Saint Vitus

The speaker's skin was grey and blotched; he spoke in a kind of broken song, with much variety of key; his gestures seemed (as in the disease called Saint Vitus's dance) to be imperfectly under control; he was badly dressed; he carried himself with an air of shrinking assumption, as though he were proud to be where he was and to do what he was doing, and yet half expected to be called in question and kicked out.

The Wrecker 1898

I dance with the fury of Saint Vitus and his wooden cross.

The Nightly Dance 2010

He had Wenceslas 'bones moved to the church of Saint Vitus in Prague - the very church Wenceslas had built to celebrate the alliance between the Bohemians and the Germans.

Anne Dilenschneider: Good King Wenceslas: What Will We Risk for Justice? 2009

This spectacle restoring her to a sense of the proprieties, she stood for some few moments silent, with her mouth wide open; and then, posting off to the bed on which the Baby lay asleep, danced in a weird, Saint Vitus manner on the floor, and at the same time rummaged with her face and head among the bedclothes, apparently deriving much relief from those extraordinary operations.

The Cricket on the Hearth 2007

Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought Saint Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person.

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon 2002

Halfway down the stairs he began performing a series of odd maneuvers that looked as though he'd developed a severe case of Saint Vitus 'dance.

Till the Butchers Cut Him Down Muller, Marcia 1994

Then came Friday night, upon which Salome, though as pouty and uncomfortable as ever, danced as if she were bareback on a bucking python, danced like a police whistle in a raid on a bordello, danced like a self-winding watch on the wrist of Saint Vitus.

Skinny Legs and All Robbins, Tom 1990

I no longer doubt but that many of these babies with a bad nervous heredity, who are born predisposed to Saint Vitus 'dance, bad temper, chronic worry, neurasthenia, and hysteria could be spared much of their early troubles and later miseries by prompt and proper methods of early nursery discipline.

The Mother and Her Child William S. Sadler

Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought Saint Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 1917

Quackenboss's portrait of Saint Vitus is perhaps the most arresting contribution to the exhibition, and portrays the Saint intoxicated with the exuberance of his own agility.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 Various 1898