"Stillness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at work. The girl, who helped her mother cook for the 'hands,' was crazed by the shock, and that night stole forth into the woods and was never seen or heard of more. There are old hunters who aver that her cry may still be heard at night at the head of the valley whenever a tree falls in the stillness of ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... storekeeper, lay outside the little tent, with the pungent pine-wood smoke drifting past him and his feet toward the fire, while dusk crept up the range and a wonderful stillness settled down upon the lonely valley. His hands were badly blistered, and he was aching in every limb, while some of his knuckles had the flesh torn off them, for Devine had brought a heavy hammer down on them several times that day ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... shady walks of Mount Hermon. Under the umbrageous trees, perfumed by roses and lilies, tombs, [239] silent, innumerable tombs on all sides, on marble, the names of friends, kindred, acquaintances, solemn stillness all round us, at our feet the placid course of our majestic flood. There were indeed many friends round us, though invisible, nay, on counting over the slumberers, we found we had more, though not dearer friends, in this abode ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... landlady's children; opposite, the packer from Rigger's. The girls' room was downstairs. When Maurice's song had reached its close he heaved a profound sigh, and then followed silence, as slumber claimed the sole period of his existence not devoted to work. The tenement soon passed to stillness complete. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... silence and care, he began to ascend these stairs and when he was about half-way up he became aware of a faint and strange sound that came trembling through the silence and stillness of ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... twitter, then quiet down again. On occasions the air chambers in our boats would contract on cooling off, making a noise like the boom of a distant gun, every little sound being magnified by the utter stillness of the night. ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... breast to woo his gentle mate, and the soft whispering note of the little tree-creeper, as it flitted from one hemlock to another, collecting its food between the fissures of the bark, were among the few sounds that broke the noontide stillness of the woods; but to all such sights and sounds the lively Catharine and her cousin were not indifferent. And often they wondered, that Hector gravely pursued his onward way, and seldom lingered as they did to mark the bright colours ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... its slow windings, we at last heard a voice, and in the distance made out dark forms sitting on the earth beside that sombre water. We went on with caution, gliding from tree to tree and making no noise. In the cheerless silence of that place any sound would have shattered the stillness like a pistol shot. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... great room with its double row of beds, the trained silence of the sleepers seemed unnatural, almost terrible, especially after the horror that had broken it. Max had never before felt the oppression of this deathlike stillness. Usually he slept as the rest slept; but now, weary as he was, he resigned himself to lie staring through the slow hours, till the orderly's call, "Au jus!" should rouse the men to swallow ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... cold for wandering, and knows no change that is worth the name of change. It is rest to be with one who is at rest, who cannot go to or go from his happiness, for whom the meaning of Deity is here and now. What stillness and depth of manner are communicated to all who sound the deeps of life! what a refuge is their society from wit, zeal, and gossip, from petty estimates and demands! To these, now first encountered, we have been always known; in them we meet no private motive, no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... dragons, the portieres flying about like phoenixes with variegated plumage. Gold and silver glistened with splendour. Pearls and precious gems shed out their brilliant lustre. The tripod censers burnt the Pai-ho incense. In the vases were placed evergreens. Silence and stillness prevailed, and not a man ventured so much as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... walling that silent place, in the monotonous sky overhead, there seemed something indefinitely menacing; a menace, too, in the intense stillness; and, in the twisted, uplifted limbs of every giant tree, a subtle ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... breathless stillness of a tropical afternoon, when the air was hot and heavy, and the sky brazen and cloudless, the shadow of the Malabar lay solitary on the surface of the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... shouting after Stephen, as he ran frantically up the hill. Snip was always basking lazily in the sunshine under the hedge of the paddock, at the very point where he could catch the first sight of his young master, after which there was no more idleness or stillness in him. Stephen could hardly breathe when he found that Snip was not at the usual place to greet him; but before he reached his home he saw it—the dead body of his own poor Snip—hung on the post of the wicket through which he had to pass. He flew to the place; he tore his ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... first of the gray dawn, while the house was in utter stillness, and rising at once, rose and dressed herself with soundless haste. It was hard indeed to go and leave James thus in danger, but she had no choice! She held her breath and listened, but all was still. She opened ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... with satisfaction, "I was about to ask you what you thought the distance was. Two miles is about what I had estimated. We can't say very exactly, for sound is likely to travel far in this still air. But let us make a liberal allowance for the stillness. I think we are safe in saying that the sound comes from a point not more than four miles distant from this island. Now, the next question is, from what ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... night, half spring, half summer. Few stars twinkled in the blue ocean above; a ringing shout, a distant wagon broke in at times upon the stillness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... backward,—slowly and noiselessly they closed the door, and the faint echo of their stealthy footsteps creeping away along the outer passage to another part of the house, was hushed at last into silence. After a long pause of intense stillness, some clock below stairs struck midnight with a mellow clang, and Helmsley opening his eyes, lay waiting till the excited beating of his heart subsided, and his quickened breath grew calm. Blaming himself for his nervous terrors, he presently rose from his ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... knockings and shoutings summoned the innkeeper from his early slumbers. While waiting in the darkness below, the Turkish muezzins ascended the many minarets, and began the evening call to prayer. The weird chanting from so many voices (there are seven mosques in Dulcigno) in the otherwise utter stillness ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... of an automobile cut the stillness, and the machine stopped in front of the clubhouse, but no one at the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... were motionless as they swept past the doorway, but the air whizzed with the speed of their flight, and in a moment was silent again. Then from the upper room a man's voice began to roar out upon the stillness. It roared, it broke out in thick sobs that shook the closed windows in their fastenings, it wrestled with emotion for utterance, and, overcoming it, rose into a bellow again; but, whether soaring or depressed, the ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rapidly enter; and so He too enter'd. The light waned around him, and pass'd Into darkness. The wrathful, red Occident cast One glare of vindictive inquiry behind, As the last light of day from the high wood declined, And the great forest sigh'd its farewell to the beam, And far off on the stillness the voice of the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Balmoral, from whence the Prince writes: "We try to strengthen our hearts amid the stillness and ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... they climbed aloft, the sparks and pieces of burning rope taken off by the wind and flying miles to leeward, the ghastly glare thrown upon the dark sea as far as the eye could reach, and then the death-like stillness of the scene—all these combined to place the Golden Rocket on the tablet of our memories for ever. But, notwithstanding the reluctance with which we did it, we would not have missed the opportunity for anything on earth. We ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... discourse, hesitated, repeated the same words several times, and was so confused that, in speaking of the Act of Settlement, he could not recall the name of the Electress Sophia. The House listened in solemn silence, and with the aspect of profound respect and compassion. The stillness was so deep that the dropping of a handkerchief would have been heard. The Duke of Richmond replied with great tenderness and courtesy; but, while he spoke, the old man was observed to be restless and irritable. The Duke sat down. Chatham stood up again, pressed his hand on his breast, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... would—heavenly beam, mystic aureole—before his mind's eye. Architecture had no special interest for him, and the history of church or faith could seldom touch his emotions; but the glorious handiwork of men long dead, the solemn stillness of an ancient sanctuary, made that appeal to him which ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... an immense solemnity, like a dark ocean beneath the vast dome of the sky, and something quivered in every fibre of his being, like moonlit ripples on the sea. He felt at the same time a portentous stillness ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... slowly, and the newly dug sides of the tunnel seemed to close in on him menacingly. It was quiet. Not the blank silence of space that Tom was used to, but the deathlike stillness of a tomb. It sent chills up and down his spine. Finally he stepped around a sharp bend and ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... the church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack. Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words. "Repent before it is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dust, filling the air with light; and how through the curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water,—their dripping masses lifted at intervals, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... windows of the Tuileries, lights blazed along the Rue de Rivoli, dotted the great Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs Elysees. There were the steady roar of wheels and the tramping of feet without, but within was the stillness of death. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of fine plush. We followed it from field to field and from stile to stile; it was all adorably the way to church. At the church we finally arrived, lost in its rook-haunted churchyard, hidden from the workday world by the broad stillness of pastures—a grey, grey tower, a huge black yew, a cluster of village-graves with crooked headstones and protrusions that had settled and sunk. The place seemed so to ache with consecration that my sensitive companion gave way to ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... there through the wood narrow, unmade roads were cut, and along these hour after hour twenty-five thousand men moved ceaselessly and silently. Through the thick foliage there came to them faint echoes of the thundering guns, while close about them the cries of startled birds broke the stillness, and the timid, wild things of the woods scurried in terror before them. As the day went on the heat became stifling, and dust rose in clouds beneath the tramping feet. Still, choking, hot and dusty ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... up at the foot of the Mont Cavalier, at a point where that eminence rises with a certain cliff-like effect, and, like other springs in the same circumstances, appears to issue from the rock with a sort of quivering stillness. I trudge up the Mont Cavalier,—it is a matter of five minutes,—and having committed this cockneyism enhanced it presently by another. I ascended the stupid Tour Magne, the mysterious structure I mentioned a moment ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... glowed and shot fire as the red beams struck on them through the branches. It seemed that a forked tongue darted in and out, but this may have been imagined by the heated fancies of the bystanders. The prayer ended; the stillness of death rested a moment on man and nature; then a wild gust of wind, striking the oak without any preliminary warning, bent and snapped the upper branches, and crashed inland through the swaying forest. The watchers saw the ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... condition of the Gallian Sea by the intervention of human agency. Notwithstanding the increasing cold, the sea, unruffled as it was by a breath of wind, still retained its liquid state. It is an established fact that water, under this condition of absolute stillness, will remain uncongealed at a temperature several degrees below zero, whilst experiment, at the same time, shows that a very slight shock will often be sufficient to convert it into solid ice. It had occurred to Servadac that if some ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... each of us allow Him to deal personally with us concerning this sin, of restraining prayer, and its consequences in our life and work; concerning the deliverance from sin, its certainty and blessedness. Just bow in stillness and wait before God, until, as God, He overshadow you with His presence, lead you out of that region of argument as to human possibilities, where conviction of sin can never be deep, and full deliverance can ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... forth in sharp rasping sentences, and it seemed as if blood must surely be shed ere the confusion ended. As the word "liar" rang out, a sudden silence followed, and at once hands rested upon butts of revolvers concealed in four hip-pockets. But before they were drawn a peculiar noise broke the stillness, which caused Reynolds to start, for the sound came from the ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... The proportions of the bridge were stated by an antiquary, since departed this life, to be "so accurate that, if a person speak against the wall of any of the recesses on one side of the way, he may be distinctly heard on the opposite side; even a whisper is audible during the stillness of the night," a circumstance of itself of little import, one would think, but which is perhaps worth recording, as indicating the preciseness of a certain class of historians of the time. To-day it is to ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... railing, he climbs with his feet and his hands, And firm on a narrow projection, with the belfry beneath him, he stands! Now once, and once only, they cheer him—a single tempestuous breath, And there falls on the multitude gazing a hush like the stillness ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... said, Monty turned to deliver a little farewell address. Very simply he told his hearers that, when in a few hours' time the boats came to take them to the Peninsula Beaches, they were to know that they were doing the right thing. There was a tense stillness, as he said with suggestive slowness: "I am only the lips of your Church. She has been with you on this ship, and striven not to fail you. And now to God's mercy and protection she commits you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... this land. The gardens, that had looked like a place of departed and unhappy spirits when she rose that day, were now bathed in the luminous rays of the declining sun, were alive with the softly-calling voices of children, quivered with romance, with a dreamlike, golden charm. The stillness of the evening was intense, enclosing the children's voices, which presently died away; but while she was marvelling at it she was disturbed by a sharp noise of knocking. She looked in the direction from which it came and saw Androvsky ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... coffee-houses, however, there generally prevails a very decorous stillness and silence. Everyone speaks softly to those only who sit next him. The greater part read the newspapers, and no one ever disturbs another. The room is commonly on the ground floor, and you enter it immediately from the street; the seats are divided ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... The blacks must have thought that their town was attacked, and very quickly tumbled up from their beds (they had not many clothes to don) and flew to their arms. Shots were heard in different quarters, and the previous stillness of the night was rudely broken by shouting and hallooing of men, barking of dogs, and crying of children, and screaming of women to each other to inquire what it was all about. The noise, however, was not a thing to be much-dreaded. It showed that the negroes were awake, but it was also ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... little time to contemplate the scene as we rode along, but still I could not help being struck by the solemn stillness, and the wildness of the desolation around. The voices of the men, as they shouted out, appeared strange and unnatural from their very distinctness, as did the tramp of the animals; while not another sound ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... its dull uniformity and stillness, was a contrast after the stir and freshness and prettiness of life in the Dallases's house. It struck Esther rather painfully. The room where she and her father took their supper was pleasant and homely indeed; a bright fire burned on the hearth, or in the grate, rather, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... that I carried, and was then able to perceive that there was light within the room. I scarcely knew how to act. For some minutes I paused at the door. I spoke, and requested permission to enter. My words were succeeded by a death-like stillness. At length I ventured softly to withdraw the bolt, to open and to advance within the room. Nothing could exceed the horror of my expectation; yet I was startled by the scene ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... and mist now being borne by the faint breeze of the coming daylight in their direction. But he could make out enough to determine that an attack must have just commenced upon the mess-room and its surroundings, while, in spite of the stillness in that direction, the lad could gather that the defenders must ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... fast in my arms, gasping the words, "God cares! God cares, Reba! 'We shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace,'" for at first I could only believe that the end of the world had come. This dreadful noise was followed by an awful stillness in our immediate vicinity, though we could hear, apparently from outdoors, mingled cries, screams, and groans of fright, ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... Dyak servants. Presently one of the men began a queer chanting song, in which the others joined at intervals. After this it would seem that they turned in for the night, for no further sound came from their direction, and the whispering stillness became ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... bed full of anxiety. For a long while we lay awake, straining our ears to catch the sound of firing or the drone of German propellers. But no sound broke the stillness of the night, and one by one ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... bread and a long draught from the fountain was Stephan's breakfast, which being speedily finished, he broke the morning stillness with repeated blasts from the horn, which seemed to awake the valley as by magic; for scarcely had the more distant mountains echoed the summons, than from almost every door-way scampered one or more goats. All hurried in the direction ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... stillness. A young man from a neighboring farm came stealthily across a field and climbed a fence. He also came to the hill but for a time did not see her lying almost at his feet. He looked toward the house and stood with hands ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... scrutiny, gentlemen of the jury,'' he said, "at the matter brought out by these debates. Consult yourselves in the calm and stillness of your souls. If it is not proved to you that Helene Jegado is responsible for her actions you will acquit her. If you think that, without being devoid of free will and moral sense, she is not, according to the evidence, as well gifted as the average ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... his arm, for the way was rough, but as they approached the camp she stopped a moment amid the shadow and stillness of ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... reach of our own animals. The evening was calm and lovely; the sea murmured in the distance, and the rising moon shed a beauty over the landscape which we seemed never before to have so admired and enjoyed. The summer night closed around us in all its solemn stillness, and our deepest feelings were touched; when suddenly the spell was broken by an outburst of the most hideous and discordant noises. As by one consent, every beast of the forest seemed to arise from its den, and utter its wild nocturnal cry. Snorting, snarling, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... beside him. His eyes, half-startled, half-fierce, fixed themselves on me; his hand went toward his pocket in a most significant way. In a minute he would be shooting me, I reflected grimly. And upstairs the very stillness of Van Blarcom shrieked suspicion; he could not have helped hearing the clatter that ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... would not be ignorant of their whereabouts. But the bullocks fed on undisturbed. No one came to remove them; only their owner stood regarding them for a while. Darkness fell, and the call of an owl that hooted eerily, or the distant wail of a curlew, alone broke the stillness. Then up came Dicky's best friend, a moon but little past the full. Everything was in his favour, not a hitch of any kind occurred; quietly and without any fuss the great fat beasts began to make their slow way west across the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the glimmer of the fire showed plainly among the trees. Intense quiet prevailed; only the murmur of the water flowing past, and occasionally the raised voice of one of the men about the fire, broke the stillness. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... my attention. I then observed that the passage ended in a kind of open grotto, where I could dimly discern the little figures of several children, who, separated from their nurses in the sudden onset of the storm, had taken refuge there. As the gloom deepened they became silent again, until the stillness was broken by a familiar voice. There was no mistaking it.—It was Sarah Walker's. But it was not lifted in lamentation, it was raised only as if resuming a ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... The orchestra ceased its tuning. The lights were lowered. Silence and stillness enwrapped the auditorium. And the quivering violins sighed out the first chords of the "Lohengrin" overture. For me, then, there existed nothing save the voluptuous music, to which I abandoned myself as to the fascination of a dream. But not for long. Just as the curtain ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... form or mode, but contained within itself the most entrancing delight. His heart was athirst and yet satisfied. It was a breaking forth of the sweetness of eternal life, felt as present in the stillness of contemplation. Whether he was in the body or out of the body, he knew not." It lasted about an hour and a half; but gleams of its light continued to visit him at intervals for ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... he began, suddenly, breaking the stillness, "let's you and I get out of this, where it is warmer. Come and take a walk down on the avenue; the sun will shine yet for half an hour, and it ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... lessen this sense of loneliness. I knew that these were the regiments which I was destined to command, travelling to the camp where I must meet them. But in such silence did they move that no sound came from them even in the deathly stillness of the perfect night, so that almost I was tempted to believe them to be the shadow-ghosts of ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... England during this month of December, if I may judge from my own neighbourhood—on the western borders of Berks—where, at least three times in the week, I hear their merry peals break gladsomely upon the dark stillness of these cold evenings, from many a steeple around. In the Roman States and the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, the "pifferari" go about playing on a kind of rough hautboy and bag-pipes, before the pictures of the Madonna, hung up at the corners ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various
... impulse is the best for turning the key and obtaining safe conclusions,—no. I did not write before because I always do shrink from touching my own griefs, one feels at first so sore that nothing but stillness is borne. It is only after, when one is better, that one can express one's self at all. This is so with me, at least, though perhaps it ought not to be ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... had come out that minute without a bean and gone home with me, I'd been so relieved I'd never have tried again. But he didn't come. Nothing happened. Nights and nights and nights went by, and the stillness began to sound again. My throat went choking mad. I began to shiver, and I reached for the rug the ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... well call for a chapter to itself were it not that broad farce is much the same whoever the writer may be. But My Sunday at Home is really less important as farce than as evidence of Mr Kipling's enthusiasm for the stillness and ancientry of the English wayside. The pages of this story distil and drip with peace. Moreover, the story is neighboured with two others, all beckoning Mr Kipling home to Burwash in Sussex. There is the Brushwood Boy, who after ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... from the effects of a violent disease, from which it was feared he could not recover.[10] His house, which on all occasions was the abode of hospitality, and on Commencement Day especially so, (being the great College anniversary,) was now a house of stillness, anxiety, and watching. For seventeen successive years it had been thronged on this anniversary from morn till night, by welcome visitors, cheerfully greeted and cared for, and now it was like a house of mourning ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... and loudly clapped his hands, which produced a curious effect—a short, sharp little shriek of terror from the busy multitude, followed by absolute stillness, every rat frozen to stone, which lasted for a second or two; then a swift scuttling away in all directions, vanishing with a rustling sound through the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... is busy throwing out its volumes of water, the appearance is very peculiar. Little notice is given of an eruption, which takes place suddenly, although at stated intervals. All at once the watcher is rewarded for his patience by having the stillness changed into activity of the most boisterous character. The water is hurled upwards in a mass of frothing, boiling and foaming crystals. The actual height varies, but frequently goes as far as thirty feet. In a moment the wall of water becomes compact, oblong and ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... like inhaling oxygen gas. Every appearance of drowsiness deserted the people of both vessels, and every one was instantly busy in making sail. Raoul had a proof into what dangerous proximity to the frigate he had got by the sound of the calls on board her, and the stillness of the sea was yet so great that the creaking of her fore-yard was actually audible to him as the English rounded in their braces briskly while ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sister long before the dreaded moment of hearing their mother's bell. They need not have been fearful of the immediate effect; Mrs. Fulmort's perceptions were tardy, and the endeavours at preparation were misunderstood, till it was needful to be explicit. A long stillness followed, broken at last by Phoebe's question, whether she would not see Robert. 'Not till I am up, my dear,' she answered, in an injured voice; 'do, pray, see whether Boodle is coming with my ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unspoken had come up, and there was a crisis—neither could have said how long it lasted—during which they were reduced, for all interchange, to looking at each other on quite an inordinate scale. They might at this moment, in their positively portentous stillness, have been keeping it up for a wager, sitting for their photograph or ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... as in London and Manchester. Photographs have extended their renown and they are so familiar to-day that there is no need to describe them. Another masterpiece dealing with the subject of Death is the 'Sic transit', where the shrouded figure of the dead warrior is impressive in its solemnity and stillness. 'Dawn' and 'Hope' show what different notes Watts could strike in his treatment of the female form. At the other extreme is 'Mammon', the sordid power which preys on life and crushes his victims with the weight of his relentless hand. The power of conscience is shown ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... ship, the bustling of the sailors as they pursue their several avocations, the call of the boatswain, the noise of the carpenters' hammer that cannot be excluded from the cabin, contrasts vividly with the calm brought by the solemn stillness of the Sabbath,—its influence is visible on all. No tar-bucket is seen on deck, no paint-pot stands in the way, the sailor intermits his weekly task of mending the sails, and the ropes that are ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... Beppo found himself in a dark antechamber for him to be instantly scrupulous in his footing and breathing. As he touched the curtain, a door opened on the other side of the interior, and a tender gabble of fresh feminine voices broke the stillness and ran on like a brook coming from leaps to a level, and again leaping and making noise of joy. The Duchess of Graatli had clasped the Signora Laura's two hands and drawn her to an ottoman, and between kissings and warmer claspings, was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with a long and pained look. Then, with a deep sigh, she took up the bits of the broken cue and went into her little porcelain cabinet, in order to gain rest and self- command in solitude and stillness. ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... his voice was heard in conversation with that of another man; then the lifting up of the sluices broke the stillness, and the creaking of the lock-gate as it opened. After that Rowles came in ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... Marriott, 'just a little. I went down to the fags' room, and when I opened the door I noticed a certain weird stillness in the atmosphere. There is usually a row going on that you could cut with a knife. I looked about. The room was apparently empty. Then I observed a quaint object on the horizon. Do you know one ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between the elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb; with its ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpse-like aspect and ghost-like stillness of the flitting wearer. Just as the male shape approached the female, the dark Shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment wrapped in darkness. When the pale light returned, the two phantoms were ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... A perfect stillness had hung over the crowd during this scene; but when it became known that Ethel was to go off unscathed a murmur broke out from the elder females, disappointed in their work of vengeance. But the Stag waved his hand peremptorily, and the crowd scattered silently to their huts, to talk ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... The stillness and the night seemed thinking to each other. George had little imagination, but what he had woke in him now as he rode slowly along. Step by step the old man seemed following him, on silent church-yard feet, through the eerie whiteness of the night. There was ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... the forest lay in heights and hollows; above rose the white mountains; and higher yet, the moon rode in a fair sky. There was no breath of air; nowhere a twig creaked; and the sounds of our own camp were hushed and swallowed up in the surrounding stillness. Now that the sun and the wind were both gone down, it appeared almost warm, like a night of July: a singular illusion of the sense, when earth, air, and water were strained to bursting with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and began to pace up and down the shadowed room, while the little Jacqueline, sitting back upon her heels in a stillness almost Oriental, watched, evolving some ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the housekeeper survey her face, her figure, and her dress, with that reluctant interest, that distrustful curiosity, which women feel in observing each other. As she walked on beyond the house, the sharp voice of Noel Vanstone reached her through the evening stillness. "A fine girl, Lecount," she heard him say. "You know I am a judge of that sort of thing—a ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... between them for several minutes. It was the fashion of these friends to wait for the spirit to move them to converse, and not unfrequently a silence longer than that which was in heaven came between their sentences; but to-night there was thunder in their spiritual atmosphere, and the stillness was oppressive. Mrs. Smiley beat ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... majestic glory, Miss Janet's favorite mountains, yet were the peaks alone distinctly visible; the twilight only strong enough to disclose the mass of heavy fog that enveloped them. The stars had nearly all disappeared, those that lingered were sadly paling away. How solemn was the stillness! She thought of the words of Jacob, "Surely God is here!"—the clouds were flying swiftly beneath the arch of Heaven, as if from God's presence. Many thoughts were suggested to her by the grandeur of the scene, for my reader must remember, that an ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... of St. Lawrence, Cartier had preceded Champlain by a period of more than sixty years. During this long, dreary half-century the stillness of the primeval forest had not been disturbed by the woodman's axe. When Champlain's eyes fell upon it, it was still the same wild, unfrequented, unredeemed region that it had been to its first discoverer. The rivers, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... was breathless silence. Once again the terrible howling seemed to circle the hut, but it grew less distinct as it went across the marsh and up the mountains on the other side of the valley. Then came an ominous stillness. Presently some man, who couldn't hold in any longer, said that the ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... battle at a distance of about 2,000 yards from the enemy's line, the stillness of what one sees is in marked contrast to the turmoil of shells passing overhead. The only movement is the cloud of smoke and earth that marks the burst of a shell. Here and there long white lines are visible, when a trench has brought ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... other, and for some time not a sound had broken the stillness. Naught save the ticking of the clock, and that did not startle them, but, rather, by its monotonous tune, seemed like a friend that sought ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... stacks, here and there, were flaming like volcanoes in the midst of the plain, stripped bare in the evening stillness. Around the biggest of them there were about three hundred persons, perhaps; and under the command of M. Foureau, the mayor, in a tricoloured scarf, youngsters, with poles and crooks, were dragging down the straw from the top in order to save ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... rocks were parti-coloured with lichens; the river was bright, flowing and rippling past; the "Pipe of Peace" had pushed off and sped on, and in another minute or two was turning the point, and then—out of sight. Stillness seemed to fill the woods and the air as the beat of her paddles was lost. I breathed stillness. New York was fifty miles away, physically ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... went out and dropped into the water. He said nothing. Neither did Peter. The man in the boat did not stir. So went by a second of profound stillness. Then a ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... hand warningly to Sir George, and uttered the one word, "Father." Her voice sounded like the clear, low ring of steel as I have heard it in the stillness of sunrise during a duel to the death. Madge gently placed her hand in Dorothy's, but the ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... sides their windows showed a waste of torn and twisted rock. Volcanic mountains towered to the heights, their sides streaked with masses of lava, frozen to stillness these countless years from its molten state. The rising sun, its movement imperceptible, cast long slanting rays between the peaks. It lighted a ghostly world, white with thick hoar-frost of solid carbon dioxide. A silent world, locked in the stillness of cold near the absolute zero. Not a breath ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... little one, abashed, at once became very quiet, and relapsed into gloomy stillness, with his lustreless eyes fixed on his potatoes, which, however, he did ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... me open shoji quick. Old priest make bell sing. Lovely star hangs its light over mountain. All things have great stillness. Not even leaf tremble in white moonlight. Strange feel hold me. Then I know Tke Chan have gone to play ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay
... the balcony, and reentered his couch, where he lay feigning sleep. In the nursery was a terrific stillness. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... omnipotent is the silence of the night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible. From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half sound, a half whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of the earth and all created things in ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... such viewpoints as this. In the luminous stillness of a perfect morning of the Italian summer I could look north, and east, and west, upon more than a third of the battle line, that goes snaking among the mountains from near the Swiss frontier to the Adriatic. And what a length of line it is! In England ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... and a half ago it had been a treat to her to walk in that market-place, hanging on her father's arm, to stand in the sombre stillness of that solemn cathedral, while the organ rolled its magnificent music along the dusky aisles. They two had chaffered for fruit at those stalls, laughing gaily with the good-tempered countrywomen. They had strolled on the beach and amused themselves economically, from the outside, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... though not yet severely cold, was crisp with the purity of frost and sweet with the exquisite scent of flowering loquats. The only sounds breaking its stillness were the trains passing across the long viaduct approaching the bridge, and the rumble of the vehicles as they ground their homeward way along the stony road, their lights flashing as they passed, and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... their holy service, is not without his solace and enjoyment when, to the eyes of others, he seems the most lonely and miserable. He breathes an atmosphere which the multitude know not of; "a serene heaven which they cannot discern rests over him, glorious in its purity and stillness." Nor is he altogether without kindly human sympathies. All generous and earnest hearts which are brought in contact with his own beat evenly with it. All that is good, and truthful, and lovely in man, whenever and wherever it truly recognizes him, must sooner or later acknowledge his claim ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... unconsecrated. Then the girl had gone, and he had quietly shut the door and lived his life outside. But the sealed place was there, and the fire burned before the old picture. Why should he, for Dick Fielding, for any one, let the light of day upon that stillness? The one thing in life that was his own, and all these years he had kept it sacred—why should he? Fiercely, with the old animal jealousy of ownership, he guarded for himself that memory—what was there on earth that could make him share it? And in answer there rose before ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... wood—occasionally pausing to listen. Hearing nothing, he stamped his foot, doubtless exclaiming: 'What the deuce has happened to him down there!' He had made about thirty turns (I have counted them), when a sound broke the stillness—the two women were coming." ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... and delightful. The arch of the Rialto just gleamed through the deepening twilight; long lines of palaces, at first partially illuminated, faded away at length into gloomy and formless masses of architecture; the gondolas glided to and fro, their glancing lights reflected on the water. There was a stillness all around me, solemn and strange in the heart of a great city. No rattling carriages shook the streets, no trampling of horses echoed along the pavement: the silence was broken only by the melancholy cry of the gondoliers, and the dash of their oars; by the low murmur of human voices, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... stern to be melted and turned aside by a melody. And, sir, one of the most sacred duties that can fall to the trust of a man is to see that the family name, which is to survive after he has folded his hands in eternal stillness—pardon my devious methods, for I assure you that my windings proceed from a kindness of heart—I say that my duty now is to those who may bear my name in the future. I trust that I am now sufficiently started ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... Cymru, far from the city's din, Your peace no tumult troubles, no discord enters in; No sound breaks on your stillness but merry children's cry, Or murmur of the rustling leaves ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... content with all the world. Lucia, leaning back with her crochet lying on her lap, and her eyes half hidden by their black lashes, had yielded herself up entirely to the indolent enjoyment of perfect stillness, forgetting even to be conscious of the pair of handsome blue eyes which rested on her, taking in luxuriously the charm ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the iron gate, the music of the stream that ran through the glen rose refreshingly through the August stillness. She wished Nick were with ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... counted as part of the return itself, and not after it. And he might, if his brain were over-fatigued, drop down later in the night in his pajamas and dressing-gown when the house was quiet, and compose his mind with a brandy and water, or something suitable to the stillness of the hour. But this was not really a drink. Mr. Rasselyer-Brown called it a nip; and of course any man may need a nip at a time when he would ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... emerged from the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom it cut in close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of sand, smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to breathe their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through the stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone bridge, but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank showed where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over the table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's chief historian, the graveyard. Beneath ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... off and withered,—a character no one would have guessed in him, an inherent refinement that was almost womanly; and he had all a woman's abnegation of self. He took the cares lavished on him so meekly. As the features of the old man return in the stillness of death to the aspect of youth,—the lines effaced, the wrinkles gone,—so, in seeing Burley now, you saw what he had been in his spring of promise. But he himself saw only what he had failed to be,—powers ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the pavement appeared to be composed of squares of white marble or alabaster, united by richly coloured bands of brilliant red; its only roof was the canopy of heaven; its greatest ornament and charm the stillness which reigned around. To the left, at some distance, was a beautiful little white marble church, with a seat on the top occupied by the Blessed Virgin holding her Divine Infant. From the eminence on which ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community" |
