"Sleepless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... once or twice with heroism indeed, but what of that amid eighty thousand heroes? Back he staggered with the rest, exhausted, sleepless, fighting, fighting, fighting, his mind filled alternately with horror and with wonder, horror at the deeds to which men can sink and the general scheme of things that makes them possible, wonder at the heights to which they can rise when lifted by the inspiration of a great ideal and a holy ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... in the first part of this book that sleeplessness was a characteristic of Shakespeare, even in youth; he attributes it to Henry IV. in old age, and to Henry V., a youth at the time, who probably never knew what a sleepless night meant. Shakespeare's alter ego, Valentine, in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," suffers from it, and so do Macbeth and Hamlet, and a dozen others of his chief characters, in particular his impersonations—all of which shows, I think, that from the beginning the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... as before in the cheerful, smoke-filled room, I puffing slightly at my Ajar, and Tom's sleepless eyes fixed absently on the wall; and then presently I went to the window and watched the dull gray dawn creep over the ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... across the whole width of Germany, the carriage had left unrest behind it. Men had travelled night and day to stand sleepless by the roadside and see it pass. Whole cities had been kept astir till morning by the mere rumour that its flying wheels would be heard in the streets before dawn. Hatred and adoration, fear and that dread tightening of the heart-strings which is caused by the shadow ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... I have spent many sleepless nights wondering how and where I was to obtain that magnetic thrill, that minute incident, probably only ten per cent of which would carry the remaining ninety per cent to success. One that would positively satisfy ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... party the gratitude of Europe and the possession of office for a generation. If more mischief happens in Turkey it will be on you that public displeasure will fall, and you may need a bridge for yourselves and not find one. I croak like a raven. Perhaps you may set it down to an almost totally sleepless night." ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... not used to passing sleepless nights," said the Texan. "When we are fairly launched into the Indian country you may not sleep so sound. Take hold and eat. A hearty eater on the plains generally stands travel best. To-morrow, it is likely, we'll have a fifty-mile ride or more, if those Black ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... Bouvard got a bilious attack in consequence. Scarcely had he recovered when he started for Savigny, from which place he returned without having brought the matter nearer to a settlement, and he could only grumble about having gone to the expense of a journey for nothing. Then followed sleepless nights, alternations of rage and hope, of exaltation and despondency. Finally, after the lapse of six months, his lordship Alexandre was appeased, and Bouvard entered into possession ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... cloud was gathering over them. Aunt Elsie's rheumatism, which during the autumn had given her much trouble from time to time, was growing daily worse. Painful days and sleepless nights were no longer the exception, but the rule; and not long after the coming in of the New Year, the help which for a long time she had positively and even sternly refused, became a necessity to her. She could neither rise nor lie down without assistance, and she was ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... this, lose yourself, good reader, wander off a great distance from everywhere, and be benighted in a wild country, with nothing but your rifle and hunting-knife. You will then find yourself dinnerless, supperless, houseless, comfortless, sleepless, cold and miserable, if you do not know how to manage for yourself. You will miss your dinner sadly if you are not accustomed to fast for twenty-four hours. You will also miss your bed decidedly, and your toothbrush in the morning; but if, on the other hand, you are of the right stamp, it is astonishing ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... and we were on the tramp again. Our sleepless night, and the strong emotions that had kept us awake, made us feel tired and listless, but the bare idea of being exposed to the same torment and fear another time, gave us courage and strength to press on as far as possible in search of some nocturnal refuge, more secure from ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... said, his voice growing stronger in his eagerness, "this town is like unto a child of mine own, so dear is it to me. I have spent sleepless nights and weary days, I have suffered cold and hunger and the contumely of jealous men in its behalf; nay perchance, even death itself. And thou, too, hast shown it great favors till in truth it hath become partly thine own and dear to thee. Now that I must depart, ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... noted for his diplomacy. Just now he wanted to convey the impression that nothing which could happen next Saturday or Sunday could be of the smallest interest to him; whereas he had spent an almost sleepless night in wondering whether it would, in certain circumstances, be proper to make a bow at the beginning of his sermon and another at the end; whether he ought to meet the visitor at the west door; whether the mayor ought to be told, and whether ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Garrison was fighting out the night with his sleepless thoughts, Sue Desha was in the same restless condition. Mr. Waterbury had arrived. His generous snores could be heard stalking down the corridor from the guest-chamber. He was of the abdominal variety of the ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... travel long sleepless nights in the diligence, and be ferried at day-break over "ancient rivers." You shall tread the grass-grown streets of Ferrara, and the deserted halls of Bologna, where the wisdom-loving youth of Europe erst assembled, but whose solitude ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... annihilate us. And then, little by little, there came over me the sense of that mute reciprocal watching from trench to trench: the interlocked stare of innumerable pairs of eyes, stretching on, mile after mile, along the whole sleepless line from ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... hateful, Venom drops for aye distilling, Every nerve with torment filling; Thus shall he in horror languish. By him, still unwearied kneeling, Sigyn at his tortured side,— Faithful wife! with beaker stealing Drops of venom as they fall,— Agonising poison all! Sleepless, changeless, ever dealing Comfort, will she still abide; Only when the cup's o'erflowing Must fresh pain and smarting cause, Swift, to void the beaker going, Shall she in her watching pause. Then doth Loki Loudly cry; Shrieks ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the pride of a moment before changed to compassion. He remembered that he must tell her what would alarm. For in her face he saw the traces of many a sleepless night, and of ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... sleepless nights in reconciling myself to all this, and perhaps wept a little, too, at the thought that after years of separation I might be a stranger to my own darling. But at length I put my faith in "the call of the blood" to tell her she was mine, and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... at this of all times! And Pete Carlin at the bottom of it! With her nerves frayed raw by two nights of sleepless vigil and the memory of the Curlew's disabled motor rankling within her, Dickie Lang brushed by a group of men and confronted a bullet-headed man in a loose ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... The eye that has sternly reviewed the Warwickshire Yeomanry Cavalry, lacks something of its wonted brightness; whilst ROYDEN's black velvet suit sets off the added pallor of a countenance that tells of sleepless vigil. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... further doubt," said Mrs. Clifton. "It is my child you have cared for so long. Oh! why could I not have known it before? How many lonely days and sleepless nights it would have spared me! But God be thanked for this late blessing! I shall see my ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... nothing is entitled. No doubt, when bodily pain has ceased, it is all over: we do not feel it any more. And you have probably observed that the impression left by bodily pain passes very quickly away. The sleepless night, or the night of torment from toothache, which seemed such a distressing reality while it was dragging over, looks a very shadowy thing the next forenoon. But it may be doubted whether you will ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Lord, to David my father thou gavest only the gift of harmonizing words and sounds, to sing and praise thee on strings, to lament sweetly, to make people weep or admire beauty; but why hast thou given me a meditative, sleepless, hungry mind? Like an insect born of the dust, I hide in darkness; and in fear and despair, all shaking and shivering, I see and hear in everything an invisible mystery. Why this morning? Why does the sun come out from behind the temple and gild the palm tree? Why ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... condition became still more pitiable after the alliance of the revolutionists with the French—the hereditary enemies of both England and the colonies. From the beginning the Loyalists were deprived of the freedom of the press, freedom of assemblage, and under an espionage universal, sleepless, malignant—subjecting the Loyalists to every species of insult, to arrest and imprisonment at any moment, and to the seizure ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... was greatly concerned, and passed many sleepless nights weighing the possibilities of what might happen. Although he was to become a clergyman, and duelling was forbidden him, he nevertheless had plenty of fight in him, and many times wished that he could ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... it was that she had been too much fatigued by the occurrences of the past day and sleepless night, or whether the little laudanum which she had drunk a few hours previously now began to act upon her, certain it is that Mrs. Cat now suddenly grew sick, feverish, and extraordinarily sleepy; and in this state she continued for many hours, to the pity of all her fellow-travellers. At ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... point teachers knowing the true tradition of the Vedanta have made the following declaration, 'When the individual soul which is held in the bonds of slumber by the beginningless Maya awakes, then it knows the eternal, sleepless, dreamless non-duality' ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... weighed as heavily in the ears of the chance auditor as if it had been his own guilt, so that he sought to free himself of the burden and passed it on as if it would burn his tongue should he delay but a moment. Perhaps it was this sleepless woman, perhaps the lips of nameless Rumor herself, that enriched the picture of this murder-caravan with the figure of a tall, broad-shouldered man, armed with a double-barreled gun, who headed the procession. Now the gray web had a central point, and received a sort of illumination and ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... on their watch. Here rests, in fitful and affrighted slumbers, the recent victor, Prince Charles Edward, a broken and despairing fugitive, his gallant spirit dissipated, and his well-knit limbs stained, and bruised, and soiled by urgent journeys and perilous encounters. Beside him sits a sleepless guardian, the brave, the beautiful, the heroic Flora Macdonald. A deer-hound, who had crouched at her feet, has given an alarm of coming danger. The peril is imminent, but the foe is invisible. What shall be done? ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... the distance, the songs that reached his ears in detached phrases, as if they passed over a resonant sheet of water, the perfume of the flowers that bloom so strangely toward the close of Parisian balls, when the late hour, confusing all notions of time, and the weariness of the sleepless night communicate to brains which have become more buoyant in a more nervous atmosphere a sort of youthful giddiness. The robust nature of Jansoulet, that civilized savage, was more susceptible than ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Pr. and Med. p. 143, is a prayer which was, he writes, 'composed at Calais in a sleepless night, and used before ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... same moment, in a little cottage at the other end of the town, a sleepless mother rose from her knees beside the kitchen table and passed slowly up the stairs to her own room. The children and the eldest girl were long since asleep, but the mother could not rest for thinking of her wayward boy. Where was he to-night; where at this very moment? And he had promised, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... into the Church through faith in Jesus Christ, without passing through the gate of circumcision. Depend upon it, if there had been any, even the most microscopic, divergence on his part from the general, broad stream of Christian teaching, the sleepless, keen-eyed, unscrupulous enemies that dogged him all his days would have pounced upon it eagerly, and would never have ceased talking about it. But not one of them ever said a word of the sort, but allowed his teaching to pass, because it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... up astern of the Rosan with a cheery yell and let go his anchor, ordering the dories over the side in the same breath. But his aspirations received a chilling setback from none other than Bijonah Tanner himself. The old man had been sleepless for a week, trying to nose out the Lass for the top haul of the fleet, and here was a young scapegrace who came and cast anchor within a hundred yards of his ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... well-turned compliments; and, strange as it may seem, scarcely an hour had passed before he had charmed away every shadow of suspicion. Matters now went on as before for a few weeks, when Joseph had another sleepless night, and a more convincing unfolding of his partner's real character; and the next night, after the office had been closed, he spent in examining the books of the concern, and detected a number of artfully-contrived fraudulent entries ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... potter's art that will make him both rich and famous,—and he utters a prayer for vengeance upon these Chandlers, and he parts from them. A time of destitution and of pitiful struggle with dire necessity, sleepless grief, and the maddening impulse of vengeance now comes upon him, so that he is wasted almost to death. He will not, however, abandon his quest for the secret of his art. He may die of hunger and wretchedness; ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... to the room over the bar. McGaw began pacing the floor, his long arms hooked behind his back. He had passed a sleepless night, and every hour now added to his anxiety. His face was a dull gray yellow, and his eyes were sunken. Now and then he would tug at his collar nervously. As he walked he clutched his fingers, burying the nails in the ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... whispered a few words, scarcely moving his lips. His face looked yellow by daylight, and the eyes behind the gold spectacles were heavy-lidded and almost closed. Orme inferred that the night had been sleepless for Alcatrante. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... and eat all the grapes you can hold." Arrived upon the ground, we learned that it was six francs fine to touch a grape in the vineyards; that every field had a watch set in it, who popped up between the vines from time to time, and interrogated the vicinity with an eye of sleepless vigilance; and that small boys of suspicious character, whose pleasure or business took them through a vineyard, were obliged to hold up their hands as they passed, like the victims of a Far Western road ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... the invention of the sleepless torture, was simply roasting the soles of the feet before ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was no lessening of anxiety, because for days following the battle for life had still to be waged. Would human strength hold through the combat? That was the question that filled the weary hours of the day and the sleepless watches of the night. ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... anybody else's escorting her. Upon one occasion he declined to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the escort. After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a full year, he at last attempted its execution—that is, attempted to disfigure the young woman. It was a success. It was permanent. In trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dead," said Raffles, dropping into his chair and drinking thoughtfully; "and so he will be till we wake him up. It's a ticklish experiment, Bunny, but even a splitting head for the first hour's play is better than a sleepless night; I've tried both, so I ought to know. I shouldn't even wonder if he did himself more than justice to-morrow; one often does when just less than fit; it takes off that dangerous edge of over-keenness which so often cuts one's ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... During a sleepless night in Italy he formed the plan for the music of "Das Rheingold," but not wishing to write on Italian soil, he got up and ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... marking certain peculiarly significant answers of the suspected persons with a cross. He was, perhaps, the least tormented of the four companions at this funereal repast. The crime did not seem to him one of those which keep judges of instruction sleepless through the night; he saw clearly the motive of it; and he had Bertaud and Guespin, two of the assassins, or at least ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... rest on the hard straw mattress which he could never be prevailed upon to change for something softer, no complaint ever passed his lips. "My Saviour, my dear Saviour" was his only exclamation. On the days that followed these sleepless nights of pain, he was always smiling and serene. In spite of the weakness that oppressed him, he had help, advice and ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... to move again. She had spent a sleepless night, probably, and was dressing to go down to the garden for a breath of air. Gannett rose also; but some undefinable instinct made his movements as cautious as hers. He stole to his window and looked out through the slats ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... most lawless people in Europe, in North Russian forests where the bear is something to be reckoned with—but I have never come to harm. The most glorious and wonderful nights I ever had were almost sleepless ones, spent looking at the stars and tasting the new sensations. Yet even in respect of rest it seems to me I have thriven better out of doors. There is a real tranquillity on a mountain side after the sun has gone down, and a silence, even though the crickets whistle and owls cry, though the wind ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... on, and Joseph noted that Teddy was apt to be from home a bit and would often go away for a day or two. And the new head-keeper, who was sleepless on the job, traced where a car had come across one of the drives in Oakshott's by night, for the wheels had scored the grass; and where the thing had stood was a dead bird the blackguards ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... message, long ago she would surely have sent Chaturika to summon me, knowing that it was impossible for me to come of my own accord, and that I should be sitting waiting with my heart on fire for her summons to arrive. And so I lay, tossing all night long sleepless on my bed, and cursing the moon, which poured as if to mock me a silver flood of light upon the floor, seeming to say: Think what a night it must be in the garden! until in an agony of reminiscence and humiliation, I turned my ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... locked, but that wander far away in the sunlit world, in their wild pilgrimage after destined goals. Throughout the restless night I hear the footsteps over my head. Who walks? I do not know. It is the phantom of the jail, the sleepless brain, a man, the man, the Walker. One—two—three—four; four paces and the wall." ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Southey, Scott, Kirke White, Landor, Montgomery, and others, have laid immortal flowers upon his tomb, to make the heart ache that we did not live in time to save the "sleepless soul" from ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... industry was as unwearying as his fertility was inexhaustible. Great as was his intellectual power, his chief strength came from the depth and earnestness of his moral convictions. In the long and arduous battle against the aggressions of Slavery, he had been sleepless and untiring in rousing and quickening the public conscience. He was keenly alive to the distinctions of right and wrong, and his philanthropy responded to every call of humanity. His sympathies were equally touched by the sufferings ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... born shall release thee. Such fruits hast thou reaped from thy friendly disposition to mankind. For thou, a god, not crouching beneath the wrath of the gods, hast imparted to mortals honors beyond what was right. In requital whereof thou shalt keep sentinel on this cheerless rock, standing erect, sleepless, not bending a knee:[10] and many laments and unavailing groans shalt thou utter; for the heart of Jupiter is hard to be entreated; and every one that ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... no food, no water, sleepless nights and thrilling escapes made them look queerly primitive and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... to eat alone with Adare again this morning, and his heart jumped with both surprise and joy when Josephine came out into the hall to meet him. She was very pale. Her eyes told him that she had passed a sleepless night. But she was smiling bravely, and when she offered him her hand he caught her suddenly in his arms and held her close to his breast while he kissed her lips, and then her ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... freaks in sober sadness Are a mere poetic madness: Pegasus is but a horse; He that follows him is worse. See, the rain soaks to the skin, Make it rain as well within. Wine, my boy; we'll sing and laugh, All night revel, rant, and quaff; Till the morn, stealing behind us, At the table sleepless find us. When our bones, alas! shall have A cold lodging in the grave; When swift Death shall overtake us, We shall sleep and none can wake us. Drink we then the juice o' the vine Make our breasts Lyaeus' shrine; Bacchus, our debauch beholding, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... The whole place seemed at rest. Only one light was gleaming from a long low building which had been added to the coach houses of recent years for a motor garage. That one light, the Prince knew, was on his account. There his chauffeur waited, untiring and sleepless, with his car always ready for that last rush to the coast, the advisability of which the Prince had considered more than once during the last twenty-four hours. The excitement of the evening, the excitement of his ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Now, by the battling hosts of Set, never have I met a foe so worthy the overcoming. Listen! Dost thou know that I have sorrows? Dost thou remember that I may have sleepless nights and unhappy days—discontents, heartaches and oppressions? I am not less human because I am royal, but because I am royal I am more unhappy. Sorry indeed is a prince's lot! Wherefore? Because he is sated with submission; because he hath drunk ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... events, and form at last the constants of human understanding. A character of the first order of greatness, such as seems to pass out of the limits and course of ordinary life, often lies above the ken of intellectual judgment; but its merits and its infirmities never escape the sleepless perspicacity of the common sentiment, which no novelty of form can surprise, and no mixture of qualities can perplex. The mind—the logical faculty—comprehends a subject, when it can trace in it ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... received some warning, some message, it did not matter from whom, nothing else could cause him to burst forth with such violence, and the very nature of the case forbade her from speaking; she could only keep silent, knowing that significant talk was going on all around her, and pass sleepless ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... I was a long time coming to it; took the unopened missive at last up to my room and only attacked it just before going to bed. I had better have let it wait till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. With no counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; and it finally got so the better of me that I determined to open myself at least to ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... emotions, the poor girl dragged herself to her own apartment and there upon a restless, sleepless couch, beset by wild, impossible hopes, and vain, torturing regrets, she fought out the long, bitter night; until toward morning she solved the problem of her misery in the only way that seemed possible to her poor, tired, bleeding, ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the morning, he knew at once that this prophecy had not been fulfilled. She met his anxious scrutiny with a smile indeed, but her heavy eyes belied it. He knew that she had spent a sleepless night. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... weeks' terrible visitation, and these last fearful five days of sleepless exertion and bereavement, had not faded the bright red of the cheek, nor were there signs of tears, though the eyes looked bloodshot. Indeed, there was a purple tint about the eyelids and lips, a dried-up appearance, and a heated oppressed air, as if the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name, and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... joys that never end—I'm going home! Last year the warning came on sunken eye And wasted cheek. I gazed and thought to spend My Christmas with the angels. God knows best; And here I linger, weary sufferer still. The morning comes long watched-for, long desired; The day drags on, and then the sleepless night: But this will have an ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... mere recollection of Ursus, a shiver ran through Chilo's whole body. But he thought that in the evening he would send Euricius for news to that house in which the thing had happened. Meanwhile he needed refreshment, a bath, and rest. The sleepless night, the journey to Ostrianum, the flight from the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... about a little matter of business. Mr. Sewell was telling us something of you the other night, at my cousin Bromfield Corey's, and it occurred to me that you might be willing to come and read to him. His eyes seem to be on the wane, some way, and he's rather sleepless. He'd give you a bed, and sometimes you'd have to read to him in the night; you'd take your meals where you like. How does it strike you, supposing the 'harnsome ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... after a sleepless night, presented himself at Henry Blaine's office the next morning. The great detective, observing his young subordinate with shrewd, kindly eyes, noted in one swift glance his changed demeanor: his pallor, and the new lines graven about the firm mouth, which added strength ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... and ill-humor toward her parents had caused her many unhappy days and sleepless nights; and often had the day closed on faults unrepented of, and sins unforgiven. It was but the afternoon before that she had spoken in a high angry tone to her eldest sister, Mary, and parted in displeasure from her ...
— The Good Resolution • Anonymous
... distant and constrained. He was quick to observe the change, and in private raved and raged at it. He even made the mistake of showing his pique to her, upon which she became still more retiring and conventional. Then be bemoaned himself in the sleepless watches of the night, and confided to his bed-post that in his belief such a case had never occurred before in the history of the world, and never by any chance could or would happen again. He also broke out into an eruption of bad verses, which were found ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... topsails of an eight-hundred-ton ship. It would be rather a lengthy business, and somewhat noisy at that; for on a quiet night the rasping of the chain sheets through the sheeve-holes might be heard at a considerable distance, far enough, indeed, to attract the attention of any sleepless individual in the settlement. Moreover, the inside of the Basin was a particularly quiet spot, being under the lee of the Heads, and thus sheltered to a considerable extent from the sweep of the wind. True, the reef lay to windward, and the ceaseless roar ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... by shock an a sleepless night, was spared the more harrowing details of the coroner's visit and the subsequent jaunty activities of Mr. Lyken and ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... What a mockery is their love! but how deadly are their hatreds! All this great society, with whom so young an adventurer has trafficked, abate nothing of their price in the slavery of their service and the sacrifice of violated feelings. What sleepless nights has it cost you to win over the disobliged, to conciliate the discontented, to cajole the contumatious! You may smile at the hollow flatteries, answering to flatteries as hollow, which like ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... done and in the way I want it, never knocking things about or fidgeting round, but just ready-handed, neat and bright. God knows, a handsome woman wouldn't have risked the spoiling her beauty by all these weary, sleepless nights, especially for a man she did not love." And then to think she was actually willing to work and slave for him, and support him out of her share of the booty, and let him fool away his own on other women! "Wonder what the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... of tender compassion for la belle cousine, and would not suffer her to be chidden. Fortunately, no bones had been fractured, though the sinews of her ankle were severely sprained; but the pain was intense, and after a sleepless night, the boys found to their grief and dismay, that Catharine was unable to put her foot to the ground. This was an unlooked-for aggravation of their misfortunes; to pursue their wandering was for the present impossible; rest was their only remedy, excepting the application of such ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... suffering. Even her husband was misled by the calm surface of her feelings into the belief that there was no wild turbulence beneath. He did not see the tears that wet the pillow upon which she slept. He did not know how many hours she lay sleepless in the silent midnight watches. Daily all her duties were performed with unvarying assiduity; and when he spoke to her she answered with her usual gentle smile. That it faded more quickly than was its wont, Benjamin ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... we had spurred our horses to the gallop to get out of sight of this hideous charnel-house, of which I long continued to think in my sleepless nights. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... row of cars with a locomotive sending up steam. A throng of people were moving toward the snow-covered platform, and hurrying to the train. Darvid came out also, searching with his eyes for a youthful face which filled his sleepless nights with care. At first he could not find it, but when many people had entered the train, those assembled for the passive role of spectators formed a group and turned their glances toward one point upon the platform. There in the hands of a number of people bloomed a garden of beautiful ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... breaking bold and passionate Over his shoulder, and will flash abhorrence On darkness and with level looks meet fate, When once loose from that marble film of theirs; The Night has wild dreams in her sleep, the Dawn Is haggard as the sleepless, Twilight wears A sort of horror; as the veil withdrawn 'Twixt the artist's soul and works had left them heirs Of speechless thoughts which would not quail nor fawn, Of angers and contempts, of hope and love: For not without a meaning did he place The ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... was new to Wells, was a man of waxed mustaches and sleepless ambitions. The other hotels had most of the tourists, but he intended to retrieve the fortunes of his employer, and bring prosperity back to the side streets. He adored his vocation, and would have shed his heart's blood on the altar of any dining-room ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... some hope in Cappy's heavy heart, he being by nature inconsistent and always seeing a profit where others found naught but a deficit. However, though Cappy was variously gifted he was not a clairvoyant, in consequence of which he spent a very sleepless night following the receipt of that windy cablegram from the American consul. He dined at his club, and when it was time for him to leave and his daughter sent her car for him, he lacked the courage to go home and face his son-in-law. So he spent ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... gathered the produce of the gold-bearing garden. You have not courage to confront the sleepless dragon; you have not craft to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... After exhausting a sleepless night in meditating on the intelligence I had received, I was at first inclined to think that I ought, as speedily as possible, to return to London, and by my open appearance repel the calumny which had been spread against me. But I hesitated to take this course on recollection ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... as he said to himself, for business. But to his great disappointment he found Mr. Ransom in a frame of mind which precluded action. Indeed, that gentleman looked greatly changed. He not only gave evidence of a sleepless night but showed none of the spirit of the previous evening, and hesitated quite painfully when Gerridge asked him if he did not intend to go ahead with the interview ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... and strained in a selfish stupor; he was awake, fully awake, and in mental as well as bodily agony. For his thoughts were upon those at the little manor, and he knew that they must have passed a sleepless night on his account, and he knew, too, that in all probability his uncle had been out with others searching for him, certain that some evil must have befallen or he ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... down the next morning after a sleepless night, and with a wild endeavour to scheme some way of getting the money to pay my creditor. To my absolute amazement I found a polite note from the lieutenant coldly thanking me for the notes I had sent him by messenger, and handing me a formal receipt for L800. At first I regarded it as ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... child in this peaceful time, but I have a premonition that something threatens, and I charge you to guard her welfare and happiness with your life," still fresh in his mind, Alvarado, whose white, haggard face showed that he had passed a sleepless night, rode at the head of the column. Some distance in front of him rode a trooper, for there were even then thieves, wandering bands of masterless men who levied bloody toll on travelers from the capitol whenever they got opportunity. Next to the captain came the sergeant of ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... collection commenced existence in the head of a powerful mathematician during some sleepless nights. Seeing how large a number was practicable, he amused himself by inventing a digested plan of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... to the tireless sinews of electric motors—which ask no wages when they stand unemployed. Similar motors already enjoy favour in working the elevators of tall dwellings in cities. If a householder is timid about burglars, the electrician offers him a sleepless watchman in the guise of an automatic alarm; if he has a dread of fire, let him dispose on his walls an array of thermometers that at the very inception of a blaze will strike a gong at headquarters. But these, after all, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... starts, confounded in his might, Leads back his peers, and dares no more the fight. But the sly Priestess brings her opiate spell, Soft charms that hush the triple hound of hell, Bids Orpheus tune his all-enchanting lyre, And join to calm the guardian's sleepless ire. Soon from the tepid ground blue vapors rise, And sounds melodious move along the skies; A settling tremor thro his folds extends, His crest contracts, his rainbow heck unbends, O'er all his hundred hoops the languor crawls, Each curve develops, every volute falls, His broad back flattens ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... with a vain hope of overhearing some expression of pleasure, and lingering again on her way back, to be overtaken by her surprised lover, sought her own bed without rejoining the circle, and passed a sleepless and happy night of ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... great headquarter staff was occupied, that very night, in drawing up the text of the capitulation,' a significant and practical comment, showing what stuff there was behind the severe language which, at the midnight meeting, fell from the Chief of that able and sleepless body of ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... inevitable. What I suffered on re-entering this house, God and my sleepless pillow alone know. Had any discovery been made in our absence; or would it be made now that renovation and repairs of all kinds were necessary? Time finally answered me. My secret was safe and likely to continue so, and this fact once settled, life ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... long Ishmael struggled with the tempter. In the morning he arose from his sleepless pillow unrefreshed and fevered. He bathed his burning head, made his morning toilet, and sat down to read a portion of the Scripture, as was his morning custom, before beginning the business of the day. The portion selected this morning was the fourth chapter of Matthew, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides, a ghostly intruder, into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honor with the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... we can gather they did not threaten to return to this country afterwards. There is no end to the woes of Pacificists, conscientious or otherwise. The Press campaign against young men of military age engaged in Government offices is causing some of them sleepless days. Even on the stage the "conchy" ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... forth sleepless activity. The world rings with the clash of warring forces. The priest, then, that idly folds his arms and manufactures sops for a gnawing conscience, while the very air is electric with the energies of assault, that priest is set up not for the resurrection ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... passed a sleepless night after the visit of Mere Malheur, sometimes tossing on her solitary couch, Sometimes starting up in terror. She rose and threw herself despairingly upon her knees, calling on Christ to pardon her, and on the Mother of Mercies to plead for her, sinner that she was, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... "Mrs. P. retired early, but Kay and I sat up chatting and enjoying the peaceful loveliness of this old garden. A sleepless mocking bird and a sleepy little thrush gave a concert in the sweet-lime tree; a couple of green frogs in the fountain rendered a bass duet; Kay thought that if we remained very quiet the spirits of some lovers of the 'splendid idle forties' might ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... thine eyes, and see! Sheer down, From where the Alps tremendous frown, Strides War, which Julius leads: Eager to follow, to pursue— Sleepless, to one high purpose true, The prosperous soldier speeds. He comes, all eye to scan, all hand To do, the instinct of command; With firm-set tread, and pointed will, And harden'd courage, practised skill, And anger-whetted sword: A man to seize, and firmly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... he has been too deep asleep, as I explain the thing; drowsiness has gained his little people, they have gone stumbling and maundering through their parts; and the play, to the awakened mind, is seen to be a tissue of absurdities. And yet how often have these sleepless Brownies done him honest service, and given him, as he sat idly taking his pleasure in the boxes, better tales than he could fashion ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sleepless I lay, until the dawn of day; The steeds, that were to leave me desolate, Their hoofs were beating ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... the Arctic summer-time, when the crashing of the great glaciers and the gleaming of the melting bergs told of rapid dissolution, and the sleepless sun was circling its day-and-nightly course in the ever-bright blue sky. The population of Flatland was assembled on the beach of their native isle—the men with downcast looks, the women with sad and tearful eyes. Two india-rubber boats were on the shore. Two kites were flying overhead. The ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priest-like task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... shock, outwardly at least, there appeared to be no change in him. His apparently colorless personality drifted on in precisely the same amiable, inconsequent manner. What his moments of solitude were, only he knew. The agony of grief through which he passed, the long sleepless nights, the heartbreaking sense of loss, these things lay hidden under his meaningless exterior, which, however, defied ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... fearful odds, with sleepless nights and fasting days sapping her strength; and when the battle ended, though the will was unfaltering, physical exhaustion triumphed, and delirium mercifully took the tortured ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... weather in the westerly belt was subject to very frequent changes. No doubt they had many a sleepless night, with rain, sleet, and hail; but on the other hand they never had to wait very long for a cheerful glimpse of the sun. The wind is for the most part of cyclonic character, shifting suddenly from one quarter to another, and these shifts always involve ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... bore traces of a sleepless night—his face was bloodless; he averted his eyes from mine; he ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... too ill and weary to argue the matter, and Harry left her, as she thought, to repose. No sooner was she gone, however, than the closed lids of Mrs. Basil were opened wide, and revealed a sleepless and unutterable woe. Her sharp, pinched face showed pain and fear. Her parched lips muttered unceasingly words like these, which were, perhaps, the ravings of her fevered brain: "I am sure of it now, quite sure; those stags, those ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... inland across the plains of China. For a space the star, hotter now and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the murmur of the flood. And thus it was with millions of men that night—a flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the flood like ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... keep so slack a waking on their dykes! Now have they made a sleepless winter for us. Every night we must look, lest the down-slope Between us and the woods turn suddenly To a grey onrush full of small green candles, The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh. And well for us then if there's no more mist Than the white ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... fascinated the President of the western concern. To his mind, his own enterprise, the manufacture and sale of steam and hot-water heating plants, had long been in the doldrums. He himself had spent many sleepless nights trying to plan some way of extending its business; of opening up new markets; of creating a wide new patronage; of manufacturing something which would bring in more profits than their regular line, and finding a successful sale for it. It now seemed to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... should get caught just at this time, and not with some o' those girls in Marion. Well, it's none o' my funeral," he ended, with a sigh; for it had stirred him to the bottom of his sunny nature, after all. A dozen times, as he lay there beside his equally sleepless companion, he started to say something more in deprecation of the step, but each time stifled the opening word ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Val, sweet and calm and cool, was sitting just where the smoke-dimmed sunlight poured in through a window upon her, and a breeze came with it and stirred her hair. She had those purple shadows under her eyes which betray us after long, sleepless hours when we live with our troubles and the world dreams around us; she had no color at all in her cheeks, and she had that aloofness of manner which Manley, in his outburst, had described as being ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... covered with black and heavy clouds, and lightnings flashed, and thunders roared, and everything betokened a night of storm and rain. We protected ourselves against the threatening elements as well as we could, and prepared ourselves for cold and drenching showers, and for a sleepless and troubled night, when, happily for us, the wind suddenly changed, and dissipated the clouds. The stars came out in all their glory, and the night was calm and bright, and all we had to try our patience was a little frost. And there I slept; and there I often awoke; and in ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... were therefore given many anxious days and sleepless nights. They wanted to buy Florida, not conquer it. They had entertained no thought of authorizing the things that Jackson had done. They recognized that the Tennesseean's crude notions of international law could ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... ultimate emancipation. Before this agitation commenced, this subject, in all its aspects and bearings, might be discussed as freely at the South as anywhere; but now, not a word can be said. It has kindled a sleepless jealousy in the South toward the North, and made the slave-holders feel as if all the rest of the world were their enemies, and that they must depend upon themselves for the maintenance of their political rights. We say rights, because they regard them as such; ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... one to the other like a pendulum. Panic asserted itself in the small hours, when he awoke in his bed and wondered what would happen when pay-day came, should it bring no pay with it ... and to a man lying sleepless in the small hours, the worst seems not only possible but likely. Then, as daylight waxed and he awoke again from a short doze, to his surprise he found himself absolutely reckless. As well be hanged for a ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... cornet as an instrument to be used in leading congregational singing has caused much dispute and contention. And while the cornet is allowed by many, the violin is still tabu absolutely in certain districts. All this is "Covenant of Works": be careful concerning what you do—have a sleepless and vigilant eye ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... which I had found my uncle had removed completely all my doubts as to his designs. I magnified suspicions into certainties, and dreaded night after night that I should be murdered in my bed. The nervousness produced by sleepless nights and days of anxious fears increased the horrors of my situation to such a degree, that I at length wrote a letter to a Mr. Jefferies, an old and faithful friend of my father's, and perfectly acquainted with all his affairs, praying him, for God's ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... necessary to clothe, rear, educate and care for a family of ten orphans of soldiers, and bring them up to maturity, if she would furnish the motherly love, the years of hard labor and self-sacrifice, the sleepless nights and endless patience needed for the work. After a few days of prayerful consideration she accepted, and in the fall of 1865 ten orphans were gathered together in Indianapolis from various parts of the State ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... I awoke, and I set off at once for Phelps's room, to find him haggard and spent after a sleepless night. His first question was ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... by the doctor for the patient were soon realized. The fever flew to his brain. For nearly six weeks he lay prostrate, at the mercy of death; now raging with the wild strength of delirium, and now sunk in the speechless, motionless, sleepless exhaustion which was his only repose. At last; the blessed day came when he enjoyed his first sleep, and when the doctor began, for the first time, to talk of the future with hope. Even then, however, the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... But this is the God's truth. I am a dangerous and wicked girl. My name is Clara Luxmore. I was never nearer Cuba than Penzance. From first to last I have cheated and played with you. And what I am I dare not even name to you in words. Indeed, until to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I never grasped the depth and foulness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... believe so?" she replied quickly. "I had half foreseen it, I had forced it from him, and yet I felt it like a blow! It cost me a sleepless night, and some—well, some very bitter tears. Not that the tears were a new experience. How often, after all that noise at the theatre, have I gone home and cried myself to sleep over the impossibility of doing what I wanted to do, of moving those hundreds of people, of making them feel, ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... miles from the firing line in a fair-sized French town. It's a treat to be away from the noise of battle, and from sleepless nights, and in a civilised place again. We are only here for a day or two, however, and then on we go—or at least ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... acquainted—better far, it seemed to him, than the aspirations which were threatening to lead poor Clara—who knew whither? A temptation beset him to walk round into Upper Street and pass Mrs. Tubbs's bar. He resisted it, knowing that the result would only be a night of sleepless ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... down and step into active control again to-morrow through some sly, subtle suggestion which it hopes may get past the vigilance of my sentinel. That word daily becomes, of necessity, my constant keynote—a daily conflict, a daily sleepless vigilance, and, thank God, a ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... life it is often the least important actors who are happiest, and the stars themselves are not always to be the most envied. Florence, torn between her ambition and her love, knew what it was to toss all night on her sleepless bed and wet the pillow with her tears. De Souvary, who found himself every day deeper in the toils of his ravishing American, chafed and struggled with unavailing pangs; and as for Frank Rignold, he endured long periods of black depression ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne |
