"Pins and needles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... torment, torture; rack; cruciation[obs3], crucifixion; martyrdom, toad under a harrow, vivisection. V. feel pain, experience pain, suffer pain, undergo pain &c. n.; suffer, ache, smart, bleed; tingle, shoot; twinge, twitch, lancinate[obs3]; writhe, wince, make a wry face; sit on thorns, sit on pins and needles. give pain, inflict pain; lacerate; pain, hurt, chafe, sting, bite, gnaw, gripe; pinch, tweak; grate, gall, fret, prick, pierce, wring, convulse; torment, torture; rack, agonize; crucify; cruciate[obs3], excruciate|; break on the wheel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the mouth of the image, and John Martin had such frightful pains in his stomach that he went into convulsions; and, after an emetic had been given him, vomited up all the above-named articles, save the pins and needles which worked their way out through his flesh, causing him ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... be sorry to have you go, Master Porter," said the principal of the academy. "But I can understand how you feel about your father and sister, and it will perhaps be better for you to go in search of them than to sit down here and be on pins and needles over it;" and ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... felt as if a hundred pins and needles were pricking at his memory, for there rose up in it certain doubts and troubles touching Richard Hare and one Thorn. He laid his eager hand upon the other's arm. "Ebenezer James, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... whose life was surely full enough of big happenings, always counted the setting free of the Indian scientist as the greatest thing he ever did. For my part, knowing how much this meeting must mean to him, I was on pins and needles of expectation and curiosity as the great stone finally thundered down at our feet and we gazed across it ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... spirit and a marked preference for the upper octave, Ronald was suddenly shown in. I got him a segar, drew in a chair to the side of the fire, and installed him there—I was going to say, at his ease, but no expression could be farther from the truth. He was plainly on pins and needles, did not know whether to take or to refuse the segar, and, after he had taken it, did not know whether to light or to return it. I saw he had something to say; I did not think it was his own something; and I was ready to offer ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passed very slowly, and Nic's cramped position began to affect him with the tingling sensation known as pins and needles; this he did not attribute to the movement of his nerve-currents eager to reach his toes and fill him with a desire to kick his enemies, but quietly changed his position and waited, trembling with excitement, and longing now to get the matter ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... the doughty mannikins Amused themselves with sticking pins And needles in the great man's breeches: And how some very little things, That past for Lords, on scaffoldings Got up and worried him ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... slight accident at the Stoney-street signal box, outside Cannon-street he was utterly incapacitated, and that, for I don't know how many weeks and months, he was in bed without ceasing. The doctors, I believe, put pins and needles into him, but he never flinched, and when the case came before the court we found that some of the medical experts declared that it was just within the order of Providence that in twenty years he might get better; but these witnesses ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... harassed Wilbur's spirit when they occurred, the policy of selling short proved reasonably remunerative in the course of half a dozen separate speculations. In round figures he added another $2,500 to that which Williams had made for him. The process kept him on pins and needles, and led him to scan the list of stock quotations before reading anything else in the newspaper. Selma was delighted at his success, and though he chose not to tell her the details of his dealings, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Hakea leucoptera. "Pins and needles."—Maiden, in his work "Useful Native Plants of Australia," says: "In an experiment on a water-yielding Hakea, the first root, about half an inch in diameter and six or eight feet long, yielded quickly, and in large drops about a wine-glass full ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... that sheltered me many a night on the mountains. And there the little children come, not a bit shy or afraid of old "Daddy Dan." They pick their way across the new carpet with a certain feeling of awkwardness, as if there were pins and needles hidden somewhere; but when they arrive at safe anchorage, they put their dirty clasped fingers on my old cassock, toss the hair from their eyes, and look me straight in the face, whilst they tell their little ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... was it to drop Steve Roberts as he was in the act of shooting at me. Yet it is most difficult to be hard with a chuckle-headed retainer like Tom Spink—especially when he continually fails by a shade to give sufficient provocation. For twenty-four hours after my talk with Margaret I was on pins and needles to have it out with him, yet rather than have had it out with him I should have preferred to see the poop rushed by the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... evoked no response. Sorry though I shall be, thought Polly, dear Ned had better not come to the house so often in future. I wonder if I need tell Richard why. Jerry was on pins and needles, and even put Trotty ungently from him: Richard would be so disgusted by Ned's blatherskite that he would have no patience left to listen ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... that catch was too lovely for anything!" cried Grace, when the two Rover boys had managed to break away from the rest of the team and their numerous friends, and had rejoined the girls and Songbird. "Why, do you know, I was on pins and needles when I saw that ball coming down and you running after it. I was so afraid you ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... there. She felt very stiff, and the arm on which she had been leaning ached horribly. She rubbed it a little, dully conscious of the pain, and as the blood began to course through the veins again, the sharp, pricking sensation commonly known as "pins and needles" aroused her effectually, and she recollected that she had walked out to Culver Point and established herself in one of the numerous little bays that fringed the foot of the great red cliff, intending to spend a pleasant afternoon in company with ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... lead him to an apartment whose whereabouts I did not know; but by chance we found it. The door was open and there I saw my valet de chambre asleep on an armchair. A candle was going out on a table beside him. He drowsily offered a night robe to the marquis. I was on pins and needles; but the marquis was in a mood to be easily deceived, took the man for a mere sleepy-head, and made a joke of the matter. We passed on to the apartment of Monsieur de T——-. There was no misunderstanding the reception which he accorded me, and the welcome, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Jackson, in Cincinnati, May, 1828, in referring to the want of markets, for the farmers of the West, said, "He was certain, the aggregate of their agricultural produce, finding a market in Europe, would not pay for the pins and needles they imported." ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... to our own country, I will show you two of them fastened on the great church porch. His usual food is pickled coats of mail, salt helmets and head-pieces, and salt sallets; which sometimes makes him piss pins and needles. As for his clothing, 'tis comical enough o' conscience, both for make and colour; for he wears grey and cold, nothing before, and nought behind, with the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to her shanty and found it all pins and needles. She was so desperate that she went to see ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... blood, of the lymph, of the air, so the health of a nation or a state or a group of states is dependent on the free circulation of peoples, goods, opinions, money, and what not. A bad circulation results in "pins and needles," and we Europeans have so inverted common sense as to indulge habitually in a policy of pin-pricks. A bad circulation results in cold feet, in local stagnation, in lethargy. No circulation results in ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... deep breath as we stopped, I shook my right hand by holding it in my left at the wrist. I was a mass of tingling pins and needles because she had grabbed me just above the elbow. It felt as though it would have taken only a trifle more to pinch my arm off and leave me ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Small rolls of pieces of white and brown linen and cotton, are also often needed. A brick pincushion is a great convenience, in sewing, and better than screw-cushions. It is made by covering half a brick with cloth, putting a cushion on the top, and covering it tastefully. It is very useful to hold pins and needles, while sewing, and to fasten long seams when ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... never have trusted a strange postmaster with the excess. Anyway he sold that bunch of rabbits a week later for one hundred and seventy-five a head, thus adding twenty-two hundred and fifty dollars of my money to his tainted fortune. You can imagine the pins and needles he'd been on for a week, scared I'd get the tip and knowing if he even mentioned them runts at any price whatever that I'd be wise at once. That joke of the boys must of seemed heaven-sent ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... meneshsha (منشّا) or fly-flap, made of the long flowing beard of the Wadan. It is a most effective whipper-away of the flies. It instantly disperses them, the fine strong hair of the Wadan's beard hitting them like pins and needles. This species of fly-flap is greatly valued in Soudan, where it sells at a high price. The hairs which are of a dull grey or red brown, are usually dyed with henna when made up into fly-flaps. I expressed myself ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... that cordial greeting and consideration one would naturally expect from a converted Chinaman whose Fankwae accomplishments soar to the classic altitude of Latin, the Celestial convert seems rather anxious to get rid of me; he is evidently on pins and needles for fear my presence should attract a mob to the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the people in the form of trading-schooners from St. John's and the larger ports of the more southerly coast. It is in this way that the fisher-folk procure their flour and tea, their medicines and clothing, their tackle, their molasses, pins and needles, their trinkets, everything, in fact, both the luxuries and necessities of life. It is chiefly a credit business, the prices based on credit; the folk are outfitted in the spring and pay in salt-cod in the late summer and fall. Why shouldn't a cash-trader, underselling the ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... that's true. All personal remarks avoid, For every one will be annoyed At hearing disagreeable truth; Besides, it shows you quite uncouth, And sadly wanting in good taste. But what advantages you waste! Think, Pins and Needles, while you may, How much you hear in one short day; No servants wait on lordly man Can hear one half of what you can. 'Tis not worth while to mince the matter; Nor men nor boys like girls can chatter; All now are learning, forward moving, E'en ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... interchangeable mechanism about the breech-blocks, and the officer who posted off in hot haste to Paris succeeded with the greatest difficulty in securing five thousand of the missing implements. Their inactivity, again, was another matter that kept him on pins and needles; why did they idle away their time for two weeks? why did they not advance? He saw clearly that each day of delay was a mistake that could never be repaired, a chance of victory gone. And if the plan of campaign that he had ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Bump, bump, jolt, jolt, creak, creak, went the vehicle. Jack now diving his elbow into the lad's ribs, the lad now diving his into Jack's; both now threatening to go over on the same side, and again both nearly chucked on to the old mare's quarters. A sharp, cutting sleet, driving pins and needles directly in their faces, further disconcerted our travellers. Jack felt acutely for his new eight-and-sixpenny hat, it being the only article of dress he had on ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... jufvrouw!" she cried imploringly. "PLEASE never think of such a thing as THAT. Oh! please keep it on, I am burning all over, jufvrouw! I really am burning. Not burning exactly, but pins and needles pricking all over me. Oh, ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... the stage of pain.—This consists of lightning-like pains in the lower extremities, numbness, formication (feeling of ants, etc., crawling), sensation of dead extremities; pins and needles in the soles of the feet and fingers, coldness, itching of arms and scrotum or other parts, a sensation of constriction around the chest, headache, pain in the small of the back and loins of an aching character may occur. These symptoms may constitute ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "Pins and needles, Spike—that's all. A hoary old trick, but useful now and then. Mr. Flowers isn't so very wide-awake as folks seem to think. You see, it wouldn't have done to knock him out here; he ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... merchant took pity on him, and gave him a home in his own house, where he used to stay with the servants, being employed in little errands. One day the merchant noticed Dick picking up pins and needles that had been dropped, and asked him why he did it. Dick told him he was going to sell them when he got enough. The merchant was pleased with his saving disposition, and when soon after, he was going to send a vessel to foreign parts, he told Dick he might send anything he ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... you boys didn't miss the train altogether," said Agnes, Herb's sister. "I don't see why you didn't hurry a little. We were on pins and needles all the time until you ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... posture clearly, yet believed, as men disincline to do, that they grow. She says, that 'In their judgements upon women men are females, voices of the present (sexual) dilemma.' They desire to have 'a still woman; who can make a constant society of her pins and needles.' They create by stoppage a volcano, and are amazed at its eruptiveness. 'We live alone, and do not much feel it till we are visited.' Love is presumably the visitor. Of the greater loneliness of women, she says: 'It is due to the prescribed circumscription of their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... showin' over the wire blinds and the noise of the carts just beginnin' in the streets. There was sparkles in my eyes, flashes and colors, you know, and a feelin' as if I was all wet with warm water. I couldn't see at first, but by an' by I put up my 'and and cleared my eyes—all pins and needles, my 'and was. Then I got on my elbow, and saw—the room and the bottles and all, and me naked on a table under a big light. An' against the wall, at the other side o' the room, there was 'im—Fish—in a white- rubber gown and a ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... made them similar promises, threatening that they should never be free from aches and pains till they had agreed to become the devil's. When they refused, the witches pinched, or bit, or pricked them with long pins and needles. More than two hundred persons named by these mischievous visionaries were thrown into prison. They were of all ages and conditions of life, and many of them of exemplary character. No less than nineteen were condemned and executed before reason returned to the minds ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... felt colder, and diving requires much stimulant. From practice at this work, I could pick up pins and needles in a clear, sandy bottom; and, considering the density of the medium, could live like a beaver under water; but I required ample fees for my trouble. When we returned on board, we were very wet and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat |
