"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had drawn near to it, inch by inch, or whether it, seeing him about to make good his escape, had crept up on him, he could not say. He only knew that it was there, within arm's-length, waiting, tense, prepared, and somehow deadly in ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... He knew by the tense, strained tone of her voice that she was very near the breaking-point, and his whole being yearned to comfort her and try to make ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... continued to withdraw the hand he had thrust into his right coat pocket. Beside me I heard Brutus draw a sharp breath. I saw Mr. Sims fumble under his cloak and take a quick step backwards. There was a tense, pregnant silence, broken by Mr. Sims in fervent expletive. My father had withdrawn his hand. He was holding in it his silver snuff box, which he tossed carelessly on the table, where it ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... sable plumes, standing stiff and motionless in the stirless summer air. Thousands of stars flashed out across this blackness, throbbing in their orbits with a quick pulsation as of uneasy hearts beating with nameless and ungratified longing. And through the tense silence came floating a long, sweet, passionate cry,—a shivering moan of pain that touched the edge of joy,—a song without words, of pleading and of prayer, as of a lover, who, debarred from the possession ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the crowd, as with a stir and rustle the close ranks relaxed from the tense attitude of prayer, and each man ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... that called to the depths of these men. And their passion to kill and to save was surpassed only by the wild hate which was yet love, the unfathomable emotion of a peon slave. Gale marveled at it, while he felt his whole being cold and tense, as he turned once more to follow in the tracks of his leaders. The fight predicted by Belding was at hand. What a fight that must be! Rojas was traveling light and fast. He was gaining. He had bought his men with gold, with extravagant promises, perhaps with offers of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... sounds about her. Every muscle in her lithe young body was strained to catch a glimpse of one familiar figure. She had little difficulty in singling him out from the rest. He had stripped off his sweater and stood with head well down, his great limbs tense, straining for the word to spring. Anna's breath came quickly, as if she had been running, the roses that he had sent her heaved with the tumult in her breast. It seemed to her as if she must cry out with the ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... rustle of cedar brush. By and by Roberts came back to her, dragging his saddle, and lay down near her. Joan raised up a little to see Kells motionless and absorbed by the fire. He had a strained and tense position. She sank back softly and looked up at the cold bright stars. What was going to happen to her? Something terrible! The very night shadows, the silence, the presence of strange men, all told her. And a shudder that was a thrill ran over and ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... carbines and swinging aloft their sabers, galloped forward in a mighty rush. The beat of hundreds of hoofs made a steady sound, insistent and threatening. The yellow light of the sun, replacing the silver of the first dawn, gilded them with gold, glittering on the upraised blades and tense faces. The bullets of the Southern sharpshooters, in the bushes and trees along the Opequan, crashed among them, and horses and men went down, but the mighty sweep of the mass was ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... submarine began the descent into the lower ocean depths. From three hundred and fifty feet she went to four hundred, and when the hand on the gauge showed four hundred and fifty there was a tense moment. If anything went wrong now there ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... watched him and the reluctant cook go forward into the howling darkness. The Sophie Sutherland was plunging into the huge head-seas and wallowing tremendously, the tense steel stays and taut rigging humming like harp-strings to the wind. A buffeted cry came to his ears, and he felt the schooner's bow paying off of its own ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... words only require explanation. Infrid for Unfried, discord, disturbance, any thing in opposition to Frieden or peace. The Frid-stools at Beverley, Ripon, and Hexham, still bear the old theotise stamp. Wart, or ward, may be either the past tense of werden, to be (our was), or an old form of waehren, to endure, to last: our English wear is the same word. The sense is pretty much the same in both readings alluding to Eve. In ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... the wild shouts of applause the girl springs and leaps with so harmonious a concealment of the muscular working of her frame, that her dance might seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly, but for the few drops on her firm rounded neck and the smile, forced, tense, and almost painful, at the corner of her mouth, which betray the exhausting effort of the exquisite little creature, Paul Astier, who did not care for dancing, had stayed on the terrace to smoke. The applause and the thin sounds of the piano, audible ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Jill did the change to the present tense seem strange. The story was much too real to ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... sound of her voice, tense and authoritative, came through the slit of the window and thrilled him. 'All is well now, but I ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... she said, and her voice was tense, "if I were a man and loved a woman, I would be ready to give up everything for her. My riches, my pride, my life, my honor, my soul even,—they would be as nothing, as less than nothing to me,—if I loved. Harry, don't let me think I am mistaken. Let this miserable firm of yours fail, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... when the suspense below and above was growing tense, it was broken. Footsteps and voices were heard ascending the stairs, the trampling and hubbub were followed by a heavy knock; perforce the door was opened. While Mademoiselle, who had risen, awaited with a beating heart she knew not what, a cowled father, in the dress ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... rein; and then sat silent and motionless on the back of his horse, his eyes on his comrade, waiting in tense expectancy for the moment when he would reach the clump of bushes and look down into the valley beyond and see the cause of those strange and terrible cries that had so suddenly and so fearfully ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... the past tense? I love her still. I shall always love that sweet companion of these many happy years. From the time I saw her in those poor London lodgings I loved her with all the strength of my manhood. But you know that, being already married, she could not be my wife. Then, shortly after the surrender ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... to discourse on eternal torment while gazing at earthly paradise. Janice became convinced that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become things of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... long admired the dignity of Miss Portman's mind, and the simplicity of her character," continued her ladyship, with an arch look at Belinda; "and though he was too much a man of genius to begin with the present tense of the indicative mood, 'I love,' yet I was, and am, convinced, that he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... one pulling hard at his shoulder. He opened his eyes, and stared sleepily. It was Crockett bending over him, and, Bowie lying on his sick bed ten feet away, had raised himself on his elbow. The light was so faint that Ned could scarcely see Crockett's face, but it looked very tense and eager. ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... himself, and motioned me toward a chair, which I didn't take. His authoritative manner was, I must say, not unimpressive. And he knew how to arrange a rather crude stage-setting; the room, with all air and sound excluded, seemed tense and breathless; the one dim candle on the table lent a certain solemnity ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... idea of their being true would have given me pain. I am inclined to think that the idea of now enjoying the pleasures, or now enduring the pains of a future life is altogether chimerical. I can enjoy the life or lives of others in a future tense just as well as I can now enjoy my own future life. I have as much reason to believe that rational intelligence always did exist, as I have to believe it always will; yea, one idea is just as certain to me as the other, and no more so. And as I cannot ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... Some tense situations in the story of the Deerslayer are associated with Three-Mile Point, the present picnic resort of Cooperstown; and a full understanding of the events described as having taken place on ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... to note that they are not constituted witnesses by being sent; they are sent because they are witnesses. They are not then to be endowed with miraculous power; "these have power" in the present tense. These facts, if nicely considered, will at once suggest ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... houses were shuttered; all this was too remarkable not to have been arranged. Virginia and I looked at one another; but she watched me like a cat, keeping guard over every movement of mine. One hand pressed her bosom, the other was stretched downwards—a straight, tense ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... it to wrench it open again, for something in the uncanny movement of the thing and the tense and almost palpable silence of the chamber seemed to portend a lurking evil lying hidden in this rock-bound chamber within the bowels of the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not a voice was raised; anxious faces; twitching fingers; the whole crowd tense as a stretched wire. A false turn, a wilful sheep, a cantankerous judge, and the gray dog would be beat. And not a ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... The footsteps were close at hand now upon the tessellated pavement. Then through the drooping palm boughs they saw him. Julien was standing tense and prepared, his uninjured arm was ready to strike. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she met the look of her father, which rested on her with penetrating power—as she read the rising anger of his soul in the tense swollen veins of his brow, and ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... I banged him with my open hand across the snout, and he quieted down and followed into the house, all tense and watchful. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... her to him—crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... between her blankets, wide awake, conscious that she was straining her ears to catch some faint sound. A half dozen times she caught herself listening with nerves on edge and muscles taut, and each time forced herself to relax. But always she came back to that horrible, tense listening. She charged herself with cowardice, and pooh-poohed her fears, but it was no use, and she wound up by covering her head with her blanket. "I don't care, there was somebody watching, but if he ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... whole of my equestrian career in France, I never came off. I rode along in front of my section, balancing on this "Ship of the Desert" of mine, past all the same landmarks, cracked houses, windmills, estaminets, etc. I experienced innumerable tense moments when my horse—as frequently happened—took me for a bit of a circular tour in an adjacent field, so as to avoid some colossal motor lorry with one headlight of about a million candle-power, which would suddenly roar its way down our single narrow ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... sinks a ghostly silence prevails. Even the subdued tones of the sea are hushed. Though I listen with aching intentness no sense of sound comes to my relief. Thus must it be to be bereft of hearing. This death-like pause, this awful blank, this tense, anxious lapse, this pulseless, stifling silence is brief. A frail moan, just audible, comes from the direction of the vanishing moon. There is a scarcely perceptible stir in the warm air—a sensation of coming coolness rather than of motion, and a faint odour of brine. A mile out across the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... school-desks, scored with the deep-cut initials of generations of Sark boys, sat the dead man's widow, tense and quivering, her eyes consuming fires in deep black wells, her face livid, her hands clenched still as though ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... and sat down at the table, took off her gloves, and two absurd small thumbs appeared above its edge, the knuckles white and tense with the strength of ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... this book was completed over four months ago. Since then many important changes have occurred in the international situation. Chapters in which we dealt with the then still existing Dual Monarchy must of course be read in the past tense, since Austria exists no more. And again, many things which we anticipated and hoped for in the future have already become accomplished facts. However, I trust that the story itself has not only lost none of its value ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... twice around, till every hole had a lace through it and the crossing laces made a diamond pattern all around. At first this was done loosely, but tightened up when once around, and finally both the drum-heads were drawn tense. To the surprise of all, Guy promptly took possession of the finished drum. "Them's my Calfskins," which, of ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in the present tense afford a strong proof that the original records of these transactions are nearly coeval with the transactions themselves. Later MSS. ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... a word to the handsome and strong; Megillus of Corinth, and Damoxenus the wrestler will do. Inform them that auburn locks, eyes bright or black, rosy cheeks, are as little in fashion here as tense muscles or mighty shoulders; man and man are as like as two peas, tell them, when it comes to bare ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... tend to write and lecture, they impose their notions of good and bad upon others, who seek to escape being "common." In T.'s case his attitude toward food, clothes, companions, sports and work created a tense disharmony in his family, and one of his brothers labeled him "The Kill-joy." Secretly envious of other people's simple enjoyment, T. made strenuous efforts at times to overcome his repugnances and to enlarge the scope of his ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... are not Put into books, or acted on the stage. Nay, they are lived in silence, by tense hearts In homes, among dull unperceiving kin, And thoughtless friends, who make a whip of words Wherewith to lash these hearts, ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... triumphant confidence as to the future based upon the deliverance of the past. 'Hast,' a past tense. It is as good as done. The believing use of God's great past, and initial mercy, to make ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... in the papers that a large shipment of heavy cannon had left America for Russia," he said with dry humor, "in transit for us—for if they're consigned to the Russians, we'll have them sooner or later, I hope;" adding, with his habitual tense earnestness, "the Americans are something more than shrewd, hard-headed business men. Have they ever vividly pictured to themselves a German soldier smashed by an American shell, or bored through the heart by an American bullet? The grim realism of the battlefield—that should make also the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... with her distressed eyes regarding me. Her expression changed to dread. There was a tense stillness ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... tense silence in the dressing tent, broken only by the patter of the rain drops on the canvas roof, while the show's surgeon ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... away. He perplexes me, as I say, to death, and though he tires out my patience, he still fascinates me. Sometimes I think he has n't a grain of conscience, and sometimes I think that, in a way, he has an excess. He takes things at once too easily and too hard; he is both too lax and too tense, too reckless and too ambitious, too cold and too passionate. He has developed faster even than you prophesied, and for good and evil alike he takes up a formidable space. There 's too much of him for me, at any rate. Yes, he is hard; there ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... his hands to remove the headpiece. Suddenly a change came over his face and his arms dropped slowly. He gave his mates a warning look. There fell a silence in the cabin. Anxiously the others watched the operator's tense features. Minutes passed. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... been waiting in the dining-room, her whole soul one dry tense misery. She stood looking out of the window taking curious heed of a Jewish wedding that was going on in the square, of the preposterous bouquets of the coachman and the gaping circle of errand-boys. How pinched the bride looked in the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there in the deep of the branches there was the stir of a wing, as a pigeon settled to its nest; from beyond the wood came a brief, shrill bicker of starlings; all things beside these were mute, and in the silent dusk, spirit was sensitive to spirit, and the air was tense with the unspoken word. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... his slowness to speak created an atmosphere. There was no jest in his voice or manner. The air grew tense. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... from the corner of his eye, and his face went pink. Without another word he clambered up beside the driver and the engine rolled out of the yard and went clanking down the uneven, crooked track, leaving a dissolving trail of steam behind. When it returned the little face at the cab window was tense and somewhat pale beneath its tan, but the hand upon the throttle beside the engineer's lay steady as a little ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... eyes and looked ahead. Step by step he traced the marks on up the hill in the direction of the dugout, and, at last, silent speculation gave place to tense, low-spoken words. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... apt to fall, since the rules on which the true practice is built are among the subtlest in any language. [70] We have poetical constructions, as tollere consilia iniit; popular ones, as infitias it, dum with the perfect tense, and colloquialisms like impraesentiarum; we have Graecizing words like deuteretur, automatias, and curious inflexions such as Thuynis, Coti, Datami, genitives of Thuys, Cotys, [71] and Datames, respectively. We see in Nepos, as in Xenophon, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... swathed in lustrous gold—the chariot of the goddess herself. The awful splendour of the scene tended to depress one and make the task more trying. I have never felt more nervous than I did in that ghostly light in the tense silence, surrounded by the hidden horror of fathomless depths. All was covered with a uniform layer of snow, growing deeper and heavier at every step. I was ahead and went through eight times in about four miles. The danger lay in ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... year again showed the value of the United Nations in bringing about the peaceful adjustment of tense international controversies. In Indonesia and in Palestine the efforts of the United Nations have put a stop to bloodshed and paved the way to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... are loss of appetite, restlessness and sometimes colicky pains. The hog usually wanders off by itself, acts dull, grunts, lies down in a quiet place or stands with the back arched and the abdomen held tense. Vomiting commonly occurs. Sometimes the animal has a diarrhoea. The body temperature ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... more profuse, the animal is fevered, and the symptoms of lameness increased. Poulticing is at this stage perhaps resorted to. By its means the process of suppuration is aided, and the swelling (at first tense and hard) either becomes gradually softened, its contents discharged, and a simple abscess cavity left behind, or the suppuration runs immediately round the necrosed structures, and casts them off bodily as a slough. This latter ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... sayings sink down into your ears" was His forceful prelude on this occasion, in Galilee. Then followed the reiterated prediction, spoken in part in the present tense as though already begun in fulfilment: "The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day." We read with some surprize that the apostles still failed to understand. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the dying embers, is wrapped in introspection. Then, rousing, you lie down, your canopy the dark blue vault of the heavens, your mattress the soft, curling buffalo grass. After a night of deep refreshing sleep you spring at dawn with every faculty renewed and tense. Breakfast eaten, you catch a favorite roping-horse, square and heavy of shoulder and quarter, short of back, with wide nervous nostrils, flashing eyes, ears pointing to the slightest sound, pasterns supple and strong ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... soar very high; it skimmed a few hundred feet above the banked darknesses of cumulus that hid the world, ready to plunge at once into their wet obscurities should some hostile flier range into vision. The tense young steersman divided his attention between the guiding stars above and the level, tumbled surfaces of the vapour strata that hid the world below. Over great spaces those banks lay as even as a frozen lava-flow and almost as still, and then they were rent by ragged ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the suffering, the wilderness, the Cross, the Resurrection, all the experiences He went through, these give to this victory-word, Jesus, a meaning unknown before. They put the name Jesus actually above every name in the experiences of tense conflict and sweeping victory it stands for. This threefold chording makes music never to ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... People were shouting, talking, laughing, waving hats and handkerchiefs. The whole world seemed a buzz of merriment, and out of the very thick of it, Toby's voice, small and tense, spoke ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... original tale. The entire music was composed by Edmond Rickett, who wrote melodies for a number of London Christmas pantomimes. The scenery, by Maxfield Parrish, was composed of six stage pictures, simple, harmonious, and beautiful, with tense blue skies, a dim suggestion of the forest, and the quaint architecture of the House of the Seven Dwarfs. Pictures in old nursery books were the models for the scenes. Because of the simplicity of the plot ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... speaks in his own person. The Prophet is very sure that his God is Love, and he hears that love utter itself in tones of yearning for the love of men, and even of agony for their sin and misery. There is, too, a singular prayer of his which is tense with the instinct, that God would surely be to Israel what Jeremiah had resolved and striven to be—not a far-off God who occasionally visited or passed through His people, but One in their midst sharing their pain; not indifferent, as he fears in another ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... in her voice now, and he recognized the tense quality of it. "I shall telegraph to the attorneys in Rome to partition the estates, my heart!" mocking her. "The king will not add to his private purse the riches of Colonel Grosvenor and the Principi di Monte Bianca, your ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... different Isabel from the curled up little person who sat on the cushions. Her face was white and tense—her mouth drawn in a line of determination. She shook her head at the offer of a chair and ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... lie in the little room, Just touching hands, with eyes and ears that strain Keenly, yet dream-bewildered, through tense gloom, Listening in helpless stupor of insane Drugged nightmare panic fantastically wild, To the quiet breathing ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... A tense silence followed this remark. In the street below the rumble of the traffic came to us muffled by the heavy plate-glass windows. I saw Tallant glance at Gorse and Dickinson, and I knew the matter had been decided between themselves, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... responded. Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry. With eyes grown big and wistful, she watched the shining orb. All the bravado, the fear, and rebellion died out of her, and in hushed wonder she got from the great white night what God in heaven meant ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... time he was leading the way to the spot that he was describing, the others following breathlessly. Once there, he grasped Allen's arm excitedly, crying in a tense voice: "Look here, old man, here is one of those bags they carried the other day—the place is full of them. Now I am going to open this one. You keep ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... He laughed, but it was a high-pitched, tense laugh. "We don't dare even use the telescope or television. Or electron radio. Our rescue ship might be right overhead, visible to the naked eye, before we see it. Three days more—that's what I'll ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... profess exactly as other people do. The second is by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... them forward first, then raise them, then move them backward as far as possible in the raised position, muscles tense, and then lower ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... a sale by some accident remaining incomplete. The question does not seem to be of great philosophical significance. For to explain how mankind first learned to promise, we must go to metaphysics, and find out how it ever came to frame a future tense. The nature of the particular promise which was first enforced in a given system can hardly lead to any truth of general importance. But the history of the action of debt is instructive, although in a humbler ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... silence, sitting tense and mute, scarcely even breathing, while the pale blue eyes opposite remained steadily and unblinkingly ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the little poem from The Princess, (page 107) note how we are influenced by the tense emotion of the attendants who speak. We do not try to imitate them; but having made the scene stand out before us, we speak as we in imagination hear them, in an ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... awful," she declared, in tense tones. "When Jim went to bed, everything was perfectly quiet. And then, when he woke up, all of a sudden, there beside him ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Tense, filled with an excitement that set their pulses pounding wildly, they angled slowly down, nearer to the edge of the vast crimson area, closer to the ground. The radio keened its ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... the enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his eyes began to flash. He stopped and stretched out his neck as if he were going to yawn, raised his upper lip and showed his ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... hissed across the room at the American. Pasquale was no longer lounging. He leaned forward, body tense and rigid. His prisoner understood that an offer for his life was being made him. But what kind of an offer? Just what was he ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... encyclopedic, in itself a living organism, it can speak only through the mouths of men, who often misrepresent it for their own partisan and prejudiced plans. It is strong and steadfast, though, and in time is always victorious over its menial opposition, for what is history but the past tense of truth, and it is justly said that veritas numquam perit, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... tense with danger. Heedless of the black looks of Dolph, Tom dug his heels into his pony's flanks, moving forward ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... of an invisible motor struck upon their tense ears, the sound coming from some point ahead in the black, narrow lane. Dauntless sat straight and peered ahead, sounding his ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... abrupt cessation of the drums and cries. The wailing of the women behind the temple died. The tense air pulsed with electricity. A cock crowed feebly in the village. Then at a rippling splash of the drums and the sudden screaming of the wizards, they began to push the idol. The base had already been loosened in the earth by the slaves. The idol began to totter. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... ... sei}, subjunctive of dependent question, narrated indirectly, the tense remaining the same as would be used when stated directly: {Ist die Welt wirklich so ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... the picture of disheartened woe, but it was not her nature to give way to tears. She felt absolutely dismayed and utterly cast down, as if under a depression that would not lift, but she gave no physical sign of this except by her tense, drawn face ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... after dinner, during an hour that I had been accustomed to read and doze. The first days were hard for us both. I sat down in a big chair before the fire and talked with him, but there was no sign. He stared at the stones and stared out of the window, his eyes sometimes filmy, his body sometimes tense. I seemed to require at first some sort of recognition that I was talking—but none came, neither nod of acquiescence, look of mystification nor denial.... They said as he passed the house farther along the Shore after ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... strange, tense voice, "you are mad. You do not know what you ask. Virginia is not for such as you. Tell me that she does not know of your feelings toward her. Tell me that she does not reciprocate your love. Tell me the truth, man." Professor Maxon seized von Horn roughly by ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... once look up from that absorbing little operation with the fat forefinger, felt this pause and knew that Billy's grin had gone; and his own mouth drooped and drooped. It was a tense moment. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... or secret agent she was, and in one or other identity she could be my friend or my powerful enemy, could aid my country powerfully if she had the whim; or damage it irreparably if she had the desire. But—yes—as I studied her that keen, tense, vital moment, ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... instant in a frantic leap that ended as before in the maelstrom of air back of the ship. But the muffled roar was changed, punctured with a machine-gun's familiar rattle, and the stabbing flashes from Blake's ship before he threw it out of the other's path were a song of joy to the tense nerves of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... part there was a solemn quiet about the board, broken only by the rattle of the ball and the click of chips. There was an absence of the clink of gold pieces that one hears as the croupier rakes them in at the casinos on the continent. Nor did there seem to be the tense faces that one might expect. Often there was the glint of an eye, or a quick and muffled curse, but for the most part everyone, no matter how great a loser, seemed respectable and prosperous. The tragedies, as we ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the controls and circuitry, then put in the last call to the tense little group in Dulaq's ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... There followed a tense moment of silence; but the doctor was used to such moments, and could usually determine during the silence, whether the confidence should be allowed or avoided. He turned and looked steadily at ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... Jesus the resurrected Redeemer shall come again and fashion our dying bodies like unto his glorious body. But the object of this chapter is to point out the scriptures which teach us the blessed truth of the present-tense gospel inheritance, which in the redemption plan is to be realized by the people of God in this gospel dispensation, on this side of ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... Irving's satire of both has always the old-time Grub Street flavor, or at least the reminiscent tone, which is, by the way, quite characteristic of nearly everything that he wrote about England. He was always a little in the past tense. Buckthorne's advice to his friend is, never to be eloquent to an author except in praise of his own works, or, what is nearly as acceptable, in disparagement of the work of his contemporaries. "If ever he speaks favorably of the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... from danger Or death, does not seem to her wholly a stranger When next she encounters him; yet both essayed To be formal and proper; and each of them made The effort a failure. The jar of a train At times holds a mesmeric spell for the brain And a tense excitation for nerves; and the shriek Of the engine compels one to lean near to speak Or to list to his neighbor. Formality flies With the smoke of the train and floats off to the skies. Roger led his companion to talk; and the theme Which ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... keeping him from carrying his high-handed measures a little further. Mr. Landale, livid, with eyes suddenly black in their orbits, moistening his white lips while he quivered from head to foot with a passion so tense that not even his worst enemy could have ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... tense in study, for he had partially grasped, in a hazy, nebulous way, the rudiments of a thought which was destined to prove the key and the solution to the puzzling problem of ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I felt the arm about me grow tense and rigid as from beyond the bolted door the harsh voice reached us, fiercer, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... In the tense silence, one of the leaders of the new republic came forward. He had for years conspired and worked with Masaryk for the freedom of their country, and now he greeted him by throwing his arms about ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... the confusions of his day. Arguments?— You could hardly call them so; there is very little arguing, where Tao is concerned. The Tiger was abroad, straining all those lithe tendons,—a tense fearful symmetry of destruction burning bright through the night-forests of that pralaya: grossest and wariest energies put forth to their utmost in a race between the cunning for existence, a struggle of the strong for power.—"It is the way of Tao to do difficult things when they are easy; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... change and sport and pure air, he told himself, but it was hardly to be expected that he should do more. He yawned, dozed, and surveyed his line without curiosity; beside him sat "Mistah Breckenridge," every muscle of him tense, and a light in his eyes that was ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... unrest and agitation conveyed itself to him. The train was slowing down in the darkness; the lady opposite was leaning forward, her face pale, her whole attitude tense with excitement. The train stopped; outside someone was walking along the metals; there came the sound ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... of evening, made all the simple pastoral scene a dream of incommunicable loveliness,—and the two youthful figures, throned on their high dais of golden-green hay, might have passed for the rustic Adam and Eve of some newly created Eden. They were both very quiet,—with the tense quietness of hearts that are too full for speech. A joy in the present was shadowed with a dim unconscious fear of the future in both their thoughts,—though neither of them would have expressed their feelings in this regard ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... in ridding herself of her disquieting memories when her daughter followed her, choking back tense excitement until she had fairly closed the door behind her. Then her words came with a rush, for all that she kept her voice in check ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... quite like the feat of a prestidigitator—for the woman worked so fast that the eye could literally not follow her, and there was only a mist of motion, and tangle after tangle of sausages appearing. In the midst of the mist, however, the visitor would suddenly notice the tense set face, with the two wrinkles graven in the forehead, and the ghastly pallor of the cheeks; and then he would suddenly recollect that it was time he was going on. The woman did not go on; she stayed ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... tense whisper, to her sleeping nephew—"Chris, what on airth is this here hitched to ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... room changed with the passing of the sunlight—grew tense, electric, almost, one would have said, expectant; and Owen realized that the moment for which he ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the present tense, although in my time the Holy Greek Fathers did not exist, but simply the fathers belonging to the Greek Church. Moreover, as I was following an historical order, how could I refer to the Protestants, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... minister. And then there came the rustle of shutting books and of people composing themselves to listen, the few coughs, the vague suggestion of hassocks and cushions being made comfortable. And then, in a moment, almost with the giving out of the text, the sudden stillness and that tense sensation which told that the young orator ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... stirred. At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies of the waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and raised his head high. Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed loudly, as if he asked a question. How could he know, dumb brute, that what he asked only ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... follow the counsels of friends of Jamadagni's son, of the celestial rishi Narada, and of island-born Krishna, while they offered me counsel. In the midst of the assembly, Krishna told me what was for my good, saying, "A truce (tense) to hostilities, O king! Let thy son take the whole kingdom! Give but five villages to the Pandavas!" Fool that I was, for not following that advice, I am now obliged to repent so poignantly! I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... in tense readiness to dodge back out of danger, Carmena gazed over at her late pursuers with serene fearlessness. Her rich contralto voice, no longer harsh from thirst, rang mockingly down ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... For one tense moment I thought the General would burst. By an effort he pulled himself together, however, and shouted to my troops in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... thin, hawk-like face, steady gray eyes, rather long hair which also was gray like his moustache and goatee. He had been a soldier and an Indian fighter, and he looked it. As Dorgan lurched toward the boys, who stood tense, with flashing eyes, and prepared for resistance, this cowboy stepped between, and ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... calculated how she could reach David's heart. If she had looked up then and seen his white, drawn look, and the tense grasp of his hands that only the greatest self-control kept quiet on his knee, perhaps even her mercilessness would have been softened. But she did not look, and she felt her part was well taken. She sobbed quietly, and waited, and his hoarse voice asked once more, as ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... caused the glowing coals of the little fire to sizzle and smoke. The cry of the wolves had floated—but this new cry seemed to hurl itself through the night—a terrifying crescendo of noise that sounded at once a challenge and wail. For a full minute after the sound ceased the boy sat tense and motionless, staring wide-eyed beyond the fire, while behind him, in the farthest corner of the tent the malamutes huddled and whined. Then he shook himself and laughed. "Some howl!" he muttered, "I bet they heard that in Ten ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... notice the tense in that passage—"He that believeth that Jesus is come in the flesh"—not that He did come, or was come, but that He is come now. Oh! how people hate Jesus Christ in the flesh. You may be ever so devout, ever ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... stiff collar Lord Saint Sinnes looks down at her—with something of the deep intuition which makes him the finest steeplechaser in England. Perhaps he notes the quiver of the lip, the sinews drawn tense about her throat. Such silent signals of distress are his business. Certainly he notes the little shiver of abject fear which passes through the girl's slight form as they pass out of the room together. Their departure is ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... went forward alertly, but Drew did not need that signal of someone's approaching. He backed into the shadow-shade of a tree and sat tense, with Colt ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the change which had come over the looks and actions of the company at the mention and appearance of the violin. The faces that had shown indifference and the look of languid weariness freshened and became tense in all their lines; and on their heads again animation sat crowned. Those who were seated jumped to their feet. The conversationalists broke their circle and swung suddenly into line. Eyes sparkled. Little happy screams and miniature war-whoops ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... notice it now in her abstraction. She had risen at the tinkle of the bell, and seated herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with a great pimple on the end of it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak, piping voice said, reckless of the proper tense, "There was a woman wanted to ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... more warily, finally at a very snail's pace. His progress was noiseless. Such a difficult result was accomplished primarily by his quickness of eye in selecting the spots on which to place his feet, and also to a great extent by the fact that he held his muscles so pliantly tense that the weight of his body came down not all at once, but in increasing pressure until the whole was supported ready for the next step. He flowed ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... toward his breast. The weary body was overcoming the will. A sound broke the pleasant spell. He sat up, tense. Someone had entered through the window and stumbled over the chair! Hawksley threw ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... sunshine there comes commonly a darker day of cloud, still hard and forbidding, though milder in promise, with a sky of lead, deepening near the horizon into darker films of iron. Then, while all the nerves of the universe seem rigid and tense, the first reluctant flake steals slowly down, like a tear. In a few hours the whole atmosphere begins to relax once more, and in our astonishing climate very possibly the snow changes to rain in twenty-four hours, and a thaw sets in. It is not strange, therefore, that snow, which to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... while her father lay and silently watched her, with a look in his eyes less of pain than of utter comprehension. He said not a word, while she bit her lip and stared again into the fire, clenching the fist that had spoken for her bitterly aching heart. After a time the tense fingers relaxed, and she held up the hand and ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... ought to get that established, for the record," another of the trustees put in. "Doctor Chalmers, is it true that you spoke, in the past tense, about the death of Khalid ib'n Hussein in one of your classes on ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage—a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... breast. I heard Swank gasp and Whinney's face was white and drawn, his favorite expression when deeply moved. She stood close to her husband, half-twined about him with the grace and strength of an eva-eva vine while her kindling eyes burned questioningly, her lithe body tense and protective. "He is to be christened," said Baahaabaa, with a magnificent gesture ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... in detail. He devoted his chief attention, however, to Big Waller. He "caught" that gigantic Yankee in every conceivable action and attitude. He photographed him, we might almost say, with his legs apart, the hatchet high above his head, and every muscle tense and rigid, preliminary to a sweeping blow. He "took" him with a monstrous pile of logs on his brawny shoulder; he portrayed him resting for a moment in the midst of his toil; he even attempted to ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne |
