"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thorn was out of her flesh. She talked and thought of him as in his babyhood, and left him her blessing at the last. As year after year crept by, the twin-brothers ceased to talk of him. But it was because they had begun to think of him with that strained, tense attention with which we sit and listen for the steps of one who long delays his coming, and who may be dead by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... sort of reply to this; and for another long minute Susan sat tense and motionless, watching the boy's face. Then, with almost a guilty look over ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... We all got up. The air became tense, and in the silence there seemed no motion of ship or wave. I said to myself, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... his table; he was straining forward, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. His eyes and every tense instinct of the man were concentrated on the fireplace. The red light of the embers was in the room. I could see him clearly, and the table beyond him with the calculations; but the fireplace seemed strangely out ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... looking out westwards across the park, towards the sea. For a moment she dreamed of all the wonderful things that lay on the other side of that silver streak. She saw inside the crowded Opera House. She felt the tense hush, the thrill of excitement. She heard the low sobbing of the violins, she saw the stage-setting, she heard the low notes of music creeping and growing till every pulse in her body thrilled with her one great enthusiasm. When she turned back to the table, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... uncertainty was short as it was tense. Once more the brave black head appeared, a blot on the foam-flecked surface, no longer battling, with dilated nostrils, against fearful odds; but lying sideways, inert . . . lifeless; . . . and a prolonged outburst of shouting, clapping, and huzzaing informed the echoing hills that ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." To cleanse ourselves is shown by the Greek tense to be an act done definitely and once for all. It means, therefore, to put ourselves under the conditions of cleansing by a definite act of consecration to God. It means to place ourselves in co-operation with the Holy Spirit, who is distinctively the Sanctifier and Cleanser. It means, also, ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... see him, to look into his face, to hear his voice, perhaps to touch his hand; for he was free of manner and gentle to all, and if he came he would go from one to another, and remember each with royal memory, and find kind words for every one. They wanted him among them, they felt a sort of tense desire to see him again, and even to shout for him again, as the vulgar herd did in the streets,—as they themselves had done but an hour ago when he had stood out beside the throne. And still the dancers danced through the endless ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... With tense nerves, he waited for the scenes in which she would appear. All the little well-remembered gestures, the graceful movements, the tender graces which he had been wont to steel himself against were there. They brought him ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... losers, but finally Dunwody began to edge in upon the accumulated winnings of his neighbor on the right. An hour passed, two hours, more. The boat plowed on down-stream. Presently the colored boy began to light lamps. There came to the faces of all the tense look, the drawn and lined visage which is concomitant to play for considerable stakes. A frown came on the florid countenance of the young officer. The pile of tokens and currency before him lessened steadily. At last, in fact, ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... of politics into the school-room and the whole tense life of the capital was extremely undesirable, and, if continued, could not fail to have an injurious influence upon immature lads; so my mother hastily decided that, instead of waiting until the next year, we should go to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... very still and tense. She was afraid to look at Baldos, who rode up as Quinnox started into the narrow defile, calling to the escort to follow. The keen eyes of the guard caught the situation at once. Miss Calhoun shot a quick glance at him as he rode up beside her. His face was impassive, but she could see his hand ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... came, its thick verdure proffering ambuscade, the air hung tense along the border. Traders had sent in word that Shawanoes, Delawares, Mingos, Wyandots, and Cherokees were refusing all other exchange than rifles, ammunition, knives, and hatchets. White men were shot ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... whose name was Julius Csar." Let our judgment be "Julius Csar was assassinated." Then it becomes "the man whose name was Julius Csar was assassinated." Here Julius Csar is a noise or shape with which we are acquainted, and all the other constituents of the judgment (neglecting the tense in "was") are concepts with which we are acquainted. Thus our judgment is wholly reduced to constituents with which we are acquainted, but Julius Csar himself has ceased to be a constituent of our judgment. This, however, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... Brinnaria a tense and anxious period of waiting. Flexinna obtained her parents' permission and remained with her friend. The entire household continued in good health and there was nothing to distract t he two from their ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... my mind on my destination, thinking only of what I shall do when I get there, and how I shall do it. This thought influences my whole body. I am all "keyed up," my muscles are tense, my breathing, even, is constricted and the walk does me comparatively ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... earring glittered, the poor fellow having been a nautical dandy of the first water was drenched and clotted into heavy masses with the death—sweat, and had fallen back on the deck from his forehead, which was well formed, high, broad and massive. His nose was transparent, thin, and sharp, the tense skin on the bridge of it glancing in the silver light, as if it had been glass. His mouth was puckered on one side into angular wrinkles, like a curtain drawn up awry, while a clotted stream of black gore crept from it sluggishly down his right ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and stopped the car with a jerk. In an instant she was out in the road, cutting lengths of barbed wire from a fence with the scissors and placing them across the road behind us. Her expression was set and tense. When she had placed some six pieces of wire in position, she ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tense moment. Every one of the adventurers felt it, and all but Tom grasped their weapons with tighter grips. They were ready to spring out as soon as a landing was made. Tom managed the machinery in the dark, for he knew every wheel, gear and lever, ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... grateful for the tense moment when Joan had seemed to turn to him for sympathy, a wild and lonely dryad of a ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the 27th of February—new style—was tense with an ominous expectancy. In the Allied chancelleries anxious groups were gathered. They realized that the fate of the Allies hung in the balance. In Petrograd alone three hundred thousand workers went out on strike that day, and the police agents did their level best ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... steps uncertain On a thousand-year long race, But the bellying of the curtain Kept me always in one place; While the tumult rose and maddened To the roar of Earth on fire, Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened To a whisper tense as wire. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... friendly interest, though they were not at all persons that mattered, being of the semi-leisured class who each day went down, as they put it, "to see Number Six go through." There was thus a rather tense air of expectancy when the train pulled in. From one of the Pullman night coaches emerged the Honourable George, preceded by a blackamoor or raccoon bearing bags and bundles, and followed by another uniformed raccoon and a white ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... ladder when Beamish left his cabin and began to descend the starboard. Willis felt that the crisis was upon him. He whispered to the remaining constables, who closed in round the cabin door, then grasped his revolver, and stood tense. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... did get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretching out, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious, how delicious! but that was as far as I could get—sleep was out of the question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealing of the nobility up and down the halls ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that beats on a mountain, his spirit in vain Assaulted his doom and beat on the Gates of Death: Then prone with his arms o'er the lyre he sobbed out his pain, And the tense chords faintly gave voice to the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to Childe Rowland. Another point of interest in English folk-narrative is the repetition of verbs of motion, "So he went along and went along and went along." Still more curious is a frequent change of tense from the English present to the past. "So he gets up and went along." All this helps to give the colloquial and familiar air to the English fairy-tale not to mention the dialectal and archaic words and ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... I remember best was the way in which the repetition of the Lord's Prayer rolled from the lips of the assembly like the sound of the surging of the sea. It was the emotional effect of a strongly emotional moment. One felt tense. It was hard to restrain tears. As far as crowd-sympathy has any spiritual value it was there. The Caucasian God was taken out of ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... 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 men ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end. Matthew, barely noting that it WAS a girl, sidled past her as quickly as possible without looking at her. Had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude and expression. She was sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... awake when the midnight accommodation whistled its impending arrival from the north. She listened, tense, as the train came to a stop in the town. A brief halt, then it sounded its underway, the pistons accelerated their chugging beat and it passed out of Crampville ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... For a tense moment I gazed at her bewildered. In the next, I cursed myself for a fool—I blushed for my suspicions, my obtuseness—I sought dizzily the words, the prescribed words that ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... little, so carefully do animals conceal themselves. In the night they emerge, and in the morning and evening there is a deafening din of insect life. But at noonday there is a soft and solemn hush, and we are tense with curiosity to know all that is going on in those mysterious forest depths and up among the tree-tops, so close but so impossible ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... tense in her clasp upon his arm, and hold there rigidly for a moment, while the swift thoughts whirled through her mind. Then, as if the struggle had ended, she silently relaxed, and leaned more heavily ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... dominus a great rod; while the extraordinary physiognomies round facies faciei would have been worthy of any collection of caricatures. Moreover the illustrations of the verb amo commemorated the gentleman who was married on Sunday, killed his wife on Wednesday, and at the preter-pluperfect tense was hanged on Saturday. Other devices were scattered along the margin, and peeped out of every nook—old men's heads, dogs, hunters, knights, omnibuses; and the habit of drawing so grew upon him, that when he was going to read any book where scribbling was insufferable, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to the desk and inquired whether there were any messages or visitors for Mr. Kay McKay; and the quiet, penetrating glances of the clerks on duty immediately discovered his state of intoxication but nothing else, except his extreme politeness and the tense whiteness of ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... and his fellow workers were gathered, tense and gleeful, around the things their digging had exposed to the daylight. There was a gob of junk—scarcely more than an irregular formation of flaky rust. But imbedded in it was a huddled form, brown and hard as old wood. ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... It was a tense moment, and Andy might well be pardoned for speaking a bit theatrically. Truth to tell he hardly ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... liquid ease, he was on his feet, body tense, alert. Her form was vaguely familiar as she ran toward him. She dodged from his sight, then re-appeared as the winding path cut ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... with her face turned away, looking down into the water. She had taken my arm and drawn me toward the rail. Now I felt her fingers tighten convulsively. In the droop of her head and the tense curve of her neck I sensed her mad impulse ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... The tense feline growl of the tiger grew more distinct. The Prince's hand sought the jewelled handle of his kris. There was a swift rush in the darkness, a crashing among the rubber-vines, a short, quick snarl, and then all ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... out of a cloud, and shows me a white face above my own, drawn tense with emotion. "It ees all settle, Blanca; I go ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... and believed. The dramas were variously and pithily described as The Picture with the Punch Powerful—The Smashing Five-Reel Masterpiece—A Play of Peculiar Problems and Tense Situations—Six Gripping Reels, 7,000 Feet and Every Foot a Punch! Vida Sommers, in the scenes reproduced from these plays, had indeed a busy face. In the picture captioned "Why Did You Make My Mamma Cry?" the ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... and she looked down at her son. The child lay for a moment, wide-eyed and tense. Then some indescribable quality seemed to make him momentarily too large, too tall, for the narrow ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... top of rebellion!" shouted the irate pedagogue. "Keep your seats!" he roared, as half the school came upright under the tense strain ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... 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 skull ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... first applause; and Trimmer's people, seeing the crowd had taken Hector's point, sprang to their feet and began to cheer. At a tense moment, such as this, cheering is often hypnotic, and good managers know how to make use of it on the floor. The noise grew thunderous, and when it subsided Hector was master of the convention. Then, for ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... in a circle, with the boy in their midst, and they pleaded. I remember the throb of that moment now. A single pulse seemed to beat in the room, so tense was the tension, until he spoke out bravely. "I will not go ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... of in the past tense, as we speak of the dead, was not pleasant to Sir Francis, walking behind ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... news of his son Guido, thus proving that, while these unfortunates know both past and future, the present remains a mystery to them. Too amazed at first to speak, Dante mentions Guido in the past tense, whereupon the unhappy father, rashly inferring his son is dead, plunges back into his sepulchre with a desperate cry. Not being able to correct his involuntary mistake and thus comfort this sufferer, Dante begs Farinata to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... inspired whirl of two lovers, whose feet hardly felt the ground, and whose hearts bounded and thrilled, and their cheeks glowed, and their eyes shot fire; and when Grace was obliged to stop, because the others stopped, her elastic and tense frame turned supple and soft directly, and she still let her eyes linger on his, and her hand nestle in his a moment: this, and a faint sigh of pleasure and tenderness, revealed how sweet her ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... tense attitude of his waiting added to the weirdness of the picture which the old wanderer of the mountains made as Aldous faced him. MacDonald was tall; some trick of the night made him appear almost unhumanly tall as he stood in the centre of that tiny moonlit ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... Berkshire Street as Ronnie took his seat at the piano; the voice of Canon Mousepace outlasted the others for a moment or so, and then subsided into a regretful but gracious silence. For the next nine or ten minutes Ronnie held possession of the crowded room, a tense slender figure, with cold green eyes aflame in a sudden fire, and smooth burnished head bent low over the keyboard that yielded a disciplined riot of melody under his strong deft fingers. The world-weary Landgraf forgot for the ...
— When William Came • Saki
... the tone of need (kath usteresin), as if I had been wondering, and fretting, and suspecting you of forgetfulness or of parsimony; no, I have been in a happier mood than that; for I, for my part (ego: slightly emphatic), have learnt (emathon: our perfect tense best gives this aorist) to be, in my actual circumstances, self-sufficing (autarkes); "carrying with me all I have"; independent, not of grace, but ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... it easy. Every muscle taut, every nerve tense, his keen eyes vainly straining to pierce the blackness of the stuffy room—there lay Ben Westerveld in bed, taking it easy. And it was hard. Hard. He wanted to get up. He wanted so intensely to get up that the ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... liberate the horse. Oliver tried to help him, but he could not do much, the horse was so deep in the snow. And, besides, he was standing, or rather lying, in such a position, that many parts of the harness were drawn so tense, that Oliver had not strength enough ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... be holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense, wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a near-by table and disappeared ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... became tense. Everybody—everybody was against him and Fleur! It all strengthened the appeal of her words: "Make sure of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... again—the finding the watch, and the presumption from it of a maker; and in this case there was the watchmaker's shop close by. He urged, too, that Homer was the only great poet who did not in narrating past events use the present tense—speak of them as if happening at the moment. He quoted long passages from Paradise Lost to show how Milton would fall into the present tense, though he might have begun in the past. The fact that throughout the many thousand lines of Homer no instance of the sort could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... refers to, them as facts; for in the case of pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of Israel; not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a man could prophecy ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and I've thought folks looked down on me for it, even when they didn't seem to intend to do it. But I guess it isn't so bad as I thought when I first began to notice it. Do you suppose it is?" His voice was suddenly tense with personal interest in the question which ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... the past called attention, with no other object in view than to make my readers unwilling to retire for the night, to destroy the peace of mind of those who are good enough to purchase my literary wares, or to titillate till tense the nerve tissue of the timid who come to smile and who depart unstrung, then should I deserve the severest condemnation; but these things I do not do. I have a mission in life which I hold as sacred as my good friend Mr. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... use of his extra few inches of height to glance around the briefing room. He saw row on row of tense faces—faces that reflected the same emotions he was feeling. Space exploration was something still new and mostly unknown, and even the experienced men of IES still knew fear occasionally. The galaxy ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... necessary to Mr. Strange's life. That life was, it appeared, held by this suffering gentleman on a precarious tenure. It was ebbing away fast with each passing hour. The servant already spoke of his master in the past tense, describing him to me as a young gentleman not more than five-and-thirty years of age, with a young face, as far as the features and build of it went, but with an expression which had nothing of youth about it. This was the great peculiarity of the man. At a distance ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... herself couldn't fail to recognize that impersonation. It's ridiculously funny, Elfreda, but I wish you wouldn't do it." As Grace and Elfreda were standing with their backs directly away from the door neither girl saw the tense little figure that stood rigid, one hand on the door casing, listening with eyebrows drawn fiercely together. An instant later it had vanished. Grace, after triumphantly placing the last hook in its eye, began helping ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... addressed himself to the work. The truth was that Jimmy was one of those men who are charged to the brim with force. Somehow, the force had to find an outlet. If he had undertaken to collect birds' eggs, he would have set about it with the same tense energy. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... thrill passed through the bodies of her companions and communicated itself to the men in the chairs. There was a moment's tense pause, and then the end man, muttering something about "going to see what had happened to poor old Ben Todd," rose slowly and went out. His companions, with heads erect and a look of cold disdain upon their faces, ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... only charms the sense, Not difference only sets the mind aglow, It is the likeness in the difference, Familiar language spoken on the snow, To have the Perfect in the Present tense, To hear the ploughboy whistling, and to know, It smacks of the wild bush, that tune—'Tis ours, And look! the bank is pale with ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... Journal: "A tense story founded on PORTER EMERSON BROWNE'S play, is full of tremendous situations, and preaches a great sermon." 12mo, cloth bound, with six illustrations from scenes ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 teeth. Then he galloped ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... sitting tense and mute, scarcely even breathing, while the pale blue eyes opposite remained steadily and unblinkingly fixed upon ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... thing. But think for a moment! Is it not a fair guess that a man like our neighbour, who has had such a varied career, who can divine my interest in him as an author, and Mac's as an artist, will be able to fathom the reason why you watch him with a tense and ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... good," said Daniel Boone. His muscles tense, his eyes bright, he stretched out his hand; he was strong and active, the Hancocks, Colonel Callaway, Squire Boone, Flanders, and all—they were as stout as buffalo and as quick as panthers; rifle muzzles that rarely missed were resting upon ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... With muscles tense and every nerve alert the three young soldiers waited. It seemed as if the smoke from the three explosions would never lift and the three boys felt as if hours had elapsed before they could catch a glimpse of the room. Finally ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... came toward him and delivered his oration. At its conclusion he turned his livid face toward where, above him, Patsy was swaggering and heaving his shoulders in a consummate display of bravery and readiness. The Cuban, in his clear, tense tones, spoke one word. It was the bitter insult. It seemed fairly to spin from his lips and crackle in ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... an order in Aguinaldo's handwriting dated Malolos, September 13 (?), 1898, [188] shows how tense was the situation while the question of withdrawal of the Insurgent forces from the city of Manila was under consideration. It contains instructions for General Pio del Pilar, General P. Garcia and General Noriel or Colonel ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... but in passages which the Maestro has marked "con passione" nothing can exceed the elegance of his attitudes, and the pleasing dignity of his gestures. After, par exemple, the recitativi, what a pretty empressement he gave (alas! that we must now speak in the past tense!) to the tonic or key-note, by locking his arms in each other over his poitrine—by that after expansion of them—that clever alto movement of the toes—that apparent embracing of the fumes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... 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 about Helena, conscious ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the back is the next region treated. The patient lies prone, folding the arms under the head; a firm pillow is put under the epigastric region, so as to the better relax the back muscles, which are too tense when a person lies flat. Beginning from the occiput, both hands stroke firmly and rapidly downward and outward to the spines of the scapulae, at first lightly, then with increasing force. Then the whole back is vigorously rubbed—scrubbed one might ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... and shutting his hands and began to scream, at first under his breath, then louder in the over tone, then with the full strength of his lungs. A mountain lion on another slope answered him. He stretched his arms up over his head, every muscle tense, and screamed. And then, without appreciable transition, he sank to the rock and hid his face. For the moment the nerve ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... marching to their fate. We have done what we could. Have we not defined poetry? Is it nothing to have laid the boundary line of beauty?... The huge, hurrying, helpless world in its belts and spindles—the people who are going to be obliged to live in it when the present tense has spoiled it a little more—all this—the great strenuous problem—the defense of beauty, the saving of its past, the forging of its future, the welding of it with life-all these?... Pull down the blinds, Jeems. Shut out the noises of the street. A little longer ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now, And most adorable; Caedmon, in the morn A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call That late brought up the cattle; Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting; — all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, Your more or less, your little mole that marks You brother and your kinship ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... clearly than on the day before, the violence of a conflict which a confession would provoke. But, this time, his resolve was taken. There were too many reasons urging him towards a breach which he considered necessary. With his mind and his whole frame palpitating with his tense will, he was about to utter the irrevocable words, when Marthe hurried ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the path to where we see the distant glow of the flames. The music is supremely noble and touching, with just a hint here and there of over-facility: I mean chiefly that the vocal phrases are not tense and full of character as are those in the Valkyrie: they seem to have been put in to fit the orchestral web. In an earlier chapter I spoke of this weakness in the Ring; and from this point onward till the end of Wagner's writing days, unless he was writing undisguised ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... double reference—to the certainty of the present, and to the perfection of the future. That there is such a double reference may be made very obvious if we notice that the first of the promises, which includes them all, and of which the others are but aspects and phases, is cast into the present tense, whilst the remainder stand in the future. 'Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,' not shall be—'they shall be comforted,' they 'shall inherit the earth,' and so on. So, then, we are warranted, indeed we are obliged, to regard this great promise in the text as having two epochs of fulfilment—one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the cavity of the abdomen is known by a tense swelling of the belly; which does not sound on being struck like the tympany; and in which a fluctuation can be readily perceived by applying one hand expanded on one side, and striking the tumour ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... exprobraverat nescio quid, quod in aula Syriaca in Cypriorum opprobrium effutivisse dicebatur." The English translator has, by omitting the most important words, and by using the aorist instead of the preterpluperfect tense, made the whole ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beside him, facing the room, with body motionless, and head moving swiftly from side to side with a curious swaying movement. His eyes were wide open, his back rigid, his neck and jaws thrust forward, his legs tense and ready to leap. Savage, ready for attack or defence, yet dreadfully puzzled and perhaps already a little cowed, he stood and stared, the hair on his spine and sides positively bristling outwards as though a wind played through it. In the dim firelight he looked like a great yellow-haired ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Baron?" said Count Victor, questioning, but he got no answer. Doom came up to him and peered at him as if he had been a ghost, a tear upon his cheek, something tense and troubled in his countenance, that showed him for the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... forgiveness. The only difference between the two parts of speech is this, that, whereas a noun may express any object whatever, verbs can only express those objects which consist in an action. And it is this superadded idea of action that superadds to the verb the phenomena of tense, mood, person, and voice; in other words, the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... verbs throughout are in the aorist, but the sense of the original is better expressed in English by the present than the past tense.] ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... excited Frenchmen on the fateful Sunday of July 12, 1789. The moment was a tense one, when, coming out of the Cafe Foy, Camille Desmoulins, a youthful journalist, mounted a table and began the harangue that precipitated the first overt act of the French Revolution. Blazing with a white hot frenzy, he so played upon ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... all that was gone. His muscles were hard, his thoughts were tense, he saw red! Presently he had a conviction that we were gaining ground, and he suddenly became aware of the fact that we had gained the better of the situation and had returned to our trenches. A number of the enemy had been taken prisoners, ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... cursed again the father who had bequeathed him such an inheritance, but as he did so he stopped suddenly for a soft clear voice sounded close to his ear. "No man need be fettered for life by an inherited weakness. Every man who is worthy of the name can rise above hereditary deficiencies." He lay tense and his heart gave a great throb and then he remembered. The voice was inward—it was only another memory, an echo of the young mother who had died, ten years before. Overwhelming shame filled him. "Mother, Mother!" he whispered chokingly, and deep tearing sobs shook his broad ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... increased. Like the ghost of a great wind it moaned and sighed about us. Little by little a new note crept in—a sibilant, metallic note as of a tense sheet of silk drawn rapidly ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... people, rough outlines of objects, omens in embryo, symbols of trifles, which told her that she would be victorious. She wanted to see these things and she compelled herself to discover them. Under her tense gaze the porcelain became alive with the visions of her insomnia; her disappointments, her hatreds, the faces she detested, arose gradually from the magic plate and the designs drawn thereon by chance. By her side the candle, which ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... silence. Terror came into Lucia's heart. Her brain reeled. She had seen Morgan in a temper before—many times; but never with quite this sinister light in his eyes, this tense, quiet force behind his slightest gesture. What was he going to say to her? She felt like an animal at bay. She determined that she would gain one advantage by making him be the first to speak. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... day up for prayer, meditation, and solitary walks, and often went in to service in the cathedral. He says that he was in a state of tense excitement, and the solitude and introspection had an alarmingly depressing effect upon him. He says that the result of this was an appalling mental agony: "It seemed to me after a day or two that there ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The situation here is tense. Of course, nobody knows what will be done. I favor telling Germany that we will make no trade with her, and if she fails to make good her word we will stop talking to her altogether. I am getting tired of having the Kaiser ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... all as unpoetical, and without at all, especially in the description of historical times, going in pursuit of poetical flights or embellishments—maintaining throughout his narrative the present tense.(55) What we have already said of the national drama of the same poet, applies substantially to the work of which we are now speaking. The epic, like the tragic, poetry of the Greeks lived and moved essentially in the heroic period; it ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... farther along, and the tense strain of suspense was beginning to tell upon the man who sat thoughtful and alone in the second-floor office of the Crow's Nest, when Benson ran up to report the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... of tense waiting I tried to collect my thoughts. I told myself that I must keep steady, that I must keep my mind clear. I struggled to get a grip on myself; the light, the steady flying without power, the boundless, horrible silence had shaken me. But there was more ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... not turn, nor for a moment did she answer. He could see her profile clear-cut as a cameo in the almost vivid light, and in that light her eyes were wide and filled with a dusky fire, and her lips were parted a little, and her slim body was tense as she looked at the wonder of the moon silhouetting the cragged castles of the peaks, up where the soft, gray clouds ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... string Rang, and sprang inward, and the waterish air Hissed, and the moist plumes of the songless reeds Moved as a wave which the wind moves no more. But the boar heaved half out of ooze and slime, His tense flank trembling round the barbed wound, Hateful; and fiery with invasive eyes And bristling with intolerable hair Plunged, and the hounds clung, and green flowers and white Reddened and broke all round them where they came. And charging with sheer tusk he drove, and smote Hyleus; and sharp ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... to remain where she was, but her tense interest in what was doing drew her forward in spite of herself. She rode along the ridge that bordered the park, at first slowly and then quicker as the impulse grew in her to be in at ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... hours—full of adventure and tense situations. I was a bit disappointed to find that the Pirate was a Greek who preyed mostly upon Italian, Greek and Turkish vessels in the Eastern Mediterranean, because I had hoped that Kingston would address himself to the problem in the previous century, where ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Willcocks is an English writer of unusual force and that dry, incisive humor dearly beloved of the intellectual reader. In 'The Way Up' this writer crystallizes a tense and telling problem. The book is earnest enough for the most serious of readers, yet never dull or dreary. The ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... on a bench, peering over the shoulders of the crowd. Prince Ferdinand William Otto saw him, and bent forward. "There he is!" he said, in a tense tone. "There on the—" ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the room, he seated 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 to ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... decree to refer to those who are promised to others in marriage, especially if the betrothal be expressed by words in the present tense. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... hiding-place where, lost in the crowd, I might waste my days unnoticed until such time as I could summon up sufficient resolution to put an end to my dead life. I had been ambitious—dwelling again amid the bitterness of the months that followed my return, I write in the past tense. I had been eager to make a name, a position for myself. But were I to claim no higher aim, I should be doing injustice to my blood—to the great-souled gentleman whose whole life had been an ode to honour, to her of simple faith who had known no other ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Emma McChesney's eyes, and something in her set, unsmiling face, told him that she was not seeing seashores. She was staring straight at him, straight through him, miles beyond him. There was about her that tense, electric, breathless air of complete detachment, which always enveloped her when her lightning mind was leaping ahead to a goal ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... held the bottle, staring at it in blank astonishment; so tense was his attitude that it caught ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Budaeus, who, according to Merrill, had the Parisinus at his disposal, has corrected two obvious misprints, made an inevitable change in the tense of a verb—with or without the help of the ancient book—and introduced from that book one unfortunate reading which we find in ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... his face, as he inquired in low, tense tones, "Of what avail are wealth and position to one who finds an insurmountable barrier placed between himself and all that he holds most precious ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... by their forms all of the distinctions of mood and tense, person and number, found in the English, and form their participles, and are changed into verbal or participial nouns; and these modifications are for, the most ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... [Tense pause. Powhatan, with arms folded, considers deeply. Then makes sign of assent, but gives back necklace to Pocahontas, who rises with pantomime of joy. Powhatan makes sign to braves to release Smith. Smith is unbound. His weapons are given back to him. He chafes his wrists ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... world has placed this famous Religious—Historical Romance on a height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep fascination. ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... 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
... proclaim her obedience. Cornelia was still standing in the middle of the room. It appeared to the maid that she had not altered her position by as much as an inch since she had seen her last. Her expression was tense with expectation. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and exalted with anticipation of the crown of happy love, and laid it on the little white bed. Later, when the officials came to view the body, they opened the door softly and shrinkingly, and the drip, drip, drip on the clay floor sounded on their tense brains like strokes from the ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... his fingers down the tense muscles, then up to the manly shoulder-blades. "Why, boy, you are built like ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... then bit his lip. He had not meant to carry things so far, but the pent-up anger had its way at last. His mind was weary and tense, irritable from two sleepless nights and from futile decisions, and he inherited a tendency to black and sudden rage. It was true he had walked through life with a black dog at his heels. Sometimes he turned, closed with, throttled, and flung off his pursuer; sometimes he left him ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... fifth day they knew that it had distinguished itself at Alost and Termonde and Quatrecht. The names sounded in their brains like a song with an exciting, maddening refrain. October stretched before them, golden and blank, a volume of tense, ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... the electricity of an excitement so tense, so suppressed, that it struck her like some living force as she rode through the thronged, though ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... which held her; her quiet dignity, the way she moved. He placed her on a pedestal in his thoughts, which was a thing he had never dreamt of doing for any other woman, and before long his admiration melted into love. Then being forty-two the disease took rapid and tense possession. He was only happy when he was with her, able to talk to her now and again, to ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... to rebandage the maimed hand and replace it in the supporting sling; and, afterward, went over and talked with Aunt Ruth before passing out and going round to his side of the divided house. But so long as he remained in sight, Cleek's narrowed eyes followed him and the tense creases seamed Cleek's indrawn, silent lips. But when he broke that silence it was to speak to the captain and to say some silly, pointless thing about that refuge ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... For one instant, mind and body, she was rigid with the sheer wonder of it. Then, as the atmosphere of the room surged back, tense with vitality, her mind leapt forward in welcome. He was coming back, coming back! The words hammered themselves out to the rhythm of the eager tread that never lingered so much as a second's space on its way to her, that stumbled slightly on ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... of all this as he knelt in the stern of his little craft and plied the paddle slowly and with infinite caution, his every nerve tense, and sight and hearing strained to catch any sound of movement on the rapidly nearing point. Were it white men only that they were seeking to elude, he would have felt far less apprehension, but he recognized that in the person of Indian Charley they had to deal with a mind ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... without fear and without reproach. Nearing the supreme moment of his life the Prince could only have had the feeling that it was about to end. He answered the questions put to him clearly, concisely—with the most profound indifference. After all those tense months of action, to talk was a weariness to him. But he concealed it, lest his foes should suspect in his manner the apathy of discouragement or the numbness of a crushed spirit. The details of his conduct could have no importance one way or another; with his thoughts these ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... their way further up the coast to their destination. On the way they encounter various characters, some good and honourable, and others very much the reverse. Finally they arrive and set to work seeking for gold. Of course there are more adventures and tense situations, as you ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... is in those words, thou hast been! when the sense of them becomes absolutely clear to us. One feels one's self sinking gradually into one's grave, and the past tense sounds the knell of our illusions as to ourselves. What is past is past: gray hairs will never become black curls again; the forces, the gifts, the attractions of youth, have vanished with ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... upon Trent was curious. For an instant his face was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he gradually drew himself together as he sat into a tense attitude. He looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon. But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was: "I had no ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley |
