"Numb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... next turn!" exclaimed Tom prayerfully. He was sitting waist-deep in water, and his teeth were chattering. He was becoming numb again, but there was no opportunity for exercise now. The old flatboat seemed ready to slide from under ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... sensation of impending death. Usually during the exertion and excitement, sudden onset of agonizing pain in the region of the heart and a sense of constriction, as if the heart had been seized in a vise. The pains radiate up the neck and down the arm. The fingers may be numb. The patient remains motionless and silent, the face usually pale or ashy with profuse perspiration. Lasts for several seconds or a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... I know it well Lord Warwick, blame me not, 'Tis loue I beare thy glories make me speake: But in this troublous time, what's to be done? Shall we go throw away our Coates of Steele, And wrap our bodies in blacke mourning Gownes, Numb'ring our Aue-Maries with our Beads? Or shall we on the Helmets of our Foes Tell our Deuotion with reuengefull Armes? If for the last, say ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... "Numb my hands with palsy, Rack my feet with gout, Hunch my back and shoulder, Let my teeth fall out; Still, if Life be granted, I prefer the loss; Save my life, and give me Anguish ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... getting numb. She had been sitting on them in correct Japanese fashion all this time. She was proud of the accomplishment, which she considered must be hereditary, but she could not keep it up for much longer than half an hour. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... property. After the Restoration—and not before—Greatrakes felt 'a strong and powerful impulse in him to essay' the art of healing by touching, or stroking. He resisted the impulse, till one of his hands having become 'dead' or numb, he healed it by the strokes of the other hand. From that moment Greatrakes practised, and became celebrated; he cured some diseased persons, failed wholly with others, and had partial and temporary success with a third class. The descriptions given by Stubbe, in his letter to the celebrated ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Propositiones aliquot frustra antehac tentatae, cum censura brevi Doctrinae Wallisianae de Motu, London 1671 in 4to. There is an account of this book in the Philosophical Transactions, Numb. 72, for the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... effort, and suddenly—incredibly—there burst upon Thyrsis' sight an apparition. Sick at heart, numb with horror, dazed—he scarcely knew what it was. It happened so swiftly that he had hardly time to see; but something leaped forth something enormous, supernatural! It came—it came—there seemed never to be an end to it! He started to his feet, staring, crying out; and at the same moment the doctor ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... would not slight. Inside of his hot-headedness and courage there was that reserved look in his eyes, which some men and brutes have, that says they have a life of their own to live separate from yours, and they know it. The boy crept up jealously, thrust his numb fingers into his mother's hand. She ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... weary, the wind chilled me, and there were ringing noises in my ears: the enthusiasm that had sustained me grew less. Would they ever find me? Glancing downward, I tried to discover lights. In listening I grew numb, the mountains began to reel around me, the moon and the stars danced before me, my senses began to wander. Should I attempt to go forward? Would it not be better to throw myself down? Once more I looked over the precipice, and just ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... but when we know that hundreds are rendered homeless every day, and countless thousands are killed and wounded, men and boys mowed down like a field of grain, and with as little compunction, we grow a little bit numb to human misery. What does it matter if there is a family north of the track living on soda biscuits and turnips? War hardens us to human grief ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... been Mr. Reardon's. For fully half an hour he lay there, gradually straightening out the tangle in his intellect, and presently he was aware that the back of his head was very sore and ached, so he put up his hand to rub it and found a lump as large as a walnut. His right shoulder was numb and he was unable to move it, although this would not have surprised him had he been aware that a hundred and eighty pounds of Teutonic masculinity had landed on that shoulder with both feet and dislocated ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... more letters addressed to "Dear C.," bearing no signature, and yet written by Charles. Desiree read them carefully with a sort of numb attention which photographed them permanently on her memory like writing that is carved in stone upon a wall. There must be some explanation in one of them. Who had sent them to her? ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... seemed settled for Hitty; her father admitted no nursing but hers. Month after month rolled away, and the numb grasp gradually loosed its hold on flesh and sense, but still Judge Hyde was bedridden. Year after year passed by, and no change for better or worse ensued. Hitty's life was spent between the two parlors and the kitchen; for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... back into his face but receded when he saw Terry standing by him. Still faint and sick he struggled to his feet, leaning against the trunk of the banyan and stamping his feet weakly to restore the still numb legs. Terry helped him hobble over to where the Bogobos, who had come up at the shots, were grouped about the dead monster. Lindsey, kneeling to examine the head of the great reptile, struck a match to point out the jagged wounds that had shattered ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... indices of the change that had taken place within her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had found herself ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and turned in time to guard his head with his right arm. It felt numb and he was half dazed by a shock of pain, but he struck savagely with his left hand and his knuckles jarred on bone. The other's stick dropped, and when they grappled Festing was relieved to feel his arm was ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... thought the day was ours. The headlong Rupert Swept all before him, like the wind that bends The thin and unkind corn, his men were numb With slaying, and their chargers straddling, blown With undue speed, as they had hunted that Which could not turn again—e'en thus was Rupert, When round to meet his squadrons came a host Like whirlwind to the wind. There was a moment that the blood-surge roll'd Hither and thither, while ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... mingled incapacity and unworthiness. Before she left the cottage, it was spring time in her soul; it had begun to put forth the buds of eternal life. Such buds are not unfrequently nipped; but even if they are, if a dull, false, commonplace frost close in, and numb the half wakened spirit back into its wintry sleep, that sleep will ever after be haunted with some fainting airs of the paradise those buds prophesied. In Mercy's case they were to grow into spiritual ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... upon the floor of the landing. "My feet are cold and numb from waiting for life to come out of life," he said heavily. "The woman struggled ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... own purple, the meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent, with imprisoned song, are ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... should have been split in two; and, though his face did not show it, it must have been surprising to Carse that she wasn't. With one flick of the wrist he wrenched the Star Devil out of her plunge and sent her scudding, a hundred feet up, over the jungle rim. Friday was gaping. Harkness, still numb from the dive, foolishly staring; and then the brigand bared her ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... think that I owe you no explanations, but I shall say this: the evil courses that you deplore were adopted, not vindictively, but in the effort to numb the agony that you had made me suffer. You but ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the boys had been fully occupied by their athletic games; but as the ground became one series of frozen humps, hands grew numb, and feet cold, the interest in them subsided; and yet the love of misrule, so much stronger in a boys' than in a girls' school, grew more active ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... In his rage-maddened heart was no room for gratitude to the ape-man. He recalled only the fact that Tarzan had laid this painful indignity upon him. He would be revenged, but just at present his legs were so numb and his head so dizzy that he must postpone ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his hand toward the bent figure that was about to shuffle past him. The withered hand of the white-faced clown rested in the strong grasp of the pastor, and his pale, little eyes sought the face of the stalwart man before him; a numb desolation was growing in his heart; the object for which he had gone on day by day was being left behind and he must stumble forth into ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... probably make no effort to learn of his whereabouts until after midnight. The night, too, was already growing very cold, with a raw, gusty wind that soughed drearily among the willows; his bare hands and wet feet were fast becoming chilled and numb. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 'run into' the dark green of the sashes, both colours being wet at the same time, each man having two pots of paint and two sets of brushes. The wind was not blowing in sudden gusts, but swept by in a strong, persistent current that penetrated their clothing and left them trembling and numb with cold. It blew from the right; and it was all the worse on that account, because the right arm, being in use, left that side of the body fully exposed. They were able to keep their left hands in their trousers pockets and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Wings in mourning veils, dark as crepe, And feasts on afterglow of Trust, On cauldrons tossed to crafty Death That froths dank pomp and guidons bright, Unto a height, where falt'ring eyes, Betrayed by crystals numb in dust, Gasps at the sight with startled breath As vapours green, war with the light, Faint as the sunset's golden dyes. All mounts of bone are tombs of weal, Each scree, a temple of king Doom; And runnels that the suns do shun, Are pools where ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... "It's growing rather numb. But it might be worse," I answered mendaciously. If anything in this world could be worse, I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, 305 When the frost flowers deg. the whiten'd window-panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... easy prey, we said, to our gunners, archers and swordsmen. All was in readiness for the attack—and yet no word was ever given. No trumpet sounded, though the men were drawn up ready. We all stood to arms; but the sight of that dazzling white figure seemed to close the lips of our commanders, to numb the limbs of our soldiers. I can say no more. When the chance was gone—the hour passed—we gazed into each other's face as men awaking from a dream. We cursed ourselves. We cursed the witch who had bound us by her spells. We vowed to redeem and revenge ourselves another ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... matter. For my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift apart, Why, nothing ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a dazed way and saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those crisp curls. I was an old man, she a weak, wretched girl. She raised her face at my touch, and burned in my brain a vision of stricken agony, of horrible soul-pain, which we liken, for want of a better simile, to the anguish in the eyes of a dying doe. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... was one thing that they knew quite well: the water was almost colder than they could bear, at first. If their feet hadn't grown numb, after a time, so that there was no feeling in them at all, they wouldn't have been able to stand there so still ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... were many exceptions to this rule. There were some of the upper classes remaining, described in the certificates which all the emigrants were obliged to procure, like Sir Nicholas Comyn, of Limerick, 'who was numb at one side of his body of a dead palsy, accompanied only by his lady, Catherine Comyn, aged thirty-five years, flaxen-haired, middle stature; and one maid servant, Honor M'Namara, aged twenty years, brown hair, middle ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... longer job than he had expected it to be, for my pal was tired and numb. But the grave was made at last, upon the very summit of ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of weariness with this thing, "Ah, my God, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... this time were numb with cold. We had been ascending steadily, and Byfield's English thermometer stood at thirteen degrees. I borrowed from the heap a thicker overcoat, in the pocket of which I was lucky enough to find a pair of furred gloves; and leaned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sick, numb, he glanced at Naida, who was still staring silently, and hitched his rifle half up to his shoulder. But he did not look down the sights yet. Although it was time, and more than time, that he fired, he would not do it until the last possible second, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... fluttering heart and heaving and clamoring lungs—plunging forward under the weak urging of his heavy master, responding now through force of habit—feeling that because he was in motion he must continue in motion. It was a numb, mechanical effort, involuntary and apart from him, as much apart from his control as was the beating of ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... solitude also began even to numb the powers of his mind. He was fully aware of this, and tried to shake it off, for he shuddered more at the thought of mental than of physical decay. Among other things, he took to talking more frequently to Brownie, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... had died away as suddenly as it had come. She felt numb and yet excited. She leaned forward and once more laid ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... tap of the bell, no less surely to grapple with lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets, but with none of the incidents of glorious war, the flag, the hurrah, and all the things that fire a soldier's heart, to urge them on,—clinging, half naked, with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying to put on their stiff and frozen garments,—is one of the sights that make one proud of being a man. To see them in action, dripping icicles from helmet and coat, high upon ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... hundred Mohawks fell on the Hurons encamped under shelter of Quebec, butchered without mercy, and departed with shouts of laughter that echoed below the guns at Cape Diamond, scalps waving from the prow of each Iroquois canoe. Quebec was thunderstruck, numb with fright. The French dared not retaliate, or the Iroquois would fall on the colony at Onondaga. Perhaps people who keep their vision too constantly fixed on heaven lose {99} sight of the practical duties of earth; but when eighty Onondagas came again ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Yale boat was one who seemed to be growing blind and numb. In his heart he was praying for strength as earnestly as he would have prayed for the salvation of his soul. Only a few moments more—he must ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... money; that whatever or whoever you pay money for, is an article of property, and the fact of your paying for it proves that it is property. The children of Israel were required to purchase their first-born out from under the obligations of the priesthood, Numb. xviii. 15, 16; Exod. xxxiv. 20. This custom is kept up to this day among the Jews, and the word buy is still used to describe the transaction. Does this prove that their first-born were, or are, held as property? They were bought as really as were servants. So ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a tent in Otago (New Zealand) during a severe winter, we were perfectly numb with cold at nights, until we adopted the Maori plan, which is to dig a hole about a foot square in the clear, to cover the bottom with a stone or stones, and to fill it at night with red-hot cinders from the camp ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... very fast, her eyes hurrying from side to side of the page, her face blanching, and her hands more numb with ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... now began to beat again rather wildly, but she reasoned with herself; she was no coward, and indeed why had she any cause for alarm? No one could be more aloof than her companion seemed. She was already numb with cold too, and her common sense told her shelter of any sort ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... of sheep was steady and continuous. The current was swift and the men's bodies ached and grew numb in the intense cold, but they stood their ground. Only in one place was the water too deep to work, and here they lost a few terror-stricken animals who turned aside from the chain ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... in ordinary, began to assuage the violence of my suffering, and to-numb my feeling of them. My health returned to me, though I still retained an air of grief, dejection, and languor, which taking off from the ruddiness of my country complexion, rendered it rather more ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... smoking-room, where my friend was consuming large cigars; I envied him his occupation, but rejected all his invitations to join him. After a time he came out and wrapped me up in half a dozen rugs on a seat. By the time we reached Dublin I was numb to the heart, and knew I was in for a ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... Sadducistic race, With grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of this kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the whole thing begin to seem queer. As evidence that I must have been awake, I recalled afterwards that my arm had been made numb by the pressure of my head upon it while lying down, and now ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Nelson could not imagine a man making such a declaration; it was new to his entire experience and contrary to his code. It was unconservative, therefore it staggered him. It was, in fact, a phenomenon so unique as to leave him numb. He told himself that it must have been the act of a madman or a fool. Under no circumstances could he conceive of himself warning an enemy of his intentions; on the contrary, when he undertook to crush a rival he went about ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... off and break their useless necks. It grew silent and much cooler as the night ran out, but Rags still sat immovable, shivering slightly every now and then and cautiously stretching his stiff legs and body. The arm that held the child grew stiff and numb with the light burden, but he took a fierce pleasure in the pain, and became hardened to it, and at last fell into an uneasy slumber from which he awoke to pass his hands gently over the soft yielding body, and to ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... had finished and sealed the letter, she sat motionless with a numb feeling in hands and brain, trying to realize what she had next to do. To go, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... weight on the springs and removed the pressure of the jaws. The girl drew out her numb leg. She straightened herself, swayed, and clutched blindly at him. Next moment her body relaxed and she was unconscious ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... of unhappy things, She knew not of the evil days to come, Forgotten were her ancient wanderings; And as Lethae'an waters wholly numb The sense of spirits in Elysium, That no remembrance may their bliss alloy, Even so the rumor of her days was dumb, And all her heart was ready ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... with the idea of saving firewood, climbed a tree. But now the cold became intense. The heat of the day had been followed by sharp frost, and the unfortunate sportsman, with no extra covering, became so numb that he decided to descend from his perch and light his fire. He had clambered down to the lowest bough, and was about to drop to the ground, when something stirred below him. A moving body parted the bushes, and he heard at his feet an unmistakable ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the site of impaction of the embolus, and the pulses beyond are lost. The limb becomes cold, numb, insensitive, and powerless. It is often pale at first—hence the term "white gangrene" sometimes applicable to the early appearances, which closely resemble those presented by the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... City. Down with property. Addington had learned to distrust one sort of individual, and she instantly believed she could trust the other individual who was as unlike him as possible. Because Dives had been numb to human needs, Lazarus was the new-discovered leader. And the pitiful part of it all was that though Addington used the alphabet and spoke the language of "social unrest", it did it merely with the relish ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... distressed by the sudden summons. It was the first time she had ever had the shock of bad news. It was the first time she had ever been called upon to act for herself in such an emergency, and she felt perfectly numb, mind and body. Tippy's voice sounded a mile away ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... unsympathetic. And when his own wife had said to him, in accents almost of reproach, "Oh, David, David, how could you take such a time as this to be sick, with all the worry of moving and furnishing and Rosy's wedding and everything else?" he felt as bare and chill and numb as a naked sailor cast ashore on some ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... murmur filled the soul far better than words, that curtain of foliage which masks our thought. Pierre allowed himself to be cradled by this humming. Such the song of a golden wasp that floats through the chiaroscuro of one's thought. His days became numb things in this new languor. That solitary and naked heart dreamed of the warmth of ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... terribly. And I gave him morphia under the doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone—not at first, but after a little bit—I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it doesn't matter if you don't believe ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... evils of frail life fill the old: Their wasted limbs the loose skin in dry folds Doth hang about: their joints are numb'd, and through Their veins, not blood, but rheums and waters flow. Their trembling bodies with a staff they stay, Nor do they breathe, but sadly sigh all day. Thoughts tire their hearts, to them their very mind Is a disease; their eyes ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. Suddenly Sperry ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The rider's hands grew numb and he dropped the reins over the horn and shoved his hands in his pockets. Unaccustomed to riding he grew weary and, despite the storm, he drowsed, to awaken with a start as gusts of wind swept against his face. He raised his dripping hat and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... small hours of the morning a weary commuter, numb from the cold and the cramped position in which he had tried to sleep, crawled out of the train and floundered through the heavy snow-drifts to the nearest telegraph station. This is the message he handed to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... rifle and shot the paddler dead; and a second later one of his companions coming up, killed in like fashion the Indian in the bow of the canoe. The third Indian, stunned by the sudden onslaught, sat as if numb, never so much as lifting one of the rifles that lay at his feet, and in a minute he too was shot and fell over the side of the canoe, but grasped the gunwale with one hand, keeping himself afloat. Young Wetzel, in the bottom ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... came upon us, recognized the doctor, shrieked, and set off for help, lashing his mules into a mad run. But Alicia never moved, and I huddled beside her, numb and silent, looking at the white face upon her knees. With all the impatience wiped out, it was a fine face, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... also drank whiskey which he bought in the liquor store—knowing that, I felt my teeth gritting hard and I took a fierce swing with the stick I was carrying, at a little maple tree beside me.... I socked that tree so fierce with my stick, that my hands stung so bad they were almost numb; the stick broke in the middle and one end of it flew ahead to where Circus and Dragonfly were and ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... with all the worry, numb'd, dead, Sank my body, upon the bed reposing, 15 This, O humorous heart, did I, a poem Write, my tedious anguish ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... the attack be sustained indefinitely? Grim as were results of sun-fishing on the rider, they were hardly less vitiating for the horse. The forelegs of Alcatraz began to grow numb below the shoulder; his knees bowed and refused to give the shock its primal snap; to the very withers he was an increasing ache. He must vary the attack. As soon as that idea came, he reared and flung ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... hearing his own voice. He was trying to open the locket but his hands were numb and trembling. When at last he did open it he could not see the child face within, for now even the star-light was shut off by a ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... whirled faster and faster, and Pierre's legs found it harder and harder to move themselves through the great drifts. They seemed heavy and numb, and he was growing oh, so tired! If he could but lie down to sleep until Christmas Day! But he knew that he must not do that. For those who choose this kind of soft and tempting bed turn into ice-people, and do not wake up in the morning. So he ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... himself assuring the officer that he had not been mistaken, but it was not his own voice that reached his ears, and when his caller had gone he found himself sitting limply in his chair, numb with horror at his ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... words, the princely youth Leaps on the scaly back that slumbers, still Unconscious of his foot, yet not for ruth, But numb'd to dulness by the fairy skill Of that sweet music (all more wild and shrill For intense fear) that charm'd him as he lay— Meanwhile the lover nerves his desperate will, Held some short throbs by natural dismay, Then down the serpent-track ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... reduced the third stage of a $5,000,000 rocket to junk was evident to him only as a brilliant blue-white flash, a hammer-like shock through the antennae support that left his wrist and forearm numb. Then a violent wrench as a long cylinder, expelled from the split hull, caught the loop of his life line and dragged him in till he clashed hard against it, the suddenly increased tension or a sharp edge parting the line close to the anchored end. He clawed blindly for a hold, found ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... You might manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, cold-blooded Whig, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... chattering during sleep (in the case of a child). 1081: chilly every afternoon at three or four o'clock, she feels a shivering, worse during warmth; chilly creepings across the back, the hands feel numb; an hour after, feverish heat, with rough cough, hot cheeks and hands, no thirst; these symptoms pass off gradually, but she feels heavy and prostrated. 1089: chill after a heat of thirty-six hours. 1090: sudden chilliness, afterwards heat and sweat. ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... excited emotions which he had thought could never be revived. The ashes gave forth a lingering flame at the first murmurings of that voice. Who has ever felt himself return to youth and purity after growing cold and numb with age and soiled with impurity? Suddenly, Wilfrid loved as he had never loved; he loved secretly, with faith, with fear, with inward madness. His life was stirred to the very source of his being at the mere ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... now commands the multi-colored bands Of angels to intrude and slay the beast That His good sons may have a feast of food. But as they come, Leviathan sneezes twice ... And, numb with sudden pangs, each arm hangs slack. Black terror seizes them; blood freezes into ice And every angel flees from the attack! God, with a look that spells eternal law, Compels them back. But, though ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Afanasief, may fairly be derived from kost', a bone, for changes between st and shch are not uncommon—as in the cases of pustoi, waste, pushcha, a wild wood, or of gustoi, thick, gushcha, sediment, etc. The verb okostenyet', to grow numb, describes the state into which a skazka represents the realm of the "Sleeping Beauty," as being thrown by Koshchei. Buslaef remarks in his "Influence of Christianity on Slavonic Language," p. 103, that one of the Gothic words used by Ulfilas to ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... November Novembro. Novice novulo. Noviceship noviceco. Novitiate provtempo. Novitiate (place) novicejo. Now nun. Nowadays nuntempe. Nowhere nenie. Noxious malutila, venena. Nozzle nazeto. Nude nuda. Nudity nudeco. Null nuliga. Nullify nuligi. Numb rigidigi. Numbness rigideco. Number (quantity) nombro. Number numero. Numeral numero. Numerical nombra. Numerous multa. Numerously multege. Nun monahxino. Nuncio nuncio. Nunnery monahxinejo. Nuptial edzigxa. Nurse ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and regret as the darkness fell. She did not stir from her post. The damp of the mist was unnoticed, the chill of the air. She was waiting for that return which was to claim her to an earthly hell, than which she could conceive no greater—waiting like the condemned prisoner, numb, helpless, fearful lest the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... dead, suppose he should drown in the filthy water in the bottom of the boat? Carefully, she worked the frightened animal to the farther end of the boat, and swiftly made her way to the limp form of the cowboy. She realized suddenly that she was numb with cold. Her hat, too, floated in the bottom of the boat, and her rain-soaked hair clung in wet straggling wisps to her neck and face. Stooping over the injured man she twisted her fingers into the collar ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... generally is, is a most terrible exposure. There is no kindly parental provision for the poor, thoughtless, delicate young creature,—not even the shelter of a dressing-room with a fire, at which she may warm her numb fingers and put on her skates when she arrives on the ground, and to which she may retreat in intervals of fatigue; so she catches cold, and perhaps sows the seed which with air-tight stoves and other appliances of hot-house ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... persisted in, the man would experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and inert.—Such is more or less the history of France under its Jacobin pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each day suffers ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... his right hand, crooked his index finger. There was a sudden, smashing pain against his hand and a loud roar. The gun was in his hand—half the fingers were numb—and smoke curled ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... for the hands of the sailors were numb with cold, the ropes stiff with ice, while the wild and angry wind snatched at the tackle and tore at ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... without doubt, the poor boy would suffer. There is no such pain as when love dies in the full glory of its strength. But then would come the ministrations of Time, the healer. Mother Nature of the rough hand and tender heart would scar the hurt, and little by little its agony would numb into ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... though their flailing tentacles were as myriad as the stars they had never seen. It seemed as though their numbers would never appreciably diminish. We thrust and parried till our arms grew numb. And still there appeared to be hundreds ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... pale again, hollow-eyed, diaphanous—a prism for an unearthly ray. Her beauty took on its elfin guise; she walked a ghost. Night and day she felt for the ring; though she knew it was not there, her hand was always in her vest, her bosom always numb and cold. Sometimes her urgent need was more than she could bear. A trembling took her, an access of trembling which she could not check. At such times, if others were about her, she would sit vacant and speechless, smiling faintly for courtesy; her eyes would brim over, the great ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... gauge showed two hundred feet. Already the three people were numb from the vibration; they hardly felt any sensation at all, save one of great weight pressing inwards. The compartment was fairly cool and the air good—kept so by the automatic air rectifiers and the insulation, which shut out the heat born ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... silver grots, or giant range Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge 240 Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb His bosom grew, when first he, far away, Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray Old darkness from his throne: 'twas like the sun Uprisen o'er chaos: and with such a stun Came the amazement, that, absorb'd in it, He saw ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... Thirlwell began his homeward march. The sky was low and leaden, and a biting wind blew from the south. It drove the snow-dust into the men's smarting faces and froze their breath on their furs. Their hands stiffened on the sledge-traces and their feet got numb. The cold got worse when snow began to fall and when they camped one night Thirlwell noted that they had used more food than he thought. The transport of provisions is perhaps the main difficulty of a ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... Molly from whom the years had taken more than their toll, giving but little in return. He could not think beyond this fact, as yet. And he felt nothing, nothing at all. Both heart and mind lay mercifully numb under the anaesthetic of ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... am wounded, mortally I think. The fight rages round me. I have done my duty. This is my consolation. I hope to meet you all again. I left not the line until all had fallen and colors gone. I am getting weak. My arms are free but below my chest all is numb. The enemy trotting over me. The numbness up ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... and hearts are weary, Souls are numb with hopeless pain; For the footfall on the threshold Never ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... attainment of the goal with respect to each "dimension" of feeling. Striving is tense, attainment brings the feeling of release. Striving is often excited, but fatigue and drowsiness (seeking for rest) are numb, and self-assertion may be neutral in this respect, as in "cool assumption". Reaching the goal may be excited or not; all depends on the goal, whether it be striking your opponent or going to sleep. On the other hand, reaching the goal is practically always ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the years to come, When he shares of Sorrow's store,— When his feet are chill and numb, When his cross is burdensome, And his heart is sore: Would that he could hear once more The gentle voice he used to hear— Divine with mother love and cheer— Calling from yonder spirit shore: ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... smell without the use of any other organs; but you are to know, that this learned problematist was brother to him, who, preaching at St. Mary's, Oxford, took his text out of the history of Balaam, Numb. xxii., "Am I not thine ass?" Dear Sir, pardon ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Near the center of the yard several men had built a charcoal fire. Peter was tempted to warm his hands, but immediately gave up the idea: these very men had seen him in the Garden! He walked back and forth in the shadows, but it did not help much: his feet were getting numb. He wished he had never come into the courtyard. If he tried to get out, the woman ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... gods be numb; Though human effort, plot, and plan Be sifted, drifted, like the sum Of sands in wastes Arabian. What king may deem him more than man, What priest says Faith can Time resist While THIS endures to mark their span - This monument in ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... reference was made to the subject in either of the papers. Surgeon Reyburn told me, as he was passing a corner where a group of secessionists were discussing the subject quite freely, that one man said, "Why don't Savage do something about that soup-house affair, and not be a numb-head, and let that woman wind him around her finger like that?" Another said, "If I'd lied once over that old soup-house, I'd lie again, before I'd hold still and take all that" He changed his soup-house policy for a little while; but the complaints among secession ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Antelope were closed while he chanted the dirge. He sang it over and over, pausing between the lines, and straining as it were every sense lest he might not catch the rapt whisper of her spirit, but only the distant howls of coyotes answered him. His body became cold and numb from sheer exhaustion, and at last his knees bent under him and he sank down upon the ground, still facing the teepee. Unconsciousness overtook him, and in his sleep or trance the ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... quailed before that look, the most dreadful thing he had ever seen. It made him numb and sick, and when he rose he staggered; for, though tall, he was slender and had little strength. The weight on his chest became a pain and fixed on his throat, to choke and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold; the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months; and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... know why Lord Lilburne should be so generous, or what that noble person's letter to himself was intended to convey. For two days, he seemed restored to vigorous sense; but when he had once clutched the first payment made in advance, the touch of the money seemed to numb him back to his lethargy: the excitement of desire died in ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "They are numb," he said, in surprised apology to his host. A moment later he shivered violently, beads of sweat burst out on his forehead, and the color swept from his face. He started up, staring wildly about him; he tried to speak, but his words stumbled into incoherent babbling. It was all ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... the night for a space swooned into a numb and desolate silence. Then in the field behind, the last corncrake harshly called; a shepherd whistled on his dogs; a cart rumbled over the cobbles, making for the shed. The sound of the river as it came to him among the alder-trees ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... just about to break upon her sight, as though a music divinely beautiful was just about to burst upon her ear. But the light was not for her eye; the music was not for her ear. The radiance and the harmony came from herself, from within her. The intellect was numb. Only the heart was alive on this wonderful midsummer's morning, and it was in her heart that the radiance shone and the harmony vibrated. Back in his place once more, high on his throne, the love that she believed ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... built of rough logs, the chinks once closed with mud which had fallen away. The door stood open, and his entrance into its darkness was followed by the scurrying of many little feet. Bassett unstrapped his raincoat from the saddle with fingers numb with cold, and flung it to the ground. He uncinched and removed the heavy saddle, hobbled his horse and removed the bridle, and turned him loose with a slap ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sort an age of transition, but our own is characteristically and cardinally an epoch of transition in the very foundations of belief and conduct. The old hopes have grown pale, the old fears dim; strong sanctions are become weak, and once vivid faiths very numb. Religion, whatever destinies may be in store for it, is at least for the present hardly any longer an organic power. It is not that supreme, penetrating, controlling, decisive part of a man's life, which it has been, and will be again. The work of destruction is ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... drew stung in his lungs; his bare shoulders and arms and the exposed section of thigh between kilt and boot were numb. He could only move on stiffly, pushed ahead by his guards when he faltered. He guessed that were he to lose his footing here and surrender to the cold, he would forfeit the battle entirely ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... chimed softly in his ear. Ravdin forced his attention back to the landing operation. He was still numb and shaken from the Warp-passage, his mind still muddled by the abrupt and incredible change. Moments before, the sky had been a vast, starry blanket of black velvet; then, abruptly, he had been hovering over the ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... looked it, which was all that the half-hysterical girl by his side could ascertain by an occasional timid glance. The fact lent her a sort of courage to persevere to the end, and she signed her maiden name for the last time with a numb confidence in the man whom she had, so to speak, bargained for as a husband ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... became chilled by the inflow of cold water and was helplessly numb. A little stimulant would have done him a world of good; but he could neither beg, buy nor borrow anything from the spectators. When he reached Lower Waterford Bridge, his agent met him with supplies, and there he stopped to repair his dress. He was only about midway of the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... shone two long, obliquely set, pale eyes, ablaze with devilry and malice. The thing, after the nature of all terrifying phantasms, was endowed with hypnotic properties, and directly its eyes rested on me I became numb; my muscles slept while my faculties remained ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... determined to keep it; and yet she knew she would not keep it. She argued passionately with herself, a prey to an inward dread; for no matter how firmly she forced resolution upon resolution, they all seemed to melt in her soul like snow on a blazing fire. Then, determined to rid herself of a numb sensation of powerlessness, and achieve the end she desired, she said, 'I'll tell you, Emily, what I'll do. I'll not stay here; I will go away. Let me go away, dear, and then it will be ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... stopped; the snowshoe slipped from beneath her arm; one numb hand groped for the log door-casing in support; the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the little estray by the arm, and hurried her along. Poor little Jennie! her feet seemed hardly to touch the ground, they were so cold and numb. She didn't much care even if she was being taken ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness was falling more ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... unpleasant symptoms of which he had complained two hours earlier, but his general condition was also greatly improved, the swelling of the injured limb had subsided, the flesh had recovered its natural colour, the numb feeling had almost disappeared, and now all that remained to remind him of his disagreeable and perilous adventure of the previous night was the smarting and burning sensation of the cauterised wound itself, which he endured ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... himself again by moving about, for he felt as tired as a horse when it stops and refuses to go further in spite of the whip, and its master sees that it must be fed before it can work again. The foot in the boot with a hole in it had already grown numb, and he could no longer feel his big toe. Besides that, his whole body began to feel ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... existence but in memory) to bring her round out of some wilful mood—and such moods were common enough now! Frequently she was sullenly indifferent to the feelings of others—not from any unkindness, but because her heart seemed numb and stony, and incapable of sympathy. Then afterwards her self-reproach was terrible—in the dead of night, when no one saw it. With a strange perversity, the only intelligence she cared to hear, the only sights she cared to see, were the circumstances which gave confirmation to the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... abruptly. "Do you think I have not watched his courage and ideals wither as if they had been frosted? He is numb. 'Heavy as frost,' Wordsworth said, and that's the weightiest figure he could find. It did not take her a month to begin to change him. In three months she has him well started. Isn't it a pity that the worse one of the two should have the controlling force? But Dick's very volatility ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... And marching time drew on, and wore me numb,— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... some new hateful character. For soon enough this conviction that the will would triumph grew to something monstrous, a parent of monstrous fancies. Worst of all, when I felt no actual pain, but only unutterable weariness of body and soul, when feet and legs were numb so that I knew not whether I trod on dry hot rock or in slime, was the fancy that I was already dead, so far as the body was concerned—had perhaps been dead for days—that only the unconquerable will survived to compel the dead ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... deck. He was in a sort of panic. But deep down within him his wits were working, and the idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, "Boatswain on ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad |
