"Groping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you ever go and squeak in a corner, and then creep away, to make the blind man think you were there, and so go groping ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... be the first to spread the news wherever we go. The reason is, that we get the authentic news through our friends and bankers, and circulate it in the inns, instead of the ridiculous stories invented by those groping in ignorance. The feelings of the people seem excellent every where; the troops alone maintain a gloomy silence. The country, from Montpellier, is the same as hitherto, flat and insipid: but the crops are much farther advanced than in Provence. We had some fine peeps at the Mediterranean ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the Michigan university town were a number of people who had broken from the old faith and were groping about to find a new one, but, as a rule, with such insufficient knowledge of the real basis of belief or skepticism that the religion they found seemed less valuable to them than the one they had left. Thiers, Voltairian though he was, has well said, "The only altars which are not ridiculous are ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... blown walls of sleet Across uneven pavements sunk in slime To scatter and then quench itself in mist. And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurled Against the jutting angle of a wall, And cursed, and reeled against, and flung aside By drunken brawlers as they shuffled past, A man was groping to what seemed a light. His eyelids burnt and quivered with the strain Of looking, and against his temples beat The all enshrouding, suffocating dark. He stumbled, lurched, and struck against a door That opened, and a howl of obscene mirth Grated his senses, wallowing on ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... dikes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,[326] And who the most in love of dirt excel, Or dark dexterity of groping well. Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around The stream, be his the weekly journals[327] bound; 280 A pig of lead to him who dives the best; A peck of coals a-piece[328] ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... led—I forget how—to acknowledge that he had latterly slept very badly at night. Mr. Candy thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order and that he ought to go through a course of medicine immediately. Mr. Franklin replied that a course of medicine, and a course of groping in the dark, meant, in his estimation, one and the same thing. Mr. Candy, hitting back smartly, said that Mr Franklin himself was, constitutionally speaking, groping in the dark after sleep, and that nothing but medicine could help him to find it. Mr. Franklin, keeping the ball up on his ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... containing several lively little creatures just about as large as a fresh-water eel at the age at which it is known to the small boy who tries to catch it in his hands as the 'darning needle.' After groping about in the sand at the bottom of the case he found the specimen required and handed it over to Mr. Bartlett, who held it in his hand and allowed it to make savage darts at his fingers. 'You see,' he said, it is a lively little thing—extremely ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... to bottom and patting it with his hands. This habit he kept up as long as the weather permitted him to be outdoors, and he did not give it up even after his sight was gone. He would still take his daily walk out to the haystack on the knoll, drag himself slowly around it, groping with his hands to feel it, as if he wished to make sure that it still stood there, firm as a rock and untouched. He would stretch out his hands and touch its face and count the strips of turf to himself ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... like express trains. He watched them with much interest, and mused upon their activity. Each had a special work to do, and was performing it to the best of its ability. He was glad now that he was alive, and had something definite in view. It was far better than groping around in a haphazard way looking for work. Something seemed to tell him that he was entering upon the trail of a mystery and he was eager to follow the scent wherever it might lead. The spirit of adventure was in his blood, mingled with the nectar of romance. It had always ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... has worked for Mr. Thoburn twenty years, buried his only child last Thursday, and his employer spent the afternoon speeding his thoroughbred on the race-track beside the cemetery. At the very moment when Tom was groping about the open grave, struggling with his broken heart and following his daughter with streaming eyes, Mr. Thoburn was bawling out that his filly had done it in two and a quarter—and the clods were falling on ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... mood of the stories as works of art and their burden and direction as criticisms of life. Like Dreiser, Conrad is forever fascinated by the "immense indifference of things," the tragic vanity of the blind groping that we call aspiration, the profound meaninglessness of life—fascinated, and left wondering. One looks in vain for an attempt at a solution of the riddle in the whole canon of his work. Dreiser, more than once, seems ready to take refuge behind an indeterminate sort ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of fruit after their kind. Only, by the increasing number of them, they have given proof of an unrest on this subject which at last is beginning to embody itself in organization and concerted study and enterprise. A fifty years of mere tentative groping is likely to be followed by another ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... message for us, and wait almost with awe to hear their accents. But this young girl has at once the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery of expression. Can she tell me anything? Is her life a complement of mine, with the missing element in it which I have been groping after through so many friendships that I have tired of, and through—Hush! Is the door fast? Talking loud is a bad trick in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... several minutes, he ran against an obstruction. The tunnel seemed to come to an end. He did not dare show his light. But he felt with his hands. It was rock that blocked his way. Cleggett understood that this barrier was the result of the explosion. Groping and exploring with his hands, he found that the passage turned sharply to the left. It was more narrow and curving, for the distance of a few yards, and the earth beneath was fresher. When ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... light flows in remotely Through the hollow moon, Dim strange brilliance From waters beyond the sky. Groping, I listen to the harsh tinkle of the far-off stars, Feel the ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... stayed behind a moment to fasten the trap-door; I, by drift of groping, found the outlet from the attic, and proceeded to descend the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which this led, separating the front and back rooms of the third storey: narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... sound beyond the door, and a groping on the outer face of the door. Marguerite jumped up. Mr. Haim stumbled into the room. He had incredibly aged; he looked incredibly feeble. But as he pointed a finger at George he was in a fury of anger, and his ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... happy, I am sure, than you could make me, even by surrounding me with the glittering lights that shine upon your path, and which, alas! may one day go suddenly out, and leave you wearily groping in the darkness. I trust, dear brother, my words may not prove a prophecy; yet, should they be, trust me, Clarence, you may come back again, and a sister's heart will receive you none the less warmly that you selfishly desired her to sacrifice the happiness ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... leaves below and leaves above, And groping under tree and tree, I found the home of my true love, Who is a ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... the stove to warm her hands if they had followed their impulses they would have jumped and run. The bravest among them dared not raise his eyes two inches above the bottom part of the stove-door though in each mind there was a wild groping for some light and airy nothing to show how much he felt at ease. Something which should be appropriate ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... got half way, they repented of their undertaking: The bottom was covered with branches of trees interwoven with each other, sometimes they kept their footing upon them, sometimes their feet slipt through, and sometimes they were so entangled among them, that they were forced to free themselves by groping in the mud and slime with their hands. In about an hour, however, they crossed it, and judged it might be about a quarter of a mile over. After a short walk they came up to a place where there had been four small ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... may point out four varying decades of work in Southern education since the Civil War. From the close of the war until 1876, was the period of uncertain groping and temporary relief. There were army schools, mission schools, and schools of the Freedmen's Bureau in chaotic disarrangement seeking system and co-operation. Then followed ten years of constructive definite effort toward the building ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... hours of the morning, put a couple of biscuits under her pillow before she got into bed, so as to be prepared for any emergencies of appetite. She woke suddenly in the night, with the horrible sensation that a hand was groping under her pillow. She switched on the electric light by her bedside, but nothing was to be seen. Thinking she must have been dreaming, she switched off the light and lay down again. Hardly was she settled, and sinking off to sleep, when ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... hills, stretching away to the dim horizon, and over it all the vast blue dome of heaven. Sky and earth, with thorny brakes and grass and flowers and wild creatures, with birds that flew low and others soaring up into heaven—what was the secret meaning it had for her? She was like one groping for a key in a dark place. Not a human figure visible, not a sign of human occupancy on that expanse! Was this then the secret of her elation? The all-powerful, dreadful God she was at enmity with, whom she feared and fled from, was not here. He, or his ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... contrary, they had suddenly shone out on the pathway along which I had been blindly groping. But for the accident of being in the dirty little store at so psychological a moment, hearing that strangely familiar voice and catching sight of that mysterious doubloon as well as those mysterious ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... was moving slowly along ashore, and apparently groping its way, if one could judge from the many signal whistles heard. This rumbling sound was magnified in the fog until it seemed almost deafening at times. It annoyed Jack, for he was straining his heading to catch anything ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... world, manifest to his senses, will become comprehensible if he accepts the communications of occult science as correct. All experiences in the supersensible world are nothing but an uncertain—nay, a dangerous—groping in the dark if we despise the method of preparation which has been described. Therefore in this book the facts concerning the supersensible processes of the earth's evolution will first be given, before the path leading ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... moment she was silent. It was patent that she was groping desperately for the correct thing to say. And finally ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... With groping hand he searched for the gap in the fence which Elsbeth had shown him once, and when he had found it he penetrated to the inner garden. The branches tore his clothes as, in a sort of wilderness, he crept along the ground to find a path. At last he came to an open place. The white gravel threw ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... fell, but I heard above me the sound of something tearing, and the thought darted through my mind that I was hanging by my trousers. Groping around, I found vine-leaves, branches, and lattice-work, to which I clung, and tearing away with my foot the cloth which had caught on the end of a lath, I again brought my head where it should be, and discovered that I was hanging on a vine-clad wall. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... have found the bench and shelf almost immediately by groping round the wall, but he determined to exercise his sense of direction, to pit himself against ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... estimate Lyly's position as a novelist and as a prose writer is to chase the will-o'-the-wisp of theory over the morass of uncertainty; the task of investigating his comedies is altogether simpler and more straightforward. After groping our way through the undergrowth of minor literature, we come out upon the great highway of Elizabethan art—the drama. Let us first see how Lyly himself came to tread this ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... theory is a looking- glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost path. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... consuming fire; So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn, And burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze, Where all the harvest long ago was reaped And safely garnered in the ancient barns, But still the gleaners, groping for their food, Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw, While the young reapers flash their glittering steel Where later suns ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the history of the invention shows incontestably that great industrial and intellectual advances are made exceedingly slowly, and little by little, even as Nature herself proceeds. Perhaps articulate speech and the art of writing were gradually developed in the same groping way as typography ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... is groping in the mists of doubt, The sunlight and the shadows all are gone, Only a cold, gray cloud my life's about, Nor ever ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... hands quiver ever so slightly, groping for the right words. Societics was his faith, and his teacher, Abravanel, its only prophet. This man before him, carefully preserved by the age-retarding drugs, was unique in the galaxy. A living anachronism, a refugee from the history books. Abravanel had singlehandedly worked out the ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... been unsuccessful for some days past in fishing; neither perch nor sunfish, pink roach nor mud-pouts [FN: All these fish are indigenous to the fresh waters of Canada.] were to be caught. However, they found water-mussels by groping in the sand, and cray-fish among the gravel at the edge of the water only; the last pinched their fingers very spitefully. The mussels were not very palateable, for want of salt; but hungry folks must not be dainty, and ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... had in mind. "It would be like the days having no sunrise. I'd be groping in the dark, and almost no reason for me to keep on groping. Splashed in concrete and slaked in lime, from head to toe, steaming under that eternal sun, five hundred spiggities and not half enough foremen to keep 'em jumping, I find myself saying to myself, 'What in God's name is the ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... crowning torment, and the inward pride of pure love. In the breathless pauses I could hear the hollow bumping of gunwales knocking against each other; faint splashings of oars; the distant hail of some laggards groping their way ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... a most extraordinary thing. He put out his hand, his clean, strong hand, warm and healthy and groping with the keenness of low, found the hardened grimy hand of his one-time companion, and gripped it ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... Peterson, but at the last word she turned to include Bannon, as if she had suddenly remembered that he was in the party. There was an uncomfortable feeling, shown by all in their silence and in their groping ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... groped blind and frightened under it, feeling along the wall with one hand, still carrying the bronze image by the head with the other. Once he dropped it, and would have left it, but with an impulse like an effort of self-respect, he searched for it, groping elbow-deep in the slush and water, found it, and stumbled on. Another corner presented itself; he came round it, and almost at once a light ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... even if their works had not been preserved we should, though it would have cost us many long years of labour, have discovered for ourselves "ideas of the true and the beautiful." Where should we have found them? Where the ancients themselves found them, after much groping. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... builder, a constructor, an architect. As works of architecture, of design, with porch and balcony, and central body, and roof, all in harmonious proportion, his six novels are unapproachable. There is a perfection of form in them which puts to shame the hopelessly groping attempts at beauty of harmonious form of even the greatest of English men of letters. As a work of architecture, for instance, "Virgin Soil" bears the same relation to the "Mill on the Floss" that the Capitol at Washington bears to the Capitol at Albany. ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... must hasten now and he knew it. Again his right hand sought Drennen's left, fought at the deadly grip at his own throat. In his reach a quick cunning came to him and his groping fingers passed along Drennen's wrist and did not tarry there. Up and up they went, the great questing fingers of the Canadian, until at last they found the fingers of the other man. Here they settled. And then those who watched saw the middle finger of Drennen's ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... wall, the blood ran out of his belly as out of a bowl, and soaked quite through the bed to the boards, and through the chinks of the boards it ran pouring down to the ground. Some said that when the neighbours came to see him, he lay groping with his hand in his bowels, reaching upward, as was thought, that he might have pulled or cut out his heart. It was said, also, that some of his liver had been by him torn out and cast upon the boards, and that many of his guts hung out of the bed on the side thereof; but I cannot confirm ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her real conversion had begun through the breaking of the spectacles. For Nancy had allowed Terry to confess to having broken the glasses, though she would not have dear old Madam disturbed by a description of the pranks with the dog. So long as Nursey had to go groping about as if in the dark, putting her nose to the carpet in search of the dressing-comb she had dropped out of her hand, feeling all over the pin-cushion for a pin, and shaking out the newspaper with an expression on her face which told that it was a perfectly ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... hands in particular, is no longer possible; the thunder-bolts of retribution have been long since launched by other hands; and yet still it happens that at times I do—I must—I shall perhaps to the hour of death, rise in maniac fury, and seek, in the very impotence of vindictive madness, groping as it were in blindness of heart, for that tiger from hell-gates that tore away my darling from my heart. Let me pause, and interrupt this painful strain, to say a word or two upon what she was—and how far worthy of a love more honourable to her (that ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... he was of too bold and kindly a nature to remain for a moment inactive after the explosion was over. At once he descended, and, groping about among the debris, soon found his friend— alive, and almost unhurt! A mass of rock had arched him over—or, rather, the hand of God, as if by miracle, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... this statement, and I must be understood to make it with come reservation. Six years ago, I spent all my leisure time for twelve months in the study of that Work, and wrote out a translation of it, but at the close I was only groping my way in darkness to lay hold of [footnote continued ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... at him as though bewildered. Then her eyes again sought the burning building into which the stranger had plunged, bent on his mission of mercy. By now the staggering truth must have forced itself into her groping mind, for she suddenly caught hold of Fred ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... did not imply the confused groping back to sense that it usually indicates, but rather an actual desire to know whether or not he was on board the Jeanne D'Arc. Plainly his wits had not been badly shattered by his experience overboard. But the sailor who was attending him with such ministrations as he understood, answered ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... my North Dane mother, and saw my rage red in my eyes, and smote him with the skull of Guthlaf, so that he was wine-drenched, and wine-blinded, and fire-burnt. And as he reeled unseeing, smashing his great groping clutches through the air at me, I was in and short-dirked him thrice in belly, thigh and buttock, than which I could reach no higher up the mighty frame ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... hid himself in order to spy out and betray the blessed saints, who then dwelt and worshipped in these dismal places. You have heard the story, signor? A miracle was wrought upon the accursed one; and, ever since (for fifteen centuries at least), he has been groping in the darkness, seeking his ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... old and so shrunken, in spite of her bulk, as she looked up at him. The look in her eyes was so strained. The way her hand brought her apron-corner up to her mouth, as though to stifle the fear that shook her, was so groping, somehow, so uncertain, that, paradoxically, the pitifulness of it reacted to make ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... from it, still it seemed to strain like some fettered Afrit from Eblis, throbbing with wrath, seeking with every malign power it possessed to break its bonds and pursue. Not until long after were we to know that it had been the dying hand of Serku, groping out of oblivion, that had cast it after us as a fowler upon ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... from the lips of Milly. The woman he held struggled from his arms and stared at him wildly in the veiling twilight. A strange horror fell upon him, and for several seconds he remained motionless, leaning over the back of the sofa. Then, groping towards the wall, he switched on the electric light. He saw it plainly, the white mask of a woman ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... twenty-fifth anniversary of the German Empire, on Jan. 18, 1896, our Kaiser uttered the words: "The German Empire has become a world empire, (Aus dem deutschen Reich ist ein Weltreich geworden.)" And the German Empire's groping for its way in world-politics found its expression in the first naval proposal of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of sinful waste and incompetent groping for a means out of the tangle do not connect themselves intimately with this history. But no doubt remains that the system which was at this period in practice was vicious in the extreme. In a word, the whole of the British mobile strength in South Africa was directly based on the railway communication. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... a large house, with fruit trees around it. I searched under, and climbed up and shook several of them to no purpose. At last I found a tree on which there were a few apples. On shaking it, half a dozen fell. I got down, and went groping and feeling about for them in the grass, but could find only two, the rest were devoured by several hogs who were there on the same errand with myself. I pursued my way until day was about breaking, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... came up to that light all he saw was an opening just wide enough for him to creep into. The moment he was inside thick darkness fell upon him. He could find his way neither in nor out; but on groping around he at last came upon a staircase, up which he climbed and found himself in a passage-way. Through this passage-way he went for a long, long time, until at last he stumbled upon a door. He opened the door and stepped into a room, but it was pitch dark there too; so he groped all about ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... we were both groping downstairs, leaving the candle by the empty chest; and the next we had opened the door and were in full retreat. We had not started a moment too soon. The fog was rapidly dispersing; already the moon shone quite clear on the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cit, turned in surprise and fear at sight of the samurai in his deep hat. Said Kibei—"Don't be afraid. Bunzaemon San has forgotten pipe, or purse, or something. He must go back to the Yamadaya." At the fellow's groping in his garments and failure to understand he grew impatient. "A friend lies at the Yamadaya. It is late, and they will not open at an unknown voice. Entrance somehow must be had. Deign to lend your aid." At last the fellow comprehended—"O'Moto San! A moment: my pipe...."—"Oya! ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... starless as a company of travelling actors. I could not remain under the tree all night, that was certain; and so I left it, although I could scarcely see my hand before me. That hand, by the way, still tenaciously grasped the invaluable sixpence. Groping my way out of the Battery, and guided by a light, I entered the bar-room of a respectable hotel, where a large number of well-dressed gentlemen were assembled, who were seeking shelter from the storm, and at the same ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... and men of the world as they are, they know that they must have a Religion. They have read the story of the French revolution, and the shadow of the guillotine is always over their thoughts; they see the giant of labor, restless in his torment, groping as in a nightmare for the throat of his enemy. Who can blind the eyes of this giant, who can chain him to his couch of slumber? There is but one agent, without rival—the Keeper of the Holy Secrets, the Deputy of the Almighty Awfulness, the Giver and Withholder of Eternal ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... the old Director turned towards him his white-bearded, ruddy face, with a look as if he were groping ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... brooding eyes flashed and fastened upon a priceless Rembrandt "Laughing Cavalier" on the wall opposite; they flashed again when her gaze shifted to a colossal Rubens "Rape of the Sabines"; her face lighted for an instant when her fingers in groping closed upon a cobwebby golden net, scintillating with cunningly wrought jeweled insects caught in the meshes, which had once graced the all-powerful ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... later, so it seemed to him, Cosmo Waynflete became doubtfully aware of another change of time and place—of another transformation of his own being. He knew himself to be alone once more, and even without his trusty charger. Again he found himself groping in the dark. But in a little while there was a faint radiance of light, and at last the moon came out behind a tower. Then he saw that he was not by the roadside in Japan or in the desert of Persia, but now in some unknown city of Southern Europe, where the architecture was hispano-moresque. By ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... heavily canopied, the night was stark black and loud with clashing waters. A fitful wind played in gusts now grim, now groping, like a lost thing blundering blindly about in that deep darkness. Ashore a few wan lights, widely spaced, winked uncertainly, withdrawn in vast remoteness; those near at hand, of the anchored shipping, skipped and swayed and flickered in mad mazes of goblin dance. To him who paced ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... room where the fire started, which was now a sea of flames, Frank saw a figure groping with ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... night, the dark, dark night, The night with never a star. When the stars are veiled and the moon has sailed Beyond the horizon's bar. When thought grows weary of groping its way Through darkness dense and deep, And buries its head in oblivion's bed, Wrapped warm in the mantle ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... himself several times on the side, as though he were feeling for his sabre. (Since the partition of the country he had worn no sabre; however, from old habit, at the mention of a Muscovite he always clapped his hand to his left side; he was evidently groping for his switch; and hence everybody called him Hand-on-Hip.) Now he raised his head, and they listened in deep silence. Maciej disappointed the general expectation; he only frowned and again dropped his head on his breast. ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made itself into stray, swaying ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Susannah, added my father; canst thou carry Trismegistus in thy head, the length of the gallery without scattering?—Can I? cried Susannah, shutting the door in a huff.—If she can, I'll be shot, said my father, bouncing out of bed in the dark, and groping ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Groping about in inky blackness might mean the forgetting of some article of apparel, which, if found later on, might lead to suspicion or even detection of the fraud. Sir Marmaduke dared not ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... toppled the whole tree over. But the great vegetable had known its own business best, and had built itself up right cannily; and stood, and will stand for many a year, perhaps for many a century, if the Matapalos do not squeeze out its life. I found, by the by, in groping my way to that tree through canes twelve feet high, that one must be careful, at least with some varieties of cane, not to get cut. The leaf-edges are finely serrated; and more, the sheaths of the leaves are covered with prickly hairs, which give the Coolies sore shins if they ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... in the manner of Mr. Clausin when he referred to the contents of the little tin box. Paul disliked very much to give anything up; but it was only groping in the dark to try and solve the puzzle without more of a ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... chop and change about, groping in the dark: but the only distinction is, that all changes made by the faculty are orthodox; but any alteration proposed out of the pale of MD, is an ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... sharp-witted girl, a ready girl,"—she gave a dreary little laugh—"who could pick up other people's ideas, and string them together as if they were her own. The girls weren't clever enough to know the real from the sham, but Mr Rawdon knew it at once. He saw how—how—" (she paused, groping in her extensive vocabulary for a word to express her meaning) "how meretricious it was! ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... commencement of his exercises there was no gracious emotion felt by him, he was led by an overruling Providence to adopt means of seeking Divine favour which God should bless. He was brought from the dream of desire to the reality of enjoyment; from the state of one in darkness, groping his way, to the light to which, by his own efforts, he could not have come; from the paralysis of moral imbecility to the strength which enabled him to stretch out his hand and ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... creature for all her wildness, and very neat in her habits. By touch, almost without groping, she dressed in the dark. Silently she slipped out of her room, noiselessly she closed the door, softly she groped her way to the stairs, down the stairs out into the courtyard to the corner of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... suppressed excitement had for some months been hatching in Paris and in the provinces. "The Parliament growled over the tariff-edict," says Cardinal de Retz; "and no sooner had it muttered than everybody awoke. People went groping as it were after the laws; they were no longer to be found. Under the influence of this agitation the people entered the sanctuary and lifted the veil that ought always to conceal whatever can be said about the right of peoples and that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... him to a narrow thoroughfare, with five-story tenements frowning on either side, where the people he met were not so well dressed as those he had left behind, and did not seem to be in such a hurry of joyful anticipation of the holiday. Into one of the tenements he went, and, groping his way through a pitch-dark hall, came to a door way back, the last one to the left, at which he knocked. An expectant voice said, "Come in," and the professor pushed ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... heard, too, the clumsy but rapid groping of heavy feet on the stairs above, far up in the winding stone steps, but momentarily coming nearer. Instantly he pushed Hedwig out to the street, tossing the bundle on the ground, withdrew the heavy key, shut the door, and double turned the lock from the outside, ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... movement, made him look quickly toward the bed; and at sight of the still, white face among the pillows, boyish love—God Himself has made no stronger passion—swept doubt, distrust, rebellion, worldly ambition, all, into the abyss of renunciation. He went softly, groping because the quick tears blinded him, to kneel at the bedside. She was his mother; for one thing she had lived and striven and prayed; living or dying she must not, she should not, be disappointed. And if his service must be of the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... could not help noticing the actions of his chum. When the thunderous roar was about at its height Frank had thrown himself flat on the ground. Bob could not see what he was doing, but his groping hand came in contact with the head of his comrade; and he discovered that it rested on the ground, with one ear pressed ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... heard the voices within the room. She was still tormented by desires. She wished to be beyond their range. She wished inconsistently enough that she could find herself driving rapidly through the streets; she was even anxious to be with some one who, after a moment's groping, took a definite shape and solidified into the person of Mary Datchet. She drew the curtains so that the draperies met in deep folds in the middle ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... light. But the room was a bare sort of thing, had nothing of her in it, and the thought of its bleak primness was repellent. She decided that a walk was what she needed, to clear out the cobwebs. Slowly she arose to her feet and groping along the edge of the table, felt her way to the door. An hour's walk would be enough; she would not need her coat. Slowly and thoughtfully she opened ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... irrational. Are not those dreamers, who are incapable of attaching any one positive idea to the causes of which they unceasingly speak, true deniers? Are not those visionaries, who make a pure nothing the source of all beings, men really groping in the dark? Is it not the height of folly to personify abstractions, to organize negative ideas, and then to prostrate ourselves before the figments of our ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... talking altogether to the boy, or above his head—aloud—as to herself? "I am a woman, Will, and at nineteen most such are already wife and mother, and I am still unwed. Shall I tell you why? We are but souls wandering and lonely in the dark, Will, other souls everywhere around, but scarce a groping hand that ever meets or touches our outstretched own. In all life we feel one such touch, perchance, or two. The rest we know no more than if they were not there. My father, great, simple, countryman's soul, I knew, Will, and Mary Shakespeare ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... state, the native girl was protected against seduction and moral ruin by drastic penalties against the seducer, which safeguards have since the introduction of civilized rule been done away with. With tribes just groping their way from barbarism towards civilization natural hygienic and moral laws have been trampled upon, and for this state of affairs the white man's rule is not wholly free from blame. It should be a crime to defile a potential mother and a woman should continue to be regarded as the cradle ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... lately dropped out of my clothes, that I could not forget it. I told my neighbour I had some; and if she would stay a moment my wife should give it to her. Accordingly, my wife, who was wakened by the noise as well as myself, got up, and groping about where I directed her, found the lead, opened the door, and gave it to the fisherman's wife, who was so overjoyed that she promised my wife, that in return for the kindness she did her and her husband, she would answer for him we should have the first cast ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... my own cursed curiosity," he muttered, as he commenced groping his way up in the darkness. But it was not so easy as he had supposed. Twice he slipped his foot into a rotten hole, and once the stairs trembled so violently that he thought they were about to fall. Nevertheless he reached the top, as he realized ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... is illustrated by a familiar catch. Ask a friend to define the word "spiral." He will find it difficult to express the meaning in words. And nine persons out of ten while groping for appropriate words will unconsciously describe a spiral in the air with ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... longer, he jumped on her, and stamped and crushed her under-foot in a perfect frenzy of anger. Another pup was born beneath his feet before he dispatched the mother with a last furious kick, and then the mangled body lay quivering in the midst of the whining pups, which were awkwardly groping for their mother's teats. Jeanne had escaped, but the baron returned and, almost as enraged as the priest, suddenly seized the abbe by the throat, and giving him a blow which knocked his hat off, carried him to the fence and threw ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... developed under investigation, you see," she replied. "But I am not very sure of Josie's ability, because she is not very sure of it herself. She dare not, even yet, advance a positive opinion. Unless she learned something last night she is still groping in the dark." ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... to such speeches, but was not angered by them. A strange thought began to stir in my mind, a thought that made me bear with him patiently. Many a time as be lay asleep by my side I would watch his calm, quiet face, and think to myself, as though groping after some idea: ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... searching fingers, the other firmly twisting itself into the soft collar of his antagonist's shirt. Twice Burke struck out heavily, driving his clinched fist into the other's body, unable to reach the protected face; then Winston succeeded in getting one groping foot braced firmly against a surface of rock, and whirled the surprised miner over upon his back with a degree of violence that caused his breath to burst forth in a great sob. A desperate struggle ensued, mad and merciless—arms gripping, bodies straining, feet rasping along ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... interesting essays we may be permitted to quote a few of Mr. Mill's admissions, which, taken together, almost amount to a confession of faith in the Christian system, and which leave upon the mind the impression that this painful groping of an earnest inquirer after the truth, and the closer approximation he continually made to Christian dogma, would have resulted, had he lived longer, in his adoption of that faith as offering the hypothesis that best explains the perplexing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... What I do next I don't know. Go back to Chagres, maybe. At any rate, here's his ticket from Panama up to San Francisco." By the flicker of the storm, now retreating, Captain Crosby was revealed groping across the floor, and extending ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... cure has told us not to be afraid of them,—I snap my fingers at that old Bergeron with her stupid countersigns,—je m'en fricasse! But, my ring—my ring? I have dropped it, that's all, while I was groping around the room in my sleep. After a while I will look ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... her feet, and after some groping and adjusting, the cranking was attempted. Failure. Ruddy went bravely at it again. Failure. Again ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... it hobbled Wayland, painfully, two brace of dead ducks and his slung fowling piece bobbing on his back, his rubber-shod crutches groping and probing among drenched rocks and gullies full of kelp, his left leg in splints ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... little way down over the summit until I had reached an elevation of about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of savage peaks that stand guard about Ritter on the north and west, groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it presented itself. Here a huge gorge would be found cutting across my path, along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the bottom and then, selecting some ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... steel-blue starlit night in the open we said that we meant to sleep and sleep it out, even if we lost a whole day by it. It seemed but a moment after sleep had claimed us, when, struggling through the heavy darkness, came far-away light strands groping for our eyes, and soft, half-uttered music questioning the ear. Returning I opened my eyes, and there was the sun struggling slowly through the screen of white birches in Opie's wood lot, and scattering the night mists ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... was, in that crucial moment, that Dirke's groping soul came out into the light,—even as the wide white flower over yonder had come out into the light, springing from its grim, unsightly stem. In that flashing instant of time his true nature, which he had so long sought ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... look. His groping fingers had found something that felt like a door-edge. His hand ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... gave it a foothold in nature, and defeats its own object. For the differentiation of the instinct in respect to sex, age, and species is obviously necessary to its success as a device for reproduction. While this differentiation is not complete, — and it often is not, — there is a great deal of groping and waste; and the force and constancy of the instinct must make up for its lack of precision. A great deal of vital energy is thus absorbed by this ill-adjusted function. The most economical arrangement which can be conceived, would be one by which only the one female ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... I gazed, I saw the arm of Professor Bottomly raised as though groping instinctively for something in her slumber—saw her fingers close upon the blue-flannel shirt of her companion, saw his timid futile attempts to elude her, saw him inexorably hauled back and his head forcibly pillowed upon ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... was feeling these things, I was groping, without knowing it, toward an understanding of what the spell is which people find in the Alps, and in no other mountains; that strange, deep, nameless influence which, once felt, cannot be forgotten; once felt, leaves always behind it a restless longing to feel it again—a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... on her straight, pale profile, groping and confused in this new flood of light, wondered if ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "So, groping in my darkness, I at length Hit on the door that issued into light. Long talks between the patient and his friend Were frequent, and they heeded not my presence. Little by little Percival soon told The story ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... death—infinite, menacing, for ever treacherously active—filled every interstice of the poem. The problem of existence was answered only by the enigma of annihilation. And it was a callous, inexorable death; blind, and groping its mysterious way with only chance to guide it; laying its hands preferentially on the youngest and the least unhappy, since these held themselves less motionless than others, and that every too sudden movement in the night ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... left the room, Matilde rose to her feet, very pale and unsteady, and locked the door. Then, as though she were groping her way in darkness, she got back to the sofa, and falling upon it, buried her face in the cushions, and bit them, lest she should cry out. She felt that it would have been easier, after all, to have killed Veronica Serra, than it had been to part with ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... and out, diving through doorways, racing along passages, chasing one another round corners, groping in cupboards, panting, squealing, laughing or shuddering, the girls pervaded the upper story. There was a ghostly gloom about the old place which made it all the more thrilling, and gave the players ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... head in a solitude in Yorkshire, and buries his probably fine talents in a Lincolnshire fen? Have I genius? Am I blessed with gifts of eloquence to thrill and soothe, to arouse the sluggish, to terrify the sinful, to cheer and convince the timid, to lead the blind groping in darkness, and to trample the audacious sceptic in the dust? My own conscience, besides a hundred testimonials from places of popular, most popular worship, from reverend prelates, from distinguished ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... here, during which, feeling very miserable and dejected, Syd was groping about, trying to find out how the hammock was fastened, and in the ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... it never came in this world for Raby Ferrers. In the full prime of youth and strength the mysterious doom of blindness came upon the young vicar and left him groping in a ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... express herself. She was a clever woman and a good one too. What a shame it would be if he were to interrupt her now with amorous speeches and strain her to his heart in a violent fit of passion as he had [Pg 237] done on the first evening, when he had been groping in the passage in the dark and had run against somebody soft, who had pressed herself against the wall, and who, when he whispered in an eager voice, "Is that you, Mrs. Tiralla?" had flung her arms round his neck and had let herself be led wherever he wanted. That evening she had been ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... them (described only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery expressive of enormous power put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase, and upon it, groping his way upward, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther and you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onward to him who had reached the extremity, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... theory of an atomic universal electro-magnetic medium help us on in our groping and searching after light in this direction? Who will uplift the veil? Already we peer almost into the spirit world. A little more light, a little more truth, and then there will burst forth upon the hearts and minds of men the grandest and most glorious truth that Nature can reveal of her ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... unconvincing ring of his tone, lacking the full and complacent self-assurance usual to it, for as if groping for something to make good the lack he sought backward through his memories and unfolded bit by bit the tale of his experiences. Scotch born of drunken parents, he had been reared in the slums of American cities and the forecastles of American ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... to draw inferences about? That was another puzzle. I felt myself being drawn into a fog-filled labyrinth of intrigue in which already groping were most of the people I knew. What with the mysterious relations between Betty and Boyce and Gedge, what with young Dacre's full exoneration of Boyce, what with young Randall's split with Gedge and his impeccable attitude towards Phyllis, things were complicated ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... groping behind him, touched the door handle. But before he could grasp it, it turned, and the door opened behind him. It hit him full in the back, and he stumbled forward a couple of steps ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... along the road side by side, but each could scarcely see anything of the other. The sportsman was searching his pockets to find a shilling. He succeeded, and, groping, put it in Alister's hand, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... horrid to see—and I loathe doing it!" She shook her curly dark head like a punished child, and stayed a minute longer, eyes downcast, groping after gloves and hat. "I thought maybe I'd get the answer before you saw me—sitting up like ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... released from a clay-bank and blinking in the sunlight. Not only has she taught me the joy of living, but through her ingenuity she brought about one of the greatest discoveries that has been made in years on ancient Egypt. I feel guilty in taking any credit for it whatsoever, for while I was groping blindly after the solution, she put her finger, as it were, on the whole source ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... was lost to me, outwardly, it now came within my range of knowledge, if you know what I mean. I knew that it was groping its way along the bed, feeling for some other part of me. At any moment I could have said exactly where it had got to. When it was hovering just over my chest another hand knocked lightly against my shoulder. I fancied it lost, and wandering in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... all. I tried to appear unconscious of him as a detached personality, to treat him as merely a part of the group as a whole. Then I improved such occasions as presented themselves to steal glances at him, study him a la derobee—groping after the quality, whatever it was, that made him a puzzle—seeking to formulate, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of the woman, who was groping for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... than the English sailors knew that they had found the spot where the Spanish galleon had been wrecked, so many years before. The other Indian divers plunged over the boat's side and swam headlong down, groping among the rocks and sunken cannon. In a few moments one of them rose above the water with a heavy lump of silver in his arms. That single lump was worth more than a thousand dollars. The sailors took it into the boat, and then rowed back is speedily as they could, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and live in it. Then a strange thing happens, and always happens the moment I begin to try to decide which of the two—the Hand-made World or the Machine-made World—I will choose. I find that in an odd, confused, groping, obstinate way I am bound to choose them both. In spite of all its ugly ways—a kind of vast indifference it has to me, to everybody, its magnificent heartlessness—I find I have come to take in the Machine-made World a kind ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... time was represented by 'row-barges' of his own invention. Now that the pinnace was growing in size and sail power, while shedding half its oars, some new small rowing craft was wanted, during that period of groping transition, to act as a tender or to do 'mosquito' work in action. The mere fact that Henry VIII placed no dependence on oars except for this smallest type shows how far he had got on the road towards the broadside-sailing-ship fleet. On the 16th of July, 1541, the Spanish Naval Attache ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... found the heavenly light? Pass it on. Souls are groping in the night, Daylight gone. Lift your lighted lamp on high, Be a star in some one's sky, He may live who else would ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... army, by all the gods!" whispered Yates, groping for his clothes. "Renny, give me that revolver, and I'll show you more fun ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... spears of the Morning; Sifting the nations, The slag from the metal, The waste and the weak From the fit and the strong; Fighting the brute, The abysmal Fecundity; Checking the gross, Multitudinous blunders, The groping, the purblind Excesses in service, Of the Womb universal, The absolute Drudge; Changing the charactry Carved on the World, The miraculous gem In the seal-ring that burns On the hand of the Master— Yea! and authority Flames through the dim, ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley |
