"Unseeing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... August humidity. The clear-browned skin and the rangy strength of the figure gave him a certain distinction. He held in his sinewy hands a doubly folded newspaper. Presently it slipped from his hold to the seat beside him. He stared at the window opposite with harassed and unseeing eyes. Abruptly he rose and went out on the platform. Average Jones picked up the paper. In the middle of the column to which it was folded was a ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Come now, Olympian, swear a solemn oath That he shall be the Lord of all around, Who on this day shall be of woman born, Of mortal men, who trace to thee their blood.' She said, and Jove, the snare unseeing, swore A solemn oath; but found his error soon. Down from Olympus' height she sped in haste To Argos of Achaia; for the wife Of Sthenelus, the son of Perseus, there, She knew, was sev'n months pregnant of a son; Whom, though untimely born, she brought ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... stolidly before a viewing screen. Theoretically he was on watch. Actually his eyes were unseeing, there was nothing to see. The star pattern changed so slowly as to be all ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... had opened the long sash and sped out upon the rain-soaked lawn; and she was none too soon. As if unseeing, or unfearing, the strange figure swept nearer and nearer to the moonlit water, its feet already splashing in it, when Dorothy's arms were flung around it ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... past her, unseeing, at the wall. "I guess I've known it for quite a while," he said at last. "I didn't want to believe it, so I wouldn't. Are you engaged ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... went over the young man on the bed. His face blanched. His lips lost their color. For a moment, as the big French-Canadian bent over him, he stared with glazed, unseeing eyes, at last to turn dully at the sharp, questioning voice of ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... wall a well-known voice cried, "Hail to thee, my twining vine!" Ivy turned and looked up, with the uncertain, inquiring smile we often wear when conscious that, though unseeing, we are not unseen; and presently two hands parted the leaves far enough for a very sunshiny smile to gleam down on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sea always to my right, and so did go proper to my way; yet with no great ease; for the sea also did steam very strong in that part, and because of this great fog of steam, I was surely much laboured to make a great speed, lest unseeing I go headlong into an hole of the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... along beside her, unseeing the objects that were nearest—the lovely shrubbery, beautiful flowers, and quaint little furnishings of that grand lawn—but with his eyes fixed on a distant mountain peak, bare of verdure, and seemingly but a mass of vari-colored rock; and he ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... subject:—"The 'Fiat lux' of creation is therefore, in the deep sense, 'fiat anima,' and is as much, when you understand it, the ordering of Intelligence as the ordering of Vision. It is the appointment of change of what had been else only a mechanical effluence from things unseen to things unseeing,—from Stars, that did not shine, to Earth, that did not perceive,—the change, I say, of that blind vibration into the glory of the Sun and Moon for human eyes: so making possible the communication out of the unfathomable ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... thy foolish point hath missed Thy dagger—thus I answer—with my fist!" Then swift he leapt and, even as he spoke, He fetched the knight so fierce and fell a stroke That, reeling, on the greensward sank Sir Gui, And stared, wide-eyed, unseeing, at the sky. Right firmly then upon his knightly breast Duke Joc'lyn's worn and dusty shoe did rest, And while Yolande stood white and dumb with fear, Thus sang the Duke ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... quadrangle, appeared the Master of Durham. The Master was in cap and gown, and carried some large papers under his arm; he walked slowly, as he had taken to walking of late, his odd, trotting gait transformed almost to a hobble. Meditative, he looked straight before him with unseeing eyes. No artist was ever able to seize the inner and the outer verity of that round, pink baby face, filled with the power of a weighty personality and a penetrating mind. Stewart marked him in that minute, sagacity and benevolence, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times as might be convenient. He was considered ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... upper right hand of the stove sat the two kitchen gods, small ancient idols, with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry world. Since time was they had sat there, ensconced at the very root of life, seemingly placid and unseeing and unhearing, yet venomously watching to be placated with food. Opposite the stove, on the white wall, hung a row of brass hooks, from which dangled porcelain spoons with pierced handles. On a serving-table stood the piled bowls for the day, blue-and-white rice patterns, of a thin, translucent ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... and warning to himself. Likewise, the driving mist seemed to be a reflection of his soul; or his soul a reflection of the driving mist and also of the vessel, as it struggled onward into the unknown, unseeing and unseen. He stepped over to the railing and looked straight down the ship's side. There he could tell with what tremendous rapidity the Roland ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the traffic manager stopped at the window and stood looking with unseeing eyes upon the morning bustle of Sierra Avenue. Then ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... her eyes, there was no light of reason in them—only the vacuous, unseeing stare of a dulled and ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... but not the world of every day—the world in which the vast majority of men have to spend fifty-two weeks of every year. Very delightful, too, is the type of man thus produced—charmingly learned, sweetly innocent, guileless, impracticable; walking the path of life with head in air, with eyes unseeing and ears unhearing the things that fill the thoughts of common men. Holding fellowship with the immortals, eating the bread of philosophy, doctrinaire, drinking the wine of poetry—how good would it be to live with such men if only there were nothing else to do in this old world of ours. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... yield, Nor even deem the foolish flowers vain. So take it, and if still too slight, too small It seem, think 'tis a bloom that grew anear, In other Springtime, the old garden wall. (That pale blue flower you will remember, dear. The heedless world, unseeing, passed it by, And left it to the bee and you.) Then say, "Because the hands that tended it are nigh No more, and little feet are gone away That round it trampled down the beaded grass, Sweeter to me it is than musky ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... high, only that little wall.... One movement, the least little yielding, the least bending over: oh, what bliss ... and how frightful!... He became drunk with delight, filled with the pleasure of it; he gasped, his eyes became unseeing; it was like being wafted along, a gentle flight through the air and ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... lying limp and still in the middle of her low, gilded bed, gazing with unseeing eyes at the rose canopy above. Her hair was pushed back ruthlessly, revealing an unsuspected height of forehead, which somewhat altered her appearance. She was very pale, a pallor with a tinge of yellow in it. She received the injection ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... had sped involuntarily from Penelope's lips as she met his blank, unseeing gaze. The sound of her voice seemed to bring ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... so deep in colour as to seem almost black. She stared at Ralph, unseeing, then the light of recognition flashed over her face and she sat up, reaching back quickly ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... to rock, folly-stricken and insensate in its hideous dance of death. Bennett continued. His voice insensibly lowered itself, a certain gravity of manner came upon him. At times he looked at the written pages in his hand with vague, unseeing eyes. No doubt ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... and cast me on the wave Where all my hopes had found a sudden grave. Love makes us blind and selfish: otherwise I had seen Helen's secret in her eyes; So used I was to reading every look In her sweet face, as I would read a book. But now, made sightless by love's blinding rays, I had gone on unseeing, to the end Where Pain dispelled the mist of golden haze That walled me in, and lo! I found my friend Who journeyed with me—at my very side, Had been sore wounded to the heart, while I Both deaf and blind, saw not, nor heard her cry. And then I sobbed, "O God! I would have ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hard glance at him, and he felt ignominiously repulsed. In its preoccupation her face had no recognition of him, not only as a lover but as a human being. Her eyes, under low-drawn brows, stared for a second into his with the unseeing intentness of inward thought. Her struggles to avoid his kiss were not half so chilling. Further solacing words ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... broken soldiery that flees Through winter of wild hills from hounding foes, Hath but the pain of frozen wounds, and fear Feeding on his dark spirit, to watch withal. And lo, As suddenly, as blessedly thou comest Now to my heart's unseeing watch for thee, As out of the night behind him into the heart, Drugg'd senseless with its ache, of that lost soldier An arrow leaps, and ere the stab can hurt, His frozen waking is the ease of death. So I am killed by thee; all the loud pain Of pleasure that had lockt my heart in life, ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... had vanished, letting himself down outside so lightly that she had not heard the slightest noise. She stood up then, bewildered, frightened, as if awakened from a drugged sleep, with heavy, downcast, unseeing eyes, her fortitude tired out, her imagination as if dead within her and unable to keep ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... He recognized a Presence with him, one day. That One unseen by unseeing eyes became real to him and then more real. He yielded to His wooing. He companioned with Him daily. This came to be the realest thing. And he was transformed by it. He grew constantly less like what he had been, and more like ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... it had shrunk a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths, without any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Abbess of Andouillettes, leant his head against the back of the chair, and sat motionless, fixing his unseeing eyes upon the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... of paper, already well written over, and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps the postscript. He was absorbed unusually in his cogitations, and nibbled into bits the feathery end of the gray goosequill of which he had been making such excellent use. While he meditates, unseeing, we will use the liberty of an old acquaintance to scan the letter—for such it is—which he has been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from it some matters which it may ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... lifted to glance toward the house, with here and there a straggler limping to the roadside, or an aide spurring past—just a stream of armed men, who had been plodding on since daylight, footsore, hungry, unseeing, yet ready to die in battle at their commander's word. It was ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... he had gone. Then she crouched, staring with wide, unseeing eyes into the outside dark. The man would go right away; she would not have even him to mitigate the horrible ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... suddenly—was seized with a sick distaste for the whole scene—for Betty's love affairs—for her own interest in them—for her own self and personality above all. Her great black eyes gazed straight before them, unseeing, over the crowd, the diamonds, the lights; her whole being gave itself to a quick, blind wrestle with some vague overmastering pain, some despair of life and joy to which she could ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... moulded plaster ceilings and fireplaces, made by Italian craftsman who were brought over from Italy. The front of the building has been altogether modernized, but much of the beautiful decorated interior work remains, to enrich the rooms where the many unseeing visitors take their meals. The Trevelyan Hotel, in the High Street, which presents to the street a most unpretentious exterior, and where, indeed, the principal rooms are the Victorian of Dickens, with ugly curtains and carpets, wall-papers ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... at him in a curiously unseeing and at the same time interested manner, as only eyes of a particular blue shade ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... still gazing with unseeing eyes at the picture before which I stood planted, and saying over and over in monotonous iteration, "One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue! One of the department ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... many inviting glances cast in his direction; he talked only to the bathing master, the native fishermen and the waiter at his table. With observant eyes, he took in the least details of his surroundings; but he did it in an unseeing fashion that completely misled the members of the summer colony who discussed him largely under their awnings and wrangled solemnly over the important question as to whether he was ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... dwelt upon the matter of her "looks," and the way she lighted up the dingy dining-room, and so conversed that a man found himself listening and glancing when it was his business to be an unhearing, unseeing piece ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... McKinstry's feet, and throwing him to the deck below; the fall incapacitated him from remaining at his station, and Lieutenant-Commander N.W. Thomas took command of the Monongahela. Meanwhile the Mississippi had passed, unseen and unseeing, in the smoke, and had herself grounded a little farther up near the head of the spit. She was observed to be on fire as the Monongahela again drew near the bend, and at the same moment the latter vessel's engines ceased to move, a crank-pin being heated. Thus unmanageable ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... gaze with lack-lustre, unseeing eyes. When the fever-fit of rage left him, he was still subject to odd lapses of memory. One of these had assailed him now. He did not recognize his ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... shiver seemed to pass through him; underneath his tanned skin he was paler, and the blood in his veins was cold. His eyes, fixed upon the flying landscape, were set in a fixed, unseeing stare—surely the fields were peopled with evil memories, and faces in the trees were mocking him. So he remained for several moments as though in the grip of a nightmare, and the lady watched him. There was a little tragedy, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... this youth, verily I will smite thy neck." The Minister answered, "Hearing and obeying: however, do thou, O Commander of the Faithful, give me three days' delay," and the Caliph rejoined, "I have granted this to thee." Hereupon Ja'afar went forth like unto one blind and deaf, unseeing nor hearing aught, and he was perplext and distraught as to his affair and continued saying, "Would Heaven we had not forgathered with this youth, nor ever had seen the sight of him." And he ceased not faring till he arrived ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... three have willed it so. Good heavens, what an enigma life is! Some winged insect whirling in a cyclone would have as much chance of escaping its doom as a human being under such circumstances." Then he stopped, and looked with blank, unseeing eyes down the slanting fir avenue. "It is a mystery," he went on—"the very mystery of mysteries; the Sphinx is nothing to it. A month ago we were strangers—I neither knew nor cared that such a person as Elizabeth Templeton ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... had shot from under him into the fire, scattering the embers, so he lay full length, with the red gash in his forehead, his arms spread out like a cross, and his face, in the inverted image, turned earthwards, gazing down on Granger and the Last Chance River with startled, unseeing eyes. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... walking swiftly along the road, where he had intended to walk slowly—a hundred questions pounding through his brain. Suddenly a thought came to him that stopped him in the trail, his unseeing eyes staring down into the dark chasm of the river. After all, was it so strange that Quade would do these things? Into his own life Joanne had come like a wonderful dream-creature transformed into flesh and blood. He no longer tried to evade the fact that he ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... sleeper who alone, at night Walks with unseeing eyes along a height, With death below and only stars above, I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep Along the edges of life's perilous steep, The lost ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... diamonds for weaving in the hair—glowing and glimmering like spurts of flame imprisoned within frozen dewdrops. Sometimes she looked at the great emerald Denis Harlenden had set on her finger. But her eyes had something of the fixed, unseeing stare of the sleep-walker. At last Sophia Ozanne came back and stood beside her. Neither looked at ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... up in bed and dropped her bare, pink legs over the edge. Her eyes were open now, but set in a fixed, unseeing stare. ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the words left his mouth, when the door opened, and out came a form—whether phantom or living woman none could tell. Pale, forlorn, lost, and purposeless, it came straight towards them, with wide unseeing eyes. They parted in terror from its path. It went on, looking to neither hand, and sank down the stair. The moment it was beyond their sight, they came to themselves and rushed after it; but although they searched ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and then at the grim figures of the human wolves and reptiles that crawled into the Square from below Fourth Street, and wondered what might happen if they should really meet. But to-day he gazed with unseeing eyes. There was on all the earth no poverty, no crime, no shame, no despair, no pain, no conflict. The splendour of the sunset was in his soul and the world was athrob ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... down the hall, after depositing his hatless charge in a blue satin reception-room, and Stanchon stared, unseeing, at the old Chinese panels and ivory figures that dotted its walls and tables. The strong odour of freesias and paper-narcissus hung heavy in the room; the roar of the great, dirty, cold city was utterly shut away and a scented silence, costly and ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Half-conscious, half-hearing, altogether unseeing, I thought there were two Voices near me. I couldn't understand what they said. One of the Voices was gently and persistently applying cold and soothing applications to my forehead. Another Voice chafed my hands. I thought one said, "Achmet," and the other replied, "Sahib." I knew I must ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... stared at each other with unseeing eyes, neither conscious, it would seem, of the other's presence. The circumstances called for prompt action, for swift decision, for keen and subtle energy, yet they were silent, helpless, looking into vacancy, and ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... store books in a trunk in a cave?" Drew changed the subject quickly to break that unseeing stare. He outlined what Stein had told him, and Anse's ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... gardener whom we saw oftenest hung about his flowers in a sort of vegetable calm, and not very different from theirs except that they were not smoking cigarettes. He did not move a muscle or falter in his apparently unseeing gaze; but when one of us picked a seed from the ground and wondered what it was he said it was a magnolia seed, and as if he could bear no more went away. In one wilding place which seemed set apart for a nursery ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... their secret ravished, no wasting moon Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours: Only the soft, unseeing heaven of June, The ghosts of great trees, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... it before him; frowned down on it a moment with a sharp hiss of indrawn breath. Then he twisted oddly on his chair, and sat bolt upright, staring straight before him with unseeing eyes. Presently he passed a hand across his brow, and made a ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... his head and peered at the blueprints on the nearest wall with unseeing eyes. A full minute passed. Keeping his face still averted, he began to tap out the ash and half-smoked tobacco ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Friedrich's exhausted body sank upon the moss of the upper, and the bracken and small shrubs closed over him, as if to shield him in their gentle embrace from the trouble that had driven him to their care. He lay on his back, staring with unseeing eyes at the tree-leaves far above his head, black against the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... of the pale winter sunshine into the shadow, and back again, to the tune of "Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre," which she hummed beneath her breath, while the baby's foolish little head, in its white cap from which protruded one tiny straight wisp of brown hair, with its beady, unseeing black eyes and its round mouth dribbling peacefully, bobbed over her shoulder as ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... personnel, and my own Company Headquarters. The cave was dimly lit by a few candles. Throughout the day and night there were perpetual comings and goings, and it was common to see men, dazzled by the outside sun, come stumbling down the stairs and tread unseeing on the prostrate forms of those asleep below. The bare chalk was floor, bed, and bench to all alike. The shadows, the dim groups of figures, and the rough pillars forming walls and roof, gave the impression ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... hot in her eyes, making him dim in her sight as he threw the rein over the horse's head, starting the animal out of its sleep with a little squatting jump. She stood so, stretching out her hands to him, while he, unbending in his stern answer to the challenge of duty, unseeing in the hard bitterness of his heart, swung into the saddle ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... his knowing it. When, considerably after his usual dinner-hour, he was back in his room, he looked at familiar objects with unseeing eyes. He was not conscious of hunger, but going into the kitchen begged for a cup of the coffee that could be smelt brewing on Frau Krause's stove. When he had drunk this, a veil seemed to lift from his brain; ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... and the intentions of the scheme under which we survive. Ach! So few humans learn that this invitation to live specifies not the hours, like a five-o'clock. It says—so well as Father-Mother Nature has learned to write the words to our unseeing eyes—'at once,' but we ever put off the living we are invited to at once—until to-morrow-next day, next year—until this or that be done or won. So now you will find this out. Before, you would have waited for a time that never came—no matter ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of food, she walked listlessly into the library and sank into a huge chair. Spring was well advanced, yet there was an open fire. Elbows upon the arms of her chair, hands clasped under her chin, she turned unseeing eyes upon the flickering flames. Motionless, barely breathing, she was a ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... roasting in the ashes, or fresh fish sizzling on hot stones gave a charm to the learning of wood-lore that it never could have possessed otherwise. At first with the heedlessness of city-bred boys, they crashed through the under-brush with unseeing eyes, and unhearing ears, but it was not long until they had learned the alertness of young Indians, following by signs of bark and leaf and fallen feather, trails more ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to Siloam Pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangor of the trumpets of the armies of God, blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white light of the new Heaven, until the great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... gone up to his room to lock the door and then to stand long at the window, staring with unseeing eyes down into the village street. By good rights, he should have seen one future, if not the other, opening out before him in ever-widening vistas. At nineteen or so, however, one is not too imaginative. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... they gained the top of the bank. With glittering eyes the old squaw stooped swiftly and turned the body upon its back. The unseeing eyes stared upward, water ceased to gush from the open mouth, and the lolling tongue settled ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Purchas's urgent solicitation that he should take another look at the patient, and say what he thought of his condition. Upon descending to the stuffy little cabin he found that, as the mate had reported, there was no marked change in Potter's condition; he still lay, as before, without movement, his unseeing eyes upturned, and apparently quite unconscious of the presence of the two men who bent over him. The only difference noticeable to Leslie was that the man's breathing seemed to ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... unseeing; his face was blanched to the whiteness of paper; an almost imperceptible movement of his chest showed that he still breathed. Nathaniel lifted one of the limp hands and its clammy chill struck horror to his heart. Tenderly he lifted the old ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... having had a moment in which to summon up the reserves of his courage and his command, smiled into her appealing eyes, kissed her pale face, and still smiling, took his way, unseeing and unheeding all but those appealing, tearful eyes and that pleading voice asking with sweet selfishness ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... his chair. Aimlessly—as one in perplexing, troubled thought—he went to the window and, standing there, looked out with unseeing eyes upon the cast-iron monument on the opposite corner of the street. Then he moved restlessly to the other window, and, with eyes still unseeing, looked down into the little garden of the crippled boy—the garden with the big moss and vine-grown rock in its center. Then he ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... her clinging hands, turning away from her, his eyes staring unseeing out of the window. A moment she continued looking at him, her dry eyes anxiously pleading. Then she buried her face within her hands and waited, her whole body trembling. Twice Winston sought to speak, before sufficient courage came to him to allow of his turning ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the righteous Saviour, and He shall speak peace unto the heathen." At the first notes Leonhard looked hastily toward the window, and if it had been a door he would have passed out on to the piazza, that he might there have heard, unseeing, unseen. While he sat still and looked and listened it seemed to him as if he had been engaged in foolish games with children all his life. He sat as it were in the dust, scorning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... under her breath as Cyrus reached her, to which he responded brusquely, "Howdy, Mandy," while he glanced with unseeing eyes at the mulatto boy at her side. Then, as he walked rapidly down the hall, with James at his heels, the woman turned back for a minute and gazed after him with an expression of animal submission and acquiescence. So little personal to Cyrus and so free from individual consciousness was ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... to the rail, to stand grasping it and staring across the water with unseeing eyes at the gay old city twinkling back with her thousand eyes of light. The cool night breeze, sweeping down unhindered over the level Netherlands from the bleak North Sea, was comforting to his throbbing temples. By degrees his head cleared, his rioting ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... lovely one to send her Glance into the vale, And, unseeing, toward him bend her Angel visage pale. And thus sat he, staring wanly, His last morning there: Toward her window still the manly ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... is the spiritual man whose deepest consciousness is pure vision, the pure life of the eternal. But the spiritual man, as yet unseeing in his proper person, looks out on the world through the eyes of the psychical man, by whom he is enfolded and enmeshed. The task is, to set this prisoner free, to clear the dust of ages from this ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... Staring before her with unseeing eyes, Sister Wynfreda nodded an absent assent. "To me also it seemed that the Lord had led her to us... I keep in mind how she looked when she came that first morning... a bit of silk was in her hand, which Frode had given her for a present, because a golden apple ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... They rode on unseeing and he resumed his journey, to stop an hour later and eat cold food, while he permitted his horse to graze in an opening. He had seen only three houses, one a large colonial mansion, with the smoke rising from several chimneys, and the others small log structures inhabited by poor farmers, ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to the ravine-lip; and stood there sniffing the icy air and growling deep in his throat. Looking down to the ledge he saw Cyril was no longer its sole occupant. Crouched at the opening of a crevice, not ten feet from the unseeing child, was something bulky and sinister;—a mere menacing ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... again to the men; somehow, after his glance at Edward, they seemed more pitiful than ever. For Edward typified the power they were facing—the unseeing, uncomprehending power that meant to crush them. The possibility of failure was revealed to Hal in a flash of emotion, overwhelming him. He saw them as they would be, when no leader was at hand to make speeches to them. He saw them waiting, their life-long habit of obedience striving ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... talked more than ever before; the flush on his cheeks was like the flush of wine or the sun which had fired his blood. As he had talked the more, so had she grown the more silent. She was sitting now with her hands clasped and her head thrown back, looking up at the stars with unseeing eyes. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came to! I cried aloud in my desolation and fear and hid my face in my hands, while the icy cliffs mocked my cry and the dead maid, tripping alongside, rolled her head over, and stared at me with stony, unseeing eyes. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... With unseeing eyes Echo gazed straight ahead rebuilding from her dream fabric a tragedy of the desert, in which the two men who had played so great a part in her life were ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... demand no Inconsiderable share in that Pity. What a Difficult, what an Arduous Task, have those Worthy Personages now upon their Hands? To carry the Knife so exactly, that on the one side, there may be no Innocent Blood Shed, by too unseeing a Zeal for the Children of Israel; and that on the other side, there may be no Shelter given to those Diabolical Works of Darkness, without the Removal whereof we never shall have Peace; or to those Furies whereof several have kill'd more people perhaps ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... holding a family indignation meeting on the broad porch when the Van Ramps came contentedly down for a walk, and brushed by them with unseeing eyes. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... told me that 'women were funny.' I had heard already of domestic differences. People were saying that Amy Foster was beginning to find out what sort of man she had married. He looked upon the sea with indifferent, unseeing eyes. His wife had snatched the child out of his arms one day as he sat on the doorstep crooning to it a song such as the mothers sing to babies in his mountains. She seemed to think he was doing it some harm. Women are funny. ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... drawing off the Count's eyes for one instant, and leaving them blinded for another, had revealed him clearly at the same time to Sir Terence. Sir Terence's blade darted in, driven by all that was left of his spent strength, and Samoval, his eyes unseeing, in that moment had fumbled widely and failed to find the other's steel until he felt it sinking through his body, searing him from breast ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... genius planned, Beyond the reach of the apprentice hand, Beyond the ken of the untutored heart, Like a fine carving in a common mart, Only the favoured few will understand. A chef d'auvre toiled over with great care, Yet which the unseeing careless crowd goes by, A plainly set, but well-cut solitaire, An ancient bit of pottery, too rare To please or hold aught save the special eye, These only with the sonnet ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... all very well for Hal to be a main feature in her life, blessing it with her friendship, while she turned kindly, unseeing eyes away from the corners where the murky shadows lay: Hal, who knew about the mad, discreditable marriage and its violent termination, and probably also of her mother's insatiable thirst for admiration and excitement at ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... is obliged to open books in order to read them sooner or later admits this. He finds the few books he opens in the literal or unseeing way do not make him see anything. They merely make him see that he ought to have opened the others—that he must open the others; that is, if he is to know anything. The next thing he sees is that he must open all the others to know anything. When he comes to know this he may be said to have reached ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... pale, boyish-looking fellow, with an abstracted, musing look in his large dark eyes. Mrs. Grant noticed with amusement that he wore a white straw hat in spite of the season. His eyes were directed to her face with his usual unseeing gaze. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at these over the card of pump-clips in the pane in the door with unseeing eyes. He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and the jacketless ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boarded-up shop was dark and depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machines had never looked so hopelessly disreputable. He thought of their fellows ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Clayton, Lord Greystoke, stood deaf and unseeing, suffering the pangs of keen regret for the opportunity that he had wasted because he had been so gullible as to place credence in a single statement of the first lieutenant of ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Cranium and Mr. Panscope appeared at the top of the tower, which, unseeing and unseen, they had ascended on the opposite side to that where the squire and Mr. Milestone were conducting their operations. Their sudden appearance a little dismayed the squire, who, however, comforted himself with the reflection that the tower was perfectly safe, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... lap, and she gazed with unseeing eyes at the hills. After all, Patricia, mourning her lover, had not known ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... were unseeing. Children played on the street, people walked and talked, the toilers were busy at their tasks, and that was all he knew or saw. And yet of late he had a new, unexpected vista of life. Like many men, Joe had missed women. There was his mother, but no one else. He was rather shy, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... Now they stand forlornly cheek by jowl with new yellow brick. Actaeon, from one great pillar, gazes on less divine pictures than a goddess bathing; Artemis, on the other pillar, drapes herself for unseeing eyes. A papered notice-board lolls against the superb ironwork of the gates. Hunter and huntress, pillars and wrought ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... compartment was packed with City men (how he wished Flossie would turn her head and not her eyes if she must look at them!); and as they got in at Earl's Court, one of them, a polite person, gave up his seat to the lady. Flossie turned an unseeing eye on the polite person, and took his seat with a superb pretence of having found it herself after much search. And when Rickman said "Thanks" to the polite person her indignant glance informed him that she had expected support in her ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... day of my happiness," he muttered, as he took his place at the office table. "Well, I suppose no one could expect such pleasure as I have had these last three months to continue; but, whatever happens, Saidie and I will stick together." He sat musing for a moment, staring with unseeing eyes at the pile of ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Temple it was very still—dark and still. Very still was it within The Quiet Room, and the darkness that came stealing through the open window was a thick and heavy darkness. The Pilgrim lay upon his couch staring with blank, unseeing eyes into a blackness wherein there was not even a spot of gray to show ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... again—he was gone. A great silence,—a horrible oppression and loneliness fell upon Walden's heart. He sank into his accustomed chair and stared before him with unseeing eyes,- -mechanically patting his dog Nebbie while gently pushing the animal back in its attempts to clamber ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of Leslie's marriage; then came news of his death, after a life that had not fulfilled his dreams for him. Nothing more she had heard or known—nothing to this day, when she had seen his daughter pass her by unseeing in the ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lands would increase it another five thousand. Within a few years, according to Mr. Van Ostend—and she trusted him—her dividends from her stock would net her several thousands more. She was calculating, as she stood there gazing northwards, unseeing, into the serene night and the hill-peace that lay within it, how she could invest this increment for the coming years, and casting about in her mathematically inclined mind for means to make the most of it in interest ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... animation, as they circled among the others on the floor, her red lips close to her partner's ear, but Hamlin, suspicious and watchful, noted that her eyes were busy elsewhere, scanning the faces. They swept over him apparently unseeing, but as the two circled swiftly by, the hand resting lightly on the Major's shoulder was uplifted suddenly in a peculiar, suggestive movement. He stared after them until they were lost in the crowd, feeling confident that the motion of those ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... as Bobby's little army, reenforced from four to six by the addition of a "plain clothes man" and Dillingham, the Bulletin's star reporter, invaded the place. Before a word was spoken, Feeney, the plain clothes man, presented Scales with a writ, which the latter attempted to read with unseeing eyes, his fingers trembling. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... let me look at you," and, slipping her hand beneath the chin, she turned the face up to hers. She was prepared for tear-drenched eyes and trembling lips but she found neither. Isidore's dark-lashed lids drooped heavily over his unseeing eyes, his head rolled loosely from side to side, and he began to slip, silently and unconsciously ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... already, and knew it practically by heart. So she left the sheets undisturbed in their envelope. But she raised the whole to her lips, and pressed it there, while her eyes, as they slowly filled with tears, travelled—unseeing—to the wintry street beyond the window. Eyes and face wore the same expression as Wilfrid Bury had surprised there—the dumb utterance of a woman hard pressed, not so much by the world without as by ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... looking up at the fading heavens, he moved forward, head lifted, silent, unhurried, with the soundless, stealthy, and certain tread of those who walk unseeing ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... nearly knocked me down, Stoker. Where are you going?" It was one of the factory boys who asked the question, and Alec, hurrying down the street with unseeing eyes, became suddenly aware that he had run against some one who had caught him by the arm, and was laughingly shaking him to make him ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. Timothy Green, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing eyes at her own fair reflection in the glass before her. Chloe, the black handmaiden who stood at the door, latch in hand, had time to grow tired of waiting before her mistress spoke. "You may tell Mr. Haward that I am at home, Chloe. Bring ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... young. Neale saw those staring eyes fix upon his; he realized a dull, opaque blackness of horror, hideous veils let down over the windows of a soul, images of hell limned forever on a mind. Then that film, that unseeing cold thing, like the shade of sleep or of death, passed from her eyes. Now they suddenly were alive, great dark- violet gulfs, full of shadows, dilating, changing into exquisite ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Twice he bent and kissed her, and each time her lips met his shyly and her body made its happy, nestling movement. She clung to him, unable to release herself, and he sat, half supporting her in his arms, as he gazed with unseeing eyes at the blur of the great city across the bay. For once there were no visions in his brain. Only colors and lights and glows pulsed there, warm as the day and warm as his love. He bent over ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... her, that her hat was bent forward over her eyes. She only wanted to find little Agnes, and to have her love again. In the bower Irene did find the child crouched up in one corner, terrified, an almost unseeing expression in her eyes. Irene rushed to her with ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... youth was rapt; for some moments his eyes were unseeing, and his lips moved without sound. It was not difficult to see what home meant for him, a goal achieved at hazard, something familiar and sympathetic, worth all the rest of the world. He came back to his surroundings ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... had ceased, and she had not an idea of what came next; how one entered upon the process of starving to death in the streets. Passers-by, strolling under the trees, glanced at her as she passed them, preoccupied and unseeing, a neat, comely little figure of a girl in her quiet clothes with her still composed face. She went slowly; there was a seat which she knew of farther on, overshadowed by a lime tree, where she meant to rest and put her thoughts in order; but already at the back ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... filled with sad-eyed, patient-faced women, whose quiet demeanor was more heartrending than tears would have been. Some gave them the welcome that those who are united in the bonds of affliction give each other; others only stared at them with stony, unseeing eyes. Whose turn would be the next? was the thought that filled every breast. Oppressed and saddened, Peggy thoughtfully took the seat assigned her, and, as Sally sank down beside her, she slipped her hand into her friend's protectingly. Sally responded with ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... victim. Sure enough, he had killed him. Zaidos was out of his way forever. He felt in his blouse where the precious papers were, then, moved by some strange impulse, he took them out, and held them up before the unseeing eyes of ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... Asher replied absently, looking out with unseeing eyes at the lengthening woodland shadows, "a church or two more, some brick sidewalk, and a few stores and homes—just added on, not improved. I miss Jim Shirley everywhere. The older folks seem the same, but some of the girls are pushing baby-carriages ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... I—I was sort of excited. I liked to look at her, but didn't think." And now consciously her face was called up, infinitely sweet and more impelling for the deliberate memory. Flash of brown skin, smooth and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold, unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong, clean, fine face rose before Jean, eager and wistful one moment, softened by dreamy musing thought, and the next stormily passionate, full of hate, full of longing, but the more mysterious ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... her that it was no question of ransom. She had only spoken to try and stifle the inner conviction that grew despite her efforts to crush it. Her hands were locked together tightly, her eyes still staring out unseeing at the wonderful sunset. She felt dazed, hopeless, like a fugitive who has turned into a cul-de-sac, hemmed in on every side; there seemed no way out, no loophole of escape. She wrung her hands convulsively and a great shudder shook her. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... knees; I was almost distracted. When it got dark I jogged along to the Town Hall—God knows how I got there—and sat on the edge of the balustrade. I tore a pocket out of my coat and took to chewing it; not with any defined object, but with dour mien and unseeing eyes, staring straight into space. I could hear a group of little children playing around near me, and perceive, in an instinctive sort of way, some pedestrians pass me by; ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... adequate or calm. He was angry, suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an enemy. His face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. His breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in his throat. He struck furious ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... control, shouldered his way into the room in his characteristic fashion, as if he were meeting and hurling back a foot-ball rush. Epstein, breathless and obviously greatly excited, actually stumbled over the threshold in his unseeing haste. Laurie, slowly following the two, alone wore some resemblance to a normal manner. He was very ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... confiscated at that time. Doubtless, again, our Government, to encourage settlement, sold land in such large parcels in early days. Incurious Abingdon cares for none of these things. Singular Abingdon! And yet are these folk, indeed, so singular among citizens? So unseeing a people? Consider that, within the memory of men living, the wisdom of America has made free gift to the railroads, to encourage their building, of so much land as goes to the making of New England, New ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... a scarlet frock and pink ribbons, appeared in the doorway. The vague, almost unseeing look with which the teacher turned to her was interpreted by the vanity of this buxom damsel to be the dazzled vision of eyes half blinded ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... it was more. Not simply the gravity of responsible manhood, it was that, and something else. This was the change, the old careless gaiety was gone out of the face and in its place sadness, almost gloom. Straight down the river the grave, sad face was turned, but the eyes were fixed with unseeing gaze upon the flowing water. The canoe was now almost abreast the hiding place in the bushes and still drifting. Suddenly the man in the canoe, lifting up his face toward the sky, cried out, "I'll bring her back, please God, and I'll find ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... He threw the soiled and scribbled missive down on the table and sat with unseeing eyes fixed on the studio wall. So, they had cast him out of their councils! They already thought of him as one who ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the sun had set Darrell paced up and down the veranda, pausing at intervals to gaze with unseeing eyes out over the peaceful scene below him, his only companions his own troubled thoughts. The young moon was shining, and in its pale radiance his set ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... another in passing, but no, such is not the case. If they happen to pass in the same street they either look haughtily at each other, with apparently the utmost dislike, or else they gaze ahead with unseeing eyes. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... last the sick man's babblings—and they were mostly as profane and lewd as his occasional bursts of song—were quieted. The unseeing glitter of his eyes that had ever and anon been turned upon us was changed to a dull and heavy consciousness, and he struggled to rise, but his limbs ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... comin' back," he said, with a little return of his old boyish roughness, but his eyes fell before hers as he turned hurriedly away. He was rolling away from the hills, and his mind had gone back to her seated with folded hands and unseeing eyes in the old circuit rider's porch, dreaming, thinking—thinking, dreaming— before he began fully to understand. He remembered his mother telling him how unhappy Mavis had been the summer the two were alone in the Blue-grass, and how she had ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... looked, the events of the last few crowded days seemed to rise up and bear him down under their horror and immensity. He sat clutching the arms of his chair, and with unseeing eyes stared and stared at the letters. All at once he felt very young, very helpless, ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... myself clear, Professor. We, or rather most of us, are in a very unhappy state of mind. Thus, what might three days ago have been a very simple thing, takes on for all of us perhaps a grossly exaggerated importance. Mr. Flynn there," glancing toward one of the men who was looking with dull unseeing eyes at the table, "has an important errand at his home. His home is in Pleasantville, N.Y. That is not far from New York City. We are really perplexed as to whether we ought to let him go." Justice Higginbotham nervously clenched his fist until the knuckles ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew |
