"Dumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and bridle from his mount. Rapidly as he worked, he had only just removed the bridle when the pony sank to its knees, struggled for a moment to rise, then sank slowly to the ground, where it lay looking up at its master with dumb appealing eyes. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... cabinets showing the method of collecting vital statistics of the department of the State of Michigan and cabinets exhibiting the work of the School for the Feeble-Minded, of Kalamazoo, and a cabinet of the School for the Deaf and Dumb, of Flint. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... into these inquiries, but next moment she saved the consistency of her conduct by resuming her dusting, while the old woman sat scared and dumb under her dingy white cap and lustreless ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... incident with the captive packers, who sat near her lord, armed with a willow wand, watchful of intruding wasps, sand-flies, and even the more ostentatious advances of a rotund and clerical-looking humble-bee, with his monotonous homily. Content, dumb, submissive, vacant, at such times, Wachita, debarred her husband's confidences through the native customs and his own indifferent taciturnity, satisfied herself by gazing at him with the wondering but ineffectual sympathy of a faithful dog. Unfortunately for Elijah her purely ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... essayed to speak she found that she was dumb. She could not get her voice to give her the assistance of a single word. She did not cry, but there was a motion as of sobbing in her throat which impeded all utterance. She was as happy as earth,—as heaven could make her; but ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... an odd criss-cross pattern. "To-day's her seventh birthday, an' I showed her how to make the cruachan whistle, an' when I'd finished she blew on it a loud note that wud ha' wakened the sidhe for miles around in Donegal. An' then she looked at me as dumb as a fish, her big gray eyes blank as a plowed field wid nothin' sown in it. She niver has a word to show that she hears me, even, when I tell o' the gentle people." He added in a whisper to himself, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... song will come; If thought fades, souls will not be dumb; If sound ceases, Silence our song; If Life ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... faced Spurlock, the granite was cracked and rived; never had Spurlock seen such dumb agony in human eyes. "What shall I say? Shall I tell you, or shall I leave you in the dark—as I must always leave her? What shall I say except that I am accursed of men? Yes; I have loved something—her mother. Not wisely but too well. I loved her beyond anything in heaven or on earth—to ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... her eyes fixed on him and wondered what they expressed. Did they warn him, did they plead, or did they confess to a sense of provocation? For an instant his head swam; he was sure it would make all things clear to stride forward and fold her in his arms. But a moment later he was still dumb there before her; he hadn't moved; he knew she had spoken, ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... became professor of literature at Gandia and finally royal librarian at Naples. He died at Rome on the 12th of January 1817. He is the author of many miscellaneous treatises on science, music, the art of teaching the deaf and dumb, &c. But his chief work, the labour of fully twenty years, is entitled Dell' origine, progressi, e stato attuale d' ogni Letteratura (7 vols., Parma, 1782-1799). A Spanish translation by his brother Carlos appeared at Madrid between 1784 and 1806, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... today are those who tomorrow will shape the destiny of our land, and we cannot afford to neglect them. The Legislature of Colorado has recommended that the National Government provide some general measure for the protection from abuse of children and dumb animals throughout the United States. I lay the matter before you for what I trust will ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... listened to it like a razor,—"Do not despair! And who or what shall give me comfort when my son is gone? I have wept till my eyes are dry,—suffered till my heart is broken,—prayed till the voice of prayer is dumb,—and all of no avail. He will be hanged—hanged—hanged. Ha! ha! What have I left but despair and madness? Promise me one thing, Mr. Wood," she continued, with a sudden change of tone, and convulsively clutching the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... all her former interest in so doing things for herself as to save interference; and when Mrs. Ledwich and Mrs. Pugh walked in, overflowing with suggestions, she let them have their way, and toiled under them with the sensation of being like 'dumb driven cattle.' If Leonard were to be an exile, what mattered it to her who ruled, or what appearance ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... left lonely—unloved, and perhaps untended—in charge of the enemy. One dares not think of the agonies of those sad souls—the nation's invalids—bereft of kindly words and kindred smiles; one cannot linger without a sense of emasculating weakness on the sad side-picture of battle that, in its dumb wretchedness, seems so much more paralysing than the active horror of facing shot and shell in company with glorious comrades in arms. Let us hope there was some one to whisper to them, to persuade them that all was for the best; that the safety of their sick selves and their sound mates depended ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... for a moment and wrung them in his, then, with a look of dumb agony in his blue eyes, turned his back upon her and continued his way down the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... bird movements that might well give us the dates, day by day. To me the first warning of the passing of summer comes in the tin-trumpet notes of the blue jays. While the nesting season is on the blue jay is as dumb as an oyster. The woods may be full of him and his tribe, but never an old bird says a word. After the young can fly you may hear them if you slip quietly along in the pine woods. You have to be pretty near though, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... acclimatized, have grown, and have been bearing nuts in Ontario. When such success has been achieved, it seems that there in Canada all the enterprise is forgotten. Of course, the Carpathian walnuts could not advertise themselves—they are "dumb critters." ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... suffer in body over the weary months of the strike, he infused a spirit into them they had not known before. He made the world ring with the shame of Dublin's slums and he did much to make men of those who were little better than dumb-driven animals. He united the Capitalists of Ireland against him in a powerful organisation, and though they broke his strike they did not break the spirit that was behind it. Some men will say the Rebellion of Easter Week had its beginnings in the Dublin Strike of 1913; others ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... that time and midnight each one must turn cake once. When clock strikes twelve future wife or husband of one who is to be married first will enter and lay hand on cake marked with name. Throughout whole proceeding not a word is spoken. Hence the name "dumb cake." (If supper is served before 11:30, "Dumb Cake" should be reserved for ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... bear the appearance of gossip and prying, and would not expose his sister; so he pieced it out with his own words, and made it sound far less discreditable to her. It was quite enough for Mr. Edmonstone; the accuracy of the details seemed to strike him dumb; and there was a long silence, which he broke by saying, with a ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to some distant place in which they had heard—falsely perhaps—that the earth was more generous than in the country they had left. Some would die by the way, all would suffer hunger and thirst and the scorching mid-day sun, but their sufferings would be dumb. To me they seemed to typify the very soul of Russia, unexpressive, inactive from despair, unheeded by the little set of Westernizers who make up all the parties of progress or reaction. Russia is so vast that the articulate few are lost in it as man ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... was making this speech his wife had, by dumb show, ordered the waitress to take something down-stairs, in order that there might be no listener to Hilbrough's autobiographical ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Woman! The reigning Czarina, old CATIN herself, is silently the Olympian Jove to Catharine, who reveres her very much. Though articulately stupid as ever, in this Book of Catharine's, she comes out with a dumb weight, of silence, of obstinacy, of intricate abrupt rigor, which—who knows but it may savor of dumb unconscious wisdom in the fat old blockhead? The Book says little of her, and in the way of criticism, of praise or of blame, nothing whatever; but one gains ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... had inherited from her father a strong nature. Her intuitions had become womanly and keen, and Merwyn's dumb agony affected her more deeply than a torrent of impetuous words or any outward evidence of distress. She went back to her chair and shed bitter tears; she scarcely knew why, until her father's voice aroused her by saying, "Why, Marian ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Bill did not appear to comprehend the precise drift of the remark, and his only reply to the wordy fix into which the learned agent had drawn him was made in the dumb-show of scratching with his one disengaged hand (the other being employed in holding his hat) his uncombed head—an operation that created much laughter, which was not damped by the Agent's putting, with a serious face, a concluding question or remark to him to the effect that he presumed ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... in the slang or cant of his own craft. Knowledge is not only at one entrance, but at every entrance quite shut out, and even literature itself grows perilous, so that to be safe they must all be dumb. ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... and your windows, And if you are deaf, dumb, or blind, You may know I am always quite ready, Your duds or your ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... think I was necessary in the house. Every person (1 had almost said every creature, for all the dumb beasts seemed to know and love Phillis) about the place went grieving and sad, as though a cloud was over the sun. They did their work, each striving to steer clear of the temptation to eye-service, in fulfilment of the trust reposed ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the bedside, dumb with grief. Jose wrung his hands in despair. The day drew slowly to a close. The Alcalde had dispatched Juan down to the river to signal any steamer that he should meet, if perchance he might purchase a few grains ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... stand it to hear you speak, it are so sweet!" exclaimed Mother Mayberry in positive rapture and again the tears filled her eyes, while her face crinkled up into a dimpled smile. "Don't say nothing where the mocking-birds will hear you, please, 'cause they'll begin to hatch out a dumb race from plumb discouragement. Come out on the porch where it ain't so hot, but I'm a-holding on to you to keep you from flying up into one of the trees. I'm a-going to set about building a cage ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... it on his arm to his own door, where he delivered it to a servant, with injunctions to feed and comfort the starveling. From which facts it may be seen that Mr. Caspar Brooke, in spite of all his faults, was a lover of dumb animals, and of children, and must therefore have possessed a certain amount of kindliness ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... through the crowd, I saw Jacob and the orange-woman— the orange-woman, with broad expanded face of joy, stretched up her arms, and shouted loud, that all the mob might hear. Jacob, little accustomed to sympathy, and in the habit of repressing his emotions, stood as one unmoved or dumb, till his eyes met mine, and then suddenly joy spread over his features and flashed from his dark eyes—that was a face of delight I never can forget; but I could not stay: I hastened to be the first to tell Berenice of her father's safety, and of the proof which all the world had had of the falsehood ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... a venerable commonplace. The historic husband thought that the fact of his spouse's likeness not being a 'speaking' one was its principal merit. And Lessing makes a man excuse himself for marrying a deaf woman on the ground that she was also dumb. We all remember Hood's ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the floor, all huddled up in a corner, moanin' and moanin', like a dumb beast that has a death wound. I lifted her up, and tried to soothe and quiet her,—she was tremblin' all over,—but 't was hard work. Not a word could I get out of her but "Devil! Devil!" and then "Solomon!" over and over again. I brought the Bible, and read her about the Temple, and the ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... curtains, Maisie's couch, covered with flowers that smiled at her, gay on the white ground. She thought of the other house, of the curtains that had shut out the light from her and Jerrold, of the couch where she had lain in his arms. Each object had a dumb but poignant life ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... but is delighted when one falls. So far indeed, the only enthusiasm a native has shown, has been while hunting after a successful shot. The paddlers at once re-enact the scene, put imaginary guns to their shoulders give a loud bang and then describe circles with their hands to give a dumb show of the bird falling, laughing and shouting all the time. They are really just like young children and are easily pleased by trifles. After walking some distance the sergeant becomes wildly excited and ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... stepped into the room and taken off his hat, when Mrs. Miller came from the inner chamber with a lamp in her hand. How she started! With her pale face grown suddenly paler, and her hand on her bosom, she could only exclaim: "Why, it's Dr. Renton!" and stand, still and dumb, gazing with a frightened look at his face, whiter than her own. Whereupon Mrs. Flanagan came bolting out again, with wild eyes and a sort of stupefied horror in her good, coarse, Irish features; and then, with some uncouth ejaculation, ran back, ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... while to him to move hand or lips for any cause. Some French writer has called such a condition of desiccation of the heart's interior. Maryan found that definition quite appropriate. When he sat motionless, deaf and dumb, or walked like an automaton moved by springs, he felt exactly as if the interior of ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... principle carries with it an appearance of negation and the symptoms of death; for is not life the struggle of two forces? Here in this Northern nature nothing lived. One sole power—the unproductive power of ice—reigned unchallenged. The roar of the open sea no longer reached the deaf, dumb inlet, where during one short season of the year Nature made haste to produce the slender harvests necessary for the food of the patient people. A few tall pine-trees lifted their black pyramids garlanded with snow, and the form of their long branches and depending ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... marching armies 'woke Amid the branches of the soldier oak, And tempests ceased their warring cry, and dumb The lashing storms that muttered, overcome, Choked by the heralding of battle smoke, When these gnarled branches ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... to be sure the parlor was rather small if you wanted to have company; but then, who would ever want to give a party? and besides, the pump in the kitchen was a compensation for anything. How lightly the dumb waiter ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... looking restless and anxious, he sent her to the kitchen to get her dinner with Joseph; and with the master of the house, grim and saturnine, and Hareton absolutely dumb, I made a cheerless ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... these pages and he is lost in bewilderment, impoverished in thought, dumb for words, paralyzed for expressions, to co-ordinate the evidence with any man measure of what the ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... go ashore, Gertrude," he repeated. "We have already left Erith. * * * Gerty, Gerty," he continued, for she was struck dumb with a sudden terror, "don't you understand now? I have stolen you away from yourself. There was but the one thing left: the one way of saving you. And you will forgive me, Gerty, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Literally dumb with terror, so weak that he could not rise, Pond saw this strange cavalcade moving up toward the little lake, and looked to the spot where the Texan had lain down to see if he had ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, ling'ring ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the Queen, "not only Spain, but the King and me, so as to attach herself to the King, her husband, alone." Upon this I tried not to remain dumb, and to say what was appropriate. Their Majesties dismissed me with much goodness, and I was again encircled by the crowd ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... bars, each bar being about twenty pounds in weight; the stacks, of varying height, being arranged in tiers of three running lengthwise along the room, with two narrow longitudinal passages between them. Escombe, after staring in dumb amazement at this enormous accumulation of dull white metal, drew from his pocket a small memorandum book and pencil which he had found in one of the pockets of his old clothes, and, with the instinct of the engineer rising for ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... such miserable-looking specimens of humanity. One was demented to such an extent that it was impossible to get out of him more than a few disconnected groans. He spent most of his time crouched like an animal, and hardly seemed conscious of what took place round him. Another was a deaf and dumb cretin; a third possessed a monstrous hare-lip and a deformed jaw; while two women, dried up and skinny, and a child were badly affected by goitre. For a single family that seemed a ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... That is not a mere form of words, but the deepest and most solemn affirmation that human lips can make. To be indifferent to God is to be indifferent to the greatest of all realities, that upon which the aspiration of humanity rests for its uprising passion of desire. No institution that is dumb concerning the meaning of life and the character of the universe, can last. It is a house built upon the sand, doomed to fall when the winds blow and floods beat upon it, lacking a sure foundation. No human fraternity ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... of mind: and on the map I showed him all the old trails of the fur traders, explorers and adventurers, French and English, who had discovered our America long ago; whereat their eyes kindled and their tongues went dumb. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... and forlorn, I had renounced what man desires, I'd thought some poet might be born To string my lute with silver wires; At least in brighter days to come Such men as I would not lie dumb. ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... even more strange that while, in my experience, Italian Spirits neither understand nor speak Italian, and French Spirits can neither comprehend nor talk French, and German Spirits remain invincibly dumb in German, it is reserved to Indian 'braves' to be glibly and fluently voluble in the explosive gutturals of their own ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... close cabal marked how the Navy eats And thought all lost that goes not to the cheats; So therefore secretly for peace decrees, Yet for a War the Parliament would squeeze, And fix to the revenue such a sum Should Goodricke silence and make Paston dumb. ... Meantime through all the yards their orders were To lay the ships up, cease the keels begun. The timber rots, the useless axe does rust, The unpractised saw lies buried in the dust, The busy hammer ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... an aviation mechanic of any sort must bear in mind is that he must do his work with a conscience. True, he is handling mute metal engines, or dumb wires and struts—but in his work he holds the life of the pilot in his hand. It is not too much to say that hundreds of pilots' lives have been saved by the conscientious work of skilled mechanics who realized the danger ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... at her immovable face, with its fallen eyes, and then went out of the room. He never quarrelled with his mother, because his anger, like her own, was dumb, and silenced him as it mounted. Her misgivings had stung him deeply, and at the bottom of his indolence and indifference was a fiery pride, not easily kindled, but unquenchable. He flung the harness upon his old unkempt horse, and tackled him to the mud-encrusted buggy, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Batavius, and the late hour at which she went, might account for the omission, especially as Lysbet remembered that Joanna's servant had been sick, and might be unfit to come. She was determined to excuse Katherine, and she refused to acknowledge the dumb doubt and fear that crouched ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... land and all that is therein, the city and them that dwell therein; and the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land shall howl... for the Lord will spoil the Philistines, the remnant of the Isle of Caphtor. Baldness is come upon Gaza; Ascalon is dumb with terror, and you, all that are left of the giants, how long will ye tear your faces in your mourning?"* Ascalon was sacked and then Gaza,** and Necho at length was able to re-enter his domains, doubtless by the bridge of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Eloise, she was like some one made dumb by a thunderbolt. Her garden had become a desert. Ice had fallen in her summer. Death was too large a fact for her to comprehend. She had seen the Medusa's head in its terror, but not in its loveliness, and been stricken to stone. At length in the heart of that stone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... and all high places became crowded with thousands and tens of thousands of heads, each of them staring towards that advancing dust. In silence they stared as though their multitudes were stricken dumb, till presently, from far below out of the maze of winding streets, floated the wail of a ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... and we are yet dying," he muttered as he swayed in the saddle. "We, the Yaqui, are yet dumb as our fathers bade. But it is the end, senor, and the red gold of ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... what was happening at the Boston end of the wire while all this dumb show was being enacted in the Wilmington court-house. My directors and officials were lined up against the walls of the directors' room in the Boston Gas Light Company's office like so many members of young John D. Rockefeller's Sunday-school class, inasmuch ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... our human forms, it were best you did not go back. Beyond the trees is the house of a lone woman, and there you may live until your task is finished." The seven wild geese then flew back to the marsh, and Sheen went to the house beyond the trees. The Spae-Woman lived there. She took Sheen to be a dumb girl, and she gave her food and shelter for the services she did—bringing water from the well in the daytime and grinding corn at the quern at dusk. She had the rest of the day and night for her own task. She gathered the bog-down between noon and sunset and spun ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... and I do not understand the deaf and dumb alphabet. I'm sorry, but you'll have to go to some one else. I'm very unfortunate. I have to mend this dress and I ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... for fear of trust, forget to say The perfect ceremony of love's rite, And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might. O, let my looks be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast; Who plead for love, and look for recompense, More than that tongue that more hath more express'd. O, learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love's ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... set out for a scene of contest (B. C. 480), perilous and precarious, and no longer on the site of their beloved and father-land. Their grief was heightened by the necessity of leaving many behind, whose extreme age rendered them yet more venerable, while it incapacitated their removal. Even the dumb animals excited all the fond domestic associations, running to the strand, and expressing by their cries their regret for the hands that fed them: one of them, a dog, that belonged to Xanthippus, father of Pericles, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... books purporting to be a history of my life states with the utmost soberness that, as a boy, I was cruel to dumb animals and to my schoolmates, and, as for my teachers, to them I was a continual trouble and annoyance. A hundred of my friends and schoolmates will bear me out in the statement that, far from being cruel ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... more woe Than words, howe'er so witty; The beggar that is dumb, you know, Deserves ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... any rate, that is the bargain. You may accept or refuse. You do not know where I stand, and I do. You must see and be blind, feel and be dumb, hear and make no answer, unless I speak—if you are to ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... arm. The magnificence of the Shelbourne with its uniformed porters overpowered Gabrielle, and when she reached the Halbertons' private room, she, who had often been reproved for talking the heads off Biddy and Mr. Considine, was dumb. Jocelyn, however, pouring gin and bitters on his Pommery, did talking enough for both of them. He was in excellent form. His talk flowed steadily and Gabrielle, drifting as it were, into an eddy, was left at liberty to examine her ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... parts it thinks and feels as a unit. And in this large, inclusive sense of things lies a wiser wisdom than the mere sum of all that it knows. On that dismal morning this great brute force, groping at the bottom of a white ocean of fog among trees that seemed as sea weeds, had a dumb consciousness that all was not well; that a day's manoeuvring had resulted in a faulty disposition of its parts, a blind diffusion of its strength. The men felt insecure and talked among themselves of such tactical errors as with their meager military vocabulary they were able to name. Field ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... Dumb-bell drill was going off with great snap. It was followed by work with the Indian clubs. Then, after a brief rest, the entire squad took to the track in the gallery. For ten minutes the High School young men jogged around the track. Any fellow in the ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... fingers, and put a kiss on each, making the Sign of the Cross on the still, childish breast, and murmuring a little prayer. She would have screamed to avert the defiling, heathen thing from him, but the memory of the sister-embrace and the sister-look held her dumb. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... they stood looked upon the hall below, at the end of which was Philip's study. Suddenly its door burst open, and Philip himself passed through it, grasping a candlestick in one hand and some parchments in the other. His features were dreadful to see, resembling those of a dumb thing in torture; his eyes protruded, his livid lips moved, but no sound came from them. He staggered across the hall with terror ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... which was immediately before the entrance of the roast-beef, he had given an intimation that he had brought some news with him, and was beginning to tell, that he came that moment from Mr Allworthy's, when the sight of the roast-beef struck him dumb, permitting him only to say grace, and to declare he must pay his respect to the baronet, for so he ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... standing that will follow. How so? Well, you see, it's because the parents of elite children will run over for a little visit in order to find out why the children do not come home. Then again, we are kind to dumb animals when raising chinquapins. Squirrels and white-footed mice, crows and blue jays are full of enthusiasm for the nuts, and they will assume the responsibility of gathering the crop if the matter is left ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... him for a while. Who were the divers and what were they after? Orvil played dumb. He said he knew nothing about divers and of course he had seen bubbles. He always saw bubbles. Marsh gas was rising all the time. He couldn't understand what ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... "miracle cures" occur. All founders of religions have based part of their claim on the belief of others in their healing power. Nothing is so spectacular as when the hysterical blind see, the hysterical dumb talk, the hysterical cripple throws away his crutches and walks. In every age and in every country, in every faith, there have been the equivalents of Lourdes ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... long, wholesome, air-filling Anglo-Saxon breath, from the Tennessee Valley to the Gulf. There was a quickening of pulses that had faltered, and heart-beats that had fluttered, dumb and discouraged, now rattled like kettle-drums, to the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold, With a ton of plate in the middle hold, And the cabins riot of stuff untold. And they lay there That had took the plum, With sightless glare And their lips struck dumb, While we shared all by the rule of thumb— Yo-ho-ho ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... her, "Who art thou? What dost thou upon that tree?" But she did not answer; and then he questioned her in all the languages that he knew, but she remained dumb to all, as a fish. Since, however, she was so beautiful, the King's heart was touched, and he conceived for her a strong affection. Then he put around her his cloak, and, placing her before him on his horse, took her to his castle. ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... dignity, and am dumb," said Henri laughing. "Go on, Cathelineau, and if the men you name, say but one word, one syllable against your choice—I'll ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... few hours in this Castle, and hast been for the whole space so drunk, Lambourne, that thou art deaf, dumb, and blind. But we should hear less of your bragging were you to pass a night with us at full moon; for then the ghost is busiest, and more especially when a rattling wind sets in from the north-west, with some sprinkling of rain, and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... support themselves by the profession of arms. That Sraddha which is censurable, consumeth the performer thereof like fire consuming fuel. If they that are to be employed in Sraddhas happen to be dumb, blind, or deaf, care should be taken to employ them along with Brahmanas conversant with the Vedas. O Yudhishthira, listen now unto whom thou shouldst give. He that knoweth all the Vedas should give only to that able Brahmana who is competent to rescue both the giver and himself, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... church, and should be disregarded even when not denied. It was not only inevitable; it was a Christian duty distinctly enjoined by apostolic authority.[372:1] The five years of war, during which Christians of various lands and creeds intermingled as never before, and the Sunday laws were dumb "inter arma" not only in the field but among the home churches, did perhaps even more to break the force of the tradition, and to lead in a perilous and demoralizing reaction. Some reaction was inevitable. The church must needs suffer the evil consequence of overstraining the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... many a heart was stricken dumb with grief! We who had known thee here,—had met thee there Where Rome threw golden light on every leaf Life's volume turned in that enchanted air,— O friend! how we recall the Italian days Amid the Caesar's ruined palace halls,— The Coliseum, and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... roar of the river as it now rolled, angry and red, bearing away stumps and trees on its muddy water. She listened and smiled, and pressed closer to the rock that took care of her. She pressed the palm of her hand against it. When you have no one to love you, you love the dumb things very much. When the sun set, it cleared up. Then the little girl ate some kippersol, and lay down again to sleep. She thought there was nothing so nice as to sleep. When one has had no food but kippersol juice for two days, one doesn't ...
— Dream Life and Real Life • Olive Schreiner
... any physical deformities, for it was the custom of the tribe to kill any child that was born deaf, dumb, ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... my samples in—I sell a specialty line of baby shoes— I spread them on the counter. The old man was curious to see what a 'deaf and dumb man' was selling, I suppose, for up he marched and looked at my line. He picked up a shoe and wrote on a piece of paper: 'How much?' I wrote the price and passed the slip back to him. 'What are your terms?' he wrote back. 'Bill dated November 1st, 5% off, ten days,' I replied ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... a child, for the years which had elapsed had transformed her into a woman; but she had retained her old characteristics of shyness, simplicity, and a worshipful love of Raphael. She had followed him to Rome, so he told me, like some faithful, dumb animal which could not live away from its master, and moved by her great affection he had given her lodging and employment as his model. There lacked not malicious tongues who called her his mistress; but so modest yet unabashed ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... there is a dumb poet in every explorer; but the poet wasn't dumb to-day when Martin talked about the cyclone or anticyclone, or whatever it is which covers the region of the South Pole like a cap, and determines the weather of a great ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... that PEOPLE have learned to understand is that when a dog wags his tail he means 'I'm glad!'—It's funny, isn't it? You are the very first man to talk like us. Oh, sometimes people annoy me dreadfully—such airs they put on—talking about 'the dumb animals.' DUMB!—Huh! Why I knew a macaw once who could say 'Good morning!' in seven different ways without once opening his mouth. He could talk every language—and Greek. An old professor with a gray beard bought him. But he didn't stay. He ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... But Ellen was dumb and motionless. They all looked at one another. "Tell Aunty Wetherhed: that's a good girl," said the ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... St. Peter's expecting to be struck dumb with admiration, and accordingly it was so. A feeling of vastness filled my whole mind, and made it disagreeable, almost impossible to speak or exclaim: but it was a style of grandeur, exciting rather than oppressive ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... things from the shelves or the stove. While we were slicking up the dishes I got to chuckling and Jim began to blush and look foolish. I could see that he knew I had found him out. We made short work of the chores. I wound the alarm clock and sent down the milk bottle via the dumb waiter, which you can't tip with a dime, but have to push or pull clean to or from the cellar, unless it happens to be en route just as you get there and can chuck your ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... us there is delight, not only in common with dumb animals, but also in common with angels. Wherefore Dionysius says (De Coel. Hier.) that "holy men often take part in the angelic delights." Accordingly we have delight, not only in the sensitive appetite, which we have in common with dumb animals, but also ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... at last become Tired of long waiting, and of sitting dumb Upon his charger; so with greenest leer He vented his impatience in a sneer. "Is this," he said, "the glorious Table Round, And is its glory naught but empty sound? Braggarts! I put your bluster to the test, And find you quail before a merry jest!" Then ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... Leighton gave herself up to attentions to Kilian; she was saying silly little things to him in a little low tone all the time, and offering him different articles before her, and advising him what he ought to eat; all of which seemed most interesting and important in dumb-show till you heard what it was all about, and then you felt ashamed of them. At times, I think, Kilian felt somewhat ashamed too, and tried to talk a little to the others; but most of the time he seemed to like it very well, and did not ask ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... the rascal and I do not know what became of him. The duke and his nobles were simply struck dumb by the scamp's outrage and his ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... had succeeded in getting away unnoticed; when we had satisfactorily reached one of our secret nooks, and were sitting side by side, and, at last, the book was slowly opened, emitting a pungent odour, inexpressibly sweet to me then, of mildew and age;—with what a thrill, with what a wave of dumb expectancy, I gazed at the face, at the lips of Punin, those lips from which in a moment a stream of such delicious eloquence was to flow! At last the first sounds of the reading were heard. Everything around me vanished ... no, not ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... then the orang-outang shook his head, turned over the violin, turned it back again, raised it up in the air, lowered it, held it straight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and picked it up again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agile creatures. He seemed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacity and in his gestures there was something marvelous as well as infantile. At last he undertook with grotesque gestures to place the violin under his chin, while in one ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... also the greatest tenderness toward dumb animals, and never could bear to see them injured. Miss Alldridge, in an interesting sketch of Miss Nightingale, quotes the following story from ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... all I know about it if you turn me loose," he said. "Give me a horse and a chance to pull my freight, and I'll talk. Otherwise, I'm dumb." ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to jail. He resolved to pretend to be dumb, and he charged Terence not to betray him. The officers of justice came to take him up: Sir John resigned himself to them, making signs that he could not speak. He was carried before a magistrate. The merchant had never seen Mr. Phelim O'Mooney, but could swear ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... pulled off her glove and gave it to him. Some time after appeared the earl himself, who was met by an ancient hermit, a secretary of state, and a soldier; each of whom presented him with a book recommending his own course of life, and, after a little pageantry and dumb show to relieve the solemnity of the main design, pronounced a long and well-penned speech to the same effect. All were answered by an esquire, or follower of the earl, who pointed out the evils attached ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-ey'd ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... and tired people pass into a quiet serenity; but it is the serenity of the old dog who sleeps in the sun, wags his tail if he is invited to bestir himself, but does not leave his place; and if one reaches that condition, it is but a dumb gratitude at the thought that nothing more is expected of the worn-out frame and fatigued mind. But no one, I should imagine, really hopes to step into immortality so tired and worn out that the highest hope ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... NOT come!" He was angry, but his mind was confused. He loved her with all the strength of his simple, straightforward nature. Therefore he appeared at his worst before her—usually either incoherent or dumb. It was not surprising that whenever it was suggested that only a superior man could get on so well as he did, she always answered: "He works twice as hard as any one else, and you don't need much brains if ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... savagely upon him.) May the thunder of heaven strike thee dumb, thou lying spirit! I will tear thy venomed tongue ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... end of the portico, two lofty doors were thrown open, and we were struck dumb with the magnificence of the scene which ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... painter broke in, "I am as dumb as a carp, the more so since your escapade is not very praiseworthy!—For you have, in fact, deserted the domestic hearth—yes, you have deserted the hearth.—It is pretty here, a little like a courtesan's, perhaps, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... and in many instances the husband vaut mieux que la femme. At Madame Suard's we met the famous Count Lally Tolendal and the Duc de Crillon. This morning Maria has gone with the Pictets to see the Abbe Sicard's deaf and dumb. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... world—he had felt wind and rain and sunlight, the pride of high buildings and the surge of a galloping horse, thresh of waves and laughter of women and smooth mysterious purr of great machines, with a fullness that made him pity those deaf and dumb and ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... gifts, if she respect not words: Dumb jewels often in their silent kind 90 More than quick words ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... in silence. His own whirling thoughts were of a sort that he could not fathom; they possessed him completely, they destroyed, seemingly, all power of analysis, they made him dumb; and they were tangled inextricably in the blended impressions of ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... the hidden veins of thought With the electric force of strife, Thrilled the dumb marble of my life Unto a ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... and dumb from utter horror. They advance upon us, nearer and nearer. Our fate appears certain, fearful and terrible. On one side the mighty crocodile, on the other the great sea serpent. The rest of the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Madden,—Life will be more tolerable to me if before nightfall I can know that there is a piano under my roof. Even if it remains dumb, it will be some comfort to have it here and look at it, and imagine how a great master might make ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... glory. St. Leo thus extols their faith and devotion: "When a star had conducted them to adore Jesus, they did not find him commanding devils, or raising the dead, {099} or restoring sight to the blind, or speech to the dumb, or employed in any divine actions; but a silent babe, under the care of a solicitous mother, giving no sign of power, but exhibiting a miracle of humility."[21] Where shall we find such a faith in Israel? I mean among the Christians ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... so the other that remain, are retained for a discipline and order, which (upon just causes) may be altered and changed, and therefore are not to be esteemed equal with God's Law. And moreover, they be neither dark nor dumb Ceremonies, but are so set forth, that every man may understand what they do mean, and to what use they do serve. So that it is not like that they in time to come should be abused as other have been. And in these our doings we condemn no other Nations, ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... spark of life gone? Did it fall to these sodden pavements, for ever done, or did it go on up, to meet the kiss of the rising sun? And the sparrows, which fall to the ground, answered not. The sun rose calm and passionless, but dumb. The sky folded in, large but inscrutable. None the less arose the voice of lamentation and ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... society in Florence is not blind, and especially it is not dumb. The old lady who had celebrated Mrs. Bowen to him the first night at Palazzo Pinti led a life of active questions as to what was the supreme attraction to Colville there, and she referred her doubt to every friend with whom she drank tea. She philosophised ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... of the first division are carried on in regular gymnasiums or at home, and consist of exercises with dumb-bells, bars, suspended rings, poles, and many other appliances with which most boys and girls are familiar. Regular practice in a good gymnasium, under the direction of a competent teacher, is considered, by those who best understand the education of young people, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... him, without adding another word, she plunged into one of those dumb activities by which true artists escape from themselves and from ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... point of bursting through the window and somehow scrambling aloft to the rescue of that helpless being who was being ground and wrenched and pounded by that porcine monster, when the monster suddenly rose to view again with a dumb-bell ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... I was dumb, ashamed and sorry to have unwittingly hurt my friend. But now he was speaking again, in his ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... to be marked with the comely mark of golden liberty among the prophetic creatures, who enjoy the rank as reasoning beings next to the angels, refuse not the inspiration of the understanding ass, to that day dumb, which would not carry forward the tiara'd magician who was going to curse God's people, but in the narrow pass of the vineyard crushed his loosened foot, and thereby felt the lash; and though he was, with his ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... almost a total loss of voice, and had in vain tried variety of advice, recovered her voice in an instant, on some alarm as she was dancing at an assembly. Was this owing to a greater exertion of volition than usual? like the dumb young man, the son of Croesus, who is related to have cried out, when he saw his father's life endangered by the sword of his enemy, and to have continued to speak ever afterwards. Two young ladies in this complaint seemed to be cured by electric shocks ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... life that there was something one had to do for them. They were there in their simplified intensified essence, their conscious absence and expressive patience, as personally there as if they had only been stricken dumb. When all sense of them failed, all sound of them ceased, it was as if their purgatory were really still on earth: they asked so little that they got, poor things, even less, and died again, died every day, of the hard usage of life. They had no organised service, no reserved ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... was he. I was standing this morning near Chepe Cross, to let a waggon pass, when I looked up, and all at once I saw a young man of some twenty years standing likewise till it went by. The likeness struck me dumb for a moment. Gerard's brow—no, lad, not thou! Thy mother knows—Gerard's brow, and his fair hair, with the very wave it used to have about his temples; his eyes and nose too; but Agnes's mouth, and somewhat of Agnes in the way he held his head. And ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... other children came out of their lips; but she had not spent many months in this lower world, before we saw with bitter apprehension and deep sorrow that God had sealed her sweet lips with eternal silence. She saw all; she heard nothing; she could never speak. My darling was deaf and dumb." ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... hands to express her dumb admiration. "Who would not be happy to be dressed in those lovely clothes, to be decked in those jewels and to marry a man who will give you everything that the heart could desire?" ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... lingered in his place With countenance of mild surprise, And looked upon the Buddha's face With dumb, uncomprehending eyes. ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... terms. But I, feeling myself to be one too many, left them to their merriment and lagged behind, as usual on such occasions: I had no relish for walking beside Miss Green or Miss Susan like one deaf and dumb, who could neither ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... appearance her husband, without really stirring at all, had the effect of withdrawing into the background, where, indeed, I tacitly joined him; and the two ladies remained in charge of the drama, while he and I conversed, as it were, in dumb show. Apart from my sympathy with her in the matter, I was very curious to see how my wife would play her part, which seemed to me far the more difficult of the two, since she must ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... wonder at the loveliness of the maiden, and in fear of the anger of Lavarcam, the men were dumb. ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... is it, brethren, to cry out unto Christ, but to correspond to the grace of Christ by good works? This I say, brethren, lest haply we cry aloud with our voices, and in our lives be dumb. Who is he that crieth out to Christ, that his inward blindness may be driven away by Christ as He is passing by, that is, as He is dispensing to us those temporal sacraments, whereby we are instructed to receive the things which are eternal? Who is he that crieth out ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... believe that angels pipe to children who are about to die; and in Scandinavia, youths are said to have been enticed away by the songs of elf-maidens. In Greece, the sirens by their magic lay allured voyagers to destruction; and Orpheus caused the trees and dumb beasts to follow him. Here we reach the explanation. For Orpheus is the wind sighing through untold acres of pine forest. "The piper is no other than the wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the dead." To this ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske |
