"Yawn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... You are not fit to be alone." I tried to call up my pride, and laugh off the accusation against my courage, all the more, perhaps, because I felt its truth. "Do you want anything more that I can get you, Lady Speldhurst?" I asked, trying to feign a yawn of sleepiness. The old dame's keen eyes were upon me. "I rather like you, my dear," she said, "and I liked your mamma well enough before she treated me so shamefully about the christening dinner. Now, I know you are frightened and fearful, and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... itself. It is no light praise, mind you, when one says that every touch is the record of a tireless observation—you have only to look at a great Sir Joshua to see that quite half of every canvas is merely a recipe, a painted yawn in fact, as the intensity of his vision relaxed; but in a Velasquez your attention is riveted by the passionate search of the master and his ceaseless absorption in the thing before him—and this is all the more astounding because the work is hardly ever conceived ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... are getting too horrid technical for me," said Charteris, with a yawn. "I don't know what you feel about turning in, Hal, but your unfortunate servants will certainly think they ain't going home till morning. I have been riding ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... always seem so much harder to learn when one's just come back after the holidays?" propounded Marjorie Butler with a melancholy yawn. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... with a lover's customary eloquence till a late hour in the night. Wilkinson was all patience; but about one o'clock he began to yawn, and then they went to bed. Early on the following morning, Bertram ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... a good deal when he does not know the name or the exact location of a single one of them, but he seems impressed, although a little perplexed, and to make it easier for him I say as another famous teacher once said to me: "Open your mouth, put two fingers and a thumb between your teeth, yawn, now sing ah." He makes a convulsive effort and the tone is a trifle worse than it was before. I say to him, "Your larynx is too high, and it jumps up at the beginning of each tone. You must keep it down. It is impossible ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... a very weary yawn and turned her face from the light. Priscilla stepped into the hall, put on her waterproof and oldest hat and went out. She knew her way well to the little vicarage, built of gray stone and lying something like a small, daring fly against the brow of the hill. The little house looked ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... head of Lake's bed, and his servant immediately got up, and with great carefulness turned his bed round. Lake gave a yawn, and asked sleepily, "What's ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... myself, and I'd have gone to bed some time ago if you hadn't asked me so many questions," answered Henry Stowell, with a yawn. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... and tolerated him while he told us about his own. But a sense of boredom begins to creep into our hearts at the end of the second evening, which, if there were not the pleasure of bidding him "Good-bye" on the morrow to keep our spirits up, would end in exasperation to be fought down and a yawn to be suppressed. The man who invented "long visits" ought to be made to spend them for the rest of his life as a punishment. There is only one thing longer—though it sounds rather like a paradox to say so—and that is a "long day." To "spend a long day" with anyone sees ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... adder all on fire, As the dark pepper-grain, livid and swart. In that part, whence our life is nourish'd first, One he transpierc'd; then down before him fell Stretch'd out. The pierced spirit look'd on him But spake not; yea stood motionless and yawn'd, As if by sleep or fev'rous fit assail'd. He ey'd the serpent, and the serpent him. One from the wound, the other from the mouth Breath'd a thick smoke, whose ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... tied neck and heel, the houndsfoot," said Wilkin. "But what would you have, lady? My countrymen cannot live without rest or sleep." So saying, he gave a yawn so wide, as if he had proposed to swallow one of the turrets at an angle of the platform on which he stood, as if it had only garnished ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... adversary; and THEN, I warrant you, some pretty trials of skill would take place. My Lord Deuceace, although so young, had a very great skill and cleverness with the cards in every way; and it was only from hearing Frank Punter, who came with him, yawn three times when the Chevalier had the ace of trumps, that I knew we were Greek to Greek, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... up, lifted his arms high above his head to stretch his healthy young muscles, pulled his face all askew in a yawn, rumpled his hair again and reached for his papers and tobacco. He knew that Mary V never noticed or cared if a fellow smoked; she was too ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... as she grew from a baby to a tiny girl she learned the little songs to sing to Bruno when he was a little puppy. Would you like to hear one of them? She used to sing it on the street corners, and at the end of the last verse that knowing, cunning, darling Bruno would yawn as if he could not keep awake another minute, tuck his silky head between his two fore paws, shut his bright eyes, give a tired little sigh, and stay fast asleep until Lola waked him. This is ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and languid, and covered up a slight yawn. She said she was glad if any little thing she could do had made life pleasanter for him. This has been such a perfectly simple thing—very, very far ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... little girl is quite well, mother," he said one day, after studying his daughter reading the Endymion without a yawn. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... trail Of the slender rail The train, like a nightmare, flies And dashes on Through the black-mouthed yawn Where the cavernous ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... occasion for as long as five nights. This child had a very curious face, and even in her sleep, as I saw her, there was about it something wild and defiant. When the Matron turned her over she did not yawn or cry, but uttered a kind of snarl. I suppose that here is an instance of atavism, that the child throw back for thousands or tens of thousands of years, to when her progenitors were savages, and that their primitive instincts have reasserted themselves in her, although she ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... number one, my boy," said Dandy, with a yawn; "for if you don't, no one else will," and he shut his eyes and was fast ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... the yawn, a broad one. The lady did not take it, however. So far she had held her own; more—had nicely secured her ends. But further communications trembled upon her tongue. The word is just—literally trembled, for they might cause ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Jinn was obliged to own that such a handsome pair had never before been seen; so he gave his consent to their marriage, which was performed in ever so great a hurry, for already the Jinn had begun to nod and yawn. Still, when it came to saying good-bye to his dear little Princess, he wept so much that the tears kept him awake, and he followed her in his thoughts, until the desire to see her face once more became so strong that he changed himself into ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... the least popular part of the Louvre. Artists haunt it; but the Parisian, the provincial, the globe trotter, gape once in their lives at Andrea del Sarto, Titian, Salvator Rosa, Murillo of course, and the rest of the mighty dead, and then ask with a yawn, "Where are the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... I be!" said Connie, stretching her arms a little, and suppressing a yawn. "It seems to get on my narves, like. I am that miserable when I'm turning that horrid handle and pressing that treadle up and down, up and down, as no words can say. I 'spect it's the hair so full of fluff an' things, too; some'ow I lose my happetite for ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... may our whole destiny be affected by the mood of an idle moment; by some superficial indecision, mere fruit of a transient unrest. We lightly debate, we hesitate, we yawn, unconscious of the brink. We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly accept from sheer ennui, and "life," as I have read in a quite meritorious poem, "is never the same again." It was thus I now toyed there with my fate in my hands, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... he agreed, readily. "Why not?" He heaped the money under a stone, sank over upon his back with an affected yawn, drew his hat over his eyes, and lay still. "We go to sleep now, Franke," he proposed. "Eet's ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... to his revered grandfather bubbling forth orthodoxy. Up in Distinguished Strangers' Gallery sat a little boy on his father's knee. Long he listened to the gentle murmur, broken now and then by a yawn from a back bench, or the rustling of the manuscript as it was turned over folio by folio. It was a great occasion for him; his first visit to the Chamber which still echoed with the tones of his father's uncle, JOHN BRIGHT. He kept gallantly awake as quarter-hour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... noisy yawn and left the room while Buck kindled the lantern. By that light he read his name upon the envelope and tore it open. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... an hour. The nurse laid down the volume with a yawn, stretched herself, yawned again, crossed her hands, and closed her eyes. She was going to sleep. If she would only fall so fast asleep that the woman behind ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... quietly in the corner of a seat. Mrs. Parker dropped a hymn-book. Little Tommy Blake, who had fallen over while napping and hit his nose, snivelled under his breath. Madeline Brand, as she sat at the melodeon below the minister's desk, stifled a small yawn with her pretty fingers. A June bug boomed through the open window and circled around Deacon Tuttle's head, affecting that good man with the solicitude characteristic of bald-headed persons when buzzing things are about. Next it made a dive ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... Thatcher with a slight yawn. "I've got here some papers somewhere;"—he began to feel in his coat pocket languidly;—"but, by the way, this is a rather dreary and God-forsaken sort of place! Let's go up to Welker's, and you can look at them over a ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... not consider what you ask," I replied; "my gossip may have amused you, but the effusions of my pen would to a certainty make you yawn like graves." ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... individual, separate thinking had grown rusty, and as she sat before the hearth ideas came slowly. The room was dim—lighted only by the firelight; and in that dimness her mind began to stir and stretch and yawn itself awake, like a creature that had been hibernating through a long, dark winter. Suddenly the widow of the Richest Trustee broke out into a feeble little laugh—a convalescing laugh that acted as if it was just getting ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... especially bicycling have conferred, by the force of circumstances, a freedom which strength of argument, entreaty, and tears failed to effect. Mothers and and chaperons do not, as a rule, bicycle, and play tennis and golf; they cannot always go to club meetings, even to yawn through the sets, and so the young people play by themselves, and there are fast growing a lack of restraint and a healthy freedom of intercourse which are gravely deprecated by grand-mammas, winked at by mothers, but enjoyed to the full by daughters. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... barefaced fishing for compliments?' said Charles; but Amabel, who did not like her sister to be teased, and was also conscious of having wasted a good deal of time, sat down to practise. Laura returned to her drawing, and Charles, with a yawn, listlessly turned over a newspaper, while his fair delicate features, which would have been handsome but that they were blanched, sharpened, and worn with pain, gradually lost their animated and rather satirical expression, and assumed an ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it right and fitting," replied the lady raising her shoulders, and with an expressive movement of her hands. Sabina quite took her meaning, and suppressing another yawn ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Arthur, pretending to stifle a yawn, "why can't we all be out in this keen air and sunshine? If there were but ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... their elders had found the time hang somewhat heavily on their hands. The evening had not been so interesting to them as to their juniors. Lady Darcy was tired with the preparations of the day, and the countess with her journey from town. Both were fain to yawn behind their fans from time to time, and were longing for the moment to come when they could retire to bed. If only those indefatigable children would say good-night and take themselves off! But the echo of the piano still ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... suppressed a yawn. Had Mary-Clare said simply, "I don't love you any more," Larry would have got up from the blow and been able to handle the matter, but she proceeded after a fashion that utterly confused him and, instead of clearing the situation, managed ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... half-suppressed yawn, "will this fog never lift? Who would have thought, after the glorious moon of last night that we should have such a day as this on ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... her because you are not going to drive me to it,"—this with a half-stifled yawn behind a faultless white hand that was just beginning to show the blue veining of bad hours and dissipation. Then: "Go back to your hotel and go to bed, Bertie. You'll wake up in a better frame of mind a few hours later, perhaps. Kiss ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the inevitable verandah, and though Hilderman was the tenant of the furnished house he had contrived to impart a suggestion of his own personality to the room. The furniture was arranged in a delightfully lazy manner that almost made you yawn. The walls were hung with photographic enlargements of some of the most beautiful spots in the neighbourhood. I remembered what Myra had told me as to his being an enthusiastic photographer, so I asked him ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... which the usual visitors are composed almost exclusively of workmen, which constitutes them rather a species of brasserie, the prostitution in Paris has been refined by luxury. The viveurs enter them, no longer to finish the night in them, but to pass a few minutes, to yawn and to drink champagne in the company of some young women lightly clad, indifferent and passive, pretty sometimes, bestial almost always. You can rarely avoid hearing confidentially from one of them her story, the eternal ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... are signs of the contagiousness of the idea even in the house of the adversaries. The triumph comes with time, and the turbulent waves of controversy recede into gentle ripples of approval. And for many a cause for which men have suffered and died, posterity has but a yawn. "Just think of it—all that fuss and all that ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... it a cloud of apprehensions, for darkness must ever be the ally of crime; and it was one night, long after the clocks had struck the mystic hour "when churchyards yawn," that the hand of Dr. Fu-Manchu again stretched out to grasp a victim. I was dismissing ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... who held Jasper Losely in profound detestation, she said, with tranquil sternness, "That man has crossed my life, and darkened it. He passed away, and left Night behind him. He has dared to return. He shall never escape me again till the grave yawn for one of us." ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ties of blood, and treat on the ground of mere humanity? Let me conclude, for it is sickening and loathsome to a man of my age, to see his long silent household graves yawn, and give up uncalled—their sheeted dead. For some years the money sent, was a quietus, and I was left in peace. I was lonely; it was, hard work to forget, because I could never forgive; and the more desolate the gray ruin, the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... with the music Edith forgot, for a time, the slight shock which she had received. The opera was Samson et Dalila, and a very famous tenor was making his reappearance after a long absence. Edith gave herself up to complete enjoyment of the music. Then suddenly she was startled by a yawn at her side. Burton was sitting back, his hands in his pockets, his ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... With a long yawn Gyp uncurled her legs. "I'm dead. I'm going to bed." She turned toward the door. "Oh, say, I most forgot. Ginny told me to tell you that the reason she played the way she did to-night was 'cause she kept thinking ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... so as to be able to speak together, a thing forbidden by Madame Rupprecht's rules of etiquette, which strictly prohibited any but the most necessary conversation passing between members of the same family when in society. I was sitting, I say, scarcely keeping back my inclination to yawn, when two gentlemen came in, one of whom was evidently a stranger to the whole party, from the formal manner in which the host led him up, and presented him to the hostess. I thought I had never seen any one so handsome or so elegant. His hair ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... me and byelow in the trib," answered Tilly, stretching herself over his arm with a great yawn. ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... but a fellow makes some bloomin' mistakes sometimes. I am not interested very much though," continued Matlock Styles, and gave a yawn. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... the high door and disappeared behind it. Anna stood still waiting. "He's only just awake," said the hall porter, coming out. And at the very instant the porter said this, Anna caught the sound of a childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she knew her son and seemed to see him living before ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... car drew up before the door. As it did so, an Italian laborer arose from the curb not far away where he had been comfortably seated with his back against a tree; then throwing his arms wide in a luxurious yawn, he started ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... wave, surging and shouldering its way over the expanse, filling all the rivers, and dashing against the protecting barriers under our feet; but before sunset the rivers will be emptied again, the bridges will uselessly hang in the air over the deserted channels, the beach will yawn wide and bare where a ship of the line might have anchored. Sometimes a stranger schooner from New England, secure in a safe distance from shore, drops down in six or seven fathom. Then, suddenly, the ebb sweeps off from the intruder, and leaves his two-master keeled ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... drew rein. In response to Billy's call a rough-bearded fellow lifted the tent flap and stood suppressing a yawn, as if visitors to his lonely claim were ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of dawn, Sinclair wakened even more suddenly that he had fallen asleep. There was no slow adjusting of himself to the requirements of the day. One prodigious stretching of the long arms, one great yawn, and he was as wide awake as he would be at noon. He jerked on his boots and rose, and not until he stood up, did he see John Gaspar asleep in the big chair, his head inclining to one side, the book half-fallen from his hand, and the lamp sputtering its ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... than an inch at a time, then he would stand motionless for a moment. Thus was he worming his way behind the guard when the latter straightened up, opened his cavernous mouth in a wide yawn, and stretched his arms above his head. Korak stood rigid as stone. Another step and he would be within the hut. The black lowered his arms and relaxed. Behind him was the frame work of the doorway. Often before had it supported his sleepy head, and now he leaned back ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... imitated from Boccaccio and from the tale of the Monk in Chaucer. The "litel hevynesse" which the knight noticed in the monk's stories is particularly well imitated, so much so that Lydgate himself stops sometimes with uplifted pen to yawn at his ease in the face of his reader.[838] But his pen goes down again on the paper, and starts off with fresh energy. From it proceeds a "Troy Book, or Historie of the Warres betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans," ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Nigel, with a half-suppressed yawn, that was irresistibly dragged out of him by the sight of another earthquake on ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... of his own shadow, afraid of his own thoughts, would breathe the suppressed invocation, "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" as the idea crept curdling over his brain and through his veins, "It is the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... as though he were trying to embrace the whole world. He pushed himself up on his tiptoes, arched his back, and gave out with a prodigious yawn that somehow managed to express all the contentment and pleasure that filled his soul. He felt a faint twinge in his shoulders, and there was a dull ache in the small of his back, both of which reminded him that he was no longer the man ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... is nothing more than a continual yawn," answered the young woman; "is it my fault? Do you think it very amusing to be your mistress? Look at yourself. Does there exist another being as sad, as dull as you, more uneasy, more suspicious, devoured by a ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... she continued, repressing a yawn, "I'd manage to be seen on good terms with Low at the hotel; so perhaps you need not give the letter to him until the last ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... palate will immediately drop upon the tongue. Sing while it is in this position, and you will produce nasal tone. Now breathe through the mouth, and the soft palate will rise. Raise it higher still, by attempting to yawn, till the uvula almost disappears. Sing again with the soft palate in this position, and if nothing else interferes you will produce pure vocal tone. If you sing up and down the scale you will perceive that the soft palate to some extent rises and falls with the pitch of your tones. ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... one was the Gorla Mustelford debut, and the house settled itself down to yawn and fidget and chatter for ten or twelve minutes while a troupe of talented Japanese jugglers performed some artistic and quite uninteresting marvels with fans and butterflies and lacquer boxes. The interval of waiting was not destined, however, to be without its ...
— When William Came • Saki
... from the casket and began to play leapfrog before the astonished guests, who had never before seen such a thing as a frog. The little green strangers jumped over each other quick as a flash, and finally one of them jumped down the other's throat. Then, as the Baby Elephant opened his mouth to yawn, the remaining frog ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... traced, They thought an effigy so large in frame Best fitted for the floor. There it was placed, Under the seats for schoolchildren. And they Kicked out his name, and hobnailed off his nose; And, as they yawn through sermon-time, they say, "Who was this old stone ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... It is Asmodeus's show improved. I went to a Paris theatre with a friend. The play began with half a dozen milliners chattering and sewing round a table. After a few moments, my friend gave a prodigious yawn, and declared he was going home, "for you might as well sit down and see a parcel of real milliners at work as this play." Tastes differ; and I did not find this an objection. But what a compliment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... because they inspired men with the idea of hanging themselves; that contagion of suicides, of robberies, of murders, at certain epochs, by desperate means; that strange and subtile enticement of example, which makes you yawn because another yawns, suffer because you see another suffer, kill yourself because you see others kill themselves—and my hair ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... shimmering in the lamplight. She picked it up, of course, in a bored sort of way; and she was positively on the very verge of being interested in it when—would you believe it?—she attacked the third yawn—or the third yawn attacked her—and however it was, the yawn was accomplished with such dexterity, such certainty, and with such satisfaction to the lady, that she quite forgot to look at ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... one," said the lady in an odd voice. It was so odd that Hays looked up. But she had somewhat altered her position, and was gazing at the ceiling, and with her hand to her face seemed to have just recovered from a slight yawn, at which he hesitated with a new and timid ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 'em much," Farquaharson stifled a yawn. "Dress Rehearsal until two this morning followed by a call for line rehearsal again at eleven. When they get through that, if they ever do, there's nothing more except the strain ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... cheerful and gay than I had expected, and more so than I quite liked. He went first to his room, but came immediately to me. 'Good-evening!' he said. I answered him quietly, without looking up. After walking across the room once or twice, with a smothered yawn he took up the fly-clap from behind the door—a most unusual proceeding—and remarking, 'Where do all these flies come from?' began to slap about, as loudly as possible. The noise is particularly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... supper they were all so tired they could do nothing but yawn until it was late enough to ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... hands behind her head and her lips parted in a half-yawn. "Does everything come back to one thing? I wish I knew! It's more than likely that, under the same conditions, I should have been very like your stenographers—if they are good ones. Whatever I was, I would have been a good one. I think people are very much alike. You are more different ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... at the church, for we had the fourth pew in front of the choir. They said he looked like Napoleon, but it was not true; he was a good-looking fat fellow, short and thick, and pale with fatigue, and not at all lively, quite the contrary. During the service he did nothing but yawn and rock back and forth like a pendulum. I am telling you what I saw myself, and that shows how blind people are, they want to ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... Meagles!' returned the lady, tapping him on the arm with the green fan and then adroitly interposing it between a yawn and the company, 'how can you, as a man of the world and one of the most business-like of human beings—for you know you are business-like, and a great deal too much for ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... summarily with Uncle James. "I can't tolerate him. But you can't say I separate myself from Aunt Grace Mary. She likes me, and she's kind; but she's silly, and when I'm with her any time it makes me yawn. Is that my fault? And did I separate myself from Kitty? Did I separate myself from papa? Do I separate myself from Count Bartahlinsky? Have I separated myself from Aunt Victoria?—and who ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... man sighed, and expected me to sigh after him. But a sigh is not (like a yawn) infectious; and we are all more prone to be sent to sleep than to sorrow by one another. Not but what a sigh sometimes may make us think ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... and if he could feel a spice of interest in any earthly thing he could be charming. But his listless, easy air—of gentlemanly-giftedness fatigued—provokes and bores. He is like a man who suppresses a yawn to tell a story. He is a blend of genuine power and native priggery, and his faults are the more annoying because of the virtues they obscure and spoil. He is ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... The Chevalier, nothing if not quick to take in a situation, began to yawn like a sleep-ridden mortal. Gracefully he made his excuses and went, with as little mind to sleep as to go and drown himself. The imp Curiosity kept the Chevalier wide awake, and with airy fingers plucked away the cotton ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Vesey With Bishop's scraps grown fat and greasy, While Wynne sleeps the whole debate, They submissive round him wait; (Yet would gladly see the hunks, In his grave, and search his trunks,) See, they gently twitch his coat, Just to yawn and give his vote, Always firm in his vocation, For the court against the nation. Those are Allens Jack and Bob,[18] First in every wicked job, Son and brother to a queer Brain-sick brute, they call a peer. We must give them better quarter, For their ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... lurid with rage and famine: and as, every now and then, he paused and glared around, the spectators fearfully pressed backward, and drew their breath more quickly. But the tiger lay quiet and extended at full length in his cage, and only by an occasional play of his tail, or a long impatient yawn, testified any emotion at his confinement, or at the crowd which honored ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... later when the upturned gables and twisted dolphins on the roof had begun to take definite shape in the gray light of the new day, the gong boomed out again, doors creaked, and from their cell-like rooms shuffled the priests to yawn and stretch themselves before the early service. The droning chorus of hoarse voices, swelling in a meaningless half-wild chant, harmonized strangely with the romantic surroundings of the temple and become our ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... The yawn reminded her that she was sleepy, and without prelude she kissed him, asked the breakfast hour, and ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... lady smiled as she heard him speak, and had not an unfortunate yawn accompanied those two tender words, in all probability they would have terminated this chapter. But the word yawn is not found in Love's dictionary, and consequently the unlucky husband was forced to rise from his bed preparatory to going forth ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... that San Giacinto should see the nervous working of his fingers. Giovanni, on the other hand, looked upon the proceedings with an indifference that was perfectly apparent. He occasionally looked at his watch, suppressed a yawn, and examined his nails with great interest. It was clear that he was not in the least moved by what was going on. It was no light matter for the old nobleman to listen to the documents that deprived him one by one of his titles, his estates, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... surrounded by a lofty wall, with only one entrance, which is by a massive iron gate, and that is fast bolted. Within are thousands and millions of human beings, of all ages and classes, by one epidemic disease bending to the grave. The graves yawn to swallow them, and they must all perish. There is no balm to relieve, no physician there. Such is the condition of man as a sinner. All have sinned; and it is written, "The soul that sinneth shall die." But while the unhappy race lay in that ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... the stretch. The yawn is a stretch of the lungs as the stretch is a yawn of the muscles. Both of these exercises express a hunger for oxygen. Whenever anyone is sitting in a cramped position or even in one position for a long time, the stretch or yawn is instinctive. ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... delightful to have you!" she declares, with exuberant cordiality. "I have done nothing all the afternoon but lie on this sofa and yawn over a novel. I could have written it better myself, and that foolish librarian at Mudie's recommended it. I drive to town nearly every afternoon—there is always something to buy or something to see. Are you fond ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... nothing else: chained to the foot of the forward binnacle stood a panther, a dark yellow creature with black spots, bigger than Pummy, swinging his tail. Clare turned at the noise he made. The panther made a bound and a leap to the height and length of his chain, and uttered a cry like a musical yawn. Clare stretched out his arms, and staggered toward him. The next moment the animal had him. The captain darted to the rescue. But the beast was only licking him wherever there was a bare spot to lick; and Clare wondered ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... rose, with a yawn, and handed him the tobacco. She swept his ten-cent piece in a drawer and sat down again. One of the men lounging about the great white-topped stove in the middle of the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... with ancient mariners—I beg your pardon—oldest inhabitants," said Valentine with a despondent yawn. "Well, I suppose that sort of individual is a little less obtuse when he lives within the roar of the great city's thunder than when he vegetates in the dismal outskirts of a manufacturing town. Where am I to find my octogenarian prosers? and when am I to begin my operations upon them?" "The ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... patriot band, Fat from the leanness of a plundered land, True Cincinnati, quit their patent ploughs, Their new steam-harrows, and their premium sows; Let all in bulky majesty appear, Roll the dull eye, and yawn th' unmeaning cheer. Ye veteran Swiss, of senatorial wars, Who glory in your well-earned sticks and stars; Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons; Ye smug defaulters; ye obscene buffoons; Come all, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... laughing at play. The silence was so profound that it was emphasized to his ears by the droning of a fly in one of the high, iron-barred windows; and in spite of himself he started when it was suddenly and ferociously broken by a melancholy roar like the thunderous yawn of a bored lion. But still the marabout did not appear. Evidently he intended to show the persistent Roumi that he was not to be intimidated or browbeaten, or else he did not really ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... we were afterwards told, are caused by the splitting of the ice when there comes a fall in the barometer. Then the glacier will yawn like ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... upon the human intellect. When he came to the last entry, in which, while the size of the mountains was mentioned with some approval, the saltness of the hotel butter was made the subject of severe comment, he shut the book up with a yawn. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the open with the frowning walls of the great gorge far above him, like a giant mouth agape in a desperate yawn. At his feet lay the river, flowing swiftly on to join the great Mackenzie in its northward rush to swell ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... feigning an ostentatious yawn, "I believe the wise method of ridding oneself of impertinents is to grant their requests. Have you ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... one of his fat legs, stretched his arms, pushed his slouch hat from his forehead—he was still on his back drinking in the sunshine—and with a yawn cried: ...
— A Gentleman's Gentleman - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... monsieur," said the directress, affecting to suppress a yawn; her sprightliness was now extinct, her temporary candour shut up; the little, red-coloured, piratical-looking pennon of audacity she had allowed to float a minute in the air, was furled, and the broad, sober-hued flag of dissimulation again hung low over the citadel. I did not like her ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... couch, with a great bunch of dewy roses in his arms, which, in the next picture, lay all scattered over Judy, when she waked and gazed at him dreamily. Jimmie came out strongly at this point, with a prodigious yawn that almost broke him in two, and was so expressive of great weariness that little Bobbie Green, his bosom friend, was carried away by the realism of it, and asked in awe, "Did he really sleep a hundred years?" and was not quite brought ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... you could not even yawn When your Committees would prepare To have the teeth of paupers drawn, Or strip the slums of Human Hair; Because a Doctor Otto Maehr Spoke of "a segregated few"— And you sat smiling in your chair— It shall not ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... him; then not quick enough to take in the rushing scene. There is a rock here and a big green cave of water there; there is a tumultuous rising and sinking and sinking of snow-tipped waves; there are places that are smooth-running for a moment and then yawn and open up into great gurgling chasms the next; there are strange whirls and backward eddies and rocks, rough and smooth and polished—and through all this the canoe glances like an arrow, dips like a wild bird down the wing of the storm, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... heard something like a yawn, as of a person waking from sleep. Then Giuditta's croaking voice ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... from a yawn-mouthed cave, Like a red-hot eye from a grave. No man stood there of whom to crave Rest for wayfarer plodding by: Though the tenant were churl or knave The Prince ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... yawn Alene slipped her feet to the white rug beside the bed, stood up, and lifting her gown as if for a skirt dance, skipped lightly to a willow rocker which stood invitingly before one of the tall windows overlooking the terrace ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... dozers. But there is no accounting for that conquering spirit of all-besetting drowsiness that attacks us at sundry times and places. It is in vain that we lengthen our limbs into an awakening stretch—that we yawn with the expressive suavity of yawning no more—that we dislocate our knuckle bones, and ruffle the symmetry of our visage, with a manual application; like the cleft blaze of a candle, drowsiness returns again. Well, then, what manner of reader is he that hath never sinned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... ought to write for the British, I suppose?" I muttered, with a yawn. "Muddle all one's language up until nobody has the faintest idea of what the author's sentiments are, and then they don't know whether he means anything heterodox ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... on slippery partitions. I'm a civilised man. I keep thinking of old Albrecht and the Barbarossa.... I feel I want a wash and kind words and a quiet home. When I look at you, I KNOW I want a wash. Gott!"—he stifled a vehement yawn—"What a Cockney tadpole of a ruffian ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... and caked, and waiting for its eaters. But in this age of prose-devouring and verse-despising, hardy indeed should I be, if I adventured to bore the poor, much-abused, uncomplaining public with hundreds of lines out of a dormant epic; the very phrase is a lullaby; it's as catching as a yawn; well will it be for me if my thread-bare domino conceals me, for whose better fame could brook the scandal of having fathered or fostered so slumbering an embryo?—Let then a few shreds and patches suffice—a brick or two for the house: and verily I know they ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... she drowsily remarked at length, turning to John after some further parley which he did not understand and tapping her mouth prettily with the palm of her hand to fight away a yawn. "You know we've been riding all day. And William Penn is at death's door with hunger. Poor William Penn! I'm afraid he'll suffer to-night at the tavern stable. They never take care of him and feed him as I do at home. He is so unhappy when be is hungry; ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... along the silent streets, Even when moonlight silvers empty squares The dark holds countless lanes and close retreats; But when the night its sphereless mantle wears The open spaces yawn with gloom abysmal, 5 The sombre mansions loom immense and dismal, The lanes are ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... at such length a fool, Mosca," said Count Guarini, with a yawn, "and strive so desperately to be rascal in spite of it, that I am almost sorry for you. Tie me these points, my good fellow, get me my sword, and go to the devil ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... very interesting," said Virginia, stifling a yawn. "I hope to see something more of him; he's a new sort and worth studying. And—oh, father, is there any chance that we'll have that house-party at our San Blanco estate next Spring? I mean—of course ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... will come down into the court-yard and walk in the sun for hours. You should see those lazy rascals of guardsmen scatter at the first sight of him—like mice running to their holes when puss begins to yawn and stretch herself." ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... morning, Bertram awoke. Had any observers been present they would have seen him turn over in bed, push his fists into the air and fight the sunshine which was streaming through the window, and then open his eyes and begin to remember where he was. Then they might have seen him yawn to a greater extent than so small a boy would seem to be capable of. It was when Bertram's waking operations had reached this stage that he remembered what had happened last night: he had been naughty and had gone to bed early in consequence. ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... Princess were wide open now, and she clapped her hands when Pippo brought the gay picture for her to see; while the old woman, with a long yawn, went away, carrying her distaff, like ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott |
