"Livid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the elevator shaft when Locke, carrying Eva in his arms, entered. At the sight Zita's whole body expressed her unquenched hatred of the unconscious girl. Her eyes narrowed, her lips became livid, and her hands clenched as though she would like to strike ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... man with the scar and the moustaches, came out of the house like a cannon ball, and came racing across the lawn to Valentin like a dog to his master. His livid face was quite lively with the glow of this domestic detective story, and it was with almost unpleasant eagerness that he asked his master's permission ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... been some ceremony at the monastery amongst the hills where most of his time here is spent, and he had evidently come straight from there. His flowing black robes were splashed with mud and torn by brambles, and his white face was livid with exhaustion and anger. His dark eyes burned like fire in their hollow depths, and his right hand was raised above his head, as though he had been on the point of striking or denouncing us. I shall not forget his appearance ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of instant death was before his eyes, and the teeth of Keona chattered in his head, while his face grew more hideous than ever, by reason of its becoming livid. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... fact, a sort of Palace of Illusions. She is first in a dark room, and she then finds herself suddenly in a room of dazzling light. "At the far end of this room, the whole aspect of which is very forbidding, she distinguishes seven personages, wrapped in red cloaks and wearing masks of such livid whiteness that they looked like corpses. They were all seated behind a table of black marble. Just in front of the table, and on a lower seat, was an eighth spectre. He was dressed in black, and he, too, wore a white mask. By the wall, on each side of the room, were about twenty men ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... for mercy. When he had taken up crime as a means of livelihood he had decided that if the price to be paid for his course was death, he would pay like a man. He glanced at the cottonwood grove, wherein were many ghastly secrets, and smiled. His hairless eyebrows looked like livid scars and his lips quivered in ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... Republican, which appears semi-occasionally at Greenville, Tex., denounces in what Dorenus was wont to term "livid language," my statement to the effect that a nation pays for its imports with its exports. He says it is all "iconoclastic foolishness," declares that a nation does nothing of the kind, and proceeds to animadvert in an unchristian spirit on the density of my ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Ronald said imploringly, laying his hand upon her arm. 'He deserves it, no doubt; but don't glory over his humiliation.' He had no need to ask whether she spoke the truth; his brother's livid and scarlet face was ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... whispers. Within the low rail, their faces fronting the altar, and their backs turned on the audience, sat a row of spectres. Start not, reader; spectres they were,—fleshless, bloodless spectres. I saw them enter: they came like the sheeted dead; they wore long white dresses; their faces were pale and livid, like those that look out upon you from coffins; their forms were thin and wasted, and cast scarce a shadow as they passed between you and the beams of the sinking sun. Their eyes they lifted not, but kept them steadfastly fixed on the ground, over which they crept ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... whole country. The gloom was general; Vesuvius disappeared just after we had the pleasure of discovering it; lightning began to flash with dreadful rapidity, and people to run frightened to their houses. At four o'clock darkness universally prevailed, except when a livid glare of lightning presented momentary glimpses of the bay and mountains. We lighted torches, and forded several torrents almost at the hazard of our lives. The fields round Naples were filled with herds, lowing most piteously, and yet not half so much scared as their masters, who ran ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... was livid. He wanted to say something awful, something that would crush the fearless lad before him—but the words would not come. He caught up his silk hat and waved it fiercely in the face of Ralph and ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... his countenance. This went on up to two o clock—Pompey having finished his speech at noon—and every kind of abuse, and finally epigrams of the most outspoken indecency were uttered against Clodius and Clodia. Mad and livid with rage Clodius, in the very midst of the shouting, kept putting questions to his claque: "Who was it who was starving the commons to death?" His ruffians answered, "Pompey." "Who wanted to be sent to Alexandria ?" They answered, "Pompey." "Who did they wish to go ?" They answered, "Crassus." ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... throne, Gave the law unto his people, deeply graven into stone, "Gitche Manitou, the Mighty," in compassion for the race Of unlettered, untaught heathen who knew not his god-like face Save they saw it in the tempest or the lightning's livid glare, Or in some familiar emblem they could see, or feel, or wear, Taught them peace and love to kindred, through an emblem formed of stone, Fashioned in the well-known outlines of a thing they called their own. In the caverns of his ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... looked very uneasily at his younger brother's face. The livid pallor had passed away, but the strongly-marked eyebrows ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 24th.—We left Rome this morning, after troubles of various kinds, and a dispute in the first place with Lalla, our female servant, and her mother. . . . . Mother and daughter exploded into a livid rage, and cursed us plentifully,—wishing that we might never come to our journey's end, and that we might all break our necks or die of apoplexy,—the most awful curse that an Italian knows how to invoke upon his enemies, because it precludes the possibility ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... turned livid with anger, and was at a loss how to reply, when Lady Vernon fortunately ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... rose and fell. Some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, low down, some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism flickered with livid sparks. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... of him, but when he saw the huddled form, limp and insensible, and the face livid and drawn, his better judgment flashed through and mastered his terrible anger. He caught the inert Mayor by the arms, dragged him across the soft flooring of hoof shavings and metal-dust, to the outside, slinging him unceremoniously on to the heap of broken iron beside ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... of Actual Human Life— If thou could'st see the serpent strife Which the Greek Art has made divine in stone— Could'st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek, Note every pang, and hearken every shriek Of some despairing lost Laocoon, The human nature would thyself subdue To share the human woe before thine eye— Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be true To ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... M. le Dauphin. He showed me that he perceived this with an air of gentleness and of affection which penetrated me. But I was terrified with his looks, constrained, fixt and with something wild about them; with the change of his looks and with the marks there, livid rather than red, that I observed in good number and large; marks ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... looked at the livid face patched with scarlet against the coarse linen, Maria began to feel a little perturbed. Something in the atmosphere of the room had penetrated even the brick wall of her stolidity. She hoped the two ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... the frill of black lace which fringed the hand that lay upon our visitor's knee. Five little livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... up, livid with fury and despair, and rushed headlong from the place with both hands clenched and raised on high. So terrible was this inarticulate burst of fury, that Jorian's puny ire died out at sight of it, and he stood looking dismayed after the human ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... door opened again and Nigel strode in. He was in riding dress and was breathless and livid with anger. He was in a nice mood to confront a wife on the verge of screaming hysterics. After a bad half hour with his steward, who had been talking of impending disasters, he had heard by chance of Wilson's conflagration and the hundred-pound cheque. He had galloped ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of Desolation, void of Light, Save what the glimmring of those livid Flames Casts pale ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... organs. Besides the slow and progressive derangement of his or her health, the diminished energy of application, the languid movement, the stooping gait, the desertion of social games, the solitary walk, late rising, livid and sunken eye, and many other symptoms, will fix the attention of every intelligent and competent guardian of ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... statue, stared at the contortions of the executioner for a moment, then, livid, wheeled on the Prophetess, shaking ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... departed, distracted [with pain], for she was grievously exhausted. But swift-footed Iris having taken her, led her outside the crowd, oppressed with griefs; but she began to turn livid as to her beauteous skin. Then she found impetuous Mars sitting at the left of the battle; and his spear and swift horses had been enveloped in darkness. But she, falling on her knees, with many entreaties besought from her ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... spear went through Gulveig. But still she stood smiling at the Gods. A second time Odin hurled his spear. A second time Gungnir pierced the witch. She stood livid as one dead but fell not down. A third time Odin hurled his spear. And now, pierced for the third time, the witch gave a scream that made all Asgard shudder and she fell in ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... mother, the sword piercing her entrails.[75] If a God had given me a mouth sounding with a hundred tongues, and an enlarged genius, and the whole of Helicon {besides}; {still} I could not enumerate the mournful expressions of his unhappy sisters. Regardless of shame, they beat their livid bosoms, and while the body {still} exists, they embrace it, and embrace it again; they give kisses to it, {and} they give kisses to the bier {there} set. After {he is reduced to} ashes, they pour them, when gathered up, to their breasts; and they ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... was thrown into such consternation on the eruption of the plague that the citizens destroyed themselves, as if in frenzy. When the plague ceased, men thought they were still wandering among the dead, so appalling was the livid aspect of the survivors, in consequence of the anxiety they had undergone, and the unavoidable infection of the air. Many other cities probably presented a similar appearance; and small country towns and villages, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Her voice had struck him with pain; her countenance still more distressed him. Nothing could afford a more complete contrast to the soft and glowing visage that a few moments before he had beheld in the fane of Apollo. She was quite pale, almost livid; her features, of exquisite shape, had become hard and even distorted; all the bad passions of our nature seemed suddenly to have concentred in that face which usually combined perfect beauty of form with an expression the most gentle, and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... face had changed as utterly as if he had removed a mask. From flushed that it had been it was livid now and the eyes were blazing, the mouth twitching. Thus a moment he glowered upon his enemy. Then standing in his stirrups he swung aloft ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... to her feet, her face livid. She would have leaped at the prisoner, but the colonel held her back. But he could not hold back the flood of voluble French that poured from ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... in this light), it made them not flare, nay, not redden in the faintest degree, but reflect a brilliant speck of white light. Everything was unsubstantial, yet not as in a mist, nay, rather substantial, but flat, as if cut out of paper and pasted on the black branches and green leaves, the livid, glaring houses, with roofs of dead, scarce perceptible rod (as when an iron turning white-hot from red-hot in the stithy ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in Adrian and went to his office in Toledo every day, happened that day to be in the Western Union office up-town—and it was the superintendent I was really struggling with! In about twenty minutes he arrived livid with rage, and I was discharged on the spot. I informed him that the general superintendent had told me to break in and send the despatch, but the general superintendent then and there repudiated the whole thing. Their families were socially close, so I was sacrificed. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... not astonished that the wine turns against you. Every time I think of them, if by accident I look in the glass, I see that it turns me quite livid. The beggars! fortunately, ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... reference to the Confession passed his lips, she raised her head. A faint tinge of color showed itself on her livid cheeks; a momentary spasm of pain stirred her deathlike face. The one last interest left in the woman's life was the interest of recovering the manuscript which had been taken from her. To that appeal the stunned intelligence still faintly ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... rushed at each other. By a quick movement, Blunt secured a hold which Merry did not fancy, and he slipped out of his grasp. On the marble whiteness of Merriwell's bare back four livid streaks showed, and a flick of red ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... the situation at a glance. She beheld Cayrol livid, tottering, and excited. She felt Jeanne trembling on her breast; she saw something serious had occurred. She calmed herself and put on a cold manner to enable her the better to suppress any resistance that they ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... grew livid. The end of all things was at hand; his dinner had been put back half an hour! This was a climax in the affairs of his life, which for the moment he failed to grasp or estimate. Was a father ever cursed with such daughters as his? He had been in the City ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... white that is not the snow of years but the ashen colorlessness borne of continuous nervous strain. And there was the unexpected stoop of the powerful shoulders, the occasional unavoidable trembling of the hands, and in his face, which repeated the livid tone of the hair, were graven lines, many and deep, born of the repressed disappointment and increasing loneliness that had insensibly humanized the harsh visage. To the eyes of the son, looking on his father for the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... over mid-stream and two hundred feet above it, with the tall cliffs and mysterious, dark recesses of the Highlands on either hand, the waters turned to a livid gray under the feeble light of the waning moon. No part of our voyage was more impressive, no scene more awe-inspiring. It was a region of such weird lights and gruesome shadows as no fancy could people with aught but gaunt goblins and dread demons, come down to us through generations untold, an ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... wheeled and dashed for the mantel. But as he endeavored to lay hand on the revolver Maurice brought down the blade on the Colonel's knuckles, leaving a livid welt. Maurice took possession of the weapon, while a grimace of agony shot over the Colonel's face. Seeing that the chambers were loaded, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... recollect the wild Magellan coast; The head-winds and the icy, roaring seas; The nights you thought that everything was lost; The days you toiled in water to your knees; The frozen ratlines shrieking in the gale; The hissing steeps and gulfs of livid foam: When you cheered your messmates nine with "Ben Bolt" and "Clementine", And "Dixie Land" and "Seeing ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... from the earth the aethalium is often pyriform. This fact did not escape Micheli. See Nov. Plant. Gen., Tab. 95. The plasmodium is pale pink, soon becomes buff when exposed in fruiting, finally pallid or somewhat livid, and is outwardly changed into the stout, tough peridium. This consists of an intricate network of irregular gelatinous tubules enclosing within the meshes protoplasmic masses of pretty uniform size, 60-100 mu. Outwardly the protoplasmic vesicles predominate; inwardly the gelatinous ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... while here and there on the mother-of-pearl pavement was stretched from them what looked like spots of blood. The Ancients were reeling from exhaustion; they filled their lungs inhaling the freshness of the air; the sweat flowed down their livid faces; they had shouted so much that they could now scarcely make their voices heard. But their wrath against the Suffet was not at all abated; they hurled menaces at him by way of farewells, ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... of the truth, rose instantly, and went into the hall, where, when he saw the African magician dead, and his face already livid by the strength of the poison, he embraced Aladdin with great tenderness, and said, "My son, be not displeased at my proceedings against you; they arose from my paternal love; and therefore you ought to forgive the excesses to which it hurried me." "Sir," ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... David's face was livid and his clenched fist was raised to strike, but Patsy and his crutches lay in a little huddled heap ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... drama of which it formed a part was confined to anticipation. In chuckling over the vexations he could inflict by the rigid clutch of his dead hand, he inevitably mingled his consciousness with that livid stagnant presence, and so far as he was preoccupied with a future life, it was with one of gratification inside his coffin. Thus old Featherstone was imaginative, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... would mean massacre unspeakable. He was as brave a man as ever wore a uniform, but he knew that on the next words he should speak the lives of fifty thousand men depended. He took one more look round the ring of steel which enclosed him on every side, and then with livid lips and grinding teeth gave the order for the flag to be hauled down. The next moment he unbuckled his sword and hurled it into the sea; then with a deep groan he ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... may dare thy livid terrors now. My son, thy proxy, is by my side, pure and shameless, brave and trustworthy. He shall carry thy sword to the holy soil and dye it 'deep in Paynim blood.' Then thou and I ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... that ignoble motive; but it is mentioned by Suetonius, c. 47. The British pearls proved, however, of little value, on account of their dark and livid color. Tacitus observes, with reason, (in Agricola, c. 12,) that it was an inherent defect. "Ego facilius crediderim, naturam margaritis ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... by the violence and length whereof they suffer so much, that they are born with great weakness, and many times it is difficult to know whether they are alive or dead, their body appearing so senseless, and their face so blue and livid, that they seem to be quite choked; and even after some hours, then-showing any signs of life is attended with weakness, that it looks like a return from death, and that they are still in a ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... I was hesitating—whether to call on Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knowing that her thick-headed husband was in hoc for debt—when the door of her house crashed open and that old scoundrel, Lord Steyne, came wildly down the steps, his livid face blood-streaked, his topcoat on his arm and a dreadful look in his eye. The world knows the rest as I learned it half an hour later at the greengrocer's, where the Crawleys owed an inexcusably large bill. Then the Duchess de Langeais—but ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so. There is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures. I would keep some book of natural history always by me as ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... horse's side. Its neck was covered with long blue hair, its sides with scales of green and gold. Its back was of corrugated skin, of a purple hue. Its belly was similar in nature, but its colour was leaden, dashed with blotches of livid blue. Its skinny, bat-like wings and its tail were of a dull gray. It was strange to see how so many gorgeous colours, so many curving lines, and such beautiful things as wings and hair and scales, combined to form the horrible ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... because of Gilian's presence, and as he spoke the purple of the Cornal's face turned to livid and the scar became a sickly yellow. He rose and thumped his ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... now livid with concentrated rage, and her eyes glittering with that suppressed light peculiar to intense passion, she ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... hide. "The gold of heaven," he murmured, and saluted the sky to the right. "The rod of hell," he thought, and pointed towards the left, where distant trees stared, black, angry outlines against those waves of livid fire. Was not this contest in the clouds a kind of allegory of the quarrel in which he was now engaged, and was not his cause very surely, in its righteousness, its justice, its honor, gilded and invigorated by those noble rays to strive against ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... not to betray herself while in Miss Day's room, now as she stood alone in the brilliantly lighted corridor, she simply danced with rage. Her small hands were clenched until the nails pierced the flesh and her delicately colored face became livid with passion. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... singeing. Berthaud moved the candle, and as if his enemy's sang froid wounded him, he threw savagely, dashing down the dice on the table, and lifting the box with a gesture of defiance. He swore a frightful oath: his face was livid. He had ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... and the Wondership forged steadily forward. It was a weird experience for the boys. About them the artillery of heaven thundered and flashed. They could see each other's faces and the black outlines of their craft in the livid flare of flash after ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... Soignes, for the road was so completely choked up as to be impassable.—The dead required no help; but thousands of wounded, who could not help themselves, were in want of every thing; their features, swollen by the sun and rain, looked livid and bloated. One poor fellow had a ghastly wound across his lower lip, which gaped wide, and showed his teeth and gums, as though a second and unnatural mouth had opened below his first. Another, quite blind from a gash across his eyes, sat upright, gasping for breath, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... Martin, in an under-tone, "you did it that time, Barney. I verily thought the old fellow was hanged. He became quite livid in the face." ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... onward, with officious care, And all the speed her aged limbs can bear. But furious Dido, with dark thoughts involv'd, Shook at the mighty mischief she resolv'd. With livid spots distinguish'd was her face; Red were her rolling eyes, and discompos'd her pace; Ghastly she gaz'd, with pain she drew her breath, And nature shiver'd at ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... livid with rage, took a darker tinge at this command. More on-lookers had now arrived, who jeered and hooted the unfortunate man. It was a great joke to see the boaster at length brought low by quaint old Captain Josh. Such a thing ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... disease, between them, had left very little of a husband to take under nursing when she got him again. An attack of scurvy had filled my mouth with sores, shaken every joint in my body and covered me all over with scars and livid spots, so that I was unlovely to look upon. A smart knock on the ankle joint from the splinter of a shell that burst in my face, in itself a mere bagatelle of a wound, had been of necessity neglected under the pressing and insistent calls upon me, and had grown worse and worse until the ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... varied districts of different languages, the races of men are as different as the places. But to describe their persons and customs in general terms, they are nearly all slight in figure, swarthy or rather of a pale livid complexion; fierce-looking, with goat-like eyes, and eyebrows arched in a semicircle and joined, with handsome beards, and long hair. They at all times, even at banquets and festivals, wear swords; a custom which that excellent author Thucydides tells us the Athenians were the first ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... interruption. They held their breath and waited. The conversation which had started harmlessly enough had become a duel. The grim shadow of tragedy seemed suddenly to have stalked in amongst them. Hassen sprang to his feet, livid, his coal-black eyes on fire. Reist was facing him, his head thrown back, passionate, contemptuous, bitter. With a swift, threatening gesture he threw out his arm ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... speechless from utter astonishment. Then, as he realized the significance of his son's words and their application to himself he completely lost control of himself. His face became livid, and he brought his fist down on his desk with a ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... bed, an old-fashioned four-post one. She had her arms twined round one of the bed-posts, and her head thrown back, as if some one were pulling her backwards by her hair, which fell over her night-dress to the floor in thick, black masses. Her eyes were closed; her face was death-like, almost livid; and the cold dews of torture were rolling down from brow to chin. Her lips were moving convulsively, with now and then the appearance of an attempt at articulation, as if they were set in motion by an agony of inward prayer. Margaret, unable to move, watched her ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... and the words and the injury together, fairly put Ellen beside herself. She dashed the letter to the ground, and livid and trembling with various feelings—rage was not the only one—she ran from her aunt's presence. She did not shed any tears now; she could not: they were absolutely burnt up by passion. She walked her room with trembling steps, clasping and wringing her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Darbyshire paused; the words stuck in his throat,—his lips trembled,—his face gradually grew pale and livid, as if he were going to give up the ghost. The court was extremely moved: there was a deep silence, and there were heard sobs from the throng behind. The judge sate with his eyes fixed on his book of minutes, and not a voice even said ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... the unfleshed, carved carcases of the devils who leer, writhe, crunch, and tear on the outside of Orvieto Cathedral, and the Giottesques painting those terrible green, macerated Christs, hanging livid and broken from the cross, which abound in Tuscany and Umbria, the artists who produced these loathsome and lugubrious works were indubitably students of the antique; but they had learned from it not a love for beautiful form and noble drapery, but merely the general shape of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... approaching strangers were now so near that it was possible for John to confirm the statement of his friend. A long livid scar, extending almost entirely across his left cheek, was visible on the face of the younger man. His companion was taller, evidently at least ten years older and had a face which was not altogether prepossessing ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... green valleys of the Nile, trace merely a narrow ribbon. And here, more than elsewhere, the sight of this sovereign desert rising up before us is startling and thrilling, so high up it seems, and we so low in the Edenlike valley shaded by the palms. With its yellow hues, its livid marblings, and its sands which make it look somehow as if it lacked consistency, it rises on the whole horizon like a kind of soft wall or a great fearsome cloud—or rather, like a long cataclysmic wave, which does ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... universal deluge,—Prince Alexis himself, who walked behind the coffin, his eyes fixed and his features rigid as stone. They remarked that his face was haggard, and that the fiery tinge on his cheeks and nose had faded into livid purple. The only sign of emotion which he gave was a convulsive shudder, which from time to time ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... editors of all other city newspapers look with livid faces on that front page. They scan the true and succinct account of Corkey's interview, which reaches them an hour later. They indignantly throw it in the waste-basket, cut off the correspondents by telegraph, and proceed hurriedly to re-write the front page ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... had long fled from the Parisian dandy's complexion. In the dim light he looked livid, and his forehead bore bright beads of perspiration. But even Alec's fiery eyes discerned that he was not only afraid, but bewildered, and his voice cracked with excitement when ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... however, was the blue paint that covered the walls, a blue of a particularly insistent shade which, in the solidity of its expanse, seemed to make all the enclosed space and objects livid. The tall shutters on one side, Lee discovered, opened on the upper porch and a prospect of the tracks beyond. "If I stayed here a night I'd be raving," Savina declared. "Lee, such a color! And the place, the people—did ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fenced with strong gates. Her hall is Elvidnir; her table is Hunger; her knife, Starvation; her man-servant, Delay; her maid-servant, Sloth; her threshold, Precipice; her bed, Care; and her curtains, Anguish of Soul. The one half of her body is livid, the other half is flesh-colour. She has a terrible look, so that she ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... are too late," the doctor whispered, lifting with his finger one of the closed lids, and letting it drop to again.—"See here!" He had been feeling at the wrist; and, as he spoke, he slipped the sleeve up, bared the sleeper's arm. From the wrist to elbow it was livid purple, and pitted and scarred with minute wounds—some scarcely scaled ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... said, croaking like a raven; and at first I thought that I dared not, and immediately after knew that I dared. I sprang to my feet, and faced him, livid as he was. "Doctor Lanfranchi," said I, "I have overheard you-by accident—as you praised her. I have heard you call her good. Ah, and in agreeing with you I can testify that you spoke more truth than you dreamed of. No saint in Heaven ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... symptoms of a previous debilitating disease, the diagnosis was difficult. During the patient’s recovery from one of the abdominal attacks above mentioned, the gums were observed to be spongy, separated from the teeth and reverted, bleeding, and in various parts presenting the livid appearance of scorbutic gums. At the same period arose pains of an anomalous description, and of considerable severity about the shoulders and thorax. These gradually yielded as he recovered strength, but were succeeded by other pains ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... you!" In the lamp-light the on-lookers saw that the face of the engineer had gone livid. His words came thickly. "You fool! Are you crazy? Have you forgotten Pollak, and what happened in the shop of Levinski, ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... held a flash of mockery. She had seen many dirty, poverty-stricken mavericks of humanity, but never a more battered specimen than this gaunt, hollow-eyed tramp, black as a coal-heaver, whose flesh showed grimy with livid wounds through the shreds of his clothing. But beneath his steady look the derision died. Tattered his coat and trousers might be. At least he was a prince in adversity. The head on the splendid shoulders was still finely poised. He gave an ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... lay she in that state unchanged, though chill— With nothing livid, still her lips were red; She had no pulse, but death seem'd absent still; No hideous sign proclaim'd her surely dead; Corruption came not in each mind to kill All hope; to look upon her sweet face bred New thoughts of life, for it seem'd full of soul— She had so much, earth could not claim ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down The stale despair of night, must now renew Their desolation in the truce of dawn, Murdering the livid hours ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... grief, is gloomy, sedentary, motionless. The lower jaw falls; the lips pale; the eyes are cast down, half shut, eye-lids swelled and red, or livid, tears trickling silent, and unwiped; with a total inattention to every thing that passes. Words, if any, few, and those dragged out, rather than spoken; the accents weak, and interrupted, sighs breaking into the middle ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack, flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye. One's gaze went with infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the king sat with compressed lips listening, but with a countenance proclaiming the collecting tempest within—changing to livid paleness or portentous fire, at almost every sentence. On mentioning the letter, he clinched his hand, as if then he grasped the thunderbolt. The lords immediately apprehended that this was the letter ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... treasures brings; For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies." But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? "No, ('tis replied) the first Almighty Cause Acts not by partial, but by general laws; The exceptions few; some change since all began; And what ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... us to them. He possessed the full empire of light and shade, and of all the tints that float between them; he tinged his pencil with equal success in the cool of dawn, in the noon-day ray, in the livid flash, in evanescent twilight, and rendered darkness visible. Though made to bend a steadfast eye on the bolder phenomena of nature, yet he knew how to follow her into her calmest abodes, gave interest to insipidity and baldness, and plucked ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... her last sigh. They did not leave her side for fear that she would make a will in favor of the convent of Beguins belonging to the town. The sick woman kept silent, she seemed dozing and death appeared to overspread very gradually her mute and livid face. Can't you imagine those three relations seated in silence through that winter midnight beside her bed? An old nurse is with them and she shakes her head, and the doctor sees with anxiety that ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... rose the fires, and the wind cut off great fragments and hurried them off into the night, blowing them, it seemed, straight up against the piled thunder of the clouds. Then the roof sagged, swayed, and fell crashing, while a vast cloud of sparks and livid fires shot up a hundred feet into the air. It was as if the soul of old Boone had departed in ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... up out of a dense and livid ground. It comes up out of a ground that lies thickly packed beneath our feet, and that is wider than the widest waste, and deeper than the bottomless abysses of the sea. It comes up from a soil that descends downward through all times and ages, through all the days of humankind, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... spring afternoon in Easter week. The clouds had vanished, dispersed by a sudden wind, and as we entered the church the fiery panes of the high windows shone out like lamps through the dusk. A priest was at the high altar, his white cope a livid spot in the incense-laden obscurity, the light of the candles flickering up and down like fireflies about his head; a few people knelt near by. We stole behind them and sat down on a bench close to ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... man his arm to take him back to dinner. This the notary did not consider it wise to refuse; but as soon as he re-entered the room where his colleagues were, he threw himself into a chair, and pointing to his livid face and mangled neck, demanded justice for the trap into which he had just been led. It was then that my grandfather, revelling in his rascally wit, went through a comedy scene of sublime audacity. He gravely reproached the notary with accusing him unjustly, and always addressing ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... appearance, should be something superlatively bad. It grows about four inches high; the top is round, with a fleshy and inflamed appearance; the stalk is out of all proportion in its thickness, being about two inches in diameter and of a livid white color; this, when broken, is full of a transparent gelatinous fluid, which smells like an egg in the last stage ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... He could see it slowly fill the pit, and as it gradually rose toward his nostrils, he could feel his death gradually measured out to him by inches. When he had breathed it in a little, his face swelled a livid purple, he choked and strangled, staggered and fell beneath the murky surface to die out of sight. The terror of such a slowly creeping danger! the horror of such a repulsive death! I remember saying at the time that in his place I would have snatched a quick respite from the lingering agonies ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... death overtaking him. His heart was yielding, overtaxed from this strain; and I think there at the last, he realized it. The blood drained suddenly from his face and lips, leaving them livid. I saw fear, then a wild horror in his eyes. He stood swaying. Then his knees gave way and he toppled. He fell from his height in the air where I stood gazing at him—fell forward on his face, his titanic length spread all across the top ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... caught Birch's arm, and for a second the two men stared into each other's faces. And when Mart saw the features of old Jerry, he did not wonder that Birch paused, for the quartermaster's face was absolutely livid with mingled fear and anger, while his blue eyes shone out clear ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... dense woods emerge, And roll upon our serried lines like ocean's angry surge. Our ranks are silent—on each face the light of battle glows: 'Ready!' At once our polished tubes are levelled on our foes. Now leaps a livid lightning up—from rank to rank it flies— A fearful diapason rends the arches of the skies. The wooded hills seem reeling before that fierce recoil; With fire and smoke the valleys like Etna's craters boil: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... night; then to go away again—somewhere. She was conscious now of a first driving of sleet in her face; but it only lasted for a few minutes. Then it ceased; and a strange gleam swept over the valley—a livid storm-light from the west, which blanched all the withered grass beside her, and seemed to shoot along the course of the stream as she toiled up ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... livid with rage, and ready to burst out in awful maledictions; but at this summons he sprang to the ladder, and was on deck in a moment. At first, he felt a strong disposition to wreak his vengeance on Tier, but, fortunately for the latter, as the captain's foot touched the quarter-deck, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... had heard before. We waited some minutes in silence, when Smart asked Oscar in a low voice if he could see anything. "Nothing" was the boy's reply. "Get down then, Sir, and let me see what ails blacky." For a black man it was strange to see how livid Benjie was, and he trembled in every limb. "Come, come, Snow-balls," said Smart, "what are you quaking about?" "Me dead wid fear, masser Smart." "You need not tell me that, you sneak," muttered Smart, "come get up, and let's go to yon tree, and see if the old gentleman holds court ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath of hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face, and beyond its control, rather than a ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... in, he found that the encumbrance was nothing more or less than the body of a woman lying dead along the floor of the tiny room. Upon a bed in the corner two children were lying, smiling as if in sleep, but both stiff and cold, the livid tokens of the terrible malady visible upon their little bodies, though the end seemed to have been painless. No other person was in the house, and Raymond, drawing a covering over the children as they lay, turned from the house again with a shudder ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... placed a sphere of rosy light upon the nearest machine and flipped it out into the camp of the enemy. As if it were a magnet it drew the green tendrils of gas, to leave the air clear. Here and there lay shrunken, livid shapes, ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... the angry trumpeting of an elephant mingled with the groaning of iron dragged over stone and the crashing of splintered wood. Rama, who was a few yards ahead, turned and ran past the white man, his face livid. Dermot looked after him in surprise. The man had dashed back to the little door and was beating on it madly with his fists. It was opened to admit him and then hastily closed. The soldier heard the rusty bolts grinding home ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... stood the two black pine woods, like the frame of the picture, between heaven and earth. The sky was white with clouds and the earth with snow. Both the snow and the clouds were so white, that each reflected upon the other a painfully livid brightness. The road was white, but sharply cut by the shadows that lay in the wheel tracks and footprints. The blacksmith shop also was black and white. The shingled roof, from which the wind had swept ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... coming from it, and a red colour glowed at the tip. The moment the robbers caught sight of this apparition there was a yell of fear which paralysed the children into rigid statues. The men's faces were livid with terror, and some seconds passed before either had recovered his senses sufficiently to act. Then one man, with a great sweep of his arms, caught up all the children into one tumble bunch, and flung them screaming with pain and surprise under the bed of the adjoining room. ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... IX. died, as it was supposed, by poison. His last hours were wretched, and his remorse for the massacre of St. Bartholomew filled his soul with agony. He beheld spectres, and dreamed horrid dreams; his imagination constantly saw heaps of livid bodies, and his ears were assailed with imaginary groans. He became melancholy and ferocious, while his kingdom became the prey of factions and insurrections. But he was a timid and irresolute king, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... saddened them. He was, like his father, short and fat, but his figure lacked the latter's brutal obesity, and showed, instead, an almost ridiculous debility. His father's high color was changed in him to the livid flabbiness peculiar to persons who live in close back-shops, or in those railed cages called counting-rooms, forever tying up bundles, receiving and making change, snarling at the clerks, and repeating the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... looked back over his shoulder at his Commanding Officer: his face was livid with excitement. "It means women, Herr Kapitan," he said. ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... describe the consternation of Sir Oswald. He did his best to conceal his alarm; but the livid hue of his face, the ashen pallor of his lips, betrayed the intensity of his emotion. He sent out mounted grooms to search the different roads between the castle and the scene of the pic-nic; and then he left his guests without a word, and shut himself in his ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon |
