"Motionless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... methodically along, paying little attention to their surroundings. Game dozed everywhere beneath the scanty shade, sometimes singly, sometimes in twos or threes, sometimes in herds. Motionless they stood; and often, were it not for the switch of a tail, they would have remained unobserved. Even the sentinel hartebeestes, posted atop high ant hills on the outskirts of the herds, seemed half asleep. Nevertheless they were awake enough for the job, as was ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... been sitting in the arm-chair against the fireplace in her usual attitude, resting her head on her hand and with her feet crossed one over the other on the fender. She had been listening silently and motionless. She now closed her eyes ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... Lucy always enjoyed. She would sit for hours under her awnings and watch the lazy boats crawling in and out of the inlet, or the motionless steamers—motionless at that distance—slowly unwinding their threads of smoke. The Station particularly interested her. Somehow she felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that Archie was at work and that he had ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... motionless. Suddenly her eye lighted up—she darted into the carriage, and clapped her hands ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... heart to hail them; they would see soon enough. And almost immediately Mary did look up and see the two horsemen. She spoke over her shoulder, and Clare quickly appeared from her tent. The two women awaited them motionless. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... paper, and steadied herself resolutely. All over the room other girls were sitting on hard, uncomfortable chairs before tables like her own, some motionless and stunned-looking like herself, some already setting briskly to work. On the walls, among a number of quotations, "Help one another!" stared her in the face with tragic significance, and again: "How far high failure overleaps the bounds of low successes." Failure! She lifted the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... once more with pity at Cornelli, who was sitting quite motionless on the bench. The book by now was lying on ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... (it was early-closing day) were stretched motionless, with their heads on pocket-handkerchiefs, side by side, within a few feet of the sea, while two or three gulls gracefully skirted the incoming waves, and settled near ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... bed, to discover if Mary's sleep were peaceful. Her face was turned partly inward to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within. Happy is it, and strange, that the lighter sorrows are those from which dreams are chiefly fabricated. Margaret shrunk from disturbing her sister-in-law, ...
— The Wives of The Dead - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Pensees are only the echo of the phrases of the Confessions. But how different is the tone! Pascal's charge against human ignorance is merciless. The God of Port-Royal has the hard and motionless face of the ancient Destiny: He withdraws into the clouds, and only shews Himself at the end to raise up His poor creature. In Augustin the accent is tender, trusting, really like a son, and though he be harassed, one can discern the thrill of an ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... my feet, and saw that a heavy squall was indeed bearing down on us. It had hitherto escaped my notice, owing to my being so much engrossed by our conversation. I instantly did as Bill desired, for the schooner was lying motionless on the glassy sea. I observed with some satisfaction that the squall was bearing down on the larboard bow, so that it would strike the vessel in the position in which she would be best able to stand the shock. Having done my best to shorten sail, I returned ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... was struck dumb. The good-natured Dutchman had taken a fancy to the little pale-faced, sad-looking stranger, and really felt very kindly disposed towards her; but she neither knew nor at that moment cared about that. She stood motionless, utterly astounded at this unheard-of proposal, and not a little indignant; but when, with a good-natured smile upon his round face, he came near to claim the kiss he no doubt thought himself sure of, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... gate, she caught sight of Lloyd Fenneben, leaning motionless against the gray bole of the elm tree. But she was looking through a tangle of purple oak leaves and twining bitter-sweet branches, and Fenneben ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... is father!" cried the young girl, wildly, shaking herself free from the doctor's detaining hand. "Oh, they have killed my father! See! he is lying on the pavement dead, motionless! Oh, God, pity me! I am left alone in the wide, ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... and left the chapel. Here again, for the third time, he felt shortness of breath; he entered the house and threw himself upon his hard bed of the Order and lay for a time motionless. He thought he would fall asleep, when suddenly a strange feeling overpowered him; it seemed to him that he would never again be able to sleep, and that if he remained in that ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... for him alone. I need hardly say, that he soon interested himself in my cure, and regularly made inquiry respecting its progress. He always found something cheering to say—something to inspire patience and hope, himself a living commentary on his words. When I looked at this poor motionless figure, those distorted limbs, and, crowning all, that smiling countenance, I had not courage to be angry, or even to complain. At each painful crisis, he would exclaim: "One minute, and it will be over. Relief will soon follow. Every day ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... given power as the scorpions of the earth have power;" (v. 3.) for when you catch the locust it makes little resistance and does not bite. Few of these were eating, and most of them were either flying or lay motionless basking in the sun, grouped in hundreds round tufts of long coarse grass. My Moorish fellow-travellers didn't like their appearance. They said the locusts are bad things, and came from the hot country to devour their harvest. It was indeed, an unpleasant sight, this horde of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... is another beautiful morning, with the sun dimpling in the early sunshine. Four sailboats are in sight, motionless on the sea, with the whiteness of their sails reflected in it. The heat-haze sleeps along the shore, though not so as quite to hide it, and there is the promise of another very warm day. As yet, however, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thing within all the wide rolling landscape save the sun-flecked water, the softly stirring grass and rustling forests, the almost motionless white clouds. For two miles the hills billowed away gently to the northward, where at last they were swept up into the thickly timbered, crag-crested mountains. For twice two miles toward the west one might guess the course of the stream before here, too, the ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... Lambert. With his elbow on his desk and his head supported on his left hand, he spent the hours of study gazing at the trees in the court or the clouds in the sky; he seemed to be thinking of his lessons; but the master, seeing his pen motionless, or the sheet before him still a blank, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... independent of it. I heard plainly the scratching of a pencil, at the same time that the psychic's left hand and both of her feet were in full view, and at the same time that her hand was outspread, apparently motionless, upon the under side of the slate. In a few moments the scratching paused, and the psychic, with an embarrassed smile, said: 'They don't know how ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... had seldom been able to take dejeuner with us. In consequence he had a little hut erected near the river, au buisson Vincent, whither he retired almost daily, and to which I took or sent him his lunch; there he read, wrote, or sketched, surrounded only by silent and motionless objects. This morbid sensitiveness decreased with the light of day, and when the sun had set we generally joined him to admire the beauty of the after-glow fading slowly into twilight in the summer evenings. He always dined with us all, and after dinner ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... tone or a tremulous movement, even so flashed through Rudy, thoughts—powerful, overwhelming, speaking of the happiness of his life; his, henceforth, "constant thought." His eyes were fixed upon a point in the trellis-work, and this was a light in Babette's sitting room. Rudy was so motionless, one might have thought that he was observing a chamois, in order to shoot it. Now, however, he was like the chamois—which appears sculptured on the rock, and suddenly if a stone rolls, springs and flies away—thus stood Rudy, until ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... bulky mulatto, on short legs, and he came tapping the floor in front of him with his gold-headed cane. His yellow face was lifted in the light, with a show of white teeth, all grinning, and his shrunken, papery eyelids lay motionless over ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... the man had stood motionless, gazing in growing astonishment upon the radiant uplifted face which was swept by passion's clouds, as the June sky was swept ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... companies are aligned: the N.C.O.'s retire to the supernumerary ranks. The battalion stands rigid, facing a motionless figure upon horseback. The ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... sought her there At the accustomed hour, They found her cold and motionless, Within that ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... he did not worry, Betty certainly did in the days that followed. She had dreams at night in which she saw Allen riding about in the shadows. There would be a report, two reports, and he would topple over backwards to lie crumpled up and motionless. No wonder that she became pale and lost her appetite and made her mother worry even in the midst of the excitement over this double hunt—the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... His anxiety for Raymond was sharpened by this long inaction. He seemed to have been standing for ages. What were the others doing? Not a sound reached him between the lengthening pauses of the wind. His companion stood drawn up motionless beside him; and so they waited, straining eye and ear into the darkness, conscious that others were ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the room immediately below that in which I slept. I knew the cry, it was the cry of my mother; and I also knew its import, yet I made no effort to rise, for I was for the moment paralysed. Again the cry sounded, yet still I lay motionless—the stupidity of horror was upon me. A third time, and it was then that, by a violent effort, bursting the spell which appeared to bind me, I sprang from the bed and rushed downstairs. My mother was running wildly about the room; she ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... [He lies motionless; music dies away, and there is a long silence. The forest is dark, with gleams of moonlight. Suddenly there is a faint note of music... the Nibelung theme. After a silence it is repeated; then again. Several instruments take it up. It swells louder. Vague forms ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... attack or unfair defence, the Duke of Wellington has appeared to be paying not the slightest attention to the proceedings. He has sat absorbed in thought, or at least in seeming indifference. You would almost suppose that, overcome by fatigue, or indisposition, he was sleeping, so perfectly motionless and silent is he, reclining, with folded arms, his legs stretched out to their full length, and his hat over his brow. The question has been discussed, argued, disputed upon for hours. No result seems to have been come to, and you are as ignorant of the object and scope ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... bump; a vision of brick pillars lingered before the rattling windows of the cab; a sudden cessation of atrocious jolting and uproarious jingling dazed the two women. What had happened? They sat motionless and scared in the profound stillness, till the door came open, and a rough, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... vibration carried through the waves that even his nerves, far less sensitive than those of the life about him, reacted. He blinked behind his mask. A fish floated by, spiraling up, its belly exposed. And about him growths drooped, trailed lifelessly through the water; while there was a now motionless bulk sinking to the obscurity of the depression floor. A weapon perfected on Terra to use against sharks and barracuda had worked here to kill what could have been more ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... bethought him of the peerless maid Marina, that haply with her sweet tongue she might win some answer from the silent prince; and with the consent of Helicanus he sent for Marina, and when she entered the ship in which her own father sat motionless with grief, they welcomed her on board as if they had known she was ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... pressed tightly over my mouth, and another hand on my breast held me down motionless upon ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... and my heart thrilled as I watched. Suddenly a stream of red sparks swooped upwards into the air and circled towards us. Involuntarily I stooped under cover, then raised my head again. High up in the air a bright flame stood motionless lighting up the ground in front, the space between the lines. Every object was visible: a tree stripped of all its branches stood bare, outlined in black; at its foot I could see the barbed wire entanglements, the wire sparkling as if burnished; further back was a ruined cottage, ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... it with the cold accuracy of a cautious attorney;—but in truth her eyes did not follow a single word of the letter. There was neither flutter nor triumph in her face, or in the movement of her limbs, or in the quiet, almost motionless carriage of her body; but, nevertheless, the pulses of her heart beat so strongly, that had all depended on it she could not have read a word of the letter. "Well, my dear," said Sir Thomas, when he thought that ample time had been given for the perusal. Mary simply ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... had disappeared from view and the silent, motionless trees, like thoughtful witnesses, surrounded them, Sanine suddenly put his arm round Lida's waist and said in a strange tone, half fierce, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... which no one could answer They lent their assistance, and pulled at the rope to help their companion. Nearer and nearer he came, and still nearer, until at last he was within reach. A few moments more and he emerged from the mouth of the well, and falling forward, he lay for a moment motionless. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... fear. I was queerly affected by the vast expanse of loneliness outside, and by the deathly quiet prevailing both without and within. There was not the slightest whizzing or whistling now. We might be hanging perfectly motionless in space for all I knew. The batteries made no sound either. I could hear only the low, regular breathing of the doctor as he slept, and the slight crunching of Two-spot on his bone. Presently I thought ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... greeting as he looked from one to another of these ill-assorted hosts of his, and whenever he chanced on the motionless girl he felt that he could not understand it. Look at her! how sweet and delicate she was, how small and well-set her head, her feet and hands how fine, her shape how tender. "How should a lily spring in so foul a bed?" thought he to himself. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... descended to the road and gazed up admiringly at his work. In the act of departing he turned, and suddenly stood still again. His face was toward the Bayfield gate. Dorothea could not tell if he saw her, but he remained thus, motionless, for almost a minute. Then he seemed to recollect himself and marched off briskly down the road. Early next morning she descended and read the inscription, which ran: ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of dawn was in the sky, and between him and the light stood a tall, motionless figure, outlined clearly in the cave's mouth by the coming glow in the east. It was the figure of a man. He held in his hand a great horse pistol, and was evidently studying with some curiosity the sleeping figures whose slumbers he ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... he stole beneath the farther bank, and, rounding the bend, came in sight of two men, the one seated upright before the fire cooking his bannocks, the other stretched out twenty paces distant at the edge of the underbrush, completely covered with a robe, motionless as if he slept. The man who was awake looked up, shaded his eyes, then rising to his feet came down to the water's edge and ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... to look they could just catch the outline of each other's countenance, but this they did not often attempt. Their attention was held by the silent figure on the bed, and so motionless was this figure in the profound slumber in which it lay enchained, and so motionless were they in their increasing suspense and expectation, that time seemed to have come to a standstill in this little room. There was one break. The ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... picture—the white boat, the graceful children, and the still, blue water. Susy's fair arms were bared to the elbows, and her face was deeply flushed. Dotty's beautiful eyes danced, but she herself was motionless and demure. ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... next morning, and tried to recollect his dreams, which had been all connected with his recent sojourn at Dotheboys Hall, he sat up, rubbed his eyes, and stared—not with the most composed countenance possible—at some motionless object which seemed to be stationed within a few yards ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... but still trembled sadly, and caught her breath with every fresh roar. The tempest had gathered fury, and was now raging as though Judgment Day were come, and earth about to be blotted out. For some minutes we listened almost motionless, but heard nothing save the furious elements; and, indeed, it was hard to believe that any sound on earth could be audible above such a din. At last I turned to ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... motionless, eyes cast down, hands clasped before her—a picture of injured innocence. She did not say a word in self-defence, but her feelings were so plainly written on her face that the vicar's eyes ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... trees; the branches of the tall lime trees swayed over her head; the fallen leaves twirled round her feet. She crossed the gardens; the moon cast strange shadows upon the broad paths. At length she saw the shrubbery gate, and, by it, erect and motionless, gazing on the bending trees in the park, was Hugh Fernely. He did not hear her light footsteps—the wind among the lime trees drowned them. She went up to him and ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the pillars supporting the balanced planes that, motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship's motive-power, as it were a gift from Heaven vouchsafed to the audacity of man; and it is the ship's tall spars, stripped and shorn of their white glory, that incline themselves before the anger of the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... without which we cannot imagine ourselves to be? We ourselves perish. Of that there is no doubt at all. One is here talking and alive. His friends are with him: on the time when they shall meet again he is utterly not there. The motionless flesh before his mourners is nothing. It is not a simulacrum, it is not an outline, it is not a recollection of the man, but rather something wholly gone useless. As for that voice, those meanings in ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... league, they stretch in low ignoble outline. Here and there a valley opens sharply into the desert, revealing an infinite perspective of summits and escarpments in echelon one behind another to the furthest plane of the horizon, like motionless caravans. The now confined river rushes on with a low, deep murmur, accompanied night and day by the croaking of frogs and the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... over the gravel rolled the heavy rubber-tired wheels that announced Mr. Coddington's arrival. The boy sat in precisely the spot where his father had left him and after alighting from the car the elder man made his way toward the motionless figure sitting so still ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... The Syndic remained motionless, glaring at the window. Everything on a night like this, and to an uneasy conscience, menaced danger. At length it occurred to him that the applicant might be Louis, whom he had sent with the message to the Porte ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... of his voice died away upon the night, and there was no sound but the soft ripple of the water under keel. In the bow sat the girl, motionless as a crouched Indian, her face fixed ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... meanwhile the Pathfinder was far from being out of danger; for the first minute, admiration of his promptitude and daring, which are so high virtues in the mind of an Indian, kept his enemies motionless; but the desire of revenge, and the cravings for the much-prized trophy, soon overcame this transient feeling, and aroused them from their stupor. Rifle flashed after rifle, and the bullets whistled around the head ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... an anxious moment for all birds when their young leave the nest. One noontime by the unusual mewing of a parent catbird I felt sure that the critical time had come. Sure enough, there sat one of the young on a twig a few inches above the nest, motionless and hushed. No lusty response to the agitated cry of the mother, as is usually the case with the robin. "No publicity" is the watchword of the young catbirds as well as of the old. An hour or two later another young one was perched on a branch, and before night, when no one was ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... can but cast her shadow on my page. It was a dainty half-length, neither tall nor short, in a plain, well-fitting dress of black silk, with linen collar and cuffs, that rose above the counter, standing, in spite of displeasure, calm and motionless. Her hair was dark, and dressed in the simplest manner, without even a reminder of the hideous occipital structure then in favor—especially with shop women, who in general choose for imitation and exorbitant ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... lay back in her chair, motionless, while before her mind's eye rose the altered face of the woman who, deceived for long, was deceived no more—who knew! With her there had been no self-respecting reticence, no decency of secret tears. She had heaped insult upon the woman who had wronged her, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... of his room, when suddenly his ear caught the sound of slow and stealthy footsteps upon the stairs. His own lamp was unlit, but a dim glimmer came from a moving taper, and a long black shadow travelled down the wall. He stood motionless, listening intently. The steps were in the hall now, and he heard a gentle creaking as the key was cautiously turned in the door. The next instant there came a gust of cold air, the taper was extinguished, and ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... day was clear and carried the gaze out as far as the blue sky went; there were a few white clouds suspended idly over the horizon. A lateen sail was visible in the direction of Cat Island, and others to the south seemed almost motionless in ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... to the end, and then fell back into her chair. But she did not hide her face this time. The fair pathetic features were quite motionless and white, without any expression, and her hands lay with the palms turned ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... There is a commotion, the crowd part, and WAKOMETKLA advances to the altar. The drum beats, all prostrate themselves; the drum again beats, and the initiatory ceremony is concluded; the crowd is motionless; all face to the east. The quartz wall that shuts in the valley, and whose pinnacles point heavenward in needle-shaped spires, brighten; the points sparkle like diamonds; a ray penetrates into the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... object to catch my eye, when the shoji were pushed apart, the next morning, was a string of the ubiquitous paper fish, dangling limp in the motionless May air from a pole in a neighboring yard; highly suggestive of having just been caught for breakfast. The sight would have been painfully prophetic but for the food we had brought with us; for, of all meals, a Japanese breakfast is the most cold, the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... and a veiled woman evidently young, halted their horses in Portsmouth Square, where the former alighted and offered an arm to his companion. She, however, disdaining his assistance, sprang lightly from the saddle and, turning her back on him, gazed, motionless, toward the bay. There was something arresting and curiously dramatic about the whole performance, something that hinted of impending tragedy. The slight figure with its listless droop and stony immobility ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... and uncertain, giving a demoniac and supernatural cast to the group and its tropical surroundings, Esperance suddenly awoke and raised himself upon his elbow. For an instant he gazed around him in bewilderment and terror. Was he dead, and were those swarthy-visaged forms extended motionless on the grass of the oasis the forms of fiends? This thought shot through his mind and augmented his consternation. When he fell asleep he was with his father, with the dauntless Monte-Cristo, and the last faces he had seen were the faces of French people and friends. Now he was in the ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... in orderly and perfect lines, stirring or swaying slightly: sometimes they bent their heads, sometimes two leaned together, but for the most part they were motionless. It was the time when the fashion is just changing and some were newly all in shining yellow, while others ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... executing this order an oppressive silence filled the room. The stranger's dark shadow rested motionless by the doorway. Above the breathing of the three men could only be heard the far-off sound of Harwich bells still ringing ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... god or man, and once she had seen him she knew that she must gain his love or die. From that day on, she haunted him like his shadow, gliding from tree to tree, nestling down amongst thick fern and undergrowth, motionless as one who stalks a wild thing, watching him afar off while he rested, gladdening her eyes with his beauty. So did she feed her hungering heart, and sought to find contentment by looking on his face ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... Wolf, is very common in the shallow and weedy lagoons along the sides of the stream. It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish, lurking under the shadow of a pad at noon, with still, circumspect, voracious eye, motionless as a jewel set in water, or moving slowly along to take up its position, darting from time to time at such unlucky fish or frog or insect as comes within its range, and swallowing it at a gulp. I have caught one which had swallowed a brother pickerel half ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... close group. Probably the priest was addressing them. Soon the fringe of the crowd thinned, then the others walked quietly away. When at last the priest was left alone by the mutilated Indian, he knelt, and for a space was motionless. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... unstirred by a breath of wind the very buildings of Roselawn seemed strangely motionless, with their roofs glistening in their covering of moisture. And through an archway of trees the distant spire of the church on the hill rose above the mist as a symbol held aloft by some smoke-shrouded martyr ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... and runs far inland, and here and there are bits of tree jungle. Every now and then we see some bird or beast which we have not seen before outside of a Zoo; a grand eagle is in sight just now, no vulture this fellow; he looks twice the size of our golden eagle, and sits motionless on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a sandbank. I can only just make out his or her mate soaring against the woods on the hills behind. On a bank to our right there's a whole crowd of large birds—as we get closer I can count their feathers with my glasses; ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... on all sides might there have infected them; but the terror of the inhabitants who knew better than they what the thing meant, did not much shake them. For one moment many of the people stood in the street motionless, pale, and staring; the next they all began to run, some for the gateway, but the greater part up the street, staggering as they ran. The movement of the ground was indeed small—not more, perhaps, than half an inch in any direction—but fear and imagination ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the window that I might hear every note. The old garden, half hidden by trees, looked cool and Eden-like in the light of the July moon, athwart whose silver hemisphere fleecy clouds were drifting like the traces of thought across a bright face. Motionless shadows stretched toward the east, from which the new day would come, but with a dreary sinking of heart I felt as it each coming day ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... change swept over Macdonald's face, a flush dyeing it to his ears. He sat motionless a little while, as if debating the question, the young officer's hand still outstretched. Macdonald dropped his hand, quickly, as if moved to shorten the humiliation, to the buckle of his belt, and opened it with deft jerk. At that moment Chadron, ten feet away, slung a revolver ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... o'clock, no three, who looked upon the stock-gamblers and dollar-trailers as they looked upon the worms that honeycombed their headstones' bases. What thoughts went through Bob Brownley's mind only his Maker knew. For minutes he stood motionless, then he walked on down Broadway. He went into the Battery. The benches were crowded with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York's mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise: Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... down on his old box, staring at Oliver and the motionless form on the bed, with a feeling of despair tugging at his heart. He could scarcely believe it was all true; for it was not very long since—only it seemed like long years—since he had leaped over the counter in his ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... the opposition, whose presence was a support to Franklin, during the ordeal through which he was to pass. He stood at the edge of the recess formed by the chimney, with one elbow resting upon the mantel, and his cheek upon his hand. He was motionless as a statue, and had composed his features into such calm and serene rigidity, that not the movement of a muscle could be detected. As usual, he was dressed simply, but with great elegance. A large flowing wig, with abundant curls, such as were used by elderly gentlemen at that ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... indicated in his conversation and movements was deep-seated in his nature. I was with him in a night trip to New York; when the train was derailed in part. As the wheels of the car struck the sleepers, he grasped the back of the seat in front of him and remained motionless, while many of the passengers added to their peril by abandoning ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... of not more than a mile or two he made out the outlines of a queer-looking three-masted ship. Here at least was company. Obtaining the glasses, which the ill-fated skipper had left in his cabin, the mate of the Eleanor Jones scanned the neighbor vessel eagerly. She was as motionless under the cloudless blue dome of the sky as the ship ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... one morning, on the green, flowery meadow, under the ruins of Burg Unspunnen. She was sketching the ruins. The birds were singing, one and all, as if there were no aching hearts, no sin nor sorrow, in the world. So motionless was the bright air, that the shadow of the trees lay engraven on the grass. The distant snow-peaks sparkled in the sun, and nothing frowned, save the square tower of the old ruin ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... enough to last a long while, he came back and sat down by his mother. All this time the Delaware remained motionless, with his face away from them. He was debating some troublous question in his ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... Hanging between those motionless cylinders of red and violet light was a strange-looking, greenish globe. A round ball, nearly a yard in diameter, hung between the rays, almost touching them. Its surface was oddly splotched with darker and lighter areas. It was spinning steadily, at ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... light that fell From angel-chariots sentinelled on high, Reposed, and listened, and saw thy living change, Thy dead arise. Charybdis listened, and Scylla; And savage Euxine on the Thracian beach Lay motionless: and every battle ship Stood still; and every ship of merchandise, And all that sailed, of every name, stood still." ROBERT POLLOK: Course of Time, Book VII, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... crouched in the sterns, and tin flags bearing the numbers of their ships in the bows, were being shepherded into position. A tense silence was closing down on the spectators. It deepened as the line straightened out, and the motionless boats awaited the signal with their oars poised in readiness for the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Miss Lily sat motionless, bending forward a little, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes on the singer. Whether she saw him was doubtful, for her tears fell fast as Doodles sang ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... black hair. It was an ascetic face, and yet there was passion of an unnamed sort ready to flash out and do strange things, overthrow the fabric of an ordered life perhaps, or contradict the restraint of years. He stood motionless until Raven, still searching, had got within three feet of him. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... arms. Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu;" and she pressed her little brown fingers over her throbbing temples. Has my own father leagued himself against my happiness and, and—my honour!" And, with a loud, heart-rending cry, she fell to the floor, pale and motionless. ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... swinging on the trees around its border, all would be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a feathered oar,—and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found in the spring,—whence its common name of "Dead-Man's Hollow." Higher up there were huge cliffs with chasms, and, it was thought, concealed caves, where ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... quarter, and the King stayed motionless like one in a dream. Presently, however, the dream was faintly shaken by a little lirrup of sound, as light as rain dropping from leaves above a pool. Again and again the sweet round notes fell on the meditations of the King, and he remembered with entrancement that this was the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... another human being together, in some spot secure from the intrusion of spectators. A musket is conveniently at hand. It is already loaded. I say to my companion, "I will place myself before you; I will stand motionless: take up that musket, and shoot me through the heart." I want to know what passes in the mind of the man to whom these words ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... sat silent and, save for a start or two, motionless while his companion detailed her circumstantial evidence. Whether it was enough to prove Mrs. Marland's case or not—whether, that is, it is inconceivable that a young man should go to any place fourteen evenings running, and upset a friend of his youth out of a canoe, except there ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... to drive their points home, and in order to get what they think variety. Sir Charles Wyndham is the only English actor I can think of at the moment who does not make unnecessary grimaces, who does not insist on acting when the difficult thing is not to act. In "Tartuffe" Coquelin stands motionless for five minutes at a time, without change of expression, and yet nothing can be more expressive than his face at those moments. In Chopin's G Minor Nocturne, Op. 15, there is an F held for three bars, and when Rubinstein played the Nocturne, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... had been made in the rock to give light and ventilation. Something alive was down there, moving. I was frightened; I hardly dared to look. And I had a nightmare feeling of being struck dumb and motionless. I tried to turn and run up the stairs but I had to look, and the gray filtering light struck ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the bathroom. His father, taking a chair, placed the tips of his fingers together and in this attitude remained motionless, a figure of ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... was a small sound in the next office. Aletha was suddenly very, very still. She sat motionless for a long half-minute. ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... sling. They crept back around the foot of the piled rocks, dragging themselves with tense muscles, a foot at a time and waiting long between. By the touch of her hand on his foot he knew she followed close. Looking over his shoulder, he sensed the huddled figure still motionless ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... as ever) she had given evidences of having something in her thought, some instruction or advice she desired to impart to her children, but which, so feeble was she, was beyond her strength to utter. Thus she had lain for three days, motionless, but for the restless turning of the head, and the burning, gleaming eyes seeming to take the place of her voice, and cry out the message her ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... forget. They seemed, from their transparency and firmness, like some wondrous imagination of the artist's chisel, in which the marble, fancying itself human, had begun to breathe. The eye was calm and bright—the mouth, the feature round which danger loves to play, though easy, motionless, and with lips apart, had about it an air of immobility and quiet scorn, which was not the effect of muscular action, but of nature in repose. And in his whole appearance, features, attitude and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... as a starter. If you let him have his way he sits in his chair and in his deep, beautiful voice addresses a row of remarks to The Future in General—the only thing big enough or worth while to talk to. He sits perfectly motionless (except the whites of his eyes) and talks deeply and tenderly and instructively to the Next Few Hundred Years—to posterity, to babes not yet in their mothers' wombs, while his dearest friends ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... longer was to be considered in the role of a possible eavesdropper, Ginsburg nevertheless spoke cautiously as again he turned his face toward the motionless figure stretched ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... front of the church, the crowd waited the end of the ceremony. Shopgirls from the Rue de l'Eglise, and laundresses from the Rue de Paris, curiously contemplated the equipages, with their stamping horses, and the coachmen, erect upon their boxes, motionless, and looking neither to the right nor the left. Through the open door of the church, at the end of the old oak arches, could be seen Marsa's white, kneeling figure, and beside her Prince Zilah, whose blond head, as he stood ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... overhangs Alleys and bowers so dim. We moved between Pinnacles of black rock, which, from beneath, Molten by inner fires, so said my guide, Gushed long ago into the hissing brine, That quenched and hardened them, and now they stand Motionless in the currents of the sea That part and flow around them. As we went, We looked into the hollows of the abyss, To which the never-resting waters sweep The skeletons of sharks, the long white spines Of narwhal and of dolphin, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... The child in the next room had not stirred. The dumfounded husband sat motionless under pretence of listening. His wife made a despairing gesture. He motioned to hearken a moment more; but no human sound sent a faintest ripple across the breathless air; the earth was as silent as the stars. Still he waited—in vain—they ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... days we were washed by the sea I do not know, but it must have been fully a week, and we were both entirely exhausted, when something happened to our boat, and everything appeared motionless, but still I could hear a terrific roaring sound. When I regained my senses, I recognized Tom bending over me, and the first words I remember were: 'I thought you would never come to again.' I learned that we ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... The leaves of a catalpa, across the roadway, hung motionless. Somebody yawned on the veranda below. I threw away my half-finished cigar, and closed my eyes. I think I had not lost consciousness for more than a few seconds before I was awakened by the shaking and thrilling of the whole building. As I staggered to ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Forcus had gone to bed he kept his promise:—sitting motionless in his chair, his elbow on the arm of it, his head upon his ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... framed in fire, The flame ran from one curtain to another; fanned by the wind which was still blowing—valence, draperies, all the ornamentation of the three windows were in a blaze. Ida stood helpless, motionless as Lot's wife, confronting the flames. To rush through them, to leap through the open window although it were to certain death, was her first impulse. Any death must be better than to fall down suffocated on the floor, and to be ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Poninski with fresh supplies was coming up. He did not come, and the rumour of treachery, never, however, proved, gathered about a name that was already of ill repute to a Polish ear. Galled by standing motionless without ammunition, a Polish battalion rashly charged, and the Russians broke through the Polish line. Niemcewicz, rushing up to repulse them at the head of a Lithuanian squadron, was wounded, captured ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... a respectful distance—but making an angry muttering noise. Jon stood motionless, his head reeling at the enormity of what he had done. A policeman pushed ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... object lying part way up the slope caught his eye and instinctively he jerked his horse back, swung to the ground and, crawling to the rim of the bluff looked cautiously over the edge. For a long time he stared downward at the motionless form of a woman. Her face was not visible but he could see that she wore a riding costume, and a hat of approved cowboy pattern. In vain his eyes searched the beach, and the bluff, and even the river. "Crossin' on Long Bill's ferry an' the cable busted," ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... King suddenly rose, remarking that it was late, and that as he had resolved to return to Versailles he had no time to lose. Richelieu, who had not yet recovered sufficient self-possession to entreat a continuance of his intercession, remained motionless as he left the room; while the indignation of the Queen-mother at so undignified a retreat rendered her equally unable to expostulate; and meanwhile Louis, delighted to escape from all participation in so dangerous a contention, sprang into the carriage which was awaiting ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... than a stately old rook, who Master Simon assured me was the chief magistrate of this community, would settle down upon the head of one of the ewes, who, seeming conscious of this condescension, would desist from grazing, and stand fixed in motionless reverence of her august burthen; the rest of the rookery would then come wheeling down, in imitation of their leader, until every ewe had two or three of them cawing, and fluttering, and battling upon her back. Whether they requited the submission ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... had noticed the prisoner's demeanor for the last few days would have been struck with the change which had come over it. Hitherto he had stood often for hours leaning motionless, with his arms crossed, in the corner of his cage, with head bent down and listless air, his thoughts only being busy; now he paced restlessly up and down his narrow limits, two steps each way and then a turn, like a caged beast; his hands were clenched, his breast heaved, his breath came ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... destitute of feeling, though it had been my lot to see men die in many ways, and I ran over to that motionless form without an idea that anything but an ordinary accident had occurred. There he lay, silent and, as it turned out afterwards, dead as a door-nail, the strangest old fellow ever eyes looked upon, dressed in shabby sorrel-coloured ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... of the pursuers found further effort useless, he checked his horse. Willock now sat erect on the broncho's bare back, lightly clasping the halter. Looking behind, he saw seven horsemen in varying degrees of remoteness, motionless, doubtless fixing their wolfish eyes on his fleeing form. As long as he could distinguish these specks against the sky, they remained stationary. To his excited imagination they represented a living wall drawn up between him and the abode of ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... that fell deed, madness raged upon the minutes, now that it was done—all still, all calm, all quiet, Terror held the hour-glass of Time. There lay the corpse, motionless, though coiled and cramped in the attitude of struggling agony; and the murderer gazed upon his victim with a horror most intense. Fly! fly!—he dared not stop to think: fly! fly! any whither—as you are—wait for nothing; fly! thou caitiff, for ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... joined the party, who were standing at the foot of the pilot-house staircase, "we may venture outside; we are only three thousand feet above the sea-level, and the ship is almost motionless. Permit me." ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... with whom he had once had a business misunderstanding, who, burning for revenge, was now jumping and howling and threatening as only a drunken Indian may, while our heroic old captain, in severe icy majesty, stood erect and motionless, uttering never a word. Kadachan, on the contrary, was well nigh smothered with the drunken caresses of one of his father's tillicums (friends), who insisted on his going back with him into the house. But reversing the words of St. Paul in his account of his ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir |
