"Yawn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is ever towards too much. Thus (by all accounts) the Catholics in Mangareva, and thus (to my own knowledge) the Protestants in Hawaii, have rendered life in a more or less degree unliveable to their converts. And the mild, uncomplaining creatures (like children in a prison) yawn and await death. It is easy to blame the missionary. But it is his business to make changes. It is surely his business, for example, to prevent war; and yet I have instanced war itself as one of the elements of health. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the words that should have followed a long-drawn yawn, but none came, for the simple reason that ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... open fanes and gaping graves Yawn level with the luminous waves; But not the riches there that lie In each idol's diamond eye,— Not the gaily-jewelled dead Tempt the waters from their bed; For no ripples curl, alas, Along that wilderness of glass; No swellings tell that winds may be Upon ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... another turn, and the scene is changed in a moment,—in the twinkling of an eye. The happy valley is gone,—it has vanished like a dream; and a scene of stern, savage, overpowering sublimity rises before you. Alp is piled upon Alp, chasms yawn, torrents growl, jutting rocks threaten; and far over head is the dark pine forest, amid which you can descry, perhaps, the frozen billows of the glacier, or have glimpses of those still higher and drearier regions where winter sits ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Julien's nerves. Nevertheless, he endeavored to fulfil his duties as master of the house, throwing in a word now and then, so as to appear interested in their gossip, but he ate hardly a mouthful. His features had a pinched expression, and every now and then he caught himself trying to smother a yawn. His companions at the table could not understand a young man of twenty-eight years who drank nothing but water, scorned all enjoyment in eating, and only laughed forcedly under compulsion. At last, disturbed by the continued taciturnity ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his costume, and though he was clean-shaven, some instinct caused Dan to classify him as a German. He glanced back at Chevrial at last, but the latter was gazing dreamily out over the water and stifling a little yawn with his hand. ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... extinguish'd sun; (Ye sublunary worlds, awake, awake! Ye rulers of the nation, hear, and shake!) Thick clouds of darkness shall arise on day; In sudden night all earth's dominions lay; Impetuous winds the scatter'd forests rend; Eternal mountains, like their cedars, bend: The valleys yawn, the troubled ocean roar, And break the bondage of his wonted shore; A sanguine stain the silver moon o'erspread; Darkness the circle of the sun invade; From inmost heaven incessant thunders roll, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... polite or generous; but this of yours is a deep grief, and alarms me for you. Shall I tell you how I know? You often yawn and often sigh; when these two things come together at your age they are signs of a heavy grief; then it comes out that you have lost your relish for things that once pleased you. The first day I came here you told me your garden had ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... remember whether he had ever sighed before in his life, but if he had, he could not recall the circumstances. He tried to console himself with the absurd supposition that he was sleepy and that the long-drawn breath had been only a suppressed yawn. Then he walked on, gazing before him into the purple haze that filled the deep street just as the sun was setting, and a vague sadness and longing touched him which had no place in his catalogue of permissible emotions and which were as far removed from the cold cynicism which he admired ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... I drank three," replied Jason Philip with a yawn. "But to accuse a man of my standing of lying on such small grounds is an act of perfidy such as only an uncultured woman like yourself could be ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Sita to come out and see their early history drawn on the terrace of the palace. They move about and the different parts of the picture are shown to Sita, when the eyes of Sita turn on the 'yawn-producing' weapons. Rama asks her to salute them so that they would attend also on her children. Sita then feels tired and lays her head on the arm of ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... and enormous Mansions of Silence which society has raised to Ennui in that Omphalos of town, Pall Mall, and which, because they knock you down with their dulness, are called Clubs no doubt; those who yawn from a bay-window in St. James's Street, at a half-score of other dandies gaping from another bay-window over the way; those who consult a dreary evening paper for news, or satisfy themselves with the jokes of the miserable Punch by way of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some time my eyes fixed moodily on the glowing embers, till I was roused by the deep boom of the hall clock as it slowly counted twelve. I rose with a laugh and a yawn. The first of the doctor's orders had been, "Early to bed!" I hastily made ready, but before turning in, paused for a moment by the open window, enticed by the fresh country smells of plowed land and sprouting green things, that blew in on ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... he is quicker than a wink! He didn't give me time to think, But made me yawn and stretch ...
— Dew Drops - Volume 37, No. 18, May 3, 1914 • Various
... same piece, perfectly translated, was played there; it made everybody in the audience yawn. "Ho, ho!" he said, "the to kalon is not the same for the English and the French." After much reflection he came to the conclusion that beauty is often very relative, just as what is decent in Japan is indecent in Rome, and what is fashionable in Paris, is ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Englishman, whose crimes had been many and black, bore himself with an air of complete indifference and received the sentence of the supreme penalty with a bored yawn. After he had been led on to the scaffold and just as the hood and noose were about to be placed over his head, the attendant priest, still persisting in his attempts to awaken penitence, in spite of the doomed man's deafness to his prayers, asked him ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... to the spot. Darkness had closed in around her, and she clung to the banisters to save herself from the gulf which seemed to yawn before her feet. The ringing of a bell, the drawing-room bell summoning Mrs. Enderby's maid, brought her back to consciousness, and with trembling limbs she regained her room. It was as though some ghastly vision of the night had shaken her soul. The habit of her mind overwhelmed ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... wish to alter; Colonel Goldsworthy seems coming round to good-humour; and even General Grenville begins to grow sociable. He has quitted the corner into which he used to cast his long figure, merely to yawn and lounge ; and though yawn and lounge he does still, and must, I believe, to the end of the chapter, he yet does it in society, and mixes between it loud sudden laughter at what is occasionally said, and even here and there a question relative to what is going forward. Nay-yesterday ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... couch; she did not trouble herself to rise when the visitor entered, but held a hand to him, at the same time scarcely suppressing a yawn. Novel reading has a tendency to produce this expression of weariness. Then she smiled, as one does in ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... aunt, he seemed not a little dubious how to conduct himself. "I would to God, naunt," he said at last, "that old Whitaker were alive now, with his long stories about Marston Moor and Edge Hill, that made us all yawn our jaws off their hinges, in spite of broiled rashers and double beer! When a man is missed, he is moaned, as they say; and I would rather than a broad piece he had been here to have sorted this matter, for it is clean out of my way as a woodsman, that have no skill of war. But ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... shoulders. "I am a wizard. But it needs no wizard to guess that, as the exalted personage is no longer with us, he will not walk abroad to-night, and you will not have to yawn and doze in the lodge till ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Cowardly Lion with tears in his eyes. "If I yawn again, I'll swallow my tail, and if I don't have something to eat soon, I'll do it anyway. Let's hurry! There's something queer about this place, Dorothy! Ah, hah, ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... in the world, the terminal yawn. Mrs. Babbitt yawned with it, and looked grateful as he droned, "How about going to bed, eh? Don't suppose Rone and Ted will be in till all hours. Yep, funny kind of a day; not terribly warm but yet—Gosh, I'd like—Some day I'm going to take ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Carl, with a yawn. "I pet you I vas der sleepinglessness feller in der whole bunch. If he gets avay on my vatch it vill not be pecause I ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... Susanna, heartily. And she put up her hand, to cover a weary little yawn. "But there 's no mystification. There 's a perfectly plain statement of fact. I 'm ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... that; the family and the servants hunted the house all over in search of him and his daughter," replied Mr. Dallberg with a yawn. ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... write journals? Because human nature is filled with egotism. There is nothing so interesting to oneself as oneself; and journals cannot yawn in one's face, no matter how lengthy the expression of one's feelings ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... himself heaved a tremendous yawn, settled back in greater comfort against his sustaining tree, and closed his eyes. I waited, counting the seconds by the beating of the blood in my ears. In the background Cookie hovered apprehensively. Plainly he would go on hovering unless loud snores from the pirates gave ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... a yawn; PERCY's feelings are outraged by receiving a tin trumpet from the Lucky Tub; general move to the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... huge standing collar, and in his buttonhole a ridiculous artificial flower. This type of comic singer is unknown in American concert-halls of any grade, though he is sometimes seen at the German concerts in the Bowery of the lowest class. Here he is very cordially esteemed. The ladies behind him yawn in a furtive manner under cover of their bouquets, but the audience is hilarious over him as he sings about his friend Thomas from the country, who came up to Paris to see the sights and shocked everybody by his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... He pretended politely to suppress a yawn, indicating that the subject bored him inordinately. "If I ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... terribly intoxicating draft," says a writer, and the sight of young lovers is one that softens all but the most cynical. We smile at their inconsequence; tremble, almost, at their rapturous happiness; yawn, it may be, over their mutual ecstasies, still we know they are passing through a phase, they are lifted for the time being out of the commonplace, ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... sleeping, drinking, and eating. Still he wallowed and rolled up and down himself in the mire and dirt—he blurred and sullied his nose with filth—he blotted and smutched his face with any kind of scurvy stuff—he trod down his shoes in the heel—at the flies he did oftentimes yawn, and ran very heartily after the butterflies, the empire whereof belonged to his father. He pissed in his shoes, shit in his shirt, and wiped his nose on his sleeve—he did let his snot and snivel ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... her question by appearing, with a stretch and a yawn, from beneath a bunk. He had heard his name in Courtenay's voice. That sufficed for Joey ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... magnificence upon the sofa, protested mutely against what she considered a tendency to 'rowdyism' in her hostess; flirted—intellectually—with any one who had the hardihood to sit near her; and on the stroke of ten rose with a suppressed yawn and a transparently insincere little ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the night, Those that slew thy virgin knight; For the which, with songs of woe, Round about her tomb they go. Midnight, assist our moan; Help us to sigh and groan, Heavily, heavily: Graves, yawn and yield your dead, Till death be ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... there we made a minute examination of the statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor—who was just beginning to yawn—were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that came from one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen edifice there were a driver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven people! ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... Tim! It's sad for him. He lags the long bright morning through, Ever so tired of nothing to do; He moons and mopes the livelong day, Nothing to think about, nothing to say; Up to bed with his candle to creep, Too tired to yawn, too tired to sleep: Poor Tired Tim! It's ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... vanity was flattered by the prestige he acquired because of it. Like many another robustious big toper, the Templar was a chicken at heart, and "to be in with Gourlay" lent him a consequence that covered his deficiency. "Yes, I'm sleepy," he would yawn in Skeighan Mart; "I had a sederunt yestreen wi' John Gourlay," and he would slap his boot with his riding-switch and feel like a hero. "I know how it is, I know how it is!" Provost Connal of Barbie ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the world's madness, because of the human fear and weeping everywhere, because of the new abysses which seemed to yawn every day on every side, that both soul and senses were so abnormally overstrung. He was overwhelmed by exquisite compassions in his thoughts of Robin, he was afraid for her youngness, her sweetness, the innocent defencelessness which was like a child's. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... leaves, which they carried on their heads; the soot which had formed their festival dress was washed off by the rain. The square itself was deserted, save for a pack of dogs and a few little boys, rolling about in the mud puddles. Once in a while an old man would come out of the gamal, yawn and disappear. In short, it was a lendemain de fete of ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... girded upon him, and he 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 ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... stormy sunset or a misty dawn. The sun sinks beyond the vast expanse of open, wide, and illimitable sea, heaving with a deep and mysterious ground swell as the long waves roll shorewards. Between the great pinnacles of rock blue chasms yawn and pass away, and the bases of the nearer rocks are momentarily hidden by the ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... and, when one of them asks with a yawn what is happening, the woman who keeps the cafe that crouches at the corner of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to the other end of the pew, knocking over a big hymn-book on the way, which attracted so much attention that I have seldom felt more embarrassed in my life. Kate's great dog rose several times to shake himself and yawn loudly, and ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... dived overboard among the mountainous seas that were rolling south of Cape Horn one January. For an hour this hero fought with the blinding water, and he saved his comrade at last. Strange to say, the lounging impassive dandies who regard the universe with a yawn, and who sneer at the very notion of friendship, develop the kindly and manly virtues when they are removed from the enervating atmosphere of Society and forced to lead a hard life. A man to whom emotion, passion, self-sacrifice, are things ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... not have said, "hoping for a yawn" for anything that could have been offered me; but the young woman who stood for Mrs. Ascher's Psyche must have longed for that relief. The attitude in which she was posed suggested yawning all the time, and we all know how fatal it is to think of ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... Perhaps not. It is hard to say. It is a great while since our skinless and touchy crowds of the wonderful industrial era, moving as one man to the words of the daily papers, were such creatures. Perhaps we should merely yawn and stretch ourselves, feel revived with the sun a little warmer on our backs, and snuff up a pleasant smell which we remembered; begin to whistle, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... to the attack, she said, with a poor pretense at a yawn, "So you think a man may love a woman even after—after she has turned him out of ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... attention than usual when they heard her talk, and put their ears close to a crack in the wall between the rooms, and heard the queen say quite plainly: 'When I yawn a little, then I am a nice little maiden: when I yawn halfway, then I am half a troll; and when I yawn fully then I am a ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... duty in his present humble position, he justly believed that it would be the stepping-stone to something better. But, having learned to know himself, he was afraid of himself; and he had seen with an infinite dread what cold, dark depths yawn about one whom society shakes off as a vile and venomous thing, and who must eventually take evil and its consequences as his only portion. The hot, reeking apartment wherein he toiled was the first solid ground that he had felt beneath his ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... murderous brother's deed, This one alone hath touched the quick; this one my heart may lead Unto its fall: I feel the signs of fire of long agone. And yet I pray the deeps of earth beneath my feet may yawn, I pray the Father send me down bolt-smitten to the shades, The pallid shades of Erebus, the night that never fades, Before, O Shame, I shame thy face, or loose what thou hast tied! He took away the love from me, who bound me to his ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... however absurdly exaggerated; but men, I think, are most moved by the simple and quiet sorrows. We smile at the critical point of a spasmodic tragedy, complacently as the Lucretian philosopher looking down from the cliff on the wild sea; we yawn over the wailings of Werter and Raphael, but we ponder gravely over the last chapters of the Heir of Redclyffe, and feel a curious sensation in the throat—perhaps the slightest dimness of vision—when we read in The Newcomes how that noble old soldier crowned the chivalry ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... critically unimpassioned way that the instructor in Dramatic Theory could not have praised too much. The room finally having become too dark for reading, she threw down the book with something like a yawn. "It would have been a joke on Portia," she remarked, "if Bassanio had chosen the wrong casket"; and she turned her attention to the campus outside. Groups of girls were coming along the path from the lake, and the sound of their voices, mingled with laughter ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... enjoying themselves in the ballroom, 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 sounded from the room, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... 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
... sunshine and the green, Enters the solid darkness of a cave, Nor knows what precipice or pit unseen May yawn before him with its sudden grave, And, with hushed breath, doth often forward lean, Dreaming he hears the plashing of a wave Dimly below, or feels a damper air From out some dreary chasm, he knows ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the studio clock was striking seven, she would yawn and say sadly: "I must go. . . . I have to go, although this is my true home. . . . Ah, what a pity that we ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... return to his repose, A cherub flapp'd his right wing o'er his eyes— At which Saint Peter yawn'd and rubb'd his nose; "Saint porter," said the angel, "prithee rise!" Waving a goodly wing, which glow'd, as glows An earthly peacock's tail, with heavenly dyes; To which the Saint replied, "Well, what's the matter? Is Lucifer come back ...
— English Satires • Various
... evening paper. And sadly yawned, the way only that man yawns Who has read much that is strange— And the thought suddenly overcame him, Like a timid person who gets gooseflesh, And the way the person who stuffs himself Starts to burp, Like a mother in labor: The great yawn might perhaps be a sign, A nod from fate, To lie down to rest. And the thought would not leave him. And then he began to undress... When he was stark naked, ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... as does a noble watch-dog when the 'suspicious tread of theft' approaches. The hurry of the jaded horse, the sudden stop, the maddened furious knock, all told a tale which his well-trained ear only knew too well. He sat up for a moment, listening in his bed, stretched himself with one involuntary yawn, and then stood upright on the floor. It should not at any rate be boasted by any one that he ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... cannibal men, Baas. Think they eat the Arabs and like them very much," he said with a yawn, then went ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... Better go and hire a hall," remarked the sporting editor, with a yawn. "If you are engaged in a talking match you have won the money. Blanket him somebody, and ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... 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
... law, and the national effort was as orderly as it was impassioned. "There is agitation, there are meetings, there is mutual encouragement to the struggle, the provinces concert opposition together, the wrath against Great Britain grows and the abyss begins to yawn; but such are the habits of order among this people, that, in the midst of this immense ferment among the nation, it is scarcely possible to pick out even a few acts of violence here and there; up to the day when the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... many of them he appeared to enjoy himself hugely. At the musicals and purely literary entertainments, however, Miles Dawson always looked, as he was, extremely bored. Once Miss Henderson had seen him yawn at a Shelley reading. He was, in short, of the earth earthy, or perhaps, to be more accurate, of the horse horsey. Intellectual pleasures were naught to him but fountains of ennui, and being a very honest, frank sort of a person, he took no pains to conceal the fact, and it ruined his chances ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... French islands. Until they heard of the Rights of Man they were flourishing and happy, but as soon as this system arrived among them, Pandora's box, replete with every mortal evil, seemed to fly open; hell itself to yawn; and every demon of mischief to overspread the country. Blacks rose against blacks, whites against blacks—and each against the other in murderous hostility: subordination was destroyed, the cords of society snapped asunder, and every man appeared to thirst ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was hardly ill-mannered at all. "I don't love ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... good for nothing but to be forgotten. His love for literature he found one of the first pleasures of his life; nor did he, after he came into the possession of a large fortune, find that his habits of constant occupation lessened his enjoyments, for he was never known to yawn at a window upon a ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... stung me, I will own; but it was not so much these that wrought me to sudden, cold fury, as that contemptuous yawn. Even as I stood mute with righteous indignation, all my finer feelings thus wantonly ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... up in the dim light to see the big, burly policeman leaning over me, while Esau was giving vent to a noisy yawn. It was morning, indeed, and though not aware of the fact, I must have ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... attract the tourist types to the extent he had hoped, and so decreed that his faithful and devoted subjects, leaving their cozy hearths and inglenooks, should go forth at the hour when graveyards yawn —and who could blame them?—to spend the dragging time until dawn in being merry and bright. So saying His Majesty went to bed, leaving them to work while ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Besides, I'm a regular Janissary—what is to be, will be. Why the devil should I bother to form an opinion and battle for it. It's quite wearisome enough to have to live." And the young man enforced his favorite aphorism with a long yawn; then he added: "Do you think there will ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the volunteer firemen will get there, they seem so slow about gathering, and running their old machine to a blaze. Thank goodness! we've decided to have an up-to-date fire department in little old Chester right away. Our town has waked up from her long sleep, and is beginning to stretch and yawn." ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... get into the house, though if I were sitting on a jury I think I should base an indictment—one of criminal negligence—of the Jewel on the fact that it was unlocked. It was just the hour, you know, when policemen yawn ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... that, you will admit, was in other circumstances. The world, and we, were younger then. Eleven nights of this is enough for me, and, if you would be so good as to step into the next room, I will give instructions for your being—excuse this yawn—bowstrung." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... with such shouts of pleasant laughter. Perhaps the anecdote was just a trifle doubtful; granted; but what does the wife take by her remonstrance? Most probably a quarrel; possibly a good-natured peccavi for the sake of being let off the continuance of the sermon; perhaps a yawn; most certainly not reform. If the man is a man of free speech and broad humor by nature and liking, he will remain so to the end; and what the censorship of society leaves untouched, the interference of a wife ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... a yawn. Then a sudden groan escaped him, and he put his hand to his head. "Thousand devils!" ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... sound of a prodigious yawn from the room next door occupied by Jack Harpe. A cot creaked. A boot was scraped ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... have interposed for the purpose of explaining to the reader why, as our hero conversed, the maiden began to yawn. Blind to this, however, he continued to relate to her sundry adventures which had befallen him in different parts of the world. Meanwhile (as need hardly be said) the rest of the ladies had taken umbrage at his behaviour. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a slight yawn, leaning her pretty shoulders languidly against the door-post, as she shaded her moonlight-accustomed eyes from the vulgar brilliancy of Mrs. Bradley's bedroom candle. "Well—oh, he talked a great deal about 'his ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... playing, and was just about to yawn, now cannot in any way give rein to her yawns. She does not know whether she wants to be angry or to laugh. She has a steady visitor, some little old man in a high station, with perverted erotic habits. The entire establishment ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... her half-silk hose (that were always coming down, and that she was always twisting up, just under her knees, before my abashed eyes). She wore shoes much too little for her plump feet ... and, when not abroad, let them yawn open unbuttoned. And her plump body was alive and bursting through ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... said Rosemary, with a yawn, "if there was nothing more for me to do. It's such a nice day, and I'd like a breath ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... eaten a doughnut, the subject is of transcendent interest; and as for one who has not—well, he should be made to feel his limitations," replied Francesca, with a yawn. "Come, let us forget our troubles in sleep; it is ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... good time," returned Isabel, smothering a yawn. "It will be lots of fun to go all over the country and see ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... stretched his great mouth open, with a formidable yawn. Panic seized the "young uns," and they scampered; their bare legs and exceedingly scanty attire (only three shirts and a half to four little barbarians) seeming to offer the dog unusual facilities, had he chosen to regard them as soap-grease and to regale himself on that sort of diet. ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... couldn't discover that it was any different from Mr. Coyote's three remaining paws. And he had just started to say so, too, when Mr. Coyote interrupted him with an enormous yawn. ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... little old poem that nobody reads Blooms in a crowded space, Like a ground-vine blossom, so low in the weeds That nobody sees its face— Unless, perchance, the reader's eye Stares through a yawn, and hurries by, For no one wants, or loves, or heeds, The little old poem that ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... He took a chair, nodded to me not to dismiss my assistant, joined our conversation, and when conversation was merged in accounts, he took up a book of songs, and amused himself with it till my business was over and my disciple of Coke retired. He then said, very slowly, and with a slight yawn, "You have never been ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at an empty space upon the wall which seemed to yawn expectant. By a terrible impression, she was pursued by the thought of a fresh slab which might soon perhaps be placed there,—with another name which she did not even dare think of in such ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... a prodigious yawn which came from the Girl there was an ominous quiet hanging over the place that chilled the man. Sudden sounds startled him, and he found it impossible to make any progress with his preparations for the night. He was about to make some remark, however, when to his well-attuned ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... rebuke, And as if his backbone were not jointed, The Duke stepped rather aside than forward, And welcomed her with his grandest smile; And, mind you, his mother all the while 160 Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward; And up, like a weary yawn, with its pulleys Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis; And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies, The lady's face stopped its play, 165 As if her first hair had grown gray; For such things must begin some ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Meuse which separates South Holland from North Brabant. All that we saw from the ship was a wide expanse of water, two dark stripes to the right and left, and a gray sky. A French lady, breaking the general silence, exclaimed with a yawn, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... picture them in their UN of the Universe, making speeches in their different languages, listening patiently without understanding each other's different problems, boring each other and being too polite to yawn. ...
— The Carnivore • G. A. Morris
... sir, a mere joke,' Edwin cuts in, with a provoking yawn. 'A little humouring of Pussy's points! I'm going to paint her gravely, one of these ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Mrs. Fox elected to walk home as a tribute to the glorious moonlight, and Jack was commandeered to act as her escort. It was a good opportunity for the lady to show that renegade, Master Bobby Smart, that he was not indispensable. His yawn ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... must be the prince!" Mrs. Orton Beg responded, raising her slender white hand to smother a yawn. "And it must be good-night, too—or rather, good-morning! Just look at the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a gigantic yawn, stretched her beautiful long body till the tips of her fingers almost touched the low rafters, and said, "It's a good thing Charleton and Peter will be going along to protect us from Scott, ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... as our government. 'Tain't decent; no gent can hold a candle to it. But it's a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pass your days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and petitions (which ain't petited) and letters to the Times, which it makes my jaw yawn to re-read, and all your time have your heart with David Balfour; he has just left Glasgow this morning for Edinburgh, James More has escaped from the castle; it is far more real to me than the Behring Sea or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an army revolver, was a dishevelled young man, his hair tousled, his eyes swollen with sleep. He was clad in orange-striped silk pyjamas open at the neck, and even as he scowled darkly on the intruders below he stifled a capacious yawn. Although his face was in shadow there seemed something familiar about him. However, before anything had been said on either side, the belligerence faded from the young man's manner, his attitude altered, and he gave vent to a lazy chuckle, as with his free hand he fastened the ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... brothers it suggests the muffled ponderous beat of a gigantic sinister heart. Wotan and Alberich explain to the dragon his danger and indicate what may buy him safety. Having heard them out, Fafner, unseen in the cave, gives a long lazy comfortable yawn. "I lie and possess! Let me sleep!" Wotan laughs. "Well, Alberich, the plan failed. But abuse me no more, you rogue! One thing, I further enjoin you, keep well in mind: Everything is after its kind, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... youthful band along the avenue, and one by one the drowsy congregation stole through the Gothic ante-chamber that leads to Christ Church chapel, like unwilling victims to some pious sacrifice. Here a lengthened yawn proclaimed the want of rest, and near a tremulous step and heavy half-closed eye was observed, pacing across the marble floor, with hand pressed to his os frontis, as if a thousand odd and sickly fantasies inhabited that chamber of the muses. Now two friends might be ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... came when the young man ceased from his labours and sat up with a yawn. He stretched out his hand and lit a cigarette, walked to the little round window which commanded the deck, gazed out of it steadily, and turned back once more to his chair before the instrument. Then something happened. A greater shock than any that lay ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as they liked. But Polly Brewster and her friend Eleanor Maynard were almost talked out by the time they finished the last bit of Sary's delicious dessert; and Barbara Maynard tried her best to hide a yawn behind her hand, while Anne Stewart, the pretty teacher who was the fourth member in the party that spent a night in the cave, was eager to continue planning for the future of the mine, but Nature demanded rest after the three ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... mentioned, as if in remembrance of his father's injunction, that he had been to take his leave of Miss Howell, since he found his visits gave uneasiness to her friends. "On the whole," he added, endeavoring to yawn carelessly, "I believe I shall visit ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... awhile. To the fairness and helpfulness of the newspaper men there are one or two exceptions, for instance, a certain sneaking whelp who writes for several papers. He went to the Navy League dinner last night at which I made a little speech. When I sat down, he remarked to his neighbour, with a yawn, "Well, nothing in it for me. The Ambassador, I am afraid, said nothing for which I can demand his recall." They, of course, don't care thrippence about me; it's you they hope ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Mary, "she'd only say, 'Oh, all right,' and yawn and change the subject—and what could I do then?" She answered herself, "Nothing," and thoughtfully added, "It will take ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... lady that my lady was very glad to keep her. She could make caps like a Parisian milliner; she could dress her exquisitely; she could read for hours in the sweetest and clearest of voices, without one yawn, the dullest of dull High Church novels. She could answer notes and sing like a siren, and she could embroider prie-dieu chairs and table-covers, and slippers and handkerchiefs, and darn point lace ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... 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 turmoil over ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... when day is at an end There are little duds to mend; Little frocks are strangely torn, Little shoes great holes reveal, Little hose but one day worn, Rudely yawn at toe and heel; Who but you could work ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... field-path, a covey of umbrellas! He had been standing at the window for the last half-hour, his hands in his pockets, and his mouth often contracting itself into the traditional sin of a whistle, but as often checked into sudden gravity—ending, nine times out of ten, in a yawn. He looked askance at Osborne, who was sitting near the fire absorbed in a book. The poor squire was something like the little boy in the child's story, who asks all sorts of birds and beasts to come and play with him; and, in every case, receives the sober answer, that they ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... lurching and half asleep. The boatmen shout one to another in nasal discords. Lazily you preen your great wings, eagle wings, built for the sky; And you yawn.... ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens |
