"Uncomprehending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw ahead on the street not a human form, saw no face at any door of any house. I wondered over this, wondered uncomprehendingly. I had never seen the street of Vediamnum. wholly deserted, not even in rains much harder than that which descended on us. Still wondering, still uncomprehending, when we were far enough into the village for the travelling carriage to be already between the first houses, I saw fall across the roadway, in front of me, two stout trunks of trimmed trees, straight like pine trees; I heard the crash as they jarred on the stones of the stream-side wall, I ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... yellow sun and to the glance of that most obnoxious type of countryman who lives near a metropolis and has attained its cheap smartness without its urbanity. A dozen of these yokels, red-eyed, cheerless as scarecrows, saw the incident. Dimly it passed across their confused and uncomprehending minds, taken at its broadest for a coarse joke, at its subtlest for a "shame." Meanwhile there upon the platform a measure of brightness faded ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... right to come back and murder you. [He stops to listen. Hearing no sound, he closes the door behind him and comes forward to the table. He throws himself into the rocking-chair—despondently.] There's no one here, I'm thinking, and 'tis a great fool I am to be coming. [With a sort of dumb, uncomprehending anguish.] Yerra, Mat Burke, 'tis a great jackass you've become and what's got into you at all, at all? She's gone out of this long ago, I'm telling you, and you'll never see her face again. [ANNA stands up, hesitating, struggling between joy and fear. ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... said Mark, going off at a tangent. He felt that there were too many points of resemblance between his own father and God to make it prudent to persevere with the discussion. On the subject of his father he always found his mother strangely uncomprehending, and the only times she was really angry with him was when he refused out of his basic honesty to admit that he ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... opened, and the girl looked round with wild, uncomprehending gaze, then her eyes grew steady, and a moment later fixed themselves upon Stane. He waited, saw wonder light them, then, in a voice that shook, the girl asked: "How ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... murmured to herself, in uncomprehending revery, "he said he was a workingman—and he knew that I was very, very rich. He knew my father would have rewarded him magnificently, given him money, work, anything he might have asked. And yet, and yet—he would not even tell his name. And he refused ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... the girl rested passive in uncomprehending astonishment; then abruptly she exerted herself to break free from the supporting embrace, but found the effort wasted for lack of opposition, so that her own violence sent her reeling away half a dozen paces, to bring up against the desk; while Lanyard, making no move more than to drop ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... in all men, and that truth freely put in circulation will win acceptance. It derives no less from the experience, which has shown that men are not likely to discover truth if they cannot speak it, except under the eye of an uncomprehending policeman. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... tails wagging, eyes gleaming, they stood with fore-feet upon the couch and bent to sniff Him who was so dear to them. So they stood for just one uncomprehending moment; then dropped, to the ground, shivering, as Touaa gave a little whine. Then they walked slowly round the couch, whining and sniffing as they went, and Touaa stayed a moment to lick the hand which had so often pulled her silky ears, and Iouaa rose for an instant upon ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... yesterday!" she repeated, aloud; and went on thinking to herself, "day before yesterday," in a sort of an uncomprehending way. She had pictured him seeking her at the very first hour, and he had lived under the same sky since day before yesterday; while only by accident had he stumbled upon her. Mademoiselle must have lied when she said, "Poor fool, ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... was so fluttered and bewildered that she lost all presence of mind, and stood in uncomprehending wonder, while Monica pushed authoritatively into the house, and beckoned the knight to bring Agnes and lay her on a sofa, when she and old Elsie ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... of the others' presence, Ferris dropped to one knee beside the uncomprehending dog. With his arm about Chum's neck, he bent close to the collie's ear ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... processes that led you into throwing your beloved pink parasol into Miranda Sawyer's well. Perhaps you feel equal to discussing the efficacy of spiritual self-chastisement with a person who closes her lips into a thin line and looks at you out of blank, uncomprehending eyes! Common sense, right, and logic were all arrayed on Miranda's side. When poor Rebecca, driven to the wall, had to avow the reasons lying behind the sacrifice of the sunshade, her aunt said, "Now see here, Rebecca, you're too big to be whipped, and I shall never whip you; but ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the neophytes that shook the very rafters— such a shout that Lisa shuttled across the room, and, sitting down on a stool at Mistress Mary's feet, looked up at her with a dull, uncomprehending smile. Why were those beloved eyes full of tears? She could not be displeased, for she had been laughing a moment before. She hardly knew why, but Mistress Mary's wet eyes tortured her; she made an ejaculation of discomfort and resentment, ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his white trousers, looked so eager and so uncomprehending that Avrillia evidently felt called upon ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... aroused by the shock, struggling about in his embedment, and finally sat up. Up? Down, I mean. Then he stood, on the ceiling, and began to walk! His nose had been bruised by the impact, and I noticed with uncomprehending wonder that the blood moved slowly upward over his lip. He saw the window, and walked across the ceiling to it upside down. There he pushed the top of the window down and leaned out, gazing up ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... unequal. The long tongues soon reached the roof of the large barn, which was filled with straw, nor could the flakes of burning thatch be kept from the stable, while the water of the pond was soon reduced to mud. Helpers began to flock in, but who could tell which were trustworthy? and all were uncomprehending. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a moment, uncomprehending. Then with a sob of gladness he reached out a hand, shoved over a lever. Mirrors of anti-entropy shifted, assumed different angles, and the Invincible sheered off. They were no longer retreating directly from the Sun, but at an angle quartering ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... behind him, uncomprehending, for the sheath-knife, which he wore, sailor fashion, in the middle of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... have struggled to do so, and are trying to do so to-day, with a sense always of guilt and shame in their minds, laying up mental difficulties for themselves, the psychologists tell us, by this repression. You know the type; you know the kind of person who becomes hard and narrow and uncomprehending. That is one type. You can read it in their faces. The pinched look, the cramped mentality reflects itself in the body and in the face. And then there is the other type, those who have rejected this ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... of you know the present whereabouts of the party?" persisted the policeman. Attacked on every side by insects, he was becoming rather pathetic in his discomfort and indignity. His small eyes, set in red fat, stared with uncomprehending protest; his fat busy hands were not agile enough to defend him. He felt unsuccessful and foolish, and very near the ground. He wished quite disproportionately to be at home with his ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... gets the impression of most regal natures, gifted with all the most divine elements of humanity, but subjected to a constant unnatural pressure from the ceaseless scrutiny and ungenial pertinacity of some inferior and uncomprehending person invested with the authority of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Hilda with a queer, uncomprehending gaze. She seemed scarcely to understand what was being ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... was about to hang up the receiver, with a blank and uncomprehending look on his face, when Babe caught the black rubber earpiece ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... devotional expression, that might have befitted an angel of charity. A priest and a lady were dispensing loaves and warm garments to the throng around; but each gift was accompanied by a gentle word from the lady, framed with difficulty to their homely English tongue, but listened to even by uncomprehending ears like a strain ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waiting patiently for the arrival of Pollyooly, while the baron slept in his deck-chair, listened to the discussion with uncomprehending ears. It did not occur to her to invite the be-tutored Hohenzollern to accompany her; but when she started, the prince, doubtful of the reception of a direct offer to escort her would receive, followed ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... sweet, uncomprehending smile. Ralph possessed himself of her hand. It was warm and steady—his ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... seven years' nakedness on all-fours! And so I told the fellow, who by some cunning calculations about wind, and sun, and so forth, which he imparted to my uncomprehending ears, brought me suddenly to the top of a little crag, below which, some hundred yards off, the whole herd stood, stags, hinds—but I can't describe them. I have not brought away a scrap of sketch, though we watched them full ten ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... was the only thing to be done. Barbara's instinct foresaw madness if we took her to the flat in St. John's Wood. Her father's house, her natural refuge, was equally impossible. For what explanation could we have given to the worthy but uncomprehending man? He would have called in doctors to minister to a mind afflicted with a disease beyond their power of diagnosis. Unless, of course, we made public the facts of the tragedy; which was unthinkable. Barbara's instinct pierced surely through the gloom. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... and he stopped. At Gilian, sitting still and seemingly uncomprehending, the Cornal looked as at a stranger. "So it is," said he; "just a wean! I forgot, some way. How old are you—sixteen? Nonsense! By the look of you I would say a hundred. Oh, you're an old-farrent one, sitting ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... through dinner an indefinitely unpleasant remembrance of the conversation lingered with Sylvia, and she sat silent for minutes at a time, returning to actualities with a long, curious side-glance across at Siward, and an uncomprehending smile of assent for whatever Quarrier or Major Belwether had ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... a lonesome, nervous little lady, and at these times only a little more fidgety than ever. Sometimes she cried because of Kenneth, in her room at night, and Ella braced her with kindly, unsympathetic, well-meant, uncomprehending remarks, and made very light of his weakness; but Emily walked her own room nervously, raging at Ken for being such a beast, and Mama ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... eyes was more than Olva could bear. It was dumb, uncomprehending misery, the unhappiness of something caught in a trap—and that trap this ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... for Tucson's glance at Leviatt's face was uncomprehending. But Leviatt did not wait ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... uncomprehending air, but the moment she saw what it was a flush of triumph and joy ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beauty and calling David's attention. Once she did point out a bird just leaving a stalk of goldenrod, its light touch making the spray to bow and bend. David had looked with unseeing eyes, and smiled with uncomprehending assent. Marcia felt she might as well have been talking to herself. He was not even the old friend and brother he used to be. She drew a gentle little sigh and wished this might have been only a happy ride with the ending at home, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... packing or unpacking—but never thought of returning it, no, not once! Which of the two, she wondered, had been right? Was it not an indirect slight to her that Nick should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Or was it not rather another proof of his finer moral sensitiveness!... And how could one tell, in their bewildering world, "It was not because we've quarrelled; we haven't quarrelled," she said slowly, moved by the sudden ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... form, stunned. In a few moments the police would be there. Instinctively we looked at Karatoff. Plainly he was nervous and overwrought now. His voice shook as he brought Errol out of the trance, and Errol, dazed, uncomprehending, struggled to take in the horribly unreal tragedy which ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... featured photos, projected testing dates—even ventured a possible date for launching, with the building of the Starship so near to completion. That had been a month ago. Now Dan stared at the ship and shook his head, uncomprehending. ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... us, uncomprehending. Kennedy picked up the crushed, unlighted cigarette and laid it in the palm of his hand beside another, half smoked, which he had ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... who through the dark days had watched with anxious though uncomprehending eyes her boy's dejection and hard effort to live it down, and had applied partridges and sweetbreads and other forms of devotion steadily but unsuccessfully, saw at once and with, rapture the change when the Governor greeted her the next ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... gave the excuse her heart longed for, and her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his eyes—uncomprehending at first, and then filled with a ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... move with our movements, pluck us uncomprehending from the station we had struggled for, and make our sorrowful meat of our attained desires! The stars in their courses pivot and swing on these subtle attractions, ancient as themselves. Judith Barrier, tearing the gaudy ribbon from ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... she was, and the need for haste desperate. Chris's hands were glued to the stick: his nerves were as tight as violin strings. Then, when only ten feet from the rack clamp, he gave a startled jump of uncomprehending amazement. ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... in the act of getting to their feet. A quick glance showed Cal none was hurt. Louie looked around, dazed and uncomprehending. There was not so much as a bent blade of grass to show where the ship's weight had pressed. Louie sank down suddenly on the ground and buried his face in ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Board were fixed upon Mr. Getz in excited expectation. But he was still heavily uncomprehending. Then the president, rising, made his formal announcement, ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... the heavier clothing he needed. But—he drew a long breath and asked himself one day why he should stay there. Why should he? He could not forbear a wry grimace when he tried to see himself carrying out his appointed task faithfully to the end—preaching vainly to uncomprehending ears month after month, year after year, stagnating mentally and suffocating spiritually in those silent forests where God and godly living was not a factor at all; where food, clothing, and shelter loomed bigger than anything else, because until these primary needs were satisfied a man could not ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... you would never know; but the gods, it seems," he could even laugh, "have ordained otherwise. 'Fata obstant.'" Still that startled, uncomprehending look on the girl's white face! He went on more quickly, like a man driven to bay. "You do not understand; you are credulous; take people for what they seem,—not for what they are; or ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... inward pronouncement filled me with grief. I felt that I could not bear to remain longer in Gorakhpur, only to see my brother removed before my helpless gaze. Amidst uncomprehending criticism from my relatives, I left India on the first available boat. It cruised along Burma and the China Sea to Japan. I disembarked at Kobe, where I spent only a few days. My heart was ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... wild cat of Benygant; casting foam from his mouth, and fire from his eyes"—from this man upwards and downwards. Some are highly finished, and these are not always the best. For example, the portrait of his father, the stiff, kindly, uncomprehending soldier, strikes me as a little too much "done to a turn." It is a little too like a man in a book, and so perfectly consistent, except for that one picturesque weakness—the battle with Big Ben, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... glory. In this sordid age, and with an uncomprehending public, you've had rare fortune in getting rid of your work, Dick. Your pictures are sellers, I hear. How proud your father would have been! My old friend was one of the few men I have known who set a ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... by his artless prattle. Standing out of the way, he had watched his captain walk the weather-side of the poop, he took full cognizance of his liking for that inexplicably strange man and saw him swerve towards the companion and go down below with sympathetic if utterly uncomprehending eyes. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... at her in uncomprehending astonishment. "Nay, dearest lady," he protested, "put this wild fancy from your mind. Your uncle would never accept me as your suitor; you would gain only dishonour by such a course. Bid me farewell, and forget me in the glory of your new life; and ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Jesus to make us believe. We die every day more deeply into empty, eternal death. We are hopelessly pulled apart. Our life will remain meaningless theatrics". As she ate, the girl looked on, with a cheerful look emanating from the uncomprehending reddish brown eyes on her clear face. Schulz had sunken into gloomy thoughts. The girl said that her whole life also was a spectacle, and therefore she didn't find it to be so meaningless. In the acting school, in which ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... goods, and abandoned themselves to a paroxysm of weeping despair, while the children shrieked stridently, victim of all the realistic horrors that only childhood can conjure. Most of the men looked on in silence, uncomprehending resignation on their faces, mute, pathetic figures. Poor moujiks! They didn't understand, but they took all uncomplainingly. Nitchevoo, fate had decreed that they should suffer this burden, and so they accepted ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... but it met with no response; no indication appeared to show that it awakened any feeling other than uncomprehending astonishment in one of his judges and derision in the other. And then, with a start, I caught sight of Ingra, standing close beside the throne, his face made more ugly by the grin ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... nearer facades of precipice; it reeled, drooped, and shuddered as if in hopeless horror. Probably, since the world began, no other fire lighted by man had struggled against the gloom of this tremendous amphitheatre. The darknesses were astonished at it, but they were also uncomprehending and hostile. They refused to be dissipated, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... there. Thousands pressed by him. The laughter and grumblings of life buzzed in his uncomprehending ears. No one noticed him. The continuous clang-clang-clang of the street cars grew to a rhythmic roar. Strange odors filled his nostrils. What held him most was the lights—the myriad lights that blinked away in perspective up Market Street, clusters of them, pillars of them, ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... enough, from the poor cow's eyes tears were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the grass: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. "Why have they done this thing to me?" they seemed ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... settled; so full of absorbing work; you are so flattered and appreciated that you are like a big ship anchored in a safe harbor, and you can't think what it's like to be a silly little yacht bobbing about on the open sea!" (Such is the uncomprehending viewpoint of twenty toward thirty; the calm assumption that ladies of that mature age can have no love-affairs of their own ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the applause. Again and again it broke out from all over the house, while the curtain rose and fell, and the conjurer stood on the stage, mute, uncomprehending. What had happened? At first he had thought they were mocking him, but it was impossible to misjudge the nature of the applause. Besides, the stage-manager was allowing him call after call, as if he were a star. When at length the curtain remained down, and the orchestra struck ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Keenan sprang at him. Frank at the moment, was marveling at the unbroken continuity of evidence linking her with her uncomprehending opponent. ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... her side, his head pillowed close to hers on the fragrant fir, she still lay awake, her eyes staring up at the golden stars, still fearful, uncomprehending. At last she was his, as he would have her,—wholly his, so she said, seeking comfort,—and thus kissing his brow, with a long, wondering sigh she fell asleep by ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... an imaginary spool from his pocket, spun it by means of an imaginary string, then sent it aloft and pretended to catch it dexterously. The cowboys watched him with grave, uncomprehending eyes. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... the eye, dashed past, and the protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the path of No. 99's flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with arms of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Dorothy, lovely in her young motherhood, carrying our boy, the tears running down her cheeks. She could not speak. She could only rub her cheek against mine, press her lips to mine, hold our little boy's laughing and uncomprehending lips to mine. We cried. We uttered ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the present age look upon this eccentric woman-worship with uncomprehending eyes. Perhaps we shall feel a little less bewildered when we meet it, stripped of courtly theories and mediaeval fashions, in some of the great men who are closely connected with our own period; in Michelangelo, in Goethe, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... who looks on at the great events of life with eyes that are almost indifferent, and in the depths of her soul treasured devoutly the afterglow of the wonderful hour through which she had lived—all uncomprehending. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... to raise his eyes from his hands, and there he beheld, seated in a far corner of the room a handsome giant, physically perfect. The creature looked about him in a dazed, uncomprehending manner. A great question was writ large upon his intelligent countenance. Professor Maxon stepped forward and took ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... under him, and thus he had much more opportunity of regulating the admission of visitors than at home; and he certainly often turned Mr. Fane in upon her, when she had intended that gentleman to be excluded, and contrived to turn a deaf or uncomprehending ear when she desired that there should be no admission of visitors unless her father was absolutely ready for them; and also there were times when he must have suggested an invitation to dinner, or a joining in a sail. No doubt Gregorio ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that met her eyes, as she opened the door, completed her undoing. There was Fauntleroy, with an uncomprehending grin on his cherubic face, pinching each separate leaf of her cherished sensitive-plant. Evidently the borrowed baby did not exactly understand the desperately funny quality of the act, but he knew it must be the funniest thing in the world, for the Madigans were writhing grotesquely ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Livid blotches met his gaze—the gums swollen and discoloured. He dropped back sick and pale, staring at his bulky comrade, dazed and uncomprehending. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Catia, as she now called herself, she was modern enough, distressingly so sometimes. Nevertheless, analyzed, she would not have seemed to Scott at all domestic. She was too much wrapped up in her own personal concerns, too uncomprehending in a spiritual crisis. Domesticity, to be practical, must consist of something else than mere ability to keep a house and to extract from the butcher the best cuts obtainable for one's income. One's spiritual bric-a-brac ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... With dull, uncomprehending gaze James Moore stared as bidden. There was the gray dog naked in the moonlight, heedless still of any witnesses; there the murdered sheep, lying within and without that distorted shade; and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Martha Hawn was standing in her porch with one hand above her eyes when they drove into the mouth of the lane. She came down to the gate, and Jason put his arms around her and kissed her; and when he saw the tears start in her eyes he kissed her again while Steve stared, surprised and uncomprehending. Again that afternoon Jason wandered aimlessly into the blue-grass fields, and again his feet led him to the knoll whence he could see the twin houses of the Pendletons bathed in the yellow sunlight, and their own proud atmosphere of untroubled calm. And again, even, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... group of five young people, three men and two girls. Of the girls, who are sisters, Effie Rutherglen is the more important and detailed figure. Effie, in the time before the story opens, had an affair with Oliver Bligh; then, summoned North to live with her futile and uncomprehending parents, she fell (as did her sister Milly and most of the local spinsters) under the fascination of one Clive Maxwell, who was an author and had appealing eyes and obviously a way with him. Then Oliver ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... brothers, and would be pretty sure to find his way to the water-hole at any risk, if it were only to vary the monotony and to see how the land lay. And so after one vain effort to free her hands, she stood still and listened, while Fisher poured into her unwilling, uncomprehending ears the story of his love for her, and then, since that made no impression, he warned her again and again against Gentleman Jim. Foolishly warned her—for was ever woman yet warned against the man she loved. An angry gleam flashed into Nellie's ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... uncomprehending, stunned. "I—I do that?" he whispered, half to himself. "Did you ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... continue to climb even if there were no views to be enjoyed from the tops. "I am free to confess," wrote A. F. Mummery, "that I would still climb, even though there were no scenery to look at." And Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond echoes this sentiment in a defiant challenge to their uncomprehending critics. "To further confound the enemy," she writes, "we do not hide the fact that were no view obtainable from the summit a true climber would ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... marched doggedly on, some looking puzzled and full of wonder, others tired but cheerful, others with expressionless, uncomprehending faces. But in the faces of a few I read a consciousness of the tremendous tragedy of which we formed a tiny part. We found the other Batteries in a house not yet marked down for burning. The house was crowded out already ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... moaned Vittoria. "We did not come to see this monstrous thing. Oliveta, spare yourself!" In the silence her voice sounded so loudly and shrilly that people on the adjoining balcony turned curious, uncomprehending ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Aissa also stepped nearer to them. They stood in a close group, and the two men could feel the calm air between their faces stirred by the light breath of the anxious woman who enveloped them both in the uncomprehending, in the despairing and wondering glances of her wild ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... up in bed dazed and uncomprehending, but the smile of the doctor brought him to a sense of where he was. The latter was not in the least surprised ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... at gaze, uncomprehending, too astonished for speech. We had come, even the unbelievers of us, prepared for the supernatural, for something surpassingly eery, and anything so commonplace as the smoke of a fire was a surprise greater than the sight ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... boy whispered. "They're always crowdin' me." His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child complaining of something beyond his experience. "I can't remember when they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always movin' me on. Moved me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris, and now they've shut me out of London. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... into machines. The object of a good trade school is precisely the reverse. It is the common school which makes people into machines, when it sends them directly from books, which do not explain the working world, out into that world to become uncomprehending appendages to minute processes ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... sprang to his feet, and as his thin lips parted into a forced, uncomprehending smile, Harry struck him with his fist, full in the face. Before Harry could draw back Shuter had seized him by the throat, and was fumbling in his pocket for an old sailor's knife which he was always known to carry; but before he could draw it he was swung violently ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... Delcasse stared, uncomprehending; but Lepine, his face suddenly illumined, snatched out his pocket-book and produced ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... critics who still deny the authenticity of this work, although they concede that it is full of Wagner's spirit and influence and may have been produced by some ardent follower or pupil; one steeped to the eyebrows in mythologic lore and capable of hurling titanic tonal eccentricities against the uncomprehending ear-drum of the dull and ignorant herd. There are those, too, who think that some disciple of Richard II.,—Strauss, not Wagner,—had a hand in the orchestration, simply because his "Sinfonia Domestica" occupies itself with the same sweet history of the ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... leads up from Jericho to Jerusalem; our Lord, far in advance of His followers, with a fixed purpose stamped upon His face, and something of haste in His stride, and that in His whole demeanour which shed a strange astonishment and awe over the group of silent and uncomprehending disciples. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... highest and most extensive views, and thence contracting an habitual greatness, possessed the truest fortitude, looking down indeed with a kind of disregard on human life and death. And then, declaring that the pattern of this City was laid up in Heaven, I sat down, amid the cheers of the uncomprehending little audience. ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... see how I'm dressed?" she half whispered. He looked, uncomprehending, at the long ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... daughter in her affliction. If the baby sister had only lived, the home might have been different; but alas! there was only a son,—a son who tried to be tender and sympathetic, but after all was nothing but a big, clumsy, uncomprehending man-creature, who ought to be felling trees, ploughing, sowing, reaping, or at least studying law, making his own fortune and that of some future wife. Old Mrs. Mason, a garrulous, good-hearted grandame, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Why, what do you mean?" he asked in uncomprehending astonishment, taking the boy on his knee; but when the little scamp had explained, the stupidest person in the world could not ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... dusty sheepskins, leaning on their staffs, looking down at the woman who had fallen out of their ranks. A gendarme elbowed his way through the crowd. He began to wave his arms and strike his boot with his whip, and shout at the weary-eyed, uncomprehending peasants. At last, two of them tucked their staffs under their arms and, leaning down, picked up the fainting woman. They carried her round to her cart and laid her down on the straw, her head on the lap of one of her children. For a moment the child looked down at her mother's ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... to see anything else. She had got herself separated from the rest of her party and she was wandering along about alone, seeking information regarding the whereabouts of the Farnese Bull from smiling but uncomprehending custodians and doorkeepers. These persons she would address at the top of her voice. Plainly she suffered from a delusion, which is very common among our people, that if a foreigner does not understand you when addressed in an ordinary tone, he will surely get your meaning if you screech at ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the naked skies Because a sorrow on dark midnight lies, Death, on the living world of sense; Because on my own land a shadow lies That may not rise; Because from bare grey hillside and rich city Streams of uncomprehending sadness pour, Thwarting the eager spirit's pure intelligence ... How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars On ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... man of sense with all his fanaticism One of his sayings is preserved "Odious is contentiousness in Kings, more odious vexation in judges uncomprehending a case; yet more odious is shallowness of doctors in religions and most odious are avarice in the rich, idleness in youth, jesting in age and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... confidence in her hearers, called "Home," packed up her slender belongings and sought for employment afresh, lavishing all her love on each successive batch of ingrates. Only His Majesty the King had repaid her affection with interest; and in his uncomprehending ears she had told the tale of nearly all her hopes, her aspirations, the hopes that were dead, and the dazzling glories of her ancestral home in "Calcutta, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... consider how much hangs upon what you say." When he left her, Louisa stood at the door watching him as he went along the passage towards her husband's room. It was a forlorn-hope; but still the unreasoning, uncomprehending heart took a little comfort from it. She watched his figure disappearing along the narrow passage with a thrill of mingled anxiety and hope; arguing with Gerald, though it was so ineffectual when ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs like sit, stand, and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park |
