"Immobility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stopped in the midst of a bar, leaving the dancers at a standstill in their measure, and all the moving sea of light and colour and gleaming jewels was arrested instantly in its motion, while every look was turned towards the King. The change from sound to silence, from motion to immobility, was so sudden that every one was startled, as if some frightful accident had happened, or as if an earthquake had shaken the Alcazar ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... you would have said, without a wink. The next moment the tree closed, and the glimpse was gone. This discovery of human presences latent overhead in a place where we had supposed ourselves alone, the immobility of our tree-top spies, and the thought that perhaps at all hours we were similarly supervised, struck us with a chill. Talk languished on the beach. As for the cook (whose conscience was not clear), he never afterwards set ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the clashing of arms, reawoke his combative spirit of old. Or, possibly his brute intelligence penetrated the dwarf's knavish pusillanimity, and, changing his tactics that he might still range on the side of perversity, resolved himself from immobility into a rampant agency of motion. Furiously he dashed into the thick of the conflict, and Triboulet, paralyzed with fear and dropping his lance, was borne helplessly onward, execrating the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... within and stood just before the opening, regarding Casey with that maddening, Indian immobility so characteristic of the race. She did not speak, though Casey waited for fully two minutes; nor did she move aside to let him go in. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... when he was triumphant, loving him with a deep, passionate devotion, as honourable to them as it was precious to him. I have seen him cry like a child at evidences of their love for him, he whose courage no danger could daunt, and who was never seen to blench before hatred nor change his stern immobility in the face of his foes. Iron to enmity, he was soft as a woman to kindness; unbending as steel to pressure, he was ductile as wax to love. John Stuart Mill had the insight in 1868 to see his value, and the courage to recognise it. He strongly supported his candidature, and sent a ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Sarah, in a faltering voice, for, notwithstanding her habitual immobility, in reflecting upon the immense importance of the revelation she was about to make to Rudolph, she felt herself more agitated than she could have thought possible. After a moment's silence, Sarah, no longer ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... "That's Ibiza off there!" Tonet called to his companions. Slowly the Garbosa crept along over the tranquil, circular immensity, beyond whose rim black lines could occasionally be seen—the smoke of distant steamers. A bare ripple under the vessel's bows marked her virtual immobility. The sail hung lifeless from the mast, sweeping back over the deck at times as a capricious zephyr headed the course. Looking down over the sides, the eye plunged deep into the blue waters, where the sky, the clouds ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... eyes and presences served to stir up what waking life was in her. When she spoke, her face dawned with a clear, although not warm light; and although it must be owned that when it was at rest, the same over-stillness, amounting almost to dulness, the same seeming immobility, ruled as before, yet, even when she was not speaking, the rest was often broken by a smile—a genuine one, for although there was much that was stiff, there was nothing artificial about Helen. Neither was there much of the artificial ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... flew from mouth to mouth and silence and immobility reigned in the Old Mill, from one end to the other of the house and grounds. Each one stood at his post. All along the wall, the soldiers kept themselves hidden, perched ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... of conservative in action. From Senator Lodge, for example, we do not expect any new perception of popular need. We know that probably his deepest sincerity is an attempt to reproduce the atmosphere of the Senate a hundred years ago. The manners of Mr. Lodge have that immobility which comes from too much gazing at ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... at him for a moment or two with eyes of glowering resentment; but in the end he put forth a hand not wholly steady and took the sheet held out to him. Monck stood beside him in utter immobility, gazing out over the valley with a changeless vigilance that had about it ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the place were almost enchantment enough to account for the gray-headed porters, their immobility and longevity, and I longed to draw the charm over me. But I was one of a party which had come under the inspiration of the most inane motive of travel,—the desire to see all there was to be seen; and so, after a half-hour's repose, and the usual refreshments,—preserved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... herself up into a tiny ball. Embracing her knees with her hands, and resting her chin upon them, she stared doggedly at the river with wide-open eyes; on the pale patch of her face they seemed immense, because of the blue marks below them. She never moved, and this immobility and silence—I felt it—gradually produced within me a terror of my neighbour. I wanted to talk to her, but I ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... works had become part of the landscape, and, imaginatively, not much more. But just as they could not contemplate the obliteration of part of the landscape, so it was difficult to conceive permanent idleness at the works. It was a case of the immobility of the non-speculative mind, which is lethargic in hours of exaltation but comfortably ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... a drama, a tragic drama even, and not at all a metaphysical immobility or a quasi-mobility, or even an eternal circulus viciosus. There are three stages of human life: the first stage before the sin, in God-like naivete, the second in sin, and the third after the atonement, ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... governing themselves in accordance with their own appreciation of it. And I cannot believe that it is well for you or for Europe that such things can be accomplished in the eyes of the world, without one nation arising out of its immobility to protest in the name of universal justice. This is to enthrone brute force, where, by the power of reason, God alone should reign; it is to substitute the sword and poniard for law—to decree a ferocious war without limit of time or means between ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the expansion of his chest, he leaned back again into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... street. The houses were all asleep, and the college buildings dark as empty fortresses. The moon-threaded mist clung closely to the town like a shroud of gauze, not concealing the form beneath, but making its immobility more mysterious. The trees drooped and dripped with moisture, and the leaves seemed ready, almost longing, to fall at a touch. It was one of those nights when the solid things of the world, the houses ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... produce that slight change of the colour of the skin which adds so powerful an expression to the emotions of the soul. "How can those be trusted who know not how to blush?" says the European, in his dislike of the Negro and the Indian. We must also admit, that immobility of features is not peculiar to every race of men of dark complexion: it is much less marked in the African than in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... audience, particularly in the grand sleep-walking scene. So thoroughly had I entered into the nature of Lady Macbeth, that during the entire scene my pupils were motionless in their orbit, causing me to shed tears. To this enforced immobility of the eye I owe the weakening of my eyesight. From the analytical study which I shall give of this diabolical character [at the close of her Memoirs] the reader can form for himself an idea of how much its interpretation cost me (particularly ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... flung herself down upon the red sofa, and buried her head in the rags which covered the bosom of her mother, and wept there. The old woman received her daughter without issuing from her state of immobility, or displaying any emotion. The mother possessed in the highest degree that gravity of savage races, the impassiveness of a statue upon which all remarks are lost. Did she or did she not love her daughter? Beneath that ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... appeared to get Rea's meaning, then vigorously shook his head and gazed at Jones in fear and horror. Following this came an action as singular as inexplicable. Slowly rising, he faced the north, lifted his hand, and remained statuesque in his immobility. Then he began deliberately packing his blankets and traps on his sled, which had not been unhitched from the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... approached, the Jews rose and bowed low. Then they settled back into their former immobility. Some stared at us vacantly; others lowered their eyelids and rubbed their hands together softly, with a terrible subservience. If we brushed close to one, he cringed like a dog who fears a kick. Yellow, parchment-like faces, all with the high-bridged, curving noses, and the black, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... upon the table, and either because he was naturally a silent man, or because the presence of the countess struck him dumb, or because he had no message to deliver that morning, retired without speaking. Bertha looked anxiously at her aunt; the immobility of her features ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... his Siamese telegraphic style in their printed programme. They begin by stating that they will sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and boldness. The essential elements of their poetry will be courage, daring, and rebellion. Literature has hitherto glorified serene immobility, ecstasy, and sleep; they will extol aggressive movement, feverish insomnia, the double-quick step, the somersault, the box on the ear, the fisticuff. They declare that the world's splendour has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that of a man about Gerald Burton's own age. The features were stilled in the awful immobility of death: but for that immobility, the dead man lying there before them might ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... but also became more difficult to live with as she got better. For example, when she came out of catatonic-like immobility, she became extremely promiscuous, and was determined to sleep with my husband. In fact she kept crawling into bed with him with no clothes on. Either we had to forcefully remove her or the bed would be ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... toward establishing a man's intellectual pre-eminence. Thus, when the daughters were called on to strike a filial attitude about their parent's pedestal, there was little to do but to pose gracefully and point upward; and there are spines to which the immobility of worship is not a strain. A legend had by this time crystallized about the great Orestes, and it was of more immediate interest to the public to hear what brand of tea he drank, and whether he took off his boots in the hall, than to rouse the drowsy echo ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... his choice of several possible methods of procedure. The simplest, though not the most effective method, is to write out the argument in full, and to memorize it word for word. The weakness of such a course lies in the immobility of its attack and defense. The first speaker for the affirmative may decide beforehand exactly what he will say and the order in which he will say it, but all those who are to follow should adapt their arguments, to some extent at least, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... most volatile thing in the world. It can laugh and sigh and groan and weep, as well as shout and storm, with the ease of an infant, and then immediately regain its immobility and fixed attention. With Ollie's simple statement a sound rose from it which was a denunciation and a curse upon the ashes of old Isom Chase. It was as if a sympathetic old lady had shaken ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... your own fault. You have endangered the monarchy by your ideas of progress. The immobility of governments is the sine qua non of the stability of thrones. You will not doubt this, if you read again the history of ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... in this case relieved my painful feelings. And the man seemed to have done nothing. Except for the change of position in order to use his feet, which made us all start by its swiftness, my recollection is that of immobility. But he had bent the bars wide apart. And now he could get out if he liked; but he dropped his legs inwards, and looking over his shoulder beckoned to the soldiers. 'Hand up the water,' he said. 'I will give them all ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... rejection of all but episcopal orders the Act of Uniformity severed it as irretrievably from the general body of the Protestant Churches whether Lutheran or Reformed. And while thus cut off from all healthy religious communion with the world without it sank into immobility within. With the expulsion of the Puritan clergy all change, all efforts after reform, all national developement, suddenly stopped. From that time to this the Episcopal Church has been unable to meet ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... of time, but rather by the simplicity of His divine nature. For that infinite motion of temporal things imitateth the present state of the unmovable life, and since it cannot express nor equal it, it falleth from immobility to motion, and from the simplicity of presence, it decreaseth to an infinite quantity of future and past, and since it cannot possess together all the fulness of its life, by never leaving to be in some sort, it seemeth to emulate in part that which ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... the state, of poetry and music, of dress and manners even, and of style in the very vessels and furniture of daily life, on an austere simplicity, the older Dorian or Egyptian type of a rigid, eternal immobility. The disintegrating, centrifugal influence, which had penetrated, as he thought, political and social existence, making men too myriad-minded, had laid hold on the life of the gods also, and, even in their calm sphere, one could hardly identify a single divine person ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... now, and again she stood pressing down her terrors, urging her faculties to intelligent action. She did not let them slip from her guidance; held them close as dogs to the trail. A moment of rigid immobility and she had whirled back to the telephone and called up a near-by livery stable. This answered promptly and she ordered a cab sent round ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... and on the sea-line; but these were always shifting in the strife of winds, and the sun shone through them petulantly. As we climbed the rollers, or sank into their trough, the outline of the bay appeared in glimpses, shyly revealed, suddenly withdrawn from sight; the immobility and majesty of mountains contrasted with the weltering waste of water round us—now blue and garish where the sunlight fell, now shrouded in squally rain-storms, and then again sullen beneath a vaporous canopy. Each of these vignettes was photographed for one brief second on the brain, and swallowed ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... "Now you may dream; you can't avoid it," he observed lazily, and closed his eyes; and neither taunts nor jeers nor questions, nor fragments of shells flung with intent to hit, stirred him from his immobility. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... sheets, but knew when to fall off before the wind and when to luff again—was called lacking in character. And he was called so in a depreciatory sense, of course, because he was so hard to catch, to classify, and to keep track of. This middle-class notion about the immobility of the soul was transplanted to the stage, where the middle-class element has always held sway. There a character became synonymous with a gentleman fixed and finished once for all—one who invariably appeared drunk, jolly, sad. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... small wooden houses resting on clumps of wood or blocks of stone, a mode of construction which enables them, when tired of or displeased with their locality, to transport them elsewhere. I was told that a street of stone huts, constructed for their use, is almost abandoned, by reason of the immobility of such residences. I consider this locomotive propensity a favourable trait in their character. Behind the barracks we stopped at a hut on the rising ground whereon the barracks ought to have been placed, and assuredly ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... lorcha with one long, strong kick. Then I was alone on the deck, which suddenly looked immense, stretched on all sides, limitless as loneliness itself. A heavy torpor fell from the skies and amid this general silence, this immobility, the cabin door alone seemed to live, live in weird manifestation. It had been left open, and now it was swinging and slamming to and fro jerkily, and shuddering from top to bottom. Half in plan, half in mere irritation at this senseless, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... expression of countenance. Catenac was not a man to be easily alarmed, but the doctor's appearance was so threatening, and the smile upon Mascarin's lips was of so deadly a character, that he stood still, positively frightened into immobility. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... Markledew, it was always with fear and trembling. A big, heavy, lumbering man, with a face that might have been carved out of granite, eyes that bored through an opposing brain, and a constant expression of absolute, yet watchful immobility, he was a trying person to tackle, and most men, when they did tackle him, felt as if they might be talking to the Sphinx and wondered if the tightly-locked lips were ever going to open. But all men who ever ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... immobility as the form of the Infinite: the West, movement. It is because the West is infected by the passion for details, and sets proud store by individual worth. Like a child upon whom a hundred thousand francs have been bestowed, he thinks she is multiplying her fortune ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to immobility, but his little eyes remained fastened on the camera obscura above. All the cunning, patience, and murderous immobility ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... gazing at him from the black depths of the mirror above the bureau, a haggard face drained of all life, of all blood, with deep inky pools upon the eyes. A sudden emotion stirred in the chill immobility ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... outstretched claws. His head sunk between his shoulders. Of the eyes, only red pin-points showed in the twitching face. I stood stone-still, struck into utter immobility. My brain was trying to urge me to fly, fly! This is the Black Death, Sophy! the ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... was that which would strike our eyes most immediately if we could transfer ourselves in time, and enjoy a physical impression of that world. This characteristic was derived from what I have just been saying. It was the material counterpart of the moral immobility or steadfastness of the time. It was this: that the external forms of things stood quite unchanged. The semi-circular arch, the short, stout pillar, occasionally (but rarely) the dome: these were everywhere the mark of architecture. There was no change nor any ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... characteristic is the quality called fudoshin, or immobility of heart. That this existed in practice from an early era cannot be doubted, but its cultivation by a recognized system of training dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the introspective tenet (kwanshin-ho) of the Zen sect of Buddhism taught believers ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... were interrupted: these reasons, though true, appeared insufficient excuses. "They concealed the most powerful cause of the immobility of their countrymen; it was to be discovered in the interested attachment of their grandees to the crafty policy of Russia, which flattered their self-love, respected their customs, and secured their right over the peasants, whom the French came to set free. Doubtless, national independence ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... of the Renaissance more fortunate than in being in advance of us with their tombs: they have left us nothing to say in regard to the great final contrast—the contrast between the immobility of death and the trappings and honours that survive. They expressed in every way in which it was possible to express it the solemnity of their conviction that the marble image was a part of the personal greatness of the defunct, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... treasure. He had met it and frustrated it in almost as brutal a fashion: the gold was already tarnished with blood. To his surprise, yet relief, he found his partners unconscious of the outrage, still sleeping with the physical immobility of over-excited and tired men. Should he awaken them? No! He should have to awaken also their suspicions and desire for revenge. There was no danger of a further attack; there was no fear that the culprit would disclose himself, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... indifference was as irritating to him as it had been to the Hippodrome Manager. Sobrenski's blood had never stirred for any woman, however charming, and Arithelli's type of looks was repulsive to him. He loathed her thinness and pallor, her silence and immobility of expression. He vowed inwardly that she should look less indifferent before he ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... image above the pit vanished. A clear light sprang up in the big room. Simultaneously, Halder felt the nightmare immobility draining from him and the sensation of dreamlike unreality fade from his mind. He turned to the right, found Kilby's eyes already on him, saw the Rellis couple sitting beyond her ... Rane, no longer disguised, looking like ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... The immobility of this figure under the moon's rays was terrible. I felt my tongue freezing, my teeth clinched. I was about to cry out in terror when, by some incomprehensible mysterious attraction, my glance fell below, and I ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... economically self-supporting, were the essential needs which determined the structure of the great fiefs. The upper classes rarely went far afield, while the "rural population lived in a sort of chrysalis state, in immobility and isolation within ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... proclaimed the sole basis of civil organization to be the right to liberty and equality (liberty for all), but they had encountered social anarchy by the way. The philosophy of the epoch had asserted the sovereignty of the human Ego, and had ended in the mere adoration of fact, in Hegelian immobility. The Economy of the epoch imagined it had organized free competition, while it had but organized the oppression of the weak by the strong; of labor by capital; of poverty by wealth. The Poetry of the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... shrinking on the application of a 5 per cent. solution of cocain. Its soft consistence and the fact that it becomes smaller when painted with cocain differentiate it from true hypertrophy of the mucous membrane. Its situation and immobility, its pink colour, and the shrinkage under cocain, distinguish it from the mucous polypus of the nose. The turgescence may involve the whole extent of the mucosa of the inferior turbinated bodies, including their posterior ends. After anaesthetising with cocain, the electric cautery, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... which it finds itself possessed. Nevertheless, the forms under which societies are organized are subject to the social will, and, if disapproved, are modified or abolished. Some change is taking place even where there is apparent immobility, as becomes evident when the history of institutions is followed through long periods of time. The utmost that can be said is that, where intelligence is little developed and energy at a low ebb, the social will may bear the ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... neither budged nor uttered a sound—he had made Mrs. Worthingham out as all at once perfectly pleased to see him, completely aware of what he had most in mind, and singularly serene in face of his sense of their impediment. It was as if for all the world she didn't take it for one, the immobility, to say nothing of the seeming equanimity, of their tactless companion; at whom meanwhile indeed our friend himself, after his first ruffled perception, no more adventured a look than if advised by his constitutional kindness that to notice her in any degree would perforce be ungraciously ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... the climate and the scenery, exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vivacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility of the Russ, the rugged sternness of the Scot, the repose and dreaminess of the Hindoo are largely due to the country in which they dwell, the air they breathe, the food they eat, and the landscapes and skies they ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... melancholy, due, no doubt, to their dimensions being much too large for the limited number of guests entertained within them, to the silence which one feels astonished to find in them after so many flourishes of trumpets, to the immobility of their luxurious furniture, which attests by the aspect of age and decay it gradually assumes the transitory character of dynasties, the eternal wretchedness of all things; and this exhalation of the centuries, enervating and funereal, like ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... her father really slept or if, aware of her, he only kept consciously quiet. Did his eyes truly fix her between lids partly open, and was she to take this—his forebearance from any question—only as a sign again that everything was left to her? She at all events, for a minute, watched his immobility—then, as if once more renewing her total submission, returned, without a sound, to ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Often, too—indeed nearly always—I have found that after exhausting my all too scanty stock of patience, and making an "exposure" in despair, the errant blossoms and leaflets would settle down into perfect immobility, as if to say, "There! don't be cross—we'll behave," ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... moonlight; and the mockery of her low fitful laugh! As I caught the sinister note in its silvery rise and fall, I knew what was before me if I failed to retain my composure. And I strove to hold it and to meet her calmness with stoicism and the taunt of her expression with a mask of immobility. But the effort was hopeless, and when the time came for dealing out the cards, my eyes were burning in their sockets and my hands shivering like leaves in ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... at him, his face a mask of immobility. "That sounds all right," he said, with slow emphasis. "I reckon you'll put ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... long brocade robe undulated about her little feet. Same face, same figure. It was she indeed; and to prevent any possible doubt of it, she was seated on the back of a huge old- fashioned book strongly resembling the "Cosmography of Munster." Her immobility but half reassured me; I was really afraid that she was going to take some more nuts out of her alms-purse and throw the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... her, the whole Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with an indescribable air of being in the presence of the foe; and while Dandie saluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well in court, Hob marched on in awful immobility. There appeared upon the face of this attitude in the family the consequences of some dreadful feud. Presumably the two women had been principals in the original encounter, and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, too late to be included ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many of our artists, full of a passionate yet shy strength, that some may think is the result of continual communion with Latin things, with Italy and Italian work, Italian verse, Italian painting, on the part of a race not Latin, but without the immobility, the want of versatility, common to the Germans, which has robbed them of any great painter since the early Renaissance, and in politics has left them to be the last people ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... rate for a while—English national consistency, England's future as a nation is compromised by her fear of democracy. She has built her national organization on the idea that the national welfare is better promoted by a popular loyalty which entails popular immobility, than by the exercise on the part of the people of a more individual and less subservient intellectual and moral energy. In so doing she has for the time being renounced one of the greatest advantages of a national political and social organization—the ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... emancipation than in the United States. Yet here, a majority of the original thirteen colonies have wholly discarded slavery, and given themselves up to the dominion of free white men; while others among those known as border States, notwithstanding their apparent immobility, have long been unconsciously preparing to follow in the same path of safety. Even without the rebellion, it is demonstrable, we believe, that the border States could not long have resisted the necessity for gradual, but complete ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... trousers on the eighth form of the local college. However, they left off talking. The one was working with his mind far away from the world, while the other grew stiff and cramped with the sleepy weariness of protracted immobility. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... so, crossed the room and silently turned the key, locking herself in. Then her manner changed; she moved about the room in a half-aimless, half-conscious way, as though some purpose was beginning to take shape in her mind. Her motions had an easy, cat-like grace, in contrast with their immobility a little while before. Gradually her step became quicker, while ripples of feeling began to pass over her face, which was fast losing its pallor. Gleams of light began shooting from her eyes, that were so dull and stony when her husband found her with Edith's letter ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... first came to Rome, eager to observe its religion, especially its antiquities of religious usage, I assisted at the most curious, perhaps, of them all, the most distinctly marked with that immobility which is a sort of ideal in the Roman religion. The ceremony took place at a singular spot some miles distant from the city, among the low hills on the bank of the Tiber, beyond the Aurelian Gate. There, in a little ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... her, and then he took her home. He was a little frightened, for there was something not like her in the way she had taken it, a sort of immobility that might, he thought, cover heartbreak. But she smiled when she thanked him, and went very calmly ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wondrous imagination of the artist's chisel, in which the marble, fancying itself human, had begun to breathe. The eye was calm and bright—the mouth, the feature round which danger loves to play, though easy, motionless, and with lips apart, had about it an air of immobility and quiet scorn, which was not the effect of muscular action, but of nature in repose. And in his whole appearance, features, attitude and look, there was a conscious pride and superiority over his opponents, which, though unpresuming ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... to lean closer to the light and frown to make out the print of his book. The sight of his stolid immobility merely sharpened their hunger, for there was never any passion in this hulk of a man. When he relaxed over a book the world went out like a snuffed candle for him. He read slowly, lingering over every page, ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... immobility, inertia, quiet, suffering, deliberation, inaction, passion,[A] repose, suspension. endurance, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... its very freedom for prolonged stability, with Florence; Sparta, firmly based upon an ancient constitution, indifferent to culture, and solid at the cost of some rigidity, with Venice. As in Greece the philosophers of Athens, especially Plato and Aristotle, wondered at the immobility of Sparta and idealized her institutions; so did the theorists of Florence, Savonarola, Giannotti, Guicciardini, look with envy at the state machinery which secured repose and liberty for Venice. The parallel between Venice and Sparta becomes still more remarkable when we inquire ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... it? I looked across at Semyonov, who was now seated on Vera's right hand just opposite Boris Grogoff. He was very quiet, very still, looking about him, his square pale beard a kind of symbol of the secret immobility of his soul. I fancied that I detected behind his placidity an almost relieved self-satisfaction, as though things were going very much better ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... yet compact of body, he was something round-shouldered, with the stoop of those who serve. In a mask of immobility, full-colored and closely shaven, his lips were thin and tight, his eyes steady, grey and shallow: a countenance neither dishonest nor repellent, but one inscrutable. Standing solidly, once halted, there remained a suggestion of ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the girl's face changed. Her dark eyes glowed with an internal fire and the immobility of her face vanished as if by magic to be replaced by an expression of fierce hatred. Her lips drew back, exposing her strong white teeth and she literally spat out ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... chill of night, the manifold rays of stars and silence, silence reft of winds, yet alive with the tense immobility of the ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... 've got to go somewhere," she insisted, placing her two hands upon his shoulders. She attempted to give him a little shake, with the result that she shook only herself. His physical immobility was so suggestive of his mental attitude that she desisted, with sudden meekness, and the point was apparently settled as he wished. He possessed himself of her hand, and began to stroke the inside of her arm, as if he had discovered a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... she remained where she was, trying to subdue even her breathing. Why were they not talking? What did this mutual silence, this mutual immobility mean? She was only a few feet from them. Yet she could not hear a human sound, even the slightest. There was something unnatural, but also tremendously impressive to her in their silence. She felt as if it signified something unusual, something of high vitality. She felt ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... landing, where indeed the danger was acutest, they were trapped by two of the Watchetts. These elderly ladies shot almost roguishly out of the drawing-room, and by their smiles struck the descending party into immobility. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... lying face downwards, was the form of a stalwart, well-built man, with irons on his legs. I thought for a moment that the poor fellow was asleep; yet, as we stood gazing upon him in silence, I was suddenly impressed by the perfect immobility of the figure, and the oppressive silence that pervaded the cabin. Let a man be sleeping ever so peacefully, you will notice some slight movement due to the inspiration and expiration of his breath; and there will also be the sound ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... back suddenly in his chair, and for some minutes complete silence reigned in the room. He was evidently thinking deeply, and his eyes were fixed upon the open book with inscrutable immobility. Once he glanced slowly towards Rene Drucquer, who sat with downcast eyes and interlocked fingers. Then he pressed back his elbows and inhaled a deep breath, as if weary of sitting in ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... gray twilight of the sky behind. Erect and perfectly motionless he sat, so motionless as to look almost lifeless, gazing before him down the valley into the illimitable distance beyond. There was something in that stern immobility of look and attitude which struck me with a curious sense of congruity. It was right that he should be thus—right that he should be no longer the laughing boy who a moment before had been in my memory. The haunting horrors of that place seemed to demand it, and for the first ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... partly hid her face. How often had he seen her sitting thus by the fireside at home! But though he stood without in the dark and cold for many minutes, she did not stir; neither hand nor foot moved. At last he grew terrified at this utter immobility, and stepping through the hall he told the landlady that the English lady had business with him. He opened the door, and ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... called the land of quiet repose, content to remain anchored to the hoary past, and proud of her immobility. Invasion after invasion has ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... understood as referring to necessity of coercion which causes an act to be involuntary and excludes devotion. Hence he says pointedly: "Lest that which we are free to do be done without devotion and unwillingly." On the other hand the necessity resulting from a vow is caused by the immobility of the will, wherefore it strengthens the will and increases devotion. Hence the argument does ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... twenty seconds after John Aldous announced himself there was no visible sign of life on the part of either Quade or Culver Rann. The latter sat stunned. Not the movement of a finger broke the stonelike immobility of his attitude. His eyes were like two dark coals gazing steadily as a serpent's over Quade's hunched shoulders and bowed head. Quade seemed as if frozen on the point of speaking to Rann. One hand was ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... his grandfather seemed not awe-inspiring, but just a frail old man, paralyzed into almost complete immobility, lying here almost pathetically happy to have his grandson at last with him. An old man, with nothing of the mystic about him—an old man who had been—unknown to the savants of his Earth—perhaps the greatest scientist among them. Quietly, with pride welling ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... water close to them would be often agitated by some impulsion given it from a distance. Often they believed this beat and plash to be the boat they lay in wait for, running in ashore; and again and again they would have started up, but for the immobility with which the informer, well used to the river, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... and again like Philomel to her vain regrets.[17] With Reinagle ... Newman and Blanco White had frequent (trios) at the latter's lodgings, where I was all the audience.... Most interesting was it to contrast Blanco White's excited and indeed agitated countenance with Newman's sphinx-like immobility, as the latter drew long rich notes with a steady hand."[18] Dr. Newman was still "bowing" forty years later, by which time the alleged "sphinx-like immobility" had made way for an ever-varying expression ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... now, and why the clear blue eyes looked at me, sometimes with the pity of an angel, sometimes with the innocent perplexity of a child. But the change meant more than this. There was a coldness in her hand, there was an unnatural immobility in her face, there was in all her movements the mute expression of constant fear and clinging self-reproach. The sensations that I could trace to herself and to me, the unacknowledged sensations that we were feeling in common, were not ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... solid tree the two lassos that retained the savage beast; then he gave the signal that his office was accomplished, and retired. Two hunters approached, threw their lassos over the animal, and fixed the ends to the ground with stakes; and now our prey was thoroughly subdued, and reduced to immobility, so that we could approach him with impunity. With blows of their cutlasses the Indians hacked off his horns, which would so well have revenged him had he been free to use them; then, with a pointed bamboo, they pierced the membranes that separate the nostrils, and passed ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... prevails, and the progressive movement, more or less rapid, goes on continually. Improvements gradually force themselves upon the attention of the most prejudiced minds, and eventually conquer opposition in spite of professional immobility and aversion to change. Observation has shown that the most important steps of progress usually originate outside of the professions, and are only adopted when they can no longer be resisted with safety to the conservative body. To the volunteer officer and soldier, or to those educated ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which the student of geology has to dismiss from his mind, is that of the immobility or rigidity of the Earth's crust. The lane, we live on sways even to the gentle rise and ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... color—respectively belong. This resolves itself into a comparison between time and space. The characteristic thing about time is succession—hence the very idea of music, which is in time, involves perpetual change. The characteristic of space, on the other hand, is simultaneousness—in space alone perpetual immobility would reign. That is why architecture, which is pre-eminently the art of space, is of all the arts the most static. Light and color are essentially of space, and therefore an art of mobile colour should never lack a certain ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... contortions of his countenance, were most ludicrous; and finding all these of no avail, he tried to make the Indian understand him by repeating English words very loudly and distinctly again and again. The Indian sat with his eye fixed steadily upon him, and in spite of the rigid immobility of his features, it was clear at a glance that he perfectly understood his military companion's character and thoroughly despised him. The exhibition was more amusing than politic, and Tete Rouge was directed to finish what he had ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... breathed upon them with the religious breath with which her lips, as a child, touched the paten at the village church. Then she leaned over them, with her head thrust forward, terrifying in her immobility, with her eyes fixed intently upon the black dust scattered in patches over the plate. She sought what she had seen fortune-tellers find in the granulations and the almost imperceptible traces left by the coffee as it trickled away. She fatigued ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... burning of a candle, and the rusting of iron are all cases of oxidation: or that the colouring of the underside of a red-admiral's wings, the spots of the giraffe, the shape and attitude of a stick-caterpillar, the immobility of a bird on its nest, and countless other cases, though superficially so different, agree in this, that they conceal ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... assassin, but he did not bend beneath the accusation. A single tear escaped from his eyes and froze on his pale cheek. The doctor and Bell looked at him with a sort of terror. Leaning on his stick, he looked like the genius of the North, upright in the midst of the whirlwind, and frightful in his immobility. ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... as a tower, having spat so much without coughing, that he coughed now without being able to spit; no longer rising from his chair, he who had so often risen for humanity; but drinking dry, eating heartily, saying nothing, but having all the appearance of a living Canon of Notre Dame. Seeing the immobility of the aforesaid canon; seeing the stories of his evil life which for some time had circulated among the common people, always ignorant; seeing his dumb seclusion, his flourishing health, his young old age, and other things too numerous to mention—there were certain ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... of his breath he resumed that immobility which extended even to his eyes. He recalled the thoughts of her that had filled his captivity, all his memories of their union which had gained, from "the pathos of distance," and from the passage of time, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... anything, improved. Outlines that he had missed for the last ten years were showing up again. The Postlethwaite nose was cleaner cut. He was almost slender, and not half so weak as Fanny said he ought to have been. Immobility in bed, his spiritual attitude of complacent acquiescence, and the release of his whole organism from the strain of a restless intellect had set him up more than his influenza had pulled him down; and it was a distinctly more refined and youthful Waddington that Barbara ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... this employ that Finn found his mate when he arrived at the cave that morning from Nuthill. For some moments Finn also gazed down at the victims, pondering over their immobility and his mate's mournful cries. Then, very tenderly at first, he nuzzled the dead puppies. That process flashed a picture into his mind, and he saw again Warrigal's dead children in the Mount Desolation cave. So he understood. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... was a man, soul and body, heart, hand, and spirit, stood beside the other, who was a shadow, and beside her, who was a woman—and the tragedy began in the prologue of contrast. Strength to weakness, motion to immobility, the grace and carriage of manly youth to the sad restfulness of helpless, hopeless limbs that never again could feel and bear weight; that was the contrast from which there was no escaping. On the steps of love's temple, at the very threshold, the one lay ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... exhibit in her person and face, more opposite extremes of beauty. If the one was strikingly characteristic of warmth, the other was no less indicative of coldness. Fair, even to paleness, were her cheek and forehead, which wore an appearance of almost marble immobility, save when, in moments of oft recurring abstraction, a slight but marked contraction of the brow betrayed the existence of a feeling, indefinable indeed by the observer, but certainly unallied to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... work. It is very different. You do not understand the psychic immobility of labour. Habits grow stronger as the mentality is simplified. I have heard that there are animals in the zoological garden that still perform useless operations that their remote ancestors required ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... and immobility is the first stage of dissolution. John Quincy Adams sought not merely to consolidate the Republic, but to perpetuate it. For this purpose he bent vast efforts, with success, to such a policy of internal improvement as would increase the facilities of communication and intercourse between the ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Presidents and Governors looked down at him from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering in their evil immobility. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... me, refuses to allow every volume to be jettisoned. It imposes, as a hair shirt, several new and serious books which there has been no time to examine. They are books that require a close focus, a long and steady concentration, a silent immobility hardly distinguishable from sleep. This year for instance I notice Jung's Analytical Psychology confidently expecting to go for a holiday with me. I feel I ought to take some such stern reminder of mortality, and, in addition, out of a sentimental regard for the past, a few old books, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson |
