"Dumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unite, Legions on legions bright'ning all the shores. Then banners rise, and cannon-signal roars, Then peals the warlike thunder of the drum, Thrills the loud fife, the trumpet-flourish pours, And patriot hopes awake, and doubts are dumb, For, bold in Freedom's cause, the bands ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from Venice ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... word to the corner where Tyr was chained. The dog rose up to meet him, as piteous and indignant as a dumb beast can be. He stroked the black head. "Good Tyr! ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... sound of joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank, But friends and foes, in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... the dumb lips of his flock he lent Sad pleading words, showing how man, who prays For mercy to the gods, ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... by-and-by his son-in-law; Dr. Jarocki, the zoologist; Julius Kolberg, the engineer; and Brodowski, the painter. These and others, although to us only names, or little more, are nevertheless not without their significance. We may liken them to the supernumeraries on the stage, who, dumb as they are, help to set off and show the position of the principal figure ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... for I got neither cash nor manuscript. The next time I passed the empty store, I stepped in to explain, but the artist had a black eye, and his own interest was so engrossed in Chinese lacquer-work and a stormy divorce case he had coming on shortly, that I was struck dumb. What was a short story in comparison with such issues? And I knew he had no more opinion of me as an author than I had of him as ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... to-day and a great deal more. For instance (a third and last idea out of the thousand that Ely arouses), Ely is dumb and yet oracular. The town and the hill tell you nothing till you have studied them in silence and for some considerable time. This boast is made by many towns, that they hold a secret. But Ely, ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... a casket; but is declined, probably, because Wolfstein, being a professor of the capital crime, considers mere larceny infra dig. A "second robber" must therefore be hired, and Ottocar has one already preserved in the castle dungeons, in the person of a dumb prisoner. Dummy comes on, and the auditors at once recognise the "brother" who was not murdered in the prologue. He steals the casket, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... meaningless frictions and massacres? "Would that My people forgot Me and kept My commandments," says the Jerusalem Talmud. Too long has Israel been silent. "Who is blind," says the prophet, "but My servant, or deaf as My messenger?" He is not deaf to-day, he is only dumb. But the voice of Jerusalem must be heard again when the new world-order is shaping. The Chosen People must choose. To be or not to be. "The religion of the Jews is indeed a light," said Coleridge in his "Table Talk," "but it is as the light of the glow-worm which gives no heat ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... her post by the window. Her mind was bruised between two conflicting feelings—a dumb longing for someone to caress and comfort her, someone who would meet her pain with a bearing less hard and wooden than Bridget's—and at the same time, a passionate shrinking from the bare idea of comfort and sympathy, ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a little. Like himself, she seemed smitten dumb; and with every moment of silence, he became more acutely aware of her. He had discovered that this was one of her most potent spells. Never for long could a man be unaware of her, of the fact that she was before ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... nothing of his typical talent. Mere whirlwinds of words, mere melodramas of earth and heaven do not affect us as Dickens affects us, because they are exaggerations of nothing. If asked for an exaggeration of something, their inventors would be entirely dumb. They would not know how to exaggerate a broom-stick; for the life of them they could not exaggerate a tenpenny nail. Dickens always began with the nail or the broom-stick. He always began with a fact even when he was most fanciful; and even when he drew the long bow he was careful ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... conventional hussar pantaloons and boots; and you shall see the picturesqueness of his wearing borne out in his bearing all through the tragedy down to the moment when he becomes invincibly and consistently dumb. ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... who until now had been struck utterly dumb with astonishment, could not refrain from a cry of admiration at the sight of the lovely Fatma. She seemed to him a hundred times more beautiful than any description he had heard of her ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... was an old lady of Parma, Whose conduct grew calmer and calmer, When they said "Are you dumb?" She merely said "Hum!" That provoking ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... last we reached the harbour. I remember nothing more Till I stood, my sick heart throbbing, With my hand upon the door. There I paused—I heard her speaking; Low, soft, murmuring words she said; Then I first knew the dumb terror I had ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... morning, they said, 'Good morning, father!' and the princes answered, 'Good morning, dear children!' But it was suddenly quite otherwise; for when we awoke one morning at Dusseldorf, and were ready to say, 'Good morning, father!' lo! the father was gone away; and in the whole town there was nothing but dumb sorrow, everywhere a sort of funeral disposition; and people glided along silently to the market, and read the long placard placed on the door of the Town Hall. It was dismal weather; yet the lean tailor, Kilian, stood in his nankeen jacket which he usually wore only in the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... a fortune in jewels!" Captain Purcell exclaimed. They had found the glade in the forest, where Robin had created a king's ransom for Glaudot. The men gathered around, many of them struck dumb by the sight of all ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... I was struck dumb with Amazement, and while I was considering with my self what this should mean, I observ'd a Man riding up to us, mounted on a Lion; when he came to the others, I found him of the common Size with the Inhabitants of our Globe; he had on his Head a Crown of Bays, which in ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... until the next election come, that no mortal could discover what he did? He must not tell it to his wife or his child; he must keep it locked up from his bosom friend; he must not broach it to his pot-companion, but be as dumb as the tankard which they had emptied between them; and this state of silence must be observed for three years. Thus far for the elector: how far was the concealment to be operated upon by the candidate? He had found out that he was unsuccessful; that where he had been promised five hundred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wandered from his home, singing the story of his loss and his despair to the helpless passers-by. His grief moved the very stones in the wilderness, and roused a dumb distress in the hearts of savage beasts. Even the gods on Mount Olympus gave ear, but they held no power over the darkness ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... of him. His son! And now he—the mighty Lord of the Jungle—he, Tarzan, King of the Apes, the only one in all the world fitted to find and save the child from the horrors that Rokoff's evil mind had planned—had been trapped like a silly, dumb creature. He was to die in a few hours, and with him would go the child's last ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the box of Le Vasseur, the performance was composed of a tragedy in which a very handsome actress had the part of a dumb priestess. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... dumb creatures know the provision of their God, the sinner does not recognize the provision of his Saviour. He quibbles and questions, 'May I?' and am 'I am afraid it is not for me;' and 'I think it cannot be meant ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... their pumpkin field. Men, in every age, flatter themselves that they have secured this force within the bounds of their convenience, but it gathers and grows. Now it is calm and deep like a lake, but gradually its pressure will increase, the dykes will give way, and the force which has so long been dumb will rush forward ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... time, Susan started off on a lecture tour of her own, determined to make people understand that this war, so abhorrent to her, must be fought for the Negroes' freedom. "I cannot feel easy in my conscience to be dumb in an hour like this," she explained to Lydia, adding, "It is so easy to feel your power for public work slipping away if you allow yourself to remain too long snuggled in the Abrahamic bosom of home. It requires great will ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... last year at a fete given under the patronage of Lecureuil, the deputy; a benefit performance given in aid of poor actors of the ninth arrondissement. He had prowled around her, dumb, famishing, and with blazing eyes. For a whole fortnight he had pursued her incessantly. Cold and unmoved, she had appeared to ignore him. Then, suddenly, she surrendered; so suddenly that when he left her that day, still radiant and amazed, he had said a stupid thing. He ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... nearly killed my father. He lost his habitual firmness, and his sorrow, usually dumb, ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... possible to find more detestable Gojim than these impure and dumb children of Talvus—these Christian swine?" [Footnote: Children of Edom, children of harlots, swine, dogs, abominations, worshippers of the crucified, idolaters, are titles of honour freely given to Christians by the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... preaching again!' Well! shame on us preachers if we have made a living Gospel into a dead theology. And shame no less on you hearers if by you the words that should be good news that would make the tongue of the dumb sing, and the lame man leap as a hart, have been petrified and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... was struck dumb. So, then, his secret was betrayed, and in the most dangerous quarter, and, worst of all, by his own folly! Once or twice he was about to speak, but the chief checked him, and he himself was only too well aware of the utter futility of any denial or of any attempt to ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... ambassador striving to obtain an audience for him. Nothing was so easy as to cover Louville with confusion, if he had spoken falsely, by making him show his letters; if he had none he would have been struck dumb, and having no official character, Alberoni would have been free to punish him. Even if with confidential letters, he had only a complaint to utter in order to introduce himself and to solicit his pay, Alberoni would very ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Patricia told him. She was always sure that her dumb friends understood quite well all she said to them. "There comes ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... "What, my dear, if you come to that, is the matter with YOU?" When, a minute later on, he had followed up his last note by a touch or two designed still further to conjure away the ghost of the anomalous, at that climax verily she would have had to be dumb to the question. "There seems a kind of charm, doesn't there? on our life—and quite as if, just lately, it had got itself somehow renewed, had waked up refreshed. A kind of wicked selfish prosperity perhaps, as if we had grabbed ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... had been that of a dumb animal, and I had heard it once or twice before when poor 'Brownie' had ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Mrs. Van's voice was tragic. "Do you want Dolores to get mad and quit? They've got their feelings same as we have. I guess I've got to catch a deaf and dumb one if I want to keep her ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... said to be derived from the Danish word mumme, or momme in Dutch (Germ. larva), and signifies disguise in a mask, hence a mummer." In the Promptorium Parvulorum we have "Mummynge, mussacio, vel mussatus": it was a pantomime in dumb show, e.g. "I mumme in a mummynge;" "Let us go mumme (mummer) to nyghte in women's apparayle." "Mask" and "Mascarade," for persona, larva or vizard, also derive, I have noticed, from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Section A of the British Association, and Fellows of the Royal Society and of the Royal Astronomical Society, to whom I sent copies of my paper, were, without exception, dumb.' Professor De Morgan, however, having occasion to examine Mr. Reddie's publications some time after, was in no sort dumb, but in very plain and definite terms exhibited their absurdity. After all, however, the real absurdity consisted, not in the statements which Mr. Reddie made, nor even in the conclusions which he drew from them, but in the astounding simplicity ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... I didn't mean to insult the dumb creation," responded Tom. "Baxter, you are the limit. I suppose you have joined ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... is of uncommon psychogenetic interest and practical importance, a solution seems to be promised in the investigation of the formation of concepts in the case of those born deaf, the so-called deaf and dumb children. On this point I offer first the words of a man of ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... struck the two disputants dumb: Adams cried out, "Was ever anything so unlucky as this poor gentleman? I protest I am more sorry on his account than my own. You see, Joseph, how this good-natured man is treated by his servants; one locks up his linen, another physics his horses, and I suppose, by his being at this house ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... to place him; Those spots bar him out of each class; We think him a treasure to study at leisure And analyze under a glass.' I seemed to grow cold as I listened To the words that these butterflies spoke; With fear overcome, I was speechless and dumb, And then ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... corrals, red-lidded caballeros cursed irritably the horses they saddled. In the patio Don Andres gave dignified adieu to the guests that still lingered. The harp was shrouded and dumb upon the platform, the oaken floor polished and dark with the night-long slide of slippered feet. The fiesta was slipping out of the present into the past, where it would live still under the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... brains; worst of all, he had promised very differently as a boy. A younger man who had been at school with him, having come out for his health, travelled some hundreds of miles to see Carmichael, whose conversation struck him absolutely dumb. "He was captain of our house," the visitor explained to Carmichael's subordinates, "and you daren't say dash in ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... some stout husband; the praetor would take power from him being interdicted, and the management of him would devolve to his relations, that were in their senses. What, if a man devote his daughter instead of a dumb lambkin, is he right of mind? Never say it. Therefore, wherever there is a foolish depravity, there will be the height of madness. He who is wicked, will be frantic too: Bellona, who delights in bloodshed, has thundered about him, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... times no! That man in love?... That man was loathsome with his bilious, yellow face, his nervous, cat-like movements, crowing with conceit... loathsome! No, not in such words would Kister have uttered to a devoted friend the secret of his love.... In overflowing happiness, in dumb rapture, with bright, blissful tears in his eyes would he have flung himself on ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in a taxi-cab kept Spike dumb for several miles. Having arrived at what seemed a sufficiently remote part of America, Jimmy paid the driver, who took the money with that magnificently aloof air which characterizes the taxi-chauffeur. A lesser man might have displayed some ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... of LATHOM (who, being quite six feet or more, cannot be described as Small and Earl-y) is to lay the foundation-stone of "The Cross Deaf and Dumb School for N. and E. Lancashire." Now the Deaf and Dumb are, as a rule, exceptionally cheerful and good-tempered. It is quite right, therefore, that exceptions to this rule should be treated in a separate establishment, and that the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... Christian duty distinctly enjoined by apostolic authority.[372:1] The five years of war, during which Christians of various lands and creeds intermingled as never before, and the Sunday laws were dumb "inter arma" not only in the field but among the home churches, did perhaps even more to break the force of the tradition, and to lead in a perilous and demoralizing reaction. Some reaction was inevitable. The church must needs suffer the evil consequence ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... I thought she resented this somewhat indiscreet, not to say indelicate though indirect avowal of his feelings towards his mistress; and that she looked on Guert with even more coldness than she had previously done. Neither of the ladies, however, said anything. During this dumb-show, Mr. Cuyler had leisure to recover from the surprise of discovering that one of his prisoners was really a clergyman, and to inquire ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... trades, he did not seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, MULTUM IN PARVO, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior—though ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... stood there, dazed and dumb, harkening the terrible cries that rose from those still not dead in the ruins, she perceived some of the Folk gathered along the brink of the new chasm. More and more kept coming from the scant half of the caves still left. And all, dazed and numbed like herself, stood there ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... repair, "the walls are sound, the roofs unbroken, the doors and even window-shutters"—being of solid basalt monoliths, incapable of decay or destruction—"are in their places." In the town whose dumb streets no foot but the Bedouin's has trodden for centuries and centuries, there are hundreds of such houses as this; and in a province not larger than Rhode Island there are a hundred such towns. According to Mr. Porter, the language of Scripture, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... of great sanctity, had dominion over all creatures. Fire, air, water, and earth were also subject to him. He drove away wicked spirits; he gave sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, health to those in decay, and life to the dead. The elements could not affect him. He walked upon fire, held his hands in a burning hot oven without sustaining injury; and he and a companion passed over the sea upon his cloak spread on ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... annually for some years; and, by means of Collin also, the directors of the high schools allowed me to receive free instruction in the grammar school at Slagelse, where just then a new, and, as was said, an active rector was appointed. I was almost dumb with astonishment: never had I thought that my life would take this direction, although I had no correct idea of the path which I had now to tread. I was to go with the earliest mail to Slagelse, which lay twelve Danish miles from ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... we trace The lines of empire in thine infant face. What nations in thy wide horizon's span Shall teem on tracts untrodden yet by man! What spacious cities with their spires shall gleam. Where now the panther laps a lonely stream. And all but brute or reptile life is dumb! Land of the free! thy kingdom is to come, Of states, with laws from Gothic bondage burst, And creeds by charter'd priesthood's unaccurst; Of navies, hoisting their emblazon'd flags, Where shipless seas now wash unbeacon'd crags; Of hosts review'd in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... dumb; not a word came to her lips. But he seemed to need no reply; a sad meditativeness was stealing upon him which made him oblivious for the moment of ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... of the dumb animals moved him to a ready sympathy, and he was constantly planning to spare them ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... speak to her." He makes a sudden dash for the woman in the corner. Campbell takes up his magazine, and watches him over the top of it, as he stops before the woman, in a confidential attitude. In a moment she rises, and with a dumb show of offence gathers up her belongings and marches past Roberts to the door, with an angry glance backward at him over her shoulder. He returns crestfallen ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... a joy which, in its wild excess, paralyzes the faculties, makes dumb the voice, confuses the brain, until ecstasy becomes agony, and all the senses are enveloped in a cloud of doubt. Such was the joy of Maurice as he stood powerless, questioning the blissful reality of the hour, yet in the actual presence of that being who was never a moment absent ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... those who tomorrow will shape the destiny of our land, and we cannot afford to neglect them. The Legislature of Colorado has recommended that the National Government provide some general measure for the protection from abuse of children and dumb animals throughout the United States. I lay the matter before you for what I trust will be ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... it," answered Adair; "the very daring of the thing would throw them off their guard. They would never expect that two white people could so speedily turn themselves into niggers. Of course we must pretend to be dumb: though we can talk first-rate nigger gibberish in the berth, it won't pass current, I fear, among the natives of ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... and you'll be master once more in your own house. She's all docity jist now—keep her so.' As we returned we saw a light in the keepin' room, the fire was blazin' up cheerfulsome, and Marm Porter moved about as brisk as a parched pea, though as silent as dumb, and our supper was ready in no time. As soon as she took her seat and sot down, she sprung right up on eend, as if she had sot on a pan of hot coals, and coloured all over; and then tears started in her eyes. Thinks I to myself, I calculate I wrote that 'ere lesson in large letters anyhow, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... sighed a deep, quivering sigh. Felix knew that she loved the little horse, too, and, so he sometimes thought, she was herself so weary that she often longed to lie down beside the trail and perish as the tired dumb animals did. She had never made complaint before, but to-night, perhaps appalled by the thought of the mountains still to be crossed, she ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... of their abandonment, suddenly gave way, for no apparent reason. She bitterly regretted the brother whom she scarcely remembered; she imagined his suspense and anguish on her account, and suffered for both; she felt the dumb pain of homesickness for a home she had never known. Her loneliness became intolerable. Her condition at last affected Mrs. Markham, whose own idleness had been beguiled by writing to her husband an ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... and I want to count, too; but I don't want us to be the only ones that count. I want to live in a world where every soul counts—white, black, and yellow—all. That's what I'm teaching these children here—to count, and not to be like dumb, driven cattle. If you don't believe in this, of course ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of stately priests, the processions and the incense, the divine choir and the celestial harmonies resounding lingering in arched roofs, that attracted many a neighbor. The altar was desolate, the choir was dumb; and while the services proceeded in hushed tones of subdued sorrow, and sometimes even of suppressed anguish, gradually, with each psalm and canticle, a light of the altar was extinguished, till at length the Miserere was muttered, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... exercises going on. Under the supervision of teachers in black frock-coats and Derby hats, a class of girls are ranged in two rows, throwing and catching pillows, altogether back and forth at the word of command. Classes of boys are manipulating wooden dumb-bells and exercising their muscles by various systematic exercises. The youngsters are enjoying it hugely, and the whole affair looks so thoroughly suggestive of the best elements of Occidental school-life that it is difficult ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a word with the nurse, then turned the others out of the room by a practiced innuendo of manner. They stayed a long time in the room without opening the door. Meredith paced the hall alone, sometimes stopping to speak to Warren Smith; but the two officials of peace sat together in dumb consternation and astonishment. The sleepy young man relaxed himself resignedly upon a bench in the hall had returned to the dormance from which he had been roused. The big hospital was very still. Now and then a nurse went through the hall, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... man and wife, who had been separated for so many long years, and under such trying circumstances. To be sure, they were poor ignorant negroes, who are looked upon by a large portion of the world, as only fit to be ranked with dogs and other dumb animals: yet they have souls, hearts which had been given to Christ, and the meek and lowly Jesus, were he now upon the earth, would not be ashamed to take this down-trodden race by the hand and lift them up. God looks down from his throne above with pitying eye; he pities ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... life valueless in Ireland and property worthless, whilst no deed was too cowardly, no atrocity too barbarous, for them to praise. They alone in modern times warred against women and children. Animals were the dumb victims of the inhuman ferocity they in no way tried to check, and they effectively taught the receptive Irish millions that a British Government could be coerced into giving what was demanded provided a sufficient number of crimes ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... deathly power in silence drew My lady's life away. I watched, dumb with dismay, The shock of thrills that quivered thro' And tightened every limb: For grief my eyes grew dim; More near, more near, the moment grew. O horrible suspense! O giddy impotence! I saw her fingers lax, and change ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... sternly question what had been the evil of that mystic life, which seemed now oozing away through the last sands in the hour-glass. I placed my hand softly on his pulse: it scarcely beat. I put my ear to his breast, and involuntarily sighed, as I distinguished in its fluttering heave that dull, dumb sound, in which the heart seems knelling itself ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lent small sums of money at interest, and did other commissions, and with this woman Svidrigailov had for a long while close and mysterious relations. She had a relation, a niece I believe, living with her, a deaf and dumb girl of fifteen, or perhaps not more than fourteen. Resslich hated this girl, and grudged her every crust; she used to beat her mercilessly. One day the girl was found hanging in the garret. At the inquest the verdict was suicide. After the usual proceedings ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... several natives who had made the journey, but they were as dumb and driven animals, fighting as they were told, carrying what they were given to carry, walking as many miles as they were considered able to walk. They hired themselves out like animals, and as the beasts ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... motioned to him to guide me towards the houses visible in the distance. This he seemed willing to do, but before we had gone many paces he repeated two or three times a phrase or word which sounded like "r'mo-ah-el" ("whence-who-what" do you want?). I shook my head; but, that he might not suppose me dumb, I answered him in Latin. The sound seemed to astonish him exceedingly; and as I went on to repeat several questions in the same tongue, for the purpose of showing him that I could speak and was desirous of doing so, I observed that his wonder grew ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... and Rattleshag slept, while Fanny steered the boat. Wahena, no longer in bonds, kept close to her. He intimated in his dumb language that he wanted to take the helm, and gently took the tiller from her. He was soon proficient in steering, for there was now nothing to do but keep the boat in the middle of the river, and occasionally ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... was lovelier than ever. Nor was it any wonder it should seem so to him, for certainly never had the eyes in it rested on his with such a lovely and trusting light in them. A moment she stood, then slowly sank again upon the sand and drew her skirts about her with a dumb show of invitation. The place where she sat was a little terraced hollow in the slope, forming a convenient seat. Malcolm saw, but could not believe she actually made room for him to sit beside her—alone with her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... as the work of a Higher Power, who, when He pleases, can accomplish his results by the feeblest instruments. I am glad of anything which gives notoriety to the book, because it is a plea for the dumb and the helpless! I am glad particularly of notoriety in England because I see with what daily increasing power England's opinion is to act on this country. No one can tell but a native born here by what an infinite complexity of ties, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... morning, at her parting with Rudin, she had involuntarily cried out that he did not love her! But that made things no easier for her. She sat perfectly still; it seemed as though waves of darkness without a ray of light had closed over her head, and she had gone down cold and dumb to the depths. The first disillusionment is painful for every one; but for a sincere heart, averse to self-deception and innocent of frivolity or exaggeration, it is almost unendurable. Natalya remembered her childhood, how, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... the doctor. "For there's the solution of the mystery. No mystery at all. Barry is simply a man who is closer akin to the brute forces in nature. See! By the eternal heavens, he's dragging that beast—that dumb beast—back from the ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... statement, as quoted by Hutchinson. What was the real cause or motive of this discrepancy among the witnesses does not appear. The facts, that at first they went into fits in beholding him, were all struck dumb for a while, and Ann Putnam saw him on the beam, were likely to have an unfavorable effect upon the minds of the people, and threatened to explode the delusion. But Ann, with a quickness of wit that never ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... himself might be, the death of Robespierre was a signal at which great multitudes of men, struck dumb with terror heretofore, rose out of their hiding places: and, as it were, saw one another, how multitudinous they were; and began speaking and complaining. They are countable by the thousand and the million; who have suffered cruel wrong. Ever louder rises the plaint of such a multitude; into a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... on his lips. He looked at the crier, dumb for a minute, and then called him back quickly. "Let me see," said he; and when he had convinced himself that he was not mistaken, he offered the man at once a thousand sequins, without allowing him ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... so overcome that his eyes held no tears. With dumb grief he shut himself up in his room to find his comfort ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... be here if I did?" she flashed resentfully. "I was a country girl away at school, more foolish than one of those dumb Swedes in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... relating his amatory exploits, and I need not say how dismal that kind of narrative is to all but the narrator. It would be dismal even if sprightly and vivacious, for all men are rivals in woman's favor, and to relate your successes to another man is to rouse in him a dumb resentment, tempered by disbelief. You will not convince him that you tell the tale for his entertainment; he will hear nothing in it but an expression of your own vanity. Moreover, as most men, whether rakes or not, are willing to be thought rakes, he is ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... ferocity aroused by the possession of a few water-white pebbles, set me shuddering. I was dumb with amazement. ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... our troops went into winter-quarters, and I returned to Court, like the rest. The roads and the posting service were in great disorder. Amongst other adventures I met with, I was driven by a deaf and dumb postillion, who stuck me fast in the mud when near Quesnoy. At Pont Saint-Maxence all the horses were retained by M. de Luxembourg. Fearing I might be left behind, I told the postmaster that I was governor (which was true), and that I would put ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... was a tease, that girl, and I would of give anything to of been able to tease her right back agin. But I couldn't think of nothing to say, so I jest stands there kind o' dumb like, thinking what a dern purty girl she was, and thinking how dumb I must look, and I felt my face getting red. Doctor Kirby would of thought of something to say right off. And after I got back to camp I would think of something myself. But I couldn't think of nothing ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... quietly observant of recent comings and goings, was standing at the door of the shop, and missed no item of this dumb show. He raised both hands in silent condemnation of Elkin's childishness, whereupon the horse-dealer jerked a thumb toward Grant's retreating figure, and went through a rapid pantomime of the hanging process. ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... if she had grown dumb and could never more regain the power of speech. Yet she managed to nod, and directly after the favourite bowed a farewell to Charmian. The Ligurian was obliged to follow his master, while Charmian and Barine passed through the gateway between the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not speak, she sinks in a swoon, Sister Helen,— She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon." "Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Her woe's dumb ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... troops of fawns, is free enough. Lost, presently, amidst bankless, boundless marsh —soaking in slow shallowness, as it will, hither and thither, listless among the poisonous reeds and unresisting slime—it is free also. We may choose which liberty we like,—the restraint of voiceful rock, or the dumb and edgeless shore of darkened sand. Of that evil liberty which men are now glorifying and proclaiming as essence of gospel to all the earth, and will presently, I suppose, proclaim also to the stars, with invitation to them out of their courses,—and of its opposite continence, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... from this question," he said. "From whatever point a discussion starts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is the madness of Rufus about Naevia; 'He thinks of nothing else; talks of nothing else, and if Naevia did not exist, Rufus would be dumb.'" ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... his ears, and sat dumb with astonishment. Then, rage lending him wings, he flew after the Lizard, who, despite his short legs and scanty breath, put his best foot foremost, and scuttled ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... have not told yet, and do not design to tell. The bitterness of those days hid itself from view at the time—and shall keep its concealment still. Even if I could dwell on my sorrows with the eloquence of a practised writer, some obstinate inner reluctance would persist in holding me dumb. ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... Further, prudence is more consistent with human nature than with that of dumb animals. Now there are instances of a certain natural prudence in dumb animals, according to the Philosopher (De Hist. Anim. viii, 1). Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Well, and have you no word of greeting? Why, they are dumb with astonishment! And is it so strange a thing to bring one's wheel outdoors? 'Twas out of doors that this wood first grew! (Touches wheel.) All day I have longed to be out in these wide spaces—and ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... flyer, "goes our last chance of escape. They were not as dumb as we thought: they knew how good a leap to the pavement would look after we had been ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... table, and hastily swallowed a light meal; in fact he rose while the rest were still busy gorging themselves. And before Lee or the others were ready to launch at Circuit any shafts of their rude wit, his manoeuvres struck them dumb ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... acted, not as a parent, but as a stepmother, if she had designed the faculty of speech to be the promoter of crime, the oppressor of innocence, and the enemy of truth; for it would have been better for us to have been born dumb, and to have been left destitute of reasoning powers, than to have received endowments from providence only to turn them to the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... before me, still so handsome, so apt a speaker, with so great a variety of fortunes to relate, I saw he was the very personage to captivate a boyish fancy. John Paul had left only that morning; it was not to be supposed he had been altogether dumb upon his favourite subject: so that here would be Mr. Alexander in the part of Dido, with a curiosity inflamed to hear; and there would be the Master, like a diabolical Aeneas, full of matter the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fact (one sees it in every street, in every village), that parental love is oftenest at its zenith in the nursery, and then falls lower and lower on the firmament of human life, as the child gets older and older? Look at all dumb brutes, the lower animals of this our earth; is it not thus by nature's law with them? The lioness will perish to preserve that very whelp, whom she will rend a year or two hence, meeting the young lion ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... most beautiful among the youth of the place. The Japanese may visit them for a certain payment, but to Europeans they do not show themselves willingly, and only for a large sum. When this takes place at any time, it is only a dumb show for a few moments, during which ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... voice which used to squawk and squeak Is now for ever dumb— Yet may you see his bones and beak All in ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... austere and dumb On the hight shelf Of my half-lighted room, Would place the shining bust And wait alone, Until I was but ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... seem to be everywhere characterized by gentleness: there is no visible quarrelling, no loud harshness, no tears and reproaches. Cruelty, even [13] to animals, appears to be unknown: one sees farmers, coming to town, trudging patiently beside their horses or oxen, aiding their dumb companions to bear the burden, and using no whips or goads. Drivers or pullers of carts will turn out of their way, under the most provoking circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy dog or a stupid ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... a word when the tale had been told. He asked no questions, neither did he make any outcry. He stood like one stricken dumb, dry-eyed and motionless, gazing upon that quiet form lying upon the bed. Gently they led him away, and tried to speak to him. He did not heed them. A weight such as he had never known before pressed ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... "I was struck dumb for some time with this astonishing request; when I recovered my vexatious surprise (foreseeing the consequence), I made answer, I was highly sensible of the honour designed me, but, upon my word, I had never printed a single line ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... days!" he said. "I've knowed him ever since his mustash growed, and there's days when he's struck with a dumb sperit, just like Scriptur'. Don't you fret, Mary! He'll see you righted, or I'll give you ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards |
