Cox and Forshaw encourage the reader to imagine how a succession of bullet-like particles could build up an interference pattern—a worthwhile exercise "because it's futile, and a few hours of brain-racking should convince you that a stripy pattern is inconceivable." ❋ Richard Lea (2011)
No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. ❋ Unknown (2003)
In this connection may I venture to call your attention to what a brain-racking job the office of Governor is. ❋ Unknown (2003)
Before his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet, for a few moments, gives up his brain-racking thoughts of penitence; he even endeavours to philosophise, as he may have done at the University of Wittenberg before he allowed himself to be lured into dreamland. ❋ Jacob Feis (N/A)
Midnight: I had sent out the night-firing orders to our four batteries, checked watches over the telephone, and put in a twenty minutes 'wrestle with the brain-racking Army Form B. 213. ❋ George Herbert Fosdike Nichols (N/A)
Via Hammersmith, Kew Bridge, Brentford, and Hounslow was our way out of town, and a more awful, brain-racking, and discouraging start it would have been impossible to make. ❋ Unknown (N/A)
So, after deliberate brain-racking, he went one better with the information: ❋ Ernest Raymond (1931)
A silence, significant of much brain-racking, followed. ❋ Ruth Sawyer (1925)
Was not this the way to obtain release from that hard labour, to get out of that brain-racking circle? ❋ Stijn [pseud.] Streuvels (1920)
For the next day or two Paul lived in a whirl of telephones, telegrams, letters, scurryings across London, interviews, brain-racking questionings and reiterated declarations of political creed. ❋ Unknown (1914)
How many a tallow candle that I helped my mother mold have I seen melt away as I read and reread these "romances, couched in gorgeous diction and abounding in thrilling episode," when I should have been absorbed in the brain-racking exercises of algebra or geometry! ❋ John Allan (1914)
Out of the night he had come, out of travail, and brain-racking perplexity and torturing effort, crossing rushing waters and matching his splendid strength and towering will against obstacles, against fate, against everything. ❋ Percy Keese Fitzhugh (1913)
There was no such brain-racking work; no forcing of the phantasmal multitude of the poet's brain to dance to pay the expenses of the funeral; no mediæval castle to sacrifice; no tragic failure of the ultimate goal. ❋ Edwin Watts Chubb (1912)
'Tis no brain-racking puzzle from an inner page of the Family Herald, ❋ Various (1902)
The public, which had expected something different, was disappointed; and when succeeding numbers brought further brain-racking profundities, there was a large ebullition of disgust. ❋ Thomas, Calvin, 1854-1919 (1901)
After Hal left her, she spent a wretched, restless, brain-racking afternoon, and was only just able to struggle through her part at night. ❋ Gertrude Page (1897)
After a while Anguish asked another appalling question, the outgrowth of brain-racking study: ❋ George Barr McCutcheon (1897)
Lydia, by way of reviving our drooping spirits, I fancy, as she is not usually given to conundrums or puzzles, suddenly propounded a series of brain-racking questions. ❋ Anne Hollingsworth Wharton (1886)
But our natural man through self-love opposes the voice of conscience and reason, and this gives rise to many brain-racking questions. ❋ Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1882)
