"Immobile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hoping that this reference to possible-ill-health might bring the girl to his feet, as it had often done before in the case of other women; but it did not seem to produce the least effect. She stood silent, immobile, with her eyes still fixed upon the floor. Silence and stillness were so unusual in one of Ethel's vivacious temperament, that Oliver ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... rough texture as the great majority of his subjects. His straightforward, abrupt manner savoured sometimes of gruffness, while his direct, unadorned method of expressing himself harmonized well with his rough-hewn, immobile features and somewhat sluggish movements. His education was not fitted to soften these peculiarities. During the first twenty years of his life he had no prospect of succeeding to the throne, because he had an elder brother, Nicholas, who seemed of a fairly robust constitution. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... seul et unique en la force de ses Problemes, si sa trop grande presomption ne l'avoit porte a avancer en cette Science une proposition aussi absurde, qu'elle est contre la Foy et raison, en faisant la circonference d'un Cercle fixe, immobile, et le centre mobile, sur lequel principe Geometrique, il a avance en son Traitte Astrologique le Soleil fixe, et la ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... this is the place, do you not, Mr. Thane? This is Pilgrim Station?" The old gentleman spoke to the younger of the two men in front, who, turning, showed the three-quarter view of a tanned, immobile face and the keen side glance of a pair of dense black eyes,—eyes that saw ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... of the room was open. A torrid heat entered, along with clouds of dust; the flames of the four candles were flickering beside the immobile corpse, and upon the cloth which covered the face, the closed eyes, the two stretched-out hands, small flies alighted, came, went and careered up and down incessantly, being the only companions of the old woman for ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... back a little way and was leaning against the round table. He took another step forward and, with his eyes still fixed on hers, looking in that immobile face for a quivering sign of fear or anxiety, he repeated, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... vehicles—the only new and strong motors—he saw soldiers, many soldiers, but all wounded, with head and legs bandaged, ashy faces made still more tragic by their growing beards, feverish eyes looking fixedly ahead, mouths so sadly immobile that they seemed carven by agonizing groans. Doctors and nurses were occupying various carriages in this convoy escorted by several platoons of horsemen. And mingled with the slowly moving horses and automobiles were marching groups of foot-soldiers, with ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... recovered from his shock of surprise sufficiently to realise that the enormous and immobile dwarf was Mr. Ferdinand, and that Mr. Ferdinand was not yet aware of his presence, the Prophet resolved to beat a rapid and noiseless retreat. He carried this resolve into execution by turning sharply round, knocking his head ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... visibly, though he remained calm. "Met him here, in my house? Impossible!" he exclaimed, at the same time glancing towards the butler, but the face of that functionary was as immobile as rock. "I did not suppose the ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... wring from a soulless bond-house. But not even Idaho could have brought us more joy than our seventy-five-mile trip up the Rogue River in Southern Oregon. We hired an old buckboard and two ancient, almost immobile, so-called horses,—they needed scant attention,—and with provisions, gun, rods, and sleeping-bags, we started forth. The woods were in their autumn glory, the fish were biting, corn was ripe along the roadside, and apples—Rogue River apples—made red blotches under every tree. "Help yourselves!" ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... stick the old Guide pulled his big body up on his one stout leg, hobbled nearer and gravely eyed Muckluck's offering as it swung to and fro on its walrus-string over the Leader's head. The Boy, quite conscious of some subtle change in the hitherto immobile face of the Indian, laid the token in his hand. Standing there in the centre of the semicircle between the assembly and the dog, Kurilla turned the Great Katharine's medal over, examining it closely, every eye ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... still, she advanced towards the band-stand. As she came opposite to Artois the orchestra of women struck up the "Valse Noir," and the old woman stood still, impeded by the now dense crowd of listeners. While the demurely sinister music ran its course, she remained absolutely immobile. Artois watched her with ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the chair Goree offered him. They who cast doubts upon Garvey's soundness of mind had a strong witness in the man's countenance. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and immobile as a statue's. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes added to the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to account for ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... that I should disobey so august a command, being, as I am, the prime minister in this her principality of Domestic Felicity. Her brother has never ceased to be among the first in her dear regard. He possessed the merriest black eyes: his mother's eyes, as I, a boy, remember them. No matter how immobile his features might be, these eyes of his were ever ready for laughter. His nose was clean-cut and shapely. A phrenologist would have said that his head did not lack the bump of caution; but I know better. At present he wore a beard; so this is as large an inventory of his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... found it tough but savory. Hunger would have given a sufficient sauce to anything and as he ate in a sort of luxurious content he studied his captors with the advantage of the daylight. The full sunshine disclosed no more of softness and mercy than the night had shown. The features were immobile, the eyes fixed and hard, but when the gaze of any one of them, even the chief, met the boy's it was quickly turned. There was about them something furtive, something of the lower kingdom of the animals. That inherited primitive instinct, recently flaming up with such strength in him, did not tell ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on the tall house across. It was Dr. Ed's evening office hour, and through the open window she could see a line of people waiting their turn. They sat immobile, inert, doggedly patient, until the opening of the back office door promoted them all one chair toward ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... characterized by their mobility. Their protoplasm is contractile and their form varies according to the species. In man and vertebrate animals they resemble infinitely small tadpoles, and their tails are equally mobile. The female germinative cell, on the contrary, is immobile and much larger than the male cell. Conjugation consists in the movement of the male cell, by means of variable mechanism, toward the female cell, or egg, into the protoplasm of which it enters. At this moment it produces on the surface of the egg a coagulation, which ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... direction. He must not spit in front of the sun nor perform the lower functions of the body in its sight. Others say that the sun and moon are the eyes of God, and the light of the sun is the effulgence of God, because by its light and heat all moving and immobile creatures sustain their life and all corn and other products of the earth grow. In his incarnations of Rama and Krishna there are temples to Vishnu in large villages and towns. Khermata, the mother of the village, is the local form of Devi or the earth-goddess. She has a small hut and an ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... His eyes were fixed on the ground, and she thought his face looked almost phantom-like, as if the blood had sunk away from it, leaving it white beneath the brown tint set there by the sun. He stayed quite still. The dark shadow cast by the towering mosque fell upon him, and his immobile figure suggested to her ranges of infinite melancholy. She sighed as one oppressed. There was an old man praying near them at the threshold of the door, with his face turned towards the interior. He was very thin, almost a skeleton, was dressed in rags through ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... even as they labored the submarine swung in ever increasing rolls and dips; the great weight of water she had shipped slopped back and forth; her bow went steadily down. Keith swept her forward tanks clean of water, always conscious of the immobile, staring octopi submarine in the teleview, watching them, it seemed, curiously, and not driving home their advantage with additional bolts of ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... and immobile, and as he spoke the red sun made a sudden glory of her hair. She leaned towards him, and it was as if the spirit of all the man's lifelong, foolish, romantic musings were in her ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... call you've got to be sorry for me, Helene Churchill," she drawled languidly. "I've got my character, same as you've got yours. And just about nine times as many good looks. And when it comes to nursing—" Like an alto song pierced suddenly by one shrill treble note, the girl's immobile face sharpened transiently with a single jagged flash of emotion. "And when it comes to nursing? Ha! Helene Churchill! You can lead your class all you want to with your silk-lined manners and your fuddy-duddy book-talk! But when genteel people like ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the victim of his own powers of inhibition is certainly the more unhappy sufferer; he remains immobile and silent; but internally he longs to move. A thousand impulses which can find no outlet torture the soul which aspires to art, to work; and eloquent speech on his own misfortunes would fain flow from ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... himself standing in the cabin of the E ship, confronted by E McGinnis, Junior E Gray, and Mrs. Gray. He sank down in a chair and sat frozen, immobile. Only his eyes were alive, darting frantically here and there as if expecting some hole to open up and swallow ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... e degna di racconto la mortificazione hauuta da vn peruerso, che fatto ardito, non so da quale spirito diabolico, volendo rubbare alcune di dette gioie, e forsi tutte, dalle mani della Beata Vergine fu reso immobile da vna guanciata della Vergine fin' a tanto, che la giustizia l' hebbe nella sua braccia; contempli ogn' vno questa Statua, che ne riportera mosso ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... contrast the reposeful, somewhat immobile countenance, the dreaming eye, the almost womanly softness of his smile, with the picture, and find the contrast ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... told the truth simply, and no effort on the part of the barrister could shake her evidence or break through the unnatural calm in which she appeared to have enveloped herself. Harry saw her several times during the course of the trial, and found a desolate anguish in her white immobile face, that stirred up in his heart again a fury against fate, the law, and every force and condition that added the smallest pang to her sorrow. If he could have only interposed his body between her and all this trouble it ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... to stand, immobile, wrapped in the sinister patience of her calling. Fred could not take his ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... from Helen silenced him as Mildred Caniper and her brother turned the corner of the passage. They both stood still at the sight of this dark-clad vision which rested immobile for an instant before it smiled ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... ill effect. When admitted she looked ill and pinched. The left thigh and leg were painful and edematous. The abdomen looked like that of the sixth month of pregnancy. The abdominal wall was tense, smooth, and without lineae albicantes. Palpation revealed a cystic immobile tumor, extending 2 inches above the umbilicus and apparently fixed by deep adhesions. The fetal parts could only be made out with difficulty by deep palpation, but the heart-sounds were easily heard to the right of and below the umbilicus. By the right ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... themselves to the immobile-featured Celestial when they had jointly and severally inspected the house from top to bottom. Sam Foo gazed at them, listened to their account of themselves, and disappeared. He re-entered the room ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... concluded his husky sermon. The scanty congregation, who had been sitting, stolidly immobile in their stiff, Sunday clothes, shuffled to their feet, and the pewful of school children, in clamorous chorus, intoned the final hymn. Anthony stood near the organ, absently contemplating, while the rude melody resounded through the church, Rosa's deft manipulation of the key-board. The rugged ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... light upon its existence and character as it is or occurs. Light, we hope, has been cast upon it. We have learned that in its inmost essence and to its utmost bounds Reality—what lies outside and around us—is not fixed, rigid, immobile, was not and is not and cannot be as the ancient or mediaeval mind feigned or fabled, something beyond the reach of time and change—static or stationary—but is itself a process of ceaseless alteration. We have ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the blind man's sudden interjection into the conversation. Since he had concluded his story, Captain Dabney had sat listening, immobile and silent. At times Martin had suspected him of dozing. But now, his emphatic outburst proved that he had followed Little Billy's ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... first time Vine's cold, immobile face showed some signs of interest. He abandoned his somewhat negligent attitude, and sat ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... peut-etre au dela de la sphere des nues, Au sein de cet azur immobile et dormant, Peut-etre faites-vous des choses inconnues Ou la douleur de l'homme entre ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... picked himself up and nonchalantly returned to his old position as if this were a banal compliment. "Now then. First butt exercise." One rank advanced upon the other, and the two ranks were locked in a close embrace. They remained thus with muscles strung like bowstrings, immobile as a ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... and Jasmine, watching closely, fascinated by Krool's taciturnity, revolted by his immobile face, thought she saw in his eyes a glint of malicious and furtive joy. A dark premonition suddenly flashed into her mind that this creature would one day, somehow, do her harm; that he was her foe, her primal foe, without present or past cause for which she was responsible; but still a foe—one ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was there, between ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the tired clock like a ball across the lawn, and exclaimed in a tone of challenge to the universe: "But where did everything come from before that—before the East, I mean?" And he glared at his immobile Uncle through the paper with an air of fearful accusation, as though he distinctly held he was to blame. If that didn't let the cat out of the bag, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... enough in the open plains, where they can be seen and avoided, but in the tall grass or the scrub they are a continuous anxiety. No cover seems small enough to reveal them. Often they will stand or lie absolutely immobile until you are within a very short distance, and then will outrageously break out. They are, in spite of their clumsy build, as quick and active as polo ponies, and are the only beasts I know of capable of leaping into full speed ahead from a ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... her mother was going to be what in the family slang was called "grand." The grandeur consisted in a polite inattention; it went with a soft voice and immobile expression. In this mood Adelaide answered you about three seconds later than you expected, and though she answered you accurately, it was as if she had forced her mind back from a more congenial ether. She ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... insight surprising, while she enjoyed the spiritual largeness she fancied she saw in his immobile features. "Yes," he repeated, "they think they do; that's ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... stood there immobile. The hand that held the pistol was not raised nor lowered. The thumb did not draw back the hammer. But over her face came, gradually, a change; a desperate sorrow, an abandonment of hope. Even the light in her hair that had made it a flaming wheel seemed in some mysterious way to die ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... door was opened reluctantly a little way by a servant with an immobile mask of a face who stared at him stupidly, but finally admitted that the three men whose names he mentioned were inside. He also said that Mr. Carter was in, but could ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... listen to me, Panek!" he hissed urgently, using all his fighting technique meanwhile to keep the other's threshing form immobile. "I'm trying to warn you that the bozo you're after carries one of those new needle-guns, and the needles are poison-tipped. Also, he's the fastest man on the draw I've ever seen—I watched him practice. Just one of those needles and you'd be kaput ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... strand, it has gone to sleep, peaceful in its huge stretch, bathed in the moonlight. As soft as velvet, and black, it mingles with the dark southern sky and sleeps profoundly, while on its surface is reflected the transparent tissue of the flaky, immobile clouds, in which is incrusted the gilded design of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Jefferson an immobile face, in which the eyes were beginning to glitter, "is a man to be judged by his private fancies or by his public acts? I know nothing of Mr. Hamilton's secret desires. Neither, I fancy, do you. We ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... bitterly at the manner in which that former self had been beguiled. As if to give emphasis to his jest he arose from his box, lounged over to the window, cleared its panes of mist with his hand, and gazed out upon the landscape of his choice. It stared back at him with immobile effrontery, with the glazed wide-parted eyes of the prostrate prize-fighter who, in his falling, has been stunned—eyes in which hatred is the only sign of life. He threw back his head and guffawed at the conceit, as though ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Thousands of lives have already been consumed by that bloody regime, yet the monster on the throne is not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture, literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron yoke? The majority, that compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold misery, still believes that the rope which strangles "the man with ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... from those lines by which thought and care are wont to mark the passage of man through life. One thing, however, was wanting to this beautiful mask. It was devoid of expression. Those delicate features were immobile and stony, No trace of emotion stirred the compressed lips; no shadow of thought flickered over the high, marble brow; and the glance of those clear, light-blue eyes was as calm, cold, and unfeeling as that of a statue. This young man, with Medusa-like beauty, was Anthony ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... with a melancholy immobile face, was walking slowly up and down, listening in silence. When the old man stopped to clear his throat, he went up ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the day's alarms, Of boss and bell the very jinx, He gazed immobile as the Sphinx On pompous front and ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... of a child of eight. That is to say, she told it in a monotone without evincing, and clearly without feeling, the slightest amusement in it, and at the end, continuing quite grave, watched for its effect on others with a curious, staring interest. Her immobile, investigatory expression made the doctor laugh, which seemed, of late, to be the object in life of all ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... du plus grand des monarques 425 Tout rvre genoux les glorieuses marques; Lorsque d'un saint respect tous les Persans touchs N'osent lever leurs fronts la terre attachs, Lui, fierement assis, et la tte immobile, Traite tous ces honneurs d'impit servile, 430 Prsente mes regards un front sditieux, Et ne daignerait pas au moins baisser les yeux. Du palais cepeudant il assige la porte: A quelque heure que j'entre, Hydaspe, ou que je sorte, Son visage odieux m'afflige et me poursuit; 435 Et ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... wave, poured forth into his breast, and the wild power of grief, with which it had been invested, clutched his heart painfully. He felt that tears would soon gush from his breast, something was clogging his throat and his face was quivering. He dimly saw Sasha's black eyes; immobile and flashing gloomily, they seemed to him enormous and still growing larger and larger. And it seemed to him that it was not two persons who were singing—that everything about him was singing and sobbing, quivering and palpitating in torrents of sorrow, madly striving ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... weather the work of railroad construction on the extension of the G. T. & C. line began to be pressed forward with eager alacrity. Indeed, it had languished only when the ground was deeply covered with snow or locked so fast in the immobile freeze that steel and iron could not penetrate it. The work had been persistently pushed at practicable intervals, whenever the labor could be constrained to it. Possibly this urgency had no ill results except in one or two individual cases. The ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... had crept over the immobile features of Miss Berber. She opened her eyes and regarded the lank Marchmont with distaste. Her finger pressed a button on the divan. Slowly she raised herself to her elbow, while he watched, his pale eyes fixed on her with the expression of a ratting ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... day's run over the mesa. He had borne his beloved owner far ahead of the sheriff's posse, and was now securing a moment's much-needed rest. Merton undid the riata and for half an hour practised casting it at his immobile pet. Once the noose settled unerringly over the head of Dexter, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... two men crossed, as rapiers do, feeling out the strength back of them. The wounded Indian, tall and slender, stood straight as an arrow, his gaze now on one, now on the other. His face was immobile and expressionless. It betrayed no ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... company; and as Kittrell sat down he looked about him, and could scarcely repress a smile as he recalled Manning's estimate of Glenn. The old man sat there, as solemn and unctuous as ever he had in his pew at church. Benson, red of face, was more plainly perturbed, but Salton was as reserved, as immobile, as inscrutable as ever, his narrow, pointed face, with its vulpine expression, being perhaps paler than usual. Benson had on his desk before him the cartoon Kittrell had finished ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... so as to keep his legs out of Ishmael's reach, and the two strained to try and over-balance each other's body, using the ordinary arm and breast hold. Ishmael, after a few moments of this immobile straining, let go Doughty's arm to seize him by the back of the collar, and Doughty, profiting in a flash by the steeper angle of inclination, caught him square under the arms and raised him bodily in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the thing cannot move lower. They are fashioned for existence in the regions of space and in even the most rarified air they are helpless. There is no chance of one ever reaching the surface of the earth without years of gradual acclimation, and even if it did, it would be practically immobile. In a few years the layer will flow enough to plug the hole I have made, but even so, I'll build a couple of space flyers equipped with disintegrating rays as soon as we get down and station them alongside the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... blue water, heaving in a slow northerly swell, the motor-launch threaded her way between the granite knobs, capped with solid spray. The waves had undermined the white canopies so that they stood immobile, perched on the dark, kelp-fringed rocks, casting their pallid reflections in the turquoise sea. Steaming into a natural harbour, bordered by a low ice-foot on which scores of Weddell seals lay in listless slumber, we landed on the largest islet—a succession of salt-encrusted ridges covered ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Tom was again frozen into that immobile state more dead than alive. Miles laughed and ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... out of the window, and he, too, forever afterward prided himself upon his swiftness of discernment. He was a romantic little chap, and he likened the immobile old heathen to the genius of the Siwash race, gazing calm-eyed upon the hosts of the invading Saxon. The hours swept along, but Imber did not vary his posture, did not by a hair's-breadth move a muscle; and Dickensen remembered the man who once sat upright ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... regiment as "battalion guns." At the same time he knew the value of fire concentration, and he frequently massed guns in strong batteries. His plans called for smashing hostile infantry formations with artillery fire, while neutralizing the ponderous, immobile enemy guns with a whirlwind cavalry charge. The ideas were sound. Gustavus smashed the Spanish Squares at Breitenfeld ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... Lamartine, "he had kept beneath the first frosts of age the freshness, the stature, the suppleness, and beauty of youth." His health was excellent, and but for the color of his hair—almost white—he would hardly have been given more than fifty years. As alert as his predecessor was immobile, an untiring hunter, a bold rider, sitting his horse with the grace of a young man, a kindly talker, an affable sovereign, this survivor of the court of Versailles, this familiar of the Petit-Trianon, this friend of Marie Antoinette, of the Princess of Lamballe, ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... is Nullibi, that is to say, no where," they deserve to be called Nullibists.[5] In contrast to these false teachers, More describes absolute space by listing twenty epithets which can be applied either to God or to pure extension, such as "Unum, Simplex, Immobile . . . Incomprehensible "[6] There is, however, a great difficulty here; for while Space and Spirit are eternal and uncreated, they yet contain material substance which has been created by God. If the material world possesses ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... had come to pass. The elephant, finding it impossible to reach the shikaree with its trunk—and no doubt judging by the "feel" that the rock was not immobile—had at length dropped down on all fours and, placing its broad shoulder against it, backed by the enormous weight of its bulky body, had sent the column crashing among the tops of a chestnut tree growing near—the trunk of which, yielding to the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... first time coming from his lips, caused her to start. She sent him a penetrating glance, but it broke on a face immobile as marble. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... murder, and Richard's complete prostration. Mr. Slocum in his own excitement had noted it superficially at the time, but now he recalled the young man's inordinate sorrow, and it seemed rather like remorse. Was his present immobile serenity the natural expression of a man whose heart had suddenly ossified, and was no longer capable of throbbing with its guilt? Richard Shackford was rapidly becoming an awful ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Clodd shows that dreams were necessarily and invariably considered as real events, and it could not have been otherwise, as primitive man would have been unable to conceive the abstract idea of a vision or fantasy. And since during dreams the body remained immobile and quiescent, it was thought that the spirit inside the body left it and travelled independently. Hence the reluctance often evinced to waking a sleeper suddenly from fear lest the absent spirit might not have time to return to the body before its awakening and hence ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... It remained immobile; she pulled it—no response. She tugged it. A face lifted itself at the far end of the cart. It was the corporal's wife lying on her own possessions, very tired and rather cross. Jo patted her ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... cook, was astonished and somewhat grieved that day to receive orders that dinner was to be served an hour earlier than usual. And Stumph, grave and immobile, was betrayed into an expression of astonishment when his master and guest sat down to the same dinner ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... its actual or future positions, and not to the progress by which it passes from one position to another, progress which is the movement itself. In our actions, which are systematized movements, what we fix our mind on is the end or meaning of the movement, its design as a whole—in a word, the immobile plan of its execution. That which really moves in action interests us only so far as the whole can be advanced, retarded, or stopped by any incident that may happen on the way. From mobility itself our intellect turns aside, because it has nothing to ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... about the Prince in front of these tall, painted tepees many chiefs of strange, odd-sounding names. One of these immobile and aquiline men was Chief Shot on Both Sides, another Chief Weasel Fat, another Chief One Spot, another Chief Many White Horses. They had a dignity and an unyielding calm, and if some of them wore befeathered bowler hats, instead of the sunray feathered ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... to clean more hurriedly, more superficially than the first, keeping the while a wary eye on the stooping figure at the table. When that too was finished to his satisfaction and restored to his hip pocket, a flicker of almost childlike amusement crossed his usually immobile features and he started operations with an air of fine unconsciousness upon one of a couple of rifles that stood propped against the tent wall near him. Two years of hardships and danger had left no mark upon him, the deadly climate of the region through which he had passed had not impaired his ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... other side pushing its advantage to the extreme and making the supposititious testimony distinctly damaging to the interests of its proponents. In brief, it was the general feeling in all that region that Silas Deemer was the one immobile verity of Hillbrook, and that his translation in space would precipitate some dismal ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... and as fulfilled with subtle strength, as these are, with a vague inscrutable smile on the lips. He knew what it was to have the strange and magical current of force in his back and loins, and down his legs, force so perfect that it stayed him immobile, and left his face subtly, mindlessly smiling. He knew what it was to be awake and potent in that other basic mind, the deepest physical mind. And from this source he had a pure and magic control, magical, mystical, a ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... him reach a crescendo at that moment. And his body was frozen immobile, his eyes locked on the cat's eyes, burning into the animal, the animal burning into him. Burning and ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... smoke, now like densest ink pouring up from some unseen funereal funnel—now blindingly white, flung like the plume of Navarre above the tumult of the fray. The tall, cold buildings standing almost defiantly in the winter air, lifting their immobile fronts to face the onrush—and the same buildings a little later, when the flames had passed, leaving only gnawed skeletons and heaped and smoldering ruins in their wake. The grim and terrible anguish of twisted steel girders ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... she, literally not believing the evidence of her senses, stared at the two immobile figures, her eyes became focussed on the face of the woman standing to Varick's right. There was a coarse beauty in the mask-like-looking countenance, but it was a beauty now instinct with a kind of stark ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... accompanying Long having been rendered immobile for the day, and the two batteries sacrificed, Sir Redvers Buller decided that without their support it would {p.231} be impossible to force the passage. He therefore directed a general withdrawal to the camp. The abandoned batteries were left in the open, where, together with the wounded ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... little pale at the gills, immobile, ruminating these matters, a not very pleasant look about his ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... as a rule woolly hair, deformed cranium, powerful jaws, and enormous zygomatic arches, are covered with scars on the head and trunk, and are often tatooed. Habitual homicides have a glassy, cold, immobile, sometimes sanguinary and dejected look; often an aquiline nose, or, in other words, a hooked one like a bird of prey, always large; the jaws are large, ears long, hair woolly, abundant and rich (dark); beard rare, canine teeth, ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... even if there were power enough. "A low temperature acting gradually," says my geology, "during an indefinite age would produce results that could not be otherwise brought about even through greater heat." "Give us time," say the great mechanical forces, "and we will show you the immobile rocks and your rigid mountain chains as flexible as a piece of leather." "Give us time," say the dews and the rains and the snowflakes, "and we will make you a garden out of those same stubborn rocks ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... she had entered the compartment in New York. Throughout the thirty miles or more, she had sat alone and inert beside the snow-clogged window, peering through veil and frost into the night that whizzed past the pane, seeing nothing yet apparently intent on all that stretched beyond. As still, as immobile as death itself she had held herself from the moment of departure to the instant that brought the porter with the word that they were whistling for B—-. Without a word she arose and followed him to the vestibule, where she watched him as he unfastened the outer door and lifted the trap. A single ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... their arms and bodies shining with perspiration. All this time they had remained immobile from the waist downward; their naked legs folded under them like those of statues. The chant of the men was quieter now, expressing a memory of the old gaiety now crushed by the inhibitions of the whites, by ridicule of island legends, and by ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... maintain a continued existence is very old. Mr. Herbert Spencer finds the genesis of this belief in dreams. Since primitive men believed themselves able, in their dreams, to wander about while the body remained immobile and since in their dreams they met and spoke with their dead, they conceived an immaterial existence. The spirit of a dead man, having left the body, would still go on about its business. They, therefore, set out food and drink upon his grave and sacrificed his dogs, his horses or his ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... desecrated the divine colour, and he can no longer see it, though it is all around. I see him, a single black figure against the red-hot hell that he has kindled, where spires and turrets stand up like immobile flames: he is stiffened in a sort of agony of prayer. Then the mercy of Heaven is loosened, and I see one or two flakes of snow ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... humanity, from the judicious intermixture of whose best elements we are apt to get our Stephensons, our Arkwrights, our Telfords, and our Edisons. In a rank of life just above the last, we find the fixed and immobile farmer caste, which only rarely blossoms out, under favourable circumstances on both sides, into a stray Cobbett or an almost miraculous miller Constable. The shopkeepers are a tribe of more varied interests and more diversified lives. An immense variety of brain ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... wonder that Pontiac started. In a single glance he saw that he had been betrayed and that his plan was known. Still, his hesitation was but momentary and hardly noticed ere with immobile face he resumed his march toward the great council-house that stood near the water's edge, on the further side of the town. As the procession of fierce warriors, decked in the fullest glory of savage habiliment, moved slowly down the street, frightened faces gazed furtively at them from behind half-closed ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... gone out of Mukoki's face. 'Again the battle-scarred old warrior wore the stoic mask of his race, which only now and then is lifted for an instant by some sudden and unexpected happening. Behind that face, immobile, almost expressionless, worked a mind alive to every trick and secret of the vast solitudes, and even before his young comrades had gained the use of their tongues he was, in his savage imagination, traveling swiftly back over the trail of the monster bear to the gun that had fired the golden ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... a prey to internal disorder, their government tended to become oligarchical, and their incapacity for uniting among themselves made them the victims of foreign invaders. The Swiss Republican organisation was more successful, but became aristocratic and immobile. The House Towns and the towns of Flanders and the Rhine organised for pure defence; they preserved their privileges, but remained confined within ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... how dense or how acute John Turner really was. His round, fat face was always immobile and fleshy—no wrinkle, no movement of lip or eyelid, ever gave the cue to his inmost thought. He was always good-natured and indifferent—a middle-aged bachelor who had found life not hollow, ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... listened to the reports that came through the radiovisor and watched that immobile, threatening monster ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... was so intent upon for so long, leaning immobile against that wooden guard. He continued to watch her. Would she presently bestow a cursory glance upon him and withdraw to some other part of the ship? Hollister waited for that with moody expectation. He found himself wishing ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... living. The talisman of Epicurus has evaded my grasp—the glittering bauble![5] The ravishing ideal JOY, has been to me not as the statue to Pygmalion: I have grovelled down in adoration at its feet, and have found it the same immobile, relentless, unresponsive image. Youth is yet mine, but it is a youth hoary in desolation. Centuries of anguish have flooded through my bosom, even in the heyday of existence. The tangible and the intangible, the visible and the invisible, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... which they are working. Thus, reproducing with remarkable likeness, the lower part of my face, where kindness and the expression of authoritativeness and calm dignity are so harmoniously blended, K. undoubtedly introduced into my eyes his own suffering and even his horror. Their fixed, immobile gaze; madness glimmering somewhere in their depth; the painful eloquence of a deep and infinitely lonely soul—all that ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... that one of them is far more alarmed at my presence than the other. The ouzels proved no exception to the rule. In this case it was the cock who showed himself the bolder spirit. He remained watching me for fully ten minutes, his legs and body as immobile as those of a statue, but he occasionally turned his head to one side in order to obtain a better view of me; and I could then see, outlined against the sky, the wriggling forms of several caterpillars ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... old Augustus. Valentine looked attentively in the failing light at the majestic wreck of the tall, fine old man. He made out that the eyes were closed, and that the face had its usual immobile, untroubled expression, and the last words startled him. "I have thought it best," he continued, "not to leave you ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... dark and ideal, as if Tasso inspired, typical of Italia. The intention has given rise to interesting speculation. The German girl leans forward in earnest entreaty, while her Italian sister remains immobile and impenetrable. And herein some have seen shadowed forth a divided mind between two nationalities. Solicitations had come from Germany, yet, after moments of hesitation, Overbeck held fast to the ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... rasping became a whining shriek. A score of enormous beetles, the advance guards of the army, zoomed out of the darkness into a ray of straggling moonlight. Shrieking, the blacks, who had watched the approaching swarm perfectly immobile, threw away the two ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... promithcuouthly ath she wath; and if I can do anything towardth putting you on the trail of your people, I'll do it. I know thome of the voyageurth who traded with the Cherokeeth, and your father wath one—wasn't he?" He glanced at Low's utterly abstracted and immobile face. "I thay, you don't theem to take a hand in thith game, pardner. What 'th the row? Ith anything wrong over there?" and he pointed to the Carquinez Woods, which were just looming out of the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... albumen is to be snugly applied, another dry bandage placed above this, and finally splints fastened in position by cords. This dressing is to remain undisturbed for three days, and then renewed every third day for nine days. After the ninth day a strictura (cast, apparatus immobile?) is to be prepared and firmly applied with splints and a bandage, and the patient is to be cautioned not to bear any weight upon the injured arm (ne infirmus se super illud appodiet?). The fracture is then left until it is believed that consolidation ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... towards inaction. It is often easy to discern in a group of children the leading characteristics of these temperaments, the phlegmatic or lymphatic, hard or soft, not easily stirred, one stubborn and the other yielding, both somewhat immobile, generally straightforward and reliable, law abiding, accessible to reason, not exposed to great dangers nor likely to reach unusual heights. Next the sanguine, hard or soft, as hope or enjoyment have the upper hand in them; this is the richest group in attractive ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... interest in them and attention to them. Goethe looked at all as specimens of human nature, and, therefore, all worthy of study. But, after all, this way of looking at others seems to be more suited to the artist than to the man; and I can not conceive of any but a very passionless and immobile person who could do it.... Does all nature furnish one type of the soul? If so, it might be the ocean; the rough, swelling, fluctuating, unsounded ocean. Shall it ever rest? Rest? What an infinite, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... ever a mortal had a firm grip on his emotions, MacRae had, and yet there was a sleeping devil within him that was never hard to wake. But his looks gave no hint of the real man under the surface placidity; you'd never have guessed what possibilities lay behind that immobile face, with its heavy-lashed hazel eyes and plain, thin-lipped mouth that tilted up just a bit at the corners. We had parted in the Texas Panhandle five years before—an unexpected, involuntary separation that grew ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... gazing, immobile. One thing alone ruffled his deep inward calm. This was the thought that he must presently put off from him all his splendour, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the bosom of the enchantress leaned against the broad chest of the vigorous soldier, her soft hair caressed his cheek, he inhaled a subtle Perfume, and a sudden intoxication overflowed his heart, which he had tried to make as stern and immobile ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... incredulous exultation, Aurora's thoughts and feelings were for a long minute limited to an intense and immobile watchfulness. He walked over the gravel with his eyes on the door under the portico. You would have thought his purpose set, and that he would not pause until he had ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... watched both men as I broke the news. Its effect upon them was different in both cases. Mr. Raven started a little; exclaimed a little: he was more wonder-struck than horrified. But Mr. Cazalette's mask-like countenance remained immobile; only, a gleam of sudden, almost pleased interest showed itself ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... surge of pressure as the ship arose from the ground, and his chair creaked ominously with the extra weight. He became fearful that it might collapse, and he strained forward trying to shift some of the pressure through his feet to the floor. He sat that way, tense and immobile, for what seemed a long time until abruptly the strain was relieved and he heard the rising and falling whine of the rockets that told him the ship was in pulse drive, flickering back and forth across the speed ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... a moment further, removing his glasses, with the edge of which he tapped methodically the palm of his left hand. Helen had sunk back into the depths of her armchair, and was watching with immobile countenance but vividly interested eyes the ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... decide whether we intend to fight with mobile or immobile horses,[13] and in every case the question arises how the conditions of the moment, whether in attack or defence, can ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... The immobile, amused superiority of this proprietor of silver boxes, this wearer of strange and brilliant garments, became slightly intensified as he pointed to the fallen sleeve, a rag of red and snow, lying near ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... afterwards. All these tribes of Pitris wait upon the Lord of the creation and cheerfully worship the Supreme Deity of immeasurable energy. And Rakshasas, Pisachas, the Danavas and Guhyakas; Nagas, Birds, and various animals; and all mobile and immobile great beings;—all worship the Grandsire. And Purandara the chief of the celestials, and Varuna and Kuvera and Yama, and Mahadeva accompanied by Uma, always repair thither. And, O king of kings, Mahasena (Kartikeya) also adoreth there the Grandsire. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... cannot judge whether it is like herself or not," he said, handing the picture to Mr. Underwood, who seemed almost to devour it with his eyes, though he spoke no word and not a muscle moved in his stern, immobile face. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour |
