"Senseless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was completely developed, the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless, panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amid strange contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... size and isolation are more beautiful than young ones and are little likely to be injurious to health, and ends them by raising mounds and sticking into them dense belts of quick-growing trees like poplars to hide as speedily as possible the desolation of bricks and mortar he has created. It is this senseless outdoor work of the builder and his nurseryman which stands most in need of revision from time to time in suburban residences, but which rarely receives it from a silly notion, amounting to tree worship, which prohibits the cutting down of trees, no matter how injudicious ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... nourishment to make shoes, to appreciate book-lore, which is a pleasure and a profit to the makers of shoes; possibly in the non-event of marriage she will make shoes herself. The system of education in our schools is all wrong. It is both senseless and futile. Look at the children filing past to school, and look at their fathers, and their mothers too, filing past to the factory. Look at their present, and look at their future. And look at the trash taught them in their text-books—trash from its utter dissociation ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dangerous; and in the midst of the excitement, one of the fishermen struck his killing-spike into the head of a boy. Everybody knew that it was a pure accident; but accidents involving danger to life are rudely dealt with, and this blunderer was instantly knocked senseless by the men nearest him,—then dragged out of the surf and flung down on the sand to recover himself as best he might. No word was said about the matter; and the killing went on as before. Young fishermen, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... of Limehouse Church clock stared through the window at us. It is rather a senseless face, because it is so full of cracks that you can find any hour in it you do not want, especially when in a hurry. But nobody with a life that had not wide areas of waste leisure in it would ever visit Hammond now, where he lives in a tenement building, in ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... hand and foot. Before they left him the outlaw whom he had captured evened his score. Three times he struck Flatray on the head with the butt of his revolver. He was lying on the ground bleeding and senseless when they rode away toward ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... time to attend to those who had been struck by lightning. Three of them were found to be dead, but the other two—who were stunned and senseless—still lived, and were lifted and ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... the first to see it. She flew up-stairs when she heard the scream; found Miriam a senseless heap on the floor, the desk open on the little table by the window, the contents scattered, the window up, and somebody bounding and slipping away in the moonlight. Then she heard the challenge and scuffle ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... was not until very recently and is even now seldom used by them between each other, and is clearly a foreign importation. Their fancy for affectionate greeting was in giving a pleasant bodily, sensation by rubbing each other on the breast, abdomen, and limbs, or by a hug. The senseless and inconvenient custom of shaking hands is, indeed, by no means general throughout the world, and in the extent to which it prevails in the United States is a subject of ridicule by foreigners. The Chinese, with a higher conception of politeness, shake their own hands. The account ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... experience is slender, and to whom all earth's joys appeal more strongly than they do to those who have drunk of the cup, and know how bitter is its sediment. It is especially needful to be pealed into the ears of a generation like ours, in which senseless luxury, the result of wealth which has increased faster than the power of rightly using it, has attained such enormous proportions, and is threatening, in commercial communities especially, to drown all noble aspirations, and Spartan simplicity, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he began partly to sing, partly to chant the disconnected verses of hymns, those which spoke his gladness, many times over. The sheep with their senseless eyes turned to look ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... Romans and alienating his friends and supporters by his senseless follies, Octavian had been restoring order to Italy, and, by his wise and energetic administration, was slowly repairing the evils of the civil wars. In order to give security to the frontiers and ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... abyss how dark, and how profound? Down, down, (I still am falling, horrid pain!) Ten thousand thousand fathoms still remain; My plunge but still begun—And this for sin? Could I offend, if I had never been, But still increas'd the senseless happy mass, Flow'd in the stream, or shiver'd in the grass? "Father of mercies! why from silent earth Didst thou awake, and curse me into birth? Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, And make a thankless present of thy light? Push into being ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... and destroy Siva. How I could have been infatuated enough to believe in that senseless piece of wood is beyond my power to understand. But destroy it, sir; take it away; let me never lay eyes ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... to his wounds; and we found new joy in the anticipation of his recovery. His disappearance—from the spot where he had been left for dead—was explained. He had "played 'possum," as he himself expressed it. Though roughly handled, and actually senseless for a time, he had still clung to life. He knew that the Indians believed him dead—else why should they have scalped him? With a faint hope of being left upon the field, he had lain still, without stirring hand or foot; and the savages, otherwise occupied, had not noticed him after taking ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... blow had missed clean; but his second did not. Following up his right-hand blow with all a trained boxer's swift dexterity, he sent a straight left hander flush on the angle of the light-bearer's jaw. The man dropped his lantern and collapsed into a senseless heap on the floor, while Alan, with no further delay, rushed toward ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... fine missile, one of the boys took hold of it and threw it with all his strength at Pinocchio's head. But instead of hitting the Marionette, the book struck one of the other boys, who, as pale as a ghost, cried out faintly: "Oh, Mother, help! I'm dying!" and fell senseless to ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... were always the enemy of the sons of Morna; but we are living in spite of you," he said, "and I have but the one fault to find with your shape, and that is, that it was not put on the whole of the Fianna the same as on yourself." Caoilte made at him then; "Bald, senseless Conan," he said, "I will break your mouth to the bone." But Conan ran in then among the rest of the Fianna and asked protection from them, and peace was ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... short and snappy. He absolutely forbade us to board the Lancashire Queen, and as absolutely refused to give up the two men. By this time Charley was as enraged as the Greek. Not only had he been foiled in a long and ridiculous chase, but he had been knocked senseless into the bottom of his boat by the ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... through his skull, and I feared that my gun might burst, but it was my only chance. If it failed—the full horror of my situation flashed across me. How I blamed myself for having engaged in the useless, I might say senseless and cruel sport. I knew that Nowell must be a long way off, but I hoped that he might hear my voice, so I shouted as shrilly as I could at the very top of it. Scarcely had I done so, than the buffalo, feeling the pain of his wounds, with a loud grunt rushed on towards me. I fired ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... is more abominable before God than the irrational creature: for it is said of the sinner (Ps. 48:21): "Man when he was in honor did not understand; he hath been compared to senseless beasts, and made like to them." But an irrational animal, such as a mouse or a dog, cannot receive this sacrament, just as it cannot receive the sacrament of Baptism. Therefore it seems that for the like reason neither may sinners ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... seemed as if it must burst, so terrible was the pressure. I could not breathe. My lungs seemed filled with molten lead. How long this agony continued I do not know, for the thread of consciousness broke under its terrible tension and I fell senseless upon the floor. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... is given to the husband over the body of his wife, and it seems as if the tendency in England were to approximate to the Chinese custom. Is it not a fact that, if a husband in England brutally maltreats his wife, kicks her senseless, and disfigures her for life, the average English bench of unpaid magistrates will find extenuating circumstances in the fact of his being the husband, and will rarely sentence him to more than a month or two's ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... not go home. Beside herself, almost senseless with pain and rage, she wandered about through the streets, meditating, reflecting how she might revenge herself for this degradation, this faithlessness ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... you from a sling with the first stone he can pick up. Clever malefactors count on the unexpected, that senseless accomplice of so many crimes. They grasp the incident and leap on it; there is no better Ars Poetica for this species of talent. Meanwhile be sure with whom you have ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... like the verticals in a Howe truss, why is it not possible by analysis to show that they do? Of course there is no need of special literature on the subject, if it is the intention to perpetuate this senseless method of design. No amount of literature can prove that these stirrups act as the verticals of a Howe truss, for the simple reason that it can be easily ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... amnesty was obtained at the price of Tu's head, and an enormous indemnity. On January 15, 1873, his family having all committed suicide, the Sultan passed for the last time through the crowded streets of Ta-li on his way to the camp of his victorious adversary. He arrived there senseless, having taken poison before setting forth. His corpse was beheaded and his head was forwarded to the provincial capital, and thence in a jar of honey ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... kiss; And is it needed that Love's daintier brute Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit. She is great Nature's ever intimate In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, Until perverted by her senseless male, She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, Elusive to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this worthless priest has denied me absolution, because, forsooth, he says I killed the convent porter. Ha! ha! ha! Where is it said in your Scriptures that one man can pray another to death? But the licentiousness of the vile priest has turned his brain, and he wallows in all most senseless superstitions. Did he not run after my old hag of a servant, as I myself saw; and this was not enough, but he must take Dorothea Stettin (the hypocritical wanton) behind the altar alone; and because I and these seven maidens discovered his iniquity, he refuses ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... expenditure of thirty-six thousand dollars a year well enough. It meant thinking about his fees of course, seeing to it that the work he undertook was profitable as well as interesting. Only, declared the man who was not Rose's husband, it was senseless—suffocating! Rodney tried, with an athletic sweep of his will, to crowd that train of thought out of his mind as, with his hand, he had swept the papers that gave rise ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... two had well-nigh been fatal to me; for the sea having hurried me along as before, landed me, or rather dashed me against a piece of rock, and that with such force that it left me senseless, and indeed helpless as to my own deliverance; for the blow taking my side and breast, beat the breath as it were quite out of my body, and had it returned again immediately I must have been strangled in the water; but I recovered a little before ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... investigation into Franco-German relations conducted on behalf of the Figaro is the work of one of the ablest publicists of modern France. It is the work of a good European who wishes to put an end to the senseless competition in armaments, and to the international distrust and nervousness which are the main causes of such armaments. The book is also the work of a good Frenchman who realizes that no settlement can be durable which does ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... womanly gentleness and sympathy, and, above all, a wise forbearance from probing into his still open wounds, might have won a certain amount of gratitude and affection from him. But Helen was unequal to this. She only drove him wild with causeless and senseless jealousy, and goaded him almost to madness by endless ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... I now see everywhere around me. Yet there came a day when a hundred thousand Londoners hung upon his every movement—when strong men gasped and women wept at his invincible but unavailing spirit. When he had fallen senseless in that historic race on the very threshold of his goal, so high was the determination within him, that while he floundered on the track like a broken-backed horse, with the senses gone out of him, his legs still continued ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had no other reason but this, their verse was, sung to music; otherwise it had been a senseless thing ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... be put to it—yes, frankly—to give a name of any sort or kind to their hostess's "set." Was it a set at all, or wasn't it, and were there not really no such things as sets, in the place, any more?—was there any thing but the senseless shifting tumble, like that of some great greasy sea in mid-Channel, of an overwhelming melted mixture? He threw out the question, which seemed large; Milly felt that at the end of five minutes he had thrown out a great many, though he followed none ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... says the Kid to me, with a openly admirin' glance at the runt. "Go on with your story," he nods to him. "Never mind Senseless, here, I'm gettin' ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... who had been known for years past as a splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless peasant in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to the hospital. He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A government post driver could hardly have coped with ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... him, grasp table-knives, and cut the cords that have been confining him. Senseless, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... rum-bottle and rummers upon the communion table, and drawed up a trestle or two, and sate round comfortable and poured out again right hearty bumpers. No sooner had they tossed off their glasses than, so the story goes they fell down senseless, one and all. How long they bode so they didn't know, but when they came to themselves there was a terrible thunder-storm a-raging, and they seemed to see in the gloom a dark figure with very thin legs and a curious voot, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... "making her look," he thought, "more like a Scotch poodle-dog than an honest girl." He hated those books which, he fancied, stole away her heart from her home. He had once picked up one of them where she had left it; but the high-flown style seemed as senseless to him as the words of an incantation, and he had flung it down more bewildered than ever. He thought there must be some strange difference between their minds when she could delight in what seemed so uncanny to him, and he gazed at her, reading by the lamp-light, as over ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... circumstances that produced it. For instance, the wolf, wishing to cover up its tracks, buries its excrement; the dog, a town dweller, stupidly scrapes the pavement. In the latter case instinct has become senseless, purposeless. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... when half a minute saved his life. He had scarcely set foot in the fort of St. Maria when he was lifted off his feet as if by a hurricane, and a beam which struck him on the head and shoulders stretched him senseless on the earth. For a long time he was believed to be actually killed, many remembering to have seen him on the bridge only a few minutes before the fatal explosion. He was found at last between his attendants, Cajetan and Guasto, raising himself up with his hand on his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... something which he knows not; he that can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is not to be admitted among reasonable beings. All that we know of matter is, that matter is inert, senseless, and lifeless; and if this conviction cannot he opposed but by referring us to something that we know not, we have all the evidence that human intellect can admit. If that which is known may be overruled by that which is unknown, no being, not omniscient, ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... to tell you the strange and seemingly improbable reason that urged me on to this senseless act; the fact, however, is that I am ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... senseless," retorted Tom, "and, besides, you Americans always say 'nice' at everything." Then he looked at her red eyes and poor little nose, and added kindly, "Well, never mind, call it checkers, then, I don't care; let's have a game," and he rushed for ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... peace until they entered the Ohio. Here they were assailed by a summer storm of great severity and one of the boats, struck by lightning, narrowly escaped sinking. A rower was knocked senseless, but nobody was seriously injured, and by great efforts, they got the boat into ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "Why continue this senseless talk about highwaymen?" demanded Carson, "when you know just as well as I do that there are no robbers here other than yourselves! Mr. Buck," he added, turning to Elmer's father, "I call upon you to assist ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... daughter, I cried out, 'Alice, Alice,' and caught the girl in my arms. Her father was so enraged that he picked up a gun lying near at hand, and gave me such a terrific blow on the head that I was knocked senseless. I remember nothing of it, but mistaking Anita for you was, undoubtedly, my first approach to my former consciousness. That scene was probably the one which you saw in your dream, Alice, and to think that afterwards ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... madness that befell! In one short night that vale became More foul than Dante's inmost hell. Men cursed their wives; and mothers left Their nursing babes alone to die, And wantoned, singing, through the streets, With shameless brow and frenzied eye; And senseless clowns, not fearing God,— Such power the spotted fever had,— Razed Cragwood Castle on the hill, Pillaged the wine-bins, and went mad. And evermore that dreadful pall Of mist hung stagnant over all: By day, a sickly light broke through The heated fog, on town and field; ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... realize how any escaped alive. Our loss was heavy. In the Twenty-eighth (colored) for instance, commanded by Lieut.-Col. Russell (a Bostonian), he lost seven officers out of eleven, and ninety-one men out of two hundred and twenty-four; and the colonel himself was knocked over senseless, for a few minutes, by a slight wound in the head; both his color-sergeants and all his color-guard were killed. Col. Bross, of the Twenty-ninth, was killed outright, and nearly every one of his officers hit. This was nearly equal to Bunker Hill. Col. Ross, of the Thirty-first, lost his ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... horse stumbled suddenly on a steep descent, and threw him over. The old man's head struck violently against a stone, and he remained lying senseless. It was a full hour before they succeeded in bringing him to consciousness. But the blow had been so severe, and the old man was so confused in his head, that he could no longer serve as guide. They were obliged to place him on the same horse as his grandson rode, ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... changes which took place in their commandants. 'Why, one can never know who is the chief among these Boers. Like the Bushmen, they have no king—they must be the Bushmen of the English.' The idea that any tribe of men could be so senseless as not to have an hereditary chief was so absurd to these people, that in order not to appear equally stupid, I was obliged to tell them that we English were so anxious to preserve the royal blood that we had made a young lady our chief. This seemed to them ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... life and death, time and eternity, one upon these lips? Was he not a god? Were not youth and age merely a fable; visions of men's fancy? Were not home and exile, splendor and misery, renown and oblivion, senseless distinctions, fit only for the use of the uneasy, the lonely, the frustrate; had not the words become unmeaning to one who was Casanova, and who ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... taken from the gallant Frenchman were soon forced from me, and not stripping off my apparel fast enough to please a Mulatto sailor, I received a blow with the butt-end of a pistol under the left ear, which precipitated me down the hatchway, near which I was standing, and I fell senseless into the hold. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... no midnight oil For me, to throw dim light upon the scroll, Whose feeble pedantry dulls down the soul From high imaginings to senseless words; But for my lamp I'll have the summer sun Set in the brightness of the firmament; My chamber shall be canopied by heaven, Gemmed by the glory of the fixed stars, And round it floating evermore the breath Of nascent flowers, and fragrant greenery: ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... girl, and him, too! No, poor devil! he meant well. It was just the senseless, quixotic sort of thing one would have expected of him. But I don't know that it has done much good. It has made me feel a sneak, though I've only been lying to back him up. Why couldn't he let it alone? There would have been a storm, of course, but it would soon have blown over, and ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... rumble told us that both shots had gone off. Gifford was a fairly good sprinter, but I beat him on the home run. The hole was half full of shattered rock and loosened gravel and we went at it with our bare hands. After a few minutes of this senseless dog-scratching, Gifford sat down on the edge of the ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the tortures he afterwards saw inflicted upon many other prisoners; but he was only made to run the gantlet. Two lines of Indians were drawn up, with sticks in their hands, and Smith dashed at the top of his speed between their ranks. He was cruelly beaten, and before he reached the goal he fell senseless. When he came to himself he was in the hands of a French surgeon. He was well cared for, and he lived in hopes of rescue by Braddock's army, which was marching against Fort Duquesne in greater force than had ever been sent into the wilderness. But while he was still so broken ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... instead of attacking me, moved off slowly to pick up M. Bonpland's hat, which, having somewhat deadened the violence of the blow, had fallen off and lay at some distance. Alarmed at seeing my companion on the ground, and for some moments senseless, I thought of him only. I helped him to raise himself, and pain and anger doubled his strength. We ran toward the Zambo, who, either from cowardice, common enough in people of this caste, or because he perceived at a distance some men on the beach, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... invisible object, in shrill and piercing accents, she would cry out: 'Mother, mother, he is gone; they have killed him; what will become of me?' And uttering a wild, unnatural shriek, she would fall senseless in ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... still I feel My heart-strings quiver, my senses reel, Thinking how like a fast stream we range Nearer and nearer to yon dread change, When soul and spirit filter away, And leave nothing better than senseless clay. ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... the uses of the more intelligent and powerful individuals and groups of their kind. So it went on for innumerable ages, and nobody dreamed of anything else until at last the conditions were ripe for the inbreathing of an intellectual life into these inert and senseless clods. The process by which this awakening took place was silent, gradual, imperceptible, but no previous event or series of events in the history of the race had been comparable to it in the effect it was to have upon human ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... laager, and near it lay the piles of dead; round us was rank upon rank of plumed savages, standing in silence to wait the issue of the duel, and in the centre stood the grey-haired chief and general, Sususa, in all his war finery, a cloak of leopard skin upon his shoulders. At his feet lay the senseless form of little Tota, to my left squatted Indaba-zimbi, nodding his white lock and muttering something—probably spells; while in front was my giant antagonist, his spear aloft and his plumes wavering in the gentle ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... kind words on intellectual presence of mind, and his animating example of it, have determined me to make a vigorous effort over my own sloth and inanity. I believe the first thing is to be always conscious of what I am thinking of, and never to let my mind run at loose ends in senseless reveries. ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... have grown almost too familiar with the wheel: it has become a positive danger to them. They not infrequently mistake its rate of speed and injure themselves in attempting to fly across it. Recently I had a thrush knock himself senseless against the spokes of my forewheel, and cycling friends have told me of similar experiences they have had, in some instances the heedless birds getting killed. Chaffinches are like the children in village streets—they will not get out of your way; by and by in rural places the merciful man will ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... staking tens of pesos on a single throw, which the loser must pay out of his share of the countless treasures of the Aztecs. Little did they care if they won or lost, they were so sure of plunder, but played on till drink overpowered them, and they rolled senseless beneath the tables, or till they sprang up and danced wildly to and fro, catching at the sunbeams ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... How senseless you had been with your old angers and resentments. Now that you understood, you could never feel anger or resentment any more. As long as you lived you could never feel anything but love for them and compassion. Mamma, Papa and Aunt Charlotte, Dan and Roddy, they were caught in the net. They ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the burrows by their bases, and not one by the cut-off ends. The worms in confinement often seized the needles near the middle and drew them towards the mouths of their burrows; and one worm tried in a senseless manner to drag them into the burrow by bending them. They sometimes collected many more leaves over the mouths of their burrows (as in the case formerly mentioned of lime-leaves) than could enter them. On other ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... phrase upon its lips; a complete phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, invented when man's mind was asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were always unmeaning; ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... philosophic inspector of entrails, and adorer of idols, call an excessive superstition and culpable obstinacy? Why, they bound themselves by the most solemn religious services, not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; not to falsify their word, nor deny a pledge committed to them; and when some senseless blocks of brass were carried on men's shoulders, into the court-house, to represent a mortal man, they would not adore them, nor pray to them; no, not though this philosopher compiled the liturgy, and set the example. For this ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... train stopped for dinner, he was aware that no one knew him, and he ate hungrily; he felt strengthened and encouraged, and he began to react against the terror that had possessed him. He perceived that it was senseless and ridiculous; that the conductor could not possibly have been telegraphing about him from Willoughby, and there was as yet no suspicion abroad concerning him; he might go freely anywhere, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... he reached the village and sank, exhausted and senseless, upon the steps of the nearest cottage. The villagers thought he had returned only to die, but after a time he opened his eyes, and in a few days he was strong enough to tell his ...
— The Enchanted Castle - A Book of Fairy Tales from Flowerland • Hartwell James
... in the fury that tempted him to pursue her with a taunt, and then leave her to work herself out of the transport of senseless jealousy she had wrought herself into. But he set his teeth, and, full of inward cursing, he followed her up-stairs with a slow, dogged step. He took her in his arms without a word, and held her fast, while his anger changed to pity, and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... my beautiful combs;" and gave her the poisoned one. And it looked so pretty that the little girl took it up and put it into her hair to try it; but the moment it touched her head the poison was so powerful that she fell down senseless. "There you may lie," said the queen, and went her way. But by good luck the dwarfs returned very early that evening; and when they saw Snow-White lying on the ground, they thought what had happened, and soon found the poisoned comb. And when they took it away, she recovered, and told ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... vast revelation of the resistances to individual will of which the universe is capable, also of a terrestrial horizon, bottom upward, burst upon me during the brief space which I spent in flying over his head. Picked up senseless, I was carried to the bosom of my family on a wheelbarrow, and awoke to the consciousness that my parents had decided on sending me to a boarding-school,—a remedy to this day sovereign in the opinion of all well-regulated parents for all tangential ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the monkey's eye. It seemed to feel some sense of property in this gold, for, quick as lightning, one hairy paw brushed the robber's hand, and the next moment the nugget was gone. With a great oath the robber turned on Gum, and dealt it a blow on the head which knocked it senseless to the other side of the room. But, before that blow fell, two things happened. With one hand held out to protect itself against this sudden onslaught, the monkey made a grab at its assailant's face, and tore off the black mask, so that Donald instantly recognised the man, in the ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... Victims of wine or love or death, In ragged time they jump, they shake Their heads, sweating to overtake The impetuous tune flying ahead. They flounder after, with legs of lead. Now, suddenly as it started, play Stops, the short echo dies away, The corpses drop, a senseless heap, The drunk men gaze about like sheep. Grinning, the lovers sigh and stare Up at the broad moon hanging there, While Tom, five fingers to his nose, Skips off...And ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... "It was senseless of us to let them get in here anyway," said the Big Business Man. "That sparrow evidently has stopped getting smaller. Do you realize how big it will be to us, after we've diminished ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the physician warned him against full meals, on Monday I pressed him to observance of his rules, but without effect, and Tuesday I was absent, but his wife pressed forbearance upon him again unsuccessfully. At night I was called to him, and found him senseless in strong convulsions. I staid in the room, except that I visited Mrs. Thrale twice.] About five, I think, on Wednesday morning he expired; I felt, &c. Farewell. May God that delighteth in mercy have had mercy on thee. I had constantly ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... were wont to be recreated, and their spirits and hopes revived for a whole twelvemonth, are now extinct and put out of use, in such a fashion as if they never had been. Thus are the merry lords of bad rule at Westminster; nay, more, their madness hath extended itself to the very vegetables; senseless trees, herbs, and weeds, are in a profane estimation amongst them—holly, ivy, mistletoe, rosemary, bays, are accounted ungodly branches of superstition for your entertainment. And to roast a sirloin of beef, to touch a collar ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... question arose that was considered of far greater importance, namely, the conception of the antipodes and the problem of deciding whether human beings existed on the earth's opposite side. It was Lactantius who asked, "Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? That the crops and trees grow downward? That the rains and snow and hail fall upwards toward the earth? I am at a loss as to what to say of those, who, when they ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... of a man, held him at arm's length, looked him over, and stood him on his feet. The withered face was more than ever like a death's head, and the eyes were glassy, senseless. But as to hurt or scratch, there was none. The beady orbs started slowly in their sockets, rolling from side to side. The lips opened, and formed words. "Killed? yes, I am killed. But I want—my cotton, my burros, my peons—I ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Mr. Kent, furiously, "she deserves her refusal for her ingratitude. After God provided her friends who made her a free woman, she is so senseless as to want to go back to be lashed and trodden under foot again, as the slaves of the South are. I say, she deserves it ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... stood upon his brow; the clammy feeling of fear took possession of his heart, and though, perhaps, he would have had no objection to try the fortune of the pistol or the sword, in any college broil or senseless riot of the populace, the circumstances under which he then stood were so new to him, that he was quite unmanned and incapable of ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... they are in love with her, and most of them believe she could make them happy. Now, no one concedes physical beauty or allurement to Percy. He is as ugly as they grow, but he isn't stupid. He is just a nice, amiable, senseless nincompoop with a great deal of money and a ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Professor and his sister, and put an end to conversation for a few moments. It soon burst forth again, however, the topic being Benedetto's discourse. There ensued such a confusion of senseless remarks, of worthless opinions, of would-be wise sayings devoid of wisdom that the lady in black proposed to Signora Albacina, in whose company she had come, that they should take their departure. But at that point the Marchesa Fermi, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... self-consciousness that was liable to become inflamed and over-sensitive. If adequate security can be provided, by a League of Nations, or in some other way, for the free development of the national life of every nation, the senseless over-emphasis of nationality from which the past has suffered will no longer hinder the growth of a true Internationalism. I believe that the real alternative lies not between Nationality and Internationalism but between ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... destroyed. 9. Among the numberless horrible operations that this unhappy and accursed tyrant performed in this kingdom, together with his brothers, (for his captains and the others who helped him, were not less unhappy and senseless than he) was one very notorious one. He went to the province of Cuzcatan, in which, or not far distant, there is the town of San Salvador, which is a most delightful place extending all along the coast of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... at, but no answer was returned. Newman's arm could no longer be restrained; the bellows, descending heavily and with unerring aim on the very centre of Mr Squeers's head, felled him to the floor, and stretched him on it flat and senseless. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... scarcely allowed us to answer; the Indian sprang from his horse, and, running towards the child, pressed him to his heart, and then, stretching out his arms, fell senseless to the ground. I rushed towards him and opened his gourd—it was full! With the help of Sumichrast I poured a few drops of brandy between his teeth. He gradually regained his senses, and looked at us in surprise. He was exhausted from ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless. My consternation ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... it was rumoured that plague patients were buried alive, as may sometimes happen through senseless alarm and indecent haste; and thus the horror of the distressed people was everywhere increased. In Erfurt, after the churchyards were filled, 12,000 corpses were thrown into eleven great pits; and the like might, more or less exactly, be stated with respect to all the larger cities. Funeral ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... sudden awakenings from similar interruptions of vital activity. The coming to himself and the bursting of his case were simultaneous. He sat staring about him, with, of all his mental faculties, only his imagination awake, from which the thoughts that occupied it when he fell senseless had not yet faded. These thoughts had been compounded of feelings about Lilith, and speculations about the vampire that haunted the neighbourhood; and the fumes of the last drug of which he had partaken, still hovering in his brain, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... the rapidity of a single bullet the whole contents of the automatic's magazine poured out and every missile took effect in the reptile's huge head. In its death agony it straightened out its folds and Frank's senseless body dropped from them, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... engendered by Pierce's accusation, but which expanded with each leap of her horse until it included Vil Holland, Bethune, the Samuelson cowboys, and even Len Christie and the Samuelsons themselves—a senseless, consuming rage that caused the blood to throb hotly to her temples and found vicious expression in driving the rowels into her horse's sides until the animal tore down the rough, half-lit trail at a pace that sent the loose stones flying ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... his feet, and would have warded off the apparition with his hands, only they were laced in steel behind him, then, with a deep groan of terror, pitched forward upon his face, senseless. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... relation to the battle of Waterloo, and the comparative merit, in a military point of view, of Napoleon and Wellington. The Frenchman, being an adroit swordsman, got the best of the argument by running his antagonist through the body, and leaving him senseless, and apparently lifeless, on the field. He made his escape to Grenada. Having learned that the champion of Wellington was in a fair way to recover from his wound, he was now on his return ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... been told to keep one road for their up traffic and another road for their down traffic? But they wouldn't do it, because it was the British who told 'em. But the British had found out, hadn't they? Catch them having a senseless mix-up like that! But our men won't listen. They won't even listen to me. I've told one general and six or seven colonels only this morning. Told the general to keep certain roads for troops and wagons going to the front, and other roads of traffic coming ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... had another serious, and even painful half hour, when he first looked upon the corpse. There it lay, a senseless shell, deserted by its immortal tenant, and totally unconscious of that subject which had so lately and so intensely interested them both. It appeared as if the ghastly countenance expressed its sense of the utter worthlessness of all earthly ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... and gives [15] scope to higher demonstration. To strike out right and left against the mist, never clears the vision; but to lift your head above it, is a sovereign panacea. Mental dark- ness is senseless error, neither intelligence nor power, and its victim is responsible for its supposititious presence. [20] "Cast the beam out of thine own eye." Learn what in thine own mentality is unlike "the anointed," and cast it out; then thou wilt discern the error in thy patient's mind that makes his body ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... a piano, or need one: do give it a chance! Its very size makes it tremendously important, and if you load it with senseless fringed scarfs and bric-a-brac you make it the ugliest thing in your room. Give it the best place possible, against an inside wall, preferably. I saw a new house lately where the placing of the piano had been considered by the architect ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... prison—not much larger than a coffin—in the Monastery of Saint Maurice. The Council ended their labours by burning Huss. They would have liked to burn Wycliffe; but as he had been at rest with God for over thirty years, they took refuge in the childish revenge of disinterring and burning his senseless bones. And "after that, they had no more that ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... most extravagant compliments; her senseless chatting I described as unrestraint tempered by finesse, her pretentious exaggerations as a natural desire to please; was it her fault that she was poor? At least, she thought of nothing but pleasure ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... men made perfect; welcome, Jesus Christ, Spirit of all grace, God the judge of all, and life for evermore:—The other (although I do not meddle with their eternal state, as being no-ways my province or prerogative to determine upon) at least those I have here condescended upon, died either in a senseless, secure, supine stupidity, or else belching out the most fearful oaths, and imprecations against themselves or others, or worse, if worse may be, roaring out in despair in the most dreadful horror of an awakened conscience under the sense of God's wrath and fiery indignation ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... as though carven in stone, coming in collision with a terrible force; then each, staggered by the encounter, drew back, dizzy and bruised, to recoil, and take breath, and gather fresh force, and so charge one on the other in successive rounds until the weaker should succumb, and, mangled and senseless, ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... gown, spangled with tinsel stars, and two or three crowns, one above another, of gilt foil, the effect is the oddest imaginable. As I was sitting upon a marble step, philosophizing to myself, and wondering at what seemed to me such senseless bad taste, such pitiable and ridiculous superstition, there came up a poor woman leading by the hand a pale and delicate boy, about four years old. She prostrated herself before the picture, while the child knelt beside her, and prayed for some time with fervour; ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... strict fulfilment of justice and duty and the great possibilities for personal happiness which another line of conduct seems to assure. And the dividing line is not always marked and clear. He knew that the issue of taking her, even as his wife, was made difficult by the senseless opposition of her father. The opinion of the world brought up still another complication. Supposing he should take her openly, what would the world say? She was a significant type emotionally, that he knew. There was ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... His heart had gone on, and his breathing, though it became shallow, did not cease; he was even able to turn his eyes. But to the men in the observatory room the gas from the weapons of the attacking force came as a devastating, choking cloud that struck them senseless as if with a blow. Lieutenant McGuire hardly heard the sound of his own pistol before unconsciousness ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... great part of his gardens, and watch his gardeners at their labors. With a pair of field-glasses, he could search every wooded knoll of the park for a half-mile to the river, in the hope of catching some fellow idling, whom he could dismiss. In his senseless economies, he had discharged servant after servant, until now his stately house was woefully ill-kept, and even his favorite gardens ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... statesmen who have lived since their time would have acted differently. Fox, with a free hand, would have saved us, and but for the senseless attitude of the Pitt-Castlereagh party, the Grey, Romilly, Horner, Burdett and Tierny combination would have prevented the last of Napoleon's campaigns between his return from Elba and his defeat at Waterloo, which proved to be the bloodiest ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... and saw it nodding there, A single tree upon the sharp-edged hill, Holding its leaves though in the orchard all Leaves and fruit were stripped or hung but few Red and yellow over the littered grass. —It vexed me, the brave tree and senseless name, As I went through the valley looking up And then looked round on elm and beech and chestnut And all that lingering flame amid the hedge That marked the miles and miles. Then I forgot: For through the apple-orchard's shadow I saw Between the dark boughs of the cherry-orchard A great slow ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... showed himself a jealous God to all who, straying from the path of direct worship of Jehovah, had recourse to other deities, whether idols or evil spirits, the gods of the neighbouring heathen. The swerving from their allegiance to the true Divinity, to the extent of praying to senseless stocks and stones which could return them no answer, was, by the Jewish law, an act of rebellion to their own Lord God, and as such most fit to be punished capitally. Thus the prophets of Baal were deservedly put to death, not on account of any success which they might obtain by their intercessions ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... did his best, and was liberally paid out of the three hundred pounds which Mrs. Denover had found in the bosom of Harriet's dress. But for days and weeks she lay very ill—ill unto death—delirious, senseless. Then the fever yielded, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... impartially consider the sole and veritable causes of the emigration," says an honest man, "will find them in anarchy. If the liberty of the individual had not been daily threatened, if;" in the civil as in the military order of things, "the senseless dogma, preached by the factions, that crimes committed by the mob are the judgments of heaven, had not been put in practice, France would have preserved three fourths of her fugitives. Exposed for two years to ignominious dangers, to every species of outrage, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the mandarin, she denied that she knew anything of the cause of her husband's death. He had come home drunk one night, she declared, and had fallen senseless on the ground. After a great deal of difficulty, she had managed to lift him up on to the bed, where he lay in a drunken slumber, just as men under the influence of liquor often do, so that she was not in the ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... that the minor degrees and shades of this great influence have been sufficiently appreciated. Not only all vivid emotions and all circumstances of exciting interest leave their light and shadow on the senseless things and instruments among which or through whose agency they have been felt or learned, but I believe that the eye cannot rest on a material form, in a moment of depression or exultation, without communicating to ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... spokesman of four masked men who had intruded into his conjugal chamber, that he was wanted below. While still dazed, the squire was pulled, rather than helped, out of bed, and Mrs. Meredith, who tried to help him resist, was knocked senseless on the floor. Down the stairs and out of the house he was dragged, his progress being encouraged by such cheering remarks as, "We'll teach you what Toryism comes ter." "Where 's them tools of old George you've been a-feeding, now?" "Want ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the ladder. He ascended quickly, and burst open the casement—the smoke poured out in such volumes that it nearly suffocated him, but he went in; and as soon as he was inside, he stumbled against the body of the person who had attempted to open the window, but who had fallen down senseless. As he raised the body, the fire, which had been smothered from want of air when all the windows and doors were closed, now burst out, and he was scorched before he could get on the ladder again, with the body in his ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat |
