"Nerveless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was interesting of 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
... 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 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... possibly reflected from the five different sources. Deny that he can be ignorant of the truth, or foolish in believing error. Affirm all strength and courage and steadfastness. He comes to-day with an uncertain ring in his voice. He is undecided as to what to do; is weak and nerveless; can not tell whether he is better or worse. The treatment for strength and courage will bring him back to Truth, and he will brighten and revive under the warm ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... their homes, and of a piece with the monotony in which they lived. Paul never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing. His home was next the house of the Cumberland minister. He approached it tonight with the nerveless sense of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home. The moment he turned into Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... a gasp of terror from Fenwick's lips as those fingers closed around his neck. Then the hypodermic fell from his nerveless hand and he fought to ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... not well be otherwise. Lucille has returned to Dorset House. Souspennier is confounded altogether by a little revelation which I ventured to make. He spoke of an appeal. I let him know with whom he would have to deal. I left him nerveless and crushed. He can do nothing save by open revolt. And if he tries that—well, there will be no more of ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... M. and returned to the fold. This evening, as all was still, we played a little game of Bridge, as in the old days when life was a pleasant dream. Suddenly a dozen rifle shots, in quick succession, rang out in the air and the cards fell from our nerveless fingers as a stray ball rattled against the iron shutters of our windows. Instinctively we crouched into sheltered corners and waited; another volley and another followed, until finally Monsieur S. whispered in a hoarse voice, "A la cave." The household, including the ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... that he would lie down upon the ridge and cling to it, thus gaining strength by a little rest. But he soon found that this would not answer. His overtaxed frame was becoming nerveless, and his only hope was to escape at once. In trembling weakness he crawled back to the edge and looked over. Annie stepped forward to the foot of the ladder and extended her hands as if ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... how hungry I am for it? I knew years ago what it was to love you ... and I've dreamed of it ever since. But all your appeal is to passion, Stuart—none of it to the sense of fair play. I'm neither sexless nor nerveless. When I held you off a little while ago, my hands on your breast could feel the beat of your heart—and the arms that kept us apart were aching to go round your neck. I've sat back there in the window of my room night after night and watched ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... that they are languid, morbid, misanthropic, and nerveless. They seem ill-nourished as well as mentally and spiritually starved. They seem the victims of inherited or acquired weaknesses that stamp them as belonging among the physically unfit. If the farmer should discover among his ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... just as we would. We live amid a multitude of influences we can not altogether control. Nor is it best we should. Our vanity, or ignorance, or selfishness might do us great spiritual injury. We might soon become like spoiled children, or nerveless drones, or pampered aristocrats. What we are to control is ourselves, our minds. We must seek Happiness in the right state of mind, in the legitimate labors, duties, and pleasures of life, and then we shall find what we seek; yet we may often find it ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... weak, and she could not keep her seams straight. The machine they had was ricketty. Sewing, for her, was impossible. For a few days she was stunned with the new demand for which she was unprepared. She was nerveless. It made Sally sick to watch her mother and to realise from the vacancy which so soon appeared upon her face that memory and a kind of futile pondering had robbed her brains of activity. With a bitter sense of grudge against life, a tightening of lips already ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... symphony; And at respectful distance other castes, Afraid to touch a Brahman's sacred robes Or even mingle with his grief their tears. And when they reached the fragrant funeral-pile, Weeping they placed their dead on their last couch, The child within its father's nerveless arms; And when all funeral rites had been performed, The widow circled thrice the funeral-pile, Distributing her gifts with lavish hand, Bidding her friends a long and last farewell— Then stopped, and raised her tearless eyes and said: "Farewell, a long farewell, to life and friends! ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... their captives squat down in one corner, while the others possessed themselves of their guns and watched them. The wretches looked frightened out of their wits. They were Neapolitans and peasants, weak, feeble, nerveless. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... sleep," replied Maria, with the gentlest sadness conceivable. There was in it no shadow of complaining. Of late years all the fire of resistance had seemed to die out in the girl. She was unfailingly sweet, but nerveless. Often when she raised a hand it seemed as if she could not even let it fall, as if it must remain poised by some curious inertia. Still, she went to the shop every day and did her work faithfully. She pasted linings in shoes, and her slender little fingers ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... scarcely struggled. The courage of his madness seemed to pass, the venom died out of his face, he shook like a man in an ague. Prince Shan kicked the revolver on one side and looked scornfully down upon him, now a nerveless wreck. ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... priestly office produced 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 ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... she knew him well; held him a slave to her fluttering hand. Being proud of her slave, she let the hand flutter down now somehow with some flowers it held until it touched his hard fingers, her cheek flushing into rose. The nerveless, spongy hand,—what a death-grip it had on his life! He did not look back once at the motionless, dusty figure on the road. What was that Polston had said about starving to death for a kind word? Love? He was sick of the sickly talk,—crushed it out of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... sat, quite spent, staring before him until Sylvia returned from the kitchen with a plate of cold meat and some bread. She sat down beside him, putting out again consciously all her strength, and set the knife and fork in his nerveless hands. In the gentle monologue with which she accompanied his meal she did not mention her mother, or anything but slight, casual matters about the house and garden. She found herself speaking in a hushed ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... 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 ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; inapt, unapt; crippled, disabled &c v.; armless^. harmless, unarmed, weaponless, defenseless, sine ictu [Lat.], unfortified, indefensible, vincible, pregnable, untenable. paralytic, paralyzed; palsied, imbecile; nerveless, sinewless^, marrowless^, pithless^, lustless^; 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... seen her but once before, but she knew at a glance the worn, wrinkled face; and, as if a picture of the scene hung before her, she saw that old, queer form, leaning trustfully on the strong arm, lying nerveless now, being carefully helped through the pushing throng—being reverently cared for as if she had been his mother; and she, looking after the two, had wondered if she should ever see them again. Now she stood in the presence of them both, yet what an unmeasurable ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... horse. As the animal came nearer and nearer it whinnied on seeing him, and finally changed its course and came directly toward him. Then he saw that there was a man on its back; a man either dead or asleep. His hand hung down nerveless by the horse's shoulder, and swung helplessly to and fro as the animal walked on; the man's head rested on the horse's mane. The horse came up to Sidney, thrusting its nose out to him, whinnying gently, as if it ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... virtues of men were difficult; they were apt to be nerveless and uncertain, because their aim was uncertain, and they wanted inspiration. Of course there are always kindly hearts; but a man will never put forth quite his best for an uncertainty. There was a want of centre about their virtues, a want of faith, and as a result they ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... whistles cut it short, and some huge, unearthly creature 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 ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... American women have to give to their household affairs, produce that lack of time that is offered as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the mind blank and nerveless except when ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... existence, wrestling with the storm, fighting for its life from the moment that it leaves the acorn until it goes into the ship, that gives it value. Without this struggle it would have been characterless, staminaless, nerveless, and its grain would have never been susceptible of high polish. The most beautiful as well as the strongest woods are found not in tropical climates, but in severe climates, where they have to fight the frosts and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... did I tense myself for a second leap than I felt a nerveless sensation in my knees, as though the bones had turned to butter, and knew that my high hopes had budded too soon. Instead of leaping, I staggered on for two short steps, then stopped because I could stagger no farther. Looking back at the cruiser, I saw ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... as though he had been struck with some sharp instrument. He had carried in his hand the old satchel which contained the wine purchased by Mr. Schulte, and which had been consigned to his care on leaving the depot, and as he fell unconscious the satchel dropped from his nerveless grasp upon the floor. ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... nineteenth fade in the night, the breaking of which would bring the crush of pride, the end of power. At court there was the silent dread and the dying hope that relief might come at the last hour. Men, with pale faces and tearful eyes, wandered through the ancient castle, speechless, nerveless, miserable. Brave soldiers crept about, shorn of pride and filled with woe. Citizens sat and stared aimlessly for hours, thinking of naught but the disaster so near at hand and so unavoidable. The whole nation surged as if in the last throes of death. ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... ranks some soldiers whose hands are too nerveless or too full of worldly trash to grasp the sword which they have received, much less to strike home with it at any of the evils that are devastating their own lives or darkening the world. The feebleness of the Christian conflict with evil, in all its forms, whether ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... that the other systems of organs are developed in the same way, from tubes formed out of simple layers, did not escape Wolff. The nerveless system, muscular system, and vascular (blood-vessel) system, with all the organs appertaining thereto, are, like the alimentary system, developed out of simple leaf-shaped structures. Hence, Wolff came to the view by 1768 which Pander developed in the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... sons of Spain, and strange her fate! They fight for freedom, who were never free; A kingless people for a nerveless state, Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee, True to the veriest slaves of Treachery; Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, Pride points the path that leads to liberty; Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife, War, war is still the cry, 'War even ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... nerveless hand and held it a moment in silence, and then he laid it gently down and stood up, looking about through the moonlight, toward the ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... face of the king, his eyes fell to the silver tablet in the nerveless hand. Moving close, and holding the lamp in convenient position, he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... strokes grew slower 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 with a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... sword upon his thigh, Doth gleam the panting soldier's eye, But nerveless hangs the arm that swayed So proudly that terrific blade. The feeble bosom scarce can give A throb to show he yet doth live, And in his eye the light which glows, Is but the stare, that death bestows. The filmy veins that circling thread The cooling ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... a comical look at his young master as he began to try the bow, holding it in his injured, nerveless grasp, and pulling at ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... his armour-bearer thrust his sword Hilt-deep into his heart. "Better to die "By friendly hand," he cried, "than owe my death "To yonder hated victors. Quick! Thy sword! "Thrust deep and quickly!" But the faltering hand That held the sword fell nerveless. "Mighty King! "I dare not!" spake the trembling armourer. "Then by my own I die," exclaimed the King. And as he spake he poised the glittering blade Point upward from the earth, and moaning fell Upon the thirsty steel. The ruddy gush Came spurting through the armour ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... dull unceasing ache was left and he was very tired. He tried to smile, to gather together the tatters of his courage and faith, but he could not think of the future. When he tried to think of Shirley a sickening qualm rushed over him, leaving him weak and nerveless. ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... 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
... feebly wailed over the threatened destruction of the Union, weakly apologized for the contemplated Treason, garrulously scolded the North as being to blame for it, and, while praying to God to "preserve the Constitution and the Union throughout all generations," wrung his nerveless hands in despair over his own powerlessness—as he construed the Constitution—to prevent Secession! Before writing his pitifully imbecile Message, President Buchanan had secured from his Attorney-General (Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania) an opinion, in which the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... reported, after an attempt to settle the Muhongo, that the chief's head had grown big since he heard that the Musungu had come, and that its "bigness" could not be reduced unless he could extract ten doti as tribute. Though the demand was large, I was not in a humour—being feeble, and almost nerveless, from repeated attacks of the Mukunguru—to dispute the sum: consequently it was paid without many words. But the Arabs continued the whole afternoon negotiating, and at the end had to pay eight ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... of my betrothed, and, untwining myself from the lithe and nerveless limbs of the savage, I rose to my feet. The ranche ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... in frightened silence, and her clenched hands dropped nerveless at her side. It was her father! What a change the heavy beard made in his appearance; and then besides, it was almost a year since she had seen him. No wonder she had failed to recognize him in her anger. It would have taken more than ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... ever to excel as an oarsman. The sun was burning hot, 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 ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... 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, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... insufficiency of his establishment, was 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 ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... recognisable, the final letter terminating in a wandering line as if the pen had dropped from nerveless fingers. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... 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 lips, that ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... him, as she left the room and passed to where Meydon lay nerveless, but with wide-open eyes, waiting for her. The eyes closed, however, before she reached the bed. Presently they opened again, but the lids remained fixed. He did not ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... 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
... audience was startled by the snapping of a string; the violin and bow dropped from the nerveless hands of the player. He ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... her vaguely, and without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had obviously not discerned her yet in her position against ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... and his look told me he had understood my question. He lifted up his thin, emaciated arm, and, seeming to clasp hold of something, he said, "Missionary, I am holding on to God; He is my all of joy and hope and happiness." Then the arm fell nerveless, and my triumphant Indian brother ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... progress had reached, and the present drop in temperature restored her everyday sense of safety. With it came a sudden ebbing of energy and endurance. The "spell" was over for the time, but her escape from the shadow of it left her nerveless and almost indifferent to its returning; apathetic, too, to her tormentor. Going in, she closed the door behind her, apparently not noticing that he followed her, and when he opened it and came in, she was sitting in his great chair by the fire, taking off the baby's coat, and, with the capable, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... like the ciborium and the nave columns a relic of an earlier building. The stalls are fine of their kind, and we were told that an offer of 50,000 florins and a new set had been made for them and refused. They are dated 1445, and are elaborately carved with figures and the usual nerveless foliage of the period, of which other good examples occur at Zara and Parenzo. In a chapel in the north aisle is a polygonal Renaissance font of rather pleasing design, with S. John the Baptist in the central panel and fruit, &c., hanging in the others. In the apse of the north aisle is an early ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... reflections must that spectacle inspire him! The outstretched arms lying helpless along the earth—the claw-like fingers now stiff and nerveless—he may be thinking how they once clutched a cowhide, vigorously laying it on his own back, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... dodged his blow and ran my bayonet through him, as I thought, but there he was coming at me again. Again I dodged and plunged into him, and again he was coming. Suddenly all power left me; my hands, arms and legs became nerveless, and I stood rooted; he clubbed his rifle, and as it crashed on my skull I awoke, and that must have been the time I cried out. And, Reg, just as sure as I am lying here, my number is up. I am as good ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... house is all a flame of song. I must abide until the prelude closes, Until his heart has ceased its preparation And he comes forth into the dying year, Leaves his house of inspiration empty, And with a loneliness of heart creeps forth Eagerly into the night, and gropes his way With outstretched nerveless hands unto my home, Where I wait, alone! I hear his lips Murmur again, and moan, and murmur again Tones of the broken prelude, vainly trying To call me forth, who am waiting in my home, Waiting in sweet imprisonment, the bonds Of love restraining me from running ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... clumsiness to confess," he answered hotly, raising his voice. "It is a fine thing to sit here in Paris, among the languid, dull, and nerveless beauties of the Court, whose favours are easily won because they look on dalliance as the best pastime offered them, and are eager for such opportunities of it as you fleering coxcombs will afford them. But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... gone, in full retreat, leaving killed, wounded, and much property by the way, we all experienced a feeling of relief. The struggle had been so long, so desperate and bloody, that the survivors seemed exhausted and nerveless; we appreciated the value of the victory, but realized also its great cost of life. The close of the battle had left the Army of the Tennessee on the right, and the Army of the Ohio on the left; but I believe neither General Grant ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... "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 hand made ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 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
... I said as cheerfully as possible, "and I thank you also as His instrument; but if you would keep me from fainting away like a nerveless woman, I beg ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... wretch's throat; but there was no occasion to use force: he recognized me, and nerveless, paralyzed, sank on the floor incapable of motion much less of resistance, and could only gaze in my face ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... Alma's engagement ring, broken in twain. It had slipped from her nerveless finger when they took her to her room. With a gesture of impatience, he picked up the fragments, and threw them, diamond and all, out of the window into the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... fire, however, an explosion was heard, and I saw the man suddenly drop his weapon, which went off as it escaped from his nerveless grasp. Then he threw up his hands, reeled, took two uncertain steps backward, and fell at full length on the floor. Nighthawk had ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... right description. His mechanical reiteration of the words that are said to him by Sophia, in the moment when the fond father knows that his idolised Olivia has fled with her lover; his collapse, when the harmless pistols are taken from his nerveless hands; his despairing cry, "If she had but died!"; his abortive effort to rebuke his darling child in the hour of her abandonment and misery, and the sudden tempest of passionate affection with which the great tender heart sweeps ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... held my hands I could not move— The nerveless palms together prest— And clasped them tightly to his breast; While in my heart the question strove. The fire-flies flashed like wandering stars— I thought some sprang from out his eyes: Surely some spirit makes or mars At will our earthly destinies! "Speak, Maud!"—at length I turned away: He ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... seeing the sbirri reappear pale and nerveless, shaking their heads without speaking, they at once inferred that ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on Jacob's well The weary hour of noon, The languid pulses Thou canst tell, The nerveless spirit tune. Thou from Whose cross in anguish burst The cry that owned Thy dying thirst, To Thee we turn, our Last and First, Our ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... thing: everything has the look of being painted with clumsy tools, and what is worse, by obtuse and vulgar minds. Take away Meissonier, Decamps, one or two others, and some of the youthful pictures of Ingres, and all is tame, nerveless, without intention, without fire. One need only cast one's eye over that stupid, commonplace paper L'Illustration, manufactured by pettifogging artists over here, and compare it with the corresponding English publication ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... and let my life expire with my honour. . . ." Why could he not wrench this feeling from his heart, banish this girl from his eyes? Why could he not be wholly true to her who was and always had been wholly true to him? Horrible—this will-less, nerveless feeling, this paralysis, as if he were a puppet moved by a cruel hand. And, as once before, it seemed to him that the girl was sitting there in Sylvia's chair in her dark red frock, with her eyes fixed on him. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... His nerveless limbs succumbing under him, he sank without ceremony to a chair that was opportunely near him. With the same lack of ceremony, mechanically, in a dazed manner, he mopped the sweat that stood in beads on his brow, then raised his wig ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... resignation We lift our hands on high; Not like the nerveless fatalist, Content to do and die. Our faith springs like the eagle Who soars to meet the sun, And cries, exulting, unto thee, "O Lord, thy will ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... memorials of the drow have never entirely disappeared—even at the present time they display themselves in my system, especially after much fatigue of body and excitement of mind. So there I sat in the dingle upon my stone, nerveless and hopeless, by whatever cause or causes that state had been produced—there I sat with my head leaning upon my hand, and so I continued a long, long time. At last I lifted my head from my hand, and began to cast anxious, unquiet looks about the dingle—the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Miss Langmore, you may have the ring back." It was passed out and Raymond took it and slipped it back on Margaret's hand, which was cold and nerveless. The girl was sitting as motionless as a ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... cowardice and weakness of inaction. The value of work, of constant occupation, to sustain and divert the mind, was speedily learned. Gradually she took the helm of outdoor matters from her uncle's nerveless hands. She had a good deal of a battle in respect to Chunk. It was a sham one on the part of Zany, as the girl well knew, for Chunk's "tootin'" was missed terribly. Mr. and Mrs. Baron at first refused point-blank to hear ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... returned home from Meredith's bedside and found Honor nerveless and prostrated with white cheeks and dark rings round her eyes, she was convinced that it was high time her daughter ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... closing the studio doors behind him. Olga looked apprehensively about her. Some mysterious presence seemed to oppress her. She fumbled with nerveless fingers at the buttons of ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... forward to gaze at the hedgeways in the neighbourhood of the Hall strangely renewing their familiarity with her. Both in thought and sensation she was like a flower beaten to earth, and she thanked her feminine mask for not showing how nerveless and languid she was. She could have accused Vernon of a treacherous cunning for imposing it on her free ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his face, he found that his remaining probe had disappeared and that he was in possession of three eyes. The third eye was on his forehead, where the old sorb had been. He could not guess its use. He still had his third arm, but it was nerveless. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... quickly, but he lacked the vigor to attempt an escape. On the contrary, he hung limp and paralyzed with terror. The mystery, the uncertainty, the hideous significance of that wordless scuffle in the dusty road rendered him nerveless, and he cried out shakingly, like a man ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... gallant few! From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew:— O, bloodiest picture in the book of Time! Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe! Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear, Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career; Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell, And Freedom shrieked—as ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... sphere and her work, 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
... She smiled sweetly at the men around the table. "Thank you very much, gentlemen," she said. She handed the chips to Malone, who took them in nerveless fingers. "Sir Kenneth," she said, "I hereby appoint you temporary Chancellor of the Exchequer—at least ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... near, The clouds already closing in upon me, The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost, I yield my ships to Thee My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd; Let the old timbers part, I will not part, I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me, Thee, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... But the sinister influence of to-day saps his will and renders him infirm; each new to-day is wasted amid thoughts of visionary to-morrows which take all the power from his soul; and, when he is nerveless, powerless, tired, discontented with the very sight of the sun, he finds suddenly that his feet are on the edge of the gulf, and he knows that there ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... hair graying rapidly at the temples and a care-worn face; the face of a man whose tasks or responsibilities, or both, have overmatched him. He was walking the floor with his head down and his hands—thin, nerveless hands they were—tightly locked behind him, ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... her out,—holding her hot, trembling fingers in his cold, nerveless hand, a moody frown on his brow, and his lips writhing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... brave chieftans; where the mighty ones Who flourished in the infancy of days? Ah 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, Hushed is the stormy voice, and quenched the blaze ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... dining-room, which was again filled with cowboys, coal-miners, ranchers and their tousled families, and certain nondescript town loafers of tramp-like appearance. The flies were nearly as bad as ever—but not quite, for under Mrs. Wetherford's dragooning the waiters had made a nerveless assault upon them with newspaper bludgeons, and a few of them had been ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... 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 effort, and the natural explanation ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... every minute to see the water churned into angry foam by the furious sharks. Instinctively I placed my hand on the knife I had thrust through the lapel of my coat for just such an emergency, but strength and courage were all gone and my nerveless hand could not draw it out. It seemed a long time that I waited, half dazed, for death, which I hoped when it came would ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... new courage, he directed his feet towards the site, upon which he knew there was an old chapel known as Queen's Glasshouse Chapel, whose ownership had slipped from the nerveless hand of a dying sect of dissenters, he could not find the site and he could not see the chapel. For an instant he was perturbed by a horrid suspicion that he had been victimized by a gang of swindlers posing as celebrated persons. Everything ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... walk, to sit in her own room, 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 |
