ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... beneath where our airmen fly, Slowly the Garrison guns go by, Breaking through bramble and thorn and gorse, Towed by engines or dragged by horse, The great guns, The late guns, That slowly rumble up To enable Messrs. VICKERS to converse with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... them out, and brought them into the house. First he took one, and 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 was tightly fastened, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... it close to my face to breathe its fragrance, and always its faint sickening-sweet odor brought me only disappointment and disgust. It was a Lamia among roses. Another peculiarity was that it had very few thorns, and those few were small and weak. Yet the thorn is as much a part of the true rose as its sweetness; and lacking the rose thorn and the rose perfume, what claim had it to the rose name? I never saw this false rose elsewhere than in the false garden, and because it grew there, and ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... years we have done something towards making live-fences. We have dug ditches and banks within some of the fences, planting them with thorn, acacia, Vermont damson, Osage orange, and other hedge material. We have now some very good and sightly hedges. Luckily, we never tried whins, or furze, as here called. This is a vile thing. It makes a splendid hedge, but it spreads ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay



Words linked to "Thorn" :   glochid, rune, annoyance, pain, botheration, infliction, irritant, pain in the neck, glochidium, runic letter, bother, pain in the ass, aculeus



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