"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It had rained all night, the sky awakened covered with white clouds. Young wild colts trotted on the summit of the sierra, with tense manes and waving hair, proud as the peaks lifting their ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... and capillary blood vessels of the skin are tense and contracted. Therefore the heat cannot escape, the skin is hot and dry, and the interior of the body remains overheated. When the skin relaxes and the patient begins to perspire freely, we say the ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... hooked her right arm behind her in her left hand—an attitude absolutely necessary to the situation—and replied: 'One is indicative mood, present tense, third person singular, verb active to say. Other is indicative mood, present tense, third person plural, verb ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... preached from the text, "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord"—a statement which, after the lapse of so many centuries, has still to be couched in the future tense. The delay has been excessive, but Dr. Hitchens is hopeful. He believes in the ultimate and speedy fulfilment of the prophecy. One of his grounds for so believing is this (we quote from the Christian Commonwealth), that "Out of 20 leading lecturers, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest possible impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better still perhaps a game of billiards, he will find himself doing in sheer sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where the billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the suspended ball over the net. Sympathetic magic is, modern psychology teaches us, in the main and at the outset, not the outcome of intellectual illusion, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... of tense expectancy, the cannon opened fire, and speedily gaps were seen in the white masses. Yet the crescent never slackened its advance, except when groups halted to fire their muskets at impossible ranges. Waving their flags and intoning their prayers, the Dervishes ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... showed every movement of his muscles. Though the ride was hot and monotonous I was impressed with his vitality. He seemed to have eyes all around his head. The man was in repose, but it was the repose of a leopard; at a sudden call, every fibre would evidently become tense, the servant of a nimble brain, and an instant pounce upon any opposition could be depended upon. What a pity, I found myself thinking, that the fellow has no longer a chance for his live energy (the war was then well over), and I had to check an incipient wish ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Brassfield, seated on a sofa in a shadowy corner, holding both Miss Scarlett's hands in his; saw the girl frantically, but in vain, trying to take them from his grasp. He sat like a statue, with his eyes set wide and unwinking like a corpse's, every limb and muscle rigid, his body tense and immovable as a stone image. The sight was terrible. It was as if the living man had been transformed in an instant into a ghastly trap, to catch those soft, warm, pretty hands! She ceased her efforts to break away, but stood white and almost ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... smile crossed his face, as he inquired in low, tense tones, "Of what avail are wealth and position to one who finds an insurmountable barrier placed between himself and all that he holds most ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... intolerant, she seized the Bible and thrust it out of sight, into the drawer. Then, her body still tense with the atoms of anger, she sat down upon the edge of the bed and rocked from side to side. But shortly this movement ceased. The recollection of the forlorn and loveless years—stirred into consciousness by the unexpected confrontation—bent ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... man in the section pricked up his ears. There was no order given; but a sensation ran the whole length of it and a movement from easy riding to tense rigidity that could be felt by some sixth sense. Every man was listening, feeling, groping with his senses for something he could neither hear as yet nor see, but that he knew was there. And then, far-distant yet—not above, but under the jolting of ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... silently to anchor off the Cove, and many battalions of Kitchener's Army and batteries of Field Artillery came ashore. When the sun again lifted above the eastern hills, the anchorage was deserted and the new arrivals hidden from aerial observation beneath prepared covering. Anzac grew tense in anticipation of a ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... have had a great blessing; and I need not use the past tense, the work is going on yet, although the meetings do not continue. The work will continue forever, I believe; the truth is, we have had a new baptism, the members who came to us early in the fall, came filled with the Spirit, and have worked as no other members ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... took care of its advantage. At a tense moment in that soul and nerve trying period, with Wall and State streets full of talk about General Electric's probable absorption of Westinghouse, General Electric being then at its highest price, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... breathed, just audibly. Miss Lucilla sat upright and tense, hot tears starting to ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... Latin recitation, which came just before closing time at noon, that Cordelia's perturbation culminated in a blunder that sent most of the class into convulsive giggles, and even brought a twitching smile to Genevieve's tense lips. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... Peter. "She was English! Was she?" He bore a little on the tense of the verb. "That lets in a flood of light. And—and what, by the bye, is ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... mingled with the blue wreaths that ascended from the sanctuary in a fragrant cloud, lingering over the congregation. The celebrant offered the bread and wine to Our Father in Heaven. And all this took time; the children were tired by their tense concentration; their prayers had all been said two and three times over; and they were now vacantly waiting and longing, looking at their clothes, at the stained-glass windows in the choir or St. Anne in her crimson ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... and, like blind flies, Err with their wings for want of eyes; Poor authors worshipping a calf, Deep tragedies that make us laugh, A strict dissenter saying grace, A lecturer preaching for a place, Folks, things prophetic to dispense, Making the past the future tense, The popish dubbing of a priest, Fine epitaphs on ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... other side of the enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his eyes began to flash. He stopped and stretched out his neck as if he were going to yawn, raised his upper lip and showed his teeth. Then he galloped across the grass and approached ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... is still more curious) we have a participle of the present tense formed from this fictitious past ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... if the man had somehow made himself known, the horseman relaxed his attitude of tense readiness. The hand that had held the bridle rein to command instant action of his horse, and the hand that had rested so near the rider's hip, came together on the saddle horn in careless ease, while a boyish smile of amusement broke over ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... some of you pack guns, too!" he added, in biting scorn. In the long, tense pause, strung keenly as a tight wire, he sat motionless on Black Star. "All right," he went on. "Then let some of you take this message to Tull. Tell him I've seen Jerry Card! ... Tell him Jerry Card will ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... as other women." Her voice sounded like a moan. "I thought myself different, stronger—perhaps worse than other women. I was wrong. Oh, Bertie! cannot you see that she loves you as I loved you long ago—oh, so long ago? And someone has said that there is no past tense in love! No, no! she does not love you as I loved you—guiltily; no, her love is the love that purifies, that exalts. She loves you, and she waits for you to tell her that you love ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... Naturel), ex-convicts (John Gabriel Borkman), people with ideas in advance of their time (Ghosts), and a host of other characters that are usually considered dangerous to society. In order that the dramatic struggle might be tense, the dramatists have been forced to strengthen the cases of their characters so as to suggest that, perhaps, in the special situations cited, the outcasts were right and society was wrong. Of course it would be impossible to base a play upon the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... The strange, tense atmosphere filled Scotty with vague alarm. He felt that the air was pregnant with disaster. Danny Murphy nudged him when the master closed his eyes for prayer and whispered that "Somebody was goin' to ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... rationalists, and in the end his reason subdued his demon. Therefore, the little knot of linotypers and helpers who had stood wonderingly by while the two adversaries stared at each other, through a tense half-minute, now listened to ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Court (poor things) may stand on one Leg, or lean against sideboards, to rest themselves as they choose; but Sit Down they Dare not. This is the same Discipline, I believe, that still prevails, and so I speak of it in the present tense. The Table is entirely set out, and served by the Empress's Maids of Honour (who put on the very dishes and sauces), Twelve young Ladies of the First Quality, having no Salary, but their chamber at court (like our Maids at the Montpelier by Twitnam), where they live in a kind of Honourable Captivity, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... grasps a war weapon, a stone tied in a crotched stick, from the heap of wedding gifts, and smites PADAHOON to the earth, standing threateningly over him. The others stiffen into tense attitudes, drawing their blankets tighter, their eyes burning bright. PADAHOON draws the knife that hangs in ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... in, and takes a dislike to Dick, the Squire's son, and to his friend Tom. He tries to pin the blame on them. At times even Dick's father is inclined to think that way, too. But eventually the culprit is found. There are the tense moments typical of this author, and you will perhaps learn a lot about fenland natural history. A good read, and better still to listen ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... alone in the farm, in all that landscape the only living thing at the moment, except for the animals. A tense energy of will seemed to possess her. She was defending herself—defending Ellesborough—and their joint lives. How was she going to do it? She didn't know. But the passion in her blood would give her strength—would ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it was going to be! How we should rejoice to see the curved sabres of our comrades rising against the clear sky to slash down upon the leather schapskas of our foe! We waited for the word that was to let loose the pent-up energy of all those tense muscles. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... the past year again showed the value of the United Nations in bringing about the peaceful adjustment of tense international controversies. In Indonesia and in Palestine the efforts of the United Nations have put a stop to bloodshed and paved the way to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... round a slight curve in the road, with two wheels in the air, and a skid which seemed for a moment as though it must mean destruction. Mud and small stones flew up around it. The driver was crouching forward over the wheel, tense and motionless. Duncombe moved to the side of the road to let it pass, with a ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... demanded the skipper, his voice growing tense and forceful, "rob a stage and kill a man, somewhere in ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... There was another savage impact and both players rolled upon the ground, but this time Holden did not get up. He got his man but he was unconscious or at least seemingly so. His chest bone had been broken. It was a tense moment. We all felt a pang of sympathy, for Holden was a square, if rough, player. Harvard's cheers subsided into murmurs of sorrow and Holden was carried tenderly off ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... air of deference, was covered by a white cloth. He came to the boats across from us and got into a punt, balancing his tray across the bow while he paddled, standing, toward the little island. Now I became more than ever tense, and perhaps I moved, for Smilax pressed my arm ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Primavera"—in the terrible scene where Strafford learns his doom, is only to be paralleled by the song of Mariana in "Measure for Measure," wherein, likewise, is abduced in one thrilling poignant strain the quintessential part of the tense life of the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the precipice on Long's Peak. Time has not changed the character of that face—it is sheer and smooth and icy now, as then. He was probably the first man to attempt its descent, and I was always weak and spent when he ended his story of it, so vividly did he portray its dangers. I sat tense, digging my nails deep into my palms, living through every squirm and twist with him, from the moment he slid down from the comparatively safe "Narrows" to the first niche in the glassy, precipitous wall, till, after many nearly-the-last ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... presently swerved a trifle from its first course, fluttered to and fro an instant, then neared a woman, who sat listlessly by herself, her arms resting upon those of her chair and her eyes, dark and sad, fastened upon the far horizon. There was a tense quiet in her attitude that seemed to cover something most ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... like the Rabbit who was late for the Duchess's dinner. Her rubber-heeled oxfords were pounding down hard on the white marble pavement. Suddenly she saw coming swiftly toward her a woman who seemed strangely familiar—a well-dressed woman, harassed looking, a tense frown between her eyes, and her eyes staring so that they protruded a little, as one who runs ahead of herself in her haste. Hannah had just time to note, in a flash, that the woman's smart hat was slightly ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... before in all her life did the girl's will call upon the muscles of her body. Her hands far out now, like the still pinions of some strange being of a strange white world, her lithe body as tense as wire, she gathered her strength, felt her body rising as the skis slipped up the short slope of the mound, knew that in one flying second there lay both success and death. At the very instant, when, had she let herself go, she would be slipping down to the water that was grinding ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... scarcely answer, but, with every faculty of mind concentrated, he thought, "Henry's explanation of his use of the present tense does not explain, and there is more meaning in what he left unsaid in our recent interview than in what he said. Can it be possible? Let me take this heavenly theory and, as we were taught at college, see how much there is to support it. Was there any change in her manner ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... of explaining that he had made the implication by his use of the past tense, but gave up the idea as involving a waste of energy. "How old is this chap, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Instantly the tears were dried, the brown face grew white and tense, the whole slender body rigid with passion, and with unseeing eyes Tabitha stared straight ahead ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... invented the rest. We purposely allowed the newspaper reporters to take the same view of the case, but when we four were alone we unburdened our hearts, and relived the marvelous life of Venus. I use the past tense, because I have yet to ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... either side as far as possible, until they crouched, isolated, crestfallen, and self- condemned by their guilty countenances, a target for all eyes. At length Sekosini's story came to an end, and for a few tense moments a profound silence ensued. There was not an individual present who did not realise the vital importance to the entire nation of the issues that had been raised by the witch doctor's confession, and the manner in which those issues would be dealt with by the king. ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... of February—new style—was tense with an ominous expectancy. In the Allied chancelleries anxious groups were gathered. They realized that the fate of the Allies hung in the balance. In Petrograd alone three hundred thousand workers went out on strike that day, and the police agents ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... Tense, anxious, watchful, he waited. He saw hesitation, but saw, too, that the hesitation was momentary, that it would be followed by a blind rush if he could not drive fear into their hearts. And he realized with a sick ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... his passage across the room. His outstretched hand fell to his side. The expression of eagerness with which he had approached Josephine disappeared from his face. He confronted Phipps, who had also risen to his feet, as a right-living man should confront his enemy. There was a second or two of tense silence, broken by Phipps, who was ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tense expectation of a revolution had grown too great not to demand some sacrifice. A summons was suddenly spread calling us to a notorious alley in order to exercise popular justice upon a hated magistrate who, it was rumoured, had unlawfully taken under his protection ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... raised her startled, frightened eyes, and for a moment her glance met Harley's; it seemed to him to be full of entreaty; the whole atmosphere of the place was to him tense, strained, and tragic; why, he did not know, but he shook himself and decided that it was only the result of weariness, the long ride, and the night in the storm. Nevertheless, the feeling did not depart because he ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of politics into the school-room and the whole tense life of the capital was extremely undesirable, and, if continued, could not fail to have an injurious influence upon immature lads; so my mother hastily decided that, instead of waiting until the next year, we should go to Keilhau ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eyes I could have sworn it was Miss Atkins," laughed Grace. "Even she herself couldn't fail to recognize that impersonation. It's ridiculously funny, Elfreda, but I wish you wouldn't do it." As Grace and Elfreda were standing with their backs directly away from the door neither girl saw the tense little figure that stood rigid, one hand on the door casing, listening with eyebrows drawn fiercely together. An instant later it had vanished. Grace, after triumphantly placing the last hook in its eye, began helping Elfreda find her handkerchief and gloves. "Now you have everything ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... Pike's huge form tense convulsively and involuntarily, and I noted the way his huge hands strained in their clutch on the bridge-railing. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... incidents which she now began to recount with dramatic effect. The girls sat spellbound, and when, at the conclusion of the first story, a faint little wail sounded from the distance, the general start was indicative of tense nerves. ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... think you were having a mood and a tense at the same time this evening," said Bel, looking with some surprise at her friend. "What has stirred you up so? Have you and Julian ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... over the sceptre-spikes of the chestnuts, Over the speckle of the wych-elms' green. She shouted; then stood still, hushed and abashed To hear her voice so shrill in that gay roar, And suddenly her eyelashes were dimmed, Caught in tense tears of spiritual joy; For there were daffodils which sprightly shook Ten thousand ruffling heads throughout the wood, And every flower of those delighting flowers Laughed, nodding to her, till she clapped her hands Crying 'O daffies, could ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... sepulchrally, at the same moment striking the match on the tense seat of his trousers and holding it to the aperture. "Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness . . . Eh? . . . Good Lord!"— he drew back and ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a cheer as Don Carlos, dripping wet but smiling, came up the ladder, and the cheer was taken up by practically everyone around, save Myra, who was standing tense and white, her brain ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... a grim smile. "Certainly not, Foster. It's against orders to start anything with Consops cruisers. You know why. The situation is so tense that a fight between two spaceships might plunge Earth into war." His smile got even grimmer. "But you never know. The Consops ship might fire first. Or an accident ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... eyes still closed, and stood tense and erect, the north wind blowing on his face. A shiver ran through Robert, not a shiver of fear, but a shiver caused by the mysterious and the unknown. His own eyes were open, and he gazed steadily into the northern heavens. The occult quality in the air deepened, ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... defied, for several hours, his wife's application of the remedies she had found efficacious in former attacks. Her ultimate resort was chloroform, and by the liberal use of this, relaxation of the tense nerves and a sleep that resembled healing repose were induced by the middle of the afternoon. The weather continued to threaten rain, although none had fallen as yet, and the wind moaned lugubriously in the leafless branches of the great walnut before the end window of the narrow ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Gellius, (Noctes Atticae, vi. 17,) Ammianus Marcellinua, (xxii. 16,) and Orosius, (l. vi. c. 15.) They all speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably strong: fuerunt Bibliothecae innumerabiles; et loquitum monumentorum ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... away. He was quite warm and tense now—almost nervous. It was quite clear to him that he had done or was contemplating perhaps a very treacherous thing. Under the current code of society he had no right to do it. It was against the rules, as they were understood ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... ennuye beyond my usual tense of that yawning verb, which I am always conjugating; and I don't find that society much mends the matter. I am too lazy to shoot myself—and it would annoy Augusta, and perhaps * *; but it would be a good thing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... through in a golden flood, was all at once darkened, and in the doorway—framed vividly against the day—was the figure of a man. A tense breath came to Carrigan's lips. At first he felt a shock, then an overwhelming sense of curiosity and of pity. The man was terribly deformed. His back and massive shoulders were so twisted and bent that he stood no higher ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... the official announcer rose above the hum of the crowd and there was a sudden, tense shifting of the nervous human mass. A dozen bookmakers turned leisurely to their slates, a dozen pieces of chalk were poised aggravatingly—and a hoarse grunt of disappointment rose from the watchers. Black Bill the ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... convinced that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become things ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... paused upon the threshold, tense, thrilled, apparently speechless. Tom was reminded of a trim little wren poised upon the edge of its nest. This time it was more difficult to counterfeit an exclamation of joy, but the catch in "Bob's" voice, the moisture in ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... crossing the roof when a Yellow Cat rose up. The Black Torn glared and growled, so did the Yellow Tom. Their tails lashed from side to side. Strong throats growled and yowled. They approached each other with ears laid back, with muscles a-tense. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... straight to his study. The walls of his hall as well as those of his room were covered with books from floor to ceiling. Benda said he was just getting ready to go on an extended journey. The finished politeness with which he removed the books from a chair and the tense way in which he eyed Herr Carovius made it clear to the latter that this was neither the time nor the place to engage in mock conversation. Carovius talked gas pipes. Benda finished all he had to say on this subject in two short, crisp sentences ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... from The Princess, (page 107) note how we are influenced by the tense emotion of the attendants who speak. We do not try to imitate them; but having made the scene stand out before us, we speak as we in imagination hear them, in an ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... finally concludes that the experiment of making the Negro a citizen was a failure. Here again Mr. Rhodes shows his lack of knowledge of human affairs in that he studies history only in the present tense. No man at present is wise enough to say whether we shall finally obtain more good than bad results from the Reconstruction, for we are too close to that part of our history to make a proper estimate ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort, a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent visits; but here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable duties ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinctly, with a straightforward adherence to fact, without disdaining anything at all as unpoetical, and without at all, especially in the description of historical times, going in pursuit of poetical flights or embellishments—maintaining throughout his narrative the present tense.(55) What we have already said of the national drama of the same poet, applies substantially to the work of which we are now speaking. The epic, like the tragic, poetry of the Greeks lived and moved essentially in the heroic period; it was an altogether new and, at least in design, an enviably ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... notebook and seized a pencil, and then held herself tense to receive the message, staring downwards at the blank page. Dayson lolled in his chair, throwing his head back. He knew that the presence of himself, the great shorthand expert, made Hilda nervous when she had to write from dictation; and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... group, brown heads and golden bent above the scores, and pale muslins and flower-wreathed hats mingled in a tender rainbow. All were young and pretty, and bathed in summer bloom; but not one had the nymph-like ease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she bent her soul ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... I had just irately blamed a printer for a blunder of my own, and the words I overheard reminded me of the unpleasant truth that I had recently made a great many senseless blunders, over which I chafed in merciless self-condemnation. For weeks and months my mind had been tense under the strain of increasing work and responsibility. It was my nature to become absorbed in my tasks, and, as night editor of a prominent city journal, I found a limitless field for labor. It was true I could have jogged along under the ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... however, this shriek became hoarse with rage, and howled as it shook the rigging. It used the shrouds and stays of the still upright mainmast as an aeolian harp from which to draw horrible music. It made the tense ropes tremble and thrill, and tortured the spars until they wailed a death-song. Its force as felt by the shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it were a sea, and bruised them against the shrouds and bulwarks; it asserted ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... said it," replied Dave, raising a tense arm. "It's a one-man job. D—n Snap! He could have done it, if he hadn't gone to the bad. But it won't be easy. I tried to get Holderness. He was wise, and his men politely said they had enjoyed my call, but I wasn't ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... homox, how very near to the Latin homo! I think, too, that I have even got a notion of some of the grammatical forms of the language. That termination of en, as in deluden, salubren, seems to me the sign of the present tense of the plural form of the verb. That other termination of tar, as in ebuntar, carantar, I suppose to be the sign of the infinitive. Depend upon it that this language is one of absolute regularity, undeformed by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... feeling contempt and dislike, to be pleased at something and waiting for the favourable moment to turn something into ridicule and to burst into laughter. His long nose, his thick lips, and his sly prominent eyes seemed tense with the desire to laugh. Looking at his face, Kuzmitchov smiled ironically ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the rattle of the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was a time to quicken the steadiest pulse, and when the crucial moment came, when a pebble suddenly rang against the pane with a sound that the tense waiting magnified into a shivering crash, Hollyer leapt from the bed on ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... the first applause; and Trimmer's people, seeing the crowd had taken Hector's point, sprang to their feet and began to cheer. At a tense moment, such as this, cheering is often hypnotic, and good managers know how to make use of it on the floor. The noise grew thunderous, and when it subsided Hector was master of the convention. Then, for the first time, I saw how far he would go—and why. I had laughed at him all my life, but ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... mesh of his gas-mask the lean lines of his jaw went taut. Tense, steely fingers flipped to the knobbed control instruments; the gleaming single-seater scout plane catapulted in a screaming somersault. Lance's ever-wary sixth sense told him the tongues of disintegrating flame had licked the plane's protected belly, and for the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... moreover, that in this entire text in Matthew the Lord speaks in the future tense: "I will build," "I will give." The words do not really confer a grant, but are at best a promise. It is necessary now that the Catholics find a complement to this text in Matthew, a text which relates that Christ actually carried out later what He promised ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... the name of the men who attacked you and treated you so cruelly?" asked Peggy, breaking the tense silence which followed the conclusion of the Mexican's ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... was as though he did not hear her. His face was set and white, his blue eyes glowed black. He stood with lips parted, waiting for the cue to begin. His audience, to most of whom the song was known, caught by a mysterious telepathy the tense emotion of the boy, and stood silent and eager, all smiles gone from their faces. The song was in the Ruthenian tongue, but was the heart cry of a Russian exile, a cry for freedom for his native land, for death to the tyrant, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... quiet, this same unending mystery of voiceless desolation that had won him to the North. Until to-night he had loved it. But now there was something oppressive about it, something that made him strain his eyes to see beyond the rock and the fire, and set his ears in tense listening for sounds which did not exist. He knew that in this hour he was longing for companionship—not that of Breed, nor of men with whom he hunted men, but of men and women whom he had once known and in whose ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... auxilium, help), that which gives aid or support; the term is used in grammar of a verb which completes the tense, mood or voice of another verb; in engineering, e.g. of the low steam power used to supplement the sail-power in sailing ships, still occasionally used in yachts, sealers or whalers; and in military use, of foreign or allied troops, more properly of any troops not permanently maintained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... continued in a tense, even voice. "I'd like to know what put that crazy notion in yore head. Don't tell me you are in love ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... she said, smiling faintly. "I am not very brave—after all!" And going to the dresser, her knees trembling under her, she poured out some water and drank it greedily. Then she turned to him, "Do you understand?" she said with a long tense look. "Are you prepared? If you come here, you will see me suffer worse things, things a hundred times, a thousand times worse than that. You will see me suffer, and you will have to stand and see it. You will have to stand and suffer ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... becoming more tense, momentarily. Many towns in the heart of the lumber district had passed absurd criminal syndicalism ordinances. These prohibited membership in the I.W.W.; made it unlawful to rent premises to the organization or to circulate its literature. The Employers' Association had boasted ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... figure when he enlarges upon small adventures which may come his way—adventures which the soldier endures in silence as part of his everyday life. On this occasion, however, the episode was all our own, and had a sporting flavour in it which made it dramatic. I know now the feeling of tense expectation with which the driven grouse whirrs onwards towards the butt. I have been behind the butt before now, and it is only poetic justice that I should see the matter from the other point of view. As we approached Ronchi we could see ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his lips when there came the sound of a chair being quickly pushed back, and Oliver stood beside Margaret. His eyes were flashing; his right shirt-cuff was rolled back, the bit of charcoal still between his fingers. Every muscle of his body was tense with anger. Margaret's quick instinct took in the situation at a glance. She saw Oliver's wrath and she ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... room above—" I looked up at the closed shutters, scarcely seeing them for the blinding rush of tears; yet stared steadily till my eyes were dry and hot again, and my choked and tense throat relaxed. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the great drawing-room at Berkshire Street as Ronnie took his seat at the piano; the voice of Canon Mousepace outlasted the others for a moment or so, and then subsided into a regretful but gracious silence. For the next nine or ten minutes Ronnie held possession of the crowded room, a tense slender figure, with cold green eyes aflame in a sudden fire, and smooth burnished head bent low over the keyboard that yielded a disciplined riot of melody under his strong deft fingers. The world-weary Landgraf forgot ...
— When William Came • Saki |
