"Nerveless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cool, delicate, nerveless hand back upon her knee, and rose, for the Sister was folding up her sewing. He looked long after the girlish figure as it ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... equivalent to the queenly Wisdom of these early chapters of Proverbs. The earnestness of the repeated exhortations implies the strength of the forces that tend to sweep us, especially those of us who are young, from our grasp of that Wisdom. Hands become slack, and many a good gift drops from nerveless fingers; thieves abound who will filch away 'instruction,' if we do not resolutely hold tight by it. Who would walk through the slums of a city holding jewels with a careless grasp, and never looking at them? How many would he have left if he did? ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Allandale swayed while his face assumed a ghastly hue. Then in deathly silence he slowly crumpled up, as it were. No sound passed his lips and he sank in a heap upon the floor. His still smoking pistol dropped beside him from his nerveless fingers. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... I replied, speedily drying my tears; and starting up, I threw myself on my knees before him, and clasping his nerveless hand between my own, continued: 'Don't you know that you are a part of myself? And do you think you can injure and degrade yourself, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... not be; my courage was appalled; my arms nerveless: I muttered prayers that my strength might be aided ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... flash of metal as he took steady aim at Mr. Morton's breast. Another instant, and ten little children would have been fatherless; but a resounding whack from a hickory stick sent a shot into the air, and the hand that held the pistol dropped, nerveless. The would-be murderer tottered a few steps, then fell in a heap on ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett
... I return," whispered the chief to Cole, and then folding his arms over his brawny chest, he walked with a proud step into their midst. Every tongue seemed to be paralyzed, every limb nerveless, as they, with horror depicted on their ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... axe, Christopher swung it lightly over his shoulder; then, lowering it with a nerveless movement, he tossed ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Duggin's hand to the floor,—with a sound like the first clatter of gravel on a coffin lid; and in abasement absolute he dropped his head; his hands nerveless, his jaw trembling. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... is one of loss to England. The brilliant French conquests of Henry V (SS289, 290) slipped from the nerveless hands of his son, leaving France practically independent. The people's power to vote had been restricted (S297). The House of Commons had ceased to be democratic even in a moderate degree. Its members were all property ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... strength has nonetheless been terrorized into abject helplessness before the onslaught of a royal Bengal. Thus the tiger has converted the man, in his own mind, to a state as nerveless as the pussycat's. It is possible for a man, owning a fairly strong body and an immensely strong determination, to turn the tables on the tiger, and force it to a conviction of pussycat defenselessness. How often ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... familiar signal he heard the clatter of a dish, dropped from nerveless fingers, he heard a startled voice cry out his name, then he pressed the ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... wasted. So, he wandered at his work, painfully, and very slowly and clumsily, fumbling blindly with the brushes, and finding it difficult, when he sat down, to summon the energy to move again. His limbs, his jaw, were slack and nerveless. But he was very tired. He got to bed at last, and slept inert, relaxed, in a sleep that was rather stupor than slumber, a dead night of stupefaction shot through with ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... knew' on this subject. Much of its knowledge never can be revealed, but enough will come to-night to show that in our darkest hour we had an enormous mass of aid, little suspected by those weaker brethren who stood aghast at the Southern bugbear, and who, falling prostrate in nerveless terror at the windy spectre, quaked out repeated assurances that they had no intention of 'abolitionizing the war,' and even earnestly begged and prayed that the emancipationists might all be sent to Fort ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... him, he looked at her in silence, and tears rolled down his cheek—he was so nerveless. Then he said, in his ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... I'm too keen, and press The spirit of invective to excess: Some call my verses nerveless: once begin, A thousand such per day a man might spin. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... into a chair. Her arms lay nerveless on the table. Her face was hidden in them. But now, overhearing us, or stung by some fresh thought, she sprang to her feet in anguish. Her face twitched, her form seemed to stiffen as she drew herself up like one in physical pain. "Oh, I cannot ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... hung a looking-glass, in which Beatrice's face and Hilda's were both reflected. In one of her weary, nerveless changes of position, Hilda happened to throw her eyes on the glass, and took in both these images at one unpremeditated glance. She fancied—nor was it without horror—that Beatrice's expression, seen aside and vanishing in a moment, had been depicted in her own ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... six feet away from me she stood, arrayed in the gauzy dress of the harem, her fingers and slim white arms laden with barbaric jewelry! The light wavered in my suddenly nerveless hand, gleaming momentarily upon bare ankles and golden anklets, upon little ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... whisper to Corrigan. The cold savagery in it had paralyzed him, and he gasped as Trevison's eyes found him, and the pistol that he tried to raise dangled futilely from his nerveless fingers. It thudded heavily upon the boards of the floor an instant later, a shriek of fear mingling with the sound as he went down in a heap from a vicious, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... eye, and his face and neck were so bruised and tender that every fresh blow he received gave him exquisite pain. But his wits were quite clear, he had not lost his temper, and when down, in a few minutes he was ready to stand up again. He easily warded off a nerveless blow of his antagonist, returned it with one from his left hand on the body, and then sent his right fist for the first time straight into Saurin's face. Saurin got confused and turned half round; Crawley following up his advantage, followed him up ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... low scream that came moaningly up from her breast, which was drowned in the echoes of the report, Mary Burton made no outcry. She no longer leaned limp and nerveless against the support of the doorway. Something had seemed to snap the cords of her paralysis and out of her blanched face her eyes stared wide and piteous. As the older banker staggered back she was quick to reach the motionless figure and to lift its ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire, when-down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison mine was but an infant's! Then I had had a visitor, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... though the restless guests moved about, Hermia sat rooted to her chair, fascinated with horror. Her body seemed nerveless and she feared that if she rose her limbs would not support her, or, if they did support her, she must fly like a mad thing from the house. And so she sat, a fixed smile frozen on her lips, greeting those who approached her. Beatrice Coddington left her seat, and Trevvy Morehouse ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... which lay behind the shop. The next instant, with no thought but of the exigencies of the moment, he had leapt over the partition and darted into the room. There, stretched out across the floor, his head lying on the hearthrug, his hands lying inert and nerveless at his sides, lay an old man, grey-bearded, venerable—Daniel Multenius, no doubt. He lay very still, very statuesque—and Lauriston, bending over and placing a trembling hand on the high, white forehead, knew that ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... walked to the window; then, nerveless and depressed, I went out into the garden again ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the biographer of Milton Samson Agonistes is charged with a pathos, which as the expression of real suffering no fictive tragedy can equal, it must be felt that as a composition the drama is languid, nerveless, occasionally halting, never brilliant. If the date of the composition of the Samson be 1663, this may have been the result of weariness after the effort of Paradise Lost. If this drama were composed in 1667, it would be the author's last poetical ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... him with the dagger in my right hand, and wounded him, but not deeply, in the side. He gave blow for blow, but his poniard scarce drew blood, so nerveless was the arm that would have driven it home. I struck again, and he stabbed weakly at the air, then let his arm drop to his side, as though the light and jeweled blade had ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... stagnation of the lower orders could easily be understood. Behind them were the many centuries during which idleness had been encouraged, vanity flattered, and nerveless life willingly accepted. When they were neither masons, nor carpenters, nor bakers, they were servants serving the priests, and more or less directly in the pay of the Vatican. Thence sprang the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... back with his hot, fevered head upon the cushion of the long cane chair, his dead cigar between his nerveless fingers, a thousand bitter thoughts crowded upon him. He had striven to reform, he had tried hard to turn aside and lead an honest life, yet it seemed as though his good intentions had only brought upon him ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... entered; 'a rebel family walked out, and we walked in; comfortable quarters.' I noticed then there was a carpet on the floor, sofa, mirrors, and other comforts. 'Sit down,' said the doctor. He had taken the tone of command with me—a tone I would have resented at any other time; now, nerveless and weak, relying on him solely, I obeyed him like a sick child. He brought the tea, watched me while I drank it, looked on while I choked down tears and food together. He ordered me to go to sleep, and left me. Doubtless even this command had its effect. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... went on and rushed, striving to clasp him. Next moment, before ever I touched him—oh, well was it for me that I touched him not!—some strength seized me and whirled me round and round as a dead leaf is whirled by the wind, and tossed me up and cast me down and left me prone and nerveless. ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... and the nerveless form, that had scarce moved for years, was raised upon the bed by the last yearning effort of a ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... crag—in reality an enormous mass of ice—which supported the snow-bank on which the Flying Fish rested, break off and go thundering down into the unfathomable depths below. The spectators clung to each other in helpless nerveless terror at so appalling a spectacle as the falling of this mass, weighing probably millions of tons; but the full significance and import of the catastrophe did not present itself to their dazed and bewildered senses until they beheld the Flying Fish, after following the falling mass ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... hunger too, for our provisions had almost failed us. I could have gone on, however, as long as a man remained alive to help me work my guns. At last a shot came through the embrasure at which was a gun I was on the point of firing. Suddenly I felt my arm jerked up—the match dropped from my nerveless arm, and I fell. At that moment the signal was given to cease firing. Another flag of truce was going forth. I felt that I was desperately wounded—I believed that my last hour ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hope-shod, stept lightly on the homeward way; So specially it fared with Ambrose Gray That time I tell of. He had work'd all day At a great clearing: vig'rous stroke on stroke Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke, And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that? There was a treasure hidden in his hat— A plaything for the young ones. He had found A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round For its long winter sleep; and all his thought As ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... drifting meanwhile on the downward path. Its foreign policy was in nerveless hands; jobbery was rampant; trade and industry declined; the dividends of the East India Company fell year by year through the incompetence and greed of officials appointed by family influence; the West India Company was practically bankrupt. Such was the state of the country ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... others—we are not supposed to entertain on a large scale. The result is a beautiful commentary on human nature. Now that we may stay up as long as we choose, we no longer choose. Our heads begin to nod at nine o'clock, and by nine-thirty the pen drops from our nerveless grasp. ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... and strange her fate; They fight for freedom who were never free; A kingless people for a nerveless state." ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... Fellowes had bought a music-box which could be timed to play at will—even days ahead, and he had evidently set the box to play at this hour. It did so, a strange, grim commentary on the stark thing lying on the couch, nerveless as though it had been dead a thousand years. It had ceased to play before Stafford entered the room, but, strangely enough, it began again as he said over the dead body, "He did not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that gladdens a wife's heart, but slowly, feebly, jotting down each dull footstep with a melancholy dub of his staff. We must pardon his pretty wife, if she sometimes blushed to own him. Her visitors, when they heard him coming, looked for the appearance of some old, old man; but he dragged his nerveless limbs into the parlor,—and there was Mr. Toothaker! The disease increasing, he never went into the sunshine, save with a staff in his right hand and his left on his wife's shoulder, bearing heavily downward, like a dead ...
— Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the arch, with one hand holding back the lace drapery, the other hanging nerveless at her side, she looked as weird as any of her ideal creations; and, in the greenish seashine breaking through the dense foliage of the trees about the house, her wan face, snowy muslin dress, and floating white ribbons, seemed unsubstantial as the figures on the wall. To-day ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the widower always wore, "In memory of Catherine Harper," dropped off on the table-cloth. He did not perceive the loss until Agatha restored it, and then his fingers seemed unable to slip it on again, until his daughter-in-law aided him. In so doing, the clammy, nerveless feel of the old man's ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... he stepped up to the couch and bent for a moment over the helpless form of his employer. There was no recognition in the glazed eyes, and the hand, which he just touched with his own, was nerveless ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... counterpoint. Nature had fortunately endowed him with precisely the equipment necessary for the man who was to reform Italian opera. The school of Paisiello, notwithstanding its many merits, had several grievous weaknesses, of which the most prominent were uniformity of melodic type, nerveless and conventional orchestration, and intolerable prolixity. Rossini brought to his task a vein of melody as inexhaustible in inspiration as it was novel in form, a natural instinct for instrumental colour, and a firm conviction that brevity was the soul of wit. He leapt into fame ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... gleam of eagerness in the pallid face before me died piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which cold sweat ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... 'I need you,' went across the continent, and brought the ready response, 'coming on the wings of the wind.' It was Judge St. Claire who wrote to Harold, for Jerrie's nerveless fingers could not grasp the pen, and she could only dictate what she ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... for the first time Joanna Baillie's "Count Basil." I am not sure that the love she describes does not affect me more even than Shakespeare's delineation of the passion in "Romeo and Juliet." There is a nerveless despondency about it that seems to me more intolerable than all the vivid palpitating anguish of the tragedy of Verona; it is like dying of slow poison, or malarial fever, compared with being shot or stabbed or ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... stripling stood: with panting breast Feebly he pour'd the lamentable wail Of helpless consternation, struck at once, And rooted to the ground. The Queen beheld His terror, and with looks of tenderest care Advanced to save him. Soon the tyrant felt Her awful power. His keen tempestuous arm Hung nerveless, nor descended where his rage Had aim'd the deadly blow: then dumb retired 540 With sullen rancour. Lo! the sovereign maid Folds with a mother's arms the fainting boy, Till life rekindles in his rosy cheek; Then grasps his hands, and cheers ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... such as the history of earlier times offers in such abundance. Those times are past, those men are no more. In the soft lap of refinement we have allowed the powers to languish which those ages exercised and made necessary. With humble admiration we gaze now at those gigantic forms, as a nerveless old man at the manly sports of youth. Not so in the case of this history. The people that we here see upon the stage were the most peaceful in this part of the world, and less capable than their neighbors of that heroic spirit which gives sublimity ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... sleepless, watching the firelight play hide and seek with the shadows among the aged, smoky rafters and flicker over the strings of dried things that hung from the ceiling. In the other corner her father and stepmother snored heartily, and Bub, beside her, was in a nerveless slumber that would not come to her that night-tired and aching as she was. So, quietly, by and by, she slipped out of bed and out the door to the porch. The moon was rising and the radiant sheen of it had dropped down over the mountain side like a golden veil and was lighting up the white ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... splendour was turning to the collection of works of art, and the work of second-class artists was evidently much in demand and obtained its meed of admiration. Bissolo was a fellow-labourer with Catena in the Hall of the Ducal Palace in 1492; he is soft and nerveless, but he copies Bellini, and has imbibed something of ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... last words the paper slipped from Josiah's nerveless hands, and for many minutes he sat as one stricken blind and dumb. Then his poor, plebeian figure seemed to crumple up, and with an inarticulate cry of rage and despair he fell forward, with his head upon his out-stretched arms across ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... on her chair in order to laugh more at her ease, but with a nerveless, unhealthy laugh, one of those laughs which ends in nervous fits, then, a little more calmly, she replied: 'Ha! ha! my dear, improper? that is to say, that they dare everything, at once, all, you understand, and many other ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... my betrothed, and, untwining myself from the lithe and nerveless limbs of the savage, I rose to my feet. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... My God! he's fainted! I must tie him on!' He heard a tearing sound, and something was wound round his wrists. Then his nerveless fingers relaxed their hold; and all passed ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... of promise." Before giving any extracts, we must inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English heroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt's poems, this hint might indeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless versification, and the Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciple's work than in his own. Mr Hunt is a small poet, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... or indolence Byron scamped his task, and cut up whole cantles of the novel into nerveless and pointless blank verse, here and there throughout the play, in scattered lines and passages, he outdoes himself. The inspiration is fitful, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... its fall, he became as Lot's wife. The pistol dropped from his nerveless grasp, thudding gently on the carpet, and, with his fingers crooked paralytically, he stood swaying... and looking into the face ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... water by the timber, I raised her above it. The weight proved too much and she sank again. Again I pulled her to the surface and again she sank. This I did again and again with no avail. She drowned in my very grasp, and at last she dropped from my nerveless hands to leave my sight forever. As if I had not suffered enough, a few moments after I saw some objects whirling around in an eddy which circled around, until, reaching the current again, they floated past me. My God, man, would you believe me? it was three of my ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the ages past? Where the brave chieftains, where the mighty ones Who flourish'd in the infancy of days? All to the grave gone down. On their fallen fame Exultant, mocking at the pride of man, Sits grim Forgetfulness.—The warrior's arm Lies nerveless on the pillow of its shame; Hush'd is his stormy voice, and quench'd the blaze Of his red eyeball.—Yesterday his name Was mighty on the earth.—To-day—'t is what? The meteor of the night of distant ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... nothing of it—nor of his toilet either, nor of Ferrall, who came in on his way to bed having noticed the electricity still in full glare over the open transom, and who straightened out matters for the stunned man lying face downward across the bed, his mother's letter crushed in his nerveless hand. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... howled with agony, letting the spear drop from his nerveless hands, and just as it clattered to the ground Canaris was upon him with a rush, and down they went together, ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... himself whom a brass inscription 'fastened by the people over his door-lintel' testifies to be the 'Ministre adore,' are dwindling into clearer and clearer nullity. Execution or legislation, arrangement or detail, from their nerveless fingers all drops undone; all lights at last on the toiled shoulders of an august Representative Body. Heavy-laden National Assembly! It has to hear of innumerable fresh revolts, Brigand expeditions; of Chateaus in the West, especially of Charter-chests, Chartiers, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... her from going down there; he would hold her, just where she was on the dark stair nerveless, breathless, as long as he liked, if he liked he would bring her back, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... hand suddenly gone nerveless—nerveless with sheer joy, all else forgotten in the perception that there, safe and sound, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... high-strung, nerveless maid who had matured to womanhood in the crisis of the night before—seizing command of a menacing situation through sheer effrontery and wit, compelling fate itself to swerve aside as she led our galloping horses through the slowly ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... groan and drop across the thresholds of her prison, until at length the way was clear—a babe might have taken what he would from that half-scorched town and asked no man's leave. Yet what did it avail me? Heru was helpless, my own spirit burnt in a nerveless frame, and ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... vision ceas'd, and in a radiant cloud Withdrew—The breathless senate rev'rent bow'd. New vigour throbb'd in every patriot breast, And nerveless horror sicken'd ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this harmonious marriage of earth-scents and sea-smells seemed as perfect; never before had the delicacy of the foliage and color-gradations ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the level of the multitude? Where the bold front that in the breach of wrong Stemm'd the fierce current of insidious foes, Flashing Truth's falchion in the van of Time? Shame! it hath rusted in its scabbard, till The nerveless arm can scarce withdraw it thence. O Earth! rejoice that at his side there comes An undimm'd light to beacon on the world; One who upholds the honour of his line Unsullied as the glory of the stars; Whose voice rings clear above the battle strife, And shakes oppression from his iron ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... and the colonel backed up against it for support. The shock of the surprise, the sudden revulsion of feeling, left him nerveless. ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... vibrating echoes, and there was a short, impressive silence. Then piercing through the profound gloom came the clamorous cries and shrieks of frightened women, . . the horrible, selfish scrambling, pushing and struggling of a bewildered, panic-stricken crowd, . . the helpless, nerveless, unreasoning distraction that human beings exhibit when striving together for escape from some imminent deadly peril,—and though the King's stentorian voice could be heard above all the tumult loudly commanding order, his alternate threats and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... mother's nerveless grasp. The detective quietly picked it up, placed it in the lock, and opened the door. And just at that instant, Rex Lyon, with the letter ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... last change passed over his face. He fell to the ground, sudden and heavy. The chords THERE, too,—the chords of the human instrument were snapped asunder. As he fell, his robe brushed the laurel-wreath, and that fell also, near but not in reach of the dead man's nerveless hand. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... eloquence are equally mixt. If he had been living in our own day Nero might possibly have made an ephemeral name for himself among the writers of the Sub-Swinburnian School. His longer poems were, no doubt, nerveless and insipid, deserving the scornful criticism of Tacitus and Persius; but the fragments preserved by Seneca shew that he had some skill in polishing far-fetched conceits. Our playwright has not fallen into the error of making Nero "out-Herod Herod"; ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... with his eldest son, seeing the Nashaway Valley blooming with the fruits of civilized labor; seeing new families filling the woeful gaps made in the old by Philip's warriors; seeing children and grandchildren grasping the implements that had fallen from the nerveless hold of the earliest bread-winners, with hopeful and pertinacious purpose to extend the paternal domain; seeing too, may we not trust, from the Pisgah height of prophetic vision the glorious promise awaiting this his Canaan; these softly rounded hills and broad ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... nor shook. There were a gold cross and a bunch of silver medals hung by a whipcord about the neck of the dead man. This Captain Morgan broke away with a snap, reaching the jingling baubles to Harry, who took them in his nerveless hand and fingers that he could hardly close upon ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... each time with a full sack on her back, and beyond passing the time of day with me she took no notice of my presence. Then, the cart empty, she fumbled for matches and lighted a short clay pipe, pressing down the burning surface of the tobacco with a calloused and apparently nerveless thumb. The hands were noteworthy. They were large- knuckled, sinewy and malformed by labour, rimed with callouses, the nails blunt and broken, and with here and there cuts and bruises, healed and healing, such as ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... could I, Gladys?" Lillian said again and again, white, wild-eyed, and haggard, so limp and nerveless that she could not have reached the library had not the other ladies supported her between them, half carrying her to her reclining chair. "You both think I was wrong, don't you?" She looked up at them with agonized eyes, pleading ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... post, even after consciousness had departed. The rescuing party found him with head drooped upon his arm, while his nerveless fingers still rested ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... days again. He realized that monarchy was essential to peace, and that the price of freedom was violence and disorder. He had no illusions about the senate. Fault and misfortune had reduced them to nerveless servility, a luxury of self-abasement. Their meekness would never inherit the earth. Tacitus pours scorn on the philosophic opponents of the Principate, who while refusing to serve the emperor and pretending to hope for the restoration of the republic, could contribute ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it from her nerveless fingers and caught her supple body as ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... her dress, even of the little basket and shawl, was minutely accurate; and by degrees the horror of her situation, and her utter helplessness, became frightfully distinct. The papers fell from her nerveless fingers, and one desperate cry broke from her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... dressed as no other woman in Bramble County, except Rosalie Gray, could have attired herself—simply, tastefully, daintily. Her face was flushed and eager and the joy of living glowed in every feature. Ed Higgins and 'Rast Little were struck senseless, nerveless by this vision of health and loveliness. Anderson Crow stealthily admitted to himself that she was a stranger in a strange land; she was not of Tinkletown or any place ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... ruthlessness. It is frightful to contemplate the physical wreck of a being whom, in some strange and hideous way, one always feels to be oneself. When I look at him it is as if his fallen face, his hanging nerveless hands, his down-drooping figure and eyes lit with despair were mine. His poses, his gestures, his physical tricks, they are all mine. I watch them with a cold, enveloping disgust, frozen in criticism of everything ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was hung insecurely, and it fell with a crash at Miss Burton's side. Was it the shock of the falling picture upon unprepared and overstrained nerves, or what was it that produced the instantaneous change in the joyous-appearing maiden? Her hands dropped nerveless from the keys. So great was the pallor that swept over her face that it suggested to he artist the sudden extinguishment of a lamp. She bowed her head and trembled a moment and then escaped ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... friendly voices, the changed room, and the strange looks of all around me. The passage was terrible to me; but I had yet more to undergo. I was recovered just in time to witness the poor wretch, whose prop and consolation I had undertaken to be, carried, exhausted and in nerveless horror, to the ignominious tree—his head drooping on his breast, his eyes opening mechanically at intervals, and only kept from fainting and utter insensibility by the unused and fresh morning air, which breathed in ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... O my unhappy fate! {405} My mother sinks to the dark realms of night, Nor longer views this golden light; But to the ills of life exposed Leaves my poor orphan state! Her eyes, my father, see, her eyes are closed, And her hand nerveless falls. Yet hear me, O my mother, hear my cries! It is thy son who calls, Who prostrate on the earth breathes on thy ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... provinces of the empire, taking aspects more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... shall, before it is long, see her Ministers made sensible of its real value."* (* Banks to Hunter, February 1, 1799. Historical Records of New South Wales 3 532.) If that was the feeling in 1799, we can imagine how a claim to the right to found a French settlement in Australia during the nerveless regime of Addington would have been received. It would not have delayed the signing of the Treaty of Amiens by one hour. England at that time would not have risked a frigate or spent an ounce of powder on resisting such a demand. But the subject does not appear to have been even ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... this can show is that the child's soul was then existing in a separate state. It does not prove that the soul was immortal, nor that it was experiencing retribution, nor even that it was conscious. And we do not deny that the ancient Jews believed that the spirits of the dead retained a nerveless, shadowy being in the solemn vaults of the under world. The Hebrew word rendered soul in the text is susceptible of three meanings: first, the shade, which, upon the dissolution of the body, is gathered to its fathers in the great ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... are!" I muttered, letting go her hand, but not before I had kissed it passionately across the tiny knuckles and in the palm. It fell nerveless into her lap; her face grew so desperately pallid, even her ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... crashed out from the darkness toward the place where they stood. A roar of cannon seemed to tear their ear-drums—another—and another—everywhere about them. With one mind five hundred imaginative workmen dropped their weapons from nerveless hands and fled, bumping, tumbling, fighting each other. A voiceless flow of chaotic clamour marked their course toward ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... for him, in particular, the seal and attestation of his extraordinary grandeur of mind. His empire dissolved after he had departed; his dominions lost their cohesion, and slipped away from the nerveless hands which succeeded; a sufficient evidence—were there no other—that all the vast resources of the Frankish throne, wielded by imbecile minds, were inadequate to maintain that which, in the hands of a Charlemagne, they had availed to ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... life, we must look for the drawbacks which our great-grandfathers had to put up with during that remarkable period which closed and opened the two centuries, when great changes ever seemed on the eve of being born, yet ever eluded the grasp of the reformer. What a sluggish, silent, nerveless world, it must have been as we now think! On the other side of the cloud, which shut out the future, were most of the contributories to the noisy current of our modern life—from express trains and steam hammers to lucifer matches and tram ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... reality. The fundamental principle on which it rests, that the empire is a community of sovereigns, that the diet is a representation of sovereigns and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns, renders the empire a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels. The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor and the princes and states; of wars among the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... scanty white hair streaming backward on the end of the pallet, which had been turned up to form a pillow. Over him and reaching from his feet to his breast, was drawn a sheet, and on that sheet lay one of his thin, wrinkled and nerveless hands. His eyes were shut, and he might have appeared to be asleep, but that ever and anon there broke from him one of those low but distinct groans indicative of severe inward pain, which had startled the two Zouaves. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... and slower, and gradually ceased, Walter's eyes slowly closed, and he sank down unconscious. His paddle fell from his nerveless hand and floated away on the stagnant water just as a dark, shapeless mass crept out of a bunch of reeds and struck the canoe ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... arrived at such a gorgeous dome, As even the pomp of Eastern opulence Could never equal: wandered thro' its halls A numerous train; some with the red-swoln eye Of riot, and intemperance-bloated cheek; Some pale and nerveless, and with feeble step, And eyes lack-lustre. Maiden? said her guide, These are the wretched slaves of Appetite, Curst with their wish enjoyed. The epicure Here pampers his foul frame, till the pall'd sense Loaths at the banquet; the voluptuous here ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... itself, but the attention of Sterry was riveted by the figure of a man lying motionless on the ground, only a few paces in front of where the door had been. His nerveless right hand still grasped the Winchester with which he had evidently made a sturdy fight when ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... if the reason were obvious). To show his confidence in me. (Napoleon's jaw does not exactly drop; but its hinges become nerveless. The Lieutenant proceeds with honest indignation.) And I was worthy of his confidence: I brought them all back honorably. But would you believe it?—when I trusted him with MY pistols, and MY horse, and ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... and she is only happy when she finds pleasure in lovingly, patiently, and faithfully performing the duties and enacting the relations that belong to her as woman. She is not the natural head of society. Man, rough, stern, cold, and almost nerveless, is made to be the head of human society; and woman, quick, sensitive, pliant (as her name indicates), gentle, loving, is the heart of the world. As the heart, she has power. She rules through love, and finds the work set for her to do in the doors opening ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... because of these last two characteristics that Dr. Johnson applied to Donne and his followers the rather clumsy name of 'Metaphysical' (Philosophical) poets. 'Fantastic' would have been a better word. 4. In vigorous reaction against the sometimes nerveless melody of most contemporary poets Donne often makes his verse as ruggedly condensed (often as obscure) and as harsh as possible. Its wrenched accents and slurred syllables sometimes appear absolutely unmetrical, but it seems that Donne ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... The carpets, where the subdued light struck them, betrayed places worn down to the warp. Mrs. Montgomery herself had a like effect of unsparing use; her personal upholstery showed frayed edges and broken woofs, which did not seriously discord with her nerveless gentility. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... he ceased to live—he merely existed. Into his soul there occasionally shot gleams of sunshine, but his nerveless hands refused to do the bidding of his brain. He stood on crutches, hat in hand, at church-doors, and asked for alms. Sometimes he would make bold to tell people of wonderful pictures within, over ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... hands over his head as Moriarity had done, he suddenly brought his clinched fists full against Sam's temple, putting into the blow the strength of three men. Without a groan the detective's head sank forward, his revolver dropped from his nerveless grasp, and he lay ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... swiftly to find that his aunt's knitting had slipped on the floor; her nerveless hands drooped by her side as if there were no life in them, and her head had fallen against the back of her chair. The boy was paralyzed with fear at the sight of her closed eyes and the deathly pallor of her face. He ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... silent scorn which seemed to blaze from his eyes, as he held her there—his slave until he chose to give the signal for release? At last he looked away towards the judge, and the woman fell forward in the box gasping, a crumpled up, nerveless heap ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strength after the birth of her child. She lay nerveless and white, so that her husband, her mother, the Colonel, all became alarmed. The celebrated accoucheur who had attended her alarmed them ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... comprehension so much more resembled their lady's than that of Miss Fulmort, and who made such intolerable blunders, that he bestowed on them more vituperation than, in their opinion, 'he had any call to;' and looked in a passion of despair at the numb, nerveless fingers, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their natural effect. Either men refused to accept the office, which hence tended to fall into abeyance; or accepting it, they sank under its weight into spiritless creatures, cloistered recluses, from whose nerveless fingers the reins of government slipped into the firmer grasp of men who were often content to wield the reality of sovereignty without its name. In some countries this rift in the supreme power deepened into a total and permanent separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... stood on the brow of the now nerveless and unhappy youth. He was pale, and his eyes were fixed for an instant; but, suddenly recovering himself, he rushed hastily from the apartment before his uncle could interpose to prevent him. He heard not or heeded not the words of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... tumbling out of barns and sheds, clutching their rifles in nerveless hands, aghast in the face of absolute destruction. It was all over with the first dash of the dragoons. The enemy, craven at the outset, threw down their guns and tried to escape through the alleys and side streets at the end of the common. Firing all the time, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... frightful hour; one I shall remember to my dyin' day, as it war only yesterday I saw and heard it. It war now dark, the boat half filled with water, my brother dyin', Captain Paul nerveless hangin' over his wife and children, cryin' like a whipped child. I still clung on to my oar, and made the poor blacks pull for this side of the river, as fast and well as thar bewildered ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... inept; unfit, unfitted; unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; inapt, unapt; crippled, disabled &c. v.; armless[obs3]. harmless, unarmed, weaponless, defenseless, sine ictu[Lat], unfortified, indefensible, vincible, pregnable, untenable. paralytic, paralyzed; palsied, imbecile; nerveless, sinewless[obs3], marrowless[obs3], pithless[obs3], lustless[obs3]; emasculate, disjointed; out of joint, out of gear; unnerved, unhinged; water-logged, on one's beam ends, rudderless; laid on one's back; done up, dead beat, exhausted, shattered, demoralized; graveled &c. (in difficulty) 704; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... locked up, so that neither Mary nor Elizabeth could come by surprise, and to let her weary frame (weary with being so long braced up to rigidity and stiff quiet) fall into a chair anyhow—all helpless, nerveless, motionless, as if the very bones had melted ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... upstairs in the dusk of the garret, speaking little. Molly had exhausted her strength for the while and argued no more, but leaned back in her chair with a hand laid on Hetty's forehead, who—crouching on the floor against her knee—drew down the nerveless fingers, fondled them one by one against her cheek, and kissed them, thinking ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not John Schuyler. It could not be John Schuyler. It was not possible. John Schuyler was at least a man—not a palsied, pallid, shrunken, shriveled caricature of something that had once been human.... John Schuyler had hands—not nerveless, shaking talons.... This sunken-eyed, sunken- cheeked, wrinkled thing was not John Schuyler—this thing that crawled, quiveringly—from the loose, pendulous lips of which came mirth that was more bitter to hear than the ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... the water was smooth as oil, and very weighty—it seemed to resist every stroke of his clumsily wielded blades. Altogether it was hard, uncongenial work,—and, being rendered somewhat flabby and nerveless by his previous evening's carouse with Macfarlane's whisky, Mr. Dyceworthy was in a plaintive and injured frame of mind, he was bound on a mission—a holy and edifying errand, which would have elevated any minister of his particular ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli |
