"Toothless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. In the cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam. She would sit for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away, leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her benevolence), the old woman would burst out ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... The toothless, childish old man woman Trenholme encountered when he entered the house struck him as an odd exaggeration of the report he had just received. He did not feel at home when he sat down to eat the food Bates set before him; he perceived that it was chiefly because in a new country hospitality ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... a hectic flush; his heart was beating with the exhilaration of an old war-horse. Looking over Tom's shoulder, he squinted into the distance, his underlip quivering against his toothless gums. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... vileness? Do you know that in your schools one-quarter of the children are already purblind? Have you gauged the importance of your tremendous consumption of quack catholicons, of the fortunes derived from their sale, of the spread of modern nervous disorders, of toothless youth and thrice loathsome age among the helot-classes? Do you know that in the course of my late journey to London, I walked from Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner, during which time I observed some five hundred people, of whom twenty-seven ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... steps, and drawing Virginia with her, she began to walk slowly toward the terraced side of the garden. An old lamplighter, carrying his ladder to a lamp-post at the corner, smiled up at them with his sunken toothless mouth as he ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... shoulders heaved in his toothless laugh. "Seven o'clock," he said scornfully. "Yew look through a knot-hole in your floor any mornin' when it's handy to four o'clock and yew'll see my ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... account of the burglary failed to mention the false teeth, they worried him considerably. The picture of a human waking in the cool dawn and groping for them in vain, of a soft, toothless breakfast, of a strange, hollow, lisping voice calling the police station, of weary, dispirited visits to the dentist, roused a great ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... wiseacres in Suffolk are said to have adopted as a remedy for witchcraft. "A woman I knew forty-three years had been employed by my predecessor to take care of his poultry. At the time I came to make her acquaintance she was a bedridden toothless crone, with chin and nose all but meeting. She did not discourage in her neighbours the idea that she knew more than people ought to know, and had more power than others had. Many years before I knew her it happened one spring that ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... see the king's leech,' he said to himself, 'and bid him give me some medicament that shall strengthen my wound. For I cannot abide that I stay here like some toothless old hound, while his fellows are gone ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted landlords—quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but gums. There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the departure; plenty of things may have happened to eliminate it. Men lose their hair and their teeth; why might not a man lose a tail? Scientists say that coming generations far in the future will be toothless and bald. Why may it not be that through causes unknown to us we are similarly deprived of ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... so old that it seemed as if he could never have been young, yet he was whistling a toothless but patriotic whistle, over some bit of amateur-carpenter work, in front of a one-room bungalow. Inside, visible through the open door, was the paralyzed wife he had lately wheeled "home" to Vitrimont, in some kind of a cart. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... emitted a sickening odour. I ordered them not to come too near us, for although these females had no claims whatever to beauty—and, as far as I could see they possessed no other charm—one being old and toothless, the other with a skin like a lizard, they actually tried to decoy us to their tents, possibly with the object of getting us robbed by their men. My men seemed little attracted by the comical speeches and gestures ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Mary-Constance Ballard Richardson, in spite of the dignity of her hyphenated name, was a wee morsel. Swathed in fine linen, she showed to the unprejudiced eye no signs of great beauty. With a wrinkly-red skin, a funny round nose, a toothless mouth—she was like every other normal baby of her age, but to her family and friends she was a ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... same time, "Husband, husband! the wolf has got the child! Gabriel, Gabriel! don't you see? The wolf has got the child!" Then the man chased the wolf, and got back the child. "Brave old dog!" said he; "you are old and toothless, and yet you can give help in time of need, and will not let your master's child be stolen." And henceforth the woman and her husband gave the old dog a large ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... proportion. His knowledge was so contracted, and his inclinations so mean, that it was useless to reason, and almost impossible to be pleased with him. Not content with a most charming woman, he amused himself with an old red-haired, toothless waiting-maid, whose unwelcome service Madam de Warrens had the patience to endure, though it was absolutely disgusting. I soon perceived this new inclination, and was exasperated at it; but I saw something else, which ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of disinheritance came round to the place where the two parents were sitting, the mother lifted up her voice and wept aloud; and the father, clenching his toothless gums to conceal his emotion, remained with his head bent down: presently, in a husky voice, he said, "Wife, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... east, beyond that The plantation once called Ararat; But they have gone, Forgotten as an ancient drinking song; And the old houses, dull and roofless, Gape, with their doorways Like a dumb mouth toothless, With snake-engendering rooms that wall in fear, Silent, down ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... her head. "I am not you," she said. "I am I. And I feel as if there was a heavy hand on my neck pressing me down. If I should live to be a toothless old woman, I should never feel that I had any right to be happy again. Heaven knows what I might be tempted to do, but I should laugh at myself for a ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... strings of teeth being regarded by these people very much as belts of wampum among the Winnebagoes of the North; or cowries, among the Bengalese. So, that in Valapee the very beggars are born with a snug investment in their mouths; too soon, however, to be appropriated by their lords; leaving them toothless for the rest of their days, and forcing them to diet ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... give a fierce bark or two, when, discovering his error, he'd wag his tail and go back to his den—all this being evidently done to show that he was as vigilant as ever—a sort of protest, that said, "Don't believe one word about my being blind and toothless, still less flatter yourself that the place is secure. It requires all my activity and watchfulness to protect; but go back in peace, I'm ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... immediate institution among the girls. There was no doubt about his gratitude. All was fish that came to his net, and he accepted anything and everything, from tea and tobacco to books which he could not read, with the same toothless smile and showers of blessings. If, as Miss Gibbs suggested, his cottage would have been improved by a little more soap and water, and a good stiff broom, that did not really matter, as he was generally sitting outside on a bench beside a beehive, with a black-and-white Manx cat ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... strike. O son, this breast Pillowed thine head full oft, while, drowsed with sleep, Thy toothless mouth drew ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... "There has never been a dog grow old in our family that he didn't sooner or later develop a kind of second puppyhood. I have seen them do all manner of inexplicable things, and one old, toothless, wire-haired terrier used to snap at his ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... gibberish in its rage. Then it began to hurl its whole body madly against the glass walls and to beat its head. It appeared to have a sudden incomprehensible hatred for the three strangers. It was trying to fly at them. The toothless gums moved spasmodically, and it threw its face into horrible grimaces. That nameless, loathsome abortion was the nearest that Oliver Haddo had come to ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... was the answer, and on the instant a horrible shriek rent the air. Jimmie had quickly grasped both of the Professor's arms at the wrists and was slowly twisting them in a grip of iron. Kell's face went white, the lips writhed back over toothless gums, the eyes closed in the supreme effort to withstand ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... the last rays of the warm sun, sat a bulldog, toothless and old. Now and then a sear leaf, falling in a zig-zag course, rustled past his ears, and he would shake his head as if he, too, were dreaming and the leaves disturbed him. All at once he sniffed, his ears stood forward, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... beside the bed Sobbed where he stood, yet sware, "The fit will pass: Ten years the King may live." Eochaid frowned: "Shall I, to patch thy fame, live ten years more, My death-time come? My seventy years are sped: My sire and grandsire died at sixty-nine. Like Aodh, shall I lengthen out my days Toothless, nor fit to vindicate my clan, Some losel's song? The kingdom is my son's! Strike from my little milk-white horse the shoes, And loose him where the freshets make the mead Greenest in springtide. He must die ere long; And not to him did Patrick open Heaven. Praise be to Patrick's God! ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... man with a deeply-wrinkled face, was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of horn spectacles: occasionally pausing from his task, and slily noting down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice and cunning. His clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see that he wore them from choice and not from necessity; all his looks and gestures ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... it as they have the word heart, and talk about the voice of natur and its sensations, and its laws and its simplicities, and all that sort of thing. The noise water makes in tumblin' over stones in a brook, a splutterin' like a toothless old woman scoldin' with a mouthful of hot tea in her lantern cheek, is called the voice of natur speaking in the stream. And when the wind blows and scatters about all the blossoms from your fruit trees, and you are ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock; Tu —— whit! —— Tu —— whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew.' 'Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She makes answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour: Ever and aye, moonshine or shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say she sees my lady's shroud.' 'Is the night chilly and dark? ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... apothecaries, sun-shunning night-birds and corner-creepers, dull-pated and base mechanics, stage-players, jugglers, peddlers, prittle-prattling barbers, filthy graziers, curious bath-keepers, common shifters and cogging cavaliers, bragging soldiers, lazy clowns, one-eyed or lamed fencers, toothless and tattling old wives, chattering char-women and nurse-keepers, long-tongued midwives, 'scape-Tyburns, dog-leeches, and such-like baggage. In the next rank, to second this goodly troupe, follow poisoners, enchanters, wizards, fortune-tellers, magicians, witches and hags. Now, if you ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... old men who offered these last suggestions chuckled with malicious enjoyment, and two of the old women mumbled with their toothless gums as though tasting sweet morsels; but the third drew herself up with ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... a long stare and turned away toward the corral and a low shed that served as a stable. A rusty old mower and a toothless rake and a rickety buckboard stood baking in the sun, and a few stunted hens fluttered away from their approach. In the corral a mangy pony blinked in dejected slumber; and all the while, the three dogs followed them and barked and yapped and growled, until Pink turned in the saddle with ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... he could scarce repress a shudder as he looked at the band of women who surrounded him. All were past middle age, some were old and toothless, but all were animated by a spirit of ferocious triumph. Raising him into a sitting position, they clustered round him, some shook their skinny hands in his face, others heaped curses upon him, some of the most furious assailed him with ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... its four elevations, that it might have been said to resemble at that moment the cascatelles of Saint-Cloud. Water flowed everywhere; it boiled, it leaped, it murmured; it was black, white, blue, and green; it shrieked, it bubbled under the broom of the portress, a toothless old woman used to storms, who seemed to bless them as she swept into the street a mass of scraps an intelligent inventory of which would have revealed the lives and habits of every dweller in the house,—bits ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... woman, with a skin tanned like leather, and kindly little blue eyes, twinkling with delight and pride. Yes, there they are, photographed somewhere in my brain, the wrinkled, yellow, withered faces of the two old women, their watery eyes and toothless mouths, with figures as shapeless as the bowlders on the beach, watching beside the bed where lay the white but tenderly beautiful face of the young girl, with her curls of glossy hair tossed about the pillow, and her long, tremulous eyelashes making ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... man poured a glass of neat gin down his shrivelled throat, and the effect upon him was extraordinary. A light glimmered in each of his dull eyes, a tinge of colour came into his wax-like cheeks, and, opening his toothless mouth, he suddenly emitted a peculiar, bell-like, and most musical cry. A hoarse roar of laughter from all the company answered it, and flushed faces craned over each other to catch a ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... oft Fred'rick sighed and wept; A toothless hag—his only servant kept; His kitchen cold; (where commonly he dwelled;) A pretty decent horse his stable held; A falcon too; and round about the grange, Our quondam 'squire repeatedly would range, Where oft, to melancholy, he was led, To ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... deserted, of course. Its busy cobbled streets were quite empty except for a few strolling soldiers in khaki, and just here and there the same toothless old woman who is always the last to leave a doomed city. At the typhoid hospital we gravely offered the cases of milk which we had brought with us as an earnest of our good conduct, but even the hospital was nearly empty. However, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came back in my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typical Advanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled other losses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing hairless, growing bald, growing toothless, unemotional, irreligious, losing the end joint of the little toe, dwindling in its osseous structures, its jawbone and brow ridges, losing all the full, rich curvatures of ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... though bright, was cold, and a bonfire on the rocks was greatly patronized by the very old and very young, while distant preparations for tea were viewed, at first with stealthy, half-reluctant admiration, and then with open restlessness. The patriarchs—toothless and wrinkled, yet not a man of them over fifty-eight—stood around in expectant silent clusters, and also in their best clothes, of which a great deal of faded red neck-tie and pepper and salt trousers seemed chiefly to ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... I was washing up, And just had rinsed the final cup, All of a sudden, 'midst the steam, I fell asleep and dreamt a dream. I saw myself an old, old man, Nearing the end of mortal span, Bent, bald and toothless, lean and spare, Hunched in an ancient beehive chair. Before me stood a little lad Alive with questions. "Please, Granddad, Did Daddy fight, and Uncle Joe, In the Great War of long ago?" I nodded as I made reply: "Your Dad was in the H.L.I., ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... a hand was clapped over her mouth, breaking her false teeth, and all her stifled shrieks, queries and expostulations were literally cuffed into a whimper. Five minutes later, toothless, half-dressed and trembling, she thrust a few things into a dressing-case, struggled into a fur coat, and passed with sagging knees downstairs, clinging to the arm of a bully whom she had ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... for life. I fear indulgence dulled her moral sense. She was an immense happiness to her mistress, whose silent and lonely days she made glad with her oddity and mirth. And yet the small creature, old, toothless, and blind, domineered over her gentle friend—threatening her sometimes if she presumed to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own bed, into which it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I believe it is too true, though it was inferred only, that her mistress and friend spent a great part ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... less confused. I see a little toothless head. From out the ragged beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone, but touching and almost melodious. The man who lies there ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... a small girl of eleven with a brilliant, tawny head, and a wide and toothless smile, opened the door cautiously, and said, ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... down again, it was to fall, not upon the water, but into the throat of the voracious tyrant; who, although toothless and without any means of masticating, made shorter work of it by introducing them untoothed, and at a single gulp, into ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... dressed in a shabby overcoat, a silk waistcoat, renewed twice in a score of years, and a very dirty pair of trousers, with a bald head, a face full of deep hollows, a wrinkled, callous skin, a beard that had a trick of twitching its long white bristles, a menacing pointed chin, a toothless mouth, eyes bright as the eyes of his dogs in the yard, and a nose like an obelisk—there he stood in his gallery smiling at the beauty called into being by genius. A Jew surrounded by his millions will always be one of the finest spectacles which humanity can give. Robert Medal, our great actor, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... story her old husband opened his mouth wider and wider, until the pipe-shank dropped out of his toothless gums on to his waistcoat. Then he stretched his left arm and brought down his clenched hand with a bang ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... sensation, but there was still another. Olivier Delagarde had been unmasked, and the whole island had gone tracking him down. No aged toothless tiger was ever sported through the jungle by an army of shikarris with hungrier malice than was this broken traitor by the people he had betrayed. Ensued, therefore, a commingling of patriotism with lust of man-hunting and eager expectation of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I am not sure I have a real friend in the world, for, gild a fool or a monkey, and mark what a troop of flatterers fawn around and follow admiringly at his heels! And as for choosing a wife, why, were I toothless, one-eyed, or deaf as a post, the magic of gold would transform me ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... this the dancers began to arrive. They came in their strange deckings of glaring colors, and many and varied were the types which soon filled the room. There were old men and there were young men. There were girls in their early teens, and toothless hags, decrepit and faltering. Faces which, in wild loveliness, might have vied with the white beauty of the daughters of the East. Faces seared and crumpled with weight of years and nights of debauchery. Men were there of superb physique, whilst ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Dona Patrocinio would have another with four facades, six feet higher, and more gorgeous hangings. Then he would fall back on his reserves, his strong point, his specialty—masses with bombs and fireworks; whereat Dona Patrocinia could only gnaw at her lips with her toothless gums, because, being exceedingly nervous, she could not endure the chiming of the bells and still less the explosions of the bombs. While he smiled in triumph, she would plan her revenge and pay the money of others to secure the best orators of the five Orders ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... prefer stockings! You yearn to skate but they consider the weather better for corn-popping! You ask for a bicycle but they had already found a very nice bargain in flannels! You beg to dine the gay-kerchiefed Scissor-Grinder's child, but they invite the Minister's toothless mother-in-law!... And when you're old enough to go courting," he sighed, "your lady-love's sentiments are outraged if you don't spend the day with her and your own family are perfectly furious if you don't spend the day ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... for two; I wish I had. It is not very enlivening to meet a fellow-creature whose expression and accents say, "You are the hair that breaks the camel's back of my endurance, you are the last drop that makes my cup of woe run over"; persons whose heads drop on one side like those of toothless infants, whose voices recall the tones in which our old snuffling choir used to wail ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and love Is richer than all vain imaginings! Let then her lore fulfil thee evermore, And like high inspiration send thee forth To prophecy aloud unto mankind Of love, and peace, and verity sublime. Let not disaster daunt thee, nor reproach, No feeble yelpings of the toothless curs That follow on the heels of all who walk The highways of this world in faithfulness, And strength, but like a wild swan on the wave Let every billow swelling round thy breast Raise thee ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... instrument of torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had specially created toothless whales of the Family Balaenidae solely for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to procure for women this indispensable ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... and evening Scott would solemnly lift them out one by one from their nest of gunny-bags under the cart-tilts. There were always many who could do no more than breathe, and the milk was dropped into their toothless mouths drop by drop, with due pauses when they choked. Each morning, too, the goats were fed; and since they would struggle without a leader, and since the natives were hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace slowly at the head of his flocks, accommodating ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... surely be some mistake. Here, what's this? This old toothless hag, without her wig, is unknown to me! And why does she address me as "ARCHIBALD"? I was expecting to see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... those who did not often weep. The ship was a charnel-house. Death in its most horrible forms was there,—from starvation, from corruption, scurvy, lock-jaw, gangrene, consumption, and fever. How ghastly the scene! Men, once robust and strong, weak and helpless as babes, with hollow cheeks, toothless gums, thin pale lips, colorless flesh, sunken eyes, long, tangled hair, uncombed for many months, skeleton fingers with nails like eagles' claws, lying in rags upon the deck,—some, with strained eyes, looking up for the last time to the dear old flag which ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... glossy volumes roll'd, The gaudy conch with azure, green, and gold. You round Echinus ray his arrowy mail, Give the keel'd Nautilus his oar and sail; Firm to his rock with silver cords suspend 70 The anchor'd Pinna, and his Cancer-friend; With worm-like beard his toothless lips array, And teach the unwieldy Sturgeon to betray.— Ambush'd in weeds, or sepulcher'd in sands, In dread repose He waits the scaly bands, 75 Waves in red spires the living lures, and draws The unwary plunderers to his circling jaws, Eyes with grim joy the twinkling shoals beset, And clasps ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... wanted to play safe we'd both enter some home for aged and decrepit men and sit among the halt and blind and toothless until we became even as they. Rawlings' defaulter is encumbered, most disgracefully, with the usual blonde, in this case the lily-handed cashier in a motion picture shop; and a man of Rawlings' intelligence would know at a glance that ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... would have terrified three thousand Archers with his shouts; he would have pierced the whole line of the enemy with his shafts. Ah! but if you will not leave the aged in peace, decree that the advocates be matched; thus the old man will only be confronted with a toothless greybeard, the young will fight with the braggart, the ignoble with the son of Clinias;(8) make a law that in the future, the old man can only be summoned and convicted at the courts by the aged and the young man by ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... with a gay grin, which, distorted by her toothless gums and the wreathing steam from the kettle, enhanced her witch-like aspect and was spuriously malevolent. She did not notice the stir of an approach through the brambly tangles of the heights above until it was close at hand; ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... occupations in this world, making hay! It was a very confined patch of churchyard lying between Gracechurch-street and the Tower, capable of yielding, say an apronful of hay. By what means the old old man and woman had got into it, with an almost toothless hay-making rake, I could not fathom. No open window was within view; no window at all was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have enabled their old legs to descend from it; the rusty churchyard- gate was locked, the mouldy church was locked. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... to eyes that were full of the undazzling brightness of the true King of Israel, and the ordered ranks of His attendants! How little the greatness! How tawdry the pomp! How impotent the power, and how toothless the threats! The poor show of the earthly king paled before that awful vision, as a dim candle will show black against the sun. 'I stand before the living God, and thou, O Ahab! art but a shadow and a noise.' Just as we may have looked upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... they are not bigger than lobster's claws; and the pair that succeeds these is permanent, and has to last him for life—perhaps for centuries—for no one can tell how long the mighty elephant roams over this sublunary planet. When the tusks get broken—a not uncommon thing—he must remain toothless or "tuskless" for the rest of his life. Although the elephant may consider the loss of his huge tusks a great calamity, were he only a little wiser, he would break them off against the first tree. It would, in all ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... two hundred years ago very many people believed in witches. Although not always so, it was generally very old people, people who had grown ugly and witless with age who were accused of being witches. In almost any village might be seen poor old creatures, toothless, hollow cheeked, wrinkled, with nose and chin almost meeting. Bent almost double, they walked about with a crutch, shaking and mumbling as they went. If any one had an ache or a pain it was easily accounted for. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... A.M. and proceeded to the entrance of the Yellow-Knife River of the traders, which is called by the natives Beg-ho-lo-dessy; or, River of the Toothless Fish. We found Akaitcho, and the hunters with their families, encamped here. There were also several other Indians of his tribe, who intended to accompany us some distance into the interior. This party was quickly ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... ground away with her toothless jaws, as if she were actually chewing the end of her long nose. She made me sit down, chucked me under the chin with her lean fingers, called me "poverino," and leered at me so roguishly with her red eyes that one corner of her ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... instruments grow as physical bodies do. Suppose there was a time when the piano was keyless, as a baby is toothless. Suppose that sounding boards have a period of immaturity and that the whole mechanism of the instrument is in a state that can only be characterized as infantile. If a master musician attempts to play on such a piano his performance would by no means be an indication ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... were black with spilled water, and underneath them was a fine medley of dinted zinc jugs, slop pails and coarse yellow earthenware crocks. There was an array of fancy articles in the room—a battered, soiled and well-worn array of chipped basins, of toothless combs, of all those manifold untidy trifles which, in their hurry and carelessness, two women will leave scattered about when they undress and wash together amid purely temporary surroundings, the dirty aspect of which has ceased ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... no time in exultation. He merely ordered his men to carry the copper utensils along, instead of destroying them on the spot. Then, he addressed Ben York, who grinned idiotically from toothless gums, where he crouched in the diminishing puddle. The ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... wake of the brush and the cloth. They were drinking biting poisons from tin cups—for those hands quivering with palsy could not be trusted with glass-dancing with drunken, disease-swollen or twisted legs—venting from ghastly toothless mouths strange cries of merriment that sounded like shrieks of damned souls at the licking of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... in the old man's voice. Rather he took the question as an inquiry into the further marvels of his process. "Here," he continued, enthusiastically, "I'll prove that to you also. My dog Spot is around the place somewhere. And he is a decrepit old hound, blind, lame and toothless. You've ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... to reach their carriage, which was waiting for them on the Boulevard Malesherbes, they made the young people, Giselle and Fred, walk ahead, that they might have an opportunity of expressing themselves freely, the old dowager especially, whose toothless mouth never lost an opportunity of smirching the character and the reputation ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... only when he felt himself compelled to acknowledge that he could no longer be accepted by any woman. Although almost entirely crippled, he did not appear to be so when he was seated, when he talked, or when he was at table. He had only one meal a day, and always took it alone because, being toothless and unable to eat otherwise than very slowly, he did not wish to hurry himself out of compliment to his guests, and would have been sorry to see them waiting for him. This feeling deprived him of the pleasure he would have enjoyed in entertaining at his board friendly and agreeable guests, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that the old man had already forgotten his joints, for he poured out another glass of wine and was pledging Yvonne with toothless gayety. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... of children in heaven flying about with their little fluffy wings is fascinating. But would eternal childhood be fair to them? If a babe dies while teething, shall it remain forever toothless? How shall its mother know it if it is allowed to ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... recalls another which Mrs. Keeley, the actress, tells of a tradesman's little boy who was often taken to stay with his grandmother and grandfather—the latter a very feeble old man, bald and toothless. This little fellow was told that his father and mother had "bought" a nice new baby brother for him. The little man was much interested by the news, and was taken to see the new arrival. He looked at it with astonishment for ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... I guess they just scraped acquaintance in the Alley after dinner, like they sometimes do. A man with eyelashes like his always speaks to any woman alone who isn't pockmarked and toothless. Two minutes after he's met a girl his voice takes on the 'cello note. I know his kind. Why, say, he even tried waving those eyelashes of his at me first time he turned in his key; and goodness knows I'm so homely that pretty soon I'll be ripe for bachelor floor thirteen. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... lying upon the bed smiled bravely as his father entered, but Mr. Pottigrew was shocked to see that he smiled with toothless gums. A grave professional-looking man rose from the bedside and beckoned Mr. Pottigrew out of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... passed, till we were safely come to Tours, and so to their house in a street running off the great place, where the cathedral stands. It was a goodly dwelling, with fair carved-work on the beams, and in the doorway stood the old Scots kinswoman, smiling wide and toothless, to welcome us. Elliot kissed her quickly, and she fondled Elliot, and held a hand out over her ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... half pulled them along in their haste. They overtook and passed by the bent old grandmothers who were trudging along with crooked canes toward the centre of excitement. Most of the young braves galloped hither on their ponies. Toothless warriors, like the old women, came more slowly, though mounted on lively ponies. They sat proudly erect on their horses. They wore their eagle plumes, and waved their various ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... all-comprehensive precept a mere toothless generality. Let a man try honestly to shape his life by it; and he will find soon enough how close it grips him, and how wide it stretches, and how deep it goes. The greatest principles of the gospel are to be fitted to the smallest duties. Indeed that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... from that angle at all, Mart.... You're still the ground-and-lofty thinker of the outfit, ain't you? Now that you mention it, though, we may find that the Last of the Mohicans ain't entirely toothless, at that. But say, Mart, how come I'm as wild and cock-eyed as I ever was? Rovol's a slow and thoughtful old codger, and with his accumulation of knowledge it looks like I'd be ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... this monstrous Nought had come to his kingdom and was opening a yawning mouth and toothless jaws to swallow its all down into the throat that it has not got—you, and me, and your young officer, with this splendid, recreant city and the sky and the earth. Wait, only wait! The glorious image of Serapis still stands radiant, but the cross casts an ominous shadow ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... i' faith, a woman smells best [6] when she smells of nothing at all. For those old women who are in the habit of anointing themselves with unguents, vampt up creatures, old hags, and toothless, who hide the blemishes of the person with paint, when the sweat has blended itself with the unguents, forthwith they stink just like when a cook has poured together a variety of broths; what they smell of, you don't know, except this only, that you understand ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... But its jaws were toothless; only soft, cold gums pinched me, and I held it twisting and writhing, while the icy temperature of its body began to benumb my fingers and creep up my wrist, paralyzing my arm; and its incessant ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... mirror, your path is strewn with roses, the world is at your feet. Slam! 'Scene III.' In a moment twenty years have passed; your hair is grey, you are matronly, stout, your face is no longer oval; yet unmistakably it is you yourself, the same woman. Slam! 'Scene IV.' You are enfeebled, a crone, toothless, tottering on a stick. Once more! It is the last effect—the door flies ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the most Scottish and free sermons that ever I heard anywhere. The way here of all preachers, even the best, has been to speak before the Parliament with so profound a reverence as truly took all edge from their exhortations, and made all applications of them toothless and adulatorious. That style is much changed, however: these two good men laid well about them, and charged public and Parliamentary sins strictly on the backs of the guilty." [Footnote: Baillie's Letters, II. 220, 221.] As the sermons themselves remain in print, we have the means of verifying ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... sweaty women, with their sleeves rolled up, came to the doors to look at us, and as I greeted them one and all with a nod they smiled back with pleased astonishment. I had never been down in the Settlement before, but most of them spoke to me by name and one toothless old woman hastily broke off a bloom from a struggling geranium, came to her rickety gate and offered it to me with an ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... than go toothless, she wears 'em to this day. And I do believe it is the raspin' of them teeth aginst her gooms, and her discouraged and mad feelin's every time she looks in a glass, that helps to embitter her towards men, and the laws men have made, so's a woman can't have the control ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... out and his thin hair seem to stand on end, for to this torture he never grew accustomed. Then, as the men yelled with delight, the mass of dark branches would sweep down with a soft, windy crash into the snow, and Gillsey, pale and nervous, but adorned with that unfailing toothless smile, would pick himself out of the debris and slink off ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and beheld a tiny, bent old woman, all enveloped in grey rags. The old woman's face was visible from beneath them: a yellow, wrinkled, sharp-nosed, toothless face. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hand, because the chief engineer had enough imagination to keep his desk locked. His wife relished his style greatly. They were a childless couple, and Mrs. Rout, a big, high-bosomed, jolly woman of forty, shared with Mr. Rout's toothless and venerable mother a little cottage near Teddington. She would run over her correspondence, at breakfast, with lively eyes, and scream out interesting passages in a joyous voice at the deaf old lady, prefacing ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... is toothless, the jaws resembling the beak of a turtle, and in some species both the upper and the lower jaws have medial sutures like those of a snake. Was there not a Roman statesman or warrior whose jaws were fitted with a consolidated and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... doors open, the candles flaring, and nobody to guard but the toothless old hound who slept and snored on the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Bennett grinned a toothless grin at me and did some dialect, which I understood to mean that I might do as I liked, but that he (Bennett) was not going to catch no ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... sank deeply into his chair, and his toothless jaws worked convulsively. The skinny hand which clutched the piece of tubing twitched and shook, so that the primitive deadly weapon fell from ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... was called Backbarah the Toothless, going one day through the city, met an old woman in an out-street, who came to him presently, and said, I want one word with you, pray stop one moment. He did so, and asked her what she would have. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... steel!' Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought': and while uttering these words he fell down ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... the number of the Catholics; and if all the seventy members returned were of the Catholic persuasion, they must still plot the destruction of our religion in the midst of 588 Protestants. Such terrors would disgrace a cook-maid, or a toothless aunt—when they fall from the lips of bearded and senatorial men, they are nauseous, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... well, my holding can pay for all. How thinkest thou? It is a well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. I do not know how to ask save at the lance's point. Ugh! I grow angry and I curse them, and they feign penitence, but behind my back I know they call me a toothless old ape.' ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... spoons of delicious broth to his lips, and their toothless mouths had kindly lines about them. He heard their high ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... wall at her back. Her head, shorn of the false "front" she wore in the day, appeared to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes had dwindled to mere points of blackness; her mouth, sunken and drawn over toothless gums, was like the mouth of a witch. The wind, blowing in gusts through the open door, inflated her gray shawl and the skirt of her dressing-gown, while, with each flutter of her garments, the grotesque shadow on the white wall danced and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the greatest respect for them. My shining leather coat made a great hit. They fondled it and stroked it, and coo-ed at it as if it were a new baby. All the women past their very first youth seemed toothless. I wondered if it could be a characteristic of the tribe—sort of Manx Eskimo. I asked the Prophet what was the cause of the universal shortage, and was told that the Eskimo women all chew the sealskin to soften it for making into ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... it down at first to fastidiousness, possibly a still lurking desire to be able to give all to one man; that hope of the complete mating which no woman relinquishes until toothless, certainly not in the mere ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... have paid four francs an hour to copy,—a dazzling mass of snow, worn like that in all the classical representations of Deity. It was easy to guess from the way in which the cheeks sank in, continuing the lines of the mouth, that the toothless old fellow was more given to the bottle than the trencher. His thin white beard gave a threatening expression to his profile by the stiffness of its short bristles. The eyes, too small for his enormous face, and sloping like those of a pig, betrayed cunning and also laziness; ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Valois, shouts of scorn from the populace, thunders from the pulpit, anathemas from monk and priest, elaborate invectives from all the pedants of the Sorbonne, distant mutterings of excommunication from Rome—not the toothless beldame of modern days, but the avenging divinity of priest-rid monarchs. Such were the results of the edicts of June. Spain and the Pope had trampled upon France, and the populace in her capital clapped their hands and jumped for joy. "Miserable ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... man's toothless smile received the empty glasses; and when the two machines had trundled away in the dimness, it stood looking after them—the deep smile of guileless, crafty old age—that suffers and waits—and clutches its morsel at last and fastens on ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... A toothless old woman then entered the hall, and was told by Utgard-Loki to take hold of Thor. The tale is shortly told. The more Thor tightened his hold on the crone the firmer she stood. At length after a very ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... now be distinguished down below at our feet, where the morning had not yet reached it. Grasping his abundant clothing by handsful, he squatted and wriggled. It was Papa Blaire. His little eyes blinked among the dust that luxuriated on his face. Above the gap of his toothless mouth, his mustache made a heavy sallow lump. His hands were horribly black, the top of them shaggy with dirt, the palms plastered in gray relief. Himself, shriveled and dirtbedight, exhaled the scent of an ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... bed, there was the clock. She had the option of lying down and floating quietly into the day, all peril past. It seemed sweet for a minute. But it soon seemed an old, a worn, an end-of-autumn life, chill, without aim, like a something that was hungry and toothless. The bed proposing innocent sleep repelled her and drove her to the clock. The clock was awful: the hand at the hour, the finger following the minute, commanded her to stir actively, and drove her to gentle meditations on the bed. She lay down dressed, after setting her light beside ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Daddy," she mused, "were I a thousand years old, wrinkled and toothless, he would still look upon ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... afternoon sun struggling through the curtains that cover its fantastic windows allows a mellow light to fill the expanse of the building. A toothless old woman and a young girl, both of them thinly and poorly clad, are the sole occupants of the church, and they are evidently too much absorbed in prayer to notice our presence. They have placed beside the Madonna's altar lighted tapers which glimmer ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... patients and of the attendants, all but three; Rooke, the head keeper, a morose burly ruffian; Hayes, a bilious subordinate, Rooke's shadow; and Vulcan, a huge mastiff that would let nobody but Rooke touch him; he was as big as a large calf, and formidable as a small lion, though nearly toothless with age. He was let loose in the yard at night, and was an element in the Restraint system; many a patient would have tried to escape but for Vulcan. He was also an invaluable howler at night, and so cooperated with Dr. Wolf's bugs and fleas to avert sleep, that vile foe to insanity ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... we would sleep, and never cease to rummage and twitch us, until they see us safe landed at the grave. We can do nothing (but be poisoned) with impunity. What is worst of all, we must marry certain relatives and connexions, be they distorted, blear-eyed, toothless, carbuncled, with hair (if any) eclipsing the reddest torch of Hymen, and with a hide outrivalling in colour and plaits his trimmest saffron robe. At the mention of this indeed, friend Plato, even thou, although resolved to stand out of harm's way, beginnest to make a wry ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... woman came hobbling out to greet her with a toothless smile. "Ah, bella signorina, there are no more letters for you to-night. Have you come to talk to me ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... affair of eaves modest as drooped eyelids, of latticed windows, of wistaria before and a bower of willows behind—was found and furnished out of the girls' store and the Captain's credit. Donna Matura, a brown old woman, hideous, toothless, and inclined to swooning, was installed as duenna. She was, indeed, owner of the house and furniture, for which Olimpia paid and the Captain promised to pay; but that did not appear until much later. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... courage do not wish to strike them that run away with speed. That is another reason why the routed foe should not be pursued hotly. Things that are immobile are devoured by those that are mobile; creatures that are toothless are devoured by those that have teeth; water is drunk by the thirsty; cowards are devoured by heroes. Cowards sustain defeat though they have, like the victors, similar backs and stomachs and arms and legs. They that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... much meat," she continued, more harshly than before. "But of what worth to you and me? A few bones to gnaw in our toothless old age. But the back-fat, the kidneys, and the tongues—these shall go into other mouths than thine and ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... moments afterwards, the voice of the priest was heard saying mass in the church, and Flemming saw the toothless old sexton treading the fresh earth into the grave of the little child, with his clouted shoes. He approached him, and asked the age of the deceased. The sexton leaned a moment on his spade, and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... complaints multiplied. The most obstinate penetrated at night into the Suffet's tent; they took his hands and sought to move him by making him feel their toothless mouths, their wasted arms, and the scars of their wounds. Those who had not yet been paid were growing angry, those who had received the money demanded more for their horses; and vagabonds and outlaws assumed soldiers' arms and declared that they were being forgotten. Every ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Lieutenant Schwatka says, may be more likened to "locust sawdust and wild honey." The first time I partook of this dainty I had unfortunately seen it in course of preparation, which somewhat marred the relish with which I might otherwise have eaten it. The confectioner was a toothless old hag, who mixed the ingredients in a wooden dish dirtier than anything I ever saw before, and filled with reindeer hairs, which, however, were not conspicuous when well mingled with the half-churned grass ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... garment. It was a thatched hut; yet there were circumstances in the life of the owner which had transformed the interior into a luxurious apartment. The owner of the hut was herself hanging on the edge of life; she was a toothless, bent, and withered old remnant; but her vigor and vivacity were those of a witch. Her hands and eyes were ceaselessly active; she was forever busy, fingering a fish-net, or polishing her Normandy brasses, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock; Tu-whit!—Tu-whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily he crew. Sir Leoline, the baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four f[)o]r th[)e] quart[)e]rs [)a]nd twelve f[)o]r th[)e] hour, Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud: Some say, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... were taken to the rooms where the Englishman had stayed. These were bare and squalid, like hundreds of other rooms in the poorer quarters of Paris. The landlady, toothless and grimy, had not yet tidied up the one where the Englishman had slept: in fact she did not know he had ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... civics can never be solved by appealing to Nature Back, when only the few could be healthy, when one baby in three died in infancy, when old age was toothless and childish, when infection ravished nations, when the average life was twenty years shorter than now, and when unspeakable filth was tolerated in air, street, and house. They can all be solved by appeals ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... you see, lay now in evasion, and it was for this that I was thus craftily preparing. Once out of Castile I could deal with Philip, and he should not find me as impotent, as toothless as he believed. But I ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... was Brains, and a young Tartar, whose name nobody knew, were sitting on the bank of the river by a wood-fire. The other three ferrymen were in the hut. Simeon who was an old man of about sixty, skinny and toothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy, was drunk. He would long ago have gone to bed, but he had a bottle in his pocket and was afraid of his comrades asking him for vodka. The Tartar was ill and miserable, ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... his due, Dan begins to refine. However, I wish, honest comrade of mine, You would really on Thursday leave St. Catharine,[1] Where I hear you are cramm'd every day like a swine; With me you'll no more have a stomach to dine, Nor after your victuals lie sleeping supine; So I wish you were toothless, like Lord Masserine. But were you as wicked as lewd Aretine,[2] I wish you would tell me which way you incline. If when you return your road you don't line, On Thursday I'll pay my respects at your shrine, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... before his igloo. Two signs of spring pleased him. Some tiny icicles had formed on the cliff above him, telling of the first thaw. An aged Chukche, toothless, and blind, had unwrapped his long-stemmed pipe to smoke in ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... spread wide, an old man, tall, thin, toothless, with the profile of the eagle, interrupted him in a solemn voice. "Padre, we do not ask for a miracle, the miracle is already performed. The woman was healed when she touched the man's dwelling, and we say to you that the man is saintly, and that ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... withered frame, Yet just as busily swung she on: The garland beneath her had fallen to dust; The wheels above her were eaten with rust; The hands, that over the dial swept, Grew crook'd and tarnished, but on they kept; And still there came that silver tone From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone, (Let me never forget, to my dying day, The tone or the burden of that lay)— "PASSING AWAY! ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... plains. Ornithostoma's spread of wings was twenty feet. Its bones were a marvel of lightness, the entire skeleton, even in its petrified condition, not weighing more than five or six pounds. The sharp beak, a yard long, was toothless and ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... is now toothless, and of great size. The young frog feeds on living prey, which is generally caught by the tongue. For this purpose, the tongue in the frog and toad is fixed to the front of the floor of the mouth, so that the tip of the tongue points backwards towards the throat! ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... flutter back and forth through the light. The trees have put on a thin green pretense. Even the soil pretends to fecundity. Toothless jaws widen in a smile of real mirth. Bones lightened of ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... was now married, and under the incantation whistled over him by the toothless Archdeacon of Mundlebury, had sprung up into a county magnate, and was worth cultivating, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... can't hit upon any other way of attracting attention, let him dance on his head in the middle of the street; after that he may hope to get consideration for his volume of poems. I am speaking of men who wish to win reputation before they are toothless. Of course if your work is strong, and you can afford to wait, the probability is that half a dozen people will at last begin to shout that you have been monstrously neglected, as you have. But that happens when ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... a beautiful fair woman, carried by three men, her hair across her face and brandishing a green staff. Next this group an old careworn man in blue canvas maintained his place in the crush with difficulty, and behind shouted a hairless face, a great cavity of toothless mouth. A voice called that enigmatical word "Ostrog." All his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling song. The multitude were beating time with their feet—marking time, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The green weapons waved, flashed and slanted. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... said to be born with silver spoons in their mouths; if that means, as I suppose it does, that from their earliest days they enjoy all the luxuries of life, then I may say that when I first saw the light I must have had a very rough wooden one between my toothless gums. However, as I've often since thought, it isn't so much what a man is born to which signifies, as what he becomes by his honesty, steadiness, perseverance, and above all by his earnest desire to do right in the ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... Secondly, we are always most zealous when Religion goes in his silver slippers; we love much to walk with him in the street, if the sun shines, and the people applaud him." What a fine grotesque, again, Bunyan gives us in toothless Giant Pope sitting in the mouth of the cave, and, though too feeble to follow Christian, calling out after him: "You will never mend till more of you be burnt." We do not read The Pilgrim's Progress, however, as a humorous book. Bunyan's pains mean ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd |
