"Nerveless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her nerveless fingers, Grace saw her surroundings through a swirling mist. For a moment or two she yielded to the terror that clutched at her heart. Her sturdy nature reasserting itself, she rose, recovered the letter and walked ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... wickedness! The man will be looking all day long for his heroine in the tin-shop, by the forge or in the factory, in the counting-room, and he will not find her, and he will be dissatisfied. A man who gives himself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be nerveless, inane, and a nuisance. He will be fit neither for the store, nor the shop, nor the field. A woman who gives herself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be unfitted for the duties of wife, mother, sister, daughter. There she is, hair disheveled, countenance ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... lifeless. With the last effort of his strength Uncas rose to his feet, and hurled Cora's murderer into the abyss below. Then, with a stern and steady look, he turned to Le Subtil and indicated with the expression of his eye all that he would do had not the power deserted him, Magua seized his nerveless arm and stretched him dead by passing his dagger ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... And such nerveless or nervy creatures as they were! From the top of a cliff, one day, I watched a band of them go down a nearly perpendicular wall. I could not follow, though I did go part way down to where the wall bulged outward. There the ledges had crumbled away, leaving ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... out,—holding her hot, trembling fingers in his cold, nerveless hand, a moody frown on his brow, and his lips writhing with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the doorway, it might have been a minute before he saw that a man sat in front of the fireless hearth with his arms stretched before him on the table and his head fallen into them. For many minutes there was no sound, no stir of the man's nerveless pose; it might have been that he was asleep. Suddenly the characterless silence of the place was flooded with tragedy, for the man groaned, and a child would have known that the sound came from a torn ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... prelude closes, Until his heart has ceased its preparation And he comes forth into the dying year, Leaves his house of inspiration empty, And with a loneliness of heart creeps forth Eagerly into the night, and gropes his way With outstretched nerveless hands unto my home, Where I wait, alone! I hear his lips Murmur again, and moan, and murmur again Tones of the broken prelude, vainly trying To call me forth, who am waiting in my home, Waiting in sweet imprisonment, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... placed before her. The description of herself, her dress, even of the little basket and shawl, was minutely accurate; and by degrees the horror of her situation, and her utter helplessness, became frightfully distinct. The papers fell from her nerveless fingers, and one desperate cry broke from ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... preceding chapter for boys might well be repeated here, but space forbids. Read that chapter again, and know that the same signs that betray the boy will make known the girl addicted to the vice. The bloodless lips, the dull, heavy eye surrounded with dark rings, the nerveless hand, the blanched cheek, the short breath, the old, faded look, the weakened memory and silly irritability tell the story all too plainly. The same evil result follows, ending perhaps in death, or worse, in insanity. Aside from the injury the girl does herself by yielding ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Washington, "first in the hearts of his countrymen," the most popular man of the Seminary—this successful and well beloved young person sat wretched and restless in his room and let the breeze blow over his prostrate head and his idle, nerveless hands. Since the night of the rescue of Billy Strong he had felt himself another and a worse man. He sent a note to his ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... tremor was visible on the face of the little seamstress, a movement of every muscle, and her nerveless fingers could not ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... in his footsteps, Perry caught up behind him, and made an impulsive, nerveless clutch at the unfolded paper. "I knew you'd see it; so I wanted to be along with you," he said in a voice like that of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... for nearly a minute during which Gladwyne sat very still in nerveless dismay. All resistance had melted out of him, his weakness was manifest—he could not face a crisis, there ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... she was as she bent and lifted his nerveless hand, with the light of purest compassion ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... upon the neck of the fallen witch-doctor, the ape-man raised his face to the moon and uttered the long, shrill scream of the victorious bull ape. Then he stooped and snatched the zebra's tail from the nerveless fingers of the unconscious man and without a backward glance retraced his ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... old warrior entered, followed by a man who was obviously more of a Levantine than a Serb. The older man, small, slight, gray haired, and swarthy, but surprisingly active in his movements for one of his apparent age, raced up to Prince Michael. He fell on his knees, caught that nerveless right hand, and pressed ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... woke, and for a space All nerveless did I seem; For I have ridden many a race, But never one at such a pace As in that ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... evenings out of the six, the long-legged gamekeeper, who was just a big, drunken bully, would swagger easily into These-an'-That's kitchen and sit himself down without so much as "by your leave." "Good evenin', gamekeeper," the husband would say in his dull, nerveless voice. Mostly he only got a jeer in reply. The fellow would sit drinking These-an'-That's cider and laughing with These-an'-That's wife, until the pair, very likely, took too much, and the woman ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the people have nothing to do; and idleness, everywhere, is the parent of vice. "There is scarcely anything," says the good old Quaker Wheeler, "so striking, or pitiable, as their aimless, nerveless mode of spending life." ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... straight and stark, as though, thought Rankin despairingly, she were already dead. Her right arm was out over the sheet, her thin hand nerveless. Her face was very white, her lips swollen and bleeding as though she had bitten them repeatedly. She was absolutely motionless, lying on her back with closed eyes. At the slight sound made by the men in entering, she opened her eyes and looked ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... were quite serious. He had genuine poetic feeling, but little talent. In trying to reproduce Spenser's richness of imagery and the soft modulation of his verse, he succeeds only in becoming tediously ornate. His stanzas are nerveless, though not unmusical. His college exercise, "The Nativity," 1736, is a Christmas vision which comes to the shepherd boy Thomalin, as he is piping on the banks of Isis. It employs the pastoral machinery, includes a masque of virtues,—Faith, Hope, Mercy, etc.,—and closes with a compliment ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... it would not be; my courage was appalled; my arms nerveless: I muttered prayers that my strength might be aided from above. They ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... greater than he had often run in the mine and on the frozen trail. The daunting thing was that Driscoll, whom they had expected to steer the canoe, looked afraid. He crouched astern, paddling in a slack, nerveless manner. There was no chance of landing now; they must run through the mad turmoil into ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... has swung full circle: Timon is almost as weak as "Titus Andronicus"; the pen falls from the nerveless hand. Shakespeare wrote nothing for some time. Even the critics make a break after "Timon," which closes what they are pleased to call his third period; but they do not seem to see that the break was really a breakdown in health. In "Lear" he had brooded and raged to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... when she finds pleasure in lovingly, patiently, and faithfully performing the duties and enacting the relations that belong to her as woman. She is not the natural head of society. Man, rough, stern, cold, and almost nerveless, is made to be the head of human society; and woman, quick, sensitive, pliant (as her name indicates), gentle, loving, is the heart of the world. As the heart, she has power. She rules through love, and finds the work set for her ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... be the sons of Spain, and strange her Fate! They fight for Freedom who were never free, A Kingless people for a nerveless state;[103] Her vassals combat when their Chieftains flee, True to the veriest slaves of Treachery: Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, Pride points the path that leads to Liberty; Back to the struggle, baffled in the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... suddenness with which his powers were again prostrated, by the recurring weakness that succeeded the cessation of the supply of the natural aliment of the lungs, prevented him from imparting strength to the signal. He gave one weak blow on the side of the bell, and the instrument fell out of his nerveless hands upon the bench. In a few moments more he was stretched beside Jenkins. I myself now tried to lift my arms to seize the instrument. I succeeded only in placing my hands upon it—I was unable to grasp it, and fell, with my back on the side of the bell, powerless, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... before her, she felt its hideous novelty as though it were unexpected. At sight of it the force that had borne her up through the happenings of that day went out of her, and as she stood with the knife and the rope, that she had brought in the hope of cheating the lynchers, dangling from her nerveless hand her helplessness overcame her. Again and again she called to the dead man for help, called to him as she had been accustomed to call when her woman's strength had been unequal to some ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human] Footnote continued from Page 269 [character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. . . . The habit of excessive novel reading and theater going will produce ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... "passeth the understanding of man." The hand of the All-Father has forever soothed the heart-hunger and unrest of life from his troubled breast. That hand which swept, at will, every cord of the harp of life, has fallen nerveless, but its music will yet linger in the hearts of men until love of truth and beauty shall utterly fade from the earth. A long good-night to thee, Brave Heart, thy better part has found the better place; to that which is mortal and remains with us, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the thought had comae to me I had thrust it away. This time, however, there was no escape. The whole hideous scene spread itself out again before my eyes. I saw the doubled-up body, limp and nerveless. I felt again the thrill of horror with which one looks for the first time on death. The mockery of the sunlight filling the air, gleaming far and wide upon the creek-riven marshes and wet sands, the singing of the birds, the slow tramp of the wagon horses. All these things ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all efforts, the Ottoman Power is rapidly wasting away. The life of the Orient is nerveless and effete; the native strength of the race has died out, and all attempts to resuscitate it by the adoption of European institutions produce mere galvanic spasms, which leave it more exhausted than before. The rosy-colored accounts we have had ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... must suffer! Hark to that low, sickening thud! 'Tis the accursed soap dropping from his nerveless grasp. Hist to that sound—like unto a death rattle! It is the water gurgling in the tub. And what means that low, poignant, smothered gasp? It is the last convulsive cry of Jacques descending into the depths. All is ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... on her chair in order to laugh more at her ease, but with a nerveless, unhealthy laugh, one of those laughs which ends in nervous fits, then, a little more calmly, she replied: 'Ha! ha! my dear, improper? that is to say, that they dare everything, at once, all, you understand, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... unfallen fruit. Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a real power and the consuls were the twin towers of the world. But he never hoped to see such days again. He realized that monarchy was essential to peace, and that the price of freedom was violence and disorder. He had no illusions about the senate. Fault and misfortune had reduced them to nerveless servility, a luxury of self-abasement. Their meekness would never inherit the earth. Tacitus pours scorn on the philosophic opponents of the Principate, who while refusing to serve the emperor and pretending to hope for the restoration of the republic, could contribute nothing ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the cool, delicate, nerveless hand back upon her knee, and rose, for the Sister was folding up her sewing. He looked long after the girlish figure as it was ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... ear, "we can get through to the side aisle now—that's almost clear. Come, Eva, buck up—buck up, I say, or we'll never get out of this!" for Eva, terrified, bruised, and half fainting, was now hanging limp and nerveless to Lena's arm. ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... that she appeared like a beautiful piece of statuary, her eyes turned upward, as if seeking for strength to meet the vague sense of desolation which was creeping into her heart. Upon the table were two notes, one addressed to her mother, the other to herself, in his hand-writing. With nerveless hand she broke the seal; no emotion was visible, save the delicate glow upon her cheek, which came and went, and the playing of the muscles about her compressed lips, as she read ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... toward the man in frightened silence, and her clenched hands dropped nerveless at her side. It was her father! What a change the heavy beard made in his appearance; and then besides, it was almost a year since she had seen him. No wonder she had failed to recognize him in her anger. It would have taken more ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... a telegraphic dispatch and handed it to him. The Vice-president opened it, glanced through it, and tried to hand it to the Secretary of State. Instead, it fluttered from his nerveless fingers, and he sank back with a groan. The Secretary picked it up ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... heartache and listlessness, a nerveless mood came on him. What was it worth, anyhow-success? Struggle, strife, trampling on someone else. His play crowding out some other poor fellow's hope. The hawk eats the partridge, the partridge eats the flies and ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... group of men wrangled drunkenly outside a public-house. Down one deserted street another drunkard staggered, cursing with awful curses a slipshod woman who kept pace with him on the pavement and answered him with nerveless jeers. Just beyond a man overtook them, walking swiftly, his tread echoing as he went; he turned and looked at her as he passed; he had a short board and wore a "hard hitter." Then there was a girl plying her sorry trade, talking in the shadow with ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... to that. Certain it is that the acutest theories, the greatest intellectual power, the most elaborate education, are a {142} sheer mockery when, as too often happens, they feed mean motives and a nerveless will. And it is equally certain that a resolute moral energy, no matter how inarticulate or unequipped with learning its owner may be, extorts from us a respect we should never pay were we not satisfied that the essential root ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... in direct line with Harry between himself and the snake, so dared not shoot. Harry's automatic had dropped from his nerveless fingers at the first alarming whir of the vibrating rattles. Unable to make a sound or move a muscle the lad stood entirely unnerved while the great reptile prepared ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... vision ceas'd, and in a radiant cloud Withdrew—The breathless senate rev'rent bow'd. New vigour throbb'd in every patriot breast, And nerveless horror sicken'd all ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... a flood of tears and pressed her son to her heart, but he seemed to be crushed by the revelations he heard. Pale, trembling, nerveless, he dared not pronounce the sweet name of mother, for his soul was filled with horror at his inability to realize the relationship sufficiently to destroy the burning passion he felt for her person. He cast ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... his establishment, was for him, in particular, the seal and attestation of his extraordinary grandeur of mind. His empire dissolved after he had departed; his dominions lost their cohesion, and slipped away from the nerveless hands which succeeded; a sufficient evidence—were there no other—that all the vast resources of the Frankish throne, wielded by imbecile minds, were inadequate to maintain that which, in the hands of a Charlemagne, they had ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... have learned the secret of it, know what he wanted, but he could not even lift his nerveless hand to show her the gilded point beneath which lay the spring that controlled the hidden ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... months, the warriors on both sides weakened. They said the incantations of the rival medicine men were bewitching them, were making their hearts like children's, and their arms nerveless as women's. So friend and foe arose as one man and drove the medicine men from the island, hounded them down the Inlet, herded them through the Narrows and banished them out to sea, where they took refuge on one of the outer islands of the gulf. Then the tribes once more fell ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... breathe heavily. Then Drew lifted his notes to the desk; tried to fix his eyes and attention upon them, failed and gazed helplessly at that one face in the appalling vacancy. Presently the bits of paper fell from his nerveless hand and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... stole into the secret room Where Love lay dying; Mystic and faint perfume Met me like sighing; As heaven had cast a still-born star He lay nor stirred; the shell-thin hand Nerveless of high command Where once the lord-veins ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... which had weighed on heart and brain. The hatred of the whole struggling, sordid crew, all the cant and ugliness and ignorance of a mad world, his weakness in the face of it, his fall from common virtue, his nerveless indolence—all stung him like needle points, till he cried out in agony. Anything to deliver his soul from such a bondage, and in his extreme bitterness his mind closed ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... of the men kicked her pistol out of her nerveless hand, caught her by the shoulder and dragged the trench-knife from her convulsive grasp. Then he said ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... and the nerveless form, that had scarce moved for years, was raised upon the bed by the last yearning ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... is one of loss to England. The brilliant French conquests of Henry V (SS289, 290) slipped from the nerveless hands of his son, leaving France practically independent. The people's power to vote had been restricted (S297). The House of Commons had ceased to be democratic even in a moderate degree. Its members were all property holders elected by property holders (S297). Cade's rebellion was the sign ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... imprecations not M. Fouquet alone, but even La Valliere herself: from fury he subsided into despair, and from despair to prostration. After he had thrown himself for a few minutes to and fro convulsively on his bed, his nerveless arms fell quietly down; his head lay languidly on his pillow; his limbs, exhausted from his excessive emotions, still trembled occasionally, agitated by slight muscular contractions; and from his breast only faint and unfrequent sighs still ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... His mouth hung slightly open, like an idiot's. He felt vacant, and wasted. So, he wandered at his work, painfully, and very slowly and clumsily, fumbling blindly with the brushes, and finding it difficult, when he sat down, to summon the energy to move again. His limbs, his jaw, were slack and nerveless. But he was very tired. He got to bed at last, and slept inert, relaxed, in a sleep that was rather stupor than slumber, a dead night of stupefaction shot through with ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... surrounding Roger de Conde, and while he was taking heavy toll of those before him, he could not cope with the men who attacked him from behind; and even as she looked, she saw a battle axe fall full upon his helm, and his sword drop from his nerveless fingers as his lifeless body rolled from the back of Sir Mortimer to the battle-tramped clay of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... overheard Trevison's tense whisper to Corrigan. The cold savagery in it had paralyzed him, and he gasped as Trevison's eyes found him, and the pistol that he tried to raise dangled futilely from his nerveless fingers. It thudded heavily upon the boards of the floor an instant later, a shriek of fear mingling with the sound as he went down in a heap from a vicious, deadening blow from ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it from her nerveless fingers and caught her ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... to borrow money of Breede, not even on the day of his coronation. Tully, the chief clerk, was equally impossible. Tully's thick glasses magnified his eyes so that they were terrible to look at. Tully would reach out a nerveless hand and draw forth the quivering heart of his secret. Tully would know right off that a man could have no respectable reason for borrowing five dollars ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... Lite reached out and took it from her nerveless fingers. "Maybe it won't amount to anything ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... whose blighting breath our snowy fields of cotton melted over night brought no terror for King Cotton no longer reigns supreme. The king is dead but the people rejoice as the scepter falls from his nerveless hand and a new monarch ascends the throne. Millions of royal banners flutter in the breeze glistening green with promise for the future and hope is high, and the hearts of the people light as they gather to pay ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... his words became inaudible, As in the mazes of the Mammoth Cave, Fainter and fainter on the listening ear, The low, retreating voices die away. His eyes were closed; a gentle smile of peace Sat on his face. I held his nerveless hand, And bent my ear to catch his latest breath; And as the spirit fled the pulseless clay, I heard—or thought ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate! They fight for freedom, who were never free; A kingless people for a nerveless state, Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee, True to the veriest slaves of Treachery; Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, Pride points the path that leads to liberty; Back to the struggle, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... concealed her ignorance of her newest guest's identity, she stiffened her lips and poured out another cup of tea with a nerveless hand. The stranger took the cup of tea with some relief, and ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... gray silence came a shattering sound that sent the ladle crashing out of Mrs. Brenner's nerveless hand and brought a moan from the dozing old woman! It was a scream, a long, piercing scream, so intense, so agonized that it went echoing about the room as though a disembodied spirit were shrieking under the rafters! It was a scream of terror, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... shed a lurid light. Those wrestlers, too, whom naked we behold Through many a summer's night and winter's cold, Now changed appear'd, his pristine languor fled, Expiring Abel raised his sinking head, While with fix'd eyes his murderer seemed to stand, The bone half dropping from his nerveless hand. So, when of old, as Latian records tell, At Pompey's base the laurel'd despot fell, Reviving freedom mock'd her sinking foe, And demons shriek'd as Brutus dealt the blow. His trencher-bonnet tumbling from his crown, Subdued by Bernard, sunk the Doctor down; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... that neither twitched nor shook. There were a gold cross and a bunch of silver medals hung by a whipcord about the neck of the dead man. This Captain Morgan broke away with a snap, reaching the jingling baubles to Harry, who took them in his nerveless hand and fingers that he could hardly close upon ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... then and took the book from his nerveless hand. "She indicated that this is a manual for running the ship," he said. "All ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... concerned, proved, long ago, a failure; first lapsing into Fourierism, and dying, as it well deserved, for this infidelity to its own higher spirit. Where once we toiled with our whole hopeful hearts, the town paupers, aged, nerveless, and disconsolate, creep sluggishly afield. Alas, what faith is requisite to bear up against ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lay back with his hot, fevered head upon the cushion of the long cane chair, his dead cigar between his nerveless fingers, a thousand bitter thoughts crowded upon him. He had striven to reform, he had tried hard to turn aside and lead an honest life, yet it seemed as though his good intentions had only brought ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... arm fell, the heavy sword dropped from his nerveless fingers, and he stumbled backward and fell to earth like ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... of tools had ceased. The men ate and drank in silence. No sound came from the Northern troops in the wood. A heavy, ominous silence brooded over the little valley which had seen so much battle and passion. Harry felt relaxed and for the moment nerveless. His eyes wandered to the new earth, beneath which the dead lay, and he shivered. The wounded were lying patiently on their blankets and those of their comrades and they did not complain. The surgeons had ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... who was watering the mustangs at a spring, when he happened to glance upward. A small white hand was hanging over the top of the stone. Sturges was not a Californian, but he sprang to his feet and pressed his lips to that hand. It was cold and nerveless, and clasping it in his he applied his gaze to the rift above the stone. In a moment he distinguished two dark eyes and a gleam of white brow above. Then ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... the Girl handed it to him. With one hand he swung it into place before the table, while with the other he jerked off the table-cover, and flung it across the room. Johnson neither moved nor groaned, as the edge slid from beneath his nerveless arms. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... what is passing round about it. True, the tenant that is about to depart from the house in which he has dwelt so long, closes the windows before he goes. But what is there in the cessation of the power of communication with an outer world—what is there in the fact that you clasp the nerveless hand, and it returns no pressure; that you whisper gentle words that you think might kindle a soul under the dull, cold ribs of death itself, and get no answer—that you look with weeping gaze to catch the response of affection ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... position beside her door, the second figure shot forward now, with ready and perfect aim at the already-beginning-to-be-nerveless figure of Getaway hanging over the ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... I? How could I, Gladys?" Lillian said again and again, white, wild-eyed, and haggard, so limp and nerveless that she could not have reached the library had not the other ladies supported her between them, half carrying her to her reclining chair. "You both think I was wrong, don't you?" She looked up at them with agonized eyes, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... ranks some soldiers whose hands are too nerveless or too full of worldly trash to grasp the sword which they have received, much less to strike home with it at any of the evils that are devastating their own lives or darkening the world. The feebleness of the Christian conflict with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... of Milton Samson Agonistes is charged with a pathos, which as the expression of real suffering no fictive tragedy can equal, it must be felt that as a composition the drama is languid, nerveless, occasionally halting, never brilliant. If the date of the composition of the Samson be 1663, this may have been the result of weariness after the effort of Paradise Lost. If this drama were composed in 1667, it would be the author's last poetical effort, and the natural explanation would ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... hung insecurely, and it fell with a crash at Miss Burton's side. Was it the shock of the falling picture upon unprepared and overstrained nerves, or what was it that produced the instantaneous change in the joyous-appearing maiden? Her hands dropped nerveless from the keys. So great was the pallor that swept over her face that it suggested to he artist the sudden extinguishment of a lamp. She bowed her head and trembled a moment and then escaped by a ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... revealed that our enemy was gone, in full retreat, leaving killed, wounded, and much property by the way, we all experienced a feeling of relief. The struggle had been so long, so desperate and bloody, that the survivors seemed exhausted and nerveless; we appreciated the value of the victory, but realized also its great cost of life. The close of the battle had left the Army of the Tennessee on the right, and the Army of the Ohio on the left; but I believe ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... hair streaming backward on the end of the pallet, which had been turned up to form a pillow. Over him and reaching from his feet to his breast, was drawn a sheet, and on that sheet lay one of his thin, wrinkled and nerveless hands. His eyes were shut, and he might have appeared to be asleep, but that ever and anon there broke from him one of those low but distinct groans indicative of severe inward pain, which had startled the two Zouaves. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... they'll find no helper there, And if—without a head—the body should rebel, Convulsive throes I mock, and nerveless fury quell. Whate'er ensues the Emperor must approve, I shall have done my part, and win his love. Here ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... barely recognisable, the final letter terminating in a wandering line as if the pen had dropped from nerveless fingers. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... it, Mark placed the handles in the nerveless fingers of Mr. Henderson. Then he started the current. In about a minute the eyelids of the aged inventor began to quiver, and, in less than five minutes he had been revived sufficiently to enable him to sit up. He passed his hand ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... reverently and kissed her hand before retiring, Walter Skirving motioned him near his chair. Then he drew him downward till Ralph was bending on one knee. He laid a nerveless heavy hand on the young man's head, and looked for a minute—which seemed years to Ralph—very fixedly on his eyes. Then dropping his hand and turning to the window, he drew ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... distorted now, Jorth's face was a spectacle to make Ellen sick with a terrible passion of despair and hate. The truth of her father's ruin and her own were enough. What mattered all else? Jorth beat the table with fluttering, nerveless hands that seemed all the more significant for their lack ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the King's affair," he added with even greater fierceness; so that Pak Chung Chang's silver pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers and clattered on ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... nerveless strings— The sinews of brave old airs Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings So closely here declares A sad regret in its ravelings And ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... Joyce herself felt dull—nerveless. Words did not seem to come easily to her. She was tired, she thought, and of course she was, having spent a sleepless night. One little matter gave her cause for thankfulness. Dysart was absent from luncheon. He had gone on a long walking expedition, Lady Baltimore said, that would ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... words fell from him, but only for a moment—for the bow slipped from his nerveless grip and his head sank forward upon ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... before those terrible eyes of his, and gripped the pillow with nerveless hands. Her lips opened but she said nothing. Jim started, and then caught her ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... into an ague. Drink something, warm and strong, boy! drink something warm and strong. I tell you, I, for one, cannot get through this day without some such support as this," said the judge authoritatively, as he took from the young man's nerveless hand the harmless glass of water, and put into it the perilous glass ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... never entirely disappeared—even at the present time they display themselves in my system, especially after much fatigue of body and excitement of mind. So there I sat in the dingle upon my stone, nerveless and hopeless, by whatever cause or causes that state had been produced—there I sat with my head leaning upon my hand, and so I continued a long, long time. At last I lifted my head from my hand, and began to cast anxious, unquiet looks about the dingle—the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... engagement ring, broken in twain. It had slipped from her nerveless finger when they took her to her room. With a gesture of impatience, he picked up the fragments, and threw them, diamond and all, out of the window into ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... fail to come the next night, as he saw every reason to expect a crisis. Guy sat intently marking every alteration in the worn, flushed, suffering face that rested helplessly on the pillows, and every unconscious movement of the wasted, nerveless limbs stretched out in pain and helplessness, contrasting his present state with what he was when last they parted, in the full pride of health, vigour, and intellect. He dwelt on all that had passed between them from the first, the strange ancestral enmity that nothing had as yet ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wholly successful. It could not well be otherwise. Lucille has returned to Dorset House. Souspennier is confounded altogether by a little revelation which I ventured to make. He spoke of an appeal. I let him know with whom he would have to deal. I left him nerveless and crushed. He can do nothing save by open revolt. And if he tries that—well, there will be no more of this wonderful ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... life and light would not go out together. The hope seem'd vain. From out the gloom there came The grinding keel—the tread of hurrying feet— Clashing of words, of steel, and all was dark— And all was still. But hark! a sound—the faint Breathing of one who swims with pain, the plash Of nerveless hands nearer and nearer comes, Yet ever fainter. What boots it now to have Escaped the vengeful swords that smote his kin? The waves engulf him and his bubbling cry. But unhoped help is near—a friendly word— ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... he, that helmsman bold? The captain saw him reel, His nerveless hands released their task, He sank beside the wheel. The wave received his lifeless corse, Blackened with smoke and fire. God rest him! Never hero ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... practical, thought only of their stupidity in not having brought off with them a loaf of bread apiece. In the hurry of their abrupt departure they had even gone off without breakfasting, and hunger soon made its presence felt by the nerveless sensation in their legs. Others among the prisoners appeared to be in the same boat, for they held out money, begging the people of the place to sell them something to eat. There was one, an extremely tall man, apparently very ill, who displayed a gold piece, extending it above the heads ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... me," she asked, "what is lacking in my life or how hungry I am for it? I knew years ago what it was to love you ... and I've dreamed of it ever since. But all your appeal is to passion, Stuart—none of it to the sense of fair play. I'm neither sexless nor nerveless. When I held you off a little while ago, my hands on your breast could feel the beat of your heart—and the arms that kept us apart were aching to go round your neck. I've sat back there in the window of my room night after night and watched you ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the swing of the weapon; both wrestled for the deadly steel, they fell, rolled over and over on the grass; at length Hermann grasped his opponent's throat like a vice with his mailed hand, and held till the arms of his foe hung nerveless by the side and the face grew black, when, disengaging his right hand, he found his dagger, and drove it ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... which had before been prudentially soft and nerveless, suddenly hardened into solid muscle, and one of his heavy blows came full and square upon the region of Archy's left eye. The young lord of the manor reeled as though a tornado had struck him, and fell heavily upon ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... This is nerveless work, tentative, talkative, no clear expression of the whole; and as he tries to expand it further in lines we may study with interest, for the very failures of genius are interesting, he becomes even more feeble. Yet the feebleness is ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... at last, when she fancied she saw the first rays silvering the night, and looked up hopefully, it proved one of many ignes-fatui which had flashed across her path, and she saw that it was Goethe, uplifted as the prophet of the genuine religion. The book fell from her nerveless fingers; she closed her eyes, and groaned. It was all "confusion, worse confounded." She could not for her life have told what she believed, much less what she did not believe. The landmarks of earlier ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... and send them to papa at once. Grandma's papers. They are very important. What? Prince has not come home? Oh, what can have become of him? Those missing papers! Oh, telephone to papa at once! He must do something," and Grace let the receiver fall from her nerveless hand as she looked out into the storm. The rain, after a long dry spell, was ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... and returned to the fold. This evening, as all was still, we played a little game of Bridge, as in the old days when life was a pleasant dream. Suddenly a dozen rifle shots, in quick succession, rang out in the air and the cards fell from our nerveless fingers as a stray ball rattled against the iron shutters of our windows. Instinctively we crouched into sheltered corners and waited; another volley and another followed, until finally Monsieur S. whispered in a hoarse voice, "A la cave." The household, including ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... the king of birds Drops down his flagging wings; thy thrilling sounds Soothe his fierce beak, and pour a sable cloud Of slumber on his eyelids: up he lifts His flexile back, shot by thy piercing darts. Mars smooths his rugged brow, and nerveless drops His lance, relenting at ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... marched. Men slid gradually down into the saddle, with bowed heads, until the tired horses stumbled and jerked them again into a hazy consciousness for a few yards. Then the heads drooped once more, the nerveless hands loosed the reins, and bodies swayed unevenly back and forth. Here and there a man, utterly overcome by sleep, lurched from his saddle, pitched headlong and lay where he had fallen until one more wakeful picked ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... entry and stood in the kitchen door, looking at poor Ann. She sat quite still, as Elmira had said, her head tipped back, her eyes closed, and her mouth slightly parted. Her little bony hands lay in her lap, with the fingers limp in utter nerveless relaxation, but she was not asleep. She opened her eyes when her children came to the door, but she did not speak nor turn her head. Presently her eyes ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... truly, till the pure-born (Deva) added his spiritual power, and caused him to frame a reply in true words: "His appearance changed, his vital powers decayed, filled with sorrow, with little pleasure, his spirits gone, his members nerveless, these are the indications of what is called 'old age.' This man was once a sucking child, brought up and nourished at his mother's breast, and as a youth full of sportive life, handsome, and in enjoyment of the five pleasures; as years passed on, his ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... finished playing "The Awakening of the Lion," the curtain rose, disclosing the nerveless Signore in purple tights and high-topped boots. A long, portable cage had been put together on the stage during the intermission, and within it the ten pacing beasts. There is something terrifying about the roar of a lion as it begins with its high-keyed moan, ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... beheld a chance of escape within my reach. My guard lay before me at my mercy. His vigorous limbs relaxed by sleep; his bosom open for the blow; his carbine slipped from his nerveless grasp, and lying by his side; his stiletto half out of the pocket in which it was usually carried. But two of his comrades were in sight, and those at a considerable distance, on the edge of the mountain; their backs turned to us, and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... looking at its huge sides, Electra coveted even a deck passage; envied the meanest who hurried about, making all things ready for departure. The last bell rang; people crowded down on the planks; Russell hastened back to the carriage, and took the nerveless, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... properly enough, concerning both these schemes, that they were insufficient and in many respects objectionable; but that to give the administration hearty support in the most vigorous measures which it was willing to undertake, was better than to aid an opposition utterly nerveless and servile and altogether devoid of so much as the desire for efficient action. It was no time to stay with the party of weakness; it was right to strengthen rather than to hamper a man so pacific and spiritless as Mr. Jefferson; to show a readiness to forward even ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... cannot gratify their curiosity. Mr Braidwood told me, it remained long in his school, but had been lost before I made my inquiry. [Footnote: One of the best criticks of our age 'does not wish to prevent the admirers of the incorrect and nerveless style which generally prevailed for a century before Dr Johnson's energetick writings were known, from enjoying the laugh that this story may produce, in which he is very ready to join them'. He, however, requests me to observe, that ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... the blacksmith's and carpenter's, whose comprehension so much more resembled their lady's than that of Miss Fulmort, and who made such intolerable blunders, that he bestowed on them more vituperation than, in their opinion, 'he had any call to;' and looked in a passion of despair at the numb, nerveless fingers, once his ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vestige of Murray's mechanical smile had gone. An expression of deep horror had deadened the curious light in his eyes. He sat nerveless in his chair, and his bulk seemed to have become flabby with loss of vitality. Bill was watching the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... few moments the strong young man sat as though stunned by the suddenness of the blow. His brawny arms were nerveless; the heart had gone out of him, leaving him helpless as a little child. But presently his strong manhood asserted itself, and a bright glitter came into ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... found in his original endowment of physical strength. The child's birth-stock of vital force is his capital to be traded upon. Other things being equal his productive value is to be estimated mathematically upon the basis of physique. Born weak and nerveless, he must go to society's ambulance wagon, and so impede the onward march. Born vigorous and rugged, he can help to clear the forest roadway or lead the advancing columns. Fundamentally man is a muscular machine for producing the ideas that ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... And now arrived at such a gorgeous dome, As even the pomp of Eastern opulence Could never equal: wandered thro' its halls A numerous train; some with the red-swoln eye Of riot, and intemperance-bloated cheek; Some pale and nerveless, and with feeble step, And eyes lack-lustre. Maiden? said her guide, These are the wretched slaves of Appetite, Curst with their wish enjoyed. The epicure Here pampers his foul frame, till the pall'd sense Loaths at the banquet; the voluptuous here Plunge in the tempting torrent of ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... time with a full sack on her back, and beyond passing the time of day with me she took no notice of my presence. Then, the cart empty, she fumbled for matches and lighted a short clay pipe, pressing down the burning surface of the tobacco with a calloused and apparently nerveless thumb. The hands were noteworthy. They were large- knuckled, sinewy and malformed by labour, rimed with callouses, the nails blunt and broken, and with here and there cuts and bruises, healed and healing, such as are common ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... to his bow, and as I looked he shot. It struck me on the right arm, pinning it just above the elbow. The pistol, which I had been carrying aimlessly, slipped from my nerveless hand to the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... slight hands, folded nerveless over the quiet breast, might never more thrill to her emotions of large motherliness, and scatter gladness with gracious flutterings, in swift response to a too-adoring populace—now that the sleeping eyes might never again unclose ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of Alora and secretly terrified over her mysterious disappearance. She tried to embroider, as she sat alone and waited for something to happen, but her nerveless fingers would not hold the needle. She bought some novels but could not keep her mind on the stories. Hour by hour she gazed from the window into the crowded street below, searching each form and face for some resemblance to Alora. She had ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... characteristics that Dr. Johnson applied to Donne and his followers the rather clumsy name of 'Metaphysical' (Philosophical) poets. 'Fantastic' would have been a better word. 4. In vigorous reaction against the sometimes nerveless melody of most contemporary poets Donne often makes his verse as ruggedly condensed (often as obscure) and as harsh as possible. Its wrenched accents and slurred syllables sometimes appear absolutely unmetrical, but it seems that Donne generally followed ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... be; my courage was appalled, my arms nerveless. I muttered prayers that my strength might be aided from above. They ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various |
