"Unseeing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the shadow of a little rain-washed tent one golden May morning and gazed with unseeing eyes at the rich spectacle spread before him by Nature. The sky was a dome of blue velvet, mottled with white clouds, and against the line of the horizon a belt of intense green told where the forest was springing into new life under the vivid touch of spring. The ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to Ealing. The compartment was packed with City men (how he wished Flossie would turn her head and not her eyes if she must look at them!); and as they got in at Earl's Court, one of them, a polite person, gave up his seat to the lady. Flossie turned an unseeing eye on the polite person, and took his seat with a superb pretence of having found it herself after much search. And when Rickman said "Thanks" to the polite person her indignant glance informed him that she had expected support in her ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... care on its own part, and without intelligence on the part of the operating law, from irrational to rational, and risen in the scale from the mere promptings of instinct to the highest exercise of reason,—from apes and baboons to Bacons and Newtons. The blind lead the blind;—the unseeing law operates on the unperceiving creatures; and they go, not together into the ditch, but direct onwards, straight as an arrow, and higher and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... that faced a corner of the front. The body had lain on the side away from the house; a servant, he thought, looking out of the nearer windows in the earlier hours of the day before, might have glanced unseeing at the hut, as she wondered what it could be like to be ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... with his examination. Mr. Hamilton Fynes, this mysterious person who had succeeded, indeed, in making a record journey, was leaning back in the corner of his seat, his arms folded, his head drooping a little, but his eyes still fixed in that unseeing stare. His body yielded itself unnaturally to the touch. For the main truth the doctor needed ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... delicate eagle profile, her fair skin and light blue eyes, I recalled this conversation with vivid indignation. The surgeon, at least, should be convinced of his mistake. Jeannette had never looked more brilliant; probably the man had never really scanned her features,—he was such a cold, unseeing creature; but to-night he should have a fair opportunity, so I invited him to join our storm-bound ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... of giving you a courteous nod on his morning journey across the archipelago of snowy-topped tables under the convoy of the head waiter to his own table, comes in to breakfast with shaking hands, flushed face, and passes your table with unseeing eyes, you would probably conclude that he was under the influence of liquor, and in your English way you would severely blame him, not so much for the moral turpitude involved in his excess as for the bad taste, which prompted ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... may travel it with reasonable safety, in a glimmer of light. And no available track so easy but man, however capable, will blunder therein, if he walks in darkness; nay, the more resolute and conscientious he is, the more certainly will he stub his big toe on a root, and impale his open, unseeing eye on a dead twig, and tread on nothing, to the kinking of his neck-bone and the sudden alarm of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... rage formed in Hi's eyes. Amos Garwood stood looking on, unseeing. But Dick Prescott's thoughts were flying like lightning. He knew that, somehow, Garwood ought to be seized and held until the friends searching for ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... upstairs Grace sat staring at her theme with unseeing eyes. Disagreeable thoughts would come, and try as she might she could not drive them away. She had been snubbed and she could not forget it. Giving herself a little impatient shake she turned her attention to her theme and went on writing rapidly. Half an hour later she folded it neatly, ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... past her, unseeing, at the wall. "I guess I've known it for quite a while," he said at last. "I didn't want to believe it, so I wouldn't. Are you engaged ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... placed in the way of Death. His time had come and there was no one to ask for a respite. He would die under the knife and every one would be convinced that it was for the best. As she sat up in bed, staring before her with bleak, unseeing eyes, she had an inward vision of this rich man's family counting in advance the profits of the day's business! Braden Thorpe was to be the only victim. He was to be the one to suffer. Two big tears grew in her eyes ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... guarded the green glades of a deer park. Now they stand forlornly cheek by jowl with new yellow brick. Actaeon, from one great pillar, gazes on less divine pictures than a goddess bathing; Artemis, on the other pillar, drapes herself for unseeing eyes. A papered notice-board lolls against the superb ironwork of the gates. Hunter and huntress, pillars and wrought iron, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... man's figure, a stranger standing near. I was a bit of the outside, negligible. She remained as she was, clear and sustained like an old stone upon the hillside. She stood short and sturdy, looking for the most part straight in front, unseeing, but glancing from time to time, with a little, unconscious attention, at the thread. She was slightly more animated than the sunshine and the stone and the motionless caper-bush above her. Still her fingers went along the strand of fleece ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... men rushing at Chester. He rolled over, deaf and unseeing. Shells were coming true and straight. An aeroplane appeared overhead so close down that Chester could see it plainly in the light of the star-shells when his sight came back. Aeroplanes were guiding the guns ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... "The shiver'd steel rebounding from his neck. "His limbs unwounded, to the wondering foe "Thus long expos'd, loud Caeneus call'd;—Now try "Our arms thy limbs to pierce!—Up to the hilt "His deadly weapon 'twixt his shoulders plung'd; "Then thrust and dug with blows unseeing 'mid "His entrails deep; thus ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... limp and still in the middle of her low, gilded bed, gazing with unseeing eyes at the rose canopy above. Her hair was pushed back ruthlessly, revealing an unsuspected height of forehead, which somewhat altered her appearance. She was very pale, a pallor with a tinge of yellow in it. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... exalted. It would not have taken a close observer to decide that in his devotion there was no element of the spurious and in his happiness, no flaw. As for Armitage, unseeing, but sensing clearly the drift of things, his eyes were grimly fixed ahead, the muscles of his jaws bulging in knots on either side. This chauffeur business, he felt, was fast becoming ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... from Penelope's lips as she met his blank, unseeing gaze. The sound of her voice seemed to bring him back ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... of churchyards, funereal monuments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is the resource of the Ostrich; who, hard hunted, sticks his foolish head in the ground, and would fain forget that his foolish unseeing body is not unseen too. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism, significant of the same thing, and of more, he would go; or stopping his court carriages, would send into churchyards, and ask 'how many new ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... he cried, knowing in a flash, yet denying it in his mind at the same time. Stunned, he stared at the perky ears, the dull staring and unseeing eyes, the leather thongs that held the head and body of a dog to the metal encasement. Carol saw ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... not pretend His clay were colder, or his God less true, Or that his grave, at length, would be less green. She'd not deny The boundless depths of her eternal sky Brooding above a boundless universe, Because he seemed to man's unseeing eye Going a little further to fare worse; Nor would she assume he lacked that unseen friend Whom even the tragic ironists declare Were better than the seen, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... but from afar by missionary efforts, the farther away the better, in China and Japan, in India and Africa. For there this church is in no danger of race contamination in its pews and at its altars and in its homes. The American church is saying with the spirit of the unseeing Peter of old, "Not so Lord, we have never accepted any man who is brown or black or yellow as really our brother, for we are white and Thou hast made us of different clay, of purer blood than all these millions of brown and black and yellow peoples. Thou hast made us white and white we mean to ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... the book was Youth, And the dead man that wrote it I, The face was Beauty, the name Truth— And thus, with an unseeing eye, I pass the ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... the soiled and scribbled missive down on the table and sat with unseeing eyes fixed on the studio wall. So, they had cast him out of their councils! They already thought of him ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... carrying himself with a palpable effort at control, shouldered his way into the room in his characteristic fashion, as if he were meeting and hurling back a foot-ball rush. Epstein, breathless and obviously greatly excited, actually stumbled over the threshold in his unseeing haste. Laurie, slowly following the two, alone wore some resemblance to a normal manner. He was very serious but ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... conscious of poisonous vapours within him; he felt the absence of all love, the absence of all sorrow; he felt weariness, a great weight, the advance of a mortal drowsiness. Once more he fell into stupid contemplation of the noise of the river, and fixed his unseeing eyes upon the dark woods of the Francolano. Before his mental vision passed slowly, automatically, the image of the evil priest, who had lived there with his court of harlots. He felt weary from kneeling, and let himself sink to the ground. Again he was ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... nerves strung to their utmost point of tension Wrayson walked homeward with the unseeing eyes and mechanical footsteps of a man unable as yet fully to collect his scattered senses. But for him the events of the evening were not yet over. He had no sooner turned the key in the latch of his door and entered his sitting-room, ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sat, with his unseeing gaze straight ahead, his body tense and motionless. On the desk within reach lay the revolver. Cautiously Susan half extended her hand toward it, then drew it back. She glanced again at Keith's absorbed face, then turned and made her ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... to Carpenter in Montreal right away," he said to the attendant who answered his call. Then he swung about in his chair, with a throaty grunt of content. He sat for a moment, staring at the woman with unseeing eyes. Then he stood up. With his hands thrust deep in his pockets he slowly moved his head back and forth, as though ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... as always, is the spiritual man whose deepest consciousness is pure vision, the pure life of the eternal. But the spiritual man, as yet unseeing in his proper person, looks out on the world through the eyes of the psychical man, by whom he is enfolded and enmeshed. The task is, to set this prisoner free, to clear the dust of ages ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... started the fire by rubbing sticks together. One was intently leaning forward, as if in the act of blowing. Among the figures behind the group stood a man with an infant in his arms, vividly characterized by the unseeing eyes. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... to speak to the little waif of humanity before her, for she was a lover of children, and was never happier than when she was surrounded by these little creatures—the very babies crowed a welcome to her from their mother's arms. But this evening Margaret's eyes had a strange unseeing look in them; they were searching the winding shore for some expected object, and she scarcely seemed to notice the little one ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... recognizing a lady approaching from the opposite direction. It was Madame Laurier. . . . Would she recognize Julio? He noted that the youth turned pale and began looking at the other people with feigned interest. She continued straight ahead, erect, unseeing. The old gentleman was almost irritated at such coldness. To pass by his son without feeling his presence instinctively! Ah, these women! . . . He turned his head involuntarily to look after her, but had to avert his inquisitive glance immediately. He had surprised Marguerite motionless behind ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gone up to his room to lock the door and then to stand long at the window, staring with unseeing eyes down into the village street. By good rights, he should have seen one future, if not the other, opening out before him in ever-widening vistas. At nineteen or so, however, one is not too imaginative. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... own weakness, and even in shame, disaster, and poverty, it was possible to lead a life that was not without grandeur. The man who was beaten to the ground by an outrageous fortune might be a finer thing than the unseeing, cruel powers that ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... the stove sat the two kitchen gods, small ancient idols, with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry world. Since time was they had sat there, ensconced at the very root of life, seemingly placid and unseeing and unhearing, yet venomously watching to be placated with food. Opposite the stove, on the white wall, hung a row of brass hooks, from which dangled porcelain spoons with pierced handles. On a serving-table stood the piled bowls ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Thy will, my Saviour, and do it!" In her pain she prayed, and at last, through her mute adoration, Rapt from all mortal presence, and in her rapture uplifted, Glorified she rose, and stood in the midst of the people, Looking on all with the still, unseeing eyes of devotion, Vague, and tender, and sweet, as the eyes of the dead, when we dream them Living and looking on us, but they cannot speak, and we cannot: Knowing only the peril that threatened his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... silence followed the announcement that meant so much to Joe. He could hear murmurs of surprise, and the violent motion of the craft in which he lay, bound helpless and unseeing, told him that the work of rescue was under way. The motor boat, he reflected, must be making fast to the other. The bandage over Joe's eyes prevented him from seeing what went on. Then came a series of exclamations and questions, and, to Joe's surprise, the voices ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... though it seemed still upon him, the horrible clamours, all gonging and blaring at him; the red, maddened faces, the clenched fists, the open mouths, all raging at him—all the ruck and uproar swam about the dazed old man as he made his slow, unseeing way through the ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Gynt, this strangely motionless one who has thrown the west side into an uproar. There is no drama around him. He is a dead young man in uniform walking slowly, limply through three acts. This is all one remembers—that his eyes were open and unseeing, that his arms hung like a scarecrow's and that the fingers of his hands were curled in ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... man's devotion gradually unfolded. Before the Major had finished the Colonel's hand had crept to the bell at his side, and, as the darky's shuffling footsteps echoed along the corridor, he turned again and stared with unseeing eyes at the outline of the old barn. Dick shifted the log and a crimson glow irradiated the old library, making a halo of soft fire about the figure of the old darky as he paused before ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... and gazed at it earnestly with unseeing eyes. Mr. Sheitlis had just purchased a liberal order of cloaks and suits from Potash & Perlmutter, and it was, therefore, a difficult matter for Abe to turn down this stock proposition ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... him; frowned down on it a moment with a sharp hiss of indrawn breath. Then he twisted oddly on his chair, and sat bolt upright, staring straight before him with unseeing eyes. Presently he passed a hand across his brow, and made a ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... twenty yards before the nose of the amphibian. It glistened with wet, and glittered unbearably in the incredible brightness of the lightning. Every spot and speck and detail showed with an almost ghastly distinctness. But it dived on past, its pilot rigid and tense and unseeing, plunging like a meteor straight downward. The golden, iridescent mist of rain closed over its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... she went into the sick-room. It was a relief not to see her father lying there with unseeing eyes and breathing so heavily; but, somehow, Sarah felt very uncomfortable under his keen glance to-day. Still, she managed to say, 'I am glad you are ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... question which was the paler, the man or the woman. It had come home to him, as it had never done before. He dropped her hands and went over to the window, where he stood very still, staring out with absolutely unseeing eyes; whilst she watched him with a deadly pain at her heart, thinking she had killed the love which she knew had grown ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... with the vehemence of her argument, and eager to press it farther. But her last words had touched an unexpected fibre in Odo. He looked at her with his unseeing ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... one of the front windows, and his eyes gazed unseeing across the street into the green shrubbery of the Luxembourg Gardens. The lace curtains had been left by the femme de menage hanging straight down, and not, as usual, looped back to either side, so he could see through them with ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... reached for the revolver which lay in the snow at her side. She leaped toward MacNair who had regained his feet, red with the life-blood of the Indian who lay upon his back in the snow, staring upward wide-eyed, unseeing, throatless. She called loudly, but her voice was lost in the mighty uproar, and MacNair sprang up ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... if she broke her silence, if she tried to speak—and then she could not bear to be out of the sight of the little figure with the flushed cheeks, moving her head back and forth on the pillow and gazing about with bright, unseeing eyes. As night came on, she began to give, in a voice not her own, little piteous cries of suffering, or strange delirious mockeries of her pretty laughter and quaint, unintelligible, prattling talk. Once, as the long, hot night stood still, the baby ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... all arrangements for the two-horse sledge that was to take them to Fontainebleau. He called for his bill, and paid it. Then he hung about the entrance to the forest, looking with an unseeing eye at the tricks which the snow had been playing with the trees, at the gleams which a pale and struggling sun was shedding over the white world—till his watch told ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the rangy strength of the figure gave him a certain distinction. He held in his sinewy hands a doubly folded newspaper. Presently it slipped from his hold to the seat beside him. He stared at the window opposite with harassed and unseeing eyes. Abruptly he rose and went out on the platform. Average Jones picked up the paper. In the middle of the column to which it was ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... compartment, which had not been made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times as might be convenient. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... had gone. Then she crouched, staring with wide, unseeing eyes into the outside dark. The man would go right away; she would not have even him to mitigate the horrible condition of aloneness ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... blind, a. unseeing, sightless, purblind; oblivious, undiscriminating, inconsiderate, unmindful; unintelligible, illegible; obscure, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating inflection of one who has a story to retail well worth any loiterer's while to ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... not to hear. She was gazing at the fountain, her unseeing eyes gloomily reflecting ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... new beauty to-night!" he said; and then "I told her about you, and she said that she used to know you—well." I was glad my face was in shadow—I could hardly keep back a brutal laugh—and Grayson, unseeing, went on to speak of her as I had never heard any man speak of any woman. In the end, he said that she had just promised to be his wife. I answered nothing. Other men, I knew, had said that with the same ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... moment in which to summon up the reserves of his courage and his command, smiled into her appealing eyes, kissed her pale face, and still smiling, took his way, unseeing and unheeding all but those appealing, tearful eyes and that pleading voice asking with sweet ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... blood-warming, so to say; the real thing now took place. He stood up on his hind legs and shot into the air, alighting on his four feet as if to pierce the earth. He whirled like a howling dervish, grunting, snorting—unseeing, and almost unseen in a nimbus of dust, strap ends, and flying pine needles. His whirling undid him. We seized the rope, and just as the pack again slid under his feet we set shoulder to the rope and threw him. He came to earth with a thud, his legs whirling uselessly in ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... with exertion, they gained the top of the bank. With glittering eyes the old squaw stooped swiftly and turned the body upon its back. The unseeing eyes stared upward, water ceased to gush from the open mouth, and the lolling tongue settled flabbily between the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... before; the flush on his cheeks was like the flush of wine or the sun which had fired his blood. As he had talked the more, so had she grown the more silent. She was sitting now with her hands clasped and her head thrown back, looking up at the stars with unseeing eyes. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a second glass slowly. The wine bubbled up to the brim and overflowed. He had been looking at the glass with unseeing eyes. He set the bottle down impatiently. Fool! To have gone to Burma, simply to stand in the golden temple once more, in vain, to recall that other time: the starving kitten held tenderly in a woman's arms, his own scurry among the booths to find the milk so peremptorily ordered, and the ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... than any you know. You taught me a moment ago to be direct—to be honest. It is so I must be with you now. I must be brave," her voice trembled a little, "I must stand face to face with you. Oh, if you were not so unselfish—so unseeing, you would not make ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... came. He recognized a Presence with him, one day. That One unseen by unseeing eyes became real to him and then more real. He yielded to His wooing. He companioned with Him daily. This came to be the realest thing. And he was transformed by it. He grew constantly less like what he had been, and more ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... alarms, undergo the love of the place, with perpetual apprehensions of having to leave it: alarms, throbbing suspicions, like those of old travellers through the haunted forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing we are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... craftsman who were brought over from Italy. The front of the building has been altogether modernized, but much of the beautiful decorated interior work remains, to enrich the rooms where the many unseeing visitors take their meals. The Trevelyan Hotel, in the High Street, which presents to the street a most unpretentious exterior, and where, indeed, the principal rooms are the Victorian of Dickens, with ugly curtains and carpets, wall-papers and furniture, Victorian pictures, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... period of complete unconsciousness of movement and of his surroundings. Light—light everywhere; a blue-white radiance that beat upon his unseeing eyes with unrelenting ferocity. Stabbing pains bored into his very brain, pains that carried with them an unspoken and unintelligible command. Why couldn't they let him alone; leave him to die in peace? ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... the floors. There is no fire in the drawing-room, so the family remain on after dinner in the dining-room, which rather gives them away. There is really no one in the room but Roger. That is the truth of it, though to the unseeing eye all the family are there except Roger. They consist of Mr., Mrs., and Miss Torrance. Mr. Torrance is enjoying his evening paper and a cigar, and every line of him is insisting stubbornly that nothing unusual is happening ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... garden paths and spaces, without being hot. A gardener whom we saw oftenest hung about his flowers in a sort of vegetable calm, and not very different from theirs except that they were not smoking cigarettes. He did not move a muscle or falter in his apparently unseeing gaze; but when one of us picked a seed from the ground and wondered what it was he said it was a magnolia seed, and as if he could bear no more went away. In one wilding place which seemed set apart for a nursery several men were idly working with many pauses, but not so many as to make ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... hands, turning away from her, his eyes staring unseeing out of the window. A moment she continued looking at him, her dry eyes anxiously pleading. Then she buried her face within her hands and waited, her whole body trembling. Twice Winston sought to speak, before sufficient courage came to him to allow of his turning back, and looking down upon ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... one to send her Glance into the vale, And, unseeing, toward him bend her Angel visage pale. And thus sat he, staring wanly, His last morning there: Toward her window still the manly ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... knees; I was almost distracted. When it got dark I jogged along to the Town Hall—God knows how I got there—and sat on the edge of the balustrade. I tore a pocket out of my coat and took to chewing it; not with any defined object, but with dour mien and unseeing eyes, staring straight into space. I could hear a group of little children playing around near me, and perceive, in an instinctive sort of way, some pedestrians pass me by; otherwise I ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... down into the field, another peasant is driving a team of oxen at a plow. The distant figures are aglow with golden mellow light, the last light of day, which deepens the gloom of the shadowing hillside. The sower's cap is pulled tight about his head, hiding under its shade the unseeing eyes. The mouth is brutal and grim. The heavy jaw flows down into the thick, resistive neck. The right arm swings powerfully out, scattering the grain. The left is pressed to his body; the big, stubborn hand clutches ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... attend our Honourable Judges, do demand no Inconsiderable share in that Pity. What a Difficult, what an Arduous Task, have those Worthy Personages now upon their Hands? To carry the Knife so exactly, that on the one side, there may be no Innocent Blood Shed, by too unseeing a Zeal for the Children of Israel; and that on the other side, there may be no Shelter given to those Diabolical Works of Darkness, without the Removal whereof we never shall have Peace; or to those Furies whereof several have kill'd more people ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... man's back to be turned to make love to her. If she did not believe that she was the most beautiful, the most ravishing, the most delicate-souled woman in the world, it was through no fault of Aristide. Mr. Ducksmith went his pompous, unseeing way. At every stopping-place stacks of English daily papers awaited him. Sometimes, while Aristide was showing them the sights of a town—to which, by the way, he insisted on being conducted—he would extract a newspaper from ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the station Mess, Wyndham made his appearance, and with a friendly nod of welcome took the reins out of her hands. But by seven o'clock she was back at her post; and one look at Harry's flushed face and unseeing eyes convinced her that the next twelve hours would make a high demand upon her energies, and her resolute hopefulness ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... not come. Another day—but why paint another day that was but a smear of flat dull slate? Yet another breakfast, and the lady of mystery came. Before he knew he was doing it he had bowed to her, a slight uneasy bend of his neck. She peered at him, unseeing, and sat down with her back ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... middle of the reach and both the banks in one blank unseeing circular glance, and left ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... has set my wings a-beating; Oftentimes it coaxes, as I sit in weary-wise, Till the wild life hastens out to wild things all entreating, And leaves me at the spinning-wheel, with dark, unseeing eyes. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Parcae Sisters three have willed it so. Good heavens, what an enigma life is! Some winged insect whirling in a cyclone would have as much chance of escaping its doom as a human being under such circumstances." Then he stopped, and looked with blank, unseeing eyes down the slanting fir avenue. "It is a mystery," he went on—"the very mystery of mysteries; the Sphinx is nothing to it. A month ago we were strangers—I neither knew nor cared that such a person as Elizabeth Templeton existed; and a week—a little cycle of seven or eight nights ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... if for support, looking off with unseeing eyes into the night. Lights along the river-side were reflected in the water; here and there a bridge made a long low arch of lamps; more lights sprinkled the suburban hills, making a fringe to the pall of stars. They grew pale, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... sit up nicely and let me look at you," and, slipping her hand beneath the chin, she turned the face up to hers. She was prepared for tear-drenched eyes and trembling lips but she found neither. Isidore's dark-lashed lids drooped heavily over his unseeing eyes, his head rolled loosely from side to side, and he began to slip, silently ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... of his condition. Upon descending to the stuffy little cabin he found that, as the mate had reported, there was no marked change in Potter's condition; he still lay, as before, without movement, his unseeing eyes upturned, and apparently quite unconscious of the presence of the two men who bent over him. The only difference noticeable to Leslie was that the man's breathing seemed to ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Schmucke?" remarked a person in a suit of black, reducing Schmucke to stupefaction by the mention of his name. He looked up with the same blank, unseeing eyes that he had turned upon Remonencq, who ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... deep in colour as to seem almost black. She stared at Ralph, unseeing, then the light of recognition flashed over her face and she sat up, reaching back ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... I would run across Blenkiron somewhere in Germany, but I didn't think it would be so soon. There he sat staring at me with his full, unseeing eyes, rolling out platitudes to Stumm, who was nearly bursting in his effort to keep civil. I looked moody and suspicious, which I took ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... moment, Mr Cranium and Mr Panscope appeared at the top of the tower, which, unseeing and unseen, they had ascended on the opposite side to that where the Squire and Mr Milestone were conducting their operations. Their sudden appearance a little dismayed the Squire, who, however, comforted himself with ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... will kindly direct me to the house—" said the lady, looking straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently supremely indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. Lenoble in ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... youth was rapt; for some moments his eyes were unseeing, and his lips moved without sound. It was not difficult to see what home meant for him, a goal achieved at hazard, something familiar and sympathetic, worth all the rest of the world. He came back to his ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... circle that made it look like the sunken mouth of an old woman, and her eyes—in which that stark terror was still visible, as though it had been rendered indelible by the violence of the shock that had called it into being—seemed looking through the figures around her, with the intense yet unseeing gaze with which one might look through shadows in search of an object one ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... For a while she lay there, watching him, scarcely breathing; then a faint shiver of utter loneliness came over her—of desire for his attention, his voice, his friendship, and the expression of it. But he never moved; his eyes seemed dull and unseeing; his face strangely gaunt to her, unfamiliar, hard. In the dim light he seemed but the ghost of what she had known, of what she had thought him—a phantom, growing vaguer, more unreal, slipping away from her through the fading light. And the impulse ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... been no acquaintance between her and young Prothero, the medical student. If their ways met it was only by accident, at long intervals, and always, she remembered, out of doors, on her mountains. They used to pass each other with eyes unseeing, fixed in their own dream. That was fifteen years ago. In all that time she had not ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... and threw a swift look into Keith's unseeing eyes. Then she laughed, hysterically, a ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... tide comes in. The moonlight flood and glory Of that unresting surge thrill earth with bliss, And I can hear the passionate sweet story Of waves that waited round her for her kiss. Sweetheart, they love you; silent and unseeing, Old Ocean holds his court around you there, And while I reach out through the dark to find you His fingers twine ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... Motes danced in the beam, and the house somehow seemed less despairing, less alone. A portrait of Colonel Kent, in uniform, hung above the great mantel. Rose smiled at it with comprehension, but the painted lips did not answer, nor the unseeing eyes swerve from their ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Elysees. Of his fondness for riding on the tops of omnibuses I have already spoken. These long rides, when he traverses Paris from one end to the other, are his periods of composition. He sits plunged in a profound reverie, with vague eyes gazing unseeing into space. So well are his moods understood by the conductors and habitual travellers on those lines that he is always left undisturbed. Sometimes the greater part of the day will be passed in these excursions, nor does any severity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... tribute I now yield, Nor even deem the foolish flowers vain. So take it, and if still too slight, too small It seem, think 'tis a bloom that grew anear, In other Springtime, the old garden wall. (That pale blue flower you will remember, dear. The heedless world, unseeing, passed it by, And left it to the bee and you.) Then say, "Because the hands that tended it are nigh No more, and little feet are gone away That round it trampled down the beaded grass, Sweeter to me it is than ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... three times already, and knew it practically by heart. So she left the sheets undisturbed in their envelope. But she raised the whole to her lips, and pressed it there, while her eyes, as they slowly filled with tears, travelled—unseeing—to the wintry street beyond the window. Eyes and face wore the same expression as Wilfrid Bury had surprised there—the dumb utterance of a woman hard pressed, not so much by the world without as by ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... swiftly along the road, where he had intended to walk slowly—a hundred questions pounding through his brain. Suddenly a thought came to him that stopped him in the trail, his unseeing eyes staring down into the dark chasm of the river. After all, was it so strange that Quade would do these things? Into his own life Joanne had come like a wonderful dream-creature transformed into flesh and blood. He no longer tried to evade the fact that he could ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... sleep: she lay motionless as the slow hours passed; gazing into the darkness with wide, unseeing eyes, while she thought of all that the coming day would bring. The end of her incredible journey was at hand. The Grand Vizier's word was pledged. The Grand Turk himself would grant her an audience before the hour of noon, to receive her ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... side. Slowly she thrust out both arms, shoulder-high on either side, with her fists clenched; her head back and slightly on one side; her lips open in agony—the position of crucifixion. Her eyes looked up, unseeing; then closed tight. She drew a long breath, like a sigh that was too weary for sound, and her plump, placid left hand clutched her panting breast, while her right arm dropped again. All the passion of tragedy seemed to shriek in her hopeless gesture, and her silence was ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... beneath, or the once blind man, his eyes now dripping with water of Siloe, looking on Him who had made him whole, or heard the marvellous talk of "men like trees walking," and the rest—I have no doubt that ten days later they sat themselves with unseeing eyes, and wondered whether it was indeed they who had witnessed those things. Human nature, like a Leyden jar, cannot hold beyond a fixed quantity; and this human nature, with experience, instincts, education, common talk, public opinion, ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... under him into the fire, scattering the embers, so he lay full length, with the red gash in his forehead, his arms spread out like a cross, and his face, in the inverted image, turned earthwards, gazing down on Granger and the Last Chance River with startled, unseeing eyes. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... child is wise in the matter of grief. Kent's lips trembled, but he made no attempt to comfort Lydia. He only held her tightly and watched the fire with bright, unseeing eyes. And after what seemed a long, long time, the sobs grew less. Finally, he slipped a pocket handkerchief into Lydia's hand. It was gray with use but of ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... first day of school, too! The culprit arose, and slowly made her way forward, trembling with fear. This wonderful new creature whom she adored was after all an unknown quantity, and Elizabeth was always afraid of the unknown. She went up the aisle all unseeing. She did not even notice Rosie's glance of ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... fish and rice in gloomy silence. Ume's gentle words failed to bring a reply. When the breakfast dishes were removed the old man continued listlessly in his place, staring out with unseeing eyes ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... dilettanti I mean), and without an intimacy of feeling, an abandonment to the spirit of the place, impossible to most Americans. They retain too much, of their English blood; and the travelling English, as a class, seem to me the most unseeing of all possible animals. There are exceptions; for instance, the perceptions and pictures of Browning seem as delicate and just here on the spot as they did at a distance; but, take them as a class, they have the vulgar familiarity of Mrs. Trollope without her vivacity, the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... by genius planned, Beyond the reach of the apprentice hand, Beyond the ken of the untutored heart, Like a fine carving in a common mart, Only the favoured few will understand. A chef d'auvre toiled over with great care, Yet which the unseeing careless crowd goes by, A plainly set, but well-cut solitaire, An ancient bit of pottery, too rare To please or hold aught save the special eye, These only with the sonnet ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... metronome with delusions of syncopation. He sat motionless, his forearm resting on the steering wheel, the spray of blossoms caressing his cheek, his mind stunned by the anaesthetic he drew in with each breath. He was as one lost in thought, his eyes open but unseeing, observing ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... see you alone. I see the other with you always." She looked at him, dumb, indignant, desperate. Then, feeling that all was indeed at an end, she cast around her a surprised glance of her unseeing eyes, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... he came back to find Lamy sitting with his back to a tree, staring unseeing into the ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... into silence, and he stood looking across the room with unseeing eyes, meditating deeply. It was quite dark, now, outside, as I could see through the uncurtained window, which opened upon the dreary expanse stretching out to haunted Sedgemoor. Two candles were burning upon the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Elim involuntarily walked to a window, gazing with unseeing eyes at the familiar pleasant prospect. A realization flashed unbidden through his mind, a realization like a stab of lightning—he was free. He overbore it immediately, but it left within him a strange tingling sensation. He directed his mind upon Hester and the profitable contemplation ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... with unseeing eyes the angular form of the teacher as she retreated to her platform. If Miss Merton had dealt her a blow on her upturned face, it could have hurt no more severely than had this unlooked-for reprimand. She was filled with a choking ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... but did the chief responsibility rest with me, I fear it would be more than my too irritable nerves would bear." Nelson, in truth, was passing these hours in a fever of anxiety, scarce able to eat or drink. Yet at that very moment the British were crossing the enemy's wake, unseeing and unseen, and barely fifty ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan |
