"Automaton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... signaled. I rose like an automaton, and cast an involuntary glance about me; the guests were filing through the drawing-room, into the room where refreshments were laid. When the last had gone, I left the friendly protection of the niche by the fire-place, and stood so near him that I saw his ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... without sign or sound to indicate that they had landed, always crowding forward, carrying the battle to his adversary, refusing to yield a step when to yield meant to evade punishment. Passion, deep and gripping, had made him for the moment an insensate automaton; he was devoid of any feeling except a consuming desire to punish the ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... soldier is but an automaton, a machine that works by the command of a good, bad, or indifferent engineer, and is presumed to know nothing of all these great events. His business is to load and shoot, stand picket, videt, etc., while the ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... sight of him, and the trooper saluted like an automaton, since nothing save obedience was any affair ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... appendix, appendices or appendixes; automaton, automata or automatons; axis, axes; bandit, banditti or bandits; basis, bases; beau, beaux or beaus; cherub, cherubim or cherubs; crisis, crises; datum, data; ellipsis, ellipses; erratum, errata; focus, foci: fungus, fungi or funguses; ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... different with an automaton. Such a man is like a machine,—a spring. Weight carries him away, making him move and turn forever in the same direction, and with equal motion. He is uniform, and never changes. Once seen, he appears the same at all times and periods of life. At best, he is but the ox lowing, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... not ivory, but a dirty white, and flabby, like the belly of a toad. His thin and bloodless lips were flattened over a row of pure white teeth with glistening specks of gold that opened when he smiled; closing again slowly like an automaton's. His shrunken, colorless hands lay on the black cloth like huge white spiders; their long, thin legs of fingers turned up at the tips—stealthy, creeping fingers. Sometimes, too, in their nervous ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... way to the boat, on the little vessel itself, I expected Slafe to relax, to indulge in a conversational word, to do something to mark him as more than an automaton. But his actions were confined to using the nasalsyringe, to exchanging one camera for another, to quizzing the sun through that absurd lorgnette, and to muttering over cans of film which he sorted and resorted, always ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... they have in the language from which they are taken; as, focus, foci; terminus, termini; alumnus, alumni; datum, data; stratum, strata; formula, formuloe; vortex, vortices; appendix, appendices; crisis, crises; oasis, oases; axis, axes; phenomenon, phenomena; automaton, automata; analysis, analyses; hypothesis, hypotheses; medium, media; vertebra, vertebroe; ellipsis, ellipses; genus, genera; fungus, fungi; minimum, minima; ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... deep serene glance, I asked (as other parents have done), "Whence came you? From what dusky night rose your starry eyes? Out of what unillumined void flowered your fairy face? Can it be, as some have said, that you are only an automaton, a ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ought to have reversed the order in which we have noticed them, since of the three, the latter appears to be the most important, (at least) in his consideration; for he takes care before the commencement of the performance to place one of his automaton figures on the second row of every box, which commands a good view of the House, who are merely intended to sit with their hats off, and to signify that the two first seats are taken, till the conclusion of the second act; and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... claims are in some measure those of a seer. His immense show of philosophical apparatus, his prodigality of logical balance-wheels and escapements, resemble the superfluous clock-work of the "automaton" which plays its game as the gentleman concealed inside shall judge expedient. It is of course impossible to probe the Two Absolutes, or the wonderful marriage which takes place between them. Mr. Frothingham sees that so it is. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... self-possession? Would he ever again be satisfied with himself? It was an invasion of his tranquillity, from within and without. He was restless. Bright ideas never came to him, as of old; or else they were the ideas of other people. A miserable state of affairs! He was becoming an automaton—an echo. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Lidhurst has no thoughts or feelings," said Vivian, "any more than an automaton. I'll answer for her—I am sure I can do her the justice to proclaim, that she has always, from the first moment I saw her till this instant, conducted herself towards me with the same petrified ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... revolting process that had turned Bill Jones from a human being into a mindless automaton was repeated with Professor Ralston. It happened as before, too rapidly for intervention, too suddenly for the minds of the onlookers to shake off the paralysis of an unprecedented nightmare. But when the victim was thrown to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... again, sonny," he said, renewing his broad, confiding smile, as the spruce young man poised a glass inquiringly. The living automaton went through the same motions as before, and again Elder Brown quaffed ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... as perfect as an automaton in her training and regularity, accompanied Bertie, to whom were confided all details of dress, all keys and jewels, with entire confidence and safety. An elaborate doll seemed the red-and-white and stupidly-staring Euphemia. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... of the Council of the California Psychical Research Society. Dr. J. C. Anthony is a well and favorably known physician, who has practised here for many years, also a member of our Council. Dr. Cecil E. Nixon is a Dentist, best known as a Magician, and as the inventor of "Isis," a wonderful automaton which plays any tune you request of her on the zither. Mr. Henry Huppert is one of the partners in the Preston-Huppert X-Ray Laboratory, a man with scientific training and a ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... thin, very pale, and apparently in very poor health. He is consequently not exactly a pleasant comrade for the chase: he does not seem to enjoy the sport at all, and his one endeavour is to get through with his task without losing more of his strength and health. Even now he is more of an automaton than a human being, more dead than alive, and yet—greatest of all miseries!—he is not allowed to die. For he has a mother, the witch Uraka, who keeps him artificially alive by anointing him every night with magic salve and giving him such diabolic advice as will be useful to him ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... the type of a class of men common in all times. We have seen Nicodemus very often. He is a good man whose goodness has no life in it. His goodness is a sort of an automaton—all machinery and no soul. He is so thoroughly right in all he does; everything about him is so proper; he is so perfectly en regle in his own eyes,—that we sometimes wish that he might be betrayed into some impropriety, commit some ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the very windows of the Tuileries, against His Majesty, the Queen, the Austrian party, and the Coblentz party, the constant thwarting of every plan, and these last horrors at Nantes, have so overwhelmed the King that he is nearly become a mere automaton. Daily and nightly execrations are howled in his ears. Look at our boasted deliverers! The poor Queen, her children, and all of us belonging to the palace, are in danger of our lives at merely being seen; while they by whom we have been so long buoyed up with hope are quarrelling ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Camp, and Reviews in Hungary, where the Kaiser and everybody had been very gracious to me] with much regret." Parted regretfully with Keith;—had played, at Presburg, in sight of him and fourteen other Englishmen, a game with the Chess Automaton [brand-new miracle, just out]; [Account of it, and of this game, in KEITH too (ii. 18; "View, 3d September, 1774:" Keith to his Father).]—came on through Vienna hitherward, as fast as post-horses could carry us; travelling night and day, without stopping, being rather ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... what we are doing, but we must be able to know, or there will be nothing worth while to forget! The danger of the mechanical idea—the extreme technician's notion that the sign is enough—is that the person may become an automaton and inhibit the power of real feeling in himself; and though he may perform admirably and win the applause of some critics who love form unduly, he fails in the great issue and wins only superficial success or fails utterly, without seeing why. The real experience has a magnetism ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... of their second interview, she treated Rafael with a kindly indifference like any other of the adorers who had flocked about her in her day. She had come to look upon him as a new piece of furniture that she found in place in front of her every afternoon; an automaton, who appeared as regularly as a clock strikes, to spend hours and hours staring at her, pale, shrinking with an absurd consciousness of inferiority, and often answering her questions with stupid phrases that ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Gavrilo of all power of grasping anything and transformed him into a senseless automaton, wholly absorbed in ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... aspect of life is changed; this impulse has lost its force, and another which before I should not for a moment have entertained, is all-powerful over me. In short, I know just as little about myself as I do about the Eternal Essence, and I have a haunting suspicion that I may be a mere automaton, my every thought and act due to some power ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... Bridget, turning instantly from a friend into an automaton, as was her custom on the rare occasions when I hardened myself to find fault. The words were submissive enough, but her manner announced that she had said her say, and would stick to it, though Herself, poor ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lacking may be evolved. It takes a very sensitive instrument to register all that is seen, heard and done while out of the body. It also requires physical, emotional and mental harmony, or the dreamer is apt to mistake an actual astral experience for an automaton of the physical brain, or vice versa. To what extent the ego would guide us and warn us, if we were only sensitive and responsive to the delicate vibrations sent down into the physical brain, it is impossible to ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... has a very deadening effect upon character—seeing the same faces, hearing the same things, performing the same routine in the same kind of way every day, year in and year out, makes him a sort of automaton. Kipling has told us something of the effect of this thing in "Soldiers Three." There came a time when I broke under the strain of this man's continued insults. For nearly a year I got comfort from the advice of the brethren. We had a weekly meeting where ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... carts, waggons, vans, cabs, omnibuses, crossed and intermingled in a steaming splash-bath of mud; human beings, reduced to their due paltriness, seemed to toil in exasperation along the strips of pavement, bound on errands, which were a mockery, driven automaton-like by forces they ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... unworthy of her. In parts this effect is productive of too much pain. I saw Rachel one night with her brother and sister. The sister imitated her so closely that you could not help seeing she had a manner, and an imitable manner. Her brother was in the play her lover,—a wretched automaton, and presenting the most unhappy family likeness to herself. Since then I have hardly cared to go and see her. We could wish with geniuses, as with the Phoenix, to see only one of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... engineer Melzel had devised an ingenious decoration. Above an excellent portrait of the new Empress there appeared a rainbow; on one side, his happiest invention, an automaton, which the Viennese called the War Trumpet. But a Genius was silencing it by pointing to this motto, Tace, mundus concors, "Silence, the world ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... need! It was ignoble to sit here and support the paltry pretence of intellectual dignity. A few days ago her startled eye had caught an advertisement in the newspaper, headed 'Literary Machine'; had it then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of such poor creatures as herself to turn out books and articles? Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently, that the work of literary manufacture might be physically lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true automaton; ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... energy, and a most extraordinary black indifference to the surrounding world. Save in the deep centre of her soul, where she agonized, she seemed to have lost all capacity for emotion. Nothing moved her, or even interested her. She sat in the house, and ate a little, and talked a little, like an automaton. She walked about the streets like a bored exile, but an exile who has forgotten his home. Her spirit never responded to the stimulus of environment. Suggestions at once lost their tonic force in the woolly cushion of her apathy. If she continued to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... an inner room, where in the dark the chairs, upside down, perched dismally on the table tops. He almost obeyed an impulse to go in there and start playing, by the brilliance of his playing to force these men, who thought of him as a coarse automaton, something between a man and a dog, to recognize him ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... fancy, like an ancient frog, or the semblance of what had once been a frog, from which, however, all the impulses and juices that had made him alive had slowly leaked away, until nothing but the shell was left. He was a pithless automaton, in whom mind and emotions had long since become inert, and only enough sensibility was left to enable him to feel dimly miserable. Who was he—or, better, who had he been? I learned that for seven years he had sat in that same chair ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... prosperity of putting his hand to his mouth and of opening his eyes in an assumption of surprise, which had no basis in fact, now grew upon him. He really degenerated, although he did not know it, into a mere automaton. Life strews its shores with such ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Christianity.' To-morrow she will say, 'I am socialism.' It is the revolting idea of a demagogy without an idea, a principle, a sentiment, of a people which would march toward the west with the gait of a blind man, having lost its soul and its will and killing at random, of a terrible automaton like a dead body which can still ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... had been raised from our own side, when it was seen that he was being brought up, to clear the bar that the whole House might witness the scene, and every one stood up in intense curiosity. There were now only this figure, less human even than an automaton, and two persons, R. Stuart and E. Ellice, pushing the chair in which he lay. A loud cry of 'Shame, Shame,' burst from our side; those opposite were silent. Those three were counted without passing the tellers, and the moment after we saw that our tellers were on the right in walking to the table, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... instant he seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator—such fancies are in dreams; then he regained his identity almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a directing will as alert and fierce as that ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... occasion, in the Cleopatre of Marmontel, he fancied that he could reproduce the hissing of the asp, just as the automaton invented for the purpose by Vaucanson might have done it. The abortive effort made them laugh all the evening. The tragedy sank ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... like any other self-propelled and fuel-fed mechanism; but mechanism is usually controlled by an attendant. The question is whether our will or mind or life can direct our body's energy along certain channels to attain desired ends, or whether—as in a motor-car with an automaton driver—the end and aim of all activity is wholly determined by mechanical causes. And a further question concerns the mode whereby vital control, if any, ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... was the first regular French tragedy: the last French tragedy on the same subject was the Cleopatre of Marmontel. For the representation of this tragedy Vaucanson, the celebrated French mechanist, invented an automaton asp, which crawled and hissed to the life,—to the great delight of the Parisians. But it appears that neither Vaucanson's asp, nor Clairon, could save Cleopatre from a deserved fate. Of the English tragedies, one was ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... do; I needn't trouble you further." Then, after a word or two, partly aside, with Mr. Carey, he turned to Lionel and abruptly asked what salary she wanted—just as if Lionel had brought him some automaton and ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... I questioned were often doctors who ranked as majors or held some commission in the German medical corps. They were less stiff and automaton-like than the officers and sergeants of the line service. Their attitude varied in accordance with the number of stars they had on their epaulette. If their rank were inferior to mine, they were exaggeratedly obsequious, holding their hands along ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... remained seated on his throne, looking straight before him, immovably. All the sea of human life and motion seemed to surge around and below him, and to die away into stillness about his feet. A censer was brought to him; and he raised his hand with the action of an automaton, and put the incense into the vessel, looking neither to the right ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... he were in a dream, working like an automaton, going through mechanical motions that seemed completely unrelated to the living patient that lay on the operating table. In his training he had assisted at hundreds of organ transplant operations; he himself had done dozens ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... yet how was he to interpret the words of the abbess? Were they the mere ravings of delirium, or had they signification? If Rita was false, then indeed was there no truth upon earth. Confused, bewildered, tortured by the ideas that crowded upon his heated brain, Herrera sat like an automaton upon his horse, unmindful of where he was, and utterly forgetting the dangers that surrounded him. He was roused by the Mochuelo from his state ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Glapion, who, seeing that the hot-blooded Italian was overstepping the bounds of prudence in his harangue, called him by name, and with a half angry sign brought his sermon suddenly to a close. Padre Monti obeyed with the unquestioning promptness of an automaton. He stopped instantly, without rounding the period or finishing the sentence that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... rage, hate in his heart, his eyes aflame, his throat dry, his teeth clenched, unable to articulate a word; then he swung round like an automaton and darted from the room, banging the door after him with a noise of thunder; piles of books and papers rolled on to the floor of the Chief's office at ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... bewildered than gratified by the welcome. He required to be assured that the multitudes assembled meant him no harm, and would not move without Lanty; and though he bowed low in return to M. Dessault's greeting, it was like an automaton, and with no recognition. ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... existence, though I am not material,' says a third. 'Are my habitual actions voluntary,' it exclaims, 'however rapid they become; though I am unconscious of these volitions when they have attained a certain rapidity; or do I become a mere automaton as respects such actions? and therefore an automaton nine times out of ten, when I act at all?' To this query two opposite answers are given by different minds; and by others, perhaps wiser, none at all; while, often, opposite answers are given by the same mind at different times. In like manner ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... to tell you, sir—I was a mere automaton, a machine, in the hands of others. A new publication was sent to me, with a private mark from my employer, directing the quantum of praise or censure which it was to incur. If the former were allotted to it, the best passages were selected; if condemned to the latter, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... like large words which cover ignorance. I do not see how we can certainly say what was going on. Perhaps during all this time I had neither consciousness nor self-consciousness. I may have been a mere automaton, under the control of a series of reflex actions. The feeling of the reins in my hands may have set me erect. The feeling of the ground beneath my feet may have projected these along their way; and all this with no ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... hands, and each was avoiding looking at the other. The official was smiling like an automaton. The father turned his back brusquely, and threading his way through the throng, entered a cafe, where for some time he needed the most retired seat in the darkest earner ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... relapsed; it was now conspicuous for its want of "success waves"; it seemed to imply a definite cognizance of personal uselessness. He who had brightened a moment before now spoke like an automaton. Mr. Mackintosh looked at him and his shabby garments. He had a contempt ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... second child died, two more fell ill on the same day. Only Abel and Jan were still "about." The mother moved like an automaton, and never spoke. Now and then a deep sigh or a low moan would escape her, and the miller would move tenderly to her side, and say, "Bear up, missus; bear up, my lass," and then go back to his pipe and his cherry-wood chair, where he seemed to grow gray ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... seem much like lovers, Rainey fancied. They lacked the little intimacies that he, though he made himself somewhat of an automaton at the wheel, could not have failed to see. If the girl slipped, Carlsen's hand would catch and steady her by the arm; never go about her waist. And there was no especial look of welcome in her face when the doctor ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... want to pitch the ball asked for he changes the sign by a shake of the head. I think the old method was the better, because it is certainly the business of the pitcher not only to do the pitching, but to use his own judgment in deceiving the batsman. He should not act as a mere automaton to throw the ball; moreover, the catcher has enough of his own to attend to without assuming any of the duties of the pitcher. Of course, if the pitcher is young and inexperienced, while the catcher is seasoned and better acquainted with the weak points of batters, ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... hours of intense living are over, after he has spent an excessive amount of energy, he has hours when he is only partially alive. One then sees his eyes with a vague and sleepy look in them; and he is like old Rameau, who used to walk about for hours as if he were an automaton, seeing nothing and thinking ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... mechanically as those of an automaton and her face was as expressionless. "Oh!" Her eyes seemed burning through Armitage. "And you made ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Fourier has often been objected to as a mechanical arrangement, by which persons were fixed, automaton-like, and expected to work where they were placed, and has been opposed with the criticism that human beings are not automatic—that they have the restlessness of human nature and will ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... in the chair proffered him by the lawyer. There was something strange in his air, a quiet automaton-like quality which attracted the latter's notice and led him to watch him very closely. Ransom was busy with the door, which the strong west wind blowing through the hall ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... against a blank wall of ignorance; for hypnotism, to most people, means a dangerous power by which an unscrupulous, strong-willed Svengali dominates an abnormally weak-willed Trilby whose will continues to grow weaker until the subject becomes a mere automaton; and most of us would rightly prefer that a boy should be his own master—even if he were rushing to headlong ruin—than that he should be the mere puppet of the most saintly man living. The human will is sacred and inviolable, ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... the actual things heard, the actual facts mastered, is the lecture-system valuable to the student, as for the method of study which he derives from it. He is no longer like an automaton, a school-boy guided by his teacher and text-book, but is spoken to as an independent thinker. Authorities are quoted, which he may consult at his leisure. No subject is exhausted,—it is only touched upon. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... is merely a piece of mechanism. But the real automaton possesses a human brain which has been transplanted into it and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... her enamelled sophistication. It was not evident in her make-up, her dress, or her hair-do. These were perfection. In fact, she bore that store-window look that made me think of an automaton, triggered to make the right noises and to present the proper expression at the correct time. As though she had never had a thought of her own or an emotion that was above the level of very mild interest. As if the perfection of her ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... calculated, we should be strolling along Beverley Brook or through the glades of Coombe Woods with sunshine filtering through the birches overhead; it would have been more pleasant, and far more instructive, than wasting my time with a hatchet-faced automaton like this. That comes, I thought, of being patriotic. I ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Sampson, in a voice whose untuneable harshness corresponded with the awkwardness of his figure. They were the first words which Mannering had heard him speak; and as he had been watching with some curiosity, when this eating, drinking, moving, and smoking automaton would perform the part of speaking, he was a good deal diverted with the harsh timber tones which issued from him. But at this moment the door opened, and ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... like him!" ejaculated Bessie. "You are always talking about Mr. Bradley, as if he had an automaton ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... side was a body that had scarcely ever much life in it—sympathy seemed to have drawn them together—every feature and limb was round and fleshy, and, if a kind of brutal cunning had not marked the face, it might have been mistaken for an automaton, so unmixed was the phlegmatic fluid. The vital spark was buried deep in a soft mass of matter, resembling the pith in young elder, which, when found, is so equivocal, that it only appears a moister part ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... senseless caricatures, to whose authors' clumsy hands the mason's trowel would assuredly have been better adapted than the painter's pencil. It was the very dotage of incapacity. The colouring, the treatment, the coarse obtrusive mechanical touch, seemed those of a clumsily constructed automaton, rather than of a human painter. Thus musing, our artist stood for some time before the vile daubs that excited his disgust, gazing at them long after the train of his reflections had led him far from them; whilst the master of the shop, a little, gray, ill-shaven fellow in a frieze cloak, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... of the one, Be you a Convocationist, and into that of the other, Be you a Moderate; and then with his charmed rod he tapped them across the shoulders, and set them a-walking. The creatures straightway jerked up their little heads to the angle of his face, bowed like a brace of automaton dancing-masters, and after pacing round his knees for a few seconds, began Dialogue the first, in just the set terms in which we had been reading it beside our own fire not half an hour before. It seemed, for a few ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... this teaching and this minute instruction the work is apparently made so smooth and easy for the workman, the first impression is that this all tends to make him a mere automaton, a wooden man. As the workmen frequently say when they first come under this system, "Why, I am not allowed to think or move without some one interfering or doing it for me!" The same criticism and objection, however, can be raised against all other modern subdivision ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... fact to Mr. Truscomb when the new machines were set up three years ago. An operative may be ever so expert with his fingers, and yet not learn to measure his ordinary movements quite as accurately as if he were an automaton; and that is what a man must do to be safe in ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... remarked Kennedy as imperturbably as if he were an automaton, "that supposing some one took advantage of your absence to rob your safe, don't you think the wisest course would be to be ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... driver ahead was an automaton, a man whose brain did not know the meaning of fear. He knew that from his hideout Caleb Barter was directing the flight of the escaping car. He could fancy the old man of the apple-red cheeks, sitting in a chair in his hideout, his ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... an automaton, his bright eye and full-rounded head presage higher things. Occasionally his mind breaks through the mist of instinct and ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... He always made a point of choosing men who were highly strung and impressionable. He was known to boast that after three interviews with him he could make anyone, either man or woman, into a will-less automaton. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... learns the authorities for his opinions only later on, when they serve merely to strengthen both them and himself; while the book-philosopher starts from the authorities and other people's opinions, therefrom constructing a whole for himself; so that he resembles an automaton, whose composition we do not understand. The other man, the man who thinks for himself, on the other hand, is like a living man as made by nature. His mind is impregnated from without, which then bears and brings forth its child. Truth that has been merely ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... closer scrutiny even of a friend to determine, so much had the passing of these few months altered him in appearance and in manner. Once light of mien, now he smiled never at all. For hours he would seem to go about his duties as an automaton. He spoke at last to his ancient and faithful friend, kindly as ever, and with his ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... virtuous soul commands not nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton." ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... isolated from opportunities of vice that their souls lay in no great danger of damnation. The activities of Considine were practically limited to his Sunday services, but though the softness of the climate might eventually have transformed him into a likeness of the ancient automaton who had preceded him, it was not in his nature to take things easily. He came of a vigorous stock. The clear, thin air of the Wiltshire downland that his ancestors had breathed makes for energy of temperament. At Roscarna he had given vent to this ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... self-appointed publicity, where a single error or dereliction may ruin the prestige of years! Consider also the rank turpitude of such a lapse! Alas, women frequently do not consider these things. Some of them seem to have a superstition that a newspaper is an automaton and has a will-to-live of its own; that somehow (they know not how) it will appear, and appear fitly, with or without man's aid. They cannot imagine the possibility of mere carelessness or omission interfering with the superhuman regularity and ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... sit at that desk in Crimsworth's counting-house day by day and week by week, scraping with a pen on paper, just like an automaton; you never get up; you never say you are tired; you never ask for a holiday; you never take change or relaxation; you give way to no excess of an evening; you neither keep wild company, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... account of an automaton speaking-machine which Mr. Franklin Peale and himself had recently inspected. The machine was made to resemble as nearly as possible, in every respect, the human vocal organs; and was susceptible of varied movements by means of keys. Dr. Patterson ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... around me like a grim, sepulchral figure, closing me up in the circle of your narrow ideas. But now I can endure it no longer. I was a proud, high-spirited girl, you've made of me a colourless social automaton, a slave of your stupid worldly traditions. I'm turning into a feeble, complaining, discontented wife! And I refuse to be it. I'm going home—where at least there's some human spontaneity left in people; I'm going ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... brought her to the brink of the grave. She was reduced almost to a shadow; she would go about the affair—she would entertain no other—with a sort of jerking, spasmodic activity as unlike muscular energy as if she were an automaton. She had no rest in her sleep, and would scream and cry out in weird accents at intervals, and dream such dreams! She would blanch when questioned, and close her lips fast, and never a word escaped them of what these visions ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... revived a little, and insisted on going onward. This time she walked for some distance. She did this with a stolid, heavy step, and mechanically, like an automaton moved by ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... mode of copying is chiefly used for drawings or maps: the instrument is simple; and, although usually employed in reducing, is capable of enlarging the size of the copy. An automaton figure, exhibited in London a short time since, which drew profiles of its visitors, was regulated by a mechanism on this principle. A small aperture in the wall, opposite the seat in which the person is placed whose profile is ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... the centre of it, staring toward the garden. Noon had crept upon it, devouring all shadow. Her eyes saw little but the golden blur. A fusuma opened softly, and two women, Mata and the attendant seamstress, came mincing and smirking toward her, each with an armful of white silk. Ume rose like an automaton. They began her toilet, talking the while in low voices. They robed her in white with a thin lining-edge of crimson, and threw over her shining hair a veil of tissue. Some one outside called that the bride's kuruma was at the gate. Old Kano entered ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... initiative, overcoming the bashfulness of that timid overgrown boy; and he, submissive rather than seeking, allowed things to take their course, like a superior being with thoughts absorbed in higher things, and responding to affairs of earth like an automaton. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... But has any one of the distinguished advocates of the automatic theory ever acted on it, or allowed his thoughts to be really ruled by it for a moment? What can be imagined more strange than an automaton suddenly becoming conscious of its own automatic character, reasoning and debating about it automatically, and coming automatically to the conclusion that the automatic theory of itself is true? Nor is there any occasion here to entangle ourselves in the controversy about Necessarianism. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the slightest interest in it. To gain all that the world could give I would not have raised a listless finger; and it was entirely without intention that I took a cigarette, and felt for matches in my pocket. It was the act of an automaton, of a corpse that twitches a little after life ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... identical with the saying of the ancients, that true proceeds from cause to effect; though the ancients, so far as I know, never formed the conception put forward here that the soul acts according to fixed laws, and is as it were an immaterial automaton. ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... the proceedings, but (as became a perfectly bred footman) like an article of furniture artfully constructed to come and go at the word of command. Julian gave the word of command, addressing the admirably constructed automaton by the ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... character has assumed many meanings. Originally it signified probably the dominant ground-note in the complex mass of the self, and as such it was confused with temperament. Afterward it became the middle-class term for an automaton, so that an individual whose nature had come to a stand still, or who had adapted himself to a certain part in life—who had ceased to grow, in a word—was named a character; while one remaining in a state of development—a skilful navigator on life's river, who did not ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... to the king of the Romans, in the gardens of his cloister at Cologne, when he converted the intensity of winter into a season of summer, full of flowers and fruits, which disappeared when the banquet was over; and his having constructed a marvelous automaton, called "Androis," which, like the invention of his contemporary, Roger Bacon, was said to be capable of auguring all questions, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... every employee. He saw him deceiving Madam Bartlett, sneering at Mr. Ranny's efforts at reform, terrorizing little Miss Leaks. Then he had a swift and relentless vision of himself in his new position, a well trained automaton, expected to execute Mr. Bangs's orders not only in the factory but in the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... agents, when all the external circumstances that affect us, and all our mental and bodily acts, are predetermined and brought about by God. Man is thus reduced to, a mere passive instrument. He is nothing more than a complicate and curious machine—a man-machine, an automaton—whose every movement is conceived, determined, directed, controlled by a supervisor. It avails nothing to apply to him terms which signify freedom. We may say that he has the power to will; that he actually wills; but the difficulty is not relieved. ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... was not fit to teach children, or to be with them: I had already reduced the boy to little better than an automaton; I had broken his fine spirit with my rigid severity; and I should freeze all the sunshine out of his heart, and make him as gloomy an ascetic as myself, if I had the handling of him much longer. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... patient to the last, but they could not be made, by punishment or the fear of it, into machines. They read their chance of success, not in opposing numbers, but in the character and reputation of their commanders, who, in turn, believed, as a rule, that "the unthinking automaton, formed by routine and punishment, could no more stand before the high-strung young soldier with brains and good blood, and some practice and knowledge of warfare, than a tree could resist a stroke of lightning." So that with Southern soldiers discipline came to mean "the pride which made ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... bear that you should live and die without being a happy wife. I don't want you to become a mere benevolent automaton set aside for church work, and charities; getting solemn and thin, with patient curves deepening around your mouth, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... It seemed so comical. What a position! The candle shook as she laughed. What a man, answering her like a little automaton! Seriously, quite seriously he said it to her—"We s'll have folks talking!" She laughed in a breathless, hurried way, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... went. The sun shone bright, and scintillant the tide. O'er which the sea-mew swept, with dewy drops besprent. Before he went he kissed me; and I watched His boat that lay so still and stately, till Automaton she seemed, and that she moved To where she willed of her own force and law. But I knew better: his was the will That set the pretty sprite a-going. His arms controlled her to obedience: Those arms that lately clasped me. No alarms Chilled my fond heart, nor ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... an automaton? Good! Let me alone, then," said Rose, speaking from a corner where she was sitting on the carpet at the foot of a bookcase, with a volume spread open on her knee.—"Miss Helstone, how do you do?" she added, directing a brief glance ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Hester Grimes will do that," declared Jess. "She moves about the stage like an automaton. She is going to get us a big laugh, but in the wrong place. ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... Piper entranced is merely an automaton, a "machine," of which use is made to communicate between two worlds, it is perfectly evident that, on this side as well as the other, it is well to have honourable and experienced experimenters. Phinuit was not perhaps wanting in experience, but he was assuredly wanting in ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... until noon, then at 3 P.M., again at sunset, and at 9 P.M., and once or twice before morning. The sleep was deep, and nothing seemed to arouse her. Gairdner mentions the case of a woman who, for one hundred and sixty days, remained in a lethargic stupor, being only a mindless automaton. Her life was maintained by means of the stomach tube. The Revue d'Hypnotisme contains the report of a young woman of twenty-five, who was completing the fourth year of an uninterrupted trance. She began May 30, 1883, after a fright, and on the same day, after ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... himself in love with some unattainable beauty, he had a passionate craze for music, and played upon the violin and flute with considerable taste and execution. The sound of a favourite melody operated upon the breathing automaton like magic, his frozen faculties experienced a sudden thaw, and the stream of life leaped and gambolled for a while with uncontrollable vivacity. He laughed, danced, sang, and made love in a breath, committing a thousand mad vagaries to make you acquainted ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... lips. I was a poised and motionless receptacle for all that quantity of wine. It lay inert in my fear-inert stomach. I was too frightened, even, for my stomach to turn. So all that Italian crew looked on and marvelled at the infant phenomenon that downed wine with the sang-froid of an automaton. It is not in the spirit of braggadocio that I dare to assert they had ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... o' the clock, automaton figure that strikes the hour; Jack-a-lent, puppet thrown at ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... suspended, But gain'd his senses as he ended; Abruptly turning on his toe, "I thank you, Master Cupid, no! I am a freeman and a brave, And will not stoop to be a slave. Your rules will never do for me, I'd rather learn the rule of three— "And since I find it is the plan, To make me an automaton, I'll case my heart in triple mail, And fence it so completely round, That all this vaunted skill shall fail, Those blunted arrows back rebound; For know, usurper! from this hour, I scorn thy laws, abjure thy ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... him that the dwarf no longer spoke. He worked his will entirely without words; his evil mind possessed fully the mind of his victim. For Blaine Carson there was no further independent thinking. He was an automaton, a sleep-walker. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... sobriety; but his crime is, in a moral light, comprised in the origo mali, the drunkenness only. His senses being once gone, he is no more than a human machine, as insensible of misconduct, in speech and action, as a parrot or an automaton. This is more particularly the case with respect to indecorums, such as the defender is accused of; for a man can no more be held a common swearer, or a habitual talker of obscenity, because he has been guilty of using such expressions when intoxicated, than he can be ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... are subject to it must be really material machines. We look here only to the necessity of the connection of events in a time-series as it is developed according to the physical law, whether the subject in which this development takes place is called automaton materiale when the mechanical being is moved by matter, or with Leibnitz spirituale when it is impelled by ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter (say the psychological and comparative, not ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... hand that held the lather brush, turned about like an automaton, tripped over the mat, recovered himself with an effort, and preserving what dignity a man can preserve in pink-striped pyjamas and a sun helmet, stalked majestically back to his quarters. Half-way across he remembered something and came ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... for him to do anything for himself: one Cardinal kneeling, holds the book open before him, another carries his handkerchief, a third folds and unfolds his robe, a priest on each side supports him whenever he rises or moves, so that he appears among them like a mere helpless automaton going through a certain set of mechanical motions, with which his will has nothing to do. All who approach or address him prostrate themselves and kiss his embroidered ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... then led him, with his eyes shut, to the front of the stage, and pointed out to the spectators the phrenological development of his head; he then touched the bump of language, and set the seeming automaton talking. But here the professor was caught in his own trap. After once setting him going, he of the mnemonics refused to hold his tongue until he had given, to his weary listeners, the whole lecture he had delivered a few nights before. He pranced to and fro on the platform, declaiming in the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... set in motion, will continue its function of recording true time only so long as every wheel, spring, and lever performs its allotted duty, and at its allotted time; or till the limit that man's ingenuity has placed to its existence as a moving automaton has been reached, or, in other words, till it has ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... that seemed to chuckle and wink, saying, "We're rogues together; then I must lend you a hand." But he could be ruthless also, displaying a curious aloofness from his fellow-men and an unconsciousness of any suffering he might inflict that left mere cruelty far behind. If I were making an automaton king, I would model my machine on the lines of Hammerfeldt. He had no belief in a future life, but would sometimes trifle whimsically with the theory of a transmigration of souls; he traced all beliefs in immortality to the ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... I stood, like a pallid automaton, when the instant came for him to change his position, and he saw me. The cry that rose to his lips but did not escape them, the reel which his figure gave before it stiffened into marble, testified to the shock he had received, and also to ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... his eyes, biting off the thread with her whit teeth, and saying "Now it will be warmer" as she bit; and finally, how she shook hands with every boy in turn and, throwing a deprecating glance at the female automaton, insisted upon filling ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... it had been decided to start the Cast-iron Canvasser there, and then move him on to more populous and active localities if he proved a success. They sent up the Genius, and one of their men who knew the district well. The Genius was to manage the automaton, and the other was to lay out the campaign, choose the victims, and collect the money, geniuses being notoriously unreliable and loose in their cash. They got through a good deal of whisky on the way up, and when they arrived at ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... of astrology makes one an automaton, slavishly dependent on mechanical guidance. The wise man defeats his planets—which is to say, his past-by transferring his allegiance from the creation to the Creator. The more he realizes his unity with Spirit, the less he can be dominated by matter. The soul is ever-free; it is deathless because ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... somnambulist stirred from his motionless position and advanced at a slow pace; he walked like an automaton. After taking a dozen steps he stopped, looked around him, and slightly bent forward. His strained features resumed their natural proportions, life re-animated his brow, the deathlike inertia of his face gave place to an expression of sadness ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... way, automaton-like, unresponsive now to horror or any emotive. And once again, within the ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... discover he guessed at. He then projected a similar machine; and gradually his genius produced a clock. Encouraged by this first success, he proceeded in his various attempts; and the genius, which thus could form a clock, in time formed a fluting automaton. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... suspicious of systems. I am more than suspicious of any constrained formal method, bringing up children in a mere manual drill, crimping them into a mould of mincing proprieties, and making them speak with an automaton click. Perhaps the most headlong young men that can be found, are those who spent their early days in a sort of strait jacket with a clock-work movement. They were wound up so tight when they were boys, that now they take great pleasure in going fast, and running down. ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... is introduced at this point, as has been done, they say, by Luther. If God has determined all things beforehand by a sovereign decree, if there really is no such thing as human choice, and all things occur according to a foreordained plan, man no longer has any responsibility. He is reduced to an automaton. Free will is denied him; he cannot elect by voluntary choice to engage in any God-pleasing action; for he is told that his natural reason is blinded by sin and his understanding darkened, rendering it impossible for him to discern ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... she had once seen on the stage—a figure that walked and moved its arms and uttered sounds which resembled a human voice—and it seemed to her that she, herself, was this figure and that her gestures and the words she spoke were the result of the hidden automaton within her. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... heart and said in a low but very grave and impressive tone, "Nathanael, my darling Nathanael, throw that foolish, senseless, stupid thing into the fire." Then Nathanael leapt indignantly to his feet, crying, as he pushed Clara from him, "You damned lifeless automaton!" and rushed away. Clara was cut to the heart, and wept bitterly. "Oh! he has never loved me, for he does ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist. If one, nevertheless, meets with real spontaneity (which, by the way, is a rare treat,) it is not due to our method of rearing or educating the child: the personality ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... replied Thorndyke. "There is no reason to suppose that he knew how he was dressed. You have heard Jervis's description of his condition; that of a mere automaton. You know that without his spectacles he was practically blind, and that he could not have worn them since we found them at the house in Kennington Lane. Probably his head was wrapped up in the veil, and the skirt and mantle put on afterwards; ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman |
