"Breathlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ultimate heights. Here one would like to camp through a whole week of fine weather could such a week ever be counted upon. Higher than any point in the United States, the top of the Browne Tower probably on a level with the top of Mount Blanc, it is yet not so high as to induce the acute breathlessness from which the writer suffered, later, upon any exertion. The climbing of the tower, the traversing to the other side of it, the climbing of the ridge, would afford pleasant excursions, while the opportunity for careful though difficult photography would be ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... amongst the stones and bracken. She ran thus perhaps a quarter of a mile, then threw up her arms, fell down amongst the fern, and lay there on her face. At first her heart hurt her so that she felt nothing but that physical pain. If she could have died! But she knew it was nothing but breathlessness. It left her, and that which took its place she tried to drive away by pressing her breast against the ground, by clutching the stalks of the bracken—an ache, an emptiness too dreadful! Youth to youth! He was gone from her—and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sunshine, whirring through the traffic of the crowded streets, neither spoke for breathlessness. Cornelius Allendyce stared at the buildings and swallowed at regular intervals to steady his nerves—a trick he had always found most helpful in important legal trials. Robin kept her eyes glued ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... pardon me, Mr. Audley," he said, with asthmatic breathlessness. "I have great apprehensions. Your fish-plates, they are cleared away with the knife ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... mentally worlds apart can love violently for a while when there is physical attraction. And they are very happy, breathlessly, feverishly happy. Then they wake up with a memory of mutual giving-way that embitters and humiliates when the inevitable longing for something more stable than softness and breathlessness sets in. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... line him on that tree," "He's waitin' to draw his fire," came from the cart; and then it was silent. But above this human breathlessness the river rushed and sang, and the wind rustled the tree-tops with an indifference that seemed obtrusive. Colonel Starbottle felt it, and in a moment of sublime preoccupation, without looking around, waved his cane behind him, warningly to all ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... day in the Shoreham, he saw Audrey Valentine at another table. He had not seen her for weeks, and he had an odd moment of breathlessness when his eyes fell on her. She was pale and thin, and her eyes looked very tired. His first impulse was to go to her. The second, on which he acted, was to watch her for a little, to fill his eyes for the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a satisfaction, and to know that it was true gave me mysterious breathlessness and made me hear fragments of old songs during my walk that night. I walked very far, under the trees of the Bois, where I stopped for a few moments to smoke a cigarette at one of ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... cries of men, the trampling of speeding hoofs held her. The breathlessness of the whole thing was upon her now, making it impossible to detach her regard from ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... much taken up watching Bonnie's face when she opened her books, looking deep into her eyes as she looked up from the little velvet case where the watch ticked softly into her wondering ears; seeing the breathlessness with which she lifted the flowers from their bed among the ferns and placed them reverently in jars ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... never hear of a revival in a dissecting-room? Then, on another point of physiology, M. Payerne states, with regard to the distress experienced by many persons in the ascent of a high mountain, 'that the lassitude and breathlessness felt in elevated places appear to proceed, not from an insufficiency of oxygen, but rather from the rupture of the equilibrium between the tension of the fluids contained in our organs and that of the ambient air, whatever be the way in which ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... stop to his floodings; that, indeed, seems reserved to the master wizard; while the tiros of life's magic, puffed up with half-science, do not drink, but drown. In this way bicycling has added, methinks, an item to the hurry and breathlessness of existence, and to the difficulty of enjoying the passing hour—nay, the passing landscape. I have only once travelled on a bicycle, and, despite pleasant incidents and excellent company, I think it was a mistake; ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... hence there is balance between them, and this also we not only know to be there, but feel there. The characteristic mood of the evolutionary type of unity is equally unique—either a sense of easy motion, when the process is unobstructed, or excitement and breathlessness, when ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... detected anything of the kind," replied the physician, and his deep voice was gloomily in keeping with his personality. "I had observed a certain breathlessness at times, however. No doubt it is one of those cases of unsuspected endocarditis. Acute. I take it," raising his shaggy brows interrogatively, "that nothing had occurred to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... on him intently and she waited with eager breathlessness for him to speak. But when at length he answered his words brought a look of swift disappointment and she relaxed in her chair with an air of weary ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... named Barrymore, the husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence to ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... moment the judge began to consider his purely formal defense, entirely unsupported by affidavits or evidence of any kind. None the less, he strung his denials out by every amplification he could devise, and, having fired his last shot, sat down in despairing breathlessness to hear the ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... auld wheezie bellows," replied one woman coarsely, adding a rough jest at his breathlessness, whilst the others laughed loudly, adding, each one, another sally to torment ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... to have impressions like these sufficiently often in life: this is the excitement which is helpful; the heartbeating, the breathlessness, the pain even, which brace and make us widely sensitive. Brother Wind—why did St. Francis not invoke him?—played with us roughly and healthfully, telling us, in the hurtling against houses, the rustling, soughing among ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something very different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for one would never attempt such unholy ceremonies again. "We saw Satan pursuing us with his hour-glass. It ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... own place in the simple room which Marcel's father had dedicated to the science which had been his whole life. For him it had been all sufficient. The storming of the elements outside might have been the breathlessness of a tropical climate so far as he cared, once absorbed in the studies that claimed him. And in a measure the atmosphere of the room had a similar influence upon these ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... appeared first, in ball costume, gorgeously arrayed and so pale that the jewels that glistened everywhere on her dead-white flesh seemed more alive than she, as if they were scattered over the cold marble of a statue. The breathlessness due to dancing, the trembling of intense excitement and her rapid descent, caused her to shake from head to foot, and her floating ribbons, her ruffles, her flowers, her rich and fashionable attire drooped tragically about her. Risler followed her, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... good points of colour and position, and four other pictures, including an exquisitely simple and quaint little picture of the Dower House at Balcarres, and a Daphne with rather questionable flesh- painting, and in whom we miss the breathlessness of flight. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... here, have shown that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is social. The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena. They are bad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... say?' inquired the Dodger; taking advantage of the next interval of breathlessness on the part of his ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... white like paper, and her hands were cold and shaking, but her voice, except for a certain breathlessness, was cheerfully steady. With more or less noise and with a running fire of inconsequent comment, she rummaged among the trunks and boxes, gradually working her way to, ward the desk where Keith ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... had all their past could be made to appear to have given them. It was to this tune they proceeded, the least little bit as if they knowingly pretended—he giving her the example and setting her the pace of it, and she, poor dear, after a first inevitable shyness, an uncertainty of wonder, a breathlessness of courage, falling into step and going whatever ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... we best might. As the Southron formed their long ranks into lines, each man occupying his place as by magic, and preparing to cover themselves by large shields, called pavesses, which they planted before them, I again felt a strange breathlessness, and some desire to go home for a glass of distilled waters. But as I looked aside, I saw the worthy Kempe of Kinfauns bending a large crossbow, and I thought it pity he should waste the bolt on a ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... very angry; but I certainly was sad and I made up my mind at the window that that man would some day be sorry for an unnecessary act of cruelty. I am glad that the gentleman is present to-night"—a deep silence and breathlessness pervaded the audience—"for I am sure that he is sorry. But here are the newsboys of the town. They are my invited guests to-night. I want to say to the townspeople that the only kindly hand ever laid on my head was the Vicar's. It is too late now to ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the strain and breathlessness of him, the agitation with which he appeared to be laboring, and especially the simple, matter-of-fact detail of his story, carried absolute conviction to Ellen Jorth. Her vague doubt of him had been created by his attitude toward her. Emotion ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... their wheel, the enormous, toppling, loaded team; its three strong horses in a wild, plunging gallop; heels, heads, haunches, one dark, frantic, struggling tumble and rush. An instant more, of paralyzed breathlessness, and then a thundering fall, that made the ground quiver under their feet; then a stillness more suddenly dreadful than the noise. A great cloud of dust rose slowly up into the air, and showed ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... warm, and Mrs. Dagon fanned herself. When she and Mrs. Newt met there was a tremendous struggle to get the first innings of the conversation, and neither surrendered the ground until fairly forced off by breathlessness ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... written on it was the same; the shuttered shops were the same; the lamp-posts and the whole look of the perspective was the same; only it was tilted upwards like a lid. Forgetting any trouble about breathlessness or fatigue I ran furiously forward, and reached the second of my accustomed turnings, which ought to bring me almost within sight of the station. And as I turned that corner I nearly fell on the pavement. For now the street ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... She leaned a little further forward. Her lips were parted. The fire in her eyes had given way to a great wonder, and the breathlessness of her silence was like a thing to be felt. It held us all dumb. We waited—we scarcely knew for what. Only we knew that she had something more to say, and we were impelled to wait for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... composed with all save Fordyce, who now produced in her a kind of breathlessness which frightened her. She longed for, yet dreaded, his coming, and for several days avoided direct conversation with him. He respected this reserve in her, but was eager to get her comment ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... impearl'd With lily shells, and pebbles milky white, Poor Cynthia greeted him, and sooth'd her light Against his pallid face: he felt the charm To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm Of his heart's blood: 'twas very sweet; he stay'd His wandering steps, and half-entranced laid His head upon a tuft of straggling weeds, 110 To taste the gentle moon, and freshening beads, Lashed from the crystal roof by ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... approached. I stopped my horse, and the black ball bounded almost into the road before me, and suddenly straightening itself up into a haggard hag of a half-naked negress, exclaimed, with panting eager breathlessness, 'Oh missis, missis! you no hear me cry, you no hear me call. Oh missis! me call, me cry, and me run; make me a gown like dat. Do, for massy's sake, only make me a gown like dat.' This modest request for a riding habit in which to hoe the cotton fields served for an introduction to sundry other ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... asked; and after the concert I boldly led the way into the parlour, and lavished its magnificence upon them as if I had been the host, or one of the hotel guests at the very least. I enjoyed the breathlessness of the Deerings so much, as we walked up and down the vast drawing-rooms accompanied by our images in the mirrors, that I insisted upon sitting down with them all upon some of the richest pieces of furniture; and I was so flown with my success as cicerone that I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Williams, and in a state of breathlessness. She had been running, perhaps to escape the unseemly embraces of the wind, which had taken great liberties with her skirts,—liberties no less shocking because of the darkness of the evening; for though De la Rochefoucauld has settled it that man's alleged courage takes a vacation when darkness ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and walking about with a gun. His spirits were very equable and good. But he told me that he had gone out shooting in September over some fields lent him by a neighbour, and had had to return owing to breathlessness; and he added that he suffered constantly from breathlessness and pain in the chest and arms, that he could only walk a few paces at a time, and then had to rest to recover his breath. He did not seem to be anxious about it, but he went down one morning ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at this time I was ignorant of the rich man's will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had heard only one mention, hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in the breathlessness which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of double death, I realized from my knowledge of her that something more than grief was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the core of my being when ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... wonderful this waiting and this pause. Could one convey this in the theatre? This deep suspense, this breathlessness? Perhaps. The air weighs on the brain——what sound ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... same class, and the women especially make a bolder attempt than ours, if not so well advised, at gayety. They had put on the best and finest they had, in Battersea Park, and if it was not the most fitting still they wore it. The afternoon was sultry to breathlessness; yet a young mother with a heavy baby in her arms sweltered along in the splendor of a purple sack of thick plush; she was hot, yes; but she had it on. The young girls emulated as well as they could the airy muslins and silks in which the great world was flitting and flirting at the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... expectoration. In long-standing cases of chronic bronchitis the nutrition of the lungs becomes impaired, and dilatation of the air-tubes (emphysema) and other complications result, giving rise to more or less constant breathlessness. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... church and the seats were all filled. It gratified him, at the same time that it hopelessly abased him to observe all this evidence of her power. As he waited for her to appear that tremor came into his hands again, and that breathlessness, and curiously enough he felt that horrible familiar sinking of the heart which he always felt just before he ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the childish recollection she had carried with her, year after year, of a purple faced, cursing figure who leaned over the rickety old fence that bounded the garden, shook his fists in John Anderson's mildly puzzled face and roared threats until he had to cease from very breathlessness. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... The fire that was kindled on Pentecost has not died down into grey ashes. The rushing of the mighty wind that woke on that morning has not calmed and stilled itself into the stagnancy and suffocating breathlessness of midday heat. The same fulness of the Spirit which filled the believers on that day is available for us all. If, like that waiting Church of old, we abide in prayer and supplication, the gift will be given ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... think so, doctor!" replied the dying uncircumcised Philistine. But he added at whiles, his breathlessness being grievous, and often broken by a sore hiccup, "I am, however, no saint, as you know, doctor; so I wish you to put in a word for me, doctor; for you know that in these times, doctor, it is the duty of every good ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... perceive him they still rowed on speaking no word,—the measured, musical plash of the oars through the smooth, dark olive-green water alone breaking the stillness around them. There was a curious sort of hushed breathlessness in the air; fantastic, dream-like lights and shadows played on the little wrinkling waves; sudden flushes of crimson came and went in the western horizon, and over the high summits of the surrounding ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... barbarous times we welcome our champions on the eve of a big fight. The Old Man has hurried, for he is out of breath; and the deadly pallor of his cheek is almost affrighting to see. But he soon recovers himself, though when he rises to speak the breathlessness is still very apparent, and he has to gasp almost now and then for more voice. Fortunately on this occasion we have not long to wait for the big announcement which everybody is so anxiously expecting. It is usually the fate of the House of Commons, whenever something very momentous is under ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... owner—a small, wizened lady of negligible physique but great staying power—entered upon a duet with Alphonso, which soon reduced that very moderate performer to breathlessness. He shrugged his shoulders feebly, and cast an appealing ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... very well," she said, with a shade of meaning. "But"— here I thought her voice had a touch of breathlessness—"but who is the officer? I mean, what is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on the tone. What did it mean? It was a breathless tone, though not in any manner like the woman's. It was as if he had run and stumbled and caught himself up, and all the time been strangled from within by rage or some like madness. The woman's breathlessness had simply meant life's going out of her with sheer fright. Now the man was coming up the slope, bent at the shoulders, as if he carried a heavy load or as if almost doubling himself helped him to go the faster. He was a thin man with long ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... conveyed to a chair and had overcome the breathlessness and semi-blindness that any exertion caused him he saw that she looked ill, and as if she ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... broke. Then, lightly avoiding their beasts, they came at each other with great fierceness, and so fared for two hours, feinting and striking, and so heavy were their blows that each bled from many wounds as they stood. At last, for sheer breathlessness, each leaned upon ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... days went on, his eyes brightened and there was a breathlessness in his expression when he turned ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... against the table, and gasped for a moment or two, partly from breathlessness, partly, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... see it now, and my sick brain Staggers and swoons! How often over me Flashes this breathlessness of sudden sight In which I see the universe unrolled Before me like a scroll and read thereon Chaos and Doom, where helpless planets whirl Dizzily round and round and round and round, Like tops across a table, gathering speed With every spin, to waver on the edge One instant—looking over—and ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... all the same," reiterated Janice; "and last year I could beat Jacky Whitehead, but now when I try to run in my new frocks I come nigh to dying of breathlessness." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... with breathlessness they listened, the sounds and disturbance died away to whispers, and there was nothing but a ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... and breathlessness, for she had hurried at top speed from the harbour, Edith forgot that the homely garment she adopted as a disguise effectually cloaked her from the recognition of the ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... that command of hers I leapt of a sudden to my feet, a tightening about my heart, and beset by a certain breathlessness that ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... to the young man beside her. He was looking down at her, too. And as their eyes met, and clung for an instant, a slow dark color rose in his face. Prudence felt a curious breathlessness,—caused ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... Name? Morning may break, as it broke on Jacob by Jabbok with the assurance of blessing or as on Jeremiah with a firmer impression of the Will not his own; but no strength is left to glory in the Nature behind the Will. There is a horrified breathlessness about ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... especially the 4-mile row. Such severe exertion of course increases the blood pressure, even in these athletes, and the heart increases its speed. There is then exhilaration, later discomfort, and soon, as McKenzie points out, a sensation of constriction in the chest and head. This is soon followed by breathlessness, and soon by a feeling of fulness in the head, and then syncope. The heart, of course, becomes dilated. Heart murmurs are often found after much less severe exertion than boat racing. They may not last long, or they may ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... lady—running, or attempting to run, but with faltering and unequal steps. I followed her. At the first of the flight of steps before the inn, she stumbled and fell. She was trembling and sobbing violently; whether from breathlessness or agony, I could not tell. I raised her, and assisted her to mount the steps. "My brother! my brother!" she exclaimed incessantly. I could get no words but these from her. No time was to be lost. I sat down beside ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge, Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest—an ocean-song. Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly, In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios. Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is! To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon, Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... falling through the blackness. Laughing, shouting, splashing, the campers sported in the water until all of a sudden a red canoe shot into their midst and the director of Camp Altamont, accompanied by two assistants, came in an advanced stage of breathlessness to find out what the matter was. They heard the noise and the splashing of water and ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... returned. He still had the breathlessness of out of doors. His daughters were seated on the floor near the fireplace, the elder engaged in dressing the younger's wounded hand. His wife had sunk back on the bed near the fireplace, with a face indicative of astonishment. Jondrette was ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Cleek. "That looks as if she had struggled very desperately, and one would hardly expect that from a woman of her advanced years and choked into breathlessness at that. Still, her arms could not have been cut otherwise; arms are not vital parts, and the maddest of assassins would know that. So, of course, they were either slashed unavoidably in a desperate death struggle or, else——" His brows knotted, his voice slipped off ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Breathlessness is, perhaps, the most common effect of undue exertion. Let a middle-aged person, who is out of practice, run a certain distance, and he is soon troubled with his breathing. The respirations become ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... out, in a voice twice as deep as my natural one, and with a queer breathlessness, that sudden fright so often gives one. ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... mad she looked, how insane the whole scene was, and she gave way to her emotions. Partly through physical exhaustion and breathlessness, and partly through helpless terror, she fell on ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Her breathlessness gave Rosalys time to come forward and warmly kiss Celestina in her turn. Then they made her sit down; she was looking rather tired, for she had had a long walk in the sun—and by degrees she told them all her news. There was a good deal ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... difficulty of access or egress, which exists even to this day, though the woods have been very much thinned since the revolution. Perhaps there never was any thing in the whole universe better calculated to inspire religious awe than the first view of this monastery. It was imposing even to breathlessness. The total solitude—the undisturbed and chilling silence, which seem to have ever slept over the dark and ancient woods—the still lakes, reflecting the deep solemnity of the objects around them—all impress a powerful image of utter seclusion and hopeless ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... creep on hands and knees, by which method he slowly and painfully overcame foot after foot of the ascent. A little later he was forcing his way with infinite labor, an inch at a time, through a space so narrow that he was squeezed almost to breathlessness. He was also bathed in perspiration, and was obliged to recruit his strength by ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... bright And gold-shod feet, round limb and light, Gleamed from beneath the girded gown That, unrebuked, untouched was thrown Hither and thither by the breeze; Shrill laughter smote the thick-leaved trees, Till they, for very breathlessness, With ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... together they avoided the latter, and holding each other well up, became one irresistible wedge-shaped mass. At times they yelled, not from consciousness nor bravado, but from the purely animal instinct of warning and to combat the breathlessness of their descent, until, reaching the level, they charged across the gravelly bed of a vanished river, and pulled up at Collinson's Mill. The mill itself had long since vanished with the river, but the building that ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... retro-sternal goitre the tumour displaces and compresses the trachea and causes dyspnoea, and there are occasional paroxysmal attacks of breathlessness, which may be mistaken for asthma, particularly as the patient is usually the subject also of bronchitis and emphysema. In some cases the patient can, by a violent expiratory effort, such as coughing, project the goitre upwards into the neck. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... more instructions to give. Afterwards he left the place. The night outside was close, and he was conscious of a certain breathlessness, a certain impatient desire for air. He turned down toward the Embankment, and sat on one of the seats, looking out at the sky signs and colored advertisements on the other side of the river, and down lower, where ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... accomplished,—the Pisgah height attained. Here he found her established on a slab of granite, hands loosely clasped over her knee, helmet tilted a little backward, forming a halo round her head and face. He arrived in a very unheroic state of breathlessness, and she greeted him with a frankly ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... his eyes with a calmness which showed that she meant exactly what she said, and he turned uneasily away. A silence even greater than before fell upon them. They did not move. It was so still in the room that it might have been empty. The breathlessness of the air increased, so that it was horribly oppressive. Suddenly there was a loud rattle of thunder, and a flash of lightning tore across the heavy clouds. Susie thanked Heaven for the storm which would give presently a welcome freshness. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... all that skating multitude, moving in endless maze over the vast surface of the frozen water-meadow, liked best this season of the year for its expression of a perfect impassivity, or at least of a perfect repose. The earth was, or seemed to be, at rest, with a breathlessness of slumber which suited the young man's peculiar temper. The heavy summer, as it dried up the meadows now lying dead below the ice, set free a crowded and competing world of life, which, while it gleamed very pleasantly russet ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... his rifle caught tightly, and he was attacked by a sensation as of something thrusting at him hard, so that he closed his eyes and remained for some seconds with his head projecting over the edge of the shelf before he shuffled himself back into his former position, and then lay panting till the breathlessness that had attacked him passed away, leaving a sensation of anger against himself for his want ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... how can a man run in his best clothes across soft, new soil when he is getting a bit too stout? And Timmy had seen him first. When Flannery reached the corner of the alley Timmy was gone, and with a sigh that was partly regret and partly breathlessness from his run Flannery turned into the main street. There was the inspector, sure enough, standing on the curb. Flannery had lost some of his dignity, but he made up for it in anger. He more than made up for it in the heat he had run himself into. He was red in the face. He met the inspector ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... character, that circulated widely in our neighborhood because subscribers were rewarded with a premium of a diamond ring, warranted I don't know how many karats, occupied me for hours. The stories in this paper resembled, in breathlessness of plot, abundance of horrors, and improbability of characters, the things I used to read in Vitebsk. The text was illustrated by frequent pictures, in which the villain generally had his hands on the heroine's throat, while ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... appease, for a fortnight after they had reached the ship their condition was very wretched. Shackleton at once went to bed, and although he soon tried to be out and about again, the least exertion caused a return of his breathlessness, and he still suffered from [Page 144] the violent fits of coughing that had troubled him so much on the journey. With Wilson, who at one time had shown the least signs of scurvy, the disease had increased so rapidly at the end that on his return he wisely decided ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... alarming attack of breathlessness and giddiness, he returned to London. In Green Street he was happy in the proximity and skill of his son-in-law, Dr. Holland, and "a suite of rooms perfectly fitted up for illness and death." This phrase occurs in the last of his published letters, dated the 7th of November 1844. It was now pronounced ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... overstrained spirit doth possess. She sinks with drooping wing—poor unfledged bird, That fain had flown!—in fluttering breathlessness. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the dining room in a black evening gown so daringly lacking in back, and yet, withal, so slimly perfect an elegant thing, that an actual breathlessness hung over the hall, the ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... once the car moved on with a jerk, the girl sinking back into her corner with a suggestion of breathlessness, as though her effort to seem composed had been almost too much ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... car both woman and child were too utterly exhausted with breathlessness to do anything except just sit down ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... two feet from the front stoop when he become aware of danger, something, a familiar scent, a breathlessness, and then a sudden stir. A dark thing ahead and the feeling of something coming behind. Billy as if a football signal had been given, grew calm and alert. Instantly both arms flashed up, and down the mountain shot two long yellow winks of light, and ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... fever, or in those who have not received proper treatment. It is characterized by a generally enfeebled state, the patient having a sallow complexion, cold hands and feet, and temperature below normal, except occasionally, when there may be slight fever. When the condition is marked, there are breathlessness on slight exertion, swelling of the feet and ankles, and "ague cake," that is, enlargement of the spleen, shown by a lump felt in the abdomen extending downward from beneath the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... was breathlessness induced by fear and by excitement, not by the quick pace at which they ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... breaths called Prana and Apana occurring within this compound of the five primal elements, rushes upwards, from a situation of distress, leaving the embodied creature. It is even thus that the wind leaves the body. Then is seen breathlessness. The man then becomes destitute of heat, of breath, of beauty, and of consciousness. Deserted by Brahman (for Jiva is Brahman), the person is said to be dead. By those ducts through which he perceives all sensuous objects, the bearer of the body no longer perceives ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... reporter on a Boston paper came out to the college by appointment to interview a group of Wellesley women, alumnae and teachers, grief-stricken by the catastrophe which had befallen them. He came impetuously, with that light-hearted breathlessness so characteristic of young reporters in the plays of Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. He was charmingly in character, and he sent his voice out on the run to meet the smallest alumna ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... cranny of it for the radius of a quarter of a mile. When he has quite satisfied himself that we were safe for the moment, he would return to the fire, where he would lie, six inches of pink tongue vibrating with breathlessness, beautiful in the consciousness of virtue. Dick generally sat on a rock ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... spread from side to side of the parade, there was the long, halting line of panting and powder-blackened men, who, in spite of their breathlessness, had followed up their British cheer with a tremendous petillating roar of laughter, which ran along the line from end to end and back again—a roar of laughter so loud that hardly a man knew that the band was now playing in full force ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... squirrel or rabbit or creature of some kind which she expected to see. At last—was that a squirrel or rabbit—that rosy, round face, with shaggy, fair hair falling over the eager blue eyes, and a general look of breathlessness ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... said quickly, and with a manner of breathlessness, "I couldn't. You know how I've wanted to leave Friendship, too, you know that. An' I want to yet, as far as wantin' goes. But wantin' to mustn't be enough to make you ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... a torrent of patriotism and sentimentality. He watched me impassively while I called Heaven to witness and proclaimed my loyalty to France, ending through sheer breathlessness in a maundering, tearful apotheosis where mixed metaphors jostled each other—the government, the Emperor, and the French flag, consecrated in blood—and finally, calling his attention to the fact that twenty centuries had once looked down on this same banner, I collapsed ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... at her; did not speak. She gazed at him curiously, and when she saw the grayness of his face, the lines about his mouth, and eyes that advanced his age by twenty years, she felt a little catch at her heart, a breathlessness, a sudden alarm. ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... will play Mozart together, and I shall listen to you!" How well he was cared for, and how much devotion and tenderness were lavished upon him, we can judge from another letter of M. Gavard, quoted by Professor Niecks, in which he says: "In the back room lay the poor sufferer, tormented by fits of breathlessness, and only sitting in bed resting in the arms of a friend could he procure air for his oppressed lungs. It was Gutmann, the strongest amongst us, who knew best how to manage the patient, and who mostly ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... well fast in order that the current might not sweep her away. The rapids were now less than a hundred feet distant, and the rush of the water brought down with it a cool, spray-laden breeze that was infinitely refreshing after the baking breathlessness of the stream below; but the roar of the chafing waters was so loud that it was almost impossible to make one's voice heard; Phil therefore scrambled up the steep bank, and signed to Dick to follow. Fighting their way through the dense undergrowth, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a sudden qualm of breathlessness wrenched through her, to her very finger tips, with a fierce leap of the blood, a wild ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... skies, the winds of fall Sing dangerously through the hissing grass; Sunlight and clouds in slow procession pass Over the tress, then comes an interval Of utter calm, the air is a morass Of humid breathlessness. A dreadful call Rings suddenly from the onrushing squall, And the storm closes in a ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... no matter how beautiful and eloquent, could be only a sacrilege. The very tone of the high ranges is that of silence vast and eternal beyond scope of thought, and the only sounds that can fittingly shatter that mighty breathlessness are the great, calamitous phenomena of nature,—the thunder crashing in the sky and the avalanche on the slope. The forests they had just left were deeply silent, but the far hush had been alleviated ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... the breathlessness of a new idea, "if I should give in and agree to take the land, would you go up there with me and turn it ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... interruption; Tracey Tanner returns, hot-foot. Either he has been running, or his breathlessness is due to excitement. Before the two upon the bench he pauses in agitated glee, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... A strange breathlessness attacked her, and she attributed it to the celerity with which she was being carried along. Pulling the hood down over her face, she sank low in the seat. The whir of the car now seemed to be a world-filling sound. Again the feeling of excitement, the poignancy ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... hoarse than usual and more uncertain. Though he could not hear the words, the broken sentences gave an impression of breathlessness. When she stopped speaking he heard the voice of the proprietor raised in an emphatic stage-whisper. Yes, Monsieur Poleski was within. Mademoiselle was fortunately in time to find him. If Mademoiselle would give herself the trouble to wait but ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... mischievously. She sprang toward him again; but again he darted away. Whereupon she raced after him, pursuing him around the inclosure, the colt frisking before her, kicking up his heels and nickering shrilly, until, through breathlessness, she was forced to stop. Then the colt stopped, and after a time, having regarded her steadfastly, invitingly, he seemed to understand, for he quietly approached her. As he came ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... face was still stretched out to the priest in her eagerness; the staff was swaying to and fro beneath the tremulous hand. She had poured out her words so quickly that there was in his chest a feeling of answering breathlessness, yet he still sat regarding her placidly with the serenity of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... not conceive, and rolled manuscript usually gave him spasms. The youth, however, presented a letter of introduction from Brown's best friend. He said he had a story to submit, and he said it with a certain appearance of breathlessness at the end of the sentence, which showed Brown that it was his first story. Brown frowned inwardly, and smiled outwardly. He begged the youth to take a seat. As all the seats were filled with unopened papers and unbound books, the youth said he ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... queer breathlessness that we all sat before our wine glasses in the midst of the perfume from the rich food and dying flowers and waited—for what ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... point of the argument when the carriage from Stone Hover arrived. It was a stately barouche the coachman and footman of which equally with its big horses seemed to have hastened to an extent which suggested almost panting breathlessness. It contained Lady Edith and Lady Celia, both pale, and greatly agitated by the news which had brought them horrified from Stone Hover ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fright and weariness. When his steps slackened, through sheer inability to keep up, Nicanor, with a bound forward, dragged him after, so that, to save himself from falling on his face, he bounded also, on his fat legs, with explosive grunts of breathlessness. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... looking around on each familiar object with strange emotions. Soon a light step was heard descending the stairs, and moving along the passage. The door opened, and Edith—no, her aunt—entered. The young man had risen in the breathlessness ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... tone in sounds, the heart was normal. Her anaemic condition was accounted for by her having suffered from menorrhagia for the greater part of two years, which only stopped a few months before her admission to the Asylum. It had during its continuance brought on breathlessness on exertion, and what she called spasms or "grippings at the heart," no doubt the basis of her uneasy feelings in left hypochondrium. There was a slight enlargement of the thyroid gland, but no symptoms referable to it. None of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... that in some sort the jingle answers me!" then said Jehane; and she began with an odd breathlessness, "Friend, when King Henry dies—and even now he dies—shall I not as Regent possess such power as no woman has ever wielded in ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... not tell you I had friends in Hesperides Vale," she said at last. Her eyes continued to search the far blue canyon, but her color heightened at his quick glance of surprise, and she went on with a kind of breathlessness. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... The chill breathlessness of the air seemed prophetic of more snow. The Reverend Allan Telford looked across the bare wastes and cold white hills and shivered, as if the icy lifelessness about him were slowly and relentlessly creeping into his ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... like some relentless monster rushing from its lair. But the Cheddar gorge, though majestic and awe-inspiring, is not of great extent. Soon the valley widened, the road took longer sweeps to round each frowning buttress, and at last emerged, with a quality of inanimate breathlessness, on to the bleak and ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... season was unluckily suffering from an attack of old-standing breathlessness, and he also had his hands full; at the same time he did his best in helping Pontius in seeking out the sculptor Pollux. Both men did their utmost, but though they soon were able to find Euphorion and dame Doris, every trace ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... same time, it was pleasant to sit there idle in the midst of the hurry, the breathlessness. I seemed to be at last in contact with real life, with the life that matters. I was somebody, too. Fox treated me with a kind of deference—as if I were a great unknown. His "you literary men" was pleasing. It was the homage that the pretender pays to the legitimate prince; the recognition ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... weak, and she died just as her brother did, the late Sir John Kennaway, through failure of the heart and consequent mortification of the feet. I now believe that local death began on the night of the 5th. Her sufferings in the feet were great, and we could do nothing to allay them. Her breathlessness (also from weakness of the heart) we could aid by fanning. She knew she could not recover, and only prayed for 'release.' Her prayer was granted early on ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... oppressed, a song of deliverance to each, would go up to heaven, till its echoes were seemingly the responses of angels and justified spirits. But it is not so. Only here and there a traveller is seen to enter upon the road—there is no noise of preparation or departure; but a silence, deeper than the breathlessness of midnight, rests upon our land—not a shout of joy ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... while the appetite usually disappears, and a general bodily upset is represented. The lips are pale, the red of the eyelids, seen by turning down the lower eyelid, will exhibit a similar appearance. Breathlessness is another notable sign; the least exertion, going upstairs for instance, causes the sufferer to pant, because the heart, not being supplied with blood of good quality, cannot perform its work properly. The pulse is weak ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... Fanny would be—he would be driven from the community—if he confessed the slightest of his doubts to his children. If, say at the table, when they were all together, he should drop his negative silence, his policy of nonintervention, what a horrified breathlessness would follow. His children, Lee thought, his wife, the servants in the kitchen, none knew him; he was a stranger to his ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... with his right and then shot his second under Penny's guard. The blow sent the latter staggering against a tree. Fortunately, though, it had landed on his ribs, and after the first instant of breathlessness, during which he managed to side-step further punishment, he showed no damage. Again Beaufort feinted and swung, but this time Penny sprang back out of the way. Then, before the other could recover, he went into him, left, right and left again, and Beaufort gave way. ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... though bigger things are yet in store. For there is always the chance that a horse may be gored to death—even that a man may die horribly. Such things have been and may be again; so the tardy ones climbed and scurried and attained breathlessness and a final ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... frighten you.' But she spoke with a breathlessness that completely nullified the assurance. 'It is merely that I find I must come to an explanation with Lord Mountclere before I can live here permanently, and I cannot stipulate with him while I am here in his power. Till I write, good-bye. Your things are not ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the delicate and sweet verses of the Irish poet, with a natural felicity of execution, which amply compensated for the absence of those Italian arts, which so frequently elevate the music at the expense of the sentiment. Stevens looked and listened, and half forgot himself in the breathlessness of his attention—his eye fastened with a gaze of absolute devotion on her features, until, having finished her song, she detected the expression of his face, and started, with blushing cheeks, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... all their thrilling involutions; but when he had painted the globe red he married and settled down. And then began "Young Tom Tiddler's School-days," "Young Tom Tiddler's Schooldays Continued," "Young Tom Tiddler Abroad," and all the weekly round of breathlessness; and never was proverb truer than that the young cock cackles as the old cock crows. By the time interest palled in the son a new generation of readers had arisen, and the unblushing paper commenced to run "Tom Tiddler's School-days" again. So went the whirligig. But at Christmas, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... of the companion and looked back. A breathlessness of excitement held the pirates in a vise. From above, the hanging lamp threw strong shadows across their faces, bringing out the deep lines, accentuating the dominant passions. With their rags and ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... round and gave me an overhaul this morning. He tells me my heart is dilated—hence my severe breathlessness. I was told I must go to England, but need not expect to get away for a fortnight or so. The hospital is very airy ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... off five enemies at once with my flashing sword. These visions haunted my dreams when at last I slept, and it was after a bout of especial fierceness that I found myself lying awake, in a great heat and breathlessness. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... began; then hastily took off his cap and begged the girl's pardon, to which she could not reply for breathlessness. But he seemed to understand what was needed at once, for, after a swift glance from her to the man who was close at hand now, he ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... had come out. Olga could not have recognised him at this distance, but she knew the Italian's eyes would not be deceived. Instantly she took to flight, along a cross-street leading eastward. Florio kept at her side, and neither spoke until breathlessness stopped her as she entered ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... was no sound. It was still, unreal, and like a scene on the stage. The birds, skimming over the tops of the trees from time to time, threw in as it were a note of fear and suspense. There was breathlessness in the air. A couple of hares, like white shadows in their spotless winter coats, shot from covert to covert across ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... matter, coming from no one knows where, meaning one hardly knows what; but already a magic, an incantation. "Lewti" is a sort of preliminary study for "Kubla Khan"; it, too, has all the imagery of a dream, with a breathlessness and awed hush, as of one not yet accustomed to be at home ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... against the back of her chair than before her attack of breathlessness, had gazed unwaveringly at the young man throughout his speeches. A grim smile crept over her visage; her lips were pressed together, and her eyes twinkled with subdued satisfaction. She ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing |
