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Tear   Listen
noun
Tear  n.  
1.
(Physiol.) A drop of the limpid, saline fluid secreted, normally in small amount, by the lachrymal gland, and diffused between the eye and the eyelids to moisten the parts and facilitate their motion. Ordinarily the secretion passes through the lachrymal duct into the nose, but when it is increased by emotion or other causes, it overflows the lids. "And yet for thee ne wept she never a tear."
2.
Something in the form of a transparent drop of fluid matter; also, a solid, transparent, tear-shaped drop, as of some balsams or resins. "Let Araby extol her happy coast, Her fragrant flowers, her trees with precious tears."
3.
That which causes or accompanies tears; a lament; a dirge. (R.) "Some melodous tear."
4.
(Glass Manuf.) A partially vitrified bit of clay in glass. Note: Tear is sometimes used in the formation of self-explaining compounds; as, tear-distilling, tear-drop, tear-filled, tear-stained, and the like.
Tears of St. Lawrence, the Perseid shower of meteors, seen every year on or about the eve of St. Lawrence, August 9th.
Tears of wine, drops which form and roll down a glass above the surface of strong wine. The phenomenon is due to the evaporation of alcohol from the surface layer, which, becoming more watery, increases in surface tension and creeps up the sides until its weight causes it to break.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tear" Quotes from Famous Books



... understanding in which ideas involuntarily translate themselves through imagery. Owing to this palpable form it is able to give its weighty support to the conscience, to counterbalance natural egoism, to curb the mad onset of brutal passions, to lead the will to abnegation and devotion, to tear Man away from himself and place him wholly in the service of truth, or of his kind, to form ascetics, martyrs, sisters of charity and missionaries. Thus, throughout society, religion becomes at once a natural and precious instrumentality. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... another. He had to deal with various governors and various colonies, each with its prejudices, jealousies, and shortcomings. He had to arrange for new levies from a people unused to war, and to settle with infinite anxiety and much wear and tear of mind and body, the conflict as to rank among officers to whom he could apply no test but his own insight. He had to organize and stimulate the arming of privateers, which, by preying on British commerce, were destined ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... Build and blow up, as best ye may, And do your worst to scare away Some visionary foe,— But, if in brute and blundering power You tear down Rodolph's granite tower, Defeat and scorn and shame that hour Shall whelm you like an arrowy shower— Haro! ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... "No shores where it could be washed up, rocks tear it to pieces; or if it get in an eddy, might be there for weeks. No see Sam ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... living. Generals, commandants, and burghers, no longer in the grimy costumes of the battlefield, but in the black garb of the legislator, filled the circles of chairs; bandoliered burghers, consuls and military attaches in spectacular uniform, business men, and women with tear-stained cheeks filled the auditorium; while on the official benches were the heads of departments and the Executive Council, State Secretary Reitz and General Schalk Burger. The Chairman of the Raad, General ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... trances, and became statue-like, as before, only the day after the Model's arrival. She was wan and silent, tasted nothing at table, smiled as if by a forced effort, and often looked vaguely away from those who were looking at her, her eyes just glazed with the shining moisture of a tear that must not be allowed to gather and fall. Was it grief at parting from the place where her strange friendship had grown up with the Little Gentleman? Yet she seemed to have become reconciled to his loss, and rather to have a deep feeling of gratitude that she had been permitted ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... him with tear-dimmed eyes for fully a minute. But he said no more and his stern countenance, as well as his unkind words and tone, repelled her. She put out her hand once, as though to speak, ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... with a swelling heart, first drove him forth, and planted his own foot once again upon the soil dearer to him than any other spot on earth. As he stood upon the familiar terrace, looking over the wide, fair valley of the Towy, his heart swelled with thankfulness and joy; and if a slow, unwonted tear found its way to his eye, it was scarce a tear of sorrow, for he felt assured that his brother Griffeth was sharing in the joy of this restoration to the old home, and that his loving and gentle spirit was not very far from him at this supreme hour ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... parting is a little worse to bear, that is all—and you, who gave me this ring, you are not going to say a word of regret. No, no, Natalushka, many thousands and thousands of people in the world have gone through what stands before us now, and wives have parted from their husbands without a single tear, so proud ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... stranger. She looked away quickly, wondering if what she had seen was merely some strange effect of the moon, or whether Androvsky was really altered for a moment by the action of some terrible grief, one of those sudden sorrows that rush upon a man from the hidden depths of his nature and tear his soul, till his whole being is lacerated and he feels as if his soul were flesh and were streaming with the blood from mortal wounds. The silence between them was long. In it she presently heard a ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... went for naught, how invariably he was misunderstood! How great was the glee with which everybody persecuted him and knocked him about the ring! And yet, notwithstanding all his troubles, did he win from us a sympathetic sigh or even the fraction of a tear, except tears of laughter? All his troubles ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... cut it away. Put two nails in the shoe on each side, and both forward of the quarters, and one in the toe, directly in front of the foot. Let those on the sides be an inch apart, then you will be sure not to cut and tear the foot. Let the nails and nail-holes be small, for they will then aid in saving the foot. It will still further aid in saving it by letting the nails run well up into the hoof, for that keeps the shoe steadier on the foot. The hoof is just as thick to within ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley

... to dally with it myself, having been brought up on cistern water, but I find in traveling that I entertain a more kindly feeling for you strange foreign people when I carry a medium-sized headlight. Come along, now. Don't compel me to tear ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... possessed him, but he never paused to analyse it, never asked himself by what right he pursued this man, what wrong the latter had done him. His action was wholly unreasoning; he knew that he wished to overtake the wearer of the mask and to tear it from his ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... present Lord Grey; Walter Leaf, the Homeric Scholar; W. A. Meek, now Recorder of York; M. G. Dauglish, who edited the "Harrow Register," and myself. On the polling day I received my "Baptism of Fire," or rather of mud, being rolled over and over in the attempt to tear my colours from me. The Tory colour was red; the Liberal was blue; and my mother, chancing to drive through Harrow with the light blue carriage-wheels which my family have always used, was playfully but loudly hissed by wearers of the red rosette. Among the masters, political opinion ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... tear-stained cheeks, her throat working piteously, Miriam stared at this strange sister. "But tell me if you are happy," she said in ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... in the most conspicuous manner. It was his father's trunk, and the first thing that went into it, as the widow lifted the cover, and the smothering shut-up smell struck an old chord of associations, was a single tear-drop. How well she remembered the time when she first unpacked it for her young husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed their snowy plaits! ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... double quick in the direction of the flimsy small structures between the old El Dorado and the Parker House. Some men, after a moment, brought ropes and axes. We began to tear down the shanties. ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... intent upon his love, gave the poor woman scarce a thought, though when he saw her he noted her tear-stained eyelids and her woebegone, reproachful ways with an irritation which, though it could not pierce the studied courtesy of his manner, made itself felt, and further wounded the unhappy woman. Madame ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... saw of her at Brighton confirmed him in this judgment. When he accompanied her to Manville Street, he allowed her, of course, to remain alone in the room where Reardon had lived; but Amy presently summoned him, and asked him questions. Every tear she shed watered a growth of passionate tenderness in the solitary man's heart. Parting from her at length, he went to hide his face in darkness and think of ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... well have hit a wall. Before Ben could strike another blow he was lifted from his feet by an upward slap that threatened to tear loose one side of his face. Too dazed to resist, he felt both his wrists encircled by a tremendous hand. The woman's voice rose sharply in ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston

... Edith," he says, "how pale you are this morning—how tired you look. If one ball is going to exhaust you like this, how will you stand the wear and tear of London seasons in ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... Oswald, between the towns of Alton and Newton. The neighbors have the opinion that a sick person's shirt thrown into the well will prognosticate the outcome of the disease; if it floats the sick one will recover, if it sinks he will die. To reward the saint for the information, they tear a rag off the shirt and hang it on the briers near by; "where," says the writer, "I have seen such numbers as might have made a fayre rheme in a paper-myll." Similar practices are related by other authors. Ireland formerly had a sanctified well in nearly every parish. They were marked by ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... white hair; he murmured something as he did it, but no one heard what he said. But he did not cry and he showed no dismay. The men with the snow- shovels agreed that he was a strange lad, with not a tear for his father's death, and they were half-inclined to dislike him for it.— He's a hard one! they said, but not in admiration.—You can carry things ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... a wrinkled boot in each hand, back of the heel. A tear splashed down on one of them and she shook the salt water from her eyes impatiently as if she had faced tragedy before and knew it ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... flash the wide world seemed to smile before her, as if the gates of Paradise were open. She threw herself in Mark's arms and laid her hand on his shoulder. If she went away into the far distance with him, she thought, he could not tear himself from her, and once alone with her he must realise that life was only ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... was temperance, and he died when the fight against liquor was hottest. He had a rare gift as a speaker. His influence with an audience was unlike that of any other of his contemporaries. He shortened the distance between a smile and a tear in oratory. He was one of the first, if not the first, American speaker who introduced dramatic skill in his speeches. He ransacked and taxed all the realm of wit and drama for his work. His was a magic from the heart. Dramatic power had so often been ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... walking across the fields, gazing at the almond-trees' carnival. Others were before me. An Osmia in a black velvet bodice and a red woollen skirt, the Horned Osmia, was visiting the flowers, dipping into each pink eye in search of a honeyed tear. A very small and very modestly-dressed Halictus, much busier and in far greater numbers, was flitting silently from blossom to blossom. Official science calls her Halictus malachurus, K. The pretty little Bee's godfather strikes me as ill-inspired. What has malachurus, calling attention ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... was her ghost—a ghost with a black mask of tragedy for a face, with eyes swollen and reddened, with lips which shook in occasional spasms of pain, though their owner strove to keep them firm. With their own faces tear-streaked and with lumps in their throats the girls kept their heads averted, as though they had been caught doing something very wrong, and made poor pretense of eating the dishes that the old woman placed before them. Such glances as they stole at her were sidelong covert glances, but ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... full exhibition of his warm sentiments. When their tete-a-tete had come to a close, they both went on again to vow by the mountains and swear by the seas, and though they found it difficult to part company and hard to tear themselves away, they, in due course, became, after this occasion, mutual sworn friends. But by a certain day the virus in Ta Chieh's system had become exhausted, and the spots subsided, and at the expiry ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Lion, wiping a tear from his eye with the tip of his tail. "It is my great sorrow, and makes my life very unhappy. But whenever there is danger, my heart ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... horse and rider from behind. Chaouache's door is still open. He stands in it with his red-eyed wife beside him and the children around them, all gazing mutely, with drooping heads and many a slow tear, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... blue one has a nasty tear, besides the stain where Jake spilt the coffee. I must make a trip to the settlement when ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... 1712 a peremptory ukaz ordered him off to the army in Pomerania, and in the autumn of the same year he was forced to accompany his father on a tour of inspection through Finland. Evidently Peter was determined to tear his son away from a life of indolent ease. Immediately on his return from Finland Alexius was despatched by his father to Staraya Rusya and Ladoga to see to the building of new ships. This was the last commission entrusted to him. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... ready response, and nothing loth the helmsman changed his course to follow the eccentric craft. She was evidently bound on some secret mission, for not otherwise would she thus tear through the darkness before the wind without the ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... always with rejoicing This ministry is wrought, For many a sigh is mingled With the sweet odours brought. Yet every tear bedewing The faith-fed altar fire May be its bright renewing To purer flame, and higher. But when the oil of gladness God graciously outpours, The heavenward blaze, With ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... splashed. I gave an involuntary shudder. Burning wax was hotter than melted lead, and it stuck to anything it touched, worse than napalm. I saw a man being dragged out of further danger, his clothes on fire, and asbestos-suited firemen crowding around to tear the burning garments from him. Before I could get to where it had happened, though, they had him in the ambulance and were taking him away. I hoped they'd get him to the ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... leap the beast jumped at the dummy's throat, and with her paws on its shoulders she began to tear at it. She would fall back with a piece of food in her mouth, then would jump again, sinking her fangs into the string, and snatching few pieces of meat she would fall back again and once more spring forward. She was tearing up the face ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... often wondered, since, why I never shed a tear during all those terrible three days. I couldn't, in some way, though the nurse herself was crying, and poor old Whinnie and Struthers were sobbing together next to the window, and dour old Dinky-Dunk, on the other side of the bed, was racking his shoulders with smothered sobs as he held the little ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... accompaniment of ominous splashes as the sides began to fall in. When daylight came we found our select estate converted into a system of canals filled with a substance varying in consistency from coffee to glue. Hic, Haec and Hoc, owing to the wear and tear of constant traffic, became especially gluey, and after a time we rechristened them respectively the Great Ooze, the Little Ooze and the River Styx—the last not solely in reference to its adhesive qualities, but also because such a number of things went West in it. Some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various

... Lear came Froufrou, the lineal successor of The Stranger as the current masterpiece of the lachrymatory drama. Nothing so tear-compelling as the final act of Froufrou had been seen on the stage for half a century or more. The death of Froufrou was a watery sight, and for any chance to weep we are many of us grateful. And yet it was a German, born in the land ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... of the poor man's eye, as Bell said this. It fell down his thin face. He put up the back of his hand and took the tear off. Then he said: "I have been cold; I know what it is to have no food to eat; I have had no bed to lie on: I can bear all this with-out a sigh; but, oh! I can not bear the loss of my ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... act of the Federalists since the consummation of the Union as dangerous to American liberties or as inimical to the public welfare, it was to be anticipated, when he and his party assumed office, that they would seek both to tear down the Federalist structure and rear in its place a temple of the true Republican faith. Not only did nothing of the kind follow, but nothing of the kind was even attempted. Considering the fulminations of the Republicans during the last ten years of Federalist domination, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... face of the Earth they come all singing with staves in their hands for their armes, and after they are set round the cabbin, begin to knock and make such a noise that one would thinke they have a mind to tear all in peeces, and that they are possessed of some Devills. All this is done to expell and frighten the soule out of that poor and miserable body that she might not trouble his carcase nor his bones, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... to put his threat with respect to the clothes into instant execution, when the stranger, once more seizing him, exclaimed—"You must promise, Mr. Fenton, before you leave my grasp, that you will make no further attempt to tear off your dress. I insist on this;" and as he spoke he fixed his eye sternly and commandingly on that ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... of this good-natured delusion, Captain Cuttle even went so far as to revolve in his own bosom, while he sat looking at Walter and listening with a tear on his shirt-collar to what he related, whether it might not be at once genteel and politic to give Mr Dombey a verbal invitation, whenever they should meet, to come and cut his mutton in Brig Place on some day of his own naming, and enter on the question ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... carriages in waiting for them. Among those who came next was a handsome, spirited-looking girl of twenty-five, who, though not of the family group, was a sincere mourner. As she stepped forward with the elasticity of youth, glad of the fresh air on her tear-stained cheeks, it happened that she also observed the presence of the reporter, and she paused, plainly appalled. Her nostrils quivered with horrified distress, and she turned her head as though seeking some ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... problem of no small dimensions. Yesterday Number Five desired some plantains that I had given to Number Seven. I tried to reason with him, but, as you know, he is mentally defective, and for answer he rushed at Number Seven to tear the coveted morsel from him. The result was a battle royal that might have put to shame two Bengal tigers. Twelve is tractable and intelligent. With his assistance and my bull whip I succeeded ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... discomfort. It was true that Petsy was no more, having succumbed to a bilious attack of unusual severity, but a second Petsy had already taken her place, and Lady Ashbridge sat with him—it was a gentleman Petsy this time—in her lap as before, and occasionally shed a tear or two over Petsy II. in memory of Petsy I. But this did not seem to account for the wakening up of her mind and emotions into this state of depression and anxiety. It was as if all her life she had been quietly dozing in the sun, and that the place ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... sabotage," Malone added, "if the errors aren't caused by normal wear and tear on the machines—you let me know right away. Phone me. Don't ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... least, this mass of stocks and bonds. Heaps of paper they seem; dead, inorganic things. A second's blaze will consume any one of them, a few strokes of the fingers tear it into shapeless ribbons Yet under the institution of law, as it exists, these pieces of paper are endowed with a terrible power of life and death that even enthroned kings do not possess. Those dainty prints with their scrolls and numerals ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... she blazed with such anger that she rose to tear the wire loose from the wall and end the torment. But her curiosity restrained her. She set the earpiece ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... Carthaginian armies coming up, very easily marched up the eminence, but were stopped by the novel appearance of the fortification, as by something miraculous, when their leaders called out from all sides, asking "what they stopped at? and why they did not tear down and demolish that mockery, which was scarcely strong enough to impede the progress of women and children; that the enemy, who were skulking behind their baggage, were, in fact, captured and in their hands." Such were the contemptuous reproofs of their leaders. But it was not an easy ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... For ten days I had not been letting myself think about the future, but it seems that every minute I live in Byrdsville, my heart winds around my friends and theirs around mine. To take me away now would be to tear me—but where was Father, and why didn't I hear what he is going to do and have done ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... credit to myself," he wrote to the same friend, on returning to Rome, "for having sternly shut myself up for an hour or two every day, and come to close grips with a romance which I have been trying to tear out of my mind." And later in the same winter he says—"I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to be very well contented there.... If I were but a hundred times richer than I am, how very comfortable I could be! I consider it a great piece of good fortune that I have ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... father all this time had been quietly smoking on the piazza. Hearing the commotion he hurried also into the room, just in time to see the spinster lady, almost fainting with terror, tear herself loose. ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... They exhibited, rather, an elemental economy of nature, such as the cave-men must have exhibited. But there was strength in those meagre bodies, the ferocious, primordial strength to clutch and gripe and tear and rend. When they spring upon their human prey they are known even to bend the victim backward and double its body till the back is broken. They possess neither conscience nor sentiment, and they will kill for a half-sovereign, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... now, sir," said the courier, going back to his seat, "or they will tear the flanks of ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... eight hours at a stretch, she sat in that chair of hers, almost never leaving the table. Again, Potapitch told me that there were three occasions on which she really began to win; but that, led on by false hopes, she was unable to tear herself away at the right moment. Every gambler knows how a person may sit a day and a night at cards without ever casting a glance to right ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... beauty. He who can behold it and not feel a benevolent interest in it, is an object of pity. He who can live and not live in part for Girlhood, is devoid of the highest order of feeling. He who can see it wither under unrighteous customs or pass away by the blight of unholy abuses, and not drop a tear of sympathy, is less than a generous man. He who sees its perilous position and lifts not his warning voice, fails in a great duty. It is not enough to admire Girlhood; it is not enough to do it graceful honors, make it obsequious bows, strew its pathway with ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... to the same class of goods as that with regard to which Mr. Linklater and I were previously examined. The veil which she has produced is quite a good thing, but in the same class of goods there are a great number of job articles which tear ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... one side by the passage of innumerable feet for many years. A millstone showing marks of rotation on the surface, a bronze clasp or brooch with fragments of enamel inlay, the ornamental bronze handle of an important key, a glass lacrymatory (tear-bottle), numerous coins—referred to below—and other objects in bronze and ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... his eyes and looked at her face. She returned his glance for a moment, then flushes of color spread over her face and died down, and she dropped her face. He laid his hand softly upon hers, and spoke her name for the first time, "Alves." A tear dropped on his hand beneath the lamp, then another and another. He started up from his seat and strode to the window, keeping his back turned to the quiescent woman. It was terrible! He knew that he was a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... next moment sighed and drooped her head, while a tear fell on the blue silk with which she was embroidering the crosslet on his pennon. Sir Reginald might have said somewhat to cheer her, but at that instant little Arthur darted into the hall with news that the armourer was come from Taunton, with two mules, loaded with a store of goodly ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... benight in sin, delight To glut their vandal cravings, These hands of mine shall not incline To tear out ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... leaned against a chair with her face in her hands. Mr. Grimm went to her suddenly, tore the hands from her face, and met the tear-stained eyes. ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle

... cometh, and the tear Wet on her cheek! What tiding shall we hear?... Thy grief is natural, daughter, if some ill Hath fallen to-day. Say, is she living still Or dead, your mistress? Speak, if ...
— Alcestis • Euripides

... while his teeth gleamed in a snarl. Something slipped over his head and despite his struggles, it twisted tightly around his neck. A strange odor made him sick and weak when he tried to breathe. His paws clawed in his attempts to tear the sack from his head, so that he could breathe and fight, but his legs grew limp, a noise sounded inside his ears, something seemed to be hammering at the top of his head. He made one more effort, ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker

... when travelling in the East. Of what material is formed the nether man of a Turk I have never been informed, but I am sure that it is not flesh and blood. No flesh and blood,—simply flesh and blood,— could withstand the wear and tear of a Turkish saddle. This being the case, and the consequences being well known to me, I was grieved to find that Smith was not properly provided. He was seated on one of those hard, red, high-pointed machines, in which the shovels intended to act as stirrups ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope

... ripping him up with his horn, and that the lion and all wild beasts are afraid of him. I am not at all surprised that this is the case, for I have examined the skin of a rhinoceros which I saw in a menagerie, and it was so thick and heavy that scarcely any animal could tear it, with teeth or claws, so as to get at the enemy within it. The rhinoceros which I saw in a cage was not quite full-grown. His horn was not more than an inch or two above his nose, but he was an enormous fellow, and his ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... I ran. Once when they were nearly on me I managed to check them for a minute in a hollow by getting among some sheep. But they soon found me again, and came after me at full tear not more than a hundred yards behind. In front of me I saw something that looked like walls and bounded towards them with my last strength. My heart was bursting, my eyes and mouth seemed to be full of blood, but the terror of being torn to pieces still gave me power to rush ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... myself; for I don't sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the child is sick. I knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience. This little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life, and often I could soothe away its troubles and get it to laugh through the tear-dews on its eye-lashes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a drop of the milk of human kindness in his composition. Regardless of his own physical wants, he despised the same wants in others. Charity sued to him in vain, and the tear of sorrow made no impression on his stony heart. Passion he had felt—cruel, ungovernable passion. Tenderness was foreign to his nature—the sweet influences of the social virtues he had ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... than any other sort of old shoe for this Place of Hoofs," he observed. "Well, the Carr family are certainly pretty well disposed of now. I am 'the last ungathered rose on my ancestral tree.' I wonder who will tear ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... scene. Martha reminded him with bitter tears that her mother had committed him to her with her last breath and set before him all the advantages he would have in her house over ours. Father sat pale and inflexible; tear after tear rolling down his cheeks. Ernest looked distressed and ready to sink. As for me I cried with Martha, and with her father by turns, and clung to Ernest with a feeling that all the foundations of the earth were giving way. It came time for evening prayers, and Ernest ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... a loose nail in the lock of the trunk. Sticking to this nail was a raveling of brown wool. Here it is, sir. The woman—Madame Duclos—wore a dress of brown serge. If my calculations are not wrong and we succeed in getting a glimpse of that dress, we shall find a tear in the skirt—and what is more, one very ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... of books are careless people—first of all. They tear pages open with their thumbs, or cut them with sharp knives which damage the margins. It is so difficult to keep paper knives, and ivory paper knives are the favourite pasture of some scholars, who bite the edges ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... few minutes. He had spoken under a strong impulse of excitement, he hardly knew how. He, too, leaned his head upon his hand, but from under it he still watched the trembling girlish figure, which was the dearest thing in the world to him. Presently he saw a tear steal out from between her small fingers and fall glittering upon the black dress she wore. He moved uneasily—he had been surely very harsh. Another tear fell—tear of bitter humiliation, good for her to shed—then ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... conscience which lay yet deeper—for the progeny of crime is most frequently a litter as numerous as a whelp's puppies—helped to crush the mind which was neither strong enough to resist temptation at first, nor to bear exposure at last. I turned away with a tear, which I could not suppress, from the wretched spectacle. But I could have borne with more patience to behold this ruin, than to subdue the rising reproach which I felt as I turned to encounter ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... Huntinglen, if indeed he fully comprehended them; but the blubbering of his good-natured old master, which began to accompany and interrupt his royal speech, produced more rapid effect. The large tear gushed reluctantly from his eye, as he kissed the withered hands, which the king, weeping with less dignity and restraint, abandoned to him, first alternately and then both together, until the feelings of the man getting entirely the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... as he read, sometimes with fine declamatory emphasis, sometimes in low, tremulous tones, the various poems enshrined in his manuscript. At other times she was sad, and more than once Mrs. Hopkins had seen a tear steal down her innocent cheek, when there seemed to be no special cause for grief. She ventured to speak of ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... what a strange child it is!" said Aunt Loring, as she wiped off a tear which had fallen from Jessie's eyes upon her cheek. "Just like her mother for all the world in some things"—the last part of the sentence was in a qualifying tone—"though," she went on, "her mother hadn't anything like her trials to endure. Oh, that Dexter! if I ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... growl in his sleep. When I rubbed the cat's back it would crack and sparkle. The wolves seemed to howl more and differently on these nights, and once I went to the station, thinking the fire there needed fixing, and I heard the telegraph instrument clicking fit to tear itself to pieces. Often the next day after the northern ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth

... the lines over, quite unintelligible. He was, about to make inquiries, but he felt convinced that the Fairy would be both to divulge the decrees of Heaven; and though intent upon discarding the book, he could not however tear himself away from it. Forthwith, therefore, he prosecuted a further perusal of what came next, when he caught sight of a picture of a bow. On this bow hung a citron. There was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... in great agitation and almost illegible, and at the bottom of the paper there was a dirty smudge that might have been a tear stain or a finger mark. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... sleeped under the same roof; played at the same sports; and dabbled in the same river—the bloody, bloody Nith!—from infancy to youth. Oh! sirs! but I canna get on ava"—— Here Janet sorted her wheel, and apparently shed a tear, for she moved her apron corner to her eye. "Aweel, this was the nicht o' the wedding, bairn—no this nicht, like; but I think I just see it present, for I was there mysel, a wee bit whilking lassie. Lawson, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... with instruction none, I go, and leave it there, My ghost with Time in its lair, And the things that must yet be done Tear at my heart unknown, And the years have tongues of stone With no syllable to make ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... veil which intervened between her and the land. They could only hope that the boat had got alongside, and that her crew had been taken on board. Dick had built his hut so strongly that it withstood the furious blast raging round, which shook it every now and then, threatening to tear it up from the foundation, while the roof creaked and clattered as if about to be carried off. The night was a more fearful one than any they had passed since that of their shipwreck; but how different were their ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... money all the time, and of what I'll eat tomorrow; buying land, haggling with farmers on the market, studying fertilizers, having children who'd keep me busy with their colds and the shoes they'd tear, my widest vision limited to getting a good price for the fall crop. There are times when I envy a hen. How good it must be, to be a hen! A fence around me to mark the boundaries of my world, my meals ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... give way!" she thought to herself. "I won't shed a single tear. Tears are wasteful luxuries, bad for body and mind. And yet yet oh, it is hard just when I wanted to help father most! Just when I wanted to keep him from being worried. And a whole year! How shall I bear it, when even six hours has seemed half a life time! ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... Juliette de Marny; he too, like Anne Mie, instinctively mistrusted the beautiful girl and her strange, silent ways, but, unlike the poor hunchback, he knew that no sin which Juliette might commit would henceforth tear her from out the heart of his friend; that if, indeed, she turned out to be false, or even treacherous, she would, nevertheless, still hold a place in Droulde's very soul, which no one else ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... but have forgotten the record of the hundred and twenty-six years of rule to which he fondly alluded. As it was, in the vast crowds that watched him go, there was not found a man who said, 'God bless him;' not a woman who shed a tear. Had any one of the bullets aimed at Ferdinand II. taken fatal effect, it would have been a less striking punishment for his political sins than this leaden weight of indifference which descended ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... has come to marshal us, in all his armor drest; And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest. He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye; He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high. Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, Down all our line, a deafening shout: God save our lord ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... long delays, As I have done, nor feels time fleet and, fade:— One morn he finds himself grown old, alas! To gird my loins, repent, my path repass, Sound counsel take, I cannot, now death's near; Foe to myself, each tear, Each sigh, is idly to the light wind sent, For there's no loss to equal ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... their bodies interred with all proper solemnity, Mr Rawlings himself reading the burial service over their remains, the miners grasped their picks and shovels with one hand as they wiped away a tear with the other, and went back to the mine, some of them possibly with the reflection that, all things considered, their slain mates were perhaps after all now ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... breathlessly, nay, tremble for her. Perhaps it was too much to hope that he would mourn her sincerely, should the leap cost her life; but he would surely pity her, and he could never forget the moment of the fall, and therefore herself. Loni would tear the gold circlet from his dyed black locks and, in his exaggerated manner, call himself a son of misfortune, and her the greatest artist who had ever trodden the rope. All Augsburg, all the dignitaries of the realm, even ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the same. Means are found to feed the wounded English, becoming more and more numerous, the wounded Belgians and the prisoners. At the mill the miller's wife has four sons and a son-in-law in the army. I went to see her; not a tear, she looked straight before her absorbed in her work and said only "It is necessary." She continues her work as yesterday, as always, only with more energy and seriousness than formerly, with the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... faith, is the creation of new competitors. Does a railroad monopoly oppress us? Build a competing line. Is the gas company of our city charging us $3 per thousand for gas which cost but 50 cents to produce and deliver? Let us start another gas company and tear up all our pavements again to lay its mains. Has the sugar trust put up the price of sugar two cents per pound? Well, "sugar can be produced anywhere by the expenditure of labor and capital," the Trust's lawyers say, and so we will "trust" that some enterprising manufacturer will take ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... put his burial clothes in his wallet; but when he came to bid his wife and children adieu, their grief surpassed description. They could not reconcile their minds to the separation, but resolved to go and die with him. When, however, it became necessary for him to tear himself from these dear objects, he addressed them in the following terms: "My dear wife and children, I obey the will of heaven in quitting you. Follow my example, submit with fortitude to this necessity, and consider that it is the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.

... Kentucky, and Tennessee should not be overlooked. But Maryland presents the example of complete success. Maryland is secure to liberty and union for all the future. The genius of rebellion will no more claim Maryland. Like another foul spirit being driven out, it may seek to tear her, but it will woo ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... work of but a few moments to tear the sheets into strips and to bind and gag the helpless man. Then Jack and Frank ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... she replied, spiritedly. "You're talking nonsense. Even if you were were that way, it'd be no reason to play poor ball. Don't throw the game, as Pat would say. Make a brace! Get up on your toes! Tear things! Rip the boards off the ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... fresh burst of grief convulsed her frame, or that she presently passed from the extremity of grief to the extremity of rage, and, realising anew Sir George's heartless desertion and more cruel perfidy, rubbed her tear-stained face in the dusty chintz of the window-seat—that had known so many childish sorrows—and there choked the fierce, hysterical words that ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... work. At Arcot's suggestion, Wade and Morey attacked the plate of crystal in an attempt to tear off a small piece, on which they might work. Arcot himself went into the televisophone room and put through a second call to the Tychos Observatory, the great observatory that had so recently been established on the frigid surface ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... sing—the lame his crutch forego, And leap exulting like the bounding roe. No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear, From every face He wipes off every tear. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson



Words linked to "Tear" :   laceration, snap, lacrimal secretion, tearing, tear into, teardrop, tear gas, rush along, tear down, tear gland, rush, shred, separation, rip up, part, revelry, weep, shoot, split, bout, binge, dash, displume, bust, rive, dart, pelt along, H2O, scoot, wear and tear, scud, tear sheet, step on it, opening, water, speed, snag, deplume, separate, rent, drib, hotfoot, tear up, buck



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