"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blossom! Here was a young man to whose pleased ears I had rehearsed Just before the battle, mother, at some weekly picnic; and now, in that tense moment of my life, he came (from the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... his breath, tense for the sound of pursuit in spite of the girl, Gray went to look. Out beyond the hangar, he ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... way to speak to your own father, what give you your being," said Granger, in a puzzled, would-be indignant voice, for he could not understand Bet's speaking of all her trouble and rage in the past tense. "What's come to you, lass?" he continued. You was in a rage—ain't you in a rage still?—the beat's gone for ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... of her stall, Daisy, the mare, lay, heaving and snorting after her agony. From time to time she turned her head toward her tense and swollen flank, seeking with eyes of anguish the mysterious source of pain. The feed of oats with which Willie had tried to tempt her lay untouched in the skip beside ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... was nothing hidden in his life which could seriously disturb her; nothing, that was, irrevocable. Which had he been—wise or fortunate, or only trivial? Perhaps, everything considered, merely fortunate; and he wondered how she would have met an infidelity of his? He put his question in the past tense because now, Lee congratulated himself, all the danger was passed: forty-seven, with responsibilities that increased every month in importance, and swiftly growing children; the hair above his ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... British Columbia is famous on the Pacific Coast. It was in the old days of murder and robbery on the trail to the gold diggings of Cariboo. In the face of the plainest evidence the jury had refused to convict. The astounded judge turned amid tense silence in fury on ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... its first course, fluttered to and fro an instant, then neared a woman, who sat listlessly by herself, her arms resting upon those of her chair and her eyes, dark and sad, fastened upon the far horizon. There was a tense quiet in her attitude that seemed to cover something most ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... and the gathering of the storm are commented upon by the two lovers in a scene which is charged with an inescapable atmosphere of foreboding; note the incident of the fugitive doves in the scene at Melisande's tower window; or the episodic passage near the end of the third act, during the tense and painful scene of Golaud's espionage: "Do you see those poor people down there trying to kindle a little fire in the forest?—It has rained. And over there, do you see the old gardener trying ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... sewing machines was absent. The room seemed to be holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense, wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a near-by table and disappeared into the ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... little space the confusion took no account of her coming but the city man was standing directly behind her and he saw the pliancy of her attitude stiffen and then across her shoulder he recognized in a rear door the tense figure of Bud Sellers. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the spectacular which more readily appeals to the Mexican. The bull-fight, with its accompaniments of showy dress, tense excitement, and elements of danger and bloodshed, is his favourite amusement. Military parades and political functions enter largely into the distractions of polite life, as indeed is the case throughout Spanish-America generally. Military titles are exceedingly numerous. Formerly it was ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... of Mr. and Mrs. John Jones," this also producing a change of person altogether inadmissible. Neither must one be betrayed into the mistake of using the words, "will accept," thus throwing the acceptance into the future tense, when, in reality, you do accept, in the present tense, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... deduct from a present, a past tense and twist the sentences to make from it 'The Holy ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... people to behave and profess exactly as other people do. The second is by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... tense silence; then Mrs Conolly came to her and put an arm round her. But the girl stiffened under the touch of sympathy implying mutual knowledge of that which belonged ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... He had not the least doubt of it. Others danced with more abandonment, with more exuberant vigour— "romped" was his criticism—but none with such elan perfectly restrained, covering precision with grace. Hands across, cast off and wheel; as their fingers met again he felt the tense nerves, the throb of the pulse beneath the glove. Her lips were parted, her eyes and whole face animated. She was not thinking of him, or of anyone; only of the swing and beat of the music, the sway of life and colour, her own body swaying ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... win him?" Eudemius's voice was not above a whisper, yet it was tense with restrained excitement. Drops of sweat beaded his forehead; the cords of his neck were taut. "Varia, dost know, child, what ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... She said little the whole time, but sat, sure of their sympathetic tolerance, and listened to them with that living light of interest in her eyes to which the heart responds with confidence more surely than to any spoken word. The evil influences which had held her tense at Slane had no power to trouble her here. She was high enough above Dan and Bertha to look down upon them dispassionately, knowing them for what they were, yet personally unaffected by their turpitude. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... risen from his seat, and for the briefest possible space the three men stood thus, facing each other, as if uncertain how to act. Then the tense silence of the dining-room was broken by the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... for so much philosophy at one time, and now let me apply it. When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done, and that you can say of it,[Greek: Tetelesai], or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) [Greek: eirzasai]; suppose ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... a quarrel, from sensitive vanity and pride in his own fighting skill. The army and the navy were quicker to discern the reality of the threat. The military machine that was to supply the small expeditionary force was working at high pressure, and the air was tense. If Germany intended to make her bid for the mastery of Europe, it was recognized that she had every reason for making it soon. 'All the heads of departments', said the chairman, at a meeting in January 1912, 'are very anxious to get on with this—Lord Haldane told ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... under foot, a slight movement of the mass, and a heavier jar. This was followed by a single sharp crackle. Behind him he knew something was happening. If for no other reason, he knew it by the strained, tense face of Carson. From beneath, thin and faint, came the murmur of running water, and Smoke's eyes involuntarily wavered to a glimpse of the shimmering depths. He jerked them back to the way before him. Two-thirds ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... or other give to understand That woman, soul and body were her slave Would she but take, but try them—any test Of will, and some poor test of power beside: So did the strings within my brain grow tense And capable of ... hang similitudes! She answered kindly but beyond appeal. 'No sort of hope for me, who came too late. She was another's. Love went—mine to her, Hers just as loyally to some one else.' Of course! I might expect it! Nature's ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... raised her startled, frightened eyes, and for a moment her glance met Harley's; it seemed to him to be full of entreaty; the whole atmosphere of the place was to him tense, strained, and tragic; why, he did not know, but he shook himself and decided that it was only the result of weariness, the long ride, and the night in the storm. Nevertheless, the feeling did not depart because he willed that it ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Well he knew that chief's prowess in the field. He ran his eyes over the silent, watching Hurons, and then back to the sombre face of their leader. Thundercloud sat rigid upon his stallion; his head held high; every muscle tense and strong for instant action. He was ready and eager for the fray. He, and every one of his warriors, would fight like a thousand tigers for their Princess—the pride of the proud race of Wyandots. Cornplanter saw this and he felt ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... house of Pedro was my house, it should be, Pevroque qui no quiru, of which qui means house, and Pevroque qui, house of Pedro. The verb was, does not now exist in it apart, but in expression it appears, or nearly so, in the substantive qui, which is put in the imperfect by the termination of that tense, ru being added, as, quiru, was house; no quiru, was my house. The same is otherwise said: Pevroque qui no guaguaru, the house of Pedro was mine; the guagua, if ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... about that, now! Do you really think they were being run away with?" asked Jerry in a tense tone, as he tried to picture the alarm that must overwhelm aeronauts under ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... paused, his slender hand up to his lips, his head turned toward the door, an expression of tense expectancy in ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... to direction. A voice from overhead or broken by echoing obstacles does not readily betray its source. Finally she stood up and listened once more intently—her attitude full of tense earnestness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... and carefully unlocked its narrow door. But by the time I had reached the fourth floor, and unlocked, with the same key, the only other door that had a streak of light under it, I had gained a certain degree of tense composure born of the desperate nature of the occasion. The calmness with which I pushed open the door proved this—a calmness which made the movement noiseless, which was the reason, I suppose, why I was enabled to suppress the shriek that rose to my lips as I saw that the room had occupants, ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... I said, standing up, white and tense and it amazed me, but I was also exultant; "then we won't ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... floats along, O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying, And wakes in every breast its song Of ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... The situation was tense, horrible, so that the miscellaneous articles from their pockets—knives, keys, plugs of chewing tobacco, and here and there, among the foreign ones, small combs for beard and mustache unexpectedly brought to light, caused a smile of pure ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the dancers, or at least the parts that we could see, became tense and rigid. A soft hiss went round the circle, and once again the wriggling movement started. But this time the six went forward instead of backward. They broke out of the circular formation, and in a long glistening ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... reached the name Donnell, Steve. No answer came. Captain Donnell called his name a second time, then a third. A tense silence prevailed in the Common Room of the starship, where ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... tense period of waiting there began to appear in the meantime a few difficulties. My friend had the piece returned from the management with a particularly polite but equally peremptory rejection. He now took the manuscript ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... and Trimmer's people, seeing the crowd had taken Hector's point, sprang to their feet and began to cheer. At a tense moment, such as this, cheering is often hypnotic, and good managers know how to make use of it on the floor. The noise grew thunderous, and when it subsided Hector was master of the convention. Then, for the first time, I saw how far he would go—and ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... expression was generally quite intelligible to others, he did not comprehend what was spoken or written in the ordinary way. Accustomed to attach a distinct meaning to every word, and acquainted with very few besides nouns and a few verbs, which he only used in the present tense, independent of the pronouns, and without reference to number, he was quite lost among the other parts of speech. For instance, if I had wanted to say, "You must go to the village and buy me a small loaf of bread," I should have expressed ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... gone the thorn was out of her flesh. She talked and thought of him as in his babyhood, and left him her blessing at the last. As year after year crept by, the twin-brothers ceased to talk of him. But it was because they had begun to think of him with that strained, tense attention with which we sit and listen for the steps of one who long delays his coming, and who may be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Louis looks altogether different now, as seen over Seas and at the distance of forty-four years, than it looked then, in France, and struggling, confused all round one! For indeed it is a most lying thing that same Past Tense always: so beautiful, sad, almost Elysian-sacred, 'in the moonlight of Memory,' it seems; and seems only. For observe: always, one most important element is surreptitiously (we not noticing it) withdrawn from the Past Time: the haggard element ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the first conjugation and proceed to the second. Belle, I will now select for you to conjugate the prettiest verb in Armenian; not only of the second, but also of all the four conjugations; that verb is siriel. Here is the present tense:—siriem, siries, sire, siriemk, sirek, sirien. You observe that it runs on just in the same manner as hntal, save and except that the e is substituted for a; and it will be as well to tell you that almost the only difference between the second, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... {132} head turned at the prospect of a conflagration, saw in a European war a field large enough in which to develop his untried statesmanship. The pretexts for war lay ready to hand. There was not only the tense situation arising between Austria and France because of the relation between the two reigning families, but there was also acute friction over certain territories belonging to German sovereign princes, such as those of Salm or Montbeliard, that were enclaved within the French ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... there, in the midst of all the tense excitement, there suddenly rang out a shot; followed by a scream from the lips of Tony McGee, who was seen darting forward to where a fluttering object lay struggling ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... named) are desire and fear. Hope of course is nothing more than desire with a telescope, magnifying distant matters, overlooking near ones; opening one eye on the objects, closing the other to all objections. And if hope be the future tense of desire, the future of fear is religion—at least with too many ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... tense moment they stared at one another, while the children stared at the stranger. He was certainly a handsome man; melancholy, "interesting." Pale, with regular features and sleepy, smallish eyes ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... results of trade. That he is not a business man—and a successful one—my position here at the present time is a sufficient proof," she said triumphantly. "And I must also protest," she added, with a faint sigh, "against Mr. Brimmer being spoken of in the past tense by anybody. It ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense crowd informed of ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... Then, keeping the muscles tense, push the fists slowly out, and then draw them back ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... dry keel. But the bayou, hidden in the tall rushes, was its highway; for suddenly the canvas was black as it turned its shady side, and soon was red again as another change of direction caught the sunbeams upon its tense width and showed that, with much more wind out there than it would find by and by in here under the lee of the swamp, it was following the unseen meanderings of the stream. Presently it reached a more open space where a stretch of the water lay shining in the distant ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... night of torment, lying tense on his bed in the dark, and figuring out how long it would take him to pay back the money he was advancing to himself. Any fool could do it in five years, he reasoned, but he was going to do it in three. The trouble ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... percha Is the shape of a man. His brow is oval too, but broader. His nose is long, but thick at the tip. His eyes are blue Wherein faith burns her signal lights, And flashes her convictions. His mouth is tense, almost a slit. And his face is a massive Calvinism ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... collect as hastily as possible a great body of unemployed, to arm them, and to send them out as officials of the United States to do whatsoever was desired by the railroads. They were not under the control of the army or of responsible United States officials, and their intrusion into a situation so tense and critical as that then existing in Chicago was certain to produce trouble. And the fact is, the lawlessness that prevailed in Chicago during that strike began only after the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... a sharp click, into the catch. The noise startles me afresh; jarring, horribly, on my tense nerves. After that, I stand, for a long while, amid an ever-growing quietness. All at once, my knees begin to tremble, and I have to ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... seized his rifle; and his nerves, though tense as stretched bow-strings, seemed suddenly calm and steady. He lifted the rifle to his cheek, and resolved not to shoot until he had a clear aim at heart or brain. Bruin, though Lars could hear him rummaging within, was in no hurry to come out, But he sighed and growled uproariously, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... must indulge me in a long parenthesis. I beg him to bear me witness that I never made one before. This parenthesis is on the tense that I am obliged to use in sending to the press these minutes. The reader observes that the last transactions mentioned happen in April and May, 1871. Those to be narrated are the sequence of those already ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... themselves are subsequently tightened by forcing home the keys until a certain amount of tension has been attained, this is ascertained only by the peculiar sound which emanates from the blade on being drawn considerably tight and tense. Great experience is required to accustom the ear to the correct intonation, as in general the tensile strain on the saws approximates so closely to the breaking point that one or two extra taps on the keys are quite sufficient to ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... that it is an essential part of her femininity. Modern psychology and physiology have pointed out that the menstrual cycle of woman has a vast influence not only on her emotional nature but on her whole psychic life, so that there are times when she is more nervously tense, more apt to become hysterical or to yield to the influence of suggestion. Moreover, because of the emphasis on chastity and the taboos with which she was surrounded, any neurotic tendencies which might be inherent in her nature ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... him, I should like to know?" said Fouche, raising his eyes curiously to General D'Hubert's tense, set face. "Take one of these pens, and run it through the name yourself. This is the only list in existence. If you are careful to take up enough ink no one will be able to tell what was the name struck out. But, par exemple, I am not ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which the Italian schools ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... they've sent me away. Oh, they've been all that's kind, of course—I must have at least six months' rest, they say—they talk about nursing homes—I've thought and thought and thought about it until I'm certain. There's only one rest for me, Majy dear." She raised a tear-stained, tense and beautiful face and drew herself up so that one arm leaned on my chair, and the other on my shoulder. "And that is to be with the one human being that is left for me to love—oh, really love—you know what ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... here," said her aunt, gazing in troubled surprise at the tense little figure by the mantel. "I don't know what could have put such things into your head, my child. Money isn't everything. In times of real trouble it cannot ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the English perfect tense. There are many other cases in these poems where the preterit had best be rendered by ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... it always by the form of the word. The main difference is, that the subjunctive has no -s as the ending of the present tense, third person singular; ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... this, for she was suddenly struck with its force. Still she only pretended to loosen her stays to satisfy her mother, while the lacings remained as tense ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... she only had a chance. How often had she looked at the well-dressed actresses on the stage and wondered how she would look, how delightful she would feel if only she were in their place. The glamour, the tense situation, the fine clothes, the applause, these had lured her until she felt that she, too, could act—that she, too, could compel acknowledgment of power. Now she was told that she really could—that little things she had done about the house had made even him feel her power. It was ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... this body, but where? When my finger tips touch the object I wish to examine, I seem to be in them. When the brain grows weary from overstudy, I seem to be in it. When the heart throbs, the breath comes quick, and the muscles grow tense from noble resolve or strong emotion, I seem to be in them all. When, filled with the buoyant life of vigorous youth, every fiber and nerve is a-tingle with health and enthusiasm, I live in every part of my marvelous body. Small ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... high above the valley in order to keep the grade. Twice Wilbur halted Kit to try to stop the foremost of the herd behind him from pressing on too close, but the third time Kit would not halt. She was stepping as though on springs, with every muscle and sinew tense, and the distance between the steers before and the steers ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the way they encounter various characters, some good and honourable, and others very much the reverse. Finally they arrive and set to work seeking for gold. Of course there are more adventures and tense situations, as you would expect from ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... eyeballs tense, And swollen frontal veins: To all his powers of eloquence He gave ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... the patter of its running, and once or twice a fleeting dark shadow. The breeze was freshening and conjuring every sound about the ramshackle buildings into spectral wailings. A fragment of glass falling from a window startled the listeners. Agitated, their nerves tense, they strained their eyes for glimpses of the hurrying apparition and listened ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... wonder sprang up and whirled within the big dumb wonder that was on him: that here was he, a lad not yet twenty-two, with a dead wife on his hands, while his shipmates were off with the laughter of young women in their ears after the silent and tense watches of the sea. His captain had gone home to Newry to where his wife awaited him, the tall, graceful woman with the hair like black silk and the black eyes and the black ear-rings and the slim, white, enigmatic hands. And the first mate had gone to Rostrevor with a blond, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... consider, first, the case where the Verb is Active Transitive, and the Subject therefore an Agent), we pass from Statism to Motism; or from Rest to Movement. This is, at the same time, to pass from the Domain or Kingdom of Space to the Kingdom or Domain of Time (or Tense). ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Smith, red and panting with honest rage, only the sense of his lady's proximity keeping him from carrying his high-handed measures a little further. Mr. Landale, livid, with eyes suddenly black in their orbits, moistening his white lips while he quivered from head to foot with a passion so tense that not even his worst enemy could have attributed ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... some American poet will one day be able to write in the past tense similar verses of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... wretchedness.—Their laughter at the Children breaks out forlornly now and then.—The PIPER shepherds the Children, but with watchful eyes and ears toward the entrance always. —His action grows more and more tense. ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... the inner life is throbbing fast and strong, intimate expression becomes impossible. And above these two men, chatting about the trivial things of their existence, hung a black shadow of dread: a strain of waiting which, minute by minute, grew more tense. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... unbuckle the straps of the harness, in order to liberate the horse. Oliver tried to help him, but he could not do much, the horse was so deep in the snow. And, besides, he was standing, or rather lying, in such a position, that many parts of the harness were drawn so tense, that Oliver had not ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... the way through the Narrers to ketch the Shark!" he growled; and he kept on his way till the imperative mood present tense was tried, and then he made for the side of the cutter, to receive what was to him a regular knock-down blow, or, as he put it, a wind taking him on a very dangerous ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... his agony walked to the window, his updrawn shoulders tense, like those of a man standing by an open grave. He stood there for a moment, Kitty silently watching him, until, with a deep sigh, he ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... spoil his pleasure of complete surprise by catching a glimpse of the grande toilette before it was finished. At a quarter past seven Susan put her head into the sitting-room—only her head. At sight of his anxious face, his tense manner, she burst out laughing. It seemed, and was, grotesque that one so imperturbable of surface should be ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... few moments that remained—moments of tense anxiety, for they knew not to what a premature finding of the paper might lead—both men noticed that the carriage seemed to darken about them and to grow warmer; that Karswell was fidgety and oppressed; ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... condensed and coalesced into one, obscuring the head of Madame Baraduc, and developing towards the right. Cords were formed in the shape of a figure eight, closed at the top, and opened at the point nearest the body. Thus, as the globe develops in one direction, the cords seem to become more tense, and pull in the opposite direction. The separation becomes more and more complete, until finally, three and a half hours after death, a well-formed globe rested above the body, apparently held together ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the faces of the children Flooded with sweet innocence! God's smile on their foreheads glisten Ere their heart-strings have grown tense. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the oil stove which they always used for preparing the breakfast. Her purchases were carefully arrayed, and then hidden. She removed her outer clothes, and let down her hair, shivering slightly, but tense with resolve and the absorption of the moment. Round her shoulders she hung a big towel, and kicked it out, looking down at her legs and feet. She was conscious of pride, of physical freedom. She made small dancing steps, as happy as a child, ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... to the case of a sale by some accident remaining incomplete. The question does not seem to be of great philosophical significance. For to explain how mankind first learned to promise, we must go to metaphysics, and find out how it ever came to frame a future tense. The nature of the particular promise which was first enforced in a given system can hardly lead to any truth of general importance. But the history of the action of debt is instructive, although in ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... whisper, "Then you will go abroad with me?" Bessie flushed to her temples and rose from the sofa. She had a way, when she was very much in earnest, or very much stirred with some passionate thought, of pacing the parlor with her hands clasped tightly before her, and her arms tense and straining at the clasping hands. With her head bent slightly forward, and her brown hair hanging in one long tress over her shoulder, she went swiftly up and down, while I lay back on the sofa and watched her. She would speak it out presently, the ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... mean by 'real difference'?" he demanded. "I have told you, haven't I, that 'I wrote' is the perfect tense, while 'I have written' is the imperfect tense." This was in accordance with the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... heartbreaking moans, like those of a woman in dire pain, came to his ears. He felt the cold perspiration start over his body. His nerves grew tense with trepidation, his eyes wide with horror. Instinctively, his fingers clutched the revolver at his side and his gaze went toward the black, square thing which marked the presence of the haunted house. The orchestra of the night seemed to bring its dirge to a close; ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... superficial respiration with a low, hushed voice; he complained of continuous, also occasionally of marked tearing and contracting pains in the entire abdomen, most severe upon the right side low down; the temperature was 103.2 degree F., the pulse was 112, full, somewhat tense, regular ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... haunt in the mansion of Penarrow, Lionel found his half-brother in that brooding attitude, elbow on knee and chin on palm, staring into the fire. This was so habitual now in Sir Oliver that it had begun to irritate Lionel's tense nerves; it had come to seem to him that in this listlessness was a studied tacit ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... minute of the day had a healing virtue which he must not lose. He was sure that his chance of winning the woman he loved lay in living to win her, and he grappled his soul to his frail body with every thrill of energy that his dying nerve had left, with all the tense moral grip that love and despair can give. And yet it seemed hopeless, for his strength sank daily. At last he could not even sit up at table, and remained lying in his low chair, while the others ate their meals hastily in order not to leave him ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and parade about the world, and you can't take all chances without having some adventures. You can't be a great actress without the luxury of nerves. Without a plentiful supply—or without the right ones—you'll only be second fiddle. If you've all the tense strings you may take life for your fiddlestick. Your nerves and your adventures, your eggs and your cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions. You play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and terrors, and if you trade on the fury of the elements you ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Lockley stayed tense and was weary of his tenseness, Jill was safe. He tried to reason his uneasiness away. The cab of the truck wobbled and swayed. The feel of the vehicle was entirely unlike the feel of a passenger car. It ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... shows the same deep insight into the complications of the human soul [as did the author's earlier novel].... This story from the opening page is tense with sustained power and is surely destined to be one of the most important contributions to this ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... blow on his elbow-joint and writhed, cursing; but while I laughed at the fellow's contortions, the plump man sprang (marvellous nimble) and dashed out the light and, as I stepped from before the window, I heard the lattice go with a crash of glass. Followed a long, tense moment wherein we all (as I judge) held our breath, for though the storm yet roared beyond the shattered casement, within was a comparative quiet. Thus, as I stood in the dark listening for some rustle, some stealthy creeping step to guide my next blow, I thrust away my pistol ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... is tense. Of course, nobody knows what will be done. I favor telling Germany that we will make no trade with her, and if she fails to make good her word we will stop talking to her altogether. I am getting tired of having the Kaiser and Carranza vent their impudence at our expense, because they know ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... she paused upon the threshold, tense, thrilled, apparently speechless. Tom was reminded of a trim little wren poised upon the edge of its nest. This time it was more difficult to counterfeit an exclamation of joy, but the catch in "Bob's" voice, the moisture in her eyes, was attributed ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... feeling one has when one goes in to bat at cricket, and rather a lot depends upon your doing well, and you are waiting for the first ball. Well, it's very much the same as that. Do you know what I mean? A sort of tense feeling, not quite knowing what to expect. One does not feel the slightest bit frightened, and the idea that there's a chance of you and your ship being scuppered does not enter one's head. There are too many other ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... straight moustache, turning slightly grey, did not hide the mouth, which had unusually pale lips. The ears were set very flat against the head, and were finely shaped. The chin was pointed. The general look of the whole face was tense, critical, conscious, but in the defiant rather than in the timid sense. Such an expression belongs to men who would always be aware of the thoughts and feelings of others concerning them, but who would throw those thoughts and feelings off as decisively ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... In tense silence each Senator rose and gave his verdict "guilty" or "not guilty". And when the votes were counted it was found that the President was declared guilty. There were forty-eight Senators, and to convict the President it was necessary that two-thirds should declare him guilty. Thirty-five said ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... its often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence—all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. How ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... was to the tinder!—how loud that Angel would have had to play! For Ruth Thrale might easily have chanced to say:—"Yes, the same that my mother's was." And that past tense ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... [Footnote 17: The Imperfect tense describes a past action or state in progress; the Past Definite narrates an event. Ex.: I met (past def.)] Charles, who wore (imp.) a black hat: Encontre a Carlos quien ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... seeking glance up at the veranda; saw her and knew who it was that had called him, and lifted his hat in the gesture that she knew so well. Jean's fingers were close to her gun, though she was not conscious of it, or of the strained, tense muscles ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... of the month, however, the skies cleared, the wind settled steadily into the north, and a great quiet began to deepen over the fields, a quiet that at night grew so tense you seemed to hear the close-glittering heavens snapping with the light of the stars. Everything seemed charged with electric cold; the rich soil of the garden struck fire like flint beneath your feet; ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the conjugation of the Latin verb. Perfect verbs express that an action takes place a single time, and therefore is entirely completed and past; from their very nature it results, that they have no imperfect tense, and their conjugation must be in general incomplete. Imperfect verbs express that the same action continues. Both have in most cases the same radical syllable, and may be formed with a certain degree of freedom; thus ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... moments there was dead silence. "Blow up any minute!" We looked at one another. We sat tense. Our very thoughts seemed petrified. From the far corner of the ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... half-drowsy ears, was amused by the colloquy that ensued, in the course of which Andy completely floored the Canadian by a glowing description of Dunore, delivered in the present tense, but referring, alas! to a period of sixteen or twenty years previously. But the smart black-eyed backwoodsman wound up with the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... her right arm for him to look at; under her muslin blouse he saw its tense roundness, and its whiteness through the ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... waiting in tense silence. The men beneath me—there must have been about five hundred of them—did not speak. They scarcely moved. Bob and Crossan stood in front ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... room above—" I looked up at the closed shutters, scarcely seeing them for the blinding rush of tears; yet stared steadily till my eyes were dry and hot again, and my choked and tense throat relaxed. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also,—I use the past tense with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I am writing,—a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... watch, saw what had become of his time-values (he had taken hours for minutes—not, as in other tense situations, minutes for hours) and the strange air of the streets was but the weak, the sullen flush of a dawn in which everything was still locked up. His choked appeal from his own open window had been the sole note ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... mind away from such thoughts. Nerves. That was it. He was tense. He was imagining things. They were certainly too well aware of the gravity of this situation to let ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... He was still holding the salute. "At ease. You'll get a hernia of your exhaust pipe if you stay so tense. Anyways, I'm just the sergeant here. That's the Chief of Police ...
— Arm of the Law • Harry Harrison
... flushed air till at last it turned to grey and she seemed fairly to receive new information from every brush of the breeze. By the time they moved homeward it was as if this inevitability had become for Mrs. Wix a long, tense cord, twitched by a nervous hand, on which the valued pearls of intelligence ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... has had no stools since the 14th. His Abdomen is tense. No change in the other symptoms. The Tinct. Serpent. was omitted in his draughts, and an equal quantity of Tinct. Rhaei Sp. substituted in ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... whoa!" barked Slavin, with an oath, as the mettled, high-strung animal began to kick affrightedly. Slipping again it sank down in the snow and remained still for some tense moments. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... their own moustaches. Every one knows that a large floor may have a covering of large figures, and that a small one must have a covering of small—yet this is not all the knowledge in the world. As regards texture, the Saxony is alone admissible. Brussels is the preterpluperfect tense of fashion, and Turkey is taste in its dying agonies. Touching pattern—a carpet should not be bedizzened out like a Riccaree Indian—all red chalk, yellow ochre, and cock's feathers. In brief—distinct grounds, and vivid circular or cycloid figures, of no meaning, are here Median laws. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Ludlow are so human to him, the hawthorn and broom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations, he cannot help but compose under a kind of imaginative wizardry of exultation, even when the immediate subject is grim or grotesque. In many of these brief, tense poems the reader confronts a mask, as it were, with appalling and distorted lineaments; but behind it the poet smiles, perhaps sardonically, but smiles nevertheless. In the real countenance there are no tears or grievances, but a quizzical, humorous expression which ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... dizzy descent to make to Lake Bennett. Conductor and brakeman were on the alert. With their hands upon the brakes these men stood with nerves and muscles tense. All talking ceased. Some of us thought of home and loved ones, but none flinched. Slowly at first, then faster and faster the train rolled over the rails until lakes, hills and mountains fairly flew ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... suddenly come to life. She heard his voice, low and tense, dominating the other voices in the kitchen. She could not hear a word he said, but suddenly Aunt 'Mira broke out with: "Oh! my soul and body, Marty! It ain't ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... in the present tense, and the term "executive" can describe only the then actual President. Consequently, it designates General Washington as expressly as if he ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... some mope and weep, And wish THEIR frugal sires would keep Their only sons at home;— Some tease the future tense, and plan The full-grown doings of the man, And pant ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the auxiliary particles the verb can form the infinitive and potential mood. The Mpongwe verb carries four tenses,—present, past or historical, perfect past, and future. Upon the principle of alliteration the perfect past tense, representing an action as completed, is formed from the present tense by prefixing a, and by changing a-final into i: for example, t[)o]nda, "to love;" at[)o]ndi, "did love." The past or historical tense is derived from the imperative by prefixing a, and by changing ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... instant silence, sitting tense and mute, scarcely even breathing, while the pale blue eyes opposite remained steadily and unblinkingly fixed upon ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Delphos, said unto them, "Either I am deceived, or by your plausible and pleasant lookes, you are not in any serious and earnest discourse amongst your selves;" to whom one of them, named Heracleon the Megarian, answered, "That belongeth to them, who busie themselves in seeking whether the future tense of the verbe , hath a double, or that labour to find the derivation of the comparatives, [omitted] and of the superlatives [omitted], it is they that must chafe in intertaining themselves with their science: as for discourses of Philosophie they are wont to glad, rejoyce, and not to vex ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... loaded pistols) retreating sideways along the wall until he had put the bulk of a massive buffet between him and the door; and, in the small space between that article of furniture and the corner of the room, waited with every nerve taut and muscle tense, in full anticipation of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... at Speed; his sandy hair fairly bristled, but his face was drawn and tense. I looked at Mornac; his heavy, black ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... wharf Almayer shuffled his straw slippers uneasily. The rattle of the winch stopped, and in a tense, impressive silence that pony began to swing ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... the saddle; the horse gives a half-turn in the quickness of thought, in obedience to his own knowledge and a touch of the bridle, so presenting his flank and a long base to the direction of the strain; the rope tightens tense and smoking with the pull; horse and rider stand unmoved, but the great bulk of the arrested bovine falls prone to the ground. It is an art, a wonderful dexterity we have witnessed, acquired from birth. I ambitiously tried ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... rang out the rich young voice of our passenger, whom we'd half forgotten in our tense scanning of the horizon. Charlie and I both turned to him together in surprise—and his face certainly betrayed the confusion of one who has let something ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne |
