"Numbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... My gloves and riding-crop slipped from my nerveless fingers to the floor. A numbing, wilting sensation wrinkled my spine. The Princess Hildegarde of Barscheit! She stood opposite me, the woman—ought I not to say girl?—for whom I had been seeking, after a fashion, all these months! The beautiful madcap who ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... I have never known such intense and numbing fear as that which now descended upon me. Perhaps I may be forgiven it. A more dreadful situation it would be hard to devise. Knowing that I was on the fifth story of a house, bound, helpless, I knew, too, that a second mystic guardian of the slipper ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... her hair was so compelling that he started back, shaken; a new discordant tumult rose within him, out of which emerged an aching hunger for Rosemary Roselle; he wanted her with a passion cold and numbing like ether. He wanted her without reason, and in the desire lost his deep caution, his rectitude of conscience. He was torn far beyond the emotional possibilities of weak men. The fact that, penniless and without a home, he had nothing to offer was ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... began Andy, after a terrific clap, but his words were silenced in the thunderous vibration that followed. It was the hardest clap yet, and the boys felt a tingling, numbing sensation in their fingers. ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... His senses were numbing, and he must have fallen asleep soon after, for when he awoke it seemed to him that he had been asleep a long time, several hours at least, so many things had happened or seemed to have happened; but as he recovered his mind all the dream happenings melted away, and he ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition, the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence. The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... said Mr. Hoskyn, and then laughed at his repartee until he became aware of the vicinity of Cashel, whose health he immediately inquired after, shaking his hand warmly and receiving a numbing grip in return. As soon as he saw that Lydia and Cashel were acquainted, he slipped away and left them ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... colder and more drearily about her life. She took no interest in the household, but left everything to the management of Agnes Barker. The very presence of the young woman was oppressive to her, yet so drearily had her high spirit yielded itself to the one numbing thought of James Harrington's absence, that she had no power even to repel this repulsion, much less cast its ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... however, an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me. It seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me, were preventing me from going farther and were calling me back. I felt that painful wish to return which oppresses you when you have left a beloved invalid at home, and when you are seized by a presentiment ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... "Cease {all this}; I shall not remove myself hence, until thou art repulsed." "Let us stand to that agreement," says the active Cyllenian {God}; and he opens the carved door with his wand. But in her, as she endeavors to arise, the parts which we bend in sitting cannot be moved, through their numbing weight. She, indeed, struggles to raise herself, with her body, upright; but the joints of her knees are stiff, and a chill runs through her nails, and her veins are pallid, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... which they were was even more bitterly chill than the snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the shadows—now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven figures. Under the Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold. Together they dreamed of the old glad days when they had chased each other through the flowering grasses of the summer meadows, or sat hidden in the tall bulrushes by the water's side, watching the boats go ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... subject with his usual kindness of manner. It was a curious fact that, although Gerard had felt the awakening of love for Flavia Rose from his first glimpse of her, he never had aided Corrie for his sister's sake. Even when he had dragged himself from the overwhelming blackness of pain and the numbing effects of anaesthetics to defend the driver whose foul blow had struck him down, it was of Corrie alone he thought, not of Flavia, Corrie whom he had shielded from disgrace and open punishment. Man to man they had dealt together, no woman, however dear, entered between ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... economy not unlike that of Maupassant, and the indictment is the more terrible because of this emphasis of understatement. Before the war, M. Duhamel was known as a competent and somewhat promising poet and dramatist, and he was one of the few to whom the war brought an ampler endowment rather than a numbing silence. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in my mind, for in a second my rapid career was interrupted. At the furthest point from help or human presence the ice gave way with a crash, and I shrieked aloud at the shock of the bitter water. Oh, how cold it was! how piercing, frightful, numbing! It was not deep—scarcely above my knees, but the difficulty was how to get out. Put my hand where I would the ice gave way. I could only plunge in the icy water, feeling the sodden grass under my feet. What sort of things might there not be in that water? ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... determination to ignore the restrictions of her sex laid upon her and the payment was not yet over. Her tired body shrank from the struggle that must recommence so soon. If he would only spare her until this numbing weariness that made her so powerless should lessen. She heard his voice at the door and her icy fingers grasped at the book that had slipped to the ground. The thick rugs deadened the sound of his movements, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... as if he was talking to himself: "What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... now through water unfrozen, now upon wind-swept ice, but the snow—the snow—the heartless snow was our constant companion. It stood in walls before, it lay in ramparts round us, it wearied the eye to a most numbing pain. Unlucky were they who wore trews, for the same clung damply to knee and haunch and froze, while the stinging sleet might flay the naked limb till the blood rose among the felt of the kilted, but the suppleness ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... and heartbroken. He began to see in its fulness the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise it, so sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed—the blessing of a pathway to his daughter's soul—a misfortune had come as well. What was it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... as a strange and curious sensation seized him. It seemed as though the deck suddenly heaved upward—very much like the feeling he would have if, sitting in a hammock, someone sat down beside him. Immediately following this came a terrific explosion, numbing in its intensity, and a wall of maddened water leaped past the rail for a hundred feet into the air. In a twinkling Tim dragged him through the door, as a shower of debris came down upon the place where they had been sitting. The ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... cherished hopes that had irised her path, and now, looking steadily forward to coming years, she said to her drooping spirit: "Be strong and bear this sorrow. I will conquer my own heart." How is it that, when the human soul is called to pass through a fierce ordeal, and numbing despair seizes the faculties and energies in her sepulchral grasp, how is it that superhuman strength is often suddenly infused into the sinking spirit? There is a mysterious yet resistless power given, which winds up and sets again in motion that marvelous bit of mechanism, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... forward, and before I could recover from the first numbing shock of surprise was peering intently into ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... got his breath again; and now began to see his own misfortune. Yet not all at once to realize it, so sudden and numbing was the stroke. He staggered on, but scarce feeling or caring whither he was going; and every now and then he stopped, and his arms fell and his head sank on his chest, and he stood motionless: then he said to himself, "Can this thing be? this must be ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... straight ahead, but the lane would not last always. As though with malicious intent, the snow swooped down again and the world became an unreal, nightmare world, wherein was nothing save shifting, blinding snowfloury and wind and bitter, numbing cold. ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... life. Even the best had begun to pall, the sameness of it had commenced its fatal work. More than once lately a touch of that heart languor, which is the fruit of surfeit, had startled her by its numbing and depressing effect. Here at last was a new type—a man with clean pages before him—young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for his awful clothes he was well enough to look upon, he had no affectations, his instincts were apparently correct. His manners were hoydenish, but there was ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... big-headed red devils swarming in from every direction. Carr dodged none too quickly to save his skull from a swift-flung stone, which clanged against the Nomad's hull. There was a perfect hail of the missiles now: one struck his left arm a numbing blow, and he heard a sickening thud and Ora's moan as she was hit. And there were ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... like his The slumberous river washes soft and slow; The lapping water rises wearily, Numbing the nerve and will to sleep; and we Before the goal and crown of mysteries Fall back, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... history. She felt that her life was passing rapidly, unimproved, and aimless; she knew that her years, instead of being fragrant with the mellow fruitage of good deeds, were tedious and joyless, and that the gaunt, numbing hand of ennui was closing upon her. The elasticity of spirits, the buoyancy of youth had given place to a species of stoical mute apathy; a mental and moral paralysis was ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Grant Field next day fighting himself. When in the practice Arthurs assigned him to a right-field position, he had scarcely taken his place when he became conscious of a queer inclination to swallow often, of a numbing tight band round his chest. He could not stand still; his hands trembled; there was a mist before his eyes. His mind was fixed upon himself and upon the other five outfielders trying to make the team. He saw the players in the ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... slipped into a rift in the rocks along the river-bank. Myriads of such crevices there were in the tilted strata—unheeded, unremarked, too strait and restricted to suggest the idea of refuge, too infinitely numerous for search. There, unable in the narrow compass to turn, even to shift a numbing muscle of his lean old body, in all the constraint of a standing posture, he was held in the flexure of the rock like some of its fossils,—as unsuspected as a ganoid of the days of eld that had once been imprisoned thus in the sediment of seas that had ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... was as much out of my life as I was out of hers. By day I wandered with Mrs. Wessington almost content. By night I implored Heaven to let me return to the world as I used to know it. Above all these varying moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the Seen and the Unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one poor soul to its grave. * * * * * * * ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... vast. I am told that at one junction, close to London, the trains pass for some hours at the rate of two in five minutes. Consider how that service is done by the myriads of men employed, and this in all seasons and weathers in overwhelming heat, in numbing cold, in blinding storm, in midnight darkness. Is not this an army pretty well disciplined, though its object is not bloodshed? If we see masses full of practical energy and good sense, but wanting in culture, let us take our culture to them, and perhaps ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... instinctively, from no voluntary effort of their own. The state of exhaustion and weakness into which they had been lapsing during the perilous journey must have had much to do with their feelings, and robbed them of the power to feel more than a dull, numbing pain which came and went as their steeds ambled or walked unchecked or guided by rein, for even the lariat had glided from Chris's fingers and trailed along behind the mule upon the sand. Not that it mattered, for the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Not yet the sap moves in my frozen veins; Through all my stiffened roots creep numbing pains, That I ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... with one ear awake. His reindeer were picketed close to the improvised igloo. Other nights, they had taken turns watching to protect them from prowling wolves, but this night no one could long withstand the numbing cold of the blizzard. So he watched and half slept. Now he caught the rising howl of the wind, and now felt its lull as the deer skins sagged. But what was this? Was there a different note, a howl that ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... This spiritual quiescence, numbing her from a realisation of her purpose, held until she disappeared into the huge archway of the tower and began to ascend the narrow stairs. But here her spirit failed her, and she paused. Standing motionless in the gloom, she could hear her heart beating ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... changed? That he had not changed to her Lloyd knew in an instant. He still loved her; that was beyond all doubt. But this terrible apathy that seemed now to be a part of him! She had heard of the numbing stupor that invades those who stay beyond their time in the Ice, but never before had she seen it in its reality. It was not a lack of intelligence; it seemed rather to be the machinery of intelligence rusted and clogged from long ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... shoulders, Wyllard was conscious of little beyond the unceasing pain in his joints and the leaden heaviness of his limbs. The recollection of that march haunted him like a horrible nightmare long afterwards, when each sensation and incident emerged from the haze of numbing misery. He remembered that he stormed at Charly, who lagged behind now and then in a fit of languid dejection, and that once he fell heavily, and was sensible of a half-conscious regret that he was still capable of going on, when the Indian ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... animals, we find some curious facts having relation to this power. The electrical eel, for instance, has the faculty of overcoming and numbing his prey by this means. And among the Arabs, according to Gerard, the French lion-killer, whoever inhales the breath of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... just in time, for I could not have held on much longer. The cold was numbing me, and if I stopped swimming I must have sunk with the weight of mail. None of our old summer tricks of floating and the like were of any use with that weight on me. The arrows were coming thickly by that time, and I was glad to get to the far side of the boat and ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... rejoicing when Stella so far recovered from the strain which she had been undergoing, to learn that Bud was safe, although he had passed a very uncomfortable as well as perilous night tied to a tree with the cold numbing him, and wolves sniffing ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... it be spring? The sap moves not within my withered veins; Through all my frozen roots creep numbing pains, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... a marvel he had borne it so long. Only a numbing blow such as he had received could have stunned his faculties into acquiescence with this sleepy, uneventful existence; and now, suddenly, his soul awoke from its peaceful slumber and demanded life, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Canst thou prevent the revival of all the forces of nature in the springtime?" and "Canst thou loose the bands of Orion; canst thou free the ground from the numbing ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... burning heat; its outline was parched and stiff; the threads seemed thirsty with the constant sunshine; on either side lay the two zones proper for human life, [133] where a gentle temperance reigns; and at the extremes she drew the twin zones of numbing cold, making her work dun and sad with the hues of perpetual frost. She paints in, too, the sacred places of Dis, her father's brother, and the Manes, so fatal to her; and an omen of her doom was not wanting; for, as she worked, as if with foreknowledge of the future, her face became ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... had failed to rouse him and durst not try again. If he slipped or stumbled, he would plunge into the canon. It was horrible to reflect that she had allowed him to make the venture. Then, throwing off the numbing fear, she sprang ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... the metal vizor and bounced off, as the weird assailant ran within striking distance. For the first time in his life came the sensation of helplessness in a fight. There was a numbing feeling of horror as he ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... witness, so different from what they had expected, had dumfounded them. They felt that he had knocked the last prop out from under their safety; and all the horrors of their situation had dropped down on their spirits with crushing, numbing force. Their minds, their nerves, their very muscles were paralyzed, for the moment, by the sudden and awful realization that now they must hang, must hang for a ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... honor, but the duty would cost the girl too much. Yet, if Grace failed them, Gerald must suffer, and she doubted if her husband could bear the shame that must fall on all. Now, however, she was conscious of a numbing resignation that blunted feeling and dulled ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... When she came close, the subtle perfume of her hair was unmistakable—like the smell of pine needles on a mountain trail; new grass during a spring rain; or the crisp, winter air after a fall of snow. Perfume sharply symbolic of freedom, heady and intoxicating, numbing his mind with the ghosts ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... straight with the clergy, etc., and, if possible, to see something of the local life. It was a market-town—as tiny a one as England possesses—and had for ages served that lonely valley, and guarded our marches against the Kelt. In spite of the occasion, in spite of the numbing hilarity that greeted her as soon as she got into the reserved saloon at Paddington, her senses were awake and watching, and though Oniton was to prove one of her innumerable false starts, she never forgot it, nor the things ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... not. They were held as in horrid fascination upon the glittering, lidless orbs of the great brain that faced her. Slowly, every step a painful struggle of resistance, she moved toward the horrific monster. She tried to cry aloud in an effort to awaken her numbing faculties, but no sound passed her lips. If those eyes would but turn away, just for an instant, she felt that she might regain the power to control her steps; but the eyes never left hers. They seemed but to burn deeper and deeper, gathering ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she saw the vessel he had left home in reported, her hope revived almost to the point of gaiety. Could she have known that her husband had long since left the vessel whose name she watched so eagerly, and the sight of which filled her soul with strange emotion, she might have succumbed to the numbing intelligence. When the weather was fine she strolled to the white sandy beach that was only a few minutes' walk from her house, and there she would give herself up to the luxury of day-dreams. Her fancy was sometimes pleased by the thought that ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... stream of years encrust her With a numbing mail of stone, Till her laugh lose half its lustre, And her truth forswear its tone, And she see God's might and mercy darkly through a ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... exceptional cases, there are of course hundreds and even thousands of teachers whose personal influence is a partial antidote to the numbing poison which is being distilled but surely, from the daily Scripture lesson. But the net result of giving formal and mechanical instruction on the greatest of all "great matters" is to depress the spiritual vitality of the children of England to a point ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes |
