"Automaton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an automaton worked by environment, all the same he is the slave of environment, and never such a slave as when his environment is ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... for a share of Jack's most gracious intentions, and though he was as silent as an automaton playing a game of chess, a slight crack was visible in the veneer of his face when Jack thanked him for having brought Mr. Grayson—same reverential pronunciation—upstairs himself instead of allowing Frederick or one of the ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "I am an automaton? Good! Let me alone, then," said Rose, speaking from a corner where she was sitting on the carpet at the foot of a bookcase, with a volume spread open on her knee.—"Miss Helstone, how do you do?" she added, directing a brief glance to the person addressed, and then again casting down ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... think, not to speak, to mould himself to that dead world; he would be among the living statues peopling the upper cloister, one more automaton; he would imitate those beings who seemed to have absorbed into themselves something of the austerity of the granite buttresses, he would inhale like a healing balsam the scent of the rusty iron railings and the incense that spread through the church, the ancient ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... half a dozen voices speaking together: "Why, man, you must have had ten cents on each of these letters, before they crossed the lines"; and "How can we pay postage?" "He knows we have no money"; "What good will the bits of paper do him at all, at all?" But the man kept on like an automaton. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... of his slowly oscillating links of cemented glass and chinaware. Sometimes, it is true, he disposed of a phial of his cement, producing his bottle and receiving payment with the absorbed impassivity of an automaton. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... of his free will," it is said, "makes him a mere machine, an automaton. Without liberty, he will no longer have either merit or virtue." What is merit in man? It is a manner of acting, which renders him estimable in the eyes of his fellow-beings. What is virtue? It is a disposition, which ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... automaton, his bright eye and full-rounded head presage higher things. Occasionally his mind breaks through the mist of instinct and reaches upward to ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... with an automaton. Such a man is like a machine,—a spring. Weight carries him away, making him move and turn forever in the same direction, and with equal motion. He is uniform, and never changes. Once seen, he appears the same at all times and periods of life. At best, he is but the ox lowing, or the blackbird ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... precept upon precept) is always to turn his back upon the future, and his face to the past. He is to believe that nothing is possible or desirable but what he finds already established to his hands in time-worn institutions or inveterate abuses. His unde to be made into a political automaton, a go-cart of superstition and prejudice, never stirring hand or foot but as he is pulled by the wires and strings of the state-conjurers, the legitimate managers and proprietors of the show. His ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the type of a class of men common in all times. We have seen Nicodemus very often. He is a good man whose goodness has no life in it. His goodness is a sort of an automaton—all machinery and no soul. He is so thoroughly right in all he does; everything about him is so proper; he is so perfectly en regle in his own eyes,—that we sometimes wish that he might be betrayed into some impropriety, commit some not too great ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... separation from him was the way her correspondence—for she had insisted on freedom in this respect—was handicapped by his inability to read it. How could she allow all she longed to say to pass under the eyes even of Irene, dear friend though she had become? She would have given worlds for an automaton that could read aloud, whose speech would repeat all its eyes saw, without passing the meaning of it through ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sinister somnambulist stirred from his motionless position and advanced at a slow pace; he walked like an automaton. After taking a dozen steps he stopped, looked around him, and slightly bent forward. His strained features resumed their natural proportions, life re-animated his brow, the deathlike inertia of his face gave place to an expression of sadness and prostration. For a few seconds his lips moved, without ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... "he can oppose them with a clear conscience if they are contrary to right and happiness. Liberty consists in that very thing, that a free man is in himself a conscious law of the universe, a counter-balance to the crushing machine, the automaton of Spitteler, the bronze Ananke. I see the universal Being, three parts of him still embedded in the clay, the bark, or the stone, undergoing the implacable laws of the matter in which he is encrusted. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... this, and scrambling upon my beast, rode off. Luckily my mustang's spirit was pretty well taken out of him by the last two days' work; for if he had been fresh, the smallest spring on one side would have sufficed to throw me out of the saddle. As it was, I sat upon him like an automaton, hanging forward over his neck, some times grasping the mane, and almost unable to use ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... would have been altogether happy but for Miss Carlyle; that lady still inflicted her presence upon East Lynne, and made it the bane of its household. She deferred outwardly to Lady Isabel as the mistress; but the real mistress was herself. Isabel was little more than an automaton. Her impulses were checked, her wishes frustrated, her actions tacitly condemned by the imperiously-willed Miss Carlyle. Poor Isabel, with her refined manners and her timid and sensitive temperament, had no chance against the strong-minded woman, and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... howl, cry of horror. aumentar increase, enlarge, magnify. an, aun adv. yet, still, even, nevertheless. aunque conj. although. aura f. breeze, zephyr. aurora f. dawn, break of day, aurora. ausencia f. absence. autmata m. automaton, mere machine, puppet. avanzar advance, go forward. avariento, -a avaricious. avaro, -a avaricious, covetous. avaro m. miser. ave f. bird. aventura f. adventure, affair. avergonzarse de be ashamed ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... warm stalls, the double feed of oats, and the great manger of sweet hay that awaited them. Before going into the house Max gave to each mule a stroke of his hand in token of affection. Surely this proud automaton of Hapsburg was growing lowly in his tastes. In other words, nature had captured his heart and was driving out the inherited conventions of twenty generations. Five months of contact with the world had wrought a greater cure than I had hoped five years would work. I was making a man out ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... insculp—Demetrius, the son of Antigonus. Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within his hand the resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point through his heart, and underwent a painless death. During his trance, his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of his admiration ... Arnaud awoke ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... age," say some. To use Shakspeare's words, "he is a mechanical salt-butter rogue who says so." Men use more machines than formerly, but are not one whit more machines themselves. Was James Watt an automaton? Has the press become less an object of wonder or terror since it was worked by steam? How sublime was the stoppage of a mail as the index of rebellion. Luther's Bible was printed by a machine. The organ is a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... hour the sled whirled along. Once he stopped and mechanically gave the dogs a meal. He became transformed into an automaton, acting by some subliminal power that set his direction correctly and assisted to maintain his body in ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... but there are in the depths of our nature feelings, emotions, qualities of the soul, with which the mere intelligence has nothing to do; and which, when they rise up, like an enraged elephant from the jungle, scatter all the conventionalities of our training, and all the smooth and automaton-like operations of our minds to the winds. As I stood there, listening to the dead-level, unimpassioned, mechanical voice of the phonograph, pouring forth those deadly sentences, I realized for the first time what the sunny-haired little ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... the sidewalk. They saw him at the same time; and both Overtop and Maltboy violently beckoned him to approach. Mr. Quigg added his solicitations in a calmer and more dignified manner, moving his arm like an automaton three times from the elbow. Even the driver, Captain Tonkins, in the spirit of invitation peculiar to his mental state, steadied himself on the seat, poked his right arm and his long whip toward Marcus, and said: "Hu-hullo there—come along?" Having done ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... was that Mrs. Carder, poor dumb automaton, volunteered a remark; and the most silver-tongued orator could not have ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... till the dark had fallen. By that time I was an automaton, the way a man gets on sentry-go, and I could have easily hung on till morning. My thoughts ranged about the earth, beginning with the business I had set out on, and presently—by way of recollections of Blenkiron and Peter—reaching the German forest where, in the Christmas of 1915, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the prescribed automaton character of the figures effectually prevented all advancement in the statuary's art; the limbs being straight, without any attempt at action, or, indeed, any indication of life; they were really statues of the person they represented, not the person ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Schmidt's house, and entered alone into the wards, where I felt that I was without friendly encouragement and support. During the three days that intervened before the burial of Dr. Schmidt, I was hardly conscious of any thing, but moved about mechanically like an automaton. The next few days were days of confusion; for the death of Dr. Schmidt had left so many places vacant that some fifty persons were struggling to obtain some one of his offices. The eagerness, servility, and meanness which ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... most extraordinary black indifference to the surrounding world. Save in the deep centre of her soul, where she agonized, she seemed to have lost all capacity for emotion. Nothing moved her, or even interested her. She sat in the house, and ate a little, and talked a little, like an automaton. She walked about the streets like a bored exile, but an exile who has forgotten his home. Her spirit never responded to the stimulus of environment. Suggestions at once lost their tonic force in ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... automaton she accepted the booklet from him; like a doll automaton she followed Charley Chubb out into the street, and her limbs were trembling so she could ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... when ordered, and then went like an automaton. Pale, sorrow-stricken, and patient, she moved about, the ghost of herself; and lay down a little, and then tried to work a little, and then to read a little; and could settle to nothing ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... a regular automaton—he has acquired the valuable accomplishment of pulling the punkah-string back and forth in his sleep; he keeps it up some time after I have quitted the room in the morning, until a comrade comes round and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... upon the pavement, we may see a delicate woman mechanically repeating her daily-imposed penance of Latin prayers, before the image of a favorite saint and a basin of holy water. This self-regulating, automaton praying machine, as she counts off the number of allotted prayers by the number of beads upon her rosary, beats into her bosom the sharp edge of an iron cross that rests within her shirt of sacking-cloth, until, nature and her task exhausted, she throws herself down upon ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... slight articles of luxury. Men made perilous journies to possess themselves of earth's splendid trifles, gems and gold. Human labour was wasted—human life set at nought. Now life is all that we covet; that this automaton of flesh should, with joints and springs in order, perform its functions, that this dwelling of the soul should be capable of containing its dweller. Our minds, late spread abroad through countless spheres and endless combinations of thought, now retrenched themselves behind ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... tradition and isolated from opportunities of vice that their souls lay in no great danger of damnation. The activities of Considine were practically limited to his Sunday services, but though the softness of the climate might eventually have transformed him into a likeness of the ancient automaton who had preceded him, it was not in his nature to take things easily. He came of a vigorous stock. The clear, thin air of the Wiltshire downland that his ancestors had breathed makes for energy ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... More automaton than sentient being, he plodded on along the second enceinte of flaring, noisy boulevards, now and again narrowly escaping annihilation beneath the wheels of some coursing motor-cab or ponderous, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... lethargy, and whose eyes are opened. The most striking characteristic of the cataleptic condition is immobility. The subject retains every position in which he is placed, even if it is an unnatural one, and is only aroused by the action of suggestion from the rigor of a statue to the half life of an automaton. The face is expressionless and the eyes wide open. If they are closed, the patient ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... that mystic radiance which is sometimes called the Blood of Apollo. Turning, I saw the disk of the moon coldly rising in the heavens. I thought of the silent birds and the hovering hawk, and I began my preparations for dinner mechanically, dressing as an automaton might dress. ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... murmured Bridget, turning instantly from a friend into an automaton, as was her custom on the rare occasions when I hardened myself to find fault. The words were submissive enough, but her manner announced that she had said her say, and would stick to it, though Herself, poor thing, must be humoured when she took ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... which hitherto had mastered all other feelings. Although she repeated to herself that she wanted never to see him again, Margaret could scarcely resist an overwhelming desire to go to him. Her will had been taken from her, and she was an automaton. She struggled, like a bird in the fowler's net with useless beating of the wings; but at the bottom of her heart she was dimly conscious that she did not want to resist. If he had given her that address, it was because ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... see where I was going, for the reeds were high above my head, but so long as my reason lasted I steered by the sun. I presume that I doubled many times, and lost much space, but that I do not know, for toward the end I traveled like an automaton. I could not fix my mind on where I was going or why, but I kept repeating to myself that I must push against the current, and so, though I lost the idea at times, and found myself drifting, I think that I went some distance after my brain ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... trample. atropello outrage. audiencia audience, hearing. augusto august, majestic. aumentar to augment. aun or aun still, yet, even. aunque although. ausencia absence. austero austere. austriaco Austrian. automata m. automaton. autor-a author. autoridad f. authority. auxiliar to aid, assist, attend a dying person. auxilio aid. avanzar to advance. avaro avaricious. ave f. bird. avecindar to make a neighbor ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... moving automaton than a living creature, did Mrs. Howland arise from her place, and follow her husband up to their chamber. There, without uttering a word, she partially disrobed herself, and getting into bed, buried her tearful face in a pillow. Mr. Howland was soon by her side. Both lay without moving for nearly ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... from his face, giving way to a look of sternness and command. Although he was engaged in a joke, the subordinate must see no sign of fooling in his countenance. He said a sharp word to a blue-jacket, who nimbly sprang to the end of the settee, raised his hand in salute, and stiffened himself to an automaton. Then the girls saw the tall figure of the Lieutenant wending its way to the spot where the ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... dirty white, and flabby, like the belly of a toad. His thin and bloodless lips were flattened over a row of pure white teeth with glistening specks of gold that opened when he smiled; closing again slowly like an automaton's. His shrunken, colorless hands lay on the black cloth like huge white spiders; their long, thin legs of fingers turned up at the tips—stealthy, creeping fingers. Sometimes, too, in their nervous workings, they drooped together like a bunch of skeleton keys. On one of these lock picks he wore ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the heads of the crowd appeared what seemed to be a life-size automaton, a moving waxwork magnificently garbed in white brocade with red and gold embroidery of phenixes, and a huge red sash tied in a bow in front. The hem of the skirt, turned up with red and thickly wadded, revealed a series of these garments fitting beneath each other, like the leaves ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... sign of the cross over him, give him your blessing, kiss him," Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched like an automaton and with a face contorted with bitter grief she began, without a word, beating her breast with her fist. They carried the coffin past her. Nina pressed her lips to her brother's for the last time as they bore the coffin by her. As Alyosha went out of ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... intellectual; and hence it comes that the instrument by which conviction is attained is not demonstrated alone. How few things are demonstrated? Proofs only convince the mind. Custom is the source of our strongest and most believed proofs. It bends the automaton, which persuades the mind without its thinking about the matter. Who has demonstrated that there will be a to-morrow, and that we shall die? And what is more believed? It is, then, custom which persuades us of it; it is ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... you should live and die without being a happy wife. I don't want you to become a mere benevolent automaton set aside for church work, and charities; getting solemn and thin, with patient curves deepening around your mouth, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... other than Silas Huntly, who, after being carried overboard with the mast, had thus, almost by a miracle, escaped a watery grave. Without a word of thanks to his deliverer, the ex-captain, passive, like an automaton, passed on and took his seat in the most secluded corner of the poop. The broken mizzen may, perhaps, be of service to us at some future time, and with that idea it has been rescued from the waves and ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... Cleopatre of Marmontel, he fancied that he could reproduce the hissing of the asp, just as the automaton invented for the purpose by Vaucanson might have done it. The abortive effort made them laugh all the evening. The ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Like an automaton he turned again and paced to the hall door. Here, too, he found what he had expected. There was no hall, no familiar hat ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... talking to a brother-officer of his last week, a man who's awfully fond of him. He told me Aubrey did his work very well. He was complimented by Headquarters on his School only last month. But he's like an automaton. Nobody really knows him, nobody gets any forwarder with him. He hardly speaks to anybody except on business. The mess regard him as a wet blanket, and his men don't care about him, though he's a capital officer. Isn't it strange, when one thinks of what Aubrey ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... really awake now—it will be less trouble to get up than to try and go back to sleep. Besides, if he tries, that brass-buttoned automaton in front of him will probably start shaking him gently in ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... not seem much like lovers, Rainey fancied. They lacked the little intimacies that he, though he made himself somewhat of an automaton at the wheel, could not have failed to see. If the girl slipped, Carlsen's hand would catch and steady her by the arm; never go about her waist. And there was no especial look of welcome in her face when the doctor ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... and like an automaton—lifeless and thoughtless—she began putting the dingy, squalid room to rights. The Abbe helped her demolish the improvised screen; with the same gentle delicacy of thought which had caused him to build it up, he refrained from speaking to her now: he would not intrude himself on her ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... this bit of manhood? Steam machinery is slowly taking out of his hands even this fragment of intelligent work, and he is set at feeding and watching the great machine which has been endowed with the brains that once were in the human toiler. Man is reduced to being the tender upon a steel automaton which thinks and plans and combines with marvelous power, leaving him only the task of supplying it with the raw material, and ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... unconventionality he had rigid ideas of his own upon some topics. I happened to remember that nothing made him so nervous and irritable as bad service in a restaurant. His idea of a good waiter was a well-trained automaton with no eyes or ears. How would he like this enthusiastic, irrepressible girl? It was too late now, however. I was committed to a week of ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... say it as shouldn't; but that's all I am. Otherwise, I'm not anybody to anybody,—except a figure of romance to good old Stevie, who doesn't count in this kind of reckoning. I take naturally to nursing they tell me. A nurse is a kind of maternal automaton. I'm glad I'm that, but there used to be a lot more of me than that. There ought to be some heart and brain and soul left over, but there doesn't seem to be. Perhaps I am like the Princess in the fairy story whose heart was an auk's egg. ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... spied another acquaintance. A word to the automaton on the front seat and the limousine swept up to the curb where he was passing. Gila leaned out with the sweetest bow. She was the condescending lady now; no mouse-eyes in evidence this time; just a beautiful, commanding presence to be ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... possession of one's immortal soul! Hence I should be inclined to say that the first preliminary to a proper control of the machine is the habit of spending decidedly less than one earns or receives. The veriest automaton of a clerk ought to have the wherewithal of a whole year as a shield against the caprices of his employer. It would be as reasonable to expect the inhabitants of an unfortified city in the midst of a plain occupied by a ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... pale, and apparently in very poor health. He is consequently not exactly a pleasant comrade for the chase: he does not seem to enjoy the sport at all, and his one endeavour is to get through with his task without losing more of his strength and health. Even now he is more of an automaton than a human being, more dead than alive, and yet—greatest of all miseries!—he is not allowed to die. For he has a mother, the witch Uraka, who keeps him artificially alive by anointing him every night ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... our hands on the social wealth to-day usurped by a minority." The foregoing is printed in very large type. The article then continues, commenting upon Herve's advice as follows: "The soldier has been fed and clothed by the working class. His continued efficiency as a military automaton depends upon regular supply of food, clothing, and the necessaries of life from the same source. He has been transported to the field of conflict by the labour of a whole army of railwaymen. Let us suppose that the day of the final struggle has been reached. Suppose the ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... sensations and motor images. It would be possible to study these facts experimentally if we had at our disposition a human being who, while retaining his sensations and their motor reactions, was by special circumstances rendered entirely spontaneous like a sensitive automaton, whose movements were neither intentionally produced nor intentionally repressed. In this way, melodic intervals in a hypnotized subject might ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... room. She seemed to be too much absorbed to know it was necessary for her to leave. Next day she would steal into the chamber as often as she could, to weep over his remains, and ponder his last words to her. She moved about the house like an automaton. Every duty performed—but an abstraction from all, which shewed her thoughts were busied else- where. Susan wished her to attend his burial as one of the family. Lewis and Mary and Jack it was not thought best to send for, as the season would not allow them time for the journey. Susan ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... to Sybil Latham, and then, rigidly as an automaton, she walked swiftly to her husband's side. For a moment the two stood facing each other, eye riveted to eye. Her beautiful bare arms flew out swiftly, resting upon his shoulders, not ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the inner door, stepped into the library-bedroom, and halted dead still on the threshold. At his entrance, a tall, thin young man, with a very pale face, rose like an automaton and stared at him. It was a question which of the two was the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... in spite of such humiliation, of poverty and probable beggary, there is ever the same struggle for precedence, the same forwardness, and want of discretion. High in honour, at the head of the table, you with your own eyes observe not a Seigneur but the automaton of a Seigneur, fallen into dotage; still worshipped, reverently waited on, and fed. In miscellaneous seats, is a miscellany of soldiers, commissaries, adventurers; consuming silently their barbarian victuals. 'On all brows is to be read a hard destiny; all are silent, for each has his own sufferings ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of the others, except of old 'Giblets,' the butler, who went about like a little automaton of dry bones, poking here and there, and whispering and smiling to himself as he laid the cloth; and seeming otherwise quite unconscious ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... soldier who was the rage of the War incarnate, the awakened frenzy of the nation. He was a man lifted above pain and cold and hunger; he was gaunt and wild of aspect, restless and impatient, driving, driving to the end. He went about the duties of the camp like one in a dream; he marched like an automaton—for hours, or for days, as need might be—his thoughts flying on to those moments that alone were real to him, to the charge and the fury of the conflict, the blows that were the only things that counted. He lived amid sights ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... seemed at first unaware of her kinsman's presence, and he began to hope he might avoid any private talk with her; but when the automaton had been dismissed and the card-tables were preparing, one of her gentlemen summoned him to her side. As usual, she was highly rouged in the French fashion, and her cold blue eyes had a light which set off the extraordinary ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... congratulated upon his success in the few attempts he has made to represent historical personages. Washington, as shown to us in "The Spy," is a formal piece of mechanism, as destitute of vital character as Maelzel's automaton trumpeter. This, we admit, was a very difficult subject, alike from the peculiar traits of Washington, and from the reverence in which his name and memory are held by his countrymen. But the sketch, in "The Pilot," of Paul Jones, a very different person, and a much easier subject, is hardly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... were by the divine impulse directed. The God, says [754]Diodorus Siculus, is carried about in a ship of gold by eighty of his priests. They bear him upon their shoulders, and pursue their way by instinct, just as the divine automaton chances to direct them. These persons, who thus officiated, were probably the same as the Petipharae of the antient Egyptians, but were called Paterae by the Greeks. It was a name, and office, by which the priests of Delphi, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... earliest of his writings upon the subject, some comments upon the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, and intended to form the basis of a separate work, we find Marx insisting that man is not a mere automaton, driven irresistibly by blind economic forces. He says: "The materialistic doctrine, that men are the products of conditions and education, different men, therefore, the products of other conditions ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... of Jodelle was the first regular French tragedy: the last French tragedy on the same subject was the Cleopatre of Marmontel. For the representation of this tragedy Vaucanson, the celebrated French mechanist, invented an automaton asp, which crawled and hissed to the life,—to the great delight of the Parisians. But it appears that neither Vaucanson's asp, nor Clairon, could save Cleopatre from a deserved fate. Of the English ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... a moment, but the Prophet's manner was too much for her, and when he stepped, like a clockwork automaton with a steel interior, towards the staircase, she crept mildly ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... an automaton along the trench when suddenly I came upon an officer who, I afterwards found out, was going up to fix his next gun positions. He was sitting on a sandbag swearing like Hades, and trying to disperse the clouds of flies which were settling ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... find enough satisfaction for their needs in the company of a circle of men friends and the casual pleasures of the town, selfishness is the last epithet with which their behaviour can be charged. Unselfishness has been their curse. No sane person would, of his own accord, become the automaton that a Government office requires. Pressure on the part of relations, of parents, has been brought to bear on them. The steady employment, the graduated income, the pension—that fatal pension—has been danced by their fathers and their mothers and their Uncle Johns before ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... idea of religion had perished among the Italians. Not only had they lost the thing itself, but they had lost the power of conceiving of it. Religion unquestionably is a state of mind towards God; and devotion is a mental act resulting from that state of mind. We cannot conceive of an automaton performing an act of devotion, or of being religious; and yet, if religion be what it is taken to be at Rome, there is nothing to hinder an automaton being religious, nay, far more religious than flesh and blood, inasmuch as timber and iron will not so soon wear out under incessant ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... every saint in the calendar, whose name she could remember, and crossed herself with automaton-like energy. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... himself before his bureau and taking a sheet of paper wrote some lines upon it, whilst D'Artagnan stood imperturbable, without showing either impatience or curiosity. He was like a soldierly automaton, or ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could not leave Mrs. Sheldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungraciously, upon any consideration. They gave me a home when I most bitterly needed one. They took me away from the dull round of schoolroom drudgery, that was fast changing me into a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... him. Of him who left me in the purple pride Of early manhood. Yestermorn he went. The sun shone bright, and scintillant the tide. O'er which the sea-mew swept, with dewy drops besprent. Before he went he kissed me; and I watched His boat that lay so still and stately, till Automaton she seemed, and that she moved To where she willed of her own force and law. But I knew better: his was the will That set the pretty sprite a-going. His arms controlled her to obedience: Those arms that lately clasped me. No alarms ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... down in the chair proffered him by the lawyer. There was something strange in his air, a quiet automaton-like quality which attracted the latter's notice and led him to watch him very closely. Ransom was busy with the door, which the strong west wind blowing through the hall made ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... California Psychical Research Society. Dr. J. C. Anthony is a well and favorably known physician, who has practised here for many years, also a member of our Council. Dr. Cecil E. Nixon is a Dentist, best known as a Magician, and as the inventor of "Isis," a wonderful automaton which plays any tune you request of her on the zither. Mr. Henry Huppert is one of the partners in the Preston-Huppert X-Ray Laboratory, a man with scientific training and a student ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... his friends. He had to take his chances with them. But he had not yet learned to estimate these cool, languid, Southwestern knights of the bungstarter, who had the manners of an Earl of Pawtucket, and who, when they disapproved of your presence, moved you with the silence and despatch of a chess automaton ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... abominably loose is a most difficult one to maintain. It is, of course, desirable that the young student pass through a certain period of strict discipline, but if this discipline succeeds in making an automaton, of what earthly use is it? Is it really necessary to instruct our little folks to think that everything must be done in a "cut and dried" manner? Take the simple matter of time, for instance. Listen to the playing of most young pupils and you will hear nothing but a ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... not function—but his legs moved regularly. In the grasp of this mental, metal monster he was a mere automaton. Phobar noticed idly that he had to step down from a flat disk a dozen yards across. By some power, some tremendous discovery that he could not understand, he had been transported across millions of miles of space—undoubtedly to the ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... machines, was not yet brought to perfection; and like those animals which change their state, some parts of the old narrative still adhered. It still had a chorus, it still had a prologue to explain the design; and the perfect drama, an automaton supported and moved without any foreign help, was formed late and gradually. Nay, there are still several parts of the world in which it is not, and probably never may ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was a mere automaton that moved off in the dance and said the two or three lines that remained to her in the act as if nothing had happened, because all her mind and all her capacity for feeling were occupied ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... than in the most agreeable conversation." Pope's conversation, as preserved by Spence, was sensible; and it would seem that he had never said but one witty thing in his whole life, for only one has been recorded. It was ingeniously said of VAUCANSON, that he was as much an automaton as any which he made. HOGARTH and SWIFT, who looked on the circles of society with eyes of inspiration, were absent in company; but their grossness and asperity did not prevent the one from being the greatest of comic ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... for hypnotism, to most people, means a dangerous power by which an unscrupulous, strong-willed Svengali dominates an abnormally weak-willed Trilby whose will continues to grow weaker until the subject becomes a mere automaton; and most of us would rightly prefer that a boy should be his own master—even if he were rushing to headlong ruin—than that he should be the mere puppet of the most saintly man living. The human will is sacred ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... and all our mental and bodily acts, are predetermined and brought about by God. Man is thus reduced to, a mere passive instrument. He is nothing more than a complicate and curious machine—a man-machine, an automaton—whose every movement is conceived, determined, directed, controlled by a supervisor. It avails nothing to apply to him terms which signify freedom. We may say that he has the power to will; that he actually wills; but the difficulty is not relieved. The being who endowed ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... if she had followed the Chinese of her own free will or if violence had been used in taking possession of her and she too repeated like an automaton: ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... never woke up with any such feeling when with the United Woollen. My only thought in the morning then was how much time I must give myself to catch the six-thirty. When I reached the office I hung up my hat and coat and sat down to the impersonal figures like an automaton. There was nothing of me in the work; there couldn't be. How petty it seemed now! I suppose the company, as an industrial enterprise, was in the line of development, but that idea never penetrated as far as the clerical ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... heard recounted the history of our Proteuses of politics! With what disdainful glances I regarded the Turcarets of finance, lolling on the cushions of some magnificent carriage, and conducted by a laced automaton to the boudoir of some Aspasia. But if I heard told the mighty deeds of the Knights of the Round Table, or the valor of the crusaders celebrated in flowing verse; if chance placed in my hand the great actions of our modern Rolands, recounted in an army bulletin ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... reckless man, made bad by circumstances, but retaining many marks of a noble character, and she fills his conversation with slang, makes him impudent and lustful, a rascal in every sense of the word, without the remotest idea of what true chivalric love for a woman means; and this mechanical automaton, whose every motion reveals that he moves not by vital powers but by springs and machinery, she makes her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... pressing down on me, smothering me. You stalk around me like a grim, sepulchral figure, closing me up in the circle of your narrow ideas. But now I can endure it no longer. I was a proud, high-spirited girl, you've made of me a colourless social automaton, a slave of your stupid worldly traditions. I'm turning into a feeble, complaining, discontented wife! And I refuse to be it. I'm going home—where at least there's some human spontaneity left in people; I'm going back to my father!'—And I went ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... have heard of Sanford? He loves you well. He is the one who moves the automaton with the whiskers and long mustache, and gives your wife a ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... obeyed instantly. He had a mental flash that Wagg did know exactly what he was about in his tactics. Lacking all idea of the scheme, Vaniman had not the heart to begin to ask for any details of the big plan at the crucial moment. He allowed himself to be an automaton. It was easy to do one thing at a time, as Wagg commanded; knowing nothing about what Wagg intended to do. Vaniman was not in a position to delay matters by doubts as to the best way of doing the thing. He walked behind the board screen, conscious that his movements ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... piano in an inner room, where in the dark the chairs, upside down, perched dismally on the table tops. He almost obeyed an impulse to go in there and start playing, by the brilliance of his playing to force these men, who thought of him as a coarse automaton, something between a man and a dog, to recognize him as an ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... peeped from the rank foliage, and the naked or half-dressed occupants stared stupidly at the craft as it skimmed past. The head of the family lolled on the bank, or in the shade beside his home and smoked; the stolid wife slouched hither and thither like an automaton, plodding at her work or perhaps scratching the ground, that it might laugh a harvest, though oftener her work lay in fighting off the prodigious growth which threatened to strangle everybody and everything. She took her turn at smoking, ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... yellow rings on his forehead—and eyed with disfavor a line-backed, dry cow, with one horn tipped rakishly toward her speckled nose; she blinked silently at wind and heat, and forged steadily ahead, up-hill and down coulee, always in the lead, always walking, walking, like an automaton. Her energy, in the face of all the dry, dreary days, rasped Pink's nerves unbearably. For nearly a week he had ridden left point, and always that line-backed cow with the down-crumpled horn walked and walked and walked, a length ahead of her ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... Grimes will do that," declared Jess. "She moves about the stage like an automaton. She is going to get us a big laugh, but in the wrong ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... guidance we may in such moods most safely entrust ourselves; and it is tempting to ask, what was the secret of his success? The effort, indeed, to investigate the materials from which some rare literary flavour is extracted is seldom satisfactory. We are reminded of the automaton chess-player who excited the wonder of the last generation. The showman, like the critic, laid bare his inside, and displayed all the cunning wheels and cogs and cranks by which his motions were supposed to be regulated. Yet, after all, the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... heart and said in a low but very grave and impressive tone, "Nathanael, my darling Nathanael, throw that foolish, senseless, stupid thing into the fire." Then Nathanael leapt indignantly to his feet, crying, as he pushed Clara from him, "You damned lifeless automaton!" and rushed away. Clara was cut to the heart, and wept bitterly. "Oh! he has never loved me, for he does ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... from which they are taken; as, focus, foci; terminus, termini; alumnus, alumni; datum, data; stratum, strata; formula, formuloe; vortex, vortices; appendix, appendices; crisis, crises; oasis, oases; axis, axes; phenomenon, phenomena; automaton, automata; analysis, analyses; hypothesis, hypotheses; medium, media; vertebra, vertebroe; ellipsis, ellipses; genus, genera; fungus, fungi; minimum, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... from our own side, when it was seen that he was being brought up, to clear the bar that the whole House might witness the scene, and every one stood up in intense curiosity. There were now only this figure, less human even than an automaton, and two persons, R. Stuart and E. Ellice, pushing the chair in which he lay. A loud cry of 'Shame, Shame,' burst from our side; those opposite were silent. Those three were counted without passing the tellers, and the moment after we saw ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... conscious in his peril, yet, fetching back, he could trace them as they had worked. Seeking a solution by measures not violent, he had been given sore spears, whereon his finger tightened at the trigger, and he was a wound automaton; fixed, stern, a fate on feet, bearing down upon the chief in the ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... stretched Meshech Little, dead drunk. In nearly every chair was a barefooted, coatless lout, drunk and snoring with his hat over his eyes, and his legs stretched out, or vacantly staring with open mouth at Desire, who, with a face like ashes and the air of an automaton, was playing the piano. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... had devised an ingenious decoration. Above an excellent portrait of the new Empress there appeared a rainbow; on one side, his happiest invention, an automaton, which the Viennese called the War Trumpet. But a Genius was silencing it by pointing to this motto, Tace, mundus concors, "Silence, the world is ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... had watched him all the time they were together. He had made nothing of her then, but the impression had remained that she was the one hopeful source of knowledge in the house. Now she looked dull and moved about in Jake's wake like an automaton. Yet Hammersmith made up his mind to speak to her as soon as the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... trills and cadences of the ingenious mechanical toy failed to set in motion. In like manner we repeat that the power to determine his own course raises man to a plane incomparably higher than he could have occupied as an automaton. The same faculty of free choice which in its abuse makes the sinner, in its right {99} exercise furnishes forth the saint. All that we mean by moral progress, by "the steady gain of man," his rise to more exalted ideals, his conquest of baser appetites—all that makes the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... great grandfather, Louis XIV.; and, even after he came to his majority, he was ruled by his ministers and his mistresses. He was not, like Louis XIV., the life and the centre of all great movements in his country. He was an automaton, a pageant; not because the constitution imposed checks on his power, but because he was weak and vacillating. He, therefore, performing no great part in history, is only to be alluded to, and attention should be ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... common—these two. After the death of his young wife, years before, Hiram Carmody had surrounded himself with a barrier of imperturbability beyond which even his son never ventured. Cold and unyielding, men called him—a twentieth century automaton of big business. Rarely, outside of banking hours, did the two meet. Never but once did they hold extended conversation. It was upon the occasion of the younger man's return from a year's Continental travel that his father summoned him and, ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... My good hot cakes! The old cake woman had resumed her nightly tour, and again we heard her rapid footsteps and her shrill refrain. Always at the same hour, with the regularity of an automaton, she went by our house. And the long winter recommenced in the same manner as had the preceding ones, and as were similarly to begin the following two or ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... present, ever have room to order things for their growth and change and discipline and enlightenment. The present living idea informing the cosmos, is nobler than all forsaken perfection—nobler, as a living man is nobler than an automaton. ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... are poor samples of humanity, evidently lacking in grit, and destitute of ability to do any work which would mean decent wages). Judging from appearances, they will do nothing well. They are a kind of automaton, with the machinery rusty; slow, dull, and incapable. The man of ordinary intelligence leaves them in the rear. They could doubtless earn more even at odd jobs, but lack the energy. Of course, this means little food, exposure to weather, and increased incapability day by day. ("From ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... dropped in dismay, but she was too well-trained an automaton to put her feelings into words. She rustled starchily from the room, to give the dread message to Mary, who promptly flew upstairs, voluble ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... these youths. He always made a point of choosing men who were highly strung and impressionable. He was known to boast that after three interviews with him he could make anyone, either man or woman, into a will-less automaton. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... a voice whose untuneable harshness corresponded with the awkwardness of his figure. They were the first words which Mannering had heard him speak; and as he had been watching with some curiosity, when this eating, drinking, moving, and smoking automaton would perform the part of speaking, he was a good deal diverted with the harsh timber tones which issued from him. But at this moment the door ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... and foot in the bondage of business, and all for what—our wives and children! If they needed such a sacrifice we would not begrudge it, but the more they have the more they want, until the head of the family is a mere automaton—a machine to pamper ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... what we are doing, but we must be able to know, or there will be nothing worth while to forget! The danger of the mechanical idea—the extreme technician's notion that the sign is enough—is that the person may become an automaton and inhibit the power of real feeling in himself; and though he may perform admirably and win the applause of some critics who love form unduly, he fails in the great issue and wins only superficial success or fails utterly, without seeing ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... way!" a guard called to her. Like an automaton whose mechanism is breaking, she whirled about rapidly on her heels, then without seeing or thinking of anything ran to hide herself. She made out a door where a sentinel stood and tried to enter it, but a still more imperious ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... words, while there is no soul in them, because his mental powers are spell-bound and imbecile. He stammers, hesitates, and stumbles; or, at best, talks on without object or aim, as mechanically and unconsciously as an automaton. He has learned little effectually, till he has learned ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... be said a servant had no business to think about these things, to criticize her young master's proceedings, or wonder why her mistresses were sad: that she had only to go about her work like an automaton, and take no interest in any thing. I can only answer to those who like such service, let them have it: and as they sow they will assuredly reap. But long after Elizabeth, young and hearty, was soundly snoring on her hard, cramped bed, Johanna ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... to mark the time with the listless apathy of an automaton; the smoke curled from his meerschaum, the drum continued to tap-tap-tap, until it seemed to sound like thunder to my strained ears, for every sense was painfully excited. All count had long been lost, but when several hundred lashes ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... it needed no urging, and Sheila held her breath for fear that it might fall, straining her eyes to watch its limbs as they moved with the sure regularity of an automaton. After a time they reached the end of the level; Sheila could tell that the pony was negotiating another rise, for it slackened speed appreciably and she felt herself settling back against the cantle of the saddle. A little later she realized that ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... possibility of winning the marquise; but from the moment in which his brother, with no apparent motive of personal interest, aroused the idea that he might be beloved, every spark of passion and of vanity that still existed in this automaton took fire, and he began to be doubly assiduous and attentive to his sister-in-law. She, who had never suspected any evil in this quarter, treated the chevalier at first with a kindliness that was heightened ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... while softened to an extent by the French accent, was nevertheless harsh and emotionless. She spoke as an automaton, slowly, and pausing to choose her words. The woman was of medium size, slim and straight in spite of many years. Her skin resembled brown parchment; her eyes were small, black and beady; her nose somewhat fleshy and her lips ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... Les Trois Pigeons; however, it had been comparatively a torpid growth; my meeting with them served to enlarge it so suddenly and to such proportions that I wonder it did not strangle me. In fine, I sat there brush-paddling my failure like an automaton, and saying over and over aloud, "What is wrong with him? ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... her arguments. It seemed that possibly even this machine of justice carried a small fragment of sympathy in his soul. Certainly he was not the judicial automaton she had expected ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... poo' fellow," and are themselves far poorer; who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven;[2] who are not ashamed to admire "the creature's instinct"; and flying far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate the theory of animal machines. The "dog's instinct" and the "automaton-dog," in this age of psychology and science, sound like strange anachronisms. An automaton he certainly is; a machine working independently of his control, the heart like the mill-wheel, keeping all ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... differs from a mere automaton in this, that it is influenced by old, by registered impressions. In the higher forms of animated life that registration becomes more and more complete, memory becomes more perfect. There is not any necessary resemblance ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... before him, another carries his handkerchief, a third folds and unfolds his robe, a priest on each side supports him whenever he rises or moves, so that he appears among them like a mere helpless automaton going through a certain set of mechanical motions, with which his will has nothing to do. All who approach or address him prostrate themselves and kiss his embroidered ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... to! That's all right for them as likes to become nice varnished desks, but not for me! I'm going to hunger and thirst and satisfy my appetites—even if it makes me selfish as the devil. I'd rather be that than be a bran-stuffed automaton that's never human enough to hunger. But of course you're naturally a Puritan and always will be one, no matter what you do. You're a good sort— I'd trust you to the limit—you're sincere and you want to grow. But me—my Wanderjahr isn't ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... strain followed: days of a thousand engagements, a thousand interviews, a thousand journeyings, a thousand speeches; days in which he was reduced to an unresisting automaton, mechanically uttering the same formulas; days in which the irresistible force of the campaign swept him along without volition. And day followed day and not a sign came from the Princess Zobraska either of condonation or resentment. It was as ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... worker is guided in voting by his technical knowledge, and it is almost impossible that the choice should fall upon any but the best qualified persons. But, further, this simple spinner in Freeland is no mere automaton, whose knowledge and skill begin and end with the petty details of his own business: he is familiar with at least one or several other branches of industry; and from this again it follows that the man can take advantage of any favourable circumstance that may occur in such other branch or branches ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... low grade of intelligence. Much larger than the brain proper was the spinal cord, especially in the region of the sacrum, controlling most of the reflex and involuntary actions of the huge organism. Hence we can best regard the Brontosaurus as a great, slow-moving animal automaton, a vast storehouse of organized matter directed chiefly or solely by instinct, and to a very limited degree, if at all, by conscious intelligence. Its huge size and its imperfect organization, compared with the great quadrupeds of today, rendered its movements slow and clumsy; ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... exaltations; the alternations of despair brought her to the brink of the grave. She was reduced almost to a shadow; she would go about the affair—she would entertain no other—with a sort of jerking, spasmodic activity as unlike muscular energy as if she were an automaton. She had no rest in her sleep, and would scream and cry out in weird accents at intervals, and dream such dreams! She would blanch when questioned, and close her lips fast, and never a word escaped them of what these visions of terror ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the room a comfortable warmth and subtle perfume met his senses; the warmth was produced by stoves of a peculiar form standing in the middle of the room; one of these represented Vulcan's forge. Brightly glowing charcoal lay in front of the bellows which were worked by an automaton, at short regular intervals, while the god and his assistants modelled in brass, stood round the genial fire with tongs and hammers. The other stove was a large silver bird's-nest, in which likewise ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as a human being. Most persons treat me like an automaton or a bit of dirt. You're different; most of the men are not so bad; it's the women, Mr. Harleston, the women! Good-night, sir. I'll call you if anything ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... or trifle," he said, bitterly. "I'm not a machine, or an automaton, and I want something more than my servants, my drawing-room and table well attended, to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... walking up and down. And he looked to them so comical in his queer costume that they had a difficulty in suppressing their inclination to laugh. With a pensive air and a bent back, he walked, like an automaton, from the window to the door and the door to the window, taking each time the same number of steps and turning each ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... There was a gentle twittering of awakening birds—the grass sparkled with a million tiny drops of frosty dew. A curious calmness possessed me. I felt for the time as though I were a mechanical automaton moved by some other will than my own. I had no ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... eradicated by lapse of time, or the indifference of Laura. Such voluntary mental martyrdom resembles the punishment inflicted by some tyrant of history on his prisoners, whom he commanded to embrace his Apega, a beautiful automaton so constructed as to plunge a concealed dagger into ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... robbed it of terror? Has life treated them so harshly, that they are tolerably well pleased to be quit of it on any terms? Or is the whole thing mere blind stupor and delirium, in which thought is paralysed, and the man an automaton? Speculation is useless. The fact remains that criminals for the most part die well and bravely. It is said that the championship of England was to be decided at some little distance from London on the morning of the day ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... his eyes. The whole outward world was a void to him, until the moment arrived that beheld him successful in his designs. His preparations for the future absorbed every faculty of his nature, and left him, as to the present, a mere automaton, reflecting no principle, and animated by no event—a machine that moved, but did not perceive—a body that acted, without a ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... not long since, a man talking to a bright woman on the train, and his manner of comporting himself set me to thinking of the peculiar ways men have of addressing themselves to women. Some talk to a woman very much as they might talk to the wonderful automaton around at the museum when it plays a game of chess. "Why, bless my soul, it really seems to be thinking! What apparent intelligence? What evident faculty of mental independence! It almost appears to possess the power of coherent thought!" Others sit in the presence of a woman as though she ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... instant he seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator—such fancies are in dreams; then he regained his identity almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a directing will as alert and fierce as that ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... which before I should not for a moment have entertained, is all-powerful over me. In short, I know just as little about myself as I do about the Eternal Essence, and I have a haunting suspicion that I may be a mere automaton, my every thought and act due to some power which uses and ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... him there. The gambler was playing out his case silently, emotionless as ever. If he had observed anything unusual, if he considered anything beyond his card-play, no eye could have detected it in that impassive countenance, those cold, expressionless eyes. Apparently he was a mere automaton, the sole symbol of life showing in the white fingers so deftly dealing the fateful pasteboards from the box. The impatient, excited crowd facing him moved restlessly, cursing or laughing with each swift turn of play; ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Mr. Croft; he was much too punctual, too much of an automaton, for me; but I should have felt more regret at leaving him, and losing his friendship, and should have expressed more gratitude for his kindness to Lucy and my boy, if my head had not at the time been full of young Hudson. He professed the warmest regard for me, congratulated ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... such hopelessness, such unyouthful gravity, that the whole face seemed gloomed over, as when a heavy cloud shuts out the brilliant sunshine of an August day. He did not deign so much as a glance towards the visitors, but like an automaton blew the graceful bulb, shaped it upon his marver, with a light, skilful blow detached it from his blowing-iron, received from his assistant the foot and joined the two, with a dextrous twist and turn shaped the slender handle and added that, all the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry |
