"Dumbness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give us a mouth, she should have given us a perfect one; one that would perform all the functions of perfect speech; not one that is so liable to harm and so susceptible to dumbness, when speech is of such ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... guessed the nature of my errand at Cocheforet, and that they were not minded to be bound by Mademoiselle's orders. In particular, I augured the worst from Clon's appearance. His lean malevolent face and sunken eyes, his very dumbness chilled me. Mercy had ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... but one of the child's betwitching smiles, she stood for a moment regarding him, not in mere silence, but with a look of dumbness. She was a mother. One who is mother only to her own children is not a mother; she is only a woman who has borne children. But here was one ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Ann Putnam were spoke to by the Court; but neither of them could make any answer, by reason of dumbness or other fits.) ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... or I like this. We have often asked her, "Madam, do you want anything? Is there anything you wish for? Do but ask, and command us," but we have never been able to draw a word from her. We cannot tell whether her sorrow proceeds from pride, sorrow, stupidity, or dumbness." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... desired violence, and had been conveyed into a dumbness of mystery, that fell upon her turmoil of spirit like a blow. What struck her as especially strange and unnatural was the fact that the men with whom she was sitting in the dim court of this lonely house had not looked ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Ridge?' He had a lump in his throat and an ache at his heart from never letting himself remember it. By that strange perversity, which we all know in ourselves, he couldn't talk. The hundred and one things he had wanted to ask, died on his lips in a dumbness of gladness. Of course, you, dear reader, on the return of a husband or wife (prospective or present), on the sudden appearance of friend or kith have never been similarly affected. You didn't forget the questions you had ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... many of the children of Israel, and preparing their minds for the speedy approach of the Messiah; and yet it is stated, that Zacharias "believed not his words," in consequence of which he was smitten with dumbness till the birth of the child. But Mary, though so inferior in age, in situation, and in spiritual advantages, glorified God by a full acquiescence in his declarations; thus exemplifying what the grace of God ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... her musical Italian tones; "and thou would'st not create a pang in my heart? Then never seek to learn wherefore, when at the still tender age of fifteen, I resolved upon consummating so dreadful a sacrifice as to affect dumbness. The circumstances were, indeed, solemnly grave and strangely important, which demanded so awful a martyrdom. But well did I weigh all the misery and all the peril that such a self-devotion was sure ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... views, to suspend their opinions," &c. On the words: "the tongue of the dumb shall shout," compare Matt. xii. 22: [Greek: tote prosenechthe auto daimonzomenos, tuphlos kai kophos. kai etherapeusen auton, hoste ton tuphlon kai kophon kai lalein kai blepein.] Spiritual dumbness is the incapacity for the praise of God which, in the time when salvation is withheld, so easily creeps in, and which is removed by the bestowal of salvation. The words: "For in the wilderness," &c., state the ground of the leaping and shouting, point to the bestowal of salvation, which forms the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Circus they got out, and left me pondering on deafness and dumbness. To be dumb, of course, is, comparatively speaking, nothing; for most of the perplexities of life come from talk. But to be deaf—to live ever in silence, to see laughing lips moving, to see hands wandering ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... might know, having read them in Haronet's book, but which Edgar had no means of becoming acquainted with, and above all, which it was quite unnatural for him to repeat in his present position. He says, "Five friends have been in poor Tom at once: of lust, as Obidient; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... been in poor Tom at once; of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; and Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses chamber-maids and waiting-women. So bless thee, master!]] The passage in crotchets is omitted in the folio, because I suppose as the story was ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... dwarf, but a gallant knight. At that moment his memory came back to him, and he knew he was Conal, one of the Knights of the Red Branch, and he remembered now that the spell of dumbness and deformity had been cast upon him by the Witch of the Palace of ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... an elderly couple, speaking French. The man was evidently a quiet sort of fellow, who, by long Caudling, had subdued—whole volcanos into dumbness within him. Little did he think what eruption fate was preparing. II. sat opposite his hat, which he had placed on the empty seat. There was a tower, or something, coming; H. rose, turned round, and innocently took a seat on his chapeau. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Common minds, always impressed by noisy demonstrations, that is to say, by cries and tears, are unable to understand a mute sorrow. Dumbness to them means indifference. She was therefore astonished at the calmness with which Amelie received the message she was charged to deliver. She did not see in the dimness of the twilight that Amelie's ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... followed him. He looked up and wagged his tail; he made no sign of feeling concern that the girl was not there. Bates could have cursed his dumbness; he would fain have asked where she had gone. The dog probably knew, but as for Bates, he not only did not know, but no conjecture rose in his mind ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... 10. Alice and I went to Mr. Durant to-day about the tree planting; but Alice was stricken with temporary dumbness and never opened her lips, though she had solemnly promised to do at least half the talking; so I had to wade right into the subject alone. I began in medias res, for I couldn't think of a really graceful ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... for one moment ceased to be conscious) heavy as stone on a writing-table in some spot quite accidental in my new sense of locality; the tongue that would have spoken of it seemed to slumber in my mouth. And I knew that both dumbness and stillness were proper. Their opposites would have convicted me (the flat and earthly comparison must be allowed) of intrusion into some Place of beauty and serenity for which the soilure of ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... sat down, four on the bed; and Milt's inner ear heard a mute snicker from the Gilsons and Saxton. He tried to talk. He couldn't. Bill looked at him and, perceiving the dumbness, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... informs me, and they spend little more than the carnival in the city. The gossip of an inn-waiter ought perhaps to be beneath the dignity of even such thin history as this; but I confess that when, as a story-seeker always and ever, I have come in from my strolls with an irritated sense of the dumbness of stones and mortar, it has been to listen with avidity, over my dinner, to the proffered confidences of the worthy man who stands by with a napkin. His talk is really very fine, and he prides himself greatly on his cultivated tone, to which he calls my attention. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... if you don't let a word get in noway, nohow?" Mr. Blick was huffy. He had much to say, and thus far had been forced to dumbness. "Don't anybody know anything much. They was both at the party last night, and Mrs. Porter says that's what comes of givin' folks like the Pughs an inch. Mr. John Maxwell asked her for an invitation for Billy, and she gave it, being it was Mr. Maxwell who asked, ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... and it was she who won by seven years of service the right to deliver from hell all she could carry, and carried away multitudes clinging with worn fingers to the hem of her dress; and it was she who endured dumbness for a year because of the little thorn of enchantment the fairies had thrust into her tongue; and it was a lock of her hair, coiled in a little carved box, which gave so great a light that men threshed by it from ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... we remember kisses, Remember the dear heart-leap when they came: Not always, but sometimes we remember The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame Of ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... pleaded vehemently. "Please!... You know it isn't that. I don't want you off my hands, ever.... That is to say, I—ah—" Here he was smitten with a dumbness, and sat, aghast at the enormity of his blunder, entreating her forgiveness with eyes that, very likely, pleaded his cause more eloquently than ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... caught sight of her and stayed there, staring. She tried to speak, to welcome him, but could not, no words would come. He also seemed to be smitten with dumbness, and thus the two of them remained a while. At last he took off his hat almost mechanically, as though from instinct, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... "L'Ambitieux par Amour," autobiographical novel by Albert Savarus; a sort of "ferocious" Sormano. Represented as a young Sicilian girl, fourteen years old, in the services of the Gandolphinis, political refugees at Gersau, Switzerland, in 1823. So devoted as to pretend dumbness on occasion, and to wound more or less seriously the hero of the romance, Rodolphe, who had secretly entered the Gandolphini ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... earthquake before it shakes down the edifice! No, the world is not with Christ to-day!—and unhappily it is a fact that Christ's ministers in recent years have done more to sever Him from Humanity than any other power could ever have succeeded in doing. Not by action, but by inertia!—dumbness—lack of protest,—lack of courage! Only a few stray souls stand out firm and fair in ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of something infinitely more exciting. He wanted to stick his oar into the argument. He had a few pregnant thoughts of his own craving utterance, you could tell that. But he was handicapped into a state of dumbness by the fact that he needed both arms to balance a tray of wine and sandwiches on his head. Merely using his voice in that company would not have counted. He stood it as long as he could, which was not very long, let me tell you. Then he slammed his tray down ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... erroneous, that nobody is wronged in these trades. The taciturn storekeeper, who regards his customers with a stare of solemn amusement as Critturs born by some extraordinary vicissitude of nature to the use of a language that practically amounts to deafness and dumbness, never suffers his philosophical interest in them to affect his commercial efficiency; he drops them now and then a curt English phrase, or expressive Yankee idiom; he knows very well when they mean to buy and when they ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... endless other troubles, monsieur! her teeth fell out; she became deaf, then dumb; and then, after six months of absolute dumbness, utter deafness, speech and hearing have returned to her! She recovered, just as capriciously as she had lost, the use of her hands. But her feet have continued in the same hapless condition for the last seven years. She has shown ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... rigidity of behavior which at this time characterized the Bostonians seemed sometimes ludicrous and sometimes disagreeable to the foreign visitor. There was great gravity, together with a certain pomp and dumbness, and these things were supposed to be natural to the inhabitants and to give them joy. People are apt to forget that such masks are never worn with ease. They result from the application of an inflexible will, and always inflict discomfort. The Transcendentalists found themselves ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... splendor of her sword-bright gaze Was heavy on me with yearning and with scorn My sick heart muttered, "Yea, the little strife, Yet see, the grievous wounds! I fain would sleep." O heart, shalt thou not once be strong to go Where all sweet throats are calling, once be brave To slake with deed thy dumbness? Let us go The path her singing face looms low to point, Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame Of silver on the brown grope of the flood; For all my spirit's soilure is put by And all my body's soilure, lacking now ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... characterise a single natural species of the family, seems an exception; but this habit is soon lost and soon reacquired. The case of the wild dogs on the island of Juan Fernandez having become dumb has often been quoted, and there is reason to believe[33] that the dumbness ensued in the course of thirty-three years; on the other hand, dogs taken from this island by Ulloa slowly reacquired the habit of barking. The Mackenzie-river dogs, of the Canis latrans type, when brought to England, never learned to bark ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... is taciturn almost to dumbness. She is a thick-set, black-haired woman, and looks at me disapprovingly out of the corner of her eye as if I were a blackbeetle which she would like to squash under foot. She tolerates me, however, on account of the tongues ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... when I do look on thee, In whom all joys so well agree, Sweet, think not I am at ease, For because my chief part singeth; This song from death's sorrow springeth: As to swan in last disease: For no dumbness, nor death, bringeth Stay to true love's melody: Heart and soul ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... the tropics. After the one glimpse he stole softly back, in time to see Snow entering the living-room through the other door. By the naked arm he was clutching an age-wrinkled black who grinned in fear and made signs of dumbness. ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... then he went on in a dilation upon, the dumbness of all Nature during the season's suspension and torpidity. With all the kind and gratifying things that were said to him, Keats protested to me, as we were afterwards walking home, that he preferred Hunt's treatment of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... pretending fear just for the joy of having Chuck reassure her. Then back again in the dusk, Chuck bending to the task now against the current. And so up the hill, homeward bound. They walked very slowly, Chuck's hand on her arm. They were dumb with the tragic, eloquent dumbness of their kind. If she could have spoken the words that were churning in her mind, they would ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... fondness for shying off from disagreeable subjects—Queed felt pretty sure it was the latter—had failed to reveal the truth. West's motives did not matter in the least. The terrible situation in which he himself had been placed was all that mattered, and that he must straighten out at once. What dumbness had seized his tongue just now he could not imagine. But it was plain that, however much he would have preferred not to see the girl at all, this meeting had made another one immediately necessary: he must see her at once, to-night, and clear himself wholly of this cruel suspicion. And yet ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... observed,' said Mrs Todgers, 'how he used to watch your sister; and that a kind of stony dumbness came over him whenever she was ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... in our veins. Why should Man—a being who can live forever in a day, who is born of a boundless birth, who takes for his fireside the immeasurable—express or expect to be expressed? What we would like to be—even what we are—who can say? Our music is an apostrophe to dumbness. The Pantomime above us rolls softly, resistlessly on, over the pantomime within us. We and our machines, both, hewing away on the ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... been readers of Tolstoi, you will see that I passed into a vein of feeling similar to his, with its abhorrence of all that conventionally passes for distinguished, and its exclusive deification of the bravery, patience, kindliness, and dumbness of the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... wrong in the affair, and never for a moment did he dream of making the slightest remonstrance; still, the unwisdom of a young girl wandering about in the woods at night after trapped foxes was a patent fact which disturbed the mind of this guardian unto dumbness. ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... consoling element in the world. All the quite happy entertainment which he gets out of life comes to him from his contemplation of the peasant, as himself a rooted part of the earth, translating the dumbness of the fields into humour. His peasants have been compared with Shakespeare's; that is, because he has the Shakespearean sense of their placid vegetation by the side of hurrying animal life, to which they act the part of chorus, with an unconscious wisdom in ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... so, and four men were required to bring him; the child was dead and so beyond all human help; the two blind men were undoubtedly beggars and outcasts; the dumb man was possessed of a devil in addition to his dumbness; the group of people who were subjects of his healing power had every manner of disease, but while the people were different and the cases were desperate, Jesus was always ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... as well, but 'tisn't a many. There's hen bane which do kill the fowls and fishes if they eat the seed of it. And there's water hemlock which lays dumbness upon man. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... of the break with God has been radical and strange. Dumbness, and slowness or thickness of speech alternate with an unnatural sharpness. Sometimes the spittle has a peculiar oiliness that results in a certain slipperiness of statement. Sometimes it has a bitter, poisonous, acid ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... had he not spoken at the photographer's? Perhaps she herself had been sufficient reason for his dumbness. He had recognized her, and the espionage of the night in Paris was no longer a mystery. Nora had sent her to follow him; why then all this bitterness, since she had not been told where he had gone? Had Nora forgotten to inquire? It was possible that, in view of the startling events ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... never speaks till man is dumb, And only then if he be like a child Silently curled within its mother's womb, Or feeding at her breast. There is a wild Way also - when his dumbness is of death. And there's a first and second death. Remember To die so that no god's or angel's breath May quicken into life ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... exploration brought indubitable evidence of porcupines. We picked the barbed little weapons from his face and nose and tongue with much difficulty for ourselves and much pain for Deuce. We offered consolation by voicing for his dumbness his undoubted intention to avoid all future porcupines. Then we ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... found herself compelled. But with what heart-tearing groans and sobs, with what intervals of dumbness, in which the truth seemed unutterable for despair and shame, followed by what hurrying of wild confession, as if she would cast it from her, the sad tale found its way into Dorothy's aching heart, I will not attempt to describe. It is enough that at last it was told, and that it had ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... it seemed to him that the trampling roar grew louder every second, drowning into dumbness the crashing and grinding of the ice; and the volleying mist-clouds seemed to race up-stream to meet him. Then, with a sickening jump and turn of his heart, a hope came and shook him out of his stoicism. He saw that his ice-cake was sailing straight ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Miss Jencks and Caliban. It was Harriet Buxton who had suggested that the boy was not so deaf as we had thought, only stupid, and that his dumbness might yield to the methods then being so successfully used with that afflicted child who has since triumphed so brilliantly over more than human obstacles. Although, as Harriet pointed out, I have always felt that too ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... objection, that rose for him from within. Charlotte herself spoke again at last—"You may want to know what I get by it. But that's my own affair." He really didn't want to know even this—or continued, for the safest plan, quite to behave as if he didn't; which prolonged the mere dumbness of diversion in which he had taken refuge. He was glad when, finally—the point she had wished to make seeming established to her satisfaction—they brought to what might pass for a close the moment of his life at which he had had least to say. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... wanting in it all. Yet I ask you who read this narrative of mine if, like myself, you would not have been staggered into dumbness at seeing and hearing a man whom you had certified to be dead, moving and speaking, and, moreover, ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... held out his hand to her. He knew so well, how many thousands of times had he seen, that same look of questioning, pitiful in its dumbness. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... what I want to find out. The mission I have for you, Dave, is to watch Mulgrum. In a word, I have my doubts in regard to his deafness and his dumbness." ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the twelfth century is no dead language. Even if it were, no doubt the songs made in it might still be strong in life, as are to-day those of Homer and a hundred others. But in the case of these smaller literatures, once the tongue itself has ceased to be heard, dumbness and paralysis fall upon what might else be so full of vitality. And a song has more than its own life, it has power to quicken, to breed. If any one considers that legend of the son and father (found in many languages, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... to his own power of suffering. How we long to pierce the thoughts and feel the heart-beats and watch the trickling tears behind that machine-like exterior, that impassible mask! Our imagination is powerfully excited by the dumbness of that fate borne by one whose words never reached the outward air, whose thoughts could never be read on the hidden features; by the isolation of forty years secured by two-fold barriers of stone and iron, and she clothes the object of her contemplation ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the youth in your sight only to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart, and brimstone in your liver. You should then have accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have bang'd the youth into dumbness. This was look'd for at your hand, and this was balk'd: the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sail'd into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on Dutchman's beard, unless ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... mentally rushing hither and thither, seeking a gate or any possible means of egress. And still she was confronted by the difficulty of replying adequately to the totally unexpected. And what added to her dumbness was the fact that she was infinitely touched by Garth's confession; and when Jane was deeply moved speech always became difficult. That this young man—adored by all the girls for his good looks and delightful manners; pursued for his extreme eligibility by mothers and chaperons; ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... and became at once aware that his aunt perceived that there was something amiss. She gave him opportunities of speaking to her, but he could not take them. He shrank with a painful dumbness from displaying his secret wound. It seemed to him undignified and humiliating to confess his weakness. He hoped vaguely that the situation would solve itself, and spare him the ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... much as possible, all things were concluded to their mutual satisfaction, and in about a fortnight's time they set forward for Wales, where Dickory, notwithstanding his dumbness, behaved himself with so much diligence and affability, that he not only gained the love of the family where he lived, ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... at being made ridiculous, her sense of outrage that a perfectionist like herself should suffer punishment, added to her knowledge of the flight of time on school mornings, strangled her into dumbness. But she clasped the paper in her breast as a drowning man might a spar from the wreck. At least Number 4 was intact. She had been mercifully spared the fracture of this ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... meekly by his side. I shall never forget their faces; one moment, and then they turned and fled. It was base, but I could not blame them; the sight was not one to induce composure, as the Professor himself would say. So I thanked him as well as I could for the dumbness and heat that were on me; and he took off his hat and made a grand bow, and then he shook hands—oh, so cordially! and begged to present me with the freedom of the wheelbarrow; and then he went away. There, Hildegarde! You wanted a college story, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... from themselves; and thus they were once more able to converse with one another, without having that sense of violent self-restraint which had thus far afflicted them. Brooke was able to be lively, without any affectation of too extravagant gayety, and Talbot was no longer crushed into dumbness. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... event. But there was no whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of dresses as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. None could remember when the little church had been so full before. There was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then Aunt Polly entered, followed by Sid and Mary, and they by the Harper family, all in deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well, rose reverently and stood until the mourners were seated in the front pew. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... little. Within the muslin cage forms had turned to blurred shadows. Amongst them the form of d'Alcacer arose and moved. The systematic or else the morbid dumbness of Mr. Travers bored and exasperated him, though, as a matter of fact, that gentleman's speeches had never had the power either to entertain or ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... live with him in a remote part of his native country. From such alliances as these there may come some day a woman's impressions of the life and work of women and girls on the farms and in the factories of rural Japan. Many a visitor to the country districts must have marked the dumbness of the women folk. Women were often present at the conversations I had in country places, but they seldom put in a word. I was received one day at the house of a man who is well known as a rural philanthropist—he has indeed written two or three brochures on the problems ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... answer from the boys. They were as silent as before. It seemed as though they had been smitten with sudden dumbness. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... have accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have banged the youth into dumbness." (Twelfth Night, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... largeness of the implement. Slowly and with sober care he cut slice after slice, each one so thin that the light shone through it. Every head was turned toward him and each burning pair of eyes was fixed upon the precious bread with an expression of animal dumbness, which reminded one of the intent eyes of a hungry dog as it watches a hoped-for morsel. As he advanced step by step, the wounded stretched up shriveled hands, or propped themselves on one elbow to make ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... Barrie's mother had become her ideal. The girl felt that whatever Grandma disapproved must be beautiful and lovable; and there had been enough said, as well as enough left unsaid whenever dumbness could mean condemnation, to prove that the old woman had detested ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... tear me to pieces, may my own weapon turn against me in the evil hour, may I be terrified by midnight spectres and hag-ridden, may my body be smitten with leprosy, my eyes with blindness, my tongue with dumbness, my bones by rottenness, if ever I speak one syllable to anybody, be it priest, or child, or father, or condemning judge, or threatening headsman, of anything I have seen, heard or learnt in this place, or write it down with my hand or put anybody on the track ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... case were one, to think of his son as a hired servant—and that of a rough, swearing man, who had made money as a butcher. The farm too was at such distance that he could not well come home to sleep! But the season of this dumbness, measured by the clock, at least, was but of a few minutes duration; for presently the laird was on his knees thanking God that he had given him a son who would be an honour to any family out of heaven: in there, he knew, every one was ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... what he felt and thought disturbed him to the point of sadness, of regret. He sat musing on the curious, contradictory forces at work in his life. It was folly to be wise, to be sensitive, to respond too quickly, to see too clearly; and ignorance, dumbness of soul, was also fatal. Either way there was no escape. A man did his best and it was futile,—or seemed so to him, ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... stand with open mouth swallowing a tailor's news." ('King John,' act iv. scene ii.) And again, "They seemed almost, with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their eyes; there was speech in the dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked as they had heard of a world destroyed." ('Winter's ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... tired and hungry," Matthew ventured to say at last, accounting for her long visitation of dumbness with the only reason he could think of. "But we haven't very far to go now—only ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... homelessness. Set forth for me the wine, the honeycomb Whereto desire saith 'Yes!' O Senses, weave me from all lovely dust Some home-array, some fair familiar garb For me, exiled. Charm me some rare anointment I may trust Against her query, searching like a barb The dumbness of a heart unreconciled. Clothe me with silver; fold me from dismay; Save me from pity. For I hear her ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... was but little wind. There was an inexplicable dumbness in the cold. There was no hail. The thickness of the falling snow ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... could have screamed, had I been in less terror; for the great eyes, so big as crown pieces, the bill like to an inverted parrot's, and the slug-like undulating of its white and slimy body, bred in me the dumbness of one mortally stricken. And, even as I stayed there, my helpless body bent and rigid, the bo'sun spat a mighty curse into my ear, and, leaning forward, smote at the thing with his cutlass; for in the instant that I had seen it, it had advanced upward by so much as a yard. Now, at this action ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... lazy, fond of her meals, and given to afternoon slumbers. Lesbia and Mary were not by any means sympathetic; yet, after all, blood is thicker than water; and Lesbia was intelligent, and could talk of the things Mary loved, which was better than total dumbness, even if she generally took an antagonistic ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... she woke into a grey, despondent world again. The old angry, purposeless tears beset her and she felt that terrible dumbness settling over her. She had long ceased to fight it, now; she only wondered what Mrs. Meeker would do with her. But she never knew what Mrs. Meeker would have done, for when the tired, drudging little woman brought her breakfast tray she held it in dingily gloved hands; ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... he was seized with overpowering dumbness and chill. What was really in his mind was the Terrace—was Wharton's advancing figure. But her ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... better by remaining shut. But we may safely assume that despite the general tendency of mountain worshippers to attempt to paint—in colours strong and language divine—the effect on their minds, there are exceptional instances of noble and self-imposed dumbness. Not the dumbness which is practising ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... it over again, the incredulous terror with which she had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life. It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of suffocation. Osmond's beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air; Osmond's beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come and ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... he'd be so disgusted and angry that he'd never speak again. You know it's no small matter for a horse to talk. It isn't natural for them. It could only be produced by a mighty effort, and the most natural thing in the world would be for the creature to relapse into dumbness if transferred to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... of inactive discontent; to dart with the speed of an arrow but pursue as variant a course as fancy dictated; from twig top to field, feeding upon honeyed nectar and small insects which also loved the flowers and fed upon their sweets. Not perching in sluggish dumbness at the place of feeding but hovering in a fragrant flowery world over the red or white or blue corolla cloth of an ever changing dinner service, leading all the while a life of intense movement, to pass as a bar of light, to stop and ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... was visible; the midnight sun, by this time muffled in a transparent mist, shed an awful, mysterious lustre on glacier and mountain; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth's vitality: an universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I suppose in scarcely any other part of the world is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. On the stillest summer day in England, there is always perceptible an under-tone of life thrilling through the atmosphere; ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... extraordinary passion for botany. Every holiday was devoted to rambling about the country near London. He cared little for anything but his favourite science, but that he understood, and he never grew tired of it. I took no account of his deafness and dumbness; the one thing I saw was his mastership over a single subject. Gradually my incompleteness came to weigh on me like a nightmare. I imagined that if I had learned any craft which required skill, ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... the prism's obstruction shows aright The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light Into the jewelled bow from blankest white; So may a glory from defect arise: Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek, Only by Dumbness adequately speak As favored mouth ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... his fist as if to strike me, and I wonder that I did not run from the cabin and jump ashore, but I stood my ground, more from stupor and what we Dutch call dumbness than anything else. Ace let his fist fall and looked me over with more respect. He was a slender boy, hard as a whip-lash, wiry and dark. He was no taller than I, and not so heavy; but he had come to have brass and confidence from the life ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... herself that this brooding night, with its dumbness, its heat, its vaporous mystery, was affecting her spirit. And she got up from the bench, and began to walk very slowly towards ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... they thought that if the matter was well aired, and generally discussed, the daring offender might reconsider. Well-aired it certainly was, and widely discussed by the parents of the little town before young people who sat in dumbness, or made faint defense. It was also discussed by the young people, but ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... he feel through the faintness, the numbness, While linger'd the spirit half-loosed from the clay, Dumb eyes seeking his in their piteous dumbness, Dumb quivering nostrils, too ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... forced to dwell on the point, because I am sure to slur it over is to be false to Shakespeare) this dumbness of love was not the sole source of misunderstanding. If this had been all, even Lear could have seen the love in Cordelia's eyes when, to his question 'What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?' she answered 'Nothing.' But ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the other way around, then of course we could blame consanguinity. As it is, we can assume even in this five per cent, a mere coincidence, and we have no right to say that consanguinity and deaf and dumbness stand in the relation to each other of ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... maintained a well-nigh complete silence over his work, and answered questions only with a brief yes or no. Sometimes he did not answer them at all. The old Michel came twice daily, but this strange being had quite plainly been frightened into dumbness, and there was nothing to be got out of him. He shambled hastily about the place, his one scared eye upon the man in bed, and as soon as possible fled away, closing the door behind him. Sometimes ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... that rooted in fear, which compels to silence and drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the deserted object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect—rather with the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her husband had grown the ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... her, surely it was a hopeless task to attempt an explanation through mere words. If, after all, she was capable of misconceiving the entire set of his motives during the past two years, expostulation would be futile. In his thoughts of her he fell into a great spiritual dumbness. Never, even in his moments of most theoretical imaginings, did he see himself setting before her fully and calmly the hopes and ambitions of which she had been the mainspring. And before a reconciliation, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... them both around as with a garment of immortality. One gathers dimly something of what he felt from the look that would unconsciously come into his eyes when speaking of that enchanted journey, from the sudden dumbness with which the commonplace words would die away upon his lips. Well for him that his lesser self kept firm hold upon the wheel or maybe a few broken spars, tossing upon the waves, would have been all that was left to ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... He had opened his lips, but he stood there and uttered nought. He sounded the well of his courage, and it was dry. He groped in his treasury of words, and it was vacant. A devil of dumbness had him by the throat; the devil of terror babbled in his ears; and suddenly, without a word uttered, with no conscious purpose formed in his will, John whipped about, tumbled over the roadside wall, and began running for his ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down with little spurts of life and longer intervals of dumbness; others end with a sudden crashing of the pendulum while in its full swing, and a wild, convulsive whirr of the jarred wheels. One moment the sober tick tells that all is well, the next—silence. So was ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond |
