"Spasmodic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on every day of the 365 you would have seen more than 2,800 living beings—men, women, and children, of almost every conceivable condition except that of wealth or eminence—pass from the examination "pens" into the liberty of American opportunity. Since the stream was spasmodic, its numbers did reach as high in ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... activity, while others were stunted, or had never stirred at all. I was like a plant on which a pot has been placed, with the effect that the centre is crushed and arrested, while shoots are straggling up to the light on all sides. My Father himself was aware of this, and in a spasmodic way he wished to regulate my thoughts. But all he did was to try to straighten the shoots, without removing the pot which kept ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... her quivering under his hand for a moment, and heard her breath come in swift, spasmodic pants. He was wondering what was the effect upon her of this climax of his revelation, when ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... easier flow,—a wonder about Mrs. This, and speculation concerning Mr. That. Mr. Blank had gone to Europe with half his family, and some of them knew why he had taken the four elder children, and others wondered why he had left the rest behind. I was talked into a sort of spasmodic interest about a certain Maria, who was at the ball the night before, but could not be at the dinner to-day. In an effort to show me why she would be especially charming to me, her personal appearance, the style of her conversation and dress, her manner of life, all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... Netherlands; the burial of the Antwerp servantmaid was the last and the worst. The worst, because it was a cynical and deliberate attempt to revive the demon whose thirst for blood had been at last allayed, and who had sunk into repose. And it was a spasmodic revival only, for, in the provinces at least, that demon had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for whom it was intended. For this poetry could not have seemed alien or exotic to its original public: either through familiar poetic convention, or owing to the staccato and ejaculatory character of ordinary spoken language at the time, this spasmodic, apostrophic poetry must have seemed natural and beautiful, in the seventh ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... as his fingers extracted the hook. John brought out the fish stringer, and the unfortunate minnow, firmly tied by the gills, was lowered slowly into the water. The pair watched its spasmodic efforts at escape with a great deal ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... watched the floating movement, and as we watched, conversation became spasmodic—not worth the energy required to sustain it—until gradually we slipped into one of those sociable silences of the bushfolk—silences that draw away all active thought from the mind, leaving it a sensitive ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... she heard a sudden, sharp whistling in the air near her. Startled, she glanced quickly to one side, and clutched the baby more closely to her—too late; she saw not the arrow, such was its velocity, but felt the baby give one spasmodic bound. She flew along the road, the child screaming as she ran. As she neared the mission, and the houses clustered around it, the inmates started from their various occupations and gazed in astonishment at Juana as she sped by, wild-eyed, her hair ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... in his long arm-chair, a cigar between his lips, a pencil in his hand, a Ruff's Guide on his knee; beside him was a large green book. There was a festive air about him, very different from his spasmodic gloom of the other day; and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... various provinces for years had "boards of development" paid from national funds, but the positions on these boards were regarded as political plums, and while the members drew their salaries, no other result of their activities was apparent. The government has also made spasmodic attempts to establish an agricultural experiment station, but with its limited resources nothing tangible has been accomplished. The establishment and extension of large sugar estates was stimulated ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... sail had been sighted, not a sign of smoke appeared on the spotless horizon. At regular intervals the gun on the forward deck boomed thrice in quick succession, startling the lifeless hulk into a sort of spasmodic vitality. Then she would sink back once more into the old, irksome lethargy, incapable of resisting the gentlest wave, submissive to the whim of the slightest breeze. The ship's carpenter and his men were making slow headway in the well-nigh impossible task of repairing the rudder. Attempts were ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the throttle and the Richard protested at his action in a series of spasmodic coughs. Then the hood began to incline slowly and Gregory felt the hull rising. Perhaps the craft was not dead after all, but only sleeping. Watching Bronson's fingers on the spark and throttle, he noticed that the man was ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... at the ravaged face of our brother, convulsed with spasmodic laughter and tears, a feeling of horror ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... understanding and gentle—and sensible," she added, with brusque frankness and cordiality. "Yes, I will sing for Rudyard Byng and for Jigger; and a little too for a very clever diplomatist." She gave a spasmodic laugh. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... weariness—weariness at the weary fate of men who could 'think so brainsickly of things.' So in like manner will all the emphasis and elaboration in the literature of sensuality become a weariness without meaning, also. Congreve's caustic wit will turn to spasmodic truism; and Theophile Gautier's excess of erotic ardour, into prolix and fantastic affectation. All its sublimity, its brilliance, and a large part of its interest, depend in art on the existence of the moral sense, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... once in their lives had known the divine afflatus and touched the high level of perfection. Our host had been showing us a charming little cabinet picture by a painter whose name we had never heard, and who, after this single spasmodic bid for fame, had apparently relapsed into obscurity and mediocrity. There was some discussion as to the frequency of this phenomenon; during which, I observed, H—- sat silent, finishing his cigar with a meditative air, and looking at ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... spasmodic. He had been through the very front hell of the war—and like every man who had, he had the war at the back of his mind, like an obsession. But in ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... of infants is spasmodic croup, and is very rarely dangerous, although the symptoms seem ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... increased; yet in their depths where love had been was hate. One arm lay along the resisting stone, the other hung at her side; her face was turned to the palace, her thin nostrils quivering, her breath coming and going with that spasmodic irregularity which the consciousness of outrage brings. She laid it all to Judas; he must have returned to Kerioth, she thought. The sook itself was silent, stirred merely by some echo of the uproar in the ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... cousin stalking up and down in an extremely nervous manner. She wrung her delicate fingers with a swift, spasmodic motion. Her eyes, nearly closed, shot ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... for the next two or three minutes the lowering angry clouds would pulsate with dazzling light that leaped upward like life-blood from the throbbing heart of the storm. Each thundering peal was followed by a momentary lull, and then spasmodic gusts shook the air, as if Nature were drawing a deep breath for another effort. Before daybreak yesterday the storm had cleared, leaving a clouded sky, but no mists about the hilltops, to prevent a ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... U-tube depending from a vessel of water (Fig. 4) and apply the lamp to one leg a circulation is at once set up within it, and no such spasmodic action can be produced. Thus U-tube is the representative of the true method of circulation within a water-tube boiler properly constructed. We can, for the purpose of securing more heating surface, extend the heated leg into a long incline (Fig. 5), when we have the well-known inclined-tube ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... in sympathy with the movement or the rhythm of the song. Even though the voice may flow freely on the vowels, the articulation must not be hurried, nervous or spasmodic. This style of articulation often disturbs the legato flow and spoils the general effect. While of course it is not possible to sing the consonantal sounds, a beautiful effect is often the result of playing upon the consonant rhythmically, with ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... him: she seemed to smile as if in approval of his steadfastness. The movement of the channel ice became irregular, spasmodic, but it remained firm until the last span ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... what was required of him, and he sat motionless as a statue for a while, but before long the peculiar nervous irritation to which monkeys appear to be subject attacked him, and he began a series of spasmodic researches in natural history ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... superstitious mind the THING which crept across the dark lobby and dragged itself into the glare of the gas-lighted office might have seemed, indeed, some, creature too loathsome for humanity. A plague-stricken corpse galvanized into a spasmodic life could scarcely have lifted to the light a more awful countenance than that on which George Sheldon looked with ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... house is built, brick by brick, day after day, not by spasmodic efforts one day in the week, and the destruction of that ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... dropped her tapestry and listened attentively, smiling and blushing a little when he told her what had immediately preceded the impulse to write. But gradually the delicate pink left her face, and she began to move in the spasmodic, uncontrollable way of a person handling an electric battery. She clasped the arms of her chair with such force that her arms looked twisted and rigid, and finally she bent slowly forward, gazing up into his face with eyes expanded to ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... on fire all right," said Copple, grimly, as he loaded still more rapidly. Carefully he aimed and pulled trigger. The grizzly gave a spasmodic jerk as if stung and suddenly he made a prodigious leap off a ledge, down into a patch of brush, where he threshed like a ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... Next a spasmodic philanthropist, Lord X., struck up a friendship with Joshua, who, he said, wanted, as a background, a man of position. This led to Joshua's first introduction into a wealthy house of the upper classes, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... however, the functions of the anus and rectum are disturbed by chronic inflammation, etc., the lower portion of the rectum becomes a more or less roomy pouch, a receptacle for feces and liquids; and instead of being physiologically empty it becomes pathologically distended, the result of spasmodic action or of more or less permanent stricture of the sphincter ani. See illustration in my book entitled How to ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... itself with the heightened and plethoric fulness of the style: its accumulation and contrast of imagery; its occasional jerking and almost spasmodic violence;—and above all, the painful subjective excitement, which seems the element and groundwork even of every description of Nature; often taking the shape of sarcasm or broad jest, but never subsiding into calm. There is also a point which ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... no opportunity for rehearsal; and sometimes they have not even an idea of the nature of the turn until band parts are put in. This means that they must read at sight, that the conductor must follow every movement of the artist, in order to catch his spasmodic cues for band or patter, and that the boys must keep one eye on music they have never seen before, and the other on their ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... the other side of Bobbie was Mrs. ——, red in the face, so angry she was asked to meet Madame Romedek, talking with poor Bobbie in a sharp, spasmodic sort of way, as if she were carrying on the conversation with her knife and fork, cutting the sentences into bits, some ignoring and some eating,—and none agreeing with her, or she agreeing with none. Then George Ringold asked, I suppose, for me. I am quite aware that women who are ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... it—which really under the circumstances did not appear quite so probable as she seemed to think—with a great deal more to the same effect. In a word, she passed with great decency through all the ceremonies incidental to such occasions; and being supported upstairs, was deposited in a highly spasmodic state on her own bed, where Miss Miggs shortly afterwards flung herself ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... there came a spasmodic movement of the victim, and immediately above the middle of his forehead a black hole marred the whiteness of the figure-head. A dreadful pause; then again the report, and the solid sound and jar of the bullet in the wood; and this time the captain had felt the wind of it along ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the old footing, without comprehensive plan, developing only the same spasmodic encounters, barren of strategic result, that had marked the course of the earlier ten years' rebellion as well as the present insurrection from its start. No alternative save physical exhaustion of either combatant, and therewithal the practical ruin of the island, lay in sight, but ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... her outstretched hand, she rushed to and fro before the little group of white men. Her eyes gleamed like those of a hawk through her matted hair, and the genuineness of her frantic excitement was evident by the quivering flesh and working face, and the wild, spasmodic words she spoke. The spirit at least of her rapid utterances may ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... to stop laughing, sat down on the doorstep; the baron did the same, while, in the carriage, spasmodic sneezes, a sort of constant chuckling, told that the baroness was choking. Presently there was a motion beneath Marius' livery. He had, doubtless, understood the joke, for he was shaking with laughter beneath ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... thing in rebellions, and the history of the Dutch, who are, after all, only the extreme expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn struggle for freedom in Europe. This legend of German docility will not bear close examination. It is true that they are not given to spasmodic outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and effective a revolution ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... as much semblance of chatty interchange as a couple of victims waiting their turn in a dentist's parlour. The door was open and I could hear some one moving about laying the lunch. That was all I could hear (bar Sabre's spasmodic jerks of speech) and I don't mind telling you I was a deal more interested in what I could hear going on outside than in anything we could put up between us. Or rather in what I couldn't hear going on outside. No voices, none of those ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... beyond the salient lines of character. Nature has gifted Mr. Sickert with a keen hatred of the commonplace; his vision of life is at once complex and fragmentary, his command on drawing slow and uncertain, his rendering therefore as spasmodic as a poem by Browning. He picks up the connecting links with difficulty, and even his most complete work is full of omissions. The defect—for it is a defect—is by no means so fatal in the art-value of a painting ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... all my heart!" she impulsively answered. Then, catching her breath in a spasmodic way, as some painful thought sped like an arrow through her heart, she added, in a subdued tone: "But, Le, before anything of that sort is quite settled between us, I want you to talk with ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... weak, sickly, faint-hearted, lukewarm, languid, and spasmodic efforts that the cause is to be kept alive. God will have all or nothing. This is an age in which, if never before, both good men and bad men are truly in earnest. The devil is fearfully and terribly in earnest "Therefore rejoice you heavens, and you that dwell ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... constant, and intelligent interest by all sections of the community. It draws all classes within the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a strong and steady patriotism, equally removed from the apathy of many Continental nations in time of calm, and from their feverish and spasmodic energy in time of excitement. Its decisions, if not instantly accepted, never fail to have a profound and calming influence on the public mind. It is the safety-valve of the nation. The discontents, the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... The forehead was low, projecting over the eyes, and the sandy hair was plastered down over it and then brushed back at an abrupt right angle. The chin was heavy, the nostrils were low and wide, and the lower lip hung loosely except in his moments of spasmodic earnestness, when it shut like a steel trap. Yet about those coarse features there were deep, rugged furrows, the scars of many a hand-to-hand struggle with the weakness of the flesh, and about that drooping ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... with a forced final spasmodic effort, he seized the arms of his chair, and rose, lifted up his right arm, and turned to ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... astonishing, bewildering almost. Its faults are to be found in the enormous length allowed to digressions and episodical dissertations, in the exaggeration of all the combinations and all the theses, and, finally, in something strained, spasmodic, and violent in the style, which is very different from the style of natural eloquence or of essential truth. Effect is the misfortune of Victor Hugo, because he makes it the center of his aesthetic system; and hence exaggeration, monotony of emphasis, theatricality ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this, she began to suffer a queer upset of her physical condition. All her life she had been splendidly healthy; her body a perfect-working machine, afflicted with no weaknesses. Now odd spasmodic pains recurred without rhyme or reason in her head, her back, her limbs, striking her with sudden poignancy, disappearing ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... congenial friends have nothing to say to each other. There are, as a rule, any number of things one can do while one is waiting, but unluckily there is nothing one feels inclined to do. Up till one o'clock conversation was spasmodic. For the next half hour silence reigned, and each face became expressive of a sense of injury and patient suffering. At quarter of two, open revolt ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... with his daughter Sophia, before her marriage to Mr. Lockhart, and had sent to say that he was desirous I should come to him, which I did, and remained for ten days till the attack had subsided. During its course the extreme violence of the pain end spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the stomach were such that I scarcely expected the powers of endurance could sustain him through the trial, and so much at times was he exhausted by it as to leave us in ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... humanizing tendencies of modern society. By this want Ireland is made miserable and kept low in the scale of nations. Had the race been self-respecting, sturdy, upright, stubbornly industrious, all this savage neglect would have mended itself. Being what it is—excitable, imaginative, spasmodic, given over to ideas rather than to facts, and trusting to Hercules in the clouds rather than to its own brawny shoulders—this squalor continues and is not dependent on poverty. Time alone will show whether changed agrarian conditions will alter ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... privations. Sometimes in conversation, oftener in secret musing, now in the eloquent outburst of the composer, and now in the adjuration of the poet or the vow of the revolutionist, this latent spirit has found expression. Again and again, spasmodic and abortive emeutes, the calm protest of a D'Azeglio and the fanaticism of an Orsini, sacrifices of property, freedom, and life,—all the more pathetic, because to human vision useless,—have made known ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... frozen and paralysed, and Overbeck in Lubeck and Vienna, like Cornelius in Dusseldorf, found in tyrannous sway the pseudo-classic school of the French David, cold as marble, rigid as petrifaction, spasmodic as a galvanised muscle. But the Germans, especially the more intellectual sort, smarting under the yoke, were all the while gathering strength to reclaim nationality as their birthright. The reaction came through ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... the new community. But in a frontier community without a settled government, and with a population necessarily armed for self-defence, it was not likely to be peaceably conducted. Nor was it. For years Kansas was the scene of what can only be described as spasmodic civil war. The Free Soil settlement of Lawrence was, after some bloodshed, seized and burnt by "border ruffians," as they were called, from Missouri. The North cried out loudly against "Southern ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... deep despondence to one of hope, had Mrs. Warburton been raised, by the timely aid afforded through the persevering interference of the little playmate of her son. But she soon began to perceive, after a time, that the charity was only spasmodic, and entered into without a real consideration of her peculiar case. The money given her was the best assistance that could have been rendered, for with this she obtained a supply of wood, flour, meal, potatoes, and some warm clothing for her little ones. But this would not last always, and the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... broke into a spasmodic duo of delight and disdain. "Why look at her?" they cried. "Doesn't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... am only sorry I ever uttered a word about the edition, and leave you to be the judge. I have had a vile cold which has prostrated me for more than a fortnight, and even now tears me nightly with spasmodic coughs; but it has been a great victory. I have never borne a cold with so little hurt; wait till the clouds blow by, before you begin to boast! I have had no fever; and though I've been very unhappy, it is nigh over, I think. Of course, ST. IVES has paid the penalty. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... long black coat on it; a long, loose pair of legs, with long boots on the feet, all in motion at the same time—all shining, and wriggling, and working with an indescribable vitality, a voice bubbling up from the vast depths below with cheery, spasmodic, and unintelligible words of welcome—this was the wonderful man that stood before me, the great Danish improvisator, the lover of little children, the gentle Caliban who dwells among fairies and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... practical morality? Only when this basic, iron rule is involved is our defense of right nation-wide and prompt. Murder may swagger, theft may rule and prostitution may flourish and the nation gives but spasmodic, intermittent and lukewarm attention. But let the murderer be black or the thief brown or the violator of womanhood have a drop of Negro blood, and the righteousness of the indignation sweeps the world. Nor would ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... portion of its Christmas loaf—the pan calendau—to some friend or neighbour to whom Fortune has been less kind. But, happily, this gift nowadays often is a mere friendly compliment, like the gift of fougasso; for the times are past when weak-kneed and spasmodic charity dealt with real ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... as upright as a candle, was conducting an invisible orchestra when Aline returned. The frightened maid tried to hold the lean, spasmodic arms as they traced in the air the pompous rhythm of a march that moved on silent funereal pinions through the chamber. The woman stared threateningly at the picture on the wall, the picture of the skeleton which had come from nothingness ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... performances are worth watching, they have not sprung suddenly into notice by some special achievement or by doing work so sensational that it would not fail to set people talking. There has been no spasmodic brilliancy in their progress, none of that strange alternation of masterly accomplishment and hesitating effort which is apt at times to mark the earlier stages of the life of an artist who may or may not attain greatness in his later years. They have gone forward ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... and called for the breakdown. Bob begins a jig on his guitar, the whistler claps and the sable dancer edges his way to the center of the floor in little spasmodic shuffles. He begins with his heel tap, then the toe, then in leaps and whirls. The guitar swelled to a steady roar. The whistler quickens his claps. And Stuart's boyish laughter rang ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... minstrel with the briefest of intervals between his performances. There were black rims in the orbits of his eyes, as if he gazed feebly out of unglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, already grotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodic experiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice of Lance, he inflicted his protesting and querulous ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... be a mighty pretty dance went to that," she said, nodding her head in time with the music, and assisting the heavily spasmodic attempts of the instrument with the pleasant levity of her voice. "I used to ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the "gay science" gradually slipping down from the clouds, and settling quietly and doucely on the plain hard ground of ordinary life and business! Let all pale-faced and sharp-chinned youths, who are spasmodic poets, or who are in danger of becoming such, keep steadily before them the picture of minstrel Burn, "leading a cow by a straw-rope"—and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... brother of Hood, Shasta, St. Helens, and Rainier. At the climax of his career, Mazama probably rose sixteen thousand feet above the sea, which means ten thousand feet above the level of the present lake. We are justified too in imagining his end a cataclysm. Volcanic upbuildings are often spasmodic and slow, a series of impulses separated by centuries of quiescence, but their climaxes often are sudden and excessively violent. It seems more probable that Mazama collapsed during violent eruption. Perhaps like a stroke of lightning at the moment of triumph, death came ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... the people away there know no better than to play off tribe against tribe, sect against sect, one peasant prejudice against another. Over this pass the foolery grows grimmer and viler. We shall come to where the Servian plots against the Bulgarian and the Greek against both, and the Turk, with spasmodic massacres and indulgences, broods over the brew. Every division is subdivided. There are two sorts of Greek church, Exarchic, Patriarchic, both teaching by threat and massacre. And there is no one, no one, with the sense to over-ride all these squalid hostilities. All ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... holding his hand to his forehead as if seeking inspiration, the almost spasmodic movements of his mouth, the sort of plaintive groan that started the prayer, and the steadily accumulating earnestness with ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... critics for at least a week. They then plied him with punches and other strong drinks, which were so mixed as to seriously affect his brain, for it began to reel up his vision, and he broke forth in the most spasmodic strains, addressing those present, whom he declared a political assemblage, on the state of the nation. In my determination never to swerve from the truth in this history, I am compelled here to record, that the Yacht Club ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... only imagined it, they were only deceiving themselves; but how deplorable were the results. She herself had grown old as people should grow old—steadily and firmly. No interruptions, no belated after-glows and spasmodic returns. If, after all these years, she were now going to be deluded into some sort of unsuitable breaking-out, ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... time. The dancers are all men, young warriors and older men, but no greybeards. The orchestra consists of some half-dozen men, who clap together two sticks or boomerangs; in time to this "music" a wailing dirge is chanted over and over again, now rising in spasmodic jerks and yelled forth with fierce vehemence, now falling to a prolonged mumbled plaint. Keeping time to the sticks, the women smack their thighs with great energy. The monotonous chant may have little or no sense, and may be merely the repetition of one sentence, such as "Good fella, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... done according to God's law," answered Dick. "The present spasmodic, haphazard sentimental way of giving does. It takes away a man's self-respect; it encourages him to be shiftless and idle; or it fails to reach the worthy sufferers. Whichever way you fix it, ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... in flannel shirt and chaps came forward, dragging blanket, saddle and bridle. At sight of him the horse gave a spasmodic fling, then trembled again violently. A blind was coaxed over its eyes and the bridle slipped on. Quickly and warily, with deft fingers, the young man saddled and cinched. He waved a hand jauntily to the ropers. The lariats were thrown off as the puncher swung ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... off its criminals by a spasmodic effort. The gallows tree has borne its ghastly fruit. Fleeing "Roughs" are self-expatriated. Others are unceremoniously shipped abroad. The Vigilance Committee rules. This threshing out of the chaff gives the State a certain dignity. At least, an ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... never fully understood; the many schemes of Mazzini, never fastened upon him sufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, darkness and intricacy, to the republican plot against the President's life and those of his counselors. The police operations prove that the late murder as not a spasmodic and fitful crime, but long premeditated, and carried to consummation with as much cohesion and resolution as the murder of Allessandro de Medici ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... other sweet herbs that used to be deposited in them. Even the tiny cow-bell, which once served to warn Dame Trippew of the advent of a customer, still hung from a bit of curved iron on the inner side of the street-door, and continued to give out a petulant, spasmodic jingle whenever that door was opened, however cautiously. If the good soul could have returned to the scene of her terrestrial commerce, she might have resumed business at the old stand without making any alterations whatever. Everything remained ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... who came in contact with her, fragile in health, and only going through her duties and exertions so cheerily by the quiet fortitude of a brave woman. In the course of this year, 1842, some severe spasmodic attacks made her family anxious; and as the railway communication was still incomplete, so that the journey to London was a great fatigue to an invalid, her desire to spend Christmas in Devonshire led to her remaining there with her ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exceptions; but in making plans for the welfare of such families we must try to organize help that shall be as regular and systematic as possible. Next to having to depend upon charitable resources at all, the most demoralizing thing is to be dependent upon uncertain and spasmodic charity. ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... a terrific straining of mechanic energies, which pressed the jaws of the watchers together with spasmodic sympathy, as if their own nervous power were cooperating in the struggle, the gallant ship bore her head round to face the driving waves. From the ten huge, red stacks columns of inky black smoke poured out as the stokers crammed ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... his age. His frequent workings by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force, but was there not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only be a force ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... manifested; and the sense of taste and usually smell are also sufficiently active to enable the infant to take nourishment. No other senses are active and no other movements possible except the automatic action of vital organs and a few vague spasmodic twitchings and movements of parts of the body known as impulsive. Nothing, however, can be done from without to hasten the mental awakening; Nature in her own due time will do this, and do it much better if not hurried ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... taking especial interest in the log-books, for he was again collaborating with Louada Murilla in that spasmodic literary ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... attached, forming a keyboard four feet long. The levers, each three feet long, are delicately hung on fine brass centers, and each lever is counterbalanced by a weight hung in a vessel of water, which acts as a hydraulic brake, and checks any spasmodic movement in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... bird opened the concert with a brilliant solo by way of overture, which was duly reported by the musical critic in the shape of a chalk line on the table. The length of the effusion did not matter; a long aria, or a brilliant but spasmodic cadenza, each counted one, and one only. The Bermondsey bird, heedless of the issue at stake, devoted the precious moments to eating, emitting nothing beyond a dyspeptic twitter which didn't count; and his proprietor stood by me evidently chagrined, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the emptiness of his life; and who later had wept those pure tears of joy that he had found love. She had a moment of insight, of vision, of terrible understanding. She did not know what was taking place within her, something racking—spasmodic throes of sudden growth, the emergence for the first time in all her life of the capacity for ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... heavily on the tired spirit. I find that every prominent scoundrel known to us pursued his work of sin with an absolute unconsciousness of all moral law until pain or death drew near; then the scoundrel cringed like a cur under the scourges of remorse. Thackeray, in a fit of spasmodic courage, painted the archetypal scoundrel once and for all in "Barry Lyndon," and he practically said the last word on the subject; for no grave analysis, no reasoning, can ever improve on that immortal and most moving picture of a wicked man. Observe ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... don't know where we are, and this island may be something like Japan, subject to quakes, or it may be that this one is merely a spasmodic tremor. Perhaps the great storm which brought us here was part of the disturbance of nature which ended up with the earthquake. We ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... She and plump Mrs. Frederick Penhallow did most of the talking. Mrs. George Penhallow being rather out of it by reason of her newness. She was George Penhallow's second wife, married only a year. Hence, her contributions to the conversation were rather spasmodic, hurled in, as it were, by dead reckoning, being sometimes appropriate and sometimes savouring of a point of view not ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not and that alarm was furtherest from her. I began my investigation, but the broken ground wire was not the only trouble. It I promptly repaired, and still the engine would not respond to my cranking. There were spasmodic explosions, but they came to naught. Nor was the trouble due to any one of the half dozen primary accidents for which, in turn, I made tests. There was a fine, fat spark at the plugs, the vibrator buzzed properly, the gasoline feed ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... been conducting a vigorous campaign against singers who dispense with careful and prolonged training, and by their spasmodic and declamatory style suggest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... streets, green parks, and nobody in them, or nobody one has ever seen before. Out of La Trappe, which does not suit a Protestant man, there is perhaps no place where one can be so perfectly alone. I might study even but, as I said, there are noises going on; a last desperate spasmodic effort of building,—a new top-story to the house, out of which is to be made one "spacious room" (so they call it, though it is under twenty feet square) where there shall be air ad libitum, light from the sky, and no sound, not even that of the Cremorne Cannons, shall ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and fearful glance at the long dark figure lying face downwards upon the sward, showing signs of life only by a spasmodic twitching of the limbs; and then drawing Cuthbert's long hunting knife from his belt, she cut the cords that bound his hands and feet, and in another moment he sprang up and shook himself, keeping a wary eye all the while upon the prostrate foe. But he did not go to his side at once; ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... me! A falling leaf; a blade of grass moved by an insect; a snake or a lizard gliding out of my path; the squeal of a monkey; the fluttering of a bird's wings as it flew up to its perch, all subjected me to spasmodic thrills. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... enough upon which to build an historical narrative or from which to draw any clear idea even of what befell. All we can say with any sort of certainty is that the Saxons, through long years of probably spasmodic fighting, very gradually established themselves in southern England, and out of it carved a dominion, the kingdom of Wessex, whose capital was Winchester. Until the year 635 this kingdom, such as it was, was pagan. In that year St Birinus converted the West Saxons and their King Kynegils ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... the response of the government to such representations, and what efforts were made to enforce the act? A few unsystematic and spasmodic attempts are recorded. In 1811 some special instructions were sent out,[94] and the President was authorized to seize Amelia Island.[95] Then came the war; and as late as November 15, 1818, in spite of the complaints of collectors, we find no ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and fell senseless into the arms of several ladies. Nunez, transformed into a hero, forgetting his own health, ran to her assistance. In a few moments the place was filled with glasses of water, and two or three bottles of anti-spasmodic appeared upon the scene. When she began to recover consciousness and the critical moment of tears arrived, her sister Micaela, no longer able to control herself, attacked her ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... waiting in her anteroom for the purpose of taking her turn in consulting the prophetess professionally, that she had witnessed a scene of consternation and unaffected maternal grief in this Hungarian lady upon the sudden seizure of her son, a child of four or five years old, by a spasmodic inflammation of the throat (since called croup), peculiar to children, and in those days not very well understood by medical men. The poor Hungarian, who had lived chiefly in warm, or at least not damp ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... think your home should be made uncomfortable to you. There is no reason why it should be. At least, I should think not." She spoke with little spasmodic efforts, which, however, did not betray themselves to her companion, who seemed to her to be almost more engaged with Dumpling than with the conversation. It certainly had been through no wish of ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the dining-room they repeated their performance. They were torn between intermittent convulsive laughter and sudden spasmodic discussions of politics, college, and the sunny state of their dispositions. Their watches told them that it was now nine o'clock, and a dim idea was born in them that they were on a memorable party, something that they would remember always. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was clinging to him. She was panting with sobs, but she kept her voice down to a whisper. "Speak low, speak low," she said in his ear. "I don't know where he is. Oh, speak low." She clung to him with almost a spasmodic grip of her slender arms. "If you had been ten minutes longer I think I should have died," she whispered. "Don't make a sound. I don't know ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... possible means of relief, however; and Madame Dravikine, wise in her generation, let him weep his bitter revolt away. This lasted nearly an hour, and both were exhausted by the time the tears had ceased, and only an occasional, spasmodic sob gave evidence of the storm that had passed. It was at this juncture—Ivan upon the floor, half sitting, half kneeling, Caroline's arms clasping him close—that the door of the room opened again, quietly, and Nathalie appeared. At sight of the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... in reiterating them and so the wrangle went on till suddenly she fell from her chair on the floor in a fit, the spasmodic movements of which were so strange and varied that it would be almost impossible to describe them. At one moment the patient was extended at full length with her body arched forward in a state of opisthotonos. The next minute she was in a sitting position with the legs drawn up, making, while her ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the combined dictates. Hence results a decreased impulsiveness, and also a greater persistence. The conduct pursued, being prompted by several emotions co-operating in degrees which do not exhaust them, acquires a greater continuity; and while spasmodic force becomes less conspicuous, there is an increase in the total energy. Examining the facts from this point of view, there are sundry questions of interest to be put respecting the different races of men. (a) To what other traits than degree of mental evolution is impulsiveness related? ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... but, upon the whole, I suffered much less than might have been expected. I breathed, however, at every moment, with more and more difficulty, and each inhalation was attended with a troublesome spasmodic action of the chest. I now unpacked the condensing apparatus, and got it ready ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... falling; streams of water were beating against the window-panes, and one could hear how the water was falling to the ground from the roof, sobbing there. This sobbing sound was joined by another sound—a shrill, often interrupted, hasty scratching of a pen over paper, and then by a certain spasmodic grumbling. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... honor to my wife's dinner, Lisbeth," said he, scrutinizing her, for Lisbeth was perfectly well, trying to imitate the hiccough of spasmodic indigestion as ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... potato-rot, and the League's powerful breath blew it over. The Whigs returned to office, but not to power, the Russell Government proving a most ridiculous concern, and living through only five years of rickety rule. A spasmodic Tory Government, that discarded Tory principles, endured for less than a year, not even the vigorous intellect of the Earl of Derby, seconded though it was by the genius of Disraeli, being sufficient to insure it a longer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the patient the physician should observe the action of the larynx and feel if there are no spasmodic movements and if the flexibility is satisfactory. The action of the larynx can be exercised and improved by singing seconds, thirds, etc. The keynote always may be sung on oo; the ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... sharp claws on the rocky floor, saw the pig-like eyes of the animals shining red under the light, heard their spasmodic breathing, and was about to make a desperate rush forward when the outer cavern was flooded with a racing light which grew and grew as Tommy looked. Then he heard ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... throat. The Harvester dropped his load with a crash and ran in leaping bounds, but the dog was before him. Half way to the house, Ruth Jameson swayed in the grip of her uncle. One hand clutched his coat front in a spasmodic grasp, and with the other she covered ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... still more to be alone. During her long meditation in a white-swathed chair before the muffled hearth she had been able for the first time to clear a way through the darkness and confusion of her thoughts. The way did not go far, and her attempt to trace it was as weak and spasmodic as a convalescent's first efforts to pick up the thread of living. She seemed to herself like some one struggling to rise from a long sickness of which it would have been so much easier to die. At Givre she had fallen into a kind of torpor, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... importance than that of the Kuges. But it must not be understood that these councils were regular meetings held in the modern parliamentary way; nor that they had anything like the powers of the British Parliament or of the American Congress. These councils of Japan were called into spasmodic life simply by the necessity of the time. They were held either at the court of Kioto or that of Yedo, or at other places appointed for the purpose. The Kuges or Daimios assembled rather in an informal way, measured ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... Gary's eyes seemed to enlarge and twinkle as the boy uttered these words in a semi-drowsy, spasmodic way. Presently the partially rolled up eyes opened in a natural manner and ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... and promptness rather than strength. The hermit-trout was led to and fro by a judicious turn of wrist or elbow. His efforts had subsided to a few spasmodic struggles—an occasional struggle ending with a shiver, and then he was brought to the surface. This was followed by a last great convulsive effort, when his tail churned the water into a little circle of foam, which disappeared the moment his struggles were over. But a few seconds more were necessary ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... uniform, so he called "Halt!" The recruits became rigid. "Medical inspection," cried the corporal—"Tongues out!" Three tongues were instantly thrust out. "Salute your general," was the next order. This was too much. In the middle of a spasmodic attempt at a salute a dubious look began to spread over the faces of the three victims, which broadened into certainty as with a yell they leapt upon their oppressor and made him stand them ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... herself had roused. She did not stir when she saw a glass hurled at the unoffending Englishman's head. A hand reached over and seized a bottle behind her. The bottle was raised and still she did not move, though her fingers pressed her cheeks with a spasmodic quickness. Three times Shorland had said, in well-controlled tones: "Frenchmen, I am no spy," but they gave him the lie with increasing uproar. Had not Gabrielle Rouget said that he was an English spy? As the bottle was poised in the air with a fiendish ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... settled to their proper places. Standing in the sticky, sweet-smelling ooze, Alan eyed the robot apprehensively. Half buried in mud, it stood quiet in the shadowy light except for an occasional, almost spasmodic jerk of its blaster barrel. For the first time that night Alan allowed himself a slight smile. "A blade in the old gear box, eh? How ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... a Maenad. I was entertained by Judith's fruitless efforts to get behind this wall of reserve. Carlotta said, "Oh, ye-es" or "No-o" to everything. It was not a momentous conversation. As it was Carlotta in whom Judith was particularly interested, I effaced myself. At last, after a lull in the spasmodic talk, Carlotta said, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... accounted a good dancer; yet Saxon did not remember ever having danced with him with keen pleasure. Just a hit of a jerk spoiled his dancing—a jerk that did not occur, usually, but that always impended. There was something spasmodic in his mind. He was too quick, or he continually threatened to be too quick. He always seemed just on the verge of overrunning the time. It was ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... would be with them before the day was over: oh, the information was positive; he had it from an aid to one of the generals; and although, in speaking of the route the marshal was to come by, he pointed to the frontier of Belgium, Maurice yielded to one of those spasmodic attacks of hopefulness of his, without which life to him would not have been worth living. Might it not be that the day ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... fellow practitioners. Rousing his sleeping assistant, he ordered him to raise the patient's head a little, while, with a small spatula, he pried the firmly set teeth apart sufficiently to allow the liquid he had prepared to trickle slowly into the mouth. As it reached the throat there was a spasmodic contraction that gave Maitre Laurent an instant of intense anxiety—but it was only momentary, and the remainder of the dose was swallowed easily and with almost instantaneous effect. A slight tinge ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... her nose! The wonder is I am not dead; yes, dead by your hand, you brutal black nigger! But where was I in my presentation? O, I recollect! That mad-cap girl, my second jewel, so horrified me. I dare not yet refer to it lest my nerves become spasmodic again. Pray excuse her, Miss Orville, and I will proceed to my youngest, my infant-jewel! Eldora Adelaide Maria Suzette, greet your cousin, love, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... sentiment of the civilized world, for human edicts founded on human will and supported by physical force. The American System is but the establishment of interstate and international arbitration as the common and usual course of governmental action instead of as a voluntary or spasmodic manifestation of governmental will. ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... as he now secured would have ham strung or otherwise maimed its victim and left her wallowing helpless. But the dull teeth merely barked the leg's tough skin. And a spasmodic jerk ripped it loose from ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... punster or jester, not with a mere master of grimace or manufacturer of broad grins, not with an eccentric oddity in prose or verse, not with a merry-andrew who tickles to senseless laughter, not with a spasmodic melodramatist who writhes in fictitious pain, but that we are dealing with a sincere, truthful, and most gifted nature,—many-sided, many-colored, harmonious as a whole, and having a real unity as the centre of its power. To enter into a complete exposition of such a nature is ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and looked with perfect serenity toward the high and mighty duchess, whose titles were being pompously enumerated by the punctilious mistress of ceremonies. As ill luck would have it, this one was older, uglier, and more strangely bedizened than all the others together. The queen felt a spasmodic twitch of her face; she colored violently, and opening her fan again, it was evident to all that assemblage of censorious dames that for the second time youth and animal ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... people. Aristocracy, in our sense of the word, came to an end before the beginning of the Christian era, and government was in the hands of officials chosen for their proficiency in writing in a dead language, as in England. Intercourse with the West was spasmodic and chiefly religious. In the early centuries of the Christian era, Buddhism was imported from India, and some Chinese scholars penetrated to that country to master the theology of the new religion in its native home, but in later ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... moved; the water was trickling slowly off Baby's clothes and making a pool on the floor, Bunty was still giving vent to spasmodic boos and hoos, Judy was whistling stormily, and the General, mulcted of the scissors, was licking his own muddy shoe all over with his ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... stomach and bowels when vomiting, and the mucus and irritating substances from the bronchial tubes, trachea, and nasal passages by coughing and sneezing. To produce these effects they all act together. Their violent and continued action sometimes produces hernia, and, when spasmodic, may occasion ruptures of ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... manner. He stood the handsome creature's steadily persistent rudeness very well; he made no effort to push into the talk when she coolly held him out of it. He waited without external uneasiness or spasmodic smiles. If he could do that despite the inevitable fact that he must feel his position uncomfortable, he was possessed of fiber. That alone would make him worth cultivating. And if there were persons who were to be made uncomfortable, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dialogue could not be rendered save by actors strung up to a pitch of almost frenzied tension. To do full justice to what in Webster's style would be spasmodic were it not so weighty, and at the same time to maintain the purity of outline and melodious rhythm of such characters as Isabella, demands no common ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... that you are sluggish, reluctantly unselfish, inattentive, spasmodic. The wonder is that you are ever anything else.... Do you realize that a few million generations ago, everything that stirs in us, everything that exalts human life, self-devotions, heroisms, the utmost triumphs of art, the love—for love it is—that makes you and me care ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... been five such years in England. The sanguinary struggles of the Roses, the grinding oppression of Henry the Seventh, the spasmodic cruelties of Henry the Eighth, were not to be compared with this time. Of all persecutors, none is, because none other can be, so coldly, mercilessly, hopelessly unrelenting, as he who believes himself ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... Acts has passed through three more or less spasmodic stages.[7] The first was early in the nineteenth century when a number of scholars endeavoured to analyse the book. Their efforts were not very successful, though they unearthed a great many interesting phenomena. Later on, in the 'nineties, another series of efforts were made with, ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... stringent orders against printed attacks on the government, in spite of the spasmodic activity of the police, the boldness of some of the pamphlets is remarkable. One of them, for instance, begins as follows: "There was once, I know not where, a king born with an upright spirit and a heart that loved justice, but a bad education ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... public show. Though the rain had ceased, and the sun shone, those who possessed umbrellas were not to be coaxed, but held them aloft with a settled air of gloom which defied the lenitives of nature and the spasmodic cajolery of the worst band in Edinburgh. "It'll be near full, Jock?" "It wull." "He'll be startin' in a meenit?" "Aiblins he wull." "Wull this be the sixt time ye've seen him?" "I shudna wonder." It occurred to me that, had we come to bury Byfield, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was in the act of raising it from the notch in which it rested, when bang—bang, two shots were fired just outside, and simultaneously the door shook violently, there was a peculiar rending, splintering sound in the rough boards, and Dallas's heart gave a spasmodic leap, for he saw his cousin fall to ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... or rather his long hours, of labor and of meditation, was subject to a peculiar spasmodic movement, which seemed to be a nervous affection, and which clung to him all his life. It consisted in raising his right shoulder frequently and rapidly; and persons who were not acquainted with this habit sometimes interpreted this as a gesture of disapprobation and ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... opportunity, accepted it and became one of the elect. He passed on to the staff of the Courier, where his work was spasmodic and of a leisurely character, but always valuable and appreciated. His salary, which was liberal, seemed to him magnificent. Besides, he had the opportunity of doing other work. All the magazines were open ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... it would burst out of her bosom, when her conductress led her into an ante-room, and knocked at a door opening into a room beyond. But it is remarkable that persons of sensitively-nervous organisation are the very persons who are capable of forcing themselves (apparently by the exercise of a spasmodic effort of will) into the performance of acts of the most audacious courage. A low, grave voice from the inner room said, 'Come in.' The maid, opening the door, announced, 'A person to see you, Miladi, on business,' and immediately retired. In the one instant while ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the foreign body passes into the larynx violent spasmodic coughing immediately succeeds, which continues until it is removed or life is extinct. Such cases demand the prompt opening of the trachea below the larynx by a ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... his already upright form, and, by a strong bulging of his muscles, snapped the thongs that bound him. Evidently he had not tried thus to free himself; it was rather a spasmodic expression of savage dignity and pride. One arm and both his legs still were partially confined by the bonds, but his right hand he lifted, with a gesture of immense self-satisfaction, and pointed ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... make a protest by their hair and dress, and something somber and truculent in the expression of their faces, against the more normal type, who would have passed unnoticed in an omnibus or an underground railway. It was notable that the talk was confined to groups, and was, at first, entirely spasmodic in character, and muttered in undertones as if the speakers were ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... vast expanse of solitude spread glitteringly. All crimson and violet, with deep purple marking the depressions in its monotonous surface, and here and there the dry bed of one of its spasmodic lakes, showing almost black in its obscurity. These lakes were water-filled only in the early spring, and their moisture had long since died out of them. Under a noon-day sun they showed like shallow bowls filled with ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... Socialist wrote with unconscious humour: "The Utopist needs no knowledge of facts. Indeed such a knowledge is a hindrance. For him the laws of social evolution do not exist. He is a law unto himself; and his men are not the wayward, spasmodic, irregular organisms of daily life, but automata obeying the strings he pulls. In a word, he creates, he does not construct. He makes alike his materials and the laws within which they work, adapting them all to an ideal end. In describing a new Jerusalem ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... wondered at. The extent and determination of the secession movement were imperfectly understood, and the belief among the supporters of the government, and, perhaps, of the government itself, was, that it was a spasmodic movement for a temporary purpose, rather than a fixed determination to found an independent separate nationality; that it was and would be sustained by the real majority of the people of none of the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... deserted mining flat, crossed and broken by the burrows and mounds made by the forgotten engines of the early gold-seekers. Johnny, at times hidden by these irregularities, kept closely in their rear, sauntering whenever he came within the range of their eyes in that sidelong, spasmodic and generally diagonal fashion peculiar to small boys, but ready at any moment to assume utter unconsciousness and the appearance of going somewhere else or of searching for something on the ground. In this way appearing, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... sound of a cough, and the anxious waiting to hear whether the next explosion had a "croupy" or brassy sound. It was, of course, early recognized that there were two kinds of croup, the so-called "spasmodic" and the "membranous," the former comparatively common and correspondingly harmless, the latter one of the deadliest of known diseases. The fear that made the mother's heart leap into her mouth as she heard the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson |
