"Naked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sprang into a posture of defence, which was lost as quickly as it was taken, one great arm shot out like a piston-rod; there was the sound of bare fists beating on naked flesh; there was an exultant indrawn gasp of savage pleasure and relief from the crowd, and ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Joseph Quil's child died at 12 o'clock this morning and Saml. Lewis died at half past 12 o'clock. The Surgeon came on bord at 9 o'clock. The men something better. I took from Morgan his scrotum and left the testicles entirely naked. ...
— Journal of an American Prisoner at Fort Malden and Quebec in the War of 1812 • James Reynolds
... during one of the worst March storms ever known in the western part of New York. As she lay snuggled in laces in her father's home, a tall man walked down a lane, four miles from Ithaca, with her sleeping sister in his arms. The dark baby head was covered by a ragged shawl; two tender, naked feet protruded from under a coarse skirt. Lon Cronk struggled on against the wind to a hut in the rocks, opened the door, and ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing the huge cylinder, as closely as possible, with his arms and knees, seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The RISK of the achievement ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... in numbers, skulking about almost naked, with unkempt hair and no queue, with a small basket for gathering garbage and a staff to keep away dogs. Only beggars carry sticks in China, and it is only the beggars that need beware of dogs. To carry a ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... from the sky of Alexandria, affected him as the exciting perfume exhaled by two rare plants nourished in a hot-house. It is unimaginable what lofty, exquisite, and mysterious sentiments they exchange. Their naked souls and minds, with all their workings, are visible in these ingenuous and crowded letters, as in a glass hive we can study the industry of bees. Saint-Beuve affirms, that the later difference in their religion, the Countess Edling always remaining in the Greek communion, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... woman at a door. They had turned her out as a joke, to give her a taste of the frost because she had been crying so much, and they shut the door behind her. At nine o'clock in the morning she was already quite drunk, dishevelled, half-naked, covered with bruises, her face was powdered, but she had a black-eye, blood was trickling from her nose and her teeth; some cabman had just given her a drubbing. She was sitting on the stone steps, a salt fish of some sort was in her hand; she was crying, wailing ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... three men caught red-handed attempting murder and burglary, and entitled accordingly to protection that the law doesn't always accord to honest men. But, as I have said, a true tale in the ears of criminals acts like a chemical reagent. It sets them to work lying, and the lie burns off, disclosing naked truth again. But, mother of me, they were daring liars! The fellow who had come out of the scrap more or less unscathed piped up for the three, the other two nodding and prompting him ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... him are well known, how he said 'Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth' (πα βω και κινω ταν γαν {pa bô kai kinô tan gan}); how, having thought of the solution of the problem of the crown when in the bath, he ran home naked shouting ἑυρηκα, ἑυρηκα {heurêka, heurêka}; and how, the capture of Syracuse having found him intent on a figure drawn on the ground, he said to a Roman soldier who came up, 'Stand away, fellow, from ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... introduction of armor both in painting and sculpture: in poetry it is better still,—Homer's undressed Achilles is less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles, though Phidias would rather have had him naked; in all mediaeval painting, arms, like all other parts of costume, are treated with exquisite care and delight; in the designs of Leonardo, Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armor sometimes becomes almost too conspicuous from the rich and endless ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the war was over, and had ended as a substantial victory for the Secessionists. They had commenced the campaign naked and defenseless; but the General Government had allowed them time to levy an army against us, and we had permitted ourselves to be surrounded with a ring of fire, from which there was no escape. Nor had we employed to the fullest extent all our available means of defense. No attempt had ever been ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... the heart of the wise; a full satisfier of guests; our crowned one who spoke with Axal; a shelter to the naked; a comforter to the poor; he was eager, he was noble, it is high his death was. We hope great honour will be given to him on the head of ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... no good that we can do? We ought not to wish men to be wretched that we may be enabled to practice works of mercy. Thou givest bread to the hungry, but better were it that none hungered and thou hadst none to give to. Thou clothest the naked; oh, that all men were clothed and that this need existed not! Take away the wretched, and the works of mercy will be at an end, but shall the ardor of charity be quenched? With a truer touch of love thou lovest the happy man to whom there is no good office that thou canst ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... but things prior out of which things subsequent are formed, that is, things simple out of which things composite are formed, are the more perfect. The reason is that the prior or the simpler are more naked and less covered over with substances and matters devoid of life, and are, as it were, more Divine, consequently nearer to the spiritual sun where the Lord is; for perfection itself is in the Lord, and from Him in that sun which is the first ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the Navajo Indians, often described as though it involved some sort of genuine necromancy, is explained by a matter-of-fact spectator. It is true, he says, that the naked worshipers cavort round a big bonfire, with blazing faggots in their hands, and dash the flames over their own and their fellows' bodies, all in a most picturesque and maniacal fashion; but their skins are first so thickly coated with a clay ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... from the ordinary one. When the procession has wound its way through every street, the girls go to another house, and having shut the door against the eager prying crowd of boys who follow at their heels, they strip the Death and pass the naked truss of straw out of the window to the boys, who pounce on it, run out of the village with it without singing, and fling the dilapidated effigy into the neighbouring brook. This done, the second scene of the little drama begins. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... say, loathe the very name of Southern Confederacy. And when some miserable wretch was to be whipped and branded for being absent ten days without leave, we had to see him kneel down and have his head shaved smooth and slick as a peeled onion, and then stripped to the naked skin. Then a strapping fellow with a big rawhide would make the blood flow and spurt at every lick, the wretch begging and howling like a hound, and then he was branded with a red hot iron with the letter D on both ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... down the shoulder of the mountain spur. Under the gray light of the afternoon the limitless swamps stretching to the skyline looked cold and naked under their drifted snow. From the sky big with storm overhead, to the scanty grass that showed by the wayside blackened by the rigours of the winter, the whole aspect of the frontier was ominous and forbidding. Before he plunged into the lower ravines Rallywood turned to look back at the angry ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... people, who in the summertime went about nearly naked, but in the winter were covered with good furs of elk, otter, beaver, bear, seal, and deer. The colour of their skin was usually a pale olive, but the women for some reason made themselves much darker-skinned ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... told me many years ago, but without the vivacity and good acting of Lord Holland. Another of his sayings was in the House of Lords, when, on I forget what question, he was unsupported: 'My Lords, I stand like our First Parents— alone, naked, but not ashamed.' This was fine. Lord Holland said there was nothing like real oratory in Parliament before the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... platitude, a rosy, dimpled joke, and a steel-ribbed sermon on predestination. Close upon them came a whole string of Nights with wind-blown hair and Days with faggots on their backs. All at once I saw the ample figure of Life rise above the whirling mass holding a naked child in one hand and in the other a gleaming sword. A bear crouched at her feet, and all about her swirled and glowed a multitudinous host of tiny atoms which sang all together, "We are the will of God." Atom wedded atom, and chemical ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... and kicked him as he lay. He gave an anguished cry. The mother heard and recognised her boy's voice, and, waking the father, said "Go down, they're killing my lad." The old man, for he is an old man, went down the stairs naked and unarmed. The foul marauders met him half-way up, and served him as they had served the boy, throwing him down, kicking him, and beating him with butt-ends of guns; with one terrible blow breaking ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... taken in the act of robbing temples, if he be a slave or stranger, shall have his evil deed engraven on his face and hands, and shall be beaten with as many stripes as may seem good to the judges, and be cast naked beyond the borders of the land. And if he suffers this punishment he will probably return to his right mind and be improved; for no penalty which the law inflicts is designed for evil, but always makes him who suffers either better ...
— Laws • Plato
... and a red sky—In a black coffin is a half-naked woman, with a Phrygian cap on her head, endeavouring to push up the lid with all her might. Jules Favre, lean, small, head enormous, under lip thick and protruding, hair wildly flying like a willow in a storm, wearing a dress coat, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... this walking about in my naked feet," George grunted in a moment. "I had my slippers on when I came down the ladder, but I either had to take them off and carry them in my hands or lose them in ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the sloop's movements had been watched from the shore, for although the melancholy waste of moor and mountain disclosed no other habitation, a score of half-naked barefoot figures were gathered on the jetty; while others could be seen hurrying down the hillside. These cried to one another in an unknown tongue, and with shrill eldritch voices, which vied with the screams of the gulls ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... tree falling, one of the great, gaunt, naked things that had been ringbarked long ago. All day it had swayed to and fro, rotten through and through; now there came up across the plain a puff of wind, and down it went before it. One wild ringing cry Judy ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... tie up many another, too. Let the great world there rave and riot, We here will house ourselves in quiet. The saying has been long well known: In the great world one makes a small one of his own. I see young witches there quite naked all, And old ones who, more prudent, cover. For my sake some flight things look over; The fun is great, the trouble small. I hear them tuning instruments! Curs'd jangle! Well! one must learn with such things not to wrangle. Come on! Come on! For so it needs must be, Thou ...
— Faust • Goethe
... say that he fully merited the honour conferred upon him; for never, since the days of Vulcan, was there a man seen who could daringly dabble in the fire as he did. He had a peculiar sleight-of-hand way of seizing hold of and tossing about red-hot coals with his naked hand, that induced one to believe he must be made of leather. Flames seemed to have no effect whatever on his sinewy arms when they licked around them; and as for smoke, he treated it with benign contempt. Not so La Roche: with the mercurial temperament of his class he leaped ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... country consists of rolling sandy plains as broad as seas, dotted with gray sage-brush and relieved by bare craggy monadnocks and naked ranges which the rising and the setting sun paints unbelievable colors. Here and there thin growths of cottonwood outline thin ribbons of rivers, few and far between. Here and there alkali whitens the edges of stained hollows where water lies awhile after spring cloudbursts. Here and there are ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... it was a relief to turn to the mountains. Along the steep trails I roamed far with Vanquished Often and Exploding Eggs. We played at being alone with nature, foregoing in living all that the white man had brought. I left the house of the chief naked save for a loin-cloth of native make, and I wore no shoes or hat. Vanquished Often and my valet were attired as I, and thus we shouted "Kaoha!" to the chieftess and ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... compliance with the command of their mother. Yudhishthira, the eldest son of Pandu, loses every thing including Draupadi at chess-play with Duryodhana, the eldest of the Kauravas. Draupadi is now dragged by the hair, almost naked, into the public assembly, an insult in revenge for which ferocious Bhima vows to slay Duhsasana, the insulter, and drink his blood, and ultimately fulfils his vow. The Pandava princes then depart ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... Philadelphia and Boston, and there was no safety except 'under the paw of the British Lion,' as she quaintly said. But the first winter was terribly severe for these poor runaways. They earned their bread by chopping wood in the snows of a Canadian forest; they were frost-bitten, hungry, and naked. Harriet was their good angel. She kept house for her brother, and the poor creatures boarded with her. She worked for them, begged for them, prayed for them, with the strange familiarity of communion with God ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... suffering from temporary blindness, so that he had to be led about by Lady Glenlyon, his wife. At Dunkeld the Queen lunched, and walked down the ranks of Highland soldiers. The piper played, and a reel and the ancient sword-dance, over crossed swords—the nimble dancer avoiding all contact with the naked blades—were danced. The whole scene—royal guests, noble men and women, stalwart clansmen in their waving dusky tartans—must have been very animated and striking in the lovely autumn setting of the mountains when the ling was red, the rowan ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... trusted in him. Having once fled away, yet now there is a witness of me in the palace. Once having fled away, as a fugitive—now all in the palace give unto me a good name. After that I had been dying of hunger, now I give bread to those around. I had left my land naked, and now I am clothed in fine linen. After having been a wanderer without followers, now I possess many serfs. My house is fine, my land wide, my memory is established in the temple of all the gods. And let this flight obtain thy forgiveness; ...
— Egyptian Literature
... not possible to see this clearly with the naked eye, but by the aid of a slice of the rock prepared for the microscope the granular structure of the quartzite is made perfectly plain. So much for the mechanical, chemical, and molecular structure of sandstone, all of which affect the strength ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... necessarily guilty glimpses. To an experienced artist the customary study from a naked figure, male or female, is little more than what a low-necked dress would be to others. Yet the instinct of the age shrinks from this exposure. We can make pretty good Venuses, but we cannot look ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... roadside. So he reeled on and on, and so he came at last to the great pine. There he turned out and crawled as much as walked through the trees and undergrowth to the summit of a low ridge, where he felt the sunshine fall on his half-naked back. It was so luxurious that he paused in the full glare of it, and slowly turned, as one very cold before a warming fire, and reveled in it. With every moment he felt it pouring into him, tingling softly as it ran. It was odd with what cheerful ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... faces at the first, and then the under-tow took hold of them, and never one that saved his life that day. And yet all came to beach at last, and I knew them by their dead faces for the men I had seen hoping against hope 'twixt ship and shore; some naked and some clothed, some bruised and sorely beaten by the pebbles and the sea, and some sound and untouched—all came to beach ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... over that of use. Nay, there are still more extreme illustrations: witness the fact narrated by Capt. Speke of his African attendants, who strutted about in their goat-skin mantles when the weather was fine, but when it was wet, took them off, folded them up, and went about naked, shivering in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience—when ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... and handed them to Charles. No man in England is a finer judge of gems than my brother-in-law. I watched him narrowly. He examined them close, first with the naked eye, then with the little pocket-lens which he always carries. "Admirable imitation," he muttered, passing them on to Amelia. "I'm not surprised they ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... level with the turf; after which, the jaws being opened, they are covered with leaves in as natural a manner as possible. Great care must be taken by the person who sets the trap that he does not touch it with his naked hand; this should invariably be done with a glove on, otherwise the wolf—always extremely difficult to catch by reason of his delicate sense of smell—would be awakened to his danger. The mode of taking the wolf by means of the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... less, to the extreme infra-red extremity; and on the other hand, that the energy before absorption was so enormously greater in the blue and violet, that the sun must have a decidedly bluish tint to the naked eye, if we could rise above the earth's atmosphere to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... of the dosshouse the shadows were creeping, seeming to chase each other. The teacher lay on the board at full length and snored. His eyes were wide open, his naked breast rose and fell heavily, the corners of his mouth foamed, and on his face was an expression as if he wished to say something very important, but found it difficult to do so. The Captain stood with his hands behind him, and ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... descried, in a corner of the cave, a little naked child sitting on the moss. He was playing with balls of various colours and sizes, which he disposed in strange figures upon the floor beside him. And now Tangle felt that there was something in her knowledge which was not in her ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... man, woman and child enough to eat, and it is contrary to God's law that the helpless should go hungry. There is enough material to clothe every man, woman and child, and God never intended that the needy should go naked. There is enough wealth to house and warm every creature tonight, for God never meant that men should freeze in such weather as this; and Christ surely teaches, both by words and example, that the hungry should be fed, the naked clothed, and the ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... going to do?" Stuart repeated, dully. "That is what I want you to tell me. There is nothing I can do now. I've brought trouble and insult on people who have been kinder to me than my own blood have been. Who took me in when I was naked and clothed me, when I hadn't a friend or a sixpence to my name. You remember—I came here from that row in Colombia with my wound, and I was down with the fever when they found me, and Alvarez gave me the appointment. And this is how I reward them. If I stay I ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... mother-cell breaks up into four lumps, which quickly round themselves off and contract, and become enveloped by a cell-membrane only after complete separation" (p. 13); that in the Equisetaceae "the young spores, when first separated, are still naked, but they soon become surrounded by a cell-membrane" (p. 14); and that in higher plants, as in the pollen of many Dicotyledons, "the contracting daughter-cells secrete cellulose even during their separation" (p. 14). Here, then, in ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... looked around to see whence came the familiar voice. His eyes met Rawson's, and he grinned with pleasure, as soon as he had recovered from the surprise of seeing the unexpected apparition of a naked white man in those wilds. Red man and white man, children of the wild, in a state of nature, shook hands in friendly greeting. Then Rawson explained how they had been waiting for Joe to ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... guided her along the trackless waste, and was "wallowing," nearly helpless, among the confused waters. Still she was a beautiful and a grand object, perhaps more so at that moment than at any other; for her vast and naked spars, her well-supported masts, and all the ingenious and complicated hamper of the machine, gave her a resemblance to some sinewy and gigantic gladiator, pacing the arena, in waiting for the conflict ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mrs. Chepstow, surprised at the sudden radiance in Nigel's face, seeing before her for the first time a man she could not read, but a man whose physique now forcibly appealed to her—seemed to become splendid under some inward influence, as a half-naked athlete's does when he slowly fills his lungs, clenches his fists, and hardens all his ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... he muttered. "Night and day I'll follow him. I'll camp on his trail till I find him. Then—I'll torture him; I'll strip him and leave him naked ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Moeris and the Mareotid lakes, 505 Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors, Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes, Or charioteering ghastly alligators, Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes Of those huge forms—within the brazen doors 510 Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast, Tired with the pomp ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Poor little naked fledgling, he had shivered and huddled close to the friendly column, for, even in summer, the breeze from the Adriatic often blows fresh ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... knights with lance and cuirass, and oval bossy shield carved in quaint conceits and ornamental fashion. Nor must we despise them when we reflect upon their power of accretion. The Gallionellae, invisible to the naked eye, can, of their heraldic shields and flinty armor, make two cubic feet of Bilin polishing slate in four days. By straining sea-water, a web of greenish cloth of gold, illuminated by their play of self-generated electric light, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... appearance of precipitous and broken rocks, occurring in the midst of a soft and beautiful region of pastoral luxuriance, is very striking. A curious series of chambers, communicating with each other, has been at some distant period beyond tradition excavated in that portion of the rock which is most naked and precipitous; and from this circumstance the site has been designated Anchor Church, signifying the residence of a hermit. At a distance it bears a very close resemblance to a Gothic ruin; the rude ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... as coolly in all probability as an undertaker measures a corpse for its shroud; secondly, in a cardinal of the same material, a wrapping cut in the shape in vogue at that period; thirdly, in certain loosely-fitting boots and gloves with which I was fain to cover up my naked feet and blistered hands in forma pauperis; and, lastly, in the collarette and cuffs provided by the economic and considerate Lady Anastasia, composed of cotton lace! The Dunstable bonnet was hung upon a peg in readiness, and I was kindly counseled to lie still, "accoutred as I was," and exhausted ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... perhaps it is not difficult to discover one. Every revolutionist in literature or art produces some composition in which he goes further than in any other in his defiance of recognised rules and conventions. It was Wordsworth's central theory that no subject can be too simple and no treatment too naked for poetic purposes. His poems written at Alfoxden are precisely those in which he is most audacious in carrying out his principle, and nothing, even of his, is quite so simple or quite ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... Clavering Park. Foker saw a running figure before him, but it was lost when he got to the lodge-gate. He stopped and asked, "Who was that who had just come in? Mrs. Bonner, was it?" He reeled almost in his walk: the trees swam before him. He rested once or twice against the trunks of the naked limes. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rules. Some of the armies shoot all natives in soldiers' uniforms because they are soldiers, and then they shoot all natives who resist them in civil dress, because they are not soldiers and have no right to fight. I suppose they ought to go about naked. They used to kill their prisoners with the butt-end of their rifles, but that breaks the rifles, and now they generally ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... Stretch'd its wide ruins, o'er the plain below Casting a gloomy shade, save where the moon Shone thro' its fretted windows: the dark Yew, Withering with age, branched there its naked roots, And there the melancholy Cypress rear'd Its head; the earth was heav'd with many a mound, And here and there ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... untrained soul of hers—was rushing with her and impelling her onwards, kindling her countenance with a new ardour. With her hands she clung to the ivy, with her naked feet she clung to the projections and the crevices to push ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... Slavs were an agricultural, not a warlike, people. They fought bravely, but naked to the waist, and with no idea of military organization, so were of course no match for the Turks, well skilled in the arts of war, nor for the armed bands of Scandinavian merchants, who made their territory a highway ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... cried:—"We will fit you out, old man." Murmurs: "Never seed seech a hard case.... Poor beggar.... I've got an old singlet.... Will that be of any use to you?... Take it, matey...." Those friendly murmurs filled the forecastle. He pawed around with his naked foot, gathering the things in a heap and looked about for more. Unemotional Archie perfunctorily contributed to the pile an old cloth cap with the peak torn off. Old Singleton, lost in the serene regions of fiction, read on unheeding. Charley, pitiless with the wisdom ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... muttered Mitya, and sitting down on the bed, he took off his socks. He felt unbearably awkward. All were clothed, while he was naked, and strange to say, when he was undressed he felt somehow guilty in their presence, and was almost ready to believe himself that he was inferior to them, and that now they had a ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... scene is particularly weird and impressive, for the shadows and general indistinctness make everything appear strange. The glowing furnaces, the showers of sparks, the roar of the blast furnaces, the suffocating fumes of sulphur, and the half-naked figures of the Mexican workmen, passing to and fro with cloths over their mouths, form all together ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... emergencies. The next operation was to clothe the poor blacks, for which purpose both officers and men ransacked their wardrobes. Sheets, tablecloths, towels, bed-curtains, shirts, and flannels, were willingly brought forth and put over their naked bodies as they came out from ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... had joined the party, and no inducement that I could offer brought me more volunteers. I was very unwilling to delay, and I was on the point of subdividing among the men I already had the two extra loads, when two stray shepherds turned up, half famished and naked, with long unkempt heads of hair, and only a coral necklace and a silver bangle by way of clothing. I quickly secured them, and although one was really only a boy, I decided to trust to luck and take Dr. Wilson's assurance that he looked tough enough ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the red of some strange flower or some tall peak, blue and snowy and fairylike in lonely moonlight; and now so great was my conversion that the more brutal the outrage offered to my ancient ideal, the rarer and keener was my delight. I read almost without fear: "My dreams were of naked youths riding white horses through mountain passes, there were no clouds in my dreams, or if there were any, they were clouds that had been cut out as if in cardboard with a ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... I do not," he said, being entirely absorbed at the moment by those strange forms which, for some reason, appeared to his imagination. Alongside of the strong, handsome Phillip, whom he looked upon as a model, he imagined Kolosoff, naked, his abdomen like a water-melon, bald-headed, and his arms hanging like two cords. He also dimly imagined what the silk-covered shoulders of Sophia Vasilievna would appear like in reality, but the picture was too terrible, and he drove it from ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... music, flowed the wine. The youth in silence went; Through naked streets, in cold moonshine, His homeward way he bent, Where, on the city's seaward line, His ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... unwholesome geniuses, whose genius (such as it was) had allied itself to madness; and who were just as conceited about the madness as about the genius, and took more pains to cultivate it. It brought them a quicker kudos, and was so much more visible to the naked eye. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and others at first he would write an epistle to my book, yet waved it afterwards; this is also to my advantage; because it was through the earnest solicitations of several of you that at that time stopped his hand; And perhaps it was more for the glory of God that truth should go naked into the world, than as seconded by so mighty an armour-bearer ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... believing that a hairless dog was domesticated when America was first visited by Europeans: some of these dogs in Paraguay are still dumb, and Tschudi (1/18. Quoted in Humboldt 'Aspects of Nature' (English translation) volume 1 page 108.) states that they suffer from cold in the Cordillera. This naked dog is, however quite distinct from that found preserved in the ancient Peruvian burial-places, and described by Tschudi, under the name of Canis ingae, as withstanding cold well and as barking. It is not known whether these two distinct kinds of dog are the descendants of native species, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... Dhry-russ was whin th' remains iv th' poor girl was found. That's because th' thrile was secret. If 'twas an open thrile, an' ye heerd th' tistimony, an' knew th' language, an' saw th' safe afther 'twas blown open, ye'd be puzzled, an' not care a rush whether Dhry-fuss was naked in a cage or takin' tay with his uncle at ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... muscles of youth. He arrived at his objective point, a spot which gave him a clear view of the mountain side for a mile on either hand. Somewhere in that area, he had already decided, the bear would be feeding. He settled down for a long, careful inspection; first with the naked eye, which yielded nothing, and next with a pair of binoculars. Sandy, when hunting, possessed unlimited patience. He settled himself comfortably, and kept the glasses at work. Finally his patience was ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... sometimes meet a ragged black boy or girl driving a team, consisting of a lean cow or a mule, sometimes a lean bull, or an ox and a mule; and I have seen a mule, a bull, and a cow, each miserable in its appearance, composing one team, with a half-naked black slave or two, riding or driving, as occasion suited. The carriage or wagon, if it may be called such, appeared in as wretched a condition as the team and its driver. Sometimes a couple of horses, mules, or cows, &c., would be dragging a ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... police, happened to be in Sitting Bull's camp at the time, and describes White Bird and his people as being the toughest looking party of Indians he had ever seen. Their horses were mere skin and bone; some of them scarcely able to walk. The Indians, men, women, and children, were half naked, some of them with hands and feet frozen, and they had not a pound of food of ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... when he sees chickory flowers enticing the hand with soft, light, blue petals, wishes to stroke them and draws near—he blows—and with the puff the whole flower flies away like down on the wind, and in his hands the too curious inquirer sees only a naked ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... was the | night-wind, | drifting | fast the | snow fell, Wide were the | downs, and | shelter | -less and | naked, When a poor | Wanderer | struggled | on her | journey, Weary ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... One by one, moving like snakes, the devils passed inboard to where they could survey the seemingly deserted deck. Some slight noise awoke her to their presence, yet, even as she shrieked the sudden alarm, a hand was at her throat, and she was struggling desperately in the merciless grip of a half-naked Indian. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... Coomb's ascent: sweet songsters near Warble in shade their wild-wood melody: Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear. Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock 5 That on green plots o'er precipices browze: From the deep fissures of the naked rock The Yew-tree bursts! Beneath its dark green boughs (Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms white) Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats, 10 I rest:—and now have gain'd the topmost site. Ah! what ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... battlements that vainly defended the death-stricken place. A soft northern atmosphere would have invested it in a certain mystery of romance, but in the clear southern air, the towers and walls standing sharply defined against the blue, wind-swept sky, it looked naked and pitiful, like a poor ghost caught ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... The boys' yard was on the other side of the fence, but in the fence was a knot-hole wherein was visible a keen boy-eye. One girl after another was engaged in pulling to the height of her knees Jessy Ramsey's poor, little, dirty frock, thereby disclosing her thin, naked legs, absolutely uncovered to the freezing blast. Maria rushed bareheaded out in the yard and thrust herself through ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... starry loneliness in which I had then found myself. I wonder if I can explain my feelings. The pleasure arose from a sort of sense of protected danger. On that memorable night, I had been as it were naked to all the silence, alone in the vast universe, which kept looking at me full of something it knew but would not speak. Now, when wandering about sleepless, I could gaze as from a nest of safety out upon the beautiful fear. From window to ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... the dining room. You better not see them. Now they are amusing themselves by breaking the furniture. Even the Count is drunk; drunk, too, is that Commandant that you were talking with, and all the rest. . . . Some of them are dancing half-naked." ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... utmost energy, suddenly failed beneath him. A rifle-shot had struck him in the vertebra of the neck, causing instantaneous death. Meanwhile, King Ben Cracko had made a bolt to escape, but was seized by his long calico robe; which, however, gave way, leaving him literally naked in the midst of his enemies. A shot brought him to the ground; but he sprang to his feet, still struggling to escape. He next received two bayonet wounds, but fought like a wild beast, until two or three men flung themselves upon him, and held ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... unimpaired. The city occupied a long and narrow strip between the canal and the first slopes of the Libyan mountains. A brick fortress defended it from the incursions of the Bedouin, and beside it the temple of the god of the dead reared its naked walls. Here Anhuri, having passed from life to death, was worshipped under the name of Khontamentit, the chief of that western region whither souls repair on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... 1835 page 333. For Brazil see 'Comptes Rendus' June 15, 1846. See Azara 'Quadrupedes du Paraguay' tome 2 pages 359, 361.) describes two peculiar breeds, namely, pelones, with extremely thin and fine hair, and calongos, absolutely naked. According to Castelnau there are two races in Brazil, one like European cattle, the other different, with remarkable horns. In Paraguay, Azara describes a breed which certainly originated in S. America, called chivos, "because they have straight vertical horns, conical, and very ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... even for this country, I think it with a kind of dull surprise as I look out over the naked hideousness of the land, men can be found to fight. What is it to be a child of the veldt, and never to have known any other life except the life of these plains? It is to reproduce in your own nature the main features of this extraordinary ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty, any more than the enthusiastic old men who in spite of wrinkles and ugliness ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Mackay through the plantations, and spent a pleasanter day than of late months. Story of a haunted glen in Laggan:—A chieftain's daughter or cousin loved a man of low degree. Her kindred discovered the intrigue and punished the lover's presumption by binding the unhappy man, and laying him naked in one of the large ants' nests common in a Highland forest. He died in agony of course, and his mistress became distracted, roamed wildly in the glen till she died, and her phantom, finding no repose, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... mortally wounded him in the head; so that he, to the amazement of the townsmen, and the encouragement of Diabolus, fell down dead quite over the wall. Now, when Captain Resistance was dead, (and he was the only man of war in the town,) poor Mansoul was wholly left naked of courage, nor had she now any heart to resist. But this was as the devil would have it. Then stood forth he, Mr. Ill- pause, that Diabolus brought with him, who was his orator; and he addressed himself to speak to the ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... amusing to watch her write the note, hear her explain to the cabman: if he brought back the right dress he was to get a sovereign. It was amusing to stroll on through the naked Sunday streets, talking of the music they had just heard and of Monsignor, to find suddenly that they had lost their way and could see no one to direct them. These little incidents served to enhance their happiness. They were nearly of the same age, and were conscious of it; a generation is but ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... in armour sprang up on the Spanish ship's poop rail and, shaking his naked sword ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... pretended to act with moderation and humanity. But cruel and barbarous was their humanity! Not content with expelling the English their houses, with despoiling them of their goodly manors, with wasting their cultivated fields, they stripped them of their very clothes, and turned them out, naked and defenceless, to all the severities of the season.[***] The heavens themselves, as if conspiring against that unhappy people, were armed with cold and tempest unusual to the climate, and executed what the merciless ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... we hear only their lisping call-note; but if the birds linger late enough in the spring, when their "fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love," a gleeful, canary-like song comes from the naked branches, and we may know by it that the flock will soon disappear for their nesting grounds ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... than Potsdam and the giant grenadiers to Friedrich Wilhelm; and where, he perceives, never half so clearly before, he shall actually peel off his Kinghood, and stand before God Almighty, no better than a naked beggar. Roloff's prognostics are not so encouraging as the King had hoped. Surely this King "never took or coveted what was not his; kept true to his marriage-vow, in spite of horrible examples everywhere; believed the Bible, honored the Preachers, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... presentations of one oft-repeated figure, translated here out of the clear-coloured glass into the sadder, somewhat opaque and earthen hues of the silken threads. The figure was that of the organ-builder himself, a flaxen and flowery creature, sometimes wellnigh naked among the vine-leaves, sometimes muffled in skins against the cold, sometimes in the dress of a monk, but always with a strong impress of real character and incident from the veritable streets of Auxerre. What is it? Certainly, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... outside stairway to the living-rooms you find your passage blocked by a small fence. In trying to step over this you nearly crush a naked baby, and a yellow dog snaps venomously at your heels. You enter the main room, where the pony-saddle and the hemp-scales may be stored. The Filipinos are great visitors, and you will find a ring of old men squatting upon the benches like so many hens, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... one caring to gather it. No one? Yes! some did, for we carried all that we could find, and if the reader will stroll along the hedges on St. Lewis road he will find them in abundance: dark purple flowers, growing on a stalk naked to near the summit, where there is a whorl of three leaves, its sepals are three, petals three, stamens twice three, and its stigmas three, hence its name of trillium. We have a few of the white varieties. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... hand for the glass once more as he spoke—although even by the naked eye the flag, minute as it was, could be seen to flash red in the breeze—and sought the far-off flutter again; and then closing the instrument with an angry ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... chest, with the long, unrelieved spine, extending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the time, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Zarca, Fedalma, the Prior, Sephardo, illustrate this idea. The latter gives utterance to the thought of the poem, when Don Silva says to him that he has need of a friend who is not tied to sect or party, but who is capable of following his "naked manhood" into what is just and right, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... everybody civilly in my own house, but if I say anything I must tell the naked truth. I believe Bessie is a true girl, as you say; but I have my doubts of you. I have heard much of your career; have talked with those who have seen you in that hell at Monte Carlo, bandying jests with ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... many ways, 'tis not to he purchased for money Just when it's wanted. And yet to-day I gladly have given Many excellent articles, shirts and covers and suchlike; For I have heard of old people and children walking half-naked. Will you forgive me, too, for having ransacked your presses? That grand dressing-gown, cover'd with Indian flowers all over, Made of the finest calico, lined with excellent flannel, I have despatch'd with the rest; 'tis thin, old, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Meadow Mouse was ever known to lose his temper was when Farmer Green mowed the meadow. Under the high grass Master Meadow Mouse had been able to run about his well-beaten paths unseen by hawks. But with the grass cut and raked, leaving only naked stubble, he couldn't hide even from old Mr. Crow. It was no wonder that he agreed with Bobby Bobolink's wife. The Bobolink family were so upset by haying that they moved to Cedar Swamp at the very first clatter of the mowing machine. And when Master Meadow ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... sad for an individual, and still more so for a nation, to lose the illusions of youth, if not of innocence, and to awake to the knowledge of an unbeautiful reality, bereft of all fictitious adornment. When, however, the naked truth can be discovered—and that is seldom the case—it must be faced; if the national or individual mind cannot receive it, the fault lies with the immaturity or morbid condition of the former, not with the material of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... great network of rigging and spars and close-furled canvas. Dwarfed by the tall masts, by the distances of the sea, and by the vastness of the heavens, the small black figures stood silent on the quarter-deck. But one of those men was bound half-naked to the rigging, and two faced each other in attitudes that by outline alone, for we could discern the features of ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... many stars by the help of glasses, which we do not discover with our naked eyes; and the finer our telescopes are, the more still are our discoveries. Huygenius carries his thought so far, that he does not think it impossible there may be stars whose light is not yet travelled down to us, since their first creation. There is no question but the universe ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... robber! (Changing neck-band and ruffles.) Eh God! how still the house is! There's something in hypocrisy after all. If we were as good as we seem, what would the world be? (The city has its vizard on, and we—at night we are our naked selves. Trysts are keeping, bottles cracking, knives are stripping; and here is Deacon Brodie flaming forth the man of men he is!)—How still it is!... My father and Mary—Well! the day for them, the night for me; the grimy cynical night that makes all cats grey, and all honesties of one complexion. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... horizontal, or diagonal lines are referred to, it must not be assumed that one means in all cases naked lines. There is no pure vertical line in a stone pine or cypress tree, nor pure horizontal line in a stretch of country, but the whole swing of their lines is vertical or horizontal. And in the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... despairing cry at the door awakened McGrath and his wearied household, and, opening it, they found a bruised, bloody, and literally naked man, lying senseless on the threshold. With some difficulty they recognized the features of Mountain, and it was broad daylight before he came to himself. His story was ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... the reckoning of descent in the female line,—inheritance going through the Mother,—among the Picts of Scotland, and they even find traces of totemism, an institution already outworn among several of the naked tribes of Australia, who reckon ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... also exposed to the fierce heat of the sun, to which they were unaccustomed. The wounded were carried back on litters, turned over to the surgeons, who worked manfully with the scantiest of equipment, and were then laid, often naked except for their bandages, upon the damp ground. Regiment blocked regiment in the narrow road, and officers carrying orders were again and again struck, as they emerged from cover, by the sharpshooters' fire. The want of means of communication ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... said he, "your sins are so great that to atone for them I command you the penance of wearing my cord upon your naked flesh." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre |
