"Dumbness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... sincerity the South lacks. Her single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and venery and extortions and dehumanizings,—sterility; a dumbness of soul. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... as a pike; dark it was, but to him it was all golden with the light of his wondrous treasure. For the sake of this hoard he had given up his companionship with the Dwarfs and his delight in making and shaping the things of their workmanship. For the sake of his hoard he had taken on himself the dumbness and ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... silence and drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the deserted object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect—rather with the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her husband had grown the self-dread which ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Charlotte herself spoke again at last—"You may want to know what I get by it. But that's my own affair." He really didn't want to know even this—or continued, for the safest plan, quite to behave as if he didn't; which prolonged the mere dumbness of diversion in which he had taken refuge. He was glad when, finally—the point she had wished to make seeming established to her satisfaction—they brought to what might pass for a close the moment of his life at which he had had least to say. Movement and progress, after this, with ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... salt, may the wild beast of the forest tear me to pieces, may my own weapon turn against me in the evil hour, may I be terrified by midnight spectres and hag-ridden, may my body be smitten with leprosy, my eyes with blindness, my tongue with dumbness, my bones by rottenness, if ever I speak one syllable to anybody, be it priest, or child, or father, or condemning judge, or threatening headsman, of anything I have seen, heard or learnt in this place, or write ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... silent and secret messenger returned?—Stand up, slave, behind the back of De Neville, and thou shalt hear presently sounds which will make thee bless God that He afflicted thee rather with dumbness ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... vision of an angel, who declared to him that his wife, who was childless, should have a son in her old age who should be a great prophet and preacher, proclaiming the Messiah. Since that time, the aged couple, who live south of Jerusalem, have indeed been blessed with a child, the father's dumbness disappearing with its birth and the priest again praising the Lord of his people. To this child has been ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... suspension of judgment; his knowledge of nature brings him nearer to the unchanging and consoling element in the world. All the quite happy entertainment which he gets out of life comes to him from his contemplation of the peasant, as himself a rooted part of the earth, translating the dumbness of the fields into humour. His peasants have been compared with Shakespeare's; that is, because he has the Shakespearean sense of their placid vegetation by the side of hurrying animal life, to which they act the part of chorus, with an unconscious ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... there's something, something pressing with a numbness on my heart, And my lips, with mortal dumbness, fail the burden to impart. O, I tell you, Uncle Jared, there is something, back of all, That a soldier can not part with when he heeds his country's call. Ask the mother what, in dying, sends the yearning spirit back Over life's broken marches, ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... of it yet, But wilt be working on when Death hath set A new mound in some churchyard for my sake. On flow the centuries without a break. Uprise the mountains, ages without let. The mosses suck the rock's breast, rarely wet. Years more than past, the young earth yet will take. But in the dumbness of the rolling time, No veil of silence will encompass me— Thou wilt not once forget, and let me be: I easier think that thou, as I my rhyme, Wouldst rise, and with a tenderness sublime Unfold a world, that ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... fiends have been in poor Tom at once; of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; and Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses chamber-maids and waiting-women. So bless thee, master!]] The passage in crotchets is omitted in the folio, because I suppose as the story was ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... of the break with God has been radical and strange. Dumbness, and slowness or thickness of speech alternate with an unnatural sharpness. Sometimes the spittle has a peculiar oiliness that results in a certain slipperiness of statement. Sometimes it has a ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... shade,—the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch." But no such charge can be laid at the door of "Rab and his Friends." The very dumbness of Rab, his mute yearning to help, his brave and loyal ministries in the hospital, doubly affecting because wordless and impotent, lend an appeal to this sketch that few sketches of men and women can ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... general gathering of types. Nobles mixed with the poorest, meanest and most criminal classes, and mingled with their common sorrow. For the most part a dumbness, a silence prevailed. The shock of the national disaster had bereft the people of their powers ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked, as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed: A notable passion of wonder appeared in them; but the wisest beholder, that knew no more but seeing, could not say, if the importance ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... again in the dusk, Chuck bending to the task now against the current. And so up the hill, homeward bound. They walked very slowly, Chuck's hand on her arm. They were dumb with the tragic, eloquent dumbness of their kind. If she could have spoken the words that were churning in her mind, they would have been something ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... with Christ to-day!—and unhappily it is a fact that Christ's ministers in recent years have done more to sever Him from Humanity than any other power could ever have succeeded in doing. Not by action, but by inertia!—dumbness—lack of protest,—lack of courage! Only a few stray souls stand out firm and fair in the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "merely by the way, as it might be, without meaning harm, if you would ask a blessing for me—Aphrodite's blessing? Easy for you. Of course, it would be nice curing—curing, as they say—stupidity, plain dumbness, as they call such things—curing stupidity as easily as I can cure small ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the universal instinct. It is mockery to the dying. It is an outrage upon the mourners. The Elizabethan masters were far truer to the fact; so is the modern skeptic who shrinks at "the black and horrible grave." Men never speak of delicious blindness, of delicious dumbness, of delicious deafness, of delicious paralysis; and death is all these disasters in one, all these disasters without hope. No, no, the morgue is the last place that lends itself to decoration. Death is ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... of God's own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle but to heal: who never struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, madness, any one affliction of mankind; and never stretched His blessed hand out, but to give ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... may safely assume that despite the general tendency of mountain worshippers to attempt to paint—in colours strong and language divine—the effect on their minds, there are exceptional instances of noble and self-imposed dumbness. Not the dumbness which is ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... written of it lay (I never for one moment ceased to be conscious) heavy as stone on a writing-table in some spot quite accidental in my new sense of locality; the tongue that would have spoken of it seemed to slumber in my mouth. And I knew that both dumbness and stillness were proper. Their opposites would have convicted me (the flat and earthly comparison must be allowed) of intrusion into some Place of beauty and serenity for which the soilure ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... sweet! when I do look on thee, In whom all joys so well agree, Sweet, think not I am at ease, For because my chief part singeth; This song from death's sorrow springeth: As to swan in last disease: For no dumbness, nor death, bringeth Stay to true love's melody: Heart and soul do ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... there was silence between them—a natural silence, and no dumbness. They had forgotten about themselves in the ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... hill, When the last flush of the dissolving day Fainted before the moonlight, and, as 'twere Unconscious of my listening, uttered there The comprehensions of a soul true poised With elemental beauty, giving tongue Unto the dumbness of the blissful air. So have I seen him, too, within his home, When, newspaper on knee, his earnest gaze Seemed scanning issues from the money list; But comments came not, till my curious eye Led out his meditation into words, Thought-winding ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... been a recognition of danger in the very charm of her attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness to fall on James. He did not remember ever having been quite alone with Irene before. And, as he looked at her, an odd feeling crept over him, as though he had come across something strange ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... which heals sin heals also sickness. 135:12 This is "the beauty of holiness," that when Truth heals the sick it casts out evils, and when Truth casts out the evil called disease, it heals the 135:15 sick. When Christ cast out the devil of dumbness, "it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake." There is to-day danger of repeating 135:18 the offence of the Jews by limiting the Holy One of Israel and asking: "Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?" What ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... much for John. 'Upon my heart and life, my dea—' he began. Here Bob's letter crackled warningly in his waistcoat pocket as he laid his hand asseveratingly upon his breast, and he became suddenly scaled up to dumbness and gloom ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... seemed frozen into dumbness. He stood ghastly white with horror, thick drops started from his forehead, his teeth chattered, he staggered away. He looked at me with a haunted face, such as belongs to one who thinks ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... dwarf, but a gallant knight. At that moment his memory came back to him, and he knew he was Conal, one of the Knights of the Red Branch, and he remembered now that the spell of dumbness and deformity had been cast upon him by the Witch of the Palace ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... to Cecil Place, he proceeded to the Gull's Nest. His first inquiries were concerning the boy who had contrived to steal a passage on board the Fire-fly from France to England, and who had pretended dumbness. How the youth got on board his vessel, Dalton could not imagine; although, when the discovery was made, his feigning the infirmity we have mentioned succeeded so well, that the Buccaneer absolutely believed he could neither hear ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... that this brooding night, with its dumbness, its heat, its vaporous mystery, was affecting her spirit. And she got up from the bench, and began to walk ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... city. The gossip of an inn-waiter ought perhaps to be beneath the dignity of even such thin history as this; but I confess that when, as a story-seeker always and ever, I have come in from my strolls with an irritated sense of the dumbness of stones and mortar, it has been to listen with avidity, over my dinner, to the proffered confidences of the worthy man who stands by with a napkin. His talk is really very fine, and he prides himself greatly on his cultivated tone, to ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... And what aesthetic deafness, dumbness and blindness thus open the way for, vanity instantly reinforces. That is to say, once a normal man has succumbed to the meretricious charms of a definite fair one (or, more accurately, once a definite fair one has marked him out and grabbed him by ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... an elderly couple, speaking French. The man was evidently a quiet sort of fellow, who, by long Caudling, had subdued—whole volcanos into dumbness within him. Little did he think what eruption fate was preparing. II. sat opposite his hat, which he had placed on the empty seat. There was a tower, or something, coming; H. rose, turned round, and innocently ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him when he don't know the parties shootin'. That's his dumbness. Maybe he thought I was after him; he's jest that distrustful. Begosh! we'll have the laugh on him when he finds he run ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... anything to say, and their captains have words of command just as clear as ours, and better obeyed. We have indeed, in watching the efforts of an intelligent animal to talk to a human being, a melancholy sense of its dumbness; but the fault is still in its intelligence, more than in its tongue. It has not wit enough to systematise its cries or signs, and form ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... uttered prior to the infliction of dumbness were words of doubt and unbelief, words in which he had called for a sign as proof of authority of one who came from the presence of the Almighty; the words with which he broke his long silence were words of praise unto God in whom he had all assurance, words that ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... thing was visible; the midnight sun, by this time muffled in a transparent mist, shed an awful, mysterious lustre on glacier and mountain; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth's vitality: an universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I suppose in scarcely any other part of the world is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. On the stillest summer day in England, there is always perceptible ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... children of Israel, and preparing their minds for the speedy approach of the Messiah; and yet it is stated, that Zacharias "believed not his words," in consequence of which he was smitten with dumbness till the birth of the child. But Mary, though so inferior in age, in situation, and in spiritual advantages, glorified God by a full acquiescence in his declarations; thus exemplifying what the grace of God can accomplish, even in the youngest persons, and the weakest sex. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... small actually as to be negligible. Almost all who are spoken of as deaf and dumb have organs of speech that are quite intact, and are, indeed, constructively perfect. It comes about, however, that dumbness—considered as the want of normal and usual locution—though organically separate from deafness, is a natural consequence of it; and does, as a matter of fact, in most cases to a greater or less extent, accompany or co-exist with it. The reason of ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... a kind of death which is not death. It is going a little beyond the bounds. How can one speak, where there is a dumbness on one's mouth? I suppose, ultimately she is all beyond me, she is all not-me, ultimately. It is that that one comes to. A curious agony, and a relief, when I touch that which is not me in any sense, it ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... sufferers not as the victims of God's wrath, but of human ignorance, vice, or folly. And it was with deep satisfaction that I read in the last Report of the Schools for the Deaf and Dumb a statement of what were considered the most probable physical causes of deafness and dumbness, and a hope that it would be possible, hereafter, to prevent as ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... keenly felt the chill and fictitious character of the reigning conventionalities. The rigidity of behavior which at this time characterized the Bostonians seemed sometimes ludicrous and sometimes disagreeable to the foreign visitor. There was great gravity, together with a certain pomp and dumbness, and these things were supposed to be natural to the inhabitants and to give them joy. People are apt to forget that such masks are never worn with ease. They result from the application of an inflexible will, and always inflict discomfort. The Transcendentalists found themselves all but ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... from the roof. The Lapp himself is a dull nonentity who can neither tell fortunes nor conjure. His daughter has gone across the field; she has learned to read, but not to write, at the village school. The two old people, husband and wife, are fools. The whole family share a sort of animal dumbness; if I ask them a question, I may or may not get half a reply: "Mm-no, mm-yes." I am not a Lapp, and so ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... delighted the ears of many of the believers of the Prophet of Mecca during our long journey. I had some misgivings about his going, for I was afraid that the villagers might suspect his character, and might ill-treat him. For myself I had no fear as long as I could continue to feign dumbness, as my character was easily kept up. He had told the Sheikh's people that I was a Nazarene lad, who was ignorant of their language. Being dumb, they considered me under the peculiar care ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... power of suffering. How we long to pierce the thoughts and feel the heart-beats and watch the trickling tears behind that machine-like exterior, that impassible mask! Our imagination is powerfully excited by the dumbness of that fate borne by one whose words never reached the outward air, whose thoughts could never be read on the hidden features; by the isolation of forty years secured by two-fold barriers of stone and iron, and she clothes the object of her contemplation in majestic ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart, and brimstone in your liver. You should then have accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have bang'd the youth into dumbness. This was look'd for at your hand, and this was balk'd: the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sail'd into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on Dutchman's beard, unless you do ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... exhortation that is to pity. It is a remarkable thing that this word dumb should have been so largely applied to animals, for, in reality, there are very few dumb animals. But, doubtless, the word is often used to convey a larger idea than that of dumbness; namely, the want of power in animals to convey by sound to mankind what they feel, or, perhaps, I should rather say, the want of power in men to understand the meaning of the various sounds uttered by animals. But as regards those animals which are mostly dumb, such as the horse, which, except ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... views, to suspend their opinions," &c. On the words: "the tongue of the dumb shall shout," compare Matt. xii. 22: [Greek: tote prosenechthe auto daimonzomenos, tuphlos kai kophos. kai etherapeusen auton, hoste ton tuphlon kai kophon kai lalein kai blepein.] Spiritual dumbness is the incapacity for the praise of God which, in the time when salvation is withheld, so easily creeps in, and which is removed by the bestowal of salvation. The words: "For in the wilderness," &c., state the ground of the leaping and shouting, point to the bestowal of ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... astonishment. Common minds, always impressed by noisy demonstrations, that is to say, by cries and tears, are unable to understand a mute sorrow. Dumbness to them means indifference. She was therefore astonished at the calmness with which Amelie received the message she was charged to deliver. She did not see in the dimness of the twilight that Amelie's face from being pale grew livid. She did not feel the deadly clutch which, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... was a tremendous oppression upon her, such as one feels sometimes in a nightmare dream. She longed to speak out, to clear herself in Maurice's eyes, and yet she could not frame a single intelligible sentence. It was as though she were afflicted with dumbness. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... other accomplishments, had a faculty for dumbness and said nothing; but a smile which approached a grin formed on his face as he stood eyeing quizzically first one and then the other. Finally, picking up the empty ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... wife disputed volubly about the date of one of Paolo's grand dinners in Paris; Gaeta yawned, and I was stricken with dumbness. I could think of nothing to say which she would think worth hearing. Soon, the tremendously steep descent into the valley gave me the best of excuses to jump down and relieve the horses, which the coachman was leading. Somehow, I don't quite ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... at him, his lips parted. Bella twisted her apron about her hands. Both seemed to know the hopelessness of protest. In the same anxious dumbness they watched Garth make ready for his trip. As he pulled his cap down close about his ears, Pete at ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... seemed as if every string must be broken. This mania spread until even the outlying bassoons, triangles, and celestas were infected. A piercing note of command, however, from a clarinet caused a devastating dumbness to fall suddenly on every instrument except the piano, which continued self-consciously alone. The pianist looked at the ceiling mostly, but one note seemed to be an especial favourite with him, and whenever he played it he looked closely and paternally at it, almost indeed applying ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... Sismondi, Education evidence. Letters. House. 21st.—To-day not for the first time felt a great want of courage to express feelings strongly awakened on hearing a speech of O'Connell. To have so strong an impulse and not obey it seems unnatural; it seems like an inflicted dumbness. 28th.—Spoke 30 to 35 minutes on University bill, with more ease than I had hoped, having been more mindful or less unmindful of Divine aid. Divided in 75 v. 164. [To his father next day.] You will see by your Post that I held forth last ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... chat in the same loose, familiar way. Dumbness and deafness would have been endowments rather than deprivations ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... on the bed; and Milt's inner ear heard a mute snicker from the Gilsons and Saxton. He tried to talk. He couldn't. Bill looked at him and, perceiving the dumbness, gallantly helped out: ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... plants as well, but 'tisn't a many. There's hen bane which do kill the fowls and fishes if they eat the seed of it. And there's water hemlock which lays dumbness upon man. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... It was heavy both on the love and the pride of the father, which in this case were one, to think of his son as a hired servant—and that of a rough, swearing man, who had made money as a butcher. The farm too was at such distance that he could not well come home to sleep! But the season of this dumbness, measured by the clock, at least, was but of a few minutes duration; for presently the laird was on his knees thanking God that he had given him a son who would be an honour to any family out of heaven: in there, he knew, every one was ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... it seemed to him that the trampling roar grew louder every second, drowning into dumbness the crashing and grinding of the ice; and the volleying mist-clouds seemed to race up-stream to meet him. Then, with a sickening jump and turn of his heart, a hope came and shook him out of his stoicism. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... among us who can prove whether vivacity is temperament or just plain kiddishness; whether sweetness is real disposition or just coquetry; whether tenderness is personal discrimination or just sex; whether dumbness is stupidity or just brain hoarding its immature treasure; whether indeed coldness is prudery or just conscious passion banking its fires! The dear daredevil sweetheart whom you worship at eighteen will evolve, likelier ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... though my own private belief is, that the wisest rule upon which a man could act in this world (alas! I did not myself act upon it) would be to seal up his mouth from earliest youth, to simulate the infirmity of dumbness, and to answer only by signs. This would soon put an end to the impertinence of questions, to the intolerable labour of framing and uttering replies through a whole life, and, above all (oh, foretaste of Paradise!), to the hideous affliction ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Disconcerted, wholly ill at ease, the four went obediently to the library, deserted now that the cotillion was beginning. The two men struggled valiantly with the conversation, but the twins sat stricken to shamed dumbness: no topic could thrive in the face of their mute rigidity. Silences stalked the failing efforts. Mr. White's eyes clung to the clock while his throat dilated with secret yawns; Mr. Morton twisted restlessly and finally let a nervous sigh ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... said about no man knowing? Bartow knows. In his dumbness, his deafness, he has surprised my secret, and shows that he has done so by his peering looks, his dissatisfied ways, and a jealousy at which I could shout aloud in mirth, if I were not more tempted to shriek aloud in torment. A dumb serving-man, picked up I have almost ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... observed,' said Mrs Todgers, 'how he used to watch your sister; and that a kind of stony dumbness came over him whenever she was ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... was his silence that it presently engrossed me to the exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his face like day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... &c. Sweet, think not I am at ease, For because my chief part singeth; This song from death's sorrow springeth, As to Swan in last disease; For no dumbness nor death bringeth Stay to true love's melody: Heart and soul ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam were spoke to by the Court; but neither of them could make any answer, by reason of dumbness ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the house in the Rue Taitbout, Contenson still met with absolute dumbness. So long as Esther dwelt there the lodge porter seemed to live in mortal terror. Asie had, perhaps, promised poisoned meat-balls to all the family in the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Albert Savarus; a sort of "ferocious" Sormano. Represented as a young Sicilian girl, fourteen years old, in the services of the Gandolphinis, political refugees at Gersau, Switzerland, in 1823. So devoted as to pretend dumbness on occasion, and to wound more or less seriously the hero of the romance, Rodolphe, who had secretly entered the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... general philosophy is, that if when your poems come, you persist in giving too much importance to what I may have courage to say of this or of that in them, you will make me a dumb critic and I shall have no help for my dumbness. So I tell you beforehand—nothing extenuating nor exaggerating nor putting down in malice. I know so much of myself as to be sure of it. Even as it is, the 'insolence' which people blame me for and praise me for, ... the 'recklessness' which my friends talk of with mitigating countenances ... seems ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... absurd to us, but it is all a part of the Spirit of the Hive, as Maeterlinck would say. It is better than dead-level dumbness—better than the subjection of the peasantry of Europe. These pioneers settle their own disputes. It makes them think, and a few at least are getting an education. This is the cradle in which statesmen ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... his revelation, to regulate men's opinions concerning the action of spiritual substances upon animal bodies. At any rate it is unconnected with testimony. If a dumb person was by a word restored to the use of his speech, it signifies little to what cause the dumbness was ascribed; and the like of every other cure wrought upon these who are said to have been possessed. The malady was real, the cure was real, whether the popular explication of the cause was well founded or not. The matter of fact, the change, so far as it was ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... freedom and movement. Not a moment of inactive discontent; to dart with the speed of an arrow but pursue as variant a course as fancy dictated; from twig top to field, feeding upon honeyed nectar and small insects which also loved the flowers and fed upon their sweets. Not perching in sluggish dumbness at the place of feeding but hovering in a fragrant flowery world over the red or white or blue corolla cloth of an ever changing dinner service, leading all the while a life of intense movement, to pass as a bar of light, to stop and rest and as ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... speaks till man is dumb, And only then if he be like a child Silently curled within its mother's womb, Or feeding at her breast. There is a wild Way also - when his dumbness is of death. And there's a first and second death. Remember To die so that no god's or angel's breath May quicken ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... vainly trying to scale. She found herself mentally rushing hither and thither, seeking a gate or any possible means of egress. And still she was confronted by the difficulty of replying adequately to the totally unexpected. And what added to her dumbness was the fact that she was infinitely touched by Garth's confession; and when Jane was deeply moved speech always became difficult. That this young man—adored by all the girls for his good looks and delightful manners; ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... in the temple when he was exercising the priest's office and offering the incense of the daily sacrifice with the message that he should have a son. It was a joy that would be unclouded by the God-sent dumbness which was at once a punishment for his lack of immediate faith and a sign of the faithfulness of God. It was a joy that would hasten his steps homeward with the glad tidings, a joy that would fill the heart of Elizabeth when she heard the message of God. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... he was seized with overpowering dumbness and chill. What was really in his mind was the Terrace—was Wharton's advancing figure. But ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had found voice, and had spoken to her mother in his name. Annette always avoided Jean of Kerdual, if it was possible to do so, and would never let his shadow fall upon her. She felt that the solemn, world-old stone was in some way hostile to her, and attributed her dumbness to its influence. ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... "Please!... You know it isn't that. I don't want you off my hands, ever.... That is to say, I—ah—" Here he was smitten with a dumbness, and sat, aghast at the enormity of his blunder, entreating her forgiveness with eyes that, very likely, pleaded his cause ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... most uncomfortable silence ensues. Barbara tries to get up a conversation with Mr. Courtenay, but that person, never brilliant at any time, seems now stricken with dumbness. Into this awkward abyss Mabel plunges this time. Evidently she has been dwelling secretly on Tommy's comments on their own cat, and is therefore full of ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... not well to pity them? You pity the blind man who has never seen the daylight, the deaf who has never heard the harmonies of nature, the dumb who has never found a voice for his soul, and, under a false cloak of shame, you will not pity this blindness of heart, this deafness of soul, this dumbness of conscience, which sets the poor afflicted creature beside herself and makes her, in spite of herself, incapable of seeing what is good, of bearing the Lord, and of speaking the pure ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... it was she who won by seven years of service the right to deliver from hell all she could carry, and carried away multitudes clinging with worn fingers to the hem of her dress; and it was she who endured dumbness for a year because of the little thorn of enchantment the fairies had thrust into her tongue; and it was a lock of her hair, coiled in a little carved box, which gave so great a light that men threshed by it from sundown to sunrise, and awoke so great a wonder that ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... could I give you account of numberless numbers that have not only been made to live, but to live forever, by drinking this pure water of life. No disease comes amiss to it. It cures blindness, deafness, dumbness, deadness. This right holy water (all other is counterfeit) will drive away evil spirits. It will make you have a white soul, and that is better than a white skin.'—(Bunyan's Water of Life). Whoever offers to purify the heart, and heal a wounded conscience, by any ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the prophets of old—the moon itself appeared to stare at him in open wonderment. He grew uncomfortably conscious of this speechless watchfulness of nature,—he strained his ears to listen, as it were to the deepening dumbness of all existing things,—and to conquer the strange sensations that were overcoming him, he proceeded at a more rapid pace,—but in two or three minutes came again to an abrupt halt. For there in front of him, right across his path, lay the fallen pillar ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... men-servants stood at attention—two! one for each diner, solemn, immovable-looking creatures who seemed to move on wheels and who kept their eyes glued upon every mouthful you ate, ready to pounce upon your plate and nip it swiftly and noiselessly away. They were stricken with dumbness also, if you were to trust the evidence of your senses, but had certainly ears, and could drink in ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... surely it was a hopeless task to attempt an explanation through mere words. If, after all, she was capable of misconceiving the entire set of his motives during the past two years, expostulation would be futile. In his thoughts of her he fell into a great spiritual dumbness. Never, even in his moments of most theoretical imaginings, did he see himself setting before her fully and calmly the hopes and ambitions of which she had been the mainspring. And before a reconciliation, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... at Chaillot. I will, moreover, grant that we may draw the following inference,—that even men of genius are liable to cross humours; but I must at the same time add that the example is not dangerous, dumbness not being an efficacious method of making one's self valued, or of distinguishing ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Their objection to killing their troublesome and superfluous dogs seems to be due to a somewhat similar feeling — a recognition of intelligence and emotions not unlike their own, but mysteriously hidden from them by the dumbness of the animals. In the same way it is clear that it is but a very simple and logical inference that the crocodiles are a friendly race, and but the clearest dictate of prudence to avoid offending creatures so powerful and agile; ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Silesia become Polish Then, oh God, may children perish, like beasts, in their mothers' womb. Then lame their Polish feet and their hands, oh God! Let them be crippled and blind their eyes. Smite them with dumbness and ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... back his fist as if to strike me, and I wonder that I did not run from the cabin and jump ashore, but I stood my ground, more from stupor and what we Dutch call dumbness than anything else. Ace let his fist fall and looked me over with more respect. He was a slender boy, hard as a whip-lash, wiry and dark. He was no taller than I, and not so heavy; but he had come to have brass and confidence from the life he lived. As a matter of fact, he was not so old as I, but ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... any chance rustling of their satin lining, and bearing his George the Third silver candlestick steadily to control any clattering of its extinguisher, he moved on rather like a thief who was also a trained ballerina, holding his breath and pressing his lips together in a supreme agony of dumbness. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... vocabulary, grammar, logic returned. They still iterated and reiterated their experiences, but with a coherence which gradually grew to consistence. In between, however, came sudden, sinister attacks of dumbness. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... never speak again. You know it's no small matter for a horse to talk. It isn't natural for them. It could only be produced by a mighty effort, and the most natural thing in the world would be for the creature to relapse into dumbness if ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... anything? Is there anything you wish for? Do but ask, and command us," but we have never been able to draw a word from her. We cannot tell whether her sorrow proceeds from pride, sorrow, stupidity, or dumbness." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... of that blessed 'Then.' Blindness and deafness are defects in perception, and stand for incapacities affecting the powers of knowledge. Lameness affects powers of motion, and stands for incapacity of activity. Dumbness prevents speech, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... was but little wind. There was an inexplicable dumbness in the cold. There was no hail. The thickness of the falling ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... had a lump in his throat and an ache at his heart from never letting himself remember it. By that strange perversity, which we all know in ourselves, he couldn't talk. The hundred and one things he had wanted to ask, died on his lips in a dumbness of gladness. Of course, you, dear reader, on the return of a husband or wife (prospective or present), on the sudden appearance of friend or kith have never been similarly affected. You didn't forget ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... my voice has ceased, I feel the night throbbing with thoughts that gaze in awe at the abyss of their dumbness. ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... taking it explicitly as a sign of pleasant peace. He wouldn't appeal too much, for that provoked stiffness; yet he wouldn't be too freely tacit, for that suggested giving up. Waymarsh himself adhered to an ambiguous dumbness that might have represented either the growth of a perception or the despair of one; and at times and in places—where the low-browed galleries were darkest, the opposite gables queerest, the solicitations ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... yours than of a child Whose dumbness finds a voice mighty to call, In wordless pity, to the souls of all, Whose lives I turn to profit, and whose mute And constant friendship ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... though it cannot increase my love to him which hath been entirely circular; yet shall it encourage my deserts to their utmost requital, and make my hearty gratitude speak; to which the unhappiness of my life hath hitherto been uncomfortable and painful dumbness. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... party took advantage of his dumbness—which, as she had not unnaturally mistaken him for the butler, she took for a silent and respectful query as to her business and wishes—to open ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... back to Miss Jencks and Caliban. It was Harriet Buxton who had suggested that the boy was not so deaf as we had thought, only stupid, and that his dumbness might yield to the methods then being so successfully used with that afflicted child who has since triumphed so brilliantly over more than human obstacles. Although, as Harriet pointed out, I have always felt that ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... listened with staring eyes which mocked; for there was a thought which would not leave her, which was, that it could hear, that it could see through the glazing on its blue orbs, and that knowing itself bound by the moveless irons of death and dumbness it impotently raged and cursed that it could not burst them and shriek out its vengeance, rolling forth among her worshippers at their feet ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... raged within her at the dumbness, the paralysis that had fallen upon her. Grace, confidence, the power of movement even, seemed gone from her. A fever of shame ran through her being. Horrible doubts assailed her. She sat down awkwardly and helplessly on ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... in the hedge stood out Like revelations, but the tongue unknown; Even in the brooks a joy was quick; the trout Rushed in a dumbness dumb ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... Fate. With a sensation of relief, Patty's eyes wandered from the haggard face to a calla lily in a pot on the window-sill, and she noticed that it bore a single perfect blossom. While she waited, overcome by a dumbness which seemed to invade her from head to foot, her eyes clung to that calla lily as if it were her one connection with reality. All the rest, the close, dingy room, with the ailantus tree and the high wall beyond, the sickening ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... dared to open his mouth, even those who had been the most eager to narrate wild tales before, seemed stricken with dumbness now. ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... seemed to calm down again, and she received her only with that placid, sincere air which was her habit. Everything about this woman showed an ardent soul, repressed by timidity and by a certain dumbness in the faculties of outward expression; but her eyes had, at times, that earnest, appealing language which is so pathetic in the silence of inferior animals.—One sometimes sees such eyes, and wonders whether ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... and with scorn My sick heart muttered, "Yea, the little strife, Yet see, the grievous wounds! I fain would sleep." O heart, shalt thou not once be strong to go Where all sweet throats are calling, once be brave To slake with deed thy dumbness? Let us go The path her singing face looms low to point, Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame Of silver on the brown grope of the flood; For all my spirit's soilure is put by And all my body's soilure, lacking now But the last lustral ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... affected. He has fits of silent stiffness, alternating with spasms of extravagant gayety. He avoids me at times for hours together, and then he comes and looks at me with an inscrutable smile, as if he were on the verge of a burst of confidence—which again is swallowed up in the immensity of his dumbness. Is he hatching some astounding benefit to his species? Is he working to bring about my removal to a higher sphere of action? Nous ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... may well judge themselves to have an incomparable dignity. Yet that dignity is hardly more than what every passion, were it articulate, would assign to itself and to its objects. The dumbness of a passion may accordingly, from one point of view, be called the index of its baseness; for if it cannot ally itself with ideas its affinities can hardly lie in the rational mind nor its advocates be among the poets. But if we listen to the master-passion itself rather ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... being who can live forever in a day, who is born of a boundless birth, who takes for his fireside the immeasurable—express or expect to be expressed? What we would like to be—even what we are—who can say? Our music is an apostrophe to dumbness. The Pantomime above us rolls softly, resistlessly on, over the pantomime within us. We and our machines, both, hewing away on the infinite, ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee |
