"Faintness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long in his damp trance young Juan lay[147] He knew not, for the earth was gone for him, And Time had nothing more of night nor day For his congealing blood, and senses dim; And how this heavy faintness passed away He knew not, till each painful pulse and limb, And tingling vein, seemed throbbing back to life, For Death, though vanquished, still ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... down over her ear. The rouge upon her cheeks had run down on to her neck. She sat there, looking at him out of her hollow eyes like some trapped animal. She was shaking with fear. It was fear, not faintness, ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as to a rock, for of a truth I had never felt a grasp so steady and withal so gentle and kindly, as was his around my shoulders. I tried to murmur words of thanks, but again that wretched feeling of sickness and faintness overcame me, and for a second or two it seemed to me as if I were slipping into another world. The stranger's voice came to my ear, as it were ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... as he spoke; it might be simple disgust; it might be fear; it might be what we call antipathy, which is different from either, and which will sometimes show itself in paleness, and even faintness, produced by objects perfectly harmless and not in ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wound brought on a sudden faintness, and he fell heavily upon Big Abel's arm. With the pain a groan hovered an instant on his lips, but, closing his eyes, he bit it back and lay silent. For the first time in his life there had ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... quickly and skilfully with a tiny lancet he found in his cousin's well-appointed travelling bag. Bovey never stirred. Clarges next undertook to "do" himself. Then a strange thing happened. He had gone to the glass and bared his left arm when a sudden faintness overcame him. He tried to shake it off and sat down. Presently it left him and he felt quite as usual. Then he made a second attempt. The same thing occurred again. This time it was worse, and sight and strength failing, he sank on his own bed, fainting. By a tremendous effort ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... worlds, separated from ours by inconceivable distances, and in that way concealing at first their real nature. The whitish gleam was the mask conferred by the enormity of their remotion. This being so, it might have been supposed that, as was the faintness of these cloudy spots or nebul, such was the distance. But that did not follow: for in the treasury of nature it turned out that there were other resources for modifying the powers of distance, for ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Merciful Providence!" she exclaimed aloud, "What can I do? what shall I do? Barbara! Alas! alas! she hears me not—Dear Constance! This is worse than faintness," she continued, as exertions to restore her proved ineffectual; for Constantia, exhausted by her efforts to appear tranquil, and to chime in with the temper of her guest, until tortured at the very mention of Burrell's name, remained ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the manner of it as repellent as of yore; but Gladys, not easily repulsed, followed the little seamstress across the threshold, and closed the door. The heavy, close smell of the place made a slight faintness come over her, and she was glad to sink into the ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... bleeding villainously and he was deadly pale. I helped him up, and he said with his usual smile—who could mistake it for a sneer?—"Thanks, old man. Yes, I do feel a bit seedy. That back of yours is an animal, though." He tried hard to keep his senses; I saw him battling against his faintness, but the pain and shock were too much for him; he fell down again in ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... Devonshire to see him. The telegram I received was so urgent, that I suspected some rupture of a blood- vessel in the brain, and that I should hardly reach him alive; and this was the case. About two o'clock in the day he complained of a feeling of faintness, said he felt ill and should not recover; and in a few minutes was insensible with symptoms of ingravescent apoplexy. There was extensive haemorrhage into the brain, as shown by post-mortem examination, the cerebral vessels being atheromatous. The fatal ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... speak to Mr. Rossi?" she began, and then looking beyond Elena and seeing him, where he stood above the sleeping child, a qualm of faintness seemed to seize her, and she closed her eyes for ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... powerless to rise without assistance; Myles lay helpless in the clutch of the very iron that was his defence. He closed his eyes involuntarily, and then horse and rider were upon him. There was a deafening, sparkling crash, a glimmering faintness, then another crash as the horse was reined furiously back again, and then ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... "Faintness, I should say," said the officer who knelt by him. "Give me that glass of wine. Here, my lad, try and drink some ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... it. But the paper soon dropped from his hand; a death-like pallor overspread his cheeks, and, almost fainting, he fell back on the pillow. "Alas," he murmured mournfully, "I forget that I am a poor, sick man! I cannot read; the letters swim before my eyes!" But this faintness lasted only a moment; Stein then raised his head again, and turned his eyes with a tender expression toward his wife, who was sitting at his bedside, and watching all his movements with anxious suspense. "Dear Wilhelmina," he said, "you have been my secretary during ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... things, being almost ravenous, and eager to meet some Indians, intending to sacrifice them to their teeth. At last they arrived at the sea-coast, where they found some comfort and relief to their former miseries, and also means to seek more: yet the greatest part perished through faintness and other diseases contracted by hunger, which also caused the remaining part to disperse, till at last, by degrees, many or most of them fell into the same pit that Lolonois did; of whom, and of whose companions, having given a compendious narrative, I shall continue ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... gasp of relief, he got to his feet, the money in his hand. He stepped backward from the table, then staggered, and a faintness passed over him. He had sat so long without moving that his legs bent under him. There was a pail of water with a dipper in it on a bench. He caught up a dipperful of water, drank it empty, and let it fall in the pail ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... exclamation of pity and distress. Josephine put her hand to her bosom, and a creeping horror came over her, and then a faintness. She sat working mechanically, and turning like ice within. After a few minutes of this, she rose with every appearance of external composure and left the room. In the passage she met Rose coming hastily towards the salon ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... came to me of how near I had been to sending him into the other world, a strange feeling of faintness came over me, and, flinging my rifle from me, I sank ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... He ceased for faintness, and my heart ached to hear him speak thus to me, his servant. But Emma the queen turned half away from him, her face growing hard and scornful as she heard. Then Eadward set his book down gently, and, looking sadly at his mother, ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... I lived at the White House, then?" returned Mrs. Cheyne, arching her eyebrows in some surprise; but she offered no opposition to Nan's plan. The removal of the boot had brought on a sensation of faintness, and she sat perfectly still and quiet while the girls swathed the foot ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... raised and angry, penetrated through Anna's haze of fright and faintness. She sat up in the bed, ready to spring to the window if she heard steps on the stairs. When none came, but the voices, lowered now, went on endlessly below, she slipped out of her bed ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the system, which is used to perpetual activity, as the stomach, or heart, or the fine vessels of the skin, acts for a time with less energy, another kind of painful sensation ensues, which is called hunger, or faintness, or cold. This occurs in a less degree in the locomotive muscles, and is called wearysomeness. In the two former kinds of sensation there is an expenditure of sensorial power, in these latter there is ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... felt her heart begin to beat again and the deadly faintness pass. There was a telegram on the table. She took it up, found it addressed to herself, opened ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... tin cup. He drank hastily and went on. Now it was by a field hospital, ghastly sights and ghastly sounds, pine boughs set for torches. He shut his eyes in a moment's faintness. It looked a demoniac place, a smoke-wreathed platform in some Inferno circle. He met a staff officer coming up from the plain. "General Lee has ridden to the right. He is watching for McClellan's next move. There's ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... days, I was greatly assaulted and perplexed, and was often, when I have been walking, ready to sink where I went, with faintness in my mind; but one day, after I had been so many weeks oppressed and cast down therewith, as I was now quite giving up the ghost of all my hopes of ever attaining life, that sentence fell with weight upon my spirit, "Look at the generations of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... feel that tumultuous emotion, that mad enchantment, those deep stirrings which she thought were essential to the tender passion; but it seemed to her she was beginning to fall in love, for she sometimes felt a sudden faintness when she thought of him, and she thought of him incessantly. His presence stirred her heart; she blushed and grew pale when their eyes met, and trembled at the sound of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... as he had heard the voice in the boat; he felt that it was imperative to call out, and yet he could not: he was paralysed; the words would not come. He formed them with his lips, but no sound came. He tried with all his might to rise and scream, and he could not move. Then a sudden cold faintness came upon him, and he remembered no more till he woke and found the sun shining brightly. Stewart was lying with his eyes closed, moaning loudly ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... be ready in a minute." He took off his coat and turned his khaki shirt in at the throat, so that you saw the white line of his untanned chest in strange contrast to his sun-burned throat. A feeling of giddy faintness surged over Tessie. She stepped blindly into the boat and would have fallen if Chuck's hard, firm grip had not steadied her. "Whoa, there! Don't you know how to step into a boat? There. Walk ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... deep diwan, which was covered with leopard-skins and which occupied one corner of the most extraordinary room he had ever seen or ever could have imagined. He sat up, but was immediately overcome with faintness which he conquered ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... first waking thought in the early morning was the unpleasant one that my promised visit to Mrs. Le Grande must be made during the day. When I raised my head from the pillow the pain was even more severe than on the previous evening, and a dizzy faintness seized me when I tried to rise. I was so unaccustomed to sickness I had not learned the happy art of accepting patiently its behests; so, after a few more efforts, I succeeded in dressing myself. I went to the window and, on looking out, was greatly relieved to see huge drifts piled between us ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... to law, and in taking bonds for them as his own, contrary to what he admits to be truth and fact, that he might have acted without any distinct motive at all, or at least such as his memory could reach at that distance of time. That immense distance, in the faintness of which his recollection is so completely lost as to set him guessing at his motives for his own conduct, was from the 15th of January, 1781, when the bonds at his own request were given, to the date of this letter, which is the 22d of May, 1782,—that is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... somehow through the cleft, and sat down, shaking, upon the grass of the slope beyond; but, happening to throw myself backwards in the reeling faintness induced by my fright and the pain of my head, my eyes encountered a sight that woke me at once to ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... been busy, though the ....[1] had killed them where they clung. So there he lay, this dead Boche, skull gleaming under shrunken scalp, an awful, eyeless thing, that seemed to start, to stir and shiver as the cold wind stirred his muddy clothing. Then nausea and a deadly faintness seized me, but I shook it off, and shivering, sweating, forced myself to stoop and touch that awful thing, and, with the touch, horror and faintness passed, and in their place I felt a deep and passionate pity, for all he was a Boche, and with pity in my heart I turned ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... In the first faintness of the dawn the tired-faced troopers cheerfully filed out and formed in front of the quarters, each one, as he passed through the door, depositing his arms at the officer's feet. Oh, but it was good to be on the right side again; and the "ole ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... could endure this violent exercise for five whole days and nights, during which time not one of us durst quit his post for a single moment, take any nourishment but with his arms in his hand, or sleep except for a few moments leaning against the shops. Fatigue, faintness, the weight of our arms, and the excessive heat, joined to the pain of our wounds, deprived us of the little remainder of our strength; our feet, scorched with heat and bleeding in many places, gave us agonies impossible ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... I dream that walking there In the green shade, all unaware At a new turn of the golden glade, I shall see her, and as though afraid Shall halt a moment and almost fall For passing faintness, like a man Who feels the sudden spirit of Pan Brimming his narrow soul with all The illimitable world. And she, Turning her head, will let me see The first sharp dawn of her surprise Turning to welcome in her eyes. And I shall come and take my lover And ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... arm in arm, or hand in hand, or interchanging bright glances; but, she in tears; he, gloomy and down-looking. Were these the hearts that had so lately made old Toby's leap up from its faintness? No, no. The Alderman (a blessing on his head!) had ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... In a moment more he would from very terror have fallen into the church, but suddenly there came a gentle breath of cool wind upon his face, and it kept blowing upon him in little puffs, and at every puff Diamond felt his faintness going away, and his fear with it. Courage was reviving in his little heart, and still the cool wafts of the soft wind breathed upon him, and the soft wind was so mighty and strong within its gentleness, that in a ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... with the kind-hearted man, who preached solemnly to me all the way on the fifth commandment. But I heard very little of it; for before I had proceeded a quarter of a mile, a deadly faintness and dizziness came over me, I staggered, and fell ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... recoiling from the outer darkness and silence, giddy with the sickening sense of faintness which was creeping over her again. When Schwartz spoke she advanced with tottering steps. "Water!" she exclaimed, gasping for breath. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... our affairs seemed to have a prosperous aspect, when he came home to me one morning in much apparent disorder, looking as pale as death, and begged me by some means or other to get him a dram, for that he was taken with a sudden faintness ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... his brother as with the King who guarded that other sacred Cup, and when all was over, was quite disappointed that Stead needed his strong arm as much as ever, nay more, for on coming out into the air and sunshine a faintness and exhaustion came on, and they had to rest him in the porch before he ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... star shows no such light, that it is without rotation. The parallax of the nearest star is only one second, the whole lenticular mass of light which surrounds our sun would therefore only subtend an angle of a single second at the nearest fixed star. Seeing its extreme faintness, therefore, the effulgence of the star would render it totally invisible, provided that it could traverse the vast immensity of intervening space, without feeling the influence of that extinction, which Struve has proved does actually ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... you; nay, you must let me be," and the words came brokenly and more passionately than any ever having passed her lips, "you, and you only, have ever had the power to subdue me." Here her face changed to a sickly pallor as of faintness, a tremor ran through her whole frame, and saying in a breathless whisper, "Great heavens! your life is in danger, follow my cue; will you take care ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... was placed in his hands, and he said distinctly, "I die like a good Catholic, in faith and obedience to the holy Roman Church." Soon after these last words had been spoken, a paroxysm, followed by faintness, came over him, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to please, because it is natural, observes, "that there is a way of deviating from nature, by bombast or tumour, which soars above nature, and enlarges images beyond their real bulk; by affectation, which forsakes nature in quest of something unsuitable; and by imbecility, which degrades nature by faintness and diminution, by obscuring its appearances, and weakening its effects." In Chevy-Chase there is not much of either bombast or affectation; but there is chill and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot possibly be told in a manner that shall make ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... imbued with a pituitous humor ... and bent and drawn back. There was a large bedsore; he could rest neither day nor night; and had no appetite to eat, but very thirsty. I was told he often fell into a faintness of the heart, and sometimes as in epilepsy: and often he felt sick, with such trembling he could not carry his hands to his mouth. Seeing and considering all these great complications, and the vital powers thus broken down, truly I was very sorry I had come to him, because ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... faintness of sound is found when e separates a mute from a liquid, as in rotten, or follows a mute and ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... and drew a deep breath, which was followed by something strangely resembling a sigh. I knew it was time to move; and, shaking off a sensation of fast-approaching lethargy, I tried to get rid of the feeling of faintness, and only roused the sharp pain afresh. Still, that spurred me into effort; and as I pressed Sandho's sides lightly, he began to amble gently along, while I raised my eyes to the stars, and endeavoured to make out ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... glimpse of Mr. Wentworth's spiritual mechanism, and taught him that, the old man being infinitely conscientious, the special operation of conscience within him announced itself by several of the indications of physical faintness. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... the Hartford Courant. There was not the slightest indication apparent of the end that was so near. After the company broke up, he started out to pay a visit to one of the city parks, of which he was a commissioner. On his way thither, feeling a certain faintness, he turned aside into a small house whose occupants he knew, and asked to sit down for a brief rest, and then, as the faintness increased, to lie undisturbed on the lounge for a few minutes. The few minutes passed, and with them his life. In the strictest sense of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... case. In the first place, the individual is likely to be trained in one particular branch or in one particular line, which develops one particular set of muscles. In the second place, competition to exhaustion, to vomiting, faintness, and even syncope is absolutely inexcusable. Furthermore, contests which partake of brutality ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... wearied him to faintness; but while his own tears rained down his cheeks in his self-pity, even as Jessica's in sympathetic sorrow, a cheerful and hearty voice cried ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... were dropping, every noise Seemed like an omen; every coming step Fell on her ears like a presentiment And every hand that rested on the door She fancied was a herald bearing grief; While every letter brought a faintness on That made her gasp before she opened it, To read the story written for her eyes, And cry, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... ROOMS. The depression and faintness from which many students suffer, after being confined in a poorly ventilated school room, is clearly traceable to vitiated air, while the evil is often ascribed to excessive mental exertion. The effect of ventilation upon the health ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... "Rise up! rise up! Pay me the promised vow; For this thy misery from day to day Increases, and will yet increase, until The debt be paid." The water's cooling touch Refreshed the king; his consciousness returned; But when he saw the Brâhman, faintness seized His limbs again. Then overpowering rage Seized Višvâmitra; but before he left, The best of Brâhmans said: "If what is just, Or right, or true, enters thy mind, O king! Give me the present. Lo! by truth divine The sun ...
— Mârkandeya Purâna, Books VII., VIII. • Rev. B. Hale Wortham
... herself by resting her hand on the table. The faintness was stealing back on her. She tried to go on again. It was useless—she could ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... of despair, and a sudden faintness, she got up and went over to the tray of spirits and liqueurs which had been brought in with the coffee. Pouring out a liqueur-glass of brandy, she was about to drink it, when her ear became attracted by a noise without, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... invention that's got to do with a bathtub, with all bathtubs," said Skippy, with a sudden faintness of confidence before the professional agnosticism which Macnooder, the man of affairs, now assumed by crossing his legs and donning a large horn-rimmed pair ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... as an agreeable aromatic or acidulous perfume of chloroform character. By some this is described as emanating especially from the armpits. Sandras (quoted by Raciborski) knew a lady who could always tell by a sensation of faintness and malaise—apparently due to a sensation of smell—when she was in contact with a menstruating woman. I am acquainted with a man, having strong olfactory sympathies and antipathies, who detects ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... it was due to ignorance, for I was astonished to find many to whom the number of even their near kinsfolk was avowedly unknown. Emigration, foreign service, feuds between near connections, differences of social position, faintness of family interest, each produced their several effects, with the result, as I have reason to believe, that hardly one-half of the persons addressed were able, without first making inquiry of others, to reckon the number of their uncles, adult nephews, and ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... nothing remarkable was said. The weather was very hot, and Mrs. Coleman complained. It had been necessary to keep up a fire for the sake of the kettle. The Major promptly responded to her confession of faintness by opening the window wider, by getting a shawl to put over the back of her chair; and these little attentions she rewarded by smiles and particular watchfulness over his plate and cup. At last he and Jean fell to talking about the jubilee which ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... Poet, sure a lover too, Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below; And brought in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow A hymn from Dian's temple; while upswelling, The incense went to her own starry dwelling. But though her face was clear as infant's eyes, Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, The Poet wept at her so piteous fate, Wept ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... in and out of every little shop we came to for an hour longer. Then she said we would stop into Purssell's and get something to eat, for she was beginning to feel hungry. This had been the case with me ever so long; not that I hankered much in hot weather for hearty food, but I felt a sort of faintness; and when she said something about Purssell's having delicious peaches, I knew that they were exactly the thing which would appease all the internal ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... also, and except for Betty, Pony would everlastingly have disgraced herself. There are many persons in the world whom the sight of blood fills with a strange shrinking and terror that is almost like faintness, and Polly was one of them. Now she wanted to run away, she even turned to fly, when her friend caught hold of her. "Don't be utterly stupid, Polly, you have done a foolish trick and you've got to face the music, for if you don't, you know ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... been a crying woman. But some great change has befallen me, I believe. What is it? That swoon—it wasn't mere faintness, giddiness; it was this change ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... in a state of agitation. She had sent for Grace Stepney and was taking digitalis. Lily breasted the storm of enquiries as best she could, explaining that she had had an attack of faintness on her way back from Carry Fisher's; that, fearing she would not have strength to reach home, she had gone to Miss Farish's instead; but that a quiet night had restored her, and that she had no need of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... for the brandy, of which he seldom tasted; but he needed something to relieve the deathlike faintness which occasionally came over him, and which old Hagar, looking only at his mischievous eyes, failed to observe. Only those who knew Henry Warner intimately gave him credit for many admirable qualities he really possessed—so full was he of fun. It was in his merry eyes and ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... clearly. As I examined it, while Craig made preparations to cut out the glass to preserve it, it seemed to contain a number of minute points and several more or less broken parallel lines. The edges gradually trailed off into an indistinct faintness. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... line and began to plane down when he was aware of a feeling of faintness, but pulling himself together he landed his machine, taxied up to the sheds, and attempted to get out. It was only then that he realized that his leg was shot almost completely off above the knee; the lower part was merely hanging by a piece ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... not drawn it from her hand. Fate had restored it. As he forced himself to look at it lying in his grasp, a faintness as of death seized and held him for a moment; then this passed and he slowly rose and step by step with sidelong looks and hair starting upright on his forehead, like one who has walked in blood and sees ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... gasped, and then a sudden faintness came over her. It passed quickly, and as soon as she was sufficiently restored, I begged her to go below. She pleaded that she could not sleep, and asked me to remain with her upon the deck. "It would be absurd to suppose that either of us could sleep this night," ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... from the faintness that had seized her at first sight of the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seen Miss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon as she could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time to hear ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... The throbbing pulses, the quivering nerves, the wrung hearts, that surround the unamiable—what a cloud of witnesses is here! and what plea shall avail against them? The terror of innocents who should know no fear—the vindictive emotions of dependants who dare not complain—the faintness of heart of life-long companions—the anguish of those who love—the unholy exultation of those who hate,—what an array of judges is here! and where can appeal be lodged against their sentence? Is pride of singularity a rational plea? Is super-refinement, or circumstance of God, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... change which the appearance of its surface underwent was no less wonderful than that which the surface of the earth had presented in the reverse order while we were receding from it. From a pale silver orb, shining with comparative faintness among the stars, it slowly assumed the appearance of a vast mountainous desert. As we drew nearer its colors became more pronounced; the great flat regions appeared darker; the mountain peaks shone more brilliantly. The huge chasms seemed bottomless and blacker than ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... rich and blessed life to the service of love. Power was ever going out from him to heal, to comfort, to cheer, to save. He was continually emptying out from the full fountain of his own heart cupfuls of rich life to reinvigorate other lives in their faintness and exhaustion. One of the sources of his own renewing and replenishing was in the friendships he had among men and women. What friends are to us in our human hunger and need, the friends of Jesus were to him. He craved companionship, and was sorely hurt ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... so much and suffered so much during the last few months that nature refused to bear any longer, and it was more than a headache which brought the faintness upon her. Taking her in her arms, Miss Betsey carried her to her room, and placing her upon the ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... denial that the young man tried to utter was strangled in his throat; he threw out his arms and groped with his hands as if to find something to support him in his faintness; then ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the palate and satisfying to the cravings of hunger, at a smaller expence.—And that this meal was sufficient for all the purposes of nourishment appears from hence, that though I took my usual exercise, and did not sup after it, I neither felt any particular faintness, nor any unusual degree of appetite for my ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... last letter, and the money enclosed. It came in the nick of time, for I was run almost to my last penny. I did not write before, because I didn't feel in the humour to do anything. Thank goodness! I'm not sick any more, though I don't know that it isn't counterbalanced by the dreadful faintness and the constant movement. Isn't it awful to sit here day after day, watching myself, and knowing the only relief I shall get will be after such terrible pain? I woke up last night crying with the terror of it. Cervassi says there are cases on record of painless confinements, and in ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... "Seems a pity to tear that up," she said anxiously, "it wants a bit of mending, but it is one of the best. If you will wait a minute, miss, I think I know where I can put my hand on a piece," and Mary scrambled to her feet, forgetful of her faintness. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... lay the fragrance of the flowers; how still the night was, save for the constant muffled boom of the breaking surf!—for a moment an almost ungovernable impulse swept upon her to make some excuse, anything, no matter how wild, a sudden faintness, anything, and run from him back into the cottage. And then she tried to think, think in a desperate sort of way of some subject of conversation that she might introduce that would stave off, postpone, defer the words that she knew were even now on his lips—nothing—she could think of nothing—only ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... and well trained in athletics, parried their blows for an instant, but the man, the one who had come from the shadows of the alley, whose face was evil, stole up behind and stabbed him in the shoulder. The sudden faintness that followed made him less capable of defending himself. He felt he was losing his senses, and the next blow from one of the men sent him reeling into the street where he fell heavily, striking his head against ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... associates him, vaguely, with each and every one of the incidents which have puzzled him within the month past—with Rix, with Doctor Warren's coming, with that cold and bitter letter from Miss Winthrop, and finally with the shock and faintness that overcame this fair young girl at sight ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... that it makes it hard for me to do anything after 100 miles shaking since breakfast. My cold is no better, nor my hand either." It was his left eye, it will be noted, as it was his left foot and hand; the irritability or faintness of heart was also of course on the left side; and it was on the same left side he felt most of the effect of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and blue, a faintness rose and conquered him. The eyes closed, and the breath almost stopped. But it was only momentary, and with returning consciousness came renewed ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the Battery, had had his country villa or, more strictly speaking, his farm there, with free expanses roundabout. Shrunken though the tract a part of it remained—in particular a space that I remember, though with the last faintness, to have seen appeal to the public as a tea-garden or open-air cafe, a haunt of dance and song and of other forms of rather ineffective gaiety. The subsequent conversion of the site into the premises of the French Theatre I was to be able to note more distinctly; ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... doctors had told me would indicate the approach of death. At my urgent request they had enlightened me upon this point, and I had learned that death from the accidental stoppage of the heart would be without pain, and would simply be preceded by a feeling of faintness. It was a feeling of this kind which suddenly stole over me as I was reading "Ivanhoe." I felt it deepening, and laid aside my book under the firm conviction that I would never again read printed page. Asking for some stimulant, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... white, and she leaned back in her chair with a sudden feeling of faintness. It was years since the boy had spoken of his father; why should he utter his name now? He had raised his head when he felt her move, and her dim and failing eyes saw his face in a mist, looking so like his father when she had known him first, that she shrank from him, with a terror ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... sick with fear. The idea of my girl being trapped by such a villain as I firmly believed the man whom we knew as Sir Gilbert Carstairs to be was enough to shake every nerve in my body; but to think that she had been in his power for twenty-four hours, alone, defenceless, brought on me a faintness that was almost beyond sustaining. I felt physically and mentally ill—weak. And yet, God knows! there never was so much as a thought of defeat in me. What I felt was that I must get there, and make some effort that would bring the suspense to an end for both of us. ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... down after we parted from the other girls, and thus became sensible of some fatigue and faintness. We had been too much excited to eat any of the bread-and-butter prepared for our early breakfast at Bush House. We had run up and down and stood on our feet about three times as much as need was; we had talked ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... delight of an artist as she looked about her house, and she said to herself that she was not at all tired. She also said that she was not at all hungry, even if she had only eaten a cracker for luncheon and little besides for breakfast. She realized a faintness at her stomach, and told herself that she must be getting indigestion. Her little stock of money was very nearly gone. She had even begun to have a very few things charged again at Anderson's. Sometimes her father brought home a little money, but she understood well enough ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... one who spies a serpent in his way, Glistening and basking in the summer ray, Disorder'd stops to shun the danger near, Then walks with faintness on, and looks with fear: So seem'd the sire, when, far upon the road, The shining spoil his wily partner show'd. He stopp'd with silence, walk'd with trembling heart, And much he wish'd, but durst not ask to part: Murmuring he lifts ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... time," Bright replied ill-naturedly, "but here is the story. Julian Orden left his rooms at a quarter to six on Thursday evening. He walked down to St. James's Street and turned into the Park. Just as he passed the side door of Marlborough House he was attacked by a sudden faintness." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... faintness came over her once more and she sat down on the bank and leaned her head against a tree-trunk. The long road and the cloudy landscape vanished from her eyes, and for a time she seemed to be circling about in some terrible wheeling darkness. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... A faintness overcame me, and I felt myself dissolve. For all of a sudden a second ripple of voice swept over the lagoon, a shower of little notes, which seemed to form a little ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... could see no track, which my heart fainted to look at, which no longer roused any hope in me, as if it might lead to another beginning, or any place in which yet at the last it might be possible to live. As I lay in that horrible giddiness and faintness, I loathed life and this continuance which brought me through one misery after another, and forbade me to die. Oh that death would come,—death, which is silent and still, which makes no movement and hears no sound! that I might end and be no more! Oh that I could go back ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... of the attacks were in general as follows:—There came on at first a feeling of faintness, with rigour and a sense of weight at the pit of the stomach, soon after which the patient cried out, as if in the agonies of death or the pains of labour. The convulsions then began, first showing themselves in the muscles of the eyelids, though the eyes themselves were fixed and staring. The ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... the formation of numerous small blisters, and still later by scaling. It should not be forgotten that the berries and other portions of these plants are poisonous when taken internally, giving rise under such circumstances to vertigo, faintness, dilation of the pupils, trembling, confusion of the senses, and, in some instances, convulsions. Should it be discovered that anyone has been exposed to poisoning by these plants, the skin should be washed as quickly as is possible with alcohol, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... her grow very pale at the sight of his bloody apparition at the window of the ball-room. Bodily weakness, for she was not at this time in strong health, must be her apology, if she need any, for the faintness and loss of presence of mind, which Sir Ulick construed into proofs of tender anxiety for the personal fate of this young man. In the scene that followed, horror of his crime, pity for the agony of his remorse, was what she felt—what she strongly expressed to her mother, the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... of furniture, in which the old creature was floating down the river of life, was not unlike the encyclopedic bag which a woman carries with her when she travels; in which may be found a compendium of her household belongings, from the portrait of her husband to eau de Melisse for faintness, sugarplums for the children, and English court-plaster in case ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... imploringly. Pain and bewilderment, strange, wistful pleading, but all the old love and trust, were there as I threw my arms about his neck and bowed his head upon my breast. I could not bear to meet his eyes. I could not look into them and read there the deadly pain and faintness that were rapidly robbing them of their lustre, but that could not shake their faith in his friend and master. No wonder mine grew sightless as his own through swimming tears. I who had killed him could not face his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... weighs down my heavy eye, 24 A chiller faintness steals upon my breast; "O gentle Muse, with some sweet lullaby" Rock me in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... mind—prepared indeed, through years, by all the perplexities and rebellions of her girlhood—betraying itself in her quivering face, and lips. Suddenly, she dropped upon a fallen log beside the path, hiding her face in her hands, struggling again with the sheer faintness of the shock. And Philip, kneeling in the dry leaves beside her, completed his work, with the cruel mercy of the man who kills ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the names of husband and wife hold forth nothing, but clashing and cloying, and dulness and faintness, in their signification; they shall be abolished for ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... I must perforce stay here," sighed the man. "Prince Rupert's troops have chased me miles out of my way, or I should have reached Oxford ere this; and if it were not for the faintness that comes over me when I move, I would even now continue ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... gave no sign of making bare, Nor she of faintness or despair. Inflamed with hope that she might win, If she but coaxed him to begin, She used all arts for making fain; The mother with her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... material things rise to that subtlety of operation which constitutes them spiritual, where only the finer nerve and the keener touch can follow: it is as if in certain revealing instances we actually saw them at their work on human flesh. Nervous, electric, faint always with some inexplicable faintness, they seem to be subject to exceptional conditions, to feel powers at work in the common air unfelt by others, to become, as it were, receptacles of them, and pass them on to us in a chain ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... parallax has been increased to 8".82 or 8".83. The results from photography have disappointed me much. The failure has arisen, perhaps sometimes from irregularity of limb, or from atmospheric distortion, but more frequently from faintness and from want of clear definition. Many photographs, which to the eye appeared good, lost all strength and sharpness when placed under the measuring microscope. A final result 8".17 was obtained from Mr Burton's measures, and 8".08 from Capt. Tupman's.—With ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... little, and the deacons invariably closed them again when he looked the other way. At intervals, females were carried out, in a motionless condition,—not, as it appeared, from conviction of sin, but from faintness. You sat, absorbed in thought, with your eyes closed, and seemed not to observe them. I remember that you were very much shocked when I suggested that the breath of an average sinner exhausted atmospheric air at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... Nell overcame the deathly feeling of faintness which came upon her. Quickly she locked the door, and then turned her attention to her injured arm. The wound was still bleeding profusely, and it was with considerable difficulty that she was at length able to stop the flow of blood. The gash was not as deep as she had first expected. The ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... struggle was almost more than she could endure. She tried to appear calm; time mellowed her grief, and mitigated her torments; but when her husband would take her hand, or mention any thing like love, she would instantly feel a sickness, a faintness at her heart, and wish, involuntarily, that the earth would open ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... into night and, coming from his lair, Dick walked boldly toward the town. He had eaten nothing since morning, but he had not noticed it, until this moment, when he began to feel a little faintness. He resolved that Vicksburg should supply him. It was curious how much help he expected of Vicksburg, ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... restitution of military pay and privileges was imputed to the acknowledged weakness of Macrinus. At length he marched out of Antioch, to meet the increasing and zealous army of the young pretender. His own troops seemed to take the field with faintness and reluctance; but, in the heat of the battle, [49] the Praetorian guards, almost by an involuntary impulse, asserted the superiority of their valor and discipline. The rebel ranks were broken; when the mother and grandmother of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... "A slight faintness, that is all. Mr. Waul, before the curtain rises to-night, I wish you to ascertain in what portion of the house the American minister's box is located; write it on a slip of paper and send it to the dressing-room by your wife. Just now I believe I have no other commissions. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the midst of my faintness, which made all sounds far away as from beyond the boundary of the flesh, and beyond the din of battle, which was still going on, though feebly, like a fire burning to its close, I heard the dip of oars on the creek, and knew that ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... a faintness and oppression in the sound which made Lady Merrifield think the girl ought not to be left, and before long, sickness came on. Nurse Halfpenny had to be called up, and it was one o'clock before there was a quiet, comfortable sleep, which satisfied the aunt and nurse that ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whirlwind, did he feel faintness and fatigue? Did he drink, eat, sleep? If he did so, he was unconscious of the fact. In certain violent situations instinct satisfies itself, according to its requirements, unconsciously. Besides, his thoughts were ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... do some shopping one morning, and I had not been gone long before I began to feel ill. The ill feeling increased rapidly, until I had pains in all my bones, nausea and faintness, headache, all the symptoms in short that precede an attack of influenza. I thought that I was going to have the grippe, epidemic then in Boston, or something worse. The mind-cure teachings that I had been listening to all the winter thereupon came into my ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James |
