He was no horseman, but the tension was tearing him apart, making his nerves sing like wires stretched to the breaking point.

Stephanie watched the motionless confrontation as treecat and hexapuma glared and snarled at one another, and the tension tore at her like knives.

Britain's greatest hope is that referendums or tensions between France and Germany will tear the new Euro-Plus grouping apart before it can inflict serious damage on the economy.

At a time when sectional tensions were tearing the United States apart, stagecoaches provided regular transportation and communication between St. Louis, Missouri, in the Midwest along the Mississippi River, and San Francisco, California, in the West.

In the much commented 2010 essay "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" in the New York Review of Books, Beinart has argued that the tensions between liberalism and Zionism in the U.S. may tear the two historically linked concepts apart.

Harrington had turned away enough to extend his closure time, and he gritted his teeth as the long, exquisite tension tore at his nerves.

Mounting tensions effectively tore the League apart, and the Second Balkan War broke out when Bulgaria, confident of a quick victory, attacked her former allies Serbia and Greece.

To be sure, unity and peace among the Maltese people must be made firm and unshakable so that tensions will not tear the nation apart and lead to conflict and violence.

The changes at other firms may be less rancorous than the split at First Boston, but all reflect the tensions tearing at many of Wall Street's best-known names.

And if the many tensions of her life were slowly tearing her apart, that was her business.