"Deathlike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they met Mrs. Montrose and the Stanton girls at dinner and told them about the boy, who still remained invisible. Uncle John had listened at his door again, but the snores had ceased and a deathlike silence seemed to pervade the apartment. This rendered them all a trifle uneasy and when they left the dining room Arthur went to the hotel clerk ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... pick him up as if he were one of its cubs; saw the blood trickle down its soft white throat into the dusty road, and then it trotted gracefully away, and was lost in the darkness of the jungle. There was a deathlike silence after this. I waited a few minutes, and then I ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... exercise an influence more powerful than force of argument or elegance of style. What he said went home to the hearts of his hearers. As he uttered the deep feelings of his soul, his rude listeners were awed into silence. He paused, and there was a moment of deathlike stillness. ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... died, and Mr. Bloundel had no one to replace him. He thus lost all means of ascertaining what was going forward; but the deathlike stillness around him, broken only by the hoarse tolling of a bell, by a wild shriek or other appalling cry, proclaimed too surely the terrible state of things. Sometimes, too, a passenger would go by, and would tell him the dreadful ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... long, broad passage, in which no sound was, at first, to be heard. There was no busy noise of doors slamming, no rapid sound of shoes, no passing to and fro of men intent on their daily bread. Pausing for a moment, that he might look round about him and realize the deathlike stillness of the whole, John Grey could just distinguish the heavy breathing of a man, thereby learning that there was a captive in, at any rate, one of those prisons on each side of him. As he drew near to the door of ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... base directly below us. Both were riding in straggling clumps, and scarcely two hundred paces separated the rearmost of the pursued from the headmost of the pursuers. The latter still uttered their war-cry, while the former now rode in silence—their breath bound, and their voices hushed in the deathlike stillness of terror. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... yell that Poopy here set up seemed to give the lie direct to the skeptical seaman; but he went on deliberately, though with a glazed eye and a deathlike ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... face was pale and deathlike, and finally she said: "I cannot speak to you now. To-morrow, or ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... A deathlike stillness prevailed, while the subordinates adjusted the rope, and placed the condemned man on the grating. Then the slack of the rope was drawn in by hand, and the men were ordered to lay hold of the instrument of death, and to stretch ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... poor young Chalmers, or the rattle of some pebble dislodged by the foot of crouching guardian, or some murmured word from man to man,—some word of wonderment at the unlooked for lull in Apache siege operations,—was the only sound to break the almost deathlike silence of the morning. There was one other, far up among the stunted, shriveled pines and cedars that jutted from the opposite heights. They could hear at intervals a weird, mournful note, a single whistling call ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the Feast to the Dead, is nowhere better illustrated than in a quaint tale current along the Yukon, in which the heroine, prematurely buried during a trancelike sleep, visited the Land of the Dead. She was rudely awakened from her deathlike slumber by the spirit of her grandmother shaking her and exclaiming, "Wake up. Do not sleep the hours away. You are dead!" Arising from her grave box, the maiden was conducted by her guide to the world beneath, where the ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... out in his terror at the sight of his grandfather's deathlike face. The cry brought out his mother, and Mr Maxwell and Jacob hurried back again. He was better in a minute, and they led him into the house, and made him lie down. In a little while Katie ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... drawn back the long tresses of her hair and fastened them in place by some process of mystery, so that now her face was revealed unshadowed, clearly defined in the starlight. Dazed, expressionless, as it appeared, looking strangely deathlike in that faint radiance, he loved it, his moistened eyes fondly tracing every exposed lineament. God! but this fair woman was all the world to him! In spite of everything, his heart went forth to her unchanged. It was Fate, not lack of love or loyalty, that now set them apart, that had made of ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... advance the brooding silence seemed more profound, more deathlike. He got to marking the sand ridges, their slight variations giving play to the brain. Way off to the left was the mirage of a lake, apparently so real that he had to battle with himself to keep from turning aside. He dropped forward in the saddle, his head hanging ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... shore," he began, breaking the black and deathlike silence enclosing him and the invisible woman. "I wanted ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... in their self-consciousness, crossed the room and, as intangible as it was potent, a wave of horror went with them. There was a noisy scraping of chairs as they took their seats, and then a deathlike silence. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... by, and still he sits upon the same stone bench with folded arms, heedless alike of the fast decreasing time before him, and the urgent entreaties of the good man at his side. The feeble light is wasting gradually, and the deathlike stillness of the street without, broken only by the rumbling of some passing vehicle which echoes mournfully through the empty yards, warns him that the night is waning fast away. The deep bell of St. Paul's strikes—one! ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... dissuade her. But she would go. Her aspect, however, was deathlike, and as he softly undid the doors, and half-helped, half-carried her across the passage, he said to her that he must go and waken Fraeulein Anna and find ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... N. silence; stillness &c. (quiet) 265; peace, hush, lull; muteness &c. 581; solemn silence, awful silence, dead silence, deathlike silence. V. be silent &c. adj.; hold one's tongue &c. (not speak) 585. render silent &c. adj.; silence, still, hush; stifle, muffle, stop; muzzle, put to silence &c. (render mute) 581. Adj. silent; still, stilly; noiseless, soundless; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ten minutes the mine was silent as a grave. Only the faint drip, drip, drip of water from the warm spring and the almost inaudible tremble-mumble of the throbbing earth disturbed the deathlike stillness. ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... poorly define the state of my feelings. Since that day I have respected the high calling of burglary and regard with favor the daring knights of the skeleton key. I was frightened. I, who would feel no fear had I to fight a dozen men, trembled with fright during this adventure. The deathlike silence and the darkness in familiar places seemed uncanny to me. The very chairs and tables appeared to be sleeping, and I was fearful lest they should awaken. I cannot describe to you how I was affected. Whether it was fear or awe or a smiting conscience I cannot say, ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... as she caught a glimpse of its deathlike face, then put her hand over her eyes to shut out the fearful sight. She felt as if she were turning to stone with a sense of the awful thing she had done in her mad passion; then suddenly seized with an overwhelming desire to hide herself from all these eyes, that would presently be gazing ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... the statue gallery and into the arras passage. A deathlike silence reigned in his Highness's apartments. O God! would she find a still, white figure—a rigid, sheet-covered shape? She pushed open the tapestry door; the writing-closet was empty, but beyond, in the sleeping-room, she heard ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... these motives, I went nearer, and at last was close enough to perceive that the figure was human. He lay upon his face. Near his right hand was a musket, unclenched. This circumstance, his deathlike attitude, and the garb and ornaments of an Indian, made me readily suspect the nature and cause of this catastrophe. Here the invaders had been encountered and repulsed, and one at least of their number had been left ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... bell tinkled several times, resounding clearly in the deathlike silence, and presently a young maid-servant made her appearance at a small door that opened ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... mournful East begins to blow. But suddenly was heard the sound of steps, Grating on the crisp snow; the cottagers Were seeking Eva; from afar they saw The twain, and hurried toward them. As they came With gentle chidings ready on their lips, And marked that deathlike sleep, and heard the tale Of the snow-maiden, mortal anguish fell Upon their hearts, and bitter words of grief And blame were uttered: "Cruel, cruel one, To tempt our daughter thus, and cruel we, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... by the lamp, although feeble, nevertheless enabled the engineer to advance slowly, following the wall of the cavern. A deathlike silence reigned under the vaulted roof, or at least in the anterior portion, for soon Cyrus Harding distinctly heard the rumbling which proceeded from the bowels of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... morn, from skies ere stars exiled were, In deep and deathlike sleep my senses drowned, The self-same vision did again appear, With stormy wrathful looks, and thundering sound, 'Villain,' quoth he, 'within short while thy dear Must change her life, and leave this sinful ground, Thine be the loss, the torment, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... fear, he turn'd.—His guide was gone; A broad chaotic cloud appear'd alone. His limbs no more their chilly weight sustained, A deathlike torpor o'er his bosom reign'd, His stony eyeballs fix'd in silent trance Met the terrific Spectre's withering glance. And lo! the Phantom waves, with sudden glare, His burning sceptre thro' the starless air! High o'er the bark the booming billows spread, The deafening waves were closing ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... master's life. Come, with your razors rip my bowels up, With your sharp fireforks crack my sterved bones: Use me as you will, so Humber may not live. Accursed gods, that rule the starry poles, Accursed Jove, king of the cursed gods, Cast down your lightning on poor Humber's head, That I may leave this deathlike life of mine! What, hear you not? and shall not Humber die? Nay, I will die, though all the gods say nay! And, gentle Aby, take my troubled corps, Take it and keep it from all mortal eyes, That none may say, when I have lost my breath, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... up in her face, and it seemed as if a dark shadow rolled over it. I sprang to my feet and screamed. Peggy, who was already on the threshold, caught her as she fell forward, and laid her on the bed as if she were a little child. She was in a fainting fit. I had seen her before in these deathlike swoons, but never had I watched with such shuddering dread to see the dawn of awakening life break upon her face. I stood at her pillow scarcely less pale and cold ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... huge ship settled quietly down in the centre of the great square a profound and deathlike silence suddenly succeeded the confused babbling sound which had hitherto prevailed, and when the four travellers stepped out from the pilot-house to the deck and appeared at the gangway a visible shudder ran ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... like a dog after a run in sunshine. Some one just outside the door shouted, "He's as fit as any ov us!" Belfast put his hand on the door-handle.—"Here!" called James Wait, hurriedly, and in such a clear voice that the other spun round with a start. James Wait, stretched out black and deathlike in the dazzling light, turned his head on the pillow. His eyes stared at Belfast, appealing and impudent. "I am rather weak from lying-up so long," he said, distinctly. Belfast nodded. "Getting quite well now," insisted Wait.—"Yes. I noticed you getting better this... last month," said ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... be no waking life on the pirates' island. Even old Tabus had probably put out the fire and gone to sleep, for deathlike silence ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... remembrance of what had lately passed in this closet occurred. Whether midnight was approaching, or had passed, I knew not. I was, as then, alone and defenseless. The wind was in that direction in which, aided by the deathlike repose of nature, it brought to me the murmur of the waterfall. This was mingled with that solemn and enchanting sound which a breeze produces among the leaves of pines. The words of that mysterious dialogue, their fearful import, and the wild excess to which I was transported by my terrors, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... glance over her shoulder and Miss Gallifer look up. A little gray figure in a battered black hat stood just within the door. She stood just within the door, but with no consciousness of anything or anyone in the room. She saw only the upturned face and its deathlike fixity. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... serious crime is going forward—observe how unwearied is the attention of all classes, and especially the lowest; with what patience they will sit for days and nights together, to watch the proceedings; mark the deathlike silence which pervades the hall, when any important part of the evidence is delivered, or the verdict of the jury is returned. Observe the mighty throng which attends a public execution. The writer once was present, when an hundred and fifty thousand persons assembled in one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... bespoke the gravity of the situation, far more serious, indeed, than we then realized, and as they approached us, in the deathlike silence that prevailed, we could distinctly hear the throbbings of our hearts. We were impatient to learn our fate, and yet we dreaded the disclosure. Our anxiety was of short duration, and one of our elders spoke as follows. I repeat his very words, for as they fell from his lips ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... if she were the regularly ordained nurse, and stepped to the bedside of the sleeping patient. The broken arm in its swathings lay partly uncovered; and across his wounded brow was stretched a broad bandage, below which his face showed pale and weary-looking, in the half-stupor of his deathlike slumber: for he had become strangely quiet. His uninjured arm lay inertly on the ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... newly dug sides of the tunnel seemed to close in on him menacingly. It was quiet. Not the blank silence of space that Tom was used to, but the deathlike stillness of a tomb. It sent chills up and down his spine. Finally he stepped around a sharp bend and ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... lined up inside; the prisoner between an escort was led up in the center. It was wonderfully impressive. I felt that I was to witness the condemning of a fellow soldier to a number of years of hard labor. Over the whole assembly there came a deathlike silence and the finding of the court was read to us by an officer, the sentence ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... of fossil wood and after supper made a big fire, and as we sat around it the brightness of the sky brought on a long talk with the Indians about the stars; and their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the deathlike apathy of weary town-dwellers, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... a deathlike stillness reigned in the room; then Dr. Taylor said, low and feelingly, "You are a Christian, my dear sir, and for you dying will be but going home to a brighter and ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... and whose sin shall outlive the solid mass of the mighty pyramid that towered over us! The heaviness of her swoon had smoothed away the falseness of her face, and nothing was left but the divine stamp of Woman's richest loveliness, softened by shadows of the night and dignified by the cast of deathlike sleep. I gazed upon her and all my heart went out to her; it seemed that I did but love her more because of the depth of the treasons to which I had sunk to reach her, and because of the terrors we had outfaced together. Weary ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... boy was crying, she came over to him, kneeled down beside him and put her arms about him. Soon her kisses and her soothing words had their wonted effect, and he dropped off once more into the deep, deathlike ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... moose—a timely piece of luck, for they were in danger of starvation, and Lovewell had been compelled by want of food to send back a good number of his men. The rest held their way, filing on snowshoes through the deathlike solitude that gave no sign of life except the light track of some squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note of the hardy little chickadee, or black-capped titmouse, so ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Mr B——, who saw the necessity of administering relief, tried to awaken him to a sense of religious consolation; but he was as yet unfit even for that sacred ministration; and all her efforts having failed to rouse him, even from the deathlike stupor in which he lay, she had recourse, by my advice, to probing the wound, to take off the stricture by which the natural humours were pent up. She discoursed pathetically on the qualities of the departed, which, she said, would be the passport of her spirit to a sphere ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... A deathlike stillness surrounded the lighter. It was difficult to believe that there was near a steamer full of men with many pairs of eyes peering from her bridge for some hint of land in the night. Her steam had ceased blowing off, and she remained ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the expression of agony displayed on her countenance. Her hand was pressed tightly over her heart, her lips quivered, and her whole person trembled. It was dreadful to see her thus agitated; and Alice, throwing her arms around her mother exclaimed, "What is it, dearest mother? Be not look so deathlike. I cannot bear ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... rose to give the final decision. Beyond the circle of Willamettes, who were still indifferent and unconcerned, the discontented bands had thrown aside all concealment, and stood with bared weapons in their hands; all murmurs had ceased; there was a deathlike silence in the dense mob, which seemed gathering itself together for a forward rush,—the commencement of a ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... and immense backside. With such stimulants as these this course proved one of the most salacious and voluptuous we had yet had, and the ecstatic ending was accompanied with screams of delight, as we died away in the deathlike swoon of rapturous and satiated desires. We again rose to purify and refresh ourselves, and for some time after lay closely embraced on the bed. As Mary had not yet had my prick in her cunt, Miss F. proposed that I should fuck her, that Lizzie ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... still lasts. Despite the words Of the physician, I can cast not off That ghastly fear. Albeit he owned no drugs, This deathlike slumber, this deep breathing slow, His livid pallor makes me dread each moment His weary pulse will cease. This is the end, And from the first I knew it. The worst evil My warning tongue had wrought were joy to this. No heavier curse could I invoke on her Than that ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... horror and pity, rushed down the hill-side; the house was empty, for Aunt Keziah had gone for shelter and sympathy to some of the neighbors. He filled a jug with cold water, and hurried back to the hill-top, finding the young officer looking paler and more deathlike within those ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... house looked as deathlike as ever. It seemed incredible that human existence could be possible within its sunless walls. Indeed, my persistent efforts at the rusty bell-handle produced only a feeble echo, and the round-eyed interest of a group of urchins, who volunteered, after a time, that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a low tone, as if she were not convinced; but I did not speak again; and the captain also remained silent. Minutes, which seemed like hours, passed in another deathlike silence, broken only by the panting of Durnief. I wondered if Zara had fainted, or had gone for help, or what! There seemed to be no good reason for the silence, and the waiting. Why did she not grasp the sword, and ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... stifled. A powerful penetrating odor pervaded the rooms that were less stifling than others, and this odor Florence explained came from a liquor the Mexicans distilled from a cactus plant. Here drunkenness was manifest, a terrible inert drunkenness that made its victims deathlike. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... reached his ear, and kept his fingers firmly on the bell-rope. An hour passed on, and the sun rode high in heaven; gradually the thundering died away. Quicker grew the breathing, and tighter the cold fingers clasped each other. The last sound ceased: a deathlike silence reigned throughout the town, and many a cheek grew colorless as marble. There came a confused sound of shouts—the mingling of many voices—the distant tramp of cavalry; and then there fell on the aching ears the deep, thrilling tones ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... Jack stood in deathlike stillness. Both realized the tragedy that was about to be enacted, and both were aware of their ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... thin sprays that come in the late New England spring, but huge clumps that two men could not enclose with linked hands; great masses of scarlet and purple, and—mostly—of a waxy white, with something deathlike in their translucent beauty. There, also, he would wade into the swamps around a certain little creek, lured by a hope of the jack-in-the-pulpit, to find only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch tapped ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... silent there, Yes, deathlike! Dead? I dare not look: if dead, Were it best to steal away, to spare myself, And her too, pain, pain, pain? My curse on all This world of mud, on all its idiot gleams Of pleasure, all the foul fatalities That blast our ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... hurrying up, and dressed the wound with a pledget of linen steeped in oil; and the Maid lay very white and still, almost like one dying or dead, so that we all held our breath in fear. In sooth, the faintness was deathlike for awhile, and she did beckon to her priest to come close to her and receive her confession, whilst we formed round her in a circle, keeping off all idle gazers, and standing facing away from her, with bent, ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... that? Who is it?" asked the hoarse, nervous voice of Gubin in dissipation of the deathlike stillness. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... where all the streets were paved with water, and where the deathlike stillness of the days and nights was broken by no sound but the softened ringing of church-bells, the rippling of the current, and the cry of the gondoliers turning the corners of the flowing streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her task being done, sat down to muse. The family began a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... motionless till her mother's breathing told her that she was really asleep, and then, with noiseless tread, she approached the sleeper. The clouds shifted and the moon shone in, showing Frau von Graevenitz's face livid and deathlike in the luminous moonshine. The girl shuddered; it was like robbing a corpse, she thought. But her hesitation was momentary; she pushed her flexible hand beneath her mother's pillow, and her fingers closed on the cold iron of a key. She drew ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... unconscious. And during that interval there were no disturbing sounds to agitate the deathlike quiet of the sickroom. Riders glided into town from various points of the compass and stepped softly as they moved in the street—whispering or talking in low tones. The universal topic was the fight, and Lawler's condition. On the second day ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and rose from her crouching attitude. The moon still shone upon her face, intensifying its deathlike pallor. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... flush, succeeded by a deathlike paleness, came over his face for a moment—construed by those around into a consciousness of guilt; for, where the prejudices of men become active, all appearances of change, which go not to affect the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... for the brandy, of which he seldom tasted; but he needed something to relieve the deathlike faintness which occasionally came over him, and which old Hagar, looking only at his mischievous eyes, failed to observe. Only those who knew Henry Warner intimately gave him credit for many admirable qualities he really possessed—so full was he of fun. It was in his merry eyes and about ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... that deathlike stupor was, and the physician, when later in the afternoon he came ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... to see the same figure that he had seen on the railway platform, the same gloomy drapery, the same quiet, almost deathlike demeanor, nay, almost the same veil over her features; but the Lady Ongar whom he now saw was as unlike that Lady Ongar as she was unlike that Julia Brabazon whom he had known in old days at Clavering ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... population should disperse among the neighboring towns. But the aged senators, who had been Consuls or Censors, seeing that their lives were no longer of any service to the state, sat down in the forum on their curule thrones awaiting death. When the Gauls entered the city they found it desolate and deathlike. They marched on, without seeing a human being till they came to the forum. Here they beheld the aged senators sitting immovable, like beings of another world. For some time they gazed in awe at this strange sight, till at length one of the Gauls ventured ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... Thereat he hew for joy and meaning to do the like, raised her cup to his mouth and drank off the whole contents, without considering whether there was therein aught harmful or not. And forthright he rolled upon his back in deathlike condition and the cup dropped from his grasp, whereupon the Lady Badr al-Budur and the slave-girls ran hurriedly and opened the pavilion door to their lord Alaeddin who, disguised as a Fellah, entered therein.—And Shahrazad was surprised by the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... half-blinded by the flying spray and the wind, and clutching at whatever offered to our hands, and when at last we caught sight of the lifeboat we cheered, and the leaping of my heart made me feel sick and deathlike. As the dawn brightened we could see more plainly, and it was frightful to notice how the men looked at her, meeting the stinging spray borne upon the wind without a wink of the eye, that they might ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... she has told us that when half an hour or so had elapsed she fell into a reverie. What she was thinking of she cannot remember, save that she had forgotten altogether about her husband. Then she awoke with a curious sort of sensation at her heart. The first thing that struck her was the deathlike stillness of the room. Glancing at the bed, she perceived her husband to be lying in the same position as before. Thereupon she approached him, turned the coverlet back, and saw that he was stiff and cold— that he had died suddenly, as though smitten with a stroke. But of what precisely ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... related many pretty things out of Holberg's comedies, and about Waldemar and Absalon; but all at once she cowered together, and her head began shaking backwards and forwards, and she looked as she were going to make a spring. "Croak! croak!" said she. "It is wet, it is wet; there is such a pleasant deathlike stillness in Sorbe!" She was now suddenly a frog, "Croak"; and now she was an old woman. "One must dress according to the weather," said she. "It is wet; it is wet. My town is just like a bottle; and one gets in by the neck, and by the neck ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... and announced his unconditional refusal of the terms proposed to him. He would not give a constitution or promise allegiance to the French. The minister withdrew, and Odo was left alone. He had dismissed his gentlemen, and as he sat in his closet a sense of deathlike isolation came over him. Never had the palace seemed so silent or so vast. He had not a friend to turn to. De Crucis was in Germany, and Trescorre, it was reported, had privately attended the Duchess in her ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... agitation and it is slightly trembling from that sound; a big spot of light is also trembling, spreading light upon the water, radiating from its centre into the dark distance, there growing paler and dying out. Again there is weary and deathlike repose ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... one nearer to the war by its look of deathlike desolation. The paralysis of the bombarded towns is one of the most tragic results of the invasion. One's soul revolts at this senseless disorganizing of innumerable useful activities. Compared with the towns of the north, Rheims is relatively unharmed; but for that very ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... tormented by furious pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, having once traversed in thought its gradation of the zoned iris of the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... short, jagged ears set forward stiffly like the broken points of a javelin; its dilated eye blazing with steady green fire—as still as death. And then with his blood become as ice in his veins from horror and all the strength gone out of him in a deathlike faintness, the school- master realized that he was face to face unarmed with a cougar, gaunt with famine and come ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... bliss, and countless crowds of happy souls, and rapturous songs, and shouts of praise, and joyous meetings of loving and long parted friends in realms of endless life and boundless blessedness; but all were gone. A sullen gloom, a deathlike stupor, a horrible and unnatural paralysis of hope had come in place of those sweet visions of celestial glories. My only comfort was, that though I had ceased to believe in the divinity of Christianity myself, she ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... you have been telling her, I suppose," he said sternly, glancing at the pale and deathlike face; "you might have waited till you were sure. Poor girl! it must have given her a turn!" and, stooping down, he placed his arms under Jess, and, lifting her with some difficulty, staggered to the house, where he laid her down upon the table and, assisted by Mrs. Neville, began ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... recitation, and impressed his pupils with the idea that nothing less would pass. His ideas of order were of the loosest kind, and hence the noise at times was such that even the older pupils found it unbearable; but when the hour for recitation came, somehow a deathlike stillness fell upon the school, and the unready shivered with dread apprehension. And yet he never thrashed the boys; but his fear lay upon them, for his eyes held the delinquent with such an intensity of magnetic, penetrating power that the unhappy wretch felt ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... this horrible plume, the face seemed on the instant to alter like the hideous changes in a dream. It appeared to become of a deathlike paleness, and anon streaked with blood. Another stroke of the oar—the chin had fallen down, and the tongue was hanging out. Another pull—the eyes were gone, and from their sockets, brains and blood were fermenting and flowing down the cheeks. It was the face of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... over immense listening silences of hard, unbroken dunes extending in haggard desolation to fantastic horizons of lurid ardor, hung a heat-quivering air of deathlike stillness. Redder than blood, a blistering sun-ball was losing itself behind far, iron hills of black basalt. A flaming land it was, naked and bare, scalped and flayed to the very bones of its ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... nor what she doeth; but we know that after giving him the drugged wine, she donneth her richest raiment and perfumeth herself and then she fareth out from him to be away till break of day; then she cometh to him, and burneth a pastile under his nose and he awaketh from his deathlike sleep." When I heard the slave girl's words, the light became black before my sight and I thought night would never-fall. Presently the daughter of my uncle came from the baths; and they set the table for us and we ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Lion, then the decay of his strength as he pales and sickens in the autumn, and at last his restoration to youth and vigor after he has passed the Waters of Death—Winter, the death of the year, the season of nature's deathlike torpor, out of which the sun has not strength sufficient to rouse her, until spring comes back and the circle begins again. An examination of the Accadian calendar, adopted by the more scientifically inclined Semites, shows ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... immediately about it, there was a little grey haze. As the young man's eyes became used to the darkness, he could see upon the cots that thickly littered the floor the forms of men sprawled out, lying in deathlike silence, or heaving and snoring with tremendous effort, like ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... equally familiar with his unexpressed wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first late break of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless, and vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, "Look what I am bringing you who watch ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... not find that out,' she said, in a positive voice, and looking at him. 'But supposing they do, the trick does not seem to me to be so serious as to justify that wretched, miserable, horrible look of yours. It makes my flesh creep; it is perfectly deathlike.' ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... gloom The tyrant strides in haste; And, powerless, to his dreadful doom The victim followeth fast. The dazed captives quake and stare At the sullen torch's blood-red glare, And the lover starts aghast At the deathlike forms ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... truths that are very useful to disciples but which might be confusing and misleading to the man of the world if he attempted to literally apply them. Perhaps for the average mortal "kill out desire" might be interpreted "transmute desire." Without desire man would be in a deathlike and dangerous condition—a condition in which further progress would be impossible. But by transmuting the lower desires into the higher he moves steadily forward and upward without losing the motive power ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... had well-nigh exhausted her feeble strength in exhorting the people to come to Jesus and accept his truth, she sank into her big willow chair and silently prayed. For a brief period there was a deathlike ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... of leaves, distinctly to be heard in the deathlike silence of the room, was followed by the reading ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... wounded during our last war, lay dying in his cot. Suddenly the deathlike stillness of the room was broken by the cry, "Here! Here!" which burst from the lips of the dying man. Friends rushed to the spot and asked what he wanted. "Hark," he said, "they are calling the roll of heaven, and I am answering to my ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... out there was not a soul on the sea-front. The town with its cypresses had quite a deathlike air, but the sea still broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the waves, and a lantern was ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the spring, as she was looking at her mother, who was working among her flowers, she began coughing violently; Allie, who had been attending to her household duties, now joining them, stooped down to help her, but as she did so she saw her face was of deathlike pallor, and that the blood was slowly oozing from her mouth, staining her pale lips with its ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... again, and still there went on that undercurrent of murmuring talk which seemed to make the attempt of anyone to address the gigantic meeting hopeless. But suddenly Mr. Gladstone raised his hand, and it was almost as if a miracle had happened. In an instant there was a deathlike silence in the hall, and every man in it seemed to be holding his breath. The speaker's voice rang out, clear and musical as of old, and it reached to the furthest corners of the mighty apartment. But he had not got further than the conventional opening words when his ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... but the delegates balked on the cunningly worded resolution declaring the repeal of the Missouri Compromise inexpedient and unnecessary, yet rejoicing that it would benefit the territories and forbidding any attempt to undo it. It put the stamp of Nebraska upon the proceedings, and the deathlike stillness which greeted its reading shook the nerves of the superstitious as an unfavourable omen. Immediately, a short substitute was offered, unqualifiedly disapproving the repeal as a violation of legislative good ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... literature, there appeared so great a multitude of writers; such habits of diligence and productiveness were immediately manifested throughout the whole nation; and such a mass of respectable talent was brought to light; that the long interval of a dull and deathlike silence, which preceded this period, presents indeed an enigma difficult to be solved. No small influence may be ascribed to Germany. The principles of the government were changed; the country, physically as well as morally exhausted, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... creeping up into the eastern sky, touching the face of the waters with a soft, pearly light. A few straight streaks of cloud became faintly outlined. The moon looked yellow and deathlike. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... move. Her great, startled eyes, dark, intense, and passion-filled, stared helplessly at the two, who, transfixed, returned the stare in frozen silence. So rigid and deathlike the model lay in the meshes of the net, so beautiful and graceful in her motionless pose, that for an instant the intruders could not trust their senses. Then the woman found voice ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock |
