"Nerveless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her hand imprisoned—that fragrant, listless little hand, so lifeless, nerveless, unresponsive—as though it were no longer a part of her and she ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... nerveless strings— The sinews of brave old airs Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings So closely here declares A sad regret in its ravelings And ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... entr'acte, though the restless guests moved about, Hermia sat rooted to her chair, fascinated with horror. Her body seemed nerveless and she feared that if she rose her limbs would not support her, or, if they did support her, she must fly like a mad thing from the house. And so she sat, a fixed smile frozen on her lips, greeting those who approached her. Beatrice Coddington left her ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... sentiment partly explains why the type of beauty adored is neither womanly nor manly, but adolescent. It has to be tender, fragile, solicitous, unripe; appealing to sensibility, not to passion, by feminine charms in nerveless and soulless boyhood. The most distinctive mark of Adonis is that he has no character, no will, no intellect. He is all sentiment, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... was time to say good-bye once more, her limbs grew weak and she leaned heavily on husband and son, her nerveless feet dragging ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... low scream that came moaningly up from her breast, which was drowned in the echoes of the report, Mary Burton made no outcry. She no longer leaned limp and nerveless against the support of the doorway. Something had seemed to snap the cords of her paralysis and out of her blanched face her eyes stared wide and piteous. As the older banker staggered back she was quick to reach the motionless figure and to lift its head ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... a universe—of clay. Where is the mind that should have overtopp'd, Saul-like, the level of the multitude? Where the bold front that in the breach of wrong Stemm'd the fierce current of insidious foes, Flashing Truth's falchion in the van of Time? Shame! it hath rusted in its scabbard, till The nerveless arm can scarce withdraw it thence. O Earth! rejoice that at his side there comes An undimm'd light to beacon on the world; One who upholds the honour of his line Unsullied as the glory of the stars; Whose voice rings clear above the battle strife, And shakes oppression from his iron throne; And ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... old now. The earnest, restless gaze had gone from his eyes; he was staring mutely before him, twisting between nerveless fingers that blank scrap of paper, which had been the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... her strength after the birth of her child. She lay nerveless and white, so that her husband, her mother, the Colonel, all became alarmed. The celebrated accoucheur who had attended her alarmed ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... dropped off on the table-cloth. He did not perceive the loss until Agatha restored it, and then his fingers seemed unable to slip it on again, until his daughter-in-law aided him. In so doing, the clammy, nerveless feel of the old man's ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... household affairs, produce that lack of time that is offered as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the mind blank and nerveless except when thus ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Nerveless and dispirited he returned to the garden gate. Some one had been there since he had passed, for there were fresh foot-prints along the walk, of a small, feminine type, and directed toward the forest. The steps had passed outward, and their track was lost in the leaves ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... to see the supposed projecting crag—in reality an enormous mass of ice—which supported the snow-bank on which the Flying Fish rested, break off and go thundering down into the unfathomable depths below. The spectators clung to each other in helpless nerveless terror at so appalling a spectacle as the falling of this mass, weighing probably millions of tons; but the full significance and import of the catastrophe did not present itself to their dazed and bewildered senses until they beheld the Flying Fish, after following the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... helmet, Spud's lips moved unconsciously to repeat prayers he would have sworn were forgotten these many years. There was a pistol at his belt where his hand was resting; another hung at his other side. But the man made no move to defend himself; he was struck numb and nerveless, not through fear, but through that horror which comes with seeing one's most gruesome superstitions come true. Spud O'Malley, who would have laughed at devils and believed in them while he laughed, knew now that they were real. They had captured Chet; ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... water by the timber, I raised her above it. The weight proved too much and she sank again. Again I pulled her to the surface and again she sank. This I did again and again with no avail. She drowned in my very grasp, and at last she dropped from my nerveless hands to leave my sight forever. As if I had not suffered enough, a few moments after I saw some objects whirling around in an eddy which circled around, until, reaching the current again, they floated past me. My God, man, would you believe me? it was three of my children, dead. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... it, Mark placed the handles in the nerveless fingers of Mr. Henderson. Then he started the current. In about a minute the eyelids of the aged inventor began to quiver, and, in less than five minutes he had been revived sufficiently to enable him to sit up. He passed his hand across ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... reason were obvious). To show his confidence in me. (Napoleon's jaw does not exactly drop; but its hinges become nerveless. The Lieutenant proceeds with honest indignation.) And I was worthy of his confidence: I brought them all back honorably. But would you believe it?—when I trusted him with MY pistols, and MY horse, ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... could move one of the men kicked her pistol out of her nerveless hand, caught her by the shoulder and dragged the trench-knife from her convulsive grasp. Then he ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... eyes deep, concealing, would have foretold that she would conquer in the trial, that she would force her soul down,—but that the forcing down would leave the weak, flaccid body spent and dead. One thing was certain: no curious eyes would see the struggle; the body might be nerveless or sickly, but it had the great power of reticence; the calm with which she faced the closest gaze was natural to her,—no mask. When she left her room and went down, the same unaltered quiet that had baffled Knowles steadied her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... upon her the mesmeric look of a serpent. Old Gabe was peering covertly from under the brim of his hat, with a chuckle at his lips. Rome had fallen back to a corner of the mill, sobered, speechless, his rifle in a nerveless hand. The passion that fired him at the boy's warning had as swiftly gone down at sight of the girl, and her cutting rebuke made him hot again with shame. He was angry, too-more than angry-because he felt so helpless, a sensation that was new and ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... fixed the peg in the wet sandy soil and began hammering. After each stroke he looked at us and at the river and in all directions. He struck blow after blow and we counted about thirty. That his hands had become nerveless we would understand, for otherwise a dozen strokes should have been enough to make the peg vanish ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... been prudentially soft and nerveless, suddenly hardened into solid muscle, and one of his heavy blows came full and square upon the region of Archy's left eye. The young lord of the manor reeled as though a tornado had struck him, and fell heavily upon ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... And,—fault of novel germs,— Mature the unfallen fruit. Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a little moment, however. It passes, and recollection returns. Monica, raising her head, sees the two Misses Blake standing side by side, with folded, nerveless hands, and fixed eyes, and horror-stricken faces. Shrinking still closer to her lover, Monica regards them with a troubled conscience and with growing fear. She is at last discovered, and her sin ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... past the fallen man to the bedside, where for an instant he stood looking down on a placid face and into open eyes. As his glance wandered he saw that the judge's nerveless fingers still grasped ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... they were still in a state of perturbation from which they were not to recover for a long time. Their cheeks were white and their eyes were dark with the dread that remained even after the danger was past. Hetty's arms hung limp and nerveless at her sides as she lay back in the chair and stared numbly ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... revealed that our enemy was gone, in full retreat, leaving killed, wounded, and much property by the way, we all experienced a feeling of relief. The struggle had been so long, so desperate and bloody, that the survivors seemed exhausted and nerveless; we appreciated the value of the victory, but realized also its great cost of life. The close of the battle had left the Army of the Tennessee on the right, and the Army of the Ohio on the left; but I believe neither General Grant nor Buell exercised command, the one ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... middling by the string and swung it around in front of him, whereupon it slipped out of his nerveless fingers and fell over in the ashes. It did not break the middling, but it ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... apostles of peace draw large sections of a nation into the spell of their Utopian efforts, and they thus introduce an element of weakness into the national life; they cripple the justifiable national pride in independence, and support a nerveless opportunist policy by surrounding it with the glamour of a higher humanity, and by offering it specious reasons for disguising its own weakness. They thus play the game of their less scrupulous enemies, just as the Prussian policy, ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... the noon's heat) until the sun began to decline and I was parched with thirst. But now, as I fitted the last of my timbers into place, the board slipped my nerveless grasp and, despite the heat, a sudden chill swept over me as borne upon the stilly air came a voice, soft and rich and sweet, uplifted in song and the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... fate! {405} My mother sinks to the dark realms of night, Nor longer views this golden light; But to the ills of life exposed Leaves my poor orphan state! Her eyes, my father, see, her eyes are closed, And her hand nerveless falls. Yet hear me, O my mother, hear my cries! It is thy son who calls, Who prostrate on the earth breathes ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... breath gives out, that I dare not knock, that the flowers nearly fall from my nerveless hand? All that is a matter of course to anyone who has ever, in his youth, had dealings with faeries ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... and colour the result of working out a mathematical proposition? Was this exquisite surety of touch and handling, of mass and line composition, all these lovely depths and vast ethereal spaces superbly peopled, merely the logical result of solving that problem? Was it all clear, limpid, steady, nerveless intelligence; and was nothing due to the ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the wistaria-vine. Her spirit quailed and her cheeks blanched when she saw the naked blade of a dagger held between his teeth. She understood his mission—it was her life and the gold; and the glittering eyes of the robber she recognized as those of Basilio Velasco. After a moment of nerveless terror the ancient resisting blood of the Ovandos sprang into alert activity, and this gentlest and sweetest of young women armed her soul to meet Death on his own ground and his own terms, and ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... patronizing, authoritative air with which Jansoulet encouraged and reassured him: "Be calm, my dear colleague." But the members of the eighth committee did not laugh. They were all, or almost all, of the Sarigue species, two or three being absolutely nerveless, afflicted with partial loss of the power of speech. Such self-assurance, such eloquence ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... his scanty white hair streaming backward on the end of the pallet, which had been turned up to form a pillow. Over him and reaching from his feet to his breast, was drawn a sheet, and on that sheet lay one of his thin, wrinkled and nerveless hands. His eyes were shut, and he might have appeared to be asleep, but that ever and anon there broke from him one of those low but distinct groans indicative of severe inward pain, which had startled the two Zouaves. But the old man was not the most singular ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the secret room Where Love lay dying; Mystic and faint perfume Met me like sighing; As heaven had cast a still-born star He lay nor stirred; the shell-thin hand Nerveless of high command Where once the lord-veins sped ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... a man for a gentleman as you will find in London.... He has a retreating forehead, large aquiline nose, immense red whiskers, and a mouth contradictory of all talent. A more good-natured, habitually smiling, nerveless expression could hardly be imagined.' Bulwer seems to have made up for his appearance by his high spirits, lover-like voice, and delightful conversation, some of which our ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... seen nor heard from Katherine. During that long night at the club he had planned, in a feverish, restless way, to drive to her home in the morning; but the morning saw him speeding to Chicago, weak and nerveless. During Friday and Saturday he was confined to his room by order of the physician, but on Sunday, a bright day, he ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... chaperone, sat with her niece's arms about her, passing in and out of successive attacks of hysteria. A sailor had knocked one of the young men of the party down to quiet an incipient exhibition of panic. Ralph Oddington and Reginald Wotherspoon stood at the rail, trying with nerveless fingers to roll cigarettes. Two of the girls were weeping in each other's arms. The water bubbled under the turn of the yacht's counters. Two of the sailors were discharging blank shells from the rifle astern in hopes ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... been the fashion to compare the style of Addison and Johnson, and to depreciate, I think very unjustly, the style of Addison as nerveless and feeble[661], because it has not the strength and energy of that of Johnson. Their prose may be balanced like the poetry of Dryden and Pope. Both are excellent, though in different ways. Addison writes with the ease of a gentleman. His readers fancy that a wise and accomplished ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... like a man lifted suddenly from a dungeon into the sunlit world. I was weak. I caught hold of the horn, settled down nerveless in the saddle, and looked around me. The cattle were streaming past in two long lines for the shore, led by Ump and the Aberdeen-Angus, now half-way up the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... greet in the morning a man sick and emaciated perhaps, but still a human being, erect and in God's image, who, in the evening of the same day, would disappear from among them, making a desperate dash for freedom. The following day a broken, nerveless, shivering wretch would be dragged into their midst, blood-stained, faint, and with the gashes of a blood-hound's teeth covering his face ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... the nerveless hand and held it a moment in silence, and then he laid it gently down and stood up, looking about through the moonlight, toward the cypress swamp and ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... his force, until the prince perceived himself rapidly suffocating. His eyes failed him, and seemed bursting from their orbits; his vision presented nothing but gleams of many colored lights dancing before him; his heart heaved and panted with throes of desperate agony; his arm became almost nerveless, and his sword fell from his hand, while the shouts of the giant announced that the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... confess," he answered hotly, raising his voice. "It is a fine thing to sit here in Paris, among the languid, dull, and nerveless beauties of the Court, whose favours are easily won because they look on dalliance as the best pastime offered them, and are eager for such opportunities of it as you fleering coxcombs will afford them. But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... betrothed, and, untwining myself from the lithe and nerveless limbs of the savage, I rose to my feet. The ranche ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... that he was ill, that he was jaded, worn out, he had only told half the truth. Exhausted he was, nerveless, weak, but this apathy was still invaded from time to time with fierce incursions of a spirit of unrest and revolt, reactions, momentary returns of the blind, undirected energy that at one time had prompted him to a vast desire to acquit himself of some terrible deed of readjustment, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... sword upon his thigh, Doth gleam the panting soldier's eye, But nerveless hangs the arm that swayed So proudly that terrific blade. The feeble bosom scarce can give A throb to show he yet doth live, And in his eye the light which glows, Is but the stare, that death bestows. The filmy veins that circling thread The cooling balls are turning red; And every pang ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... strong warm hands, all manacled as they were, upon the other's nerveless clammy fingers, sent, more than the words, something of the speaker's own courage to his friend's wrung heart. And yet that very ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... a revolver wake the echoes once more. The knife dropped from the nerveless grasp of the would-be assassin, and with a howl of pain he began dancing an Irish jig on the stone ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... "we pulled against stream with determined perseverance, but in our short daily journeys we made but trifling way against it." The effects of severe toil were painfully evident. The men lost the muscular jerk with the oars. Their arms were nerveless, their faces haggard, their persons emaciated, their spirits wholly spent. From sheer weariness they fell asleep at the oar. No ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... foot upon the neck of the fallen witch-doctor, the ape-man raised his face to the moon and uttered the long, shrill scream of the victorious bull ape. Then he stooped and snatched the zebra's tail from the nerveless fingers of the unconscious man and without a backward glance retraced his footsteps across ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a spring, when he happened to glance upward. A small white hand was hanging over the top of the stone. Sturges was not a Californian, but he sprang to his feet and pressed his lips to that hand. It was cold and nerveless, and clasping it in his he applied his gaze to the rift above the stone. In a moment he distinguished two dark eyes and a gleam of white brow above. Then ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... from her, his hand falling from her arm as if it had grown nerveless, and for a moment there was absolute silence. Then the Beggar Man laughed, such a mirthless, heart-broken laugh that Faith cried out. She dropped the little suitcase she carried and ran ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... wholly successful. It could not well be otherwise. Lucille has returned to Dorset House. Souspennier is confounded altogether by a little revelation which I ventured to make. He spoke of an appeal. I let him know with whom he would have to deal. I left him nerveless and crushed. He can do nothing save by open revolt. And if he tries that—well, there will be no more of this wonderful ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fainted, and, finding that no answers could be extracted from him, he was taken back to his cell and flung upon a heap of straw. As he lay there, Nightgall, with diabolical cruelty, brought Cicely to his side, and bade her look on his nerveless arms and crippled limbs, and mockingly offered to set him free if Cicely would marry him of her own free will. When at Cuthbert's instigation she refused, he forced her away, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... his work, painfully, and very slowly and clumsily, fumbling blindly with the brushes, and finding it difficult, when he sat down, to summon the energy to move again. His limbs, his jaw, were slack and nerveless. But he was very tired. He got to bed at last, and slept inert, relaxed, in a sleep that was rather stupor than slumber, a dead night of stupefaction shot through ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... me and said that the world would soon have a surplus of educated men, that the colleges were turning out many nerveless and useless youngsters, that education seemed to be one of the follies of 1885. The fact was we were getting to be far superior to what we had been. The speeches at the commencement classes were much better than those we had ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... for the first time Joanna Baillie's "Count Basil." I am not sure that the love she describes does not affect me more even than Shakespeare's delineation of the passion in "Romeo and Juliet." There is a nerveless despondency about it that seems to me more intolerable than all the vivid palpitating anguish of the tragedy of Verona; it is like dying of slow poison, or malarial fever, compared with being shot ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... finger touched the trigger, a strange thing happened; a something which sent the rifle clattering from nerveless fingers and set the cold perspiration springing ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... as there is no doubt about the course to be taken, so long as the plan is plainly revealed, it is easy for a courageous man to advance. But to such a one uncertainty is like a shock to the body, palsying the form and changing a strong arm into a nerveless, useless stick of bone and tissue. A cup may be very bitter, salt with the brine of tears and hot with the fire of vitriol, and yet, if all the ingredients in that cup are known to him who drinks it, grief has not ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... embodiment of blithesome happiness. In the chapter dealing with the laundry I had occasion to speak of her voluptuous beauty. Her long years of hard labor—and she labored harder than any one else there—seemed to have wrought no effect upon her handsome, nerveless body. Her lovely eyes, her hair, her dazzling complexion and perfect features, were all worthy the reputation of a stage beauty. She was kind; in her rough, uncouth way, she was kind to everybody—so kind, in fact, that she was generally popular, though envied as enjoying ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... gathering to the full its mighty strength, had upreared itself for a moment majestically above its fellows,—falling, its scattered spray can only impotently sprinkle the dull, dreary shore. Broken and nerveless, I can only wait the lifting of the curtain, quietly wondering if a failure be always irretrievable,—if a prize once lost can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... from her nerveless fingers, Grace saw her surroundings through a swirling mist. For a moment or two she yielded to the terror that clutched at her heart. Her sturdy nature reasserting itself, she rose, recovered the letter and walked ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... went on and rushed, striving to clasp him. Next moment, before ever I touched him—oh, well was it for me that I touched him not!—some strength seized me and whirled me round and round as a dead leaf is whirled by the wind, and tossed me up and cast me down and left me prone and nerveless. ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... she stood still, looking at the big type with open, staring eyes. Then, with a low cry, like a wounded animal, she let the paper slip from her nerveless fingers. There was a furious throbbing at her temples: her heart seemed to stop. The room spun round, and she fainted just as Steell rushed forward to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... no one to say him nay. With a scream Lycabetta fell fainting to the floor. Hildebrand was trying to cross himself with nerveless fingers, the women were sobbing hysterically, and the slaves ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... lesser velocity but was earlier discharged. It was because of these last two characteristics that Dr. Johnson applied to Donne and his followers the rather clumsy name of 'Metaphysical' (Philosophical) poets. 'Fantastic' would have been a better word. 4. In vigorous reaction against the sometimes nerveless melody of most contemporary poets Donne often makes his verse as ruggedly condensed (often as obscure) and as harsh as possible. Its wrenched accents and slurred syllables sometimes appear absolutely unmetrical, but it seems that Donne ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... iron-nerved man, trembling and nerveless in expectancy of a revelation of horror; at length ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... and walked to the window; then, nerveless and depressed, I went out into the garden again to smoke ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... excitement:—"She rises!" Far away forward, Mr. Baker and three others were seen erect and black on the clear sky, lifting their arms, and with open mouths as though they had been shouting all together. The ship trembled, trying to lift her side, lurched back, seemed to give up with a nerveless dip, and suddenly with an unexpected jerk swung violently to windward, as though she had torn herself out from a deadly grasp. The whole immense volume of water, lifted by her deck, was thrown bodily across ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... present drop in temperature restored her everyday sense of safety. With it came a sudden ebbing of energy and endurance. The "spell" was over for the time, but her escape from the shadow of it left her nerveless and almost indifferent to its returning; apathetic, too, to her tormentor. Going in, she closed the door behind her, apparently not noticing that he followed her, and when he opened it and came in, she ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... wish to know what the word was; but I cannot gratify their curiosity. Mr Braidwood told me, it remained long in his school, but had been lost before I made my inquiry. [Footnote: One of the best criticks of our age 'does not wish to prevent the admirers of the incorrect and nerveless style which generally prevailed for a century before Dr Johnson's energetick writings were known, from enjoying the laugh that this story may produce, in which he is very ready to join them'. He, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... sons of Spain, and strange her fate! They fight for freedom, who were never free; A kingless people for a nerveless state, Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee, True to the veriest slaves of Treachery; Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, Pride points the path that leads to liberty; Back to the struggle, baffled ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Cora lifeless. With the last effort of his strength Uncas rose to his feet, and hurled Cora's murderer into the abyss below. Then, with a stern and steady look, he turned to Le Subtil and indicated with the expression of his eye all that he would do had not the power deserted him, Magua seized his nerveless arm and stretched him dead by passing his dagger several times ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... in the pallid face before me died piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which cold sweat stood ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... no! Ever since he avowed himself a religious character, he had written nothing but the most vapid and nerveless twaddle. Your poor dear father used to send his letters to me to read, and I sometimes really thought that Silas was losing his faculties; but I believe he was only trying ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... a nullity—a pale, Nerveless and pulseless quasi-invalid, Who, lest the ozone should in aught avail, Remained religiously indoors to read; So that, in wandering at her will, the Child Did, in reality, run ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... there. I shouldn't sleep," replied Maria, with the gentlest sadness conceivable. There was in it no shadow of complaining. Of late years all the fire of resistance had seemed to die out in the girl. She was unfailingly sweet, but nerveless. Often when she raised a hand it seemed as if she could not even let it fall, as if it must remain poised by some curious inertia. Still, she went to the shop every day and did her work faithfully. She pasted ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... where the subdued light struck them, betrayed places worn down to the warp. Mrs. Montgomery herself had a like effect of unsparing use; her personal upholstery showed frayed edges and broken woofs, which did not seriously discord with her nerveless gentility. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... drew forth his steel matchbox with numb and shaking fingers, opened it and stood stricken dumb. There were only three matches in the box. Unreasoning terror seized him. Three chances for life! He chose a match, struck it, but in his numb and nerveless fingers the match snapped near the head. With a new terror seizing him he took a second match and struck it. The match flared, sputtering. Eagerly he thrust the birch bark at it; too eagerly, alas, for the bark rubbed out the tiny flame. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... had produced a striking effect on me. My incessant broodings, and the corroding sense of my great irreparable loss and of my desolation had made a nerveless, listless wreck of me, a mere shadow of my former self. I ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... That is Isaac, this Jeremiah, and this Ezekiel. On the other side are the holy warrior martyrs. Then St. Procopius, there St. Theodore, who burnt the temple of Cybele. His torch may yet be relighted. And these archangels, do you think their arms will be forever nerveless and their swords always ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... lamp shining through the open window grew dim; the floor of the verandah rose and fell; his arms dropped nerveless to his sides and, with the faint muffled cry still ringing in his ears, Durham went down ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... were, now tries to subsist when the things it was essentially contrasted with have been abolished. The intellect becomes a Penelope, whose secret pleasure lies in undoing its ostensible work; and science, becoming pensive, loves to relapse into the dumb actuality and nerveless reverie from which it had once ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... might have been a minute before he saw that a man sat in front of the fireless hearth with his arms stretched before him on the table and his head fallen into them. For many minutes there was no sound, no stir of the man's nerveless pose; it might have been that he was asleep. Suddenly the characterless silence of the place was flooded with tragedy, for the man groaned, and a child would have known that the sound came from a torn soul. He lifted his face—a handsome, high-bred face, clever, a bit weak,—and tears ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... great change had come over her. Instead of being nerveless and lifeless, as he had left her, with dull eyes and weak, helpless limbs, she was now agitated, excited; she glanced nervously about her while he spoke, and tapped the finger-tips of one hand restlessly with those of the other ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... a crash at Miss Burton's side. Was it the shock of the falling picture upon unprepared and overstrained nerves, or what was it that produced the instantaneous change in the joyous-appearing maiden? Her hands dropped nerveless from the keys. So great was the pallor that swept over her face that it suggested to he artist the sudden extinguishment of a lamp. She bowed her head and trembled a moment and then ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... compelled him to pause, and more than once he fell asleep in the midst of his labour. Heavy labour it was, too, for the nerveless hands almost refused to form the irregular scrawl. Still he persevered—till evening. Then a burning thirst assailed him, and he looked eagerly round for water, but there was none in view. His eyes lighted up, however, as he listened, for the soft tinkling of a tiny rill filled ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the king, his eyes fell to the silver tablet in the nerveless hand. Moving close, and holding the lamp in convenient position, he knelt and read ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... full length upon the lounge, but they differed strangely in appearance. One was the natural Lincoln, full of life, vigor, energy and strength; the other was a dead Lincoln, the face white as marble, the limbs nerveless and lifeless, the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Jerrie's message, 'I need you,' went across the continent, and brought the ready response, 'coming on the wings of the wind.' It was Judge St. Claire who wrote to Harold, for Jerrie's nerveless fingers could not grasp the pen, and she could only dictate what she wished ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... at her in surprise, and were speechless for a moment. Then M. Destournier, recovering, reached out and took the girl's slim, nerveless hand. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... criticism only, has found means to give the public and literature the impression of a certain superiority. Mademoiselle des Touches had received this writer for the last seven years, as she had so many other authors, journalists, artists, and men of the world. She knew his nerveless nature, his laziness, his utter penury, his indifference and disgust for all things, and yet by the way she was now conducting herself she seemed inclined to marry him. She explained her conduct, incomprehensible to her friends, in various ways,—by ambition, by the dread she felt of a lonely ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... back, sobbing at the sun; amidships Corliss sprawled panting; and forward, choking and gasping and nerveless, the Scotsman drooped his head upon his knees. La Bijou rubbed softly against the rim-ice and came to rest. The rainbow-wall hung above like a fairy pile; the sun, flung backward from innumerable facets, clothed it in jewelled splendor. Silvery ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Verty would stretch out his hand, and, taking his cedar bow from a chair, bend it thoughtfully, and utter the low Indian murmur, which has been represented by the letters, "ough" so unsuccessfully; then he would allow the weapon to slide from his nerveless hand—his head would droop—the dim dreamy smile would light up his features for an instant, and he would lean upon the desk and ponder—his countenance half enveloped by the long tangled chestnut hair which still flowed upon his shoulders ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... to his post, even after consciousness had departed. The rescuing party found him with head drooped upon his arm, while his nerveless fingers still ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... the forger—was absent, but the two hands, or rather claws—the burglar and the prison-breaker—were present, and the slimly-made, effeminate Crow, if he had not the brains of the master, yet made up for his flaccid muscles and nerveless frame by a cat-like cunning, and a spirit of devilish volatility that nothing could subdue. With such a powerful ally outside as the mock maid-servant, the chance of success was enormously increased. There were one hundred and eighty convicts ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... now. She heard him stammer something about the escape of the mice; she heard him asking her pardon. Dazed, she laid her hand in his as he aided her to descend to the floor; nerveless, speechless, she sank into the big chair, horror ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... enough; yet this is not all. In fact, the Ministry, and Necker himself whom a brass inscription 'fastened by the people over his door-lintel' testifies to be the 'Ministre adore,' are dwindling into clearer and clearer nullity. Execution or legislation, arrangement or detail, from their nerveless fingers all drops undone; all lights at last on the toiled shoulders of an august Representative Body. Heavy-laden National Assembly! It has to hear of innumerable fresh revolts, Brigand expeditions; of Chateaus in the West, especially ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... this heaven. The girl burst backward out of his embrace. Martin's arms fell to his sides, nerveless, and he stood panting, tongue-tied with emotion. Nor did he have the chance to master himself and speak the words he wished, for Ruth, with a half sob, half laugh, turned and sped across the deck, and through the open alleyway door, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Northerner who suffered himself to be made the lackey of the South; and Taney, who had denied that, in the contemplation of the American Constitution, the Negro was a man. It was Black, an old Jacksonian, who in the moment of peril held the nerveless hands of the President firm to the tiller. It was Dix, another such, who sent to New Orleans the very Jacksonian order: "If any man attempts to haul down the American ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... of the hole you have a nose-breadth escape. If a hundredth part of the providential deliverances told in Ladysmith were true, it was a miracle that anybody in the place was alive after the first quarter of an hour. A day of this and you are a nerveless semi-corpse, twitching at a fly-buzz, a misery to yourself and a ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... hands were in a nerveless flutter. I could not ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to the speaking-tube and shouted to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fellow raised his saber for the final cut that would terminate the earthly career of Tarzan of the Apes when, to the astonishment of both the ape-man and Smith-Oldwick, the fellow stiffened rigidly, his weapon dropped from the nerveless fingers of his upraised hand, his mad eyes rolled upward and foam flecked his bared lip. Gasping as though in the throes of strangulation the fellow pitched forward at ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... looking old warrior entered, followed by a man who was obviously more of a Levantine than a Serb. The older man, small, slight, gray haired, and swarthy, but surprisingly active in his movements for one of his apparent age, raced up to Prince Michael. He fell on his knees, caught that nerveless right hand, and pressed it to ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... different degrees of merit is quite another. The former is the essence of criticism; the latter, one of the most futile pastimes that can readily be imagined. That each man should have his own preferences is right enough. It would be a nerveless and unprofitable mind to which such preferences were unknown. More than that, some rough classification, some understanding with oneself as to what authors are to be reckoned supreme masters of their craft, is hardly to be avoided. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... idea that she would prefer being left alone. Brant had been secretly hoping it might become his privilege to escort her home, but now he durst not breathe the words of such a request. Something indefinable had arisen between them which held the man dumb and nerveless. Suddenly they came face to face with Mrs. Herndon, and Brant felt the girl's ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... her hot, trembling fingers in his cold, nerveless hand, a moody frown on his brow, and his lips ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... of pencilled paper on the table. The next minute his rapid footsteps crunched on the gravel path. Even after he was gone and she was left quite alone in her old condition, the dead, nerveless sense of despair did not return. An unreasonable lightness of spirit buoyed her—a feeling that after a desolate winter a new season was coming, that her little world was growing larger, lighting indefinably with ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... fresh from carnage, quailed not alone to face The unfathomed depths of Darkness, the solitudes of Space! Strange! the smile of scorn, while nerveless dropped the sword-arm from the sting, On the death that scowled at distance, on the closing murder-ring. Strange! no crimson stain on conscience from the hand in gore imbrued! But Death haunts the death-dealer; blood taints the life ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... ham-and-eggs. He took the ticket and the clipping from Pinny's nerveless fingers and compared them. 19897! That was right. He had won eight hundred dollars. "Where do you cash in?" he ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... single thought Amber sprang upon Rutton, snatched the weapon from his nerveless fingers, and, leaping to the ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... she could not keep her seams straight. The machine they had was ricketty. Sewing, for her, was impossible. For a few days she was stunned with the new demand for which she was unprepared. She was nerveless. It made Sally sick to watch her mother and to realise from the vacancy which so soon appeared upon her face that memory and a kind of futile pondering had robbed her brains of activity. With a bitter sense of grudge against life, a tightening of lips already thin, and a ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... strange reflections must that spectacle inspire him! The outstretched arms lying helpless along the earth—the claw-like fingers now stiff and nerveless—he may be thinking how they once clutched a cowhide, vigorously laying it on his own back, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... them to papa at once. Grandma's papers. They are very important. What? Prince has not come home? Oh, what can have become of him? Those missing papers! Oh, telephone to papa at once! He must do something," and Grace let the receiver fall from her nerveless hand as she looked out into the storm. The rain, after a long dry spell, was ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... too, although it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this harmonious marriage of earth-scents and sea-smells seemed as perfect; never before had the delicacy of the foliage and color-gradations of the sky as triumphantly proved ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... evidently slept in her clothes all night. She looked wretched and bloated, and quite curiously dirty, as black as if she had been up the chimney; and even I could see that, early as was the hour, she was hopelessly drunk. Between both of her nerveless, black hands, she held a poker, with which she struck, from time to time, a feeble blow on a piled-up heap of plates, which she persisted in considering a lump of coal. The fire was nearly out, but she hastened to assure me that if she ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... and crossed, throwing little chips of metal from the walls with snapping sounds and going through flesh with sounds like soft tappings. It was over within seconds, the last Gern down and one man still standing beside him, the blond and nerveless Lake. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... sphere and her work, and she is only happy when she finds pleasure in lovingly, patiently, and faithfully performing the duties and enacting the relations that belong to her as woman. She is not the natural head of society. Man, rough, stern, cold, and almost nerveless, is made to be the head of human society; and woman, quick, sensitive, pliant (as her name indicates), gentle, loving, is the heart of the world. As the heart, she has power. She rules through love, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... somewhat on the characters of Mouton and Fusilier, not only because of their great devotion to the Confederacy, but because there exists a wide-spread belief that the creole race has become effete and nerveless. In the annals of time no breed has produced nobler specimens of manhood than these two; and while descendants of the French colonists remain on the soil of Louisiana, their names and characters should be reverenced as are those of Hampden ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... severe and prolonged struggle for self-control told upon Lilla. She looked, as she felt, ill and weak. She was really in a nerveless and prostrate condition, with black circles round her eyes, pale even to her lips, and with an instinctive trembling which she was quite unable to repress. It was for her a sad mischance that Mimi was away, for her love would have seen through all obscuring causes, and have brought to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... woman steps forward, tipping the symbols of despotic power—sceptre and crown—from the nerveless hand and dishonoured brow of her recent lord and master! And down he goes ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... almost nerveless, Joan waited that end which she felt could not long be delayed. She did not know, she could not understand. On every hand was a threat so terrible that in her weakness she believed that life could not long last. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... hand were yellow from the cigarettes that he was always lighting and throwing away; the rest of him became stiff and chilled as the fire died down. "As if I'd murdered her. . . ." The phrase, self-coined, repeated itself in his brain even when he was not thinking of the shaken, nerveless body which he had tried ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... This is masonically called balancing. They then rise, disengage their hands, and lift them up above their heads with a moderate and somewhat graceful motion; cast up their eyes, turning, at the same time, to the right, they extend their arms and then suffer them to fall loose and nerveless against their sides. This sign is said by Masons to represent the sign of astonishment, made by the Queen of Sheba, on first viewing Solomon's Temple. The Most Excellent Master now resumes his seat and says, "Brethren, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... jaded with travel that it could scarcely lift a foot to continue, its head drooping low as it dragged slowly onward. The traveller seemed in as evil plight as his horse. His head was bent forward upon his breast, the rein had fallen from his nerveless grasp, and he swayed in the saddle as if he could barely retain his seat. As he came nearer, and lifted his face for a moment, he was seen to be frightfully pale and haggard, with the horror of an untold tragedy in his bloodshot eyes. Who was he? An Englishman, evidently, perhaps a messenger ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... now. How we lend our own impulses to the effort with which the veteran grasps the sword wherewith he shore "the stalwart Englisher," strive with him in that strong yearning to whirl it aloft, sink with him in the instant, nerveless reaction, and sorrow that "a child could slay Richelieu now!" He is not the intriguer of dark tradition, wily and cruel for low ambitious ends, but entirely great, in his protection of innocence and longing for affection, and most of all in that supreme love of France to which his other motives ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... sick and unreasoning fear. As she gazed wide-eyed at the living confirmation of the statement that "Gum Shoe Tim" was "as cross as a bear," the gentle-hearted Principal took the paper from her nerveless grasp. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... chocolate arrived, and by force of habit I consumed it. I felt no interest in any earthly thing; my sole sensation was a dread of the coming night, which all too soon would be upon me. For several hours I sat, pale and nerveless, in my room, despising myself for a weakness and a fear which I could not possibly avoid. I was no longer my own master; I was the slave, the shrinking chattel of a ghost, and the thought of my ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... to the fold. This evening, as all was still, we played a little game of Bridge, as in the old days when life was a pleasant dream. Suddenly a dozen rifle shots, in quick succession, rang out in the air and the cards fell from our nerveless fingers as a stray ball rattled against the iron shutters of our windows. Instinctively we crouched into sheltered corners and waited; another volley and another followed, until finally Monsieur S. whispered in a hoarse voice, "A la cave." The household, including the servants, delighted to ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... religion and politics, the mildest. A kind word melted him. A plea won him. He gave to all local charities, and was gravely depressed for a week when the Titanic went down. And yet—the men in the trained-animal game acknowledged him the nerviest and most nerveless of the profession. And yet—his greatest fear in the world was that his large, stout wife, at table, should crown him with a plate of hot soup. Twice, in a tantrum, she had done this during their ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... first object. His fierce grip upon the German's wrist paralysed the muscles of the man's hand, and the pistol dropped from his nerveless fingers. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... inefficient, ineffective; inept; unfit, unfitted; unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; inapt, unapt; crippled, disabled &c. v.; armless[obs3]. harmless, unarmed, weaponless, defenseless, sine ictu[Lat], unfortified, indefensible, vincible, pregnable, untenable. paralytic, paralyzed; palsied, imbecile; nerveless, sinewless[obs3], marrowless[obs3], pithless[obs3], lustless[obs3]; emasculate, disjointed; out of joint, out of gear; unnerved, unhinged; water-logged, on one's beam ends, rudderless; laid on one's back; done up, dead beat, exhausted, shattered, demoralized; graveled ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... could not be John Schuyler. It was not possible. John Schuyler was at least a man—not a palsied, pallid, shrunken, shriveled caricature of something that had once been human.... John Schuyler had hands—not nerveless, shaking talons.... This sunken-eyed, sunken- cheeked, wrinkled thing was not John Schuyler—this thing that crawled, quiveringly—from the loose, pendulous lips of which came mirth that was more bitter to hear than the sobs of ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... the cool, delicate, nerveless hand back upon her knee, and rose, for the Sister was folding up her sewing. He looked long after the girlish figure ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Arthur with a sad smile. He took off her glove, and helped to raise her arm, which hung nerveless and powerless by her side. I felt big tears rolling ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... peiod is one of loss to England. The brilliant French conquests of Henry V (SS289, 290) slipped from the nerveless hands of his son, leaving France practically independent. The people's power to vote had been restricted (S297). The House of Commons had ceased to be democratic even in a moderate degree. Its members were all property ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Their pain unheeded, their groans silenced, the wounded staggered to their feet to look. Even the dying strove to raise themselves on their arms from the reddened soil to gaze, and, gazing, fell back dead. Slowly, mechanically, silently, the living gave way, the weapons dropping from their nerveless grip. Step by step they drew back as if compelled ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... time Mr. Jocelyn might have escaped from his thraldom, but would he? The world is full of people who are proud and self-respecting in the extreme, who are honorable and virtuous, good and kindly at heart, but whose wills are nerveless, though they may go safely through life without suspecting the truth; but if they fall under the influence of an evil habit—if they pass under this mightiest and darkest of all spells, opium hunger—they may ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... his appreciation of the girl's courage, the priest stepped forward and led her to her place beside her bridegroom. She took Haney's big nerveless hand in her firm grasp, and together they listened to the solemn words which made them husband and wife. It seemed that the gambler was passing into the shadow during the opening prayer, but his whispered responses came at the proper pauses, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... his look told me he had understood my question. He lifted up his thin, emaciated arm, and, seeming to clasp hold of something, he said, "Missionary, I am holding on to God; He is my all of joy and hope and happiness." Then the arm fell nerveless, and my triumphant Indian brother was ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... certainly do," I said as cheerfully as possible, "and I thank you also as His instrument; but if you would keep me from fainting away like a nerveless woman, I beg you ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish |
