"Wordless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... For some moments the little girls looked at each other with wordless sorrow in their eyes. I think ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... knees beside her bed. It was natural to her to pray, to throw herself on a sustaining and strengthening power. Such prayer in such a nature is not the specific asking of a definite boon. It is rather a wordless aspiration towards a Will not our own—a passionate longing, in the old phrase, to be 'right with God,' whatever happens, and through all the storms of ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... devices, he had promptly laid his arms upon his desk and his head upon his arms. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Isidore's brilliant head still rested on his folded arms and Teacher felt that she must make some effort to comfort his wordless misery. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... floor and the long hair streamed in darkness over shoulder and waist. The face was masked, the form stood erect and perfectly motionless, and the scream of surprise and consternation that arose to Leoline's lips died out in wordless terror. Her noiseless visitor perceived it, and touching her arm lightly with one little white hand, said in her sweetest and most exquisite ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... and of a virtuous taciturnity, sat up all night with Senator Hanway in his study—the night before the caucus. There was none present but Senator Hanway and the wordless telegraphic one; the former, deeming the occasion one proper for that cautious ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... from danger than a hill. An' while they differs from each other, yet they're all different from sech folks as Silver Phil. Boggs, goin' to war, is full of good-humoured grandeur, gala and confident, ready to start or stop like a good hoss. Cherokee Hall is quiet an' wordless; he gets pale, but sharp an' deadly; an' his notion is to fight for a finish. Peets is haughty an' sooperior on the few o'casions when he onbends in battle, an' comports himse'f like a gent who fights downhill; the same, ondoubted, bein' doo to them book advantages of Peets ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... departed, the languor of later droughts not yet appearing. The shrunken woods expand; the stringent, sparkling wintry stars grow mild and liquid, shining with a tremulous and tender light; the whole world seems larger, happier, more full of untold, untried possibilities. The air vibrates with wordless promises, calls, messages, beckonings; and fairy-tales are told by all ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... resolutely stemmed the tide pouring eastward, he had turned down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile of recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message in the dark splendors ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... beautiful influences are quiet; only the destructive agencies, the stormy wind, the heavy rain and hail, are noisy. Love of the deepest sort is wordless, the sunshine steals down silently, the dew falls noiselessly, and the communion of spirit with spirit is calmer and quieter than anything else in the world quiet as the spontaneous turning of the sunflower to the sun when the heavy clouds have passed away, and the light and warmth ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... to her ears her husband's fame, Won in the fields of fruitful Italy; And decks with praises Collatine's high name, Made glorious by his manly chivalry With bruised arms and wreaths of victory: Her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express, And, wordless, so greets ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... operation and were coming round, and would you believe it, though I had come all the way from West Kensington, they wouldn't let me come up and see you—positively rude the boy was at the door." (I uttered a wordless prayer for Tommy!) ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... fire, and he looked up to see why she did not finish. She was sitting on the edge of the old watchman's rude bed, bowed low over the sleeping child, and again sobs were shaking her like an ague fit. There was something heartrending in this silent, wordless anguish; but there was nothing to be said, and Tom went on making the fire. After a little she ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... she resolutely refused to give it entry. Why should Robert commit suicide? Why indeed? It was the question which had sprung to her lips when she first heard Austin's belief, and it was to that she now clung in the midst of her agonizing doubts, as though the mere wordless insistence in her mind made it an argument of negation which gathered force ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... wordless? Nay, I can recall A night not so long past but that each thought Lives at this hour, and throbs again unsought When Silence broods, and Night's chill shadows fall; Then Darkness' thousand pulses thrilled and stirred With the dear grace ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... him to his lodgings, and there Maurice held the animal, a large, half-starved street-cat, while Krafft, on his knees before it, examined the wound. As he did this, he crooned in a wordless language, and the cat was quiet, in spite of the pain he caused it. But directly he took his hands off it, it jumped from the table, and fled under the furthest corner of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... worth; Her sins and judgment-sufferings call For fearless martyrs to redeem thy Earth From her disastrous fall. For though her summer hills and vales might seem The fair creation of a poet's dream,— Ay, of the Highest Poet, Whose wordless rhythms are chanted by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... spot, that he recognised the dear features of the Mother, knew her his as hers he was, and loved her with passion. The sea is vast and wondrous, but it is alien. It holds you apart; it is not of you. But the gentle earth with her undulating form and the growing life in her lap, soothes with wordless harmonies. It was then that he forgave the fate which deformed him. A twisted oak, that is all—no less a tree and no less beautiful in the landscape! And it was sufficient to live. In the bosom of so much beauty sufficient also to die. As he stood, thinking it out, feeling the wonder and ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... hesitancy in the exchange of confidences. But with this assurance of Philip Henley's death, everything was changed. I longed to go to her and pour out my sympathy, but some instinct held me back, held me wordless. I knew not what to say, or how any effort on my part would be received. Instantly there had been a barrier erected between us which she alone could lower. Those were long minutes I sat there, speechless, gazing straight ahead, my brain inert, my hand hard on the tiller. Suddenly, with ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... Voices," with the two pages still joined as her fingers had left them. He was summoning his courage to face what might be the final solution. When he must, she had said, he was to open and read. Well ... he must. He could bear it no longer, the wordless uncertainty. He lifted down the volume, gently parted the fastened pages and read. From out the still, ordered lines, there rose to him the passionate cry of protest ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was hope and courage like a sunlit morning in spring. He was adventure for ever, and His courage and adventure flowed into and submerged and possessed the being of the man who beheld him. And this presence of God stood over the bishop, and seemed to speak to him in a wordless speech. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... to Miss Bruce-Drummond who had met up with them for a week-end at Stirling, "those poor children are so pitifully what Gelett Burgess calls 'the gagged and wordless folk'; it would be so much easier—and safer—for them if they belonged to his ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... meeting in public places have learnt to do so in silence; and a table d'hote is a wordless function unless the inevitable Andalusian—he who takes the place of the Gascon in France—is present with his babble and his laugh, his fine opinion of himself, and his faculty for making a sacrifice of his own dignity at that over-rated ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... cried. And he saw, perplexed, that Adelaide had risen with a faint wordless cry, and was gazing at him as though she were puzzled and ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... his own door, which Fanny had fastened behind her in her mad flight. Mrs. Thornton herself went. And the sound of his well-known and commanding voice, seemed to have been like the taste of blood to the infuriated multitude outside. Hitherto they had been voiceless, wordless, needing all their breath for their hard-labouring efforts to break down the gates. But now, hearing him speak inside, they set up such a fierce unearthly groan, that even Mrs. Thornton was white with fear as she preceded him ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Helder was bowing over Claire's hand, and professing his delight. The little group in the corner were pressing forward to obtain a point of vantage, and throughout the company in general was passing a wordless hum of excitement. Mr Helder was seating himself at the piano, a girl in a white dress had ascended the impromptu platform and now stood by his side, a pretty girl, a very pretty girl, a girl who acknowledged the scattered applause with a smile which showed two dimples ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... great subjects the Court's thinking has altered at times—on a few occasions to such an extent as to transcend Tennyson's idea of the law "broadening from precedent to precedent" and to amount to something strongly resembling a juridical revolution, bloodless but not wordless. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... though he were a ghost. At times she had caught him, held him to her in a passion of love and longing. But even then, with his head against her heart, his lips, or some pulse or nerve, had moved in a wordless tune, the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... of some wordless, intangible reason, that only lovers know, which made Diana seem more beautiful, more pure, her touch more sacred, and Enoch stronger, finer, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the King in Zenda. I forgot the King in Strelsau. She was a princess—and I an impostor. Do you think I remembered that? I threw myself on my knee and seized her hands in mine. I said nothing. Why should I? The soft sounds of the night set my wooing to a wordless melody, as I pressed ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Williams, ugly and wordless as ever, followed them with a proud smile till they entered the handsome suite of rooms which had been reserved for them. "There's nothing too good for Marshall Haney and his side-partner," he exulted ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... thousand chords with thousand varying tones, Whilst I but one poor sound can offer thee Of tenderness and truth. At times, indeed, This too may have its power,—but then it lasts One and the same forever, sounding still Unalterably like itself alone; A wordless prayer to God for what we love, 'Tis more a whisper than a sound, and charms Like new-mown meadows, when the grass exhales Sweet fragrance to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. "Light! give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... there side by side as quietly as if in death, each considered the issue settled. She would let him go without his property; Martin would leave with half of it. And through all the long wordless controversy, their little Rose of Sharon, a few yards away, slept as only a ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... be tempted to take any," she thought, her heart full of a wordless prayer for them. But her anxiety was soon relieved by seeing Sam forcing his way toward her ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... bursting with happiness as she clung to him. Here, in the home she had prepared, he had brought her his success, and their love glorified both. Her emotion left her wordless. Another moment, and his eyes ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... arose the bleating of lambs. Near at hand, throned among the purple flowers above their heads, a thrush was pouring out the rapture that thrilled his tiny life. The whole world pulsed to the one great melody—the universal, wordless song. Only the man and the woman were silent as ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the lights and shadows rippling across it with every breath of air,—the skimming of swallows to and fro,—the hum of bees among the cowslips, thyme and violets that were pushing fragrantly through the clipped turf,—were all so many wordless invitations to him to go forth into the fair ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... poem on exactly the same scheme as the Old Cumberland Beggar, but in treatment no two things could be further apart. The intervention of Pippa is dramatic, and though her song is in the same key as the wordless message of Wordsworth's beggar she is a world apart from him, because she is something not out of natural history, but out of life. The Victorian age extended the imaginative sensibility which its predecessor had brought to bear ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... PADDY REWSKI is a pianofortist up to the time and tune of day. Knowing that L'Enfant Prodigue is now all the go, he keeps himself up to date by performing the Musical Prodigy Son's, I mean MENDELSSOHN'S "Songs without Words;" and this so effectively, that the last wordless song he was obliged to repeat, and much obliged the audience by repeating. Then the good fellar played La Campanella, Which I prefer to Gentle Zitella, The Princess LOUISE, &c., were there, and "&c." was really looking uncommonly well considering ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... said no more. Soloveitchik remained silent also. There was great stillness around them, while overhead the stars seemed to maintain a conversation wordless and unending. Then Soloveitchik suddenly whispered something that sounded so weird ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... Michael was wordless, he could only kiss her. "That is what made him so delicate—my wretchedness and rushing about," she went on, "and so I was punished because, after three months, God took him back again—my dear little one—just when I was beginning to grow comforted and to love him. He was exactly ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... standing off and gazing wordless for a moment at this new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with bits of ribbon on the breast of it,—tried to say how proud he was and choked instead, it was for Mary that he reached out an unconscious, embracing arm, the emotion which would not go into words ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was wordless rage. He dismounted and made his way up to the lamed horse; Gloria, from where she lay, thought at first that of course he was coming to her. But he kept his back to her as he lifted the horse's fore-leg ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of the most ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... clouds lowered, and as he talked of his boyish days there, and of the sights and festivities of London town, he found in Caleb Parish and his daughter receptive listeners, but in young Doane a stiff-necked monument of wordless resentment. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the second evening of his coming. Helen was playing dreamily, and humming Some wordless melody of white-souled thought, While Roy and I sat by the open door, Re-living childish incidents of yore. My eyes were glowing, and my cheeks were hot With warm young blood; excitement, joy, or pain Alike would ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... bed and lifted up her heart to the Lord of life in silent, wordless, thoughtless, profoundly quiet aspiration. She did not wish to move or speak, or form a sentence even in her mind. She found her state a strange one, but she did not even wonder at it, so deep was the calm ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... another quarter. The abbe, as pale and as disturbed as the chevalier, came back into the room, carrying in his hands a glass and a pistol, and double-locked the door behind him. Terrified at this spectacle, the marquise half raised herself in her bed, gazing voiceless and wordless. Then the abbe approached her, his lips trembling; his hair bristling and his eyes blazing, and, presenting to her the glass and the pistol, "Madame," said he, after a moment of terrible silence, "choose, whether poison, fire, or"—he made a sign to the chevalier, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... came up through the purple gloom of the moorland, the stars' brilliancy silvering her—waiting—yielding in pallid silence to his arms, crushed in them, looking into his eyes, dumb, wordless. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... fled away, lest, in the turbulent whirl of life, the Curse should craze, and not slay her. For sleep had vanished with wordless moans and frighted aspect from her pillow,—or if it dared, standing afar off, to cast its pallid shadow there, still there was neither rest nor refreshing in the troubled spell. Nor could the thirst that consumed her quench itself with red wine or crystal water, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... rallied. Neither, whether to her shame or credit be it said, did she make any effort to deny his wordless charge. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... circumstances would have made me exceedingly happy, only added to my misery when, as it appeared, I had only a short time to live. Nature could charm, she could enchant me, and her wordless messages to my soul were to me sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, but she could not take the sting and victory from death, and I had perforce to go elsewhere for consolation. Yet even so, in my worst days, my darkest years, when occupied with the laborious business ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... over his son's silence; he would rather have had stormy argument than a wordless acceptance of the situation. Chaffering in these sorts of bargains means that a man can look after his interests. "A man who is ready to pay you anything you ask will pay nothing," old Sechard was saying ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... heavily, was in a state of wordless delight. "It's just as well I wasn't for scoldin' Bugsey for cryin' over his suit," she said at length; "for if it wasn't that I'm feart o' spottin' some of these, I'd be for doin' a cry myself. I've got such a glad ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... the attempt of this young man to describe what all who have experienced cosmic consciousness unite in saying is indescribable, for the very obvious reason that there are no words in which to express what is wordless, and inexpressible. This authentic account of a young man under twenty years of age, however, serves to prove that there is no special age of physical maturity in which the attainment of this state of consciousness may ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... nodding heads and buzzing whisperers, in which she now beheld herself unpitiably martyred, one door stood open. At any cost, through any stress of suffering, that greasy laughter should be stifled. She closed her eyes, breathed a wordless prayer, and pressed the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... motionless, still with her hands pressed tightly over her eyes, trying to command her brain to work clearly. Her will and her limbs seemed paralysed. She could only wait for Vardri's approach. Once she prayed an inarticulate wordless prayer, that inspiration might be sent her to find a way out of this impasse in which there seemed neither light ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... "new nurse" broke into a beaming smile when she saw Hansie on the scenes once more, the people crowding round her with their questions. Why did she come back? Was she going to stay? Didn't she go to Pretoria yesterday? Who was that with her? etc. Mothers pulled her aside and pointed in wordless grief to their tents, to what lay there in still repose since last night. Children clung to her skirts—"We thought you ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Worthy my fellow-thegns, if ye could read my heart at this moment, believe that you would not find there the vain joy of aspiring man, when the greatest of earthly prizes is placed within his reach. There, you would see, with deep and wordless gratitude for your trust and your love, grave and solemn solicitude, earnest desire to divest my decision of all mean thought of self, and judge only whether indeed, as king or as subject, I can best guard ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meaning. She could not play or sing; she looked often in the dog's eyes, wondering if its soul felt as dumb and full as hers; but she could not sing. If she could, what a story she would have told in a wordless way to this man who was coming! All she could do to show that he was welcome was to make crackers. Cooking is a sensual, grovelling utterance of feeling, you think? Yet, considering the drift of most women's lives, one fancies that as pure and deep love syllables itself every day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... farther out of it without disturbing anyone's feelings, explaining minutely why you are doing it, lest they should think your design is to covertly touch them; and then, their confidence won so far, you begin perhaps with the wordless book, or a lyric set to an Indian tune, or a picture of some parable—never of our Lord—or, oftener still, we find the best way is to open our Bibles, for they all respect a Sacred Book, and read something from it which we know they will understand. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... Pilate's the night of my arrival. I shall call her Miriam, for Miriam was the name I loved her by. If it were merely difficult to describe the charm of women, I would describe Miriam. But how describe emotion in words? The charm of woman is wordless. It is different from perception that culminates in reason, for it arises in sensation and culminates in emotion, which, be it admitted, is nothing ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... opposed her husband in word or deed. She took no notice of him, externally. She submitted to him, let him take what he wanted and do as he wanted with her. She was like a hawk that sullenly submits to everything. The relation between her and her husband was wordless and unknown, but it was deep, awful, a relation of utter inter-destruction. And he, who triumphed in the world, he became more and more hollow in his vitality, the vitality was bled from within him, as ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... with her mother and grandmother, and even though she went to the mountains many times, her childish heart always was homesick for the mill, and at night in her dreams her ears were filled with the murmur of waters and the wordless song of ceaseless wheels. And once when she came back a big girl,—an exceedingly big girl with braids down her back, a girl in the third reader in fact, who could read everything in the fourth reader, because she had already done so, and who could read Eugene Aram in the back ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... me,' Rose said pleasantly. He gave her something remarkably like one of his old looks and she answered it with a grave one. There was gnawing trouble at her heart. She had watched his meeting with Henrietta. It had been wordless; everything was understood. She had also seen the unhappiness of Charles Batty, and, on an inspiration, she said to him, 'Charles, you must take pity on an old maid. I have all ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... twelfth, for he found a sad joy in contemplating his handiwork as he sat at his lonely meals, and his first sitting-room was only twelve feet by eight. Finally, either because of his importunity, or because she disliked the thought that the wordless witnesses might fall into unsympathetic hands, the girl married the man, and scrubbed the stools nicely with soap and sand, and grew quite fond of them. And only once did she regret her surrender; and that was when it flashed across her one day that twenty would have been a prettier ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... many times since that old John never knew; glad that the frenzied curses that came boiling up out of that inner hell were wordless. I contrived to hold in while Runnels was hurrying me through the station office and past the sleepy sergeant at the desk. But when the cell door had opened and closed for me, and old John's heavy footsteps were no longer echoing in ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... While she gaped, wordless, Gilfoyle magnificently spoke for her, proudly informed the clerk that her name was "Anita Adair," that she was white (he nearly said "pink"), that her age was—he had to ask that, and she told him nineteen. He gave her residence as New York ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... again that resolute wordless play of the will—dismissing with a series of efforts the intellectual images of thought—that play of the will which, it seemed, had affected the boy opposite in a new way. She had no idea of what the crisis would be, or how it would ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... going to walk down to the water and look at Sir Richard's boat, and send off my card to him by a sailor or something. Then, if he's a good boy, he will turn up to-day, and then—!" The end of Anne's sentence was wordless ecstasy. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... of spell in which our actions and our thoughts were predetermined—inevitable! I knew it, but I could not shake it off, nor put my finger on any reason why I should shake it off and call a halt to the strange, wordless, silent following of ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... looking down on all this in the sweet June day, rather happy than merry, Ellen, who sat next me, her hand clasped about one knee, leaned sideways to me, and said in a low voice which Dick and Clara might have noted if they had not been busy in happy wordless love-making: "Friend, in your country were the houses of ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... but it left her weak, inert, impotent. The impulse to pray came to her, but the prayer that went up from her trembling heart was voiceless and wordless. She had no means of expression in which to cloak her utter need. Only the stark helplessness of her whole being cried ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... WASN'T, I will be bound by the wordless oath of your strangely upright land, and having said that I will be your friend—I will ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... Ice closed in.... One day the men of our tiny clearing were but a score. We huddled about our dying fire of bones and stray logs. We said nothing. We just sat, in deep, wordless, thoughtless silence. We were the ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... breathing happily the June-scented air. The stolid man and his placid wife who had sat near the rear had already started for the Colonel's house, following the foot-path across the fields. They walked silently side by side, as if long used to wordless companionship. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Wheezing breath, wordless cries, grunts, strange laughter sounded. And, withal, the major's hands and arms in one of the pits made a dry, slithering slide and click as he kneaded, worked, and stirred the gems, dredged up fistfuls and let ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... tempestuously, as King Hal wooed Kate, or let him serve twice seven years as Jacob served for Rachel, but let him never search out printed forms whereby to declare his passion; nor fit the measure of his love to the lines of the "Model Letter-Writer." As to "naming the day," 'twere a wordless lover indeed who could not say, as ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... such time, if the thought of marriage came, she did not put it aside with the light fancy that she wished still to remain free; she longed, in the drear solitude, for some one to sympathise with her, some one who could explain the meaning of the wordless thoughts that welled up within her, the vague response of her heart to the mystery of external beauty. Alas! among all her suitors there was not such ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the maple in the hazel glade Throws down the path a longer shade, And the hills are growing brown; To-ring, to-rang, to-ringleringle, By threes and fours and single The cows are coming home; The same sweet sound of wordless psalm, The same sweet June-day rest and calm, The same sweet scent of bud and balm, When the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... merely explanatory: they should have genuine dramatic value—just as much as an important speech would have in a "legitimate" dramatic production. In the pictured drama the leader really fills in a significant part of the plot which could not be portrayed by wordless action. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... Truth in a world of drifting shadows! ... Speak to me, gentle Saint! ... In what vast mystery have I been engulfed? ... in what timeless trance of soul- bewilderment? ... in what blind uncertainty and pain? ... O Sweet! ... resolve my wordless wonder! Where have I strayed? ... what have I seen? ... Ah, let not my rough speech fright thee back to Paradise! ... Stay with me! ... comfort me! ... I have lost thee so long! let me not ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... replied the man, holding long the chieftain's hand. Entering the teepee, the chieftain motioned the young man to the right side of the doorway, while he sat down opposite him with a center fire burning between them. Wordless, like a bashful Indian maid, the avenger ate in silence the food set before him on the ground in front of his crossed shins. When he had finished his meal he handed the empty bowl to the chieftain's wife, saying, "Mother-in-law, here ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... monkey-folk sometimes are, they can make very touching appeals; they plead very earnestly in their wordless way for their own lives, and still more tenderly on behalf of their helpless young. A letter from Demarara thus describes a meeting between a mother baboon and two men with guns. Mr. S—— levelled his ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... her hopelessly, for to them the doctor's silence had only one meaning; but the cattleman, standing behind the eldest brother, could not bear the wordless waiting. He felt that if she would rouse and continue to speak, death would be delayed. So ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... blue-black shadows of the pines, I quickly lost all sense of direction. After we had ridden in wordless silence a short half hour or less, and I supposed we should be nearing the head of our descending ravine, our little cavalcade was halted suddenly in a thickset grove of the pines, and Ephraim Yeates appeared at ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... dying Have thought they heard one pray 110 Wordless, urgent; and replying One seem to say him nay: And watchers by the dead have heard A windy swell from miles away, With sobs and screams, but not a word Distinct for them to say: And watchers out at sea have caught ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward him. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... clergyman came she met him quietly, and he found himself not a little disconcerted by the steady gaze of the mournful grey eyes. He was not accustomed to dealing with such wordless grief, and he found his favorite phrases sadly inadequate to the occasion. There was an ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... your plausible defence, do make your scriptureless light, which in very deed is darkness (Isa 8:20), the rule of your brother's faith; and how well you will come off for this in the day of God, you might, were you not wedded to your wordless opinion, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... loss of freedom they might experience hereafter, and gave unanimous consent. Upon receipt of which Sylvia felt inclined to dance about the three and bless them audibly, but restrained herself, and beamed upon them in a state of wordless gratitude pleasant to behold. Having given a rash consent, Mark now thought best to offer a few obstacles to enhance its value ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... in such an unexpectedly mild tone that Cumshaw was left wordless for the nonce, though his face showed in all their fulness the emotions that were stirring within him. Doubt, indecision, fear ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... them now, uninfluenced by their varying moods. He watched them in sunlight when they were all shining white and violet and soft purple, with great shadows spread over their slopes where the forests stood deepest; and they heartened him, gave him a wordless promise that better times were to come. He saw them swathed with clouds, and felt the chill of their cold aloofness; the world was a gloomy place then, and friendship was all false and love a mockery. He saw them at night—then was he an ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... He wanted his "Wawa," and no one else. It was really pathetic to see how the little fellow clung to her, hiding his pretty wet eyes in her neck, and lovingly patting her shoulder, as he crooned his wordless reproaches in her ear, and Mrs. Hoffstott, looking on, thought this must indeed be a good sister to win such hearty affection, and felt her own motherly heart warm to the forlorn little orphaned brood. But, as Sara climbed the steep staircase, ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... wordless sound. But presently, "I take my doom," the Queen proudly said. "I shall be lonely now, my only friend, and yet—it does not matter," the Queen said, with a little shiver. "No, nothing will ever greatly matter ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... prayers are not always sweet nor life-giving. The prayers to Christ are always a refreshment, but prayers to the Father may suddenly be turned without any previous thought or private intention into a most awful grief for the abominations of the whole world of us, a terrible wordless burnt-sacrifice of the soul, of unspeakable anguish. And high petitioning is a fearful and profound strain upon the ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... the scantiness of her vocabulary, but through her mind still whirled wordless outcries of rebellion. Her one brief visit to the city rose before her with all the horror of the inexplicable, strange, and repellent life which it had revealed to her. The very conveniences of the compact city apartment were included in her revulsion ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... under his blue-sleeved arm and went across the room to the door. He did not speak but Miss Beaver received the vivid impression that his visit would be repeated the following night; it was as if her sensitive intuitions could receive and register a wordless message from that other ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... days before there had come a wonderful event in the history of the company's post. A new life was born into the little cabin of Cummins and his wife. After this the silent, wordless worship of their people was filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife was a mother! She was one of them now, an indissoluble part of their existence—a part of it as truly as the strange lights ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... shall air no voices crude. No chained and chilly dances— With wordless harmonies ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... looked up to the stars. No words came. The cry of her heart was, "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me." But she was too ignorant to weave it into a prayer. When human hearts look up to God in wordless agony, the Intercessor translates the attitude into the words ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... to intelligence—secret intelligence, the wordless incalculable intuition of the Cat. It was, indeed, the cat for ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... gradually awakened by a gentle pressure on my brows. I looked up—and my whole heart relieved itself in a long deep sigh of ecstasy!—it was Aselzion himself who bent over me,—Aselzion whose grave blue eyes watched me with earnest and anxious solicitude. I smiled up at him in response to his wordless questioning as to how I felt, and would have risen but that he imperatively signed to me ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... image, of course,—not his. It was not a simile that was in his mind, or is in anybody's at such a moment,—it was a pang of wordless passion, and then ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... packed her lunch and gone off on "Nigger Baby" for the day. The ostensible object of her ride was a visit to the source of Hidden Creek. Really she was climbing away from a hurt. She felt Hilliard's wordless departure and prolonged absence keenly. She had not—to put it euphemistically—many friends. Her remedy was successful. Impossible, on such a ride, to cherish minor or major pangs. She rode into the smoky dimness of pine-woods where the sunlight burned in flecks and out again across the little ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... industry of the queen bee, as if she were the natural source of those agencies which sustain and heal. He heard her as she busied herself in their bedroom. He knew that she was already making preparations for that journey of his. She was singing a soft, wordless song in her throat ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... couldn't tell us from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with what might was left in them. Hammering each other—for we stepped aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to business of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
