"Wrench" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peering into the dusk to discover if here was a vehicle he might presume to commandeer to help him out of his predicament lifted startled eyes to the two faces in the car and strode forward, abandoning with a clang the wrench with which he had ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... cried the determined Kirkpatrick, fixing his foot on the neck of the prostrate man, and trying to wrench his hand from the grasp of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... step by step, as if she had to lift her body up an extremely steep ascent. She had had to wrench herself forcibly away from Katharine, and every step vanquished her desire. She held on grimly, encouraging herself as though she were actually making some great physical effort in climbing a height. She was conscious that Mr. Basnett, sitting at the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... sterile and forbidding of any valley of equal size on earth, unless it be that of one of the usually frozen rivers in or near the Arctic circle. Even Mormon energy, industry, frugality and subservience to sacerdotal despotism, barely suffice to wrench a rude, coarse living from those narrow belts and patches of less niggard soil which skirt those infrequent lakes and scanty streams of the Great Basin which are susceptible of irrigation; mines alone (and they must be rich ones) can ever render populous the extensive country which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... nausea returned, and she was seized with vomiting. Each effort to relieve seemed to wrench her whole body; and gradually a ghastly tint crept over her face, the spots upon her cheeks became more pronounced in tint, her eyes appeared ready to burst from their sockets, and great drops of ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... supposed to be wrong in the animal's physical system was taken to mean the animal in whose physical system the thing was wrong. Or, it is conceivable that the use of the word screw implied that the animal, possibly in early youth, had got some unlucky twist or wrench, which permanently damaged its bodily nature, or warped its moral development. A tendon perhaps received a tug which it never quite got over. A joint was suddenly turned in a direction in which Nature ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more delicate ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... ship-timber, had worn them into a succession of holes, channels, and troughs, in and out of which we thumped from morning till night. On going down hill, the violent shocks frequently threw our runners completely into the air, and the wrench was so great that it was a miracle how the sled escaped fracture. All the joints, it is true, began to work apart, and the ash shafts bent in the most ticklish way; but the rough little conveyance which had already done us such hard service held out gallantly to the end. We reached ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Fort Lille. At the angle of its junction with the main dyke of the river's bank, a strong fortress called Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) had been constructed. That fortress and the whole line of the Kowenstyn were held in the iron grip of Mondragon. To wrench it from him would be no child's play. Five new strong redoubts upon the dyke, and five or six thousand Spaniards established there, made the enterprise more formidable than it would have been in June. It had been better to sacrifice the twelve thousand oxen. Twelve thousand ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... remembered, and its tone was contempt. He understood it, and woke with a start because of a sudden fluff of flame and a whiff of smoke from the grass fire of ten years ago, and the ache in his throat gave him a strangling wrench. His head rolled; the moon swung through an arc of alarming length. That call beyond the fence struck the dominant note of his life, and it was Fear. Yet it came from a mere animal,—his grandmother's old buckskin horse, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the amateur machanic, rising up with a wrench in one hand and an oil can in the other. "Whew! That mare has been traveling some. And such a beauty! You're from Bill Candace's I'm sure. Did she run away with you? ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... voice. He was reclining in a deck-chair, wrapped around with rugs, and with a book lying in his lap. He was less drawn and pinched than when he first returned, but the change in him was still great enough to give her a sudden wrench ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... faith which for ages has been the support and consolation of a large portion of mankind, especially of the weak, the humble, the unlearned, who form an immense majority, cannot disappear without a painful wrench, and leaving for a time a great blank behind." ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... real wrench to the Queen when the time for parting came. Melbourne, with his easy-going nature and somewhat free and easy language, had schooled himself as well as his young pupil, and had become a friend as well as an ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... because there is never any moment when her will is separated from the will of God, when her union with Him fails. This peace of perfect union has, through the merits of her Son, been hers always; she has never known the wrench of the will that separates itself from God. She has always been poor; she has been perplexed with life; she has suffered and will suffer intensely, suffer most where she loves most; but peace she has never lost, because her will has never wavered ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... The doctor went back to the books; Smith returned to his oil-can and wrench. But Billie stood by the table, and began helping Van Emmon to clear up. In a moment ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... very happy," said Priscilla with all the emphasis she could get into her voice; and again she tried, quite unsuccessfully, to wrench her ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... impressions of rare cameos from Italy and Pompeii; later the Duke of Portland, who you may recall outbid him at the sale of the world-famed Portland Vase, allowed him to copy it. It was a very generous thing for an art-lover to do, and I think it must have cost the duke a wrench. It took Wedgwood a whole year to copy this vase, and when he had succeeded in doing so he made fifty more copies. The venture cost him not only his time but a small fortune as well; but it proved far from a waste of hours or money, since the feat brought to ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... children marry. This may be a privation and may be a relief: probably in healthy circumstances it is no worse than a salutary change of habit; but even at that it is, for the moment at least, a wrench. For though parents and children sometimes dislike one another, there is an experience of succor and a habit of dependence and expectation formed in infancy which naturally attaches a child to ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... aristocrats of colonial days, but to the families—so often of Presbyterian Irish stock—who rose to prominence in western Virginia at the time of the Revolution. In Kentucky all were mixed together, no matter from what State they came, the wrench of the break from their home ties having shaken them so that they readily adapted themselves to new conditions, and easily assimilated with one another. As for their differences of race origin, these had ceased to influence their lives ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... foreign man who worked at the selfsame bench, "Let me tell you this," and for emphasis he flourished a Stilson wrench; "Don't talk to me of the bourjoissee, don't open your mouth to speak Of your socialists or your anarchists, don't mention the bolsheveek, For I've had enough of this foreign stuff, I'm sick as a man can be Of the speech of hate, and I'm tellin' you straight that this is the ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... like a rudimentary, Darwinian stump. To this, all at once, his hand flung back. With a wrench and a glitter, he flourished a blade above his head. Heywood sprang to intervene, in the same instant that the disturber of trade swept his arm down in frenzy. Against his own body, hilt and fist thumped ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... stem or flower of their exaltation; whether their seat at the head of a sun-steeped marsh (at whose mouth is Venice) hath itself unseated them; whether Petrarch set boiling what Saint Antony could not allay; what it was, how it was, who gave them the wrench, I know not—but the fact is that the people of Padua have been as freakish a race as any in Italy; at the mercy of any head but the aggregate's, pack-mules of a notion, galley-slaves of a whim, driven hither and thither in a herd, like those restless leaves (souls once) ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... was more than a match for him. We did not say a word. We made no noise. But, in our struggle, we got away from the wall into the middle of the gateway I dared not let go of his arms to take him by the throat. He only tried to jerk and wrench himself away. Had he succeeded, it would have been death for me. We never moved our feet from the spot, fairly in the middle of the archway but nearer to the gate than to the patio. The slaves, formed ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... seriously anywhere, I trust," replied the captain, trying to rise. "Ah!" as he fell back again, "both back and ankle seem to have had a wrench. But, friends, are you not needed over there at the fire? ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... strength of the outlaw had Aylward nearly down, and twice with his greater youth and skill the archer restored his grip and his balance. Then at last his turn came. He slipped his leg behind the other's knee, and, giving a mighty wrench, tore him across it. With a hoarse shout the outlaw toppled backward and had hardly reached the ground before Aylward had his knee upon his chest and his short sword deep in his beard and pointed ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I was touched, my lady. I see, my lady, that to part from her would be a wrench to me, though I could not well say so in her presence, not having yet decided how far I ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... came to her support, repeating her words with an impersonal meaning, "Ayez pitie d'elle." "Mon honneur et ma foi," growled the basso. The contralto, dressed as a man, turned toward the audience on the extreme right, bringing out her notes with a wrench and a twist of her body and neck, and intoning, "Ah, malheureuse! Mon Dieu, ayez ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... cracked and his joints came loose; with wrists pinioned behind his shoulder-blades and walking on his toes he was propelled into the street. Since this was his first arrest, he did not know enough to go quietly, and when one of his captors released his grip he tried to wrench himself loose. Cossacks could not mistreat a prisoner more brutally than these policemen mistreated poor, cringing, spineless Jimmy Knight. He reached the station-house more dead than alive, and then when he saw a loaded revolver removed from his own pocket he ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... were chasing each other within the elder brother's soul. Doubt and suspicion became more and more crushing. He was tempted to break the spell and interrogate Shyuote once more, even to wrench from him, if needs be, a full explanation. The boy was old enough to enjoy that great and often disagreeable quality of the American Indian, reticence. Furthermore, he might have ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... tell your commander how one of your men tried to make one of my girls and got hit with a wrench for it! Ask him whether he wants us to produce fuel or make love! Go ahead—ask him! Or let me—I'll ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... as best they could. Then when we came to a sharp rise over which the road curled and crawled, they halted suddenly, stretched out their hands, and bade me good-bye. They meant it to be a sharp wrench—to be over quickly. Just on the rim of the horizon stretched the grey of the fading Tartar Walls with their high-pitched towers. The sun sinking behind the western hills threw some last flames of golden fire, but the air remained chill. It was becoming ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... little creature, apt to take fright at any moment. A dog coming along the barn floor in front of her manger was always the signal for a struggle at her stanchion. But the object of her worst fears was the sight of a woman! She would leap in the air, wrench and tear, and even bawl aloud and cast herself flat on the floor. Neither Gram nor any of the girls ever went in front of "Little Jersey," if it could be avoided. This fear of women has always seemed to me ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... what he knew that I should never Endure, if life should ever take that form. As little as himself would e'er have borne it A single hour, for he but made a show, Acquaint with me, and knowing it would cost The less of pain to wrench my heart from him, So soon as I had ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... superhuman he held on. He had but one thought—Viggo, his chief! Viggo, his idol! Viggo, his general! He must save him or die with him. One end of the rope was hanging on the branch and was within easy reach; but he did not venture to seize it, lest the wrench caused by his motion might detach his ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a wrench to us," Lord Ashleigh confessed, "especially as circumstances which you already know of prevent either your mother or myself from being with you during the first few months of your stay there. You have very many friends in New York, however, and your mother ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lung trouble declared itself. "I had a few pounds put by, having married so late; and it seemed a duty to Emily to give myself every chance: so we packed up almost at once and started for South Africa. It was a wrench to her, but the voyage out did us both all the good in the world, she being in a delicate state of health, and the room in Bermondsey not fit for a woman in that condition." The baby was born in Cape Town, five months after their landing. "But they've no employment for bakers out ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... strong hinge to the lid is invaluable to keep out flies, but the servants will probably wrench the lid off. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... youngest Prince took the hilt, and, with a mighty wrench, tore it from the wall; then, as he restored it to its sheath at his side, the ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... actions than was he at that moment. Hardly knowing what he did, he put his hand against Sir John Malyoe's breast and thrust him violently back, crying out upon him in a great, loud, hoarse voice for threatening a young lady, and saying that for a farthing he would wrench the stick out of his ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... cripples, aged and sick,—never absent in an Italian town,—joined with loud cries in the general enthusiasm. Agnes stood amid it all, pale and serene, with that elevated expression of heavenly calm on her features which is often the clear shining of the soul after the wrench and torture of some great interior conflict. She felt that the last earthly chain was broken, and that now she belonged to Heaven alone. She scarcely saw or heard what was around her, wrapt in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... him when he said her appetite was good. She had hunger enough for a drove of cattle and a couple of flocks of sheep. That day the judge went after the butcher to get him to buy her. When he returned with him, she had just eaten the monkey-wrench and the screw-driver, and she was trying to put away a fence-paling. The butcher said she was a fair-enough sort of cow, but she was too thin. He said he would buy her if the judge would feed her up and fatten her; and the judge said he would try. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... certain obstacles raised by the wilderness in the path of comfort, Bud went to work with what tools he had, and with the material closest to his hand. Crude tools they were, and crude materials—like using a Stilson wrench to adjust a carburetor, he told Lovin Child who tagged him up and down the cabin. An axe, a big jack-knife, a hammer and some nails left over from building their sluice boxes, these were the tools. He took the axe first, and having tied Lovin Child to the ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... trap, a Newhouse four. This misadventure had occurred in midwinter when the range was gripped by bitter frost. The cold had numbed the pain and congealed the flesh to solid ice. He had cut through the meat with his keen-pointed teeth, and one desperate wrench had snapped the frozen bone and freed him. There were many of his kind so maimed, and the wolfers, abbreviating the term peg-legs, called these three-footed ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... they were sure never to be without others in their press. But hark you me, master of mine, asked Panurge, have they not some of different growth? Ay, marry have they, quoth Double-fee. Do you see here this little bunch, to which they are going to give t'other wrench? It is of tithe-growth, you must know; they crushed, wrung, squeezed and strained out the very heart's blood of it but the other day; but it did not bleed freely; the oil came hard, and smelt of the priest's chest; so that they found there was not much ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... But there are silences of all sorts, as there is speech of all sorts. There are silences that set one's teeth on edge—it is always a relief to break them; and there are silences that are gentler, kinder, sweeter, more loving, more eloquent than any words, and which it is always a wrench to interrupt. Of these was the pause that followed now; but Margaret was asking herself what he meant by saying that he had ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... ropes decay, and soon the repulsive pendants will be gone. Not so with the iron belaying-pins, a few of which still stand around the mast, so rusted into the iron fife-rail that even the persevering industry of the children cannot wrench them out. It seems as if some guilty stain must cling to their sides, and hold them in. By one of those fitnesses which fortune often adjusts, but which seem incredible in art, the wharf is now used on one side for the storage ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the biplane came to a stop close to the girl, who was standing there staring, as though hardly understanding what it all meant. Andy hopped out the first thing even though he happened to be holding the monkey wrench in his hand at the time, having snatched it up in his excitement when he first discovered the threatening peril ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... with that felt hat slouched over his eyes. He seemed to be gazing into distance as if alone, and then, after a while, he turned and looked at me, and his eyes were full of pain like a tortured animal, and I felt a wrench at my heart. Then he clasped his hands tight together as though he were afraid he should take mine, and he said the dearest things a man could say to a woman—how the stress of the situation last night had forced from him ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... lovers—Zarlah and myself. Bending over her, I tried to console her with a false hope—a story of impossible fulfillment. I succeeded; and now I saw that I had laid the trap which Death had placed in my hands to draw her toward him, and, with a cry of horror, I tried to wrench my hand from the lever to which it was frozen, so that I might shut such a scene from ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... pull, an' I pull, an' it sho' a wondah we didn' pull dat bird all apaht betwixt us. But erbout de secon' wrench dat hongry beast gib, he pull de laig clean off'n dat ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... sisters when Lazarus became ill; this anxiety passing into fear, dread, sickening certainty, and despair; the anguish of bereavement, the loneliness and heart-breaking sorrow of four days; and that most agonized wrench of the heart when the beloved form is left alone to corrupt in the dark and ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Ill.—This invention has for its object to furnish an improved monkey wrench, which shall be simple in construction, strong, durable, and easily and quickly adjusted to the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... that in common decency he should offer to lend a hand and thus was moved to rise and approach the disabled car she had the jack under the front axle and was applying a brace wrench to the rim bolts. But the rim bolts that hold on a five-inch tire are not designed to unscrew too easily. Sophie had started one with an earnest tug and was twisting stoutly at the second when he reached her. He knew by the impersonal glance she gave ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... unutterable bitterness of former days.") which the loss of our poor dear Annie caused. And this seems to me perfectly natural, for one knows for years previously that one's father's death is drawing slowly nearer and nearer, while the death of one's child is a sudden and dreadful wrench. What a wonderful deal you read; it is a horrid evil for me that I can read hardly anything, for it makes my head almost immediately begin to sing violently. My good womenkind read to me a great deal, but I dare not ask for much science, and am not sure that I could ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... With a violent wrench, Lightbody twisted himself free, while one hand flung appealingly back, begged for time to master the emotion which burst forth in ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... hose did not fit the plug; then they tried to turn the plug to get water in their dinner pails and found that the plug had rusted and would not turn. While they worked the fire grew. It was impossible to send a man back through it, so Grant sent a man speeding around the air course, to get a wrench from the pump room, or from some one in the main bottom to turn on the water. In the meantime he and the other two men worked furiously to extinguish the fire by whipping it with their coats and aprons, but always ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... flat on the ground, hanging on to the pulley chain. The first cap was in place and, with a long wrench, Ewen was twisting it onto the thread. A new volume of gas was already rolling from the pit, while from the incline opposite the mouth of the new opening, gravel and clods of earth were shooting riverward like the sparks of a Bessemer furnace. Paul ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... the herculean effort that would be necessary in the next breath. Reaching so far that he was in danger of losing his own balance, he coolly awaited the critical moment. Then his big hand closed like the paw of a grizzly bear on the shoulder of Victor Shelton. A tremendous wrench and he was dragged out and dropped limp and senseless at ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... statue of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed youth gazing steadfastly up into the heavens. In one hand the youth held a Phillips screw driver, in the other a six-inch crescent wrench. Standing several yards away and staring raptly up into the statue's face was the youth himself, and so immobile was he that if it hadn't been for the pedestal on which the statue rested, Philip would have been unable to distinguish one ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... voice. "I was sleeping soundly on the nicest bed imaginable, having travelled far for just a whiff of water-lily odor that I thought might refresh a poor little hospital patient tossing with fever in the city, when with a violent wrench I found myself borne off from my sheltered and dusky resting-place, and tossed into a boat in the blinding glare of the sun. Fortunately, I had wrapped myself in some broad grape-vine leaves, and was mistaken for a moth cocoon; else, dear Phil, I had ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... an iron bar, which enabled me to wrench off the lock from the stable door, and, having got so far with my burglarious performance, I entered cautiously, and I may say nervously. Creeping up to the manger I fumbled about till I caught hold of a strap to which the animal was tied, cut the strap ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... Stephen kept hammering and prying, and Ruth held on to all he gained, until they slipped the wedge along gradually, to where the board was nailed again, to the middle joist or stringer. Then a few more vigorous strokes, and a little smart levering, and the nails loosened, and one good wrench lifted it from the inside timber and they slid it out from under ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... to his sides; he could not move to try to refasten the face-shield. Fearful, he held his breath; held it until his face was purple and his lungs were near to bursting. But at last the limit was reached, and with a great wrench he sucked ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... drum he found an old monkey-wrench and a short bar of iron, also a coil of fairly new Manila rope. He looked in vain for a piece of board with which to rig a "boatswain's chair." There was nothing at hand but large planks, which he had no means ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... way. The wounded man across his shoulder was suffering indescribable agonies; but he bit his lip and stifled the cries that each step his comrade took seemed to wrench from him, lest he attract the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beautifully, but a fleeter foot was behind her, and though she dodged and evaded like a creature of the woods, the reaching hand fell upon the loose sleeve of her red blouse, nor fell lightly. She gave a wrench of frenzy; the antique fabric refused the strain; parted at the shoulder seam so thoroughly that the whole sleeve came away—but not to its owner's release, for she had been brought round by the jerk, so that, agile as she had shown herself, the pursuer threw an arm about her neck, before she ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... haven't had a chance to subject it to any big strain," Frank explained. "When a boat tosses up and down on the waves it gets a terrible wrench with each jerk. I've known seams to open at a time like that when they were believed to be closed as tight ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... distinctly outlined. He stopped at once to look at it, but even as he stopped it was gone. Then he sternly brought himself back from the vague regions of fancy, and was angry that he had permitted himself to wander in them like a child lost in the forest. He bent down and patted Rip, and sought to wrench his mind from its wayward course, and to thrust it forcibly into its accustomed groove of healthy sanity. Yet sanity seemed to become abruptly commonplace, a sort of whining crossing-sweeper, chattering untimely, meaningless phrases to him. To ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... tragedy as lies in the slow or sudden death that follows on a bruised passion, though it may be a death that finds only a parish funeral. There are certain animals to which tenacity of position is a law of life,—they can never flourish again, after a single wrench: and there are certain human beings to whom predominance is a law of life,—they can only sustain humiliation so long as they can refuse to believe in it, and, in their ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... crape, be sure, with an aching void in her heart, and an acute sense of the painful wrench to her life caused by this bereavement. A fine stately, woman still, though she was now fifty-five. But six years back she had sat for Sigismunda: the dreadful mistake in historical art which poor Hogarth ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... our ancestors, and from our own consciousness of Time, we have been forced to think wrongly. Not that the thing is abstruse. It is not. If we had no consciousness of Time at all, any of us could grasp it readily. But our consciousness works against us, and so we must wrench away. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... at the end of a long and dark passage. The day filters dimly into it through a barred window no larger than a pocket-handkerchief. Juanita stood on tiptoe and looked into a narrow alley. On the sill of this window Marcos had stood to wrench apart the bars of the window immediately overhead, through which he had lifted her one cold night—years ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... He paused for neither path nor way but went straight for the school, running in mighty strides, yet gently, listening to the moans that struck death upon his heart. Once he fell headlong, but with a great wrench held her from harm, and minded not the pain that shot through his ribs. The yellow sunshine beat fiercely around and upon him, as he stumbled into the highway, lurched across the mud-strewn road, and panted up ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and cast him under ground? But after a moment he thought that if it were to be so, they would have sent more men. But should they throw themselves on him, they would not destroy his armor at once, and then he could wrench a weapon from the nearest and kill them all before assistance could ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... remembered, rather than perceived, that he stooped suddenly; with one single great effort of muscular force he dislodged the end of the log, heaved it up in the air, strongly flung it aside, whence it went crashing down into the black depths below, its own weight, as it fell, sufficing to wrench out the other end, carrying with it a mass of earth and rock from the verge of ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and wicked. When he lunged from his horse on to the horns of the brute it dragged him for a hundred feet before he could check its mad flight. At last he slowly forced its nose in the air and with a quick wrench of the head to one side threw its feet from under it. Man and beast went down in a heap—the neck of the steer across the cowboy's body. A groan went up from the crowd in the grandstand and Carolyn June's cheeks paled with horror—it looked ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... unexpectedly. Just when he thought he had gained his self-control again, so as to make no sound at any rate, the hurdle stopped. He clenched his teeth to meet the dreadful wrench with which it would move again; but it did not. Instead there was a man down by him, untying his bonds. He lay quite still when they were undone; he did not know which limb to move first, and he dreaded to ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... glad the thing was settled. The temptation to allow sentiment to interfere with business might have become too strong if he had waited much longer. He knew that it would be a wrench definitely excluding Bob from the team, and he hated to have to do it. The more he thought of it, the sorrier he was for him. If he could have pleased himself, he would have kept Bob In. But, as the poet has it, "Pleasure is pleasure, and biz is biz, and kep' in a sepyrit ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... to translate from Chinese into Manchu all documents submitted to what is called the "sacred glance" of His Majesty. In a similar sense, until quite a recent date, skill in archery was required of every Bannerman; and it was undoubtedly a great wrench when the once fatally effective weapon was consigned to an unmerited oblivion. But though Bannermen can no longer shoot with the bow and arrow, they still continue to draw monthly allowances from state funds, as an hereditary right obtained ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... course I fail. Of course she's always in my mind. But while I make the effort to prevent it, while I do sometimes manage to wrench my mind away, I'm keeping fit; I'm able to go on putting up some sort of a fight. I'm ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... murmured, "I'm not hit at all. I trod on an unexploded shell, and gave my leg an infernal wrench just as our fellows had to fall back. I couldn't move a yard, and got collared in consequence, and when it was dark they brought me along here. Where are ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... a rose from a flowering rose-tree near her, and began to wrench out its petals with a quick, nervous movement. Helmsley watched her with a vague sense ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... dinner half an hour, so I was not so very late. Such a nice dinner! Everybody turned up except you, MARMADUKE—but I told them how it was. Oh, and old Lady HOREHOUND was there, and said a man had actually got into her brougham, and tried to wrench off one of her bracelets!—only she spoke to him so severely that he was struck with remorse, or something, and got out again! And it was by the Park, close to where you left me. Just fancy, MARMADUKE, he might have got into the carriage ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... back and half turned to run, but the Subaltern saw him look round over his shoulder and twist back, saw the eyes glaring at the fiery thing in the mud, the dreadful resolve grow swiftly on the set young face, the teeth clamped on the resolve. He was going to dash for the fuse, to try to wrench it out and, as he supposed, prevent the mine exploding. The Subaltern jerked up the revolver again. This would never do; the precious seconds were flying; at any moment another man might come. He would have saved this youngster if he could, but he could allow nothing ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... both her arms in a sudden spasm, attempting to climb out upon her as a drowning man might try to climb out on an oar and sinking her down under him. In the struggle under water, before he permitted her to wrench clear, her rubber cap was torn off, and her hairpins pulled out, so that she came up gasping for air and half-blinded by her wet-clinging hair. Also, he was certain he had surprised her into taking in ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... off in obedience to the call; glad to leave him, as at the moment Kinraid resentfully imagined. Through the open door he heard the conversation between mother and daughter, almost unconscious of its meaning, so difficult did he find it to wrench his thoughts from the ideas he had just been forming with Sylvia's bright lovely face ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... voice, as he knelt down and felt the hatch. "It is fastened down with a staple and padlock. They are old, but you might have some trouble in breaking them. But let us see first. No, it moves. Now, a wrench ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... life. Let this tale then be a warning to those who are over-hasty to construct romances of pathetic contrast on an insufficient foundation. One hugs such stories to one's heart, and it is something of a wrench to have to give them up in the light of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... by the shine of the warrior's sword, The soldier paused beside it: He wrench'd the hand with a giant's strength, But the grasp of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... judgment of the new order of things should have come to them at once. The total overturning of the whole labor system of a country, accomplished suddenly, without preparation or general transition, is a tremendous revolution, a terrible wrench, well apt to confuse men's minds. It should not have surprised any fair-minded person that many Southern people for a time clung to the accustomed idea that the landowner must also own the black man tilling his land, and that any assertion of freedom of action on the part of that black ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... anything they might say or think he leaned towards the girl and began to talk to her. She looked so scared by his talking and so unhappy at having to reply, and it seemed to be so difficult for her to wrench out a "Yes" or a "No" without ever daring to look at him, that he took pity on her shyness, and drew back to a corner. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... thoughtfully chose The Naiad—a slow boat, with no reputation for speed to sustain. It meant two or three days longer on the river, but what of that? There would be no temptation in the engine-room to attach a casual wrench or so to the safety-valve as an offset to the builder's lack of confidence in his own boilers. He saw to it that her state-room was well aft—steamers had a trick of blowing ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... their feet; with a sudden wrench Mina turned her chair round toward the door. A tall slim girl in black came in with a ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... this last movement, however, and he picked up Gum roughly, and proceeded to wrench open its jaws. He felt all round his mouth, but the nugget was not there. He held the senseless body up by the tail and shook it, but no gold appeared. He took his head between his knees, and sounded all over its throat, but the nugget was not to ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... sank into a hole. Perhaps with a little calmness and patience he could have released it. But in his wild hurry he tried to wrench it out. A sudden, sharp pain rewarded this insane effort. He lost his balance and went sprawling to the ground, another quick, excruciating twinge accompanying his fall, and lay there on the soggy ground like a woodchuck ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... though they are saddened by many a regret for neglects and omissions and commissions toward you all, and that old petrifying selfishness which only grace can cure, I would not be without such days, and almost thank "each wrench which has detected how thoroughly and deeply dear you are." I can hardly tell you what the thought of leaving N. and F. is to me, but this dark day ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... door of the locker, and strove to wrench it open. Meanwhile, half paralyzed with excitement, I remained standing at the door. I saw Edmund hurl aside those who attacked him, and push on toward his goal. But a minute later a knife reached ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... which, marked the French at Waterloo. Never, indeed, had the national bravery of the French people been more nobly shown. One soldier in the French ranks was seen, when his arm was shattered by a cannon-ball, to wrench it off with the other; and throwing it up in the air, he exclaimed to his comrades, "Vive l'Empereur jusqu'a la mort!" Colonel Lemonnier-Delafosse mentions in his Memoirs, [Page 388.] that at the beginning of the action, a French soldier who had had both legs carried off by a cannon- ball, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... inspected it," replied Thorndyke, "and I may remark that it is useless to wrench at that key, because I have hampered ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... help through it all; for Rosa, the woman he loved, his mother, and his sister believed in him, and gloried in what other people called his want of common sense. Ay, though the horrible wrench of parting was suffered by Rosa every minute of every day, and the shadow of that dreadful, unnatural separation began to blacken her life even before it actually fell upon her,—through it all, she never wavered. When he first told her that he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... was going to be very respectable. She'd manage, and Jude would always find her worth his while to be decent for. She would wrench what she could from him and St. Ange and be a commonplace ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... from time to time, in order that I might note the effect of gymnastics upon my tonnage, I asked one, who was resting after prodigious efforts to wrench his arms off at a lifting machine, if there were scales convenient. He surveyed me for a moment—looked puzzled—and finally replied hesitatingly,—'Y-e-s, I think we can manage it.' He led the way to a window ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... plunged into a world of perfect strangers. Everything is done to make them at ease and comfortable in their new surroundings; the headmaster is kindness itself, the matron beams on them with smiles and fortifies them with encouragement; but just at first the wrench for the little fellows is great. In a day or two, however, they will begin to acclimatise themselves; the strangeness will begin to wear off; and having borne up bravely against their first sense of loneliness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... not be dwarfing and cramping her, all her life probably, to give way to her now. Can it ever be too early to acquire self-reliance, and is it not one of the most necessary lessons for a responsible human being to learn? Besides, 'ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute.' It is only the first wrench which will hurt her. She will find plenty of fresh interests and congenial occupations at St. Ambrose's. In a week, a fortnight, she will ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... things. There was a jar of jelly on the table all sealed up, and she said, "Won't you have some of the jell?" Mr. Miller said, "No, thank you." But Mitch took up the jar and tried to get the top off. It would have took a monkey wrench to get it off; so after tuggin' at it and not bein' able to budge it, he put it down. Just then she came up and said, "Do have some of the jell." Mitch began to laugh. Then pa took the jar and he couldn't get the top off either, and he put it down. She came back again ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... delinquents escape too frequently from the legal penalty. Let us enforce this penalty rigorously; let us increase the punishment against them and their instruments; let us screw up the machine and give them a new wrench. A new estimate and verification of the food supply takes place, domiciliary searches, seizures of special stores regarded as too ample,[4283] limited rations for each consumer, a common and obligatory mess table for all prisoners, brown, egalite bread, mostly of bran, for every mouth ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... ground to jar the steeple, and make it fall. One of them blew a horn—as he said, to bring down the old Jericho—and another thought he'd help things along by starting up the horse, and giving the building a little wrench. But Bob put a stop to that; and finally out came a head from the belfry window; It was Jedwort, who shouted down to us: 'There ain't a j'int or brace gi'n out. Start the hoss, and I'll ride. Pass me up that ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... friends.—O, I'm so glad to see you. We've been waitin and waitin for you ever so long. Come in, luncheon ain't gone down," cried out this hospitable lady, squeezing Pen's hand in both hers (she had dropped the Major's after a brief wrench of recognition), and Blanche, casting up her eyes towards the chimneys, descended from the carriage presently, with a timid, blushing, appealing look, and gave a little ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to eat and drink, as soon as they came on boards either from the baskets they had brought with them, or from the boat's provision. But he prevailed, with his smile that was like a sneer, through all the events of the voyage; and took March's mind off the scenery with a sudden wrench when he came unexpectedly into view after a momentary disappearance. At the table d'hote, which was served when the landscape began to be less interesting, the guests were expected to hand their plates across the table to the stewards but to keep their knives and forks ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he was in earnest, and, taking hold of the arrow again, gave it a mighty wrench. It came out, but the barbs of the arrow tore the flesh badly. Houston, however, paused only to tie up the wound roughly, and hurried back into the fight, though Jackson ordered him to the rear. Before long, two bullets struck him down, and he lay between ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... a season of severe trial, for a new apostolate. They did not choose it for themselves. Father Hecker had aspirations, as we know, but he did not dream of realizing them through any separation whatever. But Providence led the Holy See to change what had been a violent wrench into a peaceful division, exercising, in so doing, a divine authority accepted with equal obedience ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... foam-covered On the ridge of the waves. Then ariseth a panic, Fear among folk of the force that commands me, 35 Strong on my storm-track. Who shall still that power? At times I drive through the dark wave-vessels That ride on my back, and wrench them asunder And lash them with sea-streams; or I let them again Glide back together. It is the greatest of noises, 40 Of clamoring crowds, of crashes the loudest, When clouds as they strive in their courses shall strike Edge against ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... from behind a bulkhead door at one end of the control room. I listened, and again the sound was repeated. With the lighter still flickering in my hands, I got to my feet. The bulkhead door was jammed, but I found a heavy telargeium spanner-wrench on the floor, and with a strength which frightened me—a strength which could have come only by some upset condition of gravitation—I soon crashed the door open. I had no sooner done it, however, than I forgot about the moan which had ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... shaking with anger and terror by the time she had finished reading Kate's letter. Anger was uppermost at the moment, and with one sweeping wrench of her trembling fingers she tore the closely written sheets straight through the middle, and flung them into the little wicker basket by her desk. Then she went down-stairs and played her noisiest, merriest ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... generally underestimated, and as a consequence many persons go through life with ankles that are abnormally weak, and even painful in bad weather, and in which there is a tendency to swell and become exceedingly troublesome after a slight wrench. In all true sprains there is more or less actual tearing of the ligaments that bind the joint together, and, if the injury be not properly treated and the joint thoroughly supported, complete recovery in many instances ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... point of view and keeping it, Casey managed very well. Whenever anything went wrong that his vocabulary and a monkey wrench could not mend, Casey sat down on the shadiest running board and conned the Instruction Book which Bill handed him at the last minute. Other times he treated the Ford exactly as he would treat a burro, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Then, as Cleek's fingers clamped tight again, and the battle began anew, one long, thin arm shot out from amongst the writhing tentacles, one clutching hand gripped the leg of the table and, with a wrench and a twist, brought it crashing to the floor with a sound that a deaf man might ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... rush in like a flood, Allied with foes of our own flesh and blood, The elements of earth and hell combine, Yet tho' he trembles, stands in strength divine; He rests secure on the unyielding rock. The top may sway, but base feels not the shock; His heart is fixed, nor earth nor hell can move; They wrench not loose, but his allegiance prove. Christ wept with Mary at her brother's grave; Laid down His life a rebel world to save; Tried, like ourselves, and like us too, infirm, Yet knew no sin in either root or germ; Let us be like Him ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... undignifiedly in the center of the room, her firm strong hands tight over his wrists as he pawed at her, trying to wrench himself away. Mr. Piper was a gentleman no longer—nor a business man—nor a figure of nation-wide importance—he was only a small furious figure with a face as grey and distorted as a fighting ape's who was clutching at the woman in front of him as if he would ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... swiftly on it. In a moment the power from the storage coils of the ship was flowing through the new cable, and into the machine. A huge ring appeared about the nose of the Thessian ship, fitting snugly over it. A terrific wrench—and it was free of the Ancient Mariner. The ring contracted and formed a chunk of the stuff free of the broken nose ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... other about amidships of the log, Neewa flattened tight, his sharp claws dug in like hooks, and his little brown eyes half starting from his head. It would have taken a crowbar to wrench him from the log. But with Miki it was an open question from the beginning whether he would weather the storm. He had no claws that he could dig into the wood, and it was impossible for him to use his clumsy legs as Neewa used his—like two pairs of human arms. ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... grave.' My soul was filled with conflicting thoughts, and for a moment even my faith seemed at a low ebb. I could hear my children's stifled sobs, and my darling wife shed silent tears. The thought of parting from them gave me the bitterest wrench. With my fleeting breath I gasped these words, 'That mercy I showed others, that show thou me.' The darkened room grew darker, and after that I died. In my sleep I seemed to dream. All about were refined and heavenly flowers, while the most delightful sounds and perfumes ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... that chap, Jerry," he remarked earnestly. "He's a lad after my own heart. What he said about not wanting to shoot defenceless game gave me a wrench, for we cherish notions along that same line up here in the wilderness. Of course, the grizzly, as I said, does not come under that law, for he's too terrible a customer ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... Ducie managed to wrench open the smashed door. Then he called the Russian by name; but there was no answer. He could discern nothing inside save a confused heap of rugs and minor articles of luggage. Under these, enough in themselves to smother him, Platzoff must be lying. One by one these articles were fished out ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various |
