"Gapes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frequently struck us as strange, the morbid avidity with which the world seizes upon the slightest evidence of abstraction in great men, to declare that their minds are fading, or impoverished: the public gapes for every trifle calculated to prove that the palsied fingers can no longer grasp the intellectual sceptre, and that the well-worn and hard-earned bays are as a crown of thorns to the pulseless brow. It was, in those ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... very difference of style is not wider than the gulf which gapes between the first style of Shakespeare and the last. But men of Shakespeare's stamp, I venture to think, do not thus repeat themselves. The echo of the passage in A Midsummer Night's Dream, describing the girlish friendship of Hermia and Helena, which we find in the first act ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the victim gapes to eject the "choke pear," or to cry out for aid, the larger the hideous object becomes, until torture, suffocation ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... by the agency of other muscles. This power of moving each jaw freely and in independence of the other, is peculiar to Ophidian reptiles. The frog may reach the stomach both alive and active, so that, if afterward, the snake gapes, as he is apt to do, a frog has been seen to leap out again. The processes of life are so slow in reptiles, that one meal will not be digested by the snake for many days. He is unable to digest vegetable matter. Our snake is very harmless, and if kept and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... no difficulty in identifying the passenger he has come to meet. His sister, a governess, coming home for a holiday, is the only person that alights, and the labourer, dressed for the occasion, is the only one who gets in. No sooner is he in than he gapes out of the window open-mouthed at Miss S——. She wears a light Ulster to protect her dress from the dust and dirt of travel. Her fashionable hat has an air of the West End; her gloved hand holds a dainty little bag; she steps as those ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... and standing, is frightful to behold. It represents a man of gigantic proportions, with a head three feet high; the expression of the countenance is ferocious, eyes of brilliant slaty black are set beneath gray brows, the large, deep mouth gapes immoderately, and reptiles have made their nest between the lips of stone; by the light of the moon, a hideous swarm is there dimly visible. A broad girdle, adorned with symbolic ornaments, encircles the body ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... after seeing the women and children safely embarked in the boats,—Robertson of Brighton, referring to the circumstance in one of his letters, said: "Yes! Goodness, Duty, Sacrifice,—these are the qualities that England honours. She gapes and wonders every now and then, like an awkward peasant, at some other things—railway kings, electro-biology, and other trumperies; but nothing stirs her grand old heart down to its central deeps universally and long, except the Right. She puts on her shawl very badly, and she is awkward ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... stirs, gapes, stretches, yawns, rubs his lean fist in his hollow eyes, and stares at the rude incursion of daylight. He takes no notice of his wife's presence. She pours out tea for him with studied pose of hands and wrists, conventional ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... on that so pungent saying of Solomon that 'the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.' Look at that born fool, says Solomon, who has his eyes and his heart committed to him to keep. See him how he gapes and stares after everything that does not concern him, and lets the door of his own heart stand open to every entering thief. London is a city of three million inhabitants, and they are mostly fools, Carlyle once said. And let him in this city whose eyes ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... shillings a week has as often as not never been inside any other household than her native hovel, and stares in astonishment to find that you don't keep a pig on your drawing-room sofa. On entering your house, she gapes in awe of what she considers the grandeur around her, and the whole of her first day's work consists of ejaculating 'Lor' and 'Goodness!' We once had a hopeful of this kind who, after she had been given ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... done, with double the time, in two-thirds of the space. And yet it has taken me two months to write 45,500 words; and, be damned to my wicked prowess, I am proud of the exploit! The real journalist must be a man not of brass only, but bronze. Chapter IX. gapes for me, but I shrink on the margin, and go on chattering to you. This last part will be much less offensive (strange to say) to the Germans. It is Becker they will never forgive me for; Knappe I pity and do not dislike; Becker I scorn and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... impossible, must, we fear, ever remain a tantalizing vision. As it is, of course many a man of real ability is drowned in the rushing waves of multitudinous authors, and his works pass undistinguished to that unknown grave which gapes so mysteriously in some hidden recess of the universe, and silently swallows yearly the vast masses of printed paper which has done its brief work and been thrown by read or unread, forgotten. It is to assist in the rescue of a struggling author from this yawning abyss that the present ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... repent of all thy villanies. My clamorous blood to heaven for vengeance cries, Heaven will pour out his judgments on you all. Hell gapes for you, for you each fiend doth call, And hourly waits your unrepenting fall. You with eternal horrors they'll torment, Except of all your crimes you ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... shake. Exalted high 20 In garret vile he lives; with remnants hung Of tapestry. But oh! precarious state Of this vain transient world! all-powerful Time, What dost thou not subdue? See what a chasm Gapes wide, tremendous! see where Saul, enraged, High on his throne, encompass'd by his guards, With levell'd spear, and arm extended, sits, Ready to pierce old Jesse's valiant son, Spoil'd of his nose!—around in tottering ranks, On shelves pulverulent, majestic stands 30 His library; ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... are either full of holes or else rough with the lichen of hasty mendings, for the day is not long enough for all that his wife has to do. He wears suspenders blackened by use. His linen is old and gapes like a door-keeper, or like the door itself. At a time when Adolphe is in haste to conclude a matter of business, it takes him an hour to dress: he has to pick out his garments one by one, opening many an article before finding one fit to wear. But Caroline is ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... dreary, too, and disappinting; Is it this Sosherlistic rot Society is so disjinting, The Hinfluenza, or Hard Times, them Hirish, or wotever is it? I couldn't 'ave 'eld on at all, I'm sure, but for the HEMP'ROR's visit. Ya-a-a-w! 'Ang it, 'ow I've got the gapes! Bring us a quencher, you young Buttons! And mind it's cool, and with a 'ed! Hour family is reg'lar gluttons For "Soshal Stir." The guv'nor, he's a rising Tory M.P., he is. And Missis all the Season through as busy as a bloomin' bee ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... There is another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with bleeding feet and aching brow; the life of which the cross is the symbol; a battle which no peace follows, this side the grave; which the grave gapes to finish, before the victory is won; and—strange that it should be so—this is the highest life of man. Look back along the great names of history; there is none whose life has been other than this. They to whom it has been given to do the really highest work in this earth—whoever they ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... is this one? a sole? flat as a plate, thin as one of his own fillets; he gapes for the hook; down it goes; we ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... clarion; lo! the signal falls, The den expands, and expectation mute Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls. Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute, And, wildly staring, spurns with sounding foot The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe; Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit His first attack, wide waving to and fro His angry ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... gapes and chuckles, And boys and young women shuffle their feet in time to the dancing bear. They see him wobbling Against a dust of emerald and gold, And they ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... the rains Striped grey this piteous God of theirs; The face is full of prayers and pains, To which they bring their pains and prayers; Lean limbs that shew the labouring bones, And ghastly mouth that gapes and groans. ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... psalm-book? and not a bit of a word could I get with you, and no chance even so much as to give you my arm. Aunt Kate always comes between us and says, 'Here, Mary, you take my arm.' What does she think I go to meeting for, and almost break my jaws keeping down the gapes? I never even go to sleep, and yet I'm treated in this way! It's too bad! What's the row? What's anybody been saying about me? I always have waited on you ever since you were that high. Didn't I always draw you to school on my sled? didn't we always use to do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... hall of doom called life: most show themselves in their true colours under pressure. The good are blessed here and hereafter; the bad are accursed. Let us bring out as far as may be possible such good as a man has had in him since his origin. Let us strike down the bad to the hell that gapes for him. This, we think, or something like this, was Mr. Carlyle's translation of election and predestination into politics and morals.... There is not much pity and no salvation worth speaking of in either body of doctrine; but there is a strange, and what some might regard ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... brazen shapes— "Can the soul, the will, die out of a man 200 Ere his body find the grave that gapes? ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... the Clarion; lo! the signal falls, The den expands, and Expectation mute Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls. Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute, And, wildly staring, spurns, with sounding foot, The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe: Here, there, he points ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... chicken gapes a great deal, and sick, and complains of her throat, make pills of black pepper, cream, white flour, and put a pill in her mouth and make her swallow it till she takes down enough; the black pepper kills the worms. I ...
— A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce • Nancy Luce
... the winter was the fittest time for business, and truly I thought so, till my lord treasurer assured me the spring was the best season for sallads and subsidies. I hope therefore, that April will not prove so unnatural a month, as not to afford some kind showers on my parched exchequer, which gapes for want of them. Some of you, perhaps, will think it dangerous to make me too rich; but I do not fear it; for I promise you faithfully, whatever you give me I will always want; and although in other things my word may be thought a slender authority, yet in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... white, but such matters as these bungled between two men will interest no one. Her hair she wore half in curls, according to the hideous custom of that day. Is it not always safe to abuse the old fashion? And at no time safer than the present, when the whole world gapes with its great, foolish mouth after every novelty. I remember that Lucille looked pretty enough; but you, mesdames, who laugh at me, are no doubt quite right, and a thousand times more beautiful in your ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Eastern seas, And venturous nations more excursive grown, Scan his glad coast from radiant zone to zone, Then Fortune's minion in a foreign clime, Cursed by his own and damned to later time, Of incest born and by the chances thrown A tainted alien on a ravished throne, Gapes the foul flatteries of a fawning train, And fatuous mock'ries, which themselves disdain, A fancied monarch, but the witless sport Of adulation, and a practiced court, Vaunts to his broad realms and Timour-like proclaims Illusive titles of barbaric names, Cheats his own nature, and now generous grown,[18] ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... Pokes left sullenly, but the effect of their presence had thrown Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, and the Knight into a violent fit of the gapes. ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... these inspire, and wrap thyself up in the littleness of thy heart.—But no, rise above them. Suffer thy desires to wander into a larger and more dangerous field. Run with open eyes into the mouth of that destruction that gapes to devour thee! Why shouldst thou attend to the voice of destiny, to the immutable laws of the Gods, and the curse that is suspended over thee? Be a man. Bravely defy all that is most venerable, and all that is most unchangeable. Oh how I long for thy ruin! How my heart ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... bad, when once a real sorrow has pierced them, have a chance of becoming good. So in strange ways the things that seem hard to bear steadily tend to make the world better. When the bell tolls and the brown earth gapes and the form of the loved one is passed from sight for ever, it is bitter—ah, how bitter! But the chastening touch of Time takes away the bitterness, and there is left only an intense gentleness which seeks to soothe those who suffer; and the mother whose babe seemed to ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... long, and piles of money. There's more silver plate lying in his steward's office than other men have in their whole fortunes! And as for slaves, damn me if I believe a tenth of them knows the master by sight. The truth is, that these stand-a-gapes are so much in awe of him that any one of them would step into a fresh dunghill without ever knowing it, at a mere nod ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... lie groaning. I could point out your actual inability to live, however basely—deprived of character and credit—devoid of any relics of your fortunes! weighed to the very earth by debts, the interest alone of which has swallowed up your patrimonies, and gapes even yet for more! fettered by bail-bonds, to fly which is infamy, and to abide them ruin! shunned, scorned, despised, and hated, if not feared by all men. I could paint, to your very eyes, ourselves in rags or fetters! our enemies in robes of office, seated ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... on the descent—those archers seem an easy prey to the English—the temptation is irresistible. Long galled, and harassed, and maddened by the shafts, the Anglo-Danes rushed forth at the heels of the Norman swordsmen, and sweeping down to exterminate the archers, the breach that they leave gapes wide. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... manner, very different to that he had adopted in Bath. A pale-blue surtout, tasselled Hessians, and a cocked hat were the most obvious items of his costume. He also affected a very curious tumbril, shaped like a shell and richly gilded. In this he used to drive around, every afternoon, amid the gapes of the populace. It is evident that, once having tasted the fruit of notoriety, he was loath to fall back on simpler fare. He had become a prey to the love of absurd ostentation. A lively example of dandyism unrestrained by taste, he ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... strength and size. Zbyszko was continually looking at the doors and windows of the mansion, hardly able to remain quiet. There was light in one window only, evidently in the kitchen, because steam was coming out through the gapes ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again; The plants suck in the earth, and are With constant drinking fresh ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... The Causes of Poultry Diseases Chicken Cholera Roup Chicken-pox, Gapes, Limber-neck ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... like a cleft pomegranate Bleeding crimson seeds And dripping them on the ground. My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full, And its seeds are bursting ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... be that myself, only the half o' them young chickens goin' off with the gapes. It was a tarr'ble to do to save ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne
... words of the following sentence are probably "the crowd." There follows quite clearly: "grew ever denser as we drew near the palace of the Grand Lunar—if I may call a series of excavations a palace. Everywhere faces stared at me—blank, chitinous gapes and masks, eyes peering over tremendous olfactory developments, eyes beneath monstrous forehead plates; and undergrowth of smaller creatures dodged and yelped, and helmet faces poised on sinuous, long-jointed necks appeared craning over shoulders and beneath armpits. Keeping a welcome space about ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... pigs but not to black. In the Tarentino, black sheep are not injured by eating the Hypericum crispum—a species of St. John's-wort—which kills white sheep. White terriers suffer most from distemper; white chickens from the gapes. White-haired horses or cattle are subject to cutaneous diseases from which the dark coloured are free; while, both in Thuringia and the West Indies, it has been noticed that white or pale coloured cattle are much more troubled by flies than are those which are brown ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... each species; we do not know why white terriers are more subject than darker-coloured ones to the attacks of the fatal distemper; why yellow-fleshed peaches in America suffer more from diseases than the white-fleshed varieties; why white chickens are most liable to the gapes; or why the caterpillars of silkworms, which produce white cocoons, are not attacked by fungus so much as those that produce yellow cocoons? Yet in all these cases, and many others, it has been shown that immunity from ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... exhausted and exhausted veins, To demons, by his holiness ordain'd To propagate the gospel—penn'd at Rome; Hawk'd through the world by consecrated bulls; And how illustrated?—by Smithfleld flames: Who plunge (but not like Curtius) down the gulf, Down narrow-minded self's voracious gulf, Which gapes and swallows all they swore to save: Hate all that lifted heroes into gods, And hug the horrors of a victor's chain: Of bodies politic that destin'd hell, Inflicted here, since here their beings end; And fall from foes detested and despis'd, On ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young |
