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Rend   Listen
verb
Rend  v. t.  (past & past part. rent; pres. part. rending)  
1.
To separate into parts with force or sudden violence; to tear asunder; to split; to burst; as, powder rends a rock in blasting; lightning rends an oak. "The dreadful thunder Doth rend the region."
2.
To part or tear off forcibly; to take away by force. "An empire from its old foundations rent." "I will surely rend the kingdom from thee."
To rap and rend. See under Rap, v. t., to snatch.
Synonyms: To tear; burst; break; rupture; lacerate; fracture; crack; split.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rend" Quotes from Famous Books



... Pomp as here Caesar did ride, Now scattering of Pardons, here Crossing, there Blessing, With all his shav'd Spiritual Train'd-bans by his side; As, Confessors, Cardinals, Monks fat as Bacons, From Rev'rend ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... souls, that do not know what honour is, or what torments rend a truly noble heart, if ever it be led to commit an act which to your seared consciences and muddy intelligence appears a trivial sin, or even no sin at all; you, the mean men to whom an offence like this is so common, that, unless it were discovered, it would ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... hears them tear off an ear! Now they craunch it, and crowd snuffling along through the corn-hills! Now they cough, and his wildest fears are up; and now they breathe in hearing, and move as if for the place of his concealment, strip down a stalk, and rend off an ear, as he ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... free myself? Indeed,' he said, turning to the fishes, 'now that I am fully in your power, I shall speak the truth. What are you going to do with me?' 'To tell thee the truth,' replied the fishes, 'the leviathan has heard thy fame, that thou art very wise, and he said, I will rend the fox, and will eat his heart, and thus I shall become wise.' 'Oh!' said the fox, 'why did you not tell me the truth at first? I should then have brought my heart with me, and I should have given it to King ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... a deluge, beating through tent-canvas and spraying, with fine mist, the faces of the girls. Another vivid glare of lightning was followed by a long, loud rattling peal ending in a terrific crash that seemed fairly to rend the heavens, while the wind shook the tents as if giant hands were trying to wrest them from their fastenings. Then from all over the camp arose frightened shrieks and wails and cries, but Annie Pearson now was too terrified to utter a word. The next moment there was a loud, ripping ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... redoubled vigor the feeling of patriotism within us. Our noble soldiery are taking a stand on the broad platform of universal liberty and justice. With scathing words they have rebuked the traitors in our midst; and they now breathe out threatenings and slaughter to the miscreants who would rend the fair heritage transmitted to us by ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... classes here as elsewhere. It is indeed surprising how closely the dog family approximates to the human. The same counterparts are to be found in both. We mostly hunt in packs. And if dogs are wont to bark and bite and rend, We, on our part, are often not behind in practising the same strange arts, though not always with the ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... victory—then we might have been welcomed into the family of nations. But over the mass of thinkers settled the dark conviction that Europe saw her best interest, in standing by to watch the sections rend and tear each other to the utmost. Every fiber either lost was so much subtraction from that balance of power, threatening to pass across the Atlantic. The greater the straits to which we reduce each other, said the South, the better will it please Europe; and the only faith in her ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... you," returned Edna hastily. "I'd rather watch you." She would really have like to try her hand if there had been but one cow, but when there were six, how could a young person be certain that one of the number would not turn and rend her? To be sure, they were much less fearsome without horns, but still they were too big and dreadful to be entirely trusted. So she stood watching the milk foam into the shining tin buckets and then she walked contentedly ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... prescrites. Ceux qui sollicitent, expedient, executent ou font executer des ordres arbitraires, doivent etre punis; mais tout citoyen appele ou saisi en vertu de la loi doit obeir a l'instant; il se rend ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek

... said poor John, with a foolish pang that seemed to rend his heart. Oh, if that scamp, that cheat, that low betting, card-playing rascal were but here! he would capital-fellow him. To take not herself only, but the dear pet name that she had said was ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... me, struggle to bind you, I free you, I rend you in seven great rays . . . And we cling to them all . . . but we lose them, and slowly— We slip with the rainbow down ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke

... shall yonder valleys fill! What shrieks of grief shall rend yon hill! What tears of burning rage shall thrill, When mourns thy tribe thy battles done, 620 Thy fall before the race was won, Thy sword ungirt ere set of sun! There breathes not clansman of thy line, But would have given his life for thine. O woe ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the floor bestrow, And her torn fan gives real signs of woe. Hence, Superstition! that tormenting guest, That haunts with fancied fears the coward breast; No dread events upon this fate attend, Stream eyes no more, no more thy tresses rend. Though certain omens oft forewarn a state, And dying lions show the monarch's fate, Why should such fears bid Celia's sorrow rise? For, when a lap-dog falls, no lover dies. Cease, Celia, cease; restrain thy flowing tears. Some warmer passion will dispel thy cares. In man you'll find a more ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... when Lilith slept, lest I might mar Her dreams, from our green couch I rose, and far Passed silent. Know I not the spell that draws My feet unwilling, Edenward. Its laws I may not brave to rend my foe. Nor there The Angel pass, unseen. The night so fair, As prone among the glistening leaves I lay, On Adam shone. Not sad, as on a day Erstwhile he seemed. And I could almost swear The sound of silvery laughter on the air Fell soft. And a fleet footfall 'mong the ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... wallow where he lay, and with his strong hands felt along the walls, and found a crack between two great stones, and set his strength to rend them apart; but they clung together like the lips of Death. Long he struggled, yet could not stir them; and ever the doleful voice beat like a bell in his ears, till it seemed to him that he must give his life, so but ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards

... but small, Among court ladies all despised, Why didst thou rend it from that hall, Where, scornful Earl, it well ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... did oppose, Britannia stood our second, And those we fought Were dearly taught, Without their host they reckoned; And should they now, With hostile prow, But press, our lakes and rivers, The Giant-stroke, From British oak, Would rend their keels to shivers. And thou, Cabotia! Old England's child Cabotia! Would see thy race In death's ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... his pet corns, as he might at any minute, there would be an explosion. The snatching of the dinner from his very mouth, as it were, and the substitution of a bread-and-cheese and sardines menu had brought him to the frame of mind when men turn and rend their ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... hand that held the gun upon the floor, and it hit something and exploded smokily and fell clear. But that made things worse. While struggling to kill Joe with the revolver, his antagonist had had only five fingers with which to gouge out Joe's eyes or tear away his ears or rend his flesh. But with no pistol he had ten, and he fought like a wild beast. He even breathed like an animal. He began to pant—thick, guttural pantings that had the quality of hellish hate. And then there was a surging ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... preference that it aroused the displeasure of one of the most bigoted doctors of the Sorbonne, De Quercu, who reproached the Parisians for being worse than the Jews themselves, "inasmuch as they adored the knife that had served to rend the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... are in full blast; shouts and maudlin yells rend the air. In front of one insignificant board, "ten-by-twenty," an old wretch is ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... will excuse me, Miss," began the molasses gentleman, so full of his entrance speech that he said the first part of it before he noticed that the room was empty. And then turned to rend his fellow adventurer, ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... My assistant and I knew so little about our business that we did not fall upon that pair of pantaloons and rend them. We took them and their protestation quite seriously. We accepted their courteous, but uncompromising, rebuke like small boys caught stealing apples, whose better feelings have been appealed to. For the space of two or three ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... "Fierce rolls his dauntless eye "In scorn of hideous death; "Till starting at a brother's[A] name, "Horror shrinks his glowing frame, "Locks the half-utter'd groan, "And chills the parting breath:— "Astonish'd Nature heav'd a moan! "When her affrighted eye beheld the hands "She form'd to cherish, rend her holy bands. ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... her heart dulled with bitterness, and her mouth distorted with curses for those pointed out to her as the cause of all her sufferings. Louis, Marie Antoinette, Brissot, Vergniaud, Hebert, she cared little what the name was, but was equally ready to rend them when told that they stood for the starvation of {85} her children, her sick, or her husband. And she was easily enough persuaded that some one person was responsible. In the morning hours of the 6th of October she was convinced that Louis ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... he said into the mouthpiece, "and the boys want to know if I won't let up now that Reinhart is down? Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That's my answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they were all killed, I'd rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow. Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse his luck that he was not in the automobile with ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... replied Magdalen, 'hast thou never heard that there are spirits powerful to rend the walls of a castle asunder when once admitted, which yet cannot enter the house unless they are invited, nay, dragged over the threshold? Twice hath Roland Groeme been thus drawn into the household of Avenel by those who now hold the title. Let them look to the issue.'"—The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various

... the very hour they will tear down his doors and rend him limb from limb. There is no punishment which can serve him right—him who has ruined our pretty, pretty System. Mon ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... the weeks that followed, she was haunted by that strange consciousness of her first husband's presence; the curious, forcible impression that there was between her and him but a slight veil she lacked the resolution to rend, but that, rending it one day, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... echoed the missionary. "And herein lies the hope or the despair of men. It is pitiful, it is heart-aching, to see the vain but wild and earnest efforts made by the slaves of intemperance to get free from their cruel bondage. Thousands rend their fetters every year after some desperate struggle, and escape. But, alas! how many are captured and taken back into slavery! Appetite springs upon them in some unguarded moment, and in their weakness there is none to succor. They do not go to the Strong for ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... suit special occasions is done sometimes from extreme conscientiousness, sometimes from sheer ignorance of the ways of children. It is the desire to protect them from knowledge which they already possess and with which they, equally conscientious, are apt to "turn and rend" the narrator. I remember once when I was telling the story of the Siege of Troy to very young children, I suddenly felt anxious lest there should be anything in the story of the rape of Helen not altogether suitable for the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... they subverted all established order. Then their modes of action were very often intemperate and violent. One can hardly approve the condemnation pronounced by Cotton Mather upon a certain Rarey among the Friends in those days, who could control a mad bull that would rend any other man. But it was oftener the Quakers who needed the Rareys. Running naked through the public streets,—coming into meeting dressed in sackcloth, with ashes on their heads and nothing on their feet,—or sitting there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... glorious message to that faithful band, Who on the mountain's top bewildered stand! Oh, glorious sound to every ransomed soul, From sea to sea, from spreading pole to pole In every age, oh, tell the tidings o'er— "That very Jesus shall return once more!" Hark! angel-voices rend the vaulted sky, In thrilling tones those shining angels cry, "Why stand ye gazing on yon glistening dome? Heaven has received your risen Master home! The time will come, when, as ye saw him rise, He shall descend in power the ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... of a little cell, without other company than his father, no sooner set eyes on you than you alone were desired of him, you alone sought, you alone followed with the eagerness of passion. Will they, then, blame me, back bite me, rend me with their tongues if I, whose body Heaven created all apt to love you, I, who from my childhood vowed my soul to you, feeling the potency of the light of your eyes and the sweetness of your honeyed words and the flame enkindled ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... ourselves that something like this invidious condition of things might be realized under two further revolutions. We have said, that a second schism in the Scottish church is not impossible. It is also but too possible that Puseyism nay yet rend the English establishment by a similar convulsion. But in such contingencies, we should see a very large proportion of the spiritual teachers in both nations actually parading to the public eye, and rehearsing something very like the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... that I were free to choose my own career. Assuredly in that case I too would have joined the noble Order and have spent my life in fighting in so grand a cause, free from all the quarrels and disputes and enmities that rend England. Even should I some day gain a throne, surely my lot is not to be envied. Yet, as I have been born to the rank, I must try for it, and I trust to do so worthily and bravely. But who can say what the end will be? Warwick has ever been our foe, and though my royal mother may use him ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... the highlands hung over Paracho when dawn crawled in to find me shivering under a light blanket. As I left the place behind, the sun began to peer through the crest pines of a curiously formed mountain to the east, and to rend and tear the heavy fog banks hanging over the town and valley. Peons tight-wrapped in their blankets from eyes to knees slipped noiselessly past. There was a penetrating chill in the air, the fields were covered white with what seemed to be hoar frost, and ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... reflections on the influence of her living beauty as would beseem a sexless and malignant satirist of her sex. This power of self-abstraction from the individual self, this impersonal contemplation of a personal wrong, this contemptuous yet passionate scrutiny of the very emotions which rend the heart and inflame the spirit and poison the very blood of the thinker, is the special seal or sign of original inspiration which distinguishes the type most representative of Tourneur's genius, most significant of its peculiar bias ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... many faults thou ever aimedst highly, In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price, In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg'd sleep, In that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones that shamed thee, In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains, This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet, The spear thrust in ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forest; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well-known beds; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... There is no good in him, for he is a Republican! He is a scoundrel, for he is a Southerner! He is a thief, for he is a Northerner! He is the prince of liars, for he comes from the West! He is the scum of mankind, for he is from the East! The people rage and rend each other, and the frenzy grows apace with the hour, till honor and justice, truth and manliness, are lost together in the furious chaos of human elements. The tortured airs of heaven howl out curses in a horrid unison, this fair free soil ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... any man is the prophecy of what may happen to official-ridden Peking. The air is surcharged with mutterings. The brutally oppressed people may turn at last, rise, and, in their fury, rend to bits all flesh their skeleton ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... was a lanky, cheerful man in his early forties. He had a heat scar which ran from just beneath his left ear down almost to the corner of his mouth, a souvenir given him by a status-seeking hopeful. The hopeful had picked on the wrong man. Tem Rend owned a weapon shop, practiced constantly, and always carried the articles of his trade with him. According to witnesses, he had performed the counterkill in exemplary fashion. Tem's dream was to become a member of the Assassin's Guild. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... his peace. He felt he was on the threshold of a confession that might rend the veil of mystery surrounding the murder at Seven Kings. He stared fixedly at the ugly red tablecloth, conscious that the big eyes of the girl ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... that many of our institutions remain untouched. The introduction of new elements into an old political system may revolutionise the whole; the addition of new cloth to an old garment may, we all know, rend the whole asunder. There is no need for panic; there is the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... available, tradewinds, and falling water, as at Niagara, and from tides, you can obtain power almost without limit. Were this all, however, your progress would be slow; but the Eternal, realizing the shortness of your lives, has given you power with which to rend the globe. You have the action of all uncombined chemicals, atmospheric electricity, the excess or froth of which you now see in thunderstorms, and the electricity and magnetism of your own bodies. There is also molecular and sympathetic vibration, by ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... some truth there must be in the saying. Suspicion of self-interest could not but attach to him; that was inherent in the circumstances. He must rely upon the sincerity of his passion, which indeed was beginning to rack and rend him. A woman is sensitive to that, especially a woman of Sidwell's refinement. In matters of the intellect she may be misled, but she cannot mistake quivering ardour for design simulating love. If it were impossible ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... hung heavily. It seemed to him, only for a short moment, that he heard a kind of smothering, snorting and roaring, and that abominable vampire threw itself upon him, shook him and then began to tear his breast with its teeth to rend his heart. Then, as the light of his eyes was about extinguished he yet saw something else; for lo, death dissolved into a whitish cloud, which slowly approached him, embraced him, and finally surrounded and covered all with a dismal and ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... contrast of bygone hours Comes to rend a veil away,— And I marvel to see the stranger Who is ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... in this new project, he was about to put it into effect, when a fresh reflection filled his soul with horror. What if the populace should, without waiting to hear his harmonious accents and unequalled oratory, break out in sudden rage and rend him limb from limb? Might they not assail him in the palace? Might not a seditious mob be already on its way thither, bent on bloody work? Whither should he fly? Where ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... occasional hitch in it. Suddenly there was a convulsion in the clouds, and one of the hitches developed into a tremendous cough. There was something almost awe-inspiring in the cough. The captain was a huge and rugged man. His cough was a terrible compound of a choke, a gasp, a rend, and a roar. Only lungs of sole-leather could have weathered it. Each paroxysm suggested the idea that the man's vitals were being torn asunder; but not content with that, the exasperated mariner made matters worse by keeping ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... uneasy at the injuries they had done him, he went all over Trachonitis, and slew their relations; whereupon these robbers were more angry than before, it being a law among them to be avenged on the murderers of their relations by all possible means; so they continued to tear and rend every thing under Herod's dominion with impunity. Then did he discourse about these robberies to Saturninus and Volumnius, and required that they should be punished; upon which occasion they still ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... him!" said Legree, that night, as he sat up in his bed; "I hate him! And isn't he MINE? Can't I do what I like with him? Who's to hinder, I wonder?" And Legree clenched his fist, and shook it, as if he had something in his hands that he could rend in pieces. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... their proper share. Each god of eminent degree To some vast beam compared might be; Each godling was a peg, or rather A cramp, to keep the beams together: 40 And man as safely might pretend From Jove the thunderbolt to rend, As with an impious pride aspire To rob Apollo of his lyre. With settled faith and pious awe, Establish'd by the voice of Law, Then poets to the Muses came, And from their altars caught the flame. Genius, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... whose skin is ruined at an early age, who turns as yellow as a quince when she is yellow at all—we have seen some turn green. When we have reached that point, we try to justify our normal condition; then we turn and rend the terrible passion of Paris with teeth as sharp as rat's teeth. We have Puritan women here, sour enough to tear the laces of Parisian finery, and eat out all the poetry of your Parisian beauties, who undermine ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... written law, one-third to the Mishna, and one-third to Gemara." To understand it in accordance with the thirteen rules of interpretation, it takes a study of seven hours a day for seven years. They also say that it is lawful to rend a man ignorant of the Talmud "like a fish." Israelites are forbidden to marry the daughter of such a one, as "she is ...
— Hebrew Literature

... gave his congregation a very short service that morning. He opened with three sentences from the Book of Common Prayer: "Rend your heart, and not your garments. . . . Enter not into judgement with thy servant, O Lord. . . . If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... they watching? It might be some wild beast with teeth and claws that would rend him if he were the one who seized it, and the longer he waited the more reasonable this seemed to be. It was a creature that lived in a cave, or some deep rift among the rocks by day, and came prowling out by night ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... trusty swords the warriors go To fill the ranks; hoarse bugles rend the air; These seize their massy javelins, these prepare The death-winged ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... minutes of delay, While the cramps attacked his knees, Then to hear Miss Central say Innocently: "Number, please!" When the same he'd shouted out Twenty times—he'd rend his robe, Tear his hair, I've little doubt; 'Twould have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... because the poet has poured his laughter into her soul. She stands unafraid in the presence of the storm because her feeling for majesty overmasters her apprehension of danger. The lightning's flash may rend the oak but, even so, she stands in mute admiration at this wondrous manifestation of life. Her quickened spirit responds to the roll and reverberation of the thunder because she has grown to womanhood through the poet's ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... of awful night, Dread tyrant say! Why parting throes this lab'ring frame distend, Why dire convulsions rend, And teeming horrors wreck th' astonish'd sight? Why shrinks the trembling soul, Why with amazement full Pines at thy rule, and sickens at thy sway? Why low'r the thunder of thy brow, Why livid angers glow, Mistaken phantom, say? Far hence exert thy awful ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... sense, he agreed to halve the businesse, he continuing the fooling, and Patteson—for that is the simple good fellow's name—receiving the salary. Father delighteth in sparring with Patteson far more than in jesting with the king, whom he alwaies looks on as a lion that may, any minute, rend him. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... tears coursed down his long cheeks, and he forgot to care, but sat entranced by the revivalist's marvellous voice. Suddenly, with an awful sob, he bent and hid his face in his hands. The spectacle of the old, proud man helpless in the grasp of profound emotion was a sight to rend the heart-strings. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... are of a mournful sadness, and, while charming the ear, rend the heart. There is one of them which occurred to him on a dismal rainy evening which produces a terrible mental depression. We had left him well that day, Maurice and I, and had gone to Palma to buy things we required for our encampment. The rain had come on, the torrents had ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... corn.— Bird, beast, and reptile, spring from sudden birth, Raise their new forms, half-animal, half-earth; 410 The roaring lion shakes his tawny mane, His struggling limbs still rooted in the plain; With flapping wings assurgent eagles toil To rend their talons from the adhesive soil; The impatient serpent lifts his crested head, And drags his train unfinish'd from the bed.— As Warmth and Moisture blend their magic spells, And brood with mingling wings the slimy dells; ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... these slender threads enchanted, Which to rend no power avails, That dear wanton maiden holds me Thus relentless in her spells. Thus within her charmed round Must I live as one spellbound; Heart! what mighty change in thee; Love, O ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... Arline was sung in the same cast by two women, Miss Dyott and Mrs. Seguin: the former singing it in the first act, the latter in the second and third. When it was produced in London, Piccolomini (a most famous singer) sang Arline and it was written that "applause from the many loud enough to rend the heavens" followed. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... wand'rest thou?" Began the rev'rend sage; "Does thirst of wealth thy step constrain, Or youthful pleasure's rage? Or haply, prest with cares and woes, Too soon thou hast began To wander forth, with me to mourn ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... was guilty of a thousand extravagances to support his character. In the evening the girl, having adorned herself in her richest ornaments, prepared to go out, on which the cauzi, like a jealous and distracted lover, falling at her feet, entreated her to stay, or let him attend her, and not rend his heart by her absence. The woman upon this informed him that she was ordered to attend an entertainment by the roy's son, and durst not disobey, nor could she take him with her, as only musicians and dancers would be admitted. The ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... Cardinals accompanied him to the Flaminian gate.[131] This journey of Orsini, and the pomp with which it was surrounded, were exceedingly unwelcome at Paris. It was likely to be taken as proof of that secret understanding with Rome which threatened to rend the delicate web in which Charles was striving to hold the confidence of the Protestant world.[132] He requested that the Legate might be recalled; and the Pope was willing that there should be some delay. While Orsini tarried on his ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... time flies quickly enough. And there is nothing more absorbing than keeping the wolf from the door, else assuredly the hungry thousands would find time to arise and rend the ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... works always have a meaning, for he was a lofty and original thinker. He was colossal and magnanimous both as man and writer. Carlyle says of him: 'His intellect is keen, impetuous, far-grasping, fit to rend in pieces the stubbornest materials, and extort from them their most hidden and refractory truth. In his Humor he sports with the highest and lowest; he can play at bowls with the Sun and Moon. His Imagination opens for us the Land of Dreams; we sail with him through the boundless ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... improvements, yet I am sure, at my request, she will not be guilty of what I may well call sacrilege, and pull down my temples, and dedicated groves, and relics of art, and ruins; nor, as my son would, destroy with a Gothic hand, as the poet says, and tear away beauties, which it would rend my heart-strings not to suppose durable, as I may say, for ages! I would have my name, and my taste, and my improvements be long remembered at Wenbourne Hill! I delight in thinking it will hereafter be said—'Ay! Good old Sir Arthur did this! Yonder terrace was of his forming! These alcoves ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... you as much as water and salt." The king heard her with amazement: "Do you value me like water and salt? Quick! call the executioners, for I will have her killed immediately." The other sisters privately gave the executioners a little dog, and told them to kill it and rend one of the youngest sister's garments, but to leave her in a cave. This they did, and brought back to the king the dog's tongue and the rent garment: "Royal Majesty, here is her tongue and garment." And his Majesty gave them a reward. The unfortunate ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... was unreal, that sight—unreal like the slow, grinding movement of the avalanche under him. Wildfire's head seemed a demon head of hate. It reached out, mouth agape, to bite, to rend. That horrible scream could not be the scream of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... When the babe was three years old, just after the great war, during which no man could sow or reap, a famine came upon the land, and the people murmured because of the famine, and looked round like a starved lion for something to rend. Then it was that Gagool, the wise and terrible woman, who does not die, made a proclamation to the people, saying, 'The king Imotu is no king.' And at the time Imotu was sick with a wound, and lay in his kraal ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... cared for her, nay, that he held now a reverent admiration that he had never thought of in the past. His melancholy eyes followed her about, now and then scintillating sparks of passion that seemed almost to rend his soul. She experienced an intense and exquisite sympathy for him that drew them together in a manner that he felt, and was grateful for, but ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... his own accord, just outside of the shadow-line of the forest. Then he hunched in a big frosty heap over his prey and began to tear and rend. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... still but some three-and-twenty ships which can cope at all with some ninety of the Spaniards: but we have dash, and daring, and the inspiration of utter need. Now, or never, must the mighty struggle be ended. We worried them off Portland; we must rend them in pieces now; and in rushes ship after ship, to smash her broadsides through and through the wooden castles, "sometimes not a pike's length asunder," and then out again to re-load, and give ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... the poor child replied by a wild cry that seemed to rend her, while her eyes dilated as if under the influence of strong poison. Camors strode across the room, then returned and stood by her as he said, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... He must rend ruthlessly apart this illusion of romance with which she chose to transfigure the prowling parasite of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... never become hardened to the maddening noises of the Via Babbuino: The rattle and clatter of cab wheels; the clack-clack of thousands of iron-shod hoofs; the shrill, high cry of the street venders; the blasts of motor horns that seemed to rend the narrow street; the roar and rumble of the electric trams; the wail of fretful babies; the chatter of gossiping women; and above and through and below it all the cracking of the cabman's whip—that sceptre of the Roman cabby, that wand which is one part whip ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... who are incessantly waging a war to the death. It is to be hoped that the brigand will fall; but he defends himself step by step, and he cries aloud because he feels himself covered with wounds and mortally stricken. If you knew, Edmee, if you only knew what struggles, what conflicts, rend my bosom; what tears of blood my heart distils; and what passions often rage in that part of my nature which the rebel angels rule! There are nights when I suffer so much that in the delirium of my dreams I seem to be plunging ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... can gather from the accounts of the seven days' fighting is, that during the battle at Gaines' Mills (to speak technically), positively the whole army was without any basis. But traitors, imbeciles and intriguers rend the air and the skies with their praises of the great strategy ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... unknown tongue, and I am to thee as one that beateth the air, I say instead—Call aloud in thy agony, that, if there be a God, he may hear the voice of his child, and put forth his hand and lay hold upon him, and rend from him the garment that clings and poisons and burns, squeeze the black drop from his heart, and set him weeping like a summer rain. O blessed, holy, lovely repentance to which the Son of Man, the very root and man of men, hath come to ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... speaker, drawn so largely from his own bitter experiences, were frequently interrupted by a loud acclaim; but as Schmitz now stepped down from his eminence to mingle with his auditors, the large crowd that filled the hall to suffocation began to rend the air with frantic cheers. They threw up their caps and shouted approval; scores of them cried: "Bravo, Schmitz!"; while others crowded up to him to shake him by the hand. It was an ovation as enthusiastic as Schmitz had never aspired to in his boldest moments, and his natural vanity felt intensely ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... full-grown specimen of the giant carnivorous lemak, a seldom-seen, dying species, too clumsy, too slow, too huge to survive. His ray-gun came around, but he was caught in a feathered maelstrom and knocked too violently around to use it. Without pause the lemak's claws raked his suit. Unable to rend the tough fabric, it resorted to another method. With a strength so enormous that it could overcome the force of the gravity-plates and his forward momentum, the creature tossed him free. Dizzy, he hurtled upward. ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... green, Mother of flocks; from Antron by the sea, And from the grassy meads of Pteleus, came A people, whom while yet he lived, the brave 855 Protesilaues led; but him the earth Now cover'd dark and drear. A wife he left, To rend in Phylace her bleeding cheeks, And an unfinish'd mansion. First he died Of all the Greeks; for as he leap'd to land 860 Foremost by far, a Dardan struck him dead. Nor had his troops, though filled with deep regret, No leader; ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... of Christ. We find in the first book of Kings, eleventh chapter, that Solomon displeased the Lord by his wicked ways, and the Lord said: "Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept My covenant and My statutes which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and I will give it to thy servant (Jeroboam was Solomon's servant at that time); notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it, for David thy father's sake; but I will rend it out of the hands of thy son. Howbeit ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... of the republic, we have comparatively little cause to exult in the conceit of being freer or happier than other communities; much more in the chance, having broken the fetters of superstition and tyranny, next to rend those of false habit and fashion—to enthrone reason over the authority of one another's eyes and ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... it was abolished, as an institution, soon after the establishment of Mexican independence. The match boys, lottery-ticket venders, fruit men, ice-cream hawkers, cigar and cigarette dealers, and candy women (each with a baby tied to her back), rend the air with their harsh and varied cries, while the stranger is quickly discovered, and importuned to the verge of endurance. We were told that this army of hawkers and peddlers were allowed just in the shadow ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... operations are performed by charges of solidified oxygen and hydrogen. The charges are placed at the bottom of a 40 foot bore and exploded by a powerful electric spark. The effect is very different from that of other explosives which usually rend the rock into large fragments that have to be blasted again in detail before a clearance is made, for the oxyhydrogen charge has such terrible force that it completely pulverizes the rock, scooping out, even in granite, ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius

... to his wife's room. She was still sleeping. Then it was that spasms of mortal agony began literally to rend the man. He left her side and seated himself on the bed in his dressing-room. He sat with his arms folded across his chest. His shoulders heaved. Deep dry sobs shook his huge frame. He would not ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... and loves with unspeakable tenderness your offspring, does the mother, no matter how poor her condition, yearn over and love her children—and when they are removed from under her protecting wing, she feels as keen a sorrow as would rend your heart, were the children of your tenderest care and fondest love, taken from you and ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... mists are often eerie in movements. There are strata, there are eddying air-currents which rend the curtain or shred the massing vapors. The men in the pilot-house of the Nequasset suddenly found their range of vision widened. The fog did not clear; it became more tenuous and showed an area of the sea. It was like a thin veil which disclosed dimly ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... this parting at the gates of death was sealed by a long kiss, followed by a groan so terrible that it seemed to rend their hearts ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... no sooner said it than she burst into a dry hard sobbing, so violent that it seemed to rend her. Tess was not a hysterical girl by any means, and he ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... see its walls crumble to dust!" thought the chief justice; and, in the bitterness of his heart, he shook his fist at the famous hall. "There began the mischief which now threatens to rend asunder the British empire. The seditious harangues of demagogues in Faneuil Hall have made rebels of a loyal people and deprived me ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... birds of prey shall rend His flesh and haughty Elam bend Before our mighty Sar! Beneath his forest of pine-trees The battle-cry then loudly raise, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... the foe in thine own soul, The sloth, the intellectual pride, The trivial jest that veils the goal For which our fathers lived and died; The lawless dreams, the cynic art, That rend thy nobler self apart. ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... said; "I cannot rise to such heights, our social laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... when wounded chiefs their tents did keep, And only Aias might his weapons wield, Came Hector with his host, and smiting deep, Brake bow and spear, brake axe and glaive and shield, Bulwark and battlement must rend and yield, And by the ships he smote the foe and cast Fire on the ships; and o'er the stricken field, The Trojans saw that flame ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... upper rooms are some works of Bernini; two of them, Aeneas and Anchises, and David on the point of slinging a stone at Goliath, have great merit, and do not tear and rend themselves quite out of the laws and limits of marble, like his later sculpture. Here is also his Apollo overtaking Daphne, whose feet take root, whose, finger-tips sprout into twigs, and whose tender body roughens round about with bark, as he embraces her. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne



Words linked to "Rend" :   tear, snap, bust, rip



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