"Dumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in San Francisco, in Seattle; look eagerly as you go into the faces of the men who pass, and you feel hundreds of years—the next hundred years—like a breath, swept past. America, with all its forty-story buildings, its little Play Niagaras, its great dumb Rockies, is the unseen country. It can only as yet be seen in people's eyes. Some days, flowing sublime and silent through our noisy streets, and through the vast panorama of our towers, I have heard the footfalls of the unborn, like ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... I then dismounting, left the horses under charge of her brother, and sauntering along in an unconcerned way, we approached the house. I had agreed to feign to be dumb, lest the tone of my voice should betray me. Thus I knew I should be perfectly safe from detection, and even Aneouta would not know me. Our difficulty was to learn where she could be found. Eagerly I cast my eyes about in every direction, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... dumb, Dumb are the mortars; Never more shall the drum Beat to colors and quarters— The great guns are silent. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... manipulated in the front hall to the enduring joy of Uncle Zack, fell upon the sleeping ears in vain, and the old servant came across the lawn to call them. He also stopped, in dumb amazement, then hastened forward to gather the telltale evidence beneath his jacket. This aroused the Colonel and, after him, Brent, who looked ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... silence of dark houses with their shutters closed early against the night air, as is the custom of Sulaco. Only the sala of the Casa Gould flung out defiantly the blaze of its four windows, the bright appeal of light in the whole dumb obscurity of the street. And the murmur on the little balcony went on after ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... pity for the dog's dumb, insistent attachment. Reining in, Bartley told the dog he had better go home. For answer the dog lay down in the horse's shadow, his head on his paws, and his eyes fixed on Bartley's face. He did not seem to know what the words meant. But he did know—only pretended he did not. His rooftree was ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... fictitious or sham." The Australian noun is an extension of this idea. Webster gives "(drama) one who plays a merely nominal part in any action, sham character." This brings us near to the original dumby, from dumb, which is radically akin to German ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... through the wood, where you were hunting, I took a desire to know if you were as good as men say you are. I therefore changed myself into a white rabbit, and took refuge in your arms. You saved me, and now I know that those who are merciful to dumb beasts will be ten times more so to human beings. You merit the name your subjects give you: you are the Good King. I thank you for your protection, and shall be always one of your best friends. ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... unfolding to its full Homer's [Greek: kuma kophon]—"dumb wave"; just as the best of all comments on Horace's expression, "Vultus nimium lubricus aspici," 'Odes', I., xix., 8, is given us in Tennyson's picture of ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... line of poetry is the resurrection and the life. For a moment I forgot Harriet and the agent, I forgot myself, I even forgot the book on my knee—everything but that hour in the past—a view of shimmering hot housetops, the heat and dust and noise of an August evening in the city, the dumb weariness of it all, the loneliness, the longing for green fields; and then these great lines of Wordsworth, read for the first time, flooding in ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Silas remained dumb and aghast for a brief space. Coming to himself a little, he thought there might have been some mistake about the items,—would like to have Miss Darley's bill returned,—would make it all right,—had no idee that Squire Venner had a special int'rest in Miss Darley,—was sorry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... not, however, tell you all that I found there; but this much I can say, that during my travels through that workbox, I found not a single article complete; and silent and dumb as they were, these half-finished, forsaken things told me a sad story about that ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... There are statues of Burns, the 13th earl of Eglinton, General Smith Neill and Sir William Wallace. The Carnegie free library was established in 1893. The charitable institutions include the county hospital, district asylum, a deaf and dumb home, the Kyle combination poor-house, St John's refuge and industrial schools for boys and girls. The Ayr Advertiser first appeared on 5th of August 1803, and was the earliest newspaper published in Ayrshire. In the suburbs is a racecourse where the Western ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... "Are you dumb?" said Wyvis Brand, harshly. "Or have you not been taught what to say to that question? Where do you ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... this scene, strike him dumb with astonishment; he can not get over it, and remains in a maze. "Oh! this is too much," he says, and the idea of writing a long letter to his wife at Toulven, describing it ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... Journal, that got it from the Western Advocate, that got it from Public Opinion, that got it, undoubtedly, from the little girl herself, or, rather from her Sunday School teacher. For that matter I am convinced it was first printed in Our Dumb Animals." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the computer, cheerfully. "Pipe down yourself, guy—if you weren't so darn dumb and didn't have such a complex, you'd know that you're the crack pilot of the outfit and wouldn't care who else knew it." Stevens carefully covered and put away the calculating machine and other apparatus he had been using and turned again to ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... dumb creatures, but they are not very dumb, are they, children? though they have not the gift of speech. They soon learn to know who love them, and they testify their affection in many pleasant ways. Now Luce was not a dog to strike ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... he stood and looked at her for quite two minutes, without motion or speech on the part of either; but the dumb, desolate look in her eyes—a look of appeal, astonishment, horror and shame combined, presently clarified his senses, and he slowly grew to look at her as at his punishment, the punishment of his life. Before —always before—Sophie had been vague and indistinct: seen to-day, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the stranger had at last become Tired of long waiting, and of sitting dumb Upon his charger; so with greenest leer He vented his impatience in a sneer. "Is this," he said, "the glorious Table Round, And is its glory naught but empty sound? Braggarts! I put your bluster to the test, And find you quail before a merry jest!" Then the great king himself stood up ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... afternoon rest, these parrots were brought to the top of the very same hill every day to accustom them to the place. The object of this is just to please and otherwise fool Her Majesty, to make her feel happy and believe that she is so merciful that even such dumb things would rather stay with her." Continuing, she said: "The huge joke is this: while Her Majesty is letting the birds free, there are a few eunuchs waiting at the rear of the hill to capture them and sell them again, and so, no matter ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... that growl and snakes that hiss); We turn his merit to a fault, and style His prudence mere disguise, his caution guile. Or take some honest soul, who, full of glee, Breaks on a patron's solitude, like me, Finds his Maecenas book in hand or dumb, And pokes him with remarks, the first that come; We cry "He lacks e'en common tact." Alas! What hasty laws against ourselves we pass! For none is born without his faults: the best But bears a lighter wallet than ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... "To-day's her seventh birthday, an' I showed her how to make the cruachan whistle, an' when I'd finished she blew on it a loud note that wud ha' wakened the sidhe for miles around in Donegal. An' then she looked at me as dumb as a fish, her big gray eyes blank as a plowed field wid nothin' sown in it. She niver has a word to show that she hears me, even, when I tell o' the gentle people." He added in a whisper to himself, "But ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... popular exposition of their mutual dependence. Drawing from the antique has long been an acknowledged initiation for the limner, and Campbell, in his terse description of the histrionic art, says that therein "verse ceases to be airy thought, and sculpture to be dumb." How much of their peculiar effects did Talma, Kemble, and Rachel owe to the attitudes, gestures, and drapery of the Grecian statues! Kean adopted the "dying fall" of General Abercrombie's figure in St. Paul's as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... there money enough in the world to-day To buy your boy? Could a monarch pay You silver and gold in so large a sum That you'd have him blinded or stricken dumb? How much would you take, if you had the choice, Never to hear, in this ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... able to sing a bar to an end of his thousand-and-one songs, for the breathless extravagance of his joy. The dogs also acknowledged their old master with a thousand gambols. 'Upon my conscience, Rose,' ejaculated the Baron, 'the gratitude o' thae dumb brutes, and of that puir innocent, brings the tears into my auld een, while that schellum Malcolm—but I'm obliged to Colonel Talbot for putting my hounds into such good condition, and likewise for puir Davie. But, Rose, my dear, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... replied, "to Spafields, to be sure." "Oh," said he, "the meeting has been broken up these two hours nearly; young Watson has got possession of the Tower, and we are all going thither; turn your horses' heads and come with us." I gave him a look that appeared to strike him dumb, and laying my whip upon my wheel-horse, I passed rapidly on, exclaiming "what a ——— scoundrel!" I looked at the clock of Bow-Church, and saw that it wanted a quarter of an hour to one. I drove on at a smart pace towards Spafields, and observed to my servant, that I ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... filtered down to the greasy streets, but he plunged boldly into the delights of Shadwell, and was presently cast up, shattered in health, civilised in costume, penniless, and, except in matters of the direst necessity, practically a dumb animal, to toil for James Holroyd and to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at Camberwell. And to James Holroyd bullying ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... have striven to earn some little local notoriety by the diligent use of an odd phrase, a quaint garment, or an eccentric fling in the peripatetic, dread a satirist's powers of retributive burlesque; table orators suddenly grow dumb, for they suspect such a caitiff intends cold-blooded plagiarisms from their eloquence; the twinkling stars of humble village spheres shun him for an ominous comet, whose very trail robs them of light, or as paling glow-worms hide away before some prying ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Science awakens the sinner, reclaims the infidel, and raises from the couch of pain the helpless invalid. It speaks to the dumb the words of 342:24 Truth, and they answer with rejoicing. It causes the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, and the blind to see. Who would be the first to disown the Christli- 342:27 ness of good works, when our Master says, "By their ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the present inmates, which two women were preparing, consisted of meat and vegetables, soup and sweet things; excellent meat, and well-dressed frijoles. A poor little boy, imbecile, deaf and dumb, was seated there cross-legged, in a sort of wooden box; a pretty child, with a fine colour, but who has been in this state from his infancy. The women seemed very kind to him, and he had a placid, contented expression of face; but took no notice of us when we spoke to him. Strange and unsolvable ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... provision made for the education of the people in France before 1789, as for the notion, not less common, that there were no peasant proprietors in France before 1789. It is hardly excusable even that Mr. Carlyle, rhapsodising more than fifty years ago about the 'dumb despairing millions,' should have fallen into this error. For though De Tocqueville and Taine had not then exploded it in detail, Necker, in whose career Carlyle took so much interest, not only declared officially that there was 'an immense number' of such proprietors in France, but took ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Heaven, it trolled its song with that strong energy of cheerfulness, that its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire, and the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid—such is the influence of a bright example— performed a sort of jig, and clattered like a deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use of its ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... death by the bowstring. The orders were given to a merciless eunuch, who commonly executed his acts of vengeance. There happened at that time to be in the king's chamber a little dwarf, who, though dumb, was not deaf. He was allowed, on account of his insignificance, to go wherever he pleased, and as a domestic animal, was a witness of what passed in the most profound secrecy. This little mute was strongly ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... down one of the linen shirts he had inherited from his father, putting it before him to air at the fire. She loved him with a dumb, aching love as he sat leaning with his arms on his knees, still and absorbed, unaware of her. Lately, a quivering inclination to cry had come over her, when she did anything for him in his presence. Now her hands ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... had to say; The words were strangled in his throat, they could not find their way; Till forth they came at once, without a stop or stay: 'Cid, I'll tell you what, this always is your way; You have always served me thus, whenever you have come To meet here in the Cortes, you call me Peter the Dumb. I cannot help my nature; I never talk nor rail; But when a thing is to be done, you know I never fail. Fernando, you have lied, you have lied in every word; You have been honored by the Cid and favored and preferred. I know of all your tricks, and can tell them to your face: Do you ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... dumb," murmured Mr. Hardy, while his wife sat down and buried her face in the bedclothes and sobbed. It ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... and dumb amazement all, When to the startled eye, the sudden glance Appears far south, eruptive ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... stirs in me the shudder of Job. What is man—this weed which a sunbeam withers? What is our life in the infinite abyss? I feel a sort of sacred terror, not only for myself, but for my race, for all that is mortal. Like Buddha, I feel the great wheel turning—the wheel of universal illusion—and the dumb stupor which enwraps me is full of anguish. Isis lilts the corner of her veil, and he who perceives the great mystery beneath is struck with giddiness. I can scarcely breathe. It seems to me that I am hanging by a thread above the fathomless abyss ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an extraordinary, unheard of, unprecedented event took place in the magistrate's office. Constant, the serious, impressive, immovable, deaf and dumb Constant, rose from ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... group. Being only thirty-three years exposed, the paintings on the walls and the vases are remarkably well preserved. This tomb contains the ashes of the dependents of Tiberius, the contemporary of our Lord. One pigeon-hole is filled with the calcined bones of the court buffoon, a poor deaf and dumb slave who had wonderful powers of mimicry, and used to amuse his morose master by imitating the gesticulations of the advocates pleading in the Forum. Another pigeon-hole contains the remains of the keeper of the library of Apollo in the imperial palace ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... idol's taken And you are dumb with pain; When your faith in man is shaken And everything seems vain, There is One you can rely on, Tho' of sinners you are chief: For He was a Man of Sorrows And acquainted sore ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... created breath, and breath being air in motion, prior to these language was impossible. And as the deaf are always dumb, language, like faith, comes by hearing. But hearing itself is a pensioner, waiting upon a speaker; consequently, it must ever be contingent on a cause alike antecedent and extrinsic of itself. It is, therefore, equally ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Finally, he put the holy bone to his strong back teeth and gave a hearty scrunch. Two tit-bits came off, and he handed them to the trembling Adam, saying, "Excellent man, keep these for us." The abbots and monks were first struck dumb, then quaked, and then boiled with indignation and wrath. "Oh! oh! Abominable!" they yelled. "We thought the bishop wanted to worship these sacred and holy things, and lo! he has, with doggish ritual, put them to his teeth for mutilation." While they were raging he quieted them with words which ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... or outcry of any description, escaped the victims of our murderous fire. So dreadful was the sight that, for perhaps half a minute, the entire crew of the schooner, fore and aft, stood motionless and dumb, petrified with horror, staring with dilated eyeballs at the spot where the bodies, now all motionless, lay faintly defined in the last rays of the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... of that," said Mr Vernon. "You must pretend to be dumb; I hope that you will not have to hold your tongue long. I wish you also to take your violin. I do not know that the Turks ever play it; but you must be my slave, you know—a Christian slave, not long captured,—and that will account for your knowledge of so Nazarene-like an instrument. Miss ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... throat; slowly to choke the life's breath out of him; to feel his desperate, writhing struggles; to be conscious of every agonized twitch of his sinews, to watch the purpling face, the swelling veins, the protruding eyes filled with the dumb horror of his agony; to hold him thus—each second becoming a distinct, appreciable division of time—and thus to take what payment he could for all the blighted years that lay behind him—this he felt would ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... my colleague and alternate to remain long enough in "The Athens of Illinois," in which the successful college was situated, to visit the state institutions, one for the Blind and one for the Deaf and Dumb. Dr Gillette was at that time head of the latter institution; his scholarly explanation of the method of teaching, his concern for his charges, this sudden demonstration of the care the state bestowed upon its most unfortunate children, filled me with grave speculations in which the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... on her head, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew near the table. They knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination, Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the direction indicated and stood as if rooted to the floor. He was so surprised that he was struck dumb. Finally, recovering ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... power. Still there was no explanation. Men were left to guess, as they best might, at the Eleusinian drama performing behind the veil of Isis—to speculate for themselves, or announce to others at random the causes of this huge mystification. "The oracles were dumb." This only was certain, that Lord Stanley was ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... to have been invented by a poor deaf and dumb man living in a small country town in New England, but we can not substantiate ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... another death. Poor souls! if it is not right to love them, is it not well to pity them? You pity the blind man who has never seen the daylight, the deaf who has never heard the harmonies of nature, the dumb who has never found a voice for his soul, and, under a false cloak of shame, you will not pity this blindness of heart, this deafness of soul, this dumbness of conscience, which sets the poor afflicted creature beside herself and makes ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... beneath the weight of incommensurable infinity? and now a certain air of triumph about Beatrix disturbed her. No woman gains an advantage over another without allowing it to be felt, however much she may deny having taken it. Nothing was ever more strange in its course than the dumb, moral struggle which was going on between these two women, each hiding from the other a secret,—each believing ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... cover his face and moan and weep like a child, and Guatemoc would pass from his presence dumb with fury at the folly of so great a king, but helpless to remedy it. For like myself, Guatemoc believed that Montezuma had been smitten with a madness sent from heaven to bring ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Fisher lingered in his place With countenance of mild surprise, And looked upon the Buddha's face With dumb, uncomprehending eyes. ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... trained his dumb companion as thoroughly to prompt obedience as his black follower, for the little creature instantly bounded from its place by the mast on to the shoulder of its master, who bade it go into the place from which he had just extracted the sail. Nigel could not see this—not only because ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Institute. Yet, after all, it is only the skeleton of the thing, the original framework set into a modern covering for protection,—the whole church being about as large as a small drawing-room only. Into this little space a few dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have been huddled: the old communion-table, two ancient harpsichords, a single pew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, and a huge, half-ruinous loom; and some engraved portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls. When I visited the place, a party of young ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... play Mrs. Jellaby. All varieties of the eccentricity of elderly women, whether serious or comic, are easily within her grasp. Betsy Trotwood, embodied by her, becomes a living reality; while on the other hand she suffused with a sinister horror her stealthy, gliding, uncanny personation of the dumb, half-insane Hester Dethridge. That was the first great success that Mrs. Gilbert gained, under Augustin Daly's management. She has been associated with Daly's company since his opening night as a manager, August 16, 1869, when, at the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... the Indians, for goodness only knows how long, that we'd better provide enough food to keep from starving. I love the fawn as well as you do, and Mr. Glenn loves it because you gave it to him; but its natural to prefer our own lives to the lives of dumb animals." ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... the numerous books purporting to be a history of my life states with the utmost soberness that, as a boy, I was cruel to dumb animals and to my schoolmates, and, as for my teachers, to them I was a continual trouble and annoyance. A hundred of my friends and schoolmates will bear me out in the statement that, far from being cruel to either dumb animals or human beings, I ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... you and for your welfare, as a true sister should. Of course I'm well enough aware you men think us women are a bother; yes, awful chatterboxes—that's the name we all have, and (ruefully) it fits. And then that common saying, "Never now, nor through the ages, never any woman dumb." ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... way at the last minute,' continued Mrs. Woodward. 'The scene in which he sits with the unopened letter lying on his table before him has some merit; but this probably arises from the fact that the letter is dumb, and the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the storm that Pascal, on the following day, helped Clotilde to make her preparations for her departure. Old Mme. Rougon was not to return until Sunday, to say good-by. When Martine was informed of the approaching separation, she stood still in dumb amazement, and a flash, quickly extinguished, lighted her eyes; and as they sent her out of the room, saying that they would not require her assistance in packing the trunks, she returned to the kitchen and busied herself in her usual occupations, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Perhaps his ignorance was feigned. I do not know, but I found myself relating, a la Stanley-Livingstone, some of the current events of the day. His face was quite intelligent, tanned with labor in the fields, and his brown eyes were kind and soft, like those of some dumb animals. I note his eyes here especially, as different in expression from those of others ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... pigmy now, The other's limbs waxed ever as he fought In semblance and in size. But in what wise The child of Zeus brought low that man of greed, Tell, Muse, for thine is knowledge: I unfold A secret not mine own; at thy behest Speak or am dumb, nor speak ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... disgraceful than that formed at this juncture against Madame de Longueville; and that feature in it the more shameful perhaps was that La Rochefoucauld himself boasts of having invented and worked this machinery, as he terms it. The three conspirators were dumb, but through different but equally despicable reasons. Madame de Chatillon desired singly to govern Conde, and alone to represent him at Court, in order to reap the profits of the negotiation. Nemours ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Martha's fault that what happened happened. She is the bull-dog, and very stout and heavy. She had just been let loose and she came bounding along in her clumsy way, and jumped up on Oswald, who is beloved by all dumb animals. (You know how sagacious they are.) Well, Martha knocked the ball out of Oswald's hands, and it fell on the grass, and Noel pounced on it like a hooded falcon on its prey. Oswald would scorn to deny that he was not going to ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... boots were allowed to grow rusty and chins unshaven, as the boys gradually drank and worked themselves into a dumb forgetfulness of their ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... reached the edge. I looked up. The duchess threw up her arms and screamed. We were not fifteen paces behind, but we saw nothing. We took the few steps, and the whole magnificence broke upon us. No one could be prepared for it. The scene is one to strike dumb with awe, or to unstring the nerves; one might stand in silent astonishment, ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... when he arrived, but she instantly came over and alighted on his roof, to have a look at him. Most expressive was her manner. She stood in silence and gazed upon him a long time; all her liveliness and gayety were gone, and she appeared to be struck dumb by this new complication of her affairs. It was plain that she was not pleased. Perhaps her dislike was evident to the new bird, for suddenly he flew up and snapped at her, which so surprised her that she hopped a foot into the air. When the time came to ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... his work with a masterly precision, with the aid of his brother and Portugais. The man under the instruments, not wholly insensible, groaned once or twice. Once or twice, too, his eyes opened with a dumb hunted look, then closed as with an irresistible weariness. When the work was over, and every stain or sign of surgery removed, sleep came down on the bed—a deep and saturating sleep, which seemed to fill the room with peace. For hours the surgeon sat beside the couch, now and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... listened so attentively. We have begun with Genesis and I do hope to make the teaching practical. After service we went to the Henry Greens', who live up the hill in a direct line from here. She is much the same. Chris is at last beginning to walk, but cannot speak a word. I believe they fear he is dumb. He understands very well what is said to him. I never saw a child tumble about more in his attempts to walk, but he does not seem to mind a bit and can walk backwards ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... utterly contemptible. Rome, the mistress of the world, had reached the summit of her greatness; and she soon turned all her power against the feeble band, who were laboring to diffuse the knowledge of Christ. and calling men from dumb idols, to ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... Grace, "don't you remember, when we were children, we used to say we meant some time to live together and keep house? Suppose we try it here. We might have gas-light, you know, and all our food could be brought down on a dumb waiter." ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... he was not even allowed to come into the kitchen for a comforting cup of tea as of old. "And if anybody can't have a bit of a clack sometimes," groaned poor Jabez, "nor a cup of tea neither, why he might so well be dumb to once. I've ackshally got to talk to the 'orses and the cat to keep my powers of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... lain in prison till their bones were ready to start through the skin. Yet were they not ready to die. It seemed as if there were something they longed—more even than for life or freedom—to say; but they might as well have been dumb and tongueless, for none understood their barbarous jargon. When they found that their words were in vain, they wrung their hands in their wo, and cried out aloud in their agony. Then, however, at the stern voice of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... he's a teetotaler," Carr corrected, "and he's the greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway, and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about this expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found out and sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story either. Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest, and he's promised that after he's ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... in his care of it, exercising the bird by means of a long string, since Loll would permit no one to clip its wings. Even Kayak Bill was always bringing it green stuff to supplement its diet of rolled oats. Only Jean appeared indifferent to the bird—Jean, always tender of dumb things. She had remarked, once, that it's smoke-grey color reminded her unpleasantly of the eyes of ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... was a row in Silver Street—but that put down the shine, Wid each man whisperin' to his next: "'Twas never work o' mine!" We went away like beaten dogs, an' down the street we bore him, The poor dumb corpse that couldn't tell the bhoys were sorry ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... it to me for fifty cents. It used to be a dumb waiter, and I painted it black myself. Isn't it beautiful? Have you seen Charity's room? Wait." Peggy darted out of her door and across the hall. On the door opposite a card bore the ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Why the great dumb mountains, why the ocean hoary— Even the babbling fountains, older are than story, And his life's duration's but a few short marches Of the constellations ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... As children, ashamed, dumb, with eyes upon the ground, stand listening and conscience-stricken and repentant, so was I standing. And she said, "Since through hearing thou art grieved, lift up thy beard and thou shalt receive more grief in seeing." With less resistance is a sturdy oak uprooted by a native wind, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... as he put the question, his eyes eloquent with dumb misery, and Persis laid a friendly hand upon his arm as she answered with reassuring certainty: "Don't you worry, Nelson. I feel it in my bones that Charlotte's going to be better ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... shall thrill To twilight times of blending good and ill, Where whizz of bullets, and the clanking chain, Jar on the praise of Peace and Freedom's reign. In louder strains shall burst the exulting close, That sounds the triumph o'er the struggling foes,— The slave unbound, War's iron tongues all dumb,— His glorious Present, our all hail To Come, All hail To Come, when East and West shall be— While rolls between the undividing sea— Two, like the brain, whose halves ne'er think apart, But beat and tremble ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... with the most satisfaction were the groups or processions of army trucks we met coming east. The doom of kaiserism was written large on that Lincoln Highway in that army of resolute, slow-moving army trucks. Dumb, khaki-colored fighters on wheels, staunch, powerful-looking, a host of them, rolling eastward toward the seat of war, some loaded with soldiers, some with camp equipments, and all hinting of the enormous resources the fatuous Kaiser had let loose upon himself in ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... five and thirty days hunting and travel I returning, past by another stately mansion of the Lord Marquesses, called Stroboggy, and so over Carny mount to Brechin, where a wench that was born deaf and dumb came into my chamber at midnight (I being asleep) and she opening the bed, would feign have lodged with me: but had I been a Sardanapalus, or a Heliogabulus, I think that either the great travel over the mountains had tamed me; or if not, her beauty could never have ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... appear to be attached to a plasmosome. The ordinary chromosomes assume the form of rings and crosses in the prophase of the first maturation mitosis (fig. 8), but usually appear in the spindle as dumb-bells or occasionally as tetrads (fig. 10), or crosses (fig. 11). The unsymmetrical pair is plainly seen in figures 9 and 11, but is not distinguishable in a polar view of the metaphase (fig. 13). In the anaphase ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens
... been a good deal of criticism, no doubt sincere, of experiments on living dumb animals, and the person who stands for the defenceless animal has such an overwhelming appeal to the emotions that it is perhaps useless to allude to the other side of the controversy. Dr. Simon ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... being, as I said, an excellent mimic himself, it was the easier for him to dress up the sloop in new clothes; and first, he put on all the carved work he had taken off before; her stern, which was painted of a dumb white or dun colour before, all flat, was now all lacquered and blue, and I know not how many gay figures in it; as to her quarter, the carpenters made her a neat little gallery on either side; she had twelve guns put into her, and some petereroes ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... hear! The word of the Lord is ever speaking—alas! where is one that can hear? Where are our Isaiahs, our Ezekiels, our Jeremiahs? Oh! thou shrunken-visaged, black, hollow-eyed doubt! hast thou passed like a cloud over men's souls, making them blind, deaf and dumb? Ah, ha! dost thou shudder? I chant thy requiem, and prophets, poets, and seers shall rise again! I see them coming. Great heaven! Earth shall be again a paradise, and God converse ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Amazement held Brisket dumb. He turned and eyed Duckett inquiringly. Then Tredgold, with his back to the others, caught his ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... we see everything relating to schools from kindergarten to university, training schools, where children wuz to work, schools for the blind, deaf and dumb in operation; the work of labratories going on before you; departments in drawing, music, agricultural colleges; experiment stations, forestry, engineering schools and institutions, libraries, ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... passions, and those of our position. Our design shapes us for the work in hand, the passions man the ship, the position is their apology: and now should conscience be a passenger on board, a merely seeming swiftness of our vessel will keep him dumb as the unwilling guest of a pirate captain scudding from the cruiser half in cloven brine through rocks and shoals to save his black flag. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... yet a tongue, and Concord is not dumb; And voices from our fathers' graves and from the future come: They call on us to stand our ground—they charge us still to be Not only free from chains ourselves, but foremost ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... leaving her face as white as the marble figure near which she stood; and then, as though compelled by a power superior to her own will, she turned slowly, and stepped from her hiding place into full view. As if stricken dumb, she stood until the prayer was finished. The captain gave the signal and the little company rose to ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... approached his dumb patient, he suddenly put down the bucket of water which he was carrying and ran, shouting angrily. A flock of crows flew away from Farmer and "cawed" from a tree close by. Dad was excited, and when he saw that one of the animal's eyes was gone and a stream of blood trickled ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... in the midst of this white tangle of trees and bushes and vines, which were like a wild, dumb multitude of death-things pressing ever against him, trying to crowd him away. When he hit them as he passed, they swung back in his face with a semblance of life. If a squirrel chattered and leaped between some white boughs, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... us, on that chamber of woes and bitter unpurifying tears; and the sunlight wrapped those two, the sick man and the ministering woman, shone on them—changed, changed utterly. Good Lord! How was I struck dumb, nay, almost blinded by that change; for there—yes there, while no man but I wondered; there, instead of the unloving nurse, knelt a wonderfully beautiful maiden, clothed all in white, and with long golden ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... champion stood dumb and unresponsive; so after a moment the girl swung sharply round, muttering "Stupid ass!" and departed through ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Canadian withdrew, leaving me almost dumb. I had imagined that, the chance gone, I should have time to reflect and discuss the matter. My obstinate companion had given me no time; and, after all, what could I have said to him? Ned Land was perfectly right. There was almost the opportunity to profit by. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... abode because of its newness and bright wood-work. It was one of the very new ones supplied with steam heat, which was a great advantage. The stationary range, hot and cold water, dumb-waiter, speaking tubes, and call-bell for the janitor pleased her very much. She had enough of the instincts of a housewife to take ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... auditory crowded and cowered timidly round him, while he, looking down on them with a wrathful and contemptuous glance, was about to pour forth the pious venom which hung upon his lips, when a sharp cry of "Get along out of that" struck him dumb. Inquiry was useless, for all were ready to swear that they had not uttered a word. Dr. Direful called them "blasphemous liars," and proceeded one and all to empty the vials of his wrath through the words of a text of awful denunciation, which I dare not here repeat; but his words were again ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... duty. "Judge every man charitably, and use your best efforts to find a kindly explanation of conduct, however suspicious.... Give in charity an exact tithe of your property. Never turn a poor man away empty-handed. Talk no more than is necessary, and thus avoid slander. Be not as dumb cattle that utter no word of gratitude, but thank God for his bounties at the time at which they occur, and in your prayers let the memory of these personal favors warm your hearts, and prompt you to special fervor during ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... tears in the startled hush of laughter; he whom the Cobbler had rightly said, "might have made a fortune at Covent Garden." There was the remnant of the old popular mime!—all his attributes of eloquence reduced to dumb show! Masterly touch of nature and of art in this representation of him,—touch which all who had ever in former years seen and heard him on that stage felt simultaneously. He came in for his personal portion ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bit, Stanton," retorted Lincoln, "he may be deaf and dumb for all I know, but whatever language he speaks, if any, we can furnish troops who will understand what he says. That name of his will make up for any differences in religion, politics or understanding, and I'll take the risk of ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... She had never expected to hear any one call John Crumb noble. But she had never respected any one more highly than Squire Carbury, and he said that John Crumb was noble. Amidst all her misery and trouble she still told herself that it was but a dusty, mealy,—and also a dumb nobility. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Edgeworth's stories in her youth, and would not have cut the strings for the world; and when the new dresses, in all their gloss and softness, were spread out upon the old carpet, which scarcely retained one trace of colour, Janey was struck dumb. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... with books; most of them folios and quartos, and all in that complete state of repair which at a glance reveals a tinge of bibliomania. A dozen volumes or so, needful for immediate purposes of reference, were placed close by him on a small movable frame—something like a dumb-waiter. All the rest were in their proper niches, and wherever a volume had been lent, its room was occupied by a wooden block of the same size, having a card with the name of the borrower and date of the loan, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... instead of with the gladness that used to be heard in the place of drawing of water. The ploughmen are standing among the cracked furrows, gazing with despair on the brown chapped earth, and in the field the very dumb creatures are sharing in the common sorrow, and the imperious law of self-preservation overpowers and crushes the maternal instincts. 'Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no grass.' And on every little hilltop where cooler ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... visited by Chaucer in the fourteenth century, the passion for antiquity goes on increasing; the Latins no longer suffice, the Greeks must be known. Petrarch worshipped a manuscript of Homer, but it was for him a dumb fetish: the fetish has now become a god, and utters oracles that all the world understands. The city of the Greek emperors is still standing, and there letters shine with a last lustre. While the foe ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... him to us. We may select a pointer for the pureness of his blood and the perfection of his education. He transgresses in the field. We call him to us; we scold him well; perchance, we chastise him. He lies motionless and dumb at our feet. The punishment being over, he gets up, and, by some significant gesture, acknowledges his consciousness of deserving what he has suffered. The writer operated on a pointer bitch for an ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... a fruitful branch of homoeopathic magic which works by means of the dead; for just as the dead can neither see nor hear nor speak, so you may on homoeopathic principles render people blind, deaf and dumb by the use of dead men's bones or anything else that is tainted by the infection of death. Thus among the Galelareese, when a young man goes a-wooing at night, he takes a little earth from a grave and strews it on the roof ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... traffic an unusual stillness came upon New York, and the disturbing concussions of the futile defending guns on the hills about grew more and more audible. At last these ceased also. A pause of further negotiation followed. People sat in darkness, sought counsel from telephones that were dumb. Then into the expectant hush came a great crash and uproar, the breaking down of the Brooklyn Bridge, the rifle fire from the Navy Yard, and the bursting of bombs in Wall Street and the City Hall. New York as a whole ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... when she paused for a moment, said without thinking, "Well! why do you make such a noise about it?—to-day red, to- morrow dead." [Footnote: A German proverb, "Heute roth, Morgen todt."] These words seemed to strike the woman dumb. She stared at me, and moved away from me as soon as it was in any degree possible. I thought no more of my words; only, some time afterwards, they occurred to me, when the boy, instead of continuing to perform, became ill, and that very ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... have her back in no time!" What were her thoughts and feelings, when, after having spent her breath, she found her husband quietly opposed to this conclusion, words cannot tell. Her words could not; she was absolutely dumb, till he had said his say; and then, appalled by the serenity of his manner, she left indignation on one side for the present, and began to argue the matter. But Mr. Van Brunt coolly said he had promised: she might get as many help as she liked ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... should repent; that God is as near them in the darkness as in the light; that whatever their own health, or their own feelings may be, yet still in God they live, and move, and have their being; that to God's Spirit they owe all which raises them above the dumb animals; that nothing can separate them from the love of Him who promised that He would not leave us comfortless, but send to us His Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us to the same place whither He ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... not let it be destroyed; Demetrius's answer to which was that he would rather burn the pictures of his father than a piece of art which had cost so much labor. It is said to have taken Protogenes seven years to paint, and they tell us that Apelles, when he first saw it, was struck dumb with wonder, and called it, on recovering his speech, "a great labor and a wonderful success," adding, however, that it had not the graces which carried his own paintings as it were up to the heavens. This picture, which came with the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... started out to drive them in his old rickety vehicle to the nearest railroad station, miles distant, he was almost stricken dumb because Beverly, in the fulness of his gratitude over their marvelous escape, thrust a full hundred dollars upon him, with a promise of a like amount later on for looking after the ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... said, "But you far excel in beauty and in size. The splendor of the emerald shines in your neck and you unfold a tail gorgeous with painted plumage." "But for what purpose have I," said the bird, "this dumb beauty so long as I am surpassed in song?" "The lot of each," replied Juno, "has been assigned by the will of the Fates—to thee, beauty; to the eagle, strength; to the nightingale, song; to the raven, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... three other men, silent and motionless. A woman thinly clad and with great cave-like hollows in her face climbed the embankment and sat upon the ground below the boy and his mother. "The fire is in the old McCrary cut," she said, her voice quivering, a dumb hopeless look in her eyes. "They can't get through to close the doors. My man Ike is in there." She put down her head and sat weeping. The boy knew the woman. She was a neighbour who lived in an unpainted house on the hillside. In the yard in front of her house a swarm of children played among ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... earth of old A dumb and beastly vermin crawled; For acorns, first, and holes of shelter, They tooth and nail, and helter skelter, Fought fist to fist; then with a club Each learned his brother brute to drub; Till, more experienced grown, these cattle Forged fit accoutrements ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... while the cow looks on, enviously, maybe, unable to join them. Cows may long for conversation or prancing, for all that we know, but they can't spare the time. The problem of nourishment takes every hour: a pause might be fatal. So they go through life drearily eating, resentful and dumb. Their food is most uninteresting, and is frequently covered with bugs; and their thoughts, if they dwell on their hopeless careers, must ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... Asian desert; a cavern blown in by icy winds for only inn; a 'gaunt and taciturn host' to receive them; and at last, to perform the last offices, the high-soaring vulture, and the wild wind scattering dust and sleet on their bones.... Ah, to make them see—to make them know!... Poor dumb brutish cattle, consumed with fever of thirst, bellowing with rage, trampling each other down in a pen too small to hold them! Ah, to show them the gate—the wide-open gate—to make them lie down in green pastures, to lead them ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Patricia told him. She was always sure that her dumb friends understood quite well all she said to them. ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... Leah, the handsome Witch of Essex, to move away the massive shelves that held the books he loved, to pack up the tube through which he used to study the silent stars, looking down at him, like the eyes of dumb creatures, with a kind of stupid half-consciousness, that did not worry him as did the eyes of men and women,—and hardest of all to displace that sacred figure to which his heart had always turned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... there was yet another butterfly of my namesake's. He led us to a by-path that followed the river bank up to the bridge, running far ahead of us. When we reached him he was seated, dumb with yearning, before ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... he said he couldn't leave the rest, and that it was a puir sick beastie no' worth much trouble. But it was a nice wee thing for a' that, and it must have died all alone there, with nobody to give it a drop of water," said Geordie, regretfully, for he had a tender heart for all dumb creatures. "I must tell Gowrie's lad about this Shepaerd the very next time he comes round the hill. But did he find the lambie?" he ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... course, very well aware of the troubles of agriculture, the wetness of the seasons—which played havoc with the game—the low prices, and the loud talk that was going on around him. But he made no sign. He might have been deaf, dumb, and blind. He walked by the wheat, but did not see the deficiency of the crop, nor the extraordinary growth of weeds. There were voices in the air like the mutterings of a coming storm, but he did not hear them. There were paragraphs in the papers—how So-and-So had liberally reduced the rents ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the charges in the same unheeding way. The messenger departed with a wistful glance at the dry, pained eyes which heeded him not. With a look of dumb entreaty at the overhanging mountain and misty, Indian summer sky, and a half perceptible shiver of dread, Mollie Ainslie turned and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... ask any more questions!" grumbled Jack. "I don't know hot from cold! I'm deaf and dumb and blind from this minute on. Uncle Ike has a classical education in comparison with what I know. Go ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the Romans, you scarcely refrained from blows? Now, in a general assembly, summoned on that single business, when you have heard the arguments of the ambassadors on both sides, when the magistrates demand your opinions, when the herald calls you to declare your sentiments, you are struck dumb. Although your concern for the common safety be insufficient for determining the matter, cannot the party zeal which has attached you to one side or the other extort a word from any one of you? especially when none is so obtuse as not to perceive, that the time for declaring ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... with his left hand, and with the right he lifted down his little son out of the horse's ear, and Tom Thumb sat down on a stump, quite happy and content. When the two strangers saw him they were struck dumb with wonder. At last one of them, taking the other aside, said to him, "Look here, the little chap would make our fortune if we were to show him in the town for money. Suppose ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... I had so long desired to play. Could I reconcile myself to seclusion so entire? Would not this weight of utter silence grow heavier than I could bear? It was not always June, I told myself, and there were days of lashing rain, grey skies, and 'death-dumb autumn dripping' fog to think of. The vision of lighted streets and bustling crowds, the warm contiguity of numbers, the long lines of windows all aglow at evening, the genial stir and tumult of congregated life, took masterful possession of ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... I am dumb! I am mute. But don't use strong language, Friday! It is bad form. You must have picked up the ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... from a distance, thinking of it all. That he should have been stricken dumb by the beauty of any girl was surprising even to himself; for though young and almost boyish in his manners, he had never yet feared to speak out in any presence. The tutor at his college had thought him ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Death! thy victim starts to hear Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer; No more the farmer claims his humble bow, Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou! Now to the church behold the mourners come, Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb; The village children now their games suspend, To see the bier that bears their ancient friend: For he was one in all their idle sport, And like a monarch ruled their little court; The pliant bow ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... evasive, and excitable people, and Maurice did not like to be driven off the rink with "Better come along with me" or "I should think a good brisk walk to Clavedel would be about your mark." Winn's idea of a walk was silence and pace; he had a poor notion of small talk, and he became peculiarly dumb with a young man whose idea of ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... of the leaves strewing the earth, in the wet of the herbs long and bent, there was a sadness of death, a dumb resignation to ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... notwithstanding its agitation, than with any other phenomenon presenting itself. The waters give up no voice to the heavens. The immense flaming ocean writhes and is tortured uncomplainingly. The mountainous surges suggest the idea of innumerable dumb gigantic fiends struggling in impotent agony. In a night such as is this to me, a man lives—lives a whole century of ordinary life—nor would I forego this rapturous delight for that of a whole century ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rendering it dark and turbulent. The mouth harmonized with this stormy look, and trembled into half sarcastic smiles, as if each feature reviled the other. Now I was larger, taller, more pronounced in face and person than the pretty fairy who could entertain him so flippantly, while I sat dumb and silent in his presence. No wonder I hated myself, yet many persons had thought me good looking, and I could recollect a thousand compliments on my talents and powers of pleasing, which came to ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... and strengthened the current of prevalent opinion. It is now certain that the evidence furnished on both sides of the Atlantic as to the stellar composition of some conspicuous objects of this class (notably the Orion and "Dumb-bell" nebulae) was delusive; but the spectroscope alone was capable of meeting it with a categorical denial. Meanwhile there seemed good ground for the persuasion, which now, for the last time, gained the upper hand, that nebulae ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... you will never alter it to your liking; and more, you need not alter it, for you are not responsible for it. God sends it as it is, for better, for worse, and you must make up your mind to what God sends. Do I mean that we are to submit slavishly to circumstances, like dumb animals? Heaven forbid. We are not, like Epictetus, slaves, but free men. And we are made in God's image, and have each our spark, however dim, of that creative genius, that power of creating or of altering circumstances, by which God made all worlds; and to use that, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... by Irish of being a "single-shot" when it came to repartee—turned purple and dumb. The Happy Family, forswearing loyalty in their enjoyment of his discomfiture, grinned and left to Miguel the barren triumph ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... many months, and when at last they thought she was cured, they found out that she had become dumb. She could hear perfectly well, she could even laugh like everybody else, but it was quite impossible for her to ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... quarters, and already so much improved in health that he was able to repel with considerable vigor the many inquirers who were anxious to be put in possession of the real facts concerning his pretended marriage. It was a subject on which the captain was dumb, but in some mysterious fashion it came to be understood that it was a device on the part of a self-sacrificing and chivalrous ship-master to save Miss Hartley from the attentions of a determined admirer she ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... being dumb will not help us," said I, resuming my place, "let me hear your precautions in traveling ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the stairs the almost incoherent announcement that a stormy passage was to be experienced. Then the voice fluttered away, and left only the sound of creaking timbers and the weird moan of the wind. Munroe was riveted with dumb terror, and when speech came to him he remarked: "That's darned funny," and proceeded on deck to attend to his duties. In a short time he was joined by the captain, who was promptly informed of what ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Samuel Catieris, a poor dumb lad who was extremely inoffensive, was cut to pieces by a party of the troops; and soon after the same ruffians entered the house of Peter Moniriat, and cut off the legs of the whole family, leaving them to bleed to death, as they were unable to assist ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... of thirty, strong in limb, clear in brain and yet a dependent! No one but himself to support, and couldn't even do that! Gadzooks! Fie upon all poetry and a plague upon this dumb, dense, shopkeeping, beer-drinking nation upon which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... was an Indian boy, sort of sneaky like, and deaf and dumb, that followed us until I turned and stared him out of it. That's the way to get rid of 'em, Gail, same as a savage dog," Beverly ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... erect trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by architecture in the lands which they had conquered. For they did hold in greater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality than the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the injury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone. You may very well remember of the courtesy which by them was used towards the Bretons ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... xv. 31: [Greek: hoste tous ochlous thaumasai blepontas kophous laloutas, kullous hugieis, cholous peripatountas kai tuphlous blepontas]; xxi. 14; [Greek: kai proselthon auto tuphloi kai choloi en to hiero kai etherapeusen autous]; Mark vii. 37, where after the healing of the deaf and dumb, the people say: [Greek: kalos panta pepoieke. kai tous kophous poiei akouein, kai tous alalous lalein.] Yet shall we not be able to see, in these facts, the complete fulfilment of the prophecy, in so far as it refers to the healing of the bodily blind and deaf—inasmuch as it promises ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... cottage, from behind yon oak, Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie, That in some other way yon smoke May mount into the sky. If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough, Headlong, the waterfall must come, Oh, let it, then, be dumb— Be anything, sweet stream, but that ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... powerless to profit by them. Like a school-girl about to be examined for a scholarship, knowing that all the future might depend upon an hour of the present, the dire need to be resourceful, to be brilliant, left her dumb. ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... uncompromisedness in him involved a sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, MULTUM IN PARVO, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior—though a little ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... followed by Lush Barrock. When the fellow who had robbed the sawmill saw Snap and his chums he was almost struck dumb. ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... rise, as others did the night I was brought here, and listen. If the noise or the groan is prolonged, if the cry is repeated, I and others knock on the wicket of our doors in order to call the attention of the "blue angel." As he is not allowed to speak to the prisoners, he generally indicates by dumb motions that all is well and that one may sleep in peace. But as he opens the wicket we obtain a glimpse of part of the corridor, and that often enables us to judge of what is taking place. Besides, these signals are intended to convey to the new arrival, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... tent I just now heard two crows chuckling and laughing in their way and saying to one another "here's a joke" or caws to that effect. You need not laugh at this statement or think that my mind has suddenly become deranged, I merely state a fact. The language of animals—dumb creatures as fools call them—is far more expressive than you imagine, and if you had spent the same time and the same attention that I have in listening to birds notes, you would be able to understand much of their ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... words, they found, even as Byamee said, so were they. They could but bark and howl; the powers of speech and laughter had they lost. And as they realised their loss, into their eyes came a look of yearning and dumb entreaty which will be seen in the eyes of their descendants for ever. A feeling of wonder and awe fell on the various camps as they watched Byamce ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... unconscious even of her mother's presence. When Helene hung over the bed seeking her eyes, the child preserved a stolid expression, as though only the shadow of the curtain had passed before her. Her lips were dumb; she showed the gloomy resignation of the outcast who knows that she is dying. Sometimes she would long remain with her eyelids half closed, and nobody could divine what stubborn thought was thus absorbing her. Nothing now had any existence for ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... there a long time, dumb, immovable, petrified. With wan eyes, his teeth compressed, his mouth foaming, tearing mechanically with his nails his breast, he felt his reason totter, and was lost in an abyss of darkness. When he awoke from his stupor, he walked heavily, and with an ill-assured step; objects trembled ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... onlooker before whom spontaneity was impossible. Yet as Sunday after Sunday the two young men strode up together, she grew to accept Ellery. First he became inoffensive; then she became aware that his eyes spoke when his lips were dumb; and finally, when words did come, they were the words of a friend who understood moods and tenses. In some ways it was a comfort to have this buffer between her and Dick. It helped to prolong ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... most unpastoral principles—while the veteran husbandman may lean on the shattered, unused plough, and view himself surrounded with flocks that furnish raiment without food. Or, if his honesty be not proof against the hard assaults of penury, he may be led to revenge himself on these dumb innovators of his little field— then learn too late that some portion of the soil is reserved for a crop more fatal even than that which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore |
