"Soundless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There was a soundless flash beside me, a tiny level beam leaped down the corridor—that horribly intense actinic white beam. It struck the guard, and his figure fell forward in the grille doorway. When we reached him, there was but a crumpled heap of black ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... neither date nor signature. It was the cry of warning which a spirited, self-contained creature gives when brought to bay. It made even me recoil, though I had known from the first that her pretty wilfulness was but the tossing foam floating above the soundless depths of cold resolve ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... So swiftly, though soundless In silence's ear, Light, winged from the boundless Blue depths full of cheer, Speaks joy to the heart of the waters that part not before him, ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lay so still One might have thought it death, For hush of motion and a sleep of will Gave me but soundless breath. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... restoration from soundless depths into the pure air of respect and sympathy confused me; and beyond the words KILLED! STRUCK DOWN BY THE BRIDGE! I heard little, till slowly, dully like the call of a bell issuing from a smothering mist, I caught the sound of a name ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... fact. He thought of all authors as struggling with poverty, and continued to cite eighteenth-century examples by way of encouraging Goldthorpe and animating his zeal. Whilst the young man was at work Mr. Spicer moved about the house with soundless footsteps. When invited into his tenant's room he had a reverential demeanour, and the sight of manuscript on the bare deal table caused him to subdue ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... He felt suddenly packed in ice, from his lips to the pit of his belly; he revolved slowly away, took a few steps and caught the edge of the panel. His whole body began to shake uncontrollably and his lips moved in a soundless whisper that seemed to say, "No, no ... don't you understand? ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... again the sentinels walking back and forth, gun on shoulder, and waiting until they were farthest apart, Prescott touched the woman on the arm. "Now is our time," he said, and they slid with soundless footsteps between the sentinels ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... a crisis like that of Black Friday the sluice-gates of passion open. Cloaked in the masquerade of genuine distrust, came forth whispers whose only origin was in ancient enmities, long-treasured spites, the soundless depths of unquenchable malignities. Firms of staunchest reputation felt the rapier-stroke of old angers. The knowledge that certain houses were large holders of particular stocks was the signal of attacks upon the shares. Despite ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... down the soundless valley Thunders, and dark is here; And the wind blows, and the light goes, And the ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... them struck the shining, retreating container. It exploded with a monstrous, soundless, violence. It had been a rocket's war head. There could have been only one reason for it to be introduced into a Plumie ship. Baird ceased to be shaky. ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... heave the lead, take soundings, make soundings; dig &c. (excavate) 252. Adj. deep, deep seated; profound, sunk, buried; submerged &c. 310; subaqueous, submarine, subterranean, subterraneous, subterrene[obs3]; underground. bottomless, soundless, fathomless; unfathomed, unfathomable; abysmal; deep as a well; bathycolpian[obs3]; benthal[obs3], benthopelagic[obs3]; downreaching[obs3], yawning. knee deep, ankle deep. Adv. beyond one's depth, out of one's depth; over head and ears; mark twine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... drinks, slipping to the deck in a dead faint now and again with a momentary smash that was swallowed to silence immediately. Underneath the sulky, heaving water lurked death, silent and sharp, from which the shoals of flying fishes escaped for the moment by soundless, silvery, aimless poising in the blue air, only to fall back exhausted again into the green water and the waiting white jaws. Some of the fishes flopped on board, and were put out of life by the blows of the sailors who ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... now thoroughly subdued his temper in the determination to bring to a head that trouble about the necklace and end it for ever. He was continuing his remarks when the wall suddenly fell down with an unimaginable crash. Eve said nothing, but the soundless crash deafened Mr. Prohack. Nevertheless the mere fact that Sissie's wedding lay behind and not before him, helped him somewhat to keep ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the distance for years; so old can sorrow grow during a little sleep. When she went down they were seated as she had left them the evening before, grandmother, aunt, cousin; and they looked up with the same pride and fondness. But affection has so different a quality in the morning. Then the full soundless rides which come in at nightfall have receded; and in their stead is the glittering beach with thin waves that give no rest to the ear or to the shore—thin noisy edge of the deeps ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... to face with a man, he never seemed to be giving more than half his attention, for might not someone else approach if he lost himself in order to listen to any one voice? He had covered half the length of the room with that soundless step before she heard, and rose with a glad ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... crowded around a loss—the centre of the gathering that which was not—the sole presence the hopeless sign of a vanished treasure—an open gulf, as it were, down which love and tears and sad memories went plunging in a soundless cataract: the weeping mother—the dead man borne in the midst. They were going to the house of death, but Life was between them and it—was walking to meet them, although they knew it not. A face of tender pity looks down on the mother. She heeds him ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, will a gazer think: "To him this must have ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... Harry paddled around in his canoe, and gave the stern to Ranald. What a joy it was to him to be in a canoe stern again; to feel the rush of the water under his knees; to have her glide swiftly on her soundless way down the full-bosomed, sunbathed river; to see her put her nose into the little waves and gently, smoothly push them asunder with never a splash or swerve; to send her along straight and true as an arrow in its flight, ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... subtle fatal charm. In their sultry calm, their love of heat, I read once more the burning page Of nature under cloudless skies. O pitiless and splendid land! Mine eyelids close, my lips are dry By force of thy hot floods of light. Soundless as oil the wind flows by, Mine aching brain cries ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... A group of gliding soundless figures were out there in the darkness. And across the living room the window sash went up with a thump. A black shape was there, huddled in a great loose cloak which was over the head so that the thing inside ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... the desk upon which still reposed the cutout, the section between neck and waist still arched off the surface. As Harper reached toward the cutout to press it flat, Gault's eyes widened, his mouth opened in a soundless shout ...
— The 4-D Doodler • Graph Waldeyer
... ground and added desolation to the plain. No solitary watercourse with margin of cottonwoods or willow thickets flowed here to stripe the dingy, yellow world with interrupting green, nor were cattle to be seen dotting the distance, nor moving objects at all, nor any bird in the soundless air. The last gate was shut by the Virginian, who looked back at the pleasant trees of the ranch, and then followed on in single file across the alkali ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... were sitting on the Casino veranda overlooking the wonderful Harbor of Port Arthur. It was one of those quiet, balmy, semi-tropical nights for which this part of the world is famous, one of those crystal, clear, soundless nights, and the silhouettes of Russia's grim silent battle monsters riding at anchor were sharply outlined on the moonlit waters of the bay. We were smoking our pipes, having just finished a long chat about the history of these regions—the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... came to the foot of the Great Falls of the Missouri, alone, majestic here in the wilderness, soundless save for their own dashing—those wonderful cascades, now so well known in industry, ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... by the cradle bed Where an infant nestles its sleeping head— Smiling, perchance, in his baby rest, Deeming his pillow her gentle breast —But the feet that moved with a soundless tread In the calm still night by that cradle bed, Beyond the waters of death now stand Mid the fadeless flowers ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she heeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently as she could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused breathlessly once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning in at the gate of her father's ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... George, too, glanced through his window across the crowded street into the shattered window whence issued the Voiceless Speech. In that jagged frame in the raw November air still stood Mrs. Harvey Herrington, turning the giant leaves of her soundless oratory. The heckling request which then struck George's eyes began: ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... - I feel not the red rains fall, Hear not the tempest at all, Nor thunder in heaven any more. All the distance is white With the soundless feet of the sun. Night, with the woes that it wore, Night is over ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... does its blossoming; Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too, Blushing through the mist and dew, Cloys with tasting: What do then? Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear faggot blazes bright, Spirit of a winter's night; When the soundless earth is muffled, And the caked snow is shuffled 20 From the ploughboy's heavy shoon; When the Night doth meet the Noon In a dark conspiracy To banish Even from her sky. Sit thee there, and send abroad, With a mind self-overaw'd, Fancy, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... He bringeth to my heart, Deep as the soundless sea; How sweetly singeth the soul that clingeth, My loving ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the wild beauty of the Swiss scenery did she find rest, not by the calm lakes of sapphire blue in which she saw reflected the rugged mountains, soul-satisfying in their majestic grandeur, not in the soundless, the mysterious regions of the eternal snows—but in the north of Holland, where she found herself when autumn fell, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... no longer. He was exhausted; he had to watch passively the heavy open hand of the brute descend again in a degrading blow over his other ear. It seemed to split his head in two, and all at once the men holding him became perfectly silent—soundless as shadows. In silence they pulled him brutally to his feet, rushed with him noiselessly down the staircase, and, opening the door, flung ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... they would prostrate themselves before him as did the weeping ones upon the body of the dead Adonis! The key of this discourse is high-pitched and cutting. Laforgue, a philosopher, a pessimist, makes his art the canvas for his ironic temperament. The Prince's interview with Ophelia is full of soundless mirth. And how he lavishes upon his own deranged head offensive abuse: "Piteous provincial! Cabotin! Pedicure!" This last is his topmost ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... as they saluted her as the wife of their general, appeared to gaze upon her with rude, yet earnest commiseration; but neither word nor rumor reached her ear. Several times she essayed to ask of her husband, but the words died in a soundless quiver on her lip. Yet if it were what she dreaded, that Stanley had fulfilled his threat, and they had fought, and one had fallen—why was she thus summoned? And had not Morales resolved to avoid him; for her ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... disguise his merriment at such close range from his victim, he had slipped out into the yard, and Allen could see him writhing in the folds of darkness as he slapped his thighs and raised his heavy boots in a soundless dance of joy. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... the twinkling streams, The lilied marge their waves caress; And the sheer constellations sway O'er soundless gulfs ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... in the grass Struck at the fleet-footed lord— Still is his voice at the pass, Soundless his step at ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... fussed considerably over the extraction of the key, halted in the hallway, appalled by the utter loneliness of the darkened rooms. Beyond in the library a clock boomed loudly through the quiet. Somewhere upstairs a dull, choking rasp broke the soundless gloom. Aunt Agatha began to flutter ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... and gravely impressive in this interminable line of dark figures, close-pressed, soundless; a crowd, yet absolutely still; a close-packed, silent file, waiting, waiting in the vast deserted night-ridden street; waiting without a word, without a movement, there under the night and under the slow-moving mists ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... the river-side, once more bending over her with starting eyes, once more the attentive ear listening for the soundless breath. No sound! not even a sigh! Oh! what would he have given for her shriek of anguish! No change had occurred in her position, but the lower part of her face had fallen; and there was a general appearance which struck him with awe. Her body was quite cold, her ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... rate of succession among the reactions; the relation of the form of this reaction series to factors of attention and control; and the significance, in connection with the process of rhythmization, of auditory stimuli produced by and accompanying the reaction series, that is, the comparison of soundless and sounded reactions. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... watched him confidingly and without any fear, faintly wagging her tail. He turned away, frowned, and wrung his hands.... Gerasim heard nothing, neither the quick shrill whine of Mumu as she fell, nor the heavy splash of the water; for him the noisiest day was soundless and silent as even the stillest night is not silent to us. When he opened his eyes again, little wavelets were hurrying over the river, chasing one another; as before they broke against the boat's side, and only far away ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... was still launching its devastating rain of vibrations; they were above the range of hearing; but he felt his body quivering in response to the unheard note. Then even these vague fragments of understanding left him. The towering, soundless thing was indistinct ... it vanished in the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... her botch-work, turn about And stare disdain at me, her finished job? Why was the place one vast suspended shout Of laughter? Why did all the daylight throb With soundless ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... intensified. Quietly folding his arms, he took his stand by the coffin of the dead in silence. The dashing spray that leaped at the masts of the vessel,— the wind that scooped up the billows into higher and higher pinnacles of emerald green, might have been soundless and powerless, for all he seemed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... night that hath a moon, Staining all the cloudy white; Sinking with a soundless tune Deep into the spirit's night. Then a morning clear and soft, Amber on the purple hills; Warm high day of summer, oft Cooled ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... taken from the detective's hand, and while his blood-shot eyes vainly sought to master the few lines there written, Mr. Poindexter attracted the attention of Mr. Gryce, and, fixing him with his eye, formed his lips with three soundless words: ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... irresistibly upward on the human tide, there was one overpowering moment of fear and clamor, in which the cry of "The Prophet! The Prophet!" dominated her consciousness; then, to her, the world became suddenly and mercifully sightless, soundless, and void. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... uttering no word of objection, and stepping after me through the open window onto the narrow balcony without. I reached up and drew down the shade, leaving us in comparative darkness. The night was soundless and our eyes, straining to pierce the black void, were unable to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... whaur the mune luiks doon, As gin she war hearin' a soundless tune, Whan the flowers an' the birds are a' asleep, And the verra burnie gangs creepy-creep; Whaur the corn-craik craiks in the lang lang rye, And the nicht is the safter for his rouch cry; Whaur the wind ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... ass!" he said to himself in the soundless words of thought. "What an ass never to have suspected it when ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... over and into the black void. But for the awful sense of depth she would not have known the Canyon to be there. A soundless movement of wind passed under her. The chasm seemed a grave of silence. It was as mysterious as the stars and as aloof and as inevitable. It had held her senses of ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... a long breath, "it is not this fire that concerns us—" The voice died in his throat. Astonishment still dominated; he stared and stared. Then a ghastly laugh stretched his features—a soundless, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... of the change. Beneath him, in a space between the quays bridged by the gangway, a number of rowboats, a putative score, lay moored for the night and gently rubbing against each other with the soundless lift and fall of the river. For all that Kirkwood could determine to the contrary, the lot lay at the mercy of the public; nowhere about was he able to discern a figure in anything ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... looked down at his congregation. Then, all at once, he was aware that he had created a profound impression. Just in front of him, his eyes burning with a strange fire, sat Monsieur Valmond. Parpon, beside him, hung over the back of a seat, his long arms stretched out, his hands applauding in a soundless way. Beneath the sword of Louis the Martyr, the great treasure of the parish, presented to this church by Marie Antoinette, sat Monsieur Garon, his thin fingers pressed to his mouth as if to stop a sound. Presently, out of pure spontaneity, there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with the truth that consisted, at the worst, but in practising on one's self. She was now playing with the thought that Eugenio might inclusively assist her: he had brought home to her, and always by remarks that were really quite soundless, the conception, hitherto ungrasped, of some complete use of her wealth itself, some use of it as a counter-move to fate. It had passed between them as preposterous that with so much money she should just stupidly and awkwardly want—any more want a ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... to the heart, comes from the hills, And ravenous for flesh draws nigh the flock Penned in the wide fold, slinking past the men And dogs that watch, all keen to ward the sheep, Then o'er the fold-wall leaps with soundless feet; So stole Odysseus down from the Horse: with him Followed the war-fain lords of Hellas' League, Orderly stepping down the ladders, which Epeius framed for paths of mighty men, For entering and for passing forth the Horse, Who down them now on ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... pleasure made both men follow her example. It was only a coasting vessel, which had come rather close to the shore, and was sailing swiftly by, before the freshening breeze; but Its broad, white sails, with the moonlight upon them, and its gliding, soundless motion, gave it an unearthly effect, as of a phantom of light floating between the dark sea and sky, or a great white-winged spirit sweeping past. When it had vanished into the distance and darkness, Rose turned, and looked up at ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a bare thirty seconds' start. Then, rising with strange energy for so dazed and broken an invalid, he left the room and followed him toward the head of the stairs. His light footfall was soundless on the matting as ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Lincoln's voice was swept away and drowned, and a rush of people followed on the heels of the tumult. These intruders came towards him and Lincoln gesticulating. The voices without explained their soundless lips. "Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!" was the burden of the uproar Men were bawling for ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... children about her. Henry now lay entirely flat, and his motions were genuinely those of a serpent. It was by a sort of contraction and relaxation of the body that he moved himself, and his progress was absolutely soundless. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... He pressed them closely between his own, that were strangely cold, and lifted them to his lips. Then she swayed forward unsteadily; and in an instant her face was hidden against his shoulder, her whole frame shaken with soundless sobs. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... inclined to think nothing will——" began Major Carstairs, but he got no further, for with the extraordinary aptness of conjunction which we are wont to call coincidence, though another word might more fitly be employed, the door opened almost noiselessly and a hooded figure crept on soundless feet into the room. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... past, when till this moment, had she shown a fear, however dumbly, for his individual life? They had had fears together, just as they had had joys, but all of hers, at least, had been for what equally concerned them. Here of a sudden was a question that concerned him alone, and the soundless explosion of it somehow marked a date. He was on her mind, he was even in a manner on her hands—as a distinct thing, that is, from being, where he had always been, merely deep in her heart and in her life; too deep down, as it were, to be disengaged, contrasted or opposed, in short objectively ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Christ himself, perfect man as well as perfect God, fixes his residence and establishes the local sovereignty of the Universal Archangel." 17 A comfortable thought it must be for the saints, as they roam the flowery fields, basking in immortal bliss, to remember that under the crust they tread, a soundless sea of fire is forever plunging on its circular course, all its crimson waves packed with the agonized faces of the damned as thick as drops! The whole scheme is without real foundation. Science laughs at such a theory. Its scriptural supports are ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... place where Lewti lies, 65 When silent night has closed her eyes: It is a breezy jasmine-bower, The nightingale sings o'er her head: Voice of the Night! had I the power That leafy labyrinth to thread, 70 And creep, like thee, with soundless tread, I then might view her bosom white Heaving lovely to my sight, As these two swans together heave On ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the evening's lounge and the music they loved, the crude off-scourings of a dozen nations had retired to their bunks and were sleeping as peacefully as if their consciences were clean. Here and there a light twinkled, but as the three in the doorway looked, they blanked out one by one. The soundless ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... great muffling garment flung over his head and drawn tightly about his neck. He was in a fair way to strangle, and his vigorous efforts at escape were useless in the hands of so many. He might have been plunged at once into a great abyss of limitless, soundless depths, so futile did any resistance seem. And so, as it was useless to struggle, he lay like one dead and put all his powers into listening. But neither could he hear much, muffled as he was, and bound hand and foot now, with a gag in his ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... pressed like buds to hold The guarded heart against excess of rain. Hands spirit tipped through which a genius plays With paints and clays, And strings in many keys— Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a flood Of sun-shine where there is no breeze. So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood, Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite— Wind cannot dim or agitate the light. From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wrought From Plato's dream, made manifest in hair, Eyes, lips and hands ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... she saw her glide soundless in across the silent dusk of the morning, that filtered through the heavy drapery of the windows, but she recovered herself at once when she saw the bundle about her neck, for it both assured her of Curdie's safety, and gave her hope of her ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... above the medium height, and added to the sense of grandeur conveyed by her presence. Her carriage was erect to the verge of stiffness, and her step too firm to be quite soundless. Advancing years had not produced any unseemly embonpoint, nor had her figure fallen into the opposite extreme, and sharpened into meagre angularity; its outline retained sufficient roundness not to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... on a pleasantry, whereat Moses opened his mouth in a soundless laugh, but, observing the professor's goggles levelled at him, he transformed the laugh into an astounding sneeze, and immediately gazed with pouting innocence and interest at ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... rough table where he laid it down noiselessly, as though with that quietness he were doing something to offset the fatal blatancy with which it had just spoken. He looked down at the lifeless figure with burning eyes entirely devoid of pity, then went with a soundless tread, in spite of his heavy-soled boots, to the bed and spoke softly to the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... sat in silence for a time, until at last the soundless night became too oppressive, and Holden was ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... the face of the scout brightened. Here was the most promising pupil who had ever sat at his feet for instruction; and now they redoubled their caution, as their soundless bodies slipped through the undergrowth. Everywhere they looked for the trail of that wild turkey. It may be said that a turkey can and does fly in the air and leaves no trail, but Henry knew that the one for ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sudden call. But there had been no call. A profound silence spread itself through the sleeping house. Outdoors the wind had died down. Only the loud brawl of the river broke the stillness under the stars. But all through the silence and this vibrant song there rang a soundless menace which brought me out of bed and to my feet before I was awake. I heard Paul say, "What's the matter?" in a sleepy voice, and "Nothing," I answered, reaching for my dressing-gown and slippers. I listened ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... in the first of the gray dawn, while the house was in utter stillness, and rising at once, rose and dressed herself with soundless haste. It was hard indeed to go and leave James thus in danger, but she had no choice! She held her breath and listened, but all was still. She opened her door softly; not a sound reached her ear as she crept down the stair. She ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... her sympathies, so instant her despairs. She lived all her life at the heights or the depths, with never a day of serene, womanly, reasonable action, and when she died her passing was of the same emotional stress. She clung to earth like one whose body was about to drop into soundless deeps. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... was close at hand. He called up the telegraph-office, dictated it and directed it to be sent immediately. He had been so engrossed in this task that he had noticed nothing else. Now he looked up. The room was still filled with children, but they were all laughing. It was a soundless laugh, and yet he heard it. And then the room was empty save for the child he had seen first and vaguely. He had just time to catch a smile from his lips and then he, too, was gone as silently and as strangely as he ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... was the most silent woman I ever met. She could pass a whole day without uttering a word, and did not seem to suffer any ennui from her silence. In the house she wore always, like the other inhabitants of the village, men and women, soundless felt socks, which slipped readily into the wooden sabots used for walking out-of-doors. I was beginning to learn to walk in sabots myself, for the time was drawing rapidly near when otherwise I ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... progress, for the great mastiff Hero, since Hugo Jocelyn's death, had taken to such dismal howling that it had been found necessary to keep him away from the house in, a far-off shed where his melancholy plaints could not be heard. Treading with light, soundless footsteps down the stairs, she reached the front-door,— unbarred and unlocked it without any noise, and as softly closed it behind her,—then she stood in the open, shivering slightly in the sweet coldness of the coming dawn, and inhaling the fragrance of awakening ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... where his bubble joined his suit, and the impact drove the man downward to the unyielding surface of the asteroid with a soundless smash. Rip threw up his arms to cushion his helmet as he struck the ground beyond his enemy. He threw the air bottles away. He fought to keep his feet under him and almost succeeded, but his knees hit the ground, and pistol and ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... welled out in soundless sobs from a panic-stricken heart. "O God, I'm only a li'l' girl, an' I growed up without a mother. I'm right mean an' sulky, but if you'll save me this time from Jake Houck, I'll make out to say my prayers regular an' get religion ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... illuminated, the man who kept that watch was suddenly met by a person wearing a masque, and armed at all points. His surprise and consternation were great, and the more so as the steps of The Masque were soundless, though the floor was a stone one. The guard, but slightly prepared to meet an attack, would, however, have resisted or raised an alarm; but The Masque, instantly levelling a pistol at his head with one hand, with the other had thrown open the door of an empty cell, indicating to the man by signs ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... them up with a tough elasticity, the sun hot and lusty on their heads, the sweet, strong summer wind swift and loud in their ears, the only sound in all that enchanted upland spot. Often Sylvia lifted her face to the sky, so close above her, to the clouds moving with a soundless rhythm across the sky; once or twice she turned her head suddenly from one side to the other, to take in all the beauty at one glance, and smiled on it all, a vague, sunny, tender smile. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... mathematical relation to each other which they held, as far as distance and arrangement were concerned, and whether that could possibly have any intellectual significance. The nebulous conglomeration of the suns in Pleiades suggested a soundless depth of space, and he thought of the earth floating like a little ball in immeasurable reaches of ether. His own life appeared very trivial in view of these things, and he found himself asking whether it was all really of any significance or importance. He shook these moods off with ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... a soundless shell, as a songless nest, Seems now the room that was radiant then And fragrant with his happier rest Than that of ...
— A Dark Month - From Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works Vol. V • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... haunted me in that sunny, solitary place, not like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely injured. Was the great treasure-ship indeed below there, with her guns and chain and treasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her decks a garden for the seaweed, her cabin a breeding-place for fish, soundless but for the dredging water, motionless but for the waving of the tangle upon her battlements—that old, populous, sea-riding castle, now a reef in Sandag Bay? Or, as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the disaster of the foreign ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which few could tell anything. Here and there in the hollows between the motionless earth-billows, flowed, but did not seem to flow, what they called a brook. But the brooks there were like deep soundless pools without beginning or end. There was no life, no gaiety, no song in them, only a sullen consent to exist. That at least is how they impress one accustomed to real brooks, lark-like, always on the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... rest a moment and to listen for the stroke of pick or shovel from the opposite side of his living grave. But no sound came to him. He seemed to be in a soundless universe except for the rasp of his own ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... knowing the look, the age, the religion or even the color of the other. But I know, from the only person fitted to judge, that they loved each other tremendously and spotlessly—these two poor souls alone in that continuous, soundless, sightless, expressionless night. I know because their baby, when he grew up, and got away from that place, and learned ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... softly through the soundless woods. Under the dark branches it was already dusk, and the air had the cool chill of evening. As I neared the clump where the body lay, I walked with redoubled caution, watching and listening with strained alertness. Then I heard a ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... mother-of-pearl. "I want you to take this with you," he begged his son. "It is made of the Moon-Metal. I think I know its secret now. A vibration that defies a vacuum. I hope to perfect my work, but I may not. Here," he offered the tiny horn to his son. "Blow it if you need me. It is soundless, but it defies time and space just as my work does. I carry a ring to match it. I may not succeed. But blow it when you need me, son, and if ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... Bagot's Italian Lakes, and he wasn't making much headway. He was Italian to the core, for all that he aped the English style and manner. He could speak the tongue with fluency, but he stumbled and faltered miserably over the soundless type. His clothes had the Piccadilly cut, and his mustache, erstwhile waxed and militant, was cropped at the corners, thoroughly insular. He was thirty, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... towards the artificial water. The sky was melancholy and grey, and the park lay before her, hushed and soundless. Through the shadows of the darkening island two swans floated softly, leaving behind slight silver lines; above, the swallows flew high in the evening. There was sensation of death, too, in this cold, mournful water, and in ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... muscle; its long, slender neck, of swanlike curvature; the head, wide between the eyes, and tapering to a muzzle which a lady's bracelet might have almost clasped; its motion, step long and elastic, tread sure and soundless—all certified its Syrian blood, old as the days of Cyrus, and absolutely priceless. There was the usual bridle, covering the forehead with scarlet fringe, and garnishing the throat with pendent brazen chains, each ending with a tinkling silver bell; but to the bridle there was neither rein for the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... and vague and dusky as in pillared aisles. There were no birds, no animals, nothing living except the giant columns which bore a woven canopy of leaves so dense that no glimmer of blue shone through. Centuries had spread the soundless carpet that we trod; eons had laid up the high-sprung arches which vanished far above us where vault and column were dimly merged, losing all ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Being soundless, and devoid of perfume, the Desert's message reached him through two senses only—sight and touch; chiefly, of course, the former. Its invasion was concentrated through the eyes. And vision, thus uncorrected, went what pace it pleased. The Desert ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... furiously on every possibility of self-salvation, there came to his sensitive nostrils a faint and a familiar scent. Instantly every faculty of his mind was upon the alert. Presently his trained ears caught the sound of the soundless presence without—behind the hut wherein he lay. His lips moved, and though no sound came forth that might have been appreciable to a human ear beyond the walls of his prison, yet he realized that the one beyond would hear. Already he knew who that one was, for his nostrils ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... heavy that at first five horses were used, but we left one with his postillion at the top of the hill and swung down at a canter into the level country. The snow lay fairly deep, and the horses' hoofs were soundless as we plunged through the crisp and tingling air. The wind raced past me as I sat perched on my rickety seat, swaying wildly with every lurch of the coach. With every gust I seemed to drink in fresh strength ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... within his outworks. Once more he roused himself, heard the storm raving on—over buried graves and curtained beds, heedless of human heeding—fell a-listening to its shriek-broken roar, and so into a soundless ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... violins, or whether Veronese does right in allowing cats and monkeys to join the company of kings: but whether, supposing the subjects rightly chosen, they ought on the canvas to look like real angels with real violins, and substantial cats looking at veritable kings; or only like imaginary angels with soundless violins, ideal ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... of a this theme made Ibsen as nearly "rollicking" as he ever became in his life. We can imagine than as he wrote the third act of The Wild Duck, where so horrible a luncheon party—"we'll all keep a corner"—gloats over the herring salad, he indulged again and again in those puffs of soundless and formidable mirth which Mr. Johan Paulsen describes as so surprising an element ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... clear water washed the sands of a white beach, the cocoa-palms waved and whispered in the breeze; and as the oarsman lay on his oars to look a flock of bluebirds rose, as if suddenly freed from the treetops, wheeled, and passed soundless, like a wreath of smoke, over the tree-tops of the higher ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... upon a signpost, and turning down a lane on the left she came on a handful of unlighted cottages, and beyond them a single village street, soundless and asleep. A chemist's shop full of coloured glasses was lit from within by a single candle; upon the step the chemist stood, a skull cap ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... his companion's hand for silence. He almost held his own breath for the moment, as they moved back from the pool with the soundless step of ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... hush of peace—a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; Mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony, That I could never dream, till ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... room gave out on the street of the Consuls which as usual was silent. And the house itself below me and above me was soundless, perfectly still. In general the house was quiet, dumbly quiet, without resonances of any sort, something like what one would imagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose it was very solidly built. Yet that morning I missed ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... when he heard the story, with artistic touches from the cook, slapped his thigh and laughed one of his soundless chuckles. "The son-of-a-gun! He's the right stuff. Never whined, eh? I knew it. He's his dad over again, from the ground up." And ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... dedicate and vow me. I reach back through the days A trothed hand to the dead the last trump shall not raise. The water-wraith that cries From those eternal sorrows of thy pictured eyes Entwines and draws me down their soundless intricacies! ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... herself for a while, until Lark really slept, then she buried her head in the pillow and her throat swelled with sobs that were heavy but soundless. ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... at Henry and Henry looked at Sol. A ray of moonlight fell upon their tanned and stern faces. Then as they looked a twinkle appeared in the eye of each. The twinkle deepened and the two broke simultaneously into a soundless laugh. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... closer, smashing the remains of the night with an iron crutch. The half-extinguished Cafe Kloesschen, a gleaming fragment, lay still in the soundless morning. In the background sat the last customer. Kuno Kohn had let his head sink back on his trembling hump. The scrawny fingers of his hand covered his forehead and face. His ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... turned his eyes upon him, and again bent them upon Muzzio. From time to time he raised and lowered the branch, and waved it in the air, and his dumb lips slowly parted and moved as though uttering soundless words. On the floor between the Malay and Muzzio lay the dagger, with which Fabio had stabbed his friend; the Malay struck one blow with the branch on the blood-stained blade. A minute passed ... another. Fabio approached the Malay, and ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... up at the light, strong piers; the spot is extremely natural, though two or three stone benches have been erected on it. I remained there an hour and got a complete impression; the place was perfectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... fallen from roses. On the meadows of white poppies were long shadows blue as the blue lagoons of the sky among drifting snow-white moors of cloud. Three white aspens on the pastures were in a still sleep: their tremulous leaves made no rustle, though there was a soundless wavering fall of little dusky shadows, as in the dark water of a pool where birches lean in the yellow hour of the frostfire. Upon the pastures were ewes and lambs sleeping, and yearling kids opened and closed their onyx eyes among ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... Gillian made her way up the short central aisle until she reached the chancel steps. For a few minutes she knelt, her face crushed against the flowers she held, in silent passionate prayer that knew neither form nor words—a soundless supplication that was an inchoate appeal to a God of infinite understanding. Then rising slowly she pushed back the iron gate and went into the chancel. Directly to the left the new monument gleamed cleanly white against the old dark ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... winter this whole region—cliffs, ocean, glaciers—is covered with a pall of snow that shows a ghastly gray in the wan starlight. When the stars are hidden, all is black, void, and soundless. When the wind is blowing, if a man ventures out he seems to be pushed backward by the hands of an invisible enemy, while a vague, unnamable menace lurks before and behind him. It is small wonder the Eskimos believe that evil spirits ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... Bear me, ye whirlwinds, to some favored spot— Some mountain pinnacle that sleeps in air So delicately, mercifully rare That when the fellow climbs that giddy hill, As, for my sins, I know at last he will, To utter twaddle in that void inane His soundless organ he will play ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The grandest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... nodded her head sharply, as though in imperative self-command, and running back, her footfalls soundless on the rich, heavy rug, she picked up the plush-lined necklace case. She dropped this again, open, on the floor, halfway between the safe and the window. With the case apparently burst open as it fell, and the necklace also on the floor, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... very quiet,—quite soundless save for the beating of our hearts. On every side opened red and yellow ways, sunny glades, labyrinthine paths, long aisles, all dim with the blue haze like the cloudy incense in stone cathedrals, but nothing moved in them save the creatures ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... and she glided away from him with soundless footsteps. Close, close behind her he followed till they reached the threshold of the Cave Hall. There he tarried out of sight, yet where his eyes could still ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... appeared the ice-plumes of the cirro-stratus clouds, the true mares'-tails, flung out across the vault, their ends stretching to the centre of the storm. At the horizon, a wicked, dull glare gave threat of the typhoon's approach. All as yet was soundless, only the far-flung clouds told of the fury which was hurling them ahead of ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... not turned up, we landed and made camp at a spot where the bank rose sharply for a hundred yards to a level stretch of ground. Our canoes were moored to trees. The axemen cleared a space for the tents; they were pitched, the baggage was brought up, and fires were kindled. The woods were almost soundless. Through them ran old tapir trails, but there was no fresh sign. Before nightfall the surveyors arrived. There were a few piums and gnats, and a few mosquitoes after dark, but not enough to make us uncomfortable. The small stingless ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... SOUNDLESS. Places assumed formerly to be bottomless, but thousands of fathoms are now measured. Our elders little thought of a submarine telegraph across the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... twinkling, crunching the slim bone between her powerful jaws. It was but a morsel to such a hunger as hers. Licking her chops, and passing her black paws hurriedly over her face, as a cat does, she forsook the trail of the lynx and wandered on deeper into the soundless gloom. Several rabbit-tracks she crossed, and here and there the dainty trail of a ptarmigan, or the small, sequential dots of a weasel's foot. But a single glance or passing twitch of her nostril told her these were ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of phenomena at all; that probably man is surrounded by beings he can neither see, feel, hear, nor smell; and that, notwithstanding the excellence of his own eyes, ears, and nose, the universe the materialist is mapping out so deftly is, and must be, monophysical, lightless, colourless, soundless—a phantasmagoric show—a deceptive series of undulations, which become colour, or sound, or what not, according to the organism ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Sunday—having attributed the peacefulness he found pervading Fullerton Avenue to his own good conscience, a purely subjective phenomenon—until in the parlor of his father's house the sight of his brother Ben at the piano playing a soundless tune upon the tops of the keys, brought it home to him. When he inquired for the rest of the family, he learned that they were up-stairs ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... stretch his views beyond corporeal sight, Prometheus came, and from the floods of day Sunn'd his clear soul with heaven's internal ray, The expanding spark divine; that round him springs, And leads and lights him thro the immense of things, Probes the dense earth, explores the soundless main, Remoulds their mass thro all its threefold reign, O'er great, o'er small extends his physic laws, Empalms the empyrean or dissects a gaz, Weighs the vast orbs of heaven, bestrides the sky, Walks on the windows of an insect's eye; Turns then to self, more curious still to trace The whirls ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... joys of hearth and home and love, Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide, All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above Word or touch from the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... turned out that Peter had not been once to the dancing school. In the beginning he had done something for himself in the way of a hall for dancing, thrown out from the House of the Shining Walls, in which he and the Princess Ada, to lovely, soundless strains, had whirled away, and found occasion to say things to each other such as no ballroom could afford;—bright star pointed occasions which broke and scattered before the little hints of sound that crept up the stair to advise him that Ellen was stifling back the pain for fear ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin |
