"Dumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to me, and used to implore me to become a Catholic. One day he took me up to this stone and spoke long and earnestly about it. What a marvellous miracle it was. There was the stone; I could see it for myself. What a dumb but eloquent testimony was it not offering; how could I account for such things? and more to the same effect, all said obviously in good faith, and with no idea save that of guiding me to the truth. I was powerless. I could not ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... through endless passages to an endless gymnasium, and every now and then I came across an Indian club or a dumb-bell, wielded by energetic female athletes. I should have liked to ask them whether they felt well, but I realised—only just in time—that the question would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... the corner, almost out of sight behind the desk, was the room's single absolute incongruity. There the surprised visitor saw, reposing quietly in its shadowy retreat, a hundred pound dumb-bell. This was the President's sole remaining animal joy, the presence of this dumb-bell. He rarely touched it now, although the colored janitor's assistant scrupulously dusted it each morning, but it was an agreeable reminder of the days when the old lion was young and when his teeth, metaphorically ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... triumph in my soul, said unto her with my brain-elements that which remained of those words. And my spirit felt them strike upon the spirit of Naani, and awake her memory, as with the violence of a blow. And for a little while she stumbled, dumb before so much newness and certainly. And her spirit then to waken, and she near wept with the fright and the sudden, new wonder of ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... belonged to him. He had left them lying about when he went away to France. And old Donald had put them here safely against his return. Jack stared at them, blinking. He was full of a dumb protest. It didn't seem right. Nothing seemed right. In young MacRae's mind there was nothing terrible about death. He had become used to that. But he had imagination. He could see his father going on day after day, month after month, year ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... cry," shouted Norman. "I can't stand snivelling. If you've anything to say, say it and have done. Great Kitty, is the girl possessed of a dumb spirit? Don't look at me like that—I'm human—I haven't got a tail! Who are ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... knew that the job on which they were entering was not child's play. They knew that democracy depended upon what they did in that line. They knew that many of them would never come back. They knew that at last the real thing was facing them. They were not like dumb, driven beasts. They were men. They were American men. They were thinking men. They were silent men. ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... in dumb, silent, hideous agony which crushed for the moment belief and hope, a canary from the aviary beyond set up a trilling song. She listened for a second; it seemed to hurt her more. The poor bird was in captivity, as was her soul. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... assemblies for his brilliancy of talents as a philosopher and painter,' who, with his wife, had been made proper recipients of the 'divine manuductions,' and gifted with power 'to diffuse healing to the afflicted; whether deaf, dumb, lame, halt, or blind.' The Archbishop was therefore entreated to compose a form of prayer to be used in all churches and chapels, that nothing might prevent the inestimable power of the De Loutherbourgs from having its free course, and to order public ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... not so? The cushat dove To such a shrine we trust, Though in dumb protest she will shove Her tootsies through the crust; And larks, that sing at Heaven's gate When April clouds are high, Not seldom gain the gourmet's plate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... Allen asked me, "If I wuz as crazy as a dumb loon and a losin' my faculties—what few of 'em you ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... as well tell you here and now that C. Wilbur Todd is a shrimp. Shrimp I have said and shrimp I always will say. He talks real brightly in his way—he will speak words like an actor or something—but for brains! Say, he always reminds me of the dumb friend of the great detective in the magazine stories, the one that goes along to the scene of the crime to ask silly questions and make fool guesses about the guilty one, and never even suspects who done the ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... thee is great, and I have relinquished for thy sake all my worldly portion, and been patient with thee a whole year. I beg God that He will, in His grace, soften thy heart toward me, and that thou mayest speak to me. Or, if thou be dumb, inform me by a sign, that I may give up hope of thy speaking. I also beg of God that He will bless thee with a son that may inherit my kingdom after me; for I am solitary, having none to be my heir, and my age hath become great. I ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... beings would be the same if we were altogether managed by the sure, swift, and easy forces of nature. Progress would cease. We should move on our humdrum round as fixedly constituted, as submissive to external influence, and with as little exertion of intelligence as the dumb objects we behold. Every power within us would be actual, displayed in its full extent, and involving no variety of future possibility. We should live altogether in the present, and no changes would be imagined or sought. From this dull routine we are saved by ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... painting, finding himself all at once in front of one of those charming compositions—pictures that they would make a gallery of in London, but which we can afford to put out of doors; he is fixed, he is dumb with astonishment and delight—he goes mad. Well, Lieber Herr, this is exactly what happened to one of your English nobility. Milor arrived in Vienna; and as he had made a wager that he would see every notability in the city and its environs in the course of three days, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... poet makes the dumb peasant speak, describe his woes, and draw up a list of his complaints. By way of reply, anonymous clerks compose songs, half English and half Latin, a favourite mixture at that time, in which they express their horror of the rebels.[596] Others sound the praises of the English heroes of the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... indefinite details. His taste and literary acquirements completed the spell by which Madame Carolina was willingly enchanted. A low Dutch professor, whose luminous genius rendered unnecessary the ceremony of shaving; and a dumb dwarf, in whose interesting appearance was forgotten its perfect idiocy, prosy improvisatore, and a South American savage, were all superseded by the appearance ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... and the condemned were roughly ordered to leave it. They did so mechanically and without resistance. The executioner's assistants seized upon them, dragging them into an open space, as if, instead of human beings, they had been merely dumb animals, awaiting slaughter in a butcher's shambles. The sans-culottes cheered; the tricoteuses, seated in knots, clapped their hands wildly in savage joy, delighted that more blood was speedily to be spilled. It was an appalling ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... love, as hopeless as the shattering song, Wailed for loved beings who have joined the throng Of mighty dead ones. . . . Nay, but she was weak, Knew only prayers and ballads, could not speak With eloquence, save what dumb creatures have, That with small cries and touches small ...
— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot
... putty consid'able of an experiment, but I ben watchin' ye putty close, an' I'm more'n satisfied. Mebbe Timson c'd beat ye at figurin' an' countin' money when you fust come, an' knowed more about the pertic'ler points of the office, but outside of that he was the biggist dumb-head I ever see, an' you know how he left things. He hadn't no tack, fer one thing. Outside of summin' up figures an' countin' money he had a faculty fer gettin' things t'other-end to that beat all. I'd tell him a thing, an' explain it to him two three ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... towels, dressings, and adhesive plaster. It seemed to him more than a fancy that there was healing in the cool, soft fingers which washed his face and adjusted the bandages. His eyes, usually so hard, held now the dumb hunger one sees in those of a faithful dog. They searched hers for something which he knew he would never find ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... chorus of shrill indignation with which the world of woman encounters the slightest comment of extraneous critics. The censor is at once told flatly that he knows nothing of woman. He is a bachelor, he is blighted in love, he is envious, spiteful; he is blind, deaf, dumb. All this goes without saying, as the French have it, but he is certainly ignorant. The truth is, it is woman who knows nothing of herself. It is only self-analysis which reveals to us our inner anomalies, our ridiculous self-contrasts; it is ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... never a question. Like the angel she is, she let me be near her so long as I held my peace; but, fool that I am, I break me promise again and again. I can't keep silent when I see her. The truth would burst from me lips if I was dumb." ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... of music's gorgeous fane, I raved about Rossini, Hoped Ronzo would come back again, And criticized Paccini; I wished the chorus singers dumb. The trumpets more pacific, And eulogized Brocard's APLOMB And voted Paul "terrific." What cared she for Medea's pride Or Desdemona's sorrow? "Alas!" my beauteous listener sighed, "We MUST have ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the numerous books purporting to be a history of my life states with the utmost soberness that, as a boy, I was cruel to dumb animals and to my schoolmates, and, as for my teachers, to them I was a continual trouble and annoyance. A hundred of my friends and schoolmates will bear me out in the statement that, far from being cruel to either dumb animals or human beings, I was ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... 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 ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... From every beast; more duteous at her call, Than at Circean call the herd disguised. He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood, But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck, Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod. His gentle dumb expression turned at length The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue Organick, or impulse of vocal air, His fraudulent temptation thus began. Wonder not, sovran Mistress, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... we laid our victim out on the floor, tied hand and foot and as powerless to speak as though he had been born deaf and dumb. "We'll just rifle your chest, Cato, and stow you away in the bath-tub with a sofa-cushion under your head to make you comfortable, and bid you farewell— not au revoir, Cato, but just ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... do." Craig spoke as if his verdict were probably overpartial to her. "It's queer about families and the kind of children they have. Every once in a while you'll find a dumb ass of a man whose brain will get to boiling with liquor or some other ferment, and it'll incubate an idea, a real idea. It's that way about paternity—or, rather, maternity. Now who'd think that inane, silly mother of Margaret's could have brought such a person ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Virginia, which we call a jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and all men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out, and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned precisely as he would have been questioned in any court ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... people, and Maurice did not like to be driven off the rink with "Better come along with me" or "I should think a good brisk walk to Clavedel would be about your mark." Winn's idea of a walk was silence and pace; he had a poor notion of small talk, and he became peculiarly dumb with a young man whose idea ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... second year) with such a father over her, or that having so lived she had preserved the sweetness and clinging softness of temperament which gave to her such a strange charm—at least in the opinion of one. Doubtless she owed much of her well being to the kindly care of an old deaf and dumb woman, the only servant in that lonely old house, who had entered it to nurse the children's mother through her last illness, and had stayed on almost as a matter of course, receiving no wage for her untiring service, but ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... herself stricken dumb by this cool proposal. The degradation which awaits the drug slave had never been more succinctly expounded to her. She was to employ Gray's foolish devotion for the commercial advantage of Kazmah. Of course Gray might any ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... wherever brought up. They are the infidels who are untrue to the light they have; who deny the plenary inspiration of that elder Scripture written by the finger of God upon the human heart; who overlay their reason with heaps of antiquated traditions; who bid their conscience stand dumb before appalling iniquities in obedience to the ill-read letter of an ancient record; who, in the interest of power, wealth, worldliness, not seldom of unrighteousness and inhumanity, plead for a Tract society, a Bible, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... earnest prayer Be, too, for light—for strength to bear Our portion of the weight of care, That crushes into dumb despair One half the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... dumb and motionless at this point by the recurrence of the dreadful howling, louder than ever, as ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb, like barefoot Dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and faggots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the devotion of thy servant to thee and to the Faith he serves with little reck to life. In this very expedition was I wounded nigh unto death. The livid scar of it is a dumb witness to my zeal. Where ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... will be neglected on the other side. The child ought to love his mother before he knows that it is his duty to love her. If the voice of natural affection be not strengthened by habit and by care, it will grow dumb even in childhood; and thus the heart dies, so to speak, before it is born. Thus from the outset we are beyond ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... else can you call him? If I'd been deaf or he'd been dumb, I could have married him. But living with father, Ive got accustomed to cleverness. Jerry would drive me mad: you know very well hes a fool: even Johnny thinks him ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... about his schools and his life in Europe, he became critical, and conversed about picture-galleries and foreign life with no lack of accuracy, while the Squire listened smiling and Leila sat dumb with astonishment as the dinner went on. He ate little and kept in mind the endless lessons in regard to what he should or should not eat. Meanwhile, he silently approved of the old silver and these well-bred ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... here, and meditate on an Eternity, in such fashion as we could? Alas, how like an old osseous fragment, a broken blackened shin-bone of the old dead Ages, this black ruin looks out, not yet covered by the soil; still indicating what a once gigantic Life lies buried there! It is dead now, and dumb; but was alive once, and spake. For twenty generations, here was the earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life-wrestle,—looked at by Earth, by Heaven and Hell. Bells tolled to prayers; and men, of many humours, various thoughts, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Beugnot, I., 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
... nine-foot-long coffin plank, whom we overtook on the trail. A handful of cash and cigarettes won his consent, but in spite of my men's efforts to calm his fears, the poor fellow cringed and trembled so, as I got my camera into position, that I gave it up. I felt as I might feel if I kicked a dumb animal. ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... fine military-looking old fellow—invites me to dine with him and his charming family. It is pleasant to speak and hear spoken one's native tongue again, after being comparatively deaf and dumb in that language for nearly five years. It is still more delightful to feel at home with one's countrymen and countrywomen in a strange land, and thus, when I take leave of my hospitable English host and his family, I sincerely regret, with them, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... clenched hands above their heads, shouted vehemently. Their cries were partly in Egyptian, partly in their own tongue, but the cause of their terror and the burden of their supplications were the same. The Egyptians were upon them! Even the dumb beasts were swept into the panic and the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... from the bosom of her dress and began to draw the corners apart. "Singing doesn't seem to be a very brainy profession, Mrs. Harsanyi," she said slowly. "The people I see now are not a bit like the ones I used to meet here. Mr. Harsanyi's pupils, even the dumb ones, had more—well, more of everything, it seems to me. The people I have to play accompaniments for are discouraging. The professionals, like Katharine Priest and Miles Murdstone, are worst of all. If I have to play 'The Messiah' much longer for Mrs. Priest, I'll go ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... of the job; I'm dumb," grunted Barry. "All the same, I'd pass up Houten's proposition for the pleasure of pushing that chap's jib three inches further inboard. Let's get something to ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... into his serious eyes, half shrinking away as if she suddenly comprehended the dumb, patient strength of the man, his rugged, changeless resolution. There was a bit of falter in the quick response, yet this was ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... It was no use to argue and try to explain. I knew he did not believe what he was saying, but he worked himself into a rage, he accused me of awful things, and called me awful names in a loud voice, so that he could be heard, until I was dumb and staggering. All the time, I knew there was a reason, but I could not tell then what it was. He said at last, that he was going to Mr. Ffolliott. He said, 'I will meet him in the wood and I will ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... be here if I did?" she flashed resentfully. "I was a country girl away at school, more foolish than one of those dumb Swedes in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... another thing, professor. You've got to go dumb on this job, for which I double the twenty.' He looked puzzled, but when he finally understood me, he said 'Surely' again, and I went back to ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... put on her chignon, her curls, her breast elevator, her bustle, her high-heeled shoes, a little rouge, a little whiting and a bit of court-plaster, and sallied forth, down the dumb-waiter to the cellar, and thence, through the ash-hole, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... Pauses above the death-still wood—the moon; The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres—vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come Where the Grave closes on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... block from the granite shaft first stands rude and shapeless before him. See him in his earlier strife with the obstinate matter—how uncouth the first outline of limb and feature; unlovelier often in the rugged commencements of shape, than when the dumb mass stood shapeless. If the sculptor had stopped there, the thing might serve as an image for the savage of an abominable creed, engaged in the sacrifice of human flesh. But he pauses not, he works on. Stroke by stroke comes from ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... actors themselves seemed to have but a confused recollection of the part they played. Those concerned, however, will probably never forget Diggory's bursting into the room as they sat finishing supper, and striking every one dumb with amazement by saying to Mr. Blake, "Please, sir, some fellows are stealing our fireworks, and I've locked them up in the shed." And there will still remain in their minds memories of a wild rush to the playground; of old Noaks ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... rage, Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart; So I, for fear of trust, forget to say The perfect ceremony of love's rite, And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might. O, let my looks be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast; Who plead for love, and look for recompense, More than that tongue that more hath more express'd. O, learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... McGuire, you hain't any inception of an idea of what those men an' women an'—yes, children—did. Why, one of 'em wasn't only blind, but deaf an' dumb, too. She was a girl. An' now she writes books an' gives lecturin's, an', ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... must confess," said the gardener. "The dumb animal has found missy's book, and brought it back. Miss Lily ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... calmly, "I must confide my sufferings to some one, but not now. I will not spoil our morning walk by calling up such a frightful scene. I can myself scarcely understand how it is possible that I, who cannot bear to see dumb creatures suffer, have to reproach myself with the death of ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... on my toes, I don't feel right yet, and when any fellow does that to me, why there ain't no mistake about it, his time is out and the sentence is come to pass. He begged for his life, oh, it was piteous to see him. I don't mean to say the dumb beast spoke, but his looks were so beseeching just the way if you was tied up to the halbert to be whipped, you'd look ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... courteous surprise—What! she did not wish to be assisted?—and set the vessel on a high ledge, whence she had much ado to lift it down. As she did so, splash! half the water was spilled: then her tormentor went through a dumb show of sympathy and sorrow until the crone seemed like to burst with fury. At last he broke into a fit of shrill laughter, the first sound he had uttered, made a macaronic gesture, and capered off with the airiest gambols and antics, like a very devil's kid. A street-urchin teasing an old woman ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... to learn, that nothing helps a sorrow that can't be helped like bearing it. I don't mean to lie down under it like a dumb beast—but just take it up and bear it. That's what you're doing now, and sometime you'll be able to carry it, and still laugh now and again, when it's right to laugh—and even jest, on occasion. It's been done and done well. It's good for a man to do it. The lass down there at the cabin ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... drama To one whose heart is dumb. In listless panorama The actors go and come. The couple just before me Keep bobbing to and fro. It doesn't even bore me To see them doing so. The lover closely locks his Emotions one and all, When she is in the boxes, And he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... and given a popular exposition of their mutual dependence. Drawing from the antique has long been an acknowledged initiation for the limner, and Campbell, in his terse description of the histrionic art, says that therein "verse ceases to be airy thought, and sculpture to be dumb." How much of their peculiar effects did Talma, Kemble, and Rachel owe to the attitudes, gestures, and drapery of the Grecian statues! Kean adopted the "dying fall" of General Abercrombie's figure in St. Paul's as the model of his own. Some of the memorable scenes and votaries of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... for a time, and then calling his stenographers from their room, dictated them blind and himself dumb with details of a deal he was putting through to get control of the cracker companies of the country. When he finished, the sunset was glaring across the water through the window in front of him, and he had laid his ghost. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... hypocrites and Pharisees who are deprived after death of all truth and good and thereupon are sent into outer darkness. Those who have confirmed themselves by this kind of profanation against the Divine and against the Word and thus against the spiritual things of the Word, sit in outer darkness dumb, unable to speak, wanting to babble pious and holy things as they did in the world, but unable to do so. For in the spiritual world everyone is compelled to speak as he thinks. A hypocrite, however, wants to speak otherwise than he thinks, but there is impediment in the tongue as ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... he could hear the slow rise and fall of water, dull and heavy and without any splash, like the dumb breathing ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... and tear madly at his son's clothes; he knocked his hat off, and trampled it under his feet; he seized with both hands the lace collar, and laughed when the shreds remained in his hands. William was at first dumb with terror, but the loud laugh of his sister, who found this scene amusing, restored his presence of mind; with mad violence he pushed his father ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... sheer terror, was a passionate regret that Hermy and Ursy had not come. They would have thought it tremendous larks, and would have invented some wonderful offensive with fire-irons and golf-clubs and dumb-bells. Even Tipsipoozie, the lately-abhorred, would have been a succour in this crisis, and why, oh why, had not Georgie had him to sleep in his bedroom instead of making him cosy in the woodshed? He would have let Tipsipoozie ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... mate; "none of your skylarking! Lower away!'' But he evidently enjoyed the joke. The pig squealed like the "crack of doom,'' and tears stood in the poor darky's eyes; and he muttered something about having no pity on a dumb beast. "Dumb beast!'' said Jack, "if she's what you call a dumb beast, then my eyes a'n't mates.'' This produced a laugh from all but the cook. He was too intent upon seeing her safe in the boat. He watched her all the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the custom of placing columns upon tombs, on which were frequently represented chariots with two or four horses. The horses standing still to mourn for their master, could not be more finely represented than by the dumb sorrow of images standing over a tomb. Perhaps the very posture in which these horses are described, their heads bowed down, and their manes falling in the dust, has an allusion to the attitude in which those statues ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... that it was at Salamis that the army had perished, and the city of Athens that had been chief among their enemies, the old men breaking in upon his story as he spake with their lamentations. But after a while the Queen Atossa stood forward, saying, "For a while I was dumb, for the trouble that I heard suffered me not to speak. But we must bear what the Gods send. Tell me, therefore, who is yet alive? and for whom must we ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... from below at this scene which was all the more pleasing to witness because it was not meant to be seen. He contemplated with bitterness that beauty, that happiness. After all, nature was not dumb in the poor fellow, and his human sensibility, all maliciously contorted as it was, quivered no less than any other. He thought of the miserable portion which Providence had allotted to him; that woman and the pleasure of love, would pass forever before his eyes, and that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... slighted arts futurity shall trust, And rising ages hasten to be just. At length, our mighty bard's victorious lays Fill the loud voice of universal praise; And baffled spite, with hopeless anguish dumb, Yields to renown the centuries to come; With ardent haste each candidate of fame, Ambitious, catches at his tow'ring name; He sees, and pitying sees, vain wealth bestow Those pageant honours, which he scorn'd below; While crowds ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... wrong. I will NOT come!" He was angry, but his mind was confused. He loved her with all the strength of his simple, straightforward nature. Therefore he appeared at his worst before her—usually either incoherent or dumb. It was not surprising that whenever it was suggested that only a superior man could get on so well as he did, she always answered: "He works twice as hard as any one else, and you don't need much brains ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... loftiest, most philosophic, most gracious, would, for the time being, have jarred and ruffled his naturally equable spirit. Two only exceptions might have been conceivably possible—some humble, large-souled friend, anxious only to anticipate his slightest wish, desirous only of his company, and—dumb, and so unable to fret him with ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... when accepting you, mean "I am too happy to speak." The dumb show of staring into each other's faces, squeezing fingers, and sighing, originated, we have reason to believe, with the ancient Romans. It is much practised now-a-days—as saving breath, and being more lover-like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... flannel, while she had a waistbelt and pouch of brilliant blue. Did she know of these harmonies of color or of the picturesqueness of her appearance as she came across the bridge in the sunlight? As she drew near she stared at the stranger with the big, dumb eyes of a wild animal. There was no fear, only a sort of surprised observation in them. And as she passed she uttered, without a smile, some brief and laconic salutation in Gaelic, which of course the young man could not understand. He raised his cap, however, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... seem that he was expected to fling his life away like a dumb brute entering the reeking shambles. His youth and abilities had been given him for some other purpose. Again palsying fear and ignoble selfishness tugged at his heart-strings, and he felt all his carefully cultivated ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... be seen by the many raids which they have made, beginning as far back as December twenty-fifth, when their chief, J. E. B. Stuart, anxious to obtain something suitable with which to celebrate the holidays, crossed the Rappahannock, advanced on Dumfries, where it would seem that our boys, freezing dumb (Dumfries), suffered the raider to capture not less than twenty-five wagons, and at least two hundred prisoners. Moving boldly northward, he struck the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, burning the bridge across the Accotink Run, and from Burke's Station he swung around ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... I was discharged. The man who went out of that prison door was not the man who had entered it. The law, conscious of the fact that no human power can make amends to an innocent man for a punishment unjustly inflicted, takes no notice of it. It is dumb before a wrong so monstrous. I went back to my native town. Every hand was stretched out to me. My old employers at the mill would have put me in my old place, but I refused. I inquired for Barbara and for him. They had married after my mother's death and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... still awhile, and, ere we go, We'll make your eyes with laughter flow. Let Momus' mates judge how they list. We fear not what they babble; Nor any paltry poet's pen Amongst that rascal rabble. But time forbids me further speech, My tongue must stop her race; My time is come, I must be dumb, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... flames prepared for his own destruction. Sallust, however, was not present on the occasion, and the threat probably had been uttered at an earlier period of Catiline's career. Cicero tells us expressly, in one of his subsequent works, that Catiline was struck dumb.[200] ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... of the chief eunuch, who had come to take them to the harem, Brigit and Monny might almost as well have been deaf and dumb. Brigit knew practically nothing of Arabic; and Monny, though she had been vaguely studying since her arrival, had been too passionately occupied with other things to give much time or attention to the language of Egypt's invaders. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... a poor dumb creature. He can't speak, Jacky, but look at his poor frightened eye; it seems to say have you got the heart to go on and leave me to die for the want of a drop of water. Oh! Jacky, you that is so clever in reading the signs of Nature, have pity on the poor thing and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... madam, about the plans," he said. "It worries Mr. Allan. You see, madam, the late Mrs. Harrington was a great one for plans. She had, if I may say so, a new one every day, and she'd argue you deaf, dumb, and blind—not to speak ill of the dead—till you were fair beat out fighting it. Then you'd settle down to it—and next day there be another one, with Mrs. Harrington rooting for it just as hard, ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... alone His sinking, Bleeding heart to weep is fain, But poor dumb creatures sees He drinking Deep the bitter cup of pain, Hears the wailing, anguished cry, Hears but ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he stepped back within the pillar, which shut to again closely behind him. For a while the twelve paladins were dumb with wonder and consternation. The Emperor was the first to break ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... of the disciples to adjust their Messianic ideas to the death of their Master was not removed by the rebuke Jesus administered to Peter at Caesarea Philippi; their objections were only silenced. It would seem that even when they saw his death to be inevitable, they were simply dumb with hope that in some way he would come off victor; the cross and the tomb crushed out that hope—at least from most of them. If one disciple, his closest friend, recalled and believed his words when he saw the empty tomb (John xx. 8), others were ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... see how by means of sympathy we can at once pass the gulf which separates man from man. All the devices of the ages in the way of dumb or spoken language fail to win across the void, and leave the two beings apart; but with a step the sympathetic spirit passes the gulf. In this strange feature we have the completion of the series of differences between the inorganic and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... bareheaded, clad in torn rags. To all his questions she replied in a voice low and tremulous, and very simply—that is to say, to such of them as she would answer at all. To many—to all which touched upon Galors and his business with her in the quarry—she was as dumb as a fish. Prosper was as patient ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... he used like wireless telegraphy. Miss Helen Kellar is one of the best known for telepathy. She was born blind, also deaf and dumb. She is a great ...
— ABC's of Science • Charles Oliver
... Lord God of Heaven and Earth, that thou mayest end thy days in peace.' Having thus spoken he went his way; she, how proud soever, not seeking to stay him nor doing him any harm, but standing there silent and dumb under the tall pillars of the door, being withheld and stilled by something, she knew ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... the next morning and never recovered them. I remember the ridicule which was expressed at our moving camp on the warnings of a horse. "Injun-bit," "Man-afraid-of-his-horses," were some of the terms applied to us,—yet the practical plainsman knew enough to take warning from his dumb beast. Fear, no doubt, gives horses an unusual sense of smell, and I have known them to detect the presence of a bear, on a favorable ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... and seamed, and chasmed, was yet accessible—and more than one person in the parish had reached the bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it—and ere the cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, through among dangers that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and then the head of another, and she ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... have a heathenish name posted on her house, and expect her friends to pronounce it when she couldn't pronounce it herself. She seemed grieved when at first I could not see the absolute necessity of naming the cottage at all, telling her that in America we named only grand places. She was struck dumb with amazement at this piece of information, and failed to conceive of the confusion that must ensue in villages where streets were scarcely named or houses numbered. I confess it had never occurred to me that our manner of doing was highly inconvenient, if not impossible, ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 him with ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... fainting being traced to Lady Swiggs' pocket book instead of her heart, the whole scene changes, Sister Slocum becomes as one dumb, the good fat man is seized with a nervous fit, the man in the spectacles hangs his head, and runs his fingers through his crispy hair, as Brother Spyke elongates his lean body, and is seen going into a melancholy mood, the others ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... three hours yet,' says Colonel Bud, 'and enduring of that time all we got to do is to get one of them Hightower deligates deef, dumb and blind drunk—so drunk he won't never git back to answer roll-call; and if he does, won't know his own name if he heered it. We will simply appint a committee of one, composed of some gen'elman from amongst our midst of acknowledged capacity and experience, to accomplish this ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... passed, darker and darker gloom settled upon his spirit. Disease crept over both mind and body, he was tortured by pain, and when at length the pain left him he sank into torpor. It was not madness that had come upon him, but a dumb stupor. For more than two years he lived, but it was a living death. Without memory, without hope, the great genius had become the voiceless ruin of a man. But at length a merciful end came. On an October day in 1745 Swift died. He who had torn his own heard with restless ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the ultimate object was not a low one, it was one which was supposed to be for the benefit of humanity and of the dumb creation. But that does not justify the means. The maxim, "The end justifies the means," is the greatest perversion of truth, and still more so if this hidden power, the power of suggestion, is used to injure any one for a more personal ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... to see new lights on the Catholic question precisely at that conjuncture when the Duke of York has been laid in his grave and Lord Liverpool struck dumb by the palsy. Would any man, woman, or child believe that after nineteen years' stubborn unbelief I was converted, at the very moment Mr. Canning was Prime Minister, out of pure conscience and the ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... prodigious dumb-bells to get his eyes to open, and a return to consciousness was like the stabbing of knives. But he opened his ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... and Hope, dazed and dumb, followed the others. They found the little room, where they had passed so many homelike hours, sadly demoralized. One of the great windows was shivered to splinters, and through it projected a heavy spar, now safely wedged from further harm, and as they gazed out through the other great panes, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry |
