FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Motionless' Quotes from Famous Books

... paper, and steadied herself resolutely. All over the room other girls were sitting on hard, uncomfortable chairs before tables like her own, some motionless and stunned-looking like herself, some already setting briskly to work. On the walls, among a number of quotations, "Help one another!" stared her in the face with tragic significance, and again: "How far high failure overleaps the bounds of low successes." Failure! She lifted the ...

— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... once more with pity at Cornelli, who was sitting quite motionless on the bench. The book by now was lying on ...

— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri

... (it was early-closing day) were stretched motionless, with their heads on pocket-handkerchiefs, side by side, within a few feet of the sea, while two or three gulls gracefully skirted the incoming waves, and settled near ...

— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... bed, to discover if Mary's sleep were peaceful. Her face was turned partly inward to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within. Happy is it, and strange, that the lighter sorrows are those from which dreams are chiefly fabricated. Margaret shrunk from disturbing her sister-in-law, ...

— The Wives of The Dead - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Pensees are only the echo of the phrases of the Confessions. But how different is the tone! Pascal's charge against human ignorance is merciless. The God of Port-Royal has the hard and motionless face of the ancient Destiny: He withdraws into the clouds, and only shews Himself at the end to raise up His poor creature. In Augustin the accent is tender, trusting, really like a son, and though he be harassed, one can discern the thrill of an ...

— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... my feet, and saw that a heavy squall was indeed bearing down on us. It had hitherto escaped my notice, owing to my being so much engrossed by our conversation. I instantly did as Bill desired, for the schooner was lying motionless on the glassy sea. I observed with some satisfaction that the squall was bearing down on the larboard bow, so that it would strike the vessel in the position in which she would be best able to stand the shock. Having done my best to shorten sail, I returned ...

— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... was struck dumb. The good-natured Dutchman had taken a fancy to the little pale-faced, sad-looking stranger, and really felt very kindly disposed towards her; but she neither knew nor at that moment cared about that. She stood motionless, utterly astounded at this unheard-of proposal, and not a little indignant; but when, with a good-natured smile upon his round face, he came near to claim the kiss he no doubt thought himself sure of, ...

— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... gate, she caught sight of Lloyd Fenneben, leaning motionless against the gray bole of the elm tree. But she was looking through a tangle of purple oak leaves and twining bitter-sweet branches, and Fenneben ...

— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... is father!" cried the young girl, wildly, shaking herself free from the doctor's detaining hand. "Oh, they have killed my father! See! he is lying on the pavement dead, motionless! Oh, God, pity me! I am left alone in the wide, ...

— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... and left the chapel. Here again, for the third time, he felt shortness of breath; he entered the house and threw himself upon his hard bed of the Order and lay for a time motionless. He thought he would fall asleep, when suddenly a strange feeling overpowered him; it seemed to him that he would never again be able to sleep, and that if he remained in that ...

— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... for him alone. I need hardly say, that he soon interested himself in my cure, and regularly made inquiry respecting its progress. He always found something cheering to say—something to inspire patience and hope, himself a living commentary on his words. When I looked at this poor motionless figure, those distorted limbs, and, crowning all, that smiling countenance, I had not courage to be angry, or even to complain. At each painful crisis, he would exclaim: "One minute, and it will be over. Relief will soon follow. Every day ...

— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... given power as the scorpions of the earth have power;" (v. 3.) for when you catch the locust it makes little resistance and does not bite. Few of these were eating, and most of them were either flying or lay motionless basking in the sun, grouped in hundreds round tufts of long coarse grass. My Moorish fellow-travellers didn't like their appearance. They said the locusts are bad things, and came from the hot country to devour their harvest. It was indeed, an unpleasant sight, this horde of ...

— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... is another beautiful morning, with the sun dimpling in the early sunshine. Four sailboats are in sight, motionless on the sea, with the whiteness of their sails reflected in it. The heat-haze sleeps along the shore, though not so as quite to hide it, and there is the promise of another very warm day. As yet, however, ...

— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... thing within all the wide rolling landscape save the sun-flecked water, the softly stirring grass and rustling forests, the almost motionless white clouds. For two miles the hills billowed away gently to the northward, where at last they were swept up into the thickly timbered, crag-crested mountains. For twice two miles toward the west one might guess the course of the stream before here, too, the ...

— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... Lambert. With his elbow on his desk and his head supported on his left hand, he spent the hours of study gazing at the trees in the court or the clouds in the sky; he seemed to be thinking of his lessons; but the master, seeing his pen motionless, or the sheet before him still a blank, ...

— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... independent of it. I heard plainly the scratching of a pencil, at the same time that the psychic's left hand and both of her feet were in full view, and at the same time that her hand was outspread, apparently motionless, upon the under side of the slate. In a few moments the scratching paused, and the psychic, with an embarrassed smile, said: 'They don't know how ...

— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... had seldom been able to take dejeuner with us. In consequence he had a little hut erected near the river, au buisson Vincent, whither he retired almost daily, and to which I took or sent him his lunch; there he read, wrote, or sketched, surrounded only by silent and motionless objects. This morbid sensitiveness decreased with the light of day, and when the sun had set we generally joined him to admire the beauty of the after-glow fading slowly into twilight in the summer evenings. He always dined with us all, and after dinner ...

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... tone or a tremulous movement, even so flashed through Rudy, thoughts—powerful, overwhelming, speaking of the happiness of his life; his, henceforth, "constant thought." His eyes were fixed upon a point in the trellis-work, and this was a light in Babette's sitting room. Rudy was so motionless, one might have thought that he was observing a chamois, in order to shoot it. Now, however, he was like the chamois—which appears sculptured on the rock, and suddenly if a stone rolls, springs and flies away—thus stood Rudy, until ...

— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... bulky mulatto, on short legs, and he came tapping the floor in front of him with his gold-headed cane. His yellow face was lifted in the light, with a show of white teeth, all grinning, and his shrunken, papery eyelids lay motionless over ...

— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... the man had stood motionless, gazing in growing astonishment upon the radiant uplifted face which was swept by passion's clouds, as the June sky was swept ...

— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... companies are aligned: the N.C.O.'s retire to the supernumerary ranks. The battalion stands rigid, facing a motionless figure upon horseback. The ...

— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... sought her there At the accustomed hour, They found her cold and motionless, Within that ...

— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... he did not worry, Betty certainly did in the days that followed. She had dreams at night in which she saw Allen riding about in the shadows. There would be a report, two reports, and he would topple over backwards to lie crumpled up and motionless. No wonder that she became pale and lost her appetite and made her mother worry even in the midst of the excitement over this double hunt—the ...

— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope

... His anxiety for Raymond was sharpened by this long inaction. He seemed to have been standing for ages. What were the others doing? Not a sound reached him between the lengthening pauses of the wind. His companion stood drawn up motionless beside him; and so they waited, straining eye and ear into the darkness, conscious that others were ...

— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... the room immediately below that in which I slept. I knew the cry, it was the cry of my mother; and I also knew its import, yet I made no effort to rise, for I was for the moment paralysed. Again the cry sounded, yet still I lay motionless—the stupidity of horror was upon me. A third time, and it was then that, by a violent effort, bursting the spell which appeared to bind me, I sprang from the bed and rushed downstairs. My mother was running wildly about the room; she ...

— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... [He lies motionless; music dies away, and there is a long silence. The forest is dark, with gleams of moonlight. Suddenly there is a faint note of music... the Nibelung theme. After a silence it is repeated; then again. Several instruments take it up. It swells louder. Vague forms ...

— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair

... attack or unfair defence, the Duke of Wellington has appeared to be paying not the slightest attention to the proceedings. He has sat absorbed in thought, or at least in seeming indifference. You would almost suppose that, overcome by fatigue, or indisposition, he was sleeping, so perfectly motionless and silent is he, reclining, with folded arms, his legs stretched out to their full length, and his hat over his brow. The question has been discussed, argued, disputed upon for hours. No result seems to have been come to, and you are as ignorant of the object and scope ...

— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... bump; a vision of brick pillars lingered before the rattling windows of the cab; a sudden cessation of atrocious jolting and uproarious jingling dazed the two women. What had happened? They sat motionless and scared in the profound stillness, till the door came open, and a rough, ...

— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... vibration carried through the waves that even his nerves, far less sensitive than those of the life about him, reacted. He blinked behind his mask. A fish floated by, spiraling up, its belly exposed. And about him growths drooped, trailed lifelessly through the water; while there was a now motionless bulk sinking to the obscurity of the depression floor. A weapon perfected on Terra to use against sharks and barracuda had worked here to kill what could have been more ...

— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... bethought him of the peerless maid Marina, that haply with her sweet tongue she might win some answer from the silent prince; and with the consent of Helicanus he sent for Marina, and when she entered the ship in which her own father sat motionless with grief, they welcomed her on board as if they had known she was ...

— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... pressed tightly over my mouth, and another hand on my breast held me down motionless upon ...

— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme

... and my heart thrilled as I watched. Suddenly a stream of red sparks swooped upwards into the air and circled towards us. Involuntarily I stooped under cover, then raised my head again. High up in the air a bright flame stood motionless lighting up the ground in front, the space between the lines. Every object was visible: a tree stripped of all its branches stood bare, outlined in black; at its foot I could see the barbed wire entanglements, the wire sparkling as if burnished; further back was a ruined cottage, ...

— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... it with the cold accuracy of a cautious attorney;—but in truth her eyes did not follow a single word of the letter. There was neither flutter nor triumph in her face, or in the movement of her limbs, or in the quiet, almost motionless carriage of her body; but, nevertheless, the pulses of her heart beat so strongly, that had all depended on it she could not have read a word of the letter. "Well, my dear," said Sir Thomas, when he thought that ample time had been given for the perusal. Mary simply ...

— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... had disappeared from view and the silent, motionless trees, like thoughtful witnesses, surrounded them, Sanine suddenly put his arm round Lida's waist and said in a strange tone, half fierce, ...

— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... which no one could answer They lent their assistance, and pulled at the rope to help their companion. Nearer and nearer he came, and still nearer, until at last he was within reach. A few moments more and he emerged from the mouth of the well, and falling forward, he lay for a moment motionless. ...

— The Living Link • James De Mille

... fear. I was queerly affected by the vast expanse of loneliness outside, and by the deathly quiet prevailing both without and within. There was not the slightest whizzing or whistling now. We might be hanging perfectly motionless in space for all I knew. The batteries made no sound either. I could hear only the low, regular breathing of the doctor as he slept, and the slight crunching of Two-spot on his bone. Presently I thought ...

— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... greeting as he looked from one to another of these ill-assorted hosts of his, and whenever he chanced on the motionless girl he felt that he could not understand it. Look at her! how sweet and delicate she was, how small and well-set her head, her feet and hands how fine, her shape how tender. "How should a lily spring in so foul a bed?" thought he to himself. ...

— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... descended to the road and gazed up admiringly at his work. In the act of departing he turned, and suddenly stood still again. His face was toward the Bayfield gate. Dorothea could not tell if he saw her, but he remained thus, motionless, for almost a minute. Then he seemed to recollect himself and marched off briskly down the road. Early next morning she descended and read the inscription, which ran: ...

— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of dawn was in the sky, and between him and the light stood a tall, motionless figure, outlined clearly in the cave's mouth by the coming glow in the east. It was the figure of a man. He held in his hand a great horse pistol, and was evidently studying with some curiosity the sleeping figures whose slumbers he ...

— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... he stole beneath the farther bank, and, rounding the bend, came in sight of two men, the one seated upright before the fire cooking his bannocks, the other stretched out twenty paces distant at the edge of the underbrush, completely covered with a robe, motionless as if he slept. The man who was awake looked up, shaded his eyes, then rising to his feet came down to the water's edge and ...

— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... to look they could just catch the outline of each other's countenance, but this they did not often attempt. Their attention was held by the silent figure on the bed, and so motionless was this figure in the profound slumber in which it lay enchained, and so motionless were they in their increasing suspense and expectation, that time seemed to have come to a standstill in this little room. There was one break. The ...

— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... picture—the white boat, the graceful children, and the still, blue water. Susy's fair arms were bared to the elbows, and her face was deeply flushed. Dotty's beautiful eyes danced, but she herself was motionless and demure. ...

— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May

... next morning, and tried to recollect his dreams, which had been all connected with his recent sojourn at Dotheboys Hall, he sat up, rubbed his eyes, and stared—not with the most composed countenance possible—at some motionless object which seemed to be stationed within a few yards ...

— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... but still trembled sadly, and caught her breath with every fresh roar. The tempest had gathered fury, and was now raging as though Judgment Day were come, and earth about to be blotted out. For some minutes we listened almost motionless, but heard nothing save the furious elements; and, indeed, it was hard to believe that any sound on earth could be audible above such a din. At last I turned to ...

— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... trees; the branches of the tall lime trees swayed over her head; the fallen leaves twirled round her feet. She crossed the gardens; the moon cast strange shadows upon the broad paths. At length she saw the shrubbery gate, and, by it, erect and motionless, gazing on the bending trees in the park, was Hugh Fernely. He did not hear her light footsteps—the wind among the lime trees drowned them. She went up to him and ...

— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... the pillars supporting the balanced planes that, motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship's motive-power, as it were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man; and it is the ship's tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white glory, that incline themselves before the anger of the ...

— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... without which we cannot imagine ourselves to be? We ourselves perish. Of that there is no doubt at all. One is here talking and alive. His friends are with him: on the time when they shall meet again he is utterly not there. The motionless flesh before his mourners is nothing. It is not a simulacrum, it is not an outline, it is not a recollection of the man, but rather something wholly gone useless. As for that voice, those meanings in ...

— On Something • H. Belloc

... league, they stretch in low ignoble outline. Here and there a valley opens sharply into the desert, revealing an infinite perspective of summits and escarpments in echelon one behind another to the furthest plane of the horizon, like motionless caravans. The now confined river rushes on with a low, deep murmur, accompanied night and day by the croaking of frogs and the ...

— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... over the gravel rolled the heavy rubber-tired wheels that announced Mr. Coddington's arrival. The boy sat in precisely the spot where his father had left him and after alighting from the car the elder man made his way toward the motionless figure sitting so still ...

— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... The Syndic remained motionless, glaring at the window. Everything on a night like this, and to an uneasy conscience, menaced danger. At length it occurred to him that the applicant might be Louis, whom he had sent with the message to the Porte ...

— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... of his voice died away upon the night, and there was no sound but the soft ripple of the water under keel. In the bow sat the girl, motionless as a crouched Indian, her face fixed ...

— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... meanwhile the Pathfinder was far from being out of danger; for the first minute, admiration of his promptitude and daring, which are so high virtues in the mind of an Indian, kept his enemies motionless; but the desire of revenge, and the cravings for the much-prized trophy, soon overcame this transient feeling, and aroused them from their stupor. Rifle flashed after rifle, and the bullets whistled around the head ...

— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... an anxious moment for all birds when their young leave the nest. One noontime by the unusual mewing of a parent catbird I felt sure that the critical time had come. Sure enough, there sat one of the young on a twig a few inches above the nest, motionless and hushed. No lusty response to the agitated cry of the mother, as is usually the case with the robin. "No publicity" is the watchword of the young catbirds as well as of the old. An hour or two later another young one was perched on a branch, and before night, when no one was ...

— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... can but cast her shadow on my page. It was a dainty half-length, neither tall nor short, in a plain, well-fitting dress of black silk, with linen collar and cuffs, that rose above the counter, standing, in spite of displeasure, calm and motionless. Her hair was dark, and dressed in the simplest manner, without even a reminder of the hideous occipital structure then in favor—especially with shop women, who in general choose for imitation and exorbitant ...

— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... lay back in her chair, motionless, while before her mind's eye rose the altered face of the woman who, deceived for long, was deceived no more—who knew! With her there had been no self-respecting reticence, no decency of secret tears. She had heaped insult upon the woman who had wronged her, ...

— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... of his room, when suddenly his ear caught the sound of slow and stealthy footsteps upon the stairs. His own lamp was unlit, but a dim glimmer came from a moving taper, and a long black shadow travelled down the wall. He stood motionless, listening intently. The steps were in the hall now, and he heard a gentle creaking as the key was cautiously turned in the door. The next instant there came a gust of cold air, the taper was extinguished, and ...

— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... day was clear and carried the gaze out as far as the blue sky went; there were a few white clouds suspended idly over the horizon. A lateen sail was visible in the direction of Cat Island, and others to the south seemed almost motionless in ...

— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... to the end, and then fell back into her chair. But she did not hide her face this time. The fair pathetic features were quite motionless and white, without any expression, and her hands lay with the palms turned ...

— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford

... There is a commotion, the crowd part, and WAKOMETKLA advances to the altar. The drum beats, all prostrate themselves; the drum again beats, and the initiatory ceremony is concluded; the crowd is motionless; all face to the east. The quartz wall that shuts in the valley, and whose pinnacles point heavenward in needle-shaped spires, brighten; the points sparkle like diamonds; a ray penetrates into the ...

— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... object to catch my eye, when the shoji were pushed apart, the next morning, was a string of the ubiquitous paper fish, dangling limp in the motionless May air from a pole in a neighboring yard; highly suggestive of having just been caught for breakfast. The sight would have been painfully prophetic but for the food we had brought with us; for, of all meals, a Japanese breakfast is the most cold, the ...

— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... and a veiled woman evidently young, halted their horses in Portsmouth Square, where the former alighted and offered an arm to his companion. She, however, disdaining his assistance, sprang lightly from the saddle and, turning her back on him, gazed, motionless, toward the bay. There was something arresting and curiously dramatic about the whole performance, something that hinted of impending tragedy. The slight figure with its listless droop and stony immobility ...

— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... and uncertain, giving a demoniac and supernatural cast to the group and its tropical surroundings, Esperance suddenly awoke and raised himself upon his elbow. For an instant he gazed around him in bewilderment and terror. Was he dead, and were those swarthy-visaged forms extended motionless on the grass of the oasis the forms of fiends? This thought shot through his mind and augmented his consternation. When he fell asleep he was with his father, with the dauntless Monte-Cristo, and the last faces he had seen were the faces of French people and friends. Now he was in the ...

— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... in orderly and perfect lines, stirring or swaying slightly: sometimes they bent their heads, sometimes two leaned together, but for the most part they were motionless. It was the time when the fashion is just changing and some were newly all in shining yellow, while others ...

— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany

... executing this order an oppressive silence filled the room. The stranger's dark shadow rested motionless by the doorway. Above the breathing of the three men could only be heard the far-off sound of Harwich bells still ringing ...

— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... god or man, and once she had seen him she knew that she must gain his love or die. From that day on, she haunted him like his shadow, gliding from tree to tree, nestling down amongst thick fern and undergrowth, motionless as one who stalks a wild thing, watching him afar off while he rested, gladdening her eyes with his beauty. So did she feed her hungering heart, and sought to find contentment by looking on his face ...

— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... Wolf, is very common in the shallow and weedy lagoons along the sides of the stream. It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish, lurking under the shadow of a pad at noon, with still, circumspect, voracious eye, motionless as a jewel set in water, or moving slowly along to take up its position, darting from time to time at such unlucky fish or frog or insect as comes within its range, and swallowing it at a gulp. I have caught one which had swallowed a brother pickerel half ...

— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... close group. Probably the priest was addressing them. Soon the fringe of the crowd thinned, then the others walked quietly away. When at last the priest was left alone by the mutilated Indian, he knelt, and for a space was motionless. ...

— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... unstirred by a breath of wind the very buildings of Roselawn seemed strangely motionless, with their roofs glistening in their covering of moisture. And through an archway of trees the distant spire of the church on the hill rose above the mist as a symbol held aloft by some smoke-shrouded martyr ...

— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... and runs far inland, and here and there are bits of tree jungle. Every now and then we see some bird or beast which we have not seen before outside of a Zoo; a grand eagle is in sight just now, no vulture this fellow; he looks twice the size of our golden eagle, and sits motionless on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a sandbank. I can only just make out his or her mate soaring against the woods on the hills behind. On a bank to our right there's a whole crowd of large birds—as we get closer I can count their feathers with my glasses; ...

— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... on all sides might there have infected them; but the terror of the inhabitants who knew better than they what the thing meant, did not much shake them. For one moment many of the people stood in the street motionless, pale, and staring; the next they all began to run, some for the gateway, but the greater part up the street, staggering as they ran. The movement of the ground was indeed small—not more, perhaps, than half an inch in any direction—but fear and imagination ...

— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... the window that I might hear every note. The old garden, half hidden by trees, looked cool and Eden-like in the light of the July moon, athwart whose silver hemisphere fleecy clouds were drifting like the traces of thought across a bright face. Motionless shadows stretched toward the east, from which the new day would come, but with a dreary sinking of heart I felt as it each coming day ...

— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... change swept over Macdonald's face, a flush dyeing it to his ears. He sat motionless a little while, as if debating the question, the young officer's hand still outstretched. Macdonald dropped his hand, quickly, as if moved to shorten the humiliation, to the buckle of his belt, and opened it with deft jerk. At that moment Chadron, ten feet away, slung a revolver ...

— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... o'clock, no three, who looked upon the stock-gamblers and dollar-trailers as they looked upon the worms that honeycombed their headstones' bases. What thoughts went through Bob Brownley's mind only his Maker knew. For minutes he stood motionless, then he walked on down Broadway. He went into the Battery. The benches were crowded with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York's mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise: Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, ...

— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... down on his old box, staring at Oliver and the motionless form on the bed, with a feeling of despair tugging at his heart. He could scarcely believe it was all true; for it was not very long since—only it seemed like long years—since he had leaped over the counter in his ...

— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton

... the opposition, whose presence was a support to Franklin, during the ordeal through which he was to pass. He stood at the edge of the recess formed by the chimney, with one elbow resting upon the mantel, and his cheek upon his hand. He was motionless as a statue, and had composed his features into such calm and serene rigidity, that not the movement of a muscle could be detected. As usual, he was dressed simply, but with great elegance. A large flowing wig, with abundant curls, such as were used by elderly gentlemen at that ...

— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... indicated in his conversation and movements was deep-seated in his nature. I was with him in a night trip to New York; when the train was derailed in part. As the wheels of the car struck the sleepers, he grasped the back of the seat in front of him and remained motionless, while many of the passengers added to their peril by abandoning ...

— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... of not more than a mile or two he made out the outlines of a queer-looking three-masted ship. Here at least was company. Obtaining the glasses, which the ill-fated skipper had left in his cabin, the mate of the Eleanor Jones scanned the neighbor vessel eagerly. She was as motionless under the cloudless blue dome of the sky as the ship ...

— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... one morning, on the green, flowery meadow, under the ruins of Burg Unspunnen. She was sketching the ruins. The birds were singing, one and all, as if there were no aching hearts, no sin nor sorrow, in the world. So motionless was the bright air, that the shadow of the trees lay engraven on the grass. The distant snow-peaks sparkled in the sun, and nothing frowned, save the square tower of the old ruin ...

— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... enough to last a long while, he came back and sat down by his mother. All this time the Delaware remained motionless, with his face away from them. He was debating some troublous question in his ...

— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... Hanging between those motionless cylinders of red and violet light was a strange-looking, greenish globe. A round ball, nearly a yard in diameter, hung between the rays, almost touching them. Its surface was oddly splotched with darker and lighter areas. It was spinning steadily, at ...

— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson

... light that fell From angel-chariots sentinelled on high, Reposed, and listened, and saw thy living change, Thy dead arise. Charybdis listened, and Scylla; And savage Euxine on the Thracian beach Lay motionless: and every battle ship Stood still; and every ship of merchandise, And all that sailed, of every name, stood still." ROBERT POLLOK: Course of Time, Book VII, ...

— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... crouched in the sterns, and tin flags bearing the numbers of their ships in the bows, were being shepherded into position. A tense silence was closing down on the spectators. It deepened as the line straightened out, and the motionless boats awaited the signal with their oars poised in readiness for the ...

— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... Miss Lily sat motionless, bending forward a little, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes on the singer. Whether she saw him was doubtful, for her tears fell fast as Doodles sang ...

— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd

... black hair. It was an ascetic face, and yet there was passion of an unnamed sort ready to flash out and do strange things, overthrow the fabric of an ordered life perhaps, or contradict the restraint of years. He stood motionless until Raven, still searching, had got within three feet of him. ...

— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... arms. Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu;" and she pressed her little brown fingers over her throbbing temples. Has my own father leagued himself against my happiness and, and—my honour!" And, with a loud, heart-rending cry, she fell to the floor, pale and motionless. ...

— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... swinging on the trees around its border, all would be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a feathered oar,—and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found in the spring,—whence its common name of "Dead-Man's Hollow." Higher up there were huge cliffs with chasms, and, it was thought, concealed caves, where ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... quarter, and the King stayed motionless like one in a dream. Presently, however, the dream was faintly shaken by a little lirrup of sound, as light as rain dropping from leaves above a pool. Again and again the sweet round notes fell on the meditations of the King, and he remembered with entrancement that this was the ...

— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... another human being together, in some spot secure from the intrusion of spectators. A musket is conveniently at hand. It is already loaded. I say to my companion, "I will place myself before you; I will stand motionless: take up that musket, and shoot me through the heart." I want to know what passes in the mind of the man to whom these words ...

— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... sat silent and, save for a start or two, motionless while his companion detailed her circumstantial evidence. Whether it was enough to prove Mrs. Marland's case or not—whether, that is, it is inconceivable that a young man should go to any place fourteen evenings running, and upset a friend of his youth out of a canoe, except there ...

— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... to drive their points home, and in order to get what they think variety. Sir Charles Wyndham is the only English actor I can think of at the moment who does not make unnecessary grimaces, who does not insist on acting when the difficult thing is not to act. In "Tartuffe" Coquelin stands motionless for five minutes at a time, without change of expression, and yet nothing can be more expressive than his face at those moments. In Chopin's G Minor Nocturne, Op. 15, there is an F held for three bars, and when Rubinstein played the Nocturne, ...

— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... had been made in the rock to give light and ventilation. Something alive was down there, moving. I was frightened; I hardly dared to look. And I had a nightmare feeling of being struck dumb and motionless. I tried to turn and run up the stairs but I had to look, and the gray filtering light struck ...

— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... the bathroom. His father, taking a chair, placed the tips of his fingers together and in this attitude remained motionless, a figure of ...

— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... was a small sound in the next office. Aletha was suddenly very, very still. She sat motionless for a long half-minute. ...

— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... sling. They crept back around the foot of the piled rocks, dragging themselves with tense muscles, a foot at a time and waiting long between. By the touch of her hand on his foot he knew she followed close. Looking over his shoulder, he sensed the huddled figure still motionless ...

— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... as ever) she had given evidences of having something in her thought, some instruction or advice she desired to impart to her children, but which, so feeble was she, was beyond her strength to utter. Thus she had lain for three days, motionless, but for the restless turning of the head, and the burning, gleaming eyes seeming to take the place of her voice, and cry out the message her ...

— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... forget. They seemed, from their transparency and firmness, like some wondrous imagination of the artist's chisel, in which the marble, fancying itself human, had begun to breathe. The eye was calm and bright—the mouth, the feature round which danger loves to play, though easy, motionless, and with lips apart, had about it an air of immobility and quiet scorn, which was not the effect of muscular action, but of nature in repose. And in his whole appearance, features, attitude and ...

— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... as a starter. If you let him have his way he sits in his chair and in his deep, beautiful voice addresses a row of remarks to The Future in General—the only thing big enough or worth while to talk to. He sits perfectly motionless (except the whites of his eyes) and talks deeply and tenderly and instructively to the Next Few Hundred Years—to posterity, to babes not yet in their mothers' wombs, while his dearest friends ...

— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... longer was to be considered in the role of a possible eavesdropper, Ginsburg nevertheless spoke cautiously as again he turned his face toward the motionless figure stretched ...

— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... front of the church, the crowd waited the end of the ceremony. Shopgirls from the Rue de l'Eglise, and laundresses from the Rue de Paris, curiously contemplated the equipages, with their stamping horses, and the coachmen, erect upon their boxes, motionless, and looking neither to the right nor the left. Through the open door of the church, at the end of the old oak arches, could be seen Marsa's white, kneeling figure, and beside her Prince Zilah, whose blond head, as he stood ...

— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... overhangs Alleys and bowers so dim. We moved between Pinnacles of black rock, which, from beneath, Molten by inner fires, so said my guide, Gushed long ago into the hissing brine, That quenched and hardened them, and now they stand Motionless in the currents of the sea That part and flow around them. As we went, We looked into the hollows of the abyss, To which the never-resting waters sweep The skeletons of sharks, the long white spines Of narwhal and of dolphin, ...

— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... The child in the next room had not stirred. The dumfounded husband sat motionless under pretence of listening. His wife made a despairing gesture. He motioned to hearken a moment more; but no human sound sent a faintest ripple across the breathless air; the earth was as silent as the stars. Still he waited—in vain—they ...

— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... days we were washed by the sea I do not know, but it must have been fully a week, and we were both entirely exhausted, when something happened to our boat, and everything appeared motionless, but still I could hear a terrific roaring sound. When I regained my senses, I recognized Tom bending over me, and the first words I remember were: 'I thought you would never come to again.' I learned that we ...

— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... The leaves of a catalpa, across the roadway, hung motionless. Somebody yawned on the veranda below. I threw away my half-finished cigar, and closed my eyes. I think I had not lost consciousness for more than a few seconds before I was awakened by the shaking and thrilling of the whole building. As I staggered to ...

— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... Forcus had gone to bed he kept his promise:—sitting motionless in his chair, his elbow on the arm of it, his head upon his ...

— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... framed in fire, The flame ran from one curtain to another; fanned by the wind which was still blowing—valence, draperies, all the ornamentation of the three windows were in a blaze. Ida stood helpless, motionless as Lot's wife, confronting the flames. To rush through them, to leap through the open window although it were to certain death, was her first impulse. Any death must be better than to fall down suffocated on the floor, and to be ...

— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... Poninski with fresh supplies was coming up. He did not come, and the rumour of treachery, never, however, proved, gathered about a name that was already of ill repute to a Polish ear. Galled by standing motionless without ammunition, a Polish battalion rashly charged, and the Russians broke through the Polish line. Niemcewicz, rushing up to repulse them at the head of a Lithuanian squadron, was wounded, captured ...

— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... a respectful distance—but making an angry muttering noise. Jon stood motionless, his head reeling at the enormity of what he had done. A policeman pushed ...

— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... object lying part way up the slope caught his eye and instinctively he jerked his horse back, swung to the ground and, crawling to the rim of the bluff looked cautiously over the edge. For a long time he stared downward at the motionless form of a woman. Her face was not visible but he could see that she wore a riding costume, and a hat of approved cowboy pattern. In vain his eyes searched the beach, and the bluff, and even the river. "Crossin' on Long Bill's ferry an' the cable busted," ...

— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... King suddenly rose, remarking that it was late, and that as he had resolved to return to Versailles he had no time to lose. Richelieu, who had not yet recovered sufficient self-possession to entreat a continuance of his intercession, remained motionless as he left the room; while the indignation of the Queen-mother at so undignified a retreat rendered her equally unable to expostulate; and meanwhile Louis, delighted to escape from all participation in so dangerous a contention, sprang into the carriage which was awaiting ...

— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... than a stately old rook, who Master Simon assured me was the chief magistrate of this community, would settle down upon the head of one of the ewes, who, seeming conscious of this condescension, would desist from grazing, and stand fixed in motionless reverence of her august burthen; the rest of the rookery would then come wheeling down, in imitation of their leader, until every ewe had two or three of them cawing, and fluttering, and battling upon her back. Whether they requited the submission ...

— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... had noticed the prisoner's demeanor for the last few days would have been struck with the change which had come over it. Hitherto he had stood often for hours leaning motionless, with his arms crossed, in the corner of his cage, with head bent down and listless air, his thoughts only being busy; now he paced restlessly up and down his narrow limits, two steps each way and then a turn, like a caged beast; his hands were clenched, his breast heaved, his breath came ...

— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... destitute of feeling, though it had been my lot to see men die in many ways, and I ran over to that motionless form without an idea that anything but an ordinary accident had occurred. There he lay, silent and, as it turned out afterwards, dead as a door-nail, the strangest old fellow ever eyes looked upon, dressed in shabby sorrel-coloured ...

— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... of the pursuers found further effort useless, he checked his horse. Willock now sat erect on the broncho's bare back, lightly clasping the halter. Looking behind, he saw seven horsemen in varying degrees of remoteness, motionless, doubtless fixing their wolfish eyes on his fleeing form. As long as he could distinguish these specks against the sky, they remained stationary. To his excited imagination they represented a living wall drawn up between him and the abode of ...

— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... that fell deed, madness raged upon the minutes, now that it was done—all still, all calm, all quiet, Terror held the hour-glass of Time. There lay the corpse, motionless, though coiled and cramped in the attitude of struggling agony; and the murderer gazed upon his victim with a horror most intense. Fly! fly!—he dared not stop to think: fly! fly! any whither—as you are—wait for nothing; fly! thou caitiff, for ...

— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... joined the party, who were standing at the foot of the pilot-house staircase, "we may venture outside; we are only three thousand feet above the sea-level, and the ship is almost motionless. Permit me." ...

— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... with whom he had once had a business misunderstanding, who, burning for revenge, was now jumping and howling and threatening as only a drunken Indian may, while our heroic old captain, in severe icy majesty, stood erect and motionless, uttering never a word. Kadachan, on the contrary, was well nigh smothered with the drunken caresses of one of his father's tillicums (friends), who insisted on his going back with him into the house. But reversing the words of St. Paul in his account of his ...

— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... Rufe, with his head now enwrapped in crossed bandages, stared toward the great rock with a wavering expression in his smoldering eyes, an expression that hovered between reluctant submission, reawakened cupidity, and dawning hope. Dolores stood motionless, imperious in every line and feature, her heavy eyelashes veiling the eagerness in her eyes, her red ...

— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, "On! on!"—but o'er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast. ...

— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him. The old man looked dismally foolish. "So you determined not to shoot her, after ...

— The American • Henry James

... Daws until half past ten, and saw the moon rise on the sea. The ocean, that had stretched motionless and black against the horizon, was changed by magic into a broken field of glittering ice, interspersed with marvellous silvery fjords. In the far distance the Isle of Shoals loomed up like a group of huge bergs ...

— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... great public square of Clermont. Here the vast crowds had assembled. As far as the eye could reach, down every street leading into the square, extended a closely packed multitude. They stood silent, almost motionless, their faces turned toward the platform in the center of the ...

— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... had departed, the stately elms were motionless at rest, and the sun beat down with a fierce radiance, upon the red brick walls of ...

— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... [Exit JIM and closes the door. She stands motionless until she hears the outer door slam.] I wonder why he doesn't come. [She goes up and looks out of the window and turns down stage, crosses right, counting trunks; as she counts suitcase on table, bell rings; she crosses hurriedly ...

— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... Wilbur remained motionless, seated on the bunk-ledge, smiling grimly, while his glance wandered now to the sordid cabin of the "Bertha Millner" and the opium-drugged coolie sprawled on the "donkey's breakfast," and now to the card in his hand on which a few hours ...

— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the motionless ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely in the past for porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continued up the right fork. The day wore along, ...

— White Fang • Jack London

... laughter and of shouted farewells floating up out of the distance; and then, the strange pageant being gone, we have lonely stretches of glittering water —of stately buildings—of blotting shadows—of weird stone faces creeping into the moonlight—of deserted bridges—of motionless boats at anchor. And over all broods that mysterious stillness, that stealthy quiet, that befits so well this old ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... her. She knew! She flung out her hands and gripped at the window-frame and watched. She saw her aunt, her usually ruddy face drawn, haggard, and white. She saw something that lay motionless on a part of the old barn-door, which four men were carrying with such care. She saw a man on a bicycle dashing off ...

— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... over the bleeding night-mists. Darkness and all night's adherents were annihilated. Pelicans and geese and curlews were in uproar, as at a concerted signal. A buzzard yelped thrice like a dog, and rose in a long spiral from the cliff to Melicent's right hand. He hung motionless, a speck in the clear zenith, uncannily anticipative. Warmth flooded ...

— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... in connection with the rotation of the planets, viz.: that observation has determined that the axial rotation and sidereal revolution of the secondaries, are identical; thus showing that they are without vortices, and are motionless relative to the ether of the vortex to which they belong. We may also advert to the theory of Doctor Olbers, that the asteroidal group, are the fragments of a larger planet which once filled the vacancy between Mars and ...

— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... solitary tree in a field—in the edge of its shade, resting; his face turned toward the sky. This would be one over-bending vault of serenest blue, save for a distant flight of snow-white clouds, making him think of some earthward-wandering company of angels. He would lie motionless, scarce breathing, in that peace of the earth, that smile of the Father. Or if this same vault remained serene too long; if the soil of the fields became dusty to his boots and his young grain began to wither, when at last, in response to his prayer, the clouds were brought ...

— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... it. The problem, in some way, had simplified itself into a contest between herself, demanding time to think, and the little insistent clock, shouting to her to act upon blind impulse. If she could remain motionless for another five minutes, ...

— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... to eternal growth. Behind them, nevertheless, there is an eternal master who does not change. It is our duty to resemble him as much as we can; that is to say, as much as an ape can resemble a man. Calmness is imperative: to be as motionless as transient beings can. The popular legend runs that Heraclitus "always wept"; what is known of him only tends to prove that he was grave, and ...

— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... eye fell to the ridge opposite, across the blue canon. From one point on it a straight column of smoke rolled upward, to mushroom out and hang motionless above the top of the ridge. Its base was shot by half-seen, half-guessed ...

— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... of progress must die within your people. There must be no purpose in any field of knowledge. You must remain motionless, consolidate what you have, and live in peace. The Eye in the dimness seemed larger and brighter the longer he looked at it; all else in the echoing room was darkness. The stars are not dangerous, but there is a race which rises with you, and it rises ...

— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr

... not to be pierced or banished even in the intensest sunlight; fallen flakes and fragments of the night, stayed in their solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy bendings of the orchard boughs and yellow effulgence of the harvest, and tracing themselves in black network and motionless fringes against the blanched blue of the horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet they do not sadden the landscape, but seem to have been set there chiefly to show how bright everything else is round ...

— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... was as motionless as if he had been turned to stone. After the information he had obtained respecting the count's past, and after the story told him by Madame Vantrasson, he could scarcely doubt. "This letter," he thought, "can only be from Mademoiselle Hermine ...

— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... of some roughly made tables and benches. It seemed to be quite empty, so complete was the silence, apart from the buzz of the flies. However, two men were seated there, two wayfarers who remained mute and motionless before their untouched, brimming glasses. Moreover, on a low chair near the door, in the little light which penetrated from without, a thin, sallow girl, the daughter of the house, sat idle, trembling with fever, her hands close ...

— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... slept. Every summer he used to move into this little lodge which stood adjoining the huge seignorial house of Skvoreshniki, almost in the garden. He had only just gone in, and in restless hesitation taken a cigar, and not having yet lighted it, was standing weary and motionless before the open window, gazing at the light feathery white clouds gliding around the bright moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made him start and turn round. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four minutes earlier, was standing ...

— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... turbid atmosphere, and the odor was a composite of many odors as in a drug shop. All this—the colors, the glitter, the sounds and odors—pressed on the eyes and invaded the breast with each inhalation. It forced out live sensations, and filled the desolate heart with motionless, dismal awe. ...

— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... his purpose, even if he paid for it with his life; and when night came he set out for a wide, lonely moor, where the serpent-king held his feast. With sharpened eyes, he looked eagerly all round him, but could see nothing but a multitude of small hillocks, that lay motionless under the moonlight. He crouched behind a bush for some time, till he felt that midnight could not be far off, when suddenly there arose in the middle of the moor a brilliant glow, as if a star ...

— The Violet Fairy Book • Various

... foot on the step I found myself confronted by a footman in the Manners livery, who cried out angrily to our man: "Make way, make way for his Grace of Chartersea!" Turning, I saw a coach behind, the horses dancing at the rear wheels of the chaise. We alighted hastily, and I stood motionless, my heart jumping quick and hard in the hope and fear that Dorothy was within, my eye fixed on the coach door. But when the footman pulled it open and lowered the step, out lolled a very broad man with a bloated ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... her on the Recurring Staircase. I had turned sharply the angle of the hall and placed my foot upon the bottom step and then I saw her. She was motionless; her back I saw, and O! the grace of her neck and the glory of her arrested attitude. I feared to move, but some portent, silent, inflexibly eloquent, haled me to the staircase. That was years ago. I called ...

— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... no earth, no time, No check, no change, no good, no crime— But silence, and a stirless breath Which neither was of life nor death; A sea of stagnant idleness, Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!" ...

— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... rage, withdrew his horrible fangs and took to flight. The colonel felt a damp, icy body touch his cheek; he remained motionless. The serpent glided rapidly along the side of ...

— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... overwhelms every thing that attempts to resist its way. They trample one another and their enemies together promiscuously in the dust; the foremost of the column press on with the utmost fury, afraid quite as much of the headlong torrent of friends coming on behind them, as of the line of fixed and motionless enemies who stand ready to receive them before. These enemies, stationed to withstand the charge, arrange themselves in triple or quadruple rows, with the shafts of their spears planted against the ...

— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... for I will not reply to his letters; this restraint I have imposed upon myself; I am sure that my hand would become motionless as the cold marble were I to write to the man I love without the knowledge of my aunt, my elder sister, and my parents. I told the prince royal that he could never have a letter from me until I was his wife. This is a great sacrifice, ...

— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... hands as she stood there motionless, and apparently unmoved by the tidings she had read. Then turning slowly, she held out her hand to Edie, who obeyed the imploring look in her eyes, and led her from the dining room to her ...

— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... 'Syd,' as his sister does. I like short, plain, home-like names, such as Will, Ned, or Tom. No, no, I can never care for him, and it 's no use to try!" The exclamation broke from Polly as if a sudden trouble had seized her, and laying her head down on her knees, she sat motionless for ...

— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... startled Migwan like the report of a pistol, followed immediately by another. She came to her senses with a rush. With hardly a moment's warning the ice on which she was standing broke away from the main mass and began to move. Struck motionless by fright, she had not the presence of mind to jump back to the larger field. A wave washed in between, separating her by several feet from the solid ice. The cake she was on began to heave and fall sickeningly. There was another cracking sound and the edge of the solid body of ice ...

— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... Occidental painters, but those that are seen on the panels of the Byzantine school or fastened on the ikons, sculptures of silver or gold. Their long hair, deeply parted in the middle, fell upon their shoulders in curl-tipped golden masses. Some leant against the wall, erect, and motionless. Others were seated on the floor, their legs crossed. Most of them were in winter coats, bought in the bazaars. But there were also men from the country, with their skins of beasts, their sayons, their touloupes. One ...

— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... Very far off a whippoorwill was calling incessantly. Once or twice from the little orchard close at hand an apple dropped with a faint rustle of leaves and a muffled, velvety impact upon the turf. Kamiska, wide awake, sat motionless upon her haunches on the steps, looking off into the night, cocking an ear to ...

— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... come to Attica. There, in the utmost dejection, for the first time, she sat down to rest on a bare stone, which the people of Attica still call the stone of sorrow. For many days she remained there motionless, under the open sky, heedless of the rain and of the frosty moonlight. Places have their fortunes; and what is now the illustrious town of Eleusis was then the field of an old man named Celeus. He was carrying ...

— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... This he stood upright some little distance away, yet not too near the piece of ground where the creatures of the forest were accustomed to obtain their salt. Then, crouching beside his white friend, the Indian remained motionless and speechless for the next three hours. Once Enoch crept out and renewed the torch which had burned low; then he ...

— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... it is probable that the strong and lawless man would have stabbed him to the heart in the first impulse of his anger, for the poor youth was well acquainted with all his secrets and most of his bad intentions. But the motionless figure and the smiling face not only surprised—it alarmed—Ujarak. It seemed so unnatural. What powers of sudden onslaught might not lie hidden within that calm exterior? what dynamitic capacities of swift explosion might not underlie ...

— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... the king arrived at the place where the tent was that I have already mentioned, and he entered his and performed his usual ceremonies and prayers. You must not think that when the king passed the troops moved from their positions, on the contrary they stood motionless in their places till the king returned. As soon as the king had finished his ceremonies he again took horse and returned to the city in the same way as he had come, the troops never wearying of their shouting; as soon as he passed by them they began ...

— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... Preoccupied she seemed Now with some painful thought, and in a slow, Half-automatic manner she replenished With scanty bits of coal her little stove; Then, with a like absorbed, uncertain air, Threw off her cloak and bonnet, and sat down; Motionless sat awhile till she drew forth A pocket-book, and from it took a letter, And read these words: "You guaranteed the debt: It now has run three months, and if to-morrow It is not paid, we must seek legal help." A bill of wood and coal for Rachel's father— Some twenty dollars ...

— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... contradictions in Amherst's face baffled her, and she murmured inwardly "I don't know" as she drew aside to let him approach the bed. He stood by her in silence, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes on the injured man, who lay motionless, as if sunk in a lethargy. The matron, at the call of another nurse, had minced away down the ward, committing Amherst with a glance to Miss Brent; and the two ...

— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... opened immediately. A man wrapped in a cloak was sharply defined against the grayish atmosphere of the wintry night. As for Roland, he was completely hidden in shadow. Seeing no one, the man in the cloak remained motionless ...

— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... are a credit to you"! Ships also,—he talks often about ships: Huge moving mountains, they spread-out their cloth wings, go bounding through the water there, Heaven's wind driving them; anon they lie motionless, God has withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir! Miracles? cries he; What miracle would you have? Are not you yourselves there? God made you, "shaped you out of a little clay." Ye were small once; a few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, ...

— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... helpless innocence and virtue!—Oh let the murderous brutal Russians find heaven's vindictive arm in you its great vicegerent.—She was able to utter no more: the inward agonies she sustained, on being about to relate the story of her wrongs, became too violent for speech, and she sunk motionless on the earth. Two of the women, assisted by some Swedes, carried her out of the tent, as thinking the open air most proper to revive her; and she who remained, satisfied the ...

— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... right and left, sixty yards away from the boat's stern; but the stress soon began to tell, and it came easier after a time, nearer and nearer, till it was drawn close up, and then Dick, who was boiling over with excitement as he gazed at the great prize he had hooked, became aware that the boat was motionless and that Will was leaning over him ready to deftly insert the new gaff-hook in the fish's gills, and lift ...

— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... crest he saw that the battle was over. He saw the three men grouped about a cluster of rocks on a hill not more than a hundred yards distant. Two of the men were bending over the third, who was stretched out on his back, motionless. It appeared to Sanderson that the two men were searching the pockets of the other, for they were fumbling at the other's clothing and, seemingly, putting something into ...

— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... dew could bring them half the passion of the night, but frost sent them plunging beneath the ground to dwell with hopes of a later coming softness in their roots. They nursed the life they carried—insects, larvae, chrysalis—and when the skies above them melted, he spoke of them standing "motionless in an ecstasy of rain," or in the noon of sunshine "self-poised upon their ...

— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... The Tarsus now lay motionless on the ocean, rolling to and fro slowly under the influence of a gentle swell. There was scarcely any wind, and the smoke, which had constantly grown thicker and blacker, even with the efforts made to subdue the flames, arose in a straight pillar ...

— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... a strange, low voice. He spoke slowly and with great difficulty, as if his organs of speech were partially paralyzed. I would not have been able to distinguish his words but for the silence of that room and the unnatural keenness of my hearing. He still stood motionless, his eyes upon the floor. I knew that he was thinking ...

— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... looks and gestures the old man had told his story, his listeners sitting as if spellbound, motionless except for a whispered word of explanation here and there from Marjory. Both gave sighs of regret as his last words ...

— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... dim bedroom beyond showed her Aunt Elspeth's white head lying motionless on her pillow. The sight of the quiet sleeper made her feel appallingly lonesome. It was like being all by herself in the house to be there with one who made no sound or movement. She would have to ...

— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... a page to take the breath away, the big conception blundering clumsily behind the crude reconstruction. Great winds formed the base, winds of brown and blue and purple, piled mountainously upon each other in motionless coils, and so soft that the upright columns of the structure plunged easily and deeply into them. Thus the framework could bend and curve and sway, moving with steady glide across the landscape, ...

— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... after him. The baby looked back over his shoulder, greatly enjoying the race, tripped over a bit of stone, and fell headlong, the watch shooting on ahead. He gave a frightened cry as he fell, but the next instant, when Eunice reached him, he lay motionless. Hurriedly she raised him up. A stream of blood poured from an ugly gash in his poor little forehead, cut on a piece of glass that was half imbedded in the sand. As she raised him his golden head fell back heavily, and ...

— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... days later, on opening the door, Maria's ear caught a sound that made her stand motionless and listening. The distant and continuous thunder was the voice of wild waters, silenced ...

— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... kill itself, but only becomes tired out and lies down motionless, when the little road-runner comes over and pecks him to death. There are only a few animals, birds or insects who can kill a rattlesnake, and the road-runner does this about as neatly ...

— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster

... out of the stern windows showed me that the ship was no longer under way. She was not moving through the water. It struck me that I had better go on deck to see what was the matter. When I reached the deck I found that the barquentine was hove-to (that is, held motionless by a certain arrangement of the sails) about half a mile from a small full-rigged ship which had hove-to likewise. The barquentine's boat was rapidly pulling towards this full-rigged ship, with Captain Barlow sitting in the stern-sheets. The ship was ...

— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... early spring day, when the woods are bare and birds are very scarce, you will look into a small tree and wonder what that gray and black bird, who is sitting there so motionless, can be. He is too small for a Hawk, though there is something hawk-like about his head. He is altogether too large for a Chickadee; not the right shape for a Woodpecker; and after thus thinking over the most familiar ...

— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... night, while occupied in a translation of the Aeneid which he had commenced, he remained at his task till a late hour. The midnight bell had tolled, when, looking up, he was startled by perceiving a tall figure standing silent and motionless beside him. ...

— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... at a smart walk; the rigid straddle of his legs, the turned-out feet, the stiff back, the rakish slant of the sombrero above the square, motionless set of the shoulders ...

— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... himself in what seemed to him like an ante-room of some apartment of extreme importance. Here he waited for nearly half an hour; still on each side of him stood a soldier, erect, motionless, silent. ...

— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... be here. Oh, when will Liberty Once more be here? Scaling yonder peak, I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow, O'er the abyss his broad-expanded wings Lay calm and motionless upon the air As if he floated there without their aid, By the sole act of his unlorded will, That buoyed him ...

— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... but I very plainly saw him shake his fist at me, and his head, too; and I make no manner of doubt, if he called me anything, that he did not call me a gentleman. In ten minutes the boat was fully a mile astern. At first Sennit did not appear disposed to do anything, lying motionless on the water, in sullen stillness; but wiser thoughts succeeded, and, stepping his two masts, in less than twenty minutes I saw his sails spread, and the boat making the best of its way to get into ...

— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... to have wilted as though the flames had blasted him. He sank down upon the roof, and would have rolled off if the strong arm of his nephew had not saved him. His eyes were closed, his lips were blue and ashy, and his frame was motionless. Levi was alarmed by his appearance. He was either dead or had fainted, and the young man saw that he must be removed. Lying down by the side of the senseless form, he clasped his arms around it, and rose to his feet with the burden on his back. Like all misers, uncle Nathan was nothing but ...

— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... ardent and animated, as to be unpleasant to ride when with others. In either of these cases, the rider should endeavour to soothe her horse, by speaking to him in a calm, gentle tone. She should suffer the whip to be as motionless as possible, and take even more than usual care that its lash do not touch the flank. Her seat should be easy, her leg still, and her bridle-hand steady. The bit should not be made to press on the horse's mouth with greater ...

— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous

... round through the fog; there were some faint explosions, hoarse shouting, a long screeching whistle,—and after that the dull shock of a collision; but nothing could be seen from where they stood, and for some moments Mabel remained motionless, almost paralysed by the fear of what might be hidden behind ...

— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... conversation, nor is any foreigner permitted to speak, whatever might be his rank, unless in presence of the representative of the chief from whom he last came. In the wall on each side of the entrance of the town was a large niche, in one of which the king stood fixed and motionless, with his hands clasped under his tobe, and supported on his bosom; and round a pole, which had been placed erect in the other niche, a naked youth had entwined his legs, remaining in breathless anxiety to be a ...

— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... her father's knee, caused him to forget his habitual delicacy of feeling, and to overlook what might perhaps be termed almost a law of society. Instead of moving, therefore, as Mildred had both hoped and expected, he remained motionless in his seat. Dutton's mind was too obtuse to comprehend his daughter's allusions, in the absence, of ocular evidence of a stranger's presence, and his wrath was too much excited to permit him to think much of any thing but ...

— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and living trees, A holy scene! Along the smooth green turf Our horses grazed. To more than inland peace Left by the west wind sweeping overhead From a tumultuous ocean, trees and towers 110 In that sequestered valley may be seen, Both silent and both motionless alike; Such the deep shelter that is there, and such The ...

— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... indefinite length, while the dazzling light seemed to cut a bright pathway between walls of solid blackness for the use of the advancing monster. As the bewildering glare passed him, Rod saw that the train was a long, heavy-laden freight, and that some of its cars contained cattle. He stood motionless as it rushed past him, shaking the solid earth with its ponderous weight, and he drew a decided breath of relief at the sight of the blinking red eyes on the rear platform of its caboose. How he wished he was in that caboose, riding comfortably toward New York, instead ...

— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... the five riders leaped up, and stood erect on their horses' backs. Satisfied that they had no intention of attacking us, and were only looking out for strayed horses, we continued watching them for some time, as they stood gazing away over the plain in different directions, motionless and silent, like bronze men on strange horse-shaped pedestals of dark stone; so dark in their copper skins and long black hair, against the far-off ethereal sky, flushed with amber light; and at their feet, and all around, the cloud of white and faintly-blushing ...

— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... five other priests, seated in various situations close to the railing. One, on the right of the entrance, held a book, from which he chanted certain verses in a monotonous voice; while the others sat silent and motionless, with their eyes fixed on the ground. When he stopped, a slow and solemn air was played upon the flutes, accompanied by the drum, which had an effect by no means unpleasing; but in a few moments the other instruments ...

— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... was on the point of taking his leave, when I and my young friend entered the apartment. It is impossible to describe the emotions of the stranger, when he fixed his eyes upon my companion. He was motionless with surprise. He was unable to conceal his feelings, but sat silently gazing at the spectacle before him. At length he turned to Mrs. Baynton, and more by his looks and gestures than by words, ...

— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... laugh grew fainter, and dying away, she seemed to die with it; for there she was, with that mirthful, half-malign expression still on her face, but motionless; so that however long Septimius's life was likely to be, whether a few years or many centuries, he would still have her image in his memory so. And here she lay among his broken hopes, now shattered as ...

— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Fanny had flung herself on a chair and covered her face with her hands. Sibyl stood motionless, awaiting Mrs. ...

— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... when Dorothea passed from her dressing-room avenue the blue-green boudoir that we know of, she saw the long avenue of limes lifting their trunks from a white earth, and spreading white branches against the dun and motionless sky. The distant flat shrank in uniform whiteness and low-hanging uniformity of cloud. The very furniture in the room seemed to have shrunk since she saw it before: the slag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost in ...

— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Henry Rayne would have sat motionless in his chair by the fireside, with his inclined head resting on his hand, while he brooded over the years of his life and clasped anew in their old warmth, hands that had long grown cold, either in the gloominess of ...

— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... sir. All the time Mr. Caswall was staring, he kept his eyes fixed and motionless—but not as if he was in a trance. His forehead was wrinkled up, as it is when one is trying to see through or into something. At the best of times his face has not a gentle expression; but when ...

— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... is there a mark there? (He turns up the bracelet and sees the bruise made by his grasp. She stands motionless, not looking at him: fascinated, but on her guard.) Ffff! ...

— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... embittered, before him the future eternity has been overclouded; be contented with that sacrifice, and do not ask for the greatest too. Give back one man to his family, to his country, and to God—" But I cannot go. I must sit here motionless and count the beats of my pulse, and reckon how many ...

— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... his wife, and, as he went up into the bride-bed, gave Sigrid the torch to hold. The lights had almost burnt down, and she was hard put to it by the flame coming closer; but she showed such an example of endurance that she was seen to hold her hand motionless, and might have been thought to feel no annoyance from the heat. For the fire within mastered the fire without, and the glow of her longing soul deadened the burn of her scorched skin. At last Ottar bade her look to her hand. Then, modestly lifting ...

— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... in the middle of the water-closet on a tape from her corset, fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already motionless after an unprolonged agony, was slowly swinging in the air, and describing scarcely perceptible turns to the right and left around its vertical axis. Her face was bluishly-purple, and the tip of the tongue was thrust out between clenched and bared teeth. The lamp which had ...

— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... carried part of the American exhibition to the World's Fair of 1851. An "Et tu, Brute" expression came over his face, as he sank back with a sorrowful exclamation in the stern-sheets of the barge, which, as nautical convention requires, was lying motionless, oars horizontal, a ship's-length away; when, lo and behold, as a kind of appendix to the previous proceedings, bang! bang! went two more guns, filling the baker's dozen. It was, of course, somewhat limping, but ...

— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... stood motionless. Not a muscle of his face had moved. What were his thoughts? Upon what action was he resolving? To any one knowing the fierce violence of his pride the only possible solution was the total, immediate, final collapse of his adversary. ...

— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... the blood and brains from their crushed skulls, we shall have nothing more to learn from Indian warfare. How many mothers felt that pang in the pale dawn of that frosty morning in Deerfield? After the war party had done the work, and departed exulting with their captives, how many motionless corpses, in what ghastly attitudes, lay huddled in the darksome rooms of the little houses, or were tossed upon the trodden snow without, the looks of mortal agony frozen on their features? But you will hear the howl ...

— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... and sense sink to the spiritual repose of that serene calm, where in silence, happiness of the purest type best expresses itself; these newly wedded lovers, living in the inner world, lost to the outer, remained motionless and absorbed in ...

— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... the slightest attention to the proceedings. He has sat absorbed in thought, or at least in seeming indifference. You would almost suppose that, overcome by fatigue, or indisposition, he was sleeping, so perfectly motionless and silent is he, reclining, with folded arms, his legs stretched out to their full length, and his hat over his brow. The question has been discussed, argued, disputed upon for hours. No result seems to have been come to, and you are as ignorant of the ...

... for many miles beside his father's charger, the nature of the wooded country round Chad giving him many advantages. Edred wandered forth a little way to meet him on his return, and was presently aware of a cowled figure standing close against a great beech tree, and so motionless and rigid was the attitude that the boy had to look somewhat closely to be certain that it was not a part of ...

— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... to her now, bending over her. She never stirred. He rustled the branches, rattled his sword. Still she lay there quiet, motionless. He called her by her name, 'Bertalda!' but no voice answered him. He called again, more loud, 'Bertalda!' but only a sorrowful echo ...

— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... time the rider sat his horse motionless, frowning in indecision. Then he touched the dun lightly with his spurs, left the trail, and struck off to the north, following the ridge. He kept his gaze focused on the little ranch. The only sign of ...

— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... little giant was sent to town for policemen, a sign of confidence which seemed greatly to please him. For a half hour we smoked and joked and discussed, like so many cattle in the shambles, the three prisoners, two found guilty and the third suspected, who stood silent and motionless against the wall. Three policemen in shoddy uniforms, armed with clubs and enormous revolvers sticking out through their short coat-tails, at length appeared, of the same class and seeming little less frightened than the prisoners. They were ...

— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... could not avoid openly expressing his admiration of the excellent disposition of the enemy. The Araucanian soldiers, whose heads were adorned with beautiful plumes of feathers, seemed as if going to a banquet, instead of the doubtful chance of battle. For some time the two armies remained motionless, as if observing each other; when at length the signal of attack was sounded by Quepuantu, the vice-toqui, by order of Putapichion. The governor then gave orders to the Spanish horse to charge that belonging to the enemy; but it ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... was that the chief would hear the throbbing of his heart. He dared not draw his head into the tree, fearing that the action would attract the notice of the Apache; so he remained as motionless as the trunk of the tree itself, waiting for the danger to pass. Finally, the Indian was heard moving forward again, and the cramped and aching fugitive began to breathe more freely. He could detect that soft rippling through the ...

— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... swimming for safety, when two words from me changed all this terror into equally clamorous joy. I called to them "Totabu," the word into which they had tortured my name; and "Aidarah," an expression signifying both friend and good. They stood motionless, waiting for a repetition of the cry, to convince themselves that their ears had not deceived them; but on my reiterating "Totabu Aidarah," they burst into the wildest acclamations of joy; called aloud to the shore, ...

— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... abysses without a bottom. Then I came suddenly into still noonday solitudes, where no wind of heaven ever intruded, and where vast meadows of poppies, and slender, lily-looking flowers spread themselves out a weary distance, all silent and motionless forever. Then again I journeyed far down away into another country where it was all one dim and vague lake, with a boundary line of clouds. And out of this melancholy water arose a forest of tall eastern trees, like a wilderness of dreams. And I have in mind that the shadows of the trees ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... in sunbeams and were caught in a spider's web. I leaned against the casement, and watched those two glorious creatures, till they disappeared in the forest-glades; and then I turned. Perdita had not moved; her eyes fixed on the ground, her cheeks pale, her very lips white, motionless and rigid, every feature stamped by woe, she sat. Half frightened, I would have taken her hand; but she shudderingly withdrew it, and strove to collect herself. I entreated her to speak to me: "Not ...

— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... it is essentially necessary that I should receive from you, as my heir, a full and complete explanation. Under what circumstances did you beat Captain Scarborough in the streets late on the night of the 3d of June last? And how did it come to pass that you left him bleeding, speechless, and motionless on ...

— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... with the lengthened rope, cast after cast, paying little attention to the work of Banion, who dragged out his man and bent over him as he lay motionless on the safe edge of the treacherous sunken sands which ...

— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... serves as her bedroom, where she has a separate fireplace. She is not allowed to descend to the main part of the house, and may not sit by the fire of the family. For four days she is bound to remain motionless in a sitting posture. She fasts during the day, but is allowed a little food and drink very early in the morning. After the four days' seclusion she may leave her room, but only through a separate opening cut in ...

— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... dawn of a moody October, a pale Ghostly motionless vapor began to prevail Over city and camp; like the garment of death Which (is formed by) the face it conceals. 'Twas the breath War, yet drowsily yawning, began to suspire; Wherethrough, here and there, flash'd an eye of red fire, And closed, from some rampart beginning to bellow Hoarse challenge; ...

— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... heavily carpeted stair, along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a large library. A group of people were in this room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a couch. Another door communicated with a small study, and through the opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet. The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician, the bizarre figure crawling, ...

— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... master sat motionless for some time, gazing at the floor as if in meditation. Then he rose, went to his book-case and took down a large thick volume, which he ...

— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... M'Lellan perceiving what was done, fired his carabine at one of the robbers and made him bite the dust; the rest took to flight, but carried off the box notwithstanding. Mr. M'Lellan immediately ran up to Mr. Reed; but finding the latter motionless and bathed in blood, he hastened to rejoin Mr. Stuart, urging him to get away from these robbers and murderers. But Mr. Stuart, being a self-possessed and fearless man, would not proceed without ascertaining if Mr. Reed were really dead, or if he were, without ...

— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... hill or wood, it is surprising how large a mass of men can be pushed into the forward trenches without any disclosure of movement to the enemy. Scores of thousands of men may be packed away waiting motionless for the word, more thousands may be pouring slowly up the communication ways, and still more thousands standing ready a mile or two behind the lines; and yet to any eye looking from the enemy's side the country is ...

— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... Hence also that peculiar interest which the pranks of our mischievous relatives excite even in spectators not apt to appreciate the comic features of the spectacle. In the monkey-house of the Philadelphia Zoo I have seen saturnine burghers stand motionless for hours together, and contemplative children rapt in reveries that had little to do with the hope of witnessing a beast-fight. They seemed to feel the spell of a secret veiled in grotesque symbols, but disclosing occasional revelations of its ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... Lawson gave the warning, Jan half lifted himself, and the struggling quartet floundered across the tent into a muddle of furs and blankets. In its passage it cleared the body of a man, who lay motionless, bleeding from ...

— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... the prayer, Deep was the silence, and every head bare; The Priest alone standing, they knelt all around, Myriads on myriads, like rocks on the ground. Kneeling and motionless—"Dust unto dust. He died as becometh the faithful and just— Placing in God his reliance ...

— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... night he woke. Some sound was threatening him. It was London, coming to get him and torture him. The light in his room was dusty, mottled, gray, lifeless. He saw his door, half ajar, and for some moments lay motionless, watching stark and bodiless heads thrust themselves through the opening and withdraw with sinister alertness till he sprang up and ...

— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... seen through the veil of a heavy and thick mist. No dew had fallen in the morning; the turf was dried up for want of moisture, the flowers were withered. The birds sung less inspiritingly than usual amid the boughs, which remained as motionless as death. The strange confused and animated murmurs, which seemed born of, and to exist by the sun, that respiration of nature which is unceasingly heard amid all other sounds, could not be heard now, and never had the silence been so profound. The king ...

— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... and stood motionless by the jamb, waiting, ethereally white in the moonshine. Suddenly upon the gallery pillars flashed yellow light. She should have gone back to bed, but a thrill of unknown fear held her. By and by the yellow light went out with that quickness which ...

— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... music, Patty came down the great staircase. She paused on the landing, which was but a few steps from the bottom, and standing there, motionless as a picture, joined ...

— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... separated the road from the common, and feared that Sanders might see him. The congregation who could crane their necks sufficiently saw a black object, which they guessed to be the carter's hat, crawling along the hedge-top. For a moment it was motionless, and then it shot ahead. The rivals had seen each other. It was now a hot race. Sam'l dissembling no longer, clattered up the common, becoming smaller and smaller to the onlookers as he neared the top. More than one person in the gallery almost rose to their feet in their ...

— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... enduring conscious paralysis. And he? He laid his overcoat across one chair; next to it was the one on which the portrait of the young girl had been placed. In front of it Mr. Axtell kneeled down, buried his face in his hands, and remained motionless. A second tower I was imprisoned in, higher up than the first,—a well, deep with veins of liquid soul, such as man nor patriarch hath ever builded, and I, a bit of rock-moss, unable to reach out to the ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... cattle died, many of themselves were starved to death, several struck blind with the force of the hail and the glare of the snow, many of them maimed in their fingers and toes, and many stiff and motionless with the extremity of the cold, who had yet ...

— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... feathers in the dust as it shuffled along. At first, it was amusing to watch for the mouth to open, and then pop in a spoonful of cream. But this soon became monotonous, especially when she learned that no matter how long she sat motionless beside the pillow, the bright little eyes blinked wide awake at her ...

— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... candle or torch but the blessed white light of day. It was the longed-for opening, though still far away. He thought that he had out-distanced Radicofani and stumbled on, exultation giving him new strength when a sudden eclipse of this star of hope made him crouch motionless, grovelling close to the earth. A man's head and shoulders were silhouetted blackly against the brightness. The man peered cautiously into the tunnel, and listened; but neither hearing nor ...

— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... first. Many years' experience of being tackled at full speed on the football field had taught him how to fall. The stranger, whose football days, if he had ever had any, were long past, had gone down with a crash, and remained on the pavement, motionless. Fenn was conscious of an ignoble impulse to fly without stopping to chat about the matter. Then he was seized with a gruesome fear that he had injured the man seriously, which vanished when the ...

— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... his back, and fitted an arrow to its place. Then the bow-string twanged, and the arrow hurtled through the air, and sank deep into a great pine tree a few feet from where the Colonel was lying. For several minutes the Indian stood as motionless as the trees around him. Then picking up the fish, he glided silently forward, and reaching the pine, he fastened them to the embedded arrow. This done, he cast a quick glance toward the still form near at hand, turned and moved swiftly away. In another minute he had recovered his weapons, ...

— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... gulls, those gossiping concierges of the bay, who rise like a squall of snow as I make a clean breast of my presence, and start across the soggy, slippery mud toward the marsh running out to the open sea. A curlew, motionless on his long legs, calls cheerfully from the point of sand: "Curli—Curli!" Strong, cheerful old bird. The rifts of white mist are lifting from the bay, thinned into rose vapour now, as the sun creeps above ...

— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... A Bean-stripe: also Apple-Eating, Ferishtah is asked—Is life a good or bad thing, white or black? "Good," says Ferishtah, "if one keeps moving. I only move. When I stop, I may stop in a black place or a white. But everything around me is motionless as regards me, and is nothing more than stuff which tests my power of throwing light and colour on them as I move. It is I who make life good or bad, black or white. I am like the moon going through vapour"—and ...

— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... rare form fluttered about among the trailing vines, and bright green lizards darted in and out of the stone wall. Then an eagle or a vulture would swoop down from the heights, and settle himself on some pinnacle of rock, where he remained, motionless ...

— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... looked down upon that awful scene. In the clear morning air, the smoke of the guns curled up lazily and hung like a funeral pall over the mangled, bleeding form. Four bullets had pierced his body. He fell on his face and lay motionless for a few seconds. Then he began to slowly raise his head. Fernando came near and stood in front of him. Ten thousand years could not efface that scene from his mind. He continued to raise his head and body without a struggle. He looked the captain in the eye, ...

— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... particularly if extravagant. Most likely then, such readers of our Apology as have that organ 'large' will be delighted with Newton's rhodomontade about a God who resists nothing, feels nothing, and yet with condescension truly divine, not only contains all things, but permits them to move in His motionless and 'universal presence'; for 'news' more extravagant, never fell from the lips of an idiot, or adorned ...

— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... was ended by a loud order from above. McGuire turned as if he had been spoken to by the leader on the throne. The thin figure was leaning far forward; his eye were boring into those of the lieutenant, and he held the motionless pose for many minutes. To the angry man, staring back and upward, there ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... compelled to believe in the existence of an arctic continent; in fact, at the creation of the world, after the cooling of the terrestrial crust, the waters formed by the condensation of the atmospheric vapor were compelled to obey the centrifugal force, to fly to the equator and leave the motionless extremities of the globe. Hence the necessary emersion of the countries near the Pole. The doctor considered this reasoning very just. And ...

— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... army suddenly began to advance, the veterans and the militia together, uttering great shouts, while the Indians on the flanks gave forth the war whoop without ceasing. Robert remained motionless. The steadfastness of soul that he had acquired on the island controlled him now. Inwardly he was in a fever, but outwardly he showed no emotion. He glanced at Montcalm on the black horse, and St. Luc on the white, and then at the ...

— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... preserves our gravity at some of the most important emergencies in our lives. The two ladies waited the coming ordeal together gravely, as became the occasion. The silent maid flitted noiseless up stairs. The silent man waited motionless in the lower regions. Outside, the street was a desert. Inside, the ...

— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... lying to, her engines motionless, and the Dunkery Beacon was coming ahead like a furious ram on a course, which, if not quickly changed, would cause her to strike the smaller vessel almost amidships. It became plainer and plainer every second that the Dunkery did not intend to change her course, ...

— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... Susanna, very grimly. They all looked at her, and Jack De Baron raised his eyebrows, and sat for a moment motionless. Lady Susanna knew that Jack De Baron was intending to ridicule her. Then she remembered that should this perverse young woman insist upon going to Mrs. Houghton's house with so objectionable a companion, her duty to her brother demanded that she ...

— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... same time makes a sign to Ferdinand). Hold, Egmont!—Your sword!-(The centre door opens and discloses the gallery, which is occupied with guards, who remain motionless.) ...

— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... I thought the bird had fallen to the ground; but, as we looked, we saw by the swelling in the creature's throat that it had secured its prey. Again it drew back into its former position, where it remained perfectly motionless; while the other birds came nearer and nearer, and one at length took the place of its unfortunate fellow which had been captured. After a little time the first bird was swallowed, and another caught in the same manner. I was anxious to shoot the serpent. I fired, but missed, ...

— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... police officers exchanged glances, the judge coughed, the crowd of loafers shifted ballast and rested on the other foot. Only the prisoner stood motionless and erect. ...

— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman

... the throat to the ground, and girded about the waist; and wearing caps similar to that of the Rajah. Kajees, counsellors, and shaven mitred Lamas were there, to the number of twenty, all planted with their backs to the wall, mute and motionless as statues. A few spectators were huddled together at the lower end of the room, and a monk waved about an incense pot containing burning juniper and other odoriferous plants. Altogether the scene ...

— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... and thank him, he advanced towards him, but perceived he was coming to prevent him. The two princes drew near, and the sultan of Harran discovering Codadad in the brave warrior who had just assisted him, or rather defeated his enemies, became motionless with joy and surprise. "Father," said Codadad to him, "you have sufficient cause to be astonished at the sudden appearance before your majesty of a man, whom perhaps you concluded to be dead. I should have been so had not heaven preserved me still to serve you against your enemies." "O my son!" ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... snake encircling a monkey, as if in gentle and playful embrace. Suddenly tightening its folds, a crackling sound was heard; the writhing coils were then slowly unwound—and, with a shudder, he beheld the monster licking over the motionless figure, till it was covered with a viscid slime. Then the serpent began to devour his prey; and, when gorged and helpless, behold, it was immediately fallen upon by two other snakes. To his disturbed fancy, there was a dim resemblance between their heads ...

— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... solicitous in her care for him if he falls ill, but, as far as possible, she goes her own way and leaves the little fellow to go his. From the first she gives her child the perfectly free use of his body and, within a limited area, of the camp ground. She does not bundle him into a motionless thing or bind him helplessly on a board; on the contrary, she does not trouble her child even with clothing. The Florida Indian baby, when very young, spends his time, naked, in a hammock, or on a deer skin, or on ...

— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley

... under Time's control. Though destitute of understanding, he still regards himself as endued therewith, and though transcending the (four and twenty) topics, regards himself as one included among them. Though deathless, he still regards himself as liable to death, and though motionless regards himself to be endued with motion. Though not possessed of a material case, he still regards himself as possessed of one; and though unborn, he still regards himself as invested with birth. Though transcending penances, he ...

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... standing with his arms outstretched toward Eliza Parsons, who, a few paces away, had her back to the door of her own chamber, from which she had evidently just stepped. She stood motionless, looking curiously at the youth ...

— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne

... in the doorway, motionless, as if she had been there some time. I didn't know if she were merely knocked flat about the wolves and Collins, or scared Macartney might have found out something about her. But she was staring at Macartney's unconscious back as you look at a chair or anything, without seeing it, and ...

— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... at her side broke the spell of her gloomy musing and, glancing down, she saw the bit of stiff paper lying motionless beside her, and thinking it something she might herself have dropped, reached idly down and ...

— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... made it look the very incarnation of cruelty and brute strength—black lakes and grisly reeds as high as bamboo—prodigious black serpents troubling the water, and rearing their long spiry necks above the surface—gigantic alligators and crocodiles resting motionless in the shallows, with their snouts high in the air—hideous toads or such-like forbidding reptiles, many with tusks like the walrus, and some with glorious eyes, crouching on the banks or waddling ...

— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... contents, the deep flush which crept across his face betrayed the fact that it was recognized. He commenced to read the sheet with a studied carelessness; as he proceeded, the carelessness gave way to a troubled frown. For some time after he had finished, he sat motionless. When he looked up, his mood was contemptuous. "So this ...

— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... the horseman turned into the road some distance ahead of them and rode straight for the forest. Then, for the first time, Gwynne observed a second rider, motionless at the roadside, and in the shadow of the towering, leafless trees that marked the portal through which they must enter the forest. The flying horseman slowed down as he neared this solitary figure, ...

— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... at high speed she threw up great waves from her bows. Her stern seemed curiously deep in the water. When she was almost abreast of our lighthouse Bob hailed her. Her engines were stopped at once. A sailor with a boathook in his hand sprang into her bow and stood there motionless while the boat glided on. I could see the young officer who steered gazing curiously at Bob's entrenchments. Then the senior officer ...

— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... gold—but it had lost its power; Rascal flung it at my feet: "I will take nothing from a shadowless being." He turned his back upon me, put his hat on his head, and went slowly out of the apartment whistling a tune. I stood there like a petrifaction—looking after him, vacant and motionless. ...

— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso

... expected calm fell over the water; and the boats were ordered away to take possession of the two whalers, that lay motionless some eight miles from the "Essex." The distance was soon passed, and the two ships were ordered to surrender, which they quickly did, much astonished to find a United States man-of-war in that region. A breeze shortly after springing up, ...

— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... to come and see me, my dear," cried Lady Adelaide, with a parting wave of her fan as she moved away, leaving the girl sitting there, silent and motionless. People brushed by her as they left the room, but she paid no heed. Mrs. Vavasour spoke to her as she passed on her way to supper, but Madelon did not answer. All at once she sprang up, looking round as if longing to escape; as she did so, her eyes met Graham's; he was standing close ...

— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... Limousin remained motionless in his corner, against the wall, too startled to understand anything as yet, too frightened to move a finger, while Henriette, with her hands resting on a small, round table, her head bent forward, with her hair hanging down, the bodice ...

— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... of hours the warden remained thus in the garden, now walking, now standing motionless on the turf, and then, as his legs got weary, sitting unconsciously on the garden seats, and then walking again. And Eleanor, hidden behind the muslin curtains of the window, watched him through the trees as he now came in sight, and ...

— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... again. The stillness, the absence of storm in the taxi was so unnatural that I began to miss it. "Buck up, old fool," I said, but he sat motionless by my side, plunged in thought. I tried to cheer him up. I pointed out King's Cross to him; he wouldn't even bark at it. I called his attention to the poster outside the Euston Theatre of The Two Biffs; for all the regard he showed he might never ...

— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... from the wood, carrying a stretcher. A wounded man was lying on it. He did not move arms or legs, but he howled and screamed;, his voice rising and falling in a weird inhuman manner. A little after, two more wounded were carried out on stretchers. They were white, silent and motionless. ...

— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... did not fail to examine our shoes before putting them on in the morning, lest the scorpions should have established a squatter's right therein. Flying foxes were seen upon the trees, sometimes hanging motionless by the feet, at others swinging to and fro with a steady sweep. Ants were now and then observed moving over the ground in columns a foot wide and three or four yards long, evidently with a well defined purpose. In the morning light, after the sun had risen, clouds ...

— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... nothing I have ever seen and of nothing I have read about except the city in the Arabian tale where all the inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after centuries mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they last knew in life. Here the Wagner audience dress as they please, and sit in the dark and worship in silence. At the Metropolitan in New York they sit ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... pushes back his chair, and dashes across the room to the cupboard. He takes the black bottle from the shelf, applies it to his lips, and remains for some time motionless. He then returns to finish the delineation of G.H. with the ...

— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... themselves. Along the farthest margin of the beach waders ran busily backwards and forwards in order to collect their food. At the summits of the cliffs a flock of glaucous gulls were breeding, and on the slopes of the low land the white mountain owl was seen lying in wait for its prey, quiet and motionless for hours, but as usual it was wary and shy, so that it was only with difficulty that the hunter could get within range of it. At some places there extended between the foot of the "loomery" and the sea a stone-bestrewn beach, which at high water was mostly covered by the sea, and at low ...

— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... deepest melancholy he took no notice of any one; often for hours his eyes streamed tears or a more fearful gloom overpowered him. All outward things seemed to have lost their existence relatively to him and only one circumstance could in any degree recall him from his motionless and mute despair: he would never see me. He seemed insensible to the presence of any one else, but if, as a trial to awaken his sensibility, my aunt brought me into the room he would instantly rush out ...

— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley