"Groping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was moving slowly along ashore, and apparently groping its way, if one could judge from the many signal whistles heard. This rumbling sound was magnified in the fog until it seemed almost deafening at times. It annoyed Jack, for he was straining his heading to catch anything that came ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... It won't be long. They'll tell him—some one. And I can't do nothing to help it! But I got to do something.... My God! I got to do something. I'll dress better than this. This foulard's a botch." New fashions in dress, in coiffures, multiplied in her mind. She was groping, according to her poor enlightenment. "The pompadour!" she mused, inspired, according to the inspiration of her kind. "It might suit my style. I'll try it.... But, oh, it won't do no good," she thought, despairing. "It won't do no good.... I've ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... if, whelming you with this huge stone, I can crush you and all your men together; I will descend upon the shore, though blind, 715 Groping my way ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of the aid furnished by adequate books of reference in a special field, many a reader goes groping in pursuit of references or information which might be found in some one of the many volumes which may be designated as works of bibliography. The diffidence and reserve of many students in libraries, and the mistaken fear ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... quickness of a cat Pierre raised the butt of the heavy dog-whip which he held in his hand and it came down with a sickening thud on Billy's head. As he staggered into the middle of the cabin floor, groping blindly for a moment before he fell, he heard a strange, terrified cry, and in the open inner door he saw the white-robed figure of Isobel Deane. Then he sank down into ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... have dismally continued, "it will be a queer mixture: these simians will attain to vast stores of knowledge, in time, that is plain. But after spending centuries groping to discover some art, in after-centuries they will now and then find it's forgotten. How incredible it would seem on other planets to ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... mechanisms of "repression of impulse" and of its symptomatic symbolization can be illustrated in the most unexpected corners of individual and group psychology. A more general psychology than Freud's will eventually prove them to be as applicable to the groping for abstract form, the logical or esthetic ordering of experience, as to the life of ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... panting, and waited for the end. I remember a blind groping in the dark, a wild hurly-burly of random blows, a sudden sharp pain in my right hand—a groan, and I was standing with the swish of the rain about me, and the moaning of the wind in the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the daughter of Nisus, however, was driven by Juno to fall in love with Minos, her father's enemy; and, to win his love, she yields to the temptation of betraying her father to Minos. The picture of the girl when she had decided to cut the charmed lock of hair, groping her way in the dark, tiptoe, faltering, rushing, terrified at the fluttering of her own heart, is an interesting attempt ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... outside. Toward the exit after him backed the cowpuncher. Already scattered shots were being flung in his direction, but the dim light served him well. The last thing he saw before he vanished through the door was Culvera groping for his weapon. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... splintered. Now, suppose that quay had been of granite (as surely it is now)—or, instead of the quay, if there had been, say, a North Atlantic fog there, with a full- grown iceberg in it awaiting the gentle contact of a ship groping its way along blindfold? Something would have been hurt, but it would ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... munitions of war. Tone was in the Indomptable, 80 guns, commanded by a Canadian, named Bedout; Hoche and the Admiral in the frigate Fraternite; Grouchy, so memorable for the part he played then and afterwards, was second in command. On the third morning, after groping about and losing each other in Atlantic fog, one-half the fleet (with the fatal exception of the Fraternite) found themselves close in with the coast of Kerry. They entered Bantry Bay, and came to anchor, ten ships of war, and "a long line of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... After groping, aimless, with his right hand for a time he made an ineffectual attempt to release his left. Then he tried to disengage his head, the fixity of which was the more annoying from his ignorance of what held it. Next he tried to free ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... lands. As one who wades, alone, Deep in the dusk, and hears the minor talk Of distant melody, and finds the tone, In some wierd way compelling him to stalk The paths of childhood over,—so I moan, And like a troubled sleeper, groping, walk. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... last of these shadowy aisles and the priests' monotonous chant; and so, paying a small fee, I had a low door in the south transept opened to me; and, groping my way up a stair of an hundred and fifty steps, or rather more, I came out upon the top of the Cathedral. I had left a noble temple, but only to be ushered into a far nobler,—its roof the blue vault, its ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Groping about, we discovered some barrels, and lumber; behind which there was straw. Here we determined to lie down; and rest our bruised and aching bones. Our cloaths had been drenched and dried more than once, in the course of the night; ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... ahead acts as a scout. While the others, if nothing occurs to create excitement, keep to their ranks, he attends to his duties as a leader and is continually turning his head to this side and that, investigating, seeking, groping, making his choice. And things happen as he decides: the band follows him faithfully. Remember also that, even on a road which has already been travelled and beribboned, the guiding caterpillar ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... about, too, in that dark mountain; I saw no speck of light, either before or behind me; the iron roadway was raised about a foot, on rough stones, above the narrow path that followed the jagged, irregular wall of rock along which I was groping and stumbling. Rather an awkward place, I thought, to ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... so it seemed to him, Cosmo Waynflete became doubtfully aware of another change of time and place—of another transformation of his own being. He knew himself to be alone once more, and even without his trusty charger. Again he found himself groping in the dark. But in a little while there was a faint radiance of light, and at last the moon came out behind a tower. Then he saw that he was not by the roadside in Japan or in the desert of Persia, but ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... groping for solution to this problem. If we cannot solve it progressively, our civilization will go back to chaos. We cannot stand still with the economic and social forces that surround us. There has never been a complete panacea to all human relationships so far in this world. ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... stretched out their hands, groping eagerly to snatch the eye out of the hand of Scarecrow. But, being both alike blind, they could not easily find where Scarecrow's hand was; and Scarecrow, being now just as much in the dark as Shakejoint ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... later, she was groping her way alone through another sunless bog, but this time she reached a rest for her feet. For a week, her mother had not been able to go to the nursery, evenings, at the child's prayer hour. She spoke of it—was sorry for it, and said she would come to-night, and hoped she could ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... audience. The author of The Pilgrim, Essays on Religion, The Nature and Purpose of a Christian Society, Jesus in the Experience of Man and The Jesus of History is a scholar and somewhat of a recluse whom one finds after much groping about dim halls at Cambridge. A highly individual personality! It is this personality, though, that makes the fascination of Poets and Pilgrims—a volume of studies in which the subjects are Spenser, Milton, Evelyn, Bunyan, Boswell, Crabbe, Wordsworth and Carlyle. Mr. Glover notes ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... years had he felt so well in body and mind as during his walk home. There, there was the thought for which he had been obscurely groping! What were volumes of metaphysics and of sociology to the man who had heard this one little truth whispered from the upturned mould? Henceforth he knew why he was living, and how it behooved him to live. Let theories and poesies follow ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Him. Many others who are not ignorant yet ignore Him. They turn their faces and backs. Some give Him the cut direct. The great crowd in every part of the world is yearning after Him: piteously, pathetically, most often speechlessly yearning, blindly groping along, with an intense inner tug after Him. They know the yearning. They feel the inner, upward tug. They don't understand what it is for which they yearn, nor ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... idea!" She turned slowly white. Certain things must filter to the understanding through amazement and disbelief; it took Val a minute or two to grasp the significance of what she saw. By the time she did grasp it, her knees were beading weakly beneath the weight of her body. She put out a groping hand and caught at the corner of the corral to keep herself from falling. And ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... square was silent and deserted. He went, groping his way, towards the place where his mother had fallen. He found her with his hand, he bent over her, he put his face close to hers, he listened for the beating of her heart. Then he murmured ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... Waldron had "gone West," that on the site of one where fourteen of "ours" had stopped a shell while they slept. Memories submerged us and made us weak. Even the guiding rope that our men had used to hold themselves to the trail of nights still held its place for groping German hands. ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... plenty of wine to warm him, than it would be out on the desolate sands at Par, where the wind blows keenly enough to take one's ears off. John did mind, though, the next morning, when the butler came and discovered him. He was groping his way between two rows of casks, trying to find his way to Luxulyan, he explained to the butler, but the butler, instead of putting him in the right road, led him at once to Squire Tremaine's study, where John told the ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... is blindfolded stands in the center of the room. The other players stand anywhere they wish and in such positions as seem safest to them. The blindman is then told to take ten steps in any direction and try to capture a player by groping for him. If unsuccessful, he may take ten steps in another direction, and so on until someone is captured. The steps may be long or short ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... love of reality. His work was realism, though he had endeavored to fuse with it the fancies and beauties of imagination. What he sought was an impassioned realism, shot through with human aspiration and faith. What he wanted was life as it was, with all its spirit-groping and soul-reaching left in. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... as it were, groping in the dark, no ray of light penetrating the intense gloom surrounding me. My scanty garments felt too tight for me, my very respiration seemed to be restrained by some supernatural power. Now, free as I supposed, I felt like a bird on a pleasant May morning. Instead of the darkness of slavery, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... last inspired note has broken. No light, no flash is in thy eyes; they are dim, weighed down by the load of happiness, of the blissful sense of the beauty, it has been thy glad lot to express—the beauty, groping for which thou hast stretched out thy yearning hands, thy ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... basin to make myself more wakeful. Again I sat on the bed for what seemed a long time, until a clock downstairs struck the hour of midnight. Now, I thought, Mr. Baker and Eliza must be asleep, and groping for my clothes, I began to dress with all possible speed. As I rose from lacing my boots I trod on a loose board, which creaked so loudly that I felt certain it must be heard throughout the house. Lest any one should be aroused, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... GROPING. An old mode of catching trout by tickling them with the hands under rocks or banks. Shakspeare makes the clown in "Measure for Measure" say that ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... their own salvation under leaders of their own choice, than to be told to organize, and to do thus and so. It requires a rare power of self-control in a real leader to be compelled to witness only partial success and crude performance under secondary leaders groping toward success, and still be silent and patient. But this is the true ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... chase, however, for the lights were continually moving and frequently went out. While groping in the growing darkness, they came upon a brown object about the size of a small dog and close to the ground. It flew off with a humming insect sound, and as it did so it showed the brilliant phosphorescent glow ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... more of Thy precious words had fallen on mine ear.... I might have told her then something of what Thou didst say ... I could have found the words to make her understand.... But now I am ignorant and forlorn.... Oh, Man of Galilee! Thou didst die so soon ... and left so many of us groping in the darkness.... Thou Son of God, come back to me, if only in a dream ... show me the way, the truth, the light; show me the star which they say guided the shepherds to Thy cradle ... give me Thy cross, and let me walk once more on Golgotha ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... afterwards to be the admirable opening of WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT: it was no wonder I was pleased with that. The other three still remain unidentified. One is a little vague; it was about a dark, tall house at night, and people groping on the stairs by the light that escaped from the open door of a sickroom. In another, a lover left a ball, and went walking in a cool, dewy park, whence he could watch the lighted windows and the figures of the dancers as they moved. This was the most sentimental ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they are necessarily a matter of investigation as survivals which have a story to tell, they do not carry us very far when we are tracing the religious experience of a people, and in any case the process of investigating them is one of groping in the dark. I shall deal with these survivals in my next two lectures, and then leave them ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... joy. Would they like to hear the story? Was it not this very clue which they had been blindly groping for to enable them to solve the mystery of the Wegg crime? The boy marked their interest, and began his story at once, while the hearts of the three girls ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... arena. He could not hold her hands. Now she dared not close her eyes and cry; it was not the work of one thunderbolt she had to see. Now, under the darting questions of the court-examiner, she was like a frightened girl lost in the woods and groping through a tempest, with lightning thrusts pursuing her on every side, stitching the woods with fire like the needle in a sewing-machine stabbing and ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... saw himself later lying just outside the lip of a shell-crater, blind, helpless, his face a shredded smear when he felt it with groping fingers. He remembered that he lay there wondering, because of the darkness and the strange silence and the pain, if he were dead and burning in hell ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... grabbed the big stone which Stuart thrust into his hand, and, groping about, quickly secured another. Then he slowly raised himself into a kneeling position, ready to spring to his feet and carry out the duty Stuart had given him. Nor was it likely to be a very difficult matter to strike the sentry at that moment hammering again on the barbed ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... too noisy and blatant, and died in his hands while he was trying to create an appropriate form for it. He said he had no success with anything unless it was something disembodied, incorporeal, the melody of which had thus far found an echo in no human breast. Therefore he seemed to be groping around, without anchorage, after sprites from the land of nowhere. And the more domineering the order was to which he subjected his mind and his fancy, the more lost and hopeless his earthly self seemed to be ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... doubt bears the aspect of a futile dream; yet it is worth while pointing out that in a dim and feeble way this has been the ideal after which London has been groping ever since the day when the population first overflowed its normal boundaries. The mischief has been that nothing has been done upon a grand scale and by organised effort. A bit of open space has been bought for a park here and there, while a much larger ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... into gold. Into some attic half filled with lumber he would fling it by the handful; then, locking the door, leave it there. On their hands and knees he and his friends, when they wanted any, would grovel for it, poking into corners, hunting under boxes, groping among broken furniture, feeling between cracks and crevices. Nothing gave him greater delight than an expedition of this nature to what he termed his gold-field; it had for him, as he would explain, all the excitements of mining without the inconvenience ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... first to spread the news wherever we go. The reason is, that we get the authentic news through our friends and bankers, and circulate it in the inns, instead of the ridiculous stories invented by those groping in ignorance. The feelings of the people seem excellent every where; the troops alone maintain a gloomy silence. The country, from Montpellier, is the same as hitherto, flat and insipid: but the crops are much farther advanced than in Provence. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... if he had got hold of the idea that heredity was only a mode of memory before 1870, when he published the second edition of his Principles of Psychology, he would have gladly adopted it, for he seems continually groping after it, and aware of it as near him, though he is never able to grasp it. He probably failed to grasp it because Lamarck had failed. He could not adopt it in his edition of 1880, for this is evidently printed from stereos taken from the 1870 edition, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... courage and calling death to my assistance in that miserable condition, however, I felt still an inclination to live, and to do all I could to prolong my days. I went groping about, for the bread and water that was in my coffin, and took some of it. Though the darkness of the cave was so great that I could not distinguish day and night, yet I always found my coffin again, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... Also, he remarked that the Major's manner at such moments was a thing to dazzle the eye, like the reflection of the summer sun on the surface of burnished metal. But beneath the polished exterior, the groping perceptions of the boy would touch a thing repellent; a thing to stir a slow current of resentment ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... awoke with a start, as though surprised to find an empty place at her side. She looked at the other pillow lying next to hers; there was the dint of a human head among its flounces: it was still warm. And groping with one hand, she pressed the knob of an electric bell by her ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... this sublime truth marks a notable epoch in the history of the gradual development of the human intellect. No doubt, other philosophers, in groping after knowledge, may have set forth certain assertions that are more or less equivalent to this fundamental truth. It is to Ptolemy we must give credit, however, not only for announcing this doctrine, but for ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... she was weeping but, blinded by her tears, choked by her sobs, she yet reached out her arms to me in mute appeal; and it seemed that somehow her tears were blinding me also, her passionate sobs shaking me, for I stood in a mist, groping for the support of my chair-back; indistinctly I heard a voice speak that I knew ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake and bewildered to find everything that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... where now sat a more inept subordinate. Each such moment brought its tiny stab at his pride and self-assurance, and the brain which he must concentrate kept straying to the disquieting vision of a grief-maddened girl leaning against the wall, with her fingers twitching in little groping gestures as her lips rained accusation. Today he had made a panic, but between the opening and closing peals of tomorrow's gong each hour must be filled with the most exact and ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... The advent of the young man had produced a singularly disagreeable impression upon me, quite apart from any antagonism I might have felt toward him as a type. Strange suspicions leaped into my mind, formless—in the surprise of the moment— but rapidly groping toward definite outline; and following hard upon them crept a tingling apprehension. The reappearance of this rattish youth, casual as was the air with which he strove to invest it, began to assume, for me, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... embrasure of the window. I heard some one scream as I fell, and a door was suddenly closed. I had received severe bruises on my knee, elbow, and head, and rising with difficulty, at once began a search around the apartment, groping in the dark; but hearing nothing more, and fearing to make some fresh noise which might be heard by persons who should not know of my presence there, I decided to return to the Emperor, and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... from it, still it seemed to strain like some fettered Afrit from Eblis, throbbing with wrath, seeking with every malign power it possessed to break its bonds and pursue. Not until long after were we to know that it had been the dying hand of Serku, groping out of oblivion, that had cast it after us as a fowler upon ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... wife. Where's my wife?" he raved and groping till he found the candlestick knocked on the floor with it. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... and down a dark staircase, which I had never before seen. Yet it was not altogether dark; but the light was different from the clear, silvery light that shines through the upper halls. I heard a heavy door open and close, and all was hushed. I could not find the door, and after groping a long while for it, I went back to the ivory room, and cried myself to sleep, at the foot of my ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... barrier-cliffs of Caspak that I had felt any sense of peace or security. My hand wandered to the velvet cheek of the girl I had claimed as mine, and to her luxuriant hair and the golden fillet which bound it close to her shapely head. Her slender fingers groping upward sought mine and drew them to her lips, and then I gathered her in my arms and crushed her to me, smothering her mouth with a long, long kiss. It was the first time that passion had tinged my ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... He woke abruptly, groping after some vaguely remembered sound. A soft clicking of heels down the hall.... Of course, his mother back from the Spaceport! Now she would be stopping at his door to see if he were asleep. He lay silently; through his eyelashes he could see her outlined in the soft light from the hall. She ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... splash in your front, for no mortal ken could have pierced half a horse's length ahead. At length, we left the path altogether, and pulling down a snake fence, passed through the gap into open fields. It was all plain sailing here, and a great relief after groping through the dim woodland; we encountered no obstacle but an occasional "zigzag," easily demolished, till we came to a deep hollow, where the guide dismounted—evidently rather vague as to his bearings—and proceeded to feel his way. Somewhere about here there was a "branch" (or rivulet) ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... night, she heard the crackling of a wood fire on the hearth; she felt the touch of soft linen under her aching body, and the pressure of something cool and fragrant on her forehead. Her right hand, feebly groping the white counterpane, felt a flower in its grasp. Opening her eyes, she saw the firelight dancing on tinted walls, and an angel of deliverance sitting by her bedside—a dear familiar woman angel, whose fair crowned head rose from a cloud of white, and ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eyes—into those large, brown, childlike eyes which had seen so little of the gorgeousness of earth. His hand stirred a very little—enough, for Evelyn quickly moved the gleaming satin train of the doll under the groping fingers. The eyes lifted to Evelyn's face and the smile in them was that of a prisoner who suddenly sees the gate of his prison opened and the fields of home beyond. It mattered little, one may believe, to ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... you always played," Clara said quietly, "I remember that best." She locked her hands over her knee and began "The Heart Bowed Down," and sang it through without groping for the words. She was singing with a good deal of warmth when she came to the end of the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... deuce have I got to? Is that you, John? By heaven, I remember!' His fingers went groping weakly to his breast, then with a groan he struggled to his feet. 'The ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... it with his hands. This habit he kept up as long as the weather permitted him to be outdoors, and he did not give it up even after his sight was gone. He would still take his daily walk out to the haystack on the knoll, drag himself slowly around it, groping with his hands to feel it, as if he wished to make sure that it still stood there, firm as a rock and untouched. He would stretch out his hands and touch its face and count the strips of turf to himself in ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... possess Lygia, he would not possess her completely, for he would have to share her with Christ. Finally, he was living as if not living,—without hope, without a morrow, without belief in happiness; around him was darkness in which he was groping for an exit, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... night, about one o'clock, in the silence of the lonely old house, the aged caretaker, Jane, whom he had hired after he banished his daughter from his life, heard a wild shout of 'Help! Help!' Haswell, alone in his room on the second floor, was groping about in the dark. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... there isn't much wit and humor in me—there doesn't seem to be just now," stammered Harlan, after groping some moments for suitable reply to what he accepted ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... was pushing in this direction too, for it suddenly burst out of a broken window. From many pairs of lips there burst a groan. Well did they know that every second counted against the boy, who was doubtless groping his way along halls and through rooms ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Presently the descent became steeper, and the bridge flimsier, and sprays from the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast-increasing sheets that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the nature of groping. Now a furious wind began to rush out from behind the waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that I wanted to go home; ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... descended into the cellar. There was little light here, and I cared not to strike flint. Groping about I touched with my foot remains of bottles of earthenware, then made my way to the door again and ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... into the room and stilled the tiny winged lover of the sunshine. Then Beethoven came and rubbed himself against his master's leg, and Lancelot got up as one wakes from a dream, and stretched his cramped limbs dazedly, and rang the bell mechanically for tea. He was groping on the mantel-piece for the matches when the knock at the door came, and he did not turn round till he had found them. He struck a light, expecting to see Mrs. Leadbatter or Rosie. He started to find ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... and gases were now pouring down the shaft, and Houston realized that there was no time to be lost. Very tenderly he lifted the little form in his arms, and began, as rapidly as possible, the descent of the shaft, groping his way amid the rocks, toward the cut leading to the tunnels, through ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... little glimpse of a better way than I have hitherto known, seems like an olive leaf of hope and promise to me, for I have been tossing on a restless sea of doubt and skepticism for years, reaching out and groping after some substantial plank that would float me into a haven of peace and rest. But how is it that you, so young, argue so clearly and logically about these things that have puzzled older and wiser heads ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... has been well abused by the nineteenth. So far as I can gather, it is the settled practice of every century to speak evil of her immediate predecessor, and I have small doubt that, had we gone groping about in the tenth century, we should yet have been found hinting that the ninth was darker than she had any need ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Recently, while groping about an old book shop, I found a collection of Goblin Poetry in three volumes, containing many pictures of goblins. The title of the collection is Ky[o]ka Hyaku-Monogatari, or "The Mad Poetry of the Hyaku-Monogatari." The Hyaku-Monogatari, or "Hundred Tales," ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... that had reduced it to a mass of ruins. During the next ten days the English commander advanced about as many miles, and then discovered that for all prospect of taking Antwerp he might as well have remained in England. Whilst Chatham was groping about in Walcheren, the fortifications of Antwerp were restored, the fleet carried up the river, and a mass of troops collected sufficient to defend the town against a regular siege. Defeat stared ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... you what took place between me and Jemima, to whom I was introduced as she sat in the darkened room, poor sufferer! nor describe to you with what a thrill of joy I seized (after groping about for it) her poor emaciated hand. She did not withdraw it; I came out of that room an engaged man, sir; and NOW I was enabled to show her that I had always loved her sincerely, for there was my will, made three years back, in her favour: that night she refused me, as I told ye. I would have ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... modern humanity is indeed shattered in the Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power. The world is groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity. Knowledge is bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for the sake of utility. The East and the West, like two dragons tossed in a sea of ferment, in vain strive to regain ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... mean time, had not been idle. Hastily throwing off his clothing, he dived again and again into the deep pool, swimming to the bottom and groping about there. He brought up handfuls of sticks and small stones, and the debris of the water's bed. A dozen times he was unsuccessful—and then, at last, as he clung to the bank and opened his fist for the water to thin the mud and ooze that he had ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... were so little past midsummer, was as dark as January. Intervals of a groping twilight alternated with spells of utter blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes in the flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out of a man's nostrils; ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Have done with groping in books, Spiridion," cried he, "and tell me if you think this a time for such folly, when your life is threatened ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... centuries between two halves of the same chapter, now flashing the light of new theories upon the development of Jewish theology. He lived at Royal Street and the British Museum, for he spent most of his time groping among the folios and manuscripts, and had no need for more than the little back bedroom, behind the Ansells, stuffed with mouldy books. Nobody (who was anybody) had heard of him in England, and he worked on, unencumbered by patronage or a full stomach. The Ghetto, itself, knew little of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... story tells us that dormant memories are not dead, but are like hibernating serpents that with warmth lift their heads to strike. It fulfills, as has been said, the old-time story of the man groping along the wall until his fingers hit upon a hidden spring, when the concealed door flew open and revealed the hidden skeleton. It tells us that much may be forgotten in the sense of being out of mind, but nothing is forgotten ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... determined by instinct rather than by reason. I do not mean that instinct is opposed to reason: it is simply a crude, undeveloped, inarticulate form of reason; it is blended with prejudices for which no reason is assigned, or even regarded as requisite. Such blind instincts, implying at most a kind of groping after error, necessarily govern the majority of men of all classes, in political as in other movements. The old apologists used to argue on the hypothesis that men must have accepted Christianity on the strength of a serious inquiry into the evidences. The fallacy of the doctrine is ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... lights. And now you seek to relight them, but cannot remember the place or direction of anything, and when you have found out what you were looking for, do not know how much time has flown, except that the song is still in its first stanza. Are you aware that your groping hand has seized and rumpled into its palm a long strand of slender ribbon lately ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... nowhere,—so he took enquiring dealers experiments in a "later manner," that made them put him out of the shop. When he ran short of money, he could always get any amount of commercial work; he was an expert draughtsman and worked with lightning speed. The rest of his time he spent in groping his way from one kind of painting into another, or travelling about without luggage, like a tramp, and he was chiefly occupied with getting rid of ideas he had ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... her in sight, and when she entered a cave he pressed forward eagerly, believing that now her escape was impossible; but she had purposely trapped him there, for she had already explored a tortuous passage that led to the upper air, and by this she had left the cavern in safety while he was groping and calling in the dark. Returning to the entrance, she loosened, by a jar, a ledge that overhung it, so that the door was almost blocked; then, gathering light wood from the dry trees around her, she made a fire ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... to the surface, and reaching shore. Life, freedom, wealth, career, were forfeited. He determined to redeem the whole. He availed himself of the instruments at hand, though they were tarnished. He did not scruple to soil his fingers in groping his way out ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry on. But Strether's sense of these things, and Strether's only, should avail me for showing them; I should know them but through his more or less groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure among his most interesting motions, and a full observance of the rich rigour I speak of would give me more of the effect I should be most "after" than all other possible observances together. It would give me a large unity, and ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... gave me a line to live by. A line he said that had been written by a man who was stone blind, and hadn't anything to look forward to all the rest of his life but groping in the dark. He ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... records of history will reveal a fact that is not observant to the casual reader—that man, as an individual, has ever been groping in darkness, seeking hither and thither to find a ray of light that would safely guide him and lead him through the mystic vale of doubt and uncertainty—be a "light to his pathway, a ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... "Simla Ring," and the excellence of his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes and thought: "Evidently, this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original animal." Mellish's hair was standing on end with excitement, and he stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy knew what was about to happen, he had tipped a bagful of his powder into the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... groping in a fog of misery. Nevermore, he felt convinced, would he see his gentle, loving sister in this life; and he shivered uncontrollably as he thought that, but for his absence in her hour of peril, Theo would be as well and strong as anybody—as, for instance, little Queenie, upon whom ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... he runs groping for fame, And hardly knows where he will find her: She don't seem to take to the name Of Gally i.o. the Grinder. Gally ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... witchcraft!' cried he, spreading out both hands and groping with them, like a man in a fit. 'Two good leagues at the least have I travelled ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was changed, and I was not less so. I could not be sad when I saw Mariechen's tear-stained eyes. I guessed that something terrible had occurred; but I was groping in the dark till I got the truth out of that good Andreae. Then I wept for grief that your happiness was blighted; and I wept for joy that you were now wholly ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... succeeded in finding the uppermost steps, but then came the difficulty. He dared not let go with his hands, so as to get another step downward; and, on lowering his feet to feel for a fresh foothold, he could not discover any. Repeatedly he ran his toes over the face of the rock, groping for a notch or jutting point, but he could find nothing upon which to rest either foot, and he was at length obliged to draw them up, and place himself back upon ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... would appear in the inner fjord, another and yet another, then a small smack, followed again by a couple more boats, each steering for its own destination in the harbour, and groping its way to the ring-bolts under the warehouses and along ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... He told me a man of his age CAN'T give up a business he's been in practically all his life, and just go groping about for something that might never turn up at all. I think he's right about ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... by savage sword or lingering ailment? They vanished—absorbed again by the rushing waters—and other bubbles rose in precarious iridescence. It was a fatalist view of life, a dim and obscurantist groping after truth induced by the overpowering nature of present difficulties. The famous Tentmaker of Naishapur blindly sought the unending ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... woke me: I could not believe that I had really passed three hours without consciousness of pain. Without moving, lying as I was on my left side, I stretched out my right hand for my handkerchief, which I remembered was there. Groping with my hand—heavens! suddenly it rested upon another hand, icy cold! Terror thrilled me from head to foot, and my hair rose: I had never in all my life known such an agony of fear, and would never have thought ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... at least with some possession of a knowledge, the key to which has been revealed to them, and lost to us, and which opens the door to the meaning of those hitherto inexplicable sentences and doctrines in our old writings, about which we are still, and will go on, groping in the dark, unless we listen to what they have to tell ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... each time. If you have a different method of procedure for every battery, you will never be successful. Without a definite, tangible method of procedure for your work you will be working in the dark, and groping around like a blind man, never becoming a battery expert, never knowing why you did a certain thing, never gaining ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... hand, which looked cruel to me as that of an executioner. I think Maxine watched it, too. Suddenly it stopped. It had found something. The other hand sprang to its assistance. Both worked together, groping and prying for a few seconds: evidently the something hidden had been forced deeply and firmly down. Then, up it came—a dark red leather case, which was neither a letter-case nor a jewel-case, but might be ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... lying more quietly in her corner than usual. She had even smiled during the evening for the first time since she had been our prisoner. Suddenly, however, in the middle of the night, we were awakened by a terrible cry. We got up, groping about. Scarcely were we up when we stumbled over a furious couple who were rolling about and fighting on the ground. It was the captain and the lancer's wife. We threw ourselves on to them and separated them in a moment. She was shouting and laughing, and ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant |
