"Mindless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and were watching the struggle with interest, but there was no warning from them. Whatever called Kaydessa into such mindless and will-less answer did not touch the animals. And neither Apache felt it. So perhaps only Kaydessa's people were subject to it, as she had thought. How far away was that machine? Not too near, for otherwise the ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... to cloak it by this cannonade. With that in eye he has bundled leftwardly Thomiere's division; mindless that thereby His wing and centre's mutual maintenance Has gone, and left a yawning vacancy. So be it. Good. His laxness is ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... whatever he means to drink, and only mangles what he means to carve. Inattentive to all the regards of social life, he mistimes or misplaces everything. He disputes with heat, and indiscriminately, mindless of the rank, character, and situation of those with whom he disputes; absolutely ignorant of the several gradations of familiarity or respect, he is exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurd to two of the three. Is ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and went towards the door, Alice followed me. The house agent sat in helpless amazement. He filled me with a sense of nausea. He seemed so gross, so mindless. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... this being so, what could it matter if she had anticipated some of her portion? And yet there was in her heart of hearts a terrible fear of that stern dowager, of the cold scorn in those splendid eyes when she should stand revealed in all her foolishness, her selfish, mindless, vain extravagances. She, who had never been reproved, shrank with a sickly dread from the idea of reproof. And to be told that her career as a fashionable beauty had been a failure! That would be the bitterest pang ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... youth's Arcadian day; And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreams Shades the brown woods or tints the sunset streams, The country doctor in the foreground seems, Whose ancient sulky down the village lanes Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains. I could not paint the scenery of my song, Mindless of one who looked thereon so long; Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round, Made friends o' the woods and rocks, and knew the sound Of each small brook, and what the hillside trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... him the most deeply, he had found May Webster a ready pupil; and when she differed from him she held her own with such merry defiance, that it gave her an added charm in his eyes. And now this mindless, fox-hunting squire was to carry her off, and life at Rudham would sink into one dead level of dulness. Thus it happened that he came ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... What kindle in thee this unpitied love? Thy own warm blush within the water glows, With thee the coloured shadow comes and goes, Its empty being on thyself relies; 40 Step thou aside, and the frail charmer dies. Still o'er the fountain's watery gleam he stood, Mindless of sleep, and negligent of food; Still viewed his face, and languished as he viewed. At length he raised his head, and thus began To vent his griefs, and tell the woods his pain. 'You trees,' says he, 'and thou surrounding grove, Who oft have been the kindly scenes of ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... epigram. Whether or not it would hold water did not bother him. The story of Eris was Barry Annan at his easiest and most persuasive. There was the characteristic and ungodly skill in it, the subtle partnership with a mindless public that seduces to mental speculation; the reassuring caress as reward for intellectual penetration; that inborn cleverness that makes the reader see, applaud, or pity him or herself in the sympathetic role of a plaything ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... never heard precisely that tone from her before. One word from Douglas and she had become a zombie—a mindless muscle preparation that existed only to obey. Anger filled him—anger that one he loved could be ordered by someone who wasn't worth a third of her—anger that she obeyed—anger at his own impotence and frustration. It wasn't a clean anger. It was a dark, red-splashed thing that ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... care for the unshared sigh, If in my fear of lapse or fall, Close I have clung to Christ through all, Mindless how rough the road might lie, Sure He ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... come to this place, I went to see him, and told him his father was well, but melancholy. He told me he was as much grieved for his father as for himself. I wondered at his speech, for I thought I had enough upon my spirit in reference to myself, to make me mindless of my husband and everyone else; they being safe among their friends. He told me also, that awhile before, his master (together with other Indians) were going to the French for powder; but by the way the Mohawks met with them, and ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... Timandra, for his wits Are drown'd and lost in his calamities. I have but little gold of late, brave Timon, The want whereof doth daily make revolt In my penurious band: I have heard, and griev'd How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth, Forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states, But for thy sword and fortune, trod ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... the Partholanians: the Second Race to the First,—both mindless: they came after their predecessors had all died out; and in their turn died or departed to the last man. So we find in The Secret Doctrine that the first two humanities passed utterly and left no trace. If ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... skilful or scientific surgery to take no heed of men- 159:12 tal conditions and to treat the patient as if she were so much mindless matter, and as if matter were the only factor to be consulted? Had these 159:15 unscientific surgeons understood metaphysics, they would have considered the woman's state of mind, and not have risked such treatment. They would either 159:18 ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... that both the sociologists and the reactionaries are wrong. It does not follow that human beings become less than human because their ideas appeal to more and more of humanity. Nor can we deduce that men are mindless solely from the fact that they are all of one mind. In plain fact the virtues of a mob cannot be found in a herd of bulls or a pack of wolves, any more than the crimes of a mob can be committed by a flock of ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... creativity and your worldwide success and we support your freedom of expression but you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of your work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant, repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 'The liberty of the subject'! A contradiction in terms. Banish this unutterable folly of freedom, and control the breeding of human flesh as we control the output of beef and of mutton. Then the face of the world will alter. Millions of money is annually spent in order that mindless humanity, congenital lunatics and madmen, may be fed and housed and kept alive. Their existences are to themselves less pleasurable than that of the beasts, they are a source of agony to those who have borne them; but they live to ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... attention was riveted on an object up the street. Around a bend a few hundred yards away a huge wild devil of a thing swung unsteadily, recklessly, almost striking the curb and lamp-post; and then, righting itself, it came on with a rush—a mindless destroyer. Now on one side of the street, now in the middle, now on the other side; gliding along through the twilight, barely to be seen, creeping nearer and nearer through the shadows, now again on the wrong side of the street where it would not ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate. So thought Palmyra; where is she? So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan; yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman. In his hurried march, Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the very impression of his ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... evil green moon blazes on for twenty-four hours more, the brain powers of Earth's millions will be forever shattered. So weakened will they be by then that recovery will be impossible even with the rays shut off, and the entire planet will be populated only by mindless imbeciles, readily available material for the myriads of monstrous hybrids that the invaders will create to ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the patient Stream Hasted unceasingly, Mindless of shade or gleam, Onward increasingly,— Widening, deepening Its rocky bed ever, That it might thus take in River by river;— And I said,—"Patient Stream, Hasting through shade and gleam, Careless of noontide beam, Loitering never, So teach thou ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... it. This sapience was all a big fake; he had to believe that. The Fuzzies were only little mindless animals. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... cocoanuts, which, even the latter, he cooked before eating and prepared before cooking. Pushed by an ever-present healthy appetite, and helped by inherited instincts based on the habits and knowledge of a long line of civilized ancestry, he had advanced in four years from an indolent, mindless existence to a plane of fearless, reasoning activity. He was a hunter of prowess, master of his surroundings, lord over all creatures he had seen, and, though still a cave-dweller when at home, in a fair way ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... life is dull. Chaplain, turnkeys, jailers, all who live in prisons are prisoners. Barren of mental resources, too stupid to see far less read the vast romance that lay all round him, every cell a volume; too mindless to comprehend his own grand situation on a salient of the State and of human nature, and to discern the sacred and endless pleasures to be gathered there, this unhappy dolt, flung into a lofty situation by shallow blockheads, who like himself saw in a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... it was almost possible to divine his slow, mindless nature—for there is expression in the very turn of a man's leg as he stands—and it was easy to see that he was guarding the little path down the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... another had left off human shape. Some had been transformed against their will, that they might do no more harm to their fellow-men. Some were changed through the pity of the gods, that they might share the simple life of Pan, mindless of mortal cares, glad in rain and sunshine, and always close to the heart of ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... a mindless desire to work grows irresistibly in me. I carry out my daily tasks as though as I were performing a mass. And I lose myself while doing so. Almost the way dreamers have lost themselves. But sometimes I notice that I have become motionless and ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... place to place, but still the malady grew, till at last, unutterably mournful as it was, Mary felt it a relief when he ceased to be capable of watching the progress of it himself: his misery at least was over. Thereafter he slipped into perfect mindlessness, happy and harmless, but hopelessly mindless and vacant. Meantime, Lady Louisa Moor made a very brilliant marriage to a marquis, the eldest son of a duke, the account of which Mary Brunton read in the newspapers while watching her brother's face with its meaningless smile. How her heart swelled! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... air with which the marquise seemed to consider the Breton girl as the only creature fit to mate him, Calyste remained speechless and even mindless. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... mankind come to be reduced to a handful? If men grew, in the first instance, out of bestial forms, mindless and speechless, they would have propagated and covered the world as did the bear and the wolf. But after they had passed this stage, and had so far developed as to be human in speech and brain, some cause reduced them again to a handful. What was it? ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... mindless games are very well, my friend; But ours to-night marks, not improbably, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... aeroplane, circling at a height of a mile or rising to two miles in case of danger, we looked down on fierce fighting in the trenches and saw the Germans drive steadily forward, sweeping ahead in close formation, mindless of heavy losses and victorious by ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... made a nymph a bride, 30 Joyful I flew by young Favonia's side, Who, mindless of the feasting, went to sip The balmy pleasure of the shepherd's lip; I saw the wanton where I stoop'd to sup, And half resolved to drown me in the cup; Till, brush'd by careless hands, she soar'd above: Cease, beauty, cease to vex ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... is sufficiently wrought up to yield a self-conscious personality. Hence the dissolution of a human brain implies the dissolution of a human mind; and hence also the universe, although entirely composed of mind-stuff, is itself mindless. Now, all I have to say about these two deductions is this—they do not necessarily follow from the theory which is before us. In holding that the mind of man perishes with his body, and that above the mind of man there is no other, Clifford may have been right, ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... your numbers do but raise Confusion and divided will; In storm, the mindless deep obeys Not multitudes but single skill; In calm, your numbers, closely pressed. Do ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... Only, upon contact with the white man, some of this has been obliged to wear off a little. They have had to become adaptive, to assume a little polish, as it were. But at heart, after these many years of contact, they are still simple. They are mindless, gentle, squatting bare backed in the shade, chewing, spitting, betel nut. Chewing as the ox chews, thinking as the ox thinks. Gentle brown men and women, touching the edge of the most refined civilization ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... have lied about Pan, because they listened to the haunting music of his pipes. It calls sweetly, but does not satisfy. How many Pan has called and left them sitting among the rocks with mindless eyes and hands that fiddle with emptiness!... Pan is so sad and level-eyed. He does not explain. He does not promise—too wise for that. He lures and enchants. He makes you pity him with a pity that is red as the lusts ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... long, unhappy! shall thy sorrows flow, And thy heart waste with life-consuming woe: Mindless of food, or love, whose pleasing reign Soothes weary life, and softens human pain? O snatch the moments yet within thy power; Not long to live, indulge the amorous hour! Lo! Jove himself (for Jove's command I bear) Forbids to tempt the wrath of heaven too far. No longer ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer |
