"Sleepless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers tway there walk, white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts they still, sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Katy, bursting into tears. The long fatigue, the fears kept in check so resolutely, the sleepless night just passed, had their revenge now, and she cried and cried as if she could never stop, but with all the time such joy and gratitude in her heart! She was conscious that Ned had his arm round her and was holding both her hands tight; ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... In these nights of sleepless misery she had thought of her old home. The relatives from whom she was for ever parted—her sister, her kind old aunt—looked at her with reproachful eyes; and now, in anguish which bordered upon delirium, it was they alone who seemed real ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... their demands from flagging human muscles to the tireless sinews of electric motors—which ask no wages when they stand unemployed. Similar motors already enjoy favour in working the elevators of tall dwellings in cities. If a householder is timid about burglars, the electrician offers him a sleepless watchman in the guise of an automatic alarm; if he has a dread of fire, let him dispose on his walls an array of thermometers that at the very inception of a blaze will strike a gong at headquarters. But these, after ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... in, and the Indian rowers too, for as soon as they had ceased pulling they lay down forward to sleep, and that night the boat was moored to a tree on the eastern side of the stream, far-away from the haunts of civilised man, while Rob lay sleepless, listening to the strange and weird sounds which rose from the apparently impenetrable forest on the ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... She had not mentioned to him that she had a presentiment of evil, for she assured herself that she should have outgrown those puerile impulses of the senses. And yet, having watched him depart, she passed a sleepless night, and early the next morning had saddled her horse to ride to Lamo, there to ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... passengers and was presumed to have no other duties on deck than to give the proper orders to his first officer and work out his daily reckoning. It was an exacting, nerve-racking ordeal, however, demanding a sleepless vigilance, courage, and cool judgment of the first order. The compensations were large. As a rule, he owned a share of the ship and received a percentage of the freights and passage money. His rank when ashore was more exalted than can be conveyed in mere words. Any normal New York boy would ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... shall soften the gloomy effects of darkness. The birds, which are the harbingers of all rural delights, are hence made to sing during twilight; and when they cease, the nocturnal songsters become vocal, bearing pleasant sensations to the sleepless, and by their lulling melodies preparing us to be keenly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... that Hawk had never got out of the creek; that he had drowned miserably in the flood. She tortured herself with conjecture as to exactly what had happened. And night brought no relief. Sleepless, she tossed, marveling at how close his death had come home to her. Every scrap of the meager news added to what she already knew—pointed to what ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... never heard? Of the poor, distracted, lonely, outcast, and wandering bird? Which is not a bird of heaven, nor yet a beast of earth, But ever roveth, homeless,—a creature of strange birth. Wings hath it, but it flies not. And yet within its breast Are strange and sleepless drivings, so that it may not rest; Half-formed, half-conscious impulses, with its half-formed pinions given, Too strong for rest on earth, too weak to bear to heaven;— And madly it beats its wings, but vainly, against its side, For the light wind rusheth through them, mocking them ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... wolf-pack cherished a sleepless grudge against the carcajou, and wasted precious hours, from time to time, striving to catch her off her guard. The wolf's memory is a long one, and the feud lost nothing in its bitterness as the winter weeks, loud with storm or still with deadly cold, dragged by. For a time ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... know indeed my fate," Ellen murmured internally, as her aching head rested on a sleepless pillow, and her clasped hands were pressed against her heart to stop its suffocating throbs. "Why am I thus overwhelmed, as if I had ever hoped, as if this were unexpected? Have I not known it, have I not felt that she would ever be his choice? that I was mad enough ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... author. He had lost the support of the Houses, and the admission of fresh opponents into the royal council spoke of the secret enmity of the king. But Charles too had his reasons for desiring peace. He had a sleepless distrust of Parliaments, and his distrust was already justified. The "Cavalier" Parliament had met in a passion of loyalty. It had pressed for the death of the regicides. It had hardly been hindered from throwing all England ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... sleepless agony, the young man rose at dawn and quietly slipped out of the room, glad to escape his father's questioning for a few hours. With his mind tortured by anxiety and misgivings, he turned toward the boulevard to ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... witching hour of night. Luna illumines my chamber, and falls upon my sleepless pillow. By her light I am inditing these words to thee, my Algernon. My brave and beautiful, my soul's lord! when shall the time come when the tedious night shall not separate us, nor the blessed day? Twelve! one! two! I have ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... idlers and the active die: And nought it profits me, though day by day In constant toil I set my life at stake; But as a bird, though ill she fare herself, Brings to her callow brood the food she takes, So I through many a sleepless night have lain, And many a bloody day have labour'd through, Engag'd in battle on your wives' behalf. Twelve cities have I taken with my ships; Eleven more by land, on Trojan soil: From all of these abundant stores of wealth I took, and all to Agamemnon gave; He, safe beside his ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and stood looking down upon her. The cruelty of her injustice smote his heart. Had a man's glove been dashed in his face he could not have been more incensed. For a brief moment there surged through him all he had suffered for her sake; the sleepless nights, the days of doubts and misunderstandings! And it had come to this! Again he was treated with contempt—again his heart and all it held was trampled on. A wild protest rose in his throat ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... from intellectual apathy or want of appetite for knowledge, but simply from the fact that my earliest teachers lacked the power of imparting vitality to what they taught. Athwart all play and amusement, however, a thread of seriousness ran through my character; and many a sleepless night of my childhood has been passed, fretted by the question 'Who made God?' I was well versed in Scripture; for I loved the Bible, and was prompted by that love to commit large portions of it to memory. Later on I became adroit in turning ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... To earth's remotest bound; The rushing ocean tide Rolls on the solemn sound; God's voice is in the waters; The deep, mysterious waters, The sleepless, dashing waters, Still ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... bed lay Cherry, her head swathed in bandages, one little arm bandaged likewise; and beside her knelt Chloe Carstairs, her face like marble, her silky black hair dishevelled on her brow, as though she, too, had passed a sleepless night. Cherry's brown eyes were widely opened with an expression of half-wondering pain in their usually limpid depths, and from time to time she uttered little moans which sounded doubly piteous coming from so self-controlled ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... cities and many noble families throughout the empire. After the first night it was powerless to disturb me. I thought it possible that on leaving the ship I might be in the condition of the woman, whose husband, a fearful snorer, was suddenly called from home. The lady passed several sleepless nights, until she hit upon the expedient of calling a servant with the coffee mill. The vigorous grinding of that household utensil had the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... brimfull of high happiness, the woman who would turn them out of that Garden of Eden and spoil their present bliss with warnings of future woe must be of another heart and mind than Cousin Maud. She indeed foresaw grief to come in many an hour of mistrust by day and many a sleepless night, more especially by reason of her awe and dread of my grand-uncle; and indeed, she herself was not bereft of the old pride of race which dwells in every Nuremberger who is born under a knight's coat of arms. That Ann was poor she held ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... command they have scarcely heard, strained to a mighty endurance in a cause they scarcely understand. She seems too young to be of service, too frail to bear the hardships of the way. How can she stand out against the forced marches, the weary, sleepless ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... the advancing sentinels, had scrutinized so long through the night every wavering shade of cloud and moving form of buffalo in the dim distance, that their sleepless eyes, strained and aching, failed to distinguish this moving mass that was so like the brown plains and starless sky that it could scarce be told from them. The night, too, was bitter; northern cold cut hardly chillier than this that parted the blaze of one hot day from the blaze of another. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... furniture had been discovered in the garrets and dragged down into service without having been properly dusted, even. It was the refuse the banker's widow had left behind her. The windows without curtains had an indigent, sleepless look. In two of them the dirty yellowy-white blinds had been pulled down. All this spoke, not of poverty, but of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... lay, Jaikie thought of the flowers in the corner of the orchard thirsty and sick. It might be that they, like him, were sleepless and suffering. He remembered the rich clove carnations with their dower of a sweet savour, the dark indigo winking "blueys" or cornflowers, the spotted musk monkey-flowers, smelling like a village flower-show. They would all be drooping and sad. And ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... nigger guard, for all I heard was a little gurgling. Yes, still alive. Still alive, Blaise, thanks to Shiela's discrimination in the selection of the Governor's nourishing cordials, and thanks no less to my boy Ubbo's sleepless habits. But, old friend, you're none too soon. And don't waste any time in getting Shiela. She is still at the Governor's. I bade her stay there so they would not suspect. She has my sabre and duelling pistols with her, by the way. And she'll bear a hand with them, if need be. But who is this? ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... been in the wrong, and regret having gone too far; but both wait and watch and do not even write a few lines about nothing, which would restore peace. No, they let day succeed day, and there are feverish and sleepless nights when the bed seems so hard, so cheerless and so large, and habits get weakened and the fire of love that was still smoldering at the bottom of the heart evaporates in smoke. By degrees both find some reason for what they wished to do, they think themselves idiots to lose the time ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... I, extinguishing the fitful lamp-flame; and the room was immediately illuminated with a white, ghostly lustre. Then kneeling by the bed, I folded back the linen sheet, gazed with folded hands, and dry, dilated eyes on the mystery of death. The moon, "that sun of the sleepless," that star of the mourner, shone full on her brow, and I smiled to see how divinely fair, how placid, how angelic she looked. Her dark, shining hair, the long dark lashes that pencilled her white cheek, alone prevented her from seeming a statue of the purest marble, fashioned after ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... forms of torture then used in Rome the most common were the whistle, the fire, the sleepless, and the rope. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... what I expected it to be. Sometimes when I wake in the morning, and know that Solitude, Remembrance, and Longing are to be almost my sole companions all day through—that at night I shall go to bed with them, that they will long keep me sleepless—that next morning I shall wake to them again,—sometimes, Nell, I have a heavy heart of it. But crushed I am not, yet; nor robbed of elasticity, nor of hope, nor quite of endeavour. I have some strength to fight the battle of life. I am aware, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sorely moved: And truly might it be distressed To see such bird in such a nest;[9] For he was beautiful as day— (When day was beautiful to me 80 As to young eagles, being free)— A polar day, which will not see[10] A sunset till its summer's gone, Its sleepless summer of long light, The snow-clad offspring of the sun: And thus he was as pure and bright, And in his natural spirit gay, With tears for nought but others' ills, And then they flowed like mountain rills, Unless he could assuage the woe 90 Which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... under emerald-green rollers. They clung to her stern and hoisted her nose till Big Ivan thought that he could touch the door of heaven by standing on her blunt snout. Miserable, cold, ill, and sleepless, the emigrants crouched in their quarters, and to them Ivan and the thin-faced Livonian ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the road. At midnight, in mud and rain, we resumed the march, in convoy of a pontoon train, and over a by-road which from the manner its primitive rock was revealed, must have been unused for years. The streams forded during that night of sleepless toil, the enjoined silence, broken only by the sloppy shuffle of shoes half filled with water, and the creaking wagons, the provoking halts that would tempt the eyes to a slumber that would be broken immediately by the resumption of the forward movement, have left ineffaceable memories. A somewhat ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... begun at this time; but the skull-headed lady, alluded to by Mary Shelley as figuring in Polidori's story, is disappointingly absent. It was an argument between Byron and Shelley about Erasmus Darwin's theories that brought before Mary Shelley's sleepless eyes the vision of the monster miraculously infused by its creator with the spark of life. Frankenstein was begun immediately, completed in May, 1817, and ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and our imaginations will surround us with hobgoblins and spectres by day as well as night, and almost upset the reasoning power of strong men. To Manson, who had passed one long, sleepless night full of imaginary terrors, and believing himself governed and controlled by some supernatural power, the experience he had passed through, and the impulses that were now alternately pulling him back and pushing ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... Pox of the States-man that's witty, That watches and plots all the sleepless Night, For seditious Harangues to the Whigs of the City, And piously turns a Traitor in spite. Let him wrack, and torment his lean Carrion, To bring his sham-Plots about, Till Religion, King, Bishop, and Baron, For the publick Good, be ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... next morning it became clear to our girls that a change of programme was a necessity. Ruth had by no means recovered from her shock and the sleepless night that followed, and some of the comforts of invalidism must be found for her. At the same time she utterly repudiated the idea of Saratoga, which was now urged upon her; it had lost its charms; neither would ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... the nation from being drawn into this whirlpool of ruin? Nothing but the cool brain, sleepless vigilance, and wonderful sagacity of one man,—a young officer never read of in the newspapers,—removed from field-duty because of disability, but commissioned, I verily believe, by Providence itself to ferret out and foil this deeper-laid, wider-spread, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... fair and agitated reader will pass a sleepless night in endeavouring to decipher the mutilated sentence. She will fail, and consequently call the book delightful. But should there not have been a marriage previously ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... of this, or, at least,' said Walter, colouring, 'I have been thinking of one thing and another, all through a sleepless night, and I cannot believe, Captain Cuttle, but that my Uncle Sol (Lord bless him!) is alive, and will return. I don't so much wonder at his going away, because, leaving out of consideration that ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sleepless night, I arose weak and in agony, to hobble through my second day on the Ghost. Thomas Mugridge routed me out at half-past five, much in the fashion that Bill Sykes must have routed out his dog; but Mr. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... agents put forth sleepless activity. The world rings with the clash of warring forces. The priest, then, that idly folds his arms and manufactures sops for a gnawing conscience, while the very air is electric with the energies of assault, that priest ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... The only woman—so now it seemed—he had ever really wanted! What had become of her? What obscure and passionate impulse had led her suddenly to defy and desert him, to cast in her lot with these insensate aliens? A hundred times during the restless, inactive hours of a sleepless night this question had intruded itself in the midst of his scheming to break the strike, as he reviewed, word by word, act by act, that almost incomprehensible revolt of hers which had followed so swiftly—a final, vindictive blow of fate—on that other revolt of the workers. At ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... since their marriage! He threw himself on his bed, and passed some sleepless hours. Then fatigue had its way. When he awoke, there was a gray dawn in the room, and he was conscious of something pressing against his bed. Half asleep, he raised himself and saw Kitty, in a long white dressing-gown, sitting curled ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rash eye to Him In whom the issues are of life and death; He taught to whom the battle is—to whom The victory belongs. His cherub, that aloft Kept sleepless watch, was Providence—not Chance. ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... were reported to have been seen leaving a neighbouring station by an early train. Only last night we had news that the couple had been hunted down in Liverpool, and they prove to have no connection whatever with the matter in hand. Then it was that in my despair and disappointment, after a sleepless night, I came straight to you ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lately on a sleepless bed, I of a token thought which lovers heed; How among them it was a common tale, That it was good to hear the nightingale, Ere the vile cuckoo's note ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... she exclaimed. She looked tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said, "Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing except ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... of the storm was over, then dried his dull eyes, in which the old outlook had withered away, and trod unknowingly in the silent footsteps of Shargar, who was ever one corner in advance of him, down to the dreary lessons and unheeded prayers; but, thank God, not to the sleepless night, for some ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... every sense quickened to the most acute and distressing degree, his eyes dazzled by light which, as he declared, glanced upon the picture frames in a room where his mother and uncle could scarcely see to find their way, and his ears pierced, as it were, by the slightest sound in the silent house, sleepless with pain, incapable of thought, excessively irritable in temper, and his faculties, as it seemed, restored only to be the means of suffering. Mrs. Langford came to the door to announce that Philip Carey was come. Mr. Geoffrey Langford went to speak ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... white waistcoat and a dress-coat put his head in at the door, advanced, straightened the chairs, closed the book the Doctor had opened, put the gas out and went away, shutting the door for the night, and leaving the room to its recollections. What sleepless nights the chairs and heavy-gilt glasses and gorgeous carpets of a hotel must pass, puzzling over the fragments of history that ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... talked with a friend a shell had burst within a few yards of the pair, wounding him in the thigh and sweeping off the friend's head. He lost much blood and became a mental wreck. All day and all night he tossed about in his bed, miserably sleepless and acutely on edge, or lay in a vacant and despondent quiet. Nothing interested him, nothing comforted him—not even a promise from the doctor of a long rest ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... which nobody can deny; and, uncultivated save in military matters, and rough as he was, Bill Gedge was as human as he could be. He had just had a tremendous tramp for a whole day, a sleepless night of terrible excitement and care, a sudden respite from anxiety, a meal, and the glow of a hot sun upon a patch of rock which sent a genial thrill of comfort through his whole frame. These were the difficulties which were weighing hard in one of the scales of the young private's ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... shores, whose fringe of little shut up houses still suggested slumber. The dews had freshened the pines of Dormilliere, and the old Church stood majestically forward among them, throwing back its head and keeping sleepless watch towards the opposite side. Gradually receding, too, the Manoir showed less and less gable ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... you do not know what it is to lie awake all night, sleepless and trembling, between sheets that are made of lava, and to hear footsteps and the clanking of armour and to see Rinaldo shining in the dark and threatening you as he holds over you his sword, Fusberta, and shouts in your ear: 'How dare you applaud ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... bending leaf and the musical tinkle of these as they took their last leap into little pools below. With the chilliness which misery brings he got up at last and wrapped his weather-coat about him. If it were only day when he could go to his work and try to forget! Restless, sleepless, unable to read, tired of sitting, driven on by the desire to get rid of his own thoughts, he started out to walk. As he passed his school-house he noticed that the door of it, always fastened by a simple ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... me sore. Yea, my love's separation hath worn out my soul, And I'm grown like a shape, with a shroud covered o'er. Give the railers not cause to exult in my woe, O prince of the spoilers, O lion of war! A lover, all sleepless for loss of my dear, I'm drowned in the tears from mine eyelids that pour; And my pining for her in the darkness of night Hath robbed me, for passion, of reason ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... During a sleepless night in Italy he formed the plan for the music of "Das Rheingold," but not wishing to write on Italian soil, he got up and hastened ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... visitor of the last night must be somewhere in this neighbourhood, and I determined to devote the entire day to a rigorous search; in this my men were unanimous, as they objected to passing another night in sleepless excitement ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... night is interrupted, now by plaintive moans, now by profound sighs, uttered by the feverish sleepers; then all is quiet, and naught is heard but the regular and monotonous tickings of a large clock, which strikes the hours, so long for sleepless suffering. One of the extremities of this hall was almost plunged into obscurity. Suddenly was heard a great stir, and the noise of rapid footsteps; a door was opened and shut several times; a sister ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... fixed rivet," said the smith. "The town hath given the Johnstone a purse of gold, for not ridding them of a troublesome fellow called Oliver Proudfute, when he had him at his mercy; and this purse of gold buys for the provost the Sleepless Isle, which the King grants him, for the King pays all in the long run. And thus Sir Patrick gets the comely inch which is opposite to his dwelling, and all honour is saved on both sides, for what is given to the provost is given, you understand, to the town. Besides all this, the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... from his sleepless couch at the parsonage, and finding that the wind had moderated, launched his canoe. He left the mission station just an hour before Mr Cockran returned ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... during the terrible week that followed that night no one but MacVeigh would ever know. To him they were seven days of a fight whose memory would remain with him until the end of time. Sleepless nights and almost sleepless days. A bitter struggle, almost without rest, with the horrible specter that ever hovered within the inner room. A struggle that drew his cheeks in and put deep lines in his face; a struggle during which Isobel's voice spoke tenderly ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... unwieldy, overgrown dimensions, it dreads the least opposition to it, and shakes like isinglass at the touch of a finger. It starts at its own shadow, like the man in the Hartz mountains, and trembles at the mention of its own name. It has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It stands 'listening its fears.' It is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice. The idea of what the public ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... cheeks burned; up and down her, between the cool sheets, little hot cruel shivers ran; she lay, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling. She thought, of the woman whom he so loved, and wondered if she too were lying sleepless, flung down on a bare floor, trying to cool her forehead and lips ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... your father, with that seed of life which you and your mother must bear for days and months of days, till it should be born indeed! One hour with him—and he hath given you work for years. And hath he sleepless nights and breathless days, then? Nay, indeed! He is off to new dreams by morning, and there is only you to watch that they shall be no dreams, but realities. And when that watch is over, then look for the dawn indeed—but not this ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... with sleepless eye, I watched that wretched man, And since, I never dare to write ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... in her case, for she was still a good-natured girl; it was as though a passing wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly in the shut-up bedroom. A storm of lust disordered their brains, plunged them into the delirious imaginations of the flesh. The old pious terrors of their sleepless nights were now transforming themselves into a thirst for bestiality, a furious longing to walk on all fours, to growl and to bite. One day when he was playing bear she pushed him so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture, and when she saw the lump on his forehead she ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... daylight came, I was calm, and although I had passed a sleepless night I was not ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... unrest in the city, but definite information she had none. Nick eluded all enquiries; but it seemed to her that the yellow face grew more wrinkled every day, and the shrewd eyes took on a vigilant, sleepless look that troubled her much in secret. The thought of him kept her from brooding overmuch upon her own trouble. She did not want to brood. If her own nights were sleepless, she took a book and resolutely read. She would not yield an inch to the ceaseless, weary ache of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of John, and in the stillness of her sleepless nights prayed Heaven to keep him safe, and make her worthy to receive and strong enough to bear the blessedness or pain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... empress, of the divorced wife, sits on the throne of Clovis and Charlemagne, of Capet and Bonaparte. Within the brief space of one generation, within the limit of one man's memory, vengeance has revolved full circle; and while the sleepless Nemesis points with unresting finger to the barren rock and the insulted captive, she turns with meaning smile to the borders of the Seine, where mausoleum and palace stand in significant proximity,—the one covering the dust of the first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... entered her sister-in law's room, according to her usual custom, the latter was not obliged to feign the indisposition she had planned; the sensations of this sleepless night had paled her cheeks and altered her features; it would have been difficult to imagine a more complete contrast than that between these two young women at this moment. Clemence, lying upon her bed motionless and white ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... veranda while Gladys Todd painted; Boller in the Todd parlor, standing under a bower of clematis, while Gladys Todd moved toward him in step to the wedding-march played by the eldest Miss Minnick. In the sleepless hours that followed, one purpose fixed itself in my mind. I should leave McGraw next day at the sacrifice of a useless diploma. So I wrote to Gladys Todd. I wrote many notes before I was satisfied, and the one I despatched had, I thought, a manly, sensible tone. I did not wish to spend another ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... two sections of the Okoyong people. Three years before, a gathering such as she summoned would have been impossible—they would have laid down "medicine" and fought. She trembled to go, and longed for some of the Calabar missionaries to come up and accompany her. But God gave her peace. After a sleepless night she started with her knitting material, and reaching the clearing in the forest passed alone through the guards of armed men. Every chief was there, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow,—thanks chiefly to Mission boxes,—each ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... and forget and blunder and learn something and regret and suffer and so come again to belief much as we have to eat and grow hungry and eat again. What these others can get in their temples we, after our own manner, must distil through sleepless and lonely nights, from unavoidable humiliations, from the smarting ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... My mother grew sleepless and pallid. She laughed often, in a nervous, shallow way, as unlike her as a butterfly is unlike a sunset; and her face settled into an habitual sharpness and hardness unutterably painful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... is! how little you give me of it! You speak of our parting, with a smile on your lip; of our meeting, and you care not to hasten it! Is life but a disillusion, then, and are the flowers of our garden faded away? I have wept—I have prayed—I have passed sleepless hours—I have shed bitter, bitter tears over your letter! To you I bring the gushing poesy of my being—the yearnings of the soul that longs to be loved—that pines for love, love, love, beyond all!—that flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur! Your ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... faint in the distance, whose songs that reached him in snatches as over the resonant obstacle of a pool, the perfume of flowers that seem to become full blown in so singular fashion towards the end of Parisian balls, when the late hour that confuses all notions of time and the weariness of the sleepless nights communicate to brains soothed in a more nervous atmosphere, as it were, a dizzy sense of enjoyment. The robust nature of Jansoulet, civilized savage that he was, was more sensitive than another to these unknown subtleties, and he had need of all his strength to refrain from ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... morning, or six consecutive hours. This was so entirely new and different from anything she had experienced for a very long time, that nothing could exceed her own and the astonishment of everyone who was acquainted with the facts. Long and painful had been her nights, sleepless and full of misery, unless under the influence of a narcotic. And, as we said before, she had reached a point where her system would endure no more of crude drugging. She always awoke unrefreshed and miserable from these unnatural, forced sleeps. So when she awoke this morning, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... ports, and Bart's dread mounted. He had, as yet, had no opportunity to put the radiation counter out of order. It was behind a panel in the drive room, and try as he might, he could think of no way to get to it unobserved. Sometimes, in sleepless nights, it seemed that would be the best way. Just let it go. But then the Lhari would detect Montano's ship, and ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... remember! The very letter of that last interview was cut deep in my heart; not a sleepless night had I passed without rehearsing it word for word and look for look; and sometimes, when sorrow had spent itself, and the heart could bleed no more, vain grief had given place to vainer speculation, and I had cudgelled my wakeful brains for the meaning of the new and subtle horror which ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... night-wind woke of sweet And solemn sound, I heard alone The sleepless ocean's ceaseless beat, ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... look for these letters at his own house at Brockholes, and Logan passed a night of sleepless anxiety. One of the mysteries of the case is that Logan entrusted Bower, who could not read, with all his papers. If one of them was needed, Bower had to employ a person who could read to find it: probably he used, as a rule, the help of his better educated son, Valentine. After ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... the man with sleepless eyes that shone curiously bright. In the room behind him a portmanteau, ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... my heart out in that cursed village. The feasting and the hunting and the triumph, the wild songs and wilder dances, the fantastic mummeries, the sudden rages, the sudden laughter, the great fires with their rings of painted warriors, the sleepless sentinels, the wide marshes that could not be crossed by night, the leaves that rustled so loudly beneath the lightest footfall, the monotonous days, the endless nights when I thought of her grief, of her peril, maybe,—it was an evil dream, and for ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... sleepless bed, she goes down next morning to find Mrs. Connolly standing on the lowest step of the stairs, as if awaiting her, booted and spurred for ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... dove, mesh'd in the net, Panted with bitter anguish and dismay, By love and fear so grievously beset, That each would draw her on a diff'rent way. Her tears at night the sleepless pillow wet, And coursed along her pallid cheeks by day, Making life weary, sad, and full of woe, Her hopes of bliss ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... sleepless night the cardinals might hear the din at the gate, the yells of the people, the tolling of the bells. There was constant passing and repassing from each other's chamber, intrigues, altercations, manoeuvres, proposals advanced and rejected, promises of support given and withdrawn. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sleepless. She alternately considered ways of leaving Kennicott, and remembered his virtues, pitied his bewilderment in face of the subtle corroding sicknesses which he could not dose nor cut out. Didn't he perhaps need her more than did the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... so slack a waking on their dykes! Now have they made a sleepless winter for us. Every night we must look, lest the down-slope Between us and the woods turn suddenly To a grey onrush full of small green candles, The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh. And well for us then if there's ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... fool, fool, fool! I thought him absent; thought mid-day would bring My hero back, and pass'd this sleepless night In prayers, and sighs, and vows for his return; While scorned all oaths, forgot all faith, all honour, Clasped in Estella's wanton arms he lay, And mock'd the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... second day Salemina and I improved slightly, but Francesca had passed a sleepless night, and her hand trembled (the love-letter mail had come in from America). We were obliged to tell her, as we collected 'tuppence' twice on the same egg, that she must either remain at home, or take an ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... accepted the position—and made a signal failure. He appealed to the printers because he knew their problems—the things that lost them money, the troubles that caused them sleepless nights—and in a letter that bristled with shop talk he went straight to the point, told how he could help them out of at least one difficulty—and ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... I learnt the whole of it by heart, and could then say it without a break. I have always loved it, and in return it has helped me through many a long and sleepless night.—S. B.] ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... that?" "You did not look upward," was the rejoinder, "and God is observing you." That was a word in season. The father's arm was paralyzed. He took up his sack and returned home. Remember, my friends, that the sleepless eye of the Omnipresent One is upon you. The man that goes forth at the still, dark, hour of midnight to plunder our habitations, how startled would he be if an inmate should noiselessly and suddenly present himself before him—the servant ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... struggle against it and made some headway, but never entirely shook it off before his marriage at 26, so deeply rooted was the hold it had on him. Especially at the time between sleeping and waking, or while lying sleepless at night—when the monks prayed 'ne polluantur corpora'—did its attacks come insidiously upon him. He would struggle for weeks and then would come a relapse. On one occasion he slept with a young uncle who ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sweet and calm and cool, was sitting just where the smoke-dimmed sunlight poured in through a window upon her, and a breeze came with it and stirred her hair. She had those purple shadows under her eyes which betray us after long, sleepless hours when we live with our troubles and the world dreams around us; she had no color at all in her cheeks, and she had that aloofness of manner which Manley, in his outburst, had described as being shut up inside herself. She ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... nerves, we finished our work and started from the room. A book standing on the table fell over; and although it was not a large book, its fall sounded to our excited system like the crack of a pistol. As we went down the stairs their creaking made our hair stand on end. As we flung ourselves on a sleepless pillow we resolved, God helping, that we had smoked our last cigar, and committed our last sin ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... think of thieves, Now daily fools unbar the narrow soul, All wise and gen'rous o'er the nightly bowl. The haunted wood receives its motley host, (By trav'ller shun'd) tho' neither fag nor ghost; And there the crackling bonfire blazes red, While merry vagrants feast beneath the shed. From sleepless beds unquiet spirits rise, And cunning wags put on their borrow'd guise: Whilst silly maidens mutter o'er their boon, And crop their fairy weeds beneath the moon: And harmless plotters slyly take the road, And trick ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... They passed a sleepless night and were up early, packing to leave the woods. Darrel was to go in quest of the boy's father. Within a week he felt sure he should ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... the eunuch, he woke up suddenly with a start, and the sword fell from his lap with a sharp clang on the marble floor. A terrific scream made me jump, and I saw I was sitting on that camp-bedstead of mine sweating heavily; and the crescent moon looked pale in the morning light like a weary sleepless patient at dawn; and our crazy Meher Ali was crying out, as is his daily custom, "Stand back! Stand back!!" while he went along ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... sleep at all that night. This was only one of many sleepless nights, but it was the worst of them. The night was warm, and a faint dim colour lingered behind the treetops of the garden beyond his open window. First he lay under the clothes, then upon the top of his bed, then stripped, plunging his head into a basin ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole |
