"Nerveless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foot upon the neck of the fallen witch-doctor, the ape-man raised his face to the moon and uttered the long, shrill scream of the victorious bull ape. Then he stooped and snatched the zebra's tail from the nerveless fingers of the unconscious man and without a backward glance retraced ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... placed the handles in the nerveless fingers of Mr. Henderson. Then he started the current. In about a minute the eyelids of the aged inventor began to quiver, and, in less than five minutes he had been revived sufficiently to enable him to sit up. He passed his ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... stood up. She smiled sweetly at the men around the table. "Thank you very much, gentlemen," she said. She handed the chips to Malone, who took them in nerveless fingers. "Sir Kenneth," she said, "I hereby appoint you temporary Chancellor of the Exchequer—at least ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... suddenly nerveless, and he dropped the brief case. It was crammed with money, packets of ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... orange and the dim leaves of the olive; and the small fountains, which, in any other land, would spring merrily along, sparkling and singing among tinkling pebbles, here flow calmly and silently into some pale font of marble, all beautiful with life; worked by some unknown hand, long ago nerveless, and fall and pass on among wan flowers, and scented copse, through cool leaf-lighted caves or gray Egerian grottoes, to join the Tiber or Eridanus, to swell the waves of Nemi, or the Larian Lake. The most minute objects (leaf, flower, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... his establishment, was for him, in particular, the seal and attestation of his extraordinary grandeur of mind. His empire dissolved after he had departed; his dominions lost their cohesion, and slipped away from the nerveless hands which succeeded; a sufficient evidence—were there no other—that all the vast resources of the Frankish throne, wielded by imbecile minds, were inadequate to maintain that which, in the hands of a Charlemagne, they had availed ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... take this," Bellew went on, counting a sum into Adam's nerveless hand, "and to-morrow, when the sale begins, if any one makes a bid for anything, I want you to bid higher, and, no matter what, you ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... smooth lord whom nature's plastic pains Would seem to've fashioned for those Eastern reigns When eunuchs flourisht, and such nerveless things As men rejected were the chosen of kings;—[12] Even he, forsooth, (oh fraud, of all the worst!) Dared to assume the patriot's name at first— Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes; Thus devils when first ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... before been prudentially soft and nerveless, suddenly hardened into solid muscle, and one of his heavy blows came full and square upon the region of Archy's left eye. The young lord of the manor reeled as though a tornado had struck him, and fell ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... the sword dropped clanging from my nerveless hand. When I recovered, I found myself bound upon a horse behind one ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... bark with all my hopes, energies, and desires, and launch it forth into the ocean of life—bound for some attainable point, with ambition or pleasure at the helm! But adverse winds detain me on shore; like Ulysses, I sit at the water's edge and weep. But my nerveless hands can neither fell the trees, nor smooth the planks. Under the influence of these melancholy thoughts, she became more than ever in love with sorrow. Yet Adrian's presence did some good; he at once broke through the law of silence observed concerning Raymond. At ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... survivors came along the pier, the most dismal procession it was ever my lot to behold—eleven live but scarcely living men, most of them clad in oilskins, and walking with bowed backs, drooping heads and nerveless arms. There was blood on the faces of some, circled with a white encrustation of salt, and this same salt filled the hollows of their eyes and streaked their hair with lines which looked like snow. The first man, who was the chief mate, walked leaning heavily on the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... offspring songs, Like children, versed not in death's chilly wrongs, About him flit, frighted to see him lie So still, who did not know that Love could die. One lifts his wing, where dulls the vermeil all Like clotting blood, and shrinks to find it cold, And when she sees its lapse and nerveless fall Clasps her fans, while her sobs ooze through the webb-ed gold. Thereat all weep together, and their tears Make lights like shivered moonlight on long waters. Have peace, O piteous daughters! He shall not ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... left behind witnessed a heart-rending spectacle. The German soldiers were so utterly exhausted that their limbs could not carry them up the ascent, gentle as it was. They sank down in throngs as though paralysed, the muskets dropped from their nerveless hands, which no longer obeyed their will, and the French could seize hundreds of them and lead them away as prisoners, while many fell on the way and were left lying on the ground ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the thought had comae to me I had thrust it away. This time, however, there was no escape. The whole hideous scene spread itself out again before my eyes. I saw the doubled-up body, limp and nerveless. I felt again the thrill of horror with which one looks for the first time on death. The mockery of the sunlight filling the air, gleaming far and wide upon the creek-riven marshes and wet sands, the singing of the birds, the slow tramp of the wagon horses. All these things went to fill ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sides, Electra coveted even a deck passage; envied the meanest who hurried about, making all things ready for departure. The last bell rang; people crowded down on the planks; Russell hastened back to the carriage, and took the nerveless, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... it, as if to try its force; as far as one could see, its waves lifted themselves and crowded together, like the muscles upon a chest; over the flank of the waves passed flashes with sinister smiles; the mast groaned, and the trees bent shivering, like a nerveless crowd before the wrath of a fearful beast. Then all was hushed; the sun had burst forth, the waves were smoothed, you now see only a laughing expanse; spun out over this polished back a thousand greenish tresses sported wantonly; the light rested on it, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... of its fall, he became as Lot's wife. The pistol dropped from his nerveless grasp, thudding gently on the carpet, and, with his fingers crooked paralytically, he stood swaying... and looking into the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... dull—nerveless. Words did not seem to come easily to her. She was tired, she thought, and of course she was, having spent a sleepless night. One little matter gave her cause for thankfulness. Dysart was absent from luncheon. He had ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... he avowed himself a religious character, he had written nothing but the most vapid and nerveless twaddle. Your poor dear father used to send his letters to me to read, and I sometimes really thought that Silas was losing his faculties; but I believe he was only ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... his nerveless fingers. He turned around to face Wingate, crouching over the table, his arms resting upon it, his eyes blood-shot, a slave ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... broken in twain. It had slipped from her nerveless finger when they took her to her room. With a gesture of impatience, he picked up the fragments, and threw them, diamond and all, out of the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... late been the fashion to compare the style of Addison and Johnson, and to depreciate, I think very unjustly, the style of Addison as nerveless and feeble[661], because it has not the strength and energy of that of Johnson. Their prose may be balanced like the poetry of Dryden and Pope. Both are excellent, though in different ways. Addison writes with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... weapon from the nerveless fingers. It was quite unnecessary. The man showed not the slightest trace of consciousness. His face was ashen gray. Wilson threw back the man's coat and found the under linen to be stained with blood. He tore aside the shirt and discovered its source—a narrow slit just over the heart. There was ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Hamlin stood, nerveless and pallid, for an instant, watching Lawler's movements—until Lawler turned and faced him again. Then he staggered to a chair and dropped into it, lowering his head dejectedly, sitting with his hands folded, ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the evils of the State, [6] but in vain. The old ideal of citizenship died out. Service to the State became purely subordinate to personal pleasure and advancement. Irreverence and a scoffing attitude became ruling tendencies. Family morality decayed. The State in time became corrupt and nerveless. Finally, in 338 B.C., Philip of Macedon became master of Greece, and annexed it to the world empire which he and his son Alexander created. Still later, in 146 B.C., the new world power to the west, Rome, conquered Greece and made of it ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... hundred times in those ensuing weeks that he had been seized with an apoplexy before ever he had put his name to the contract that gave him into Merelli's hands.—As a matter of fact, the ordeal was one trying enough for nerveless men. But to Ivan it was simply a process of refined torture, in the course of which every one of his petted peculiarities of style, the most cherished of his situations, the choicest of his originalities, were ruthlessly cut, altered, or swept calmly away:—a ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Rouen where his Queen was: from whom the sad intelligence of his death was concealed until he had been dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the road black. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the Royal Household followed, the knights wore black armour and black ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... hurt. A little, contemptuous grunt escaped him as he made out just how bad it was. The bullet had merely ripped along his side, inflicting a shallow surface wound, coming the nearest thing in the world to missing him altogether. Had he not been pitifully nerveless from another wound not ten days old and his strength exhausted from his first active day since it had been given to him, he could have laughed at this and at the girl who had fired it. He stopped the bleeding as best he might, drew a rude bandage about ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... the final cut that would terminate the earthly career of Tarzan of the Apes when, to the astonishment of both the ape-man and Smith-Oldwick, the fellow stiffened rigidly, his weapon dropped from the nerveless fingers of his upraised hand, his mad eyes rolled upward and foam flecked his bared lip. Gasping as though in the throes of strangulation the fellow pitched ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on the downward path. Its foreign policy was in nerveless hands; jobbery was rampant; trade and industry declined; the dividends of the East India Company fell year by year through the incompetence and greed of officials appointed by family influence; the West India Company was practically bankrupt. Such was the state of the country in 1740, when ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... century. Those who dreaded and lamented its advances found it no difficult task to show that sometimes it was connected with Deistical or with Socinian or Arian views, sometimes with a visionary enthusiasm, sometimes with a weak and nerveless religion of sentiment. They could point also to the obvious fact that thorough scepticism, or even mere irreligion, often found a decent veil under plausible professions of a liberal Christianity. There were some, indeed, who, in the excitement of hostility or alarm, seemed to lose ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... when I went, I found Inspector Johnstone had arrived, and brought with him one of his plainclothes men. You will understand how pleased I was to see there would be this addition to our watch; for he looked a tough, nerveless man, brainy and collected; and one I should have picked to help us with the horrible job I felt pretty sure we should have to ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... margins chiefly served to note, cite, and illustrate the habits of crocodiles. Along the lower or "tail'' edge, the saurian, splendidly serrated as to his back, arose out of old Nile; up one side negroes, swart as sucked lead-pencil could limn them, let fall their nerveless spears; up the other, monkeys, gibbering with terror, swarmed hastily up palm-trees — a plant to the untutored hand of easier outline than (say) your British oak. Meanwhile, all over the unregarded text Balbus slew ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... the cut of his jib considerably," faintly whispered Stuyvesant, after he had extended a kind but nerveless hand to each, "but that mark would betray him anywhere under any disguise. Was ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... of the ages past? Where the brave chieftains, where the mighty ones Who flourish'd in the infancy of days? All to the grave gone down. On their fallen fame Exultant, mocking at the pride of man, Sits grim Forgetfulness.—The warrior's arm Lies nerveless on the pillow of its shame; Hush'd is his stormy voice, and quench'd the blaze Of his red eyeball.—Yesterday his name Was mighty on the earth.—To-day—'t is what? The meteor of the night of distant years, That flash'd unnoticed, save by wrinkled ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... the biographer of Milton Samson Agonistes is charged with a pathos, which as the expression of real suffering no fictive tragedy can equal, it must be felt that as a composition the drama is languid, nerveless, occasionally halting, never brilliant. If the date of the composition of the Samson be 1663, this may have been the result of weariness after the effort of Paradise Lost. If this drama were composed in 1667, it would be the author's last poetical ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... look at his young master as he began to try the bow, holding it in his injured, nerveless grasp, and pulling ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... entered, followed by a man who was obviously more of a Levantine than a Serb. The older man, small, slight, gray haired, and swarthy, but surprisingly active in his movements for one of his apparent age, raced up to Prince Michael. He fell on his knees, caught that nerveless right hand, and pressed ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... into the secret room Where Love lay dying; Mystic and faint perfume Met me like sighing; As heaven had cast a still-born star He lay nor stirred; the shell-thin hand Nerveless of high command Where once the ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... herself back on her chair in order to laugh more at her ease, but with a nerveless, unhealthy laugh, one of those laughs which ends in nervous fits, then, a little more calmly, she replied: 'Ha! ha! my dear, improper? that is to say, that they dare everything, at once, all, you understand, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... By heavens! I was prepared to encounter the whole force of the republic, but not this blow. This old nerveless man, with his pen, annihilates three thousand soldiers (his hands sink ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... however advisable for the departing, does little for those left behind, and is in the main detrimental to the country. The energetic, the daring, the high-spirited go, leaving the residue more abject and nerveless than ever. If Two Millions more were to leave the country next year, the condition of the remainder would not be essentially improved. Over population is not a leading cause of Ireland's ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... jests and jests thrust back again, the snapping snarl of wolf-dogs rushing in furry projectiles of wrath upon Smoke's stranger dogs, the scolding of squaws, laughter, the whimpering of children and wailing of infants, the moans of the sick aroused afresh to pain, all the pandemonium of a camp of nerveless, primitive wilderness folk. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... flesh was lacerated as though he had been struck with some sharp instrument. He had carried in his hand the old satchel which contained the wine purchased by Mr. Schulte, and which had been consigned to his care on leaving the depot, and as he fell unconscious the satchel dropped from his nerveless grasp upon ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... 'knew what it knew' on this subject. Much of its knowledge never can be revealed, but enough will come to-night to show that in our darkest hour we had an enormous mass of aid, little suspected by those weaker brethren who stood aghast at the Southern bugbear, and who, falling prostrate in nerveless terror at the windy spectre, quaked out repeated assurances that they had no intention of 'abolitionizing the war,' and even earnestly begged and prayed that the emancipationists might all be sent to Fort Warren,—so fearful were the poor cowards lest the united South, in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... something that resembled the effect of an upheaval of the earth's surface. The old woman hurled herself backward with a dreadful cry. Young Sim had been perched gracefully on a railing. At sight of the monster he simply fell over it to the ground. He made no sound, his eyes stuck out, his nerveless hands tried to grapple the rail to prevent a tumble, and then he vanished. Bella, blubbering, and with her hair suddenly and mysteriously dishevelled, was crawling on her hands and ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... light was gone from his eyes, the vigour from his body, the confidence from his manner; consciousness of failure brooded in their stead. He had not become dissipated. Great opportunities missed; this was the memory that racked him, body and spirit, and left him nerveless and decrepit, inviting death."[1401] He died in ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... time Mr. Jocelyn might have escaped from his thraldom, but would he? The world is full of people who are proud and self-respecting in the extreme, who are honorable and virtuous, good and kindly at heart, but whose wills are nerveless, though they may go safely through life without suspecting the truth; but if they fall under the influence of an evil habit—if they pass under this mightiest and darkest of all spells, opium hunger—they may learn their weakness ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... wretch's throat; but there was no occasion to use force: he recognized me, and nerveless, paralyzed, sank on the floor incapable of motion much less of resistance, and could only gaze in my face in dumb ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... I care for it? Nothing seems of value to me where you are not—I am nerveless, senseless, hopeless without you. My inspiration—such as ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... tremor was visible on the face of the little seamstress, a movement of every muscle, and her nerveless fingers could not grasp ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... reflections must that spectacle inspire him! The outstretched arms lying helpless along the earth—the claw-like fingers now stiff and nerveless—he may be thinking how they once clutched a cowhide, vigorously laying it on his own back, leaving ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... with cold sweat; and indeed these memorials of the drow have never entirely disappeared—even at the present time they display themselves in my system, especially after much fatigue of body and excitement of mind. So there I sat in the dingle upon my stone, nerveless and hopeless, by whatever cause or causes that state had been produced—there I sat with my head leaning upon my hand, and so I continued a long, long time. At last I lifted my head from my hand, and began to cast anxious, unquiet looks about ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the end was approaching. My hands were as cold as the nerveless one which would soon receive the candle. I told myself I should be a fool to attempt it. There was not one chance in a hundred. I should not squeeze hard enough. The man would yell. If I were swift as lightning and silent as force, they would take ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... insufficient was the assigned cause. During their growth, a deer's horns are not used at all; and when, having been cleared of the dead skin and dried-up blood-vessels covering them, they are ready for use, they are nerveless and non-vascular, and hence are incapable of undergoing any changes of structure consequent ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Rawson. Then the flame-thrower fell from his nerveless hand. He was swaying; his knees were trembling with weakness when Smithy and Loah, on either side, took his burned arms tenderly and helped him on where the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... had to do it. She pressed her hands tightly over the wound as Sahwah had showed her, and tried to close her ears to the gurgling. But the old terror had her by the throat, suffocating her, paralyzing her hands. They dropped uselessly at her sides; she crouched limp and panting and nerveless beside the helpless man. Then, for the first time in her life Oh-Pshaw began to fight the fear. She forced her clammy hands back over the wound, she cast desperately around for something to think about beside the murmuring horror at her feet. She began ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... The weight proved too much and she sank again. Again I pulled her to the surface and again she sank. This I did again and again with no avail. She drowned in my very grasp, and at last she dropped from my nerveless hands to leave my sight forever. As if I had not suffered enough, a few moments after I saw some objects whirling around in an eddy which circled around, until, reaching the current again, they floated past me. My God, man, would ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... prayers he would have sworn were forgotten these many years. There was a pistol at his belt where his hand was resting; another hung at his other side. But the man made no move to defend himself; he was struck numb and nerveless, not through fear, but through that horror which comes with seeing one's most gruesome superstitions come true. Spud O'Malley, who would have laughed at devils and believed in them while he laughed, knew now that they were real. They had captured Chet; they were about to take him, too, to ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... and their tousled families, and certain nondescript town loafers of tramp-like appearance. The flies were nearly as bad as ever—but not quite, for under Mrs. Wetherford's dragooning the waiters had made a nerveless assault upon them with newspaper bludgeons, and a few of them had been driven out ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... With nerveless fingers Peter drew out, not an envelope, but a stiff card. And he stared at the card in the red twilight, and ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... on both sides weakened. They said the incantations of the rival medicine men were bewitching them, were making their hearts like children's, and their arms nerveless as women's. So friend and foe arose as one man and drove the medicine men from the island, hounded them down the Inlet, herded them through the Narrows and banished them out to sea, where they took refuge on one of the outer ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... a little moment, however. It passes, and recollection returns. Monica, raising her head, sees the two Misses Blake standing side by side, with folded, nerveless hands, and fixed eyes, and horror-stricken faces. Shrinking still closer to her lover, Monica regards them with a troubled conscience and with growing fear. She is at last discovered, and ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... the room, closing the studio doors behind him. Olga looked apprehensively about her. Some mysterious presence seemed to oppress her. She fumbled with nerveless fingers at the ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... JOHN. Oh, wonderful! You have bettered here your best. Why, sir, he breathes! Will not those locked lids ope?—that nerveless hand Regain the iron strength of sinew mated With such heroic frame? You have conspired With Nature to produce a man. Behold, I chatter foolish speech; for such a marvel The fittest praise is silence. [He rises and stands before ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... that the other systems of organs are developed in the same way, from tubes formed out of simple layers, did not escape Wolff. The nerveless system, muscular system, and vascular (blood-vessel) system, with all the organs appertaining thereto, are, like the alimentary system, developed out of simple leaf-shaped structures. Hence, Wolff came to the view by 1768 which Pander developed in the Theory ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... moved, never uttered a sound. He seemed to doubt the evidence of his own eyes, and to have lost the power of speech. Then from nerveless hands his own cards fell face downward, still unrevealed, upon the table. The next moment he was on his feet, the chair in which he had been seated flung crashing ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... at her in surprise, and were speechless for a moment. Then M. Destournier, recovering, reached out and took the girl's slim, nerveless hand. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... he would stop her from going down there; he would hold her, just where she was on the dark stair nerveless, breathless, as long as he liked, if he liked he would bring ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... of metal was the cross which his fingers still gripped. Boone examined it with a somewhat superstitious caution, took it from the nerveless fingers, and slipped it into a pocket of Pierre's shirt. A small cut on the boy's forehead showed where the stone struck which knocked him senseless, but the cut still bled—a small trickle—Pierre lived. He even stirred and groaned and opened his eyes, large ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... kindly, Nancy feels a dreadful pang of pain, as well as of shamed distress. She creeps up nearer to him, and puts her hand imploringly on his arm—that arm which a moment ago held her so closely to him, but which now hangs, apparently nerveless, by ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... is he, that helmsman bold? The captain saw him reel, His nerveless hands released their task, He sank beside the wheel. The wave received his lifeless corse, Blackened with smoke and fire. God rest him! Never hero had A ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... with the dagger in my right hand, and wounded him, but not deeply, in the side. He gave blow for blow, but his poniard scarce drew blood, so nerveless was the arm that would have driven it home. I struck again, and he stabbed weakly at the air, then let his arm drop to his side, as though the light and jeweled blade had ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... branded with revolt and shame; Both were condemned, and Tus, the stern decree Received, to break them on the felon-tree. Could daring insult, thus deliberate given, Escape the rage of one to frenzy driven? No, from his side the nerveless Chief was flung, Bent to the ground. Away the Champion sprung; Mounted his foaming horse, and looking round— His boiling wrath thus rapid utterance found:— "Ungrateful King, thy tyrant acts disgrace The sacred throne, and more, the human race; Midst ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... wife's best book," said Jean Merle, holding it with shaking, nerveless hands. Felicita's book! The tears burned under his eyelids as he looked ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... past joys with purring satisfaction. This quality of self-contented sentiment partly explains why the type of beauty adored is neither womanly nor manly, but adolescent. It has to be tender, fragile, solicitous, unripe; appealing to sensibility, not to passion, by feminine charms in nerveless and soulless boyhood. The most distinctive mark of Adonis is that he has no character, no will, no intellect. He is all sentiment, sighs, tears, pliability, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... wrath: and our talents are as mischievous as if each had been seized upon by some bird of prey, which had whisked him away from fortune, from truth, from the dear society of the poets, some zeal, some bias, and only when he was now gray and nerveless was it relaxing its claws, and he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... successful. It could not well be otherwise. Lucille has returned to Dorset House. Souspennier is confounded altogether by a little revelation which I ventured to make. He spoke of an appeal. I let him know with whom he would have to deal. I left him nerveless and crushed. He can do nothing save by open revolt. And if he tries that—well, there will be no more ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then and took the book from his nerveless hand. "She indicated that this is a manual for running the ship," he said. "All is ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... towards Arthur with a sad smile. He took off her glove, and helped to raise her arm, which hung nerveless and powerless by her side. I felt big ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... with the shadows among the aged, smoky rafters and flicker over the strings of dried things that hung from the ceiling. In the other corner her father and stepmother snored heartily, and Bub, beside her, was in a nerveless slumber that would not come to her that night-tired and aching as she was. So, quietly, by and by, she slipped out of bed and out the door to the porch. The moon was rising and the radiant sheen of it had dropped down over the mountain side ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... woke, and for a space All nerveless did I seem; For I have ridden many a race, But never one at such a pace As in ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... never hoped to see such days again. He realized that monarchy was essential to peace, and that the price of freedom was violence and disorder. He had no illusions about the senate. Fault and misfortune had reduced them to nerveless servility, a luxury of self-abasement. Their meekness would never inherit the earth. Tacitus pours scorn on the philosophic opponents of the Principate, who while refusing to serve the emperor and pretending to hope for the restoration of the republic, could contribute nothing more ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... scorn which seemed to blaze from his eyes, as he held her there—his slave until he chose to give the signal for release? At last he looked away towards the judge, and the woman fell forward in the box gasping, a crumpled up, nerveless heap ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fingers that neither twitched nor shook. There were a gold cross and a bunch of silver medals hung by a whipcord about the neck of the dead man. This Captain Morgan broke away with a snap, reaching the jingling baubles to Harry, who took them in his nerveless hand and fingers that he could hardly close ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... sons of Spain, and strange her fate! They fight for freedom, who were never free; A kingless people for a nerveless state, Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee, True to the veriest slaves of Treachery; Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, Pride points the path that leads to liberty; Back to the struggle, baffled ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... I, Gladys?" Lillian said again and again, white, wild-eyed, and haggard, so limp and nerveless that she could not have reached the library had not the other ladies supported her between them, half carrying her to her reclining chair. "You both think I was wrong, don't you?" She looked up at them with ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... my unhappy fate! {405} My mother sinks to the dark realms of night, Nor longer views this golden light; But to the ills of life exposed Leaves my poor orphan state! Her eyes, my father, see, her eyes are closed, And her hand nerveless falls. Yet hear me, O my mother, hear my cries! It is thy son who calls, Who prostrate on the earth breathes ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... circle: Timon is almost as weak as "Titus Andronicus"; the pen falls from the nerveless hand. Shakespeare wrote nothing for some time. Even the critics make a break after "Timon," which closes what they are pleased to call his third period; but they do not seem to see that the break was really a ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... that nerveless and shaken condition, I heard the breaking of twigs and thud of soft steps right above me. Peering up with my half-blinded eyes I saw a huge red furry animal coming, half obscured by brush. It waved aside from his broad back. A shock ran over me—a bursting gush of hot ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... quiet; or whether it would not be better than either to start up at once and shake the disgustful burden from me. But the latter suggestion was at once abandoned, because of the assurance I felt that it would prove fatal; impeded by the heavy coils of the creature, weak and nerveless from excitement, I could not escape its fangs. Again, therefore, I spoke with the hollow but distinct accents which arise from the throat when the speaker is afraid to move a muscle:—"Kulassi Chiragh!"—Lascar, a lanthorn! "Latah own Sahib." I am bringing it, sir. There was then a ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... secured that of the Master Himself; or that He might have passed away through the midst of them, as He did through the infuriated crowd which proposed to cast Him headlong over the precipice near Nazareth at the commencement of His ministry? Every arm might have been struck nerveless, every foot paralyzed with lameness. Who, then, shall deny that Christ's ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... of awe came over her. No one very near to her had died, and though she had not seen so very much of Miss Lois, for her mother had gone up quite often without her, the fact that she had been there so lately, had held her poor nerveless hand, had kissed her good-by in an almost sacred manner when she was so near death, touched her. Did she know? Hanny wondered. What was death? The breath went out of your body—and her old thoughts about the soul came back to her. It was so different when the world was coming to an end. Then you ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... each time with a full sack on her back, and beyond passing the time of day with me she took no notice of my presence. Then, the cart empty, she fumbled for matches and lighted a short clay pipe, pressing down the burning surface of the tobacco with a calloused and apparently nerveless thumb. The hands were noteworthy. They were large- knuckled, sinewy and malformed by labour, rimed with callouses, the nails blunt and broken, and with here and there cuts and bruises, healed and healing, such ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... of American women have to give to their household affairs, produce that lack of time that is offered as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the mind blank and nerveless except ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... though, did I tense myself for a second leap than I felt a nerveless sensation in my knees, as though the bones had turned to butter, and knew that my high hopes had budded too soon. Instead of leaping, I staggered on for two short steps, then stopped because I could stagger no farther. Looking back at the cruiser, I saw ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... time she was gone for good. She lost her way, and lay down like a log in the water, and the racing seas roared over her as though she had been a half-tide rock. By a miracle no one was washed overboard. But her people hung here and there to eyebolts and ropes, mere nerveless wisps of humanity, incapable under those teeming cataracts of waves to lift so much as a finger ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... was worse; listless, nerveless, unable to rise, and spending his time in dozes that were ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... denial they had proofs. Prevarication they were familiar with, and never so happy as when they saw a poor, perplexed, bewildered victim vainly struggling in the toils, driven triumphantly from subterfuge to subterfuge, and at last, with nerveless arms and faltering tongue, dropping hopeless upon his chair, as the conviction forced itself upon him that he was there, not ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unmoved and calm while, dulled by the sound of rushing waters, the words the judge has said come booming back and back again. A sickly tremor creeps through every limb and makes it nerveless; a sense of growing weight presses the flesh down as a burden on the fainting spirit; one instant a thousand faces, crowding close, keep out the air; the next, they have all receded out of sight back into misty space, and he is left alone, with all around faded and grown confused ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... they were insufficient and in many respects objectionable; but that to give the administration hearty support in the most vigorous measures which it was willing to undertake, was better than to aid an opposition utterly nerveless and servile and altogether devoid of so much as the desire for efficient action. It was no time to stay with the party of weakness; it was right to strengthen rather than to hamper a man so pacific and spiritless as ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... dumb resignation We lift our hands on high; Not like the nerveless fatalist, Content to do and die. Our faith springs like the eagle Who soars to meet the sun, And cries, exulting, unto thee, "O Lord, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... anticipated such an action, and called to Peters not to injure the poor insane fellow more than was necessary to prevent him from injuring others. Ahpilus was not dead—that is, he was not dead over his entire body: the hips and all below were as nerveless as the body of a corpse; but above the hips, the same old vigor remained—and so it would be though he lived for yet a ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... His nerveless arm relinquished the basket to the hand of the stranger and his puzzled eyes sought the floor in a long stare, broken presently by the ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... Muses lie, Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flattery's eye: There to her heart sad Tragedy address'd The dagger wont to pierce the tyrant's breast; But sober History restrain'd her rage, And promised vengeance on a barbarous age. 40 There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead, Had not her sister Satire held her head: Nor could'st thou, Chesterfield![383] a tear refuse, Thou wept'st, and with thee wept each ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... were obvious). To show his confidence in me. (Napoleon's jaw does not exactly drop; but its hinges become nerveless. The Lieutenant proceeds with honest indignation.) And I was worthy of his confidence: I brought them all back honorably. But would you believe it?—when I trusted him with MY pistols, and MY horse, and ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... full minute Jenison stood there, staring after him, his heart as cold as ice, his arms hanging nerveless at his sides. The real, underlying motive of the man was slow in ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... not hear what Mr. Sneed said, or he was so surprised that he did not think to run, for he stood there and, a moment later, the big beast confronted him. Stretching out his paw the animal took from the nerveless hands of the actor the heavy walking stick, and, shouldering it, began to march ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... towards the place, and to distinguish the white flag at the crest of the principal bastion; his ears, already deaf to the sounds of life, caught feebly the rolling of the drum which announced the victory. Then, clasping in his nerveless hand the baton, ornamented with its fleurs-de-lis, he cast on it his eyes, which had no longer the power of looking upwards towards Heaven, and fell back, murmuring strange words, which appeared to the soldiers cabalistic—words which had ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... weird face, and shook like a leaf in the blast. His arm sank nerveless to his side, palsied by that frozen touch; his voice was so unnatural that he started at ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... she swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it from her nerveless fingers and caught her supple body ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... illness that the unexpected interview with Sanderson left her faint and exhausted. The momentary flare up of her righteous indignation at Sanderson's outrageous proposition that she should go away had sapped her strength and she made ready to meet one of the great crises of life with nerveless, trembling body and a mind ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... read for the first time Joanna Baillie's "Count Basil." I am not sure that the love she describes does not affect me more even than Shakespeare's delineation of the passion in "Romeo and Juliet." There is a nerveless despondency about it that seems to me more intolerable than all the vivid palpitating anguish of the tragedy of Verona; it is like dying of slow poison, or malarial fever, compared with being shot or stabbed or even bleeding to death, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... He gathered the poor nerveless hands into a tight clasp, kissing them passionately. He forgot the silent watcher at the foot of the bed, forgot little Mrs. Lorimer hovering in the shadows, and Tudor waiting with the nurse behind him. They all slipped into nothingness, and Avery—his ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell |
