"Faint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came from the people in the court. In the midst of them a woman was creating a commotion. She insisted on going out. She cried aloud that she would faint. It was Mrs. Garth again. The sheriff leaned over the table to ask if these questions concerned the inquiry, but Sim gave no time for protest. He never paused to think if his inquiries had ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... room above their heads. John felt a sinking sensation of disappointment as he realized it would be impossible for them to hear the conversation between the "Gink" and Gibson from where they were listening. The voices that came down to them were jumbled, faint, indistinguishable. Once Gibson laughed. Again the two voices above them stopped suddenly as if the two conspirators had ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... deeply humbled. He was of a feeble character, arrogant in prosperity, faint-hearted in adversity. Probably an agreement would have been come to between him and Lucullus— an agreement which there was every reason that the great-king should purchase by considerable sacrifices, and the Roman general should grant under tolerable conditions—had not the old ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... under foot and their beauty had suffered, their freshness was marred, and their perfume, rising acrid from bruised petals, greeted him unwholesomely after the fresh morning air, and rendered the atmosphere faint and oppressive. The stand with the flower pots, much disarranged, stood as he had left it when he pulled it roughly aside to get at the grate, and the fire had burnt out, leaving blackened embers to add to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... breeze at E., and E.S.E., till we got into the latitude of 7 deg. 45' N., and the longitude of 205 deg. E., where we had one calm day. This was succeeded by a N.E. by E., and E.N.E. wind. At first it blew faint, but freshened as we advanced to the N. We continued to see birds every day of the sorts last mentioned, sometimes in greater numbers than others, and between the latitude of 10 deg. and 11 deg., we saw several turtles. All these are looked upon as signs of the vicinity of land. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... continents warmed more, winters. It would not be much, as things are going, to remodel the floors of a few of our continents—put in registers and things, have the heat piped up from the center of the earth. The best way to get a faint idea of what science is going to be like the next few thousand years, is to pick out something that could not possibly be so and believe it. We manufacture ice in July by boiling it, and if we cannot warm a ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and frail looking, there was within her a great power of self-sustenance. She was a woman who with a good cause might have dared anything. With the worst cause that a woman could well have, she had dared and endured very much. She did not faint, nor gasp as though she were choking, nor become hysteric in her agony; but she lay there, huddled up in the corner of the sofa, with her face hidden, and all those feminine graces forgotten which had long stood her in truth so royally. The inner, true, living woman was there ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... female."—Merchant's Gram., p. 26. "The neuter gender denotes things which have no sex."—Kirkham's Compendium. "Nouns which denote objects neither male nor female, are of the neuter gender."—Wells's Gram., 1st Ed., p. 49. "Objects and ideas which have been long familiar, make too faint an impression to give an agreeable exercise to our faculties."—Blair's Rhet., p. 50. "Cases which custom has left dubious, are certainly within the grammarian's province."—Murray's Gram., p. 164. "Substantives which end in ery, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... had halted at a wayside farmhouse to see if anything in the shape of a lunch could be secured for love or money, he even called the attention of his two mates to a faint rumbling far away ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... has well nigh lost his hope in life, Upwards in trust and love still looks the wife, Towards the starry world all bright with cheer, Faint not nor fear, thus speaks her ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... poor queen shed tears, because it was a grievous trial to the mother's heart to confess that her hopes were growing faint. From that day forward, Cadmus noticed that she never traveled with the same alacrity of spirit that had heretofore supported her. Her weight was heavier upon ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Italian, calm, statuesque, reaching across him to place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by an envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed over to an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose. There was a slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old woman; but the statuesque Italian remained impassive, and—probably secure in an infallible system which placed his foot on the neck of chance—immediately prepared a new pile. So did a man with the air of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing color sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then they gave a look of treachery and cruelty to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect the face ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the 10th of April, some of the people who were looking out for the island to which we were bound, said they saw land ahead, in that part of the horizon where it was expected to appear; but it was so faint, that, whether there was land in sight or not, remained a matter of dispute till sun-set. The next morning, however, at six o'clock, we were convinced that those who said they had discovered land were not mistaken; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... a hundred singing like one. They are noisy enough then, and sing, as poets should, with no afterthought. But when they come after cherries to the tree near my window, they muffle their voices, and their faint pip pip pop! sounds far away at the bottom of the garden, where they know I shall not suspect them of robbing the great black-walnut of its bitter-rinded store.(1) They are feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure, but then how brightly ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... hardly say that these confessions of my cowardice are for your ear alone. They must not get abroad to smirch me. If on a country walk I have taken to my heels, you must not twit me with poltroonery. If you charge me with such faint-heartedness while other persons are present, I'll deny it flat. When I sit in the company of ladies at dinner, I dissemble my true nature, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat. If then, you taunt me, for want of a better escape, ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... marriage—of meetings at night, sweet and sacred, of partings, sweet and sacred too, at morning, of secret delights, of moments, at once pure and voluptuous, known only to virtuous lovers. It was not often that remembrance of all this came back to her, save as a faint echo of a once clear-sounding voice. Indeed she had supposed it all laid away forever, done with, even as the bright colours it had once so pleased her to wear were laid away in high mahogany presses that lined one side of the lofty state-bedroom up-stairs. But now remembrance laid violent hands ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... human interests as being things naturally vile and ignominious. He was to come down to us waving an olive-branch, the most amiable of all idealists, an apostle of tolerance. He says that he "hated scorn of human things." To this we must presently return, but we may pause to note it here, as a faint light thrown over the ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... old and her hair showed faint streaks of gray when at last she made her home in Philadelphia. She became a Sister of Mercy and by day and by night ministered to the sick and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... A horrible silence reigned. Through the dull wail of the snowstorm came again the melody of the viol and the heavenly voice, faint ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... water. The 29th was thick weather, with a very light, but a fair wind; we were now quite sensibly within the influence of the tides. Towards evening the horizon brightened a little, and we made the Bill of Portland, resembling a faint bluish cloud. It was soon obscured, and most of the landsmen were incredulous about its having been seen at all. In the course of the night, however, we got a good ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... our nation with other nations, the House would satisfy their duty, if, instead of a direct communication, they should pass their sentiments through the President: that if expressing a sentiment were really an invasion of the executive power, it was so faint a one, that it would be difficult to demonstrate it to the public, and to a public partial to the French revolution, and not disposed to considered the approbation of it from any quarter is improper. That the Senate, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... beyond the reach of petty grief. The modest, almost girlish smile beamed through the wrinkles of fifty autumns as brightly that evening at the Penningtons' as the town had ever seen it. From her place in a high-backed chair in the corner, Miss Morgan, in her shy, self-deprecatory way, shed her faint benediction about her as she had done for a decade. There was a sweetness in Miss Morgan's manner that made the old men gallant to her in a boyish way; and the wives, who loved her, were proud of their husbands' chivalry. During the evening ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... suddenly as he stood by the side of the sufferer, whom he could dimly see by the faint light ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... which a great modern humorist has aptly compared to cold buckwheat cakes. The question of towels was left entirely to the imagination. The glass decanters were filled with a transparent liquid faintly tinged with brown, but from which an odor less faint, but not more pleasing, ascended to the nostrils, like a far-off sea-sick reminiscence of oily machinery. Sad-coloured curtains half-closed the upper berth. The hazy June daylight shed a faint illumination upon the desolate little scene. ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... than usually attends the winding-up of a clock. Physician was glad to walk out into the night air—was even glad, in spite of his great experience, to sit down upon a door-step for a little while: feeling sick and faint. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of the southern sky for several hours. At seven on the following morning it became more brilliant and stationary, describing a well-defined arch, extending from the E.S.E. horizon to that at W.N.W., and passing through the zenith. A very faint arch was also visible on each side of this, appearing to diverge from the same points in the horizon, and separating to twenty degrees distance in the zenith. It remained thus for twenty minutes, when the ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... you, Bill?" asked Jack, in a faint voice. "I thought mother was with me, and I was on shore, but I'm glad she's not, for it would grieve her to see me ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... to where the boy lay insensible over the corpse of the man who had died in the arms of Edward; and then went out without a light, and with his gun, to the other side of the cottage, where the other robber had fallen. As he approached the man, a faint voice was ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... said, "a faint dawn began to make objects about the room visible, when I opened my eyes and saw a dim, ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... ransomed of the Lord shall return with singing into Zion' ... 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.' I used to read like anything; and I thought of things. They ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... the rest of the family observe that Mr. Blandy's looks were as well the last six months as before?—Miss Blandy has said to me, "Don't you think my father looks faint?" Sometimes I have said, "He is," sometimes not. I never observed ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... interference in the wars and contentions which have recently distracted Europe. During the late conflict between Austria and Hungary there seemed to be a prospect that the latter might become an independent nation. However faint that prospect at the time appeared, I thought it my duty, in accordance with the general sentiment of the American people, who deeply sympathized with the Magyar patriots, to stand prepared, upon the contingency of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... hands for the last time, pulled on their mittens, and mushed the dogs over the bank and down to the river-trail. According to Daylight's estimate, it was around seven o'clock; but the stars danced just as brilliantly, and faint, luminous streaks of greenish ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... appearance where none had before been visible, what has really happened has been that a star too remote to be seen has become visible through some rapid increase of splendour. When the new splendour dies out again, it is not that a star has ceased to exist; but simply that a faint star which had increased greatly in lustre has resumed its original condition. Hipparchus's star must have been a remarkable object, for it was visible in full daylight, whence we may infer that it was many times brighter than the blazing Dog-star. It is interesting in the history of science, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... been checked and made productive by plantation; seas and inland waters have been repeopled with fish, and even the sands of the Sahara have been fertilized by artesian fountains. These achievements are more glorious than the proudest triumphs of war, but, thus far, they give but faint hope that we shall yet make full atonement for our spendthrift waste of the bounties of nature. [Footnote: The wonderful success which has attended the measures for subduing torrents and preventing inundations employed in Southern France since 1863 and described in Chapter III., post, ought to ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... severe shock, because the distance from Parnassus to Fleet Street, as you know, is considerable, and the escalade might have been more serious. I reached my rooms in Half Moon Street, however, having seen only one star, with just a faint nostalgia for the realms into which for one brief day I was privileged ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... the brown carpets is a ploughman and his team. That white stream that looks like milk flowing over the green carpet is a flock of sheep running before the sheep-dog to another pasture. And the ear no less than the eye learns to translate the faint suggestions into known terms. At first it seems that, save for the larks that spring up here and there with their cascades of song, the whole of this immense vacancy is soundless. But listen. There is "the wind on the heath, brother." And below ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Desire. Besides, the morning was already so warm that we were glad to seek the shade of an adobe wall. Conversation languished. Dan Anderson absent-mindedly rolled a cigarrillo with one hand, his gaze the while fixed on the horizon, on which we could see the faint loom of the Bonitos, toothed upon the blue sky, fifty miles away. His mind might also have been fifty miles away, as he gazed vaguely. There was nothing to do. There was only the sun, and as against it the shade. That ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... troubled the princess, that I may tell the priest, so that he can think it over. She has dreamed that she is to wed a man who shall be king both in Denmark and England, and she saw the man, moreover. Strangely like Havelok's dream is that. Now what else made her turn faint but that this vision was like Havelok? And does not that make it possible that she wishes to wed him? Therefore I am going to tell the priest the story of Havelok, so far as ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... benefice that should fall in his gift, should be conferred on him. Thus they parted; but Mr. Douglas returned to Mr. Pearson's, with the unaltered purpose of pursuing his voyage to America—the hopes inspired by the earl's spontaneous promise being too faint and remote, in their possible accomplishment, to induce procrastination in his proceedings. The love of his native country yearned in his bosom, and all the perils and privations to which his little fireside-flock might be exposed, passed through his thoughts as he drove along the southern ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... perhaps otherwise normal individuals, the persons who choose for their sexual object the sexually immature (children) are apparently from the first sporadic aberrations. Only exceptionally are children the exclusive sexual objects. They are mostly drawn into this role by a faint-hearted and impotent individual who makes use of such substitutes, or when an impulsive urgent desire cannot at the time secure the proper object. Still it throws some light on the nature of the sexual impulse, that it should suffer such great variation ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... are unremembered. "I will follow the track like a leopard," gives but a faint idea of the strong will of Uledi; and Kacheche's brave words are endowed with all the attributes of that heroic abandon with which a devoted general hurls the last fragment of wasting strength against ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... of reason in that sphere. This I am enabled to do, by regarding all connections and relations in the world of sense, as if they were the dispositions of a supreme reason, of which our reason is but a faint image. I then proceed to cogitate this Supreme Being by conceptions which have, properly, no meaning or application, except in the world of sense. But as I am authorized to employ the transcendental hypothesis of such a being in a relative respect ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... with the ancient periods of their government is chiefly useful, by instructing them to cherish their present constitution, from a comparison or contrast with the condition of those distant times. And it is also curious, by showing them the remote, and commonly faint and disfigured originals of the most finished and most noble institutions, and by instructing them in the great mixture of accident, which commonly concurs with a small ingredient of wisdom and foresight, in erecting the complicated fabric ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... as a partisan of woman's rights, but as a lover of the human race. In this faint dawn of woman's day, I discern not woman's development of freedom merely, but the promise of that higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world, the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. You cannot be unconscious of the fact that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... a faint curiosity; one would have said that he was as little interested in this man's stamping ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... us," said youthful Giselher, "But now give over wailing, and haste to th' open air To cool our heated hauberks, faint as we are with strife. God, methinks, no longer, will here ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... were not those of a common mortal. She grew thinner, and we all fancied, taller; her complexion was white, and almost transparent, with a tender bloom on her cheek, which I can only liken to a young rose-leaf or the first faint blush of sunrise. Her eyes are still wonderfully clear and bright. It always seems to me as if they looked beyond the heaven and earth ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... too. Jake Martin, at his wife's instigation, had handed over to his son the little farm that had once belonged to old Sandy and there Charlie and Eppie were to start their new life. And so just as the stars were sinking into the faint blue vault of heaven, and the earth was rising slowly from its shroud of darkness and sleep, Elizabeth had arisen and was now dressed and waiting for Charles Stuart long before he ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... 'The Early Life of Washington,' got so stupidly intoxicated that when Miss Cuff, who played the youthful hero, had to fight and kill him in a duel, Bill Shipton wouldn't die; he even said loudly on the stage that he wouldn't. Mary Cuff fought on until she was ready to faint, and after she had repeated his cue for dying, which was, 'Cowardly, hired assassin!' for the fourteenth time, he absolutely jumped off the stage, not even pretending to be on the point of death. Our indignant citizens then chased him all over the house, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... affording the enemy the opportunity of obtaining information which it was of the utmost importance for the safety of the expedition to keep back. The troopers had therefore to drive them on with their swords—not a pleasant duty, when the poor fellows were faint and used up by fatigue—still it must be done. This service creates quite a dislike between the two arms. The infantry man hates the horseman, and the cavalry man despises the foot soldier. At this time straggling was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... smiling in his face, Wiping his mild and meekin mouth from all contagious taints. Thy wine doth purify the golden honey; thy perfume. Which thou dost scatter on every little blade of grass that springs Revives the milked cow, & tames the fire-breathing steed. But Thel is like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun: I vanish from my pearly throne, and who ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... of the world, is not perhaps very likely, still the grand result will amply recompense us, and you, for all our toils. We are sure to take the fortress, if we can but persuade ourselves to sit down long enough before it. 'We shall reap if we faint not.' ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... when he arrived at the wagon-road above the Concho. Dazed and weak, he endeavored to determine which direction the horse had taken. The heat of the sun oppressed him. He became faint, and, crawling beneath the shade of a wayside fir, he rested, promising himself that he would, when the afternoon shadows drifted across the road, make his way to the Concho. He had slept little more ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... and might do with her as I pleased. I observed the door of a small out-house a-jar. I pushed it open; and, with some hay strewed about, I formed a couch for her, placing her exhausted frame on it, and covering her with my cloak. I feared to leave her, she looked so wan and faint—but in a moment she re-acquired animation, and, with that, fear; and again she implored me not to delay. To call up the people of the inn, and obtain a conveyance and horses, even though I harnessed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... bronzed and moustached, with a deep bass voice and an almost guttural speech, and the other, Raff, was slight and effeminate, with nervous hands and watery, washed-out gray eyes, who spoke with a faint indefinable accent that was hauntingly reminiscent of the Cockney, and that was yet not Cockney of any brand she had ever encountered. Whatever they were, they were self-made men, she concluded; and she felt the impulse to shudder at thought of falling into ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... young officers as given by the writer of the above. He claims to have been an eye witness and fully competent to give a true recital. It is needless to say that the writer of these memoirs was one of the participants, and as to the story itself, he has only a faint recollection, but the sequel which he will give is vivid enough, even after the lapse of a third of a century. Judge Pope writes, "It is needless to say that the Third South Carolina Regiment had a half-score or more young officers, whose conduct in battle had something to do with giving prestige ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... tears, replied, "Ah, Miss Schomberg! I don't deserve it of you, and that is the truth; but keep my hand, it feels like a friend's, hold it, will you, and I think I shall sleep a little while;" and Emilie stood and held her hand, stood till she was faint and weary, and then withdrawing it as gently as ever mother unloosed an infant's hold, she withdrew, shaded the light from the sleeper's eyes, and stole out of the room, leaving the sufferer at ease, and in one of those heavy sleeps which exhaustion ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... Christianity. They who call Jesus Lord, do it by the Holy Ghost; and, therefore, it is quite true in this sense, that in every baptized Christian, who has not utterly apostatized, there is that faint sign of the Holy Spirit's still having a claim upon him; he is not yet utterly cast off. This is true; but it is not to our present purpose; such a feeble sign is a sign of God's yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our salvation. The presence with which the parable is ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... far better index than the eye. A person possessed of a fair amount of nerve can judge, to within a few yards, the line that a shot coming towards him will take. When first heard, the sound is as a faint murmur; increasing, as it approaches, to a sound resembling the blowing off of steam by an express engine, as it rushes through a station. At first, the keenest ear could not tell the direction in which the shot is travelling but, as it approaches, the difference ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... from the tower, the barracks, the parade-ground, and the surrounding sea, whose boundaries he knew not; he saw the trees, he saw the garden-ground. Slowly his eyes scanned all,—and the soul that was lodged in the emaciated figure grew faint and sick with seeing. But no tears, no sighs, no indications of grief or despair or desperate submission. He had little to learn of suffering;—that he knew. How could he greet the day, hail the light, bless Nature for her beauty, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... distorted in the frenzy of note taking. Through questions if possible, through emphasis on illustrations and explanations, where no other means is available, students must be made to see that all facts of a subject are not of the same hue, that some are faint of tint, others in shadow, and still others in high colors. Without this relativity of importance, facts are grouped; with it, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... was made up for the most part of young men, of men, that is, who had but a faint memory of the Stuart tyranny under which their childhood had been spent, but who had a keen memory of living from manhood beneath the tyranny of the Commonwealth. They had seen their fathers driven from the justice-bench, driven ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... that blindly and helplessly had drifted in in the elder sister's wake. The introductions that followed, after the American fashion, were as perfunctory as well-bred women can permit. The greetings were almost solemn, smileless, and, on part of Nita, fluttering to the verge of a faint; and nothing but Witchie's plucky and persistent support, and the light flow of airy chat and laughter, carried her through the ordeal. The two young soldiers stood stiffly back, red-faced and black-browed; the father, pallid and cold, could hardly force himself to ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... enemy, I would give no preparatory commands and would simply order the charge when we were within close range of the enemy guns. Once everything had been arranged, the regiment left its bivouac, in complete silence, at the first faint light of dawn, and made its way without difficulty through the wood, the great trees of which were widely spaced, and arrived at the level clearing in which was the Russian encampment. I alone in the regiment had no sabre in my hand, for having only one hand ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... tried to analyze this talk of mine about being so busy just to see whether I am trying to deceive myself or my neighbors. I fell to talking about this the other day to my neighbor John, and detected a faint smile on his face which I interpreted to be a query as to what I have to show for all my supposed industry. Well, I changed the subject. That smile on John's face made ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... the Hoang Ho and you enter the loess country, dear to the tiller of the soil, but the bane of the traveller, for the dust is often intolerable. But there was little change in scenery until toward noon of the following day, when the faint, broken outlines of hills appeared on the northern horizon. As we were delayed by a little accident it was getting dark when we rumbled along below the great wall of Peking into the noisy station alive with the clamour of rickshaw ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... reared and unused to such sights, would have felt faint if the man had not been Zorzi. As it was she only felt sharp pain, each time that Nella touched the foot. Pasquale looked ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... pelisse trimmed with fur, leaned forward, looking eagerly for the first glimpse of her new home. The child had now only faint recollections of Wavertree, and of her life with Mrs. Kane in the village, and except for Grant's ill-natured remarks from time to time she would have forgotten them altogether and imagined herself to be Mrs. Rushton's niece, as that lady ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... 9 But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... was such hot work catching them, It nearly made her faint: And fifteen worms'-worth of advice Was 'Buy some ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... be sure that there were faint hearts among them when they felt the cold water and knew that there were miles of it to cross, here ankle- or knee-deep, there waist-deep. But they had known this when they started, and they were not the men to turn back. At Colonel Clark's cheery word of command they plunged ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... up then, and bring it here as soon as it's ready. You won't find me gone out," Mr. Verner added, with a faint attempt at jocularity. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... crest moderately developed; supraorbital notches distinctly anterior to posterior notch of zygomatic plate; baculum with faint keel on dorsal surface of tip which curves upward; pelage coarse; ears broad, rounded, of ...
— Genera and Subgenera of Chipmunks • John A. White
... back at him with as little love as Tu-Kila-Kila himself would have displayed had his face been visible. "Yes, you are a very great god," he answered, in the conventional tone of Polynesian adulation, with just a faint under-current of irony running through his accent as he spoke. "You say the truth. You do, indeed, know all things. What need for me, then, to tell you, whose eye is the sun, that my brother, the King of the Rain, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... good mirror in white and green frame. Another desk I have made is called a jardiniere table, and was designed for Mrs. Ogden Armour's garden room at Lake Forest. The desk, or table, is painted gray, with faint green decorations. At each end of the long top there is a sunken zinc-lined box to hold growing plants. Between the flower boxes there is the usual arrangement of the desk outfit, blotter pad, paper rack, ink pots, and so forth. The spaces beneath the flower boxes ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... leave him alone? A doctor in such a case perhaps, but a clergyman——! Mon Dieu! there they go, the two of them walking towards the woods. What a strange idea! And your father has Monsieur Godfrey by the arm, although assuredly he is not faint for he pulls ahead as though in a great hurry. They must be mad, both of them. I have ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... see him after his papa's return!' And with a 'soon be over,' he set him down, and Albinia bravely stood a desperate wringing of her hand at the tug of war. She was glad she had come, for the boy suffered a good deal, and was faint, and Mr. Bowles pronounced his mouth in no state for ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... felt the return to that task through the dusty roads all the more painfully, perhaps something in that quiet shady home had reminded him of the time before he had taken on him the yoke of self-denial. The strongest heart will faint sometimes under the feeling that enemies are bitter, and that friends only know half its sorrows. The most resolute soul will now and then cast back a yearning look in treading the rough mountain-path, away from the greensward ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... looking at him, and then she sank suddenly and straight down, as if she were sinking through the floor. When he lifted her, he saw that she was in a dead faint, and while the swoon lasted would be out of her misery. The sight of this had wrung him so that he had a kind of relief in looking at her lifeless face; and he was slow in laying her down again, like one that fears to wake a sleeping child. Then he ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... in sin," to the "lily of a maiden, white with intact leaf") what a range and gradation of character! These are the two extremes; between them, as earth lies between heaven and hell, are stationed all the others, from the faint and delicate dawn in Pauline, Michal and Palma, through Pippa and Mildred and Colombe and Constance and the Queen, to Balaustion and Elvire, Fifine and Clara and the heroine of the Inn Album, and the lurid close ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... something open, and a little green in spring, and the nights are calm. It seems the least little bit like what it used to be in Wisconsin on the lake. But there we had such lovely woodsy hills, and great meadows, and fields with cattle, and God's real peace, not this vacuum." Her voice grew faint. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Downes," holding as he did the important post of confidential and body-servant to Dr Robert Morris, a position which made it necessary for him to open the door to patients and usher them into the consulting-room, and upon particular occasions be called in to help with a visitor who had turned faint about nothing—"a poor plucked ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... faint gray of dawn there came to me thoughts of Madge. I had forgotten her, but her familiar spirit, the light, brought me back to ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... all right, I guess," he said in a voice that sounded faint to the boys and far away to himself. Then, without warning, he fell over on the ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... was calm. A faint breeze from the south stirred up secret odors in the hearts of dew-covered flowers, and musically sighed through the leaves and vines. The heavens were dark, but unclouded; and, as the lips of the lovers met in one clinging ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of armored ships is the firing pin's frail spark, More sure than the helm of the mighty fleet are my rudders to their mark, The faint foam fades from the bright screw blades—and I strike from the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... cannot see the sun, get into a clear, open space, hold your knife point upright on your watch dial, and it will cast a faint shadow, showing where the sun really is, unless ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... his ear to the soft wind. Presently he heard, or imagined he heard, low beats. Like the first faint, far-off beats of a drumming grouse, they recalled to him the Illinois forests of his boyhood. In a moment he was certain the sounds were the padlike steps of hoofs in yielding sand. The regular tramp was not ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... laughing a little, and clasping her hands loosely behind her back, she walks to a mirror, the better to admire the long white trailing robe, the faultless face, the red rose dying on her breast. "And just when I had taken such pains with my hair!" she says, making a faint grimace at her own vanity. "John, as there is no one else to admire me, do say (whether you think it or not) I am the prettiest person ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... her muffled figure and wondered why she broke off so suddenly. She was staring hard at the few, faint traces of landmarks; and, bundled in the red-and-yellow Navajo blanket, with her bright, dark eyes, she might easily have passed ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... the Established Church seem to have drifted into the somewhat ignoble attitude of avoiding the disagreeable subject of vivisection altogether. When we invite them to help us we receive either no reply at all, or a reply that is carefully evasive, or we are damned with faint praise while assured that the writer is too busy to give the subject the attention it needs before any public utterance is possible upon it. All of which methods of dealing with the matter display much wisdom of the world and a very human desire to avoid controversy and other uncomfortable ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... stand before Him;(673) that temple, filled with the glory of the eternal throne, where seraphim, its shining guardians, veil their faces in adoration, could find, in the most magnificent structure ever reared by human hands, but a faint reflection of its vastness and glory. Yet important truths concerning the heavenly sanctuary and the great work there carried forward for man's redemption, were taught by the earthly sanctuary and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... lamp-pillars. A murmur of expectation ran through the crowd. For an instant the great tower seemed to pulse with a thread of life before the eye became sensible to what had taken place. Then its surfaces gleamed with a faint flush like the flush which church spires catch from the dawn. This deepened slowly to pink and then to red. . . . In a moment the architectural skeletons of the great buildings had been picked out in lines of red light. Then the whole effect mellowed into luminous yellow. The material exposition ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the staccato clip-clip of the long shears in the fingers of the girl who was leaning almost breathlessly over the work spread out on the table beneath the feeble glow of the single oil-lamp, unless the faint, monotonous murmur which came in an endless sing-song from the lips of the stooped, white-haired old figure in the small back room beyond the door could ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... deepest silence reigned. The pueblo on the steep hill and the desert plain below shone in the rays of the moon, peacefully, as though they too would slumber. From the thickets along the little stream arose a faint twitter; louder and louder it sounded, and rose heavenward in full, melodious strains, soaring on high through the stillness of the night; it was the mocking-birds' greeting ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset—hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent,—in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... and the other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama. An English observer might have said that he looked rather like the young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a growing lad faint with emptiness. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... of the Mahrattas at Sambalka was soon followed by others, and hopes of a pacific solution became more and more faint. Gobind Pant Bundela, foraging near Meerut with 10,000 light cavalry, was surprised and slain by Atai Khan at the head of a similar party of Afghans. The terror caused by this affair paralysed the Bhao's commissariat, while it greatly facilitated the foraging of ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... in the fresh air had done her so much good. Then, too, Phil and Lillian had persuaded her to cease to wear her heavy, light hair in an English bun at the back of her neck. Lillian had plaited it in two great braids and had coiled it around her head like a dull golden coronet. She had a faint color in her cheeks, and, instead of looking cross and tired, she was as merry and almost as light-hearted as the girls. The lines of her head were really beautiful, and her sallow skin was fast becoming clear and healthy. For once in her life Miss Jones looked no older than her twenty-six years. ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... later his head, except for an extreme local tenderness, felt all right again; but when he tested it the faint ticking sound was still there. His mind was now calm; his thoughts no longer went at a gallop, but they seemed—what was the word?—freer, more articulate, more at his beck and call; and in spirit he was far less harassed ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... similar place to that which the free port of Trieste would occupy under the flag of United Italy. Indeed it may be confidently assumed that the change would give an extraordinary impetus to trade in the whole eastern Mediterranean. The recent history of Batum and Baku is a faint indication ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... in the light of a specially contrived accompaniment to their several actions and movements. As they glanced carelessly at me, I felt that they held me as a foreigner, as one outside that incredible little world of theirs which they call "the profession." And so I felt crushed, with a faint resemblance to a worm. You ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... catch and retain (one would almost think they close over them) the atoms of the perfume when they are thus freed from dust, and when the hair is soft and light in its new cleanness—and it is astonishing for how long a time the hair will retain that faint, delicate aroma which is so truly lovely in a woman's hair; and all to be obtained in so simple and innocent a way as with this little mob-cap, put ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... girl's tendency to laugh increased, but whether because of fresh views of the absurdity of what had passed, or because of some faint perception of the negro's meaning, Lawrence had ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... born at Basingstoke; was professor of Poetry at Oxford, and Poet-Laureate; wrote a "History of English Poetry" of great merit, and a few poetic pieces in faint echo of others by Pope and Swift for most ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... The gateways, without gates now of course, look like the arches of a bridge, and the walls like streets hung up out of the way. When one looks through a loop hole or over a parapet, there does a faint remembrance come up, like a ghost, of the stirring times that have wrapped themselves in the mist of years, and slid back into the past. I stood over the gates—this one and that one—trying to look down the Foyle toward ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... disguised count—a flourish of trumpets, and three bars rest, to allow time for the countess to faint in his arms. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... was empty. He started down toward the stairs at a dead run, and then, too late, saw the faint golden glow of a Parkinson Field across the dingy corridor. He gasped in fear, and screamed out once ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... added Mr. Prohack, still impressively. "And I am not sure that the ingenuous and excellent Oswald Morfey is not heading straight in the same direction." And he gazed at his adored daughter, who exhibited a faint flush, and then laughed lightly. "Yes," said Mr. Prohack, "you are very smart, my girl. If you had shown violence you would have made a sad mistake. That you should laugh with such a brilliant imitation of naturalness gives me hopes of you. Let us seek ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the hall was cautiously opened, and the boys looked out. The coast appeared to be clear, and Dave tiptoed his way out, followed by his chums. A faint light was burning, as required by the school regulations, and this kept the students from bumping ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer |
