"Uncomprehending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drowsy hour of the siesta, when no one moved out if he could help it, and all work and play were at a standstill. Arithelli was sitting, as was her custom, absorbed in her own thoughts and dreams. For a moment she stared with uncomprehending eyes. She felt tired, she wanted to be alone, and she had not heard a single word. Emile shrugged ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... the neophytes that shook the very rafters— such a shout that Lisa shuttled across the room, and, sitting down on a stool at Mistress Mary's feet, looked up at her with a dull, uncomprehending smile. Why were those beloved eyes full of tears? She could not be displeased, for she had been laughing a moment before. She hardly knew why, but Mistress Mary's wet eyes tortured her; she made an ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... be done. Barbara's instinct foresaw madness if we took her to the flat in St. John's Wood. Her father's house, her natural refuge, was equally impossible. For what explanation could we have given to the worthy but uncomprehending man? He would have called in doctors to minister to a mind afflicted with a disease beyond their power of diagnosis. Unless, of course, we made public the facts of the tragedy; which was unthinkable. Barbara's instinct pierced surely through the gloom. The first coherent words ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... majestically along the platform, her white cloak trailing in the dust, called for station-masters, demanded special trains, fixed haughty, uncomprehending eyes upon the officials who informed her that she could not possibly get a train until ten, resigned herself, with sundry exclamations of indignation and stamps of the foot, to the tedious wait, sailed into the refreshment room only to sail out again, mounted the car not yet dismissed, bore ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... impression of most regal natures, gifted with all the most divine elements of humanity, but subjected to a constant unnatural pressure from the ceaseless scrutiny and ungenial pertinacity of some inferior and uncomprehending person invested with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... to the men; somehow, after his glance at Edward, they seemed more pitiful than ever. For Edward typified the power they were facing—the unseeing, uncomprehending power that meant to crush them. The possibility of failure was revealed to Hal in a flash of emotion, overwhelming him. He saw them as they would be, when no leader was at hand to make speeches to them. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... to sisters and sweethearts by the dozen, to fond mammas, to proud paternals, who throng the hostelries of the Point and the neighborhood, and swarm in lively interest all over the historic spot, listening with uncomprehending but tireless patience to examinations on fortification or grand tactics, mechanics or calculus; gasping with excitement over dashing charges on the "cavalry plain," shuddering over the reckless daring in the riding-hall, stopping their ears against ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... was made on Nissr, nor was anything seen of any other air-squadron of International Police. The wireless picked up, however, a cross-fire of dazed, uncomprehending messages being hurled east and west, north and south—messages of consternation, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... to the engine works," he ordered his still uncomprehending companions. "I have a caroj there that we can get away in." He cursed them and they finally broke into clumsy motion. There were shouts from behind him and an armed mob of D'zertanoj ran into view. Jason pulled down the hall light, burning his hand on the hot base ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... done. But there is no longer a Jesus to make us believe. We die every day more deeply into empty, eternal death. We are hopelessly pulled apart. Our life will remain meaningless theatrics". As she ate, the girl looked on, with a cheerful look emanating from the uncomprehending reddish brown eyes on her clear face. Schulz had sunken into gloomy thoughts. The girl said that her whole life also was a spectacle, and therefore she didn't find it to be so meaningless. In the acting school, in which she was preparing for a career on the ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... or two little things were caught along with the larger recollections—a woman's face that looked like Hers and almost made him forget for the moment that She was then doubtless listening to the Class history; a baby holding a flag in its little hand, and staring with awed, uncomprehending eyes at the sober-faced soldiers tramping on and on; a man mounted on a truck crying above the cheering, "Give 'em hell for us!" A remembrance that stood out above the others was that of someone calling a good-bye to the Major, of the choke in the officer's voice as he answered. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Stars quenched in anger and hate, stars sick with pity. I cannot look up to the naked skies Because a sorrow on dark midnight lies, Death, on the living world of sense; Because on my own land a shadow lies That may not rise; Because from bare grey hillside and rich city Streams of uncomprehending sadness pour, Thwarting the eager spirit's pure intelligence ... How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... uncomprehending; but Lepine, his face suddenly illumined, snatched out his pocket-book and produced the sheets ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... because, like Malvolio, he thought highly of the soul and in nowise approved the conclusions of his fellows; and he was fortunate to the last, in spite of what some are pleased to call his madness (which was indeed only his flaming and uncomprehending indignation at the persecution inevitably meted out by those who have only a half truth to one who has the whole), because he enjoyed the certainty that his high appraisement of the ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... the mills of the place, walked about as curiously as fowls liberated in a strange yard after long confinement in a coop. They looked with uncomprehending eyes on the closed doors of Peden's famous temple of excesses; they turned respectful eyes on Morgan as he passed them in his silent, determined rounds. And presently, after meeting the white-shirted, coatless dealers, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... closes the door behind him and comes forward to the table. He throws himself into the rocking-chair—despondently.] There's no one here, I'm thinking, and 'tis a great fool I am to be coming. [With a sort of dumb, uncomprehending anguish.] Yerra, Mat Burke, 'tis a great jackass you've become and what's got into you at all, at all? She's gone out of this long ago, I'm telling you, and you'll never see her face again. [ANNA stands up, hesitating, struggling between joy and fear. ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... hoped you would never know; but the gods, it seems," he could even laugh, "have ordained otherwise. 'Fata obstant.'" Still that startled, uncomprehending look on the girl's white face! He went on more quickly, like a man driven to bay. "You do not understand; you are credulous; take people for what they seem,—not for what they are; or ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... such delight as he only can know who has ascended and descended Fuji without the chance of a bath. Returning to the inn, I wandered about in my wet costume seeking vainly the room in which I had changed. Laughing girls pushed me here, and pulled me there, uncomprehending of my pantomime, till one at last, quicker than the rest, pulled back a slide, and revealed the room I was seeking. Then came dinner—soup, fried fish, and rice; and—for my weakness—a spoon and fork to eat them with. The whole house seemed to be open, and one looked into every room, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... each side, tails wagging, eyes gleaming, they stood with fore-feet upon the couch and bent to sniff Him who was so dear to them. So they stood for just one uncomprehending moment; then dropped, to the ground, shivering, as Touaa gave a little whine. Then they walked slowly round the couch, whining and sniffing as they went, and Touaa stayed a moment to lick the hand which had so often pulled her silky ears, and Iouaa ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... was in port the Tiare was a hurly-burly. Perhaps forty or even a hundred extra patrons came for meals or drinks. It was amusing to hear their uncomprehending anger at their failure to obtain quick service or even a smile by their accustomed manner toward dark peoples. The British, who were the majority of the travelers, have a cold, autocratic attitude toward all who wait upon them, but especially ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... beaten off that attack, shot or speared ten of the huge sub-men, and the next morning they buried their dead after their custom, under cairns of stone. Varnis had watched the burial of her child with blank, uncomprehending eyes, then she had turned to Kalvar Dard and said something that had horrified him more than any wild outburst of ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... you like, but it's the last run I make with this—faugh! And you say you've been a soldier!" It was Toomey's chance, after weeks of pent-up rage for battle, and he couldn't throw it away. Seeing that Ben, dull, heavy, and uncomprehending, was staring stupidly about him, not knowing what to do; seeing that even Cullin was melting at sight of the grief in Shiner's face; seeing the sympathy in the eyes of the bluecoats and the shame in those of the ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... a curious uncomprehending stare. When he clearly understood the proposal that was being made to him, he flushed deeply and ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... who had fed from his hand, when his hand had been hospitable, not one stirred to the commonest of human impulses. And so gloomy, alone and misunderstood, like the young Napoleon at Brienne, John C. Bedelle, with the consciousness of future greatness, moved out from the uncomprehending crowd. At the door Toots Cortrelle arrived with unmistakably jingling pockets, and seeing him, cried with the zest of young hunger certain ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the step stared dry-eyed into the night, uncomprehending, unrebelling, and McElroy strode ahead, blind with sudden anguish, scarce knowing which way his ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... now in Bunning's eyes was more than Olva could bear. It was dumb, uncomprehending misery, the unhappiness of something caught in a trap—and that trap this glittering ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... they would continue to climb even if there were no views to be enjoyed from the tops. "I am free to confess," wrote A. F. Mummery, "that I would still climb, even though there were no scenery to look at." And Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond echoes this sentiment in a defiant challenge to their uncomprehending critics. "To further confound the enemy," she writes, "we do not hide the fact that were no view obtainable from the summit a true climber ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... to God I'd heard your call!" Anstice bit his lip savagely; and Chloe, uncomprehending but compassionate, hastened on ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... and again it broke out from all over the house, while the curtain rose and fell, and the conjurer stood on the stage, mute, uncomprehending. What had happened? At first he had thought they were mocking him, but it was impossible to misjudge the nature of the applause. Besides, the stage-manager was allowing him call after call, as if he were a star. When at length the curtain remained down, and the orchestra struck up the opening ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... her place; Miles Feversham, like a man who has slipped on the edge of a chasm, sat a moment longer, gripping the arms of his chair; then his shifting look caught Frederic's wide-eyed gaze of uncomprehending innocence, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Lord, far in advance of His followers, with a fixed purpose stamped upon His face, and something of haste in His stride, and that in His whole demeanour which shed a strange astonishment and awe over the group of silent and uncomprehending disciples. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... establishment, was a bent and withered ancient. His jacket of gray denim hung loosely from his spare frame and his hollow cough bespoke a deep-seated ailment. Looking out from behind thick lenses set in his square-rimmed spectacles, the watery eyes seemed vacant; uncomprehending. But old Rudolph was a scholar—keen-witted—and a gentleman besides. To his many friends of the gray-clad multitude he was an anomaly; they could not understand his devotion to his well-thumbed volumes. But they listened to his words of wisdom and, more frequently than they could ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... wetted my handkerchief, slapping it smartly across his forehead and face several times. In a moment I was rewarded by the raising of his lids. For a time he lay wide-eyed and quite uncomprehending. Then his scattered wits slowly foregathered, and he sat up sniffing the air with an expression of wonderment upon ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the shallow and uncomprehending notice of this picture by Fuseli. His description of the treatment of it by other painters is however true, terse, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... me," the boy whispered. "They're always crowdin' me." His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child complaining of something beyond his experience. "I can't remember when they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always movin' me on. Moved me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris, and now they've shut me out of London. I opened ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... sufficiently remembered that indeterminate quantum of courtesy which they called their "manners" to interpolate "No offense to you, sir," or "Begging the lady's pardon." Throughout she preserved a cool, almost uncomprehending, passive manner; and it was in one of the moments of a heady tumult of words, in which they sometimes involved themselves beyond all interpretation or distinguishment, that she observed with a sort of childish inconsequence that they could get Ralph Emsden easily enough if they ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... His amazed, uncomprehending look gave her the clue to what had happened. It was another instance of the astounding and mysterious way it worked. She must have got at Bella somehow in getting at him. She saw now no end to the possibilities of the thing. ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... the prostrate form, stunned. In a few moments the police would be there. Instinctively we looked at Karatoff. Plainly he was nervous and overwrought now. His voice shook as he brought Errol out of the trance, and Errol, dazed, uncomprehending, struggled to take in the horribly unreal tragedy which greeted his return ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... had all along conceived of her as a miss of sixteen or thereabouts. No wonder that at first he looked at the stylishly gowned young woman, who stood before him with one gloved hand extended, in a puzzled, uncomprehending way. ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... letter for poor Gillian! She had to pocket it at first, and only opened it while taking off her hat at grandmamma's house, and there was only time for a blank feeling of uncomprehending consternation before she had to go down to luncheon, and hear her father and uncle go on with talk about India and Stokesley, to which she ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a lonesome, nervous little lady, and at these times only a little more fidgety than ever. Sometimes she cried because of Kenneth, in her room at night, and Ella braced her with kindly, unsympathetic, well-meant, uncomprehending remarks, and made very light of his weakness; but Emily walked her own room nervously, raging at Ken for being such a beast, and Mama ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... reeled, drooped, and shuddered as if in hopeless horror. Probably, since the world began, no other fire lighted by man had struggled against the gloom of this tremendous amphitheatre. The darknesses were astonished at it, but they were also uncomprehending and hostile. They refused to be dissipated, and ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... "Uncomprehending, but very anxious, the calf had watched the swift duel. The finish of it dismayed her, but, of course, she did not know why. She could only feel that, in spite of the disappearance of the bear, it was not altogether satisfactory. She had trembled instinctively at ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to be fastened speechless upon a rack, and to be charged by uncomprehending souls with counterfeiting emotion. She was so constituted that she could not help laying up this speech of her husband's against him as one of many stolid misdoings which justified both contempt and aversion. In fact, his inability or unwillingness to comprehend her had ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... her side, his head pillowed close to hers on the fragrant fir, she still lay awake, her eyes staring up at the golden stars, still fearful, uncomprehending. At last she was his, as he would have her,—wholly his, so she said, seeking comfort,—and thus kissing his brow, with a long, wondering sigh she fell asleep ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... statement was irrelevant, for Tucson's glance at Leviatt's face was uncomprehending. But Leviatt did ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... kind. He had lost his old confidence in certain arbitrary moral dicta which are the special refuge of those whose intelligence is keen enough to grapple competently with any material problem but who stand aghast, apprehensive and uncomprehending, before a spiritual struggle, before the ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... devotional expression, that might have befitted an angel of charity. A priest and a lady were dispensing loaves and warm garments to the throng around; but each gift was accompanied by a gentle word from the lady, framed with difficulty to their homely English tongue, but listened to even by uncomprehending ears like a strain of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Catie, or Catia, as she now called herself, she was modern enough, distressingly so sometimes. Nevertheless, analyzed, she would not have seemed to Scott at all domestic. She was too much wrapped up in her own personal concerns, too uncomprehending in a spiritual crisis. Domesticity, to be practical, must consist of something else than mere ability to keep a house and to extract from the butcher the best cuts obtainable for one's income. One's spiritual bric-a-brac must be taken down and dusted with just as careful ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... scene with Ophelia, Forbes-Robertson's tenderness was almost terrible. It came from such a height of pity upon that little uncomprehending flower! ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... the girl rested passive in uncomprehending astonishment; then abruptly she exerted herself to break free from the supporting embrace, but found the effort wasted for lack of opposition, so that her own violence sent her reeling away half a dozen paces, to bring up against ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Your life is so fixed and serene and settled; so full of absorbing work; you are so flattered and appreciated that you are like a big ship anchored in a safe harbor, and you can't think what it's like to be a silly little yacht bobbing about on the open sea!" (Such is the uncomprehending viewpoint of twenty toward thirty; the calm assumption that ladies of that mature age can have no love-affairs of ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... uncomprehending. In contrast to her narrow experience, Elsie Cameron seemed to possess all ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... discussing. How dogmatically men are in the habit of expressing themselves upon those obscure and difficult problems which deal with matters that lie on the confines of human knowledge! Such an assumption of knowledge cannot but make us uncomprehending and unsympathetic. ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... Beatrice Kendrick was sitting up, dazed and utterly uncomprehending, peering about her at the strangest vision which since the world began had ever been the lot of any human creature to behold—the vision of a place transformed beyond all power ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... wherein were all their most prized household goods, and abandoned themselves to a paroxysm of weeping despair, while the children shrieked stridently, victim of all the realistic horrors that only childhood can conjure. Most of the men looked on in silence, uncomprehending resignation on their faces, mute, pathetic figures. Poor moujiks! They didn't understand, but they took all uncomplainingly. Nitchevoo, fate had decreed that they should suffer this burden, and so they accepted it ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... myself had nothing in common with his views. To me they seemed narrow—pitifully narrow and uncomprehending—and he was my father. We were warned that in any sudden gust of anger his feeble life spark—would go out, so I put my own conceptions of what counted behind me and tried to shield him." Sam Haymond hardly ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... difficult to provide for the Franciscans. They, honest men, understood nothing save that the Tartar king had not the love of holy things for which they had hoped. They explained the offices of the Church as well as they could to ribald and uncomprehending auditors, and continued placidly in their devotions. As it chanced, a convoy was about to start for Muscovy, whence by ship they might come to Constantinople. The Tartars made no objection to their journey, for they had some awe of these pale men and were glad to be quit of foreign ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... her, uncomprehending. Slowly it dawned upon her that some one had been telling tales and undoing her careful work. "Minty! Minty!" she cried, "how can you ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... that is not for long. Fate meets them in the forest trails or the flowing water-paths; and they have grown too dull to see, too heavy to flee, too indifferent to contend. So they are spared the anguish of slow, uncomprehending decrepitude. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... eyes fixed on him wistfully. At first he tried to lure her into the gay street; but walking tired her. He encouraged her to sit outside on the pavement of the Rue Saint-Honore and join with Mme. Bidoux in the gossip of neighbours; but she listened to them with uncomprehending ears. In despair Aristide, to coax a smile from her lips, practised his many queer accomplishments. He conjured with cards; he juggled with oranges; he had a mountebank's trick of putting one leg round his neck; he imitated the voices of cats and pigs and ducks, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... and he stopped. At Gilian, sitting still and seemingly uncomprehending, the Cornal looked as at a stranger. "So it is," said he; "just a wean! I forgot, some way. How old are you—sixteen? Nonsense! By the look of you I would say a hundred. Oh, you're an old-farrent one, sitting there with your lugs cocked. And what do you think is the moral of my story? Eh?—the ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... glory. In this sordid age, and with an uncomprehending public, you've had rare fortune in getting rid of your work, Dick. Your pictures are sellers, I hear. How proud your father would have been! My old friend was one of the few men I have known who set a price ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... Greek or Sanscrit to a newly-arrived foreigner. In Shanghae or Hong Kong, say to your Chinese ma-foo, who claims to speak English, "Bring me a glass of water," and he will not understand you. Repeat your order in those words, and he stands dumb and uncomprehending, as though you had spoken the dialect of the moon. But if you say, "You go me catchee bring one piecee glass water; savey," and his tawny face beams intelligence as he obeys ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Chrysostom's seven years' nakedness on all-fours! And so I told the fellow, who by some cunning calculations about wind, and sun, and so forth, which he imparted to my uncomprehending ears, brought me suddenly to the top of a little crag, below which, some hundred yards off, the whole herd stood, stags, hinds—but I can't describe them. I have not brought away a scrap of sketch, though we watched them full ten minutes undiscovered; ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... and the sense of hearing. His brain was blurred, the sound of voices trailed off into utter silence. He felt the earth giving way beneath his quaking knees....The next he knew, men's voices fell upon his dull, uncomprehending ears. Gradually his senses returned. Out of the confused jumble words took shape. He heard his own name mentioned. Instantly his every ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... thing, seemed to find in herself no power of consolation. And as she stood wordless, with dimming eyes, there came from without a sound of mingling voices. Others were come with offers of service and sympathy. A confusion of Spanish and English hurtled on Jane's uncomprehending ear; some one climbing the step cried, "Ave Maria!" as his eyes fell on the couch. It was Pablo Vigil, a mild-eyed Mexican, with a miner's lamp burning blue ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... breath so quietly that no one ever knows: and Old Age is very, very proud. And Youth, seeing the smile by which Old Age so often hides its tears, imagines that Age can have no sadness beyond the fact of growing old. Youth is so strong, so free, so contemptuous of all restraint, so secretly uncomprehending face to face with the tears which are hastily wiped away. "For, what has Age to weep over?" it cries. "After all, it has lived its life; it has had its due share of existence. How stupid—to quarrel with the shadows when they fall!" But Old Age hearing that cry, says nothing. ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... touching her—peasants in dusty sheepskins, leaning on their staffs, looking down at the woman who had fallen out of their ranks. A gendarme elbowed his way through the crowd. He began to wave his arms and strike his boot with his whip, and shout at the weary-eyed, uncomprehending peasants. At last, two of them tucked their staffs under their arms and, leaning down, picked up the fainting woman. They carried her round to her cart and laid her down on the straw, her head on the lap of one of her children. For a moment the child looked down at her mother's ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the path of No. 99's flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with arms of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... before to make her own life, her vision had been so limited, her aspiration so low, her interest in the heart-beats of the great humanity of which her little life was so small a part had been so uncomprehending, that she had cared only for the narrow issues which concerned herself. But now, in the hour which saw her free again, she was another woman, and this woman had a passionate purpose in her heart to make herself avail for the needs ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... that the wholly uncomprehending steersman went on with his work as though Bones had no separate or ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... through the dark days had watched with anxious though uncomprehending eyes her boy's dejection and hard effort to live it down, and had applied partridges and sweetbreads and other forms of devotion steadily but unsuccessfully, saw at once and with, rapture the change when the Governor greeted her the next morning. Light-heartedly ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... thoughtfully, "I don't think he is; but he might be uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he once sets out to do. But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor boy just then! I'm afraid I'll ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... easily, luxuriously to-day, careless of any less prosperous morrows, and, when those swift, inevitable morrows came, she had seen the girlish, exotic queens of an hour, haggard, stripped of their transient splendor, uncomprehending, almost helpless. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... she repeated, aloud; and went on thinking to herself, "day before yesterday," in a sort of an uncomprehending way. She had pictured him seeking her at the very first hour, and he had lived under the same sky since day before yesterday; while only by accident had he stumbled upon her. Mademoiselle must have lied when she said, "Poor ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... stared at the girl in a strange, uncomprehending sort of way, but she was by this time too ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... "We can't let you cut in with the rest of us, missy. That wouldn't be reasonable. But it's best to fix the business fair an' square. We ain't agoin' to try any other way, not so long as I'm skipper," and he looked with brutal frankness at De Sylva and the anxious but uncomprehending San Benavides. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... beasts of Big Business beat the tom-toms of the press in order to lash the "patriotism" of their dupes and hirelings into hysteria. It was to hide their own infamy that the loathsome war dance was started that developed perceptibly from uncomprehending belligerency into the lawless tumult of mobs, raids and lynching! And it will be an everlasting blot upon the fair name of America that they were permitted to ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... him uncomprehending, but he seemed to shrink from her observation. "I am indeed truly grieved," she began to say, but he ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and by panic they gazed with uncomprehending eyes on the man and on the horse and merely shouted to him as they rushed galloping or running by, "The Prussians are on us! ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... marched doggedly on, some looking puzzled and full of wonder, others tired but cheerful, others with expressionless, uncomprehending faces. But in the faces of a few I read a consciousness of the tremendous tragedy of which we formed a tiny part. We found the other Batteries in a house not yet marked down for burning. The house was crowded out already and all the best places taken, such as they were. There were ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... that met her eyes, as she opened the door, completed her undoing. There was Fauntleroy, with an uncomprehending grin on his cherubic face, pinching each separate leaf of her cherished sensitive-plant. Evidently the borrowed baby did not exactly understand the desperately funny quality of the act, but he knew it must be the funniest thing in the world, for the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... With dull, uncomprehending gaze James Moore stared as bidden. There was the gray dog naked in the moonlight, heedless still of any witnesses; there the murdered sheep, lying within and without that distorted shade; and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Lois, smiling. And the other woman looked, with a fascinated, uncomprehending air, at the beauty ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... to his mother's room and searched her desk. He came back presently with a legal envelop, and his face was blank and half uncomprehending. The doctor took the paper from ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... after awakening and untangling the meshes in her throbbing, uncomprehending brain, was to send for Quinnox. She could scarcely wait for his appearance and the assurance that Lorry was safely out of danger. The footman who had been sent to fetch the captain was a long time in returning. She was dressed in her breakfast ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... not a brother, Madeleine. Nay, hear me," taking her hands and looking into her uncomprehending eyes, "I would not be a brother, but something closer, dearer. We are both alone in the world, more or less. Whom have you but a mad-cap sister, a poor dreamer of a brother-in-law, an octogenarian aunt, to look to? I have no one, no one to whom my coming or my going, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... young man now, strangely like what I was, when as a child, you first knew me, and he has always been my confidant. In those first days of my banishment from you I kept from crying my agony from the housetops by whispering it to him. His uncomprehending ears were my sole confessional. His mother cared little for his companionship, and her invalidism threw him continually into my care. I do not know when he began to understand, but from the hour ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... have surely the right of unlimited expectations, are as likely to be surprised by heroic demonstrations as the dullest soul that never strove for aught except its paltry starving self. But the hero surprised is not surprised into uncomprehending wonder, but rather into smiles, or tears, or heartrending, out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... see the form of the Commandant rising up on the other side of the scullery stove, and in his pained, uncomprehending gaze and in the words he utters I imagine a challenge. It is as if he said, "Of course, if you're afraid"—(haven't I told ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... drove over for the eleven o'clock breakfast. They were very kind, but they were many years older than the youngest of their family, proudly conscious of their virtue, uncomprehending of the emotions which had nearly wrenched Rachael's soul from her body more than once. Moreover, Mrs. Mitchell was the physical image of Mary Fawcett without the inheritance of so much as the old lady's temper; and there were moments, as she sat ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... to hang up the receiver, with a blank and uncomprehending look on his face, when Babe caught the ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... one after another of the Ortez vaqueros go down. Did this noble captain of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity rush to the rescue of his countrymen? He did not. Cursing, he swung his horse toward the south, followed by his amazed and altogether uncomprehending soldiery. There had been too many Gringoes in that wild, shrilling cavalcade to suit his fancy. Meanwhile the Mexican lieutenant wisely disappeared down the western edge of the coulee and rode wide until he deemed it safe to change his course and follow in the dusty ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... evidence of the higher nature, even if only expressed in the crude form of shame. At times Arsdale looked like a craven cornered to his death—at times like a man struggling with a great grief—at times like a man dazed and uncomprehending. ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... she murmured to herself, in uncomprehending revery, "he said he was a workingman—and he knew that I was very, very rich. He knew my father would have rewarded him magnificently, given him money, work, anything he might have asked. And yet, and yet—he would not even tell his name. And he refused ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... earnestly to the atheist Thelwall in defence of Christianity; on another page we find him saying, "My Spinosism (if Spinosism it be, and i' faith 'tis very like it)"; and then comes the solemn assurance: "I am a Berkleyan." Southey, in his rough, uncomprehending way, writes: "Hartley was ousted by Berkeley, Berkeley by Spinoza, and Spinoza by Plato; when last I saw him Jacob Behmen had some chance of coming in. The truth is that he plays with systems"; so it seemed to Southey, who could see no better. ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... dreamful emotions. The character of Christ, for instance, which even the least orthodox among us are in the habit of holding up as a perfect model, is not the character of a benefactor but of a martyr, a spirit from a higher world lacerated in its passage through this uncomprehending and perverse existence, healing and forgiving out of sheer compassion, sustained by his inner affinities to the supernatural, and absolutely disenchanted with all earthly or political goods. Christ did not suffer, like ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... throat. At last she let them fall, her head turning slowly, as though drawn, by some irresistible, hypnotic power, and their eyes met. Lise's were filmed, like those of a dog whose head is being stroked, expressing a luxuriant dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... closed room lay henceforth in her drawer, and all things went on as before. To her children my mother was never gloomy,—it was not her way. No shadow of household affliction was placed like a skeleton confronting our uncomprehending joy. Of what those weeks and months and years were to her,—a widow, and quite uncomforted in their dark places by any human love,—she gave no sign. We thought her a shade paler, perhaps. We found her often alone with her little Bible. Sometimes, on the Sabbath, we missed her, and knew that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... while he, speechless with astonishment at this lengthy confession, stared at her with uncomprehending eyes. Was this Tabitha? What could have happened to bring about this ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... that day Tommy could hardly believe his ears; his eyes were uncomprehending, for he had never expected to own the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... inward pronouncement filled me with grief. I felt that I could not bear to remain longer in Gorakhpur, only to see my brother removed before my helpless gaze. Amidst uncomprehending criticism from my relatives, I left India on the first available boat. It cruised along Burma and the China Sea to Japan. I disembarked at Kobe, where I spent only a few days. My heart was too heavy ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... elbow, and her face flushed with feverish earnestness. "Ah, but it is the waste of himself that I mean; his lashing himself out on stupid and uncomprehending people until they take him at their own estimate. He can kindle marble, strike fire from putty, but is it worth what ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... clearly into the dark places of Harry Feversham's mind than Harry Feversham did himself; and because he saw so clearly, he could feel no contempt. The long years of childhood, and boyhood, and youth, lived apart in Broad Place in the presence of the uncomprehending father and the relentless dead men on the walls, had done the harm. There had been no one in whom the boy could confide. The fear of cowardice had sapped incessantly at his heart. He had walked about with it; he had taken it with him to his ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... there. Thousands pressed by him. The laughter and grumblings of life buzzed in his uncomprehending ears. No one noticed him. The continuous clang-clang-clang of the street cars grew to a rhythmic roar. Strange odors filled his nostrils. What held him most was the lights—the myriad lights that blinked away in perspective up Market Street, clusters of them, pillars of them, ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... aura encore soif." I turned, not understanding for a moment what was meant, and saw one of the hill peasants, probably returning to his chalet from the market place at Vevay or Villeneuve. As I looked at him with an uncomprehending expression, he went on with the verse: "Mais celui qui boira de l'eau que je lui donnerai, n'aura ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... was a moment before he spoke, then it was with apparent irrelevance that he said: "I'm sorry you and he didn't have a good talk. 'Bob' asked him to see you—sent him there a-purpose." The sight of Gray's smiling, eager, uncomprehending face caused the old man's steady gaze to waver. He cleared his throat. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach |
