"Relaxing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had acquired a reputation for beauty and fertility, which was subsequently found to be only comparative in relation to the barrenness of the rest of the Tibetan frontier. The summer months, though not hot, are relaxing and enervating. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... lance-like stick before mentioned and pointed it at the monkeys. It was a blow-pipe. Before Lawrence could interfere, the short arrow with which it was charged had sped on its mission with deadly aim, and the smallest monkey, relaxing its hold of the paternal tail, fell without even a cry into ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... gesture of hers, however slight, good Mistress Deborah, which doth escape me." And at this her heart thrilled far more than if he had met her hand, responsive; knowing that thus he did faithfully keep his pledge to her, and that he could so keep it, only by never relaxing his ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... portions are recorded in the pages of revelation, and the earlier in the rocks, I feel my grasp of a doctrine first taught me by our Calvinistic Catechism at my mother's knee, tightening instead of relaxing. "The decrees of God are his eternal purposes," I was told, "according to the counsel of his will, whereby for his own glory he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass." And what I was told early I still believe. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... exclaimed Isabel, who looked particularly pretty in a soft-blue summer gown, while Elizabeth was like some flower, in deep-pink muslin. "You do get into the most awful heaps, Cora, dear. But you never can rest without relaxing, ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... fall, slip, or stumble while making the climb. Of course we occasionally rested, and whenever we stopped near a flat rock or a level place, we made use of it by lying down on our backs, straightening out arms and legs, relaxing every muscle, and for a time resting as loosely as possible. Just before reaching the top, we made a long climb through the deepest snow that we had encountered. Though the sun was warm, the air, rocks, and snow were cold. Not only was the snow cold to the feet, but climbing through it was tiresome, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... exquisite and so bilious. Therefore I am constrained away from my joys by sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going away on Friday. For myself, it did not affect me at all. Take the mild, soft, relaxing climate—even the scirocco does not touch me. And the baby grows gloriously fatter in spite of everything. . . . As for Venice, you can't get even a "Times", much less an "Athenaeum". We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the opera (a whole box on the grand tier, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... "No," said Marcia, relaxing. "She's a great friend of the whole family. I don't know what they meant by telling you it was to be just a family party, when they were going to have strangers in," ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... spirits. It was the recreation from one's labor which every man needs. I surprised one or two of my former friends by throwing them a smile and a cheery word as I passed them on the streets. Several times I dumfounded my family by relaxing long enough to make a jocose ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... silent while this one struggled and made queer little noises! He raised his other paw for a good look at the creature, his heart pounding wildly with excitement. And the mouse, feeling the pressure relaxing gave one quick wrench and was free. Warruk bounded after it but it slipped nimbly into a crevice in the rotten wood and was gone. Exasperated at being outwitted he clawed and bit furiously at the minute opening into which ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... was a second of hesitation. Without relaxing the speed with which she went on scribbling the same oft-repeated sentence, Olivia knew that her companion stayed her pen ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... dinner. In three days, gentle reader, have We, Christopher North, often produced a whole magazine,—a most splendid number. For the next three weeks we were as idle as a desert, and as vast as an antre,—and thus on we go, alternately laboring like an ant, and relaxing in the sunny air like a dragon-fly, enamored of extremes." Of all his contributions, we think the "Noctes Ambrosianae" give by far the best idea of their author. They are perfectly characteristic throughout, though singularly various. Every mood of the man is apparent; and hardly anything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... from the city. But most glorious Tritonian Pallas, the daughter of Jove, going through the host, roused the Greeks wherever she saw them relaxing. ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... the gaily-trapped mules, with an idle young midshipman to make mischief, and all in spirits to enjoy his nonsense, in the exhilaration of the mountain air blowing freshly from the snowy summits which seemed to rise like walls before them. The steaming, misty, relaxing atmosphere of Lima was left behind, and with it many a care and vexation. Mr. Ponsonby brought his mule to the side of his wife's litter, and exchanged many a joke in Anglo-Spanish with her and the lieutenant; and Mr. Ward, his brow unfurrowed from counting-house cares, walked beside Mary's ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... praise was anxiously sought, she observed that it was undesirable to be careless in one's housekeeping, but less disagreeable than to be fussy and house-proud. She added that Milly—whom she called Mildred—must be on her guard against relaxing into domestic dulness, when she could be so extremely clever and charming if she liked. Milly was bewildered and distressed. She felt sure that she had passed through a phase of which Aunt Beatrice ought to have disapproved. She had evidently been frivolous ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... strange calm. The relaxing of sinews, the droop of limbs and features, the absolute absence of motion, of breathing, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Cousin Dolly, precisely as I had thought. She was at first very shy indeed, going up to her chamber early in the evening, so that we had little or no music; but relaxing a little as I shewed myself friendly without being forward. I caught her eyes on me sometimes; and she seemed to be appraising me, I thought in my stupidity, as to whether she could trust me not to make love to her; but now, as I think, for a very different reason; and I would see ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... motor-horn, and above all other sounds the long-drawn, occasional hoot from a ship anchored in the river highway. There was noise, and to spare, outside, but within everything was still, except for the chittering of a nest of bats in the eaves, and the sudden, relaxing creak of bamboo chairs, that behave sometimes as though ghosts sat restlessly in ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... as I walked along the cool aisles of the woods with the quiet fields opening here and there to the low hill ridges, and saw the cattle feeding, and heard a thrush singing in a thicket, I found myself letting go—how can I explain it?—relaxing! I had been keyed up to a high pitch there in that extraordinary room, Yes, it was beautiful—and yet as I thought of the sharp little green gate, the new gable, the hard, clean mantel with the cloisonne vase, it ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... he sighted the sea, wide-stretched and restless, ahead, and turned westward parallel with the coast-line, till, in the afternoon, he came unto "a land where it was always afternoon"—a flat, damp, dwarf-treed, relaxing, gray land, mild, as a rule, and melancholy—a land full of water. But for once it was a cold land, and the thrush realized that the bitter frost had leapt ahead of him, and that he might now never outstrip it again, perhaps. I do not know if he ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... right at that," answered the showman, his stern features relaxing into a smile. "You'll do. But you'd better not hand out that line of sharp talk in bunches when you get with the show. It might get you into trouble ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the same in everything. For you meet with many who, through a desire of victory, or for glory, or to maintain their rights, or their liberty, have boldly received wounds, and borne themselves up under them; and yet those very same persons, by relaxing that intenseness of their minds, were unequal to bearing the pain of a disease; for they did not support themselves under their former sufferings by reason or philosophy, but by inclination and glory. Therefore some barbarians ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of Nice and other Synods authorize Bishops to mitigate, or even to remit altogether, public penances, whenever, in their judgment, the penitent manifested special marks of repentance. Now, in relaxing the canonical penances, or in substituting for them a milder satisfaction, the Bishops granted what we call an Indulgence. This sentence of remission on the part of the Bishops was valid not only in the sight of the Church, but also in the sight ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... again and again, until the solid lump was a great glistening globe. The artist—for if ever there was an artist it is he—carried on this exhausting task with perfect nonchalance, talking and joking with the others the while, but never relaxing the concentration of his hands, until there came a moment when the globe was broken from the original rod and fixed in some magical way to another. Again it went into the furnace, now merely for heat and not for ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... angry. That isn't fair of you when I'm being so frank. I'm going to be even franker. I'm feeling that way to-night. Comes of being tired, I suppose. Relaxing of the what-you-callems of inhibition. Do you know there's a lot of gossip about ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fanatical valour of Turkey. If Louis Napoleon pleases the vanity of France by military glory, and rewards her exertions by a triumphant peace; if he employs his absolute power in promoting her prosperity by further relaxing the fetters which encumber her industry; if he takes advantage of the popularity which a successful war, an honourable peace, and internal prosperity must confer on him, to give to her a little real liberty and a little ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... ate cheerfully, and Carroll, watching his friend's efforts with appreciation, told his story in broken sentences. Afterward, they lighted their pipes, but by and by Carroll's fell from his relaxing grasp. ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... their previous engagement, and he was evidently perfectly able to renew it, for, indeed, the wanton boy had been so wound up by the preliminary scene that his former encounter had produced hardly any relaxing effect upon his lovely weapon. I therefore drew him upon the not unwilling Laura, and again guiding the fiery courser into the lists of pleasure, had the satisfaction of seeing them once more commence the amorous encounter, which proceeded to the ordinary ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... all other destructive emotional vibrations ob-struct the inflow and normal distribution of the life forces in and through the organism, while on the other hand the constructive emotions of faith, hope, cheerfulness, happiness and love exert a relaxing, harmonizing influence upon the tissues, blood vessels and nerve channels of the body, thus opening wide the floodgates of the life forces, and raising the discords of weakness, disease and discontent to the harmonics of buoyant ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... back of the lounge, but he had slipped his hand from the relaxing hold of hers, and pressed it over his eyes. She could not seek to possess herself of it again. Winston was not the only dupe of the nefarious fraud, the betrayal of which had overtaken the guilty pair thus late in their career of duplicity. Yet, however ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... said Barker Bunn, lighting and relaxing. "But the old man has a hunch that the Fritzies are grubbing a mine—a corker—to get our goat. Hence this business of ears forward. The old man thinks the Fritzies have a strong grouch against this little alley, and since they couldn't take it top side last week they're going ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... the world as a place where SOMETHING MUST happen,—where slavery MUST be abolished, women MUST have votes, children MUST go to school until sixteen, prostitution MUST disappear, alcohol MUST be prohibited, etc. Such people miss the pretty, pleasant relaxing joys of life, but they gain in intensity of life what they lose ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... to pull him to the floor, but the action of his relaxing muscles swung him slowly until he lay face down in the air a few feet ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... continued her bounds without relaxing her speed; when, thinking that I might be more successful, I ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... bawled the officious Spartan, never relaxing his grip. "Hark you, friends, it's plain as day. Dexippus of Corinth has a Syrian lad like this. The young scoundrel's robbed his master and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... carried quickly downstream as far as the elasticity of the yielding pole and the pi-chug' will allow, then it snaps suddenly back upstream and is ready to be carried down and repeat the jerk on the relaxing pole. A system of cords passes high in the air from the jerking pole at the stream to other slender, jerked poles among the sementeras. From these poles a low jerking line runs over the sementeras, over which are stretched at ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... assumed too much," said Leadbury, gravely, relaxing somewhat the tightness of his embrace. "Have I, arguing from the fact that you both served me in the crisis of my career and saved my life, assumed too much in believing you love me? If so, I beg your pardon for arranging this surprise. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... conversation was extremely pleasing to me. Whether it struck me as heroic to study to my last hour, or that some hopes of life yet lingered in the bottom of my heart, I cannot tell, but the apparent certainty of death, far from relaxing my inclination for improvement, seemed to animate it, and I hastened to acquire knowledge for the other world, as if convinced I should only possess that portion I could carry with me. I took a liking to the shop of a bookseller, whose ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... viewing sites of antiquity and natural beauty, interrogating everybody about everything and, in general, "satisfying his curiosity." That curiosity took a great deal to satisfy. It is a positive relief to come upon a sentence in this book, a sentence unique, which betrays a relaxing or waning of this terrible curiosity. "It requires a strong mania for antiquities to persevere examining such remains as Alife furnishes, and I was soon satisfied with what I had seen." Nor did he climb to the summit of Mount Vulture, as he would have done if the view had not been obscured ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... body of freewomen upon the general social atmosphere will be, I venture to think, liberalising and relaxing in certain directions and very bracing in others. This new type of women will want to go about freely without an escort, to be free to travel alone, take rooms in hotels, sit in restaurants, and so forth. Now, as the women of the past decade showed, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... blood began to flow once more through heart and brain, and Life—which had been momentarily suspended—again ran through all my being, filling the veins and relaxing muscles and nerves, I did not then think of the slight offered me by the animal's indifference, for with renewal of life had come an atrocious spasm ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... sudden revelation of his poverty with great coolness, and Jack admired the grim resolution with which he had cut down expenses while relaxing in no whit his hold on the nonchalant beauty. Poverty would, to a certain extent, bar him out from Rose's sumptuous world, and Rose did not seem to take him very seriously as a suitor; but it was evident that Eddy did not intend to remain poor any longer than ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... companion rode on without relaxing their pace, until they reached the summit of a knoll, crowned by an old oak and beech-tree, and commanding a superb view of the castle, where ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Shepherds, and afterwards, in a speech in the People's Palace, sharply criticised Mr. CHAMBERLAIN's plan for Old Age Pensions, expressing his preference for "more modest operations" in the direction of relaxing and enlarging the provisions of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various
... inch. Beyond them lay Death Valley, a dread waste where the dead silence is broken only by the wailing and shrieking of the wind as it sweeps down in sudden fury from the sentinel peaks that guard it. Across this Baldy led unswervingly, never hesitating, and hardly relaxing his steady pace, though the sudden gusts from the mountainside often curved the team into a half circle; and he was forced to keep his nose well into the air and brace himself firmly to keep from being carried off ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... Now, with the relaxing of it, its memory vanished, and the halt swiftly took upon itself the appearance of a school holiday. Laughing and chaffing each other, groups of men loitered here and lounged there, smoking, writing ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... groups controlled by the machine. The first, that of adult men, frees itself the most and the soonest: during the following half century, we see the preventive or repressive censorship of books, journals and theatres, every special instrument that gags free speech, relaxing its hold, breaking down bit by bit and at last tumbling to the ground. Even when again set up and persistently and brutally applied, old legal muzzles are never to become as serviceable as before. No government ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... time with alternate success;—first one and then the other, being under water. At length, catching hold of the long tuft of hair which had been suffered to grow on the head of the chief, Poe held him under water, until he supposed him dead; but relaxing his hold too soon, the gigantic savage was again on his feet and ready for another grapple. In this both were carried beyond their depth, and had to swim for safety. Both sought the shore, and each, with all his might, strained every nerve to reach it first that he might end the conflict with one ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the Corporal turned his head, and he looked long and wistfully at the horseman, as, relaxing his horse's pace into a walk, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stretches himself with too great listlessness in armchairs too well cushioned. He assumes the unconstrained habits of dressing-gown and slippers; his digestion goes wrong, his appetite fails and of an evening, in the too-relaxing warmth of a nest, made for him, he yawns over his newspaper, goes to sleep, snores, and pines away. It is all very well, my sisters, to say, "But not at all—but how can it be, Father Z.?—you know ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wrought mirror, fussing with studs and buttons, he thought with a shudder of the scene of the night before, the marquis and his murderous frenzy, the impassive Emperor, the frantic man hurled to the polished floor, stunned, white-cheeked, with hands slowly relaxing and fingers uncurling ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... their fiery denunciations of heathendom, had been exchanged for the supple policy, the easy tolerance, the comprehensive charity of shrewd ecclesiastics, who clearly perceived that if Christianity was to conquer the world it could do so only by relaxing the too rigid principles of its Founder, by widening a little the narrow gate which leads to salvation. In this respect an instructive parallel might be drawn between the history of Christianity and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the hall, was gazing full at her with an indescribable gaze of passion and help and command. Her own mother's look could not have influenced her. Ellen raised her valedictory, bowed, and began to read. Andrew looked so pale that people nudged one another to look at him. Mrs. Zelotes settled back, relaxing stiffly from her fierce attitude. Fanny wiped her forehead with a cheap lace-bordered handkerchief. There was a stifled sob farther back, that came from Eva Tenny, who sat back on account of a break across the shoulders in the back of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... this was, at first appearance, merely a crowd of fashionably dressed men and women, yet they differed from the ordinary restaurant crowd in that there was something a little out of the common in the faces of nearly every one of them. The loiterers through life seemed absent. These people were relaxing freely enough,—laughing, talking, and making love,—but behind it all there seemed a note of seriousness, an intentness in their faces which seemed to speak of a career, of things to be done in the future, or something accomplished ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... decline, In thy hands they are better far than mine!" Yes, little things fit little folks. In Rome The Great I never feel myself at home. Let me have Tibur, and its dreamful ease, Or soft Tarentum's nerve-relaxing breeze. Philip, the famous counsel, on a day— A burly man, and wilful in his way— From court returning, somewhere about two, And grumbling, for his years were far from few, That the Carinae [1] were so distant, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... thoroughly strong and well, some of his companions were beginning to fail. As was natural with such men not one of them would own that he was exhausted, and in consequence it was only by paying the keenest attention that he could detect those who from sheer incapacity were relaxing their strain on the traces. And his position was not pleasant even when he knew, for to tell any of these brave people that they must turn back was a most unenviable [Page 165] task. Thus it came about that all six of them marched on, though Scott was sure that better progress would ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... nine amendments have been adopted in 185 years, and of these, excepting the amendments which ended slavery as the result of the Civil War, only the last three, passed in recent years partly through the relaxing influence of the world war, mark a serious departure from the basic principles ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... your nerves, darling," he remarked. "You had a great strain placed upon you by the London season. All those entertainments of yours must have run you down. You must go to Monplaisir. The bracing air there will benefit you, no doubt. Here, in Devon, it is highly relaxing." ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... request or proposal, they answer at once with a refusal more or less decided, and then allow themselves to be led into a long discussion on the subject, if discussion that may be called which consists chiefly of simple persistence and importunity on one side, and a gradually relaxing resistance on the other, until a reluctant consent is ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Two young men and a girl, in First Level costumes, sat at a bank of instruments and visor-screens, handling the whole operation, and six or seven armed guards, having inspected the newly-arrived conveyer and finding that it had picked up nothing inimical en route, were relaxing and lighting cigarettes. Three of them, Stranor Sleth noticed, wore the green uniforms of ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... may be?' he said, a smile relaxing his grim features as he held up a rather large nugget; ''tis the third ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Dryden and Pope, as poetic examples and arbiters, exercised tyrannical sway to the middle of the eighteenth century, and continued to be felt, with relaxing influence, however, to a much later period. Poetry became impatient of too close a captivity to technical rules in rhythm and in subjects, and began once again to seek its inspiration from the worlds of nature ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... breakfast, sir," said Grant, as Max came down; and he drew back with a tray full of hot viands, his sour, stony face relaxing into a grin as the shrinking figure of ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... having been ever reputed allowable, and even necessary expedients for relaxing both mind and body from the fatigue of serious or robust occupations, Diana had her temples, especially in countries proper for hunting, where the parents used to resort with their children, and encouraged them to partake of the diversions in which ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... great resolve of abandoning my family and my sphere of activity, to alone remain true to Elsje. It was for many years a hard and fearful struggle. It was indeed the hardest period of my life, albeit not the darkest. The gloom and dejection this most feared evil, marked by the relaxing of the highest vital spirits, dread warning of the powers that guide and rule us - this evil had vanished. I struggled and suffered, but was no longer miserable and wretched. Only I did not see my way clearly and vainly sought for help ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... no doubt of the fact, for, besides the relief experienced by the boy, from the relaxing of her grip on his waistband the moment the wail was heard, the sound of the girl's footsteps as she flew back towards the entrance of the cave was ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... time, from his injuries, but there was no manifest change in his character, nor was there any relaxing of the iron hand of authority with which his father sought to hold him back from evil. It is no matter of wonder that he grew hardened and reckless as he grew older; nor that, to avoid punishment, he sought refuge ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... turned with his easy, lithe grace towards the gun-rack, but Briscoe sat still in pondering dismay. For it was obvious that Julian Bayne had no intention of soon relaxing the tension of the situation by the elimination of the presence of the jilted lover. Pride, indeed, forbade his flight. His self-respect clamored for recognition. There was no cause for humiliation in his consciousness, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... red, and rose to his knees to clasp her about the waist. She felt like relaxing back against his blondness and feeling her fingers plow through the great double wave of his hair. But ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... handsome, with deep-lidded shadowy eyes, and—as Master Coppinger pleased himself by discovering—a slight suggestion of a luxurious Chesterfield sofa, upholstered in rich cream velvet. When he was getting better, and the rigours of the sick room were relaxing, these two provided him with interest and entertainment of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... is there to say about me?" said Pierre, his face relaxing into a careless, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate son!" He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great effort to say this. "Without a name and without means... And it really..." But he did not say what "it really" was. "For the present I am free and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and say your say, Jack," said the other, his own face relaxing into a grim smile; "that was only a bit of my crankiness, and you know me well ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... said the doctor, with some dignity. "I think you will trust him when you have talked to him a little. And now," he added with an air of amiably relaxing into lighter matters, "let us talk ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... cause to quarrel, we may as well become friends," continued Beth, her features relaxing a little ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... to nourish the selfish and debasing passions. Children come to be looked on, not as objects of affection, but as instruments of gain; not as forming the first duty of life and calling forth its highest energies, but as affording the first means of relaxing from labour, and permitting a relapse into indolence and sensuality. The children are, practically speaking, sold for slaves, and—oh! unutterable horror!—the sellers are their own parents! Unbounded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... him upon his past life, his home, his associates, even his thoughts. And often it as naturally happened that, while he spoke, the music of his voice lulled her into forgetfulness of all but the past, and she would find herself unconsciously relaxing from the somewhat frigid dignity which she felt called upon to assume, until her features must have glowed with some expression of her former familiar kindness. For she would be suddenly startled back into her forced propriety by a strange and troubled look of puzzled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... plain. There are no more churches left in our dioceses, and not being able either to plough or sow our lands, we have no revenues. We dread serious revolt, and desire to avoid a religious civil war; so all our efforts are relaxing, we let our arms fall without knowing why, and we are told, 'You must have patience; it is not possible to fight against phantoms.'" Nevertheless, from time to time, these phantoms became visible. Towards the end of ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... before the door. The extreme sharpness of the air acted on his nerves like an astringent, and braced them swiftly. Presently, he not relaxing in his disordered walk, the images began to come clearer and stay longer in his fancy; and next the power of thought came back to him, and the horror and danger of his situation rooted ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Kneeling down, with one leg on either side, Paul placed his palms on Tom's back just where the small ribs could be felt. Then by leaning forward, and pressing downward, he forced the air and water from the lungs of the patient; relaxing the movement allowed air to creep in a little, when the operation was repeated time ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... all eyes were again fastened with intense anxiety on the poor fellow, whose strength was fast failing, and his grasp plainly relaxing. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... reservoirs, unburdened his ecclesiastical bowels, and believed him happy. Then the surgeon rose quickly, as if to take note of the tapestries and count the rafters, but gained the door before anyone else, and relaxing his sphincter in advance, he hummed a tune on his way to the retreat; arrived there he was compelled, like La Balue, to murmur words of excuse to this student of perpetual motion, shutting the door with ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... say the Schaefer is the only good method," answered the doctor; "nothing of the kind. It's the one that suits us best." He stepped over to the prostrate man, never relaxing his vigilant watch for the first sign of life. Then, returning to Eric, he continued, "The Coast Guard uses ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... She took the soiled gun-barrels, from his relaxing grip, and began to unfasten the collar hooks of ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... in Marion's look, as she turned it full upon him, nobody could see; but there was a quieter earnest in it, certainly, when she turned back; and the young man had responded to her salutation with a relaxing glance of friendly pleasantness that seemed more native to his face than the frown of a few ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... been like that,' she ended simply, 'for months before he died.' She sank into the corner of a sofa by the window, as though relaxing her body after an effort. For a few moments both were silent. Trent was hastily sorting out a tangle of impressions. He was amazed at the frankness of Mrs Manderson's story. He was amazed at the vigorous expressiveness in her telling of ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... a sensible young man, Somers," replied De Banyan, slightly relaxing the rigid muscles of ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... Castile, the duke of Naxara, and many other of the principal grandees waited on the borders to receive them. Brilliant fetes and illuminations, and all the usual marks of public rejoicing, greeted their progress through the principal cities of the north, and a pragmatica relaxing the simplicity, or rather severity, of the sumptuary laws of the period, so far as to allow the use of silks and various-colored apparel, shows the attention of the sovereigns to every circumstance, however trifling, which could affect the minds of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... eyes opened; gazed dazedly, then wildly, on the strange surroundings, the water, and the vigorous Irish woman who had him in her power. He threw his arms up with a struggling motion, gasped as if with sudden pain and lost consciousness again, relaxing once more into the strong red arm that held him. It was just at this critical moment that Morton entered ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... must turn out and fend for themselves," said Mr. Tulliver, feeling that his severity was relaxing and trying to brace it by throwing out a wholesome hint "They mustn't look to ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... relaxing—"for the sake of the name you have used, and in the hope that this may be a warnin' to you for your good, I will leave your wicked and worthless life with you. No, I'll not be the man that will hurl you into perdition—but it is on one condition—you must hand me out your ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... into the parlour the party had hired, so that both could come out and meet Sir Amyas with the door ajar, without relaxing their watch upon the sleeper. The poor young man looked pale, shocked, and sorrowful. "Well," said he, after having read in their looks that there was no change, "he knows the worst." Then on a further token of interrogation, "It may ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rage, his eyes flashing, his thick tongue stumbling with the curses crowding upon it, when he realized the suspicions rife against him at the county town. But he stood with his clinched hand slowly relaxing, and with the vague expression which one wears who looks into the past, as he listened to the recital of Eugenia's pilgrimage in the snowy wintry dawn. "Mighty few folks hev got a wife ez set store by 'em like that," Luke ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a result of diminished functional movement, and we need to create a constant demand in the inactive parts. But, besides this, every active muscle is practically a throbbing heart, squeezing its vessels empty while in motion, and relaxing, so as to allow them to fill up anew. Thus, both for itself and in its relations to the areolar spaces and to the rest of the body, its activity is functionally of service. Then, also, the vessels, unaided by changes of posture and by motion, lose tone, and the distant local circuits, ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... After relaxing their hold, Zbyszko again embraced the older knight's knees, and began to kiss his hands with tears in ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of the veldt," was all he said, without relaxing the fixity of his face; "ladies are ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... corral gates, it was often necessary to enter and arouse the herd. Thereafter, under normal conditions, it was a matter of pointing, keeping up the drag cattle, allowing the herd to spread and graze, and contracting and relaxing as occasion required. In handling, it was a decided advantage that the little nucleus had known herd restraint, in trailing overland from Texas, and were obedient, at a distance of fifty yards, to the slightest whistle or pressure of a herdsman. Under favorable conditions, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... then, hath the scriptures included all under sin, that all men might be guilty and every mouth stopped before God, Rom. iii. 19. What shall we do then? Since righteousness and justice is against us, who can plead for us? It would seem that there could be no relaxing, no repealing, no dispensing with this law at least that if there be anything of that kind, that righteousness and judgment can have no hand in it. Yet, behold, what follows, "we have an advocate," &c. And an advocate's office is to sue out the client's right, from principles of justice. Elsewhere ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... was no involuntary, galvanic reaction; no sudden gasp and flame of wonder. He simply held his cigarette still poised in his fingers, half-way to his lips, with the minutest relaxing of the smile that still hovered about them, while a dull and ashen grayness crept into his ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... his hand and Rouletabille, relaxing his frown, shook it and introduced Mr. Arthur Rance to me. He invited ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... boiling hot, and contains, I believe, a good deal of magnesia and other salts, beneficial in cases of rheumatism and gout; but the high temperature of the water makes the air very muggy, and we all found the place relaxing, though perhaps it was because we indulged too freely in the baths, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... And Olga, instantly relaxing from a tension too terrible to be born, covered her face with her hands and shuddered over and over again ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... knew that Bill had the true fighter's scorn for any purely purposeless conflict were more or less concerned and watchful of him. He would drive steadily for four or five minutes with thoughtfully knitted brows, but eyes still keenly observant under his slouched hat, and then, relaxing his strained attitude, would give way to a movement of impatience. "You ain't uneasy about anything, Bill, are you?" asked the Expressman confidentially. Bill lifted his eyes with a slightly contemptuous ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... be understood as relaxing in any degree the rigor of repudiation which such an act deserved. Yet it is imaginable, even to an undepraved mind, that a woman might sometimes like to be on the other side of the fence, to view the mad bull of publicity in its own pasture, and feel that it cannot gore her. Poor George! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... matter!" said The Chobb, slightly relaxing; "and if the gentleman withdraws it, and replaces the sum correctly, I am the last man in the world to find fault ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... its rows of calfskin bindings into a golden grot in which he stood spellbound by the low murmur of her voice. A sense of infinite leisure emanated from her—a subtle denial of the ordinary responsibilities—very relaxing and delightful to Tutt. But what twitched his very heartstrings was the dimple that came and went with that pathetic little twisted ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train |
