"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now—for once he was devoting all his faculties to tense and absorbed concentration on what another man could tell, leaving reflections and conclusions on what he heard until all had ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... and placing himself before it, uttered a hollow, low, long-drawn-out howl, when the bones came compactly together. He then modulated his howl, when the bones knit together and became tense. The third howl brought sinews upon them, and the fourth, flesh. He then turned his head upwards, looking into the sky, and gave a howl, which caused every one in the village to startle, and the ground itself to tremble, at which ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... his eyes while the doctor counted his pulse. During the ensuing silence it struck Esther that both women were more worried than was necessary. The Frenchwoman in particular watched with an air of tense apprehension. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... thud-thud of the screw that had pounded for many weeks. It was late; so late that most of the ship's lights were extinguished. But all through her was a feeling of pulsating life, of unrest, of a kind of tense excitement, of long-pent expectation. There were low voices everywhere; feet paced the decks; along the port railings on each deck soldiers were clustered thickly, looking out across the grey, tossing sea to a winking light that flashed and twinkled ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... end he would share the fate of the great majority and attain only mediocrity; having missed that one great blinding shaft of pain or joy that might have stabbed him into tense, pulsing life, and spurred him up the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... Ironworker with the irresistible attraction of antipathy. The verro stood silent and as if abstracted among his admirers, who formed a circle around him. He seemed not to see the others, fixing his eyes on Margalida with a tense expression, as if he would conquer her with this stare which inspired fear in men. When the Little Chaplain, with the enthusiasm of youth, approached the verro, he deigned to smile, seeing in the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mug to his lips, mouthing the stinging liquid in dull despair. Only, instead of bringing nausea with it, the stuff settled his stomach, cleared his head, with an after glow with which he managed to relax from the tense state of endurance which filled his hours ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense crowd informed of ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... Friedrich finds that Loudon was there last night,—preterite tense, alas; the question now being, Where is he!" In fact, Loudon had written yesterday to Daun (Letter still extant, "Sommerfeld, July 31st"), That "being swift and light," consisting of horse for most part, "he may probably effect ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in a sort of tense whisper. He was mortally afraid Nan would become conscious, and see what was going on about her. But he might have spared himself the trouble. She was absolutely blind to the crowd that had gathered about them, and all the commendation she was aware of was that which ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... matter?" she inquired, vaguely troubled by the tense stillness in the attitude of both ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... gazing attentively down on the bed of Oriental poppies at the foot of the steps, and though he had taken no part in the conversation, something in his back, in the rigid look of his shoulders, as though his muscles were drawn and tense, made me say suddenly: ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... wearied by personal labor, as in earlier stages of industry, it is to-day the unremitting, tense concentration of watching the machine, the necessary rapidity of motion, ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... From thy forehead made bare, From the gleam of thy bow-bearing hand? Hast thou set not thy right hand again to the string, With the back-bowed horns bent sharp for a spring 1410 And the barbed shaft drawn, Till the shrill steel sing and the tense nerve ring That pierces the heart of the dark with dawn, O huntsman, O king, When the flame of thy face hath twilight in chase As a hound hath a blood-mottled fawn? He has glanced into golden the grey sea-strands, And the clouds are ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a trifle from its first course, fluttered to and fro an instant, then neared a woman, who sat listlessly by herself, her arms resting upon those of her chair and her eyes, dark and sad, fastened upon the far horizon. There was a tense quiet in her attitude that seemed to cover something ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... followed closely the original tale. The entire music was composed by Edmond Rickett, who wrote melodies for a number of London Christmas pantomimes. The scenery, by Maxfield Parrish, was composed of six stage pictures, simple, harmonious, and beautiful, with tense blue skies, a dim suggestion of the forest, and the quaint architecture of the House of the Seven Dwarfs. Pictures in old nursery books were the models for the scenes. Because of the simplicity of the plot and the few characters, Snow White could be played ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... shoulders as though she had carried baskets of fruit or washing upon the crown of her pate since her youth; her glorious bosom was like a bed of lotus buds in the southern wind; she moved like a deer, or a snake, or a bacchanalian dancer, as you will; but in any case in a way which in the present tense caused the Principal to mourn in secret, and in the future brought the condemnation of women and the eyes of men full ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... staring eyes, all her fear turned to anger at these men who dared appear in public after the cowardly attack they had made upon her. She darted in front of them and blocked their way, her eyes blazing and her body tense. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... waiting," was the tense reply. "We shall know when they find the Revenge. They are not apt to miss her, with a compass in the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... one hand and to the commercial interest on the other. The time had now arrived for the Republican nominee to proceed from Springfield to Washington. The journey was circuitous in order to enable Lincoln to speak at a number of places. Never before, probably, had the Northern people felt such tense strain as at that moment; never had they looked to an incoming President with such anxious doubt. Would he prevent war? Or, if he could not do that, would he be able to extricate the country—Heaven alone knew how!—without a terrible ordeal? Since his election, Lincoln had remained quietly ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... cannot tell it always by the form of the word. The main difference is, that the subjunctive has no -s as the ending of the present tense, third person singular; as, ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... according to Merrill, had the Parisinus at his disposal, has corrected two obvious misprints, made an inevitable change in the tense of a verb—with or without the help of the ancient book—and introduced from that book one unfortunate reading which we find in the ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... in among its tangled fellows; if the men agree, ten boat-hooks are thrust into it. Then for a moment the poles stand out from the log like the strings of a harp; a mighty "Ho!" from the gang, a short, tense haul, and it moves a trifle forward. A fresh grip, another shout, and forward again. It is like watching half a score of ants about a twig. And at last the freed log slides out and away ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... bottom of his heart, he bowed ever so slightly to the tense figure on the step and strode away ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... descendants in a by-gone century, as an immutable basis of constitutional interpretation, was met by loud and indignant protest from the North. The people and press of that section seized upon the salient phrase of the statement, and applying it in the present tense, accused the Chief-Justice with saying that "a negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect." This was certainly a distortion of his exact words and meaning; yet the exaggeration was more than half excusable, in view of the literal and unbending ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... earth was shrouded in darkness, and the bulk of it trembled in sympathy with the death throes of its Maker, the spirit world also received the imprint of the terrible event on Calvary as for a moment the whole spiritual creation lay in tense expectancy. The usual occupations were suspended. Speech became low and constrained. Songs ended abruptly, and laughter ceased. There were no audible sobs, neither sighing. Bird and beast were stilled, ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... the present tense, lends in the conditional mood, keeps you in the subjective, and ruins ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... his business: his slowness to speak created an atmosphere. There was no jest in his voice or manner. The air grew tense. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... patient finish, the complete thought given to every detail in the works of the greatest painters, the accumulated light and depth, the abounding life, with the hasty, jagged, contemporary manner of painting, straining into harshness from want of patience, tense and angular from want of real vitality, exhausted from the absence of inward repose. They will comment for themselves upon the pessimism to which so many surrender themselves, taking with them their religious art, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... stood in the gateway leaning on his rifle, his coonskin cap thrust back on his brown hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the misty air, for there had ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... astonishment, and when he had finished with the tense frown which involuntarily accompanied the effort of stopping the horse dead within its own length, his face softened into a beautiful smile. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... Cavaliers. Words, it was said, may easily be misunderstood by a dull man. They may be easily misconstrued by a knave. What was spoken metaphorically may be apprehended literally. What was spoken ludicrously may be apprehended seriously. A particle, a tense, a mood, an emphasis, may make the whole difference between guilt and innocence. The Saviour of mankind himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no acts to impeach, had been called in question for words spoken. False witnesses had suppressed a syllable which would have made it clear that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The muscles are all lax - the head is drooping, the arms are closing in around the face, the wings are folding, the knees are bending - and she too will soon sink to slumber with the world in her arms. What a fine contrast of feeling between the tense young "Sun" and relaxed ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... narratives of travel as the histories, traditions, romances, and stories of places. They seek to tell stories at the places where the events occurred and amid the associations of the events that still remain. The Zigzag Club go seeking what is old rather than what is new, and thus change the past tense of history to ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... never got the credit I deserved for the serene wisdom of that suggestion. All through lunch, all through the long afternoon until it was Susan's bedtime, her obedience to my command saved over and over again a tense situation. To the guest in her house Barbara was the perfection of courtesy. But beneath the mask of convention raged fury with Liosha. A woman can seldom take a queer social animal for what he is and suck the honey from his flowers of unconventionality. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... foolish. There is always some pleasure at hand; seize it, and at no time will you be without pleasure. You cannot change the past, but your spirit at this moment will in some measure shape your future. Live life, therefore, in the present tense; do not miss ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... faulty tendons when he was five and proved a Spartan patient. He stood now waiting for Mr. Baggs. Other victims had reported that it was Levi's custom to use a strap from his own waist when he beat a boy, and Abel, even at this tense moment, wondered whether he would ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... down into your ears" was His forceful prelude on this occasion, in Galilee. Then followed the reiterated prediction, spoken in part in the present tense as though already begun in fulfilment: "The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day." We read with some surprize that the apostles still failed to understand. Luke's comment ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... ready for launching there comes a moment of tense excitement before the dogshores are knocked away and she slides down the ways. In the case of a ship this excitement is shared by many thousands, who have assembled to acclaim the birth of a perfected ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... and white and tearless, stood Rachel. I was almost afraid of the child as I looked at her. She turned her great eyes upon me dumbly, with so exactly Bronson's expression in them that all at once I understood her. I knelt down beside her, and gathering her little tense frame all up in my arms, I began whispering to her. The tears rolled down her cheeks, and soon she was crying hysterically. Bronson came bounding upstairs at the sound, but she seized me more tightly around the neck and held me chokingly. I motioned ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... elderly warrior picked up a stone and handed it to the dandy with an expressive gesture. Instead of obeying he shook his head despairingly, and an ominous growl came from the assemblage. Again Donald looked at Christie, whose face was now tense and drawn, as though he ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... forms all of the distinctions of mood and tense, person and number, found in the English, and form their participles, and are changed into verbal or participial nouns; and these modifications are for, the most ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... been proved satisfactory, the Master rapped for order. Silence fell. The men settled down to listen, in tense expectancy. Some took chairs, others occupied the divan, still others—for whom there were no seats—stood ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... last night; ten fifteen to ten seventeen. We got the night long distance operator out of bed, and she confirmed it; Rivers took the call himself. He gets a lot of long distance calls in the evenings; she knew his voice." He corrected himself, shifting to the past tense and glancing, as he did, at the chalk outline on the floor, now scuffed by many feet, and the dried bloodstains. "You say this puts Gresham in ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... startled tiger, with not a muscle moving, he peered anxiously into the darkness, his arm half extended, scarcely venturing to breathe. There came a plain, undisguised rustling in the grass,—some prowling coyote, probably; then his tense muscles immediately relaxed, and he cursed himself for being so startled, yet he continued to grasp the "45" in his right hand, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... swarthy face grew sallow with fury. His eyes blazed, and there was a tense vibrato in his voice as ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... tense silence for a minute. Through all the bewildering and overwhelming thoughts that were crashing through Broussard's brain, but one thing was clear and unshakable, the deathless loyalty that a son owes ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... tense arms more limply about his neck. She had believed him absolutely when he said ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... have been nearly two hundred men, women and children lining the crest of the bluff, and speaking in low, tense voices when they spoke at all, and straining their eyes for the next sight of the coming courier or the swift dash of the intercepting Sioux. Well out now, and riding at the gallop, Blake and his half dozen, widely separating so as to cover much of the ground, were still in view, and Dade and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... Observatory. I was again alone. A reaction of despondency overwhelmed me, and it was coincident with a hemorrhage, which left me weak and nervous. I resumed my watching at the station. I seemed to anticipate a new message. I endured peculiar and excruciating excitement, a tense suspense of desire and prevision that deprived me of appetite and sleep, and accelerated the ravages of the disease, that now, victorious over my weakened, nervous force, began the last ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... retorted, in a tense voice. "I've no doubt she's as slipshod—as easy-going, I should say, as her father. The idea of her not waiting for advice from her relatives before she took such a step and came to a strange land uninvited; but she's our flesh and blood, Calvin, and she's in her teens yet. What are you ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... upon the porch with the faint tracing of a frown upon her smooth forehead, and with that slight tightening of the lips which to her family meant determination; disapproval sometimes, tense ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... way to ruining himself and his home. The children were yet young, and depended on the breadwinner. William gave her the sense of relief, providing her at last with someone to turn to if Morel failed. But the tense atmosphere of the room on these waiting ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... however, was that, seated beside his desk, in an easy chair, was a striking looking woman, not exactly young, but of an age that is perhaps more interesting than youth, certainly more sophisticated. She, too, I noticed, had a tense, excited expression on her face. As Kennedy and I entered she had looked us ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... swathed in lustrous gold—the chariot of the goddess herself. The awful splendour of the scene tended to depress one and make the task more trying. I have never felt more nervous than I did in that ghostly light in the tense silence, surrounded by the hidden horror of fathomless depths. All was covered with a uniform layer of snow, growing deeper and heavier at every step. I was ahead and went through eight times in about four miles. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... will proceed to the evidences by which I propose to try to prove its soundness." Wilson took up several of his strips of glass. When the audience recognized these familiar mementos of Pudd'nhead's old time childish "puttering" and folly, the tense and funereal interest vanished out of their faces, and the house burst into volleys of relieving and refreshing laughter, and Tom chirked up and joined in the fun himself; but Wilson was apparently not disturbed. He arranged his records on the table ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stage that the players sat up and knew beyond peradventure that big hands were out. Though their features showed nothing, each man was beginning unconsciously to tense. Each man strove to appear his natural self, and each natural self was different. Hal ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the red-hot energy which underlay Holmes's phlegmatic exterior when one saw the sudden change which came over him from the moment that he entered the fatal apartment. In an instant he was tense and alert, his eyes shining, his face set, his limbs quivering with eager activity. He was out on the lawn, in through the window, round the room, and up into the bedroom, for all the world like a dashing foxhound drawing a cover. In the bedroom he made ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as to direction. A voice from overhead or broken by echoing obstacles does not readily betray its source. Finally she stood up and listened once more intently—her attitude full of tense earnestness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... now," he exclaimed under his breath, tense and rigid with the vast futile effort of his will. "Come to me now, now. Don't you hear me, Angele? ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... out that all other sounds have lost their significance. One seems to have become all ears—to have no sense of sight or touch or taste or smell. All seem to have become merged in the sense of hearing. The very air itself seems tense with listening. Only the occasional rattle of a machine gun breaks the stillness. ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... woman—just as other women, just as other women." Her voice sounded like a moan. "I thought myself different, stronger—perhaps worse than other women. I was wrong. Oh, Bertie! cannot you see that she loves you as I loved you long ago—oh, so long ago? And someone has said that there is no past tense in love! No, no! she does not love you as I loved you—guiltily; no, her love is the love that purifies, that exalts. She loves you, and she waits for you to tell her that you love her. You love ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... a stark pause. Abner stiffened, grew tense, as one becomes at the moment of bursting into dynamic action, but he did not stir. Scattergood was surprised, but he was more surprised by Abner's next words. "I hain't goin' to half kill you on account ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... of September Christopher began to relax his long hours of work and the tense look on ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... other places. Donnegan turned and saw in the shadow and about the edges of the room a host of drawn, tense faces and burning eyes. Never while they lived would ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... wasn't afeared of you at all, 'cept fer what you mought find out. You couldn't do no harm to nobody without a gun, and I knowed thar wasn't no still up that crick. I know—I knowed whar it was." Hale noticed the quick change of tense. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... tightly pressed, opened her prayer book. Alison's lips were slightly parted as she gazed about her, across the aisle. Her experience of the Sunday before, deep and tense as it had been, seemed as nothing compared to this; the presence of all these people stimulated her inexpressibly, fired her; and she felt the blood pulsing through her body as she contrasted this gathering with the dignified, scattered congregation she had known. She scarcely recognized ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... period reflect the temper of two very different classes who were engaged in constant literary Party warfare. In the tense years which preceded the Literature Revolution the American people separated into two hostile parties: the Tories, or Loyalists, who supported the mother country; and the Whigs, or Patriots, who insisted on the right of the colonies to manage their own affairs, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of intimacy means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust. One might call it a social difference, for after all, the common socius of us all is the great universe whose children we are. If materialistic, we must be suspicious of this socius, cautious, tense, on guard. If spiritualistic, we may give way, embrace, and keep no ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... the back is the next region treated. The patient lies prone, folding the arms under the head; a firm pillow is put under the epigastric region, so as to the better relax the back muscles, which are too tense when a person lies flat. Beginning from the occiput, both hands stroke firmly and rapidly downward and outward to the spines of the scapulae, at first lightly, then with increasing force. Then the whole back is vigorously rubbed—scrubbed one might call ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... all that I need to know. Common decency, it seems to me, might have suggested to you that you leave my child out of the list of women you have degraded. Since it has not, I merely wish to say to you"—and Mr. Haguenin's face was very tense and white—"that the relationship between you and me is ended. The one hundred thousand dollars you have indorsed for me will be arranged for otherwise as soon as possible, and I hope you will return to me the stock ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... so full of apparent good will, brought a quick flush of contrition to Mary's cheeks. She experienced a swift spasm of regret for her bitter suspicion of Marjorie. Her tense face softened. Why not unburden herself to her chum now and find relief from her torture ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... her to him—crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, conscious ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... For one tense moment I thought the General would burst. By an effort he pulled himself together, however, and shouted to my troops in a voice ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... and thanked him for his expression, but there were things in the past which were not so easily wiped from the memory—especially a chafed ring around his left wrist, where the sheriff's iron had galled him when he had fretted against it during the tense moments ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... frost, your pulses beat, your cheeks glow, and a faint dew upon your forehead beneath your cap tells you that you are thoroughly warm. How the blood dances through the veins! How the eyes sparkle! How tense is every nerve! How strong each muscle! The ice looks like steel. Your skates are steel, and your legs feel the same as stroke, whish! stroke, whish! stroke! stroke! stroke! stroke! away you go, gathering power, velocity, confidence, delight, at the ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... streaming in at the window was to her eyes like the glare of the sun at noonday: the ticking of the clock on the wall fell on her ears, each tick like a sharply pointed hammer seeming to bruise the nerve. A keen thrill ran like a knife through her tense frame when the infant stirred and moaned in his sleep. The lion roused himself in an instant, and fixing his eyes upon the bed came towards it arching his back and yawning. He rubbed himself against the bedstead and stood for a moment so near that Mrs. V. could have touched him with her ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... a tense, strained way, as if trying to preserve her calm. She sat down at their little dressing-table and began to brush ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... able to see very little, so carefully do animals conceal themselves. In the night they emerge, and in the morning and evening there is a deafening din of insect life. But at noonday there is a soft and solemn hush, and we are tense with curiosity to know all that is going on in those mysterious forest depths and up among the tree-tops, so close but so impossible ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... into his stiff damask napkin, holding a fistful of it tense against bringing it down in a china-shivering bang. Then, with carefully spaced words, "If I didn't think, Bleema, that you are crazy for ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... internal condition in the living creature that is the most important single link in instinct. In the non-mating season the sight of the female has no effect on the male. But periodically his internal organs become tense with procreative cells; these change his coenaesthesia; that starts desire, and desire sets going the mechanisms of search, courtship, the sexual act and the care of the female while she is gravid. All instinctive acts have back of ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... and endurance. She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle undersized, but shapely and sinewy. The vast crowd that without much diminution, though with intermittent changes, had watched her from start to finish, began to grow tense with the approach to the end, and the last hour the enthusiasm was overwhelming. Wave upon wave of cheering followed every footstep of the plucky girl, rising to a storm of exultation as the final ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... me showing 'em the way through the Narrers to ketch the Shark!" he growled; and he kept on his way till the imperative mood present tense was tried, and then he made for the side of the cutter, to receive what was to him a regular knock-down blow, or, as he put it, a wind taking him on a very ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... hazel bushes on the other side of the enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his eyes began to flash. He stopped and stretched out his neck as if he were going to yawn, raised his upper lip and showed his teeth. Then he galloped across ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... I grow up I'll have no nurse, Nor yet a governess; And lessons will not bother me When I grow up, I guess. I'll pay no heed to proper nouns, Nor yet to mood nor tense"— Here nurse put in: "When you grow up Let's hope ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown
... companions, are not so much adapted to the reading as to the writing of Latin. For instance, I remember (we will suppose) this sequence of 'tango tetigi' from the 'As in P.' Now, if I am reading Latin I meet either with the tense 'tango,' or the tense 'tetigi.' In the former case, I have no difficulty; for there is as yet no irregularity: and therefore it is impertinent to offer assistance: in the latter case I do find a difficulty, for, according to the models of verbs which I have ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... On the way they encounter various characters, some good and honourable, and others very much the reverse. Finally they arrive and set to work seeking for gold. Of course there are more adventures and tense situations, as you would ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... to him," Laura resumed, with the complacency of one who saw a goodly portion of the festival she was enjoying still before her. "I was going to say, Mr. Pericles had poor Mr. Pole in his power; has him, would be the correcter tense. And Wilfrid, as you may have heard, had really grossly insulted him, even to the extent of maltreating him—a poor foreigner—rich foreigner, if you like! but not capable of standing against a strong young man in wrath. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at home: He saw the hunter through the fence. "My friend," said he, "please wait; I'll be with you a moment hence, And fetch our porter of the gate." This porter was a dog immense, That left to wolves no future tense. Suspicion gave our Wolf a jog— It might not be so safely tamper'd. "My service to your porter dog," Was his reply, as off he scampered. His legs proved better than his head, And saved him life to ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... of the past tense, unintentional as it had been, told the story to the woman at once. "He is dead," she said. Then he took both her hands in his and looked into her face without speaking a word. And she gazed at him with fixed eyes, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... was cooler, steadier, now. The first great strain had subsided. He was cool, tense, now—though not a whit less determined ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... that's the reason I told you to take your seat, and left him in the corner. Remember that you are a stranger in the place, and they take more notice of what you do, so you must be careful. Now let's have our conjugations. Give me the verb 'to be,' potential mood, past perfect tense." ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... comes to some of us just once, but to all of us it comes. I stood with its spell upon me. Then I heard my voice, tense but ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... rose—with eyeballs tense, And swollen frontal veins: To all his powers of eloquence He gave the ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... dozen men in evening clothes were gathered watching with intent faces the spinning wheel. There was no money on the table, nothing but piles of chips of various denominations. Another thing that surprised me as I looked was that the tense look on the faces of the players was anything but the feverish, haggard gaze I had expected. In fact, they were sleek, well-fed, typical prosperous New-Yorkers rather inclined to the noticeable in dress and carrying their ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... his face pale but fixed in a stony calm. Looking at neither judge nor audience, but straight at his accuser, with eyes that were no longer the eyes that had dreamed upon the palms, so great and black they were and searching, he said, in a clear, tense voice, "I go to my death. It is useless to speak, for you have condemned me. But I cite you, Don Alonzo Morelos, to appear beside me at the bar of God, one year from my death-day, and testify how ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... There was a moment's tense silence while they told the victim what they had come for, and while the light of welcome in Stephen Marshall's eyes melted and changed into lightning. A dart of it went with a searching gleam out into the hall, and seemed to recognize Courtland as he stood idly smiling, ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... peace for a few minutes, coughing once or twice impatiently. He suspected that the extraordinary nature of this last tale, combined with the use of the future tense, had given rise to a taciturnity so unexpected in the warrior king. He therefore asked if Vikram the Brave would not like to hear another ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... and muscle was tense with expectation. The music of the hounds grew fainter. "Evidently circling again," I mused. I was getting to be quite a huntsman, and chuckled at how David Crocketty my ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... too dreadful, Jack," he said, in a low, shaking voice. "I see they mean it. There can be no possible doubt of that now." Then suddenly the note of his voice changed. It became tense, vibrating, eager. "What's that?" he said, and again, "What's that?" and ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... the quick assurance. "First I go to my cabin to mak' ready. In the morning I come here early an' say the au revoir. Then I go an' fin' M'sieu' Tom. You are satisfy?" His shrewd black eyes sought the approval of the trio of tense faces ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... interesting. Nearly everybody in this gallery, in fact, is of the interesting sort. At once it is apparent that there is nothing of the perfunctory here. Art is vital. Art is earnest. The atmosphere is tense. The young women are clad in a manner giving much freedom to the movement of their bodies. They walk with a stride. Their clothes are not of the mode of the Avenue, but they have—how shall I say? To twist what Whistler said of his model: Character, character is what these ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... disrepute. He resented the injustice of this, and all his old hatred of the law revived. Yet despite all logic of justice as against law—he could see Gary's hand clutching against his chest, his staring eyes, and the red ooze starting through those tense fingers—Pete reasoned that had he not been so skilled and quick with a gun, he would be in Gary's place now. As it was, he was alive and had a good ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... repeated, and, then, if Wapi could have understood, he would have noted the tense pallor of her lovely face and the look of a great fear that was away back in the staring blue ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... us embodied in the shape of a fidelity without fear and without reproach. Nearing the supreme moment of his life the Prince could only have had the feeling that it was about to end. He answered the questions put to him clearly, concisely—with the most profound indifference. After all those tense months of action, to talk was a weariness to him. But he concealed it, lest his foes should suspect in his manner the apathy of discouragement or the numbness of a crushed spirit. The details of his conduct could have no importance one way or another; with his thoughts these ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... tense, suggesting that an act is complete, has a present sense in Arabic and must be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... non-religious. Their language hasn't instilled in them a predisposition to think of everything as the result of an action performed by an agent. And they have no definite parts of speech; any word can be used as any part of speech, depending on context. Tense is applied to words used as nouns, not words used as verbs; there are four tenses—spatial-temporal present, things here-and-now; spatial present and temporal remote, things which were here at some other time; spatial remote and temporal present, things existing now somewhere ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... grow.' The whole is cast into the form of history, and to begin the description with a future tense is not only an error in grammar but gratuitously introduces an incongruity. The word rendered 'tender plant' means a sucker, and 'root' probably would more properly be taken as a shoot from a root, the tree having been felled, and nothing left but the stump. There is here, then, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... forever making the ball imitate or caricature humanity, or beguiling the players to act like solemn automata. For children are usually quicker than grown-ups to see these droll resemblances. I came by degrees to like the game's variety, its tense excitement, its beauty of posture and curve. And before long I vaguely felt what I later learned consciously: that tennis is a sure revealer of character. Three sets with a man suffice to give one ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... "I don't think I'll croak you," and he slipped the revolver into his pocket while Spike watched him in sudden tense eagerness. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... this sector developed to unexpected strength. On the 17th Falkenhayn succeeded in squeezing himself through Gyimes Pass and reaching Agas, seven miles inside the frontier. At about the same time strong fighting began in the Red Tower Pass. The battle was, indeed, raging at a tense heat up and down the whole front. It was now becoming obvious that the Central Powers had determined to make an example of Rumania and punish her "treachery," as they called it, even though they must suspend activity in every other theater of the war to do so. Not a little anxiety was caused in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... reciprocal. She had sacrificed herself to him; therefore he had sacrificed himself to her. A halo of mysterious sanctity hung about her obligations to him, and seemed to forbid too close an analysis of their nature. An old conjugation of the indicative mood, present tense, backed by the third person singular's capital, floated justifications from Holy Writ of the worst stereotyped iniquity ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... they were now; she knelt on her knees in ignorant suspense. Slowly and with a patient force Rudolf began to work his enemy's arms towards one another. Rupert had read his design in his eyes and resisted with tense muscles. It seemed as though his arms must crack; but at last they moved. Inch by inch they were driven closer; now the elbows almost touched; now the wrists joined in reluctant contact. The sweat broke out on the count's brow, ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... the guest, for in Chichikov's face there dawned a sort of tense expression, and it reddened as though its owner were striving to express something not easy to put into words. True enough, Manilov was now destined to hear such strange and unexpected things as never before had greeted ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... fallen, and there was an incomplete moon in the west. But already the desert was full of feeble shadows and silver interspaces, and all that tense silence of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... ore, se esse mortuum Mundo: tamen edit eximie pecus, bibit Non pessime, stertit sepultum crapula, Operam veneri dat, et voluptatum assecla Est omnium. Idne est mortuum esse mundo? Aliter interpretare. Mortui sunt Hercule Mundo cucullati, quod inors tense sunt onus, Ad rem utiles nullam, nisi ad scelus ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... lithe liquid ease, he was on his feet, body tense, alert. Her form was vaguely familiar as she ran toward him. She dodged from his sight, then re-appeared as the winding path ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... substantive made from the preterperfect tense of bend. The space lying between two promontories or headlands, being wider and smaller than a gulf, but larger than a bay. It is also used generally for any coast-bend or indentation, and is mostly held as a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... moment, and they watched him. First he walked slowly towards the Houssa sentry, who shouldered his arms in salute. Bones halted before the soldier and stared at him. Somehow, the watchers on the stoep knew that he was staring—there was something so fixed, so tense in his attitude. Then, without warning, the sentry's hand passed across his body, and the rifle came down ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... replied Ralph. His tone was tense, and he showed that he was disturbed. He was too quick a thinker not to at once comprehend the vital issue of the present incident. With Fogg headed down the track towards him from the ditch, trying to overtake the train, ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... exciting process of becoming a great architect. And he knew and felt that he was. And the disordered bed, and the untransparent bath-water, and the soap-tin by the side of the bath, and the breakfast-tray on a chair, were as much a part of the inspiring spectacle as himself tense and especially dandiacal ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of their anger still clung to the spot where the bungalow had stood. Behind her, there were lights in a dozen rooms of the chateau. She knew that she was not the only sleepless one. Others were lying wide awake and tense, but for reasons scarcely akin to hers; ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the past tense, not because she is dead, but because times and circumstances have changed since the period when we both had to do with the Uninhabited House, and she has altered in consequence—one of the most original people who ever ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... sterns their captains glitter afar, beautiful in gold and purple; the rest of the crews are crowned with poplar sprays, and their naked shoulders glisten wet with oil. They sit down at the thwarts, and their arms are tense on the oars; at full strain they wait the signal, while throbbing fear and heightened ambition drain their riotous blood. Then, when the clear trumpet-note rang, all in a moment leap forward from their line; the shouts of the sailors strike up ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... and even to imitate his manners and dress and gait, for very loyalty and devotion. Anthony could not take his eyes off him; he watched the clear-cut profile of his face thrown fearlessly forward, waited in tense expectation to hear him speak, and paid no attention to the whisperings of the chaplain ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... done this, but his boyish love for the girls and their boat could not be restrained. Then they waved, and the maroon and white flag stood out tense and defiant ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... of mind was constantly on the increase. Still, it is true, she wrote to disciples near and far long, tender letters of spiritual counsel—analyses of the religious life tranquilly penetrating as those of an earlier time. But her political correspondence grew in bulk. It is tense, nervous, virile. It breathes a vibrating passion, a solemn force, that are the index of a breaking heart. Not for one moment did Catherine relax her energies. From 1376, when she went to Avignon, she led, with one or two brief intermissions ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... fingers down the tense muscles, then up to the manly shoulder-blades. "Why, boy, you are built like an ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... her as she lay on the floor and held her head in his trembling hands. At last she made a slight movement. He helped her raise the upper part of her body and supported her. She brushed her disheveled hair from her face and looked about her. Her gaze was such a strange tense one that Valentine's fear increased. She nodded her head and said in a low voice, "Yes!" Valentine knew that she was saying to herself that she had really heard the terrible news and had not dreamed it. She sat for a long time motionless, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... real crisis, a definite transaction, a point of time as clear as the morning dawn. It is not an everlasting dying and an eternal struggle to live. But it is all expressed in a tense that denotes definiteness, fixedness and finished action. We actually died at a certain point and as actually began ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... went on after a tense moment of silence, "what's the use of making a row? I know I lied to you—I had to do it in order to get the money. I just framed that on purpose so I could get back to New York where a proposition like mine would be appreciated. I ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the past year again showed the value of the United Nations in bringing about the peaceful adjustment of tense international controversies. In Indonesia and in Palestine the efforts of the United Nations have put a stop to bloodshed and paved the way ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... moment he seemed stunned but he tightened his arms about her, and tense the answer came. "I can't do without you, Belle, I can't do without you. I've given you my word. I take you on ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... causes, we must be satisfied with the fact—he wore a wig; and, in the distraction of mental perplexity, when Monsieur Cherfeuil was essaying to get the poet out of the absent into the conditional mood, the man of verse, staring abstractedly upon the man of tense, would thrust his hand under his peruke, and rub, rub, rub his polished scalp, which all the while effused a divine ichor—(poets never perspire)—and, when he was gently reminded that his wig was a little awry towards the left side, he would pluck it, resentfully, equally as much ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... years ago, women were going to orthopedic surgeons to have corrected. In this attitude the line passing through the centre of gravity strikes the heels, the knees are hyper-extended, and the muscles of the calves and thighs are rendered tense. ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... era in their love. It was an inspired whirl of two lovers, whose feet hardly felt the ground, and whose hearts bounded and thrilled, and their cheeks glowed, and their eyes shot fire; and when Grace was obliged to stop, because the others stopped, her elastic and tense frame turned supple and soft directly, and she still let her eyes linger on his, and her hand nestle in his a moment: this, and a faint sigh of pleasure and tenderness, revealed how sweet her partner ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... tense silence and then Hauteville said in measured tones: "It makes a strong chain ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... we were not sufficiently acquainted with it to know; but it is certainly very imperfect, for it is almost totally without inflexion, both of nouns and verbs. Few of the nouns have more than one case, and few of the verbs more than one tense; yet we found no great difficulty in making ourselves mutually understood, however strange it may ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... anxious eyes, below a hedge of rifle barrels slanted towards the north. The Philosopher had jerked out of slumber into a wakefulness like mine. He rubbed his eyes and then sat bolt upright, with a tense searching look, as though trying to pierce to the truth of things by a ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... bower in haste Ran trembling: spell-bound there, before her bridal-bed She stood, while wan smiles flickered, like the northern dawn, Across her worn cheeks' ice-field; keenest memories then Rushed with strong shudderings through her—as the winged shaft Springs from the tense nerve, so her passion hurled her forth Sweeping, like fierce ghost, on through hall and corridor, Tearless, with wide eyes staring, while a ghastly wind Moaned on through roof and rafter, and the ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... of Power, still reverberated, and trailed its still renewing echoes through every fibre of its secret habitation. Nor yet for spring;—a couchant leopard has posed itself with horrid intent; murder glitters in its fixed golden eye, quivers in the tense loins, creeps in the tawny glitter of the skin, clutches the keen claws, that recoil, and grasp, and recoil again from the velvet ball of that heavy foot; murder grins in the withdrawn lip, the white, red-set teeth, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various |
