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Thorn   /θɔrn/   Listen
Thorn

noun
1.
Something that causes irritation and annoyance.  Synonym: irritant.
2.
A small sharp-pointed tip resembling a spike on a stem or leaf.  Synonyms: pricker, prickle, spikelet, spine, sticker.
3.
A Germanic character of runic origin.



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"Thorn" Quotes from Famous Books



... we went this way, Veiled all her bowsome rods with trembling white; The robin's sunset breast gave forth delight At sunset hour; the wind was warm with May. Armored in ice the sere stems arch to-day, Each tiny thorn encased and argent bright; Where clung the birds that long have taken flight, Dead songless leaves cling fluttering ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... when I left England it was pretty well settled that we had blocked their game. They have learned of my proposed absence and intend to steal a march on us while I am away. Without assuming too much credit to myself, I may say that I, your old friend, Roxbury, I am the one man who has proved the real thorn in the sides of these scoundrels. With me out of the way, they feel that they can secure the adoption of all these infamous measures. My partners and the leaders on our side have sent for me to return secretly. They won't bring the matter to issue if they find ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... or sugar, has been found highly beneficial. An excellent diet drink may be made of toast and water, with the addition of a little vinegar, or a few grains of nitre. Tar water is strongly recommended, and also the smoking of the dried leaves of stramonium, commonly called the thorn-apple. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... the drawing of the clouds of the sky, or the waves of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask drapery, well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... already alluded to, namely, that the apparition is sometimes seen by a disinterested person, and not by those whom one would naturally expect should see it. A lady writes as follows: "At Island Magee is the Knowehead Lonan, a long, hilly, narrow road, bordered on either side by high thorn-hedges and fields. Twenty years ago, when I was a young girl, I used to go to the post-office at the Knowehead on Sunday mornings down the Lonan, taking the dogs for the run. One Sunday as I had got to the top of the hill on my return journey, I looked back, and saw a man walking ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... hundred of the latter's accomplices seated in solemn gravity, but not returning his salute as he was led along, for the sufficient if not immediately perceptible reason that they sat upon thorns, each upon one thorn a foot or so long, of iron. We may suppose the father of Frederick the Great to have had in mind this passage of Oriental life when he forced the prince to witness the execution of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... his darling child was dead, From statue-like despair the Count did start; He tore his matted locks from off his head, And bit his arms, for grief so wrung his heart. His two surviving babes drew near and said, (Thinking 'twas hunger's thorn which caus'd his smart,) "Dear sire, you gave us life, to you we give Our little bodies—feed on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various

... Having a kind of sneakin' regard for a winding, wavy way himself, he sees more beauty in the in and out line of a Varginny fence, than the stiff straight formal post and rail one of New England. As long as a partizan critter is a thorn in the flesh of the adverse party, he don't care whether he is Jew or Gentile. He overlooks little peccadilloes, as he calls the worst stories, and thinks everybody else will be just as indulgent as himself. He uses romanists, dissenters, republicans, and evangelicals ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... against Palmer.—This was an action by the Attorney-General against the defendant, Palmer, charging him with having in his possession a quantity of sloe-leaves and white-thorn leaves, fabricated into an imitation ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... puncture," said Anthea, stooping down, and standing up again with a thorn which she had got ready ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... to the West Indies, which his friends put him upon for his health's sake, the little schooner in which he was embarked was suddenly attacked by some monstrous fish, probably a thorn-back whale, who gave it such a terrible stroke with his tail as started a plank. The frightened crew flew to their pumps, but in vain; for the briny flood rushed with such fury into their vessel, that they were glad to quit her, and tumble as fast as they could into ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... First he robbed the bees of their honey, and rudely shook the little flowers, that he might get the dew they had gathered to bathe their buds in. Then he chased the bright winged flies, and wounded them with the sharp thorn he carried for a sword; he broke the spider's shining webs, lamed the birds, and soon wherever he passed lay wounded insects and drooping flowers; while the winds carried the tidings over the garden, and bird and blossom looked upon him as an evil spirit, and fled away or closed ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... profoundly, indestructibly. We may get a good view of these two opposite influences of the forms of destruction of the group symbol upon the solidity of the group by reference to the consequences of the destruction of the Jewish temple by Titus. The hierarchal Jewish state was a thorn in the flesh of the Roman statecraft that aimed at the unity of the empire. The purpose of dissolving this state was accomplished, so far as a certain number of the Jews were concerned, by the destruction of the temple. Such was ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... "the ruin of Spain is at hand! It will be delivered into the hands of strangers, and will become a prey to the spoiler. Its children will be slain or carried into captivity; or such as may escape these evils, will harbor with the beasts of the forest or the eagles of the mountain. The thorn and bramble will spring up where now are seen the cornfield, the vine, and the olive; and hungry wolves will roam in place of peaceful flocks and herds. But thou, my son! tarry not thou to see these things, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... tenants were afoot, and uncloaked. Now a Sabine farmer, afoot or horsed, is never without his trusty staff of yew or holly or thorn. These the nine used to admiration, if less miraculously than ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... She was so glad to have him there at her feet-her great, handsome, successful boy! She could only love him and enjoy him every moment of the precious days. If Grant would only reconcile himself to Howard! That was the great thorn ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... mile long and somewhat less in breadth. It was a marshy wilderness, and had the character of being "a terrible place," and amongst its swamps and thickets the huge red deer, with his immense antlers, and the wild ox found a refuge. When it received a name, it became known as Thorn-Ey, that is, Isle of Thorns; in later days people called it Thorney Island. Tradition says that in the midst of the wilderness there was erected, in the year 154 A.D., a Temple of Apollo. We are next ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... Lannigan, it was well known, could not be "reached." Whitey Mack, with his ingenious cleverness, coupled with a cold-blooded fearlessness that had made him an object of unholy awe and respect in the eyes of the underworld, was a thorn that was sore beyond measure in the side of the police. Certainly, it was no ordinary thing that had brought these two together; especially, since, with the unrest and suspicion that was bubbling and seething below ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Germans, Napoleon quitted Dresden. He only remained at Posen long enough to satisfy the Poles. He neglected Warsaw, whither the war did not imperiously call him, and where he would have again been involved in politics. He stopped at Thorn, in order to inspect his fortifications, his magazines, and his troops. There the complaints of the Poles, whom our allies pillaged without mercy, and insulted, reached him. Napoleon addressed severe reproaches, and even threats, to the King of Westphalia: ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... for a retrial, and began anew his heartbreaking labours in forcing a way to definite action through the thorn thicket of technicalities. At the same time, on his own account, and very secretly, he commenced a search for evidence against the attorneys for the defence. By now he possessed certain private agents of his ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... understand what Dean Drone was talking about, and asking one another if they knew. Once, as he passed out from the doors of the Greater Testimony, the rector heard some one say: "The Church would be all right if that old mugwump was out of the pulpit." It went to his heart like a barbed thorn, and stayed there. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... dirges due in sad array Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 115 Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... the biltong and cooked corn which they had brought with them. By the time this was finished darkness fell, for there was little moon, so that nothing remained to do except to sleep within a circle of a few dead thorn-boughs which they had drawn about their camp. This, then, they did, and so weary were they both, that notwithstanding all the emotions through which they had passed, and their fears lest lions should attack them—for of these brutes ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... spreads her sable wings, All earthly things to darken, The woodland choir grows mute and still, To thy sweet trill to hearken; Though 'gainst thy breast there lies a thorn, And thou woeworn art bleeding, Yet, till the bright day dawns again, Thou ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... of ragged stubble, wrangled With rank weeds, and shocks of tangled Corn, with crests like rent plumes dangled Over Harvest's battle-piain; And the sudden whir and whistle Of the quail that, like a missile, Whizzes over thorn and thistle, And, a ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... Deputy-Lieutenant of his County, and accustomed to lunch punctually at two o'clock? When he had been in that waiting-room for two hours, it occurred to him that he only wanted his own, and that he would not remain there to be starved for any Mr Melmotte in Europe. It occurred to him also that that thorn in his side, Squercum, would certainly get a finger into the pie to his infinite annoyance. Then he walked forth, and attempted to see Grendall for the fourth time. But Miles Grendall also liked his lunch, and was therefore ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... a doughnut. Last night he was at the Red Owl gambling with both fists. And I heard he's bought altogether ten thousand acres in leases. 'Verily,' as dad used to say, 'the sinner flourisheth like a thorn tree.'" ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby

... lighted off his horse, And tied him to a thorn: Carry me over the water, thou curtal friar, Or else thy ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... big road and turned into a level plain which had formerly been an old meadow. There were clumps of thorn trees here and there, gorgeous in their spring radiance. Some cattle were grazing off in the distance in spots where the grass was tall and luscious. At the far end of the meadow was the towering lilac hedge, skirting the lane that led to ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... his umbrella and his easel below a ridge on the far slope of the fir plantation. A thorn bush sheltered him from the wind and made him invisible from the terrace ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... hears the wavering, calamitous life of all creatures, and especially of the most beautiful and the most helpless, does He ever sigh and weep, as we do when we see a dead child or a moth's wing impaled on a thorn? ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... still the watering pot in one hand; with the other her pretty dress was held lightly aside, to avoid trickling drops. She gazed over the wall, along some lonely fields; beyond three dusk trees, rising side by side against the sky; beyond a solitary thorn at the head of a solitary lane far off. She surveyed the dusk moors, where bonfires were kindling. The summer evening was warm; the bell-music was joyous; the blue smoke of the fires looked soft, their red flame bright. Above them, in the sky whence the sun had vanished, twinkled ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... against which weak nature strove in vain. Were it in my power, I would make all your future bright with the warmest sunshine. But over your future I have no control—yet, sadly enough, are our destinies linked, and the existence of each will be a thorn in the other's heart. ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... which period we see such abbreviations as ytthat. It may be interesting to note that y in this combination and the similar combination "ye," used as the article, is not the semi-vowel y but is the survival, or revival, of an Anglo-Saxon letter of very similar form called "thorn" and equivalent in value to th. In the "yt" then, we have the y or thorn substituted for th and the vowel elided, but the sign should be pronounced "that." The sign "ye" as in the familiar phrase of the posters "ye ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence [41] The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the army ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... The new emigrants called the country where they settled "Providence," from feelings akin to those which led Roger Williams to give that comforting name to his settlement on Narragansett Bay. They were to prove a thorn in Baltimore's flesh, but for the moment they seemed tolerably submissive. In January, 1650, soon after their arrival, Governor Stone called an assembly to meet at St. Mary's in April, and to this ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... illustration of ll. 1135-6, about the nightingale singing 'against a thorn' to keep her awake, in the words of a favourite old part song of King Henry VIII., 'By a bank as I lay,' where the poem has these lines on ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... note, so beautifully clear, So soft, so sweetly mellow, rings around. Then faintly dies away upon the ear, That fondly vibrates to the fading sound. Poor bird, thou sing'st, the thorn within thy heart, And I from sorrows, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... white. The bleaching process. Chloride of lime. The red color. The madder plant. Its powerful dyeing qualities. Coffee. The surprise party for Harry. Chicory leaves as a salad. Exhilarative substances and beverages. The cocoa leaf. Betel-nut. Pepper plants. Thorn apples. The ledum and hop. Narcotic fungus. "Baby's" experiment with the red dye test sample. Test samples in dyeing. Color-metric tests in analyzing chemicals. Reagents. The meaning and their use. Bitter-sweet. Blue dye. Copper and lime as coloring substance. The completed flag. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— All's right with ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... tell me some other little mishaps to horses that could not be explained, bustling about the while. And before long I left the stables and went to my own quarters, with the thorn yet in my hand. It had been cut from the bush, and not broken, just as if it had been chosen. Now, if these hidden plotters wanted to frighten me, I am bound to say that they succeeded more or less. Was the giving of the horn by the Welsh girl to be a signal to the thrall in some way? ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... together if you can't rise above the level of fighting cats, but be careful how you throw aside the bonds that God has joined between you. Live the lot you have chosen as bravely as you can, remembering that the thorn that you have developed will never change into a rose by mere change of circumstances. Divorce and the mere shifting of the stage setting will never make your tragedy over into a ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... what had happened, and sought for the thing which had run into its foot. He found the thorn, and, not being able to extract it with his fingers, seated himself on the bank, and took out his pen-knife. As he did so, the white-haired lady came, with stately step, round the bend; she glanced at Derrick, but passed him ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... room to him, and stood with her hand on the mantelpiece. She did not laugh, she did not even smile, but there was in her the deep and quiet ecstasy that causes the thorn to blossom in beauty after a winter of reserve. It seemed to him that she was swaying as a rose sways in a gale, yet anchored always to the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... as the rose. Then, indeed, would be fulfilled the gracious promise made to a renewed Church:—"For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... corduroy, and at once met him with, 'You are one of Miss Macpherson's' boys.' He was fed and lodged, and strange to say, next day we were led, in the course of our journey, to cross that very ferry. The young runaway seeing us from the window exclaimed, 'Oh! here comes Mr. Thorn,' and would have hidden away from our sight, knowing he was doing wrong, for he would not understand that we were his friends, willing to help and love him. Oh, may all boys who read this seek earnestly to believe that Jesus ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... and he has let his readers into the secret of his taste when he wrote in "Wenderholme": "For the present we must leave him (Captain Eureton) in the tranquil happiness of devising desks and pigeon-holes with Mr. Bettison, an intelligent joiner at Sooty thorn, than which few occupations can be more delightful." About the pigeon-holes, a friend of my husband once made a discovery which he declared astounding. "I well knew that Mr. Hamerton was a model of order," he said to me; "but I only knew to what extent when, having to seek for string, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... amid our misery The germ of Union many see, And through the hedge of thorn, Like to a bee that dawn awakes, On, Progress strides o'er shattered stakes, With ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... ouk, for a' my keeping, (Wha can speak it without greeting?) A villain cam' when I was sleeping, Sta' my Ewie, horn, and a': I sought her sair upo' the morn, And down aneath a buss o' thorn I got my Ewie's crookit horn, But my Ewie was awa'; I got my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and adorn; Yet mind me—if, through want of grace, Thou mean'st to fling the blessing in my face, Thou hast full leave to tread upon a thorn." ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... street, I was glad to be obliged to refuse, because my brocade was not yet appointed, and I could wear nothing less in state. At the Waterloo we received a call from Mrs. William Rathbone and her daughter, Mrs. Thorn. It was a sister-in-law, Mrs. Richard Rathbone, who wrote that exquisite book, "The Diary of Lady Willoughby." She resides in London. Mr. William Rathbone is a millionaire. His wife is a cordial and excellent lady, who seemed to take us right ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... much jarred to recover her temper and behave so as to show that she admitted any error in herself. She was disposed rather to accuse the intolerable narrowness and the purblind conscience of the society around her: and Celia was no longer the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit, a pink-and-white nullifidian, worse than any discouraging presence in the "Pilgrim's Progress." The fad of drawing plans! What was life worth—what great faith was possible when the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Nero! Follow us!" called Mr. Lion to the boy cub who was shot. "You will have to run on three legs, but you have done that before. You did it once when you got a big thorn in your paw. Come along, follow us and we will hunt in ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum

... to make a mark. And not static, like a thorn. A ground crawler? My pant's legs had been tucked securely into my boot tops. A flier? It would have to be strong enough to pierce a GS uniform and make an entrance into flesh. Or to leave a scratch from a glancing blow. And I ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker

... rain-storm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the cloth-yard shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks to the wind, while the tails of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside out like umbrellas. The gable end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eaves-droppings flapped against the wall. Yet never was commiseration for the shepherd more misplaced. For that cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party in glorification of the christening ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various

... that of the sea broke forth as the two animals neared the last obstacle, a great hedge filled with thorn, and like a miniature mountain. Neck and neck they seemed to be, when suddenly the "King" darted forward, and, amid terrific shouts of astonishment, took the leap too short, fell sideways, and pitched his jockey into the short scrub, a dozen ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... Pomaceae. In some cases in this sub-order, the calyx becomes detached from the carpels, so that the latter organs become more or less "superior," and distinct one from the other. This happens constantly in the double-flowered thorn, Crataegus Oxyacantha, in some blossoms of which the hollowed end of the peduncle still invests the base of the carpels, leaving the upper portions detached. In apples flowers are occasionally ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... William Owen and an adventure that befell this lady during a week-end visit to Morristown, N. J., since this adventure has a bearing upon the narrative. As it is, we must be content to know that Mrs. William Owen was an irritable and neurasthenic person, a thorn in the side of her distinguished husband, who was supposed to cure these ailments. He could not cure his wife, however, and had long since given up trying. It was Mrs. Owen who quite unintentionally changed the course of ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... white crests are to every thorn in the hedge!" said Henrietta; "and look, these pieces of chalk are almost cased ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... all overworn, Yet deadly as the frost of scorn! The serious mind is born of sorrow; On Love's brow rested a crown of thorn. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... the mother swallow with swift flutterings And shrill cries Fought at the snake, Blinding him with the beat of her wings, Until he, wriggling and rearing his head, Fell backward down the bank Into Spoon River and was drowned. Scarcely an hour passed Until a shrike Impaled the mother swallow on a thorn. As for myself I overcame my lower nature Only to be destroyed by ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... over-familiar with the idea of an artificial weapon. He seemed to be groping his way towards some use of it, either as a club or as a stabbing instrument. During the fight, while he was experimenting with the thorn branch, he had evidently had this weapon lodged in some safe crotch. And now he kept handling it ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... extensive than I had anticipated. We pressed on, dodging low-sweeping branches and keeping our arms up to guard our faces from outshoots of thorn bushes. Our progress necessarily was slow, but even so quite a long time seemed to have elapsed ere we came in sight ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... very clear directions how to deprive a vampire of his baleful power. According to them, as well as to their parallels elsewhere, a stake must be driven through the murderous corpse. In Russia an aspen stake is selected for that purpose, but in some places one made of thorn is preferred. But a Bohemian vampire, when staked in this manner in the year 1337, says Mannhardt,[420] merely exclaimed that the stick would be very useful for keeping off dogs; and a strigon (or Istrian vampire) ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... a little fellow, had she not extracted many a thorn and bound up many a cut finger? and now he was a man, would she be less helpful to him when he wanted a different kind ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... your flower, O world! I pressed it to my heart and the thorn pricked. When the day waned and it darkened, I found that the flower had faded, ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore

... Sharpness. — N. sharpness &c. adj.; acuity, acumination[obs3]; spinosity[obs3]. point, spike, spine, spicule[Biol], spiculum[obs3]; needle, hypodermic needle, tack, nail, pin; prick, prickle; spur, rowel, barb; spit, cusp; horn, antler; snag; tag thorn, bristle; Adam's needle[obs3], bear grass [U.S.], tine, yucca. nib, tooth, tusk; spoke, cog, ratchet. crag, crest, arete[Fr], cone peak, sugar loaf, pike, aiguille[obs3]; spire, pyramid, steeple. beard, chevaux ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... and sore were her little feet, and everything round looked so cold and dreary. The long willow leaves were quite yellow. The damp mist fell off the trees like rain, one leaf dropped after another from the trees, and only the sloe-thorn still bore its fruit; but the sloes were sour and set one's teeth on edge. Oh, how grey and sad it looked, out ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... as thou wouldst pluck a thorn From out thy flesh; for why shouldst thou be born To bear a life so ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... neighbour, Aegon, who has gone to try his fortune at the Olympic games. After some random banter, the talk turns on the death of Amaryllis, and the grief of Battus is disturbed by the roaming of his cattle. Corydon removes a thorn that has run into his friend's foot, and the conversation comes back to matters of ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... before us, one most natural and easy of attainment. We stretched forth our hands . . . and the coveted joy was withdrawn. But it is not the hand of man which has done this thing—it is God's work. Celine, understand your Therese, and let us accept cheerfully the thorn which is offered us. To-morrow's feast will be one of tears, but I feel that Jesus will be greatly consoled. ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... and rough and, though by good fortune they met no one, since the few who dwelt in these wild parts had gone up to Bonsa Town to be present at the great feast, the sun was sinking before ever they reached the place. Moreover, this promontory proved to be covered with dense thorn scrub, through which they must force a way in the gathering darkness, not without hurt and difficulty. Still they accomplished it and at length, quite exhausted, crept to the very point, where they hid themselves between some stones ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... neighb'ring woods, and trust themselves to night. The speedy horse all passages belay, And spur their smoking steeds to cross their way, And watch each entrance of the winding wood. Black was the forest: thick with beech it stood, Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn; Few paths of human feet, or tracks of beasts, were worn. The darkness of the shades, his heavy prey, And fear, misled the younger from his way. But Nisus hit the turns with happier haste, And, thoughtless of his friend, the forest pass'd, And Alban plains, from Alba's name so call'd, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... flourish now the brier and thorn, The barley and the wheat shall spring, And valleys standing thick with corn (Praise God, my heart!), ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... of Findlay against Thorn, in the City Court of New York, where the question arose as to the right of a woman to exercise the office of notary public, Chief Justice McAdam refused to pass upon the question, holding that the right could be decided only ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... speak, Nor placid zephyr fan their fever'd cheek; Sleep ne'er shall seal their hot and blood-stain'd eye, But conscious visions ever haunt them nigh; Grandeur to them a faded flower shall be, Wealth but a thorn, and power a fruitless tree; And, as they near the tomb, with panting breast, Shrink from the dread unknown, yet hope ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... sides of the canyon. Many of them were badly out of repair, but those near Colta were still being used for raising crops of corn, potatoes, and barley. The uncultivated spots were covered with cacti, thorn bushes, and the gnarled, stunted trees of a semi-arid region. In the town itself were half a dozen specimens of the Australian eucalyptus, that agreeable and extraordinarily successful colonist which one encounters not only in the heart of Peru, but in the Andes of Colombia and the new forest preserves ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... escape, although I took it up in my hand and stroked its downy back again and again. Sometimes it closed its eyes as if it were sleepy. When I placed it on the ground, it hopped away a few inches, and by accident punctured the fleshy corner of its mouth with a sharp cactus thorn, and had to jerk itself loose, bringing the blood from the lacerated part. Meanwhile the mother lark went calmly about her household duties, merely keeping a watchful eye on the human meddler, and making no ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... with thorns, perhaps a hawthorn, and then when he catches any small creature he sticks it on the thorns and leaves it there spiked until it is wanted. Look at this one's larder. He has a wretched little dead sparrow hanging by its neck from a big thorn, and two or three bumble-bees spiked too. We can imagine the mamma saying to the little ones: 'No, dears, you mustn't have any sparrow to-night just before you go to bed; it would give you indigestion and make you dream. Papa will have some of that for his supper, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... leaned against a thorn; He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy: He neither cracked his whip nor blew his horn, But gazed upon the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... how to act, since, if he treated her with kindness, she was in despair, calling herself a lost soul, applying to her own case the woe denounced on those with whom the world is at peace, and complaining that she had no longer "a thorn in the flesh to buffet her." A disconsolate mother implored Dr. Beaumont to interfere and support her authority with her daughter, who, misunderstanding their preacher's encomiums on the sufficiency of faith, abandoned herself to antinomian licentiousness, asserting, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... hurry," Billy called as he disappeared from sight down a deep ravine. Poor Nanny was so frightened at what she had done, she could not hurry or begin to keep up with Billy, who made great leaps from rock to rock; so she ran under a thorn-apple tree and trusted to its low drooping ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... gone mad," said Macey, in a loud whisper; and screwing up his face into a grimace which he intended to represent horrible dread, but more resembled the effects produced by a pin or thorn, he crouched down right away in the stern of the boat, but kept up a continuous rocking which helped Distin's efforts to get her off into deep water. When the latter seated himself, turned the head, and began to row back, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... "Mightier" than the "strong man" must now come and pluck up the roots. The work of eradication thus accomplished, the absolute reign of Christ will be established. The heart will now become the Garden of the Lord, without briar, thorn, or thistle. Relieved of these hindrances, the graces ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... journey, me boy." said FitzGerald; "nasty deep swamps, terrible thorn thickets, grass ten foot high—it wouldn't be my ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... a thorn? Then count it not a whit! Man is well done with it; Soon as he's born He should all means essay To put the plague away; And I, war-worn, Poor captured fugitive, My life most gladly give - I might have had to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... guidance. If she could only anchor her dear old fairy godmother in a haven of calm knowledge of the facts, she was less distressingly concerned about the sister and daughter. The former of these was the more prickly thorn of anxiety. Still, she was a wonderfully strong old lady—not like old Mrs. Picture, a semi-invalid. As for the latter, she scarcely deserved to be thought a thorn at all. She might even be relied on to put her feelings in her ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... it shall prosper in the thing whereto I send it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fur tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it stall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... sylvan scene; No splendid poverty, no smiling care, No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur, there: There pleasing objects useful thought suggest; The sense is ravish'd, and the soul is blest; On every thorn delightful wisdom grows; In every rill a sweet instruction flows. But some, untaught, o'erhear the whisp'ring rill, In spite of sacred leisure, blockheads still; Nor shoots up folly to a nobler bloom ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... the Master, "If thou break off a twig from one of these plants, the thoughts thou hast will all be cut short." Then I stretched my hand a little forward and plucked a branchlet from a great thorn-bush, and its trunk cried out, "Why dost thou rend me?" When it had become dark with blood it began again to cry, "Why dost thou tear me? hast thou not any spirit of pity? Men we were, and now we are become ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... may have introduced you," her companion remarked, "but I feel it my duty to tell you that he is a man whose acquaintance is very undesirable. It is true he belongs to a fine family, but he is their thorn in the flesh. He is a drunkard and a gambler, and his associates are among the most reprobate. Two or three times I have been called to bring him out of a state bordering upon delirium tremens. A physician is not supposed to give away the weaknesses of his patients," he interposed, ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... beauties, wondrous glories dwelt, The monk in speechless adoration knelt. In each fair hand, in each fair foot, there shone The peerless stars He took from Calvary: Around His brows, in tenderest lucency, The thorn-marks lingered, like the flush of dawn; And from the opening in His side there rilled A light, so dazzling, that the room was filled With heaven: and transfigured in his place, His very breathing stilled, The friar ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... bones—human bones covered the rocky floor; but no sign of art or trace of religious obsequies rewarded my scrutiny. "Bless me!" said I, "what a journey I have had for nothing! This is merely the ordinary HOTTENTOT-HOLE style, with a stone instead of a thorn-bush to exclude wild beasts!" So I hastened forth, blaming the easy credulity that drank in traditionary tales of aboriginal tombs. At the entrance I found a negro standing, leaning on his musket; a brace of pistols ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... tuned fires. The nightingale does here make choice To sing the trials of her voice; Low shrubs she sits in, and adorns With music high the squatted thorns; But highest oaks stoop down to hear, And listening elders prick the ear; The thorn, lest it should hurt her, draws Within the skin its shrunken claws. But I have for my music found A sadder, yet more pleasing sound; The stock-doves, whose fair necks are graced With nuptial rings, their ensigns ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... tent, and these rude mountaineers found themselves face to face with that saintly sallow visage, those long gazelle eyes and the prophetic countenance framed in its apostolic beard. Raising his arms in the attitude of Raphael's Paul at Lystra, he said simply, "I am the thorn which Allah has placed in the eye of the Franks. And if you will help me I will send them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... a painful thorn the floweret's stalk upon: Behind each cupboard's gilded doors there lurks a Skeleton: The crumpled roseleaf mocks repose, beneath the bed of down: In proof of which attend the tale of Bach ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... be too swift to judge, As one who reckons on the blades in field, Or ere the crop be ripe. For I have seen The thorn frown rudely all the winter long And after bear the rose upon its top; And bark, that all the way across the sea Ran straight and speedy, perish at the last, E'en in the haven's mouth seeing one steal, Another brine, his offering to the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... peace in the remembering. But what doth be the peculiar sorrow of they that have gone over-lightly, when that they shall meet the Beloved; for then shall there be a constant and inward regret, as a thorn in the heart, that they not to have observed alway that holy care of all which doth pertain unto love; and they nigh to moan in the spirit, if they had but known, if they had but known. Yet, in the end, of their pain, shall they grow ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... thousand troops, the town was besieged by the English, led by Henry Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, with the help of the burghers of Ghent and Bruges. The town was surrounded by earthen ramparts planted with thick hedges of thorn, and by wide ditches and wooden palisades, and these were held by some ten thousand men. They were attacked, in 1383, by seventeen thousand English and twenty thousand Flemish. For two months Ypres was defended against almost daily attacks in one ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... Maremma. Ambitious, jealous, but, perhaps, less depraved than his father, the Cardinal de' Medici made no secret of his dislike of his brother Francesco and his innamorata, Bianca Buonaventuri. He became a thorn in his father's and brother's sides on account of his extortionate and presumptuous demands. His young stepmother—only two years his senior—favoured his pretensions, and so brought trouble upon herself, as we ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... weary mortal round, And sage experience bids me this declare, If heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, One cordial in this melancholy vale, 'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair In other's arms breathe out the tender tale, Beneath the milk-white thorn ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous

... her, and persuade her not to be so joyous, thinking that, if she would draw less lavishly upon her fund of happiness, it would last the longer. I remember doing so, one summer evening, when we tired laborers sat looking on, like Goldsmith's old folks under the village thorn-tree, while the young people ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... never was married, there are some so proud and fair, They knew I could have for the asking, and so they went on with their fun, Till the "Senior Partner" gave a cough, and then all their mirth was done. But I asked from Heaven though I know the way is mingled flower and thorn, That not one from partner to porter may bear all I have borne. So Jasper thinks I am sad; how the wintry winds whistle to-night! Heaven grant no poor woman or children are out in this sleety blight. I cannot read this ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty. Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid thorn good-bye. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the hole. Already half exposed by the ill-fated wretch beside them lay a number of dull yellow bars. He bent down in the hole, and, clearing off the soil with his bare hands, hastily pulled one of the heavy masses out. As he did so a little thorn pricked his hand. He pulled the delicate spike out with his fingers ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... rode unto a horn that was green that hung on a green thorn, and there he blew three deadly notes, whereupon came two damsels and armed him lightly. Then he took a great horse and a green shield and a green spear, and the two knights ran together with all their mights. They brake their spears unto their hands, and then drew their swords. Now they ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler

... without David would mean to her, he would not have wasted his breath in suggesting that she should give him up! Yet the possibility of such a thing had the allurement of terror; she played with the thought, as a child, wincing, presses a thorn into its flesh to see how long it can bear the smart. Suppose, instead of this three days' trip with Dr. Lavendar, David was going away to stay? The mere question made her catch him in her arms as if to assure herself he ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... sent. The Holy Relic on the altar of the Troodista seemed to point me hither, with every Sacred Thorn. I could pray no prayers but for thee; I could hearken to no other tales of woe. My feet turned ever thither without my will: and thus I knew that ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... rain without wind—ind the nightingales were as vocal as in fine bright weather. I heard one in a narrow lane, and went towards it, treading softly, in order not to scare it away, until I got within eight or ten yards of it, as it sat on a dead projecting twig. This was a twig of a low thorn tree growing up from the hedge, projecting through the foliage, and the bird, perched near its end, sat only about five feet above the bare ground of the lane. Now, I owe my best thanks to this individual nightingale, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... I will trust thee yet again; but it shall be the last time; therefore take heed to what I say. Between Stargard and Pegelow there stands an old thorn upon the highway; there, to-morrow evening, by seven of the clock, my servant Caspar, whom thou knowest, shall bring thee three hundred florins; but on this one condition, that thou dost now swear solemnly to abandon this villainous robber-band, and seek ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... bent and gnarled old 12th Lancer make to-day, but he and his fellows rode right well on the day for which he wears this "Cape" medal, with the blue and orange ribbon and the lion and mimosa bush on the reverse. Because of its prickles the Boers call the mimosa the "wait-a-bit" thorn, but there was no thought of waiting a bit among the 12th Lancers at the Berea, when they charged the savage Basutos and captured their chief Moshesh. This one-armed veteran of the Royal Fusiliers was left lying wounded in the Great Redoubt on the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Kau was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... double roses (vagrants from cultivated grounds, no doubt) offered buds and blooms to all who would have them. The cross-vine (Bignonia), less freehanded, hung its showy bells out of reach in the treetops. Thorn-bushes of several kinds were in flower (a puzzling lot), and the treelike blueberry (Vaccinium arboreum), loaded with its large, flaring white corollas, was a real spectacle of beauty. Here, likewise, I found one tiny crab-apple shrub, with a few blossoms, exquisitely tinted ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... (June 7), the Duke of Bassano, who had accompanied Napoleon, wrote to Count Otto: "Sir,—I have the honor of informing you that His Majesty, who left Dresden May 29, reached Thorn the 2d inst. He stopped forty-eight hours at Posen, leaving at four o'clock for Dantzic in order to review on his way several of the army corps. His health is perfect, and everywhere he has received the expression of the enthusiasm and admiration he inspires. The army is magnificent. The soldiers ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... easy to cry "treacherous," "base," and "immoral." But who, while the heart beats, can call himself safe from the temptation to this sin? It is mixed up with every generosity. It is a flood in the heart and a blinding wave over the eyes. It is the thorn in the side under the cloak of the beauty of youth. In Shakespeare's vision it is a natural force, incident to youth, as April is incident to the year. The young men live as though life were oil, and youth a bonfire to be burnt. Life is always wasteful. Youth is life's test for manhood. The clown ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... time had ascended, began to run downward. The path grew less sound. The mist, which was thicker than before, and shut them in on the spot where they walked, as in a world desolate and apart, allowed nothing to be seen in front; but now and again a ragged thorn-tree or a furze bush, dripping with moisture, showed ghostlike to right or left. There was nothing to indicate the point they were approaching, or how far they were likely to travel; until the Colonel, peering keenly before them, caught the gleam of ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... madam," said he. "Do not misapprehend me. I am not. I covet neither the title nor estates of Ostermore. Their possession would be a thorn in my flesh, a thorn of bitter memory. That is one reason why you should not think me generous, though it is not the reason why I cede them. I would have you understand me on this, perhaps the last time, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... soothing for her little sister. But Matilda could not be soothed. Maria's instances and persuasions did, however, at last urge her to the point of showing a part of her thoughts and disclosing the thorn that pressed sharpest on her mind. It was, that she had not pleased her mother by doing her best in the studies she had pursued at school. Matilda had always been a little self-indulgent; did not trouble herself with study; made ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... large promises in case of success, persuaded Murari Reo to take up his cause; and he had, it was said, also sent messages to the nizam, pointing out that, in case of war with the English, the Rajah of Ambur would be a thorn in his side. He told of the numbers of troops who had been drilled, and how formidable such a force would be, if opposed to him at a critical moment; while if he, the claimant, gained power, the army of Ambur would be at the disposal ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... began to feel the other front foot the dog whined with pain. "No wonder," said Charley with sympathy. "Look here, Lew," and he pointed to an enormous thorn that had embedded itself in ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... gave him more than was given to the others. But that was not enough. Jan was so hungry, what with his strivings in the traces and the novelty for him of this life of tense unceasing effort and alertness, that his appetite was as a thorn in his belly and as a spur to his ingenuity ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... had been detached to attack Macdonald, descended the Niemen; Tchitchakof and Platof had pursued Murat towards Kowno, Wilkowiski, and Insterburg; shortly after, the admiral was sent towards Thorn. Finally, on the 9th of January, Alexander and Kutusoff arrived on the Niemen at Merecz. There, as he was about to cross his own frontier, the Russian emperor addressed a proclamation to his troops, completely filled with images, comparisons, and eulogiums, which the winter had ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... Jack, vehemently. "What, that ugly, disagreeable woman, Ida's mother! I won't believe it. I should just as soon expect to see strawberries growing on a thorn-bush. There isn't the least resemblance ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger

... visitor in the night, as evidenced by a scrawled warning, on a dirty piece of paper, fastened to a stubby tree by a long, sharp thorn. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... could have been righted in an instant. In one flight, in 1905, while circling around a honey locust tree at a height of about 50 feet, the machine suddenly began to turn up on one wing, and took a course toward the tree. The operator, not relishing the idea of landing in a thorn-tree, attempted to reach the ground. The left wing, however, struck the tree at a height of 10 or 12 feet from the ground and carried away several branches; but the flight, which had already covered a distance of six miles, was ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright

... was standing on the rough ground before Ford Place, leaning against the gnarled trunk of an ancient thorn tree, which had yet life enough left in it to put forth its tiny, round buds of pink and white, soon to open and fill the air ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... captained by one Jonathan Thorn, who was at the time a lieutenant in the United States Navy. He had obtained leave of absence for the purpose of making a cruise in the Tonquin. Thorn was a thoroughly experienced seaman and a skilled and practised navigator. He was a man of ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... knife which Martha handed him, he prayed over it, tied Mary's hair about it, uttered another prayer and turned toward the servant who had appeared with an ax. "Take thou this to the valley. Find there a thorn-bush aside from the pathway and there tie the iron knife by the hair of Mary and repeat the scripture which is on the scroll I give thee, and as the Lord appeared in a thorn-bush to Moses, so shall he appear ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... an Evening Scene, on the same subject Animal Tranquillity and Decay, a Sketch The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman The Last of the Flock Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which stands near the Lake of Esthwaite The Foster-Mother's Tale Goody Blake and Harry Gill The Thorn We are Seven Anecdote for Fathers Lines written at a small distance from my House and sent me by my little Boy to the Person to whom they are addressed The Female Vagrant The Dungeon Simon Lee, the old Huntsman Lines written in early Spring The Nightingale, written ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... meads, considering The vermeil flowers and golden and the white, Roses thorn-set and lilies snowy-bright, And one and all I fare a-likening Unto his face who hath with love-liking Ta'en and will hold me ever, having aye None other wish than as ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... laugh but succeeded badly, and stood before her, with downcast eyes, poking his thorn-stick into the mass of pebbles. Annie waited in silence, and that brought ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... until I get one. I would bring Doctor Thorn, but he has too much to do with—too much to do just now." He comes near saying "with our own men," but checks himself in time. He cannot "kick the man that is down" with such a speech as that, and it is not ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... grief you spoke of as annoying you—the toothache in the Lord Mayor's jaw, the thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair? It is there. Ah! it stings me now as I write. It comes with almost every morning's post. At night I come home and take my letters up to bed (not daring to open them), ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... was black; The green grass was not seen; The birds did rest On the bare thorn's breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway-track, Had bound their folds o'er many a crack Which the frost had ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... decrease of specie, and as no one save a few individuals, inspired solely by cupidity, had asked for a new bank. Spencer, however, relied principally in his attack upon affidavits of Obadiah German, the Republican leader of the Assembly, and Stephen Thorn of the same body, charging that Senator Ebenezer Purdy, the father of the measure, had offered them large rewards for their votes, German having Purdy's admission that he had become convinced of the propriety of incorporating ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... went on the more quickly to make war. They came to a great wood. While they were going through it, the Bladder was heard to sneer and to say, "He! you should rise above these, brothers." With these words he went upward among the tree-tops; and the thorn apple pricked him. He fell through the branches and was nothing! "You see this!" said the four, "this one ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa

... leap; for you, the snail be slow; for you, the dove smooth her bosom; and the hawk spread her wings toward the south. All the wide world of vegetation blooms and bends for you; the leaves tremble that you may bid them be still under the marble snow; the thorn and the thistle, which the earth casts forth as evil, are to you the kindliest servants; no dying petal, nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have no more help for you; no robed pride of blossom so kingly, but it will lay aside its purple to receive at your hands the pale immortality. Is ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... a thorn hedge, which no one can pass through. But why do you ask all these questions? I am sure you have something in ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... the name of Thorn, set up in the lumber business at Union City, Indiana, where it is but a few steps across the border into Ohio,—and became a prosperous and respected citizen. He actually associated himself with the leading church of the town and was looked upon by the young men as a Californian ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... branches, and this contrivance, no doubt, is of the highest service to the plant; but as we see nearly similar hooks on many trees which are not climbers, and which, as there is reason to believe from the distribution of the thorn-bearing species in Africa and South America, serve as a defence against browsing quadrupeds, so the spikes on the palm may at first have been developed for this object, and subsequently have been improved and taken advantage of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... these envious chimes still hearing, Must at my narrow bounds repine; The linden grove, brown but thence peering, The moldering church, these are not mine. Refreshment seek I, there repairing? Another's shadow chills my heart, A thorn, nor foot nor vision sparing,— O far from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... and rose; cypress and orange; thorn and olive—the plants in which the buried lovers of ballad romance live again and intertwine their limbs, vary with the clime and race; and just as the 'Black Douglas' of the Yarrow ballad—'Wow but he was rough!'—plucks ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... path an awful form In luminous glory stood; His thorn-crowned brow, His hands and feet, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... gallantly on his new commission. After waiting a time, which in our state of suspense might almost be called a period, he leisurely returned, significantly saying, that neither man nor beast could pass that way! rubbing his thorn-smitten cheek. Now came the use of the syllogism, in its simplest form. "If the right road must be A, B, or C, and A and B were wrong, then C must be right." Under this conviction, we marched boldly on, without further solicitude or ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... was singing to the rhythm of the milk as it streamed into the frothing pail, for Daisy refused to yield her milk without a musical accompaniment. Very soft and low was the girl's singing, but clear and sweet as that of the thrush on the thorn ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... the thorn in his side. It was Schilsky she was oftenest to be met with; he was her companion at the most unexpected hours; and, with reluctance, Maurice had to admit to himself that she had apparently no thought to spare for anyone else. But it did not make any difference. The curious ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... a result of the intrigues of the pro-German king and queen, was a thorn in the flesh to the Allies for the first years of the war. The deposition of King Constantine, and the resumption of power of Premier Venizelos, brought Greece back to the place where her people ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... by Blyth on a single specimen, which was found without its head, impaled by some shrike upon a thorn at Cherrapunji. The same thing occasionally occurs in England, when the common shrew may be found impaled by the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... Voluptuous soul of the amorous South! Oh! whence the wind, the rain, the drouth; The dews of eve; the mists of morn; The bloom of rose; the thistle's thorn; Whence light of love; whence dark of scorn; Whence joy; whence grief; Death, born of wrong— Ah! whence is life ten-thousand passions ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... sweeter, the sunshine is clearer, the sky more smilin', and I cud get down and crawl on the ground yo' has walked over, that bad do I worship yer. And if yo' cud stay and marry me and civilize me, I'd try to brush up and be a decenter man than I ever war; leastways, I'd clar ev'ry rock and thorn outer yer path.' ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... very horror of it lifted her dull and shrinking eyelids. There, heaven-tall, earth-wide, hung the stranger on the crimson cross, riven and blood-stained, with thorn-crowned head and pierced hands. She stretched ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... cases. By the terms of surrender the people have been guaranteed their religious liberty; and the Treaty of Paris, which cedes all Canada to England in 1763, repeats this guarantee, though it leaves a thorn of trouble in the flesh of England by reserving to France for the benefit of the Grand Banks fishermen the Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, as well as shore rights of fishing on the west coast ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... round him, that went over one shoulder and under the other arm, and was meant, I believe, for a Scotch plaid. He had a thorn in his hand, which he held out at arm's length, as if he were a little afraid of it. "Is this a dagger?" Macbeth inquired, in a puzzled sort of tone: and instantly a chorus of "Thorn! Thorn!" arose from the Frogs ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... that which told them that their leader was no common man, but one who would die rather than abandon his marvellous enterprise. And you remember the end? The very day after the mutiny, a branch of thorn with berries on it floats by them. They are all excitement. Then a small board appears; then a rudely-carved stick; then at night Columbus sees a light, and next day lands on the shores of his new world, after a voyage of more than two months over seas hitherto unexplored by man, and in vessels ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... and in prison, was she not visited by Fenelon? Ah, 'twas worth the cost. Sympathy is the first attribute of love as well as its last. And I am not sure but that sympathy is love's own self, vitalized mayhap by some divine actinic ray. Only a thorn-crowned, bleeding Christ could win the adoration of the world. Only the souls who have suffered are well loved. Thus does Golgotha find its recompense. Hark ye and take courage, ye who are in bonds! Gracious spirits, seen or unseen, will minister to you now, where otherwise ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... A shield-may sleepeth The lime-trees' red plague Playing about her: The sleep-thorn set Odin Into that maiden For her choosing in war The one he ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous

... little wayward; while he grew daily more enamoured of his plan, redoubled his tenderness, seeking to study her whims in every other respect. It is cruel to loose every bond but that which galls most sorely, to pluck away every thorn but that which pricks most sharply: all the perceptions gather to that point, and the suffering is in consequence tenfold more acute. Such were Lucy's sensations, though she was perhaps scarcely conscious of them herself; while at every demonstration of her father's tenderness, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... reports a case in which a piece of steel was imbedded and encapsulated in the ciliary process twenty-nine years without producing sympathetic irritation of its fellow, but causing such pain as to warrant enucleation of this eye. Gunning speaks of a piece of thorn 5/8 inch long, imbedded in the left eyeball of an old man for six years, causing total loss of vision; he adds that, after its removal, some ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... sepulchre—the church itself. The Lord had thrown down a covering for his grave during the storm, and the heavy mound of sand lies upon it to this day. The drifting sand had covered the vaulted roof of the church, the arched cloisters, and the stone aisles. The white thorn and the dog rose now blossom above the place where the church lies buried, but the spire, like an enormous monument over a grave, can be seen for miles round. No king has a more splendid memorial. Nothing disturbs the peaceful sleep of the dead. I was the first to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... been the lady Ayisha going down some of those dark places for all the wealth of ancient Bagdad. Her shibrayah pitched and rolled like a small boat in a big sea, and whenever a rock leaned out over the narrow trail, or a scraggy old thorn branch swung, it was by a combination of luck and good carpentry that she was saved from being pitched down under the following camel's feet. Whoever made that shibrayah could have ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... Provinces, were the battles of Treves, Mulhausen, and Freiburg turned by the aid of the French aerostats from battles into butcheries. It was under the assault of these irresistible engines that the great fortresses of Koenigsberg, Thorn, Breslau, Strasburg, and Metz, to say nothing of many minor, but strongly fortified, places, were first reduced to a state of impotence for defence, and then battered into ruins by the siege-guns of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... silence was unbroken even by the footfall of the traveller on the bottomless carpet of leaves; sometimes they traversed vast swamps, hurrying to avoid the deadly fever, and sometimes scrub jungles, in which as far as the eye could reach was a forest of cactus and thorn bush. Sometimes they made their way through grassy uplands with trees as splendid as those of an English park, and sometimes they toiled painfully along a game-track that ran by the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... and various incidents of that distant school life which seems to me now as though I had never lived it, but only read it of it in some old forgotten book or seen it in a dream. My hair has not fallen, but for every hair of my head there has been a thorn in my destiny. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... It will be high tide at twelve o'clock, and they are sure to choose that hour, so that the cutter can run close in. I have sent off a man on horseback to Weymouth, for the revenue cutter to come round. If she's in time, we shall catch that troublesome lugger, as well as her cargo. She has been a thorn in our side for the last year. This time, I do hope we ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty



Words linked to "Thorn" :   infliction, pain in the ass, glochidium, aculeus, rune, glochid, pain in the neck, runic letter, pain, bother, annoyance, botheration



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