"Numbness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you need waste no tears for her sake," I answered. "She is a fine, pretty little creature, who will take what comes her way without excess of pain or joy. She is incapable of feeling keenly. God has been good to her in giving her numbness." ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... own dress and her shoes, and as she glanced her eyes gradually round upon her shoulders, that the stains of the place were upon her, and she knew herself to be unclean. That sense of killing cold had passed off from her, having grown to a numbness which did not amount to present pain, though it would hardly leave her without some return of the agony; but the misery of her disreputable appearance was almost as bad to her as the cold had been. It was not only that she was untidy ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... introduced to women of genuine innocence; and when they attempt to deceive these in like manner, by virtue of a power given to those women, they are heavily fined; for they occasion in their hands and feet a grievous numbness; likewise in their necks, and at length make them feel as it were a swoon; and when they have inflicted this punishment, they run away and escape from the sufferers. After this there is a way opened to them to a certain company ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... innocently, one bitter winter's midnight, on the road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... touched his arm. He could not tell why he was so interested in these two. He had witnessed many such scenes before, and they had not affected him in any way except to make him move out of hearing. But the same dumb numbness in his head, which made so many things seem possible that should have been terrible even to think upon, made him stubborn and unreasonable over this. He felt intuitively—it could not be said that he thought—that the woman was right and the man wrong, and so he grasped him again by the ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... that which preceded it;—and he knew that he, in his generation, had done nothing to promote such progress. He thoroughly despised himself,—if there might be any good in that! But on such occasions as these, when the wine he had drunk was sufficient only to drive away from him the numbness of despair, when he was all alone with the cold night air upon his face, when the stars were bright above him and the world around him was almost quiet, he would still ask himself whether there might not yet be, even for ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... convulsions at the time of the appearance of the rash. But these convulsions did not last long and were not very severe. If one lived through them, he became perfectly quiet, and only did he feel a numbness swiftly creeping up his body from the feet. The heels became numb first, then the legs, and hips, and when the numbness reached as high as his heart he died. They did not rave or sleep. Their minds always remained cool and calm up to the moment their heart numbed and stopped. And another ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... occasional picture of the king or some member of the royal family. I have walked up and down these dismal chambers for hours at a time, staring at the daubs on the walls, and picking up little odds and ends of ornaments, and gazing vacantly at them, till I felt a numbness steal all over me, accompanied by a vague presentiment that I was imprisoned for life. The progress of time is a matter of no importance in Norway. To an American, accustomed to see every thing done with energy and promptness, it is absolutely astounding—the indifference of these people ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... soft and crumbling under my feet; long ridges stretched before me vanishing into the mist. I was in the kitchen garden. But nothing was stirring around me or before me. Everything seemed spellbound in the numbness of sleep. I went ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... assault but every few seconds I had the eerie sensation that I was back in my old body, a ghostly superimposition on the living protoplast, as the spinal chord projected its agony outward. Finally the pain subsided, succeeded by a blank numbness. ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... fool," she said, moved actually now by his numbness to his own endowment. "I could beat my head and scream, when I think how you're throwing things away, your time, in that beastly night school, your power, your personal charm. Jeff, you've the devil's own luck. You were born with it. And you ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... but an ass's head Such frigid fustian could contain; I mean, the head without the brain. The cold conceits, the chilling thoughts, Went down like stupifying draughts; I found my head begin to swim, A numbness crept through every limb. In haste, with imprecations dire, I threw the volume in the fire; When, (who could think?) though cold as ice, It burnt to ashes in a trice. How could I more enhance its fame? Though born in ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... and cross the floor, but her limbs refused to act. A terrible numbness had come over them, every muscle of her body seemed to ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... know his writings know how he was simply possessed and exhausted by his musical emotions. They were really fits of ecstasy or convulsions. At first "there was feverish excitement; the veins beat violently and tears flowed freely. Then came spasmodic contractions of the muscles, total numbness of the feet and hands, and partial paralysis of the nerves of sight and hearing; he saw nothing, heard nothing; he was giddy and half faint." And in the case of music that displeased him, he suffered, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Mild: Symptoms are numbness and a slight swelling. Medium: Additional symptom of a bluing of the leg; also large blisters. Severe: Gangrene ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... said. "This feels like a neuro-toxin. Remember snake-bite aid? Well, the numbness is up to my groin now. No place for a tourniquet. And nothing here ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... assume gigantic proportions. Nothing can take them away—except time and the weariness of a soul too utterly weary to care any longer. But time works so slowly, and the utter weariness of the soul is often so prolonged before, as it were, the spirit snaps and the blessed numbness of indifference settles down upon our hearts. People who can see have the whole of the wonder of Nature working for them in their woe. It is hard to feel utterly crushed and broken before a wide expanse of mountain, moorland, or sea. Something in their strength ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... the coffee, and between the heat of the fire and that of the coffee, his blood began to course more freely. All the numbness passed from his brain and with it passed the sense of despair that had been expressed in his gesture, and a sudden hope ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... I had sworn with hand and mouth I silently renewed my oath to perform. I now intend to keep it."—"What did you swear, lady?" Tristan asks simply, without effect of defiance. "Vengeance for Morold!" she hurls at him. He seems to wonder. A sort of numbness has been creeping over him; an atmosphere of dream has closed around him; her neighbourhood, her voice, no matter what words she is saying, even these angry and cruel ones, have an effect of lulling, of making the real world seem unreal. "Are you concerned for that?" he asks, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... although there are cases of distress in which a well may become a place of refuge, a well is not at all calculated for a prolonged residence—so thought Jack. After he had been there some fifteen minutes, his teeth chattered, and his limbs trembled; he felt a numbness all over, and he thought it high time to call for assistance, which at first he would not, as he was afraid he should be pulled up to encounter the indignation of the farmer and his family. Jack was arranging his jaws for a halloo, when he felt the chain pulled up, and he slowly ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Great human experiences are costly things; they demand sacrifice, not only of ourselves, but of those who are near us. The room was intolerable to Laurie. He took his hat and coat, and hurried out. Amelia heard the dragging door closed behind him. She realized, with the numbness born of supreme emotion, that he was putting on his coat outside in the cold; and she did not mind. The bells stirred, and went clanging away. Then she drew a long breath, and bowed her head on her hands in an acquiescence that ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards{1} had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad{2} of the trees, In some melodious ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... of the kidney. The pain in the loins and along the course of the ureter from a stone is attended with retraction of the testicle in men, and numbness on the inside of the thigh in women. It is distinguished from the lumbago or sciatica, as these latter are seldom attended with vomiting, and have pain on the outside of the thigh, sometimes quite down to the ankle or heel. See Herpes ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... nature. He could go by a door opening on to the road which leads down to the world, or he could go by the opposite door, taking a path which rose towards sacred solitudes. He hesitated, undecided. The falling of a great drop near him made him open his eyes. After the first moment of numbness he recognised the arch on the right, where the road begins which leads down to Santa Scolastica, to Subiaco, to Rome; and on the left the path which rises toward the Sacro Speco. He noticed with astonishment ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... able to paddle a few hundred feet. Then both usually sat astride the ends of the canoe, their legs hanging in the water in order that the drippings might not fall inside. As this was the early summer, they occasionally kicked against trees to drive enough of the numbness from their legs so that they could ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... them the moment they opened—and saw her mother standing beside her bed, dishevelled, pale, and obviously labouring under some terrible excitement, she had been conscious as of an awful blow on the head, a physical sensation of numbness and of pain. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... pangs to mitigate. (Since if we fall before th'appointed day, Nature and death continue long their fray.) Iris descends; 'This fatal lock' (says she) 'To Pluto I bequeath, and set thee free;' Then clips her hair: cold numbness strait bereaves Her corpse of sense, and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... stouter garments and abstained from cold food and drink, and these grew well by reason of their abstinence and care to keep themselves from too great cold, for God had pity on them; but some that neglected these matters died after three days, or even two, being weakened by the numbness. ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... her bedroom, having fallen into that half-waking slumber which the numbness of sorrow so often produces, when word was brought to her that Mrs Askerton was in the house. It was the first time that Mrs Askerton had ever crossed the door, and the remembrance that it was so came upon her at once. During her ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... relaxation and sleep is weakness, numbness and death-like stupor; the secondary effect, however, is an ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... is a peculiar case. Not once in a score of years do we find such a case. Every nerve is numb, every muscle relaxed, and whether he will live or die depends on arousing him from that numbness." ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... pale shapes hovered about him; his heart was numb with anguish; he seemed to be falling, falling—and a bottomless abyss was opening at his feet. A familiar light rustle of a silk dress roused him from his numbness; Varvara Pavlovna in her hat and shawl was returning in haste from her walk. Lavretsky trembled all over and rushed away; he felt that at that instant he was capable of tearing her to pieces, beating her to death, as ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... nothing, only touched her as a breeze does a flower, and floated away. The dreamy warmth of the fire absorbed her more direct feelings, and for some moments she dozed in a haze of dim sensuousness and emotive numbness. As in a dusky glass, she saw herself a tender, loving, but unhappy woman; by her side were her querulous husband and her kindly-minded mother-in-law, and then there was a phantom she could not determine, and behind it something into which she ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... a defective enough little story, crude and young; I never glance at it without longing to write it over; but I cannot read it, to this day, without that tingling and numbness down one's spine and through the top of one's head, which exceptional tragedy must produce in any sensitive organization; nor can I ever trust myself to hear it read by professional elocutionists. I attribute the success of the story entirely to the historic and unusual character of the catastrophe ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... answer. I set my teeth, and struggled to free myself until the veins in my forehead were knotted and my bonds cut into the flesh. But, alas! I was held as in the tentacles of an octopus. Every limb was gripped, so that already a numbness had overspread them, while my senses ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... immobile. [OE]dema may, especially in the more acute cases, precede the induration. Pigmentation, of a yellowish or brownish color, is often a precursory and accompanying symptom. The skin feels tight and contracted, and in some instances numbness and cramp-like pains are ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... last heart that loved him had ceased to beat in Jonathan's noble breast, and his own crimes had slain his sons. Who can paint the storm of contending passions in that lonely black soul? or were they all frozen into the numbness of despair? ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ill-natured; she was simply curious; and as she generally said more good than evil of people, she was generally liked and tolerated by all. She was not a fashionable woman, nor an educated woman, though very popular with her neighbors at home, and she was there for numbness and swollen knees; and, having knit socks for four years for the soldiers, she now knit stockings for the soldiers' orphans, and took a dash every morning and screamed loud enough to be heard at the depot when she took it, and had a pack every afternoon, and corked her right ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... moment it took to do this, the officer not so much dismounted as tumbled from his horse, and he now walked stiffly into the public room, stamping his feet to lessen their numbness. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances,—that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutritious one denounced in the Canticles:—I am none of her minions—I hold with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... bravado, not concealing from herself that it lay in waiting. For years he had been sure that though the inevitable might happen to others it could not happen to him. There it was! He was conscious of a heavy weight in his stomach, and she of a general numbness, enwrapping her fatigue. Even then he could not believe that it was true, this disaster. As for Sophia she was reconciling herself with bitter philosophy to the eccentricities of fate. Who would have ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... small, sharp, cold, shining out of the darkness, but gliding with a smooth, steady motion towards the light, and himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb, staring back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness of fear that cannot move, as in the terror of dreams. The two sparks of light came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first time thrilled ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sheds, with ships lying beside them, and the electric lights showing their spars and masts against the sky. It had ceased snowing, but the air from the river was piercing and cold, and swept through the wires overhead with a ceaseless moaning. The numbness had crept from his feet up over the whole extent of his little body, and he dropped upon a flight of steps back of a sailors' boarding-house, and shoved his hands inside of his jacket for possible warmth. His fingers touched the figure he had hidden there ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Lights. Blurr. Gone. On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail. Spatter. Whirr! Whirr! 'Toward that patch of brown; Direction left'. Bullets a stream. Devouring thought crying in a dream. Men, crumpled, going down.... Go on. Go. Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado. Bullets. Mud. Stumbling and skating. My voice's strangled shout: 'Steady pace, boys!' The still light: gladness. 'Look, sir. Look out!' Ha! ha! Bunched figures waiting. Revolver levelled quick! Flick! ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... the nightmare when you are pursued by some awful terror, and, though sick with fear, your legs have a strange numbness, and you cannot drag them in obedience to the will. Such was my feeling in the crack above the juniper tree. In truth, I had passed the bounds of my endurance. Last night I had walked fifty miles, and all day I had borne ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... upon Freddie's back and shoulders and throat became a dead numbness; he was too cold to shiver; his arms too were now becoming numb, and he felt that he could hold his burden no longer. ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... spread over the whole foot. Exercise to restore the circulation would have prevented this, but for men who were compelled to spend the entire day in one fire bay, exercise was impossible, and by evening the numbness had almost always started. As soon, therefore, as a Company came from the front line, it marched to the rest house. Here, every man was given a hot drink, his wet boots and socks were taken away, his feet rubbed by the Stretcher Bearers until the circulation was restored, ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... that it was about to end. He answered the questions put to him clearly, concisely—with the most profound indifference. After all those tense months of action, to talk was a weariness to him. But he concealed it, lest his foes should suspect in his manner the apathy of discouragement or the numbness of a crushed spirit. The details of his conduct could have no importance one way or another; with his thoughts these men had nothing to do. He preserved a scrupulously courteous tone. He had refused ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... all mud from heel to head, and with a numbness in his brain Barnabas rides, stooped low in the saddle, for he is sick and very faint. His hat is gone, and the cool wind in his hair revives him somewhat, but the numbness remains. Yet it is as one in a dream that he finds his stirrups, and is vaguely conscious of voices ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... night sweats come on, black swellings appear on the veins, the flesh wastes and the breast becomes flat and hollow: the mouth is full of a thin spittle, the head is dizzy and confus'd, and sometimes there is an unconquerable numbness in the ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... Presently the numbness in his knees changed to a hot, pricking throb. He tried to move his legs, but found he could not. Then a sudden thought sent the blood with a rush to his heart. Perhaps he no longer had any legs! He remembered to have heard of legless men whose phantom members caused them many uncomfortable ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... of the square, then she slowly followed him. The numbness of that dead youth was still oppressing her heart and brain. But she remembered that the carriage must be waiting for her on the Embankment, also that her father—she gasped a little as the thought of ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... go somewhere," said Emeline, plucking the leaves and unsteadily shifting her eyes about his feet. "I cannot stay on the farm all the time." Through numbness she felt the pricking of ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... did he want to sit alone and think. For as the first dazed numbness wore off, he began to see himself standing alone—more alone than ever—gazing into a bottomless pit, with Fate or Destiny or blind Chance, whatever witless force was at work, approaching inexorably to push him ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... whispered, "and I believe." He made a weak effort to touch her hand, but failed. He thought that perhaps it was the chill and numbness of death which stole over him and held him bound. When the nurse, whose footsteps they had heard, entered, she found him lying with glazed eyes, and Madame Villefort fallen in a swoon ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the way it used to rise above "Old Peaky Top," just back of the cabin on Hiawassee. He straightened himself to obtain a better view. A sharp report rang out behind him from the vessel, and he felt a numbness ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... his shaking hands, striving to gain control of himself. In the early days of his misfortunes the necessity for straining every effort had kept him from brooding upon his losses, and finally a numbness of despair had seized him. But to-night the child's artless talk had brought back vividly the old home scene. He could see it now, as he had seen it so often in the light of a summer evening. The sparkling sea, with the tang of salt water wafted up over his fields; the rippling stream, winding ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... if the warmth and glow of this abundant hearth did not permeate the discourse and keep his audience comfortable in spite of the bitterest northern blast that ever wrestled with the church-steeple. He reads while the heat warps the stiff covers of the volume; he writes without numbness either in his heart or fingers; and, with unstinted hand, he throws fresh sticks of ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were to be saved. She saved him. When he regained consciousness he found himself propped up before the warm fire in the lighthouse kitchen, with the most delicious feeling of languor stealing through his whole frame, instead of the cruel numbness which had been the last sensation before he became unconscious. And it added materially to his enjoyment that a bright-eyed, dark-haired young woman hovered around him, ministering to his wants ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... officer in the army who uttered one word against their recent comrade. Ivan remembered with relief how, even under the influence of nearly a quart of vodka, he had gently refused Vladimir's generosity. From the very beginning, when, in his numbness, the future had been still unimaginable, Ivan's course had appeared perfectly clear to him. Cast out on all sides, by friends and family alike, he would be beholden to no one in the world. Starve he could, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... as he read the hurriedly written words, von Scheldmann felt the first awful sense of numbness ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... the officers, and some of the petty officers, dined the next day. The night following, every one who had eaten of them was seized with violent pains in the head and bones, attended with a scorching heat all over the skin, and numbness in the joints. There remained no doubt that this was occasioned by the fish being of a poisonous nature, and having communicated its bad effects to all who partook of them, even to the hogs and dogs. One of the former died about sixteen hours after; it was ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... dyspeptic consults his physician for pain or wind in the stomach, accompanied with headache or dizziness, occasional pains of the limbs, or numbness or tremors in the hands and feet, and sometimes with difficult breathing, disturbed sleep, and a dry cough, and huskiness of the voice in the morning. The physician suggests the propriety of his laying aside animal food for a time; but the patient objects, alleging ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... a few seconds. The old numbness had come over his mind again. But he determined to let his daughter know ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... a drowsy numbness pains My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethewards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... the descending snow made a numbness steal over him, and his feeble limbs being incapable of carrying him farther, he had to sit down in the middle of an open field. He ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... their salutes with a perfunctory bow, but recollect little else, for now that my time was so near, a numbness seemed to cloud my brain and I could think only that this little copse, full of the grey mist of dawn, was perhaps the last object my eyes should ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... for almost a mile, with the cold air beating against my body and a colder numbness creeping about the corner of ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... behave oddly. He threw a stone, which went in front of Ian and Christina. Then he threw another, which went behind them. Then he threw a third, and Christina felt her hat caught by a bit of string. She drew it toward her as fast as numbness would permit, and found at the end a small bottle. She managed to get it uncorked, and put it to Ian's lips. He swallowed a mouthful, and made her take some. Hector stood on one side, the chief on the other, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... for the merciful numbness, that was like an anaesthetic in a painful operation. She had a feeling that she would awaken soon and realise fully the terrible calamity that had befallen, but just now, if she kept still it ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... knees beside her bed; All agonies within my heart were wed, While to the aching numbness of my grief, Mine eyes refused the solace of a tear,— The tortured soul's most merciful relief. Her wasted hand caressed my bended head For one sad, sacred moment. Then she said, In that low tone so like ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... twice called to see him it was learned that his mental trouble came on very suddenly, although his memory and faculties have been failing for some time past. They say that he complained of sleeplessness, numbness and tingling sensations in the arms and legs, headache, and a peculiar itching of the skin, for months before any distinct symptoms of insanity appeared. They attribute it all to self-abuse, which he has admitted practicing from an ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... him instantly, but with no very great violence. .. He was lying on his back trying to make out what had happened to him and how it was that he had just seen Tatiana. He tried to call her... but a peculiar numbness had taken possession of him and curious dark green spots were whirling about all over him—in his eyes, over his head, in his brain—and some frightfully heavy, dull weight seemed to press him to the ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... vain. No one came. He shouted—he called loudly—no one answered. He resolved to stay there all night; but, alas! the cold was becoming every moment more biting, and the poor finger fixed in the hole began to feel benumbed, and the numbness soon extended to the hand, and thence throughout the whole arm. The pain became still greater, still harder to bear; but still the boy moved not. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he thought of his father, of his mother, of his little bed, ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... for hours, continually beaten to and fro upon the billows, now and again wetted with flying sprays, and never ceasing to expect death at the next plunge. Gradually weariness grew upon me; a numbness, an occasional stupor, fell upon my mind even in the midst of my terrors; until sleep at last supervened, and in my sea-tossed coracle I lay and dreamed of home ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the doctor failed to find a single microbe. Bolden's newly returned strength and the sensitivity of his skin where before there had been numbness confirmed the diagnosis. He was well. Peggy came to walk him home. It was ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace
... out the letter, but speaking with great effort, for the room was growing very dark, and a strange numbness seemed stealing over heart and brain, "this tells that I was stolen from the side of my dead mother who was killed in a wreck—" She could get no farther, and she knew nothing of his reply. A thick darkness seemed to envelop her, fast shutting out all sense even of ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... steady pressure of the sturdy legs about his waist Mascola felt his strength going from him. With bursting lungs he tore at the corded muscles of Gregory's throat. But his fingers had but little power. Sharp pains seared his eyeballs. A deadly numbness was creeping over his entire body. Then he felt the hand which held his knife arm twist the wrist and forced it inward ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... began to count—or rather some strange voice, not hers, seemed to count for her; as the first numbness passed, farther and farther away she seemed to dissolve, to become a disembodied consciousness poised in a misty ether. And at that moment—so she told Thyrsis afterwards—the face of Mr. Harding seemed to appear just above her, and to look at her with a pained and startled ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... of soft earth. The day was not far off, as he could tell by the brightening of the gray. He began to suffer with the cold, and then slowly he seemed to freeze and grow numb. In an effort to roll over upon his back he discovered that his position, or his being bound, or the numbness of his muscles was responsible for the fact that he could not move. Here was a predicament. It began to look serious. What would a few hours of the powerful sun do to his uncovered skin? Somebody would trail and find him: still, he might not be ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... to-night with a message to the people which my heart must deliver. It is a duty even more sacred in some ways than what I owe to my own kindred. I am aware that the hearts of the people are shocked into numbness by the recent horror. I know that more than one bleeding heart is in this house, and the shadow of the last enemy, has fallen over many thresholds in our town. What! did I not enter into the valley ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... of the garden. My indifference to personal safety was due to a numbness which had taken ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... in the big field: the rest was a picture with which she had nothing to do. There was a busy group near the fence, some men came running with a door, and then the sound of a shot broke through her numbness. The mare had been put out of her pain; but ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... and glanced into a thick book lying on the table, at that instant he had no intention, no desire, was thinking of nothing and most likely did not remember that there was a stranger in the entry. The twilight and stillness of the drawing-room seemed to increase his numbness. Going out of the drawing-room into his study he raised his right foot higher than was necessary, and felt for the doorposts with his hands, and as he did so there was an air of perplexity about his whole figure as though he were in somebody else's ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... we trekked, penetrating ever deeper the Red Desert's heart. But of the abhorred Termans we caught no sight. There was only the molten downpour of sun by day, and the desiccating numbness of cold at night. But on the sixth day, as we encamped near an underground pool located by our ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... when the face becomes paler. (Have not noticed any purple as from asphyxia by a deprivation of oxygen.) The vision becomes darkened, and a giddiness soon appears. The voluntary muscles furthest from the heart seem first to be affected, and the feet and hands, particularly the latter, have a numbness at their ends, which increases, until in many cases there is partial paralysis as far as the elbow, while the limbs become fixed. The hands are so thoroughly affected that, when open, the patient is powerless to close them and vice ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... exclaim'd:— "O sire, assist me, if within thy streams "Divinity abides. Let earth this form, "Too comely for my peace, quick swallow up; "Or change those beauties to an harmless shape." Her prayer scarce ended, when her lovely limbs A numbness felt; a tender rind enwraps Her beauteous bosom; from her head shoots up Her hair in leaves; in branches spread her arms; Her feet but now so swift, cleave to the earth With roots immoveable; her face at last ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... meant to be continually washed or dusted by the worn, busy fingers of the female saints. As I came to fuller realization of all these relics, my resolution flickered out and there fell upon me a strange numbness of spirit. I seemed under a spell of inaction. Everything behind those glass doors had been cherished too long to be lightly thrown away, yet was not old enough to be valuable nor useful enough to keep. I spent a long day—one of the longest days of my life—browsing through ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... injured man was standing the trip as well as could be expected. He suffered great pain, though at times a sort of numbness came over ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... of the mystic element in external nature has had its fluctuations in most ages and climes, and not least so in England. Marvel, in his day, felt the numbness creeping on that comes of divorce from nature, and uttered his plaint of "The Mower ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... endure a great strain of mental anguish long. A merciful numbness usually seizes it, in which everything grows hazy and unreal, and consequently painless. Agatha felt convinced she was half-asleep, and that she should wake up in her own room at Thorn-hurst or at Kingcombe, and find out everything to be a dream. Or even granting its reality, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the nerves is deadened. The inebriate may seize a hot iron and hardly know it, or wound his hand painfully and never feel the injury. The numbness is not of the skin, but of the brain, for the drunken man may be frozen or burned to death without pain. The senses, too, are invaded and dulled. Double vision is produced, the eyes not being so controlled as to ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... have serious consequences. However, for nine days the wound goes on well, and Don Carlos, having had a wholesome fright, is, according to Doctor Olivarez, the medico de camara, a very good lad, and lives on chicken broth and dried plums. But on the tenth day comes on numbness of the left side, acute pains in the head, and then gradually shivering, high fever, erysipelas. His head and neck swell to an enormous size; then comes raging delirium, then stupefaction, and Don Carlos ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... to think or feel till she had reached the train and taken her seat, and even then the first thing she was conscious of was a sense of numbness within, and frivolous observation without, as she found herself trying to read upside down the direction of her opposite neighbour's parcels, counting the flounces on her dress, and speculating on the meetings and partings at the stations; yet with a terrible ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a numbness and a deadness came over his spirit, but this condition erelong gave way to a sweet contemplation of the beauties of character that his friend possessed, and he tenderly reviewed the gracious hours ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... hand and fingers which held the chain, was left white as though the blood had been driven out; and remained so eight or ten minutes after, feeling like dead flesh; and I had numbness in my arms and the back of my neck which continued to the next morning, but ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... are who get to be partially self-enslaved by a routine of phrases and words under the repetition of which thought is hardened by its molds. Thence mechanical turns and forms, which cause numbness, even when there is a current of intellectual activity. Writers most liable to this subjection are they who have surrendered themselves to set opinions and systems, who therefore cease to grow,—a sad ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... thorn-back. This fish is of a most singular nature, productive of the strangest effects on the human body; for whoever handles it, or happens even to set his foot upon it, is presently seized with a numbness all over him, but more distinguishable in that limb which was in immediate contact with it. The same effect, too, will be, in some degree, produced by touching the fish, with any thing held in the hand; for I myself had a considerable ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the most senseless persecution, he was so surprised and confounded by the noise and violence of calumny, that his keen sentiment of injustice underwent a sort of numbness. On seeing himself thus brutally attacked on the one hand, and so feebly defended on the other, by lukewarm, pusillanimous friends, he may have questioned if he were not really in fault, and hesitated, perhaps, how to reply; for he almost spoke of himself as guilty in the farewell addressed ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... speculative freedom and dramatic imagination which would allow them to conceive other moulds for morality and happiness than those to which a respectable tradition has accustomed them. Sceptical statesmen and academic scholars sometimes suffer from this kind of numbness; it is intelligible that they should mistake the forms of culture for its principle, especially when their genius is not original and their chosen function is to defend and propagate the local traditions in which their whole training has immersed them. Indeed, in the political field, such ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... momentary numbness of his faculties so much the son of Jahdai saw, and he did not wait. Signing the messenger to follow, he passed into a closet forming part of the stall, and the two being alone, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... reach. They covered his mortal sky, and when he refused to stare up into their leaden pinions, they stooped to him and buffeted and smothered him, until he was such a mass of bruised suffering within that he could almost believe his body also was quivering into the numbness of acquiescent misery. And here were the wings again. They were even lower, in spite of this clear air. They did not merely shut it out from his nostrils, but the filthy pinions swept his face and roused in him the uttermost revulsion of mortal man against ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... and strength into the effort to force motion back into his body. Instead, a wave of cold numbness washed slowly up through him. It welled into his brain, and for a time all thought and ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... Trustee knew that he was dozing; but for all that it was unbearable—this feeling of being bound by coil after coil of rope until he could not stir a finger. A terrifying numbness began to creep over him—as if his body had died. The thought came to him like a shock that he had an active, commanding intelligence, still alive, and nothing for it to command. What did people do who had to live with dead, paralyzed ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... France; originally, it would seem—that is, in the sixth or seventh century—a baptistery, but converted into a church while the Christian era was still comparatively young. The Temple de Saint-Jean is therefore a monument even more venerable than Notre Dame la Grande, and that numbness of age which I imputed to Notre Dame ought to reside in still larger measure in its crude and colourless little walls. I call them crude, in spite of their having been baked through by the centuries, only because, although certain rude arches and carvings ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... doing, the boy focused his gaze upon two dazzling points of light that gradually came nearer, nearer. A peacefulness came over him, and he wondered why he had been so terrified a moment before. Slowly a numbness crept up his limbs; a giddiness attacked him. On came the hypnotic, icy lights, until they were within a few ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... and feeling for months of intense emotional experience had instantly been annihilated, and he was left in the midst of a great void in his consciousness out of touching-reach of anything. There was no sharp pang, but just a bewildered numbness. A few filaments only of the romantic feeling for Ida that filled his mind a moment before still lingered, floating about it, unattached to anything, like vague neuralgic feelings in an amputated stump, as if to remind him ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... off the numbness caused by the blow that he had received, and he managed to stagger to where Dick was lying, and knelt beside him and begged the Malays to bring water. They had evidently received orders to do all they ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... to regain consciousness. At first he didn't understand the lashing pain in his wrists, the strange numbness in one of his legs, the darkness with the great white Indian stars shining through. Then he remembered. And he tried to stretch his arm to the prone ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... that sounded like 'Curio- curio.' He says she seemed to complain of something about her mouth and head. Her face was drawn and shrunken; her hands were cold and clammy, and then convulsions came on. He called an ambulance, but she was past saving when it arrived. The numbness seemed to have extended over all her body; swallowing was impossible; there was entire loss of her voice as well as sight, and death took place ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... no longer possible to keep the truth about Mike Burton from the invalid, and Mary broke the news to him as gently as she could, The shock seemed to stun Jim's sensibilities for a time. As the numbness wore off, a bitter, blind hatred grew in his heart against the men he chose to regard as Mike's murderers, and he had a ferocious longing for vengeance. Again law and order, the forces of society, had intervened to embitter him. His subsequent sorrow over his mate was deep and lasting. He felt ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... I recalled to mind that the voice had been that of my poor lost Julia; and at the moment I heard it I had been dreaming of her. I questioned my own state of health. I was well; at least I had been so, I felt fully assured, up to that moment. Now a feeling of chilliness and numbness and faintness had crept over me, a cold sweat was on my forehead. I tried to shake off this feeling by bringing back my thoughts to some other subject. But, involuntarily as it were, I again uttered the words, "Poor Julia!" aloud. At the same time a deep and heavy sigh, almost ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... which. His brain felt like a stopped watch; it did not seem to be working at all. Even the power to suffer seemed to have left him. He felt curiously indifferent, strangely submissive to circumstances,—like a man scourged into the numbness of exhaustion. He knew at the back of his mind that as soon as his vitality reasserted itself the agony would return. The respite could not last, but while it lasted he knew no pain. Like one in a state of coma, he was not even ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... to do his duty. He believed that, whether living or dying, God would take care of him, and of his mother. In his soul there was sweet peace and composure; but what was the meaning of the strange feeling creeping over him, the numbness of his hands, the fluttering of his heart? Was it not the coming on of death? He remembered the prayer of his childhood, lisped many a time while kneeling by his mother's side, and ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... exhausted. I sat down by the engine in my wet clothing and soon fell asleep, without bedding or food. I slept from exhaustion until near midnight, when I was seized with fearful crampings, accompanied by a cold and deathlike numbness. I tried to rise up, but could not. I thought my time had come, and that I would perish without aid ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... died, then all the members of the family were seized by illness, its onset being on the day following the death of the child. No more of the family died, but M. Dupuy and his daughter suffered from bodily numbness for years afterwards, with partial paralysis and recurrent ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... great love, the love that poets sang, and privileged and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught girl. Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and how ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... covered them with willows and then with the earth. When we buried these thirteen people, some of their relatives refused to attend the services. They manifested an utter indifference about it. The numbness and cold in their physical natures seemed to have reached the soul, and to have crushed out natural feeling and affection. Had I not myself witnessed it, I could not have believed that suffering could produce ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... she did not always represent the horror, the numbness of fright and the flight in the same way. The artists all admired the change of expression on the dancer's sweet face, where faint distaste gave way to violent repulsion, fright and stark horror. As if a great hand ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... there, embracing the empty box that had brought him to his death; and for many minutes I sat within a yard of him, detained by the fascination and grim mockery of the picture no less than by physical weakness and a numbness of my brain. My body refused to act, and my mind hardly urged its indolent servant. I was in sore distress for Marie Delhasse,—my vehement cry witnessed it,—yet I had not the will to move to her aid; will and power both seemed ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... feet to react against the numbness, to discover whether her body would obey her will. It did. She could stand up, and she could move her arms freely. Though no physiologist, she concluded that all that sudden numbness was in her head, not in her limbs. Her fears assuaged, she thanked God for it mentally, and ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... saw you again in an hour When I seemed to be turned to a tree with trunk and branches Growing indurate, turning to stone, yet burgeoning In laurel leaves, in hosts of lambent laurel, Quivering, fluttering, shrinking, fighting the numbness Creeping into their veins from the dying trunk and branches! 'Tis vain, O youth, to fly the call of Apollo. Fling yourselves in the fire, die with a song of spring, If die you must in the spring. For none shall look On the face of Apollo and live, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... The numbness had become a prickling agony when he heard the Mexican splashing through the river to begin his search. Ford's field of vision was limited by the car trucks, but he kept the man in sight as he could. It filled him ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... few minutes to work the numbness out of my legs. How they ached! I stepped out of the tent-door like a drunken man ... fell on my face in some bushes and bled from several scratches. The blare of what was full daylight hurt my eyes. I had been writing on, entranced, by ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... head, without thought, almost without sensation, but utterly buried in myself. A rhythmic hollow and angry noise raised me from my numbness. I lifted my head; it was the sea roaring and moaning fifty paces from me. I saw I was walking along the sand of the dunes. The sea, set in violent commotion by the storm in the night, was white with foam to the very horizon, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... and will meditate. But we will not reach the nirvana, he won't and we won't. Oh Govinda, I believe out of all the Samanas out there, perhaps not a single one, not a single one, will reach the nirvana. We find comfort, we find numbness, we learn feats, to deceive others. But the most important thing, the path of paths, we ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... and pours forth the abundance of her flowers and fruits. Them comes summer and kills the spring: Earth is burnt up and withers, she strips herself of her ornaments, and her fruitfulness departs till the gloom and icy numbness of winter have passed away. Each year the cycle of the seasons brings back with it the same joy, the same despair, into the life of the world; each year Baalat falls in love with her Adonis and loses him, only to bring him back to life and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to sit there in the window, adrift on a tide of elation, and to know that the numbness of her heart was not a permanent paralysis—that she had a soul. It was absurdedly delightful, too, to reflect upon the illogical swiftness with ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... you cannot find an easy spot to lie on. You are always worse before storms. After sitting a little while you stiffen up, feeling much better after moving about. The tendons of your legs have a drawing sensation, and feel as if too short. There is more or less of numbness and paralysis, and a wooden sort of feeling of the leg when walking. You also have lightning-like shocks of pain through the limb, now and then. Your attacks come on every few weeks, and it is the left limb that is affected. ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... logs—that they were benumbed, that they had fallen asleep, and were filled with the sharp pricking of thorns. Yet he had no control over them; he could not move them, could hardly even think of them as belonging to himself. This sensation of numbness began slowly to crawl upward like some gigantic insect. He knew it would reach his knees and then pass on to his waist, but the knowledge gave him no power to prevent its coming, and when he tried to will his hand to move, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... minor, opus 57. Susanna's playing impressed me more than I can say; I had not expected such force, such fire, such bold execution. At the very first bars of the intensely passionate allegro, the beginning of the sonata, I felt that numbness, that chill and sweet terror of ecstasy, which instantaneously enwrap the soul when beauty bursts with sudden flight upon it. I did not stir a limb till the very end. I kept, wanting—and not daring—to sigh. I was sitting behind Susanna; I could not see her face; I saw only ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... ignominy, for days the King was submissive, with the sullen numbness of despair. Life for him became a succession of stunning shocks and roaring change. He would be put into strange box-prisons, which would straightway begin to rush terribly through the world with ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... himself revived amidst the glow of common hopes. His worry of the morning had only left a vague numbness behind, and he now once more began to discuss his picture with Sandoz and Mahoudeau, swearing, it is true, that he would destroy it the next day. Jory, who was very short-sighted, stared at all the elderly ladies he met, and aired his theories on artistic work. A man ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... sea did not break upon the shore; no bird or any living thing was visible; the midnight sun, by this time muffled in a transparent mist, shed an awful, mysterious lustre on glacier and mountain; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth's vitality: an universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I suppose in scarcely any other part of the world is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. On the stillest summer day in England, there is always perceptible an ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... about her, forcing the strength out of her wrists with slow, rude, masculine muscles. A numbness and a deadness ran through her limbs as he compelled her nearer to him. Her head spun round with the fear of fainting. With a great effort she forced herself back a step from him, and just as she felt the breath of his mouth upon hers her heart ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... was beside him, such radiance streaming from her that it sent a faint warmth through his numbness, and he straightened himself and smiled ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... withdraw for a moment; and with set lips but trembling hands began to unlace the dress, under the pressure of which Nora's heart heaved convulsively. And John went out of the room bewildered, and sat himself down on the landing-place, and wondered whether he was awake or sleeping; and a cold numbness crept over one side of him, and his head felt very heavy, with a loud, booming noise in his ears. Suddenly his wife stood by his side, and said, in a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... later Dr. Stewart gave Dalzell a third draught. Dan was now recovering steadily from his mental numbness. ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... make of prayer a system of 'begging-letters to the Almighty'—which had of ten quieted or distracted him in his early years of struggle, affected him no longer. His inner life seemed to himself shrouded in a sullen numbness ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sometimes the figure of a person who for the last twenty-four hours had been continually in his thoughts, who seemed at one moment to be sympathising with him and at another to be playing upon his face with a garden hose. Then it all faded away, and a sort of numbness crept over him. He made a desperate struggle for consciousness. There was something cold resting against his cheek. His fingers stole towards it. It was the flask, drawn from his own pocket and placed there by some unseen hand, the top already unscrewed, and the reviving ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deep attention. When with some inward trouble I inquired after her health, she said, with her usual frankness, "After my return from Gastein I felt very well; but now everything seems to go wrong, and I feel that my time is coming. We Ploszowskis all end with paralysis; and I feel a numbness in my arm every morning. But it is not worth talking about; it will be as ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... When he was gone, Saracinesca stood still for a moment, and then sank into a chair. His strong nature had sustained him through the meeting and would sustain him to the end, but he was terribly shaken, and felt a strange sensation of numbness in the back of his head, which was quite new to him. For some minutes he sat still as though dazed and only half conscious. Then he rose again, shook himself as though to get rid of a bad dream and rang the bell. He sent ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... wine abateth lust, my meaning is, wine immoderately taken; for by intemperance, proceeding from the excessive drinking of strong liquor, there is brought upon the body of such a swill-down bouser, a chillness in the blood, a slackening in the sinews, a dissipation of the generative seed, a numbness and hebetation of the senses, with a perversive wryness and convulsion of the muscles, all which are great lets and impediments to the act of generation. Hence it is that Bacchus, the god of bibbers, tipplers, and drunkards, is most commonly painted beardless and clad in a woman's ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... end of one reasonably successful pastorate, had stood bewildered and baffled as he looked back over his five years of effort against this persistent and amiable passivity. It was not a deliberate sin, or he might have denounced it; nor a temporary numbness, or he might have waited for it to disappear. All the more it ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... but the pressure against his chest was too severe. His left hand began to slip from Welch's wrist; the fingers wouldn't hold; there was a strange numbness from hand to shoulder. With a smothered groan he tried to tighten his clasp again. Then help came. Eager hands took his burden, and he felt himself being pulled back from the edge. He glanced up once and had a glimpse of somber twilight sky and ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... summer is like a poison in one's blood, with a sudden bewildered sickening of life and all things. In Galahad: a Mystery, the frost of Christmas night on the chapel stones acts as a strong narcotic: a sudden shrill ringing pierces through the numbness: a voice proclaims that the Grail has gone forth through the great forest. It is in the Blue Closet that this delirium reaches its height with a singular beauty, reserved perhaps for the enjoyment ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Making some pretence of work at his carpenter's bench, the old man sent Star out to loose the cow and lead her to the water; and when she was gone, he tottered to his old chair and sat down heavily. There was no pain now, only a strange numbness, a creeping coldness, a ringing in the ears. If it might "seem right" to let him wait till the Huntress came by! "It's nearly time," he said, half aloud. "Nearly time, and 'twould be easier ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... town. At its entrance a whole street had disappeared, black and charred the walls stood—silent and deserted. This constant recurrence of the symbols of separation, desertion, silence, death, produced a strange numbness in his mind, and he walked along in a dream that became deeper and deeper. But he saw everything with the obscurity, and still with the strange, piercing look, of the dreamer. Turning from the houses to the people, he saw as it were in a flash the true ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... enable him to withstand the wear and tear of regrets which would surely set in soon. It was the case with Somerset as with others of his temperament, that he did not feel a blow of this sort immediately; and what often seemed like stoicism after misfortune was only the neutral numbness of transition from palpitating hope to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do, and be, and live, even when we are weary,—this is the victory that overcometh the world. To believe in God our strength in the face of all seeming denial, to believe in him out of the heart of weakness and unbelief, in spite of numbness and weariness and lethargy; to believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream; to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for a godless repose;—these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... same uncomfortable and painful posture. The hours passed very slowly and wearily. My legs, my arms and hands had gradually become quite lifeless, and after the first six or seven hours that I had been stretched on the rack, I felt no more actual pain. The numbness crept along every limb of my body, until I had now the peculiar sensation of possessing a living ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... A little numbness that tingled spread over me; it was pleasant; I did not care to withdraw my eyes. Presently the tightness in my face relaxed, I moved my ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... his shoulders. A great pain shot through his heart; a great numbness clamped his brain. He had heard things himself. He had seen people who themselves had seen, or thought that they had seen. One man he had knocked down. With two more, his good friends, he had quarreled irrevocably. And in his own soul, something ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... is dying, too—his health is good enough, but pain which he cannot master is killing him into numbness. He watches each joy, each experience with which they were both tremulous, depart. And do you suppose it is any comfort for those two honest souls to believe that their spirits will recognize each other in some curious state that has dispensed with sense? Do you suppose that a million ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... with keen delight, and streaming over, surrounded Mose, who stood at bay not far from his horse in the darkness—a sudden numbness ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... want visitors,' she said; 'little repose—and all that sort of thing—is what I quire. No odious brutes must proach me till I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grisly resumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the Major with her fan, but overset Mr Dombey's breakfast cup instead, which was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... mind, and deprived him of the possibility of coming to any decision. But this moral catalepsy was not the effect of a cowardly dejection, as has been asserted. His great mind remained erect amid the temporary numbness of his faculties; and Napoleon, when he awoke, was but so much the more terrible, and the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... clear the numbness still lingering from the effect of Arlok's tentacle. The Xoranian seemed unable to produce a paralysis of any great duration with his weird natural weapon. Accordingly, he had been forced to bind his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the numbness, in spite of the lassitude which that burnt-out passion had left behind in brain and body, she knew what it meant. She understood. She had hated his weakness; she still hated his lack of manhood which had made him fail her. That hatred would be ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... was aware that his bonds cramped him no longer, found Roger's arm about him, and at his parched lips Roger's steel head-piece brimming with cool, sweet water; and gulping thirstily, soon felt the numbness lifted from his brain and the mist from his eyes; in so much that he sat up, and gazing about, beheld ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol |
