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Unconsciousness   /ˌənkˈɑnʃəsnɪs/   Listen
Unconsciousness

noun
1.
A state lacking normal awareness of the self or environment.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unconsciousness" Quotes from Famous Books



... always unconscious, but this very unconsciousness is perhaps one of the secrets of their strength. In the natural world beings exclusively governed by instinct accomplish acts whose marvellous complexity astounds us. Reason is an attribute of humanity of too recent date ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... strange courage came over his spirit; and, with a reckless boldness, and rapid voice, a misty sight, and total unconsciousness of all other existence, he resumed the words which had broken out, as ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... car I had a flashing glimpse in that lurid light of an emerald-green deluge bursting in like a dark sky of solid water, and in that split-second before a crushing blow upon my back, even through that tangle of bedclothes, knocked me into unconsciousness, I seemed to hear again the hopeless note in the voice of my friend ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen

... Unconsciousness, therefore, is the very channel in which our animal nature works healthily and undisturbed according to its own laws. But you are a self-conscious being, and not as the animals. God keeps the keys of their nature in His own hands. They are shut up to certain ends which are in His purpose ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... was exactly what she wanted and the child returned "Here they are—here they are!" the unconscious subjects of so much attention, with a change of mind about their direction, quickly retraced their steps and precipitated themselves upon their critics. Their unconsciousness gave Mrs. Beale time to leap, under her breath, to a ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... garden party when the loss had been announced, that it fell unheeded on their ears. And afterward all the household was careful to keep the bad news from them. So the two children went on in blissful unconsciousness of Joel's trouble, while the grand hunt ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... joyous self-assertion and happy mingling. With such flowery guides to mark the way the path to slumberland is followed. Once within the bedroom, the poppies of the hangings spread drowsy influence, and the happy sleeper passes into unconsciousness, passes through the flowered border of the ancient square, into the scene beyond, becomes one of those storied persons in the enchanted land and lives with them in jousts and tourneys or in fetes champetres at lovely chateaux. The magic spell of the house of tapestries ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... in your mind the course of your thoughts for some time past; discover the cause of this revolution in your opinions; judge yourself; and remember, that in the mind as well as in the body, the highest pitch of disease is often attended with an unconsciousness of its existence. If, then, Lady V——, upon receiving my letter, you should feel averse to this self-examination, or if you should imagine it to be useless, I no longer advise, I command you to quit your present abode; come to ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... from employing a similar symbolism and similar motifs again; and, after the tremendous hit of Electra, he deliberately chose, for Alma y vida, his next effort, a subject and style which should discourage popular applause.[5] Such was the modesty, unconsciousness and ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... thy ready aid Afford, that short-liv'd triumph they may gain, While slumber holds the eyes of Jove; for I In sweet unconsciousness have drown'd his sense, Beguil'd by Juno, in whose arms ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... A. Bassin performed a surgical operation at Poughkeepsie, New York, on a boy whose heart was too weak to permit the use of an anaesthetic, and who was lulled into unconsciousness by the strains ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various

... or in the fir woods. Moidel might have told us ghost-stories in the barn at night, but there, in the solitary darkness, they appeared to her too horribly real, especially with sleepy auditors, who might any moment drop into unconsciousness, leaving her in a dismal fright ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... in the Swift home, as preparations were made for a serious operation on the aged inventor. Tom's father had sunk into deep unconsciousness, and was stretched out on the bed as though there was no more life in him. In fact, Tom, for the moment, feared that it was all over. But good old Dr. Kurtz, noting the look on the ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton

... pretenders. The Pharisees, on the other hand, are sure that they know everything that can be known about anything in the region of religion and morality, and in their absolute confidence of their absolute possession of the truth, in their blank unconsciousness that it was more than their official property and stock-in-trade, in their complete incapacity to discern the glory of a miracle which contravened ecclesiastical proprieties and conventionalities, in their contempt for the ignorance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... this, a shrill cry of despair burst from him, and the next instant he lapsed into unconsciousness from a ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... ghost and frightened Miss Chase into such a long spell of unconsciousness that I fear for ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller

... that has been settling for so many generations in those silent crypts and Falernian amphorae of the Past! No other writers speak to us with the authority of those whose ordinary speech was that of our translation of the Scriptures; to no modern is that frank unconsciousness possible which was natural to a period when yet reviews were not; and no later style breathes that country charm characteristic of days ere the metropolis drew all literary activity to itself, and the trampling feet of the multitude had banished the lark and the daisy from the fresh ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... after noon of the following day, when I awoke fresh as a bird and hungry as an ostrich. I was told several attempts had been made to rouse me, but they were unavailing; I answered, but slept on: for my own part, of this twenty-four hours of life I protest utter unconsciousness. I found that I had slept faster than the boat had progressed, for we were but fifty miles off our starting-place, having a certain portion of freight to take in at each ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... the next evening, when he joined his class-fellows at prayers. In spite of the half-promise Louis had obtained from them, a studied unconsciousness of his presence, and a chilling coldness, greeted him. Louis alone stood by him, and looked in the deadly white countenance by him with heartfelt sympathy and compassion; and glanced at several of his companions to remind them of his wish. Ferrers seemed hardly the same; the proud, bullying air of ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... Meantime, Estelle's unconsciousness lasted long enough to alarm even the doctor. He and Goody were doing all in their power, while Jack and Julien stood close by the sofa with anxious faces, but ready to do anything which might be possible for them. Oh, how often in that time of suspense did Goody wish that she had ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... uninterested in women's clothes, was noting the long, firm folds of her skirt. Vernon had turned from the window to approve the loving closeness of those violets against her hair. Lady St. Craye in her graceful attitude of conscious unconsciousness was ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... tell you of Gaspard Petrie, a great hulking bully of a man, who called himself "The Grizzly of the Athabasca," whose delight it was to pick fights and to beat his opponents into unconsciousness with his fists. And of how the mighty Petrie whose ill fame had spread the length of the three rivers, joined the brigade once at Fort McMurry and of how the boisterous Rene became the bright and ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... was not so great but the figure of Judge Temple could be seen, standing in his own grounds, and apparently contemplating, in perfect unconsciousness of the danger of his child, the mountain in flames. This sight was still more painful than the approaching danger; and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... the tank, too, though it is customary for women to occupy the left side, on this occasion they mingled freely with the men. I suppose it is impossible in England or America to conceive of such a state of unconsciousness. Yet it seems to be universal in Japan. It is doubtless explained by the custom, practiced from infancy, not only of public bathing, but also of living together so unreservedly. The heat of the ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... do? You'll be arrested, you know." She stood straight and slim as a boy, and the frank directness of her gaze had a boy's sexless unconsciousness. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... merely after unconsciousness had come to me that I found myself in his cell. My body, I knew, lay in the jacket back in my own cell. Although never before had I seen him, I knew that this man was Jake Oppenheimer. It was summer weather, and he lay without clothes ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... zeal for God and love for souls. It needs prayer from the senders and the sent, and firm reliance on Him who alone is the Author of conversion. Souls cannot be converted or manufactured to order. Great deeds are wrought in unconsciousness, from constraining love to Christ; in humbly asking, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? in the simple feeling, we have done that which was our duty to do. They effect works, the greatness of which it will remain for ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... wondered how it is with a man when he closes his life to this world. Looking upon the struggling efforts of a dying man to retain his hold upon his body, I had often wondered whether his sliding to unconsciousness was like the dissolving of the mind to sleep ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive,—nervous to an unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of possible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank—God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... proclaimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, he displayed with a cool self-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the whole history of mankind. He has used many people ill; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... negro house-servants remarked in Fownes not merely his customary unsocial silence, but an abstraction more obvious than usual. A gird or two from the rougher of his fellow-labourers was wholly unnoted by him, and though he ate heartily, it was with such entire unconsciousness of what he was eating as to make the cook, Sukey, who was inclined to favour him, question if after all he deserved special ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... too, lay flat on the ground, and, with heavy breathing, so feigned sleep that the aroused savage was deceived into believing the form beside him to be that of some restless comrade. So he turned over with a grunt, and again dozed into unconsciousness. ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... she does not know. And I have been ready to complain of the very unconsciousness ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... into a deep sleep; he was desperately tired; he had not slept at all last night. He was sunk into deep fathomless unconsciousness. Then he rose from that, climbing up, up, seeing before him a high, black, snow- tipped mountain. The ascent of this he must achieve, his life depended upon it. He seemed to be naked, the wind lashing his body, icy cold, so cold that his ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... successful in portrayals of childhood. Her small figures are simple, unaffected, with no suggestion of pose. They convey that delightful feeling of unconsciousness in the subject that is always so charming either in nature or in artistic expression. The pastel depicting the flaxen-haired child in blue dress drawing a tiny cart is exceedingly artistic, and the same may be said ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... more how much she could be to you.—It only needs-more understanding; and, if that's all, I really believe, Imogen darling, that you and Jack will be all right again. Perhaps," Mary went on with a terrible unconsciousness, "perhaps he has come to understand, already, better than you do,—I thought that, really, the other day,—and it's that that makes the sense of division. You are at different places of understanding. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... bending over a long object on the ground. He could smell chloroform strongly, and grasped the situation. The Viennese was administering the drug, his companions having left that duty for him to perform. No doubt the treacherous guardsman was lying calmly on his back, bound and gagged, welcoming unconsciousness with ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... instantly discharged a pistol with its muzzle in his mouth. The ball passed out at the top of his head, near the center of the skull, producing a fatal wound. The unhappy man lingered for a few days in a state of unconsciousness and died. Thus ended the stirring, troubled life of one who as a politician had occupied no inconsiderable ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... only find it; but who ever found the light, lying on a hard sofa, in pitchy darkness? Perhaps if she were to get up and move about things would seem less intolerable. And with the mere thought of action the tired frame relaxed, the straining eyes were sealed with sleep, the curtain of unconsciousness had fallen upon the troubled ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... assume them, would be an occasion for humour, if it were not an opportunity for indignation: though indeed it would take a very exceptionally sober-minded spectator not to get some fun out of the blissful self-satisfaction and unconsciousness which characterize the most negligent ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden

... sound asleep because it was several seconds before she fought her way through a sea of unconsciousness and opened heavy eyes upon ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler

... others being waking, dream-sleep and dreamless sleep. In this fourth state thought is one with the object of thought and, knowledge being perfect, there exists no contrast between knowledge and ignorance. All this sounds strange to modern Europe. We are apt to say that dreamless sleep is simply unconsciousness[52] and that the so-called fourth state is imaginary or unmeaning. But to follow even popular speculation in India it is necessary to grasp this truth, or assumption, that when discursive thought ceases, when the mind and the senses are no longer ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... gazing about her with that naive unconsciousness which "every wise man's son doth know" is one thing he may never trust in a woman. "It could not be more beautiful," she added, "and you must write me something about it, instead of wandering around our pasture-pond on winter nights till your imagination ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... reach of art'. Everything is diversified according to the demand of the moment, of the sounds, the sights, the emotions; the very uniformity of the outline is gently varied; and yet we feel that the whole is one and of the same character, the single and sweet unconsciousness of the heroine making all the rest seem more conscious, and ghastly, and expectant. It is thus that versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem, and vindicates the pains that have been taken to show ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... present would have credited him with, had taken off his big loose coat and laid it on the ground, and at once Varick had followed his example. But as Bubbles lay there, in the dreadful immobility of utter unconsciousness, both Blanche Farrow and Helen Brabazon believed her ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... rallying from the shock; they knelt around the seemingly lifeless woman, trying to arouse her. Presently she opened her eyes, and, seeing Mrs. Randall's face bending above her, said faintly: "It's Stephen! I always knew I should find him somewhere." Then she sank away again into unconsciousness. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... wilt but half succeed. The other half Is to forget the former, yea, thyself, Quenching thy moonlight in the blaze of day, Turning thy being full unto thy God. Be thou in him a pure, twice holy child, Doing the right with sweet unconsciousness— Having God ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... side and head. The one impact knocked the breath out of him; the other stunned him. Even in his unconsciousness, lying on his side and quivering, he made rapid, spasmodic movements of his legs as if running for'ard to Skipper. The boys looked on and laughed, and when he no longer quivered and churned his legs they continued to laugh. Born ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... ate it occurred to him that by dragging the table along the floor he could bring the key within his reach, but when he essayed to do so, he found that the table had been securely bolted to the floor during the period of his unconsciousness. Again Gahan smiled and shrugged and ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... wife's deliverance from the dangers of such an event came also his first great sorrow. His mother did not live to receive the news of her grandchild's birth. The letter which conveyed it found her still breathing, but in the unconsciousness of approaching death. There had been no time for warning. The sister could only break the suddenness of the shock. A letter of Mrs. Browning's tells what was to ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... in his dragoman. "For love and power are only two of the various paths to absorption, or unconsciousness of self; mere methods by which men of differing natures succeed in losing their self-consciousness, for he who, like Saint Francis, loves all creation, has no time to be conscious of loving himself, and he who rattles the sword and rules like ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... seemed little need of pastoral admonition in such a town as Peltonville Center. There was a grimly commonplace and universal goodness everywhere, and the village was only saved from unconsciousness of its own perfection by the individual shortcomings of one of its citizens. Fortunately for the general self-complacence, however, the necessary revealing contrast ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... longed for the time when his earthly work should be done, and he should be called to the presence of his Saviour—to reunion with his early-lost wife. And now, though in the unconsciousness of his exhausted powers he knew it not, that time had come. His "falling asleep" was as peaceful as the sinking of a child into its nightly slumber; and Lucy did not realize that it was death, till, in the dark December morning, she stood by the cold white couch ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... point of honour. In England, he could comfort himself by the reflection that "he had been taken while loyally doing his devoir," without any misgiving as to his conduct in the previous years, when he had prepared the disaster of Agincourt by wasteful feud. This unconsciousness of the larger interests is perhaps most happily exampled out of his own mouth. When Alencon stood accused of betraying Normandy into the hands of the English, Charles made a speech in his defence, from which I have already quoted more than ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the viands, and drinking a bottle of claret in like unconsciousness, he smoked for half an hour, his eyes vacantly set, his limbs lax and heavy, as though in the torpor of difficult digestion. When the cigar was finished, he roused himself, looked at the time, and asked for a railway guide. There was a train to Wimbledon at ten minutes past eight; ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... which acknowledges the evils that are in the world, but instead of looking for a "new heaven and a new earth" it looks for release in unconsciousness. It is the religion of doubt, and hopelessness, and despair. It ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous

... again lapse into sentiment, and he made himself fairly agreeable, in his somewhat stilted fashion. Ida accepted his attention with a charming unconsciousness; but she was perfectly conscious of Urania's vexation, and that gave a zest to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... wainscot, or to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I formed but an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very soon return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... according to a common expression, to be performed "instinctively." Those cases of languages, and of songs, learnt in early childhood and quite forgotten, being perfectly repeated during the unconsciousness of illness, appear to me only a few degrees less wonderful than if they had been transmitted to a ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... mercy. My experience has generally been, however," the same correspondent continues, "that the cruelty is unconscious. A woman just grows mad with the desire to squeeze or bite something, with a complete unconsciousness of what result it will produce in the victim. She is astonished when she sees the result and will hardly believe she has done it." It is unnecessary to accumulate evidence of a tendency which is sufficiently common to be fairly well known, but one or two quotations may be presented ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... language to all around him, and exerting all his moral and intellectual energies with a spirit and resolution that never flagged till within a few hours of his dissolution, when nature gave way and he sank into a tranquil unconsciousness in which life gently ebbed away. Whatever may have been the error of his life, he closed the scene with a philosophical dignity not unworthy of a sage, and with a serenity and sweetness of disposition of which Christianity itself could afford ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... voice of the spoiled child, "let me look again...let me see some more beautiful things...I have never seen anything so beautiful, even in my sleep!" It was the plaintive cry of the child whose happiest hours are those spent in unconsciousness. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... never knew exactly how it all occurred. They only knew at the time that there was a quick rush, a flash of weapons, a desperate struggle, then momentary unconsciousness. ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson

... seemed to realize her son's death, though, after paralysis took place, and she became speechless, I thought she recovered her memory in some degree. She survived him just four months, and, doubtless, was saved much grief by her unconsciousness of what had occurred. Poor old lady! she suffered little for a year past, and died, I hope, without pain. I have the consolation of knowing that I did all that could be done to promote her comfort. Russell, I would not live here for any consideration; nothing but a sense of duty has detained ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... received. One of the visiting doctors at the hospital took him home with him as an 'interesting case,' and then he discovered the indented bit of bone which was pressing upon the brain, and causing first the unconsciousness, and afterwards a complete lapse of memory. Poor old Cardo! the jolliest fellow in the world. What must he have felt when memory returned after a successful operation, and he realised that Valmai and his father were utterly ignorant of ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... and allured, one fact intruded of which we could not pretend unconsciousness, the intensity of our aversion for each other. Never could I behold my Imogene without marvelling whatever could have induced me to wed her, and she has acknowledged that she laboured under the like perplexity. On the other hand, our good opinion of ourselves ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... best. Profoundly stupefied by the contemplation of his own temerity, he yet returned unfaltering. He who had for so long plumed himself upon his strict supervision of his personal affairs and equally steadfast unconsciousness of his neighbor's businesses, now found himself in the very act of pushing in where he was not wanted: as he had been advised in well-nigh as many words. He experienced an effect of standing to one side, a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... a sudden impulse, whose irresistibleness was veiled in his unconsciousness, he bent down, and put ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... presently; the Jews asked us to do this, for at six o'clock their Sabbath begins. And in this the thieves are lucky, for were it not for their Sabbath they would last on for three or four days: the first day is the worst day; afterwards the crucified sinks into unconsciousness, and I doubt if he suffers at all on the third day, and on the fourth day he dies. But, Sir, what may I do for you? I've come for the body of this man, Joseph answered; for, however erring, he was not a thief, and deserves decent burial. You can come with me to testify ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... of camphor; a further sense of coolness and prickling wet on Holmes's hot, cracking face and hands; then silence and sleep again. Sometime—when, he never knew—a gray light stinging his eyes like pain, and again a slow sinking into warm, unsounded darkness and unconsciousness. It might be years, it might be ages. Even in after-life, looking back, he never broke that time into weeks or days: people might so divide it for him, but he was uncertain, always: it was a vague vacuum in his memory: he had drifted out of coarse, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... the old habit and saw her oftener when he could. Of course no phase ever quite repeats itself. The blithe unconsciousness of that first immortal summer was gone for ever; each was playing a part and dreading lest the other suspect it. Moreover, Masters was irritated almost beyond endurance at the constant postponement of the financial equipment for his newspaper. The man who had promised the largest ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... whole lot to do with it," Marcus replied, and then his eyes rested on Joe Borrochson, who had again lapsed into unconsciousness. ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... murmured the unhappy woman as she clasped her hands, and taking her station at the gangway, she continued gazing on the water as it rippled by, in a state of unconsciousness to every passing object. In the meantime the vessel was under weigh, and was coming once more in sight of Brownsea, when a plunge was heard—"she's overboard," exclaimed a sailor—"cut away some spars—lower the boats—over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various

... Count, confesses that Cherubino, suspiciously garbed, is in the chamber, but pleads for his life and protests her innocence of wrong. She gives the key to her enraged husband, who draws his sword, unlocks the door, and commands the page to stand forth. Susanna confronts the pair with grave unconsciousness upon her features. The Countess is no ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... inured to camps and battles shines in the modest unconsciousness of a Christian gentleman or meditative sage, we feel unusual reverence for him. We feel that his soul is unpolluted, and that he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... he found Don Ippolito and Florida, at the fountain where he had himself parted with her the evening before; and he observed with a guilty relief that Don Ippolito was talking to her in the happy unconsciousness habitual with him. ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... and as the lad talked of his present and his future, his impatience of control, his lack of sympathy to all higher ideals, his determination to please himself to the forgetting of all else, his seeming unconsciousness of the debt he owed to his mother, all these became easily apparent. With difficulty Ranald restrained his indignation. He let him talk for some time and then opened out upon him. He read him no long lecture, but his words came forth with such fiery heat that they burned their way clear ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... he relapsed immediately into unconsciousness again. The doctor took out a large handkerchief, wiped his brow and smiled. Peter, his quick relief like a storm of joy, went downstairs to tell his friends of the Reform Committee, and ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... been enjoying about three hours' unconsciousness," he told her. "At a distance which seems about a mile from here—although it may be less—is a little pond. I've carried water in the sleeve of my coat—fortunately it is leather—and poured it somewhat generously upon your brow. And at last I've been rewarded ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... during the imprisonment, execution and burial are set forth in some of the testimonies herewith given, in a chapter of related history (the evidence at the trial not being disclosed in any present record), and all of them marked by a total unconsciousness of their sinister and ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor

... three made much pretence at eating. Madame Gregoriev, red-eyed, but very calm, sat beside her sister, whose face also bore traces of recent tears. Both of the ladies continually pressed food upon the boy, who, as he ate with boyish heartiness, talked to them with the pleasant and wonderful unconsciousness of childhood. The difficult hour was nearly over before sounds of the affair below first began to be audible to them. But at the first, muffled scream of laughter, Madame Gregoriev started, violently, all the color flying from her face, and a ghastly pallor ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... not likely to supply what education had omitted. Looking back on old journals and the like, I am astonished to see how unsettled my notions were—my sublimity, which was really ignorant childishness, and yet my perfect unconsciousness of my want ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... high, the animal may appear greatly depressed. If suffering severe pain, it may be restless. In diseases of the nervous system, the behavior of the animal may be greatly changed. Spasms, convulsions, general local paralysis, stupid condition and unconsciousness may occur as symptoms of this ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... once, as generally happened now, he lost all interest in the matter and returned to his work; or rather, to speak as he might have spoken, he set his mechanical self to work for him, while his own being disappeared in blank indifference and unconsciousness. But on the following day, which chanced to be a Sunday, he went out in the morning for a walk. He rarely worked on Sundays, having long ago convinced himself that a day of rest was ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... and I observed that all of them were drawn suddenly back with an expression of extreme terror. I heard cries and exclamations that betokened the same; but the shouts gradually died upon my ears, and the light dimmed and darkened in my eyes, as I lapsed into a state of unconsciousness, as complete as ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... more than one girl in the house, however, and I know vich of the two would be my choice, if I were, as you say, a young man myself," returned Mademoiselle sturdily. Bridgie's utter unconsciousness of her own claims to attention filled her at once with admiration and impatience, and she could not resist putting her feelings into words. "Does it never give you any fear in case one should fall in love with ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... now they grew almost feverishly anxious to discover how he felt towards his mother's memory. They detected each other laying small traps for him, and were ashamed. They held their breath as with an air of cheerful unconsciousness he walked past the traps, escaping them one and all. At first in her irritation Miss Bracy accused him of what she (of all women!) called false pride. "He is ashamed of her. He wishes to forget, and is only too glad ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... quite nettled, and becoming increasingly impatient, whereat Jules grinned. Indeed, it was his turn to be amused, for intuitively in the darkness he had guessed at Henri's condition; and knowing already how shaken he was, how nearly on the verge of unconsciousness, he had racked his brain for some method which might revive him. Stimulants, water, food, things of that sort, were out of the question; words alone could be employed, and somehow the clever Jules had contrived to pick the proper subject. The mention of Stuart, then, had helped to revive his friend; ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... folly. But the exquisite serenity of the night sky, where swam the moon, "a silver splendour;" the freshness of the sweeping breeze that dashed, keen from the east, over the sea against his face; all the glorious distance, the unconsciousness and detachment of nature from the fume and misery of life, brought him unwittingly to a ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... boys, as well as Andy Sudds and Washington, gathered in the chart room. The aged scientist was confident that during their period of unconsciousness the fragment of the earth that had once been shot off into space, had returned to its parent globe, and he spoke cheerfully of their ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... in his grasp and was choking her into unconsciousness. The foul habitues of the resort, far from aiding the poor girl, seemed for the first time that day to be showing interest and to be thoroughly ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... rendered our lives one unvaried scene. The whole of 1824, of 1825, of 1826, of 1827, presented the same dull, dark aspect; and how we lived through years like these is wonderful. We were forbidden the use of books. The prison was one immense tomb, though without the peace and unconsciousness of death. The director of police came every month to institute the most strict and minute search, assisted by a lieutenant and guards. They made us strip to the skin, examined the seams of our garments, and ripped up the straw bundles ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... that the suffrage resolution it passed was a pretense and really meant nothing—a statement, it is only fair to say, repudiated by many honorable Republicans. Now it is Chairman Roraback, who, with happy unconsciousness that he is exhibiting his party in a "yellow" light, tells the public that the national Republican platform should not be taken seriously.... "The leaders of the party," he says, "put in the suffrage plank to please women in the voting ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... truant, his father learned by experience and was apt to watch him narrowly. If the boy had an extra touch of the sun on his face, and his clothing was disorderly beyond usual, and his manner was especially unobtrusive, and his anxiety to please every person quite remarkable, and if in moments of unconsciousness he seemed to be chewing the cud of some recent pleasure, the father was apt to subject him to a searching cross-examination. And his mother had to beg the boy off with many a plea, such as mothers know how to use; and if the others ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... kicked about recklessly; the head may be drawn back and the tail drawn up; the urine may be squirted out in spurts; often the "washer" (membrane nictitans) is forced over the eye. When the convulsions cease they may be followed by a period of quiet unconsciousness (coma) which is more or less prolonged, when the animal may gradually regain consciousness, get up on its feet, and perhaps quietly partake of food, if there be any within reach, while at other times it arises with much difficulty and staggers blindly ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... withholds by steady faith. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul—it pervades the common people and preserves them—they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person, that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... that the house-door opened. She cocked her ears, and could almost make out voices in the midnight stillness. She slipped from the bed, locked and bolted the door of the room, assured herself of Lucy's unconsciousness, and went on tiptoe to the window. The trees all stood white to the north; the ground glittered; the cold was keen. Berry wrapped her fat arms across her bosom, and peeped as close over into the garden as the situation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "pinnacled dim in the intense inane." "America is a clock," I said; and then I remembered the phrase, "America is Niagara." And like a flake of foam, dizzy and lost, I was swept away, out into the infinite, out into unconsciousness. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... his size, there was nothing striking or handsome about this backwoods giant, neither of face nor of form; yet, sleeping or waking, working or at leisure, he would be noticed—and remembered. In his every feature, every action, was the absolute unconsciousness of self, which cannot be mistaken; whether active or passive, there was about him an insinuation of reserve force, subtly felt, of a strong, determined character, impossible to sway or bend. He lay, now, motionless, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man knows his own voice; many men do not know their own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's famous "Characteristics" article; allow for exaggerations, and there is a great deal in his doctrine of the self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes under the great law just stated. This incapacity of knowing its own traits is often found in the family as well as in the individual. So never mind what your cousins, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and the rest, say about that fine poem you have written, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... have succeeded in observing the phenomena of nature and of history with love and without prejudice, and the only evil I have discovered in their true essence is lovelessness. But this lovelessness also I explain to myself as an error, an error which must lead us from the state of natural unconsciousness to the knowledge of the solely beautiful necessity of love. To gain that knowledge is the task of history; and the scene on which that knowledge will be practically shown is none other than our earth, than ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... aura (Latin—vapour), sometimes warns a patient of an impending fit, commonly lasting long enough to permit him to sit or lie down. This is followed by giddiness, a roaring in the ears, or some unusual sensation, and merciful unconsciousness. In many cases this stage is instantaneous; in others it lasts some seconds—but an eternity to the sufferer. This stage is all that victims can recall (and this only after painful ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... abstract ideas are far beyond the grasp of the uncultivated intellect. The reply is, consciously to regard them as abstract, may be; but they exist and act for all that. All sane people think and talk according to certain abstract laws of grammar and logic; and they act in similar unconsciousness of the abstractions which impel them. Moreover, the Idea is usually clothed in a concrete Ideal, a personification, which brings it home to the simplest mind. This was long ago pointed out by the observant ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton

... but what did he seem to me, all unbuttoned and fatigued as he waited for me to come up, if he didn't seem unconcerned with small things, didn't seem in short majestic? There was majesty in his mere unconsciousness of our little conferences and puzzlements over ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... right. Caroline's standing over there. Are you hurt much, dad?" It was a futile question, because Brit was already going off into unconsciousness. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... anything for some time; he felt as though all the people he met in these parts must go on like this, in absolute unconsciousness, giving him blow after blow. "I don't mean to take up the cudgels for that sort of people," he said at last; "but they are—not always stupid, you know." But to this semi-defence his companion gave ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... questioning. But in both it was a large kind of look, that was not all the time being broken up and convulsed by trivial things. They both carried their heads like Indian women, with a kind of noble unconsciousness. He got so tired of women who were always nodding and jerking; apologizing, deprecating, coaxing, insinuating with ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... and soul have been broken by a prolonged painful struggle, there comes a crisis when a strong nature braces itself for greater effort; but those who give way under the strain either die or sink into unconsciousness like death. That hour of crisis had struck for Lucien; at the vague rumor of the catastrophe that had befallen David he seemed almost ready to succumb. "Oh! my sister!" he cried. "Oh, God! what have I done? Base ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Honour but honours or reputation. Spurious also is the courage which arises from the knowledge that the danger is infinitesimal; so is that which is born of blind anger, or of elated self-confidence, or of mere unconsciousness of danger. True Courage lies in resisting a temptation to pleasure or to escaping pain, and, above all, death, for Honour's sake. The exercise of a virtue may be very far from pleasant, except, of course, in so far as the end for which ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... having observed the little medallion on my neck, and being able to read, declared I was probably the daughter of Dr. Robertson, as it bore the name; but to this, I also gave no answer, and sunk again into a state of unconsciousness. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... bull, in truth, despite the crushing weight on his vitals, raised his head again, shook himself feebly, and was once more boxed into unconsciousness. The side of his face was crushed; his body was slowly flattening. The family encouraged him with tears ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... the distant door of his study open and close and his steps advance along the hall. With what a splendid swing and tramp he brought himself toward her!—with what self-unconsciousness and virile strength in his feet! His steps entered and crossed his bedroom, entered and crossed her bedroom; and then he stood there before her in the parlor doorway, a few yards off—stopped and ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... poet are but too true. What rose does not hold up its pretty, fragrant head, feigning unconsciousness of the thorns hidden beneath its bright, green leaves? And just so life's joys are with its sorrows associated. There never was a perfectly happy day, unclouded as the skies of June, for every pleasure, inasmuch as it must end, carries with it some ...
— Silver Links • Various

... little fact that all three of them, even the battered pugilist, should have been so deeply struck by that sunrise. Wilbraham on the last day of his life, when he hovered between consciousness and unconsciousness, kept recalling it as though it ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... sank rapidly, sleeping lightly, waking occasionally with a child-like smile, then lapsing again into unconsciousness. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... not last long, for an illness came which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new born baby. The doctor thought I could not live. Early one morning, however, the fever left me, but I was never to ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... of this and lay perfectly still, feigning insensibility but keenly wondering what disposition would be made of him, and resolved to fight to the last breath if his pretense of unconsciousness were discovered. Then the giant's grip about his throat grew tighter, and he felt that a terrible struggle and perhaps death were just at hand. Between his almost closed eyelids he saw the man's big frame bending silently over him and thus moments ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... but he thought another period of unconsciousness followed, because when he aroused himself the sun seemed to be much farther down in the west. His head was still aching, though not quite so badly as before, and he made a new effort to walk. He did ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler



Words linked to "Unconsciousness" :   grogginess, stupor, consciousness, semicoma, trance, unawareness, coma, narcosis, blackout, insensibility, autopilot, semiconsciousness, state of mind, semitrance, cognitive state, electrosleep, automatic pilot, stupefaction, unconscious, comatoseness, unknowingness



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