"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which she heard were his decision to test the diving-suit, and as she listened she became tense, for this information she knew was important. The continued note of tenderness in Locke's voice more infuriated Zita. She removed the headpiece of the dictagraph, slammed it back into the desk drawer from which she had taken it, and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... With tense silence he ascended the ladder, praying that his weight would not send up a warning vibration. But his luck held. He was nearly at the ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... Athenian to the burly form of the Spartan. Every outward chance, so many an anxious heart told itself, favoured the oft-victorious giant; but then,—and here came reason for a true Hellene,—"the gods could not suffer so fair a man to meet defeat." The noonday sun beat down fiercely. The tense stillness was now and then broken by the bawling of a swarthy hawker thrusting himself amid the spectators with cups and a jar of sour wine. There was a long rest. The trainers came forward again and dusted the two remaining ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... young man as he backed out of Blackie's office, "the disgustin' incivility o' the Hoon has aroosed the fichtin' spirit o' the dead-an'-gone MacTavishes. Every fiber in ma body, includin' ma suspenders, is tense ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... rather you wouldn't speak in the future tense, though. Woodward," he added, addressing that gentleman, "remember that I told you that I ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... course, fluttered to and fro an instant, then neared a woman, who sat listlessly by herself, her arms resting upon those of her chair and her eyes, dark and sad, fastened upon the far horizon. There was a tense quiet in her attitude that seemed to cover something most ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... of the verbs is made more complicated than in other languages, but it again becomes easier from neither the person nor the tense changing the word itself, but all the variations being expressed by particular particles: for instance—motau, to fear; te matau nei au, I fear; te matau ra oau, I feared; i motau na oau, I have feared; e matau au, I ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... matter of some concern to the German emperor. Health trips of more than one statesman in or about the same locality are looked upon with much suspicion and promptly investigated; more so when there is any extra political tension. At that time—it was in 1910—the air was tense, Germany was in the dark, unable ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... position as mayor. Not that office, but only the fact that he was Felicity's husband, would give him an entrance into the bishop's house, and the claim seemed to him boastful and vulgar. He rose abruptly to his feet, every muscle tense. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... gesture, fierce and intolerant, she seized the Bible and thrust it out of sight, into the drawer. Then, her body still tense with the atoms of anger, she sat down upon the edge of the bed and rocked from side to side. But shortly this movement ceased. The recollection of the forlorn and loveless years—stirred into consciousness ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... was growing late—it was after nine o'clock—crowds of people were still parading the streets, and there was something intangibly restless, something tense, in the very atmosphere of the neighbourhood. It was very plain that I had reached the strike district. I was about to make some further inquiries for the headquarters of the mill men or for Bill Hahn personally, when I saw, not ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... but a touch Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now, And most adorable; Caedmon, in the morn A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call That late brought up the cattle; Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting; — all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, Your more or less, your little mole that marks You brother and your kinship ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... do?" inquired one of the older men after a tense silence had followed the statement of the speaker. "If we go down to the spring the Indians will pick us ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... of the communication evidently startled the Superior. Wynne watched him as he laid down his pen, the lines about his thin lips growing tense. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... circumstances, and would that at length the gods opened their eyes; then he would surely have to pay a heavy penalty for his impiety, for the death of my brother and for my sufferings.' The present subjunctive in the apodosis corresponds with the same tense in the protasis, and differs very little from the future indicative. See Zumpt, S 524, note. [107] 'Although life has been taken from thee before the age of maturity, and by a person who should have done it least of all.' Unde, the more ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... of gloom, with the speaking stars seeming to call to her, with the moan of the wind in the pines, and the melancholy mourn of coyotes in the distance, she was not able to govern her thought and emotion. The day was practical, cold; the night was strange and tense. In the darkness she had fancies wholly unknown to her in the bright light of the sun. She battled with a haunting thought. She had inadvertently heard Nels's conversation with Stewart; she had listened, hoping to hear some good ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... no hurry—no earthly hurry. He felt sure of it. In the silence and the blackness—in the tense, steamy atmosphere of expectancy—he felt perfectly at ease, although he knew, too, that there was superstition to be reckoned with—and that is something which a white man finds hard to weigh and cope with, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... on constabulary ponies, brilliantly caparisoned in scarlet blankets and new saddles. "Ichabod," the Kansas maestro, had proposed to guide us to Misamis over the mountain trail. It was not long, however, before one spoke of trails in the past tense. The last place that was on the map—a town of questionable loyalty, that we had gladly left late in the afternoon—now seemed, as we remembered it, in contrast with the wilderness, a small metropolis. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... forcing its way through the bush. "The man-eater," I thought to myself; "surely to-night my luck will change and I shall bag one of the brutes." Profound silence again succeeded; I sat on my eyrie like a statue, every nerve tense with excitement. Very soon, however, all doubt as to the presence of the lion was dispelled. A deep long-drawn sigh—sure sign of hunger—came up from the bushes, and the rustling commenced again as he cautiously advanced. In a moment or two a sudden stop, followed by an angry growl, told me ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... suggestion—something like what I had read in a poem or a novel—that had nothing to do with me personally, but it grew upon me more and more the more I saw of him, and felt the witchery of his light, indifferent manner, which I learned to see was tense with the anguish he had suffered. She had killed his youth; she had spoiled his life: if I could revive them, restore them! It came upon me like a great flash of light at last, and as soon as this thought took possession of me, I felt my whole being ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... knew that it was useless to argue with a man when his mind was made up, for it only increased his stubbornness, and she held her peace. And now on the shabby schooner, threading her way across the silent sea, among those lovely islands, was enacted a dark, tense drama of which the fat little captain remained entirely ignorant. The girl's resistance fired Bananas so that he ceased to be a man, but was simply blind desire. He did not make love to her gently or gaily, but with a black and savage ferocity. Her contempt now was changed to hatred and when he ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... ease, he was on his feet, body tense, alert. Her form was vaguely familiar as she ran toward him. She dodged from his sight, then re-appeared as the winding path cut behind ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... facts; for in the case of pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of Israel; not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a man could prophecy ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... reason I told you to take your seat, and left him in the corner. Remember that you are a stranger in the place, and they take more notice of what you do, so you must be careful. Now let's have our conjugations. Give me the verb 'to be,' potential mood, past perfect tense." ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with death and fire, Pants in our pleasant English air. Each blade of grass is tense as wire, And all the wood's loose trembling hair Stark in the broad and breathless glare Of hours whose touch wastes herb and tree. This bright sharp death shines everywhere; Life yearns for solace toward ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... With tense expectation, I put my ear close to the psychic's lips and listened breathlessly. The horn soared into the air and was drummed there, as if to show that it was out of the reach of the psychic, but no voice came from it! This was a disappointment to me, as well as to Fowler, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... of all this as he knelt in the stern of his little craft and plied the paddle slowly and with infinite caution, his every nerve tense, and sight and hearing strained to catch any sound of movement on the rapidly nearing point. Were it white men only that they were seeking to elude, he would have felt far less apprehension, but he recognized that in the person of Indian Charley they had to deal with a mind crafty and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... was tense excitement, the dramatic, ungoverned excitement of children. While with shrill cries two or three of the women gathered the little ones together, the rest pulled frantically at the poles holding each tepee in place. Still apparently quite unmoved, ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... a tense instant, then closed the window, and possessing herself of a few little things, gathered hastily about the room, which she could stuff in her pockets, she opened her door softly, closed it behind her, and trotted off down ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... scene of Hamlet is no mean test of a translator's ability—this quick, tense scene, one of the finest in dramatic literature. Foersom did it with conspicuous success. Blom has reduced it to the following ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... well-known engraving of naked men fighting a series of savage duels in a wood, might be chosen as emphatic illustrations of his favourite motives. The fiercest emotions of the Renaissance find expression in the clenched teeth, strained muscles, knotted brows, and tense nerves, depicted by Pollajuolo with eccentric energy. We seem to be assisting at some of those combats a steccato chiuso wherein Sixtus IV. delighted, or to have before our eyes a fray between Crocensi ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... passed, and if you want to know how long this is in a tense situation take out your watch and count ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... something in me made me call goodbye to him. He waved his hand and smiled. Thicourt pressed more buttons and the hum of the mechanisms grew louder. Then he reached toward another lever. All in the room were tense and I was tense. ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... and we moved on, alert and tense. The trees stretched upward full one hundred and fifty feet, their tops spread out in a leafy roof. Long ropelike vines festooned the upper branches and a luxuriant growth of parasitic vegetation clothed ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... life found expression in the eager voice, in the yearning eyes. As he stared at her, half-stupefied, he imagined she was holding out her arms to him in pleading. But it was not this erect form, slight and tense, that reached forth as if to clasp him to her heart; it was a memory of his youth, a memory that in some oddmanner blurred his perception of the living presence. From the fragile body of Fran, something leaped toward ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... The tense quiet of her tone carried conviction. "Not only far-off things, I can never forget—nearly killing me and—and Roy. But because she is always stabbing at me with sharp words and ugly thoughts. She cannot ever forgive that I am here—that I make you happy, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... trying to push it off with the sweeps. The lieutenant looked down into the water over the stern, and saw that the schooner was already raising the mud in her wake. Then he went forward along the deck. His men were crouching down along by the low rail, and there was a tense quietness of expectation about them. The lieutenant looked them over as he passed them. "Johnson," he said, "do you take the lead and line and go forward and sound a bit." Then to the others: "Now, my men, the moment we run her aboard, you get aboard of her as quick as you can, do ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... see the change which had come over the looks and actions of the company at the mention and appearance of the violin. The faces that had shown indifference and the look of languid weariness freshened and became tense in all their lines; and on their heads again animation sat crowned. Those who were seated jumped to their feet. The conversationalists broke their circle and swung suddenly into line. Eyes sparkled. Little happy screams and miniature ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... had not every one bolted, for here sat two of the colony among the broken rocks. These two had not been frightened off. That both of them were greatly alarmed, any one could see from their open beaks, their rolling eyes, their tense bodies on tiptoe for flight. Yet here they sat, their wings out like props, or more like gripping hands, as if they were trying to hold themselves down to the rocks against ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... For one tense moment I thought the General would burst. By an effort he pulled himself together, however, and shouted to my troops in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... Bob, in a tense voice that reached the ears of all, and caused them to halt. "Keep your horses quiet and listen. ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... scene which is charged with an inescapable atmosphere of foreboding; note the incident of the fugitive doves in the scene at Melisande's tower window; or the episodic passage near the end of the third act, during the tense and painful scene of Golaud's espionage: "Do you see those poor people down there trying to kindle a little fire in the forest?—It has rained. And over there, do you see the old gardener trying to lift ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... up. We all got up. The air became tense, and in the silence there seemed no motion of ship or wave. I said to myself, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... us were so quiet, and I had such a tense feeling inside of me that I couldn't say a word, and didn't want to anyway. The fingers of one of Mr. Black's hands were sort of drumming on the desk, and he was looking at something in the very front of the Bible in the place where people ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... tense with deep feeling, and Julia Cloud could not bring herself to break it by words. She brought the boy's hand up to her lips, and pressed it close; and then just as she was about to speak the telephone rang ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... line, which few could see until they were stopped by the barbed wire that fences it on each side. The necessity for cutting this was another awkward hindrance. All officers, however, had come provided for such an emergency with wire-nippers. The anxiety was painfully tense as men listened to the sharp click of these instruments, and heard the severed wires drop with a clatter that struck harp-like across the deep silence, and went vibrating along the fence towards a Boer camp ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... car shot on with scarcely abated speed, for the wheels could secure no purchase in the thin sand of the roadway. Andy's heart stood still in sympathy as he saw the face of the driver whiten and grow tense. Charles Merchant, the son of rich John Merchant, was behind the wheel. Drunken Pat Gregg had taken the warning at last. He turned in the saddle and drove home his spurs, but even that had been too late had not Charles Merchant taken the big chance. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... tense pause that followed, Anthony considered a pun—something about Dick having ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... The situation was tense, horrible, so that the miscellaneous articles from their pockets—knives, keys, plugs of chewing tobacco, and here and there, among the foreign ones, small combs for beard and mustache unexpectedly brought to light, caused a smile of pure reaction. ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hearth, in which he saw Thomas Gilkan. He moved forward to call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to wait. Gilkan swung a long bar against a low, clay face, and instantly the murky interior was ablaze with a crackling radiance against which the tense figures wavered in magnified silhouettes. The metal poured out of the furnace in a continuous, blinding white explosion hung with fans of sparkling gold; the channels of the pig bed rapidly ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... There was a tense silence while Julia Cloud struggled for words to break through her unwilling lips, and ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... They tense silence was broken by the bang with which he dropped the chair he had half raised. As he leaned forward now, La Boulaye read in his face the thought that had leapt into the Captain's mind, and had it been a question of any woman other than Zuzanne ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... without added haste or deliberation, he continued to withdraw the hand he had thrust into his right coat pocket. Beside me I heard Brutus draw a sharp breath. I saw Mr. Sims fumble under his cloak and take a quick step backwards. There was a tense, pregnant silence, broken by Mr. Sims in fervent expletive. My father had withdrawn his hand. He was holding in it his silver snuff box, which he tossed carelessly on the table, where it slid ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... green of the verdure, with shocks of long white hair hanging down on each side, framing between them a pair of eyes that gleamed from cavernous sockets, like black glowing beads. There was unmistakable fear, a tense anxiety in those glittering eyes as Captain Plum walked toward the paper, but when he paused and stretched himself, the sole of his boot carelessly trampling the discarded letter, the head disappeared again and there came another satisfied ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... and sniffed at the ape-man. Tarzan stood very still, his fangs half bared, and his muscles tense and ready for action; but there was none there to question his right to be with them, and presently, the inspection satisfactorily concluded, the apes again returned their attention to ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you go to the feelies at home?" The doctor saw her tense forward from the curve of ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... coquetry of arrangement, its tormented structure of phrase, its jingle of sound-repetition, its desperate rejection of simplicity in every shape and form. To describe precisely the means resorted to would take a chapter at least. They are astonishingly modern—the present tense, the use of catchwords like [Greek: holos], the repetitions and jingles above referred to. Excessively elaborate description of word-painting, though modern too, can hardly be said to be a novelty: ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the drums and cries. The wailing of the women behind the temple died. The tense air pulsed with electricity. A cock crowed feebly in the village. Then at a rippling splash of the drums and the sudden screaming of the wizards, they began to push the idol. The base had already been loosened in the earth by the slaves. The idol began to totter. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... position not upon the heel or flat of the foot, but upon the ball near the toes—that attitude which further on we shall designate as the third. The chest is eccentric; that is, convex and dilated. In this position all the muscles are tense and resemble the chords of an instrument whose resonance is proportional ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... of explaining that he had made the implication by his use of the past tense, but gave up the idea as involving a waste of energy. "How old is this chap, Banks; the ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Carleton, only one gray head was in evidence. These thirty were eager converts; with their mouths they followed the working of Mr. Carleton's mouth; they swayed in their seats with enthusiasm, and in the intervals of his talk they spoke to each other in tense approving whispers. Yet of the chosen few who, in the words of Mr. Carleton, "were determined to get those deserts that rightly and truly belonged to them," less than half a dozen combined even a modicum of personal appearance with that great gift of being a "pusher." But they were told that ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Alan's low, tense voice was more vehement than I had ever heard it before. "It's clear to me now, George. That little fragment of golden quartz which he wanted me to be so careful of contained a world with human inhabitants! Father knew it, ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... a tense silence. Then Sidney Meeks spoke. "Mrs. Whitman," he said, "may I trouble you for the date of that document you hold, and also for the names of ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that she was to be his bedmaker, and asked him whether he intended "to tea" in his rooms that evening. (The verb "to tea" is the property of bedmakers, and, with beautiful elasticity, it even admits of a perfect tense—as "have you tea'd?") ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the single tell-tale sauce-pan upon the fire, over which Madge Hildreth had bent with sudden color, fell to bustling about with a queer lump in his throat and talking ambiguously of Aunt Ellen's Christmas orders, painfully conscious that the girl's dark face had grown pitifully white and tense and that Roger's wan little face was glowing. And when the fire was damped by the Doctor himself, and his Christmas guests hustled into dazed, protesting readiness, the Doctor deftly muffled the thin ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... constructed out of the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage—a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out of the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bow string; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... reasserted itself. He was intensely frightened, but he beat down his fear with the lash of self-scorn, as he would have whipped a hound that refused to do his bidding. He steadied himself for a moment against the doorway with tense muscles, setting his teeth together. He drew a deep breath, turned back into his stateroom, and put on a cork jacket. He was cool enough. Before he buckled it he transferred his wallet and papers from the pocket of his coat to that on the inside ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... simplest emotion in any garment when it was so beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The creatures whom I met in the ways and by ways of Parisian life, whose gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I hungered to know, awoke in me a tense irresponsible curiosity, but that was all,—I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might never, have occurred to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... tried to do his duty and wanted his nephew to believe it no matter what happened. But, as Cristy had pointed out, new brooms had time to become worn and inefficient in twelve years of use. His uncle had been talking in the past tense! He had tried to do what he thought was his duty—at first, when he swept into politics, inspired by the victory over the Rives crowd. Twelve years apparently was a long time to expect an inspiration to burn in the face of ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Infried wort." To the German scholar the two latter words only require explanation. Infrid for Unfried, discord, disturbance, any thing in opposition to Frieden or peace. The Frid-stools at Beverley, Ripon, and Hexham, still bear the old theotise stamp. Wart, or ward, may be either the past tense of werden, to be (our was), or an old form of waehren, to endure, to last: our English wear is the same word. The sense is pretty much the same in both readings alluding ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... down to a form in which nouns and verbs are its only elements, is an established fact. In the gradual multiplication of parts of speech out of these primary ones—in the differentiation of verbs into active and passive, of nouns into abstract and concrete—in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of number and case—in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles—in the divergence of those orders, genera, species, and varieties of parts of speech by which civilized ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... himself, and leaves the room to do so. The rest of the family are sure that, in her rage, she will blurt out the whole story; and they wait, in breathless anxiety, for Robert's return. What follows need not be told: the point is that this scene—the scene of tense expectancy as to the result of a crisis which is taking place in another room of the same house—is really far more dramatic than the crisis itself would be. The audience already knows all that the angry virago can say ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... did what proved to be the best thing possible: I sat quite still, and screamed for mother as loud as I could. She must have known from my voice that something serious was the matter, because in a second, just as the puma's muscles were growing tense for the final spring, there was a sudden crash of broken boughs behind me, a feeling as if a whirlwind was going by, and my mother shot past me straight at the puma. I had no idea that she could go so fast. The puma was up on his hind-legs to meet her, but her impetus was so terrific that it ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... counsels of friends of Jamadagni's son, of the celestial rishi Narada, and of island-born Krishna, while they offered me counsel. In the midst of the assembly, Krishna told me what was for my good, saying, "A truce (tense) to hostilities, O king! Let thy son take the whole kingdom! Give but five villages to the Pandavas!" Fool that I was, for not following that advice, I am now obliged to repent so poignantly! I did not listen to the righteous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Annersley had earned him disrepute. He resented the injustice of this, and all his old hatred of the law revived. Yet despite all logic of justice as against law—he could see Gary's hand clutching against his chest, his staring eyes, and the red ooze starting through those tense fingers—Pete reasoned that had he not been so skilled and quick with a gun, he would be in Gary's place now. As it was, he was alive and had a ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... drew out a little silver figure, whether of man or woman La Mothe was uncertain, so fully the tense fingers clenched it. This he held up, palsied, before his face, bowed to it thrice, his lips moving soundlessly, then the hand slipped weakly to his knees, the grasp relaxed, and the image clattered on the floor. It had served its purpose, out of the curious act of faith a renewal ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... his hand. I tried to order her away, but my tongue could not form the words. I could only look at her mutely, and there must have been an effective appeal in my eyes, for she got up, nodding an acquiescence, and stood silent and tense a yard from Alresca's feet. With a violent effort I nerved myself to perform my work. The voice of Nolan, speaking to the audience, and then a few sympathetic cheers, came vaguely from the other side of the big curtain, and then the orchestra began to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... right." And any one seeing the old man would surely have thought that he had himself fought against the infidels, such fire shot from his eyes, and so tense became his muscles. "It was in the Fourth Crusade that Venice played so ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... differed, and discussions began again which could not but spread the young man's fame. The Revue des Deux Mondes was now open to him, and henceforth, with a few exceptions, whatever he wrote appeared in that periodical. He made his entry with the drama of Andrea del Sarto, which is rife with tense and tragic situations and deeply-moving scenes. The affairs of the family turned out much better than had been expected, but Alfred de Musset continued to work with application and ardor. His fine critical faculty kept his vagaries within ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... whole hall full of people held their breath in a tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by the second breath, which they ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... listening, tense, resentful inhabitant of the castle. He held up the key of the room in ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... at her notebook and seized a pencil, and then held herself tense to receive the message, staring downwards at the blank page. Dayson lolled in his chair, throwing his head back. He knew that the presence of himself, the great shorthand expert, made Hilda nervous when ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... in gloom above them; here and there in the deep of the branches there was the stir of a wing, as a pigeon settled to its nest; from beyond the wood came a brief, shrill bicker of starlings; all things beside these were mute, and in the silent dusk, spirit was sensitive to spirit, and the air was tense with the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Strong," he paused and finished his sentence in a tense whisper, "I'll search the universe until I find Coxine. And when I do, ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... his Eton jacket, folded his arms, turned his back to the smiter and assumed a scientific arrangement of the shoulders with tense muscles and coyly withdrawn bones. He had ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... this moment that the tense strain of suspense was broken in the despatcher's room on the second floor of the Union Station. The telephone skirled joyously, and the train-master snatched up ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... from the others, pointing towards the harbour entrance. She seemed to be a fine big vessel, as far as I could judge in that light. I lingered there for some few minutes, looking at the ships, wondering why it was that Mr. Jermyn had not met me. I was nervous about it. My nerves were tense from all the excitement of the night. One cannot stand much excitement for long. I had had enough excitement that night to last me through the week. As I stood looking at the ships, I began to feel a horror of the wharf-side. I felt as though ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... rose, overturning his chair; the Kid lunged forward across the table, and his wonderful hands, tense and talon-like, thrust themselves forward as though reaching for the riches she had snatched away. They worked and writhed and trembled as though in dumb fury, the nails sinking into the oil-cloth table-cover. His face grew livid and cruel, while his eyes blazed ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... that moment, and they watched him. First he walked slowly towards the Houssa sentry, who shouldered his arms in salute. Bones halted before the soldier and stared at him. Somehow, the watchers on the stoep knew that he was staring—there was something so fixed, so tense in his attitude. Then, without warning, the sentry's hand passed across his body, and the rifle came down to ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... had quite taken the breath out of him. I knew just what to do in that moment of time she had gained. I leaped to meet her, catching her about the waist and holding on hand and foot—yes, by my feet; I could hold on by them as readily as by my hands. I could feel in my tense grip the pull of the hair as her skin and her muscles moved ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... Instantly the tears were dried, the brown face grew white and tense, the whole slender body rigid with passion, and with unseeing eyes Tabitha stared straight ahead ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... response. "If you fancy Will would cry baby at death, you knew him far from as well as I did. How strange it is to think of his being in the past tense, poor fellow. It was clever of him to leave me his Diaz; I ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... found[643] near the arch of Septimius Severus. The commentator on Winckelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and if he had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged to own that there are marks ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... he was leading the way to the spot that he was describing, the others following breathlessly. Once there, he grasped Allen's arm excitedly, crying in a tense voice: "Look here, old man, here is one of those bags they carried the other day—the place is full of them. Now I am going to open this one. You keep ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... established in the neighbourhood, and whose society and advice were necessary to Mr. Strange's life. That life was, it appeared, held by this suffering gentleman on a precarious tenure. It was ebbing away fast with each passing hour. The servant already spoke of his master in the past tense, describing him to me as a young gentleman not more than five-and-thirty years of age, with a young face, as far as the features and build of it went, but with an expression which had nothing of ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... mounted the rails on the high bridge in Lincoln Park, intent on leaving a world that had become intolerable. Packed in all around her in the inadequate dressing-room, the other girls were chattering, squealing, scrambling into their clothes, as unaware of her tense motionless figure, as if it had been a mere inanimate lump. She couldn't have been more alone if she had been sitting out on the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... calm, but with the calmness which is the outgrowth of an excitement so tense that it is still. As the vision floated nearer, I heard soft music—a crooning, yearning, soul-satisfying lullaby; I saw a little child, a mother, and a father. The child was as beautiful as an angel, and there was that in its ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... bigger than a hand, it rises from the island of Corsica and moves toward Central Europe. All too well does Europe know its meaning. From north and south, from east and west, she pours into the field the finest armies that the Old World ever saw. Then she pauses. Europe grows tense with a nameless dread. The storm cloud blackens, hovers lower, then bursts with all its fury through the continent. For ten long years, at the command of an imperial butcher, the soil is drenched with blood, the sky grows lurid from burning Paris to burning Moscow, three million homes are ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... once he was devoting all his faculties to tense and absorbed concentration on what another man could tell, leaving reflections and conclusions on what he heard until all ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... indicates a court in which candidates after election are to purge themselves. Again, quae erant omnibus sortita is very difficult. Cicero nowhere else, I believe, uses the passive sortitus. But, passing that, what are the consilia meant? The tense and mood shew, I think, that the words are explanatory by the writer, not part of the decree. I venture, contrary to all editors, to take omnibus as dative, and to suppose that the consilia meant are those of the album iudicum who had been ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... fine face had lost some of its brownness, and the eyes seemed deeper and slower, but she was still a vision of grace and beauty as she stood in response to their call framed in the curtains of an archway. Her quick sense caught the tense atmosphere, and she came forward with parted lips and extended fingers. There was the glint of light on her white teeth. "Yes?" she said. "What is wrong? ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... spoken sincerely; and, further, we may take it for granted that he used the past tense, 'loved,' merely because Ophelia was dead, and not to imply that he had once loved her but ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... of the upper hall, near a door that was closed. Garrison had lost no space behind her. She turned a white, tense face as she came ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... conventions, dictated nominations from the lowest office up to that of governor, and elected judges and legislators. The extent to which this was done differed according as the railroads had large or small interests within the state. These statements can with approximate truth now be made in the past tense, as was not possible a few years ago. A better code of business morality has developed, and the railroad management's relationship of private trusteeship toward the shareholders and of public trusteeship toward the patrons of the road is now much more fully recognized. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... that. One night—we were sitting out on the veranda—her scarf slipped, and I saw a scar on her arm, near her shoulder." Hardy stopped abruptly and began to roll a little pellet of bread between his thumb and his forefinger; then his tense expression faded and he sat back ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... some American poet will one day be able to write in the past tense similar verses of the barbarity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... now; all that was gone. His muscles were hard, his thoughts were tense, he saw red! Presently he had a conviction that we were gaining ground, and he suddenly became aware of the fact that we had gained the better of the situation and had returned to our trenches. A number of the enemy had been taken prisoners, and the plot which ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... a candle upon the washstand, screened from the bed, and lighted the oil stove which they always used for preparing the breakfast. Her purchases were carefully arrayed, and then hidden. She removed her outer clothes, and let down her hair, shivering slightly, but tense with resolve and the absorption of the moment. Round her shoulders she hung a big towel, and kicked it out, looking down at her legs and feet. She was conscious of pride, of physical freedom. She made small dancing steps, as happy as a child, while she waited and ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... you realise," he said in a low, tense voice, "that since I met you every racing minute has been ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort, a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Captain closely. Anderson turned abruptly away from them all and stood, feet apart, head down, hands behind his back, and stared out of the forward viewports. In the tense silence they could hear his knuckles crack. At length he said quietly, "That isn't what ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... doubt that you and the original of this picture are closely united by ties of consanguinity, for your resemblance to her is very striking. You spoke in the past tense, however, so I suppose ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... rose—with eyeballs tense, And swollen frontal veins: To all his powers of eloquence He gave the ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... I had already supplied the answer [111:2] which has been given many times before, and which, as it seemed to me, the author ought in fairness to have noticed. I had pointed out that we have only the Latin version here, and that the present tense is obviously due to the translator. The original would naturally be [Greek: ton sun auto], which the translator, being obliged to supply a substantive verb, has carelessly rendered 'his qui cum eo sunt.' If any one will consider ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... Jill did the change to the present tense seem strange. The story was much too real to them ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... trial. Who was it who called Professor Masson's style Carlyle on wooden legs? What can be drearier than when a plain matter-of-fact writer attempts to be animated, and tries to make his characters live by the easy but futile expedient of writing about them in the present tense? What is wanted is a passion for facts; the style may be left to take care of itself. Let me name a historian who detested fine writing, and who never said to himself, 'Go to, I will make a description,' ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... non-religious. Their language hasn't instilled in them a predisposition to think of everything as the result of an action performed by an agent. And they have no definite parts of speech; any word can be used as any part of speech, depending on context. Tense is applied to words used as nouns, not words used as verbs; there are four tenses—spatial-temporal present, things here-and-now; spatial present and temporal remote, things which were here at some other time; spatial remote and temporal present, things existing now ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... to the gate and opened it. "You must not indulge such weird thoughts," he said, his features set in a mask of tense inner pain. "You must go to bed and ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Morton, so long as we are on this subject at last, I want to ask you, do you believe mother is gone—absolutely blotted out of existence?" She waited in tense silence, and as they passed a street-lamp, and the light fell on his face, he seemed to have grown suddenly pale. "Do you believe Darwin and Spencer and Victor Hugo ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Fair. She believed, with her whole heart and soul, that he loved her and her alone. And, indeed, she was at that time, at that minute, right and not deceived; for Burr Gordon was one of those who can encompass love in one tense only, and that the present; and they who love only in the present, hampered by no memories and no dreams, yield out love's sweetness fully. All Burr Gordon's soul was in his kisses and his fond eyes, and her own crept out to meet it ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... preparedness for struggles is a conspicuous cause of strife. The monkey who stalks about among his fellows with muscles tense, tail erect, teeth bared, bespeaking expectancy of and longing for a fight, usually provokes it. We may not safely argue that lower animals prove the value of preparedness for war as a preventive measure! Among them, as among human groups, the only justification ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Bethshemesh, who were at the time busy with the wheat harvest, broke up the cart and made on the stone a burnt-offering of the kine by which it had been drawn. After they have finished, the Levites come up (ver. 15) (in the pluperfect tense) and proceed as if nothing had happened, lift the ark from the now no longer existent cart, and set it upon the stone on which the sacrifice is already burning;- of course only in order to fulfil the law, the demands of which have been completely ignored ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... of intense concentration darkened Saidee's eyes. She appeared to question herself, to ask her intelligence what was best to do. Then the tense lines of her face softened. She forced herself to smile, and leaning towards Victoria, clasped the slim white figure in her arms, holding it tightly, in silence. But over the girl's shoulder, her eyes still seemed to search an answer to ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Jasper Peyton. He smiled suddenly, with all the old, tense misery quite gone from his face. "We're going to stand by you, Anthony, all of us. We are with ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... up-spouting column of flames the airship winged her way. Tense and alert, Tom sat at the wheel guiding his craft with her load of fire-defying chemicals. Behind him were Ned, Mr. Damon and Mr. Baxter, ready to drop the ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... seek cannot be born of fear alone: it must be rooted in the lives of nations. There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce. There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak. But the law of which we speak, comprehending ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the difficult, ricketty gait, supporting the heavy figure with a practised skill which took the place of strength in her slight frame. Her features were formed after the same pattern as his, the definite profile, tense spreading nostril, and firm lips, being repeated with merely feminine modifications; and as her clear, merry eyes, freshened by the sea-breeze, flashed with fun at the stumblings and uncertainties of their course, they met the ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... Janice became convinced that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... speak only through the mouths of men, who often misrepresent it for their own partisan and prejudiced plans. It is strong and steadfast, though, and in time is always victorious over its menial opposition, for what is history but the past tense of truth, and it is justly said that veritas ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... day of this severe sunshine there comes commonly a darker day of cloud, still hard and forbidding, though milder in promise, with a sky of lead, deepening near the horizon into darker films of iron. Then, while all the nerves of the universe seem rigid and tense, the first reluctant flake steals slowly down, like a tear. In a few hours the whole atmosphere begins to relax once more, and in our astonishing climate very possibly the snow changes to rain in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... start as she thought of Peter Noyes. She turned away from the mirror as if—as if ashamed. She sprang to her feet, with an odd, tense expression about her mouth. It was as if she were looking into his dark, earnest eyes. Peter had always been so intensely in earnest about everything. In college he had worked himself thin to lead his class. In the law school he had graduated among the first five, though he came ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... not in any serious and earnest discourse amongst your selves;" to whom one of them, named Heracleon the Megarian, answered, "That belongeth to them, who busie themselves in seeking whether the future tense of the verbe , hath a double, or that labour to find the derivation of the comparatives, [omitted] and of the superlatives [omitted], it is they that must chafe in intertaining themselves with their science: as for discourses ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... hntal, and also for the present verbs of the first conjugation and proceed to the second. Belle, I will now select for you to conjugate the prettiest verb in Armenian; not only of the second, but also of all the four conjugations; that verb is siriel. Here is the present tense:—siriem, siries, sire, siriemk, sirek, sirien. You observe that it runs on just in the same manner as hntal, save and except that the e is substituted for a; and it will be as well to tell you that almost the only difference between the second, third, and fourth conjugation, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow |
