"Yawn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they only wait Who haunt the chambers of the Great. He heard the chairmen come and go; He heard the Porter yawn below; Beyond him, in the Grand Saloon, He heard the silver stroke of noon, And thought how at this very time The old church clock at home would chime. Dear heart, how plain he saw it all! The lich-gate and the crumbling wall, The stream, the pathway to the wood, The bridge where they ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... a friend who was a fool to care for a man as she cared." Mrs. Mundy put her hand to her mouth to cover a yawn. "She said—" ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... desires that evening, she would have made Jimmy stay up till at least half-past ten, even though he was "jolly sleepy." He had slept for at least two hours in the forest. She ought to have remembered that, but she had forgotten it, and when, at a quarter to nine, on an enormous yawn, Jimmy had announced that he thought he would "turn in and get between the sheets," she had almost eagerly acquiesced. She wanted her boy asleep, soundly asleep that night. When the clock had struck nine he had already traveled beyond the land ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... helmsman's words, they found themselves in a most perilous position, for an ice-quake had occurred. The ice masses had just "weighed anchor," as the sailors say. The movement lasted nearly two minutes, and it was to be feared that the crevice would yawn at the very feet of the unhappy sailors. They anxiously awaited daylight in the midst of continuous shocks, for they could not, without risk of death, move a step, and had to remain stretched out at full length ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... sit, lurching and half asleep. The boatmen shout one to another in nasal discords. Lazily you preen your great wings, eagle wings, built for the sky; And you yawn.... ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... with open mouth, clearly afraid of the spectacle that was before him. A night creaking of the building made him jump, and he moistened his lips as the pencil wrote on. When the sheet was filled, the pencil fell and David looked about him with a smile and dropping his head on the desk began to yawn. He seemed to be coming out of a deep sleep, and grinned up blinking: "Gee, I must 'a' gone to sleep on you fellows. I was up late ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... I made in entering she moved, sat up, showed her fat legs, that were covered with unqualifiable blue stockings, and with a yawn stretched her brawny arms, which terminated with fists that resembled those ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... a blink of her lustrous eyes, and a yawn of her pretty mouth, which Nature had not yet taught her to conceal with her little hand, "now, I am ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... were vigorously smooths or irons his eyebrows, rubbing them from within, outwards seven or eight times. Upon this, the patient probably raises his head and his eyebrows, and draws a deeper breath as if he would yawn; he is half awake, and blowing upon the eyelids, or the repetition of the previous operation, or dusting the forehead by smart transverse wavings of the hand, or blowing upon it, causes the patient's countenance to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... its being there (dogs should not be shut out from all advantages), but the intruder would not keep quiet. A brother of dolorous whine was engaged in prayer, when poodle evidently thought that the time for response had come, and gave a loud yawn that had no tendency to solemnize the occasion. I resolved to endure it no longer. I started to extirpate the nuisance. I made a fearful pass of my hand in the direction of the dog, but missed him. A lady arose to give me a better chance at the vile pup, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... return to his repose, A cherub flapp'd his right wing o'er his eyes— At which Saint Peter yawn'd and rubb'd his nose; "Saint porter," said the angel, "prithee rise!" Waving a goodly wing, which glow'd, as glows An earthly peacock's tail, with heavenly dyes; To which the Saint replied, "Well, what's the matter? Is Lucifer come ...
— English Satires • Various
... sleepily over his close-cropped head. "Anything exciting?" he asked with a yawn. Clay shook his head. "Same old thing. 'All cars exercise special vigilance over illegal crossovers. Keep all lanes within legal speed ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... Else to yon depths profound it you will hurl. A murky vapour thickens night. Hark! Through the woods the tempests roar! The owlets flit in wild affright. Hark! Splinter'd are the columns that upbore The leafy palace, green for aye: The shivered branches whirr and sigh, Yawn the huge trunks with mighty groan. The roots upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the desolate abyss, Sweeping the, wreck-strewn precipice, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... whole lithe body into a setting for the prettiest yawn that Kirby had ever seen. "So the Jat is missing! Yes, he came here, sahib. He was never invited, but he came. He sat here saying nothing until it suited him to sit where another man was; then he struck the other man—so, with the sole of his foot—and took the man's place, and heard ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... could not speak. Then came a louder, and the spell was broken. He started to his feet, and with the courage of terror extreme, opened the door—not opened it a little, as if he feared an unwelcome human presence, but pulled it, with a sudden wide yawn, ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... window sunk deep in the adobe wall above the entrance, a mass of them assumed the form of the crucifix, throwing a golden trail full upon the Lady of Loreto, proud in her shining pearls. The long narrow body of the church seemed to have swallowed the shadows of the ages, and to yawn for more. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... you go a-calling, Never stay too late; You will wear your welcome out If you hesitate! Just before they're tired of you, Just before they yawn, Before they think you are a Goop, And wish that you were gone, While they're laughing with you, While they like you so, While they want to keep you,— That's the time ...
— More Goops and How Not to Be Them • Gelett Burgess
... to subterranean conflict of modern trenches is a far cry, and Ares, God of Battles, may well yawn at the entertainment with which the Demon of War is providing him. But the spectator of this grim "revue" lacks something of the patience of its creator, and our Mephistopheles, marking the god's protest, will doubtless hurry the scene and diversify ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... and our household was shattered by a brother's murder, he only hath [22-55]touched mine heart and stirred the balance of my soul. I know the prints of the ancient flame. But rather, I pray, may earth first yawn deep for me, or the Lord omnipotent hurl me with his thunderbolt into gloom, the pallid gloom and profound night of Erebus, ere I soil thee, mine honour, or unloose thy laws. He took my love away who made me one ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... dead mounds of a dead past, was even then inexplicably turning its back to its fine river frontage; stretching in the form of a great adolescent giant, prone, legs flung to the west and full of growing pains, arms outstretched and curving downward in a great north-and-south yawn. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... When nature calls, we take our simple food, we rest when she requires relaxation, and when rest is satiety, innocent and useful labour improves our mental and corporeal functions. How pitiable are they, whom necessity drags to the banquet of ostentation, who secretly yawn through the lengthened vigil of unenjoyed dissipation; who rise from feverish slumbers to tasteless delights; who feel that their present course of life is a captivity; and yet look on that which would bring them freedom ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... yawn); "I shall not return until I have made the tour of Europe, and I just stepped in for a ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... branches of the trees and down in through the tangle of bushes in front of the cave where Nero had hidden. The lion rolled over, stretched out his heavy paws with their big, curved claws, and opened his mouth and yawned, just as you have often seen your dog or cat yawn after a sleep. ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... a yawn. "Josephine bored me half to death talking about her. Now it's you. I never heard so ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... broadening light searched into them, and suddenly the air was tinged with warm gold. Somewhere the sun had risen. In a little, Scrope heard a dropping sound of firing, and a few moments afterwards the rattle of a volley. The battle was joined. Scrope saw the trench again yawn up before his eyes. The Major was right. This morning, again, Lieutenant Scrope had the harder part ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... when the blue abyss of day seemed to yawn over the world more deeply than ever before, a sudden change touched the quicksilver smoothness of the waters—the swaying shadow of a vast motion. First the whole sea-circle appeared to rise up bodily at the ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... that once took the world by storm, until the author's mentality was revealed by his commitment to a mad-house. Von Kettler read till midnight, closely observed by the guard at the trap, then laid the word aside with a yawn, lay down on his cot, and appeared to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... two the chap on watch began to yawn, then to nod. Pretty soon he stretched himself on the floor, facing us, pistol in hand. For a while he supported himself on his elbow, then laid his head on his arm, blinking like an owl. I performed an occasional snore, watching him narrowly between my eyelashes from the shadow of my arm. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... but an angry frown made the lad's brow look rugged, and he was about to give orders for the hatch to be removed, when there was a yawn, and ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... jaw, as promised, on the other hand, was not in George's eyes a practical policy. Excellent a deterrent as the threat of such a proceeding might be, its actual accomplishment was not to be thought of. Gaols yawn and actions for assault lie in wait for those who go about the place busting their fellows on the jaw. No. Something swift, something decided and immediate was indicated, but something that stopped short ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... really learns anything by plays intended to teach them something, Lydia said, is because the plays are generally dull. Nobody is going to listen to "argufying" if he can help it. If you tell people what it is beneficial for them to believe they are going home and to bed, unchanged. But they'll yawn in your faces first. Lydia had a theory that you might teach the most extraordinary lessons if you only made them bewitching enough. Look at the Blue Bird. How many people who loved to see Bread cut a slice off his stomach and to follow the charming pageant of the glorified ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the justice of the praise or the censure of the professional critic; but it is hard for him to resist the fact of failure, when it comes to him palpably in the satire that scowls in an ominous stare and the irony that lurks in an audible yawn,—hard for him to question the reality of triumph, when teeth flash at every gleam of his wit and eyes moisten at every touch of his sentiment. Having tried each of these poems before more than a hundred audiences, Mr. Saxe has fairly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... will get there, they seem so slow about gathering, and running their old machine to a blaze. Thank goodness! we've decided to have an up-to-date fire department in little old Chester right away. Our town has waked up from her long sleep, and is beginning to stretch and yawn." ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... disappointed. Visions of the dark-eyed Reine, in veils of mauve and orange, silhouetted against the synchromatic scenery of the Marigny swam before my eyes. I gave vent to a cavernous yawn. I had often had supper at the Savoy. But such a performance was not my idea of romance. I had never considered that luxurious dining room in the light of adventure. But with Leonard's suggestion I entered and found that, when the mental lenses are focused correctly, it in truth possesses ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... immediately, like those who had gone before; but the weary dogs would not rend them. Barely a few threw themselves on to those kneeling nearest; but others lay down, and, raising their bloody jaws, began to scratch their sides and yawn heavily. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a fan, my word! Do you think I could not guess the truth of your story about her? Her honour indeed! What have such rubbish to do with honour? A Virginia, a baggage for your arms—and I, to have my hand kissed, and to yawn over dreary verses! By the Madonna, but I did my best to stop that play. Let me tell you, Don Francis, that it was I—I—I"—she struck her bosom with each naming of herself—"who told Semifonte ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Cappadocia," she said, with a yawn which she made not the slightest effort to stifle, "bored right through to my very marrow. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, how I do wish ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... is now between the jaws of rock that yawn so hungrily. Beyond and below are vast walls, shelving toward the floor of the gulf a thousand feet beneath—their brilliant colors shining in the sun of morning that sheds as peaceful a light on wood and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Newhall, with a sepulchral yawn; "Sunday has come at last, and I am glad. It is called a day of rest, but is no day of rest for me. I have a thousand things to do this forenoon; one hour has passed away already, and I don't know ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... made it unfit for her. Towards the middle of the afternoon she saw with joy that it had lulled, and though very cold, was so bright and calm that she might venture. She had eagerly opened the kitchen door to go up and get ready, when a long weary yawn from her old grandmother made her look back. The old lady had laid her knitting in her lap and bent her face down to her hand, which she was rubbing across her brow, as if to clear away the tired feeling that had settled there. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... at last. 'Gentlemen, it's getting something like Bedlam,' he remarked aloud. Bazarov, who had at rare intervals put in an ironical word in the conversation—he paid more attention to the champagne—gave a loud yawn, got up, and, without taking leave of their hostess, he walked off with Arkady. Sitnikov jumped up ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... my pet dimple!" said Mrs. Woffington, with perfect nonchalance. "Well, now I suppose I may yawn, or do ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... do," said the land-owner, suppressing a yawn. "But we can't send them this wood, you know, or even get it down Oil Creek, where there is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... got over our surprise, we saw the situation was serious. The policeman was threatening to awaken. Once he stopped snoring to yawn noisily, and we beat a hasty retreat. Bella switched off the lights in a hurry and locked the door behind us. We hardly breathed until we were back in the kitchen again, and everything quiet. And then Jimmy called my name from up ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... To guard their dust and speak their praise; Ye, who, should some other band With hostile foot defile the land, Feel that ye like them would wake, Like them the yoke of bondage break, Nor leave a battle-blade undrawn, Though every hill a sepulchre should yawn— Say, have not ye one line for those, One brother-line to spare, Who rose but as your Fathers rose, And ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague
... smothered a yawn, a deliberate yawn—not the kind you can't repress because the air is close and you feel like a goldfish when the water in the bowl has not been changed and you must gape for breath. The fat boy had been dancing attendance ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... partitions. I'm a civilised man. I keep thinking of old Albrecht and the Barbarossa.... I feel I want a wash and kind words and a quiet home. When I look at you, I KNOW I want a wash. Gott!"—he stifled a vehement yawn—"What a Cockney tadpole of ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... younger man sighed a yawn, as he tossed his hat into the rack above his head. "We shall both be the better for some pure air. London quite does me up. And you—you've been sticking at it months on end, haven't you? You look rather fagged—or at all events you did yesterday. You've smartened yourself ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... past one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up out of the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his still intermittent laughter ended in a kind of yawn. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... No bailiff dared within that space, For fear of the dull charm, to enter; A man would bear upon his face, 765 For fifteen months in any case, The yawn of such a venture. ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and worse," said the rector. "Come, Helen, when an intelligent young woman, I might say a bright young woman, makes a commonplace speech, it is a mental yawn, and denotes exhaustion. You and Lois are tired; run up-stairs. Vanish! I say. Good night, dear child, and God ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Davis; and Rosie, who was lying in bed with the Sunday papers scattered around her and a cigarette in her manicured fingers, reached out with a yawn and, taking the telephone, rested it on her laced ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Easington-cum-Liverton, listening to his revered grandfather bubbling forth orthodoxy. Up in Distinguished Strangers' Gallery sat a little boy on his father's knee. Long he listened to the gentle murmur, broken now and then by a yawn from a back bench, or the rustling of the manuscript as it was turned over folio by folio. It was a great occasion for him; his first visit to the Chamber which still echoed with the tones of his father's uncle, JOHN BRIGHT. He kept gallantly awake as quarter-hour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... dislocated; so that when he opened his mouth wider than ordinary, or when he yawned, he could not shut it again. In the midst of his harangues, therefore, if any of his pupils began to be tired of his lecture, he had only to gape or yawn, and the professor instantly caught the sympathetic affection; so that he thus continued to stand speechless, with his mouth wide open, till his servant, from the next room, was called in to set his ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... it," replied the young person, stifling a yawn. "I'm the wife of the charge of the ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... that way," Collins replied, with a yawn, "and we may as well take a car, if we can find one. I hope you don't mind ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... ye've got to help an' not muss things. First thing ye know he'll sour on what we are giving him and be goin' off worse than ever, trampin' the streets till all hours of the night." At which John had stretched his big frame and with a prolonged yawn, his arms over his head, had remarked: "All right, Kitty, you're boss. Sir or no sir, he's got no frills about him—just plain man like the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sunlight streaming into the room caused Mr. Korner first to blink, then yawn, then ...
— Mrs. Korner Sins Her Mercies • Jerome K. Jerome
... could the entangled thread of the estimable lady's discourse, Walden grasped the fact, albeit vaguely, that some unexpected letter with unexpected news in it had arrived to trouble the Spruces' domestic peace. Suppressing a slight yawn, he endeavoured to assume the proper show of interest which every village parson is expected to display on the shortest notice concerning any subject, from the birth of the latest baby parishioner, to the death of the earliest ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... that sort of thing to me, Miss Cary!" he said in a subdued aside. "Superior officer, you know! If you want an index to my feelings, study my countenance." He pretended to smother a gigantic yawn, and Beatrice's cool, unchecked laughter ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... still in the curve of their swift flight when Isobel Knowles came out into the porch, yawning behind her plump, sunbrowned hand. A glance at Gowan cut the yawn short. She looked alertly afield and at once caught sight ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... the baron, "will it be changed?" and he poked the fire to conceal a yawn. Excellent man! his time latterly had been more given to the investigation of opera than of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... wife— Or, rather, wife, mother and home. Once I thought Men cared for the women who found home the spot Next to heaven for happiness; women who knew No ambition beyond being loyal and true, And who loved all the tasks of the housewife. I learn, Instead, that from women of that kind men turn, With a yawn, unto those who are useless; who live For the poor hollow world and for what it can give, And who make home the spot where, when other joys cease, One sleeps ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... aware of it. Then suddenly he beheld an extraordinary and dreadful transformation take place in the countenance thrust so close to his own; the eyes winked several times with incredible rapidity, and then rolled upward and inward; the jaws gaped into a dreadful and cavernous yawn; the pistol fell with a clatter to the floor, and the next moment the muscles, so rigid but an instant before, relaxed into a limp and listless flaccidity. The joints collapsed, and the entire man fell into an indistinguishable ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the men of the Dead Sea discovered, as the valet-species always does in heroes or prophets, no comeliness in Moses; listened with real tedium to Moses, with light grinning, or with splenetic sniffs and sneers, affecting even to yawn; and signified, in short, that they found him a humbug, and even a bore. Such was the candid theory these men of the Asphalt Lake formed to themselves of Moses, That probably he was a humbug, that ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... me to apologize to you. But there is a small class to whom the above remarks do not apply. I mean those few who I delight to think will read my book diligently and admiringly, merely because I wrote it. Whose judgment is warped by their affection, and who will be unconscious of the weary yawn my pages may often produce. Shall I apologize to them? No! let them read, let them yawn; T'is a labour of love on their part, a labour which love has prepared for them—and ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... worlds, awake, awake! Ye rulers of the nation, hear, and shake!) Thick clouds of darkness shall arise on day; In sudden night all earth's dominions lay; Impetuous winds the scatter'd forests rend; Eternal mountains, like their cedars, bend: The valleys yawn, the troubled ocean roar, And break the bondage of his wonted shore; A sanguine stain the silver moon o'erspread; Darkness the circle of the sun invade; From inmost heaven incessant thunders roll, And the strong echo bound from pole to pole. When, lo, a mighty trump, one half conceal'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... her question by appearing, with a stretch and a yawn, from beneath a bunk. He had heard his name in Courtenay's voice. That sufficed for Joey ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... for that!" replied Miles. "I shall pull a face as long as a fiddle, and yawn my head half off while I'm clearing up. Oh, it will be rich to out-wit that precious pair! I had been wondering why Stee Jenkin should go off so quiet and early with Oily Dave, but I should never have guessed at the reason. I shall be through with ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... help smiling; for at that very moment Billy was yawning as wide a yawn as you ever saw on a young chuck's face. Though he didn't know it, he was already growing drowsy. And his mother knew very well that no matter how much he wanted to stay awake, in a short time he would be ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... world's madness, because of the human fear and weeping everywhere, because of the new abysses which seemed to yawn every day on every side, that both soul and senses were so abnormally overstrung. He was overwhelmed by exquisite compassions in his thoughts of Robin, he was afraid for her youngness, her sweetness, the ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the night, Those that slew thy virgin knight; For the which, with songs of woe, Round about her tomb they go. Midnight, assist our moan; Help us to sigh and groan, Heavily, heavily: Graves, yawn and yield your dead, Till death ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... If she were in tears over a certain subject on Monday, it was ten to one that she had forgotten all about it before Thursday. If she were wild with excitement over a new proposition, she would probably yawn when it was mentioned a second time, and find it difficult to maintain a show of interest. So, in the present case, she had exhausted her distress at the idea of leaving home while weeping upon her father's shoulders, and ever since then the idea of ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... along the silent streets, Even when moonlight silvers empty squares The dark holds countless lanes and close retreats; But when the night its sphereless mantle wears The open spaces yawn with gloom abysmal, 5 The sombre mansions loom immense and dismal, The lanes are black ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... With labouring step To tread our former footsteps? pace the round Eternal? to climb life's worn, heavy wheel, Which draws up nothing new? to beat, and beat The beaten track? to bid each wretched day The former mock? to surfeit on the same, And yawn our joys? or thank a misery For change, though sad? to see what we have seen; Hear, till unheard, the same old slabbered tale? To taste the tasted, and at each return Less tasteful? o'er our palates to decant Another vintage? strain a flatter year, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... it dolorously, and he tried to weave himself garlands from the flowers that grew around him; but he knew not the art, and ever and anon he felt for his button-hole, wherein to stick a lily or the like. But he had no button-hole. Then he would look at himself in the well, and yawn and wish himself back in his friends' studios in London. I almost pitied the wretch, and, going up to him, I asked him how he did. He said he had never been more wretched. "Why," I asked, "was your mouth not always full ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... favourably towards a profession of faith to hear that it is approved by a crowd, when it is of such an order that if any individual of that crowd attempted to make it known to us, we should not only fail to hear him out, but should interrupt him with a yawn? If thou sharest such a belief, we should say unto him, in Heaven's name, keep it to thyself! Maybe, in the past, some few harmless types looked for the thinker in David Strauss; now they have discovered the "believer" in him, and are disappointed. Had he kept silent, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... vigorously engaged over the pail of cold water, when a loud yawn, which died away gradually into a dreary howl, sounded from the next room, and announced that Zack was awake. In another minute the young gentleman appeared gloomily, in his night gown, at the folding doors by which the two rooms ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... sunny fields or in the busy market-place. But to the churches Nello would go; most often of all would he go to the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without on the stones by the iron fragments of Quentin Matsys's gate, would stretch himself and yawn and sigh, and even howl now and then, all in vain, until the doors closed and the child perforce came forth again, and winding his arms about the dog's neck would kiss him on his broad, tawny-colored forehead, and murmur always the same words, "If I could only see them, Patrasche!—if ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... Norton, having deposited her grey satin magnificence upon the sofa, protested mutely against what she considered a tendency to 'rowdyism' in her hostess; flirted—intellectually—with any one who had the hardihood to sit near her; and on the stroke of ten rose with a suppressed yawn and a transparently insincere little speech ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... eyes chanced to fall on the fawn-skin coat, with its lining of golden-brown silk shimmering in the lamplight. She picked it up, of course, in a bored sort of way; and she was positively on the very verge of being interested in it when—would you believe it?—she attacked the third yawn—or the third yawn attacked her—and however it was, the yawn was accomplished with such dexterity, such certainty, and with such satisfaction to the lady, that she quite forgot to look at ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... devotion; and I am scandalised to see a man cross himself thrice at the Benedicite, and as often at Grace (and the more, because it is a sign I have in great veneration and continual use, even when I yawn), and to dedicate all the other hours of the day to acts of malice, avarice, and injustice. One hour to God, the rest to the devil, as if by composition and compensation. 'Tis a wonder to see actions so various in themselves succeed one another with such an uniformity ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... yawn, and straightened a diamond bracelet on her wrist. The diamonds were massed together so heavily that the weight dragged them to the inside of her arm, leaving only the plain gold band in sight, a hiding of treasures which ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the world are you doing, Vernie?" Angie paused in the library door, stifling a yawn daintily as she slipped her ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... for you while you go to your charch," said Mr. Pericles. And here Wilfrid was seized with a yawn, and rose, and asked his eldest sister if she meant to attend ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... trust, is now in earnest waking up, and no one more rejoices at the signs of the times than myself. Twenty years ago I hoped to have seen it awake, but, alas! it proved to be but a spasmodic yawn preparatory to another nap. If it shall now have waked in earnest, and with renewed strength shall gird itself to the battle which is assuredly before it, I shall feel not a little in the spirit of good old Simeon— ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... front row. They will never trouble themselves with the question of peace. Oh! Athens! Athens! As for myself, I do not fail to come here before all the rest, and now, finding myself alone, I groan, yawn, stretch, break wind, and know not what to do; I make sketches in the dust, pull out my loose hairs, muse, think of my fields, long for peace, curse town life and regret my dear country home,(11) which never told me to 'buy fuel, vinegar or oil'; there the word 'buy,' which ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... began to yawn, but he kept on guessing. Then his head nodded. By the time he had found out that it was slippery elm he ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... back," said the Wooden Sawhorse, with a yawn of his chopped-out mouth, as he stared with his knot ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... poisonous breath, In rows here mark the labyrinths of Death. The King with torch upraised, the pathway finds, Along the way of mortal souls he winds, Where shades sepulchral, soundless rise amid Dark gulfs that yawn, and in the blackness hide Their depths beneath the waves of gloomy lakes And streams that sleep beneath the sulphurous flakes That drift o'er waters bottomless, and chasms; Where moveless depths receive Life's dying ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... hour before she opened her eyes, and then with a little yawn she lazily wondered if it were time to get up. She glanced at the clock on her dressing-table, and as it was only half- past two, she felt sure that Adele would not come to her release until three o'clock. She lay there, her eyes wandering idly about the room, when she saw a startling sight. The ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... gone out for sport with your gun. I used to like sport, too, when I was young. H'm! Ah, our sins are grievous," said Artyom, with a yawn. "It's a sad thing! There are few good folks, but villains and murderers no end—God have mercy ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the road, and there we made a minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor—who was just beginning to yawn—were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen edifice there were a driver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... all day long, though it has been but light; and the Ianthe will run up before it like a race-horse. I should not be much surprised if he were here to breakfast." "And that we may be up in time for him, if perchance he should let us to bed forthwith," said Frank with a heavy yawn. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Iris, with a yawn; "but it's not the house so much, it's the people in the neighborhood. Are there many young ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... stuff, but neither costly nor tawdry, and convenient, but not dazzling, light, are the proper requirements in the furnishing of an opera-house. As for the persons who go there to look at each other—to show their dresses—to yawn away waste hours—to obtain a maximum of momentary excitement—or to say they were there, at next day's three-o'clock breakfast (and it is only for such persons that glare, cost, and noise are necessary), I commend to their consideration, or at least to such ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the reader will not ask to be "put ashore" until the home port has finally been made. Manliness and pluck are reflected on every page; the plots are ingenious, the action swift, and the interest always tense. There is neither a yawn in a paragraph nor a dull moment in a chapter in this stirring series. No boy or girl will willingly lay down a volume of it until "the end." The stories also embody much useful information about the operation and handling ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... indecorous manner of doing their lessons was quite as remarkable as the caprice displayed in their choice of time and place. While receiving my instructions, or repeating what they had learned, they would lounge upon the sofa, lie on the rug, stretch, yawn, talk to each other, or look out of the window; whereas, I could not so much as stir the fire, or pick up the handkerchief I had dropped, without being rebuked for inattention by one of my pupils, or told that 'mamma would not like ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the way only that man yawns Who has read much that is strange— And the thought suddenly overcame him, Like a timid person who gets gooseflesh, And the way the person who stuffs himself Starts to burp, Like a mother in labor: The great yawn might perhaps be a sign, A nod from fate, To lie down to rest. And the thought would not leave him. And then he began to undress... When he was stark naked, ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... just wonderful what a lot Mrs. Warner knew about cattle," remarked Sylvia, with a yawn. "Her knowledge made me feel quite tired; for beyond the fact that a cow had four legs, two horns, and a tail, I had never realized that there was anything to ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... her wedding, which was to take place on the seventeenth day of October—yet she went on reading. Everybody read the paper. Sometimes they talked about what they read. Anyway, her work was over for the day—all except tea, which was negligible; so she went on, somewhat drearily suppressing a yawn, to a description of the new water-works, which were being speedily brought to completion in "our ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... boy, isn't he, Pepe? A little stupid for us, unable to talk for ten minutes without making us yawn, a fine ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... peals of thunder, but the yawn or bellowing clouds? by Jove, they seem to me the world's last groans, and those large sheets ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... well," said Nan, with a yawn, "and the school is in statu quo. I am in the middle school now, and perhaps I shall get a drawing-room to myself before long. I'm not sure though, for I never can ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... and the touch had to be followed up by a shake, and that by one far more vigorous, before there was a loud yawn, and two fists were thrown ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... is similar to the stretch. The yawn is a stretch of the lungs as the stretch is a yawn of the muscles. Both of these exercises express a hunger for oxygen. Whenever anyone is sitting in a cramped position or even in one position for a long ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... me," said Carl, with a yawn. "I pet you I vas der sleepinglessness feller in der whole bunch. If he gets avay on my vatch it vill not ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... it a cloud of apprehensions, for darkness must ever be the ally of crime; and it was one night, long after the clocks had struck the mystic hour "when churchyards yawn," that the hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu again stretched out to grasp a victim. I was ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... when again she wakened suddenly—just as she had done the night before, and again with the feeling that something had wakened her. And the queer thing was that the moment she was awake she felt so very awake—she had no inclination to stretch and yawn and hope it wasn't quite time to get up, and think how nice and warm bed was, and how cold it was outside! She sat straight up, and peered out into the darkness, feeling ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... acted with simple cunning. He had remained talking pugilism with Keggs in the pantry till a prodigious yawn from his host had told him that the time was come for the breaking up of the party. Then, begging Keggs not to move, as he could find his way out, he had hurried to the back door, opened and shut it, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Grammont, with a faint yawn, "why must I only lie in a hammock in the Summer, and then, where nobody can see me? I will have a hammock made for the winter, to lie in and ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... happen to have anything specially to communicate to his master in camp, he will enter giggling, sidle up to the pole of a hut, commence scratching his back with it, then stretch and yawn, and gradually, in bursts of loud laughter, slip down to the ground on his stern, when he drums with his hands on the top of a box until summoned to know what he has at heart, when he delivers himself in a peculiar manner, laughs and yawns again, and, saying it is time to go, walks ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Raby uttered a very weary yawn and turned her face from the light. Priscilla stepped into the hall, put on her waterproof and oldest hat and went out. She knew her way well to the little vicarage, built of gray stone and lying something like a small, daring fly against the brow of the hill. The little house ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... clash of weapons and saw the glare of the torches, and longed to warn Him but could not; saw the bitter shame of the kiss and the arrest and the flight; and followed to Caiaphas' house; heard the stinging slap; ran to Pilate's house; saw that polished gentleman yawn and sneer; saw the clinging thongs and the splashed floor when the scourging was over; followed on to Calvary; saw the great Cross rise up at last over the heads of the crowd, and heard the storm of hoots and laughter and the dry ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... to place my name upon her waiting list, and to take up the matter in due season; and she lamented, with a tiny and pre-meditated yawn, that as a servitor of system she was compelled to list her "little lovers and suitors in alphabetical order, Mr. Townsend. Besides, you would probably strangle me ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... tremendous yawn, settled back in greater comfort against his sustaining tree, and closed his eyes. I waited, counting the seconds by the beating of the blood in my ears. In the background Cookie hovered apprehensively. Plainly he would go on hovering unless ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... and we'll hide it in the bushes. I wish there was some place to keep this beer cool." Glass shifted some bottles to a point where the sunlight did not strike them. "I'm getting tired of training, Larry," acknowledged the younger man, with a yawn. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... lady smiled as she heard him speak, and had not an unfortunate yawn accompanied those two tender words, in all probability they would have terminated this chapter. But the word yawn is not found in Love's dictionary, and consequently the unlucky husband was forced to rise from his bed preparatory to going forth to perform deeds of valor ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... more to get away from the traders' arguments than to answer me; and I returned the insolent challenge of his unconcealed yawn in the faces of the elder men by drawing a chair up to the company of McTavishes and Frobishers and McGillivrays and MacKenzies and other retired ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... be tied neck and heel, the houndsfoot," said Wilkin. "But what would you have, lady? My countrymen cannot live without rest or sleep." So saying, he gave a yawn so wide, as if he had proposed to swallow one of the turrets at an angle of the platform on which he stood, as if it had ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... stars were shining through gaps in them. On the horizon, in the direction of the lines, there was a broad belt of blue sky. The wind was blowing into Germany. He came back yawning. "We'll go up—ho, hum!"—tremendous yawn—"through a hole before we reach the river. It's going to be clear presently, so the higher we go ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in some place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a chair, or lift themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme's experience was something much more psychologically strange if there was indeed anything unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had gone through. For while ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... feeling her quiver with laughter, I moved to the other end of the pew, knocking over a big hymn-book on the way, which attracted so much attention that I have seldom felt more embarrassed in my life. Kate's great dog rose several times to shake himself and yawn loudly, and then ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... spite of the great and earnest endeavors of my good cousin and host to provide for my enjoying the gaiety by which I am surrounded; but, alas! amidst the many faces with which his mansion is thronged, that one which is dearest to me is wanting, and all becomes a blank in my eyes; and I yawn with irrepressible weariness in the midst of the glittering pageants given to honor my arrival; and you may rest assured that I shall hail with delight the termination of a visit, which seems already to have swelled the period of our separation into ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... crimson and gold, some hours later, sat Pluma Hurlhurst, reclining negligently on a satin divan, toying idly with a volume which lay in her lap. She tossed the book aside with a yawn, turning her superb dark eyes on the little figure bending over the rich trailing silks which were to adorn her own fair beauty on the ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... impertinent. If the river is not open by the middle of May, your Sour-dough may go to bed—only he doesn't. Still, he may do as he lists. But your cheechalko—why, this is the hour of his initiation. It was as if a man should yawn at his marriage or refuse to sleep at his funeral. The offenders were some of those Woodworth fellows, who, with a dozen or so others, had built shacks below "the street" yet well above the river. At two in the morning Sour-dough Saunders ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... it was precisely that, Lena said, No. That was nothing in itself; but it would prove one way or another; and it seemed that when Norry found himself alone with Barbara, he used to yawn. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... growl like the yawn of a wild beast, he stretched himself upon the bench again, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... attached to the cycles of human destiny, or which chance brings round with the revolutions of its wheel? All this Pope could not determine; but the exciting cause he has determined, and it is preposterously below the effect. The goddess of dulness yawns; and her yawn, which, after all, should rather express the fact and state of universal dulness than its cause, produces a change over all nations tantamount to a long eclipse. Meantime, with all its defects of plan, the poem, as to execution, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... cotton, cakes of cassava bread, fruits, and tame parrots. Pedro went everywhere, and saw everything, as only a boy could. Later, when the flagship was cruising among the islands, and the Admiral, worn out by long anxiety, lay asleep in his cabin, the helmsman, smothering a mighty yawn, called Pedro to him. ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... task was at hand! He tried, while standing, to simulate indifference, but his legs were weak and his teeth chattered, just a little, in spite of his effort to control himself. It seemed as if he were forever wanting to yawn, conscious of the heaviness ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... hell. What is sweeter than life? What is more sacred than each breath we draw? Ah! my country!" These words were uttered so slowly, with such intense mournfulness, that Swithin's jaw relaxed; he converted the movement to a yawn. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was caused by the sudden arrival upon the edge of a ravine, which, on first thought, he supposed to be the very one for which he was making. But a second glance convinced him of his error, for it was nothing more than a yawn, or chasm, that had probably been opened in the mountains by some great ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... Mr Parmenter, "Oh, dear! is she going to preach a sermon?" and he hid a laugh under a yawn. Somebody else heard ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... without an object. To himself it was an intolerable nuisance. He suspected his daughter not at all. He was so far from suspecting her that he imagined her to be safe, though half-a-dozen Mosses should surround her. He could only stand idle behind the scenes, or sit in her dressing-room and yawn. But still he did it, and asked ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... I blame 'em much," Farquaharson stifled a yawn. "Dress Rehearsal until two this morning followed by a call for line rehearsal again at eleven. When they get through that, if they ever do, there's nothing more except the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... streams of indolent and voluptuous life; when the upper class spend, and the middle class make; when the ball-room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the School for Scandal; when the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers and fiddlers—creatures hatched from gold, as the dung-flies from the dung-swarm, and buzz, and fatten, round the hide of the gentle Public In the cant phase, it was "the London season." And happy, take it altogether, happy above the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... baked, and the furrow is bare, The wells they yawn empty and dry; But a rushing of waters is heard in the air, And a rainbow leaps out in the sky. Hark! the heavy drops pelting the sycamore leaves, How they wash tha wide pavement, and sweep from the eaves! Oh, the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... he found the change from the surging waves to the gentle chuck and flop of the deep water, most delightful. Languidly, to rest himself, he threw his arm over a rock just peeping above the water. But the rock gave a start and a yawn. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... they are privileged persons, they respect, they keep up decorum, they raise their eyes and compress their lips with ceremonious reverence; but, Lord! they have gone through it all so often, they are so familiar with it, they don't look at it any longer; they gaze about listlessly, they would yawn if they were not too well bred for that. The others, meanwhile, the sainted pilgrims, the men whose journey over the sharp stones and among the pricking brambles of life's wilderness finds its final reward in this admission into the presence ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... were you," she continued, repressing a yawn, "I'd manage to be seen on good terms with Low at the hotel; so perhaps you need not give the letter to him ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... silent, from sheer terror. A gulf seemed to yawn before his feet, and the Countess appeared to him in the light of the minister of wrath waiting to push him into it. With the rapidity of lightning, his whole life seemed to pass in sudden review before him—his happy ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... always seem so much harder to learn when one's just come back after the holidays?" propounded Marjorie Butler with a melancholy yawn. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... verging on seven o'clock, throws its cheerless stare into the private drawing-room of MARIE LOUISE, animating the gilt furniture to only a feeble shine. Two chamberlains of the palace are there in waiting. They look from the windows and yawn.] ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... to sky the wild farewell— Then shriek'd the timid and stood still the brave— Then some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell, As eager to anticipate their grave; And the sea yawn'd around her like a hell, And down she suck'd with her the whirling wave, Like one who grapples with his enemy, And strives to strangle ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... courses in life: the good, the bad, and the—indifferent. The good gives you calm, and makes you sleep; the bad gives you emotions, and makes you weep; and the indifferent gives you no satisfaction, and makes you yawn, so—choose wisely. ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn
... we'll have a good time," returned Isabel, smothering a yawn. "It will be lots of fun to go all over the country and see all ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... and the door reply, The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... into a cab and gave the driver the address, and made sure of the revolver in his pocket. He was frightened. He was either going to meet with a monster from outer space, or be on the way to making so colossal a fool of himself that a mental asylum would yawn for him. ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... drawn his half-willing footsteps nearly to the threshold, when the opening of a door in the neighborhood startled the Major's housekeeper, and, leaving the Major's kinsman, she vanished speedily into her own domicile. A heavy yawn preceded the appearance of a man, who, like the Moonshine of Pyramus and Thisbe, carried a lantern, needlessly aiding his sister luminary in the heavens. As he walked sleepily up the street, he turned his broad, dull face on Robin, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... offered. There are signs of the contagiousness of the idea even in the house of the adversaries. The triumph comes with time, and the turbulent waves of controversy recede into gentle ripples of approval. And for many a cause for which men have suffered and died, posterity has but a yawn. "Just think of it—all that fuss and all that turmoil ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... of the bitter dawn awoke me there; and with a yawn I stretched out both arms. My right hand encountered—what?— the body of a man stretched beside me! Still dazed and numb, I rolled over to my elbow, raised myself a little ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I yawn, while she takes away the dirty plates and proceeds to hide them in a dark corner. She fills the big bowl from the pitcher and then carries it along to the stove for ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... terror of all our host. 340 Go then, my mother, seek the hallowed fane Of the spoil-huntress Deity. I, the while, Seek Paris, and if Paris yet can hear, Shall call him forth. But oh that earth would yawn And swallow him, whom Jove hath made a curse 345 To Troy, to Priam, and to all his house; Methinks, to see him plunged into the shades For ever, were a cure for all my woes. He ceased; the Queen, her palace entering, charged Her maidens; they, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... chameleon, can take all shapes; and is of such force (as Ficinus adds), that it can work upon others, as well as ourselves." How can otherwise blear eyes in one man cause the like affection in another? Why doth one man's yawning [1628]make another yawn? One man's pissing provoke a second many times to do the like? Why doth scraping of trenchers offend a third, or hacking of files? Why doth a carcass bleed when the murderer is brought before it, some weeks after the murder hath been done? Why do witches ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Weariness is like a rapid paralysis of the heart; it may induce fainting, as expressed in the popular phrase "dead tired"; but a reflex action will nearly always restore the sufferer, like an automatic safety-valve; thus a yawn, that is to say, a deep, spasmodic inspiration, which dilates the pulmonary alveoli, causes the blood to flow to the heart like a suction pump, and sets it in motion again. In anger there is a kind of tetanic contraction of all the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... standing collar, and in his buttonhole a ridiculous artificial flower. This type of comic singer is unknown in American concert-halls of any grade, though he is sometimes seen at the German concerts in the Bowery of the lowest class. Here he is very cordially esteemed. The ladies behind him yawn in a furtive manner under cover of their bouquets, but the audience is hilarious over him as he sings about his friend Thomas from the country, who came up to Paris to see the sights and shocked everybody by his dreadful manners. He put his muddy boots on the fauteuils, did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... fire, which was out; at Modestine, standing meekly by the tree to which he was tied; at the raindrops bounding off Aggie's round and prostrate figure—and I rebelled. Every muscle was sore; it hurt me even to yawn. ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said I, with a yawn. "Did I tell you I bagged a duck and a ground-squirrel at one shot last week over in the Ramapos?" I knew well ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... morning is a graceless hour. Graveyards may yawn at twelve but even they are content to slumber at four. I don't believe there is anything so desolate in this world as the mental perspective one obtains at four o'clock. Tombstones are bright beacons of cheer as compared to the monumental regret one experiences ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... springing up in bed, and abruptly breaking off a loud sonorous yawn, with which he had opened the business of the day, "you won't deteen a gentleman who's on life and death? I give ye my word, an ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you. No matter what you believed and intended a wife would be only a brief diversion. There is that magnificent Bob, eating his head off in the stable. You would buy me a beautiful mansion and leave me in it to yawn my head off, or cry my eyes out because of my helplessness and inability to save you. This disease of business would be corroding you and marring you all the time. You play it as you have played everything else, as in Alaska you played the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... talked, talked, in deeper and deeper bass, until the very teacups on the table shuddered under the influence of him. The elder children, admitted to the family festival, ate till they could eat no more; stared till they could stare no more; yawned till they could yawn no more—and then went to bed. Oscar got on well with everybody. Mrs. Finch was naturally interested in him as one of twins—though she was also surprised and disappointed at hearing that his mother had begun and ended with his brother and ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... them, you might say. If he will only remember not to laugh in the wrong places, as he did that time we took him to church, when the minister thumped his sermon off the pulpit, and not to tell the wrong stories, as he so often does at table, and not to yawn when Mr. Hartman explains how badly he has been feeling since he left us, he will do very well. You can't expect him to take the same interest in Mr. Hartman as in Clarice: would he care for us as he does, if we were men? Jane, he is pointed out by Providence as the means of reconciling ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... watching the expressions on the faces of the players, and trying to take an interest in the play. Yet my mind was ever on the closed door and my ear strained to hear the click of chips. I heard the hoarse murmurs of their voices, an occasional oath or a yawn of fatigue. How I wished they would come out! Women went to the door, peered in cautiously, and beat a hasty retreat to the tune of reverberated curses. The big guns were busy; even the ladies must ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... hastened to add, "real happiness in a case like this is perhaps not the rule, but the exception. That chasm continues to yawn throughout the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan |
