Literary notes about Quaking (AI summary)
The word "quaking" has been wielded in literature to convey a spectrum of trembling sensations—both physical and emotional. It appears as an expression of visceral fear, as characters tremble uncontrollably in moments of terror or shock [1][2][3], while at other times it vividly depicts a trembling landscape, from the aspen’s delicate shiver to an earth roiled by natural forces [4][5][6]. Moreover, authors use "quaking" metaphorically to illustrate inner turmoil or emotional upheaval, capturing a state of nervous anticipation or despair in a single, dynamic word [7][8][9]. This versatility underscores its power to evoke both the tangible and abstract, enriching narratives with a palpable sense of instability and urgency.
- I was quaking from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain - I summoned the place in form, though with a quaking heart.
— from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson - I was quaking just now, for fear mother would ask to look at it, when we spoke of Dounia’s watch.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - These [Pg 61] are the Engelmann spruce, limber pine, alpine fir, arctic willow, black birch, and quaking aspen.
— from The Rocky Mountain Wonderland by Enos A. Mills - the growl of the thunder,—the quaking of earth!
— from Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete Volume II of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier by John Greenleaf Whittier - Arises, too, this same great earth-quaking, When wind and some prodigious force of air, Collected from without or down within
— from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus - “My soul's simply quaking in my throat at those times,” he used to say.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The old and weary voice fell like sweet rain upon his quaking parching heart.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - I can see the sunny uplands that I long to reach, but everything is quaking and giving way under my feet.
— from A Knight of the Nineteenth Century by Edward Payson Roe
