"Sense of direction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dead, and the rage which filled me drove me on and on with the strength of madness. I had lost the sense of direction. I only knew that I had burst through the ring of my assailants, and that I was running my headlong course with the whole pack of them yelling at my heels. Now and again a cry from right or left would divert one or another ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hunt in the ancient forest about the base of the Loewenburg. In the excitement of the chase he outstripped his followers, his quarry disappeared, and, overtaken by night, his surroundings, in the dim light, took on such an unfamiliar aspect that he completely lost all sense of direction. Up and down he paced in unrestrained yet impotent anger, feeling that he was under some evil spell. Maddened by this idea, he endeavoured to hack his way through the thick undergrowth, but the matted boughs ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... strange that Bill delayed his coming so long. As a rule he was always back before the coming of evening. An old and practiced mountaineer, he had never been known to lose sense of direction or sense of distance, and he was an hour overdue when the sun went down and the soft, ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... well lighted as the others had been and she had no idea where it led to. She knew Dorfield pretty well, having once resided there for three years, but in her agitated haste she had now lost all sense of direction. Feeling, however, that she was now safe from pursuit, she walked on more slowly, trying to discover her whereabouts, and presently passed a dimly-lighted bakery before which a man stood looking abstractedly into the window at the cakes and ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... ditches and holes that the peat had been taken from. These were full of black water which merged so naturally into the prevailing darkness that we repeatedly fell into them. We floundered out of one only to fall into another, uncertain where we were going and lost to all sense of direction. There was no vestige of track or road. It was then that the dog barked. We stopped to listen, conversing in low tones. Certainly, we thought, the dog must be near a house and that meant dry land and a footing. So we advanced ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... is easily tamed. It has the intelligence of the dog and attaches itself to its master as does the dog. Its sense of direction and locality is very acute. This group of seals in front of me, day after day, and week after week, returns to the same spot in the ever-changing waters, without the variation of a single yard, so far as I can see. The locality is purely imaginary. It is a love tryst, and it seems ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... brought him in time to a soggy little thicket with three areas of moss-covered mud and two round, pellucid pools of water about a foot in diameter. As the little stream had wound and twisted, Dick had by now lost entirely his sense of direction. He fished out his compass and set it on a rock. The River flows nearly north-east to the Big Falls, and Dick knew himself to be somewhere east of the River. The compass appeared to be wrong. Dick was a youth of sense, so he did not quarrel with the compass; ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... to propel himself through empty space. The searchers were growing points of light in the far distance. They gave him a sense of direction. His being, his existence, his universe of meaning and understanding depended on the success of his flight from the searchers. Faster, through the ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... Square, and it seemed then that the seat of the mystery lay almost due south. A week later he happened to be in the same locality. Once more, those deep-toned vibrations smote upon his ears; now the sound-waves were all about him and the sense of direction was lost; again, and they plainly proceeded from somewhere to the eastward. It was perplexing, but the varying quarter and strength of the wind might be sufficient to account for the difference, and in one curious particular ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... swelled and grew wilder. On the third day windfall and precipice drove the riders back from the river bed into the heavy hemlock forest, where festoons of Spanish moss overhead almost shut out the light of the sun and all sense of direction. And when they came back to the bank of the stream they saw a {72} wild cataract cutting its way through a dark canyon. There was no mistake. This was the Fraser, and it was living up ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... the right, tails to the storm. The swift change was magical. The sharp particles of icy snow seemed to swirl upon them from every direction, sucking their very breath, bewildering them, robbing them of all sense of direction. Within two minutes the men found it impossible to penetrate the wintry shroud except for a few feet ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... The sense of direction and location of these primitive Pellucidarians is little short of uncanny, as I have had occasion to remark in the past. You may take one of them to the uttermost ends of his world, to places of which he has never ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sense of direction was perfect, and he edged swiftly away toward the fallen log, behind which Paul had lain. Many dark forms passed him, but none sought to stop him; the counterfeit was too good; all thought him ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to their sight; do they guide themselves by certain indications and landmarks; or do they possess that peculiar, imperfectly understood sense that we ascribe to the swallows and pigeons, for instance, and term the "sense of direction"? The experiments of J. H. Fabre, of Lubbock, and, above all, of Romanes (Nature, 29 Oct. 1886) seem to establish that it is not this strange instinct that guides them. I have, on the other hand, more than once noticed that they appear to pay no attention to the colour ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Bart's rather uncanny intelligence, upon one point he was usually letter-perfect, and even when a stranger mentioned Dan in the hearing of the dog it usually brought a whine or at least an anxious look. He hewed to his line now with that animal sense of direction which men can never wholly understand. Boulders and trees slipped away on either side of Joan; now on a descent of the mountain-side he broke into a lope that set the flowers fluttering on her bonnet; now he prowled up the ravine ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... seepage water from the excavation. Men swarmed everywhere, on derricks, on engines, with guide ropes for cableway loads, scouring and chipping rock and concrete surfaces, ramming and bolting forms into place, shifting motors, always hurrying yet always giving a sense of direction and purpose. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... new to her, thirst and fatigue were old acquaintances, yet she could not help wondering if, in spite of her training, in spite of that inborn sense of direction which she had prided herself upon sharing with the wild creatures, she were fated to become a victim of the chaparral. The possibility was remote; death at this moment seemed as far off as ever—if anything it was too far off. No, she would find the water-hole somehow; or the ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... turns and twists the man walked for perhaps half an hour. Apparently he was bent on beclouding the lads' sense of direction. ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... absolute necessity. We were struck by the fact that the native hunters and ranchmen on such days continually lost themselves and, if permitted, travelled for miles through the forest either in circles or in exactly the wrong direction. They had no such sense of direction as the forest-dwelling 'Ndorobo hunters in Africa had, or as the true forest-dwelling Indians of South America are said to have. On certainly half a dozen occasions our guides went completely astray, and we had to take command, to disregard their assertions, and to lead ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... stopped to investigate the man in the road. There was a feel in the air now that told him it was far past the turn of night. He knew about where they were in relation to the ranch by this time, for a man who lives in the open places develops his sense of direction until it serves him as a mole's in its ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... admitted the elder of the chums reluctantly as he realized that by facing one another they had lost all sense of direction. "It's a good thing you thought of it, Horace, or we might have got ourselves into a worse mess than we're ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... wanted to climb Long's Peak all alone, without a guide. I agreed to consent to this if first she would climb one of the lesser peaks unaided, on a stormy day. This the young lady did, and by so doing convinced me that she had a keen sense of direction and an abundance of strength, for the day on which she climbed was a stormy one, and the peak was completely befogged with clouds. After this, there was nothing for me to do but allow her to climb Long's ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... always vanishing before them like a mirage. At the end of that time they were apparently no nearer their goal than when they had started. They had followed first one path, then another, until they had lost all sense of direction, and finally when they came to a place where three paths diverged, they had to acknowledge themselves definitely lost. Mr. Wilder elected one path, Tony another, and Constance ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... back toward the flames. They circled and alighted at the bottom of the gorge. No sooner safely there, then they'd take wing again and flutter back into the trees near the fire. Many dropped, overcome by the smoke, whole flocks disappeared into the roaring flames to return no more. They lost all sense of direction, all ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... past the railway station, the broad Boulevard Carnot gradually ascends to Le Cannet. This is the only straight road out of Cannes. All the other roads wind and turn, bringing you constantly around unexpected corners until you have lost your sense of direction. Branches of trees stick out over garden walls overhung with vines. Many of the largest hotels can be reached only by these chemins. You realize that the city has grown haphazard, and that no methodical ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... the dry bed of a little stream; but a careful search showed no signs of any person having been over it, and it seemed to me, in my upset sense of direction, that it should lead the other way. But, remembering that I had left the bed of the creek to follow Long Jim and Petrak, I came to the conclusion that the pirates had abandoned the creek, or had turned off from it to cache ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... John's sense of direction did not deceive him. He soon found the entrance on the village side, and, lighting the candles, immediately entered the cavern. John led the way, as his experience in its hollows enabled him to point out the direction ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... he set them to work to try to puzzle out the direction in which he was being carried. He could tell from the lurch of the car whether they turned to the right or the left. In the beginning they turned so many corners that all sense of direction was lost, but after a while they struck a car-line and held to it for a long time. He knew they were running in car-tracks by the smoothness of their passage, broken by occasional bumpings as they slipped out of the rails. It was a street with ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... help, and he was sorry for the poor wretches; but there was no response from their flying comrades. He fixed on a star to guide his course by, mounted, and rode away to the south, trusting more to his camel's sense of direction than to his own efforts to keep on ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... on, resorting at intervals to his old trick of doubling back, to confuse his pursuers. He did this so well that before long he had lost his sense of direction, and the sun having gone from the sight of man behind a mass ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... in Heaven's name is a sense of direction? The phrase explains nothing. However incoherent the mind of the animal or the savage may be, it is there somewhere, working on some data. I've been all through the psychological and anthropological side of the business, and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... scurrying of heavy feet, hoarse shouting, and the tumble of overturned furniture. That was all. And yet that other call still rang in his ears and echoed through his brain. Furthermore, it had been distinct enough to give him a sense of direction; it came from below. He hesitated only a second at thought of leaving Stubbs, but this other summons was too imperative to be neglected even for him. He turned and leaped down the stairs ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... public. We must forgive him, because he has for a long time been doing far worse than that to the Huns; but it is undeniable that in following the winding trail of his beloved guns we are in no small danger of losing our sense of direction. This is because along with imaginary tales, some of them written before August, 1914, when of course he could not fix precisely the chronology and locality of his fights, he has mixed almost indiscriminately the record of his own actual experiences during two distinct phases of the War. Not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... Library that some friends and I set out on a little tour of Boston. Whether we went north, south, east, or west I cannot tell, for this was one of the few occasions when the extreme variousness of a city has deprived me definitely of a sense of direction; but I know that we drove many miles through magnificent fenny parks, whose roads were reserved to pleasure, and that at length, after glimpsing famous houses and much of the less centralized wealth and ease of Boston, we ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... restraint of his arms. No one had ever dared to touch her before. No one had ever dared to handle her as she was being handled now. How was it going to end? Where were they going? With her face hidden she had lost all sense of direction. She had no idea to what point the horse had turned when he had wheeled so suddenly. He was galloping swiftly with continual disconcerting bounds that indicated either temper or nerves, but the man riding him seemed in no way disturbed by ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... himself in the corridors so that the doors of the various compartments were to his left and right, with the ceiling "above" and the deck "below." Otherwise, he might have lost his sense of direction completely in the complex maze ...
— The Measure of a Man • Randall Garrett
... Blix and Condy arrived at Luna's some fifteen minutes before seven. Condy had lost himself and all sense of direction in the strange streets of the quarter, and they were on the very brink of despair when Blix discovered the sign upon an ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the country, but he soon proved that his ideas of distance were vague and faulty—a serious shortcoming in a land with no food, no shelter, and no firewood except green willows in the gulch-bottoms. Folsom began to fear that the fellow's sense of direction was equally bad, and taxed him with it, but Harkness scoffed ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... thoughts tarried only with Gro. In his phantasies "he forced himself through the bolted door, climbed sharp angled passage ways and winding staircases and lifted oaken beams from barred doors. Without once making a mistake, driven by a magic sense of direction, he finally reached Gro's couch, at which he saw himself staring with great white eyes, whose pupils in the darkness of sleep had as it were glided over to the side. And upon the cover of her couch lay her two gleaming arms and the fingers ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... joined at the end of five minutes by another man, who fell into step with the doctor silently. He carried something over his shoulder which I could not make out. In this way we walked for perhaps twenty minutes. I had lost all sense of direction: I merely stumbled along in silence, allowing Mr. Jamieson to guide me this way or that as the path demanded. I hardly know what I expected. Once, when through a miscalculation I jumped a little short over a ditch and landed ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the light of that setting beam, which still reached that height, though all below, on earth, was dusk; and now he knew the west again and found his sense of direction. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... that in foggy weather birds often hurl themselves against the headlight and frequently their bodies are later picked up from the engine platform beneath. Birds seem rarely to lose their sense of direction, and they pursue their way for hundreds of miles across the trackless ocean. Terns, Gulls, and Murres are known to go many miles in quest of food for their young and return through dense fogs with ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson |
