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Come to life   /kəm tu laɪf/   Listen
Come to life

verb
1.
Be born or come into existence.  Synonym: come into being.
2.
Be lifelike, as of a painting.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Come to life" Quotes from Famous Books



... reality—returning from roof and tree, and I had the feeling of the air being made up of voices, and of whirling in this magic ether. The woman I observed would seem about to stop, her voice falling away almost to no sound, and the prolonged drone of the chorus dying out, when, as if she had come to life again, she sang out at the top of her lungs, and the ranks again took up their tones. I could almost trace the imposition of the religious strain upon the savage, the Christian upon the heathen, like the negro spirituals of Georgia, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... against the light; across the space between, there flits a fairy in lemon-yellow or orange drapery slightly blown out so that the sun makes it a transparent blaze of yellow—a dainty Tanagra Figurine come to life and colour again! ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... Harmony, or Poesy, or whatever it was supposed to represent, was to come to life in the picture and strum the strings of the lyre which it held. This was a trick picture and Mr. Hammond had explained to Ruth just how ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson

... gazed long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his. For a moment it filled him to see and know, to be certain that she knew and did not deny. But the man in him was not yet a reasoning man—too lately had he come to life. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... woman that had come to life within the body of the little milliner. With calm eyes she stared at the people in the room and when she looked again toward Margaret there was ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... execrate us if all was known." Again: "Don't let any one be in the same room with you at night—you talk in your sleep." And again: "What's done can't be undone; and I tell you there's nothing against us unless the dead could come to life." Here there was underlined in a better handwriting (a female's), "They do!" At the end of the letter latest in date the same female hand had written these words: "Lost at sea the 4th of June, the same day ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... company thrilled as she came up the aisle. She looked like the Princess in a fairy tale—but just come to life. ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn

... of it: one hour a drunken peasant, the next a baron, then another hour a peasant again; now dead, now alive on a gallows, which is the most wonderful of all. Perhaps it is that when they hang living people they die, and when they hang dead people they come to life again. It seems to me that, after all, a glass of brandy would taste magnificent. Hey, ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... as the age of the passions and the age of the reason draw on, and the love of home, and the sense of security and property under the law come to life, and as the story goes round, and as the book or the newspaper relates the less favored lot of other lands, and the public and private sense of the man is forming and formed, there is a type of patriotism already. Thus they have imbibed it who stood that charge at Concord, and they who hung ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... Donald Morley lying ill and friendless in a foreign hospital rouse every desire in her to go to him at once at any cost? Waves of surprise and shame surged over her. She heard nothing, saw nothing, save the fact that something she thought was dead had come to life. She was wakening from a long numb sleep, and the wakening was terrifying. What irremediable catastrophe had happened between now and that supreme moment when she had stood under the lilacs in the twilight with Donald Morley's arms about her, his breath ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... discover something perfectly new to me? I don't believe it!" She started up impatiently, and took a turn in the room. "Oh!" she exclaimed, with a stamp of her foot, "why can't I take laudanum enough, or chloroform enough to kill me for the next six weeks—and then come to life again when the German takes the bandage off my eyes!" She sat down once more, and drifted all on a sudden into a question of pure morality. "Tell me this," she said. "Is the greatest virtue, the virtue which it ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... of our erstwhile German friends has come to life. He was just about to lay hold of us when you came up in the air. Great Scott! What do you ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... the wife of Tyndarus, who bore him two famous sons, Castor breaker of horses, and Pollux the mighty boxer. Both these heroes are lying under the earth, though they are still alive, for by a special dispensation of Jove, they die and come to life again, each one of them every other day throughout all time, and they have the rank ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... had always shaken a little shook a great deal now, and the fits of abstraction and temper could be counted upon to appear oftener than any other moods. I used to laugh, sometimes, when I was alone, at the bitter humor of it all. It was like a Duchess novel come to life. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... Egg, in the Utchat and in the Egg, and it is given unto me to live [with] them. I am he that dwelleth in the Utchat when it closeth, and I exist by the strength thereof. I come forth and I shine; I enter in and I come to life. I am in the Utchat],(37) my seat is upon my throne, and I sit in the abode of splendor(?) before it. I am Horus and (I) traverse millions of years. I have given the decree [for the stablishing of] my throne and I am the ruler thereof; and in very truth, my mouth keepeth an even balance ...
— Egyptian Literature

... to light a cigarette, but this simple statement petrified him. His jaw dropped and his eyes bulged. Not till the flame burned his fingers did he come to life. ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... had happened even to scream, dropped the knife and bent over him. He did not move. She staggered back and ran through the now open door. As she did so, Long seemed suddenly to come to life. He raised himself and looked after her, then with a subtle smile sank back into his former assumed posture on ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... this complaint and serve it on Davis," he said. "I don't want to see him if I can help it. If you don't mind, you can tell him that I've come to life and am here in the city and that if he kills me again he'd better do it while I'm looking. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... think as we please of these Beggars of the Ocean, these Norse corsairs come to life again with the flavour of Genevan theology in them; but for daring, for ingenuity, for obstinate determination to be spiritually free or to die for it, the like of the Protestant privateers of the sixteenth century has been rarely met ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... KINDEST LETTER—exactly like himself and the way he used to talk! He had just heard of his brother's death, and congratulated me on coming into the property, and said he was now perfectly happy, and should KEEP DEAD, and never, never come to life again; that he never thought things would turn out as splendidly as they had—for Sir William MIGHT have had an heir—and that now he should REALLY DIE HAPPY. He said something about everything being legally right, and that ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... hearts at the highest pitch of human constancy have held up a light to the world. It is impossible to pass that house without a sense of awe. Because of the light that comes from it, dead faiths have come to life, weak convictions have grown strong, fiery impulses have turned to long endurance, and long endurance has kept the fire of impulse. In the harbour of New York there is a pompous statue of a goddess with a torch, designated as "Liberty enlightening ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... uninterrupted blowing, was in the process of rapidly melting away. The air was full of sunlight and reflection from the white snow, which in large, shining drops dripped down past the windows. Within the room all forms and colors had awakened, all lines and contours had come to life. Whatever was flat extended, whatever was bent curved, whatever was inclined slid, and whatever was broken refracted the more. All kinds of green tones mingled on the flower-table, from the softest dark-green ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen

... in——" but even as he spoke the old man felt how very near the end had come, and summoned all his dying strength to say, "As soon as the breath is out of me, rub me all over with that liquid, and I shall come to life again." ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac

... I often long to be that mummy you have in the Great Hospital, the one with the short nose and thick lips. When you looked at me spirit and flesh would grow one with delight, and I should come to life, and grow round and soft and warm again, and talk to you of Thebes, and you would be enchanted with me—you could not help it then. I should be so old, so very ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... The survivor goes at once to the Grand Duke, and, in a burst of remorse, denounces the dead man as the moving spirit of the plot. He is accepted as King's evidence, and, as a matter of course, receives a free pardon. To-morrow, when the law expires, the dead man will, ipso facto, come to life again—the Revising Barrister will restore his name to the list of voters, and he will resume all his obligations as though nothing unusual had happened. JULIA. When he will be at once arrested, tried, and executed on the evidence ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... queer thing happened. For the figure seemed to come to life, and Ned, who was watching through a telescope, saw a very much excited farmer looking up with an expression of the greatest wonder on his face. He saw the balloon over his head, and shook his fist at it, evidently thinking he had had a narrow escape. But the ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... there were composition only, and no division of substances, then the chaos of Anaxagoras would come again. And in like manner, my dear Cebes, if all things which partook of life were to die, and after they were dead remained in the form of death, and did not come to life again, all would at last die, and nothing would be alive—what other result could there be? For if the living spring from any other things, and they too die, must not all things at last be swallowed up in ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... memories are mine, memories stranger and more terrible than those of the average man; but this thing which now moved slowly down upon us through the impenetrable gloom of that haunted place, was (if the term be understood) almost absurdly horrible. It was a medieval legend come to life in modern London; it was as though some horrible chimera of the black and ignorant past was become create ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... be classed among the flatterers; and History has long ago realized that flattery is as little congenial to her as the arts of personal adornment to an athlete's training. An anecdote of Alexander is to the point. 'Ah, Onesicritus,' said he, 'how I should like to come to life again for a little while, and see how your stuff strikes people by that time; at present they have good enough reason to praise and welcome it; that is their way of angling for a share of my favour.' On the same principle some people actually accept Homer's ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... not require many followers when he went to war because he was a very strong man and a man whom nobody could kill, for, if he was killed he came to life again immediately. The Synteng king once chopped him up into pieces and threw his hands and feet far away, and thought he would not come to life again. Nevertheless, next morning he came to life just the same, and he walked along all the paths and by-ways to intercept his enemies. The Synteng king was in great trouble on his account, and was at a loss for a plan how to overcome him, because, ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... wondered if he were indeed an ancient Druid come to life again, and that the instinct of the ancient rites lingered in him. However this might be, he could answer all her questions, and she was much interested when at the end of another tale he told her of Blake's visions ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... refined by his illness—the sturdy hands that had guided the push-cart had lost their roughened look and seemed the shape of some old statue; and the head, poised on the round throat, was as if some old museum had come to life and laughed in the sun. If Mrs. Philip Harris had seen Alcibiades shoving his cart before him, along the cobbled street, his head thrown back, his voice calling "Ban-an-nas!" as he went, she would not have given him a thought. But here, ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... "He's come to life again, do you see?" said Cohen, who had re-entered—speaking in an undertone. "I told you so: I'm mostly right." Then in his usual voice, "Well, sir, we mustn't detain you now, I suppose; but I hope this isn't the last time we ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... and amazes me in my old age! What would the hunters of old times say of this, if they should see that amid so many gentlemen, in so large a gathering, disputes over a hound's tail had to be debated? What would old Rejtan say of this were he to come to life again? He would go back to Lachowicze and lay himself in his grave. What would the old wojewoda Niesiolowski26 say, a man who still has the finest kennel in the world, and maintains in lordly wise two hundred hunters, and who has a hundred waggon-loads of nets in his castle of Woroncza, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... on a corner of the big desk, then started walking toward a corner closet. As he neared it the bird seemed to come to life. It began screaming, "No need looking there! There's nothing in there. Nobody's ever to look into that closet! Sic ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... count at length, in a tone of careless reminiscence—"by living in that house all these years, and, so they tell me, by making a small fortune out of the vines. The house is not his, the land is not his. They are mine. Only he and I knew it, and to prove it I should have to come to life. Besides, what is land in this country, unless you till it with a spade in one hand and a ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... sir? That arm's been as dead as a stick ever since I got that arrow, now it has come to life again, and is stronger than ever. I ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... think—you must think of your child and draw to it all the good forces, so that it may come to life unhampered by any weakness of balance in you. That must be your constant self-discipline. Keep serene and try to live in a world of noble ideals and serenity. Now I am going to play ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... not jesting? can the dead come to life? God be praised if it be so! Our poor lost boy restored to our arms after all these cruel years! Ah, it seems too good to be true, it IS too good to be true—I charge thee, have pity, do not trifle with me! Quick—come to the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... with a sob, "I think I died when Richard died, but now I seem to have come to life again—that is the worst of it. Oh!! Noie, Noie, why did you not let me remain dead, instead of bringing me to life again in ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... to give my opinion on any of the company's toepics," he pronounced it more like toothpicks, "beyond lamp-ile and cottons," returned Lamps, in a confidential tone; "but speaking as a man, I wouldn't recommend my father (if he was to come to life again) to go and try how he'd be treated at the Refreshment Room. Not speaking as a ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... or before Von Hamner could reach it, the door was flung open, and Franklin Marmion strode into the room. Von Hamner crawled back to his chair. He did not like the look of a dead man who had come to life again. Nicol Hendry held out his ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... self-reproach he saw how much worse it was that Folco should have forgotten her so soon. It was worse than a slight upon his mother's memory, it was an insult. The good woman who was gone would have shed hot tears if she could have come to life and seen how her son was living; but she would have died again, could she have seen the husband she adored in the places where many had seen him since her death. It was no wonder that Marcello's anger rose ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... is in manner, disposition, capacity, and in his neat, fine, and alert physical frame, the very image of Dicky Donovan, as in my mind I perceived him; and when I first saw him I was almost thunderstruck, because he was to me Dicky Donovan come to life. There was nothing Dicky Donovan did or said or saw or heard which had not its counterpart in actual things in Egypt. The germ of most of the stories was got from things told me, or things that I saw, heard of, or experienced ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and took her to the bath-room where he washed the golden and silver image and then took it and laid it in his couch, in his wife's place. That night he heaped up bear-skins and rugs of all kinds on top of the bed, hoping that the image would come to life from the warmth, but it was all in vain, and Ilmarinen was almost frozen himself when he rose next morning. Then he said to himself: 'Surely this lovely maiden was not meant to be my bride. I will take her to Wainamoinen, and perhaps she may come to ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind

... of Jerusalem spoke it at the time of the prophets. We are no dreamers. We can tell the difference between a dream and a hard fact, can't we?"—to the other two. "For centuries the tongue of our fathers spoke from the grave to us. Now, however, it has come to life again." ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... into a black one. On get-away day the honest owner has doubts and the dishonest owner has fears. On get-away day the bookmaker wears deep creases in his brow, for few horses are "laid up" with him, and he wonders which dead one will come to life. On get-away day the tout redoubles his activities, hoping to be far away before his victims awake to a sense of injury. On get-away day the program boy bawls his loudest and the hot-dog purveyor pushes ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... something low and depraved in your tastes, that you should thus abandon the prospect of earning a respectable livelihood, and go tramping through the country with a circus. What do you think your father would say if he could come to life, and become aware of the course you have ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.

... old fellow in the blanket dressing-gown briskly, "has the dead come to life again, or is Lalor ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... to praise him too much," I rejoined, "lest I should appear to praise myself; he reminds me so much of what I was at his age. If your beautiful mother were to come to life for an hour ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James

... English rural scene, with its country houses and villages, its religion, and its elements of change and revolution, has been always at my home gates, as a perpetually interesting subject. Old historic situations, also, have come to life for me again in new surroundings, as in Lady Rose's Daughter, The Marriage of William Ashe, and Fenwick's Career; in Richard Meynell I attempted the vision of a Church of England recreated from within, with a rebel, and not—as ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... been deceived concerning it. Unconsciously to herself, she may have been the victim of a daring fraud on the part of some hanger-on who had access to her jewels, but, as no such evidence had yet come to life, as she had no recognized, or, so far as could be learned, secret lover or dishonest dependent; and, moreover, as no gem of such unusual value was known to have been offered within the year, here or abroad, in public or private market, I could not bring myself to credit this assumption; ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... whole America one immortal record and reporter? Do ye not read them, deep cut, defying the tooth of time, on all the marble of our greatness? How they blaze on the pillars of our Union! How is their deep sense unfolded and interpreted by every passing hour! How do they come to life, and grow audible, as it were, in the brightening rays of the light he foresaw, as the fabled invisible heart gave out its ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... would it be their duty to sit down meekly and bear such an injustice, without attempting a blow in self-defence, and all because of that evil from the past which, although so long buried, had suddenly come to life again? ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... world shall rise again and the dead come to life. From above comes the all-powerful one, he who rules everything, and whose name no one dares utter. All those who were virtuous and pure of heart will gather in Gimle in everlasting happiness, while the evil ones will go to Naastrand at the well Hvergelmer ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... or tamarisk Perhaps would come to life again, Or in the form of fawns would frisk 'Mid violets upon the plain; But I ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... I nearly swallowed my back teeth with the effect of the thing. Give you my word I thought for a minute it was the girl come to life and walked in out of her coffin. That voice! High and clear and fine and true as an Angelus bell across a harvest field. 'It's a lie. It's an abominable lie; and you ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... came closer, he saw it was a Serpent to all appearance dead. But he took it up and put it in his bosom to warm while he hurried home. As soon as he got indoors he put the Serpent down on the hearth before the fire. The children watched it and saw it slowly come to life again. Then one of them stooped down to stroke it, but the Serpent raised its head and put out its fangs and was about to sting the child to death. So the Woodman seized his axe, and with one stroke cut the Serpent ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... their astonishment and affright. The dead had come to life! The White Witch, struck down as they thought by mortal wound, was charging at the head of her armies. The French were swarming up the scaling ladders, pouring into their tower, carrying all ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... and a set of eighteenth-century rooms with curiously real carnival costumes in them, like Longhi's pictures come to life, and a painting or two by Guardi, including what purports to be his own portrait. Then a Chinese room, and a Goldoni room with first editions of the little man's plays, his portrait, and other relics. This ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... alarmingly silent author on her right. She remembered hearing that Charles Dickens would often sit silent through the whole of dinner, observing quietly those about him, but that at dessert he would suddenly come to life and keep the whole table in roars of laughter. She feared that Mr. Shrewsbury meant to imitate the great novelist in the first particular, but was scarcely likely to follow his example in the last. At length she asked him what he thought of the ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... each mud-walled hovel of the outcaste village there is the same stir of the returning day. Sheeted corpses stretched on the floor suddenly come to life and the ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... muscles of their slender bodies rippled under the skin. The latter was of a beautiful fine texture, and chocolate brown. These men had keen, intelligent, clear-cut faces, of the Greek order, as though the statues of a garden had been stained brown and had come to life. They leaned on their sweeps, thrusting slowly but strongly against the little wind and current that would drift ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... Cicero, writing about the Commonwealth, in imitation of Plato, has related the story of the return of Er the Pamphylian to life; who, as he says, had come to life again after he had been placed on the funeral pile, and related many secrets about the shades below; not speaking, like Plato, in a fabulous imitation of truth, but using a certain reasonable invention of an ingenious dream, cleverly intimating that these things which ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... behind. And I never tumbled for days that it was you had run off with the boat—though I found a photo of Helena and your cigarette case in the boat you left. Never tumbled till that story of the taxi driver came out. Then I said, 'Well, of all things! Wonder if that old stick has really come to life after all!' And you sure had! What's in your letter? Say, ain't ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... Were Johnson to come to life again, total abstainer as he often was, he would, I expect, denounce the principle involved in 'Local Option.' I am not at all sure he would not borrow a guinea from a bystander and become a subscriber to the 'Property ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... by rail. I should spend a disproportionate amount of my limited time in trains, and I should want a different disguise. Besides, I had already learnt something fresh about Bhme; for the seed dropped at Emden Station yesterday had come to life. A submarine engineer I knew him to be before; I now knew that canals were another branch of his labours—not a very illuminating fact; but could I pick up more ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... where no bird or squirrel or wayward breeze would go. Not a corner within the horizon but will get its needed seed, not a nook anywhere, from the wind-swept fodder-field to the deepest, darkest swamp, but will come to life and flower again with the ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... Kayan villages stories are told of persons who are believed to have died and to have come to life again. This belief seems to have arisen in every case from the person having lain in a trance for some days, during which he was regarded as dead. The Kayans accept the cessation of respiration as evidence of death, and they ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... all seemed so futile against this unknown enemy. Ghosts? We could hardly think of them now as that. Throughout the chaotic day I recall so many wild things I had heard others say, and had myself thought. The dead come to life as living wraiths? A ghost could not materialize and kidnap a girl of flesh and blood. Or could it? Hysterical speculation! Or were these invaders from ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... which wounds the bark of trees, and lays its eggs in the aperture. The lacerated vessels of the tree then discharge their contents, and form an excrescence, which affords a defensive covering for these eggs. The insect, when come to life, first feeds on this excrescence, and some time afterward eats its way out, as it appears from a hole which is formed in all gall-nuts that no longer contain an insect. It is in hot climates only that strongly astringent gall-nuts are found; those which are used for the purpose of ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... corner and broke into a canter up the slope, and as the shoulder of the hill fell away there stood before him the picture of his childhood come to life, smiling drowsily in the morning sunlight with shuttered windows that were its sleeping eyes—the great white house of Fairfield. Its high pillars reached to the roof; its big wings stretched away at either side; the flicker of the shadow ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... mysterious disseminator of news whose tongues are legion, whispered that the Dry Bottom Kicker was to come to life. Wherefore curiosity led many of Dry Bottom's citizens past the door of the Kicker office to steal covert glances at the young man whose figure was bent over the desk inside. Many passed in silence after looking at the young man—he did not see them. Others ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... "Wake up and come to life, old General Incompetence! All the eleven shiners have now been run down and captured before they could bite anybody, by me, you understand, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry

... They probably missed in him "a sort of pettifogging intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact,a tiresome and frivolous accuracy of memory" which Sir Arthur Wardour reproves in Monkbarns. Scott, in brief, was not as Dry-as-dust; all the dead bones that he touches come to life. He was as great an archeologist as a poet can be, and, with Virgil, was the greatest antiquary among poets. Like Monkbarns, he was not incapable of being beguiled. As Oldbuck bought the bodle from the pedlar at the price of a ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... cured and felt hungry, and wanted bread and meat—she who had eaten none for four-and-twenty years! And she got out of bed and dressed herself, whilst her daughter, who was so overpowered that the neighbours thought she had become an orphan, replied to them: 'No, no, mamma isn't dead, she has come to life again!'" ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... aid humanity can become inspired into consistent kindness, well centered in the lines of forecast, as also in the cup reading pleasure. So observe the figures, point them out, summing up as these gems of thought come to life. One too lazy or disobliging cannot grow these many latent powers. These are as yet but dimly apprehended. All persons possess some special gift. God meant it so, and that we give hope and joy in all honest ways. So try your gift in this mingling ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara

... amidst the deep tenderness of his words, he felt her slowly come to life again, and unfold like a flower. After the long, dead day, Louise was consumed by a desire to drain such moments as these to the dregs. She did not let a word of his pass unchallenged, and all that she herself said, was an attempt to discover some spasm of mental ecstasy, which ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... schemes: the appearance of Inspector Verot, who had been sent by you, Monsieur le Prefet, to collect particulars about the Mornington heirs. What happened between the two men? Probably no one will ever know. Both are dead; and their secret will not come to life again. But we can at least say for certain that Inspector Verot was here and took away with him the cake of chocolate on which the teeth of the tiger were seen for the first time, and also that Inspector Verot succeeded, thanks to circumstances with which we are unacquainted, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... hear my aunt's friend, the Rev. Mr. White, preach at Christ Church, and would not go to Meeting, despite Samuel Wetherill, whose Society of Free Quakers did not come to life until 1780. Meanwhile by degrees I took to wearing finer garments. Cards I would never touch, nor have ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... lips, with smiles apart, Bespoke the gladness of his heart. And in his arms he took the boy The harbinger of future joy; Delighted that indulgent Heaven To his fond hopes this pledge had given, It seemed as if, to bless his reign, Irij had come to life again. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... is not the way in Spain. He was shot, as the orders were, with his back to the wall by a squad of soldiers with regulation bullets. If he chose to come to life again, that was his own affair. The Government would take no notice of him after he was dead. He could bury himself, or he could come alive—it was all the same to them. So ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... emotion struggled through her pride, "I did not feel justified in destroying the respect so deep, the love so true, he bears you, and I have come to say to you: You have wronged me greatly. You have killed within me something that will never come to life again. I feel that for years I shall carry a weight on my mind and on my heart at the thought that you could have betrayed me as you have. But I feel that for our boy this separation on which I had resolved is too perilous. I feel that I shall find ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... too, whereas nothing was farther from her intention. Her notion clearly was that we were to be massacred somewhere in the streets of London, in consequence of the anti- Christian machinations of the Pope; that after lying about unburied for three days and a half we were to come to life again; and, finally, that we should conspicuously ascend to heaven, in front, ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... don't remember what old man is referred to. There has been such a many old men. The well-spoken old man is doubtful. The spectral old man who has come to life in bed, says, 'Billy Stevens.' Another old man who has previously had his head in ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... go to Brugh na Boinne and get satisfaction for our people," said Oisin then. "That is the advice of a man without sense," said Finn; "for if we leave these pigs the way they are, they will come to life again. And let us burn them," he said, "and throw their ashes in ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... good for the Pope was good for your minister, too, my dear madam,—said the Master. Good for everybody that is afraid of what people call "science." If it should prove that dead things come to life of themselves, it would be awkward, you know, because then somebody will get up and say if one dead thing made itself alive another might, and so perhaps the earth peopled itself without any help. Possibly the difficulty wouldn't be so great ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... elementary truths are very essential. Thus he does see that though the palm-tree may be a very simple design, it was not he who designed it. It may look like a tree drawn by a child, but he is not the child who could draw it. He has not command of that magic slate on which the pictures can come to life, or of that magic green chalk of which the green lines can grow. He sees at once that a power is at work in whose presence he and the palm-tree are alike little children. In other words, he is intelligent enough to believe in God; and the Moslem, the man ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... bed and laughing tears, so it was clearly not the clothes that made her seem all of a sparkle with lovely youth and blitheness. Kunitz would not have recognized its ivory Princess in this bright being. She was the statue come to life, the cool perfection kissed by expectation into a bewitching living woman. I doubt whether Fritzing had ever noticed her beauty while at Kunitz. He had seen her every day from childhood on, and it is probable that his attention ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... in this (by one of the paradoxes of this extraordinary period) the very fixity of serfdom was a service to freedom. The new peasant inherited something of the stability of the slave. He did not come to life in a competitive scramble where everybody was trying to snatch his freedom from him. He found himself among neighbours who already regarded his presence as normal and his frontiers as natural frontiers, and among whom all-powerful ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... out the face that she had seen that afternoon—convulsed and quivering, with its flitting sinister likeness to Amos Burr. A voice that seemed to be the voice of old dead Aunt Griselda—of her whole dead race that had decayed and been forgotten, and come to life again in her—spoke suddenly ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... true to nature the drift of this may be, it is little more than bacilli of truth seen as immense through a microscope. The agonies and tortures arising from eating cabbage and such things may, no doubt, have tragic consequences enough, but somehow the men whom these things put on the rack refuse to come to life in the imagination on the same tragic plane where Prometheus lies on his crag and Oedipus strikes out his eyes that they may no longer look upon his shame. Strindberg is too anxious to make tragedy out ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... the bronze statue of the soldier in the courtyard speak. The statue did not come to life. It stood as ever, a solid piece of golden bronze, in spots turned black and green by weather. But from its lips came words ... words that burned themselves into the souls of those who heard. Words that exhorted them to defend the ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering the room a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You should have seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed away so long. Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two were parted," she added, looking smilingly at the little girl who clung to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... before. I wasn't mistaken," the big plainsman replied. "If I had been, you'd still see it. The trouble is that it is watching now. Everybody lay low. It will come to life again. I hope ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... there is always hope. Even when felled it can put forth fresh shoots, and regain new verdure and new life. But man dies, and vanishes for ever. I lie down never to rise again. If I knew for certain that after milliards of years I should come to life again, patient and uncomplaining I would wait through all those centuries ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. 160 To pay this sum to a wandering fellow With a gypsy coat of red and yellow! "Beside," quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, 165 And what's dead can't come to life, I think. So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something for drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But as for the guilders, what we spoke 170 Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. Beside, our losses have made us thrifty. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... she said: "Perhaps you do not remember me, Mrs. Ravenel! I am Katrine Dulany. My father was overseer of your plantation, in North Carolina, for nearly three years." It was as though Mary Queen of Scots had come to life and asked me if I remembered when ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... dead," said Walter; "I have slain him; there lies he with cloven skull on the bent-side: unless, forsooth, he vanish away like the lion I slew! or else, perchance, he will come to life again! And art thou a lie like to the rest of them? let me hear of ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... is in flower," said Caesar. "I will remove all the obstacles and men's strength will come to life, which is action. This town, then others, and finally all Spain.... May nothing remain hidden or closed up; everything come to life, out into the sunlight. I am a strong man; I am a man of iron; there are no obstacles for ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... guides you here. Also we pass at will into the Fifth Dimension and even higher, and seem to 'disappear'; the only difference is that, there, we should not be able yet to guide one who did not himself understand how to pass there. Just as one who understands how to die and to come to life, as you have the phrase, would not be able to take with him any one who did not understand how ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... Sila's tent and set fire to them. Then he led Queen Truda out of the tent, unsheathed his sword, and cut her in twain. Sila Tsarevich shuddered with terror and began to weep; but Ivashka said: "Weep not, she will come to life again." And presently all sorts of evil things came forth from the body, and Ivashka threw them all into the fire. Then he said to Sila Tsarevich: "See you not the evil spirits which troubled your wife? She is now ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... the officer dropped his military preciseness as if it were an ill-fitting garment. He was the daintiest, handsomest wisp of a man I had ever set eyes on, and looked for all the world like an exquisite figure in Dresden china come to life. He could not have had much soldiering—the air and aroma of the London salon still hung closely around him—and he was so very self-possessed that he was play-acting half his time, doing everything with a grace and relish that were highly diverting. It took ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... privileged spot whence instinct radiates from all sides into our consciousness? And it is curious too, almost touching, to see how the new idea gropes its way, at first, in the darkness that enfolds all things that come to life on this earth. It emerges from matter, it is still quite material. It is cold, hunger, fear, transformed into something that as yet has no shape. It crawls vaguely around great dangers, around the long nights, the approach of winter, of an equivocal sleep ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... over, and then if thou hast endured all, and hast not spoken the slightest word, I shall be released. I will come to thee, and will have, in a bottle, some of the water of life. I will rub thee with that, and then thou wilt come to life again, and be as healthy as before." Then said he, "I will gladly set thee free." And everything happened just as she had said; the black men could not force a single word from him, and on the third night the snake became a beautiful princess, who came ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... arrived. But now that he stood face to face again with that pressing terror, his thoughts on the matter were very different. Strange to say, his first idea was this: what a disgraceful shame of that fellow Waring to come to life again thus suddenly on purpose to annoy him! He was really angry, nay, more, indignant. Such shuffling was inexcusable. If Waring meant to give himself up and stand his trial like a man, why the dickens didn't he do it immediately after the—well, the accident? What ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... waiting for the dancing up there on the hotel veranda. She waited. She waited. She saw the glow of his cigar as he came down the pier, a tall, slim white figure in the moonlight. It was just like a novel. It was a novel, come to life. He stood a moment at the pier's edge, smoking. Then he tossed his cigar into the water and it fell with a little s-st! He stood another moment, irresolutely. Then he came over ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... not killed, after all!" cried Louie, running to his side. "Dear, dear Freddy! how glad I am you have come to life again!" ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... pounded and the dance began again with energy. After a few turns had been taken about the prostrate bodies of the new members, covering them with fine robes and other garments which were later to be distributed as gifts, they were permitted to come to life and to join in the final dance. The whole performance was clearly symbolic of ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... dat dey could crawl after all, and when dey get up on deck and see de blessed sun again and de blue sky dey feel better. But not all. In spite ob de whip many hab to be carried up on deck, and dere de sailor men lay 'em down and trow cold water ober dem till dey open dere eyes and come to life. Some neber come to life. Dere were about six hundred when we start, and ob dese pretty nigh a hundred die in dose ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... woman! Horse blanket, feed sack, ar'tics—where was they? Shimmie? Say! Can you imagine, in that there prairie depot at three in the mornin', and a wind howlin' under the floor? Say! Well, I can't tell you, but talk about Shimmie! Say, she's like a dead one come to life." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... "The Ancient Mariner" jointly; and two or three lines in the poem, as it stands, were contributed by Wordsworth. But he wanted to give the mariner himself "character and profession"; and to have the dead seamen come to life and sail the ship into port; and in other ways laid so heavy a hand upon Coleridge's airy creation that it became plain that a partnership on these terms was out of the question, and Wordsworth withdrew altogether. If we must look for spiritual sustenence in the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... sighed Austin, as he walked slowly up the hall, feasting his eyes once more on the beautiful fabrics. "What a thing to live with! Just think of having all these charming people as one's daily companions. I shouldn't want them to come to life, I like them just as they are. If they moved or spoke the charm would be broken. Why don't you spend hours every day in ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... boards, in the midst of excitements and honour and crimes, with murder and sudden death awaiting them, as it were, round the corner. After Hamlet has seen his mother's death, has killed Laertes and the King and has himself expired, what is it to him to come to life again and to sit down, without his royal trappings to a supper of sausage and potatoes, while his wife sits by and darns his stockings and the baby begins to cry in its cot? So thought I, and resolved to continue my career of acting, though ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... between you two; he himself has contrived to show me a most excellent method, by which you may fairly and openly stay in her house. Happening to talk to me about a son he had lost, and whom he dreamt last night had come to life again, he told me the following story, upon which, just now, I founded ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere

... Dr. Pipt, without looking up, "and he wants to know what I'm making. Well, when it is quite finished this compound will be the wonderful Powder of Life, which no one knows how to make but myself. Whenever it is sprinkled on anything, that thing will at once come to life, no matter what it is. It takes me several years to make this magic Powder, but at this moment I am pleased to say it is nearly done. You see, I am making it for my good wife Margolotte, who wants to use some of it for a purpose of her own. Sit ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... these Platonic philosophers, and those, too, who were their pupils, were to come to life again, and address you thus:—"As, O Marcus Cato, we heard that you were a man exceedingly devoted to philosophy, a most just citizen, an excellent judge, and a most conscientious witness, we marvelled what the reason ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... "Needham's eels soon followed the Brussels hen." D'Holbach says: "Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and dead, assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a certain way." Voltaire responds: "This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life?" ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880

... full swing over these witnesses. They are killed and their bodies left lying in the streets, while the international crowds make merry because their tormentors, as these two are called, are gone. Then before the terror-stricken gaze of these crowds the two men come to life, and are caught up into the heavens. Is this the moment when all are caught up? Quite possibly. Then comes the terrible earthquake as at the end of the ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... not; you are Venetian. That is it—some wicked, beautiful friend of a Doge, come to life again." ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... the poor fellows who may be shot would be unable to come to life again," observed the skipper dryly. "To my mind it's not fair to send men ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... August sun. Then the two armies looked at each other and it seemed that each was waiting for the other to begin, as the morning hours dragged on and only the skirmishers were busy. During this comparative peace, the heavy clouds of dust were not floating about, and Dick whose body had come to life again walked back and forth with his colonel, gazing through their glasses at the enemy. He scarcely noticed it, but Colonel Winchester's manner toward him had become paternal. The boy merely ascribed ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... God has heard the cry of His servants, who for so long have cried aloud before His face, and the lamentable cry which they have raised so long over the sons who were dead. Now are they risen again—from death they have come to life, and from blindness to light. Dearest sons, the lame walk, and the deaf hear, the blind eye sees and the dumb speak, crying aloud with a loud voice: "Peace, peace, peace!" with great gladness—seeing themselves return as sons into the obedience and favour of their father, their minds being ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man seemingly in good health should die on a sudden, because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... and Vronsky," thought Levin, and the dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed on his heart and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... come on earth at all. I come by de sea. Oh, Marse Ishmael! I done died since I lef' you! done died and gone to the debbil! been clar down dar in his place, which it aint 'spectable to name! done died and gone dere and come to life again, on a ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... go," thought the pedler. "I don't want his black blood on my head, and hanging the nigger wouldn't unhang Mr. Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman? It's a sin, I know, but I should hate to have him come to life a second time ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... neighborhood of the city which now bears the conqueror's name, he marched with great precaution through forest and jungle till he reached the river. He crossed it during the night and fell upon the Indians with such impetus that they believed their slain enemies to have come to life. They fled in confusion, leaving 200 dead ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... money!' The other said the like and they were occupied with contention and mutual revilement and talk. So the thief returned in haste to his fellows, who said, 'What is behind thee?' Quoth he, 'Get you gone and flee for your lives and save yourselves, O fools; for that much people of the dead are come to life and between them are words and contention.' So the thieves fled, whilst the two sharpers retained to Er Razi's house and made peace with one another and laid the thieves' purchase to the money they ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... come to Life—the social life of the civilized community—he was the consistent teacher and the bright example of an exalted and scrupulous morality. Even the intellectual brilliancy of authors whom he intensely ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell



Words linked to "Come to life" :   come into being, resemble, be born



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