"Mute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their acquaintance, and he stood leaning against that same post, looking gloomily down into the water, when a lean, rough dog crept slowly toward him, wagging his stumpy tail and looking into the boy's face with eyes that pleaded for a friendly word. Generally Tode would have responded to the mute appeal, but now he felt so miserable himself, that he longed to make somebody or something else miserable too, so instead of a pat, he gave the dog a kick that sent it limping off with a yelp of pain and remonstrance. He had made another creature as miserable as himself, but somehow it ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... of the 'Cristobal Colon,' Admiral Cervera's flagship, and of the old cruiser 'Reina Mercedes,' which had been considered gunless, trained on them and thundering in their ears. "Still they searched with never as much as a faint cry for help or the sign of a single arm raised in mute appeal to guide them. Those on the battle-ship looking into the mouth of the harbor saw only a sheet of flame which, with the roar of the guns, lasted thirty-five minutes. By this time dawn had tinged the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us, He knows each chord—its various tone, Each spring—its various bias: Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not ...
— English Satires • Various
... Draw around to the circle . . . Ah, loitering Summer, say when For me shall be broken the charm, that I chirp with the swallow again? I am old: I am dumb: I have waited to sing till Apollo withdrew. —So Amyclae a moment was mute, and for ever a wilderness grew.— Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and gospels, all ebb and flow of time, Lives the soul that speaks in silence, and makes mute ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Charles Fownes of late?" she asked of the mute awkward figure; and though Janice did not look up, there was a moment's flicker ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... have heard the sound of their voices in prayer, but they will not discourse with anyone, but they continue as mute as ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... in Isis' calm retreat, To books and study gives seven years complete; See, strowed with learned dust, his nightcap on, He walks, an object new beneath the sun. The boys flock round him, and the people stare; So stiff, so mute! some statue you would swear, Stept from its pedestal ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... would like to do that, and he asked at the door whether Westover was going to the tea at Mrs. Bellingham's. He said he had to look in there, before he went out to Cambridge; and left Westover in mute amaze at the length he had apparently gone in a road that had once seemed no thoroughfare for him. Jeff's social acceptance, even after the Enderby ball, which was now some six or seven weeks past, had been slow; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... concubine We plucked her hands from off the door.... We choked the cry into her throat And stuck the stars among her hair.... We glimpsed the madly swaying stars Between the rhythms of her hair And all our mute and separate strings Swelled in a raging symphony.... Our blood sang paeans All that night Till dawn fell like a wounded swan ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... end of it was that after a good deal of hesitation, the Holy Mother obliged, saying that as the god was dead she supposed nothing else mattered. First, however, she went to the back of the house and clapped her hands, whereon an old woman, a mute and a very perfect specimen of an albino native, appeared and stared at us wonderingly. To her Mrs. Eversley talked upon her fingers, so rapidly that I could scarcely follow her movements. The woman bowed till her forehead nearly touched the ground, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... closer to his bosom, and kissed his broad fair forehead; while the boy, on his part, with his hand leaning on the officer's knee, and his shoulder resting confiding on his bosom, looked up in his face with eyes of earnest and deep affection. In such mute conference they remained for some five or ten minutes; while the hardy sailors pulled away at the oars, their course towards the vessel lying right in the wind's eye. After a minute or two more, Lennard Sherbrooke turned round, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... to obey their commander. They struggled successfully against the roaring billows, and, benumbed with horror and despair, at length reached the shore. Here they wandered from one wretched hovel to another, but no human voice broke upon their ear. At length they espied a solitary cow, and, mute with apprehension, sword in hand, they hastened to the cot near which she was trying to graze. With a trembling hand and beating heart, the captain lifted up the latch, and, on opening the door, imagine ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... to disable him and get him a furlough, and he determined to take his son's body home, which the captain's influence enabled him to do. Between his wound and his grief the old man was nearly helpless, and accepted Darby's silent assistance with mute gratitude. Darby asked him to tell his mother that he was getting on well, and sent her what money he had—his last two months' pay—not enough to have bought her a pair of stockings or a pound of sugar. The only other ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... manifested his displeasure on this subject, the old man remained mute and pensive, and Andre Certa broke ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... my heart is sick, Sick of this everlasting change, And Life runs tediously quick Through its unresting race and varied range. Change finds no likeness of itself in Thee, And makes no echo in Thy mute eternity." ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... Aye round about Jove's altar sing; And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; But, first and chiefest, with thee bring Him that yon soars on golden wing, Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, The Cherub Contemplation; And the mute Silence hist along, 'Less Philomel will deign a song, In her sweetest saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke Gently o'er the accustomed oak. Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... round earth underfoot; His head sought out the stars, his cupped right hand Made half the sky one darkness. He was mute. The sun, a ripened fruit, Drooped lower. ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... prevent her going near the curtain; but unconsciously, in his delight, his humming grows louder and louder, until, in a hymn of jubilation, tratara-tratara! he flings the broom up over his head, then stops short suddenly, noticing that the poor child is standing there, mute with astonishment, not knowing what to think. Capital, too, was the acting of a now forgotten actress, Mlle. Dubois, who played the young girl. Her exclamation, as she suddenly sees her brother, "Je n'ai pas peur, va!" was uttered ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... with speech inspire a mute, And taught Vanessa to dispute. This topic, never touched before, Displayed her eloquence the more: Her knowledge, with such pains acquired, By this new passion grew inspired. Through this she made all objects pass, Which ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... the mind of Constance on her departure from Langley, the incident was felt by Maude as a wrench and an uprooting, surpassing any previous incident of her life since leaving Pleshy. The old house itself had come to feel like a mute friend; the people left behind were acquaintances of many years; the ground was all familiar. She was going now once more into a new world, to new acquaintances, new scenes, new incidents. The journey over land was in itself very pleasant. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... alarmed about her. Nor was she long in rejoining him again. But when she came out, laughing, blushing, and dimpling, he scarce knew her for the moment, so transformed was she; and he stood perfectly mute before the radiant young vision his ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with the feet That were light on the green as a thistledown ball, And those mute ministrations to one and to all ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... for some time mute with astonishment and vexation, and when he recovered, ordered the ferrymen to get ready their boats to pass him over the river; but Human dissuaded him from that measure, saying that they could only convey a few troops, and they would doubtless be received by a large force of the ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... from two to five o'clock the excellent Madame Homais, who, for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle about her neighbour. The little Homais also came to see her; Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom, and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even Madame Bovary; taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... taciturnity, seemed to have given herself the task of watching over her. No words had been exchanged between the two captives, but the girl was always at the old woman's side when help was useful. At first the mute assistance of the stranger was accepted with some mistrust. Gradually, however, the young girl's clear glance, her reserve, and the mysterious sympathy which draws together those who are in misfortune, thawed ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... there came the last of the careless days: Did time in the very same manner move? (My heart almost stops in a mute amaze To think that it ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... mute,— Music's flower and fruit, Music's creature— Form and feature— Music's lute. Music's lute be thou, Maiden of the starry brow! (Keep thy heart true to know how!) A Lute which he alone, As all in good time shall be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Robin, in anguished voice, running to her; and there was no need for further speech. In that one cry and in the expression of her mute, answering face, the truth was told and understood. No use to fight for Broadweald now; were it his a hundred times over, Robin could never do that with it which he in all his boyhood had planned. Hugh Fitzooth, Ranger of the Forest of Locksley, ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Albertsville was a nice town, too young for slums, too new for overpopulation. The white buildings were the color of winter butter in the warm yellow sunlight as the city drowsed in the noonday heat. It nestled snugly in the center of a bowl-shaped valley whose surrounding forest clad hills gave mute confirmation to the fact that Kardon was still primitive, an unsettled world that had not yet reached the explosive stage of population growth that presaged maturity. But that was no disadvantage. In fact, Kennon liked it. Living could be fun on a ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... she stood mute—perhaps with no breath for words; the next minute, with a motion too unexpected and sudden to be hindered, lifting both hands she threw his off, bounded to one side to be clear of him, and sprang like a ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Wong Pao, with an obvious inside bitterness, "it is a mistake to argue with persons of limited intelligence in terms of courtesy. This, doubtless, was the meaning of the philosopher Nhy-hi when he penned the observation, 'Death, a woman and a dumb mute always have the last word,' Why did I have you conducted hither to convince you dispassionately, rather than send an armed guard to force ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... practical Christianity, who go, unseen and unknown, to build the universal church of humanity, and whom we reverence without naming them. Of Maria, the elder sister of Christina, I saw less, but enough to know that the same ardent, beautiful religious spirit burned in her, mute. In the years when I, later, saw most of the family, Maria lived in a sisterhood. She had none of the genius or the personal charm of her sister, but possessed the same ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Stratford for the first time to pay his mute tribute to the poet who seems destined to live as long as our civilisation, will enjoy a pleasant impression if he chance to have chosen a fine day and to have reached the town by the road. Stratford lies on the right bank of the river Avon, a beautiful river ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... of the Arctic will forever look barren and unfinished to me after this. Even the sailors, who know too well what a menace they are to their craft, yield to their beauty a mute and grudging homage. To sit in the sun or the moonlight, and watch a heavy sea hurling mountains of water and foam over one of these ocean monarchs is a never-to-be-forgotten experience. So too it is to listen to the thunder of one of them ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... back in shame and sorrow. That vote in his hand might have answered the prayer so lately on his lips now dumb, and perhaps averted the awful calamity. Fathers, may not the hands of the "thousands slain" make mute appeal to you? Your one vote is what God requires of you. You are responsible for it being in harmony with His law as if on ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... muzikisto. Music (to play) muziki. Muskrat miogalo. Musket pafilo. Muslin muslino. Mussel mitulo. Must (verb) devas. Must mosto. Mustard mustardo. Mustard plant sinapo. Mustard-plaster sinapa kataplasmo. Muster kunvenigi. Musty malfresxa. Mutation sxangxado. Mute muta. Mute mutulo. Mutilate vundegi. Mutinous ribela. Mutiny ribelo. Mutter murmuri. Mutton sxafajxo. Mutton, leg of sxaffemuro. Mutual reciproka. Mutually reciproke. Muzzle (for a dog) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... had just passed through, between the Meta, the Arauca, and the Apure, there were found, at the time of the first expeditions to the Orinoco, in 1535, those mute dogs, called by the natives maios, and auries. This fact is curious in many points of view. We cannot doubt that the dog, whatever Father Gili may assert, is indigenous in South America. The different Indian languages furnish words to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... her side for fear that she would make a will in favor of the convent of Beguins belonging to the town. The sick woman kept silent, she seemed dozing and death appeared to overspread very gradually her mute and livid face. Can't you imagine those three relations seated in silence through that winter midnight beside her bed? An old nurse is with them and she shakes her head, and the doctor sees with anxiety that the sickness has reached its last stage, and holds his hat in one hand and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the speaker and stood mute: the clerk did the same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under his feet; taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a moment confronting each other, mute and menacing. Around them stretched La Souleiade in the deep silence of the night, with the light shadows of its olive trees, the darkness of its pine and plane trees, in which the saddened voice ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... beside her in mute sympathy while he finished his cigarette. There was a certain depression in his attitude of which presently she became aware. She summoned her resolution and turned herself from the great vision ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... face averted, sat gazing blankly out of the window; but when he sat on, mute and unresponsive—in point of fact not knowing what to say—she turned to look at him, and the glare of a passing lamp showed her countenance profoundly distressed, mouth tense, brows knotted, eyes clouded ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Chaucer's verse was dependent upon a free, a licentious dealing with language, such as is now impossible; upon a liberty, such as Burns too enjoyed, of making words like neck, bird, into a dissyllable by adding to them, and words like cause, rhyme, into a dissyllable by sounding the e mute. It is true that Chaucer's fluidity is conjoined with this liberty, and is admirably served by it; but we ought not to say that it was dependent upon it. It was dependent upon his talent. Other poets with a like liberty do not attain to the fluidity of Chaucer; ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... him, and her tears fell fast as she felt his hand moving slowly over her dress, pressing her round arms, pausing for a moment upon her white neck, tarrying still longer upon her glowing cheeks, and finally resting in mute blessing upon her braids of hair, where the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... night's rain had brightened till Holborn Bars looked cheerful, and Holborn pavement actually clean, so that, as Elizabeth said, "you might eat your dinner off it;" which was the one only thing she condescended to approve in London. She had sat all evening mute in her corner, for Miss Leaf would not send her away into the terra incognita of a London hotel. Ascott, at first considerably annoyed at the presence of what he called a "skeleton at the feast," ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... that he was summoned to entertain travelers here; "he never needed to be sent for, he came fast enough of himself." His wit and conviviality were usually the life of the circle, but at times he was mute and abstracted and for hours together "would just sit and sit in his corner there." She described him as a "little, red-haired, light-complexioned chap, cleverer than all his sisters put together. What they put ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... crescent-shaped niche of the gray rocks of Egere, that Morhange stopped. The unlooked for waters rolled upon the sand, and we saw, in the light which mirrored them, little black fish. Fish in the middle of the Sahara! All three of us were mute before this paradox of Nature. One of them had strayed into a little channel of sand. He had to stay there, struggling in vain, his little white belly exposed to the air.... Morhange picked him up, looked at him for a moment, and put him ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... from the date of Napoleon's marriage with Maria Louisa the form of the French Government became daily more and more tyrannical and oppressive. The intolerable height which this evil had attained is evident from the circumstance that at the end of 1813 the Legislative Body, throwing aside the mute character which it had hitherto maintained, presumed to give a lecture to him who had never before received a lecture from any one. On the 31st of March it was recollected what had been the conduct of Bonaparte on the occasion alluded to, and those of the deputies who remained in Paris related how ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... sexes; only it is purely intellectual and spiritual. Its law is the desire of the spirit to realize a whole, which makes it seek in another being what it finds not in itself. Thus the beautiful seek the strong, and the strong the beautiful; the mute seeks the eloquent, &c.; the butterfly settles always on the dark flower. Why did Socrates love Alcibiades? Why did Koerner love Schneider? How natural is the love of Wallenstein for Max; that of De Stael for De Recamier; mine for ——. I loved ——, for a time, with as much passion ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was one that any man might envy, his courage was shared by humbler martyrs. In the same year in which he was beheaded thirteen Dutch Anabaptists were burnt, as he would have approved, by the English government. Mute, inglorious Christs, they were led like sheep to the slaughter and as lambs dumb before their shearers. They had no eloquence, no high position, to make their words ring from side to side of Europe and echo down the centuries; ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... And I tell you that during the last thousand years there has not been born a man capable of so much as copying them." I then, not caring to deprive them of so eminent a reputation, kept silence, and admired them with mute stupefaction. It was said to me in Rome by many great lords, some of whom were my friends, that the work of which I have been speaking was, in their opinion of marvellous excellence and genuine antiquity; whereupon, emboldened by their praises, I revealed ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Spring-queen Gisli prayed, Low the sun the pale sky trod; Mute her ruddy hand she raised Beckon'd back the ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... slow figure 'neath the trees, In ancient-fashioned smock, with tottering care Upon a staff propping his weary knees. May by the pathway of the forest fare: As from a buried day Across the mind will stray Some perishing mute shadow,—and unaware He passeth on ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... class. His only gift was characteristic alike of his methods and his economy. There is, I understand, a certain not unimportant feature of religious exercise known as 'taking a collection.' The defendant, on this occasion, by the mute presentation of a tin plate covered with baize, solicited the pecuniary contributions of the faithful. On approaching the plaintiff, however, he himself slipped a love-token upon the plate and pushed ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... grove in which the meeting was held commanded a view of the lake at the very place where the accident occurred. The nine survivors sat upon the front seat of all; the friends of the deceased were all there, and, most pathetic sight of all, the two mute white faces of the drowned were exposed to view. The people wept before the tremulous voice of the minister had begun the service, and there was so much weeping that the preacher could say but little. Poor Mrs. Plausaby was ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... thrown into the Charente would ruin us," said Cointet, in reply to mute protest, "but we do not wish to be obliged to pay cash for everything in consequence of slanders that shake our credit; that would bring us to a standstill. We have reached the term fixed by our agreement, and we are bound on either side to think ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... night are mute Beneath the moon's eclipse; The silence of the fitful flute Is in the dying lips! The silence of my lonely heart Is kept for ever more In the lull Of the waves Of a ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... to world our steady course we keep, Swift as the winds along the waters sweep, Mid the mute ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... Lost things of hope and sorrow without tongue: The human lilies, sprung Out of the ooze, and trodden, Even as they breathed and clung! Lost lilies, bruised and sodden; Lost faces, gleaming there, Where misery blasphemes the sacred young! Mute outcry, most, of those Small suffering hands defrauded of their rose; Faces the daylight shuns; Ruinous faces of the little ones,— Pale witness, unaware. Starved lips, and withering blood— O broken in the bud!— Blank eyes, ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... Prince bent over the table pretending to be in search of a page in the most Holy Book, while—if the expression be pardonable—he watched the audience with his ears. He heard the rustle as the men turned to each other in mute inquiry; he almost heard their question, though they but looked it; otherwise, if it had been dark, the silence would have been tomb-like. At length, raising his head, he beheld a tall, gaunt, sallow person, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... fighting mastiffs, yet did they but pause for a moment, to return with tenfold fury to the charge. Just at this juncture a vast and dense column of smoke was seen slowly rolling toward the scene of battle. The combatants paused for a moment, gazing in mute astonishment, until the wind, dispelling the murky cloud, revealed the flaunting banner of Michael Paw, the Patroon of Communipaw. That valiant chieftain came fearlessly on at the head of a phalanx of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... he had commenced imprisoning the crews of merchant vessels for contumacy in refusing to acknowledge his authority as the head of an independent nation. In vain did these vessels reverse their flags in a mute appeal to us to use our guns in their defense. Anderson would do nothing—not even send a communication to the governor on the subject, although the latter, without authority from the State Legislature, was thus ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... way of thinking by a sudden leap. Again, far from it! My friend and I had been undergraduates, and very proud of ourselves into the bargain, long ago in England. But we had travelled since then, in more senses than one. We had known comfort and we had known the mute impressive numbness of despair. We had made "scoops" at times and celebrated them with joyous junketings. Once we had dined at Delmonico's, a meal of which the memory is still an absurd chaos. We had, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... soul! Not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks, and silent ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... at each other in mute astonishment and inquiry as to what were the real intentions of the testator. Villefort and his wife both grew red, one from shame, the other ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not perceiving this mute interrogation, resumed as follows: "I will express myself more clearly, prince. You can understand that, being the nearest relative of this dear, obstinate girl, I am more or less responsible for her conduct in the eyes of the world; and you, prince, seem ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sense, includes any form of expression by which thoughts and feelings are communicated from one individual to another. Words may be spoken, gestures made, cries uttered, pictures or characters drawn, or letters made as means of expression. The deaf-mute converses with his fingers and his lips; the savage communicates by means of gesticulation. It is easy to conceive of a community in which all communication is carried on in sign language. It is said that the Grebos of Africa carry this mode of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... shoulder of the little English girl trembling against mine, her teeth chattering from time to time. But I also felt the gentle warmth of her body through her ulster, and that warmth was as delicious to me as a kiss. We no longer spoke; we sat motionless, mute, cowering down like animals in a ditch when a hurricane is raging. And, nevertheless, despite the night, despite the terrible and increasing danger, I began to feel happy that I was there, glad of the cold and the peril, glad of the long hours of darkness and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sacrifice: and as I rode along among them, guiding my horse this way and that way, lest he should profane with his hoofs what seemed to me the sacred dead, and as I looked on their bronzed faces upturned in the shining sun, as if in mute appeal against the wrongs of the country for which they had given their lives, whose flag had only been to them a flag of stripes, on which no star of glory had ever shone for them—feeling I had wronged them in the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... down hailstones, like pearls, and flakes of snow floated like camphor on the bosom of the air. Suddenly the Nightingale returned into the garden, but he met neither the bloom of the Rose nor fragrance of the spikenard; notwithstanding his thousand-songed tongue, he stood stupified and mute, for he could discover no flower whose form he might admire, nor any verdure whose freshness he might enjoy. The Thorn turned round to him and said: "How long, silly bird, wouldst thou be courting the society of the Rose? Now is the season that in the absence ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... unimaginable terrors. Think what it must have been to wake up in the midst of that voiceless hush, and, look out over that grim congregation of the dead! What gratitude shone in his skinny white face when he saw a living form before him! And how the fervency of this mute gratitude was augmented when his eyes fell upon the life-giving cordials which I carried in my hands! Then imagine the horror which came into this pinched face when I put the cordials behind me, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the enjoyments of human life, from the haunts where he had been so happy. He wished to have his tomb on the public thoroughfare, that he might "feel, as it were, the tide of life as it flowed past his monument, and that his mute existence might be prolonged in the remembrance of his friends." I may observe that the Roman custom of bordering the public roads with tombs gives a significance to the inscriptions which some of them ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... it sings to-day.— So may it sing alway! Though waving grasses grow Between, and lilies blow Their trills of perfume clear As laughter to the ear, Let each mute measure end With "Still ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... him in mute amazement, and, despite herself, her heart sank with a sudden desperate apprehension. What did it mean? Why should the mere mention of Max's name have roused the old maestro to ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... be only imagination, but he believed he could actually feel the hot breath of the pursuing beast on his legs as he twisted around that tree so awkwardly. With a prayer in his heart, though his lips were mute, he suddenly whirled, thrust out the gun, and pulled ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... and the victors and vanquished stood contemplating each other in mute astonishment. Dr. Vaudelier, who had followed Henry into the room, assisted Jaspar to rise, and conducted him to a chair. The courage of the vanquished seemed entirely to have oozed out, and they remained doggedly considering the ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... of the light-hearted and reckless bee-hunter was instantly closed, and he was rendered as mute, as he had just been boisterous and talkative, by the appearance of Ellen Wade. When the melancholy maiden took her seat on the point of the rock as mentioned, Paul affected to employ himself in conducting a close inspection of the household effects of the squatter. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "Ha ha!" said he, "the welcome of Heaven be unto thee, goodly Peredur, son of Evrawc, the chief of warriors, and flower of knighthood." "Truly," said Kai, "thou art ill- taught to remain a year mute at Arthur's Court, with choice of society; and now, before the face of Arthur and all his household, to call out, and declare such a man as this the chief of warriors, and the flower of knighthood." And he gave him such a box on the ear, that he fell senseless to the ground. Then exclaimed ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... better than animals, they lost much of the dignity of men. Their masters possessed over them the power of life and death, and it is shocking to read of the cruelty with which they were often treated. An accidental murmur, a cough, a sneeze, was punished with rods. Mute, motionless, fasting, the slaves had to stand by while their masters supped; A brutal and stupid barbarity often turned a house into the shambles of an executioner, sounding with scourges, chains, and yells.[20] One evening the Emperor Augustus was ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... at the Press View, ere the opening day Admits the public on receipt of pay And all the gallery like a murmurous shell hums, I stand before your picture, awed and mute, In reverent worship and an old, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... without respite. Happy who thereto can unite Poetic transport. They impart A double force unto their song Who following Petrarch move along And ease the tortures of the heart— Perchance they laurels also cull— But I, in love, was mute ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... prodigality of energy; but that prodigality is always well within the limits of order. In youth that which is to be feared is not the explosive force of vitality, but its wrong direction; and it is at this crisis that youth so often makes its mute and unavailing appeal to maturity. The man who has left his year of wandering behind him forgets its joys and perils, and regards it as a deflection from a course which is now perfectly plain, although it may once have been confused and uncertain. He is critical and condemnatory ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... him that she believed him that now,—but something in her forbade the untruth. She could do no more than leave him, with a mute ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... child!" cries Ethel, in utter horror. She has till now been a mute witness to the heartless acts of the agents of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... hand in mute disacknowledgment. Again there was a silence, and out of the pause Monsieur De la Riviere's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the love Which to himself he bore, Esteem'd his own dear beauty far above What earth had seen before. More than contented in his error, He lived the foe of every mirror. Officious fate, resolved our lover From such an illness should recover, Presented always to his eyes The mute advisers which the ladies prize;— Mirrors in parlours, inns, and shops,— Mirrors the pocket furniture of fops,— Mirrors on every lady's zone, From which his face reflected shone. What could our dear Narcissus do? From haunts of men he now withdrew, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... is over forever between her and me, and, saddest of all, she is even more to be pitied than I. Poor girl! I loved her deeply, but I did it awkwardly, as I do everything, and missed my chance of speaking. The mute declaration which I risked, or rather which a friend risked for me, found her already engaged to this beast who has brought more skill to the task, who has made no blots at the National Library, who has dared all when he had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... beggar. The man's voice changed instantly that he saw the stranger looking at him; from a half whining yet impudent tone, it began to sink and tremble with alarm, and finally he became perfectly mute and forgetful of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... response. The mute lips murmured neither reply nor adieu. I had gazed but a moment on the insensible form. Aurore had beckoned me away, and I had left the room in a state of embarrassment and ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... instant silence, sitting tense and mute, scarcely even breathing, while the pale blue eyes opposite remained steadily and ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... made for you songs, Rondels, triolets, sonnets; Verse that my love deemed due, Verse that your love found fair. Now the wide wings of war Hang, like a hawk's, over England, Shadowing meadows and groves; And the birds and the lovers are mute. ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... long before Linda had told her mother everything. Either by words, or tears, or little signs of mute confession, she made her mother understand, with all but exactness, what had passed between Alaric and herself, and quite exactly what had been the state of her own heart. She sobbed, and wept, and looked up to her mother for forgiveness as though she had been guilty of a great sin; and when her ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... whilst he hastily ran over the dreadful lines: when he had finished, the paper dropt from his unnerved hand. "Gracious heaven!" said he, "could Charlotte act thus?" Neither tear nor sigh escaped him; and he sat the image of mute sorrow, till roused from his stupor by the repeated shrieks of Mrs. Temple. He rose hastily, and rushing into the apartment where she was, folded his arms about her, and saying—"Let us be patient, my dear Lucy," nature relieved his almost ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... bird has ever visited the Channel Islands in a thoroughly wild state, though it is pretty widely spread over Europe; its range, however, being generally more to the east than the Channel Islands. Mr. Couch, however, at page 4939 of the 'Zoologist' for 1874, records the occurrence of two Mute Swans on the 7th of September at the Braye Pond, where they were shot. He also says that "five others passed over the Island the same day; they were flying low, and, judging from their colour, were young birds." As no one in the Islands keeps Swans, these were most probably a family party ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... beside the Arno, strain To match thy merit with my lays, Learn, after many an effort vain, To admure thee rather than to praise; And that by mute astonishment alone, Not by the fathering tongue, thy worth ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... showed annoyance if he return to the subject. Her temper was strangely uncertain; some chance word in a conversation would irritate her beyond endurance, and after an outburst of petulant displeasure she became obstinately mute. At other times she behaved with such exquisite docility and sweetness that Widdowson ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... silent days had passed, the mother knew that her baby must die. In the presence of her unutterable sorrow Christie was mute. The awe which fell upon her in the dread presence left her no words with which to comfort the stricken mother. But in her heart she never ceased through all that last long night to ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... name. He stared at it, bewildered. He couldn't understand what a plan of this sort was doing outside the War Department. Instantly he became a soldier; he forgot that he was masquerading as a groom; he forgot everything but this mute thing staring up into his face. Underneath, on a little shelf, he saw a stack of worn envelopes. He looked at them. Rough drafts of plans. Governor's Island! Fortress Monroe! What did it mean? What could it mean? He searched and found plans, plans, plans ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... count's hardened profligacy was likely to be influenced by any purer motives, whether to frank confession or to manly repentance. The count took the hand thus extended to him, and bowed his face, perhaps to conceal the smile which would have betrayed his secret soul. Randal still remained mute, and pale as death. His tongue clove to his mouth. He felt that all present were shrinking from his side. At last, with a violent effort, he ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a spot was reached where the forest-bred boys paused. They looked back at those who were following, and beckoned them silently forward. So quietly had the party moved that the stillness of the forest had scarce been broken. Mute and breathless, John and his companion stole up. They found that they had now reached the edge of a deep ravine, so thickly wooded as to appear impassable to human foot. But just where they stood there were traces of a narrow ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... little bedroom, so sweet and clean, with creepers peeping in at him through the window, and reminding him of home; and those blue eyes, that always looked so true, made it hard work to leave. He went off with a heavy heart and the gloominess of a mute; and as he shook hands with his friends, he made the most profound bow to Alice, and said, "Miss Cosin, I am going from paradise to I'll not say what. You cannot imagine how awful the change ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... due to a defect; but the nature of the defect is different in different cases. Deaf-mutism is so varied that frequently two unrelated deaf mutes may have hearing children. But if the deaf-mute parents are cousins, the chances that the deafness is due to the same unit defect are increased and all of the children will ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... stole up out of the rosy gray. The wings of the morning stirred and trembled; and in the darkness and chill and mysterious awakening, eyes looked into other eyes, hand sought hand, and cheeks touched each other in mute caress. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the kindly shelter of the fudge pan, "she glared. She wondered why those two idiotic individuals were stalking toward her without a word or knock or smile, when suddenly the hinder one exploded and vanished, while the other ignominiously—stark, mute, ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... of the Arsenites, to hide a revelation in the coffin of some old saint, (l. vii. c. 13.) He compensates this incredulity by an image that weeps, another that bleeds, (l. vii. c. 30,) and the miraculous cures of a deaf and a mute patient, (l. xi. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... bright Cecilia's praise rehearse, In warbling words, and gliding verse, That smoothly run into a song, And gently die away, and melt upon the tongue. First let the sprightly violin The joyful melody begin, And none of all her strings be mute; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... how it happened on Carnival night, in the last mad moments of Rex's reign, a broken-hearted woman sat gazing wide-eyed and mute at a horrible something that lay across the bed. Outside the long sweet march music of many bands floated in in mockery, and the flash of rockets and Bengal lights illumined the dead, white face ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... destroying as it were with one blow the whole pride of their past soldierly career; and, besides all this, under the spell of the man whose presence had an irresistible power—the soldiers stood for a while mute and lingering, till from all sides a cry arose that the general would once more receive them into favour and again permit them to be called Caesar's soldiers. Caesar, after having allowed himself to be sufficiently entreated, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... his hand through his thick curls. But he was still mute; he was still ruefully chewing the cud of the epithet "green." What occult horrid meaning did the word convey to ears polite? Why should ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... young King, after glancing anxiously towards De Luynes, who returned his look by another quite as helpless, fastened his gaze upon his mother as if from her alone he could hope for protection. Nor was his mute appeal made in vain, for although an expression of anxiety could be traced upon the noble features of Marie de Medicis, they betrayed no feeling of alarm. She was pale but calm, and her eyes glanced over the assembly as steadily as though ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... reached middle life was born a slave. The great bulk of the population have been brought up practically in the environment of a servile life. While there was much that was tender and pathetic and strong in the mute faith with which thousands of them lived through the dark trials of slavery, looking unto Christ as their deliverer, still the superstitions and degradations of slavery, its breaking of all home ties and life, could but infect the current religion of the black people. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... carried. It was agreed that the Prince of Conde should restrain his ardor, and let himself be vaguely regarded as the possible leader of the enterprise if it were to take place, but without giving it, until further notice, his name and co-operation. He was called the mute captain. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... responded to the call. Involuntarily my thoughts recurred to Dante's beautiful description of the Comte Ugolino's children and their piteous end in the Torre della Fame—but here, a sickening sense of the dreadful reality of the horrors, which it was evident from these mute memorials of man's cruelty to his fellow had been endured, quite oppressed me, and I wished I had never visited the spot. I felt myself so much harrowed by this sad scene, that I endeavoured to distract my attention; but what was my astonishment ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... seems a little too crude and callow to fulfil the ideals of manhood normal to her age which point to older and riper men. In all that makes sexual attraction best, a classmate of her own age is too undeveloped, and so she often suffers mute disenchantment, and even if engagement be dreamed of, it would be, on her part, with unconscious reservations if not with some conscious renunciation of ideals. Thus the boy is correct in feeling himself understood and seen ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... twenty-three teaspoons awaiting him in the kitchen. He shook his head to every question they asked him about the missing spoon. He turned quite pale; once in a while he whimpered; the tears streamed down his cheeks, but he only shook his head in that mute denial. ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... seen this hot love on the wing (As I perceived it, I must tell you that, Before my daughter told me), what might you, Or my dear majesty your queen here, think, If I had play'd the desk or table book;[20] Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb;[21] Or look'd upon this love with idle sight;[22] What might you think? No, I went round to work,[23] And my young mistress thus did I bespeak: Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy sphere; This must not be: and then I precepts gave ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... mute springs Pour out the river's gradual tide, Shrilly the skater's iron rings, And voices fill the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was shamed by the exquisite pain of anticipation that had coursed through her in that moment of waiting. She never could quite account for the temporary weakness that assailed her and left her mute and helpless under the spell of his eyes. She only knew that she waited expectant,—for something that never came! What she might have said in response, what she might have done if he had uttered the words she was prepared to hear, she did not care to contemplate, even in the privacy ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the long-nosed monkey (Semnopithecus nasalis). I think it must have suggested Sterne's stranger on a mule, who had travelled to the promontory of noses and threw all Strassburg into a ferment. I have often contemplated this nose in mute wonderment, and longed to see that monkey in life, if so be I might arrive at some understanding of it; for the taxidermist cannot rise above his own level, and the man who would mount S. nasalis would need to be a Henry Irving. Then there is the sub-nosed monkey, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... be mute," said Nello, laying his finger on his lips, with a responding shrug. "But it is only under our four eyes that I ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... tread my hearth and I Know it, be every curse upon my head That I have spoke this day. All I have said I charge ye strictly to fulfil and make Perfect, for my sake, for Apollo's sake, And this land's sake, deserted of her fruit And cast out from her gods. Nay, were all mute At Delphi, still 'twere strange to leave the thing Unfollowed, when a true man and a King Lay murdered. All should search. But I, as now Our fortunes fall—his crown is on my brow, His wife lies in my arms, and common fate, ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... wagon-loads of the wounded, huddled together thick as shrimps, their pallid faces and forlorn appearance a mute cry for sympathy. The mob roared like wild beasts, poured out maledictions on their unkempt heads, hurled stones and sticks at them amid furious din and clamour. At times it seemed as if the prisoners would be torn from the hands of their guard ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... priding herself alike on her close attention to her domestic duties, and on her privileged communications with angels and spirits. She would hold long colloquys with the spirit of her dead husband before anybody who happened to be present—colloquys which struck the simple spectators mute with terror. To her mystic view, the love union between Mary and me was something too sacred and too beautiful to be tried by the mean and matter-of-fact tests set up by society. She wrote for us little formulas of prayer ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... appointed initiation into the esoteric doctrines of his Sect. During this time he exercised his mind in storing up materials for future reflection. We are told that on several occasions he hindered insurrections in the cities in which he resided by the mute eloquence of his look and gestures;[283] but such an achievement is hardly consistent with the Pythagorean rule, which forbad its disciples during their silence ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... encouragement; though he prophesied that James was certain to get on, and uttered a rhapsody that nearly destroyed his new reputation for judgment. Lady Conway gave him an affectionate invitation to visit her whenever he could, and summoned the young ladies to wish him good-bye. The mute, blushing gratitude of Isabel's look was beautiful beyond description; and Virginia's countenance was exceedingly arch and keen, though she was supposed to know nothing ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Linton had picked it up from the ledge, beginning to oscillate it in front of her fair face, the nudging ceased. People looked at the thing with eyes wide with astonishment, but with lips mute. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... Stair insisted on her right to break the engagement, Lord Rutherford in vain entreated Janet Dalrymple to declare her feelings; but she remained "mute, pale, and motionless as a statue," and it was only at her mother's command, sternly uttered, she summoned strength enough to restore the broken piece of gold—the emblem of her troth. At this unexpected act Lord Rutherford ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... something. Moya moved before her eyes crowned in the light of the future. And that this noble and innocent girl, with her perfect intuitions, should turn to her now with such impetuous affection was perhaps the sweetest pain the blighted woman had ever known. She lay awake many a night thinking mute blessings on the mother and the child to be. Yet she resisted that generous initiative so dear to herself, aware with a subtle agony of the pain it gave ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... way off, any bringing to speech and result the mute, infrequent signs of what was yet the very real, secret strength and joy and hope ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... him of all seignorial rights save to the rents paid by his tenants, which amounted to some ten thousand francs per annum. If his grandsire had but walked in the ways of his illustrious progenitors, Bargeton I. and Bargeton II., Bargeton V. (who may be dubbed Bargeton the Mute by way of distinction) should by rights have been born to the title of Marquis of Bargeton; he would have been connected with some great family or other, and in due time he would have been a duke and a peer of France, like many another; whereas, in 1805, he ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... of the mute testimony of the newspapers in the living-room. "Some one brought those papers to him ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... longed for his appearance. He grew impatient of being alone, when a companion was so near at hand; the place was strange, and there were no well-known objects to stand in the place of friends, supplying by the thousand associations they conjure up, and their mute appeals to memory, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... away, and they stood facing each other, he eager, mystified, thrilling with passion almost beyond mastery, she trembling and unstrung, her cheeks crimson, her eyes filled with mute appeal. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... were lying on the beach behind us. There was no help for it. Margery stepped on board swiftly and silently, and I pushed well out into the stream, following until the water rose to my middle and so standing while the fellow challenged again. For a minute we kept mute as mice. The footsteps hesitated and came to a halt by the water's edge a full twenty yards below, and I guessed that the fog had blurred for him the distance as well as the direction of the sound. Very quietly I heaved myself over the stern and into the boat, ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... and lightness of touch. What the union between the two men was may be inferred from the fact that Scribe wrote many of his librettos to Auber's music, the latter being written first, Scribe then adding the words. His principal works are "Masaniello" or "The Mute," and "Fra Diavolo." He was appointed director of the Paris Conservatoire, in ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half enclose him round With all his peers; attention held them mute.'[360] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Fame throughout measureless lands; And my patriot-love, and my patriot-song, To the children of Labour will ever belong. Women and men of this brave old soil! I weep that starvation should guerdon your toil; But I glory to see ye—proudly mute— Showing SOULS like the HERO, not FANGS like the brute. Oh! keep courage within; be the Britons ye are; HE, who driveth the storm hath His hand on the star! England to England's sons shall be true, And "God and the ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... hand as she passed swiftly. The old woman carried the plump little hand to her lips in mute sympathy, and then Ruth broke away even from her and ran upstairs to her room. There she cast herself upon the bed and, with her sobs smothered in the pillows, gave way to the grief that had long been swelling her heart ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... faculties in so gentle a manner, that it could not be said he knew what it was to die; being, as it were, carried in the downy arms of sleep to the portal door of Death, where all the pains and terrors that guard the same were hushed, and stood mute around, as ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... for these exclamations, for Captain Lee stood gazing in mute amazement at young Gurwood, while the latter returned the compliment with his eyebrows raised to the roots of his hair. The similarity of their expressions did not, however, last long, for Edwin became gradually confused, while the ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... uttered unintentionally than by premeditation. There is no such thing as being "droll to order." One evening a lady said to a small wit, "Come, Mr. ——, tell us a lively anecdote;" and the poor fellow was mute the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... far edge of the ocean the rising diadem of the sun sent great bubbles of colour up through a low bank of pale green cloud to the gray night sky and the sulky stars. And, under the shadow of the cacti and palms, in rapt mute worship, knelt the men and women the priest had come to save, their faces and clasped hands ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... "It was one night when there was a division in the House, and it divided his soul from his body,—for they found him sitting mute as marble, and looking at their follies and strifes with eyes whose vision reached over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... light they wish, Birds warbling all the music. We can spare The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse Our softer satellite. Your songs confound Our more harmonious notes. The thrush departs Scared, and the offended nightingale is mute. There is a public mischief in your mirth; It plagues your country. Folly such as yours, Graced with a sword, and worthier of a fan, Has made, which enemies could ne'er have done, Our arch ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... more, but only lay there mute and motionless; and from his look one might plumb the sorrows of his soul and know how shocked he was, and how grieved and heartstricken! Love's young dream was o'er! He had thought she loved him, but now he knew better. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... I looked inside. The very walls seemed crying for her to come back. Would she ever so do? I wandered on through the bedroom, and even looked in the dressing room. I felt no compunction. It was not from idle curiosity, rather, I walked as one at a shrine. The exquisitely feminine boudoir was a mute witness to a love of beauty and art. I used only my flashlight, but on an impulse, I turned on one light by the side of the long mirror. I looked in it, as Vicky must often have done when dressing for her parties, as, indeed, she must have done, when dressing that last fatal ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... before leaving to bring the Erskines back with him were these: "You are to look your very best; I desire the Hon. Mrs. Erskine struck mute with admiration," and when she came down the stairs I could but think that she had taken his counsel to heart, whether because she was to meet "her rival," as she laughingly called Isabel Erskine, or by reason of the expected presence of his Grace of Borthwicke, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... tiny black-gloved hand, and then, also in silence, raised it passionately to my eager lips. Her soft, dark eyes—those eyes that spoke although she was mute—met mine, and in them was a look that I had never seen there before—a look which as plainly as any words told me that my wild fevered ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... market town—debts that he had long ago pretended to have paid with money that belonged to his sister. The widow Garstin sold the twelve Herdwicke rams, and nine acres of land: within six weeks she had cleared off every penny, and for thirteen months, on Sundays, wore her mourning with a mute, forbidding grimness: the bitter thought that, unbeknown to her, Jake had acted dishonestly in money matters, and that he had ended his days in riotous sin, soured her pride, imbued her with a rancorous hostility against all the world. For she was a very proud woman, independent, holding her head ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... being unmasked is even more painful than feeling deficient and ill-equipped. Then too he learns to suspect that when he has tried to be impressive, he has often only succeeded in being priggish; and the result is that he falls into a kind of speechlessness, comforting himself, as he sits mute and awkward, unduly elongated, and with unaccountable projections of limb and feature, that if only other people were a little less self-absorbed, had the gift of perceiving hidden worth and real character, and could pierce a little below the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not, however, to be expected that either the mute language of early Christianity (however important a part of the expression of the building at the time of its erection), or the delicate fancies of the Gothic leafage springing into new life, should be read, or perceived, by the passing traveller ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Wisdom.' I term it The Feast of a Thousand Ants. It is performed with the aid of African driver ant, a pair of surgical scissors and a pot of honey. I have observed you studying with interest the human skeleton yonder. It is that of one of my followers—a Nubian mute—who met with an untimely end quite recently. You are wondering, no doubt, how I obtained the frame in so short a time? My African driver ants, Dr. Stuart, of which I have three large cases in a cellar below this room, performed ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... I lay mute and breathless, and drank in every note of this siren strain. It thrilled through my whole frame, and filled my soul with melody and love. I pictured to myself, with curious logic, the form of the unseen musician. Such melodious sounds and exquisite inflections could ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... stony ground and rounded a clump of trees, behind which a small herd of animals stood for a few seconds, staring at them in mute amazement. These snorted, set up their tails, and tore wildly away to the right. This was too much. With a gleeful yell, Rollin turned to pursue, but Victor called to him angrily to let the buffalo be. The half-breed ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... laws of clay, nor brute, Can e'er the freeman's spirit suit! He gave him choice!—Hark! how he thunders! Through human strife—nor is deaf nor mute! ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... till bright eyes grow dim, Kind voices mute, and faithful bosoms cold? Till carking care, and toil, and anguish grim, Cast their dark shadows o'er this fleeting world, Till fancy's many-coloured wings are furled, And all, save the proud spirit, waxeth old! ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope |
