"Wordless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chet. A gripping of hands; a perfunctory, "Good work, old man!"—and that was all. They housed the two ships, closing the great doors to keep out the arctic cold; and then Chet Bullard threw himself exhausted upon a cot, while he stared, still wordless, at the high roof overhead. But his hands that gripped and strained at whatever they touched told of the reaction to ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... flying Time from all their silver tongues— And out of memories of her kindlier days, And sidelong glances at my father's grief, And at the happy lovers heart in heart— And out of hauntings of my spoken love, And lonely listenings to my muttered dream, And often feeling of the helpless hands, And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek— From all a closer interest flourished up, Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears By some cold morning glacier; frail at first And feeble, all unconscious of itself, But such ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the silent, wordless worship of Jan and his people was filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife was a mother. She was one of them now, a part of their indissoluble existence—a part of it as truly as the strange lights forever hovering over the Pole, as surely ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... down to the water and look at Sir Richard's boat, and send off my card to him by a sailor or something. Then, if he's a good boy, he will turn up to-day, and then—!" The end of Anne's sentence was wordless ecstasy. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... her hand and swiftly turned back to the road. Philip Ammon, wordless, started toward Onabasha on ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... Kate, or let him serve twice seven years as Jacob served for Rachel, but let him never search out printed forms whereby to declare his passion; nor fit the measure of his love to the lines of the "Model Letter-Writer." As to "naming the day," 'twere a wordless lover indeed who could not ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... that resolute wordless play of the will—dismissing with a series of efforts the intellectual images of thought—that play of the will which, it seemed, had affected the boy opposite in a new way. She had no idea of what the crisis would be, or how ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... little ones each he has caught to his breast, And clasped them, and kissed them with fervent caress; Then wordless and tearless, with hearts running o'er, They part who have never been parted before: He springs to his saddle,—the rein is drawn tight,— And Beechenbrook Cottage is ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... happened that froze the blood in his veins. He had heard the scream of every beast of the great forests, but never a scream like that which came from Mercer's lips now. It was not the cry of a man. To Kent it was the voice of a fiend, a devil. It did not call for help. It was wordless. And as the horrible sound issued from Mercer's mouth he could see the swelling throat and bulging eyes that accompanied the effort. They made him think of a ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... waltz-like movement, similar to that with which he had begun his own mad dance; and as they moved, gradually widening their circles until they were strung out all along the face of the motionless regiments, they hummed a low, weird, wordless song that was somehow inexpressibly suggestive of vague, nameless horror. As for Machenga, after watching his assistants for a minute or two, he stalked slowly toward the king and seated himself at His Majesty's feet, where, after a time, he seemed to lose all consciousness of outward things, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the viols are playing That grand old wordless rhyme; And still those two ate swaying In perfect tune and time. If the great bassoons that mutter, If the clarinets that blow, Were given a voice to utter The secret ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... circumstances would have made me exceedingly happy, only added to my misery when, as it appeared, I had only a short time to live. Nature could charm, she could enchant me, and her wordless messages to my soul were to me sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, but she could not take the sting and victory from death, and I had perforce to go elsewhere for consolation. Yet even so, in my worst days, my darkest years, when occupied with the laborious business of working out my own salvation ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... the attempt of this young man to describe what all who have experienced cosmic consciousness unite in saying is indescribable, for the very obvious reason that there are no words in which to express what is wordless, and inexpressible. This authentic account of a young man under twenty years of age, however, serves to prove that there is no special age of physical maturity in which the attainment of this state of consciousness may ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... his mind saw her—quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, wordless ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... from the ruling brain," Denny surmised soberly. "Somewhere, perhaps half a mile down in the earth, Something is able to see us through solid walls, read in our minds our intentions of what we're to do next, and send out wordless commands to these soldiers to ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... said to Miss Bruce-Drummond who had met up with them for a week-end at Stirling, "those poor children are so pitifully what Gelett Burgess calls 'the gagged and wordless folk'; it would be so much easier—and safer—for them if they belonged to his ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... samples and four assayers to every shipment, and buys them, with its allowances for freight, smelting charges and the innumerable expenditures which must be made before money can become money in reality. Fairchild sang louder than ever, a wordless tune, an old tune, engendered in his brain upon a paradoxically happy and unhappy night,—that of the dance when he had held Anita Richmond in his arms, and she had laughed up at him as, by her companionship, she had paid the debt of the Denver road. Fairchild had almost forgotten ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... but it left her weak, inert, impotent. The impulse to pray came to her, but the prayer that went up from her trembling heart was voiceless and wordless. She had no means of expression in which to cloak her utter need. Only the stark helplessness of her whole ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... a space, wordless, regarding her. His doubts and questionings had fled before her presence. He remembered the things that he had meant to say. He faced the cameras again and the light about him grew brighter. He turned again ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... his hand for a sword doth seek, And he looketh about on his brethren, but his lips no word may speak; They speak the name, and he hears not, and again he drinks of the cup And knows not friend nor kindred, and the wrath in his heart wells up, That no God may bear unmingled, and he cries a wordless cry, As the last of the day is departing and the dusk ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... quiet milk run out to Saturn would have its brighter side," Frank muttered to Tom when he came back inside the ship. Tom grinned at him in wordless understanding. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... my weak heart-pulses shiver In wordless woe for thee, Thy wasted tenderness, thy love that never Might ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... at once the girl, with a wordless cry, sank on her knees beside the vast looming bulk of the tower. She covered her face with both hands, and through her fingers the tears ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... A wordless carol of life and love, Of nature free and wild; And the three monks paused in the evening shade, Looked up at each other ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... the icicled eaves— Croons and mutters a wordless song, And the old elm chafes its skeleton leaves Against the windows all ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... image, of course,—not his. It was not a simile that was in his mind, or is in anybody's at such a moment,—it was a pang of wordless passion, and then a silent, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... scantiness of her vocabulary, but through her mind still whirled wordless outcries of rebellion. Her one brief visit to the city rose before her with all the horror of the inexplicable, strange, and repellent life which it had revealed to her. The very conveniences of the compact city apartment ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Arnold the speaker, prompted sometimes by his companions; Stone, and the few soldiers grouped about him, awe-stricken and dismayed. Blakely had started up from his litter, his face white with an awful dread, listening in wordless agony. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... lifted, And beauty came like the setting sun. My heart was shaken with tears and horror Drifted away ... O but every one Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... and looked up to the stars. No words came. The cry of her heart was, "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me." But she was too ignorant to weave it into a prayer. When human hearts look up to God in wordless agony, the Intercessor translates the attitude ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... gaped, wordless, Gilfoyle magnificently spoke for her, proudly informed the clerk that her name was "Anita Adair," that she was white (he nearly said "pink"), that her age was—he had to ask that, and she told him nineteen. He gave her residence as New York and her ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... I will be bound by the wordless oath of your strangely upright land, and having said that I will be your friend—I ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... hope and courage like a sunlit morning in spring. He was adventure for ever, and His courage and adventure flowed into and submerged and possessed the being of the man who beheld him. And this presence of God stood over the bishop, and seemed to speak to him in a wordless speech. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... "Yogananda, must I bring out into the cold realms of speech the warm sentiments best guarded by the wordless heart?" ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... kindling a fire, and he looked up to see why she did not finish. She was sitting on the edge of the old watchman's rude bed, bowed low over the sleeping child, and again sobs were shaking her like an ague fit. There was something heartrending in this silent, wordless anguish; but there was nothing to be said, and Tom went on making the fire. After a little she sat up and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... supplication which, under the circumstances, was the best she could have offered. She did not even try to form her petitions into words—the depths in which her soul lay were too deep for that; it was a wordless cry which went up to God. But its substance was an entreaty that the Father would do His will, and would bend her will to it; that whatever He saw fit to give her, He would always give His presence and His love; that ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... man, let us say, begs for drink. Had his petition been a wordless desire it might have been supposed, though falsely, to be a disembodied and quite immaterial event, a transcendental attitude of will, without conditions or consequences, but somehow with an absolute moral dignity. But when the petition became articulate and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... be feared in a phosphorescent birch stub, even with the drip of rain from the leaves making stealthy, ghostly footfalls all through the wood and the voice of the east wind in the trees overhead beginning to take up a querulous, wordless complaint that moved back and forth with the footfalls. Foxfire is a common enough phenomenon. It is easy to explain it all as I do now. The strange part of such things is always that, at the time, no matter what a man's training ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... hazel glade Throws down the path a longer shade, And the hills are growing brown; To-ring, to-rang, to-ringleringle, By threes and fours and single The cows are coming home; The same sweet sound of wordless psalm, The same sweet June-day rest and calm, The same sweet scent of bud and balm, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Princess as finding extraordinary in him were two or three mute facial intimations which his wife's presence didn't prevent his addressing his daughter—nor prevent his daughter, as she passed, it was doubtless to be added, from flushing a little at the receipt of. They amounted perhaps only to a wordless, wordless smile, but the smile was the soft shake of the twisted silken rope, and Maggie's translation of it, held in her breast till she got well away, came out only, as if it might have been overheard, when some door was closed ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... sparkling wintry stars grow mild and liquid, shining with a tremulous and tender light; the whole world seems larger, happier, more full of untold, untried possibilities. The air vibrates with wordless promises, calls, messages, beckonings; and fairy-tales are told by ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... the trance, but sweet and low The harp breathed out again Its speechless wail, its wordless woe, In Carolan's ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... The wordless thought beat through Jason's mind, filling it. He could feel it on all sides—only much stronger ahead of them in the direction of the unseen city. Naxa and the doryms reacted in the same way, restlessly uncomfortable, not ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... pines the summer wind Sings like a distant sea. O harps of green, your murmurs find An echoing chord in me! On Carmel shore the breakers moan Like pines that breast the gale. O whence, ye winds and billows, flown To cry your wordless tale? ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the unworn joy of living Is not far to find,— Leave the bell and book and candle Of the world behind, In your coracle slow drifting, Without haste or plan, You shall catch the wordless music Of ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... deadening persistence, but she resolutely refused to give it entry. Why should Robert commit suicide? Why indeed? It was the question which had sprung to her lips when she first heard Austin's belief, and it was to that she now clung in the midst of her agonizing doubts, as though the mere wordless insistence in her mind made it an argument of negation which gathered force and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... groan, he knotted his fingers together and prayed the first real prayer his heart had ever uttered. It was wordless and formless, just an inarticulate cry for help in the ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... to the weird figures of horror in which William Blake delighted—arms, hands, hair, all stretch intensely to the zenith. They seem to be straining away from the spot to which they are rooted. It is a Laocoon grouping, a wordless concentrated struggle for the sunlight, and disagreeably impressive. The trippers longed to talk and were tongue-tied; they looked now and then over their shoulders. They were glad when the eerie influence was passed, though they traversed a morass ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... and gazing wordless for a moment at this new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with bits of ribbon on the breast of it,—tried to say how proud he was and choked instead, it was for Mary that he reached out an unconscious, embracing arm, the emotion which would not go into words finding ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... First-Reader Class had welcomed him. Left to his own devices, he had promptly laid his arms upon his desk and his head upon his arms. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Isidore's brilliant head still rested on his folded arms and Teacher felt that she must make some effort to comfort his wordless misery. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... glad many times since that old John never knew; glad that the frenzied curses that came boiling up out of that inner hell were wordless. I contrived to hold in while Runnels was hurrying me through the station office and past the sleepy sergeant at the desk. But when the cell door had opened and closed for me, and old John's heavy footsteps were no longer echoing in the iron-floored corridor, the newly hatched devil broke ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... is a pianofortist up to the time and tune of day. Knowing that L'Enfant Prodigue is now all the go, he keeps himself up to date by performing the Musical Prodigy Son's, I mean MENDELSSOHN'S "Songs without Words;" and this so effectively, that the last wordless song he was obliged to repeat, and much obliged the audience by repeating. Then the good fellar played La Campanella, Which I prefer to Gentle Zitella, The Princess LOUISE, &c., were there, and "&c." was really looking uncommonly well ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... Lavished at wordless wish or mute Command, the chemic wealth Upsprings to meet the builders' hands, All hushed as dusky stealth. Noiseless as love, as silent prayer Mysterious, ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... and the flock; The Ocean when its yeasty war is waging Is awful to the vessel near the rock; But violent things will sooner bear assuaging, Their fury being spent by its own shock, Than the stern, single, deep, and wordless ire[cq] Of a strong human heart, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... shall bring every thing to Him as it comes, and pray it out in our spiritual consciousness before we act it out in our lives. We shall, therefore, find ourselves taking up the burdens of life and praying them out in a wordless prayer which we ourselves often cannot understand, but which is simply the unfolding of His thought and will within us, and which will be followed by the unfolding ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... And wordless we moved onward down from the hill In the west cloud's murked obscure, And looking back we could see the handpost still In the solitude of ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... soldiers, the grizzled colonel, the slim lieutenant. They were talking together in low tones, at least the colonel was talking, eagerly, energetically, and with much gesticulation. The junior listened wordless to every word. What had he meant by "the bird had flown?" Why should Nevins "skip?" An unpleasant fear seized upon Sancho. He knew Nevins, at least a Nevins, a captain whom everybody knew, in fact, and few men trusted. What had ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... sacrilege. She got up and crossed the room and sat down beside Jimmie on the sofa, without saying a word. Her tall, full figure towered above the gentlemanly slouch of Jimmie's boyish proportions, and her thus silently arraying herself on Jimmie's side as a wordless rebuke to my impertinence was so delicious that Jimmie gave me a solemn wink, ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... lowered, and as he talked of his boyish days there, and of the sights and festivities of London town, he found in Caleb Parish and his daughter receptive listeners, but in young Doane a stiff-necked monument of wordless resentment. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... petty fussiness which had annoyed her neighbors dropped away from her as she moved softly, keen-eyed and solicitous, among them all. The steaming bowl of coffee and strengthening sandwich, ready on the instant for each arrival the unshaken hopefulness of her eyes, and her wordless control of the awestruck little boys, were comforts scarcely realized in that dark time; yet comforts truly. Even Gabriella could not refuse the nourishment so lovingly pressed upon her, and mechanically drank the cup of broth which her friend had taken care should be of ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... your own figure?" persisted Miles. Again a wordless message flashed across the tackle-room. This time the Kid, yawning, stretched one ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... far aloft, Above the murmur of the uneasy world, My thoughts in exultation held their way: Whose tremulous whispers through the rustling glade Were once to me unearthly tones of love, Joy without object, wordless music, stealing Through all my soul, until my pulse beat fast With aimless hope, and unexpressed desire— Thou sea, who wast to me a prophet deep Through all thy restless waves, and wasting shores, Of silent labour, and eternal change; First teacher of the ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... generally an endowment of natures physically strong and rich by the senses, independently of the mind, though melody may sometimes be the audible translation of a silent thought as well as the unconscious speech of wordless passion. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... out a match a new sound caught his ear. A man was running in the dark. He heard him stumble over the lower steps as he panted fiercely and he broke into a cry as he ran, a strange, mad, sobbing cry, and he still gasped and gave out his wordless wail as he tore past Coryndon and on along the passage and into ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... over the lonely women, wearing out their souls with its melancholy moanings and its vast and wordless sighs. Its voices seemed to enter Blanche Burke's soul, filling it with hunger never felt before. Day after day it moaned in her ears and wailed about the little cabin, rousing within her formless desires and bitter despairs. Obscure emotions, unused powers ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... Weh! Schade! Schade!" she had murmured in a deep sympathetic tone, which Catherine found unexpectedly soothing. Accustomed as she had always been to brisk remedial measures, and beyond those, to wordless pity and a deliberate ignoring of the evil, she was interested and touched by this demonstration. She had felt shy with Frieda from the first, wishing so earnestly to know her well and win her love that she could not be perfectly simple and ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... mad flight. Mrs. Thornton herself went. And the sound of his well-known and commanding voice, seemed to have been like the taste of blood to the infuriated multitude outside. Hitherto they had been voiceless, wordless, needing all their breath for their hard-labouring efforts to break down the gates. But now, hearing him speak inside, they set up such a fierce unearthly groan, that even Mrs. Thornton was white with fear as she preceded ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that before the final crisis came help was well on the way. When the party of rescuers arrived, the charred and deserted dwellings of Colony Gardens told their wordless story. They had come too late. It is quite possible that the newcomers had met by the way the throng of settlers who were bound for Canada, or at least had heard of their departure from the Red River. It is ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... as he came up through the purple gloom of the moorland, the stars' brilliancy silvering her—waiting—yielding in pallid silence to his arms, crushed in them, looking into his eyes, dumb, wordless. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... were assembled at the corral, halter-breaking a three-year-old for the pure fun of it. Wally caught sight of the approaching blotch of color, and yelled a wordless greeting; him had old Hagar carried lovingly upon her broad shoulders with her own papoose when he was no longer than her arm; and she knew his voice even at that distance, and grinned—grinned and hid her joy in a fold of her ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... within the palazzo, save deep down in the heart of the Lady Fiorenza, who had never been one with her family in worldly ambitions; and far below the giddy current of the day's happenings ran the ceaseless flow of the mother's wordless prayer, enfolding her child—pleading that that which was to come to her should make ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... was shaken, As swift and swifter the notes came 1145 From my touch, that wandered like quick flame, And from my bosom, labouring With some unutterable thing: The awful sound of my own voice made My faint lips tremble; in some mood 1150 Of wordless thought Lionel stood So pale, that even beside his cheek The snowy column from its shade Caught whiteness: yet his countenance, Raised upward, burned with radiance 1155 Of spirit-piercing joy, whose light, Like the moon struggling through the night Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break With ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... In the wordless years of earliest life, mysteries around the child can receive only partial solution. But the day comes when language gives him a key whereby to unlock the doors, and he begins to ask, "What is it," then "Why," and "Where," and "How." This questioning period commences about the age of three, and ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... A groan of wordless horror went up from the wreckers. For a moment they stared at the thing rocking and sidling in their midst, with grotesque motions of life and the face and hands of a terrific death; and then, as one man, they started to splash, beat and plunge their way to the ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... his son's silence; he would rather have had stormy argument than a wordless acceptance of the situation. Chaffering in these sorts of bargains means that a man can look after his interests. "A man who is ready to pay you anything you ask will pay nothing," old Sechard was saying to himself. While he tried to follow his son's train of thought, he went ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... and while Walker was still dodging the palm creepers which tapestried it he heard a noise of lamentation. The noise came from the village and was general enough to assure him that a chief was dead. It rose in a chorus of discordant howls, low in note and long-drawn out—wordless, something like the howls of an animal in pain and yet human by reason of their ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... to intelligence—secret intelligence, the wordless incalculable intuition of the Cat. It was, indeed, the cat for the business ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... and you, Right Worthy my fellow-thegns, if ye could read my heart at this moment, believe that you would not find there the vain joy of aspiring man, when the greatest of earthly prizes is placed within his reach. There, you would see, with deep and wordless gratitude for your trust and your love, grave and solemn solicitude, earnest desire to divest my decision of all mean thought of self, and judge only whether indeed, as king or as subject, I can best guard the weal of England. Pardon me, then, if I answer you not as ambition alone ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the wolf-hound, Brock's hand on the shaggy head. The two swung steadily toward her, Brock smiling into her eyes, holding her eyes with his, and as they were closer, she heard Mavourneen crying in wordless dumb joy, crying as she had not done since the day when Brock came home the last time. Above the sound Brock's voice spoke, every trick of inflection so familiar, so sweet, that the joy of it was sharp, ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... a little wordless cry of joy. He caught her two hands in his and held them against his lips. Again that great wave of tenderness swept her, almost engulfing. But when it had ebbed she sank back once more in her chair, and she withdrew her hands from ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... long and too intimately to disregard them now, uninfluenced by their varying moods. He watched them in sunlight when they were all shining white and violet and soft purple, with great shadows spread over their slopes where the forests stood deepest; and they heartened him, gave him a wordless promise that better times were to come. He saw them swathed with clouds, and felt the chill of their cold aloofness; the world was a gloomy place then, and friendship was all false and love a mockery. He saw them at night—then was he an outcast ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a distant din and thrill of something unthinkable on the horizon of the crowd, even beyond the castle. Next it was a wordless clamour startlingly close, and loud enough to be distinct if each word had not killed the other. Next came words of a terrible clearness, coming nearer, and next one man, rushing into the room and telling the news as briefly as such ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... our sweetest honeycomb Of lovesome thought and passion-hearted rhyme, Builded of gold, and kisses, and desire, By that wild poet whom so many a time Our hungering lips have blessed, until a fire Burnt speech up, and the wordless hour ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. "Light! give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... away from what I meant to say, which was simply that Miss Rossano's wordless reception of Brunow made me furiously jealous of him, and altogether dashed my happiness. She had spoken to me—ergo, she could speak. She had not spoken to him—ergo, the emotion of encountering him was too great for her. We had been six ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... when a household should be manless, grumbling about the waste where there was none, peering into bread boxes, prying into corners never meant for masculine eyes. Etta, the girl, was like him, sharp-nosed, ferret-faced, stingy. The mother and the boy turned to each other. In a wordless way they grew very close, those two. It was as if they were silently matched against the ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... I made haste first of all to catch the eye of our waiter, who was also the proprietor of the little inn. I pressed a wordless plea into his hand. "We are eccentric," I murmured in explanation, "and you must ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... touching sight to witness the meeting between Wylie and his friends. Affection's strongest ties could not have produced a more affecting and melting scene—the wordless weeping pleasure, too deep for utterance, with which he was embraced by his relatives, the cordial and hearty reception given him by his friends, and the joyous greeting bestowed upon him by all, might well have put to the blush those heartless calumniators, who, branding the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... its string of lights on esplanade and summer villas; Cap Grisnez flashed its calm white light of guardianship; Calais town sent a message of kindly greeting from the far distance; only the Varne Sands whispered a wordless warning as they swirled the waters above them and sent a flock of shivering wavelets to beat against the smooth hull ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... laughed in frank delight, his brown cheeks colored, his eyes sparkled. "Gosh!" said he. "I—like you!" For some time thereafter he remained red and silent, but he kept one big hand in the pocket where lay the gold cigarette case. There was a wordless song in Buddy Briskow's heart, for—he had made a friend. And ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... candies, and cried, "Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Israel, sweets, all sweets!" The girl selling clay peered up impudently into Israel's eyes, and the oven-boy, answering the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms thrust out at doors standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with a mocking echo of ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Mr Helder was bowing over Claire's hand, and professing his delight. The little group in the corner were pressing forward to obtain a point of vantage, and throughout the company in general was passing a wordless hum of excitement. Mr Helder was seating himself at the piano, a girl in a white dress had ascended the impromptu platform and now stood by his side, a pretty girl, a very pretty girl, a girl who acknowledged the scattered applause with a smile which showed two dimples ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Then there is a wordless shout from Mr. Yardo; a bright dot hurtles across the screen and at the same time I see a streak of blue flame tearing diagonally ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... days before there had come a wonderful event in the history of the company's post. A new life was born into the little cabin of Cummins and his wife. After this the silent, wordless worship of their people was filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife was a mother! She was one of them now, an indissoluble part of their existence—a part of it as truly as the strange lights for ever hovering over the pole, as surely as the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... listen. The memories of the perfect summer floated around him again. Something in the music seemed to call to him, to plead with him, to try to console and cheer him with a wonderful, playful tenderness like the pure wordless sympathy of ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... blue hollow like a garment o'er me; Space all unmeasured, unrecorded time; While seen with inward eye moves on before me Thought's pictured train in wordless pantomime. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... entered the gate of the little house on Bayou Road the next day, there floated out to their ears a wordless song thrilling from the violin, a song that told more than speech or tears or gestures could have done of the utter sorrow and desolation of the little old man. They walked softly up the short red brick walk and tapped at the ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... distance, faintly heard, arose the bleating of lambs. Near at hand, throned among the purple flowers above their heads, a thrush was pouring out the rapture that thrilled his tiny life. The whole world pulsed to the one great melody—the universal, wordless song. Only the man and the woman were silent as intruders in ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Felix, and the governor swapped looks and nods which indorsed an understanding that was wordless ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... foolishly and fondly that he had fashioned the whole of his life so that it should be in harmony with hers, making sacrifices of which he had told her nothing in order that he might surround her—an ill-mated, neglected wife—with a wordless atmosphere of devotion which had become to her as vital, as necessary, as is that of domestic peace and happiness to the average woman. But for Laurence Vanderlyn and his "friendship," Mrs. Pargeter's ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... blazed through my feet. The rough stone on which my toes sank had been covered with metal and I smelled scorching flesh, jerking up my feet with a wordless snarl of rage and fury, hanging in agony ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... muffle, suppress, smother, gag, strike dumb, dumfounder; drown the voice, put to silence, stop one's mouth, cut one short. stick in the throat. Adj. aphonous^, dumb, mute; deafmute, deaf and dumb; mum; tongue-tied; breathless, tongueless, voiceless, speechless, wordless; mute as a fish, mute as a stockfish^, mute as a mackerel; silent &c (taciturn) 585; muzzled; inarticulate, inaudible. croaking, raucous, hoarse, husky, dry, hollow, sepulchral, hoarse as a raven; rough. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Wordless my other companion walked beside me. She gave no sign. Only once, when I stumbled, the hand she outstretched in quick support ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... made herself up a bed on the sofa, sat down next it in an armchair and began tending her baby, bending over it humming a wordless lullaby. Polunin sat down by her when he came in and discussed domestic affairs; then took the child from Alena and rocked her. Pale green beams of ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... red fury swept to the beach comber's brain. Wordless, face distorted, he flung himself at ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... grinned at the whiteness of his face and the involuntary trembling of his lips. Again and again he heard the lash fall upon the naked back. From near him there came the sobbing moan of a woman. A subdued movement, a sound as of murmuring wordless voices swept through the throng. A steady glitter filled the eyes of the man who had laughed at him—and he turned again to the stake. The man's back was dripping blood. Great red seams lay upon his shoulders and a single lash ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... language would have been an impertinence in any one else; yet, in the pretty and piquant Mariamne, it was simply coquettish. At any other time or place I might have felt offended; but I was now embarrassed, wordless, and plunged in problems. Why should I be concerned in this news? What was the opinion of this butterfly to me? yet its sarcasm stung me: what was Clotilde to me? yet I involuntary wished the Marquis ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... man comes into more complete mastery of it, he grows able to hear and clearly distinguish the speech of the great Companions, who counsel and comfort him on his way. They may speak to him either in wordless thoughts, or in perfectly definite ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... who does?" The eyes of the son were steady in their wordless accusation. "It's this way, father: If you never married this woman Maria, it ought to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... course. He was not wordless, for the letter contained almost a superfluity of words; but people often said things they ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... earthly as well as spiritual, and that no power on earth or in hell could prevail against its consummation! How I revelled in this sweet belief; how this blest and silent consciousness wrapped my soul in light, and hovered ever around me like a wordless blessing! This faith was the inspiration of my toil, the prompter to good deeds, the angel messenger which enabled me to overcome the evil ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Rhoda's eyes as she sprang to her feet, took several steps toward the door, and stopped. A wordless cry rose within her and came out as a miserable ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... the tide pouring eastward, he had turned down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile of recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message in the dark splendors of the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the children, who were out of school at three. He wanted his "Wawa," and no one else. It was really pathetic to see how the little fellow clung to her, hiding his pretty wet eyes in her neck, and lovingly patting her shoulder, as he crooned his wordless reproaches in her ear, and Mrs. Hoffstott, looking on, thought this must indeed be a good sister to win such hearty affection, and felt her own motherly heart warm to the forlorn little orphaned brood. But, as Sara climbed the steep staircase, with the child clasped close, ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the depths of her soul—a wordless invocation. She is close to the jungle now, and the pleasant shade of the foliage cools ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... nor Gorgo ventured to disturb their wordless devotions, but presently the ship-master rose, drawing his fine, stalwart figure to its full height; then turning his kind, manly, grave face to his wife, who had also risen to her feet, he laid ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of orange, shot through with snowy coolness, thrilled with bird song, and the laughing chuckle of a big spring breaking from the foot of the mountain. They had left the road and followed a narrow, screened path by which they came unexpectedly into this opening. They had stood upon it in wordless enchantment, looking down the slope beneath it, across the peace of the valley, to the blue ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... sweet and crushed mixture they were, pansies, clove-pinks, mignonette, bleeding hearts, bachelors' buttons, all short stemmed and minus any saving touch of green, but true love offerings for all that. Wordless gifts most of them, prim little bunches, hot from tight clasping in chubby hands, shyly and swiftly deposited on "Teacher's desk" when the back of that divinity was turned. The blue bowl took kindly to them all, and as the girl's clever fingers ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... aside. "Have you come here, Father Denfili," he cried, "to find out how well you have finished the persecution you began ten years ago? If you have, you may be quite consoled. It is finished to-night." His anger, rushing over the gates, beat down upon the old man, who sat wordless before its flood. It was a passionate story Ramoni told, a story of years in the novitiate when the old man had ever repressed him, a story of checks that had been put upon him as a preacher, of his banishment ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal quires, Unwearied voices, wordless strains: My mind with fonder welcome owns One dear dead friend's ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson) |
