"Wrench" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it be, 'Tis wondrous heavy. Wrench it open straight. If the sea's stomach be o'ercharged with gold, It is a good constraint of fortune, that It ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... period he occupied himself with endeavoring to obtain the sense of balance. Then, with a great effort, he managed to loosen the cords that bound his right arm to his side. A mighty wrench, and he had slipped them up above his elbow. His right lower arm ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... forward with a furious bound He wrench'd a rocky fragment from the ground By far more ponderous, and more huge by far Than what Phaeacia's sons discharged in air. Fierce from his arm the enormous load he flings; Sonorous through the shaded air it sings; Couch'd to ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Spirit River Crossing. The road, Garth learned, was straight, and, for the North, well-travelled. There were no forks or cross-trails, hence no possibility of their missing the way. They set off before daybreak next morning. The parting with Charley was a wrench all around: but Garth was firm in insisting that the boy must go back, and put up his hay. In the easy-going North it is only too easy to drop one's tools and start off on a jaunt. Charley bade them an abrupt good-bye; and bustled away to hide ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... her horridly in a frenzy of fear, for he saw that did Garnache shake off the Marquise there would be an end of himself. He sought to wrench himself free of her detaining grasp, and the exertion brought him down, weary as he was, and with her weight hanging to him. He sank to his knees, and the girl, still clinging valiantly, sank with him, calling to Garnache that she ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... thoughts, the things, and the people whose incompatibility with the possibility of such dalliance was driving him mad. It was the hour at which he had promised to wait upon the Cardinal. It was absolutely necessary that he should go at once; and he tore himself away from that fatal sofa-seat with a wrench, and a reflection on the purpose of his visit to the Legate, which seemed to him really to threaten to ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... that afternoon—he had seen them drive away. He would go down and make the necessary arrangements for his departure. And so it happened that he stood an hour before sunset in the parlor. A sudden heart sickness drove the blood from his lips with the wrench of remembrance. It did not strengthen him to meet her, cool and royal, in filmy purple, putting out her hand with frank friendliness, and with a new quaver of interest in her voice. Those fatal magnolias: all the outside world seemed pressing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... saw me like this. (She begins to get up) And after calling me a Spartan Mother only yesterday, because I said that if any nice, steady young man came along and took my own dear little girl away from me, I should bear the terrible wrench in silence rather than cause either of them a moment's remorse. (She is up ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... on to the bigger man like a wild cat, till at last Dawes fell with a crash, losing his presence of mind. Paul went down with him. Pure instinct brought his hands to the man's neck, and before Dawes, in frenzy and agony, could wrench him free, he had got his fists twisted in the scarf and his knuckles dug in the throat of the other man. He was a pure instinct, without reason or feeling. His body, hard and wonderful in itself, cleaved against the struggling body of ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Barrett, in tones of resignation. "It was rather a wrench, parting with them, especially the baby. He got his first tooth the ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... personally to remain here—easier on reflection at least—than for the others. At the same time Florida is fascinating, and offers not only adventure, but the command of a brigade. Certainly at the last moment there was not a sacrifice I would not have made rather than wrench myself and others away from the expedition. We are, of course, thrown back into the old uncertainty, and if the small-pox subsides (and it is really diminishing decidedly) we may yet come in at the wrong ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... It was a horrible wrench at last to leave wife and children. "My most bitter trial," he writes—"an agony that still cleaves to me—was saying good-bye to the little ones. Thank God the pain was all on one side. 'Come back soon, papa!' they cried." His wife ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... He felt completely carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as if he had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which, the deep, loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader made the shock intensely painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first gap which the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed, and beaten down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for him and for many others in like case, who had to learn by that loss that the soul of man cannot stand or lean upon any human ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... led forward his horse with a wrench upon the bridle that sent it plunging. "Get your foot in the stirrup, Hamburg, and I'll hoist you ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... right to it," answered Dru, "but certain as I am that I am doing the only thing I could do, under the circumstances, it's a hard wrench to leave the Army, even though I had come to think that I can find my place in the ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... as he spoke. "It does; but it is more a matter of knack really. A great tuner named Clark taught me, and he learned it from Jonas Chickering himself. Old Jonas wouldn't allow any of his grand pianos to be tuned with an L head wrench." ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... underbrush a hatless, dishevelled individual on foot suddenly dashed into the centre of that hesitating ring of horsemen. With skilful twist of his foot he sent a dismounted road-agent spinning over backward, and managed to wrench a revolver from his hand. There was a blaze of red flame, a cloud of smoke, six sharp reports, and a wild stampede ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... "It is a wrench, lad," Harry said kindly; "I can quite understand your feelings, and don't like the thought myself. But I see that it has got to be done, and after all it will be better to kill the poor brutes than to let them fall into the hands of the Indians, who don't know what mercy ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... to think it," said Charles; "the hold our Church has on the mind is so powerful; it is such a wrench to leave it, I cannot fancy any party-tie standing against it. Humanly speaking, there is far, far more to keep them fast than to carry ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... of intimate excitement, when the burden of his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more intolerable than the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too effectually compromised himself. He had cringed, procrastinated, promised; had ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... him. Ah! not because he loves not your Grace nor desires to serve you; but because he serves your Grace best by serving and loving his God first of all.—And think how he cannot help a sob now and again; and whispers the name of his Saviour, as the pulleys begin to wrench and twist.—And,—and,—do not forget his mother, your Grace, down in the country; how she sits and listens and prays for her dear son; and cannot sleep, and dreams of him when at last she sleeps, and wakes screaming ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... from Australia, and Jack Wrench—his name—was granted permission to train at Newmarket. It was not long before two sterling good horses, Catspaw and Bellringer, four and five years old respectively, were purchased to lead the Australians ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... were a baby, he carried him to the scaffold and handed him up to Tom Larkin, who fitted the noose around his neck and sprang down. The supports had not been set with the same delicacy as at first, and Limber Jim had to set his heel and wrench desperately at them before he could force them out. Then "Mosby" passed away ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... ran back out into the river and fished around in the locker under the seat. You had a few old wrenches there, and some rags. Well, I owe you a wrench. It was the biggest one, which means it isn't used very often ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... call that almost made me tremble for his integrity. But he did not so much as turn his head. His eyes were for me alone. With a rubber shoe flung gallantly over his shoulder, he danced incitingly before me, praying that I would pretend to be crazed by the sight of his prize and seek to wrench ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... nail, were covered with sawdust and dirt. His hands and arms and even his face were treated liberally with the same mixture that stained his clothing; and the shaggy red brown hair, uncovered, was sadly tumbled. In his hand he held a wrench. The morrow was grinding day, and he had been making some ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... feel the force of the second objection raised. We fully recognise that the right thing is for the convert to live among her own people, and let her light shine in her own home; and we deplore the terrible wrench involved in what is known as "coming out." To a people so tenacious of custom as the Indians are, to a nature so affectionate as the Indian nature is, this cutting across of all home ties is ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... not gone much more than a mile when she came upon the same swarthy son of the south and his vociferous machine. But the latter was now silent enough; it leaned against a fence, and its rider knelt beside it, a wrench in his hand, testing its parts carefully ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... ran to save him; but Elzevir saw it quicker than I, and springing forward seized him by the belt just when he turned over. The parapet wall was very low, and caught the turnkey behind the knee as he staggered, tripping him over into the well-mouth. He gave a bitter cry, and there was a wrench on his face when he knew where he was come, and 'twas then Elzevir caught him by the belt. For a moment I thought he was saved, seeing Elzevir setting his body low back with heels pressed firm against the parapet wall to stand the strain. Then the belt gave way at the fastening, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Gabriella; and the bleak month of January stretched ahead of her in an interminable prospect of cold and gloom. For the past ten years the children had absorbed her life, after her working hours, so entirely that the parting from them had been an unbearable wrench, and had left her with an aching feeling as if an arm had been cut away. She had had little time to make friends; the streets of the city isolated her as completely as if they had been spaces of uninhabited wilderness; ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... leap over the counter and wrench the threatening weapon from Mr. Bailey's grasp with one hand, while he throttled him with the other? We are obliged to say that he did not. He stood quite still, for something told him it would be dangerous to do anything else. This was the first time his courage had ever been tested, and he was ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... Even before the battle of Ipsus, however, he recovered possession once more, and for a century thereafter Southern Syria continued to belong to the Egyptian crown, although the Seleucidae more than once sought to wrench it away. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... inclosed me was a coffin! A frenzy surpassing that of an infuriated tiger took swift possession of me—with hands and nails I tore and scratched at the accursed boards—with all the force of my shoulders and arms I toiled to wrench open the closed lid! My efforts were fruitless! I grew more ferociously mad with rage and terror. How easy were all deaths compared to one like this! I was suffocating—I felt my eyes start from their sockets—blood sprung ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... to the camp bed and laid him there, letting his legs hang down. While the executioner fastened him to the rough bedstead with strong cords, the assistants bound his legs into the "boots." Presently the cords were tightened, by means of a wrench, without the pressure causing much pain to the young Reformer. When each leg was thus held as it were in a vice, the executioner grasped his hammer and picked up the wedges, looking alternately at the victim ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... living-room, he sat a long time in mental readjustment, which was brought about with many a wrench at his heart; and when, at last, his old iron will—which had been weakened a little by illness and further softened by love—had once again been tempered in the crucible of anguish, the lines on his prematurely seamed face were deeper, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... have been erroneous, for in the progress of those fourteen days' apprenticeship Mr. Taggett had received a wound in the most sensitive part of his nature: he had been forced to give up what no man ever relinquishes without a wrench,—his own idea. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the base of his horns and tried to twist his neck. This enterprise, however, was too much even for the elephant's titanic powers, for Last Bull's greatest strength lay in the muscles of his ponderous and corded neck. Raving and bellowing, he plunged this way and that, striving in vain to wrench himself free from that incomprehensible, snake-like thing which had fastened upon him. Bong, trumpeting savagely, braced himself with widespread pillars of legs, and between them it seemed that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... has been discarded is used in making this vise. The wrench is supported by two L-shaped pieces ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Perhaps they would attack him unarmed, and kill him like a beast; or capture 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 arrive. They knew ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... man rose up with the wrench in his hand, and looked for the first time into the gray-blue eyes under the bushy iron-gray brows. "The country is the same as it is on this side. The ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... fulness of productiveness,' he confesses, 'at the hour when life is flowering, a young creature is snatched away, and cast upon a barren soil where all he has cherished fails him. Well, after the first wrench he finds that life has not forsaken him, and sets to work upon the new ungrateful ground. The effort calls for such a concentration of energy as leaves no time for either hopes or fears. And I ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... again the sight of the bruised flowers caused him a fresh wrench. Lying there they were like a public advertisement of his betrayed heart. He picked them up and thrust them as far as he could reach ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... the boat lay in such position as the nobleman desired. Now there was a great commotion as, at a word from the Pfalzgraf, the garrison fell on the barge, and began to wrench off the hatches, a task which they ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... a wrench," he added, with a sobered air. "I'll miss 'em all: Frank—Ellen—Jean. By Gad, I shall miss Jean. However, it need only be for a year or two. Meanwhile—by Jingo, there's no doubt about it!—this is the chance of my life. Let's see now, what does one need? A revolver with ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... with the use of elevators, and which no doubt is common, is the habit many parties have of keeping a key or wrench to turn on and off the water at the curb. This we have sought to remedy by embracing in our plumbers' rules the following: "All elevator connections in addition to the curb stop for the use of the Water Company must be provided with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... I came to another. Looking up at the walls I saw set in the timber a number of holes cleanly bored. And in one of the last of these holes was a peg. Again my eyes shifted. From a nail in one corner of the room hung a red and white zarape, a bridle, one of those graceless bits which would wrench the mouth of the wildest horse to agony, and a sombrero. Something in these things fascinated me. I got up and examined them, while the blind man was in the other room. Turning them over I saw that the zarape was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man would slap back again, and when it was over Dick would make his politest bow, and say pleasantly, 'Thank you, sir, I felt a touch of the gout.' He told me once that if it was only a twinge, he chose a man of his own size; but if it was a positive wrench, he struck out at the biggest he ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... moment looked so ill, so small and spiteful, that Jane's heart gave a sudden wrench of pity. It was a cruel, brutal thing, she felt, in her to stop him on the edge of the grave and demand his money. She put her hand to his forehead: it was cold and clammy. "Don't wrong my father in this way," she said in a lower voice than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... performed! and all for the sake of a stinking, miserable carcass, hardly worth the hanging! How dexterously did he pick the chain of his padlock with a crooked nail! how manfully he burst his fetters asunder, climb up the chimney, wrench out an iron bar, break his way through a stone wall, make the strong door of a dark entry fly before him, till he got upon the leads of the prison, then, fixing a blanket to the wall with a spike, he ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... no answer, except to continue the maddening monotony of his movements, she was seized with a rash resolve to wrench the oars out of his hands, and made a quick motion towards ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... the swinging door disclosed a black passage into which the figure seemed to lose itself and become a part of the mysterious gloom; when the night grew boisterous and the fierce wind made furious charges at the knocker, as if to wrench it off and carry it away in triumph. Such a ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... of continuity had been a call to arouse her, Elinor freed her hand with a swift little wrench and sat bolt upright in ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... the bar and with a great effort pushed the bottom from him. It moved through the groove without much difficulty, but it needed a great wrench to free the upper end. However, it was done, and laying it quietly down he pulled himself up and thrust himself through the loophole. It was a desperate struggle to get through, for it was only just wide enough for his head to pass, and he was ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... but breathing such a prayer as I could think of, I raised my hand again and seized it firmly. Worse horror stilll The rust had eaten it into holes, and I gripped my own hair as well as the rotting steel, the sharp edge of which cut into my fingers; but setting my teeth, gave a great wrench, for I knew that if I let go of it then, no power on the earth or under it could make me touch it again. God be praised! I tore it off and cast it far from me; I saw the earth, and the worms and green weeds ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... been till this moment asleep. Sylvia darted 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 ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... recollect the uprising of 1843. Exasperated by the miserable rule of Otho, a plot was hatched to wrench a constitution from him, and when everything was ripe the Athenians arose. At midnight the hoofs of horses were heard clanging on the pavements, and the flash of torches gleamed in the streets, as the populace and military hurried toward the palace; and when the amber-colored ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... like a good thing, being often read Growne feard, and tedious: yea, my Grauitie Wherein (let no man heare me) I take pride, Could I, with boote, change for an idle plume Which the ayre beats for vaine: oh place, oh forme, How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit Wrench awe from fooles, and tye the wiser soules To thy false seeming? Blood, thou art blood, Let's write good Angell on the Deuills horne 'Tis not the Deuills ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... unearnest men, especially the great nobles, rushed to the court, determined now, that the only guardians of the state were a weak-minded woman and a weak-bodied child, to dip deep into the treasury which Henry had filled to develop the nation, and to wrench away the power which he had built ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... 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 ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... flushed, and his eye had a look which even a very little experience understands. His air was haggard, spiritless, hopeless; so unlike the alert, self-sufficient, confident manner of old, that Dolly's heart got a great wrench. And something in the whole image was so inexpressibly pitiful to her, that she did the very last thing it had been in her purpose to do; she fled to him with one bound, threw herself on his breast, and burst into a heartbreak ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... loftiest mountains, amongst huge stones; the finest plants are inaccessible to wheeled vehicles, and even on horseback it is difficult to reach them. I shall pack him carefully in mats before applying to his roots the crowbars destined to wrench him from his resting place of unknown centuries. He will have to travel 300 leagues before he reaches Vera Cruz." Being too large to be packed in a box, it was first surrounded with a dense clothing of the Old Man's Beard or Spanish moss ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... grasp; two great hands choked a despairing cry from his throat. He saw the prophet's face over him, distorted with passion, his huge neck bulging, his eyes flaming like angry garnets. He struggled to free his pinioned arms, to wrench off the death grip at his throat, but his efforts were like those of a child against a giant. In a last terrible attempt he drew up his knees inch by inch under the weight of his enemy; it was his only chance—his only hope. Even as ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... down, and he was hard hit. When he shot his last he threw the gun away, and, drawing a knife, he made at Kells. Kells shot once more, and hit Pike, but did not stop him. Silence, after the shots and yells, seemed weird, and the groping giant, trying to follow Pike, resembled a huge phantom. With one wrench he tore off a leg of the overturned table and brandished that. He swayed now, and there was a whistle where before ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Tom suddenly. "Tomba! That African can see in the dark like a cat. Why, just before we started I dropped a wrench, and I didn't have any matches handy to look for it. I was groping around in the dark trying to get my hands on it, and you know it was pretty black in the jungle. Well, along come Tomba. and he spotted it at once and picked ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... Reade tried to wrench himself free at the collar, at the same time raising his right knee with a forceful jerk. He wanted to drive that knee into the black ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... fingerstall (a leather cover for the gunner's second left finger when the gun gets hot). Under the wheels are two chocks; the vent-cover is on the vent, a tompion in the muzzle; a broom leans against the parapet beyond the stack of cannonballs. A wormer, ladle, and wrench were also part ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... to an unsoldier-like thing that he afterward tried to forget. For the driver developed unexpected strength, refused to submit, got the tunic off his head, and, seeing himself attacked by one man only, took courage and fell to. He picked up a wrench from the seat beside him, and made a furious pass at Nikky's head. Nikky ducked and, after a struggle, secured the weapon. All this in the ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... back The Snider's snarl and the carbine's crack, And the blithe revolver began to sing To the blade that twanged on the locking-ring, And the brown flesh blued where the bay'net kissed, As the steel shot back with a wrench and a twist, And the great white bullocks with onyx eyes Watched the souls of the dead arise, And over the smoke of the fusillade The Peacock Banner ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... soon connected to the first of the cylinders and with a hiss the gas rushed into the bag when a turn of the wrench set free the precious stuff. Slowly the big yellow envelope swelled and assumed shape until by the time the last cylinder was empty it was tugging and straining to rise. But the boys had weighted it down with rocks and pegged its ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... death to bear The wrench that sets us free From dungeon-chain, to breathe the air Of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... give my hand to any other;— Describing 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 come to doubt ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... wrench to the mother's heart at the thought of what she could foresee! But the warmth of the mother-love lent life to the mother-wit. Having sent her little ones out of sight, and by a sign conveyed to Saddleback her alarm, ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... 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 ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... to know. With each one of us, if we are to advance beyond the steps of the last generation, there comes a time when our growing ideas refuse any longer to fit the childish grooves in which we were taught to let them run. How great the wrench is when this supreme moment arrives we have all felt too keenly ever to forget. We hesitate, we delay, to abandon the beliefs which, dating from the dawn of our being, seem to us even as a part of our very selves. From the religion ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... enmity, he would not break his word. Complex problems resolve themselves at the point of action into such simple axioms. Dick should have a blessing and his sweetheart; he would do his best for Fairfax Preston; with his might he would keep his word. A great sigh and a wrench at his heart as if a physical growth of years were tearing away, and the decision was made. Then, in a mist of pain and effort, and a surprised new freedom from the accustomed pang of hatred, he heard the rustle and ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... excellency, the distance was so short, and I feared that he might wrench one of his hands loose. Moreover, I thought that you might prefer his being searched in ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... seem very cheerful at the thought of his promotion. "It is a wrench, it is a wrench, madame la comtesse. I have been here for eighteen years. Oh, the place does not bring in much, and is not wealthy. The men have no more religion than they need, and the women, look you, the women have no morals. But nevertheless, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... may learn not to be ashamed of changing our minds: but if we find ourselves in the wrong, to confess it boldly and honestly, as St. Paul did. What a fearful wrench to his mind and his heart; what a humiliation to his self-conceit, to have to change his mind once for all on all matters in heaven and earth. What must it not have cost him to throw up at once all his friends and relations; to part himself from all whom he loved ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... not: Love may sink by slow decay; But by sudden wrench, believe not Hearts can thus ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... 'long about the middle o' the forenoon, my man come up to the house—he's down to shore, you know, along o' Cap'n Sartell and George Olver and Lute Cradlebow and all the rest, down there a mendin' up the old schooner, 'cause Cap'n wanted Lute to see to it afore he went away. My man come up for a wrench, and 'Who do you think's a scootin' around down on the Bay?' says he. 'Wall, it's Dave Rollin,' says he; 'in the purtiest little craft, that runs jest like a picter,' and he said they couldn't see but two men aboard of her then; he guessed they ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... The wrench to the fisherman's knee proved more serious than he had anticipated. The doctor pronounced it out of the question that he should be moved for some ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... with me for an hour longer! Any excuse to put off, to delay that frightful wrench that seems to tear out the inside of both body and soul which parting ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... at once came the reaction. Instantly the larger machinery of the mind resumed its functions, the hurt of the blow came back. With a fierce wrench of pain, the wound reopened, full consciousness returned. Lloyd remembered then that she had proved false to her trust at a moment of danger, that Ferriss would probably die because of what she had done, that her strength of will and of mind wherein she had gloried was broken beyond redemption; ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... back and makes a blow at him with a great axe. Gunnar turned short round upon him and parries the blow with the bill, and caught the axe under one of its horns with such a wrench that it flew out of Skamkell's hand away ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... Jack's overcoat pocket a parcel containing a cold chisel, small screw-wrench, file, and one or two other things that he'd bought that evening to tinker up the old printing press. I knew that, because I'd lent him a hand a few nights before, and he told me he'd have to get the tools. They ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... cried the colored man, dropping the wrench he was holding. "No sire I'm not goin' t' project myself int' a grave while I'se alive. Time enough when I kicks th' bucket. No sir! If yo' an' the boys wants t' risk yo' se'ves goin' down int' th' interior of th' earth, where th' Bible ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... prayed, earth's sights and sounds faded from me, and the strange, new life began. The wrench of agony with which soul and body parted left me breathless; and my spirit, like a lost child, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... reached Sunset Ranch. The fall, the terrible wrench of his foot, and the endurance of the pain was finally too much for him. In a half-fainting condition he sank part of his weight on the girl's shoulder, and she sturdily trudged along the rough trail, bearing him up until she thought her own limbs ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... efforts of Jarvis and Max, working with one tool after another, to effect an entrance. Clearly this was not an ordinary closet lock which barred the way. But at last, with a vigorous wrench, Jarvis held the yielding door under his hand. From the top step he waved his free arm at the company, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... heaven: under this dusty roof, inside those narrow walls, He lodges whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain: the tenant of this manger is the Son, who, leaving the bosom of His Father to save us, here pillows His head on straw; of this feeble babe the hands are to hurl Satan from his throne, and wrench asunder the strong bars of death; this one tender life, this single corn-seed is to become the prolific parent of a thousand harvests, and fill the garners of glory with the fruits of salvation. Mean as it looks, yet more splendid than marble palaces,—more sacred than the most venerable and ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... felt himself drawn up in opposition to an opponent at once too delicate, too unreasoning, and too beloved to encounter. It seemed as if the absurdity of it would drive him mad, and yet he was held to it. He tried to give a desperate wrench aside from the main point of the situation. He leaned over Ellen, so closely that his lips touched ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the advantage, Jim leaped to wrench his spear from the conquered giant's head. And side by side he and Denny started again the charge against the ruler's guards, which, while still mighty in defense, were by their ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... means he regained his perpendicular, but only for a moment, Solomon having at command a perfect battery of ruses for ridding himself of a rider. No sooner was Tom upright than the donkey gave the whole of his skin and muscles a wrench sidewise, which felt as if the seat was being ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... we are always tempted to wrench the two apart, and to think that the operation of the one must sometimes, at all events on the outermost circumference of the spheres, impinge upon, and collide with, the operations of the other. Hence you get types of religion—yes! ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... exclaimed Frank Chester, flinging down his wrench and passing his hand through a mop of curly hair; ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... with a wrench. Pierce had it in his power to put an end to all this. He must purchase the right to continue, and at Pierce's own price. But was the price so severe? After all, he could contrive to do much; to carry on many of his causes; to help build ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... parents and 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
... in confidence, and on the hair-cloth sofa in the upper hall, that it would be a big wrench ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... is redeeming some of those large promises to pay which I had long ago given up as hopeless bad debts; even now, it gives me a wrench to remember the crudest chapter in that bitter lesson. So certain had I been of reelection that I had arranged to go to Boston the day after my triumph at the polls. For I knew from friends of the Crosbys in Pulaski that Elizabeth was still unmarried, was not engaged, and upon that ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... on the royal bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause, Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws, Which others at their bar so often wrench, To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth that after no repenting draws; Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intend, and what the French. To measure life learn thou betimes, and know ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... as the glass of the window splintered to fragments, and, almost with the crash, Ravenslee leapt—a fierce twist, a vicious wrench, and the deadly ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... savagely, hunting it. He came back and dived into the cockpit of the plane. He came out with a wrench, and his jaws set grimly. He worked desperately at the pump. He came back with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... high voice. "By God, it makes no difference—only one thing." He paused. Then with a wrench he went on, "Alves, did you—did you—" But he could not make himself utter the words, and before he had mastered his hesitation she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... on the Polish border; He cried that Russia was the foe; The German Press received the order And answered meekly, "That is so;" But when King WILLIAM met the Tartar His soul sustained another wrench, He found the Slavs were even smarter At entertainments ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... Spanish, French, Dutch, English, Irish, German, Jew, and Greek— What see you, as you climb the Future's Peak? Oh! no illusion. What looms there, shall wrench From life, all monsters out from Hell, to seek Dead consciences and plague earth with ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... ous sheaf stew'ing a miss' pre'vi ous guile, yeo'man as sess' im'pi ous chyle chlo'ral ab'scess a'que ous rend know'ing sick'le par'ti cle wrench go'ing nick'el crit'ic al dearth con dole' tal'ents dil'i gent worth con trol' bal'ance el'e gant mirth en roll' si'lence fal'li ble earth dis pel' com peer' prel'a cy spurt fore tell' ad here' ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... nor to the congregation who listened to the pathetic story of the "hearts torn asunder," an idea as to the incompatibility of missionary life with raising a family of children; nor that each and every missionary father had better have given his heart a decided wrench in the beginning, by abstaining from marriage, than have been a victim to perpetual domestic anxiety and have ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... influence of a family or political "pull." Let that be put down honestly, because nothing matters save the truth. But the manhood of Paris as a whole, after the first shudder of dismay, the first agonies of this wrench from the safe, familiar ways of life, rose superbly to the call of la Patrie en danger! The middle-aged fathers of families and the younger sons marched away singing and hiding their sadness under a mask of careless mirth. The boys of eighteen followed them in the month ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the door, he found a wrench in the tool-box and began fumbling about the engine. Soon the spark-plugs were unscrewed and in ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... But he warmed to his work, and in deliberate, mathematical fashion wrought through his subject. He told of the long Night; the dark age of the North Sea. The little shivering cabin-boy lay on his dank wooden couch, and curled under the wrench of the bitter winter nights; he had to bear a hard struggle for existence, and, if he were a weakling, he soon went under. Alas! there had been instances, only too well authenticated, of boys being subjected to the most shocking treatment—though we would not saddle upon the majority ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... instant she was straining, twisting in his arms, striving to cry out, to wrench herself free to keep her feet amid the crash of the overturned table and a ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the little patent Bird monkey-wrench last in our shop, and should have put it back in the toolbox belonging to the aeroplane. The fact that it isn't here shows that I mislaid it. Give ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... care whose basket it is! Let go!" he ordered, and gave such a wrench at the strings that all parted, suddenly, and the basket was his. "Y' think y're pretty smart, don't y'?" he demanded, head out of the window again; "helpin' this kid t' neglect ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... settlement that can be arrived at is merely conventional, which is a huge mistake. The fact is, there is no parent, nor nurse, nor schoolmaster, nor poet, nor stage play, to corrupt the judgments of sense, nor consent of the multitude to wrench them away from the truth. It is for minds and consciences that all the snares are set, as well by the agency of those whom I have just mentioned, who take us in our tender and inexperienced age, and ingrain and fashion us as they will, as also by that counterfeit presentment ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... and I can think of it only with unutterable loathing. If I were old and feeble, if I had tasted all the joys of life, I might submit, but not now, not now. I feel with father that it is fiendish cruelty to give one such an intense love of life and then wrench it away; and, passionately as I love life, there is one far more dear. There is that in your nature which has so won my confidence that I can reveal to you my whole heart. Mr. Haldane, I love one who is like you, manly and noble, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... 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 the flames beat them back. Helplessly they saw it eating along the mine timbers ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... prostrate law to find their essence and purpose in reconstruction. At the time of which I write, there seemed nothing left for the friends of law, bereft as they were of all statutary means for its enforcement, but making a virtue of this necessity by organizing a "vigilance committee" to wrench by physical strength that unobtainable by moral right. There had been no flourish of trumpets, no herald of the impending storm, but the pent up forces of revolution in inertion, now fierce for action, discarded restraint. Stern, but quiet had been the preparation ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... begged Tom to let his brother alone. "I was only fooling her," snarled Rafe, rubbing his injured shoulder, for Tom had the grip of a pipe wrench. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... her delicate wrist roughly, twisting it with the old wrench with which he had tormented her in their childhood days. None of them saw the stranger who was quietly walking down the ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... infant nearly strangled; another had been dragged along the ground by her hair. I could not help pitying them sincerely, but not so much as I should have done, but for the sad plight of my uncle. When I, with a kind of wrench, forced the talk into the subject of what was going on at his house, they, through their great love for him, forgot for a moment their own trials in thinking of his; and those who had anything to contribute brought it out, ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... wrench that tore Affection's firmest links apart; And doubly barb'd the shaft we wore Deep in each bleeding heart of heart; For, who can bear from bliss to part Without one sign—one warning token; To sleep in peace—then wake and start To ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... have been born into it. To me it was a stone of stumbling. Pride came to me with insidious aid and admired while I talked of Clotho; but where was my ally when I pictured Elsa also making her surrender to the Fates? My ally then became my enemy. With a violent wrench I brought myself to the thought that neither was Elsa's happiness a relevant consideration. It would not do, I could not maintain the position. For Elsa was young, fresh, aspiring to happiness as a plant rears its head ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope |
