"Numbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wellnigh frozen to death. During this excursion I walked very ill—with more pain, in fact, than I ever remember to have felt—and, even leaning on John Lockhart, could hardly get on. Baad that, vara baad—it might be the severe weather though, and the numbing effect of the sitting in the carriage. Be it what it will, I can't ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... quantities, especially when the smoothness of the water permitted us to hale the seyne. Amongst the rest, we got here cavallies, breams, mullets, soles, fiddle-fish, sea eggs, and lobsters; and here, and in no other place, met with that extraordinary fish called the Torpedo, or numbing fish, which is in shape very like the fiddle-fish, and is not to be known from it but by a brown circular spot of about the bigness of a crown-piece near the centre of its back; perhaps its figure will be better understood ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... rainy fog, and the departing passengers of the Majestic looked across a little inky strip of water to a land that was cloaked with snow. It was bitterly cold on the landing-stage, and all the interest of the scene could not keep the bitter wind from whipping one's face and numbing the feet. The wooden planks resounded not more with the tramp of marching feet than with the hard stampings of people who were trying to restore circulation. There were no very poor people on the stage. The space opposite ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... felt the awakening of love for Flavia Rose from his first glimpse of her, he never had aided Corrie for his sister's sake. Even when he had dragged himself from the overwhelming blackness of pain and the numbing effects of anaesthetics to defend the driver whose foul blow had struck him down, it was of Corrie alone he thought, not of Flavia, Corrie whom he had shielded from disgrace and open punishment. Man to man they ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... hers to the ground and he saw a red stain creeping from Tenney's boot into the snow. Tenney also glanced at it indifferently. It was true that, although the cold was growing anguish to a numbing wound, he was hardly aware of it as a pain that could be remedied. This was only ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... principle of fees by results has disappeared for ever from the National Schools, it still clings to Intermediate Education, numbing and constricting, like some remorseless ivy limb, the growth and free exercise of the central stem and its branches, and preventing the natural sap from rising and vitalising the whole. It is not as though the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... the Day, and you toasted the Day, And now the Day has come. Blasphemer, braggart and coward all, Little you reck of the numbing ball, The blasting shell, or the "white arm's" fall, As they speed ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... never known such intense and numbing fear as that which now descended upon me. Perhaps I may be forgiven it. A more dreadful situation it would be hard to devise. Knowing that I was on the fifth story of a house, bound, helpless, I knew, too, that a second mystic guardian of the slipper was come to accomplish the task ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... character are not in the order of nature, and, due allowance made for the numbing hand of time, the youthful Goethe remained essentially the same Goethe to the end. Behind the mask of impassivity which chilled the casually curious who sought him in his last years there was ever that ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... winter clouds, without falling in any rain. Then she realised that she was very tired. She wrapped herself in a rug and lay down on the couch to rest. And rest came as it comes after a sleepless night, not in sleep deep and restorative, but in a gentle numbing of the brain. She woke out of her stupor refreshed. The cloud had rolled away, and she could work again. She sat down to the last pile ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... extension of the two that preceded it. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Canst thou prevent the revival of all the forces of nature in the springtime?" and "Canst thou loose the bands of Orion; canst thou free the ground from the numbing frosts of winter?" ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... was necessary for defence, all the life of the house seemed stopped. Not a woman appeared; all the doors were closed; and the numbing desolation of a great bereavement was symbolized by Don Bal-thasar's chair in the patio, which had remained lying overturned in full view of every part of the house, till I could bear the sight no longer, and asked Cesar to have it put away. "Si, Senor," ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... of animals, we find some curious facts having relation to this power. The electrical eel, for instance, has the faculty of overcoming and numbing his prey by this means. And among the Arabs, according to Gerard, the French lion-killer, whoever inhales the breath of the lion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... too cold to answer. A blast that whirled the drifts up met her in the face, numbing all her faculties and rendering breathing difficult. The hand that held the bridle was stiffened into uselessness. Still, while life pulsed within her, she was going on, and swaying in the saddle, she ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... on to the omnibus that was to stumble with him down Piccadilly with a. hideous, numbing sense of being under the hand of Fate. Why, at this moment, in all time, should this letter of Norah Monogue's have made its unhappy appearance? With what difficulty and sorrow had he and Clare reached once more a ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... I can figure, this is about what must have happened. Some sudden, deadly, numbing plague or cataclysm must have struck ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Sandoz now remarked, it was their great love of bodily exercise, their very revels of literature that had protected them against the numbing influence of their ordinary surroundings. They never entered a cafe, they had a horror of the streets, even pretending to moult in them like caged eagles, whereas their schoolfellows were already rubbing their ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... arrow had burst to pieces unaccountably in his bow, numbing his arm and wounding him on the chin, and now he was outpaced at his own game of cold silence. He grew angry and dug David in the ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... the appearance of this projection, a man's voice began to speak, not loudly but distinctly. Dreamlike again, the voice seemed to have no specific source, as if it were coming from every direction at once; and a numbing conviction arose in Halder that their minds were being destroyed in this room, that a methodical dissecting process had begun which would continue move by move and hour by hour until the Federation's scientists were satisfied that no further scraps of information could ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... their terrible loss. It must be an unnatural calm. Men have quietly told me that they have lost their entire families and then have suddenly changed the subject and talked of some absurdly trivial matter with an air of great interest, but it was easy to see that there was some numbing influence over the mechanism of the mind. It is unnatural and awful. It is almost impossible to realize that the troops of workmen leisurely digging in the ruins as if engaged in everyday employment ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... argue that the numbing fear of his rival's genius and of its influence on his patron to which Shakespeare confessed in the sonnets was more likely to be evoked by the work of George Chapman than by that of any other contemporary poet. But Chapman had produced ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... hair was so compelling that he started back, shaken; a new discordant tumult rose within him, out of which emerged an aching hunger for Rosemary Roselle; he wanted her with a passion cold and numbing like ether. He wanted her without reason, and in the desire lost his deep caution, his rectitude of conscience. He was torn far beyond the emotional possibilities of weak men. The fact that, penniless ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... himself had known a line bombed out before now, the trenches rent and torn apart, the shattered limbs and broken bodies of the defenders, the horrible ripping crash of the bombs, the blinding flame, the numbing shock, the smoke and reek and noise of the explosions; but though all these things were known to him, the words "bombed out" meant no more now than nine letters of the alphabet and the maddening stupidity of the man at the other end, who would misunderstand the sound and meaning ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... more accurately, my successors—with amused interest. She was as much out of my life as I was out of hers. By day I wandered with Mrs. Wessington almost content. By night I implored Heaven to let me return to the world as I used to know it. Above all these varying moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the Seen and the Unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one poor soul ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... along with set teeth. The dread he would not acknowledge hung like a numbing weight upon him. Somehow, inexplicably, he knew that he was nearing ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... he was suffering so intensely from the icy nip of the water that he felt no disposition to talk, and simply pushed ahead for all he was worth, hoping that by dint of violent exertion he might be able to conquer the numbing sensation that was ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... well hit her a lick," he drawled to himself, and climbing to the spot he drove the point of his implement into a crevice of the rock and broke away a piece of two or three pounds in weight. This he took in his big, red hands, which were numbing ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... of them moved. The atmosphere had suddenly become charged with a force indescribable, almost numbing. In the far distance they saw the level line of lights from a passing steamer. Mr. Raymond Greene, with his hands in his ulster pockets, suddenly spotted them and did for them what they seemed to have lost ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hundreds of them now, long-armed and big-headed red devils swarming in from every direction. Carr dodged none too quickly to save his skull from a swift-flung stone, which clanged against the Nomad's hull. There was a perfect hail of the missiles now: one struck his left arm a numbing blow, and he heard a sickening thud and Ora's moan as she was hit. And there ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... me began to fail. I felt my life ebbing at its springs. Death drew near to me and his shape was Silence. He entered at my heart, entered with a sense of numbing cold, but my brain was still alive, I could yet think. I knew that I was drawing near the confines of the Dead. Nay, I was dying fast, and oh, the horror of it! I strove to pray and could not; there was no more ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... cherries from the fruit-stand on the library table,—"I think the whole matter may be resolved into this; the ambitious clamours and Amazonian excesses of this epoch, are the inevitable consequence of the rigid tyranny of former ages; which sternly banished women to the numbing darkness of an intellectual night, denying them the legitimate and natural right of developing their faculties by untrammelled exercise. This belief in feminine inferiority is still expressed in Mohammedan lands, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... of any two men, but had refused to contemplate what must happen if they failed in it. Now he could see that it was impossible, but dazed with utter weariness as he was he could not think consecutively, and only felt a numbing dismay that in some strange fashion softened the blow, while in place of considering the future his memory reverted without his will to the incidents of that strange journey. They rose blurred before him as the creations of an ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the advocates of Church reform evolved both a negative and a positive policy: the abolition of lay investiture and the utter extirpation of the practice of clerical marriages were to shake the Church free from the numbing control of secular interests, and these were to be accomplished by a centralisation of the ecclesiastical organisation in the hands of the Pope, which would make him more than a match for the greatest secular potentate, the successor of ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... something of the local life. It was a market-town—as tiny a one as England possesses—and had for ages served that lonely valley, and guarded our marches against the Kelt. In spite of the occasion, in spite of the numbing hilarity that greeted her as soon as she got into the reserved saloon at Paddington, her senses were awake and watching, and though Oniton was to prove one of her innumerable false starts, she never forgot it, nor the things ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... am strongly of opinion that without enthusiasm rubbing is of all occupations the most irksome, except perhaps for the quadrumana (who seem more adapted for this exercise), the most painful for the spine, the most cramping for the thighs, the most numbing for the fingers. It is a profession, Henry, demanding, above every other, enthusiasm in the operator. Now Tom's enthusiasm for rubbing as an art was from the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... not see that my lord is in danger of his life?" she cried. "Nay, I forgot, thou hast no vision. Take it now from me and look again;" and laying her hand, from which a strange, numbing current seemed to flow, upon my head, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... they should not be mistaken by our assailants: I have good reason to remember them, for they were the last I ever uttered on American ground as a free agent. They had hardly passed my lips, when a rifle cracked; I felt a dull numbing blow inside my left knee, and a sensation as if hot sealing-wax was trickling there; at the same instant, Falcon dropped under me—without a start or struggle, or sound besides a horrible choking sob—shot right through ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... suffering that Tarzan's sorrowful thoughts induced had the effect of numbing his keen, perceptive faculties, so that the advancing savages were almost upon him before he became aware that he was no longer ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the end. For nothing wastes your powers so much as apprehension. The hardest work, if done with common sense, is after all a tonic. But fear lest that work will not yield you as much as you wish is a sort of irritating cocaine of character, numbing and deadening all of your powers and at the same time lashing your mind and nerves with the knotted thongs of unhappiness. Besides, fretting is so trivial, so little, so commonplace. Fail if you must, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... in the intensity of his curiosity. He had sustained a certain temporary numbing of the faculties from the blow and his fancy, though vivid now, was vague. He was not at all sure that he was still in Richmond. The window still showed that it was night, and the rain was pouring so hard that he could hear it beating against the walls. At all events, he thought ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to mind the sacrifices Offered to her of him continually. Therefore she turned aside from Argive men The might of Aias. As a terrible storm, Whose wings are laden with dread hurricane-blasts, Cometh with portents of heart-numbing fear To shipmen, when the Pleiads, fleeing adread From glorious Orion, plunge beneath The stream of tireless Ocean, when the air Is turmoil, and the sea is mad with storm; So rushed he, whithersoe'er his feet might bear. This way and that he ran, like some fierce beast Which ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... draws back the life it has given. I return to my job. My shoulders are beginning to ache. My hands are stiff, my thumbs almost blistered. The enthusiasm I had felt is giving way to a numbing weariness. I look at my companions now in amazement. How can they keep on so steadily, so swiftly? Cases are emptied and refilled; bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled away; jars are washed, wiped and loaded, and still there are more cases, more jars, more bottles. Oh! the monotony of it, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... two-legged monsters came in just then. They relapsed into lifeless silence. There was a horrible moment as the three paused over them longer than any of the others had. Was it obvious that the effects of the numbing poison was wearing off? Would they be ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... ear awake. His reindeer were picketed close to the improvised igloo. Other nights, they had taken turns watching to protect them from prowling wolves, but this night no one could long withstand the numbing cold of the blizzard. So he watched and half slept. Now he caught the rising howl of the wind, and now felt its lull as the deer skins sagged. But what was this? Was there a different note, a howl that was not ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... o'er lives like his The slumberous river washes soft and slow; The lapping water rises wearily, Numbing the nerve and will to sleep; and we Before the goal and crown of mysteries Fall ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... paddle dipped again, and the pirogue moved back towards the lugger. It may be that the flood was at last numbing his fear, as it had so soon done that of all the brute-life around him; it was in his mind to do something calling for more courage than he had ever before commanded in his life, save on that one day in Carancro, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... with some friends, and afterwards they strolled on to her favourite view. Down the Toulon road gardens and hills were bathed in the colour of ripe apricot; an evening crispness had stolen on the air; the blood, released from the sun's numbing, ran gladly in the veins. On the right hand of the road was a Frenchman playing bowls. Enormous, busy, pleased, and upright as a soldier, pathetically trotting his vast carcass from end to end, he delighted Shelton. But Antonia threw a single look at the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... energy, and with his work still to seek. One might wonder why he did not seriously prepare for the Decline and Fall. It must have been chiefly at this time that it was "contemplated at an awful distance," perhaps even with numbing doubt whether the distance would ever be lessened and the work achieved, or even begun. The probability is he had too little peace of mind to undertake anything that required calm and protracted labour. "While so many of my acquaintance ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... and light a semblance of courage returned, still Joyce kept her eyes rigidly upon her task. She laid on more wood, and yet more. It was past midnight and the terrible stillness Was numbing her reason. Presently she cautiously turned—something compelled her. She did not expect to find—anything, but she had to look! Away from the red glare, the shadows concealed their secrets from the fear-haunted eyes, but only for ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... for his asylum chose; Upon a couch of down in these abodes, Supine with folded arms he thoughtless nods; Indulging dreams his godhead lull to ease, With murmurs of soft rills and whispering trees: The poppy and each numbing plant dispense Their drowsy virtue, and dull indolence; No passions interrupt his easy reign, No problems puzzle his lethargic brain; But dark oblivion guards his peaceful bed, And lazy fogs hang lingering o'er ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... clattered against the metal vizor and bounced off, as the weird assailant ran within striking distance. For the first time in his life came the sensation of helplessness in a fight. There was a numbing feeling of horror as he ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... quiet now, and growing ever more sleepy, ay, as if some poison were numbing him all over. And there is too much whiteness to look at every way; woods and lands, great wings, white veils, white sails; white, white ... what can it be? Nonsense, man! And he knows well enough it is but snow; he is lying out in the snow; 'tis no fancy ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... with its movement, its dangers, and its fatigues, had a numbing effect on me. It took me away from any painful reflections which might have arisen in my mind. Besides, it freed me from the immediate tyranny of John. However, after the death of my grandfather, when our band degraded itself to exploits ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... he got his breath again; and now began to see his own misfortune. Yet not all at once to realize it, so sudden and numbing was the stroke. He staggered on, but scarce feeling or caring whither he was going; and every now and then he stopped, and his arms fell and his head sank on his chest, and he stood motionless: then he said to himself, "Can this thing be? this must be a dream. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... into the clouds, that gave to her will the directless energy of a chip of wood on stormy waters. But before the Grieg concerto was done, she knew that she was free. Free! All the fine ecstasy, without the numbing terror. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... fields above a rock-bound sea. Sometimes they would stop early in the day at some fishing village, find rooms there for the night, and bathe and sail till evening. When they bathed, Nan would swim far out to sea, striking through cold, green, heaving waters, slipping cleverly between currents, numbing thought with bodily action, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... poisonous dose of aconite, marked symptoms supervene. The initial signs of poisoning are referable to the alimentary canal. There is a sensation of burning, tingling and numbness in the mouth, and of burning in the abdomen. Death usually supervenes before a numbing effect on the intestine can be observed. After about an hour there is severe vomiting. Much motor weakness and cutaneous sensations similar to those above described soon follow. The pulse and respiration steadily fail, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... particularly &c adj.; in particular, in propria persona [Lat.]; ad hominem [Lat.]; for my part. each, apiece, one by one, one at a time; severally, respectively, each to each; seriatim, in detail, in great detail, in excruciating detail, in mind-numbing detail; bit by bit; pro hac vice [Lat.], pro re nata [Lat.]. namely, that is to say, for example, id est, exemplia gratia [Lat.], e.g., i.e., videlicet, viz.; to wit. Phr. le style ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fancy had pictured it to be, and the experience which is common to all who take part in it for the first time defies expression. A peculiar sensation creeps annoyingly slowly along the spinal column, subtly affecting every member of the body. There's a gripping of the heart and a numbing of the brain, and the tongue persistently cleaves to the roof of the mouth, which seems as dry as powdered chalk. A choking sensation accompanies every effort to cough. You may be in the stepping-off ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... festivals, Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils. And, as the old swain said, she can unlock The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell, If she be right invoked in warbled song; For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift To aid a virgin, such as was herself, In hard-besetting need. This will I try, And add the power ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... heartbroken. He began to see in its fulness the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise it, so sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed—the blessing of a pathway to his daughter's soul—a misfortune had come as well. What was it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand? And what ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... every three months!" And provoked by this fresh piece of unreason she opened fire in earnest, in defence of what she believed to be their true welfare. Richard listened to her without interrupting; even seemed to grant the truth of what she said. But none the less, even as she pleaded with him, a numbing sense of futility crept over her. She stuttered, halted, and finally fell silent. Her words were like so many lassos thrown after his vagrant soul; and this was out of reach. It had sniffed freedom—it WAS free; ran wild already on the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me. It seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me, were preventing me from going farther and were calling me back. I felt that painful wish to return which oppresses you when you have left a beloved invalid at home, and when you are seized by a presentiment ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... that were having their first taste of war. Though I gave and took some knocks as the others did, and shouted as they shouted, I had at the time no fear, not because of my valor, but because of a sudden numbing of my wits, which left me with no intelligence to do otherwise than charge and shout and lay about me like ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... rejoicing when Stella so far recovered from the strain which she had been undergoing, to learn that Bud was safe, although he had passed a very uncomfortable as well as perilous night tied to a tree with the cold numbing him, and wolves sniffing and ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... intervals, a belated wagon passed, clattering. His days of usefulness were not over, but he had reached the age when one is willing to spend more time looking on. He had always been tired at this hour of the day, but it was only of late that fatigue had had a certain numbing effect, which disinclined him to think of the tasks of tomorrow. He came to this period of repose rather earlier nowadays, and after less sturdy labor—somehow, a great deal of the sturdy labor got itself done without him; and ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... swung the weapon that the shrieks had ceased, then smiled grimly in the numbing horror as he realized that Ruth Allaire was beside him. A piece of oak was in her hands, and she was striking with desperate and silent fury at ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... this numbing, heartbreaking delay would end; he would be free to take up his quest. O'Reilly choked at the thought; the blood drummed in his ears. Rosa would think he was never coming; she would surely believe that his heart had changed. As if it could! "O God! Come quickly, if you love me." Well, a week ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... instantly bruited about. General Scott was going to lead the army in person. His charger had been seen before the headquarters. The rebels were going to be swooped up by another such famous dash as the flank march from Vera Cruz to the plateau of Mexico! Then came a numbing fear that Beauregard's bragging host had fled, and that the movement would turn out a tedious stern chase to Richmond. In the agony of all this Jack, returning from a "detail" to the quartermaster's tent, heard his name shouted where his tent had been. He hurried ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... caused by that crack on the head he had received when the ship crashed; his exploring fingers found a swollen rawness on his skull. He must have a brain concussion, that would explain his earlier inability to move or think straight. The cold air was numbing his face and he willingly pulled the hairy ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... the reach of those who do the drudgery and the service and rude work of the world. And it can be done—do not let us be afraid—it can be done without in the least degree impairing the skill of our handicraftsmen or the manliness of our national life. It can be done without blunting or numbing the practical energies of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... moved. The testimony of this witness, so different from what they had expected, had dumfounded them. They felt that he had knocked the last prop out from under their safety; and all the horrors of their situation had dropped down on their spirits with crushing, numbing force. Their minds, their nerves, their very muscles were paralyzed, for the moment, by the sudden and awful realization that now they must hang, must hang for a crime ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... to her since that night he had lost faith in her. His voice seemed harsh; it fell upon her, numbing her senses. Her body went cold as if a frosty gust ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... her place rigid—half frozen with a cold, numbing fear. He had sent for her, then, only to mock her. She had failed! They were not even to have the money! Speech was quite impossible. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wicked night, the night I met the man who had died. A bitter, heart-numbing night of weird, shrieking wind and flying snow. A few black ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... that no amount of reasoning could change his Indian superstition; and with a word more of expostulation I left him standing there, and sought a place where I might lie down. Already the numbing sensation of supernatural fear had left me, for in the breaking up of that odd-formed cloud I realized its cause; and now the physical fatigue I felt overmastered all else. I found a quiet corner, and, with a saddle for a pillow, was soon ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... as much the superior of his antagonist in bodily as in spiritual strength, was about to treat the Great Adversary to a back somersault, when he suddenly felt the long nails of the stranger piercing his flesh. A new fear seized his heart, a numbing chillness crept through his body, and he struggled to free himself, but in vain. A strange roaring was in his ears; the lake and cavern danced before his eyes and vanished; and with a loud cry he ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... former effect. But Jesus 'received it not.' He will not, by any act of His, lessen the bitterness. He will drink to the dregs the cup which His Father hath given Him, and therefore He will not drink of the numbing draught. It is a small matter comparatively, but it is all of a piece with the greater things. The spirit of His whole course of voluntary, cheerful endurance of all the sorrows needful to redeem the world, is expressed in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... hilt like slowly moving worms. For a moment there was scarcely a breath between us; then he lifted his arm and brought the knife slowly out before him. I watched, horror-stricken, unable to lift my feet from the floor. A numbing paralysis of fright seemed to come ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... that all that had gone before was as nothing by comparison. Why did the great white giant stand there so unconcernedly? Why did he not flee before these horrid, hairy, tree men fell upon them both and tore them to pieces? And then there came to Tibo a numbing recollection. It was none other than the story he had heard passed from mouth to mouth, fearfully, by the people of Mbonga, the chief, that this great white demon of the jungle was naught other than a hairless ape, for had not he been seen ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... road of roses to this new home in the West. Riggs would follow her, if he could not accompany her, and to gain his own ends he would stoop to anything. Helen felt the startling realization of being cast upon her own resources, and then a numbing discouragement and loneliness and helplessness. But these feelings did not long persist in the quick pride and flash of her temper. Opportunity knocked at her door and she meant to be at home to it. She would not have been Al Auchincloss's ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... arm. That it was trying to sting with an erectile organ placed about midway between the shoulders and the tail I became instinctively aware, and presently felt something like a weak electric thrill over all my body, while my left hand, which was naked, sustained a severe shock, completely numbing it for the moment. I caught the beast by the neck, and flung him with all my force right in the face of my chief antagonist, who fell with a cry of terror. Looking in the direction from which this dangerous assailant had come, I perceived another in the air, and saw that not a moment was ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... enough to tangle up my heart With one of these same men. 'Twas terrible! Morning or evening, waking or asleep, I had no peace. Sighs, groans, and standing tears, Counted my moments through the blessed day. And then to this there was a dull, strange ache Forever sleeping in my breast,—a numbing pain, That would not for an instant be forgot. O! but I loved him so, that very feeling Became intolerable. And I believed This false Giuseppe, too, for all the sneers, The shrugs and glances, of my intimates. They ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... Jasmine to the hospital moved away from the station, she settled down into the seat beside the driver with the helplessness of one who had received a numbing blow. Her body swayed as though she would faint, and her eyes closed, and stayed closed for so long a time, that Corporal Shorter, who drove the rough little pair of Argentines, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ocean's flood he fell. Then Rama, when he saw the foe Convulsed and mad with pain 'Neath the chill-pointed weapon's blow, To Lakshman spoke again:— "See, Lakshman, see! this mortal dart That strikes a numbing chill, Hath struck him senseless with the smart, But left him breathing still. But these who love the evil way And drink the blood they spill, Rejoicing holy rites to stay, Fierce plagues, my hand ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... had noticed that aside from their hunting-knives the men of Kro-lu bore no weapons about the village streets. There was an atmosphere of peace and security within that village that I had not hoped to experience within Caspak, and after what I had passed through, it must have cast a numbing spell over my faculties of judgment and reason. I had eaten of the lotus-flower of safety; dangers no longer threatened for ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... numbing blow with his mighty fore paw, he fastens on the throat of the animal he has felled, and invariably tries to tear open the jugular vein. This is his practice in nearly every case, and it shews a wonderful instinct for selecting the most ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... O ye elements! I know— Ye know it too—it hath been granted me Not to die wholly, not to be all enslaved. I feel it in this hour. The numbing cloud Mounts off my soul; I feel it, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the explosions filled the quivering air; the ground seemed to shudder beneath them. Branches fell crashing to the ground; it seemed as if a god was flogging the tree-tops with a huge scourge. The din was awful, petrifying, numbing. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... when Maskull awoke from his profound sleep. A wind was blowing against him, gentle but wall-like, such as he had never experienced on earth. He remained sprawling on the ground, as he was unable to lift his body because of its intense weight. A numbing pain, which he could not identify with any region of his frame, acted from now onward as a lower, sympathetic note to all his other sensations. It gnawed away at him continuously; sometimes it embittered and irritated him, at other times ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... willingness to deal sudden death, the pain of poison thorn, the stinging tear of lead through flesh; and that strange paradox of the burning desert, the cold at night, the piercing icy wind, the dew that penetrated to the marrow, the numbing desert cold of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not a true fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all my life. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, and to keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, who does not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, and who may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able to lead the crowd, glory in it, die for it, or help it. Nor will any man who has not defied it, and lifted his ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... rooms, feeling as if the faint, sweet, overpowering perfume were a kind of anodyne, that was mercifully, during those early days, lulling her senses into lethargy. To the end of her days the scent of the white lily would bring back to her the feeling of actually living again through that first time of numbing grief. How many hours, how many days and nights she and her father had lived within that quiet sanctuary they could not have told—lived in the dark stillness, with one room, the stillest of all, containing the beloved something strangely aloof all that was left of the thing that ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them. Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly upon her girlish dreams ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... said, with surety, that Otah in that ultimate moment felt pain. It is fairly certain that both finitely and cosmically the initial numbing shock did register; and it may be assumed that he jolted rather horribly at the splintering bite of bone into brain. But who can say he did not reach a point-of-prescience, that his neuro-thalamics did not leap to span the eons, and gape in horror, in that ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... solfeggi—always apt to degenerate, under a pedant, into the dreariest of mechanical routine. How many a sweet-voiced chorister, even in our own days, reaches manhood with a love for music? It needs music in his soul. Haydn's soul withstood the numbing influence of pedantry. He realized that it lay with himself to develop and nurture the powers within his breast of which he was conscious. "The talent was in me," he remarked, "and by dint of hard work I managed ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... all the ills of the flesh—pain, he argued, and disease were inseparable, subdue the first and the latter ceased to exist as an active ill, and a dexterously wielded hypodermic needle left behind him a trail of narcotized and relieved sufferers. Bottles of patent medicines, exhilarating or numbing as the purchaser might require, lined the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... When the numbing sense of astonishment passed away, it left her cold with anger. Kitty was a dignified young lady, and she would not tolerate such an affront from any man alive. It was more than an affront; it was a dire catastrophe. What should she do now? ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... ineffective violence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see what had happened. The Chief recovered himself, and the two lashed out at each other so exactly together that the great clubs met in mid-air. So shattering was the force of the impact, so numbing the shock to the hairy wrists behind it, that both ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... passed without reaction, they glanced at each other in consternation. Brown and Martin raced up the ramp while the others waited. Within a few minutes the tubes began to fire and warmth slowly drove back the numbing cold. ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... a roar. It was a deep, booming, numbing roar that came from somewhere outside the rocket's hull. Simultaneously, something thrust Cochrane deep into the foam-cushions of his contour-chair. He felt the cushion piling up on all sides of his body so that it literally surrounded him. It resisted the tendency of his arms and legs ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... which never entirely left him. According to his friend Fessart, he used to confess he always experienced a nervous trembling whenever he heard his mother speak; and the effect was in some sort the numbing of his faculties when he was in her presence. Her generous abnegation at the time of his bankruptcy was a revelation to him; his gratitude for it was sincere; and from that date onwards, during a number of years, his letters to her evinced it, yet not consistently; the old ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... of the starlit sky The gleaming snow-drifts lay wide and high; O'er hill and dell stretched a mantle white, The branches glittered with crystal bright; But the winter wind's keen icy breath Was merciless, numbing and chill ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... forward to coming years, she said to her drooping spirit: "Be strong and bear this sorrow. I will conquer my own heart." How is it that, when the human soul is called to pass through a fierce ordeal, and numbing despair seizes the faculties and energies in her sepulchral grasp, how is it that superhuman strength is often suddenly infused into the sinking spirit? There is a mysterious yet resistless power given, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... granules which give a blue reaction with iodine. They are starch. Mixed with them are some larger starch granules, a few plant cells, fibrous matter, and other foreign particles. And then, there is the substance that gives that acrid, numbing taste." He appeared to be ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Milo at such an angle as to rap the latter's right elbow with a numbing force that sent the pipe flying half way across the hall. The tobacco jar must have gone too, had not one of Gavin's outflung hands caught it in mid-air, as a quarterback might ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune |
