"Sightless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hast carved me, such am I. Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline Of Death, of Life, those ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and sometimes seemed to try to wrench itself away, though for the most part it followed submissively. A neophyte might have fancied that the ripples passing over it were dreadfully like faint changes of expression on a sightless face; but Gaffer was no neophyte and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... touched and bound all the worlds together in its wonderful circle of life. One root it sent deep down into the sightless depths of Hel, where the dead lived; another it fastened firmly in Joetunheim, the dreary home of the giants; and with the third it grasped Midgard, the dwelling place of men. Serpents and all kinds of worms gnawed continually at its roots, but were never ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the closing sentence Miss Quincey's MS. had become a sightless blur. But she had managed to jot down in her neat arithmetical way: ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... foe. Pointed above, and rough and gross below: The falling ruin crush'd Cebrion's head, The lawless offspring of king Priam's bed; His front, brows, eyes, one undistinguish'd wound: The bursting balls drop sightless to the ground. The charioteer, while yet he held the rein, Struck from the car, falls headlong on the plain. To the dark shades the soul unwilling glides, While the proud victor ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... fists contacting soft flesh, and the pained cry, swiftly suppressed, of Janith. His voice, cursing and high-pitched, as he fought the straps that now were restraining his sightless body. The bite of a needle and gradual dissolution ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... snow-white hair was piled over a high cushion and ornamented by a cap of fine thread lace. In her face, which she turned at the first footstep with a pitiable, blind look, there were the faint traces of a proud, though almost extinguished, beauty—traces which were visible in the impetuous flash of her sightless eyes, in the noble arch of her brows, and in the transparent quality of her now yellowed skin, which still kept the look of rare porcelain held against the sunlight. On a dainty, rose-decked tray beside her chair there were the half ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... command the obedience of the citizen but has no power to afford him protection." "Tell it not, sir," said he, "to the father whose son was starved at Andersonville, or the widow whose husband was slain at Mission Ridge, or the little boy who leads his sightless father through the streets of your city, of the thousand other mangled heroes to be seen on every side of us to-day, that this Government, in defense of which the son and the husband fell, the father lost his sight and the others were maimed ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... against dangers neither to be counted nor foreseen. Be not too much stricken of amazement, therefore, when now these cold ones, who would not have bought an American railroad without counting the cross-ties and weighing every spike and fish-plate, were ready to send millions adrift on a sightless invasion of Asia ten thousand miles away. Besides, as the five with Mr. Harley laid out their campaign, any question of Oriental danger was for the present ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... foreign to his experience that there was no standard of comparison. Everything about her seemed to him to be quite what one would have expected, until one came, so to speak, in touch with her soul. That, if it lay behind her inscrutable, sightless and dumb eyes, betrayed her. There was no hint of it. Human in form, visibly and tangibly human, no soul sat in her great eyes that a man could discern. That, however, is not now the point. Rather it is that, to all appearance a modest and beautiful girl, she ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... few steps under the deck-awning, leaning on the arm of Senor Avellanos; a wide circle was formed round him, where the mirthless smile of his dark lips and the sightless glitter of his spectacles could be seen turning amiably from side to side. The informal function arranged on purpose on board the Juno to give the President-Dictator an opportunity to meet intimately some of his most notable adherents in Sulaco was ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... now—the dear, gay, faithful Hansel? She struck out boldly, and her strong, sonorous voice soared easily above the orchestral accompaniments. "Heil dir im Siegeskranz!"—she was hailing the returning warriors with a song of triumph, while Hansel, perhaps, lay on some bloody battle-field, with sightless eyes staring against the awful sky. Ilka's voice began to tremble, and the tears flooded her beautiful eyes. The soldier in the Austrian uniform trembled, too, and never removed his gaze from the countenance of the singer. There was joy and triumph in her song; but there was sorrow, too—sorrow ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... about the poor! Talks of starvation while his banquet waits, And fancies that a two hours' appetite Throws light on famine! Doubtless he can tell, As he skips nimbly through his dancing-girls, How sad it is to limp about the world A sightless cripple! Let him feel the crutch Wearing against his heart, and then I'd hear This sage talk glibly; or provide a pad, Stuffed with his soft philosophy, to ease His aching shoulder. Pshaw! he never felt, Or pain would choke his frothy utterance. 'Tis easy for the doctor ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... over, during which the sightless eyeballs of the singer had been turned up towards the rafters of the cottage—a sign surely that the germ of light, "the sunny seed," as Henry Vaughan calls it, must be in him, else why should ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and girls in the school. The elder Bruce tried hard to make her see one of his vile grimaces, but, feeling as if every nerve in her body were being stung with eyes, she never dared to look away from the book which she held upside down before her own sightless eyes.—This pillory was the punishment due to falling asleep, as hell was the punishment for forgetting God; and there she had to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood looking at it for a little space—half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... for tiding him over such periods—reading, tobacco, and the long, blind, dogged tramps he took in town. But here, to-night, in the rain, one stood every chance of walking off the cliffs; and he was sick of reading himself sightless over the sort of books sent wholesale to Shotover; and he was already too ill at ease, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... clear whistle was heard outside the house. "The doctor!" cried Melody, her sightless face lighting up with a flash of joy. "I must go," and she ran ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... crowd detached from the factory. The west wind sets quivering their overalls, blue or black or khaki, excites the woolly tails that flutter from muffled necks, scatters some evil odors, attacks the sightless faces so deep-drowned ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... be called by the children, returning from school and hurrying into the kitchen. And while they talked to him and bragged about what a nice regular pile he had made, he would stand with wagging tail, his sightless eyes raised to their ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... drooping— her face wistfully turned to his—and a half smile upon the lips, that made still more touching the tears not yet dried upon her cheeks. While thin, frail, shadowy, with white hair and furrowed cheeks, the old man fixed his sightless orbs on space; and his face, usually only animated from the lethargy of advancing dotage by a certain querulous cynicism, now grew suddenly earnest, and even thoughtful, as Fanny ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... So that thou hast a clod within thine hand, Life seems eternal, till the crumbling dust Runs through thy clenching fingers, and thy gage Mocks thee up from the mould'ring frame of Earth. There is no mystery like Death; it comes Sightless as the first breath of infant life, And goes to an unsearched Eternity— The End and the ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the blind man, scared by his threats, started to walk away in the slow, halting way of the sightless, and attracted Great Night Moth's attention. He picked up his new gun and while all were petrified with fear of being the target, he shot the blind man so that his body fell into the oven in which the pig had been baked. The people could only laugh loudly, if ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... tho' in worlds which sightless cycles run, Link'd to a little system, and one sun— Where all my love is folly and the crowd Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud, The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath— (Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?) What tho' in worlds ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Berlioz put it, stood at the window of his grave, regarding and mocking the world in which he had no further part. But his fury waned, he fell back as in a stupor, and lay silent, little twitches passing over his sightless face. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... ceased, the bull raised his gory, sightless head, and with a horrid roar ran headlong across the arena. With great leaps and bounds he came, straight toward the arena wall directly beneath where we sat, and then accident carried him, in one ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the return of strength and vigour, and the concentration of my views upon one object, gradually brought back my old passion, which at length became as firmly established as it was before. The elasticity of my original feelings being thus restored, I ventured, alone and sightless, upon my dangerous and novel course; and I cannot look back upon the scenes through which I have passed, the great variety of circumstances by which I have been surrounded, and the strange experiences with which I have become familiar, without an intense ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... treatment of the Emperor, and subsequently deprived of his nose, ears, hands and feet, and sent to Dehli. Death came to his relief upon the road, it is believed by his being hanged upon a tree 3rd March, 1789, and the mangled trunk was sent to Dehli, where it was laid before the sightless monarch, the most ghastly Nazar that ever was presented ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... ask,' he said, turning towards where Barnaby stood looking on, 'that one who has the gift of sight, would lay this out for me in bread to keep me on my way? Heaven's blessing on the young feet that will bestir themselves in aid of one so helpless as a sightless man!' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... terrible form that had been Druse sat up in bed with a mighty effort, and turned its sightless eyes joyfully toward Miss De ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... with exceeding persistence, he put the smallest bit of ointment on my right lid and, as I opened wide my eyes, lo and behold! both were stone-blind: naught could I see for the black darkness before them and ever since that day have I been sightless and helpless as thou foundest me. When I knew that I was blinded, I exclaimed, "O Darwaysh of ill-omen, what thou didst fore tell hath come to pass;" and I fell to cursing him and saying "O would to Heaven thou hadst never brought me to the hoard or hadst given ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a bond of sympathy. No doubt this break in the monotony of her life gave fresh courage to the fair young woman. The gentle, sightless poet relaxed the severe hours of study. Instead of grim digging in musty tomes they talked: he sat by her bedside holding the thin hands (for the blind see by the sense of touch), and they talked for hours—or were silent, which served as well. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... about them, conscious only of the sunlight and the rain, with no imaginative knowledge, it would seem, or sympathy with their brethren. It always filled Hugh with a sort of pity to think of the sightless life of trees and flowers, each rising in its place, in plain, on hill, and yet each enclosed within itself, with no consciousness of its own beauty, and still less conscious of the beauty of its fellows. And what was the life that animated them? Where did it come from? ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in a new hell; Lest it be you, lip-worshippers of Truth, Who break the heart of youth; Lest it be you, the realists, who fight With shadows, and forget your own pure light; Lest it be you who, with a little shroud Snatched from the sightless faces of the dead, Hoodwink the world, and keep the mourner bowed In dust, real dust, with stones, real stones, for bread; Lest, as you look one eighth of an inch beneath The yellow skin of death, You dream yourselves discoverers of the skull That old memento ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... labour, to marry, eat strong flesh, and beget strong children—the power of doing all this would pass away with youth, which was terribly transitory. I bethought me that a time would come when my eyes would be bleared and perhaps sightless; my arms and thighs strengthless and sapless; when my teeth would shake in my jaws, even supposing they did not drop out. No going a-wooing then, no labouring, no eating strong flesh and begetting lusty children then; and I bethought me how, when all ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... the wolf-man, pricked up against the vaguely lustrous background of the river, fascinated me. For all the world those pointed ears seemed to be listening. But I knew they were dead and dried; that a man's eyes were gazing through the sightless sockets ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... at last, coming across the little open space which he was watching. He squatted down. His feathers ruffled up until he was like a ball. His almost sightless eyes glowed like two bluish pools of fire. Ten feet away, Baree stopped for a moment and licked his wound. Oohoomisew waited cautiously. Again Baree advanced, passing within six feet of the bush. With a swift hop and a sudden thunder of his powerful wings the ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... heavy hands. He could no longer see to read; he, the great walker who loved to ramble alone, could barely grope his way about; all that was left to him of sight was the ability to recognise well-known figures standing in a strong light. Yet he still continued to preach; standing grey and sightless in the pulpit, uttering what words (perforce unstudied) came to his lips. Himself in his sorrowful age and stern endurance a ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... that had been flung into the harbour the night before, and had not been immersed long enough to rise to the surface, floated past with the tide, and its sightless eyeballs and ghastly row of teeth glared and glistened on him, as it surged against his front-glass. A slight spirt of water came through the regulating cock at the same instant, as if the dead cat ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Carrados's sightless eyes had the one quality of concealing emotion supremely. "Oh," he commented softly, "always; and it was quite a saying, was it? And why was it ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... the handkerchief round the sightless eyes. Having done so, he said to the nurse with unintentional quotation from the Gospel of St. John, and a sad irony: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ceiling above him split across. Then he plunged through the window, and staggered across the lawn with his burden—falling beside it at last, spent and breathless, his throat parched with smoke, and his eyes almost sightless. But he picked himself up presently and went back. All the rooms were blazing now. The side verandah had not yet caught, and on it he saw an old oaken chest that did double duty as a seat and as a wardrobe for Bob's spare clothes. The sight brought fresh ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... her; she still leading him by the hand, like a child. Like a child, or rather like a blind man, he sat down in the chair which she placed for him. His eyes did not move from her face; but they looked almost like sightless eyes. Hetty stood before him, with her hands clasped tight. Neither spoke. At last Dr. Eben ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... entreated thee to spare his life? Oh, cunning heart! Thou liest before high heaven! It is not pity's voice impels thee now! Why was I doomed to look into his eyes! To mark his noble features! With that glance, Thy crime, thy woe commenced. Unhappy one! A sightless instrument thy God demands, Blindly thou must accomplish his behest! When thou didst see, God's shield abandoned thee, And the dire snares ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... by some great hour, will rise, Slow-limbed, to meet the light or find his love; And, breathing long, with staring sightless eyes, Hands out, head back, agape ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... a broad smile crossed the lovely sightless features and even the dulled orbs radiated a little as Henriette excitedly told the details of ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... of Father Feral while I was going, but it was nothing to what I saw when I entered his room. The poor old man, blind and bald, was sitting in an arm-chair behind the stove, his head bowed upon his breast, and his sightless eyes open, and staring as if he saw his three sons stretched at his feet. He did not speak, but great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead on his long, thin cheeks, while his face was pale as that of a corpse. Four or five of his old comrades of the times of the Republic—Father Desmarets, Father ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... moment light seemed to come back to those sightless eyes, and with a purr, as if it understood, the great cat leaped lightly on to the table and sat before De Mouchy, whilst the latter put one finger on ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... waited in their places to give us another chance of meriting heaven; and at the church door still crouched the old beggarwoman. I saw now that the imploring eyes she lifted were sightless, and I could not forbear another alms, and as I put my copper big-dog in her leathern palm I said, "Adios, madre." Then happened something that I had long desired. I had heard and read that in Spain people always said at ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Sang the foemen with their broadswords? Sang the heroes with their weapons, Sang the eldest, sang the youngest, Sang the middle-aged, enchanted; Only one he left his senses, He a poor, defenseless shepherd, Old and sightless, halt and wretched, And the old man's name was Nasshut. Spake the miserable shepherd: "Thou hast old and young enchanted, Thou hast banished all our heroes, Why hast spared this wretched shepherd?" This is Lemminkainen's answer: "Therefore have I not bewitched thee: ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... light streaks this world of darkness with multicolored shafts, animal light produced by living organisms. In the lowest abysses sightless creatures are very scarce, contrary to the common opinion, which imagines that almost all of them lack eyes because of their distance from the sun. The filaments of the carnivorous trees are garlands of lamps; the eyes of the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the mountains the chill knowledge of death wailed through the window, and over the heads of the crowd. All the figures were upright now in the little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean over and close the sightless eyes. This done, she came to the door and opened it, and motioned for the Healer to leave. He hesitated, hearing the harsh murmur from the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she motioned, and he came. With a face deadly pale she surveyed the people before her silently ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... immediately. Was it he himself who had spoken? No, the words had come unsought to his lips, the Spirit had spoken. He closed his eyes in an effort of silent prayer, his face still raised towards the moon, as a blind man lifts his sightless eyes towards the silver ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... large cap. She had the mobile face frequent in those whose sight has decayed by stages, has been laboriously striven after, and reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent in persons long sightless or born blind. Tess walked up to this lady with her feathered charges—one sitting ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... They say she will probably live, which seems impossible. She looks like a galvanized corpse—yet must have been a good-looking child. Notwithstanding the nature of her wound, her reason has not gone, and as she sat upright in her little bed, with her head bandaged, and her fixed and sightless eyes, she answered meekly and readily to all the questions we put to her. Poor little thing! she was shocking to look at; one of the many innocent beings whose lives are to be rendered sad and joyless by this revolution. The doctor ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... this ample field Try what the open, what the covert yield: The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... living man, bearing a shield with an oak and a lion done thereon. There was Wealth-eker, on whose shield was done a golden sheaf of wheat. There was he who bore a name great from of old, Folk-wolf to wit, bearing on his shield the axe of the hewer. There they hung, dusty, befouled, with sightless eyes and grinning mouths, in the dimmed sunlight of the Hall, before the eyes of that victorious Host, stricken silent ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... throat rattled, and stretching himself out with a long shivering sigh—he died! The first beams of the rising sun, piercing through the dark, moss-covered branches of the pine-trees, fell on his clustering hair, and lent a mocking brilliancy to his wide-open sightless eyes: there was a smile on the closed lips! A burning, suffocating sensation rose in my throat, as of rebellious tears trying to force a passage. I still held the hand of my friend and enemy—it had grown cold in my clasp. Upon it sparkled my family diamond—the ring SHE had given ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Sholto was left whining on the platform, and it was as much as Angus could do to hold him back. Poor Sholto; he was a faithful beast, and they were taking his beloved mistress away from him. Myra sat back in the carriage, and furtively wiped away a tear from her poor sightless eyes. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... ignorant and indifferent; those who "sightless soar" are the presumptuous who reason blindly about things too high ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the feet—as Mr. Narkom guided it across the pavement to the door, suggested either great age or a state of total blindness: an affliction, by the way, of such recent date that the sufferer had not yet acquired that air of confidence and that freedom of step which is Time's kind gift to the sightless. ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... privation. Her eyes, large and clear, had a strange quality: extinguished for ever to her, to others they were brilliant. They were mysterious torches lighting only the outside. They gave light but possessed it not. These sightless eyes were resplendent. A captive of shadow, she lighted up the dull place she inhabited. From the depth of her incurable darkness, from behind the black wall called blindness, she flung her rays. She saw not the sun without, but her ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the pump an old woman sat shelling peas. Her form was thin but erect and her hair snowy white. She moved with alertness, and as the girl dismounted and approached her she raised her head and turned a pleasant face with deep-set, sightless gray eyes ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... the horse's neck. Even that movement probably checked him, for he reared, and before his feet touched the ground again I was close to him; with a frantic effort I caught his bridle, and swept his head round. Mariamne fell, voiceless, sightless, and breathless, into my arms. The spot where she was saved was within a single bound ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... for the improvement of his interpretations which commended itself to his imagination and his judgment. From a blind man came the most illuminating criticism of his Shylock. The sensitive ear of the sightless hearer detected a fault in Henry Irving's method of delivering the opening line ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... awe at these huge-modeled limbs, Shrunk in death's narrow house, but hinting yet Their ancient majesty; these sightless rims Whose living eyes the eyes of Helen met; The speechless lips that ah! what tales might tell Of earth's morning-tide when gods did dwell Amidst a generous-fashioned, god-like race, Who dwarf our puny semblance, and who won The secret soul of Beauty for their own, While all ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the closely set chairs and tables to the pavement. The sightless stare of light-blanched spectacles met his eyes. A gentlemanly-looking lady in short skirts ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... gave a ring to me Of gold wrought curiously, A ring which she had worn Since the day I was born, She once had said to me: I slipped it on my finger; Her eyes were keen to linger On my hand that slipped it on; 140 Then she sighed one rattling sigh And stared on with sightless eye:— The one who loved me ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... that when he looked at one lamp, another lamp close to it on the right was completely eclipsed—and he soon found that a portion of his right eye, not far from the centre, was totally sightless. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... sound enough; so now was the time to labour, to marry, eat strong flesh, and beget strong children—the power of doing all this would pass away with youth, which was terribly transitory. I bethought me that a time would come when my eyes would be bleared, and, perhaps, sightless; my arms and thighs strengthless and sapless; when my teeth would shake in my jaws, even supposing they did not drop out. No going a wooing then, no labouring, no eating strong flesh, and begetting lusty children then; and I bethought me how, when all this should be, I should ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... my days sightless, Mary, I knew I could not come to you again; but Heaven has willed it otherwise. It has been a long, long waiting, hopeless till within the last month, and it was only within the past few days that the doctor told me that all was safe, and I might ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... allowed to lead him was an honor and pleasure. He made us acquainted with Homer, and taught us ancient and modern history. To this day I rejoice that not one of us ever thought of using 'pons asinorum,' or copied passage, though he was perfectly sightless, and we were obliged to translate to him and learn by heart whole sections of the Iliad. To have done so would have seemed as shameful as the pillage of an unguarded sanctuary or the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Socrates describes the incident, the disputes were running so high, from the mere pleasure of argument, that there seemed likely to be no end to the controversy, when suddenly a simple-minded layman, who by his sightless eye or limping leg bore witness of his zeal for the Christian faith, stepped among them and abruptly said, "Christ and the apostles left us not a system of logic nor a vain deceit, but a naked truth to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... in the dark—deep down in the dark, With the terror of death in each sightless eye, Which tells how hard 'tis to burn and die ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the sleeves of the ferioul terminate; his under limbs were short in comparison with his body and arms; his legs were bare, but he wore blue kandrisa as far as the knee; every features of his face was ugly, exceedingly and bitterly ugly, and one of his eyes was sightless, being covered with a white film. By his side on the ground was a large barrel, seemingly a water-cask, which he occasionally seized with a finger and thumb, and waved over his head as if it had been a quart pot. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... stood Spell-bound the mighty multitude, Rested its long and gilded walls Upon two pillars' capitals: His brawny arms, with labor spent, He threw around the pillars there, And to the deep blue firmament Lifted his sightless ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... laborious honours of the Stroerische farm, young Karl, to whom his gray-haired father was an object of the fondest and most reverential affection, beheld with horror the gradual advances of the disease which was about to render the remaining years of life a burden to the sightless man. With the fractiousness of advancing age and growing infirmity, old Philipp obstinately refused to seek the assistance of any learned leech of the country round. Brannau and Burchhausen boasted each of a chirurgic wonder, but Stroer misdoubted or defied their skill. "His frail ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... who had been taken on board but he obtained little information. And yet he could not be content. It became a regular thing for Vivian to be seen, day after day, in the shipowners' offices, at Lloyd's, at the docks, asking eagerly for news, or, more frequently, turning his sightless eyes and anxious face from one desk to another, as the careless comments of the clerks upon his errand fell upon his ear. Sometimes his secretary came with him: sometimes, but, more seldom, a lady. For Angela was living with him now, and she was as anxious about ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... heart speaks. In the poet's vision, to blind Homer, falling into the bog, torn by the thorns and thickets and lost in the forest and the night, came the young goddess, the daughter of Light and Beauty, to take the sightless poet by the hand and lead him up the heavenly heights. Sometimes intellect seems sightless and wanders lost in the maze. Then comes the heart to lead man along the upward path. For even in its dreams the heart ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... bald-headed; suits in chancery were brought and decided, and those from the tailor were paid for; the ages came, like maiden aunts, uninvited, and lingered till they became a bore—and still Simprella, with the magician's curse upon her, conducted her sightless guide through ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... pursue. It worried, it finally quite broke him up, for it proved, of all the conceivable impressions, the one least suited to his book. He was kept in sight while remaining himself—as regards the essence of his position—sightless, and his only recourse then was in abrupt turns, rapid recoveries of ground. He wheeled about, retracing his steps, as if he might so catch in his face at least the stirred air of some other quick revolution. It was indeed true ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... to the Queen with her eyes streaming, but Katharine stood silent and like a statue with sightless eyes. Her lips smiled, for she thought of her Redeemer; for this woman she had neither ears ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... Slowcum's very thin hand. Miss Slowcum's face looked decidedly jealous, for she would have dearly liked to have been herself in Mrs. Dredge's interesting and sympathizing position. Mrs. Mortlock raised her almost sightless eyes to the fat little woman's face, and remarked in a slightly ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... mechanical and rhythmic regularity, a step and a blow, from one end of the long barn to the other. The half-blind thresher could see the outline of the open door against the sunlight, and his steps and voice guided his sightless fellow-worker. Thus healthful and useful employment was given to two stricken waifs through the use of primitive methods, which no modern machine could ever have afforded; and the blue sky and bay, with autumnal sunshine on the piled-up golden wheat on floor and in rack, idealized ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... safety. There, his limbs unbound, his tongue unloosed, Murray indulged in a blast of malediction on the road, the company, the government, his comrades, even his benefactors, and then thoughtfully demanded drink. There was no longer a stern corporal to forbid, for Connelly, suffering and almost sightless, had been led into a rear coach. But there was no longer money with which to buy, for Foster's last visible cent had gone up in smoke and flame, and, scorched and smarting in a dozen places, wrapped in a blanket in lieu of clothes, ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... differ from the bear, or from any other creature which walks the earth, and even at that supreme moment a shudder of horror passed over me as I observed that the eyes which glistened in the glow of my lantern were huge, projecting bulbs, white and sightless. For a moment his great paws swung over my head. The next he fell forward upon me, I and my broken lantern crashed to the earth, and ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Thus he spake; and towards him the aged sire opened his sightless eyes, and lifted them up and replied ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... and heavily; his eyes never unclosed; she felt tempted to raise the lashes, as she would lift up and peep under the lids of a child. Ah! but she feared to see the balls sightless and glazing over fast. The marked, lively face was placid as if it were set in death, and the slight contraction between the brows, which she had remarked the first night she saw him, was almost effaced. How dreadful it would be if he died on her knees there, in the solitude ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the public. I told this to Captain Towse, and he replied kindly that I should soon learn much greater things about the blind. At St. Dunstan's, he said, there were about three hundred men, all more or less sightless, making baskets, mats, hammocks, nets, bags, and dozens of other useful articles, mending boots, doing carpentry, learning the poultry business, fitting themselves for massage work, and, what seemed to me most incredible, taking ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... the temple laid His desperate hands, and in its overthrow Destroyed himself, and with him those who made A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, Expired, and thousands perished in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... though he had not heard. She waited. After a moment he opened the door, and, on the landing, the sightless woman of marble appeared, draped to the chin, thrusting blindly at them a cluster ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart. Never quick to detect the course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his blindness. There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot hungering for tidings, "as the Red Sea for ghosts," and swayed hither and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested reporters. At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or misrepresent. On February ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... lone sea-shore, Where billows toil for ever 'mid the rocks, Scourged on by winds in stormy equinox, Rise! rise in haste, or slumber evermore! The stern Earth calls thee, and the Ocean mocks; Roll thy poor sightless orbs about the sky, Through tears of blind and powerless agony; Rise! rise in ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... out upon Grim's brow, and his great breast labored. Slowly he stooped down, drew the dead body out of the water, and tenderly laid it across his knees. He stared into the sightless eyes, and murmuring a blessing, closed them. There was a large discolored spot on the forehead, as of a bruise. Grim laid his hand softly upon it, and stroked away the yellow tuft ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... which was advanced, a long, lotus-headed sceptre, while her painted eyes stared fixedly at the darkness. Crouched upon the ground, at the feet of the statue, scribe fashion, sat my great-uncle Tanofir, a very aged man with sightless eyes and long hands, so thin that one might see through them against the lamp-flame. His head was shaven, his beard was long and white; white too was his robe. In front of him was a low altar, on which stood ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... applauded; traitors canonized; anarchy inaugurated; monarchy calculating the end of republicanism; and the wheels of government clogged by the minions of despotism! All this, my Countrymen, and you passive, silent, sightless; reckless of your own and your children's doom? And while all this is true, you go about your usual avocations, as though the eyes of the civilized world were not upon you; as though the great, the good, the magnanimous of all lands were not breathless, and spell-bound, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... thoughts—from far where I abide— Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Save that my soul's imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel (hung in ghastly night, Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... heard from Jim and Haney constantly haunted him. He could not drive them away. In imagination he saw himself lying on the white, hot sands with open mouth, protruding tongue, black face and sightless eyes. The picture sent a thrill of horror through him and moved his dizzy, flagging brain to fresh resolution. He stumbled on through the blazing, parching, cruel heat, sometimes falling and lying motionless for a time, then pulling himself up and going on with will newly braced by the fear that ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... have a great obscurity for those, who have never disciplined and strengthened this ulterior consciousness. It must in truth be a land of darkness, a perfect Anti-Goshen, for men to whom the noblest treasures of their own being are reported only through the imperfect translation of lifeless and sightless motions. Perhaps, in great part, through words which are but the shadows of notions; even as the notional understanding itself is but the shadowy abstraction of living and actual truth. On the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and in the uncertain light it was not easy to tell where the cloak ended, and the stain that embrued the snow began. On the other side of the block a decapitated head stood mounted on an upright pike, and the sightless eyes of Ramiro del' Orca looked from his grinning face upon the town of Cesena, which ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... man succumbed to the stupor of unconsciousness. Men choked, strangled, and even died while their leader, his hair burnt and his eyes almost sightless, face and body raw with agonizing wounds, crept feebly about his ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... wayfare until he entered a city and found him a lodging. When this was done he fell to threading the streets and ways crying aloud the while, "I am the Leach, the Healer![FN446] I am the Mediciner who can cure the blind!" whereat all the one-eyed and the sightless would summon him with outcries and he would apply to them somewhat of his leaves; and after two or three days (he superintending the while) they would open their eyes and see. On this wise went by a term of time until at last the King of that city heard rumour of a new leach; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Capys, Capys, the sightless seer; From head to foot he trembled As Romulus drew near. And up stood stiff his thin white hair, And his blind eyes flashed fire: "Hail! foster child of the wondrous nurse! Hail! son of the ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... found her seated, as of old, In her accustom'd place, A midnight in her sightless eyes, And morn upon ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped, and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth in an habitual smile, which was in turn so flatly contradicted by every other line of her careworn face that it seemed gratuitously artificial. Her figure was hidden by ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... "Lillias" pass'd with fairy step, in hood and mantle green, Her sire, "Redgauntlet's" eagle eye is fixed on her, I ween; And "Wandering Willie" doffs his cap, to raise his sightless eye To Heaven, and cried, "God rest his soul in yonder ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... what he did before—at first. There were no airy cloud-boats, no far-reaching sky, no birds, or murmuring forest brooks in his music this time. There were only the poverty-stricken room, the dirty street, the boy alone at the window, with his sightless eyes—the boy who never, never would know what a beautiful world ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... darkness of his southern nature, so different from her own, exposing itself now in its passional vulnerability, made her go white with a kind of fear. For an instant, her face seemed drawn and old as she looked down at him, answering his questions. Then her eyes became sightless with tears, she stooped as if to look at his writing, and quickly kissed his fingers that held the pen, there in the midst ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... my dear. You must excuse me"—here Major Brooks turned as if seeing me with his sightless eyes. "But understand that I like you far better for owning up. There are men—there is a clergyman in our neighbourhood for one—capable of pretending a knowledge of Latin which ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Year! From sightless eyes you force this tear; Sorrows you've heaped upon my head, Losses you've gathered to drive me wild, All that I lived for, loved, are dead,— Brother and sister, wife and child, I, too, am perishing as well; I shall share the ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... degrees he appeared to recover; I gave him more of the contents of the pannikin, and at last he could speak, although with great pain and difficulty. As he did so he put his hand to his side. He was indeed a ghastly object, with his sightless eyeballs, his livid lips, and his face ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... don't want any breakfast, you poor, sightless lamb," she moaned. "And I don't blame you. Oh, Keithie, Keithie, when I see you lying there like that, with your poor useless eyes—! But you must eat, dear, you must eat. Now, come, just a weeny, ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... new-born babe, Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... receiving something in his hands borne by the silence. Then he picked up his staff and his can. He turned round and faced me for a moment before resuming his journey. There was a smile on his lips and a strange radiance in his sightless eyes, and I wished that I, too, might see what he ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... soul present and at work, and not merely in its effects as character. As types of character, the lineaments of the face were explored by the later Greek Art as profoundly as the rest of the body. But the statue is sightless,—its eyes do not meet ours, but seem forever brooding over a world into which the present and its interests do not enter. To the Greek this was no defect; but to us the omission seems to affect the most vital point of all, since our conception of the soul involves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... thou then sightless from thy birth? Evil, methinks, and long Thy pilgrimage on earth. Yet add not curse to curse and wrong to wrong. I warn thee, trespass not Within this hallowed spot, Lest thou shouldst find the silent ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... were burning briskly. Presently it could also be seen that the south end of the roof was bending of its own weight. It bent first just a little—then more. Then for a long moment it hung motionless, or with but the faintest quiver of vibration. Then, out of the sightless cavern came the screeching sound of metal scraping upon metal—a wild sound, like the torture of some inarticulate thing; a dull, grinding noise followed, and at last, out of the steaming furnace which the lower part of the train shed was now become, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... etoile and vista were the mode. I think there is[5] still one subsisting even now, if I remember right, in Kensington Gardens. Such symmetry is really a soft repose for the eye, wearied with following a soaring falcon through the half-sightless regions of the air, or darting down immeasurable precipices, to examine if the human figure could be discerned at such a depth below one. Model of elegance, exact Turin! where Italian hospitality first consoled, and Italian arts first repaid, the fatigues of my journey: ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... in the hurry of his terror, and they two were alone. The friar was a small, mean-looking man, feeling his way by the aid of hand and staff; his face upturned, craving the light. He stopped when he came up with Hilarius, and turned his sightless eyes on him; a fire ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... He believed his only companions to be the body of the half-breed who had died for him as he had lived for him, and the severed head of a newer comrade who had not betrayed him. The body lay almost at his feet; the head had been wedged in the sand so that its sightless face was turned toward him in the dreadful, lidless staring gaze of sudden death. And those two were companions with whom he could better have dispensed, even ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... kotch its breath at them awful words, and sot there rooted and grounded; and she turnt and looked around defiant-like with them sightless eyes, and strode off down the ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... horrible head had smashed in search of food. One entrance port was torn open, and the head itself still hung where it had lodged. The mouth gaped flabbily open; above it was the suction cup that formed a snout; and above that, a row of staring, sightless eyes. Chet had slammed into the mass of serpents just in time, Harkness realized. Just in time, or just ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... massacred, still stretched in their gore, one stoops over a sister; another sees his child; a wife weeps by the side of her husband, her hot tears mingling with his yet warm blood; while brother bends down to gaze into the eyes of brother, which, glassy and sightless, cannot reciprocate ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... massive, and Tom recognized the framework of the long arms and grand shoulders and chest which he had so often admired in the son. His right leg was quite stiff from an old wound on the knee cap; the left eye was sightless, and the scar of a cutlass travelled down the drooping lid and on to the weather-beaten cheek below. His head was high and broad, his hair and whiskers silver white, while the shaggy eyebrows were scarcely ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes |
