"Stillness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l'Orangerie and the Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old quartermaster. It was two o'clock in the morning, the most perfect stillness prevailed, no one was there to watch his movements. The post-horses were put into the carriage (it came from a house in the Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman lived, and had been ordered in the foreigner's name to avoid raising suspicion). Castanier saw that he had his bills and his ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... resting on the golden-green mossy turf. And it was a male, undoubtedly the mate of the wheatear I had seen at the spot, and its little mate, not knowing what death is, had probably been keeping watch near it, wondering at its strange stillness and greatly fearing for its safety when I came that way, and passed by without ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... appeared confused and undecided. Niclas looked triumphantly at his immense crowd of listeners, who were gazing at him with amazement, awaiting in breathless stillness the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... be thankful you are rid of her." He wheeled about and stood with his back to his niece's lover. He had guided the inevitable sword, but he could not witness the agony of the wound. There was complete stillness in the room; the ticking of the clock suddenly hammered in Robert Ferguson's ears; a cinder fell softly from the grate. Then ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... inexpressibly sad beauty of a ruin. All the splendid phantasmagoria of chivalry and feudalism, knights, ladies, banners, glittering arms, sweep before us; the cry of the battle, the noise of the captains, and the shouting; and then in contrast this deep stillness, that green, clinging ivy, the gentle, rippling river, those weeping birches, dipping in its soft waters—all these, in their quiet loveliness, speak of something more imperishable than ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... warehouses; masts in among the streets as steeples appear amid roofs; masts across the river hung with drooping half-furled sails; masts afar down thin and attenuated, mere dark straight lines in the distance. They await in stillness the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... he suddenly became conscious of sounds in the room overhead. Or rather in the now absolute stillness of the rest of the house he realized that the movements and voices above him, which had really been going on since he entered his room, persisted when everything ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... up—nothing broke the intense stillness of the blue overhead. He looked round in astonishment, then he bowed again, and this ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... twinkled in the studies where the upper boys were working, and in the dormitories where the rest were now going to bed. The tall trees round the building stood quite black against the faintly-lighted sky, waving their thinned remnant of yellow leaves in the November air. In the stillness you heard every slight sound; and the murmur of boys' voices came mingled with the plashing of the mountain stream, and the moaning of the low waves as they broke upon the shore. A merry laugh rang from one of the dormitories, jarring ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... which it passed, has felt powerfully, in the silence and desertion of the streets and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man,—if all at once he should hear the death-like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... its melancholy, and it produces an extraordinary impression on the natives. If a group of Indians are rioting and drinking, or engaged in furious conflicts with each other, and the sound of the Jaina is suddenly heard, the tumult ceases, as if by a stroke of magic. A dead stillness prevails, and all listen devoutly to the magic tones of the simple reed; tones which frequently draw tears from the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... the interstices between the trees and clumps of foliage could be seen the gleaming white marble of the monuments erected to Greene and Pulaski, looking like giant tombstones in a City of the Dead. The unbroken stillness—so different from what we expected on entering the metropolis of Georgia, and a City that was an important port in Revolutionary days—became absolutely oppressive. We could not understand it, but ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... was strangely bright, making the very air silvery. Miss Custer, with the rarest tact, let the stillness alone, knowing there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in counsel and woke him, for he was soon roused by the sound of the battle-cry. He came outside his tent and said, "Why do you go thus alone about the host, and along the line of the ships in the stillness of the night? What is it that you find so urgent?" And Nestor knight of Gerene answered, "Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, take it not amiss, for the Achaeans are in great straits. Come with me and let us wake some ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... however, now. The quiet, majestic air, the suppressed richness of a deep-toned, but well-cultivated voice, as the speaker paid a few well-timed compliments to his opponents, disturbed not, as it had produced, the dead stillness around. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... finally. "But the stillness here is nothing to what it is down where my village stood. I've made a frightful ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... brands were all expended and the fire extinct, and then, as I said, we went away to sleep under the boats' awnings. We were in the act of depositing our loaded rifles by our sides in a place of security, when the unearthly war cry rose in the jungle, and in the stillness of the night these discordant screams sounded like the yelling of a legion of devils. Immediately afterwards a body of natives rushed from the jungle in the direction of the boats, in which we supposed that our European party were all assembled. Always on our guard against treachery, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... delight. Now the breeze strengthens so much as to shake all the leaves, making them rustle sharply; but it has lost its most ethereal power. And now, again, the shadows of the boughs lie as motionless as if they were painted on the pathway. Now, in the stillness, is heard the long, melancholy note of a bird, complaining above of some wrong or sorrow that man, or her own kind, or the immitigable doom of mortal affairs, has inflicted upon her, the complaining, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... plain, lay the foundations of houses still showing their cemented floors. The lowlands and highlands around the settlement looked white-patched with mounds, veins, and scatters of quartz. The evening was stillness itself, broken only by the cries of the Kats, which are now nesting, as they flocked to drink; and the night was cool—a promise, and a false promise, that the Khamsn had ended ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... moonlight he could distinguish many of their neighbors, who were armed with everything from sleigh bells to horse fiddles, and the racket they made in the stillness of the night seemed greater than any noise he had ever heard. As he raised his window, a shout went up, the neighbors thinking it was Bob's uncle, but seeing their mistake they redoubled their efforts and kept the racket going for ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... humanity. Now and then an unguarded movement elicited an involuntary cry of anguish. The death-rattle rose on the warm, damp air. Down the room a low, mournful wail, almost a lullaby, went on and ceased not. And all about was silence, intense, profound, the stolid resignation of despair, the solemn stillness of the death-chamber, broken only by the tread and whispers of the attendants. Rents in tattered, shell-torn uniforms disclosed gaping wounds, some of which had received a hasty dressing on the battlefield, while others were still raw ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... look for me, now I was not there? I waited, and a strange, unearthly tremor shook both blood and nerves, until tears were wrought out, and came dropping down, and in the stillness I heard one fall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Hamburger steak, the cook's invariable dish when his poor invention failed him, it tasted by some miracle succulent and spiced. After dinner he strolled over lazily to his bungalow to get a book. He liked the intense stillness, and now that the night had fallen the stars were blazing in the sky. He shouted for a lamp and in a moment the Chink pattered over on his bare feet, piercing the darkness with a ray of light. He put the lamp on the desk and noiselessly slipped out of the room. Mackintosh stood rooted to the floor, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... listless anguish spent after his illness at San Stefano, and of the hopelessness from which her own words and looks aroused him. He spoke much, also, of Dino and of Padre Cristoforo and the kindly monks: and in the sunny stillness of an early Italian morning they went to the churchyard to ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... timidly as though she was afraid to break the stillness of the night. She embraced me: "We have no secrets from one another. I must tell mamma and my sister.... Is it so terrible? Mamma will be pleased. Mamma ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... all sitting on the grass, the boys with their heads on the sisters' laps, and there had been an outcry for a story, to which no one had responded; partly, perhaps, because the exquisite air of evening seemed a sufficient delight, the stillness too profound to be lightly disturbed. We had remained for some time without speaking, and the idea was becoming general among the girls that the boys were napping, when the summer silence was broken by the distant footfalls of a ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... may, every one of the dusky figures below had vanished as though the earth had swallowed them up. A strange if not foreboding stillness hung over the town. You would have thought it contained not a single being, at least ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... so much as the sight of their own shadows, and drove the very crows with wings adust to skulk in the furrows. The shrilling of crickets, the stumbling hoofs of an overtaxed horse, and the creaking of saddle and girth made a din in the deadly stillness of this fervent noon, and, since there was no other sound to be heard, it is hard to tell how Manvers was aware of a traveller behind him, unless he was served by the sixth sense we all have, to warn as that we ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... before. I was so interested that I forgot what I was doing and ran into the hedge so that I nearly came down. There was the noise of the scrape and drag of the machine which must have sounded very loud in the stillness. It startled him, for he looked all round, but he didn't see me, for I was under the hedge. Then suddenly he started running. He ran as if the devil was after him. I saw him squash down his Trilby hat so that it was shapeless. Then he disappeared along the path. I thought this ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... nerve and vein she was conscious of that equipoise of bliss which the fearful human heart scarce dares acknowledge. She was not used to strong or full emotions; but she had always known that she should not be afraid of them. She was not afraid now; but she felt a deep inward stillness. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... and Gregory slept held a cold glimmering whiteness; and the light he switched on showed a most sanitary bareness and two severe iron beds. There was a moment's stillness as he entered, the scrutiny of two rosy faces framed in blanket and sheet—there were no pillows—and then there was a delighted vociferous ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... which, to his life's premature end, united me to Moritz Hartmann, and led to a correspondence which afforded me the greater pleasure the more certain I became that he understood me. We met again in Wildbad the second and third summers, and with what pleasure I remember our conversations in the stillness of the shady woods! But we also shared a noisy amusement, that of pistol practice, to which we daily devoted an hour. I was obliged to fire from a wheel-chair, yet, like Hartmann, I could boast of many a good shot; but the skill of Herr Rodiger, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a sound had broken the stillness since the strangers had arrived, except that of their own voices. They began to wonder if there were no people to inhabit this magnificent ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... as death. Fleda's face was in her hands and her utmost efforts after self-control wrought nothing but tears. The stillness had lasted a little while, when very softly and sweetly the notes of a hymn floated to their ears, and though they floated on and filled the room, the voice was so nicely modulated that its waves of sweetness broke ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... tears to eyes unused to weep, and caused that group of red-gowned girls to grow very pathetic in the sight of fathers and mothers who had left little daughters safe asleep at home. This was evident from the stillness that remained unbroken for an instant after Phebe ended; and before people could get rid of their handkerchiefs she would have been gone if the sudden appearance of a mite in a pinafore, climbing up the stairs from the anteroom with a great bouquet grasped in both hands, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... through any of the paths of life. In publick assemblies are honours and transactions of wisdom; in domestick privacy is stillness and quiet: in the country are the beauties of nature; on the sea is the hope of gain: in a foreign land, he that is rich is honoured, he that is poor may keep his poverty secret: are you married? you have a cheerful house; are you single? you are unincumbered; children are objects ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... blew across the plain, promising a cool evening after the sun had set. Benoist sat down on a ditch, placed his hat on his knees as if he needed to cool off his head, and said aloud in the stillness of the country: "If you want a fine girl, she ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... has its passing clouds. When those days come for us, the doubts and fears that you don't feel now will find their way to you then. When the clouds rise in our married life—when I say my first harsh word, when you make your first hasty reply—then, in the solitude of your own room, in the stillness of the wakeful night, you will think of my first wife's miserable death. You will remember that I was held responsible for it, and that my innocence was never proved. You will say to yourself, 'Did it begin, in her time, with a harsh word ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... anxiously passed without any intelligence. My opponents rubbed their hands, and looked pleasant, when, about half an hour before the close of the poll, a dusty coach drove rapidly into the town, and eight men, more or less inebriated, rolled out to record their votes. The following morning, amidst the stillness of deep suspense, the mayor read the result of the election, which gave me a majority of three. Such a shout of joy arose from the liberals as quite to drown the hisses of the contending faction; and at length I rose, flushed with excitement, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... from Robert Louis Stevenson the last sentence brings the description to a V3; the smoking harrow is suggestive of so much more than the cloud of dust that has not yet settled to the earth in the stillness of the approaching twilight when the work of the day ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... the Canadian wilderness. Over it the moon was rising, like a red pulsating ball, lighting up the vast white silence of the night in a shimmering glow. Not a sound broke the stillness of the desolation. It was too late for the life of day, too early for the nocturnal roamings and voices of the creatures of the night. Like the basin of a great amphitheater the frozen lake lay revealed in the light of the moon and a billion stars. Beyond ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... there, and the howling seemed nearer than before. There was no sign of a light or a house anywhere, and not even a freight-train sent its welcome clatter down the track. All was still and wide and lonely, save that terrifying sound of the beasts; such stillness as she had not ever thought could be—a fearful silence as a setting for the awful voices ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... broke an irruption of riot. A group of men poured through the swinging doors of a saloon into the open arcade in front. Their noisy disputation shattered the sunny stillness like a fusillade in the desert. Plainly they were much the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... intense stillness reigned in the town. The strangers entered the first house they came to, which was also the largest, and found the floor strewn with pieces of the people who lived there. They looked much like fragments of wood neatly painted, and were of all sorts of curious ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the traffic of the day the stillness of the Avenue was puzzling. Only the whir of an automobile or the occasional hoofbeats of a cab-horse broke the silence, and hardly less dark than the tenements just passed were its handsome houses, with their closed shutters and drawn curtains, and the restless occupants therein. As he reached ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... sought a nook Beneath a thick and widely-spreading tree, And there I sat to con my little book, My book of old black-letter grammarie. All stillness in that deep and lonely dell Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing, Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell, While fancy feigned ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... friends. And those who knew him best readily agreed. Drawing up the storm-collar about his face, he passed out into the snow which was falling in flakes the size of autumn leaves. There was not a breath of wind to disturb the deathly stillness of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... received large re-enforcements, advanced again, under Sykia Wongee, third minister of state. The jungles were animated with living masses, and their tumultuous preparations for battle contrasted strangely with the stillness and quiet of the British lines. Our troops at this time had been much diminished by sickness and death; but they were recruited by the eighty-ninth British regiment from Madras, and the detachments that had been sent to the capture of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... they bore her to the grave. Reverently they laid her down to rest, and from the carriage window Alice's white face looked wistfully out as "earth to earth, ashes to ashes," broke the solemn stillness. Oh, how she longed to lay there, too, beside her mother! How the sunshine, flecking the bright June grass with gleams of gold, seemed to mock her misery as the gravelly earth rattled heavily down upon the coffin lid, and she knew they were covering up her mother. "If I, too, could die!" she ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... fell upon the room, and for a long half hour the stillness was only broken by the clatter of the loose-jointed scissors, and an occasional moan from Grant, when the blunt points collided with his skin with more than ordinary vigor. With one hand clutching the boy's yellow head for ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... trees to the water's edge, on the other with bracken and patches of ploughed land to where the cliffs broke sheer away, stretched for some miles without bend or break. Far ahead a blue bank of woodland closed the view. Not a sound disturbed the stillness, not a sail broke the placid expanse ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... send Mrs. Hart. When would Mrs. Hart come? Would she ever come, or would she never come? He looked away from Hilda feverishly, anxiously, to the door; he strained his ears to listen for footsteps. But no footsteps broke the deep stillness that reigned through the vast house, where all slept except these two who faced each ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... from his early slumbers. While waiting in the darkness below, the Turkish muezzins ascended the many minarets, and began the evening call to prayer. The weird chanting from so many voices (there are seven mosques in Dulcigno) in the otherwise utter stillness had a most ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... and a ghastly silence fell upon the group. Each one looked straight into the distance ahead of him, but the bond of sympathy was drawn still tighter, and in the moment of stillness that ensued I felt that all of us ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... his consciousness, the first impression upon his mind was the stillness which had succeeded to the din of battle; the shouts and war-cries of the crusaders, the wild yells of the Moslems, were hushed, and in their place was a quiet chatter in many unknown tongues, and the sound of laughter and feasting. Raising his head and looking round, ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... The stillness of evening was broken by the roar of a locomotive whistle, and an instant later the wheels of the train smoked and screeched against the chattering brake shoes. In the cab ahead the handle of the air valve was slammed into ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... was recreant in his duty. He performed it only too well. We learned to depend on him. He suffered us to do so. It was only by a delicate irony that the prayer-meeting could be termed one of the "social meetings" of the Church. A solemn stillness pervaded the room. No one ever spoke after he entered the awful presence, unless he rose, formally addressed "the chair," and delivered himself of a set address. Occasionally one bolder than the rest spoke in ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... noise and horrid riots were at times so boisterous, that frequently we could not, though so near them, distinguish a word the King and Queen said; and yet, whenever the leaders of these organized ruffians spoke or threatened, the most respectful stillness instantly prevailed. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the awful stillness Of their grave, The forest oaks have flourished— And the breath Of years hath swept their races, Wave on wave, As ages fainted On the shores of death. The tumbling cliff perchance Hath thundered deep, Like a rough note Of music in ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... stillness of the evening weighed heavily upon Raut. They went side by side down the road in silence, and in silence turned into the cinder-made by-way that presently opened out the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... a sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pool, And do a wilful stillness entertain; With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion, As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle, "And when I ope my lips let no dog bark." ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... catch was a leviathan; my mother when reading the word in the Bible had told me it meant some kind of great fish, the largest in the world. Once indeed I thought I had him on my hook, but it proved only a sunken log. Of stillness and solitude I had my fill strolling along the banks of the river. It seemed like Sunday without the requirements imposed upon me by that day, stiff shoes and Sunday-school. I became as still as the nature around me, stepping softly and almost hushing my breath. If ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... table descended, the floor closed up, and stillness was in the room again, as when the lady had first retired to her couch. The cock crew, and Swanhilda fell into a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the eyes endeavored to find lurking, unseen things that watched the conduct and the destinies of men. But my eyes and ears returned again each time to their vain attention to the entrance of that room, as if the stillness and the gloom bade me listen and look, while ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Goethe, for I should never end. The volume of Spruche, or aphorisms in rhyme and prose in his collected works, is accessible to everybody, but some of his wisest and finest are to be found in the plays, like the well-known one in his Tasso, "In stillness Talent forms itself, but Character in the great current ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... on her knee, and a hand resting on it still held a stylograph. She must have dozed over her writing; yet she did not stir when her name was uttered. Tims noticed a peculiar stillness in her, a something almost inanimate in her attitude and countenance, which suggested that this was no ordinary siesta. The idea that Milly might even now be resurgent fluttered Tims's ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... with dazzling brightness, upon the opening; the sound of distant shouts and the rhythmical stroke of axes came to it out of the forest; but the camp was deserted, and in the stillness Kinney's voice seemed strange and alien. "Walk in, walk in!" he said, hospitably. "I've got ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... done his protruberant teeth, sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace. We were both silent for a while, and as I looked towards the window I saw the first dim streak of the coming dawn. There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I listened, I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. The Count's ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... silence on the touching scene before them. Clarence was on his knees, regarding with fear and wonder the unnatural stillness of his mother—the child had never before looked on death, and could not recognize its presence. Laying his hand on her cold cheek, he cried, with faltering voice, "Mother, can't you speak?" but there was no answering light in the fixed stare ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... faint whisper, which comes from our friend below, asking us to declare our present sensations. We reply in the same faint whisper; and are immediately apprised of its safe arrival by another. One hundred and eighty feet separate the parties. In the stillness of that half-lit cavern, not only were our faintest whisperings conveyed, but we could hear each other breathe! This was a place to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... The stillness lengthened. The match went out, the cigarette was put down unlit. The man was certainly very still. Isbister took up the portfolio, opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak. "Perhaps," he whispered doubtfully. Presently he glanced at the door and back to the figure. Then ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... was in anguish. He could not take the watch. Tears came into his eyes. Then he hid his face, and dashed away. She heard a sob-impeded murmur that sounded like, "Forgive me!" and the banging of a door. And in the stillness she heard the regular snoring of M. Carlier. She too cried. Her vision was blurred by a mist, and she stumbled into the kitchen and seized the clock, and carried it with her upstairs, and shivered in the intense cold of the night. She wept gently for a very long ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of complete stillness (for the old dame and the attendants were at rest in the outer chamber), Bruce, whose low sighs were echoed by the wind alone, which swept in gusts by the little casement, looked toward the abdicated monarch's couch. He slept profoundly, yet frequently ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... interrupted by a sound that sent him whipping behind the door in a trice. Miss Hazeltine had stepped on board the houseboat. Her sketch was promising; judging from the stillness, she supposed Jimson not yet come; and she had decided to seize occasion and complete the work of art. Down she sat therefore in the bow, produced her block and water-colours, and was soon singing over (what used to be called) the ladylike accomplishment. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as he was with these seas, it seemed that a typhoon was more than probably brewing. There was a sense of discomfort and uneasiness in the atmosphere which communicated itself to man and beast, for in the stillness of the night, in the pauses in the singing and uproar, the horses in their stalls on board the transports could be heard whinnying and neighing, as though not altogether at ease. Little balls of electricity came ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... they were surprised at the deathlike stillness. They peered through the palisades; and, seeing the effigies of the soldiers, believed that their intended victims were within. But no sounds except the clucking and crowing of some fowls fell on their ears. They became suspicious and hammered at the ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... a secret which he told to none, knowing, in his unanalytical fashion, that it would not be believed in. But soon as ever the dark heads of the cattle began to lift themselves, he sent a resonant voice out into the stillness. The songs he sang were hymns, and he made them into a sort of imperative lullaby. Waite let his lungs and soul fill with the breath of the night; he gave himself up to the exaltation of mastering those trembling brutes. Mounting, melodious, with even and powerful swing ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... a lonely spot, no other house being in sight, for Rushville lay under the brow of a hill. The boys stood still and listened. Not a sound broke the stillness that surrounded ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... about her heavily, like the black remnants of a long- buried corpse's wrappings; a Woman whose eyes flashed with an unholy fire as she lifted her face to the white moon and waved her ghostly arms upon the air. And again the wild Voice pulsated through the stillness. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... decree of silence. The day wore on to noon, and in the unbroken stillness the boys ventured out of the grimy tree and lay at full length on the turf. The great redwoods towered in endless corridors, their straight columns unbroken by branch or twig for a hundred and fifty feet. Through ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... of light was snatched away from the tree-tops, the river grew suddenly dark, and in the great stillness the murmur of the flowing water seemed to fill the vast expanse of grey shadow ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... moment the sight of home, even after a short absence, had, on returning to it, always been delightful to Caroline; but now, for the first time in her life, every object seemed to have lost its brightness. In the stillness of retirement, which she used to love, she felt something sad and lifeless. The favourite glade, which formerly she thought the very spot so beautifully described by Dryden, as the scene of his "Flower ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... glory of God drew me to the window. In the immense stillness of the loneliness of the mountains, the thundering of the avalanches that crashed from time to time from the opposite heights was the only sound. It was as if one heard the breath of God, and in deepest reverence one's heart stood ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... place its nest. But then what animal was ever known to sleep so soundly as not to be disturbed by human footsteps? If wounded, and so unable to escape, it would not be breathing with that quiet, soft regularity, contrasting so strangely with the stillness and the silence all round. Possibly an owl's nest. Young owlets make that sort of noise—the "snorers," so country people call them. Young Raffleton threw away his cigar and went down upon his knees to grope among the shadows, and, doing so, he touched something ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... seemed a century. In the gloomy room where these unfortunates had taken refuge no sound broke the stillness save the moans of the Marquis and the voice of the Abbe Peretty, as he uttered occasional words of consolation and encouragement to assuage the mute anguish of Philip and the despair of the weeping Antoinette. ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... and opened it, and the very first lines my eyes fell on were those of the verse I wanted, though it was the last verse of a long hymn. Rising again, I told the people of my prayer and the answer, and gave them the verse. The solemn stillness which prevailed indicated that a deep impression had been made. Some two years after, a newly arrived missionary in China told me he had been present at that meeting, and how this little incident had been a great ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... back. He looked flushed, and boyishly gay, and his hazel eye searched the darkness with that subtle ray of triumph in it which had made Dorothy afraid. She drew back behind the tree and pressed her hot cheek to the cool, rough bark. She longed for the stillness of the starlit meadow, and the dim lane, with its faint perfumes and ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... At ten o'clock every morning the dead are taken from the dead-house, rich and poor alike being previously divested of clothing; and were we to revisit the spot at that hour, we are told the quiet stillness which pervaded the grove would be found no longer. We inwardly congratulated ourselves that the dreaded heat of a Bombay sun had sent us to this place at so early an hour—ere the repast began—and rapidly withdrew. It isn't much, yet I would ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... [Exit ANTONIO. Though my breast feels too anxious; I will try Whether the air will calm my spirits: 'tis A goodly night; the cloudy wind which blew From the Levant hath crept into its cave, And the broad Moon hath brightened. What a stillness! [Goes to an open lattice. And what a contrast with the scene I left, Where the tall torches' glare, and silver lamps' More pallid gleam along the tapestried walls, 30 Spread over the reluctant gloom which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... had put the bank in order for the night, he went to find his little companion, and take her to Noah's ark. The child had been sitting all the morning and afternoon in a profound stillness of expectation; but the hour came and passed, and ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... those white cottages that lay a little way back from the high road, shadowed by a screen of tall elms. There was a duck-pond in front of a low red-brick inn which reminded one of Birkett Foster, and made the central feature of the village; a spot of busy life where all else was stillness. There were accommodation roads leading off to distant farms, above which the tree-tops interlaced, and where the hedges were rich in blackberry and sloe, dog-roses and honeysuckle, and the banks in spring-time dappled with violet and primrose, purple orchids and wild crocus, and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... has th' same sort o' feelin'," confessed Dick. "'Tis like th' stillness before a big storm breaks at sea—'tis like as if some one was dyin' ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... said my uncle, surveying it from his open doorway in the dignified stillness of a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... ranging through the wood with a stag-like swiftness. Oh! What a miserable night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... insane fury of the moment, given forth a wild, ear-piercing yell, that spoke the triumph, the exulting transport, of long-baffled but never-dying revenge. The wild whoop, thus rising in the depth and stillness of the night, startled many a wakeful warrior and timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Clashnichd Aulnaic, yet he often treated her in the most cruel and unfeeling manner. In the dead of night, when the surrounding hamlets were buried in deep repose, and when nothing else disturbed the solemn stillness of the midnight scene, oft would the shrill shrieks of poor Clashnichd burst upon the slumberer's ears, and awake him to anything but ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Milan, ladies and gentlemen in holiday guise, who came, stayed one night, climbed the peak at sunrise, and departed amid jokes and shouting and half-childish play, very unlike the doings of a similar party in sober England. After that the stillness of nature descended on the mountain, and the sun shone day after day upon that great view which seemed created only for ourselves. And what a view it was! The plain stretching up to the high horizon, where a misty range of pink ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... sticks. They moved towards the door, but already Nickie had begged to be excused, and passed into the night. The stillness and mystery of ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... with a light and jaunty step, yet he looked about him thoughtfully. He had not gone far when the night stillness was broken by the crack of a fire-arm not ten paces away. A bullet cut his hat. He turned quickly. Nobody was in sight. The air was thick with mist, and nobody was stirring. "Scoundrel!" cried the officer, shaking his fist at the darkness. "You shall pay dear for that—you and your people. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... pharos Genoa first displayed itself Burning in stillness on its rocky seat; That guiding star so oft the only one, When those now glowing in the azure vault Are dark ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... and all eyes were instantly turned upon him. He was then in middle life, and his tall and erect form and fine physiognomy were singularly striking. He was full of emotion, and seemed at first to lack the power of utterance, while the stillness of death prevailed in the Convention. He began by saying: "Mr. Chairman, this is the most solemn experience of my life. I feel as if in the immediate presence of the Divine Spirit." He paused here for a few moments, while there ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian |
