"Breathlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fanny would be—he would be driven from the community—if he confessed the slightest of his doubts to his children. If, say at the table, when they were all together, he should drop his negative silence, his policy of nonintervention, what a horrified breathlessness would follow. His children, Lee thought, his wife, the servants in the kitchen, none knew him; he was a stranger to his ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... inside of a delicate shell. When they could no longer perceive him they still rowed on speaking no word,—the measured, musical plash of the oars through the smooth, dark olive-green water alone breaking the stillness around them. There was a curious sort of hushed breathlessness in the air; fantastic, dream-like lights and shadows played on the little wrinkling waves; sudden flushes of crimson came and went in the western horizon, and over the high summits of the surrounding mountains mysterious shapes, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... by a housemaid who happened to be busy in the hall, and whose red cheeks and general breathlessness bore witness to the energy of the storm of preparation now sweeping ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be that in some sort the jingle answers me!" then said Jehane; and she began with an odd breathlessness, "Friend, when King Henry dies—and even now he dies—shall I not as Regent possess such power as no woman has ever wielded in Europe? ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... A strange breathlessness attacked her, and she attributed it to the celerity with which she was being carried along. Pulling the hood down over her face, she sank low in the seat. The whir of the car now seemed to be a world-filling sound. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... bound the happy fellow came to his feet, and throwing his arms about his comrade, hugged him into temporary breathlessness. ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... afternoon, we stopped to eat a snack of the cold meat and to slake our thirst at one of the many rain pools, I was fain to follow Jennifer's lead, throwing myself flat on the soaking mold to pant and gasp and pay off the arrears of breathlessness. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... prize; Eyes glittered and young cheeks glowed bright And gold-shod feet, round limb and light, Gleamed from beneath the girded gown That, unrebuked, untouched was thrown Hither and thither by the breeze; Shrill laughter smote the thick-leaved trees, Till they, for very breathlessness, With rest ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... silence, uneasy, their lips a little parted. Not that an earthquake would have disturbed them much, for slight ones are common enough in Italy, and could do no harm at all to a wooden cottage; it was a mere physical breathlessness that they felt, as the gale suddenly dropped and the heavy air became quite still on the ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... a satisfaction, and to know that it was true gave me mysterious breathlessness and made me hear fragments of old songs during my walk that night. I walked very far, under the trees of the Bois, where I stopped for a few moments to smoke a cigarette at one of ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... interest trainmen: D. S., a brakeman, reached the burden of two hundred and forty-six pounds, with resulting breathlessness and other ailings that taxed all his resources to perform his duties. He was induced to cut down his daily food as the only means for relief, and to add to his strength. It took him a long time to master the fact that his strength was not kept up by food, but ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... enough, but she did lack spirit enough to cry. It was very still; after the rattle and confusion of the city streets, that extent of snow-covered country, where the very shadows were motionless the entire absence of soil and of disturbance the rest of nature the breathlessness of the very wind all preached a quaint kind of sermon to Fleda. By the force of contrast, they told her what should be; and there was more yet she thought that by the force of example, they showed what might be. Her eyes had not long travelled over the familiar ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... eager young reporter on a Boston paper came out to the college by appointment to interview a group of Wellesley women, alumnae and teachers, grief-stricken by the catastrophe which had befallen them. He came impetuously, with that light-hearted breathlessness so characteristic of young reporters in the plays of Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. He was charmingly in character, and he sent his voice out on the run to meet the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Breathlessness is, perhaps, the most common effect of undue exertion. Let a middle-aged person, who is out of practice, run a certain distance, and he is soon troubled with his breathing. The respirations become irregular, and there is a sense of oppression in his chest. He pants, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... It was the same place; the old familiar outlines of home and garden and landscape. But seen now, in the choking breathlessness of haste, in the fitful changing flashes of life and motion around it, in intervals of sharp suspense or dazed bewilderment, it seemed to be recognized no longer. Men who had known it all their lives, hurrying to the front in compact masses, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... asked at once. Her eyes were very bright, and there was a sort of breathlessness in her manner which ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... began; then hastily took off his cap and begged the girl's pardon, to which she could not reply for breathlessness. But he seemed to understand what was needed at once, for, after a swift glance from her to the man who was close at hand now, he said ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... old face was still stretched out to the priest in her eagerness; the staff was swaying to and fro beneath the tremulous hand. She had poured out her words so quickly that there was in his chest a feeling of answering breathlessness, yet he still sat regarding her placidly with the serenity of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... on the imitative impulse. First Bagehot, then Tarde, then Royce and Baldwin here, have shown that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is social. The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena. They are bad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals. How are idioms ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... impossible. Closing together they avoided the latter, and holding each other well up, became one irresistible wedge-shaped mass. At times they yelled, not from consciousness nor bravado, but from the purely animal instinct of warning and to combat the breathlessness of their descent, until, reaching the level, they charged across the gravelly bed of a vanished river, and pulled up at Collinson's Mill. The mill itself had long since vanished with the river, but the building that had once ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... round for a minute or two with such velocity that I almost lost my senses, and then fell suddenly, left wing foremost, down the vacuum funnel in the centre. I dropped like a stone, and lost nearly a thousand feet. It was only my belt that kept me in my seat, and the shock and breathlessness left me hanging half-insensible over the side of the fuselage. But I am always capable of a supreme effort—it is my one great merit as an aviator. I was conscious that the descent was slower. The whirlpool was a cone rather than a funnel, and I had come ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... long-standing cases of chronic bronchitis the nutrition of the lungs becomes impaired, and dilatation of the air-tubes (emphysema) and other complications result, giving rise to more or less constant breathlessness. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... their beasts, they came at each other with great fierceness, and so fared for two hours, feinting and striking, and so heavy were their blows that each bled from many wounds as they stood. At last, for sheer breathlessness, each leaned ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... day, though the woods have been very much thinned since the revolution. Perhaps there never was any thing in the whole universe better calculated to inspire religious awe than the first view of this monastery. It was imposing even to breathlessness. The total solitude—the undisturbed and chilling silence, which seem to have ever slept over the dark and ancient woods—the still lakes, reflecting the deep solemnity of the objects around them—all impress a powerful image of utter seclusion and hopeless separation from living ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... himself to look at her; did not speak. She gazed at him curiously, and when she saw the grayness of his face, the lines about his mouth, and eyes that advanced his age by twenty years, she felt a little catch at her heart, a breathlessness, a ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... Would our sheikh play us false? It was a moment of breathlessness. We crouched and cowered in the shade, holding our hearts with fear, while the Arab drivers pretended to be unsaddling the camels. A minute or two of anxious suspense; then, peering over our beasts' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... church and the seats were all filled. It gratified him, at the same time that it hopelessly abased him to observe all this evidence of her power. As he waited for her to appear that tremor came into his hands again, and that breathlessness, and curiously enough he felt that horrible familiar sinking of the heart which he always felt just before he ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... all. Yet it was not the wrong street; the name written on it was the same; the shuttered shops were the same; the lamp-posts and the whole look of the perspective was the same; only it was tilted upwards like a lid. Forgetting any trouble about breathlessness or fatigue I ran furiously forward, and reached the second of my accustomed turnings, which ought to bring me almost within sight of the station. And as I turned that corner I nearly fell on the pavement. For now the street went up straight in front of my face like a steep staircase or the side ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... as in a nightmare dream, of which even the turbulency of the weather seemed to be a part, he stumbled, blinded, panting, and unexpectedly, with no consciousness of his rapid pace beyond his breathlessness, upon the dazzling main thoroughfare of the city. In spite of the weather, the slippery pavements were thronged by hurrying crowds of well-dressed people, again all intent on their own purposes,—purposes that seemed so trifling and unimportant beside his own. The shops were brilliantly ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of men, the trampling of speeding hoofs held her. The breathlessness of the whole thing was upon her now, making it impossible to detach her ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... around to consult you about a little business matter, Agnes," he found himself beginning with sudden breathlessness, his perturbation forgotten in the overwhelming charm of her. "The governor's will has just been read to me, and he's plunged me into a ripping mess. His whole fortune is in the hands of a trusteeship, ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... had gotten by the office boy Brown could not conceive, and rolled manuscript usually gave him spasms. The youth, however, presented a letter of introduction from Brown's best friend. He said he had a story to submit, and he said it with a certain appearance of breathlessness at the end of the sentence, which showed Brown that it was his first story. Brown frowned inwardly, and smiled outwardly. He begged the youth to take a seat. As all the seats were filled with unopened papers and unbound books, the youth said he ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... appetites of the party were to appease, for a fortnight after they had reached the ship their condition was very wretched. Shackleton at once went to bed, and although he soon tried to be out and about again, the least exertion caused a return of his breathlessness, and he still suffered from [Page 144] the violent fits of coughing that had troubled him so much on the journey. With Wilson, who at one time had shown the least signs of scurvy, the disease had increased so rapidly at the end that on his return he wisely decided to go to bed, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... proper treatment. It is characterized by a generally enfeebled state, the patient having a sallow complexion, cold hands and feet, and temperature below normal, except occasionally, when there may be slight fever. When the condition is marked, there are breathlessness on slight exertion, swelling of the feet and ankles, and "ague cake," that is, enlargement of the spleen, shown by a lump felt in the abdomen extending downward from beneath the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... in a voice twice as deep as my natural one, and with a queer breathlessness, that sudden fright so often ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... from stuffy balconies and dense-packed corners than of the mosquitoes to and the heat. Without hurry he picked his way through the thronged streets, where already men lay in thousands to escape the breathlessness of walled interiors; the gutters seemed like trenches where the dead of a devastated city had been laid; the murmur was like the voice of storm-winds gathering, and the little lights along the housetops were for the vent-holes on the lid ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... eternity. I had A vision of forgetfulness. O Dream Born of a dream, as yonder cloud is born Of water which is born of cloud! I thought I saw the moonlight lying large and calm Upon the unthrobbing bosom of the earth, As a great diamond glittering on a shroud. A sense of breathlessness stilled all the world. Motion stood dreaming he was changed to Rest, And Life asleep did fancy he was Death. A quick small shadow spotted the white world; Then instantly 'twas huge, and huger grew By instants till it did o'ergloom all space. I lifted up mine eyes — ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... this, without other warning, he let fly with the banana which missed my head, and took the constable just under the left eye. He rushed at the miserable Johnson, stammering with fury. They fell.... But why dwell on the wretchedness, the breathlessness, the degradation, the senselessness, the weariness, the ridicule and humiliation and—and—the perspiration, of these moments? I dragged the ex-hussar off. He was like a wild beast. It seems he had been greatly annoyed at losing his free afternoon on ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... looks as if she had struggled very desperately, and one would hardly expect that from a woman of her advanced years and choked into breathlessness at that. Still, her arms could not have been cut otherwise; arms are not vital parts, and the maddest of assassins would know that. So, of course, they were either slashed unavoidably in a desperate death struggle or, else——" His brows knotted, his voice ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... same time, it was pleasant to sit there idle in the midst of the hurry, the breathlessness. I seemed to be at last in contact with real life, with the life that matters. I was somebody, too. Fox treated me with a kind of deference—as if I were a great unknown. His "you literary men" ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... messenger. There was a suspicion of breathlessness in his voice when he tried to ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... speculated on the tone. What did it mean? It was a breathless tone, though not in any manner like the woman's. It was as if he had run and stumbled and caught himself up, and all the time been strangled from within by rage or some like madness. The woman's breathlessness had simply meant life's going out of her with sheer fright. Now the man was coming up the slope, bent at the shoulders, as if he carried a heavy load or as if almost doubling himself helped him to go the faster. He was a thin ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... of execution, which amply compensated for the absence of those Italian arts, which so frequently elevate the music at the expense of the sentiment. Stevens looked and listened, and half forgot himself in the breathlessness of his attention—his eye fastened with a gaze of absolute devotion on her features, until, having finished her song, she detected the expression of his face, and started, with blushing ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... "There are no words for most of it, but I seem to catch the voices of things that want to be expressed somehow." Then, with sudden breathlessness, "It's a universal ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of a big fight. The Old Man has hurried, for he is out of breath; and the deadly pallor of his cheek is almost affrighting to see. But he soon recovers himself, though when he rises to speak the breathlessness is still very apparent, and he has to gasp almost now and then for more voice. Fortunately on this occasion we have not long to wait for the big announcement which everybody is so anxiously expecting. It is usually the fate of the House of Commons, whenever something very momentous is under weigh, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... as it approached. I stopped my horse, and the black ball bounded almost into the road before me, and suddenly straightening itself up into a haggard hag of a half-naked negress, exclaimed, with panting eager breathlessness, 'Oh missis, missis! you no hear me cry, you no hear me call. Oh missis! me call, me cry, and me run; make me a gown like dat. Do, for massy's sake, only make me a gown like dat.' This modest request for a riding habit in which to hoe the cotton fields served for an introduction to sundry other ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... gold sand impearl'd With lily shells, and pebbles milky white, Poor Cynthia greeted him, and sooth'd her light Against his pallid face: he felt the charm To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm Of his heart's blood: 'twas very sweet; he stay'd His wandering steps, and half-entranced laid His head upon a tuft of straggling weeds, 110 To taste the gentle moon, and freshening beads, Lashed from the crystal roof by fishes' tails. And so he kept, until the rosy veils ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... sitting more upright against the back of her chair than before her attack of breathlessness, had gazed unwaveringly at the young man throughout his speeches. A grim smile crept over her visage; her lips were pressed together, and her eyes twinkled with subdued ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... they had been inside of the Grand Union. "Then you have never seen the parlour?" I asked; and after the concert I boldly led the way into the parlour, and lavished its magnificence upon them as if I had been the host, or one of the hotel guests at the very least. I enjoyed the breathlessness of the Deerings so much, as we walked up and down the vast drawing-rooms accompanied by our images in the mirrors, that I insisted upon sitting down with them all upon some of the richest pieces of furniture; and I was so flown with my success ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sheltering ourselves behind the battlement as we best might. As the Southron formed their long ranks into lines, each man occupying his place as by magic, and preparing to cover themselves by large shields, called pavesses, which they planted before them, I again felt a strange breathlessness, and some desire to go home for a glass of distilled waters. But as I looked aside, I saw the worthy Kempe of Kinfauns bending a large crossbow, and I thought it pity he should waste the bolt on a true hearted Scotsman, when so ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an immense mistake, I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and the severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in the breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... little trout lake near the house, and walking about with a gun. His spirits were very equable and good. But he told me that he had gone out shooting in September over some fields lent him by a neighbour, and had had to return owing to breathlessness; and he added that he suffered constantly from breathlessness and pain in the chest and arms, that he could only walk a few paces at a time, and then had to rest to recover his breath. He did not seem to be anxious about it, but he ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rustling of silk filled the dark and narrow staircase. Sidonie appeared first, in ball costume, gorgeously arrayed and so pale that the jewels that glistened everywhere on her dead-white flesh seemed more alive than she, as if they were scattered over the cold marble of a statue. The breathlessness due to dancing, the trembling of intense excitement and her rapid descent, caused her to shake from head to foot, and her floating ribbons, her ruffles, her flowers, her rich and fashionable attire drooped tragically about her. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... whirring through the traffic of the crowded streets, neither spoke for breathlessness. Cornelius Allendyce stared at the buildings and swallowed at regular intervals to steady his nerves—a trick he had always found most helpful in important legal trials. Robin kept her eyes glued on the back of the taxi driver's head but he might have had two heads and one upside down ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... had carried with her, year after year, of a purple faced, cursing figure who leaned over the rickety old fence that bounded the garden, shook his fists in John Anderson's mildly puzzled face and roared threats until he had to cease from very breathlessness. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... "Scott'll line him on that tree," "He's waitin' to draw his fire," came from the cart; and then it was silent. But above this human breathlessness the river rushed and sang, and the wind rustled the tree-tops with an indifference that seemed obtrusive. Colonel Starbottle felt it, and in a moment of sublime preoccupation, without looking around, waved his cane behind him, warningly to all ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... never palls, even though bigger things are yet in store. For there is always the chance that a horse may be gored to death—even that a man may die horribly. Such things have been and may be again; so the tardy ones climbed and scurried and attained breathlessness ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... distinction between vital breath and artificial breath. It is certain that one may sing with the natural respiration; but it is rapidly exhausted if not augmented by additional inhalation; for it results in dryness and breathlessness, which cause suffering alike to singer and listener. The artificial breath, on the contrary, preserves the ease ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... The chill breathlessness of the air seemed prophetic of more snow. The Reverend Allan Telford looked across the bare wastes and cold white hills and shivered, as if the icy lifelessness about him were slowly and relentlessly creeping into his ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... strain and breathlessness of him, the agitation with which he appeared to be laboring, and especially the simple, matter-of-fact detail of his story, carried absolute conviction to Ellen Jorth. Her vague doubt of him had been created ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... came round and gave me an overhaul this morning. He tells me my heart is dilated—hence my severe breathlessness. I was told I must go to England, but need not expect to get away for a fortnight or so. The hospital is ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... it broke on Jacob by Jabbok with the assurance of blessing or as on Jeremiah with a firmer impression of the Will not his own; but no strength is left to glory in the Nature behind the Will. There is a horrified breathlessness about his lines— ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... two feet from the front stoop when he become aware of danger, something, a familiar scent, a breathlessness, and then a sudden stir. A dark thing ahead and the feeling of something coming behind. Billy as if a football signal had been given, grew calm and alert. Instantly both arms flashed up, and down the mountain shot two long yellow winks of light, and simultaneously ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... better dressed than the New-Yorker of the same class, and the women especially make a bolder attempt than ours, if not so well advised, at gayety. They had put on the best and finest they had, in Battersea Park, and if it was not the most fitting still they wore it. The afternoon was sultry to breathlessness; yet a young mother with a heavy baby in her arms sweltered along in the splendor of a purple sack of thick plush; she was hot, yes; but she had it on. The young girls emulated as well as they could the airy muslins and silks in which the great world was flitting and flirting at the same ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... as of something thrusting at him hard, so that he closed his eyes and remained for some seconds with his head projecting over the edge of the shelf before he shuffled himself back into his former position, and then lay panting till the breathlessness that had attacked him passed away, leaving a sensation of anger against himself ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... you slip away by stealth like this?" said d'Urberville, with upbraiding breathlessness; "on a Sunday morning, too, when people were all in bed! I only discovered it by accident, and I have been driving like the deuce to overtake you. Just look at the mare. Why go off like this? You know that nobody wished to hinder your going. And ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... O'Neil was lifting her from her warm nest of rugs now and telling her to fear nothing. The launch crept closer, coughing and shuddering as if in terror at this close contact. There was a brief instant of breathlessness as the girl found herself swung out over the waters; then a short climb with O'Neil's protecting hand at her waist and she stood panting, radiant, upon steel decks which began to throb and tremble to the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... fast in order that the current might not sweep her away. The rapids were now less than a hundred feet distant, and the rush of the water brought down with it a cool, spray-laden breeze that was infinitely refreshing after the baking breathlessness of the stream below; but the roar of the chafing waters was so loud that it was almost impossible to make one's voice heard; Phil therefore scrambled up the steep bank, and signed to Dick to follow. Fighting their way through the dense undergrowth, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... curious and probably surprising to discover how much the pleasure of breathing has to do with our highest and most transcendental ideals. It is not merely a metaphor that makes us couple airiness with exquisiteness and breathlessness with awe; it is the actual recurrence of a sensation in the throat and lungs that gives those impressions an immediate power, prior to all reflection upon their significance. It is, therefore, to this vital sensation of deep or arrested ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... a figure in a sweater, gray trousers, canvas shoes, Third Trinity blazer and no cap, stood, very inarticulate with breathlessness, at the door of the Senior Dean's rooms, demanding of a scandalized bed-maker to ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... should some day figure, and saw myself already holding off five enemies at once with my flashing sword. These visions haunted my dreams when at last I slept, and it was after a bout of especial fierceness that I found myself lying awake, in a great heat and breathlessness. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... after an alarming attack of breathlessness and giddiness, he returned to London. In Green Street he was happy in the proximity and skill of his son-in-law, Dr. Holland, and "a suite of rooms perfectly fitted up for illness and death." This ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... skies, the winds of fall Sing dangerously through the hissing grass; Sunlight and clouds in slow procession pass Over the tress, then comes an interval Of utter calm, the air is a morass Of humid breathlessness. A dreadful call Rings suddenly from the onrushing squall, And the storm closes in ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... which has some good points of colour and position, and four other pictures, including an exquisitely simple and quaint little picture of the Dower House at Balcarres, and a Daphne with rather questionable flesh- painting, and in whom we miss the breathlessness ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... but it was breathlessness induced by fear and by excitement, not by the quick pace at which ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... crushed Lane's hand in both his own. On his face was a glow—his dark eyes flashed: "Lane—that'll be about all," he burst out with a kind of breathlessness. Then his head high, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... if I think so, doctor!" replied the dying uncircumcised Philistine. But he added at whiles, his breathlessness being grievous, and often broken by a sore hiccup, "I am, however, no saint, as you know, doctor; so I wish you to put in a word for me, doctor; for you know that in these times, doctor, it is the duty of every good subject to ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... silence, watching. Both of them were sure that words, no matter how beautiful and eloquent, could be only a sacrilege. The very tone of the high ranges is that of silence vast and eternal beyond scope of thought, and the only sounds that can fittingly shatter that mighty breathlessness are the great, calamitous phenomena of nature,—the thunder crashing in the sky and the avalanche on the slope. The forests they had just left were deeply silent, but the far hush had been alleviated by the soft noises ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... her hand on his arm for support and walked with the same breathlessness into the restaurant. "My head's in a whirl. . . . I nearly telephoned to say I couldn't come—but I didn't see what good that would do. Eric, I want you to straighten this out for me; Jack was reported missing ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... stones and bracken. She ran thus perhaps a quarter of a mile, then threw up her arms, fell down amongst the fern, and lay there on her face. At first her heart hurt her so that she felt nothing but that physical pain. If she could have died! But she knew it was nothing but breathlessness. It left her, and that which took its place she tried to drive away by pressing her breast against the ground, by clutching the stalks of the bracken—an ache, an emptiness too dreadful! Youth to youth! He was gone from her—and she was alone again! She did not cry. What good in crying? But ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with breathlessness they listened, the sounds and disturbance died away to whispers, and there was nothing ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... waiting and this pause. Could one convey this in the theatre? This deep suspense, this breathlessness? Perhaps. The air weighs on the brain——what ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... more instructions to give. Afterwards he left the place. The night outside was close, and he was conscious of a certain breathlessness, a certain impatient desire for air. He turned down toward the Embankment, and sat on one of the seats, looking out at the sky signs and colored advertisements on the other side of the river, and down lower, where the tall black buildings lost their outline in the ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by design or accident. A weekly story paper of a worse than worthless character, that circulated widely in our neighborhood because subscribers were rewarded with a premium of a diamond ring, warranted I don't know how many karats, occupied me for hours. The stories in this paper resembled, in breathlessness of plot, abundance of horrors, and improbability of characters, the things I used to read in Vitebsk. The text was illustrated by frequent pictures, in which the villain generally had his hands on the heroine's throat, while the hero was bursting in through a graceful ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... a trial trip only,—down the Elizabeth, past Craney Island, turn at Sewell's Point, and back to the dock of the Gosport Navy Yard! When she did not turn, the cheering on the shore stopped; you felt the breathlessness. When she passed the point and took to the South Channel, when her head turned upstream, when she came abreast of the Middle Ground, when they saw that the turtle was going to fight, from along the shore to Craney and from Sewell's Point there arose a yell. Every man in ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... writes Miss Henderson, "has perhaps become obsolete; our national breathlessness cannot brook this paradox of pastoral musings within sight and sound and smell of the busy lure of money making. Within its gates we pass into a new element; and this element is antipathetic to the one-sided ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... go on indefinitely falling through the blackness. Laughing, shouting, splashing, the campers sported in the water until all of a sudden a red canoe shot into their midst and the director of Camp Altamont, accompanied by two assistants, came in an advanced stage of breathlessness to find out what the matter was. They heard the noise and the splashing of water and thought some accident ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... attention. Nana and Pauline resorted to the complicated devices of experienced coquettes. If they ran till they were out of breath, it was in view of showing their white stockings and making the ribbons of their chignons wave in the breeze. When they stopped, pretending complete breathlessness, you would certainly spot someone they knew quite near, one of the young fellows of the neighborhood. This would make them dawdle along languidly, whispering and laughing among themselves, but keeping a sharp watch through ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... remember that at this time I was ignorant of the rich man's will, and consequently of how the fate of a poor child of whom I had heard only one mention, hung in the balance at that awful moment. But in the breathlessness which seized Mrs. Postlethwaite at this sentence of double death, I realized from my knowledge of her that something more than grief was at prey upon her impenetrable heart, and shuddered to the core ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... faintly veiled transparency of air, his vague, wildly romantic subject matter, coming from no one knows where, meaning one hardly knows what; but already a magic, an incantation. "Lewti" is a sort of preliminary study for "Kubla Khan"; it, too, has all the imagery of a dream, with a breathlessness and awed hush, as of one not yet accustomed to be at home ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... goitre the tumour displaces and compresses the trachea and causes dyspnoea, and there are occasional paroxysmal attacks of breathlessness, which may be mistaken for asthma, particularly as the patient is usually the subject also of bronchitis and emphysema. In some cases the patient can, by a violent expiratory effort, such as coughing, project the goitre upwards into the neck. When the goitre is fixed in the thorax, the clinical ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... prolonged, difficult, matter. Such a baby is said to be born blue, and the breathing may be stridorous for days, becoming normal for a time, to be followed later by spells of trouble in breathing, breathlessness or breathlessness with blueness, and threatened extinction. Sometimes these spells come out of a clear sky in an apparently healthy child. That some poison, probably an oversecretion of the thymus, is responsible is shown by the relief obtainable by X-ray shrinkage of the gland, or the surgical ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... As for Courtland, he was too much taken up watching Bonnie's face when she opened her books, looking deep into her eyes as she looked up from the little velvet case where the watch ticked softly into her wondering ears; seeing the breathlessness with which she lifted the flowers from their bed among the ferns and placed them reverently in jars and ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... feeling actually ill, the sufferer inclines towards an inactive life, while the appetite usually disappears, and a general bodily upset is represented. The lips are pale, the red of the eyelids, seen by turning down the lower eyelid, will exhibit a similar appearance. Breathlessness is another notable sign; the least exertion, going upstairs for instance, causes the sufferer to pant, because the heart, not being supplied with blood of good quality, cannot perform its work properly. The pulse ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... fatally weak, and she died just as her brother did, the late Sir John Kennaway, through failure of the heart and consequent mortification of the feet. I now believe that local death began on the night of the 5th. Her sufferings in the feet were great, and we could do nothing to allay them. Her breathlessness (also from weakness of the heart) we could aid by fanning. She knew she could not recover, and only prayed for 'release.' Her prayer was granted early on Sunday ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Her breathlessness gave Rosalys time to come forward and warmly kiss Celestina in her turn. Then they made her sit down; she was looking rather tired, for she had had a long walk in the sun—and by degrees she told them all her news. There ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... the tree's self in semblance like a bay, And, showered it not a different scent abroad, A bay it had been; for no wind of heaven Its foliage falls; the flower, none faster, clings; With it the Medes for sweetness lave the lips, And ease the panting breathlessness of age. But no, not Mede-land with its wealth of woods, Nor Ganges fair, and Hermus thick with gold, Can match the praise of Italy; nor Ind, Nor Bactria, nor Panchaia, one wide tract Of incense-teeming sand. Here never ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... numbering five.[15] That wind which resides in the vital breaths called Prana and Apana occurring within this compound of the five primal elements, rushes upwards, from a situation of distress, leaving the embodied creature. It is even thus that the wind leaves the body. Then is seen breathlessness. The man then becomes destitute of heat, of breath, of beauty, and of consciousness. Deserted by Brahman (for Jiva is Brahman), the person is said to be dead. By those ducts through which he perceives all sensuous objects, the bearer of the body no longer ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... very well," she said, with a shade of meaning. "But"— here I thought her voice had a touch of breathlessness—"but who is the officer? I mean, what is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the warm September evening when the twilight was beginning to come earlier than in the August days, and her boy rushed round the corner of the cabin in a boy's habitual breathlessness from running. ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... It is distinctly a land of Luthany in which they have their being; he has inscribed for us that utter homelessness of the spirit in the far tracts that exist in the realm of the imagination; there is suffering in his pictures, that fainting of the spirit, that breathlessness which overtakes the soul in search of the consummation ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... she descended to the dining room in a black evening gown so daringly lacking in back, and yet, withal, so slimly perfect an elegant thing, that an actual breathlessness hung over the hall, the clatter of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn't remember how he got into the street. It was late evening. The twilight had fallen and the full moon was shining more and more brightly; but there was a peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in the street; workmen and business people were making their way home; other people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of mortar, dust and stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked along, mournful and anxious; he ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... composed with all save Fordyce, who now produced in her a kind of breathlessness which frightened her. She longed for, yet dreaded, his coming, and for several days avoided direct conversation with him. He respected this reserve in her, but was eager to get ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland |
