"Dumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many—could hardly accuse Mrs. Hauksbee of wasting her time. Otis Yeere was one of those wandering "dumb" characters, foredoomed through life to be nobody's property. Ten years in Her Majesty's Bengal Civil Service, spent, for the most part, in undesirable Districts, had given him little to be proud of, and nothing to bring confidence. Old enough to have lost the first fine careless rapture that ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robtustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, we for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. I pray you, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... not speak to her, did not, she fancied, even look at her; but after a few dumb seconds his hand came out to hers and held it in a close, sinewy grip. Her own was nerveless, cold as ice. She could not have withdrawn it had she wished. But she did not wish. That action of his had a strange effect ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... week since? Noonan was master of his trade at twenty-one, a lodge man, an attendant at ward meetings, and laying by money to embark as a contractor; he bade fair to be a power some day. And, though he seemed to be almost completely dumb, there must be something uncommon in him that he should be so drawn to the gay, dreaming little creature who was so clearly made ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... understands it not. Thou knowest how dazed and dumb he ever is after these visions—that he comes from them as one from the grave, remembering nothing. He has lain like a ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Occasionally Ezekiel assumed an appearance of courage, which he felt not; rallied his guests, and made sundry excuses for the presence of his aged friend, whom he represented as having a mental infirmity, as being deaf and dumb. On all such occasions the old man rose from the table, and looking at the host, laughed a demoniac laugh of joy, and departed as ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... whose fame eclipses all others! Miss Lovelace had come to settle by the lake for her father's health, the physicians having recommended him the air of Lucerne. These two English people had arrived with no other servant than a little girl of fourteen, a dumb child, much attached to Miss Fanny, on whom she waited very intelligently, and had settled, two winters since, with monsieur and Madame Bergmann, the retired head-gardeners of His Excellency Count Borromeo of Isola Bella and Isola Madre in the Lago Maggiore. These ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... girls have returned to the house, the sailors open the hampers and lustily fall to, casting playful thanks to those dumb neighbours for this double share of victuals and wine. In the lightness of their hearts they sing, and to the verses of their rollicking "Steersman, leave the watch!" ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... newspapers, meetings, and all manner of means the propagandism was carried on. On the other hand, the most violent opposition had been manifested throughout the North to these so-called "fanatics." No language was too opprobrious to apply to them. The churches and ministry were either dumb on the subject, or defended slavery from the Scriptures. Mobs broke up antislavery meetings, and in some cases proceeded even to the extreme of attack and murder,—as in the case of Lovejoy of Illinois. The approach of the political campaign of 1836, when Van Buren was running ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Mr. Hawthorne had a stupid time enough at Mr. Browne's dinner at Richmond Hill. Mr. Browne himself is always stupid, and Mrs. Browne never says a word. The judges were dumb and lofty with their own grandeur, and communicated no ideas. Do you know how very grand the judges are when in acto? Do you know that they are then kings, and when the Queen is present they still have precedence? So Imperial is Law in this realm. In going down to dinner, therefore, at Mr. Browne's ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... soon as it was clear that secession would be resisted, the preponderance of opinion in favour of the movement was overwhelming. This was not only so among the educated and governing portions of society, which were interested in slavery. While the negroes themselves were unorganised and dumb and made no stir for freedom, the poorer class of white people, to whom the institution of slavery was in reality oppressive, were quite unconscious of this; the enslavement of the negro appeared to them a tribute to their own dignity, and their indiscriminating spirit ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Herr," was the soft reply. Then Gretchen became as dumb, and our return to the inn was made in silence. Once there, however, she recovered. "I am sorry to have put you at such a disadvantage," glancing at my clothes, which were ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... is a sad thing to consider how much of their abilities people turn to tiresomeness. You see a man who would be very agreeable if he were not so observant: another who would be charming, if he were deaf and dumb: a third delightful, if he did not vex all around ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... o'clock each morning. I did not finish until late in the afternoon, but I had all of Sunday off. I found my way by the touch of the hand, and very soon I seemed to have the eyesight of a cat to find shafts, dumb-waiters, circuitous turnings in the sub-cellars of ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... active public by all this, is beyond computation. All the world is now instructed by symbols, as formerly the deaf and dumb; and instead of having to peruse a tedious penny-a-line account of the postilion of the King of the French misdriving his Majesty, and his Majesty's august family, over a draw-bridge into a moat at Treport, a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... answer; I asked her not to. I could not tell her all, and I would have no reply before. Her face was turned from me as I spoke, but her ears turned pink and her breath came quickly. I looked at her and the magnitude of my presumption held me dumb; yet a warm happy glow was upon me, and the tapping of feet on the pavement ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... are dealing with dumb brutes, and reflect how difficult it must be for them to understand our motions, signs and language, we should never get out of patience with them because they don't understand us, or wonder at their doing things wrong. With all our ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... entire household were led out of the north gate, the ruins of which choked the passageway. The cries of the domestics, some of whom had been born in the house, were most pitiable. When, finally, the horses and all the dumb tenantry of the place were driven past him, Judah began to comprehend the scope of the procurator's vengeance. The very structure was devoted. Far as the order was possible of execution, nothing living was to be left within its walls. If in Judea there ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... today are whirling; The brooks are all dry and dumb— But let me tell you, my darling, The spring ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... I will cause that they shall have burdens lashed upon their backs; and they shall be driven before like a dumb ass. ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... poor man thought he was dreaming, and, struck dumb with astonishment, he remained with his mouth open and his eyes starting ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... Johnson lies; what human can deny Old Honest Tom the tribute of a sigh? Deaf is that ear which caught the opening sound; Dumb that tongue which cheer'd the hills around. Unpleasing truth: Death hunts us from our birth In view, and men, like foxes, take ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... suffering ones; while some have come safe to land, and gone to their homes. They make their way from that dismal surf-beaten shore to the nearest house. There are loiterers about the door; and within,—within, Adele finds her mother at last, clasps her to her heart, kisses the poor dumb lips that will never more open,—never say to her rapt ears, "My child! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... legends of London and her sturdy citizens from the old simple times. That every night at midnight, when St. Paul's bell tolls out one, and we may move and speak, we thus discourse, nor leave such themes till the first gray gleam of day shall strike us dumb. Is ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... planted with young elms that made a green quiet, and murmured to the silence with their stiffening leaves. It was an effect possible only to that wonderful London which towers so massively into the present that you are dumb before the evidences of its vast antiquity. There must have been a time when there was no London, but you cannot think it any more than you can think the time when there shall be none. I make so sure of these reflections that I hope there ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the reason, there is a ready answer in the 'need of exercise.' But this will not explain the peculiar zest of those exercises, which is something quite different from our feelings whilst swinging dumb-bells or tramping the highway. Others, more sophisticated, tell us that the civilised individual retains in his nature the instincts of his remote ancestors, and that these assert themselves at stages of his growth corresponding ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... in the quaint childish hand, with a great wave of dumb sickness creeping over her—a devastating, disintegrating nausea of soul and body. The most significant fact in it, however, that Collier Pratt had fallen down "or been hurt in the street," of course escaped her entirely, except to stir her ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... the first time in his life Jack Singleton found himself at a loss for words. As a rule he had plenty to say for himself, but now he found himself suddenly dumb. He had heard his friend Carlos speak of his sister Isolda with patronising, brotherly affection as "a good child", "a nice little thing", "not half a bad sort", and so on, and he seemed to remember that only a day or two ago Carlos had casually mentioned that his sister was just sixteen ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... typical of the man. The Mussulmans declared that the first language was Arabic; the Jews said it was Hebrew; the Brahmans said it was Sanskrit. Akbar ordered twelve infants to be brought up by dumb nurses; not a word was to be spoken in their presence until they were twelve years of age. When the time arrived the children were brought before Akbar. Proficients in the learned tongues were present to catch the first words, to decide upon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... sometimes, and said: "O Lips, so cold and dumb, I would that you would tell me, if not dead, Why, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... never-to-be-forgotten year, and after a few hours' illness her weary spirit was called to the skies. We made her a grave in the solitudes of the eternal hills, and again took up our line of march, "too sad to talk, too dumb to pray." But ten weeks after, our Willie, the baby, was buried in the sands of the Burnt River mountains. Reaching Oregon in the fall with our broken household, consisting of my father and eight motherless children, I engaged in school-teaching ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... was again struck dumb. The voice from the water was again heard in a tone of impatience; the bystanders stared with redoubled awe at this man of storms, which seemed to have come up out of the deep and to be called back to it again. As, with the assistance of the negro, he slowly bore his ponderous ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... dinner will consist of the most meagre fare—at the lowest possible price—provided, in the evening, he can hear Talma declaim, or Albert warble, or see Pol leap, or Bigotini entrance a wondering audience by the grace of her movements, and the pathos of her dumb shew, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... ready by the time Ben came, and her aunt's visit had been so long that it was already late. When she had finished she went downstairs to take a last look round. There stood all the well-known pieces of furniture, dumb, yet full of speech; they had seen and heard so much that was dear to her, that it seemed cruel to leave them to strangers. Above all she looked wistfully at a small twisted cactus in a pot standing on the window ledge. Mrs White ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... then been invented, and it was necessary to explain the word to Mr. Brown. He merely remarked that the oil and paint would come to a deal of money, and then gave way. Jones was struck dumb by the brilliancy of the idea, and for once forgot ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... which language is not equal. The conception is too bulky to be born alive, and in the torture of thinking, we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned by their magnitude, find no way out—and, in the struggle of expression, every finger tries to be a tongue. The machinery of the body seems too little for the mind, and we look about for helps to show our thoughts by. Such must be the sensation of America, whenever Britain, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... in dumb show completed this species of summons, and I was obliged to execute it. I returned to the King in the space of a few minutes, bringing back in its new case the fugitive present, which a monarch asked back again so politely and with ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... couldn't tell, because my head was all dumb with the crack I got; but you weren't hit, and ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... doggie," she continued, speaking the thoughts that surged up in her mind while addressing the dumb animal, who looked as if he would like to understand her if he only could,—"who ever would have thought that things would turn out as they have when I last patted your dear old head at Bingen, 'Fair Bingen on the Rhine,' eh?" ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... have lasted it were hard to say, had not the impatient whinnying of his horses, still exposed to the storm, caught his attention. The lifelong habit of caring for the dumb animals in his charge asserted itself. He went out mechanically, unharnessed and stabled them as carefully as ever before in his life, then returned and wearily prepared himself a pot of coffee, which, with a crust of bread, was all the supper he ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... they entered the courtyard in exact order, one behind the other, and there awaited the coming of the abbess. All night they stood thus without making a sound, as if struck dumb by their guilty consciences. But when morning came, they uttered the most pitiful cries as though asking pardon and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... me, voices long dumb, many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the gangway and through the custom-house. Few seemed to take an interest in their surroundings. They exchanged no comments, but walked side by side in silence —dumb and driven animals. Some of them bore signs of disease. A few stumbled as they went. One or two were half blind, with groping hands. That they were of different nationalities was plain enough. Here a Jew from Vienna, with the fear of the Judenhetze ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... Grace, "don't you remember, when we were children, we used to say we meant some time to live together and keep house? Suppose we try it here. We might have gas-light, you know, and all our food could be brought down on a dumb waiter." ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... expression of dumb rage. The mines had been prepared and charged, he averred, but they had fought four hours the day before to regain possession of the bridge and then had ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the rulership of the land to-day; now the Tartars, remnants of whom with their high cheek bones are still visible in the Baltic provinces; particularly and always and ever poverty beyond description; poverty, disaster and conquest, like triple demons to humiliate the soul of Russia and keep her dumb for many centuries, except for the beauty of her ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... various places and postures, and comes to rest leaning over a high chair, whence, in dumb show, he addresses a gathering. CRICHTON, with the best intentions, gives him a footstool to stand on, and departs, happily unconscious that ERNEST in some dudgeon has kicked the footstool ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... favour. Here I am, quite satisfied with the laws as they now are. Show me, say I, how I shall benefit by the proposed change. That knocks them speechless. In England they may make a pretence of proving their case, but in this country they are dumb in the presence of Unionists. They cannot argue with enlightened people. They have not a leg to stand upon, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... misfortune and misery, seeming proudly to proclaim themselves victims to all the saddest ills that flesh is heir to—as, for instance, Destitute Sick Societies, Indigent Blind Societies, Deaf and Dumb Societies, Burial Societies, and the like. The nomenclature of some of these benevolent institutions seems likely to test the etymological skill of the next generation of learned men. Perhaps some ethnological philosopher will devote himself to the special ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... little cottage at the head of the chasm which drops into Havre Gosselin, and her father, Philip Carre, lived lonely on his little farm of Belfontaine, by Port a la Jument, with no companion but his dumb man Krok. ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... like a silent lute Some faithless hand has thrown aside; Those chords are dumb, those tones are mute, That once sent forth a voice of pride! Yet even o'er the lute neglected The wind of heaven will sometimes fly, And even thus the heart dejected, Will sometimes ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... ostriches were regularly painted with a horseshoe in their bills, to indicate their ordinary diet; storks refused to live except in republics and free states; the crowing of a cock put lions to flight, and men were struck dumb in good sober earnest by the sight of a wolf. The curiosity-hunter, in short, found his game still plentiful, and, by a few excursions into Aristotle, Pliny, and other more recondite authors, was able still to display a rich bag for the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... know." Suddenly he remembered Anne and the bonds she had laid on him. Had he not suffered them, in a dumb way, finding no force within himself to strike them off? Had he been a coward, a dull fellow tied to women's restraining wills? And he had by no means escaped yet. Wasn't Anne inexorably by his side now, when he turned for an instant ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... into the carriage; her face was turned from him, but he could see the pink deepen in her ear and the oval of her cheek. She answered that it was a friend of theirs, Mr. Lossing. As if the name had struck them both dumb, neither spoke for a few moments. Armorer bit a sigh in two. "Essie," said he, "I guess it is no use to side-track the subject. You know why I came ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... sparkled, and his red, little tongue pushed away the recalcitrant hairs of his moustache from his voluble lips. Daniel stood by the door, leaning against the post, his arms folded across his chest, and regarded now his mother, who, dumb and suddenly old, sat in a corner of the sofa, now the oil portrait of his father on the opposite wall. A friend of Gottfried Nothafft's youth, a painter who had been long lost and forgotten like his other works, had ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... all right then," said Mr. Harrison drily. "Or at least, folks here will call him so. I never was much of a talker till I came to Avonlea and then I had to begin in self-defense or Mrs. Lynde would have said I was dumb and started a subscription to have me taught sign language. You're not ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... head with her rolling pin before she let him go. Cris Mead's wife would have chased him clear to the Neosho; she was Bill Mead's own mother when it came to whooping things; but poor, gentle Mrs. Whately sat dumb and dazed in ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... necessary companion for a fishing excursion; but Selta had learned to follow me on such occasions without interfering with my sport, and I got into the way of talking with her, and found comfort in her dumb companionship. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... notice of this remark than if he had been deaf and Hugh dumb; but kept riding on quite comfortably, with his ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and taxes, it is also part of "the black man's burden" to pay all duties levied from the favoured race. With the increasing difficulty of finding openings to earn the money for paying these multifarious taxes, the dumb pack-ox, being inarticulate in the Councils of State, has no means of making known to its "keeper" that the burden is straining ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... any reader of this book who knows of similar tales, to communicate them, written down as they are told, to me, care of Mr. Nutt. The only reason, I imagine, why such tales have not hitherto been brought to light, is the lamentable gap between the governing and recording classes and the dumb working classes of this country—dumb to others but eloquent among themselves. It would be no unpatriotic task to help to bridge over this gulf, by giving a common fund of nursery literature to all classes of the English ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... and the encouragement of good listening. In an evening round the fire, when couples begin, to whisper or talk low to each other, it is time to put out the lights. Inspiring interest is gone. The most brilliant talker in the world is dumb. People whose idea of a dinner is private talk between seat-neighbors should limit the company to two. They have no right to spoil what can be the most agreeable social institution ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... shattered, unused plough, and view himself surrounded with flocks that furnish raiment without food. Or, if his honesty be not proof against the hard assaults of penury, he may be led to revenge himself on these dumb innovators of his little field— then learn too late that some portion of the soil is reserved for a crop more fatal even than that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... It was impossible to tell whether he understood or not. After a few seconds he glanced out over the house. "That is a beautiful dress," said he. "You have real taste, if you'll permit me to say so. I was one of those who were struck dumb with ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... its emotion in principle and intelligence; but not agreed if they mean to recommend a Christianity which professes to accept truths that might kindle a soul beneath the ribs of death and make the dumb sing, and yet is never moved one hair's-breadth from its quiet phlegmaticism. There is no religion without emotion. Of course it must be intelligent emotion, built upon the acceptance of divine truth, and regulated and guided by that, and so consolidated into principle, and it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... it. I guess I know the John Henry of your Number Two devil even if I am a dumb ferryman." Perhaps sensing he had blundered, Charon almost wept. "This paper appoints me head bridge-tender from now to the end of eternity, and, bein' worried about my job, I hopped right to it. ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... And Helen, dumb with fright, but trying to keep calm for the child's sake, and Miss Avery, calm, but murmuring tenderly, "No one ever told the lad he'll have a child"—they also reminded her that horror is not the end. To what ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... was a happy event, and not in the house of Abraham alone. The whole world rejoiced, for God remembered all barren women at the same time with Sarah. They all bore children. And all the blind were made to see, all the lame were made whole, the dumb were made to speak, and the mad were restored to reason. And a still greater miracle happened: on the day of Isaac's birth the sun shone with such splendor as had not been seen since the fall of man, and as he will shine again only ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... abides, the deepest lesson of the school of life. My feet have wandered far, and my thoughts still further from the places and beliefs of my childhood; but whatever and wherever I may be, this grief at times catches me and holds me in a pause of dumb tears, and every similar bereavement I witness renews the sympathetic grief. I have never been able to find a consolation for that loss, for it carried with it the future and its best dreams. When his mother died, I thought that any death were easier to bear than the sudden ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... stepped boldly out and stood before her. The maiden sprang quickly to her feet; there was no terror in her face; she was of true blood; if she was afraid she did not show it; it was clear she recognized the apparition, but intense surprise, overpowering other emotions, kept her dumb. Jean had thus the chance of speaking first, and deftly he used his opportunity. In a few rapid sentences he told the tale of his search, of his adventures, of his selection of his hiding-place; then he paused. The maiden was not long in finding words. There was a flush on her cheek ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... forward, and the next moment he was sending her along as fast as she could gallop, while his arm rose and fell like a flail, thrashing her unmercifully. They fled past Ann at racing speed, and she watched, dumb with amazement, while Brett steered a huge semicircular course on the downs, keeping the animal he rode at full stretch the whole time. When at last they came back and pulled up, the mare's breath was sobbing in her throat, while Brett himself, hatless ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the most melancholy of the five races of men; but even he is not lacking in the element of mirth which it is maintained is often displayed by dumb animals. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... and laughing as young ladies do when they get together, if they be but on tolerably intimate terms. But I, feeling myself to be one too many, left them to their merriment and lagged behind, as usual on such occasions: I had no relish for walking beside Miss Green or Miss Susan like one deaf and dumb, who could neither ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... of the family could enlighten him, for only Ingred and Derry knew the secret, and Ingred was at school, while Derry, belonging to the dumb creation, expressed his opinions ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... taught you some more signs," said Mr. George. "Or I wish we had a deaf and dumb boy here to go with us. Deaf and dumb people can get along excellently well where they do not understand the language, because they know how to make so ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... Bernice, "actors are not easily embarrassed. More likely we girls will be struck dumb at ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... particular talk. The partial genius is flashy—scrappy. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not every thing that should be said. He is so filled with his theme that he is dumb, first from not knowing how to begin, where there seems eternally beginning behind beginning, and secondly from perceiving his true end at so infinite a distance. Sometimes, dashing into a subject, he blunders, hesitates, stops short, sticks fast, and, because ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... of a little recess half way up the irregular wall, we found Mose, shivering with fear and looking down at us with dumb, animal eyes. We had to drag him out by main force. The poor fellow was nearly famished and so weak he could scarcely stand. What little sense he had ever possessed seemed to have left him, and he jabbered in a ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... his shoulders, but at last he accomplished it and began walking slowly home with his prize. Now it happened that in the course of his journey there lived a rich man with his only daughter, a beautiful girl, but unfortunately deaf and dumb. She had never laughed in her life, and the doctors said she would never recover till somebody made her laugh. This young lady happened to be looking out of the window when Jack was passing with the donkey on his shoulders, the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... utmost of it is to be kissed, which rather increaseth than quencheth appetite. He that sends her gifts sends her word also that he is a man of small gifts otherwise, for wooing by signs and tokens employs the author dumb; and if Ovid, who writ the law of love, were alive (as he is extant), he would allow it as good a diversity that gifts should be sent as gratuities, not as bribes. Wit getteth rather promise than love. Wit is not to be seen, and no woman takes advice ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... disappointed that Mr. PHILIP MERIVALE should have had no better chance than was afforded by the part of a dumb servant for the display of that delightful personality which so shone in his Cassio and his Doughty; but he was quietly admirable in the most thrilling scene of all—outside the Shoji of Yo-San. One missed the fine performance of Miss HILDYARD ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... and he looked at me, and I had the sudden, unpleasant realization that he was a coward, added to his other qualifications. Yes, a coward! I saw it in his blurred eyes and the quivering of his bloated lips—stark dumb funk. That was bad. I'm afraid I lost my nerve, too; I make no excuses; fear is infectious. At all events, we tore down out of that place as if death was after us, the mules clattering and flapping in the rear. After ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... conceit that if she listened attentively she would be able to hear Priscilla's heart jingling in her body—rattling like a bit of ice in a tin bucket. Now the woman's mean, chaste little soul laid bare before her filled Delia Toomey with a dumb fury. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... and the speechless Mr. Hanlon was a thing of the past. Freddie did not believe that he would ever see that dumb and loose-headed man again; but in that he was mistaken, as ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... the sketches, drawings, and rough drafts that he kept in a large old closet; but, soon becoming disgusted with this vain quest, and feeling depressed by the lassitude of his spirits, he tossed away his cigarette, whistled a popular street-song, bent down and picked up a heavy dumb-bell that lay under a chair. Having raised with the other hand a curtain that draped a mirror, which served him in judging the accuracy of a pose, in verifying his perspectives and testing the truth, he placed himself in front of it and began to ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... merciless heavens. The mother bends over her dying child, the first flower of her wedded love, the sweetest hope of her life. She is rigid with despair, and in her hot tearless eyes there dwells a dumb misery that would touch a heart of stone. But God does not help, the death-curtain falls, and darkness reigns where all ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... for the same reason. At length he pulled out a whole bundle, and spread them before me, saying, "There are seven—take which you please—or take them all." I singled out my own, and went away, struck dumb with admiration at what I had seen—not so much on account of his insolence, as of the number of new plays which from this circumstance I concluded were yearly offered to the stage. You may be sure, I did not fail ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... lost in a maze of tangled thoughts that crowded wearily through his listless brain. It was now too dark for him to discern the image by his side, but from time to time he laid his hand upon it with a gentle touch, as a mother might caress a sleeping child, and was happy in its dumb companionship. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... might please God by coming into His presence looking fine. When Egede had closed their eyes, he carried the dead in his arms to the vestibule, where in the morning the men who dug the graves found them. At the sight of his suffering the scoffers were dumb. What his preaching had not done to win them over, his sorrows did. They ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... mechanical arts in which they are the most proficient; for every one follows the opinion of his leader and judge, and goes out to the plains to the works of the field, and for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the pasturage of the dumb animals. And they consider him the more noble and renowned who has dedicated himself to the study of the most arts and knows how to practise them wisely. Wherefore they laugh at us in that we consider our workmen ignoble, and hold those to be noble who have mastered no pursuit; but live in ease, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... do with me. It means either that he doesn't care for me or that—that he does care and is fighting against it. Oh, I don't know what to think." Then, after a pause: "How I hate being a woman! If I were a man I could find out the truth—settle it one way or the other. But I must sit dumb and wait, and wait, and wait! You don't know how I love him," she said brokenly, burying her face in the ends of the soft white shawl that was flung about her bare shoulders. "I can't help it—he's the best—he makes all the others look and talk like cheap imitations. He's the best, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... fundamental facts of life. Education, culture, art, literature,—all that is commonly supposed to lift man above the level of the beasts,—are used by men and women of his kind to so pervert their own natures that they are able to descend to bestial depths that the dumb animals themselves are not capable of reaching. In what he called his love for Sibyl Andres, James Rutlidge was insane—but no more so than thousands of others. The methods of securing the objects of their desires vary—the motive that prompts ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... girl," murmured a very shy little maiden, whom the usher immediately announced as "An Ell of a dumb girl!" And so on, he went, making the most absurd as well as the most awful blunders with ladies' and gentlemen's names, as announcing the "Grand Turk" as Miss Ann Burke; for which last mistake the poor old man was not much to blame, as the subject was but a little ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... has power to be in a man. In one manner, hurting the good they have by nature, as in dumb men, and in others, staining their thoughts. In another manner, snatching away the good that they have of grace: and so he is in sinful men whom he has deceived through delight of the world and of their flesh, and leads them with him ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... which he spoke, and the essence of the speech itself, left her a moment dumb with wonder and with an incomprehensible consternation, born of some intuition not ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Yes, I've got a case; Her voice is such a sweet soprano; Her people come from Northern Thrace; You ought to hear her play piano. If she would like my suicide— If she'd want me a dead and dumb thing, Me for a glass of cyanide, ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... Rock hath yet a tongue, and Concord is not dumb; And voices from our fathers' graves and from the future come: They call on us to stand our ground—they charge us still to be Not only free from chains ourselves, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... war-ship Clampherdown, Swung round upon the tide, Her two dumb guns glared south and north, And the blood and the bubbling steam ran forth, And she ground ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... from the invisible, can never be imitated without the Master's penetration into the heart of Nature. He knew things he could never explain, and he held secrets he could not impart. Before his pictures we can only stand silent—he disarms criticism and strikes the quibbler dumb. Before a Corot you had better give way, and let its beauty caress your soul. His colors are thin and very simple—there is no challenge in his work, as there is in the work of Turner. Greens and grays predominate, and the plain drab tones are blithe, airy, gracious, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... yet," I managed to request. "And if I sit down and think for a moment, don't take it for a confession. Any innocent man would be shocked dumb temporarily if his traps gave up ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... he was quite desirous to know what ought to be done with them. Sir Barnet Skettles had much to say upon the question, and said it; but it did not appear to solve the question, for Mr Baps retorted, Yes, but supposing Russia stepped in with her tallows; which struck Sir Barnet almost dumb, for he could only shake his head after that, and say, Why then you must fall back upon your cottons, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... are from Rhode Island," the cabbie said, "or even farther away, you are deaf, dumb and blind. Everybody in New York knows what is going on by this time. I admit that it is not in the newspapers, but the newspapers do not tell the truth since, as I remember it, the City Council election of 1924, and then it is an accident, due to the major's ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... following Friday, and jumped in the sea. He arrives safely home, and while musing on his promise She appeared to him with a smiling Countenance, and (by his Misfortune) she got the first Word of him, so that he could not speak one Word and was quite Dumb, and she began to sing, after which she departed, taking from him the Compass. She took a Ring from her Finger and gave him. (The young man went home, fell ill and died 5 days after), to the wonderful Admiration of all People who saw the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... confusion than ever; and Ike dusted the blinds from the top to the bottom in a "wholesale way," as he called it, and cleaned the knives on the wrong side of the Bath-brick to his heart's content. Every one, even the dumb animals, seemed conscious of Aunt Lina's departure. My little pet kitten, Norah, resumed her place by the side of the heater in the library, starting once in a while in her dreams and springing up as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... remained for some time dumb with delight. M. de R. was the first to break the silence by giving me a cordial embrace. We burst out into mutual excuses, he for having imagined that there might be other Casanovas in Italy, and I for not having ascertained his ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 44 dumb average to despise to reward to scold the witness I never told any more stories it broke my heart not to be able to do it ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... in all its undermining power of discouragement, it stared back.—What if the deepest thing, the thing which alone lasted, the thing which, therefore, you were bound in the end to accept, to submit to, was just darkness, sorrow, loneliness of worn body and shrinking spirit, by the shore of a cold, dumb, and tenantless, limitless ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Germans, or Dutchmen, as the boys always called them; and the boys believed that they each had hay in his right shoe, and straw in his left, because a Dutchman was too dumb, as the boys said for stupid, to know his feet apart any other way; and that the Dutch officers had to call out to the men when they were marching, "Up mit de hay-foot, down mit de straw-foot—links, links, links!" (Left, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... of his voice as he soared to the sky Was that of a ghoul with the grumbles. His teeth were so hot, and his tongue was so dry, That his shout seemed us raucous as though one should try To play on a big drum with dumb-bells. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... biographies of the great masters. From them he familiarised himself with their distress and poverty; he read of the petty attitudes and fatuous mediocrity that stood deaf and dumb in the presence of immortal genius. But one day he chanced to read that Mozart's body had been buried in a pauper's grave. He hurled the book from him with an oath that he would never again touch a work of that sort. The mordant smoke of misanthropy blew into the fire of idolisation; ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Riedriech. "What is it you know about brains? No doctor knows what is on the inside of brains! You make tinkerings mit the inside plumbings, Gott bewahre! and cut up womens and cats and such-like poor little dumb beasts and says you, 'Now I know all about the brains of man.' It is right there where you ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... them in a strange questing way, and her breath came from between her slightly parted lips as if she had been running. Amazed for the moment, John Aldous did not move. Somewhere in that crowd Joanne expected to find a face she knew! The truth struck him dumb—made him inert and lifeless. He, too, stared as if in a trance. And then, suddenly, every drop of blood in his body blazed into ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... we lay out on the barge in the mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and then he would spit into the ashes and mutter into his beard. I shall never forget that day. The steamer was like a monster with fiery nostrils, and the other barges were dumb creatures with eyes, where the fires were; we couldn't see the bank, but now and then a bluff and high trees, or a castle, showed in the mist. If I had only had paint and canvas that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... never before heard an animal speak, and was struck dumb with surprise. However, she was so enchanted at the words of the crab that she smiled sweetly and held out her hand; it was taken, not by the crab, which had stood there only a moment before, but by a little old ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... talked to the Interpreter in the sign language of the deaf and dumb. The Interpreter replied in the same manner and, with a smiling nod to the children, Billy returned to the garden in the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... sooner the ordeal was over the better for all concerned. They went their way and never a word more would Borlase answer, though Green kept at him like a running brook to change his mind and act like a sensible man and not let a piece of folly spoil his own life. But he bided dumb until they reached the home of the Greens; and there stood Cicely at the gate with the moon throwing its light upon her and making her lint-white ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... thing you had under your coat was a saw. I saw you hide something under the woodpile here, but I'm so dumb that I didn't think much of it at the time. Now, the log over the gully was a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... in a hollow, he was the man who could drag it a quarter of a mile and set it on a hill, yoked up, of course, with as many other stewards as he could get. If there was anything to be done he could do it, and in the right spirit. But he was one of God's dumb saints. He had faith and he had works, but he couldn't pray, that is, not in public. This led to the incident to which I have ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... Mistrust with no little confidence commended me in dumb show to the landlady of the Inn, a Mrs. Nature, if I understood him aright. This person was still comely, though of uncertain age, wore cherry ribbons, smiled rather vacantly from vague, wonderful, indescribable eyes that seemed to change colour, like the chameleon, according to ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... But her little hand lay unreprovingly in his,—nestling like a timid bird which loved to be there, and sought not to escape. He pressed it gently to his heart; he felt by its magnetic touch, by that dumb alphabet of love, more eloquent than spoken words, that he had won the heart of Amelie ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... effort—the use of her muscles was joy to her—Split paused to wish that the house might fall on Sissy; that she might suddenly become dumb; that the key to the piano might be lost—anything that would ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... plain reason, because it is derived from informations which existed just as they are now, before man was created, and Adam fell. How can that be a real substantive Theology, though it takes the name, which is but an abstraction, a particular aspect of the whole truth, and is dumb almost as regards the moral attributes of the Creator, and utterly ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... A moment of dumb confusion succeeded, then she realized her madness, and the thing as it really was. Running to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their flight, like them to die. —Gone now! Gone to the Hades of dead loves! Is it for this that I have left the world?— Left what, poor fool? Is this, then, all that comes Of that night when the closing door fell dumb On music and on voices, and I went Forth from the ordered tumult of the dance, Under the clear cope of the moonless night, Wandering away without the city-walls, Between the silent meadows and the stars, Till something woke ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... he had such a contempt for all things on earth that it did not seem worth the while to him to move hand or lips for any cause. Some French writer has called such a condition of desiccation of the heart's interior. Maryan found that definition quite appropriate. When he sat motionless, deaf and dumb, or walked like an automaton moved by springs, he felt exactly as if the interior of his heart were ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... whatever point a discussion starts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is the madness of Rufus about Naevia; 'He thinks of nothing else; talks of nothing else, and if Naevia did not exist, Rufus would be dumb.'" ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... it out any time if he wanted to get away, and that the window had no fastenings. 'What is the good of a man,' he said to himself at last, 'if he does not understand man's talk? Now I am as silly and dumb as a man would be with us in the jungle. I ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... seized by an uncontrollable impulse to leap off and end all, the same as some persons are affected when on the roof of a tall building. So you back into the nearest corner and try to look like a part of the furniture—and wait in dumb misery. ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... in) the brute creation. They become immobile entities, or animals, or beasts of burden; or carnivorous creatures, or snakes, or worms, insects, and birds; or creatures, of the oviparous order, or quadrupeds of diverse species; or lunatics, or deaf or dumb human beings, or men that are afflicted by dreadful maladies and regarded as unclean. These men of evil conduct, always exhibiting the indications of their acts, sink in Darkness. Their course (of migrations) is always downwards. Appertaining to the quality of Darkness, they ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... utmost efforts, be borne away into lasting captivity, how could he return to tell the widowed mother that she was childless, though the dear one, henceforth to be mourned as dead, had not yet gone to the dead father? O that he had not slept! And with the big tears in his eyes, bespeaking the dumb anguish of his heart, the poor fellow turned to take another and a seventh survey of the valley, if haply he might not spy out some feature of the ground which, hitherto unnoted and favoring concealment, might enable him, without too great ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... of an eminent Puritan divine. In the oak-panelled room where the theologian wrote his famous tract upon the Carpenter who Profanely undertook to Dispense the Word in the way of Public Ministration, and was Divinely struck Dumb in consequence, Carron now ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... ears? what is that by which they are curious and inquisitive, or on the contrary unmoved by what is said? is it the faculty of hearing? It is no other than the faculty of the will. Will this faculty then, seeing that it is amidst all the other faculties which are blind and dumb and unable to see anything else except the very acts for which they are appointed in order to minister to this (faculty) and serve it, but this faculty alone sees sharp and sees what is the value of each ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... gentle sleep, that he resolved to preserve and defend this pretty jewel of love. With tears in his eyes he kissed her sweet golden tresses, the beautiful eyelids, and her ripe red mouth, and he did it softly for fear of waking her. There was all his fruition, the dumb delight which still inflamed his heart without in the least affecting Blanche. Then he deplored the snows of his leafless old age, the poor old man, that he saw clearly that God had amused himself by giving him nuts when his teeth ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... scarcely a disease or deformity in nature for which there is not some edifice, in which the afflicted are lodged, fed, and kindly treated. Would that we had such institutions in Hindustan!" In pursuance of this feeling, we now find him visiting the Blind Asylum and the Deaf and Dumb School; and the circumstantial details into which he enters of the comforts provided for the inmates of these establishments, and the proficiency which many of them had attained in trades and accomplishments apparently inconsistent with their privations, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... midnight, by an alerte announcing the passing of a Zeppelin. I got up and went out-of-doors, but neither heard nor saw anything, except a bicycle going over the hill, and a voice calling "Lights out." Evidently it did not get to Paris, as the papers have been absolutely dumb. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... Hyldreda paused, dumb with wonder, for despite the gorgeous show of jeweled attire, she recognized that face. It was the same she had looked at an hour before in the little cracked mirror. The lady in the carriage was the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... feelings in a shriek of joyful surprise, seemed to be struck dumb. Anders and Butterface stood still,—speechless. As for the Eskimos, they turned with one hideous yell, and fled from the spot like maniacs—excepting Chingatok, who, although startled, stood his ground in an ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... 380, 384. "He struck the good Germans dumb with admiration, unable to comprehend how it was that their interests had become so familiar to him and with what ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... not Jane Holland, but Gisborne's limited idea of her. It was a sombre face, broadened and foreshortened by the heavy, leaning brows. A face with a straight-drawn mouth and eyes prophetic of tragedy, a face in which her genius brooded, downcast, flameless, and dumb. He had got all her features, her long black eyebrows, her large, deep-set eyes, flattened queerly by the level eyebrows, her nose, a trifle too long in the bridge, too wide in the nostril, and her mouth which could look straight enough when her will ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... dumb, with great staring eyes, he looked round into the faces of those about him. Then in thick, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... had no other thing to do, Save to wait for the sign to come: So, like things of stone in a valley lone, Quiet we sat and dumb: But each man's heart beat thick and quick, Like ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... as one dumb, and did not inarticulate any sound—except the groan of horror which had shot through her when she had glanced at those women—until the coach stopped in ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... silenced him at once and not even any other ragamuffin lifted his voice. The audience were startled mute. They were quite ready to applaud the girl's daring, but the shocking impropriety of her breach of decorum struck them dumb. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... on high the universal shrieks of women; the men stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earth shake under their feet; the walls of the theater trembled; and beyond in the distance they heard the crash of falling roofs; an instant more, and the mountain cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... will kill your father; it struck him dumb. I can't draw him into any conversation about her; and he is so angry!" Thus the troubled mother would talk and cry. The sisters and brothers listen to her, and, without comprehending "the prospect so awful in Betsey's ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... Monday the 16th being the day for departure, they were to strike their tents, and troubled and sad were the few days thus left him for preparation and farewell. He included in his leave-taking his deaf, dumb, and blind friends; and, to use his own homely phrase, was yet more terribly "down in the mouth" at taking leave of his hearing, speaking, and seeing friends. "I shall see you soon, please God, and that sets ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... smaller chambers and halls. Rollo was exceedingly interested in the exhibition, and in all the attendant circumstances of it; but he could not tell whether Allie was pleased or not. She seemed bewildered and struck dumb with amazement at the strange aspect of the scenes and spectacles which were continually presented to view. The immense extent and the gorgeous magnificence of the galleries and halls, the countless multitude of statues, and the almost spectral appearance which they assumed when the torch bearers ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... fortune from your face. And he stands, smiling encouragement, like a clumsy dentist. When the big men, romping and swearing a moment before, hand across their sixpence, and stand before him, they are suddenly serious, dumb, timid, almost blushing as the Professor's quick hand notches the printed card. They are like little children caught playing in a forbidden garden by the owner, stepping from behind ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... young man, did you meet a tailor on the road?" "Yes," replied Mr. C. (who was never at a loss for a rejoinder) "I did; and he told me, if I went a little further I should meet a goose!" The assailant was struck dumb, while the traveller ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... eleven years' begging in churches and convents. The Pope himself has blessed it, and given it the power that whosoever eats or drinks out of it shall be pardoned of all his sins." Then said the king to Charlot, "My son, these are right holy men; see how the dumb beast ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Each chamber fair and dumb, Ere life, the Lord, is come With pomp into his hall,— Ere Toil has trod the floors, Ere Love has lit the fires, Or young great-eyed Desires Have, timid, tried the doors; Or from east-window leaned One Hope, to greet the sun, Or one gray Sorrow screened Her sight against ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... when it came the turn of the venerable priest Zacharias to offer the sacrifice in the Jewish temple—a privilege which comes to a priest but once in his lifetime—he returned before the people from the inner sanctuary stricken dumb, and manifesting by signs that he had seen a vision, the event creating great excitement among the members of his faith. Later he made it known that in the sanctuary he had a vision of an angel, who declared ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... to think of something else to say, but the appearance of the two was so amazing that, as he told Dorothy afterwards, he was struck dumb. The larger was at least two hundred feet long and made entirely of blocks of wood. On each block was a letter of the alphabet. The head was a huge square block with a serpent's face and long, curling, tape-measure tongue. The little ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... long-suffering is overwhelming. They form the most striking human exemplification of divine meekness and submission, the world has ever seen, and bring to mind continually the passage, 'He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... it, they preserved the fascination of the first moments of their meeting in the woods, the first days, the first nights together: those hours of sleep in each other's arms, still, unthinking, sinking down into a flood of love and silent joy. Swift fancies, visions, dumb thoughts, titillating, and making them go pale, and their hearts sink under their desire, bringing all about them a buzzing as of bees. A fine light, and tender.... Their hearts sink and beat no more, borne down in excess of sweetness. Silence, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... his heart was heavy, while he did his best to convey in dumb show his congratulations to Kambira, for he saw in this unexpected re-union an insurmountable difficulty in the way of taking Azinte back to her former mistress—not that he had ever seen the remotest chance of his being able to achieve that desirable end ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Their maim'd, their sick, their age-enfeebled sires Have sunk sad victims to the sateless fires; They greet with one last look their tottering walls, See the blaze thicken, as the ruin falls, Then o'er the country train their dumb despair, And far behind them leave the dancing glare; Their own crusht roofs still lend a trembling light, Point their long shadows and direct their flight. Till wandering wide they seek some cottage door, Ask the vile pittance due the vagrant poor; Or faint and faltering on the devious ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow |
