"Nerveless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his words became inaudible, As in the mazes of the Mammoth Cave, Fainter and fainter on the listening ear, The low, retreating voices die away. His eyes were closed; a gentle smile of peace Sat on his face. I held his nerveless hand, And bent my ear to catch his latest breath; And as the spirit fled the pulseless clay, I heard—or thought I ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... again as he left the finished task, and once more from the highest wind-built ridge his hungering eyes swept the round sea's edge. But he saw no sail. Nerveless and exhausted he descended to the southeastern beach and watched the morning brighten. The breezes, that for some time had slept, fitfully revived, and the sun leaped from the sea and burned its way through a low bank of dark and ruddy clouds with so unusual ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... hand imprisoned—that fragrant, listless little hand, so lifeless, nerveless, unresponsive—as though it were no longer a part of her and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... low over her. He did not speak at once. He only took the nerveless hand that lay upon his arm and carried it to his lips, breathing for many ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... with an angry laugh and a sharp, downward blow of the butt of his whip upon the peasant's head. Charlot's hand grew nerveless and released the bridle as he sank stunned to the ground. Bellecour touched his horse with the spur and rode over the prostrate fellow with no more concern than had he been a dog's carcase. "Blaise, see to the girl," he called over his ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... small fountains, which, in any other land, would spring merrily along, sparkling and singing among tinkling pebbles, here flow calmly and silently into some pale font of marble, all beautiful with life; worked by some unknown hand, long ago nerveless, and fall and pass on among wan flowers, and scented copse, through cool leaf-lighted caves or gray Egerian grottoes, to join the Tiber or Eridanus, to swell the waves of Nemi, or the Larian Lake. The most minute objects ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... ceased to move at the royal bidding the moment the direct royal pressure was loosened or removed. Enfeebled as they were, the old provincial jealousies, the old tendency to severance and isolation lingered on and woke afresh when the crown fell to a nerveless ruler or to a child. And at the moment we have reached the royal power and the national union it embodied had to battle with fresh tendencies towards national disintegration which sprang like itself from the struggle with the northman. The tendency towards personal dependence and towards a social ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... exclaimed, "Stop!" and immejitly whispered the appallin news in his left ear (tother one hed bin chawed off in a misunderstandin at Bascom's the previous Sunday nite, after servis). Never shel I forgit the look uv woe on that eminent Christian's face. The whip fell from his nerveless hand; and with teers streemin down his cheeks, washin up little streaks uv dirt in the most heart-rendin manner, he gasped in a husky voice to the wife uv his buzzum, "Cut him down, Mirandy! The North's gone Ablishin, and the d——d niggers will be free anyhow!" and ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human] Footnote continued from Page 269 [character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. . . . The habit of excessive novel reading and theater going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... by a man who was obviously more of a Levantine than a Serb. The older man, small, slight, gray haired, and swarthy, but surprisingly active in his movements for one of his apparent age, raced up to Prince Michael. He fell on his knees, caught that nerveless right hand, and pressed ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... on the face of the little seamstress, a movement of every muscle, and her nerveless fingers could ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... his forehead. It was his turn to have the shivers. There was no more color in his face than in a peeled turnip. His gun shook in his left hand like a aspen, while the spangled gun in his right hand dropped its muzzle towards earth and there was scarcely strength enough in his nerveless fingers to have pulled ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... flexible; but it was vast, and in reality of prodigious power. It was, only at moments, however, as some slight impediment opposed itself to his loitering progress, that his person, which, in its ordinary gait seemed so lounging and nerveless, displayed any of those energies, which lay latent in his system, like the slumbering and unwieldy, but terrible, strength of the elephant. The inferior lineaments of his countenance were coarse, extended and vacant; while the superior, or ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... louder than that of any thunder, it came at length forth from the rock, and taking it in his right hand he with it furiously assailed the Magician, who no sooner felt its keen edge than his club fell from his nerveless grasp, the owl flew hooting away, the serpents crawled hissing off, and the once-powerful Magician fell humbly on his ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... of transformation is still going on in a small way, especially in our provincial manufacturing towns, in which most large commercial undertakings have slipped from the nerveless grasp of the Anglo-Saxon into the more capable and ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... he directed his feet towards the site, upon which he knew there was an old chapel known as Queen's Glasshouse Chapel, whose ownership had slipped from the nerveless hand of a dying sect of dissenters, he could not find the site and he could not see the chapel. For an instant he was perturbed by a horrid suspicion that he had been victimized by a gang of swindlers posing as celebrated ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... tired and spent with the day and as his arm stole, almost snake-like, about her waist, she raised a nerveless hand, plucked feebly to remove the fingers pressing into her side, and then let her hand fall to ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... accepting for her own life a barren sacrifice, but a jealous sentinel on his. Meditating as she sat and as she eyed him,—meditating what employment she could invent, with the bribe of emoluments to be paid furtively by her, for those strong hands that could have felled an ox, but were nerveless in turning an honest penny, and for that restless mind hungering for occupation, and with the digestion of an ostrich for dice and debauch, riot and fraud, but queasy as an exhausted dyspeptic at the reception of one innocent amusement, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sons of Spain, and strange her Fate! They fight for Freedom who were never free, A Kingless people for a nerveless state;[103] Her vassals combat when their Chieftains flee, True to the veriest slaves of Treachery: Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, Pride points the path that leads to Liberty; Back to the struggle, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... its spurs and pistol and bold leather chaps a mockery of trappings. She looked at him, and decision came back to her, clear and steady. She supported him over to her bed and laid him on it. His head sank flat, and his loose, nerveless arms stayed as she left them. Then among her packing-boxes and beneath the little miniature, blue and flaxen and gold upon its lonely wall, she undressed him. He was cold, and she covered him to the face, and arranged the pillow, and got from its box her scarlet and black Navajo ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... and nerveless. I could resist no longer. I felt my hold relax. I grew weaker and weaker. I was dying. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... around him for a chair; there was one near the table, and the Girl handed it to him. With one hand he swung it into place before the table, while with the other he jerked off the table-cover, and flung it across the room. Johnson neither moved nor groaned, as the edge slid from beneath his nerveless arms. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... in trembling. The brief impulse of courage which the address of her lover, and the evident sympathy of the crowd, had imparted, was gone as suddenly as it came. She had no more strength for the struggle; and as she sunk back nerveless, and closed her eyes as if fainting under the terrible glances of both her parents, Giovanni dropped her hand from his grasp. It now lay lifeless at her side, and she was sustained from falling by some of her sympathizing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... music was. She remembered that Fellowes had bought a music-box which could be timed to play at will—even days ahead, and he had evidently set the box to play at this hour. It did so, a strange, grim commentary on the stark thing lying on the couch, nerveless as though it had been dead a thousand years. It had ceased to play before Stafford entered the room, but, strangely enough, it began again as he said over the dead body, "He did not die by his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... own early margins chiefly served to note, cite, and illustrate the habits of crocodiles. Along the lower or "tail'' edge, the saurian, splendidly serrated as to his back, arose out of old Nile; up one side negroes, swart as sucked lead-pencil could limn them, let fall their nerveless spears; up the other, monkeys, gibbering with terror, swarmed hastily up palm-trees — a plant to the untutored hand of easier outline than (say) your British oak. Meanwhile, all over the unregarded ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... A wave, gathering to the full its mighty strength, had upreared itself for a moment majestically above its fellows,—falling, its scattered spray can only impotently sprinkle the dull, dreary shore. Broken and nerveless, I can only wait the lifting of the curtain, quietly wondering if a failure be always irretrievable,—if a prize once lost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... like the slaves to be happy as well as you; but I don't like for any body to be ruined, especially people who are so nerveless and inactive as those who have resided in warm islands; surely it is ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... his rifle and leaped to his feet, hoping for a shot at a stray otter. The next instant the rifle slipped from his nerveless fingers and struck upon the ground with ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... that he would lie down upon the ridge and cling to it, thus gaining strength by a little rest. But he soon found that this would not answer. His overtaxed frame was becoming nerveless, and his only hope was to escape at once. In trembling weakness he crawled back to the edge and looked over. Annie stepped forward to the foot of the ladder and extended her hands as ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... poor Jacques—how he must suffer! Hark to that low, sickening thud! 'Tis the accursed soap dropping from his nerveless grasp. Hist to that sound—like unto a death rattle! It is the water gurgling in the tub. And what means that low, poignant, smothered gasp? It is the last convulsive cry of Jacques descending into the depths. All is over! ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... stole into the secret room Where Love lay dying; Mystic and faint perfume Met me like sighing; As heaven had cast a still-born star He lay nor stirred; the shell-thin hand Nerveless of high command Where once the lord-veins sped ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... almost nerveless, Joan waited that end which she felt could not long be delayed. She did not know, she could not understand. On every hand was a threat so terrible that in her weakness she believed that life could not long last. The din in the heavens, the torturing heat so fierce and painful. The glare of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... disciples could have secured that of the Master Himself; or that He might have passed away through the midst of them, as He did through the infuriated crowd which proposed to cast Him headlong over the precipice near Nazareth at the commencement of His ministry? Every arm might have been struck nerveless, every foot paralyzed with lameness. Who, then, shall deny that Christ's death was His ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... reached, and the present drop in temperature restored her everyday sense of safety. With it came a sudden ebbing of energy and endurance. The "spell" was over for the time, but her escape from the shadow of it left her nerveless and almost indifferent to its returning; apathetic, too, to her tormentor. Going in, she closed the door behind her, apparently not noticing that he followed her, and when he opened it and came in, she was sitting in his great chair by the fire, taking off the baby's coat, and, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... till I return," whispered the chief to Cole, and then folding his arms over his brawny chest, he walked with a proud step into their midst. Every tongue seemed to be paralyzed, every limb nerveless, as they, with horror depicted on their swarthy faces, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... life and light would not go out together. The hope seem'd vain. From out the gloom there came The grinding keel—the tread of hurrying feet— Clashing of words, of steel, and all was dark— And all was still. But hark! a sound—the faint Breathing of one who swims with pain, the plash Of nerveless hands nearer and nearer comes, Yet ever fainter. What boots it now to have Escaped the vengeful swords that smote his kin? The waves engulf him and his bubbling cry. But unhoped help is near—a friendly word— A plunge, then ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... offers in such abundance. Those times are past, those men are no more. In the soft lap of refinement we have allowed the powers to languish which those ages exercised and made necessary. With humble admiration we gaze now at those gigantic forms, as a nerveless old man at the manly sports of youth. Not so in the case of this history. The people that we here see upon the stage were the most peaceful in this part of the world, and less capable than their neighbors of that heroic spirit ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... fingers that neither twitched nor shook. There were a gold cross and a bunch of silver medals hung by a whipcord about the neck of the dead man. This Captain Morgan broke away with a snap, reaching the jingling baubles to Harry, who took them in his nerveless hand and fingers that he could hardly close ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... solemnly adjured him to be frank with him; and Ferris could not. That pity for himself as the prey of fantastically cruel chances, which he had already vaguely felt, began now also to include the priest; ignoring all but that compassion, he went up to the bed and took the weak, chill, nerveless hand in ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... ever unquiet because of the woes of his kind, now knows that peace which "passeth the understanding of man." The hand of the All-Father has forever soothed the heart-hunger and unrest of life from his troubled breast. That hand which swept, at will, every cord of the harp of life, has fallen nerveless, but its music will yet linger in the hearts of men until love of truth and beauty shall utterly fade from the earth. A long good-night to thee, Brave Heart, thy better part has found the better ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I turned automatically towards Cannon Street Station, knowing my way to it even if blindfolded, stumbling over bodies prone on the pavement, and in crossing the street I ran against a motionless 'bus, spectral in the fog, with dead horses lying in front, and their reins dangling from the nerveless hand of a dead driver. The ghostlike passengers, equally silent, sat bolt upright, or hung over the edge boards in attitudes ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... might have been a minute before he saw that a man sat in front of the fireless hearth with his arms stretched before him on the table and his head fallen into them. For many minutes there was no sound, no stir of the man's nerveless pose; it might have been that he was asleep. Suddenly the characterless silence of the place was flooded with tragedy, for the man groaned, and a child would have known that the sound came from a torn soul. He lifted his face—a handsome, high-bred face, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the old man dropped the Spider's nerveless hand to turn to Mrs. Trapes with a gloomy brow. "You 'eard that, ma'am—you 'eard this perishin' porker call me a bag o'—Joe, I blush for ye! Ma'am, pore Joe means well, but 'e can't 'elp bein' a perisher—but"—and here the ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... art, and the work of second-class artists was evidently much in demand and obtained its meed of admiration. Bissolo was a fellow-labourer with Catena in the Hall of the Ducal Palace in 1492; he is soft and nerveless, but he copies Bellini, and has imbibed something of his ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... scarcity from either; and Almayer could not help them, having at times hardly enough for himself. Almayer, in his isolation and despair, often envied his near neighbour the Chinaman, Jim- Eng, whom he could see stretched on a pile of cool mats, a wooden pillow under his head, an opium pipe in his nerveless fingers. He did not seek, however, consolation in opium—perhaps it was too expensive—perhaps his white man's pride saved him from that degradation; but most likely it was the thought of his little daughter in the far-off Straits ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... the long-protracted suffering of himself and his companion had at last proved too much for the poor lad and that his brain was giving way; for look! the baleful light of madness gleams in his bloodshot eyes! Madness gives new strength to his nerveless limbs as he rises and bends over his companion. As he slowly uplifts his arm its shrunken muscles swell beneath the skin as though they would burst it, his talon- like fingers close with a grip of steel round the haft of the upraised knife, Sibylla closes her eyes in patient ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... while all present stood in reverent silence, and gazed upon the patient with a look of such affection as a father might bestow upon a dying son as he took the weak nerveless hand. ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... fields in golden waves, the colors of the flowers sprang out, the soft cool air was like a supremely magnificent wine that could give old nerveless men the strength of young giants; and the very marrow of his bones seemed to shrink and scream for mercy. "Ought to 'a' done it at night," he said to himself. "Mr. Bates didn't wait till daylight. In the dark—that's it. At the prisons ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... ." Why could he not wrench this feeling from his heart, banish this girl from his eyes? Why could he not be wholly true to her who was and always had been wholly true to him? Horrible—this will-less, nerveless feeling, this paralysis, as if he were a puppet moved by a cruel hand. And, as once before, it seemed to him that the girl was sitting there in Sylvia's chair in her dark red frock, with her eyes fixed on him. Uncannily vivid—that impression! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the upper floor, Therese withdrew almost immediately, with Madame Raquin and Suzanne, the men remaining in the dining-room, while the bride performed her toilet for the night. Laurent, nerveless and depressed, did not experience the least impatience, but listened complacently to the coarse jokes of old Michaud and Grivet, who indulged themselves to their hearts' content, now that the ladies were no longer present. When Suzanne and Madame Raquin quitted the nuptial apartment, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... under Genevieve's nerveless fingers clicked sharply, and Miss Hart raised her head ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... with agony, letting the spear drop from his nerveless hands, and just as it clattered to the ground Canaris was upon him with a rush, and down they went ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... very much alike, these corpses. But here is one that is different. Look at the rich costume in which it is dressed. Look at its bejewelled fingers. There is no crown upon its brow. There is no sceptre in that nerveless hand. Yet it is easy to guess that this corpse, this "pocket that death has turned inside out and emptied" was once a king. Yes, this is the body of Pharaoh, the one time ruler of Egypt. But here he lies to-day among the meanest of his soldiers. He is sprawled in unkingly ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... schemes, that they were insufficient and in many respects objectionable; but that to give the administration hearty support in the most vigorous measures which it was willing to undertake, was better than to aid an opposition utterly nerveless and servile and altogether devoid of so much as the desire for efficient action. It was no time to stay with the party of weakness; it was right to strengthen rather than to hamper a man so pacific and spiritless as Mr. Jefferson; to show a readiness to forward even ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... neck and knock me silly. But I could see with joy that it reduced the speed of my horse. At last as the sun went down, reluctantly, it seemed to me, for he knew that he would never see such riding again, my ill-spent horse fell with a hollow moan, curled up, gave a spasmodic quiver with his little, nerveless, sawed-off tail and died. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... him off, and he did so, quickly springing to his feet. Doug was on his feet in a twinkling, and rushed upon Dic with uplifted knife. Dic knew that he could not withstand the rush, and thought his hour had come; but the sharp crack of a rifle broke the forest silence, and the knife fell from Doug's nerveless hand, his knees shook under him, his form quivered spasmodically for a moment, and he plunged forward on his face. Dic turned and saw Rita standing back of him, holding Doug's rifle to her shoulder, a tiny curl of blue smoke issuing from the barrel. The girl's face turned ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... With nerveless fingers Peter drew out, not an envelope, but a stiff card. And he stared at the card in the red twilight, and groaned in ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... broke. He laid the cool, delicate, nerveless hand back upon her knee, and rose, for the Sister was folding up her sewing. He looked long after the girlish figure as ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... fact that the other systems of organs are developed in the same way, from tubes formed out of simple layers, did not escape Wolff. The nerveless system, muscular system, and vascular (blood-vessel) system, with all the organs appertaining thereto, are, like the alimentary system, developed out of simple leaf-shaped structures. Hence, Wolff came to the view ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... Because you are nerveless and sluggish and full of forgiveness for all the sins of your life, in thought and in act. You have killed my soul—so you model yourself in remorse, and self-accusation, and penance—[Smiling.] —and with that you ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... heartache and listlessness, a nerveless mood came on him. What was it worth, anyhow-success? Struggle, strife, trampling on someone else. His play crowding out some other poor fellow's hope. The hawk eats the partridge, the partridge eats the flies and bugs, the bugs eat each other, and the hawk, when he ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... open palm. I was conscious as I did so of the extraordinary, appealing helplessness of his hands—instead of being clenched in a death agony as I should have expected they were stretched wide; they looked nerveless, limp, effortless. But when my fingers came to the nearest one—the right hand—I found that it was stiff, rigid, stone-cold. I knew then that Salter Quick had been dead for several hours; had probably been lying there, murdered, all through the ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... scratched nose; then reaching down with deft paw, near the quill-pig's shoulder, he gave a sudden jerk that threw the former over on its back, and before it could recover, the fisher's jaws closed on its ribs, and crushed and tore. The nerveless, almost quilless tail could not harm him there. The red blood flowed and the porcupine lay still. Again and again as he uttered chesty growls the pekan ground his teeth into the warm flesh and shook and worried the unconquerable one he had conquered. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... unexpected. At sight of it the force that had borne her up through the happenings of that day went out of her, and as she stood with the knife and the rope, that she had brought in the hope of cheating the lynchers, dangling from her nerveless hand her helplessness overcame her. Again and again she called to the dead man for help, called to him as she had been accustomed to call when her woman's strength had been unequal ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... was so tired that his legs seemed incapable of support. He wiped the razor blade and put it away with a lax nerveless hand. He realized that he had been again at the point of murder. He had been saved by the narrowest margin in the world. For a moment the fact that he had been saved absorbed him, and then the imminent danger of his position, his weakness, filled him with ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... feet away from me she stood, arrayed in the gauzy dress of the harem, her fingers and slim white arms laden with barbaric jewelry! The light wavered in my suddenly nerveless hand, gleaming momentarily upon bare ankles and golden ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... and the colonel backed up against it for support. The shock of the surprise, the sudden revulsion of feeling, left him nerveless. ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it from her nerveless fingers and caught her supple body as ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... the King's affair," he added with even greater fierceness; so that Pak Chung Chang's silver pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers and clattered ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... French physician was departing, he told Guy that he would not fail to come the next night, as he saw every reason to expect a crisis. Guy sat intently marking every alteration in the worn, flushed, suffering face that rested helplessly on the pillows, and every unconscious movement of the wasted, nerveless limbs stretched out in pain and helplessness, contrasting his present state with what he was when last they parted, in the full pride of health, vigour, and intellect. He dwelt on all that had passed ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... engagement ring, broken in twain. It had slipped from her nerveless finger when they took her to her room. With a gesture of impatience, he picked up the fragments, and threw them, diamond and all, out of the window ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... all; they'll find no helper there, And if—without a head—the body should rebel, Convulsive throes I mock, and nerveless fury quell. Whate'er ensues the Emperor must approve, I shall have done my part, and win his love. Here comes ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... sons of Mexico, and strange her fate; They fight for freedom who were never free; A kingless people for a nerveless state." ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... dwelt somewhat on the characters of Mouton and Fusilier, not only because of their great devotion to the Confederacy, but because there exists a wide-spread belief that the creole race has become effete and nerveless. In the annals of time no breed has produced nobler specimens of manhood than these two; and while descendants of the French colonists remain on the soil of Louisiana, their names and characters should be reverenced as are those of ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... would have laughed to see the patronizing, authoritative air with which Jansoulet encouraged and reassured him: "Be calm, my dear colleague." But the members of the eighth committee did not laugh. They were all, or almost all, of the Sarigue species, two or three being absolutely nerveless, afflicted with partial loss of the power of speech. Such self-assurance, such ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... herself into a chair. Her arms lay nerveless on the table. Her face was hidden in them. But now, overhearing us, or stung by some fresh thought, she sprang to her feet in anguish. Her face twitched, her form seemed to stiffen as she drew herself ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... cold with sick and unreasoning fear. As she gazed wide-eyed at the living confirmation of the statement that "Gum Shoe Tim" was "as cross as a bear," the gentle-hearted Principal took the paper from her nerveless grasp. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... it would not be; my courage was appalled, my arms nerveless. I muttered prayers that my strength might be aided from above. They ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... were upon them as he spoke. Revolvers cracked. Jack Harkness, blonde, curly haired, and of magnificent physique, let his firearm drop as he clapped his hand to a suddenly nerveless right arm. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... certainly do," I said as cheerfully as possible, "and I thank you also as His instrument; but if you would keep me from fainting away like a nerveless woman, I ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... a looking-glass, in which Beatrice's face and Hilda's were both reflected. In one of her weary, nerveless changes of position, Hilda happened to throw her eyes on the glass, and took in both these images at one unpremeditated glance. She fancied—nor was it without horror—that Beatrice's expression, seen aside and vanishing in a moment, had been ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... late, pitifully propped against a stone, the cigarette, he had tried to light to comfort him, dead in his nerveless hand. Tharon had wept and wept for Harkness, for he had been a good comrade, open-hearted and merry. And deep in her soul she harboured dim longings for justice on his ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... line of fire, or would he fail me? Suddenly something touched me on the right temple; it was not like a blow; it was not a shock; for half a second I was conscious. I knew I was hit; knew that the reins had fallen from my nerveless hands, knew that I was lying down upon my horse's back, with my head hanging below his throat. Then all the world went out in one mad whirl. Earth and heaven seemed to meet as if by magic. My horse seemed to rise with me, not ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... Paris in 1763 brought the war to an end. Its course had afforded one more opportunity of simplifying the condition of the fishing industry. The English Ministry, under the nerveless guidance of Lord Bute, omitted to seize it, and the Newfoundland clauses of the Treaty of Utrecht (which had granted to the French fishery and drying rights on the coasts between Cape Bonavista and Point Rich) were confirmed, notwithstanding the fact that the English ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... for the biographer of Milton Samson Agonistes is charged with a pathos, which as the expression of real suffering no fictive tragedy can equal, it must be felt that as a composition the drama is languid, nerveless, occasionally halting, never brilliant. If the date of the composition of the Samson be 1663, this may have been the result of weariness after the effort of Paradise Lost. If this drama were composed in 1667, it would be the author's last poetical effort, and the ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... a cry, coming from no one knew where, which, unearthly in its shrillness and the power it had on the imagination, reverberated through the house and died away in a wail so weird, so thrilling and so prolonged that it gripped not only my own nerveless and weakened heart, but those of the ten strong men congregated below me. The diamond dropped from Mr. Grey's hand, and neither he nor any one else moved to pick it up. Not till silence had come again—a silence ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... burned, her bosom heaved like the sea; her arm bared to the shoulder could have struck a man down. Yet in the midst of her frenzied speech, in full flow, she faltered. Her fists unclenched themselves, her arm dropped nerveless, her eyes sought the ground. Andrew King, pale with rage, sterner than she had ever seen him, stood ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... formidable chimera—John Rex, the forger—was absent, but the two hands, or rather claws—the burglar and the prison-breaker—were present, and the slimly-made, effeminate Crow, if he had not the brains of the master, yet made up for his flaccid muscles and nerveless frame by a cat-like cunning, and a spirit of devilish volatility that nothing could subdue. With such a powerful ally outside as the mock maid-servant, the chance of success was enormously increased. There were one hundred and eighty convicts and but fifty soldiers. If the first ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... resembled their lady's than that of Miss Fulmort, and who made such intolerable blunders, that he bestowed on them more vituperation than, in their opinion, 'he had any call to;' and looked in a passion of despair at the numb, nerveless fingers, once his ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hand trembled under his, then, suddenly nerveless, relaxed. With an effort she lifted her head; their eyes ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... far he saw, approaching the ranch, a single riderless horse. As the animal came nearer and nearer it whinnied on seeing him, and finally changed its course and came directly toward him. Then he saw that there was a man on its back; a man either dead or asleep. His hand hung down nerveless by the horse's shoulder, and swung helplessly to and fro as the animal walked on; the man's head rested on the horse's mane. The horse came up to Sidney, thrusting its nose out to him, whinnying gently, as ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... majority of American women have to give to their household affairs, produce that lack of time that is offered as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the mind blank and nerveless except when ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Gaston, and he heard Filmer breathe heavily. Then Drew lifted his notes to the desk; tried to fix his eyes and attention upon them, failed and gazed helplessly at that one face in the appalling vacancy. Presently the bits of paper fell from his nerveless hand and fluttered ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... stand close to the lamp-post against which the flute-player leaned, but he made no move to open the door. The light flared on his ashen face, showing it curiously apathetic. His instrument dangled from one nerveless hand. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... an arm-chair that stood on one side of the blaze, and made her sit down. Then, stooping, he took one of her nerveless hands and held it closely in ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... I raised her above it. The weight proved too much and she sank again. Again I pulled her to the surface and again she sank. This I did again and again with no avail. She drowned in my very grasp, and at last she dropped from my nerveless hands to leave my sight forever. As if I had not suffered enough, a few moments after I saw some objects whirling around in an eddy which circled around, until, reaching the current again, they floated past me. My God, man, would you believe me? it was ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Rabecque's hand suddenly gone nerveless—nerveless with sheer joy, all else forgotten in the perception that there, safe and sound, stood ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... day with me she took no notice of my presence. Then, the cart empty, she fumbled for matches and lighted a short clay pipe, pressing down the burning surface of the tobacco with a calloused and apparently nerveless thumb. The hands were noteworthy. They were large- knuckled, sinewy and malformed by labour, rimed with callouses, the nails blunt and broken, and with here and there cuts and bruises, healed and healing, such as are common ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... Wotton, apparently nerveless beneath his absolute immobility, let them out—and slammed the door behind them with such promptitude as to give cause for the suspicion that he was a fraud, a sham, beneath his icy exterior desperately afraid lest the house be stormed ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... jarred down a picture that was hung insecurely, and it fell with a crash at Miss Burton's side. Was it the shock of the falling picture upon unprepared and overstrained nerves, or what was it that produced the instantaneous change in the joyous-appearing maiden? Her hands dropped nerveless from the keys. So great was the pallor that swept over her face that it suggested to he artist the sudden extinguishment of a lamp. She bowed her head and trembled a moment and then escaped ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Her face was positively deathly—lips, cheeks, all alike gray-white, save for the purple hollows under both eyes. One moment I was taking stock of these things, as a doctor might; the next I was on my knees and kissing the nerveless hand at her side, all worn and bruised and stained as it was from her ceaseless strivings of the past week. I knew then that, for me, though I should live a hundred years and Constance should never deign to speak to me again, there was but ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... in her ear, "we can get through to the side aisle now—that's almost clear. Come, Eva, buck up—buck up, I say, or we'll never get out of this!" for Eva, terrified, bruised, and half fainting, was now hanging limp and nerveless ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... of his establishment, was for him, in particular, the seal and attestation of his extraordinary grandeur of mind. His empire dissolved after he had departed; his dominions lost their cohesion, and slipped away from the nerveless hands which succeeded; a sufficient evidence—were there no other—that all the vast resources of the Frankish throne, wielded by imbecile minds, were inadequate to maintain that which, in the hands of a Charlemagne, they had availed to conquer ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... door, and when I went, I found Inspector Johnstone had arrived, and brought with him one of his plainclothes men. You will understand how pleased I was to see there would be this addition to our watch; for he looked a tough, nerveless man, brainy and collected; and one I should have picked to help us with the horrible job I felt pretty sure we should ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... which a seldom-erring critic of his own day, not too generously given, vouchsafed to him. Up to his time the blank verse line always, and the semi-couplet in heroics, or member of the more complicated stanza usually, were either stiff or nerveless. Compared with his own work and with the work of his contemporaries and followers who learnt from him, they are like a dried preparation, like something waiting for the infusion of blood, for the inflation of living breath. Marlowe came, and the old wooden versification, the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... need I care for it? Nothing seems of value to me where you are not—I am nerveless, senseless, hopeless without you. My inspiration—such ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... were concerned, proved, long ago, a failure; first lapsing into Fourierism, and dying, as it well deserved, for this infidelity to its own higher spirit. Where once we toiled with our whole hopeful hearts, the town paupers, aged, nerveless, and disconsolate, creep sluggishly afield. Alas, what faith is requisite to bear up against such results of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... could see a clear picture of himself in the gutter with bloated face and bloodshot eyes a decade hence? Or what boy, slyly smoking one of his early cigarettes, would proceed if he could see his haggard face and nerveless hand a few years farther along? What spendthrift would throw away his money on vanities could he vividly see himself in penury and want in old age? What prodigal anywhere who, if he could take a good look at himself sin-stained ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... Being a quart bottle and reasonably full of liquid, the bartender's chin came down with a chug on the bar. Then he slumped quietly to the floor behind the bar. The sixshooter relinquished by his nerveless fingers remained on top of the bar ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... And such nerveless or nervy creatures as they were! From the top of a cliff, one day, I watched a band of them go down a nearly perpendicular wall. I could not follow, though I did go part way down to where the wall bulged outward. There ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... that his eyes brought to his brain the truth.... This was not John Schuyler. It could not be John Schuyler. It was not possible. John Schuyler was at least a man—not a palsied, pallid, shrunken, shriveled caricature of something that had once been human.... John Schuyler had hands—not nerveless, shaking talons.... This sunken-eyed, sunken- cheeked, wrinkled thing was not John Schuyler—this thing that crawled, quiveringly—from the loose, pendulous lips of which came mirth that was more bitter to hear than the sobs of ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... Truth to dawn; but, at last, when she fancied she saw the first rays silvering the night, and looked up hopefully, it proved one of many ignes-fatui which had flashed across her path, and she saw that it was Goethe, uplifted as the prophet of the genuine religion. The book fell from her nerveless fingers; she closed her eyes, and groaned. It was all "confusion, worse confounded." She could not for her life have told what she believed, much less what she did not believe. The landmarks of earlier ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... were quite serious. He had genuine poetic feeling, but little talent. In trying to reproduce Spenser's richness of imagery and the soft modulation of his verse, he succeeds only in becoming tediously ornate. His stanzas are nerveless, though not unmusical. His college exercise, "The Nativity," 1736, is a Christmas vision which comes to the shepherd boy Thomalin, as he is piping on the banks of Isis. It employs the pastoral machinery, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... met and crossed, throwing little chips of metal from the walls with snapping sounds and going through flesh with sounds like soft tappings. It was over within seconds, the last Gern down and one man still standing beside him, the blond and nerveless Lake. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... she could not arouse him, she pulled the relaxed and nerveless form to the lounge, but when she attempted to lift the limp figure to the couch she found it almost more than all her woman's strength could accomplish. Luther stirred and muttered, but could not ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... lifted suddenly from a dungeon into the sunlit world. I was weak. I caught hold of the horn, settled down nerveless in the saddle, and looked around me. The cattle were streaming past in two long lines for the shore, led by Ump and the Aberdeen-Angus, now half-way up the north arm ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... trifling. The men lost the proper and muscular jerk with which they once made the waters foam and the oars bend. Their whole bodies swung with an awkward and laboured motion. Their arms appeared to be nerveless; their faces became haggard, their persons emaciated, their spirits wholly sunk; nature was so completely overcome, that from mere exhaustion they frequently fell asleep during their painful and ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... was on the wretch's throat; but there was no occasion to use force: he recognized me, and nerveless, paralyzed, sank on the floor incapable of motion much less of resistance, and could only gaze in my face in dumb ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... to move about feverishly, fearing that her resolution might fail. The key of the chest was in a drawer in her dresser, hidden beneath a pile of yellowed garments. Her hands, so long nerveless, were alive and sentient now. When she opened the chest, the scent of lavender and rosemary, long since dead, struck her like ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the roots of the Medicean influence were too widely intertwined with private interests, the jealousies of classes and of factions were too inveterate, for any large and wholesome form of popular government to be universally acceptable. Besides, the burghers had been reduced to a nerveless equality of servitude, in which ambition and avarice took the place of patriotism; while the corruption of morals, fostered by the Medici for the confirmation of their own authority, was so widely spread as to justify ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... result of a sleepless night, grew whiter still, and her tired eyes filled with dread. She did not have to recall their conversation of the night before, for it had not left her mind, but her thoughts went back to a former conversation in which he had ridiculed the bandits. The newspaper fell from her nerveless fingers, and she left the table, her breakfast untouched, stealing miserably to her room, to escape her ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... is one of loss to England. The brilliant French conquests of Henry V (SS289, 290) slipped from the nerveless hands of his son, leaving France practically independent. The people's power to vote had been restricted (S297). The House of Commons had ceased to be democratic even in a moderate degree. Its members were all property holders elected by property holders (S297). Cade's ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... that, fresh from carnage, quailed not alone to face The unfathomed depths of Darkness, the solitudes of Space! Strange! the smile of scorn, while nerveless dropped the sword-arm from the sting, On the death that scowled at distance, on the closing murder-ring. Strange! no crimson stain on conscience from the hand in gore imbrued! But Death haunts the death-dealer; blood ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... from her nerveless hands. Constance felt an arm grasp her tightly. For a moment a chill ran over her at being caught in the nefarious work of breaking and entering a dwelling-house at night. The hand was Anita's, but the voice was ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... message, 'I need you,' went across the continent, and brought the ready response, 'coming on the wings of the wind.' It was Judge St. Claire who wrote to Harold, for Jerrie's nerveless fingers could not grasp the pen, and she could only dictate what she wished the judge ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... paper slipped from her nerveless fingers, her head dropped unconsciously upon the table before her, and she knew nothing more until, long afterward, when she awoke from her swoon to find her lamp gone out and the room growing cold, while her heart felt as if it had been paralyzed ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... But the sinister influence of to-day saps his will and renders him infirm; each new to-day is wasted amid thoughts of visionary to-morrows which take all the power from his soul; and, when he is nerveless, powerless, tired, discontented with the very sight of the sun, he finds suddenly that his feet are on the edge of the gulf, and he knows that there ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the house, bolted the door, returned with trembling limbs to the room above and threw himself down in his chair blanched and nerveless. They who have experienced the minutes when a well-loved one hangs between life and death can alone know what he suffered. It was now that the fleeting poverty of the ideals he had been following became visible. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... not be better than either to start up at once and shake the disgustful burden from me. But the latter suggestion was at once abandoned, because of the assurance I felt that it would prove fatal; impeded by the heavy coils of the creature, weak and nerveless from excitement, I could not escape its fangs. Again, therefore, I spoke with the hollow but distinct accents which arise from the throat when the speaker is afraid to move a muscle:—"Kulassi Chiragh!"—Lascar, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... was interesting of itself, but the attention of Sterry was riveted by the figure of a man lying motionless on the ground, only a few paces in front of where the door had been. His nerveless right hand still grasped the Winchester with which he had evidently made a sturdy ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... maybe you won't be so smart!" sneered Len. "Let go my horse!" he cried, roughly, as he swung the animal to one side. But no force was needed; as Dave's nerveless hand fell away from the bridle. He ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... reason were obvious). To show his confidence in me. (Napoleon's jaw does not exactly drop; but its hinges become nerveless. The Lieutenant proceeds with honest indignation.) And I was worthy of his confidence: I brought them all back honorably. But would you believe it?—when I trusted him with MY pistols, and MY ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... all his own, hoping indeed to tune his tongue one day to something less uncouth. None can sympathize more cordially than the writer does with Durtal in his horror of unauthorized devotions, of insufferable vernacular litanies, of nerveless and sickly hymns, of interminable "acts of consecration" void of a single definite idea, more especially when these things are brought into the very sanctuary itself, with stole and cope and every apparent endeavour to fix the responsibility on ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Christian ranks some soldiers whose hands are too nerveless or too full of worldly trash to grasp the sword which they have received, much less to strike home with it at any of the evils that are devastating their own lives or darkening the world. The feebleness of the Christian conflict with evil, in all its forms, whether ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... strokes grew slower and slower, and gradually ceased, Walter's eyes slowly closed, and he sank down unconscious. His paddle fell from his nerveless hand and floated away on the stagnant water just as a dark, shapeless mass crept out of a bunch of reeds and struck the canoe with a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... her strength after the birth of her child. She lay nerveless and white, so that her husband, her mother, the Colonel, all became alarmed. The celebrated accoucheur who had attended ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... pitiful creature leapt to swift and terrible action, for at one bound, as it seemed, he had reached the chair where hung the officer's greatcoat, whipped forth and cocked the pistols and with these murderous things levelled in his hands, crept upon the sleepers. The jug slipped from my nerveless hold and, roused by the crash of its fall, the man Tom lifted his head only to stare dazedly into the nearest pistol muzzle and the awful scowling face behind it; while the highwayman, reaching out his second pistol, awoke Mr. Vokes with a smart rap on the crown, whereupon, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol |
