"Machine-like" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time the Dervishes at Firket watched in senseless apathy the deliberate, machine-like preparations for their destruction. They should have had good information, for although the Egyptian cavalry patrolled ceaselessly, and the outpost line was impassable to scouts, their spies, as camel-drivers, water-carriers, and the like, were in the camp. They may not, perhaps, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... bulk of the men of the C.I.D. It may be that sometimes they realise that a man's life or liberty depends on their scrutiny, but for the most part they do their work with cold deliberation and machine-like precision. Is one set of finger-marks identical with another? That is all they have to answer. It is the pride of the department that since it has been established it has ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... Cossacks turned their attention to the infantry, which, firing with machine-like precision and accuracy, dealt havoc to the ranks of the Russian horsemen ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... brought against the institution. Here life for the inmates is made too easy, and little can be known by them of the actual struggles of the world. The life is machine-like, and all is routine clockwork. By the discipline, which is necessary, much of the spontaneity of growing children is destroyed, and the surroundings are pervaded with the spirit of uniformity, "solidarity" and "dead levelism." On the other hand, the children fail to learn many important lessons ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... practical spirit in which the Roman always tended to play with the pawns of his business game, even when they were freemen and fellow-citizens. A man like Cato, who had sense and honesty enough to look after his own business, elaborated a machine-like system for governing his household, the aim of which was the maximum of profit with the minimum amount of humanity which is consistent with the attainment of such an end. The element of humanity is, however, accidental. There is ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... harder and burst into fresh speed, finding himself surprised that he could. In the thrill of it he forgot his double load, forgot the close-pressing horses, forgot irritating dust. On he galloped, racing forward with machine-like evenness—on his left the paralleling horsemen, to his rear yelling and shooting, on his right his own men and horses, and for them he felt he ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... the train of a court dress. In this bright land, with its rose-coloured distances, it is strange to see them, all so sombrely clothed, spots of mourning, as it were, in the gay fields and the flaring desert. Machine-like creatures, all untaught, they yet possess by instinct, as did once the daughters of Hellas, a sense of nobility in attitude and carriage. None of the women of Europe could wear these coarse black stuffs with such a majestic harmony, and none surely could so raise their bare ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... marvellous, man-created substitute for the dead: a vast, shadowy thing which ruled their lives with passionless precision; which ordered their waking hours even to the minutest particulars; which assumed machine-like charge of their persons, their personal expenses, their bringing-up, their schooling, the items of ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... something still so terrifying to me about his machine-like efficiency," she said, "that I can believe him capable of anything. His whole plan was so perfectly thought out, down to the smallest detail. It only broke down through the purely accidental. Once through my losing the needle—though that wasn't so bad as his losing his temper!—and once because ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... and destroy so many fellows of my sort! If I am tempted what must it mean to the ordinary man?" He noted with angry shame that he felt a swelling of pride because he, of so lowly an origin, born no better than the machine-like lackeys, had been able to push himself in upon—yes, up among—these people on terms of equality. And it was, for the moment, in vain that he reminded himself that most of them were of full as lowly origin as he; that few indeed could ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... share, if not a major portion, of rural pupils will still be taught in the small, isolated, district school; there is danger that this district school may be neglected. Moreover, increased school machinery always invites undue reliance upon machine-like methods. Centralization permits, but does not guarantee, greater efficiency. A system like this one must be vitalized by constant and close touch with the life and needs and aspirations of the ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... handsome, dashing fellows; one the son of an English nobleman, one the brother of an eminent Canadian politician, one related to a celebrated English dramatist. He ran his eye along the line, then turned to Mab, raised his cap with machine-like precision, and said: "No, I suppose you do not understand that. Keep Aleck Windsor from Pretty Pierre ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... do it, nor did any of his personal followers. They taught when "the spirit moved them." I think none of the great preachers ever spoke with machine-like periodicity—certainly Savonarola did not. He preached ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... as suddenly as it had begun. There was a coming and going of officers and some consultation in an undertone. The judge left the room and the impassive-faced Javert began that machine-like writing. After a while ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... water. This again required a precise and subtle judgment. A fraction of a second too long in the water and the fine and silken edge of the proper heat was lost, and Martin found time to marvel at the accuracy he developed—an automatic accuracy, founded upon criteria that were machine-like ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... it was possible for our troops to move with such machine-like precision as to hold every nek at our mercy. But whilst Rundle held the ground to the south, and kept the Boers for ever on the move by his restless activity, Clements and Paget moved on Slabbert's Nek, Hunter swept down on Retief's Nek, Naauwpoort Nek was ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... to smile, and could think of nothing to say. I was a little abashed, notwithstanding the tone of haughty indifference I took. I began to feel very young before this machine-like impersonation ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... farm-house by reciting whole chapters on winter nights, and I have some reason to believe that the book gave the boy a taste for literature which ended in his becoming a novelist. But, as Grant went on with machine-like regularity, how curiously similar to each other his books became! Narvaez Cifuentes, in "The Romance of War," is the type of all the villains; the young dragoons were all alike; the wooden heroines might have been chopped out by a literary carpenter from one model; the charges, the escapes, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... took the field amid a riotous welcoming from the umbrella packed stands. Judd studied the blue jerseyed youths of Canton in comparison with the dark red clad boys of Trumbull. It seemed to him that the Canton team was better drilled, the players moved with more snap and machine-like precision. Judd felt ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... world before this century; a city built merely by trade, built for the home of labor, of machines, and of engines, and for the dwelling-place (one cannot call it the home) of crowds of human beings, whose value is, for the most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of forges and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to grumble in a half-incoherent way, but Jawn was as silent as at the start. To Harvey, who even in the excitement was afraid to sit down for fear of falling asleep, the engineer was a marvel in his machine-like self-control. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... superficial changes and slightly increase the number of troops, while leaving the all-important matter of organisation almost untouched; and that, too, despite the vivid contrast which every one could see between the machine-like regularity of the German mobilisation and the chaos that reigned ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... among Anglo-Saxons, they have human features, quick, responsive, mobile. Instead of the slow, long limbs creaking in stiff integuments, they have active members, for the most bare or moving freely in loose robes. Instead of a mumbled, monotonous, machine-like emission of sound they have real speech, vivacious, varied, musical. Their children are the loveliest in the world; so gay, so sturdy, so cheeky, yet never rude. It is a pure happiness merely to walk in the streets and look at them. It is a pure happiness, I might almost say, to look at anyone, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... was famous throughout the Alleghenia Guard,—an eye accustomed to control, not a single man, or two, or three, but a thousand, moving as one at his command; an eye enforcing obedience immediate, machine-like, and unquestioning. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... land when a string of small flags broke out from her mizzen rigging, and almost as if by magic, the yard arms of all three vessels were alive with men, and royals, top gallants, and mainsails with machine-like precision were dewed up and furled, and each ship, stripped of all but its topsails, rounded to, with ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... men with buckets of drinking water, into which the soldiers dipped their aluminum cups. Temporary field post offices were established in advance, so that messages could be gathered in as the columns passed. Here and there were men to offer biscuits and handfuls of prunes. In methodical, machine-like progress came the ammunition wagons, commissariat carts, field kitchens, teams of heavy horses attached to pontoons, traction engines hauling enormous siege guns, motor plows for excavating trenches, aeroplanes, carriages containing surgeons, automobiles ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... voice broke off, because a new sound was coming from the speaker. It was a voice that was unhuman and queerly horrible and somehow machine-like. Hoots and howls and whistles came from the speaker. Wailing sounds. Ghostly noises, devoid of consonants but broadcast on a wave-length close to the G.C. band and therefore produced by intelligence, though unintelligible. The unhuman ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... whatever. Their scores were exactly even. With machine-like precision he took his turn, utterly ignoring the grumbling criticisms of his adversary's play that were being freely expressed around the room. With the utmost steadiness he made his stroke, scoring two points. Then ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... not be difficult to relate. There was little or no incident to break the monotony of their enforced residence among the surly Japatites; the same routine obtained from day to day. Sultry, changeless, machine-like were those hundred days and nights. They looked forward with hopeful, tired eyes; never backward. There was nothing behind them but a dour waste, a bog through which they had driven themselves with a lash ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... rise at the end of a stroke, and fall as they commenced delivery of another. Their action was quick, steady, machine-like; they gripped the water deep, and made no slips; with a thought of the exhilaration an eagle must feel when swooping from his eyrie, the Prince looked at the cloud defiantly as a challenger might. Each moment the donjon ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... became one intense roar as the ten cartridges, which the magazine of the rifle holds, were discharged almost instantaneously. Nothing could live in front of such a fire. Valour, ferocity, fanaticism, availed nothing. All were swept away. The whistles sounded. The independent firing stopped, with machine-like precision, and the steady section volleys were resumed. This happened not once, but a dozen times during the six hours that the attack was maintained. The 20th Punjaub Infantry, and the cavalry also, sustained and repulsed the attacks delivered against their fronts with ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... it would be much better to go to college in Kansas than attend the University at Chicago, where, I felt, education was made an industry, just like pork-packing and the hundred other big concerns in that city. Kansas would encourage individuality more, be less appallingly machine-like. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the spire) certainly helps to impart an air of modernity to the building, that is lacking in far less ancient work, for oddly enough it is often the decaying features of the latest decorated style that impress the vulgar by their apparent age. The extreme care in the masonry has imparted a machine-like finish. As Professor Willis wrote: "The regularity of the size of the stones is astonishing. As soon as they had finished one part, they copied it exactly in the next, even though the additional expense was considerable. The masonry runs in even bands, and you may follow it from ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... to recognize that within even the most social group there are many relations which are not as yet social. A large number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get desired results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition and consent of those used. Such uses express physical superiority, or superiority of position, skill, technical ability, and command of tools, mechanical ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... to me! Remember that above all things I have always been respectable. Remind her that if I were too intelligent I should probably rob her of her secrets or money or something. I am really a most machine-like person. Nature meant me to be secretary to a clever woman, and my handwriting—don't forget my handwriting. Nothing so clear or so rapid ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mechanical device to wind up and set going, the artistic results of which it is capable never would have been obtained, and, I may add, this book never would have been written. The fact that artistic expression instead of machine-like precision has been its aim is what has caused its possibilities as a musical instrument to appeal to me. It cannot be sufficiently urged that in this country, as in every other, there is an immense amount ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... them and ask them to let him share in their labor. Then another thought came. The crawling figures came sharply into his line of vision. He no longer heard the voice of the youngest of the French boys that seemed to come out of the ground. The machine-like swing of the bodies of the plant setters suggested vaguely to his mind the possibility of building a machine that would do the work they were doing. His mind took eager hold of that thought and he was relieved. There had been something in the ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... you know what life in the Departments is without my telling you. But to me it isn't monotonous or machine-like. I am awfully interested in the people. Of course my immediate work is with the nice old Chief. I'm glad he is old, and gray-haired. It makes me feel comfortable and chaperoned. Do you know that I believe the reason ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... punishment drill with those dumb-bells for two hours without stopping. Of those hundred and twenty minutes he did not remit one. Long before their expiration I was ready to drop, but he came frequently to show that he had his eye upon me, and the horrible machine-like motion must continue. On other occasions I got punished for lying, when my only fault was the common childish inability to explain. "Why did you tear that piece of paper?" "Please, papa, I did not tear it; ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... solitary figure through the heavy darkness. And he marvelled, as he had marvelled before, at the machine-like perfection of these minions of the Iron Hand. Even in the face of their awful danger and amid the solemnity of the black night, the odd thought came to him that this stiff form turning about like a faithful and tireless weathercock to peer into the darkness roundabout, might ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... sheer nonsense. I have tried to understand how Germans arrive at it, and I believe it is by way of our cans of hot water brought at regular intervals every day in the year in every British household. I remember that their machine-like precision impressed M. Taine when he was in England, and certainly miss them sadly while we are abroad. Gretchen brings you no hot water unless you ask for it; but she will brush your clothes as a matter ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... time when the Pre-raphaelite School came into being the art of other lands as well as that of England was in need of an awakening impulse, and the Pre-raphaelite revolt against conventionality and the machine-like art of the period roused such interest, criticism, and opposition as to stimulate English art to new effort, and much of its progress in the last half-century is doubtless due to the discussions of the theories of this movement as well as ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... little communicant, with his bow on his arm and his taper in his hand, all combed and curled, goes to assist a poor old man lying on his wretched pallet with the whites of his eyes turned up to the sky? These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting and accent. The machine-like gestures of the little preachers with arms too short for the work, were answered by words learned by rote, so false as to set one's teeth on edge. The comical words of encouragement, the "consolation lavishly poured forth" ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... wiser system of education we may greatly increase the difference in people—Socialism would not hinder it. A higher average level of income—which is what Socialism ensures, will give people a chance to differ more than they do now. Our machine-like educational system, long hours of labor, specialized monotony of mill work, and "the iron law of wages" do tend to reduce us to a dead ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... only one person in all England who, arriving at Crawshaws, would not have been gently but firmly enfolded by the machine-like order of its perfect administration and been led in and introduced with rites proper to the occasion. But that one person was the Reverend Cyril Boom Bagshaw, and he now strolled across the threshold ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... change in the men. The uncouth, coarsely jesting, blackberry-picking fellows that lagged and straggled to the battle became soldiers in their instincts and rising excitement and courage, if not in machine-like discipline and coolness. As I rode here and there I could see that they were erect, eager, and that their eyes began to glow like coals from their dusty, sunburned visages. If there were occasional evidences of fear, there were more of resolution ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... developed by the laws of inner growth and independent of individual learning, there can be no doubt. This of course means that in the early days of a child's life, and later in so far as he is governed by these inborn tendencies, his conduct is machine-like and blind—with no purpose and no consciousness controlling or initiating the responses. Only after experience and learning have had an opportunity to influence these responses can the child be held responsible for his conduct, for only then does his conduct become ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... without seeming to move, and there he stood looking at her meekly. She leapt to him, and he shot off, as she arrived upon, the place where he had been. Perhaps she knew that only a genet, or a mongoose, could do that trick in a manner at once so machine-like and precise; and after that she merely sat, bent in a curve, with her lips up. But her spring had given her away, and he saw that she was lame. Perhaps he saw, too, the gleam of hunger, the wild, cruel gleam that forgets all else, in her eyes; but who am I ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... the unconscious implication in her words he gave no sign. The banker was not ignorant of the public sentiment toward himself and the men of his class in his profession. He had come to accept it with the indifference of his exact, machine-like habit. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... the gas and two lamps were lit. The company were still eating. The men, gorged with food, had unbuttoned their vests. McTeague's cheeks were distended, his eyes wide, his huge, salient jaw moved with a machine-like regularity; at intervals he drew a series of short breaths through his nose. Mrs. Sieppe wiped ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... bewildering swarms of su-katirs (water donkeys) engaged in the transportation of that important necessary up into the city from a stream that flows near the base of the hill. These unhappy animals do nothing from one end of their working lives to the other but toil, with almost machine-like regularity and uneventfulness, up the crooked, stony streets with a dozen large earthen-ware jars of water, and down again with the empty jars. The donkey is sandwiched between two long wooden troughs suspended to a rude pack-saddle, and each trough accommodates six jars, each ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... back set firm against a solid moral principle, it was his joy to strike out at a multitude of foes. They lost their heads as well as their tempers, but in the extremest moments of excitement and anger Mr. Adams's brain seemed to work with machine-like coolness and accuracy. With flushed face, streaming eyes, animated gesticulation, and cracking voice, he always retained perfect mastery of all his intellectual faculties. He thus became a terrible antagonist, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... being off the pitch; he retorted that I was tarred from the same stick and he proved it true, but there we sang together above the heads of venerable men who preached. They were good men, sometimes great scholars, but the ears they addressed were not always willing. A somewhat machine-like sermoniser who, it was irreverently declared, ran as if wound up but sometimes slipped a cog, had been known to pray "that the intemperate might become temperate, the intolerant tolerant, the industrious dustrious." Longfellow ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... unfailing, always fulfilling his duties with machine-like regularity, stern, impenetrable, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... wing the osprey rights itself and sails away (a methodic, unflurried flight) with fleeter white-belly in pursuit, which when within striking distance swoops again, to be faced by the grim, outstretched talons of the osprey, who has turned in flight with machine-like precision. So swift and sudden is the discreet upward swoop of the white-belly that it almost appears to be a rebound after contact with the bigger bird. So the scrimmage, or, to be exact, screamage, proceeds, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... gunners were coolly enthusiastic. They lifted their eyes every chance to the smoke-wreathed hillock from whence the hostile battery addressed them. The youth pitied them as he ran. Methodical idiots! Machine-like fools! The refined joy of planting shells in the midst of the other battery's formation would appear a little thing when the infantry came swooping out of ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... and gave a terse order. Delightedly, Pauline watched the brief, machine-like movements of the crew trimming the deck. Summers escorted her back to the conning tower. They descended. Within a few moments the wonderful craft was buried ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... helped himself pretty liberally, and, to her amazement, began to eat them with lightning speed. He bent fairly low over his plate, resting an elbow on each side, and, putting in the whole shrimp with his left hand, almost immediately seemed to take out the head and tail with the other, working with machine-like regularity. It was an accomplishment that Barbara was sure would bring him in a lot of money at a show, and she began to picture to herself a large advertisement, "Instantaneous Shrimp-eater," and the products that might ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... and universities of England a sad example of this error. What can be more deadening to the spirit, more foreign to religion, than the morning and evening prayers as they are carried on at Oxford and Cambridge with machine-like regularity! But also to England belongs the credit of the sad fact, that, according to Kohl's report, there live in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and London, thousands of men who have never enjoyed ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... the arrival of the surgeon and his two nurses, who set to work with the machine-like rapidity and precision of their highly-specialized craft. After a few minutes, the work completed, the surgeon turned to the two men who had been watching him so intently, with a ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... shape and movement. In a flash Howland saw a huge form leap from the gloom and caught the gleam of an uplifted knife. There was no time for him to leap aside, no time for him to reach for the revolver which he carried in his pocket. In such a crisis one's actions are involuntary, machine-like, as if life, hovering by a thread, preserves itself in its own manner and without thought or reasoning on the part ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... And the result was concrete practice. Kars was the guiding spirit, and Abe Dodds was the machine-like energy that drove the labor forward. Bill took no part in the work. His work lay in one direction only, and it was a work he carried out with a self-sacrifice only to be expected from him. His hospital was full ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... Yes, of course you do!" For Cyrillon with one of the quick changes of mood habitual to him, smiled, as his temporary irritation passed like a cloud, and his eyes softened—"You see, I am a machine,—educated to be a machine; and I am set down to do certain machine-like duties,—and one of these duties is,—regardless of your fame, your eccentric theories, your special work which you have chosen to make for yourself in the world,—to put you in possession of the money your father ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... him with machine-like accuracy. "Yes, sir, I deceived you. But my business was urgent nevertheless. That is my ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... oaths, and vociferations are heard in front of us. Our Captain commands us to fire by volleys: "Aim! Fire!" "They must have felt something," drawls out some one of us in a nasal, Montmartre-like voice. Then again: "Aim! Fire!" What sport! Then comes the cric-crac-cric-crac, sewing machine-like hammering of our mitrailleuses. Our Captain passes the word: "Fire low! fire low! Aim! Fire!" Volley follows volley. The enemy's dash seems checked. Their fire slackens. We hear their officers swearing and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... discipline of this splendid army of savages. That of the Zulu troops under the rule of Cetywayo, or even under that of Tshaka, might have equalled it, but could not possibly have surpassed it. Each company fell into rank with machine-like precision and celerity. The dead were left as they fell; those who were too grievously wounded to move received death from the swift, sure spear-stroke of a comrade; then, marching in five columns, the great army set forth on its return, striking ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... mile after mile with a steadiness that he had reduced to machine-like motion. He had timed himself, and the whole course was mentally charted for his guidance. If he reached the cut-off road at a certain time he would know things were moving just as swiftly as necessary. Those boys who strained themselves in that first seven ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... awkward squad. Under his influence privates learned how to obey and officers how to command; each individual merged the sense of individuality in that of homogeneousness and cohesion, until the original loose association of units became one grand unit endowed with the solidarity and machine-like quality of an efficient army. Patient labor produced a result so excellent that General Meade said long afterward: "Had there been no McClellan there could have been no Grant, for the army made no essential improvement under ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... himself, and at other times, "When shall I wake?" for he often persuaded himself that this was the troubled dream of a bad attack of fever, from which he would awaken some day quite in his right mind. Meanwhile, growing every hour more machine-like, he worked on and on always as if ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... quietly, in so matter of fact a way, that for the moment I was breathless. Like most other men, I had never sat face to face with one who had taken the life of another. Even soldiers, though they, we suppose, kill men, do it in a machine-like way. The killing is impersonal. The soldier handles the machine and it is the machine that kills. The individual soldier does not know whether he kills or not. That is why we are able to make much of the soldier, perhaps, I have thought since, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... nearly identical. The Jewish women and girls represent a formidable element to contend with, as they are now coming over in great numbers, and the question has so organized itself that each falls almost at once into her own place, and works with machine-like regularity ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... marvel that the defenders kept on fighting as long as they did. Already the door, beneath Wade's machine-like shooting, had been completely riddled; the windows were almost bare of glass; and great splinters of wood had been torn from the log walls by the heavy rifle bullets on their way through to the interior. Soon the door sagged and ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... perfectly burnished; the plumes nodding above the tall crests; the sway of ensigns and iron-shod spears; the bold, confident step, exactly timed and measured; the demeanor, so grave, yet so watchful; the machine-like unity of the whole moving mass—made an impression upon Judah, but as something felt rather than seen. Two objects fixed his attention—the eagle of the legion first—a gilded effigy perched on a tall shaft, with wings outspread until they met above its head. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... ado they commenced. The Kid handled his cards smoothly, surely, paying and taking bets with machine-like calm. The on-lookers ceased talking and prepared to watch, for now came the crucial test of the evening. Faro is to other games as war is ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... education, their environment. What chance have you under present conditions? None! For very shame, as the years pass on, you operatives will be better paid. What will it amount to? A few shillings a week more, the same life, the same anxieties, the same daily grinding toil, brainless, machine-like, leading you nowhere because there isn't a way out. There will still remain your masters; there will still remain you, the men. Can't you see what it is that I am aiming at? I want to make a great machine of all the industries of this country. The man with the gift ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... congregation had assembled in large numbers and the body of the church as well as the side aisles were comfortably filled. From time to time the ushers, with machine-like precision, took one or two persons from the patiently waiting line of non-pew-holders and escorted them to seats, a proceeding which began to irritate Armitage, seeing which Thornton grinned and observed, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... in the speed of the approaching horsemen. Then, as the English continued their work, firing with machine-like precision and deadly accuracy, the Germans came ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... there was a sudden shifting of the coloured jackets. The outsiders, nervous and overeager, were making their bids for the purse, and making them too soon. The flurry toward the front brought about a momentary spurt in the pace followed immediately by the steady, machine-like advance of Regulator, but as the chestnut horse moved up the brown mare went ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... excited. Kingozi passed them rapidly in review. But when Chake came forward, he paused in the machine-like regularity of his inspection. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... after all, Fate had been kind in removing her from the scene, even in custody, for she could hardly have borne to watch the proceedings. Vincent Jopp made rings round his antagonist. Hole after hole he won in his remorseless, machine-like way, until when lunch-time came at the end of the eighteenth he was ten up. All the other ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... series of complicated movements so thoroughly automatic that they will be gone through with accurately and precisely, at the word of command. It means the sort of discipline that makes certain activities machine-like in their operation,—so that we do not have to think about which one comes next. Thus the mind is relieved of the burden of looking after the innumerable details and may use its precious energy for ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... British cantonments. At length he was so near the town, that he was surprised to have come upon no inner line of sentries. Even as he wondered, he emerged from a copse into a field, and received the usual challenge—spoken this time in so quick, machine-like a manner, and accompanied by so prompt and precise a levelling of the musket, that he knew 'twas a British regular he ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of him, and brought visitors to look at him. In ten hours three hundred dozen bottles passed through his hands. This meant that he had attained machine-like perfection. All waste movements were eliminated. Every motion of his thin arms, every movement of a muscle in the thin fingers, was swift and accurate. He worked at high tension, and the result was that he grew nervous. At night his muscles twitched in his sleep, and in the daytime he could ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... Parrakeets whirl roostwards with machine-like synchronism of flight; geese wheel down in more or less regular formation; but these herons concentrated along straight lines, each describing its individual radius from the spot where it caught its last fish or shrimp to ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... here and there, with plate, pictures, statues, ornaments heaped in wild confusion, crowds of people, in every variety of strange dishabille, gathered round; two long lines of them handing bucket after bucket, with machine-like regularity, from the fountain; others removing the furniture from the terrace; cushions, ormolu, fine china, handed out of the lower windows; the whole seen by the wild lurid light that flashed from the windows above, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Even the most machine-like of the sere and withered book-keepers held their pens in suspense as Haldane passed hastily toward Mr. Arnot's private office, followed by the reporter, whose alert manner and observant, questioning eye suggested an ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... harmony. Centralization and freedom must everywhere coexist, and be equally operative. Conservatism is as important to society as progress. Conservatism overbalancing progress, destroys society by stagnation, blotting out the individuality of the person and moulding men into machine-like uniformity; progress preponderating over conservatism, destroys the community by disrupting bands of association before new methods are sufficiently understood, and giving reins to a liberty whose untutored use can end only in anarchy and unbridled license. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... familiar, interfering; but Bridget is Bridget, and I might as soon command her not to use her tongue, as to stop taking an interest in anything that concerns "Herself". As a matter of fact, I don't try. Servility, and decorum, and a machine-like respect are to be hired for cash at any registry office; but Bridget's red-hot devotion, her child-like, unshakable conviction that everything that Miss Evelyn does and says, or doesn't say and doesn't do, is absolutely right—ah, that is beyond ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the little bank, the shabby little banker, renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... entered Radbourn's office, he saw a young lady seated at a desk, manipulating a typewriter. She had the ends of a forked rubber tube hung in her ears, and did not see Bradley. He observed that the tube connected with a sewing-machine-like table and a swiftly revolving little cylinder, which he recognized as a phonograph. At the window sat Radbourn, talking in a measured, monotonous voice into the mouthpiece of a large flexible tube, which connected with another phonograph. His back was toward Bradley, and he ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... have the machine-like discipline that you affect," was the French officer's reply. "But we replace it with something far better—a love of country that will cause us to sacrifice ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... execute a kind of dance. Les Plantons rocked and applauded. Celina smiled beautifully at the men who were staring from every window of The Enormous Room and, with a supreme effort, went over and dragged Renee (who had neatly and accurately folded up with machine-like rapidity in the mud) through the doorway and into the house. Eventually Lena followed her example, capturing Lily en route. The scene must have consumed all of twenty minutes. The plantons were so ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... two enormous battle-flags—wrought by the dainty fingers of Japan's fairest daughters—flaunting defiantly from her mast-heads. It must have been a magnificent sight to behold that proud fleet steaming out to sea, ship after ship falling into line with machine-like precision and keeping distance perfectly, first the squadron of cruisers, led by the Yakumo; then the other five armoured cruisers, with the Asama in the van; then the four battleships— accompanied ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... you ever dreamed of virile deeds, and vast, And then come back from dreams with wobbly knees, To find your way (the braver vision past), By picking meekly at typewriter keys; By bending o'er a ledger, day by day, By some machine-like drudging? No great woe To grapple with. Slow, painful is the way, And still, the bravest ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... never wavered from the other. Burton, moisture oozing from his forehead, stood there, hesitant, staring back at old Isaac, half in a fascinated gaze, half as though trying to read some sign of weakness in the bestial countenance that confronted him. And then, very slowly, in an automatic, machine-like way, his hand groped into the inside pocket of his vest—and old Isaac cackled out ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... machine-like Elspeth! Margot felt a pang of pity for her unappreciated efforts, and the determination to spare her one task at least brought with ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... suddenly starting asunder as if in astonished anger, with a portentous hiss, you might have taken him for an automaton moved by springs, and imitating human actions in a very wonderful manner—so regular and machine-like were his motions, and so little did he seem to think about what he was at. A little passing attention, a hint now and then from his head, was sufficient to keep his hands right, for they were so used to their work, and had been so well taught by his head, ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... South of Africa to shoot elephants through the small ribs; neither is it probable that many of us would like to pass several years of their valuable lives shut up in a loose, rolling, sea-bathing-machine-like wagon, with their own beloved shadow alone for all Christian company. Let us have a ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... coming socialization of industry we must guard against that same tyranny of the majority that has marked democracy in the making of laws. There must, for instance, persist in this future economics a certain minimum of machine-like work and prompt obedience and submission. This necessity is a simple corollary from the hard facts of the physical world. It must be accepted with the comforting thought that its routine need not ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... style of "Pelleas et Melisande" in particular. Men as disparate as Schoenberg and Magnard and Igor Strawinsky have been seeking, in their own fashion, the one through a sort of mathematical harshness, the second through a Gothic severity, the third through a machine-like regularity, to give their work a new boldness, a new power and incisiveness of design. Something of the same sharpness and sheerness was attained by Berlioz, if not precisely by their means, at least to a degree no less remarkable than ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the prisoner a form shaped by his own fancy and a grief proportioned to his own power of suffering. How we long to pierce the thoughts and feel the heart-beats and watch the trickling tears behind that machine-like exterior, that impassible mask! Our imagination is powerfully excited by the dumbness of that fate borne by one whose words never reached the outward air, whose thoughts could never be read on the hidden features; by the isolation of forty ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... secretly surprised at the patience, even the interest, with which he listened to her. She would have been still more surprised to know that his wonderful memory was nailing down every word with machine-like accuracy. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... story to the effect that the speed launch must have reached the schooner and was lying alongside with its intended cargo being delivered with no loss of time. Probably, if everything went with machine-like precision, the speed boat would soon be fully laden and started back toward some secret haven where big motor trucks would be waiting to transport the cargo to Tampa, St. Petersburg, or some ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... in such an atmosphere is bliss. One does not seem to breathe, as at home, machine-like, just what is necessary for the maintenance of life, but, exhilarated with the pureness and freshness, one drinks in long breaths of pleasure. It would be difficult to give an idea of the charm of our morning and evening rambles—the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... another, behold how their movements exactly coincide! The hawk-hunted bird often escapes by reaching the cover of a tree or a bush, but not by dodging its pursuer, as a rabbit or a squirrel will dodge a dog. Schools of fish act with the same machine-like unity. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... lips, though blushing as she did so, for this young woman had fancies regarding lips and regarding kisses which should be entertained by a greater number of the women of the land. Then she told him to lie upon the sand again; that she wanted to look at him. And he obeyed, machine-like. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... resistance, struggle or lie down on the ground—they will overpower him, lift him, bind him and carry him, bound, to the gallows. And the fact that this machine-like work will be performed over him by human beings like himself, lent to them a new, extraordinary and ominous aspect—they seemed to him like ghosts that came to him for this one purpose, or like automatic puppets on springs. They would seize him, take him, carry him, hang him, pull him ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... existence seemed to be in perfect accord with the habits and dispositions of the people. The honest old burghers pursued the even tenor of their way, paying but little heed to the whirl and excitement of the large cities, and plodding on with machine-like regularity in their daily pleasures, and their slow but sure acquirement of fortune. Children were born, much in the usual manner of such events—grew into man and womanhood—were married, and they—in their turn, ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... was heard to exclaim: 'If only the first battles were fought and won!' Yet calm confidence prevailed from the very beginning. But the sight of the quiet, machine-like completion of the mobilization strengthened our trust, even though a justifiable indignation and rage filled our hearts at Europe's dastardly attack on the Central States. Hate flamed highest, however, when ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... experience it most strongly when we are shown the soul TANTALISED by the needs of the body: on the one hand, the moral personality with its intelligently varied energy, and, on the other, the stupidly monotonous body, perpetually obstructing everything with its machine-like obstinacy. The more paltry and uniformly repeated these claims of the body, the more striking will be the result. But that is only a matter of degree, and the general law of these phenomena may be formulated as follows: ANY INCIDENT IS COMIC THAT CALLS OUR ATTENTION TO THE ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... protected by the colony, for he alone can make the report. He is the machine-like representative of the Japanese patriotic formula, till the document is complete. A new arrival in the colony, who obviously cannot write the book, confesses the murder and is executed. The other high fanatic dies ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... time in many years, his days were full of work and, asleep, awake, or at work, his hours were clock-like and steadied him into machine-like regularity. It was work of his hands, to be sure, and not even high work of that kind, but still it was work. And the measure of the self-respect that this fact alone brought him was worth it all. Already, his mind was taking character ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... the stillest evening, may the presence of the night-jar be detected, except by its coarse call, while the sprightly little sun-bird flits hither and thither, prodigal of its vivid colours and joying with machine-like whirring. The sun-bird exemplifies the brightness of the day. All its activities are bold and conspicuous. Aptly named, it has nothing to hide, no deeds which will not withstand the scrutiny of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... offices of the Skandinavia Corporation, in the heart of the city of Quebec, with their machine-like precision of life, their soulless method, their passionless progress towards the purpose of their organisation, meant the open road towards the fulfilment of her desires for ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... it, but he bore up well to the work, taking pride in it after the manner of Dave and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates, whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It was a monotonous life, operating with machine-like regularity. One day was very like another. At a certain time each morning the cooks turned out, fires were built, and breakfast was eaten. Then, while some broke camp, others harnessed the dogs, and they were under way an hour or so before the darkness ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... the canvas and stretch it out on the lot so an inventory might be taken to determine in what shape the show had been left. Others were assigned to search the lot for show properties, costumes and the like, and in a very short time the big, machine-like organization was working ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... again into the corral on blindfolded Charger. Again he dragged Silvermane out on the level and drove him up and down with remorseless, machine-like persistence. At noon he took him back, tied him up, and roped him fast. Silvermane tried to rear and kick, but the saddle went on, strapped with a flash of the dark-skinned hands. Then again Silvermane ran the level stretch beside the giant roan, only he carried a saddle ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... gloomy comfort of the room, a puppet in the power of great forces that cared nothing for family or class or creed, but moved, machine-like, with dread processes to inscrutable ends. This was how it struck young Jolyon, who had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... whose care he had previously been—the one human, alert, sympathizing—not loving sin, nor sinful men, but laboring for them, sacrificing for them, pardoning them as Christ does—the other working with machine-like accuracy, but with as little apparent emotion, showing none in fact beyond a prudish shrinking from these sufferers from the outer world, of which they know nothing but have only heard of its wickedness. The contrast is powerful, and shows ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... nimble on his feet as a goat, and if he once got his hands on the ball he never missed it. It was his encouragement that steadied Dalgren; his judgment of hitters that carried the young pitcher through dangerous places; his lightning swift grasp of points that directed the machine-like ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... Tawny ears turned backward in appreciative fellowship, but without any break in a plodding dog-trot. Though the rider's aspect might say with the desert that time was nothing, the pony's expressed a logical purpose. Thus the speed of their machine-like progress was entirely regulated by the prospect of a measure of oats at the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... "That does sound mean ... This sub- editor post is going to be so difficult that it ought certainly to go to the right person. A careful, methodical, machine-like sort of creature, who will never forget or let others forget. The girls are slack enough about regular work, and will be a hundred times worse about an extra, and The Duck is a tartar about punctuality. It's going to be a problem to please them and 'keep the peace.' But you have had a ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... excellence, it must be rendered habitual. Consideration, the mark of the second stage, disappears in the third. We cannot count a person honest so long as he has to decide on each occasion whether to take advantage of his neighbor. Long ago he should have disciplined himself into machine-like action as regards these matters, so that the dishonest opportunity would be instinctively and instantly dismissed, the honest deed appearing spontaneously. That man has not an amiable character who is obliged ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... to be an argument in favor of Socialism, but a terrible indictment of it. For the road the dictatorship is now taking, which indeed offers it the only possible hope of even a passable economic success, is the barren, heartless, unspiritual, materialistic tyranny of machine-like "industrialism" which the I. W. W. represents. In the two chapters immediately following, VIII and IX, the reader will learn something of the loss of all moral standards and the cruel, lawless violence to which the atheistic, anarchistic materialism ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Andover eleven. They were big, rangy fellows and their team worked with a precision and machine-like rush that the red and black team ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... 'systems' which strew the history of religion and philosophy and the political and social paths of human endeavor HAD been found absolutely correct and universally applicable—so that every human being would be compelled to pass through its machine-like maw, every personality to be crushed under its Juggernath wheels! No, thank Heaven! there is no theory or creed or system; and yet there is something—as Jefferies prophetically felt and with a great longing desired—that CAN satisfy; and that, the root of all religion, has been hinted ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... ceased. Harry did not know it then, but the man was Putnam, and he was commanding the Yankees to reserve their fire. The British files were now ordered to deploy into line, and fire. They did so as they advanced, firing in machine-like unison, as if on parade, but aiming high. Nearer and nearer, as Harry went forward, rose the fence ahead and the breastwork on the hill towards the left. Why did not the Yankees fire? Were they, indeed, paralyzed with fear at sight of the ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and at cottage-doors, shepherds on remote hills, turnip-hoers in blue-green enclosures miles away, captains with spy-glasses out at sea, were regarding the picture keenly. Those three or four thousand men of one machine-like movement, some of them swashbucklers by nature; others, doubtless, of a quiet shop-keeping disposition who had inadvertently got into uniform—all of them had arrived from nobody knew where, and hence were matter ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... experiments that had been tried, the frequent changes in the regulations, had unsettled their ideas. In their reaction against the disagreeable rigor of German discipline, they protested that English officers alone, and not the machine-like soldiers of a despot, were the models for freemen. The common soldiers caught the spirit of insubordination from those who commanded them. Especially, the large regiment of French Guards, a highly ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... upon the sidewalks, amateurs, breeders, and the like—men who understood good stock—never failed to stop to watch the team go by, heads up, the check rein swinging loose, ears all alert, eyes all alight, the breath deep, strong, and slow, and the stride, machine-like, even as the swing of a metronome, thrown out from the shoulder to knee, snapped on from knee to fetlock, from fetlock to pastern, finishing squarely, beautifully, with the thrust of the hoof, planted an instant, then, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris |
