"Mute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scraps from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished. The animals might be sacrificed, but man could never infect them with the leprosy of flattery. A courtier remarked at Versailles on this mute resistance. "They are like me," said the uncrowned queen; "they pine ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... crushed by the emotion which he repressed like a strong and self-contained man, whose mental balance the greatest sufferings cannot disturb. Never before had any grief agitated him like this. He remained mute, while she, standing, continued: ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... goes for your uncle," he continued, without heeding her interruption. "She speaks of Parliament, of great causes, of ambition, until his eyes are on fire. She describes new pleasures to you, and you sit at her feet, a mute worshipper! I can't think why she ever came here. She's absolutely the wrong sort of woman for a quiet country place like this. I wish I'd ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Ere heaving billows learned to blow, While organs yet were mute; Timotheus to his breathing flute And sounding lyre Could swell the soul to rage, or ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... we looked at one another, mute, as though deep down in the unfathomable darkness below the surface and present reality of things dumb meanings strove to be. She made to speak ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... one day might have swept the ground clear of them, perished,—bright young Conradin, bright and brave, but only sixteen, and Pope's captive by ill luck,—perished on the scaffold; "throwing out his glove" (in symbolical protest) amid the dark mute Neapolitan multitudes, that wintry morning. It was October 25th, 1268,—Dante Alighieri then a little boy at Florence, not three years old; gazing with strange eyes as the elders talked of such a performance by Christ's Vicar on Earth. A very tragic performance indeed, which brought ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... it was there in Latin; the nom. plur. has no s, because there was no s there in Latin. The oblique cases in the singular have no s, because the accusative in Latin, and likewise the gen., dat., and abl., ended either in vowels, which became mute, or in m, which was dropped. The oblique cases in the plural had the s, because it was there in the acc. plur., which became the general oblique case, and likewise in the dat. and abl. By means ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... and ready for any act of wickedness should the occasion arrive—shuddered lest they should go down to burning flame for ever now that there was none to shrive them or to give the viaticum to any late penitent in his agony. In the tall towers by the wayside the bells hung mute; no hands to ring them or none to answer to their call Meanwhile, across the lonely fields, toiling dismally, and ofttimes missing the track— for who should guide them or show the path?—parson and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... oh, not yet!" I cried aloud in an agony that could not be repressed, clinging to Dr. Harlowe's arm as if every earthly stay and friend were sliding from my grasp. I knew the meaning of that mute, expressive glance. She was measuring her own grave by the side of Peggy's clay cold bed,—she was commending her desolate orphan to the Father of the fatherless, the God of the widow. She knew she would soon be there, and I knew it too. And after ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... east wind, when the morning's breast Gleams like a bird's that leaves the nest, A fledgeling halcyon's bound on quest, Drives wave on wave on wave to west Till all the sea be life and light, So time's mute breath, that brings to bloom All flowers that strew the dead spring's tomb, Drives day on day on day to doom Till all man's ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in every limb, strong man as he was; he caught at the back of a chair, and leaned on his two hands as he stood behind it gazing into her face with mute lips. ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... in addition to those so deeply interested. The physician prepared the clergyman for the ceremony, which was exceedingly brief and simple, Grace smiling into Graham's face when he promised to take care of her always, and she signifying her consent and pleasure in the manner that was so mute and sad. Then he told her that he was going to take her away, that she might get perfectly strong and well; and she went at his request without hesitancy, although seeming to wonder slightly at the strong emotion of her father ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... in vain. For, as quick to hear her sobbing as she had been to hear her sister's faintest whisper, her mother came to comfort her, not with words only, but the patient tenderness that soothes by a touch, tears that were mute reminders of a greater grief than Jo's, and broken whispers, more eloquent than prayers, because hopeful resignation went hand-in-hand with natural sorrow. Sacred moments, when heart talked to heart in the silence of the night, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... doubt, express an outward difference of b and p, but they do not explain the cause of that difference. Surd and sonant are apt to mislead; for if, according to the old system both p and b continue to be classed as mute, it is difficult to see how, taking words in their proper sense, amute letter could be sonant..... Both p and b are momentary negations of breath and voice; or, as the Hindu grammarians say, both are formed ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... away and drag it down to his lair, and Slid shall dive from the Threshold into the sea to see if it be there, and coming up when the fishermen draw their nets shall find it not, nor yet discover it among the sails. Limpang Tung shall seek among the birds and shall not find it when the cock is mute, and up the valleys shall go Umborodom to seek among the crags. And the hound, the thunder, shall chase the Eclipse and all the gods go seeking with Their stars, but never find the ball. And men, no longer having light of the golden ball, shall ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Reformation! Now, the making of images was forbidden, and no picture was permitted to appear even on the walls of the sacred edifice: [470:4] then, a church frequently suggested the idea of a studio, or a picture-gallery. Now, the whole congregation joined heartily in the psalmody: then, the mute crowd listened to the music of the organ accompanied by the shrill voices of a chorus of thoughtless boys. Now, prayers, in the vernacular tongue and suited to the occasion, were offered with simplicity and earnestness; then, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... hope shone once, and where resignation and memory now dwell; this trembling figure, to whose decrepitude the bending staff confesses as she totters down the hill; the gathering gloom of the sky, in which one ray of promise for a bright to-morrow shines from the setting sun; the mute witnessing of the trees upon the hill, which have seen her pass and repass from joyful youth to lonely age, and even her eager grasp upon the poor treasure of herbs that she bears,—all these items of the scene impress one with a sympathy whose keenness is even bitter, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... heirs of collateral lineage were waiting for her last sigh. They did not leave 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 ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... by the thick coiled cables forward, the huge rusty anchors, the piled-up machinery of structure and funnel and mast, weird in the blue darkness. A lantern on the wharf cast a bobbing golden gleam deep into the oily water at her side. Gun-grey, perfectly mute, she ceased to move, coming to rest against the wharf. And then, with a shiver, I saw that something clung round her, a grey film or emanation, which shifted and hovered, like the invisible wings of birds in a thick ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... from the cranes, to which species the birds seemed to belong, they became mute with astonishment. Every mushroom had disappeared, but the toadstools ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... other's white, terror-stricken faces with mute fear. The darkness and silence were enough to appal any one; but the courage of our Viking-boy ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... of that discovery emerges the stupendous mystery of song. The poet takes words, and out of their rhythms finds the harmonious vehicle for ideas. The scientist sees the apple fall and has the revelation of a universe moving in a symphony before which the mind stands mute and awestruck. The cook takes the pig from the stye and the apple from the tree and makes a pretty lyric for the dinner-table. The Great Adventure, in short, is just this passionate pursuit of the soul of harmony in things, great and ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... or comprehensive in its contents. It is devoid of anything in the nature of a bill of rights,[461] and concerning the sovereignty of the people it has nothing to say. Even in respect to many essential aspects of governmental organization and practice it is mute. It contains no provision respecting annual budgets, and it leaves untouched the entire field of the judiciary. The instrument lays down only certain broad lines of organization; the rest it leaves to be supplied through ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... make a reply. The officers were mute; but one stout man on either side seized her arm and led her away, notwithstanding expostulation, and some ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nor played. She never shaped her inner life in words: such utterance was as much denied to her nature as common articulate speech to the deaf mute. Her only language must be in action. Watch her well by day and by night, Old Sophy! watch her well! or the long line of her honored name may close in shame, and the stately mansion of the Dudleys remain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... poor souls are left to pine forgotten, if they have gone with some-lingering stains—some earthly tarnish on their nuptial garment. Ah! there is so much that might be done if we would only reflect, and let our hearts be softened by the intense eloquence of their mute appeal.... ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... false Charles-Darwinian natural selection that does not correspond with facts, and cannot result in specific differences such as we now observe. But, waiving this, the "my's," within which a little rift had begun to show itself in 1866, might well become as mute in 1869 as they could become without attracting attention, when Mr. Darwin saw the passages just quoted, and the hundred pages or so that ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... vault of heaven. The wind had died away to the faintest zephyr, and the dew was falling so copiously that it promised soon to wet us to the skin. At a signal, made by the waving of a lantern, the guns of the Cliff Battery above us suddenly became mute, as though the artillerymen had given up for the night; and a calm and tranquil silence ensued, broken only by the gentle rustle of the fitful breeze through the foliage of some firs which were dotted ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... but somewhat feared, by those who opposed him. I remember that one of the greatest privileges to which the boys at our school at that time looked forward, was being selected to go and listen to Doctor Newman playing the violin. Five or six of us were taken to his study in the evening. In mute silence, with rapt attention, we watched the thin-featured man, whose countenance to us seemed to belong even then to a world beyond this, and we listened to what to us seemed the sweetest ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... came into a place mute of all light, Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest, If by opposing winds ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... midst of this scene the war cry is heard. The enemy has again broken into the country and has already taken and burnt the fortress of Belforad. All crowd round Diaz, beseeching him to save them. While he stands mute and deprived of his invincible sword, Chimene, mastering her own grief at the sight of her country's distress, lays down Tizona at Fernando's feet. Ruy Diaz now receives his sword back from the hands of the King, and brandishing ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... touched to feel thy touch In voices which have mingled with thine own To hear a double tone. As anguish, for supreme expression prest, Borrows its saddest tongue from jest, Thou hast of absence so create A presence more importunate; And thy voice pleads its sweetest suit When it is mute. I thank the once accursed star Which did me teach To make of Silence my familiar, Who hath the rich reversion of thy speech, Since the most charming sounds thy thought can wear, Cast off, fall to that pale attendant's share; And thank ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... production and enjoyment of art; and discipline, whether intellectual, moral, or religious. Taken at his own showing, Mr. Spencer seems to contemplate, as his model of an educated man, a prodigiously capable and efficient mute. But can he deny that the ability to express what one may know, and in speech, as well as in production, is at once the final proof, and in a very real sense the indispensable consummation of such knowing? Language is the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... because now and then she lets daughter join a party (only to hasten back to mother), and even "wonders why daughter doesn't take an interest in girls her own age." That ugly couple on the porch of the apple-sauce and wash-pitcher boarding-house—the mother a mute, dwarfish punchinello, and the daughter a drab woman of forty with a mole, a wart, a silence. That charming mother of white hair and real lace with the well-groomed daughter. That comfortable mother at home and daughter in an office, but with no ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... 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
... to whisper 'Quietness,' Then quietly itself was gone: Yet echoes of its mute caress Were with me as ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... laughter, in which body and soul conjoin so heartily! I fear that no other world call show its anything just like this. As for purely moral enjoyments, the good will find them in every state of being. But where the material and the moral exist together, what is to happen then? And then our mute four-footed friends and the winged songsters of our woods! Might it not be lawful to regret them, even in ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lilith, disdaining the shelter of her nymphs and their clowneries, stood forth in all the hideous majesty of AEnothea, the undulating priestess of the Abominable Shape. His nerves macerated by this sinful apparition, Baldur struggled to resist her mute command. What was it? He saw her wish streaming from her eyes. Despair! Despair! Despair! There is no hope for thee, wretched earthworm! No abode but the abysmal House of Satan! Despair, and you will be welcomed! By a violent act of volition, set in motion by his fingers fumbling a ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... feeling, to that of Madeline Staveley. Many have I seen with a richer lip, with a more luxurious curve, much more tempting as baits to the villainy and rudeness of man; but never one that told so much by its own mute eloquence of a woman's happy heart and a woman's happy beauty. It was lovely as I have said in its mirth, but if possible it was still more lovely in its woe; for then the lips would separate, and the breath would come, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... act as unexpected as it was munificent, kept all mute for some seconds; when Sabrey, whose sensibilities were too deeply moved to permit her to speak, threw upon the donor a look which her grateful emotions made more eloquent than any language she could have summoned for a reply; and then, turning, she ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... she rose and tottered to him, and fell on his neck. She saw it was the death-bed of their love, and she kissed his eyes, and clung to him. They moaned over each other, and clung to each other in mute despair. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... messages arise Behind your clear and wondering eyes, O grave and tiny citizen? And who, of wise and valiant men, Can answer those mute questionings? I think the captains and the kings Might well kneel in humility Before you on your mother's knee, As knelt, beside a stable door, Other great men, ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... to rise to the higher abstract ideas which may be generated by such reasoning. The thought of deaf-mutes always assumes the most concrete form, and one who was educated late in life informed Romanes that he had always before thought in images. I know no instance of a deaf-mute who has independently attained to an advanced intellectual stage, or who has been able without education to form any conception of a supernatural world. R.S. Smith asserts that one of his deaf-mute pupils believed, before his education, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... dragon-fly's wings was loud in the grass. The stream beneath the beeches darkened and grew moody as the light neared its noon intensity; the beech-leaves hung limp and silent; a catbird settled near me with dropped tail and head drawn in between her shoulders, as mute as the leaves; the Maryland yellowthroat broke into a sharp gallop of song at intervals,—he would have to clatter a little on doomsday, if that day fell in June,—but the intervals were far apart. The meadow shimmered. No part of the horizon was in sight—only the sky overhanging ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... kept in training here for future military use seemed reluctant to fly in the still air, missing probably the excitement of sounds that urge them to revel in multitudinous cross-currents when shells are about; and long-tailed Namaqua doves flitted mute about the pine branches, as if unable to coo an amorous note without the usual accompaniment. Quiet did not reign all day, however. Towards evening the enemy's gun on Rifleman's Ridge, or Lancer's Nek, opened straight over the general's new quarters, to which Sir George White ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... Elise to figure almost as a mute on this momentous occasion? But does the reader think it likely that she had much to say? She might perhaps have uttered one word that would have proved insurmountable, but Mr. Wenck had spoken as it were with Benigna's authority, and so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... were like lakes; she had an aquiline nose and thereunder shell like lips showing teeth like pearls. Pleasantness prevailed in every part of her; but she seemed dejected, disturbed, distracted and in the vestibule came and went, walking upon the hearts of her lovers, whilst her legs[FN158] made mute the voices of their ankle rings; and indeed she was as ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... in the grove, The blackbird and linnet and thrush, And goldfinch and sweet cooing dove, Sat pensively mute in the bush: The leaves that once wove a green shade Lay withered in heaps on the ground: Chill Winter through grove, wood, and glade Spread sad ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... a talk together. I have something to tell you. I have a theory!" There was a significant and mysterious expression in his face as he said this. It filled the mother with a sense of foreboding. She sat down opposite him and waited in mute anxiety ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... the appointed day to suffer the trial—a hard one even at my tender years—of witnessing my mother's passionate grief and my father's mute despair. I remember that the scene of our first meeting after Caroline's death was wisely and considerately shortened by my aunt, who took me out of the room. She seemed to have a confused desire to keep me from leaving her after the door had closed behind us; but I broke away and ran downstairs ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... unwilling audience found; On every brow the cloud of sadness hung; The sounds of triumph died on every tongue. Yet not the vows thy weeping country pays; Not that high meed, thy mourning sovereign's praise, Not that the great, the beauteous, and the brave Bend in mute reverence o'er thy closing grave; That with such grief as bathes a kindred bier Collective nations mourn a death so dear; Not these alone shall soothe thy sainted shade, And consecrate the spot where thou art laid— Not ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... writer said about forty years ago: "If there are a few men well organized, of good constitution and robust health, how many are infirm, idiotic, deaf-mute, blind from birth, maimed, foolish and insane? My brother is handsome and well-shaped: I am ugly, weakly, rickety, and a hunchback. Yet we are sons of the same mother. Some are born into opulence, others into the most ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... thee, lady, for the gentle look Which crowned me from thine eyes ten years ago, Ere, clothed in nimbus of the setting sun, Thee from my dazzled eyes thy horse did bear, Proud of his burden. My dull tongue was mute— I was a fool before thee; but my silence Was the sole homage possible to me then: That now I speak, and fear not, is thy gift. The same sweet look be possible to thee For evermore! I bless thee with thine own, And say farewell, and go into my grave— No, to the ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... the domestic drama which the coming of Jacques Brigaut was destined to bring about in the Rogron family it is best to explain how the lad came to be in Provins; for he is, as it were, a somewhat mute personage ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... and groom who always accompany him on his journeys (on which he rides a white horse). Their names are respectively Hsuean T'ung-tzu and Ti-mu, 'Sombre Youth' and 'Earth-mother'; more commonly they are called T'ien-lung, 'Deaf Celestial,' and Ti-ya, 'Mute Terrestrial,' or 'Deaf as Heaven' and 'Mute as Earth.' Thus they cannot divulge the secrets of their master's administration as he distributes intellectual gifts, literary skill, etc. Their cosmogonical connexion has already been referred to in ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers; And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, "Onward! "—but o'er the Past (Dim gulf! ) my spirit hovering lies, Mute—motionless—aghast! For alas! alas! with me The light of life is o'er. "No more—no more—no more," (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore,) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! Now all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sense that he need not forever fight sleep. A wan glow flared behind the dark, uneven horizon, and a melancholy misshapen moon rose to make the white night one of shadows. Absolute silence claimed the desert. It was mute. Then that inscrutable something breathed to him, telling him when he was alone. He need not have looked at the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... fall the maternal head, and bounded to his feet, roaring with wrath. The brothers, imperturbable, with the empty pails at their sides, stared at him with mute wonder. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... stop thief! a highwayman!" Not one of them was mute; And all and each that passed that way Did ...
— R. Caldecott's First Collection of Pictures and Songs • Various
... him an instant longer, then mute for lack of a sufficiently scornful retort, turned and ran back up the steps, slamming ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... and raised her eyes to mine. "I can't feel happy," she said, "I can't help thinking——" She stopped, bent forward a little, and laid her head on my shoulder, with a terrible mute helplessness that ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... with their garrulous crowds I dwell alone, with little need of words; I have mute friendships with the stars and clouds, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... belonging to one of the party. But the heart of the nation beat high with hope, until the appalling intelligence was flashed across the wires that they were defeated. It was a cruel blow. Strong men looked at one another in mute agony, or spoke as if there was a corpse in the next room. The Press sent up a wail that resounded through the land. An eminent divine pronounced it a "National misfortune," and the pictorials containing wood-cuts of the lamented heroes were put away, as we put ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... in furious protest, condemned to batter at its walls in a vain summons to the silent lips that should have voiced its every beat, remained mute in futile and impotent adoration of the miracle love had wrought under my ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the low rush chair in stony despair, her hands clasped on her lap, her face white as her dress, her blue eyes dry, and with a mute, inquiring gaze in them, as though she looked around for an explanation ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... colour and noise. Low houses with flat roofs or miniature domes, small, secret doorways, tiny windows like eyes narrowed for spying, and overhanging upper stories supported on close-set, projecting sticks of mellow brown which meant great age. Minarets sprang up in mute protest against the infidel, appealing to the sky. All that was left of old Algiers tried to boast, in forced dumbness, of past glories, of every charm the beautiful, fierce city of pirates must have possessed before the French came to push it slowly but with deadly sureness back from ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... which we are now conscious, springs not from the beholding of perfected beauty, but from the mute sympathy which the creation with all its children manifests with us in the groaning and travailing which look for the sonship. Because of our need and aspiration, the snowdrop gives birth in our hearts to a loftier spiritual and poetic feeling, than the rose most complete ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... secretly proud "au moins je suis autre"—more a boast than a confession—gives place to a wistful, apologetic admission of the difference as a fault. Here already we have something of that resignation which comes later to its fulness in the story of the Wanderer with the Mute. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... colors which we choose, not only in personal apparel, but in our rooms and decorations, are mute witnesses to a stage ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... had already given us so much vexation. He stopped hard by me, and asked if I knew who he was? My astonishment had disconcerted me so much that I did not hear his question, which he repeated with a volley of oaths and threats; but I remained as mute ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... Germain's, the great bell of the Palais on the island had just begun to hurl its note of doom upon the town. A woman crouching at the end of the chamber burst into hysterical weeping, but, at a glance from Tavannes' terrible eye, was mute again. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the churchyard under flattening mounds—friends who had shown greater zest for melody in their time than was shown in this; or that some past voice of a semi-transparent figure might quaver from some bedroom-window its acknowledgment of their nocturnal greeting, instead of a familiar living ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... they severally declined, with a polite but solemn smile—all except one, a large, savage-looking Turk, with a most ferocious scowl, and the largest black beard I ever beheld. He did not content himself with a mute refusal of our offer, but stopping suddenly, he raised up his hands above his head, and muttered some words in Turkish, which one of the party informed us was a very satisfactory recommendation of the whole company to Satan ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... would fade,—you would leave your poor Corinne nothing but her grief. This beautiful climate, these fine arts, that poetical inspiration which I feel with you, and now, alas! with you alone, would for me become mute. I never awake but trembling; when I behold the god of day, I know not whether it deceives me by its resplendent beams, ignorant as I am whether this city still contains you within its walls—you, the star of my life! Oswald, remove this terror from my soul, and I will desire ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... mark of competence in Western Ireland, just as a big watch-chain is in certain parts of England. Not a soul on Omey Island could play the pianoforte, thank heaven; so it remained with its back against the wall, as mute evidence of solvency. There was no carpet on the floor, which was of a fine dirt-colour, and the chickens, ducks, and ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... kind of talk that was pleasing to the father, and he became morosely silent. It was equally repugnant to Ruggles and the parson to hear Nellie Dawson referred to as being in love with the execrated officer. Ruggles was grim and mute, and the parson deftly drew the conversation in ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... ever,—the noble strong man Who would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a God loved so well: He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began So to end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter to be mute: 'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sin—justification by faith alone; and then, at last, an abundant entrance is afforded into the beautiful mansions of light, where friendship is changeless and carkering care is unknown, and no more pale faces with mute hearts breaking every day. Yonder we shall be clad in the beauteous wedding garments ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... knew that a tree had another use than for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth, than for tillage and roads: that these things bore a second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all their natural history a certain mute commentary on human life. Shakespeare employed them as colours to compose his picture. He rested in their beauty; and never took the step which seemed inevitable to such genius, namely, to explore the virtue which resides ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... with their escape either by witty Fetches, or hiding themselves in dark Holes, Closets, Beds, &c. We are all for Humour, Gallantry, Conversation, and Courtship, and shou'dn't endure the chief Lady in the Play a Mute, or to say very little, as 'twas agreeable to them: Our amorous Sparks love to hear the pretty Rogues prate, snap up their Gallants, and Repartee upon 'em on all sides. We shou'dn't like to have a Lady marry'd without knowing whether ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... mischievous South wind was blowing; it disarrayed the hair, it whispered in the ear, and stirred the music in the blood. The leaves of the trees were murmuring with rustling delight. And the ceaseless sound of the ocean made all the mute longings of the heart of man and maid surge backwards and forwards on the full ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... should be in their prime—so caged and fed that the result is disease in its most loathsome form, and with all its most appalling consequences! No hope! no flight! The yet untainted, as it were, chained to the spot, with mute despair watching the slow infection, and with breaking hearts awaiting the hour—the moment—when it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... not recover all its bloom until the canoe was again in the current, down which it floated swiftly, occasionally impelled by the paddle of Jasper. She witnessed the descent of the falls with a degree of terror which had rendered her mute; but her fright had not been so great as to prevent admiration of the steadiness of the youth who directed the movement from blending with the passing terror. In truth, one much less sensitive might have had her feelings awakened by the cool and gallant air with which Eau-douce had ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... life and its surroundings. He visits the British Museum, and encounters only disappointment at the mutilated sculptures of the Parthenon; but out of this confession, which is truth, slowly arises the higher truth of that airy yet profound response with which he greets the multiform mute company of marble or painted shapes that form the real ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... prominent American silversmiths, but most of the pieces are by lesser known makers and are in the collection because of historic interest rather than artistic merit. The chief usefulness of the collection lies in its value as a social document and in the mute evidence it gives of the taste and craftsmanship of the periods covered. The collection is also helpful in dating type specimens that do not have specific associations with persons and dates. Perhaps even more ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... Autumn repartees, 'People may give themselves airs; but other people, perhaps, who make less ado, may be, perhaps, as agreeable as people who set themselves out more.' All the other people at the table sat mute, while these two people, who were quarrelling, went on with the use of the word 'people,' instancing the very accidents between them, as if they kept only in distant hints. 'Therefore,' says Autumn, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... men, but they seemed helpless except to groan and hold their heads in mute agony, dull and apparently unaware of what ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Flemild were somewhat dismayed to discover that their chosen guests could not understand a word they said, and were quite as unintelligible to them. Derette's mute offer to hold the baby was quickly comprehended; and when Isel, taking the woman and girl up the ladder, showed them a heap of clean straw, on which two thick rough rugs lay folded, they quite understood that their sleeping-place for ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... was trembling and full of a wild courage. I can feel now the exquisite surmise, the doubt of that moment. Our eyes met. She looked up at me with an unwonted touch of fear in her expression and I laid my hands on her. She did not recoil, she stood mute with her lips pressed together, looking at me steadfastly. I can feel that moment now as a tremendous hesitation, blank and yet full of light and life, like a clear sky in ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... than the rebels redoubled their fire on us, but we cared not for them. We scarcely had got clear from the side of the ill-fated vessel, when a terrific, thundering, roaring noise assailed our ears; a vivid flash blinded us; a scorching heat almost consumed us; and as we bent our heads in mute dismay, nearer despair, after a few moments of awful silence, down came crashing about us burning fragments of timbers and planks and spars and sails, and, horror of horrors! pieces of what an instant before had been human forms, breathing with life ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... general bustle spread throughout the throng, Which seemed to hold all verse in detestation; The Angels had of course enough of song When upon service; and the generation Of ghosts had heard too much in life, not long Before, to profit by a new occasion: The Monarch, mute till then, exclaimed, "What! what![553] Pye[554] come again? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... But the mute appeal that he shot at his companion produced no answer, except a resolute shake of the head—an absolute prohibition against the ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... the men who loved their fellow men. Once let this spirit prevail, and the wrangling sects will be lost in a great league of those who love in the service of those who suffer. No man will then revile the faith in which his neighbor finds help for today and hope for the morrow; pity will smite him mute, and love will teach him that God is found in many ways, by those who seek him with honest hearts. Once let this spirit rule in the realm of trade, and the law of the jungle will cease, and men will strive ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... which, grasping the mind by a certain force, deadened the ear to words implying the contrary. Mysie stood fixed to the spot, as if she were trying to realize some certainty she dared not think was possible, her lips apart, her eyes riveted on the face of the lady—mute as that kind of picture which a certain ancient calls a silent poem, and motionless as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... shores there was in America no more isolated spot holding a man's home. Out on the north bank of the Arkansas, in a grassy river bottom, with rolling treeless plains rippling away on every hand, it reared its high yellow walls in solitary defiance, mute token of the white man's conquering hand in a savage wilderness. It was a great rectangle built of adobe brick with walls six feet through at the base, sloping to only a third of that width at the top, eighteen feet from the ground. Round bastions, thirty feet high, at two ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... man glanced casually about the place, as if observing a passer-by. Ned and his companions exchanged quick looks of inquiry. Using the mute language in which the boys were adept, Ned flashed a question ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Huron, girt with wood; This driplet feeds Missouri's tide— And that Niagara's flood. What tidings from the Andes brings Yon line of liquid light, That down from heaven in madness flings The blind foam of its might? Do I not hear his thunder roll— The roar that ne'er is still? 'Tis mute as death!—but in my soul It roars, and ever will. What forests tall of tiniest moss Clothe every little stone!— What pigmy oaks their foliage toss O'er pigmy valleys lone! With shade o'er shade, from ledge to ledge, Ambitious of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... grass did not take fire. This really was nothing ideal; everything, both animate and inanimate, gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to the wind, and their noses to the ground, without the muscular strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves of the tree under which we were sitting, fell like a snow shower around us. At noon, I took a thermometer, graduated to 127 degrees, out of my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 125. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... description of his cubicle: mausoleum of his every hope and aspiration, sepulchre of all his ability and promise. In this narrow room his very self had been extinguished: a man had degenerated into a machine. Everything that caught his eye bore mute witness to this truth: the shabby tin alarm clock on the battered bureau was one of a dynasty that had roused him at six in the morning with unfailing regularity three hundred and sixty-five times per year (Sundays ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... tightening around the receiver whitened to the delicate nails under the pressure. Mute, struggling with the mounting impulse, voice and lip unsteady, she still spoke ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... woman, thou didst not forsake, Though lov'd, thou forborest to grieve me, Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake, Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, Though parted, it was not to fly, Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, Nor mute, that the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to leave her, but trusted that she knew my welfare best and so putting my mute thanks into my eyes I gave her a long last look and was hurried into the motor car. I thought of Lord Roberts, but was even more delighted when we stopped on the very same avenue where I had followed the burglars. To my ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... but an interval of a few weeks, the Conservative party in the two Houses heard the paragraph read without surprise and without a murmur. Some said that the gentlemen on the Treasury Bench in the House of Commons did not look to be comfortable. Mr. Daubeny sat with his hat over his brow, mute, apparently impassive and unapproachable, during the reading of the Speech and the moving and seconding of the Address. The House was very full, and there was much murmuring on the side of the Opposition;—but from the Government benches hardly a sound was heard, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... line of swamp, and the chapel cross stood out against a band of yellow light that spanned the west, he walked out to see the village, a little girl on either hand and little boys round about. The children talked apace. Only the girl whose hand he held in his right was mute. She was taller than the rest; yet it was she to whom the little big-eyed boy pointed when he said, vain of his ability to tell it ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... trail appeared as if cushioned to her contact with star-rayed mosses, or lightly flung after her long lassoes of delicate vines. She recalled the absolute freedom of their al-fresco life in the old double cabin, when she spent the greater part of her waking hours under the mute trees in the encompassing solitude, and, half regretting the more civilized restraints of this newer and more ambitious abode, forgot that she had ever rebelled against it. The social complication that threatened her now seemed to her rather the outcome of ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... the revolutionists sitting there listened to him in mute wonder, for they recalled that it was upon the Incorruptible's own charge their brother-deputy had been arrested. Ardently did Maximilien pour out his eloquence, enumerating the many virtues of the accused and dwelling ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... figure; only a waving bough of the tree overhead still brushed with shadow her neck and face. As the evening waned, she had less to say to him, growing always more silent in new dignity, more mute with happiness. ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... servants urged them to do so, as the only means of saving their lives. They were kept seated in their tent while the fanatics discussed the subject. The travellers sat in silence. At last Mr Richardson exclaimed: "Let us talk a little. We must die. What is the use of sitting so mute?" For some minutes death seemed really to hover over their heads. Mr Richardson proposed trying to escape for their lives, when the kind-hearted Sliman rushed into the tent, exclaiming in a tone of sincere ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... absolutely refuses to answer, or in an impertinent manner delay or trifle with the court, then he is deemed a mute; but if he speaks not at all, nor gives any sign by which the Court shall be satisfied that he is able to speak, then an inquest of officers, that is of twelve persons who happen to be by, are to enquire whether ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... 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
... his saw A forked stick to pluck the fruit, His wife, the basket lined with straw; He talks, but she is almost mute, And very pale. The minutes pass; The basket has no further space, Now on the fruits they flowers amass That with their red flush all the place While twilight lingers; then for wood He saws the branches of the trees, The noise, ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... all night upon his bed staring in a mute agony at the ceiling. Once or twice he fancied he heard the sounds of music from the next room. His heart leaped joyfully. But almost instantly his hopes sank back, like spent swimmers in a relentless sea. It seemed as if his brain were thirsting. He was in a pitiless desert of white-heated ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a voice said to me, 'You are not a square-dealer.' I opened my eyes on the barber, only to see a bloated face with impassive and mute lips; he had said nothing, I could easily see. I closed my eyes again, only to hear, 'You do not treat me as you would a gentleman.' I now knew that the voice was that of an unseen person, and I replied mentally but really. 'Who are you, and what do you want?' 'I am Jesus, whom ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... Marjorie. "When she knows how badly Mignon behaved toward Connie——" The little girl drew a sharp breath of dismay. Into her mind flashed her recent promise to Constance Stevens. She could tell Mary nothing until she had permission to do so. That meant that for the day, at least, she must remain mute, for Constance was not in school that morning, nor would she be in during the day. She had received special permission from Miss Archer to be excused from lessons while her foster father ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... to catch a yellow-winged woodpecker in its nest when my arm became twisted and lodged in the deep hole so that I could not get it out without the aid of a knife; but we were a long way from home and my only companion was a deaf-mute cousin of mine. I was about fifty feet up in the tree, in a very uncomfortable position, but I had to wait there for more than an hour before he brought me the knife with which I ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... wit. Firing under cover of that advantage, he did triple execution; for, in the first place, the distressing sympathy of the hearers with his distress of utterance won for him unavoidably the silence of deep attention; and then, whilst he had us all hoaxed into this attitude of mute suspense by an appearance of distress that he perhaps did not really feel, down came a plunging shot into the very thick of us, with ten times the effect it would else have had. If his stammering, however, often did him true ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... he murmured, as his sister tucked her arm in his in mute understanding. "Think of the architect that could plan that ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... announced to us that all the squibs and crackers, with which our pockets were crammed, were to be given up immediately; and that, as we had not said our lessons well, there would be no half-holiday, the whole school were in mute despair. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... too extraordinary to analyze or to describe. It was as if they were so sympathetically attuned that the mere sound of her voice set his whole being into vibrant response, where all his life he had lain mute. She played havoc with his resolutions, too, awaking in him the wildest envy and desire. He no longer thought of her as unattainable; on the contrary, her husband's shortcomings seemed providential. Absurd, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... place,' and ought to have parted from her inwardly, not before the eyes of the world. There are so many marriages that are not marriages. Then happiness would have been gone, but I should not have had the eye staring at me with its searching look and its mild, though mute, accusation." ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... knocked at the familiar door. It was lunch-time, and unfamiliar culinary smells seemed wafted along the passage. Her morbid imagination scented bacon. The orthodox amulet on the doorpost did not comfort her; it had been left there, forgotten, a mute symbol of the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... 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 ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... were not like those to which we are accustomed—mute ceremonies, in which sorrow is barely expressed by a furtive tear: noise, sobbings, and wild gestures were their necessary concomitants. Not only was it customary to hire weeping women, who tore their hair, filled the air with their lamentations, and simulated by skilful ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Pavilion of Louis XIV and the court, the garden and the stream, then, turning inside, the modern surveys the work of the ancient, the remnants of time. And no less curious and no less remote do the old tapestries seem than the atelier where the high looms rear their cylinders and mute men play their colour harmonies on the warp. It all seems of other times; it all seems dead. And it ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Bella's arm within her own and trotted upstairs to the bedroom, where Bella arrayed herself in total silence, and her friend, beyond a vigorous sigh or two, was mute also. ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... our seats and never stir, We allow our flowers to fade in peace, and avoid the trouble of bearing fruit. Let the starlights blazon their eternal folly, We quench our flames. Let the forest rustle and the ocean roar, We sit mute. Let the call of the flood-tide come from the sea, We ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... shell is mute,— And after is evil cheer: She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... I was a mute witness to as keen and high-handed a performance as I ever witnessed. One by one every item of the Constant-Scrappe's silver service, valued at ninety thousand dollars, was removed from the sideboard and taken along the hall and placed in the tonneau of ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... coming home from school, she went into the Perkins home. She had not seen Martha since she had lived at the Motherwells' the year before. It was a large frame house, with a well-kept garden in front and a hedge of purple and white lilacs in full bloom. Pearl was standing looking at the hedge in mute enjoyment, when Martha came out to get green onions and ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... captive maid. Her eyes were deep as the—(I can't remember what, Stephen) But she was not afraid. I go to her tent in the evening And woo her with my flute, But she dreams of the Sky Blue Water, And the captive maid is mute. ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... kick or a wamble like a lumpy snake, and her soul commiserated each movement as if it had been the last throe of dissolution, while the grey fire of the mare's one visible fierce eye, turned up from the shadow of Malcolm's superimposed bulk, seemed to her tender heart a mute ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... involuntarily with the instinctive aversion to raw liquor of one to whom the action has not become habitual. Afterward he remained standing for a moment while his eyes wandered aimlessly around the familiar room. As he did so his glance fell upon the pile of text-books, mute reminder of a lecture yet unprepared, and for an instant he stood undecided. With a characteristic shrug of distaste and annoyance, of dismissal as well, he resumed his seat, his slippered feet spread wide to catch ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... irrepressible look of perfect joy from Madeleine's luminous eyes had answered the impassioned gaze of his; one smile of ineffable gratitude played over her sweet lips. For an instant the eyes were raised heavenward, in mute thanksgiving, and then sought the ground, as though they feared to reveal too much; and the smile of transport changed to one of grave serenity, and the wonted quietude ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... nationalism and internationalism clash? Because this national spirit has rightly or wrongly been bound up so intimately with political independence. Tara's harp long hangs mute when Erin is conquered. Poland's children must not use a language in which they might learn to plot against their masters. A French-speaking Alsatian is suspected of disloyalty. Professor Dewey has recently pointed out ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... ball, and the threesomes had become a mere golf lesson, plus a clash of personalities. Wilbur Cowan did all the talking; he was grim, steely eyed, imperious. His splendid brother was mute and submissive, after a few feeble essays at assertion that were brutally stifled. Patricia danced disrespectfully in the background when neither brother observed her. She had no wish to incur again ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... to deceive his visitors, and also the government officers? It is now plain that he conducts no mining operations whatever. This mine of his is a gigantic blind. Whenever inspectors or scientific curiosity seekers visit his mill his mute workmen assume the air of being very busy, the cars laden with his so-called 'ore' rumble out of the tunnel, and their contents are ostentatiously poured into the furnace, or appear to be poured into it, really dropping into a receptacle beneath, to be carried back into the mine again. And then ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... worthy?"—Who is "worthy," by personal dignity, or distinguished and meritorious services, "to open the book and to loose the seals thereof?" No response comes from any quarter to break the solemn silence. The whole creation is mute. "Who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?" "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!" (Rom. xi. 33, 34.)—"And no man in heaven," ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... played about the lips of the spectators when she took her place in the dancers' enclosure. She was so absurd and so laughed at, that she had not the courage to make a second attempt. She buried herself gloomily in her dark corner, only leaving it to hunt up Jupillon and carry him off, with the mute violence of a wife dragging her husband out of the wineshop and leading him home ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... indicted for a barbarous murder and robbery. He had been taken up upon suspicion, several spots of blood, and part of the property being found upon him. When he was brought to the bar, he would not speak or plead, though often urged to it, and the sentence to be inflicted on such as stand mute, read to him, in vain. Four or five persons in the court, swore that they had heard him speak, and the boy who was his accomplice, and apprehended, was there to be a witness against him; yet he continued mute; whereupon he was carried back to Horsham gaol, to be pressed to death, if he would not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... with vehement suit O'ercome, from house to house pleading aloud For recompense, till I at last prevail'd. But now, with darts of anguish ye transfix My inmost soul, and I have no redress. He spake impassion'd, and to earth cast down His sceptre, weeping. Pity at that sight Seiz'd all the people; mute the assembly sat Long time, none dared to greet Telemachus With answer rough, till of them all, at last, 110 Antinoues, sole arising, thus replied. Telemachus, intemp'rate in harangue, High-sounding orator! it is thy drift To make us all odious; but the offence Lies not ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... them, and then a humble, beseeching expression filled them, as if asking pardon for the rash act nearly committed, and pity for the hard fate that prompted it. Polly read the language of these eyes, and answered their mute prayer with a simple eloquence that said more than any words for she just stooped down and kissed the poor child, with her own eyes full, and lips that trembled with the sympathy she could not tell. Jenny put both arms about her neck, and began to shed the quiet tears that ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... assuming the likeness of giant visages, its swampy meadows and inlets, lovely with flowers and waving with rushes, its royal eagles stemming the pure air aloft, its fish leaping in the ripples—and then, as he sailed on, mute with enchantment, the blue magnificence of the mountains soaring heavenward and melting into the clouds that hung about their summits—as all this multifarious beauty unfolded itself, Hudson may well have thought that the lost Eden of the earth was found at last. And ere long, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... composed entirely of new prisoners, mostly white men, but with a few blacks and one coppery-skinned drylander of Mars. Whimpering, hopeless creatures, all of them; not worth his notice. All day he labored without speaking to any of them and the quantities of ore he removed gave mute evidence of his tireless vigor. If Kulan, the giant Martian guard, took any notice of ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... kept his gaze buried in his book, marking his progress with a blade of grass. Rawlins stole away without speaking and we three were left alone to stare in mute desire at the tea things. A bee was buzzing noisily about the honey jar. It was The Seraph who spoke at last, his hands clasped ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... one of the grandest spectacles that Nature can offer to the gaze of man. Below them, the tempest; above them, the starry firmament, tranquil, mute, impassible, with the moon projecting her peaceful rays over these ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... the Count de Moustier, whatever they may have been, cannot have done injury to my endeavors here, to open the West Indies to us. On this head, the ministers are invincibly mute, though I have often tried to draw them into the subject. I have therefore found it necessary to let it lie, till war, or other circumstances, may force it on. Whenever they are in war with England, they must open the islands to us, and perhaps, during that war, they ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... were filled with birds in gilded cages, which we should have taken for songsters but for the fact that, although crowds gathered about and regarded them with mute admiration, not a sound issued from their throats—at least we heard none. A palanquin stopped at one of these shops, and a lady alighted and bought three beautiful birds which she carried away in their cages, watching them with every indication of the utmost pleasure, which we ascribed ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... up; Dysart merely became mute; Geraldine looked around with a start; her lips parted in a soundless, mechanical greeting, then the flush in her cheeks brightened; and as she rose, Dysart got onto his feet and stood silently facing ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... would obliterate their shame, and dissolve the engagement, which on his side might not be very faithfully performed. The ceremony of their homage was grateful to a people who had long since considered pride as the substitute of power. High on his throne, the emperor sat mute and immovable: his majesty was adored by the Latin princes; and they submitted to kiss either his feet or his knees, an indignity which their own writers are ashamed to confess and unable ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... sharply away, as if in sudden embarrassment. Then, in answer to his conventionally murmured good-byes, she looked back, and he saw her face radiant, alight, with the most beautiful smile trembling on the lips. The splendor of this look seemed to him a mute expression of her happiness—of love reciprocated, ambition realized—and in it he read his own doom. He turned blindly round to pick up his hat; the door behind him was opened, and there, handsome, debonair, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... "upon this platform was reared a capacious temple, within whose walls the high-priests gathered from different quarters at stated seasons, celebrated their mystic rites, while the swarming multitudes below looked up with mute adoration." Mr. Breckenridge, whose writings we have already referred to, at the time of his first visit, "everywhere observed a great number of small elevations of earth, to the height of a few feet, at regular distances apart, which appeared to observe some order: near them pieces of flint ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... The mute slave picked it up, and laid it carefully on the table again, while his master threw a ball into a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cataract could vanish thus; that the gorge and the great Falls which for uncounted centuries had thundered to the rush and tumult of the mighty waters could now lie mute and dry and lifeless, saddened them both ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... parable about the growth of the blade of corn (iv. 26), and that of the porter commanded to watch until the master's return (xiii. 34). There are two miracles peculiar to Mark, the cure of the deaf-mute (vii. 32) and of the blind man at Bethsaida (viii. 22). Among the miracles recorded in Mark, the cures of demoniacs are prominent. This is in peculiar contrast with John, where we find no cure of ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... approval, she glanced at him inquiringly. When she finished she stood for a moment in the centre of the rug panting, her beautiful bosom, beneath its filmy covering of lace, gently rising and falling. Then, asking her father's consent with a mute glance, she ran forward impulsively, and, kneeling at Thorndyke's feet, she took his hand and pressed it to her lips. And rising, suffused with blushes, she tripped from the dais and ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... Beethoven, and every piano was for him mute, and he, the maker of sweet sounds, could not hear his own voice, or catch the words that fell from the lips of those he loved, Fate seemed to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Mute, casual, they tramped out of the house together, and down the hill to a region of shabby old brown houses like blisters on the hillside. They had little to say, and that little was a polite reminiscence of incidents in ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... presently the power of replying, the different emotions of love, and shame, fear, and joy, made such a confusion in her sentiments, that she could only look the meanings of them all: Fillamour, however, found enough in this mute language to make him know, he was in as fair a way of happiness, as he cou'd wish; and returning her glances with others as languishing, as the most melting longing love cou'd teach the loveliest eyes in the world, they continued, for some moments, thus transmitting souls—" until their confidant ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... hadst not cast them away, would have made thee invincible. Dost thou not know me? Why dost thou not speak? Is it shamefastness or insensibleness that makes thee silent? I had rather it were shamefastness, but I perceive thou art become insensible." And seeing me not only silent but altogether mute and dumb, fair and easily she laid her hand upon my breast saying: "There is no danger; he is in a lethargy, the common disease of deceived minds; he hath a little forgot himself, but he will easily remember himself again, if he be brought to know us first. To which end, let us a ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius |
