"Sense of hearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eventually dominating the life of the individual."[51] Dr. Ball says: "One patient perceives at the beginning of the attack a toothed wheel, in the middle of which there appears a human face making strange contortions; another sees a series of smiling landscapes. In some cases it is the sense of hearing which is affected;—the patient hears voices or strange noises. Others are warned by the sense of smell that the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... with a confidential intention as he roared this out, forgetting in his excitement that mental infirmity does not impair the sense of hearing. This folly on his part was a salutary thing for Stephen Ryder. It calmed him instantly. He felt that he had need for caution. A fearful vista of possibilities opened before him. He remembered having seen in his childhood a man ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... sense of hearing had discovered nothing. I rose and took my hat to quiet her. At the same moment the door of the room opened suddenly and softly. Mr. Van Brandt came in. I saw in his face that he had some vile motive of his own ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... thought, and consequently he would have no imagination to use. He would be, to all intents and purposes, a living corpse. Helen Keller has only two doors of sensation closed to her—the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. Touch, taste, and smell, however were left to her; and each was quickened and heightened in order to help so far as possible to perform the world of the defective senses. The reaching of the consciousness ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... With the sense of hearing preternaturally sharpened, these poor men, who had given themselves up for lost, also listened; those who had lain down to die rising up and listening with every nerve acutely strained to catch the faintest sound. Yes, they could hear their deliverers ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... period of silence and Henry made himself as small and obscure as possible, lest the warriors, moving about, might see him. But, fortunately the night had now turned quite dark, and where eyes might fail his acute sense of hearing would reveal the approach of any enemy. But as he lay close he again laughed inwardly more than once. The three were certainly holding the grotto in most gallant fashion, and Long Jim was fast becoming one of ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... actually retired. I was returning across the square, close to midnight, when, fortunately for myself, I detected the sound of light, pattering footsteps immediately behind me. The place was quite deserted at that hour, and although I was so near home, the worst would have happened, I fear, if my sense of hearing had been less acute. I turned in the very instant that a man was about to spring upon me from behind. He was holding in his hand what looked like a large silk handkerchief. This encounter took place in the shadow ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... is emancipated and free and can do what she pleases. Many old rules have no longer any vogue; they were made by unreflecting minds, or by lovers of routine for other lovers of routine. New needs of the mind, of the heart, and of the sense of hearing, make necessary new endeavours and, in some cases, the breaking of ancient laws. Many forms have become too hackneyed to be still adopted. The same thing may be entirely good or entirely bad, according to the use one makes of it, or the reasons one has for making use of it. Sound ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... their presence in the dark room rather by the sense of touch than by the sense of hearing or sight. They walked lightly, the darkness hid them, but the air seemed heavy with their hot breath. One of them approached the bedside; Mercy felt the bed quiver. The man leaned over it, and there was a pause. Only the scarcely perceptible ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... ears had a sense of hearing that was preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer—nearer—nearer till they stopped outside her cell door. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... which finds "sense swooning into nonsense" admirable. And if a critic is so dull as to ask what "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle" means, or to whom it is addressed, none can help him any more than one can help a man whose sense of hearing is too gross for the tenuity of a bat's cry. A voice in the air thus sings the hymn of Asia at the moment of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... morning Polly sat holding the limp brown head while whispering words of affection in the long ears, and who will say that Noddy's instinct did not respond to love, even though the physical sense of hearing was deaf to earthly sounds? She slowly revived and was resting comfortably when the house-call came ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... doctor did not use glass stoppers. Tiny scratches where the light glinted off from the table, little stains upon the leather of the desk, chemical formulae scribbled upon the labels of the phials—nothing was too slight to arrest his attention. And his sense of hearing was equally alert. The heavy ticking of the solemn black clock above the mantelpiece struck quite painfully upon his ears. Yet in spite of it, and in spite also of the thick, old-fashioned wooden partition, he could hear voices of men talking in the next room, and could even catch ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now the full moon, such a moon as one sees in Egypt, shone upon the side of the Great Pyramid and made it silver. He could hear voices talking outside his door, one that of the Irish nurse which he recognised, and the other of a man, for although they spoke low, this sense of hearing seemed to ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... these lodgings. Her brother, eyeing her askance, 'Pardon me, sister (said he) I should be a savage, indeed, were I insensible of my own felicity, in having such a mild, complaisant, good-humoured, and considerate companion and housekeeper; but as I have got a weak head, and my sense of hearing is painfully acute, before I have recourse to plugs of wool and cotton, I'll try whether I can't find another lodging, where I shall have more quiet and less music.' He accordingly dispatched his man ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... to bed that night early, about ten o'clock. He couldn't sleep. His door was not quite closed and he could hear first Vera, then Uncle Ivan, lastly Markovitch go to bed. He lay awake then, with that exaggerated sense of hearing that one has in the middle of the night, when one is compelled, as it were, against one's will, to listen for sounds. He heard the dripping of the tap in the bathroom, the creaking of some door in the wind (the storm had risen again) and all the thousand ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... conveyed to the normal child through the eyes. Dr. Illingworth, a noted educator of the blind in England, says: "Of course, there is no doubt that blindness tends to a higher and more perfect development of the sense of hearing, even in the uneducated, on the same principle that Nature almost always comes to the aid of her children in providing protective agencies of one kind or another, even in the very lowest organisms, and, naturally, for ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... her father. Then she could not bear the thought that she should never see the faithful old dog again; and almost decided to go to him, but the thought had scarcely entered her mind ere her old companion was at her side. His keen sense of hearing had caught the sound of her movements, though to her they had seemed noiseless, and he had come from his kennel and stood at her side, looking up in her face as though he knew ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... the sense of hearing, it is first remarked that all children for some time after birth are completely deaf, and it was not till the middle of the fourth day that Professor Preyer obtained any evidence of hearing in his child. This child first turned his ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... place, to keep away caps from the child's head, if duly attended to, is one means of perfecting, or at least of preserving, the sense of hearing. For caps, by the heat they produce to a part which cannot safely endure an increase of temperature, greatly expose children to catarrhal affections; and many a catarrh has laid the foundation for dulness of hearing, if ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... the only words yet formed had close connection with objects and the ideas directly derived from them, signs were as much more copious for communication than speech, as the sight embraces more and more distinct characteristics of objects than does the sense of hearing." ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... to find Krupps, for I had only to turn my steps towards the lurid panorama in the sky. As I came nearer, not only my sense of sight but my sense of hearing told me that Germany's great arsenal was throbbing with unwonted life. The crash and din of mighty steam hammers and giant anvils, the flame and flash of roaring blast furnaces, the rumbling of great railway trucks trundling raw and finished ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... reported anything unusual there. He listened again, and his sense of hearing again checked the water coming over the Weir, with its usual sound on a cold ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... also, Mrs. Trent had resigned herself to a quiet acceptance of the worst, and sat for hours at a time rigidly motionless, with only her sense of hearing intensely alert, strained to its utmost for whatever news might come. As each party came back to consult the others, and for the refreshment that human nature could no longer do without, it reported to the waiting woman, who received the message in silence, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... undistracted by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. Country ministers, I am told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can estimate the amount of the collection before it is counted. There is often a huge pewter plate just within the church door, in which the offerings are placed as the worshipers enter or leave; and one always notes ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... why should decorative colours have arisen in some other way? Why should the eye be less sensitive to SPECIFICALLY MALE colours and other VISIBLE signs ENTICING TO THE FEMALE, than the olfactory sense to specifically male odours, or the sense of hearing to specifically male sounds? Moreover, the decorative feathers of birds are almost always spread out and displayed before the female during courtship. I have elsewhere ("The Evolution Theory", London, 1904, I. page 219.) pointed out that decorative colouring and sweet-scentedness ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... that was not directly associated with some object aesthetically precious. So complete was their negation of interest in anything which seemed directly or indirectly a part of our everyday life that their sense of hearing—which had gradually come to understand its own futility when the tone of the conversation, at the dinner-table, became frivolous or merely mundane, without the two old ladies' being able to guide it back to the topic dear to themselves—would ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... conditions are the Indriyas and the Visayas, etc.' Indriyas are organs of sense, and Visayas are objects on which the sense acts. Five Vijnyanas are—(1) The sense of sight, (2) the sense of hearing, (3) the sense of smell, (4) the sense of taste, (5) the ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the galloping of horse," said Morton to himself, his sense of hearing rendered acute by the dreadful situation in which he stood; "God grant they may come as ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... will make for some distant point, and march on with dogged and inflexible purpose. Some have been known to travel eighty miles in the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and through swamp and quicksand. Their sense of hearing is very acute, and they are very easily roused to fury. One peculiarity often noticed by sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when they want to obey the calls of nature. Mounds of their dung are ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... increased, if that were possible, on bringing his piece to his shoulder to find that he could not even distinguish the sights on it. Then commenced a period of suspense that tried his nerves most cruelly; every faculty of his being was strained and concentrated in the one sense of hearing; sounds so faint as to be imperceptible reverberated in his ears like the crash of thunder; the plash of a distant waterfall, the rustling of a leaf, the movement of an insect in the grass, were like the booming of artillery. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... which the air does not possess, although it touches its surface. If you choose to say that there are many animals that prey at night, I answer that when the little light which suffices the nature of their eyes is wanting, they direct themselves by their strong sense of hearing and of smell, which are not impeded by the darkness, and in which they are very far superior to man. If you make a cat leap, by daylight, among a quantity of jars and crocks you will see them remain ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... much less the truth of the wonders performed by the Word in this super-human and unearthly 'vice-corpus,' or 'quasi corpus:' least of all, would they assert either that the assurances of the Word were false in themselves, or that the sense of hearing might have been permitted to deceive the beloved Apostle, (which would have been virtual falsehood and a subornation of falsehood), however liable to deception the senses might be generally, and as sole and primary proofs unsupported by antecedent grounds, 'praecognitis ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... hardly saw each other till she left. She knew his hours of going and coming, and was careful to remain in her room, though it might be that the knowledge drew her to the window that looked into Bellevue street. As for Percival, though he never sought her, it seemed to him that his sense of hearing was quickened. Judith's footstep on the stairs was always distinct to him, and the tone of her voice if she spoke to Miss Bryant or Emma was noted and remembered. It is true that this strained anxiety ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... before. For it is well known that the sense of smell is specially effective in awakening memories, and that in general it does not require much to rouse a train of ideas. And I may say, in passing, that the sense of sight is connected with the understanding,[1] the sense of hearing with the reason,[2] and, as we see in the present case, the sense of smell with the memory. Touch and Taste are more material and dependent upon contact. They ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep C of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... sense of hearing. And then, above the slithering murmur of the water, they all distinctly heard ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... experience no more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were actively entering my mind when I suddenly became unconscious, as though going to sleep. I could not tell anything about the sense of hearing; the perfect stillness of the regions six miles from the earth—and at that time we were between six and seven miles high—is such that no sound reaches the ear. My last observation was made at 29,000 feet.... Whilst ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... account of all that he had then observed. He could only eat bread and water: meat made him shudder, and Lord Stanhope says that this peculiarity did occur in the cases of some peasant soldiers. He had no sense of hearing, which means, perhaps, that he did not think of pretending to be amazed by the sound of church bells till he had been in prison for some days. Till then he had been deaf to their noise. This is Feuerbach's story, but ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Her sense of hearing was now afflicted in as gross a manner as had been her sense of smell. She could not have spoken, though her vitality had pressed for speech. It would have astonished him to hear that his solicitude concerning provender for her during his absence was not esteemed a kindness; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... more than is necessary, but do everything you can English antipathy to babblers He is in the season of faults Impossible for us women to comprehend love without folly in man Never, never love a married woman Speech was a scourge to her sense of hearing ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... to talk; there was scarcely time to think. The road, the landscape, the very world, became a dizzying blur that destroyed all distinct sense of sight. In the rush of the air, and the rapid-fire fusillade from the motor, all sense of hearing was benumbed. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... the sense of sight is not only useful, but enables us to drink in beauty, if among beautiful surroundings, without doing us any harm. The same of music and other harmonics which may come to us through the sense of hearing. But the sense of taste and was given us to distinguish between wholesome and unwholesome foods, and cannot be used for merely sensuous gratification, without debasing and making of it a gross thing. An education which demands special enjoyment or pleasure through the sense of taste, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... we'd come upon them lying down, but, if in walking along, we'd broken a twig, or made the slightest noise, they'd think it was one of their mortal enemies, a bear—creeping on them, and they'd be up and away. Their sense of hearing is very keen, but they're not so quick to see. A fox is like that, too. His eyes aren't equal to ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... number of Bible verses, was forest freedom for the remainder of the forenoon. It was while he was in the midst of the Beatitudes that he heard the low rumble of the coming train, and it was only by resolutely ignoring the sense of hearing that he was enabled ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... with the other, Cut off your hand, and you may do With t'other hand the work of two: Because the soul her power contracts, And on the brother limb reacts. But yet the point is not so clear in Another case, the sense of hearing: For, though the place of either ear Be distant, as one head can bear, Yet Galen most acutely shows you, (Consult his book de partium usu) That from each ear, as he observes, There creep two auditory nerves, Not to be seen without a glass, Which ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... was through the sense of hearing. He had been deceived so many times that he suspected his fancy was playing with him again, but the faint tip, tip continued until such explanation ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... into account some sensibility more delicate than usual in the nerves affected, or some exquisite refinement in the architecture of the brain, which is indeed to the sense of the beautiful as the eye or the ear to the sense of hearing or sight. We admire splendid views and great pictures; and yet what is truly admirable is rather the mind within us, that gathers together these scattered details for its delight, and snakes out of certain colours, certain distributions of graduated ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to appear, Nora Worth grew more uneasy, expectant, and anxious. Ah! who can estimate the real heart-sickness of "hope deferred!" Every morning she said to herself: "He will surely come to-day !" Every day each sense of hearing and of seeing was on the qui vive to catch the first sound or the first sight of his approach. Every night she went to bed to weep in ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... lay it on the wharf....He heard men's voices in excited, subdued conversation....He saw the tall woman running up the road toward the town. She paused within a dozen feet of his hiding place.... Then something happened to him. He seemed to be losing the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. His brain was blurred, the sound of voices trailed off into utter silence. He felt the earth giving way beneath his quaking knees....The next he knew, men's voices fell upon his dull, uncomprehending ears. Gradually ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... and listened. His sense of hearing, like that of sight, was trained to a wonderfully fine point, as you have learned in the incidents previously related, so that faint noises, such as you or I could not have detected, would have told ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... bank he observed a couple of long wooden huts, obviously some kind of billets. These were on the near side of the stream, about a dozen yards from the bridge. A door stood open and a light showed in it, and from within came the sound of voices.... Peter had a sense of hearing like a wild animal, and he could detect even from the confused gabble that ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... excitement, that was the fruit of novelty, would have done credit to a veteran. The visible evidences of the existence of the camp, or of the fire could not be detected from the spot where the canoe lay, and he was compelled to depend on the sense of hearing alone. He did not feel impatient, for the lessons he had heard taught him the virtue of patience, and, most of all, inculcated the necessity of wariness in conducting any covert assault on the Indians. Once he thought he heard the cracking ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... of as many senses as possible. When an impression has been given through eye and ear and touch, for example, it is more definite in the mind than when it has come only through the sense of hearing. ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... ideas, as those of vision, becomes dissevered or disturbed; and we attend to them in consequence, which I think unravels this intricate circumstance of noises being always heard in the head, when the sense of hearing begins to be impaired, from whatever ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... court, the German Atzerott, or Adzerota, has a place just beneath the beam. This is very ominous for Atzerott. The filthiness of this man denies him sympathy. He is a disgusting little groveler of dry, sandy hair, oval head, ears set so close to the chin that one would think his sense of hearing limited to his jaws, and a complexion so yellow that the uncropped brownness of his beard does not materially darken it. He wears a grayish coat, low grimy shirt, and the usual carpet slippers of threadbare red over his shifting and shiftless feet. His head is bent forward, and seems ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... the magnetic state had an appearance of deep sleep, during which all the physical faculties were suspended, to the advantage of the intellectual faculties. The eyes of the patients were closed, the sense of hearing was abolished; and they awoke only at the voice of their magnetiser. "If any one touched a patient during a crisis, or even the chair on which he was seated," says M. Cloquet, "it would cause him much pain and suffering, and throw him into convulsions. During the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... it will be well to speak here only, is poetry. Poetry employs words in fixed rhythms, which we call metres. Only a small portion of its effect is derived from the beauty of its sound. It appeals to the sense of hearing far less immediately than music does. It makes no appeal to the eyesight, and takes no help from the beauty of colour. It produces no tangible object. But language being the storehouse of all human experience, language being the medium whereby spirit communicates with spirit in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 343 U.S. 451 (1952). The decision overruled the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Here Judge Edgerton, speaking for himself and two associates, said: "Exploitation of this audience through assault on the unavertible sense of hearing is a new phenomenon. It raises 'issues that were not implied in the means of communication known or contemplated by Franklin and Jefferson and Madison.' But the Bill of Rights, as appellants say in their brief, can keep up with anything an advertising man ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... bark piteously. The dog of a celebrated singer whom I knew would moan bitterly, and give signs of violent suffering, the instant that his mistress chanted a chromatic gamut. A certain chord produces on my sense of hearing the same effect as the heliotrope on my sense of smell and the pine-apple on my sense of taste. Rachel's voice delighted the ear by its ring before one had time to seize the sense of what was said, or appreciate the purity of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the ear-drum, as it is only there that it shows itself as a sense-organ and manifests such sounds as the man deserves to hear by reason of his merit and demerit. Thus a deaf man though he has the akas'a as his sense of hearing, cannot hear on account of his demerit which impedes the faculty of that sense organ [Footnote ref 3]. In addition to these they admitted the existence of time (kala) as extending from the past through the present ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... same class, and are consistent with each other, from the immense crowd of different, and sometimes contradictory, ideas, that rank vulgarly under the standard of beauty. And of these it is my intention to mark such only of the leading points as show the conformity of the sense of hearing with the other senses, in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the power its senses possess to examine the objects of the world that surrounds it. Every organ, in succession, is occupied in noticing the wonders and mysteries that are presented. This incessant, but silent play of perception, proceeds until a sound, often repeated, interests the sense of hearing, and although at first dimly comprehended, is meant to represent some present object or person, and which, by an excitement little understood, urges the effort of imitation. The success of intelligible pronunciation impels it forward to other attempts, vires acquirit eundo, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... Martella, all halted, and, as they had done earlier in the evening, watched for their pursuers to pass. In this instance, however, the path was so screened that nothing could be seen, and our friends depended wholly upon their sense of hearing. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... efficacious means of grace. I pretend not too minutely to conjecture as to the actual nature of those pleasures which, after the resurrection, the re-united body and soul will enjoy in heaven; but I can hardly persuade myself that melody and harmony will be wanting, when even the sense of hearing shall itself be glorified. ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... his heavy boots sink noiselessly into the deep ply of a precious Daghestan rug. One of Phelan's boots had a bad creak in it, and he knew that the master crook who would attempt such a robbery as this would have an acute sense of hearing. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... quadrangle but the restless woman who paced up and down the straight pathways, listening for a footstep whose coming was to strike terror to her soul. She heard it at last!—a footstep in the avenue upon the other side of the archway. But was it the footstep? Her sense of hearing, made unnaturally acute by excitement, told her that it was a man's footstep—told even more, that it was the tread of a gentleman, no slouching, lumbering pedestrian in hobnailed boots, but a gentleman who walked ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... human ear, the highest limit of audibleness is reached by sound-waves estimated at twenty-eight-hundredths of an inch from node to node—equal to 48,000 vibrations per second. The extreme of lowness to which our sense of hearing is susceptible, has been placed at 75 feet from node to node—or 15 vibrations per second. This total range of audibleness covers 12 octaves; running, of course, far above and far below the domain ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... method of Voice Culture. The mystery surrounding the old Italian method is dispelled so soon as the possibility is recognized of teaching singing by imitation. Practical rules are outlined for imparting and acquiring the correct use of the voice, through the guidance of the sense of hearing. The singer's education is considered in its broadest sense, and training in tone-production is assigned to its proper place in the complex ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... grimy life. The place had no other adherents. As to street noises, the rumbling of wheels in the lane merely rushed in at the gateway in going past, and rushed out again: making the listening Mistress Affery feel as if she were deaf, and recovered the sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes. So with whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all pleasant human sounds. They leaped the gap in a moment, and went upon their way. The varying light of fire and candle in Mrs Clennam's room made the greatest ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... windings of the cave. And then Grace, hardly knowing what she did, rushed up the beach, and crouched down once more at the cave's mouth. There she sat, she knew not how long, listening, listening, like a hunted hare; her whole faculties concentrated in the one sense of hearing; her eyes wandering vacantly over the black saws of rock, and glistening oar-weed beds, and bright phosphoric sea. Thank Heaven, there was not a ripple to break the silence. Ah, what was that sound within? She pressed her ear against the rock, to hear more surely. A rumbling as of stones rolled ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... passing around and getting nearer to them, he will never find them again in the same place. I have often tried the experiment, and invariably found that, as soon as I went where the antelope could not see me, he moved off. Their sense of hearing, as well as vision, is very acute, which renders it difficult to stalk them. By taking advantage of the cover afforded in broken ground, the hunter may, by moving slowly and cautiously over the crests of the irregularities ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... the sense of hearing; and I have lost the conversation of a learned, intelligent, and communicative companion, and a friend whom long familiarity has much endeared. Lawrence is one of the best men whom I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... she had expected, but what continued to puzzle her was that her mind was still active. It was true that the world she had known had withdrawn itself from the dominion of consciousness, as her body had done, except, that was, in the sense of hearing, which was still strangely alert; yet there was still enough memory to be aware that there was such a world—that there were other persons in existence; that men went about their business, knowing nothing of what had happened; but faces, names, places had all ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... mute labors is the limited extent to which his mental powers have been developed. This deficiency is attributable to two causes—his deprivation of the immense amount of information to be gained by the sense of hearing, and his want of language. Before an infant, one possessed of all its faculties, has acquired at least an understanding of articulate language, it has but vague and feeble ideas. No clear, distinct conception is shaped in its mind. "Ideas," says M. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Mercury joining in one effort. In that number is the secret of all human affairs. Learned men have made their way to heaven by imitating this music; as have others also by the excellence of their studies. Filled with this sound the sense of hearing has failed among men. What sense is duller? It is as when the Nile falls down to her cataracts, and the nations around, astonished ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... arisen from some natural operation which I had not perseverance or mental acuteness sufficient to discover. From this, or, it may be, from some deeper cause with which this is connected, arose a certain kind of fearfulness associated with the sense of hearing, of which I have never heard a corresponding instance. Full as my mind was of the wild and sometimes fearful tales of a Highland nursery, fear never entered my mind by the eyes, nor, when I brooded over tales of terror, and fancied new and yet more frightful embodiments ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the exact pin point where the kudu at that moment happened to be feeding. For the beast is shy, it inhabits the densest, closest mountain cover, it possesses the keen eyesight and sense of smell of the bush-dwelling deer and antelope, and more than the average sense of hearing. There are very few of him. But the chief discouragement is that arising from his roaming tendencies. Other rare animals are apt to "use" about one locality, so that once the hunter finds tracks, new or ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... no need for Samson's adjuration, for Fred's sense of hearing was strained to the utmost, and he was picturing mentally the effects of the scattered shots ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." Plainly stated, Nicodemus was given to understand that his worldly learning and official status availed him nothing in any effort to understand the things of God; through the physical sense of hearing he knew that the wind blew; by sight he could be informed of its passage: yet what did he know of the ultimate cause of even this simple phenomenon? If Nicodemus would really be instructed in spiritual matters, he had to divest himself of the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... impaired, his locomotion slow, and his left hand and arm yet helpless, his sense of hearing was acute enough to hear the words even across Monroe's conversation, for his sunken eyes lit up as he twisted ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... abstractedness unconsciously. To do so intentionally, you go by the law of indirectness. For instance, take sight; concentrate your vision and your whole attention upon some object, real or imaginary, until soon the sense of HEARING becomes dormant. A little practice will enable you to study, think or ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... ascertain the security of the lock. The person, whoever it might be, was probably satisfied, for I heard the old boards of the lobby creak and strain, as if under the weight of somebody moving cautiously over them. My sense of hearing became unnaturally, almost painfully acute. I suppose the imagination added distinctness to sounds vague in themselves. I thought that I could actually hear the breathing of the person who was slowly returning along ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... employ auxiliary apparatus for the purpose of signaling between stations. In central offices where an attendant is always on hand, the sense of sight is usually appealed to by the use of signals which give a visual indication, but in the case of telephone instruments for use by the public, the sense of hearing is appealed to by employing an audible rather ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... The rustle of the quilt of gay glazed calico was of note in the quietude; the impact of his bare foot on the floor was hardly a sound, rather an annotation of his weight and his movement; yet in default of all else the sense of hearing marked it. His scheme seemed impracticable as for an instant he wavered at the head of the ladder that served as a stairway; the next moment his foot was upon the rungs, his light, lithe figure slipping down it like a shadow. ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... His sense of hearing grew sharper by continued effort, and at length he heard the first comer say distinctly, "If I were but sure that I had brought this fate upon George by introducing to him that accursed Dalibard; if my oath did but justify me, I would—" The concluding sentence was lost. A few moments ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... clenched themselves, and the nails were biting into the flesh of her palms. But she felt no pain. Her whole being seemed concentrated into the single sense of hearing as she waited there in the candle-lit gloom, listening for every tiny sound, each creak of a board, each scattering of loosened plaster, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... intervals in which his sense of hearing left him, for it was only now that he became conscious that somebody was calling to him from the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the men had wrapped themselves up in their blankets, and laid down for sleep, and while enjoying their slumbers, a noise reached their ears which sounded very much like distant thunder. But a close application of the sense of hearing showed plainly that an enemy was near at hand. Springing up, with rifle in hand, for generally in the mountains a man's gun rests in the same blanket with himself, on all sleeping occasions, they sallied forth to reconnoitre, and discovered a few warriors ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... a whisper, to prevent its being overheard by the various groups in the room. The duke afterward said that he had to repeat his words several times to make the king comprehend them, his sense of hearing having obviously ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... no sign in the grub of the eyes wherewith the Cerambyx will be richly gifted. The larva has not the least trace of organs of vision. What would it do with sight in the murky thickness of a tree-trunk? Hearing is likewise absent. In the never-troubled silence of the oak's inmost heart, the sense of hearing would be a non-sense. Where sounds are lacking, of what use is the faculty of discerning them? Should there be any doubts, I will reply to them with the following experiment. Split lengthwise, the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... usual visit next day, we could not consult with him; in fact, he did not come till the 24th. The previous day, when I had been expecting him so eagerly, I was in great trouble, for my mother suddenly lost her sense of hearing. The doctor, an old German about seventy, gave her rhubarb in wine. I could not understand this, as wine is usually thought heating; but when I said so, every one exclaimed, "How can you say so? Wine is not heating, but strengthening; water is heating." And all the time the poor invalid was longing ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... fairy motion, lost in wonder and delight. He looked from the coach-window, and beheld the far-spreading fields of beauty with an eye awakened from long lethargy and inaction. He could not gaze enough. And the voice of nature made giddy the sense of hearing that drank intoxication from the notes of birds, the gurgling of a brook, the rustling of a thousand leaves. His feeble powers, taken by surprise, were vanquished by the summer's loveliness. Once, when our coach stopped, a peasant girl approached us with a nosegay, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... fear which it inspired was a feeling that roused me to action, and prompted me, even though the coming danger might be as sure as death, to rise against it and resist to the last. So I stood up with my rifle and listened, with all my soul in my sense of hearing. The sounds arose more plainly. They had come nearer. They were immediately in front. I raised my rifle and took aim. Then in quick succession two reports thundered out with tremendous uproar and interminable echoes, but the long reverberations were unheeded in the blaze of sudden light and the ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... lightest words are omens!—faded out of the sky. Emily kept her eyes upon the windows none the less. She tried to understand what her father was saying sufficiently to put in a word now and then, but her sense of hearing was strained to its utmost for other sounds. There was no traffic in the road below, and the house itself was hushed; the ticking of the old clock, performed with such painful effort that it ever seemed on the point of failing, was the only sign of life outside ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... come the Sirens, whom Ulysses will have to meet again, as he has often met them before. Indeed Circe herself was once a Siren, a charmer through the senses. The present Sirens are singers, and entice to destruction through the sense of hearing, inasmuch as "heaps of bones lie about them," evidently the skeletons of persons who have perished through their seductive song. Pass them the man must; what is to be done? He will have somehow to guard against his sensuous nature and keep it from destroying itself. Yet on the other ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... utmost degree, wise rules under the heavens, the people will, at length, be able to take part in deliberation. By putting to confusion the musical scale, and destroying fifes and lutes, by deafening the ears of the blind Kuang, then, at last, will the human race in the world constrain his sense of hearing. By extinguishing literary compositions, by dispersing the five colours and by sticking the eyes of Li Chu, then, at length, mankind under the whole sky, will restrain the perception of his eyes. By destroying and eliminating the hooks and lines, by discarding ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... violence. The noise awakened the child. The Countess was overjoyed, and, in the fulness of a mother's heart, she fell upon her knees to express her thankfulness that her beloved infant possessed a blessing denied to herself—the sense of hearing. This lady often gave similar indications of superior intelligence, though we can believe that few of them ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... finger to command silence, and all three bent their hearing to the utmost. Through the continuous noise of the rain, the steps and voices of two men became audible from the other side of the wall; and, as they drew nearer, Brackenbury, whose sense of hearing was remarkably acute, could even distinguish some fragments ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a calm at even. To these succeeded the gathering in the heavens, and the roaring of the winds, as they came rushing down the sides of the Alps, in their first descent into the basin of the Leman. As the sight grew useless, except as it might study the dark omens of the impending vault, the sense of hearing became doubly acute, and it had been a powerful agent in heightening the vague but acute apprehensions of the travellers. The rushes of the wind, which at first were broken, at intervals resembling the roar of a chimney-top in a gale, had soon reached ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... and for quite a while in a low voice; and the governor listened attentively and with growing interest. Though Teanyi's voice was muffled, Shotaye still overheard the word Cayamo several times. Straining her sense of hearing, she caught the words tupoge, tema quio, finally Shotaye also. The tuyo listened, smiled, winked slyly, and at last laughed aloud. At the same time he turned his face to her and nodded most pleasantly; ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... and would have gone, but he told me to stay. I passed an hour which interested me in spite of its painfulness. The voice of Menicuccio's sister sent a thrill through me, and I fancied that the blind must fall in love through their sense of hearing. The governess was a woman under thirty. She told me that when the girls attained their twenty-fifth year they were placed in charge of the younger ones, and at thirty-five they were free to leave the convent if they liked, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and comrades who are worthy, See and look with all your eyesight, Listen with your sense of hearing, Gather with your apprehension— Bow your heads, O trees, and hearken. Hush thy rustling, corn, and listen; Turn thine ear and give attention; Ripples of the running water, Pause a moment in your channels— Here ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... the fleet lay moored;" and then followed the strain of love, manly love and constancy, in the beautiful language of Gay, and in tones so rich, so clear, so sweet! every faculty was absorbed in the sense of hearing! the hair seemed to rise, the flesh to stir! the silence of the audience was holy—they durst not, they could not, even applaud that which so enchanted them, for fear of losing a note—I really think I could have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... consciousness were going to forsake him, but the love of life was strong; he tightened his grasp on the canoe. It was just then that he heard the voices of Ravenshaw's party and shouted, but the cry, as we have said, was very feeble, and the poor fellow's sense of hearing was dulled with cold and exhaustion, else he would have heard ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne |
