"Sleepless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the dinner-party was a nearly sleepless one for Philip, although his father had so considerately regretted his wearied appearance, he could do nothing but walk, walk, walk, like some unquiet ghost, up and down his great, oak-panelled bedroom, till, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... death. I never went to see him, but he would groan and squeak like a chicken barely out of the shell: I considered that he might step into his coffin at any moment, and heaped gift upon gift, for fear of being outdone in generosity by my rivals; I passed anxious, sleepless nights, reckoning and arranging all; 'twas this, the sleeplessness and the anxiety, that brought me to my death. And he swallows my bait whole, and ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Emma; "I love the world too well, and have spent many wretched, sleepless nights because I was unwilling to leave it: but that time is passed. If I have any fear now, it is that my work on earth will not be well done before ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... or in tent. How oft of dole have I made moan for love and longing pain, What while my body for desire in mortal peril went! How oft I've waked, how many a cup of sorrow have I drained, Watching the stars of night go by, for sleepless languishment! It had sufficed me, had thy grace with verses come to me; My expectation still on thee in the foredawns was bent. Then was my heart by that which caused my agitation seared, And from mine eyelids still the tears poured ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... are ruined! He understood that in our time immense knowledge is the only foundation for pyramidal fortunes, and his memory alone knew the long series of nights which had passed above his head while it was sleepless in winning knowledge. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... certain sadness in his voice when he speaks of unrequited love. But his constant reference to Ibsen's motif in the "Wild Duck," though it fails in its primary object of convincing me that he is familiar with Ibsen's plays, does in truth tell me that some fair one gave him sleepless nights. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... not yet generally recognized that we owe the defeat of this policy in the first instance to Lord Kitchener. From the moment he took the supreme military command in South Africa at the end of 1900, while prosecuting the war with iron severity and sleepless energy, he insisted on and worked for a settlement by consent, with a formal promise of future self-government to the Boers. In this he was in sharp opposition to Lord Milner, who desired to extort an unconditional surrender. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... and, taking his seat in it, with Lord Oliphant and Cyril opposite to him, he was driven to the Palace, learning by the way such details as they could give him of the last two days' fighting. He led them at once to the King's dressing-room. Charles was already attired, for he had passed a sleepless ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... and spent a sleepless night in the course of which I decided to cling to the ideals of ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... it so happened that the great Haroun Alraschid was one night seized with one of those fits of sleepless melancholy with which it had pleased Allah to temper his splendid destiny, and which fits are, indeed, the common lot of those who are raised by fortune above the ordinary ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... a traitor's child," he insisted, and Mrs. Stoddard went sorrowfully to bed and lay sleepless through the long night, trying to think of some plan to keep Anne Nelson safe and well cared for until peaceful ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... break a little branch, and yet she felt as if she was about to commit the most heinous crime, for which she needed the shield of a sleepless night. ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... where my eyes bid me trust. And the whole affair is so strange that one more strange act like this intrusion of mine is quite of apiece. I ask you therefore to listen to me. The listening pledges you to nothing, and at the worst, I can promise you, my story will while away a sleepless hour. If when you have heard, you can give us your advice, I shall be very glad. For we are sunk in such a quandary that a new point of view ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... alarmed by the images which the reading of these books had created; and I guess that it was from such frightful objects, rather than from the ghosts of his murdered brethren, that he was compelled to pass a sleepless night before the memorable battle of Bosworth Field. If one of those artists who used to design the horrible pictures which are engraved in many old didactic volumes of this period had ventured to take a peep into Richard's tent, I question whether he would not ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... down the broad stairs into the hall. It was impossible to ignore the fact that she was pale, and that she walked as one in fear. Her eyes were sunken, and spoke of a sleepless night. Her manner was almost furtive. She scarcely glanced, even, at the little pile of packages ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spite of his sleepless night. He descended from his dogcart by the roadside, instead of driving into the field, and he took a careful survey of the carriages he saw before him. Conspicuous in the distance he distinguished Donna ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... it is the last war of all." A silence follows, then some heads are shaken in dissent whose faces have been blanched anew by the stale tragedy of sleepless night—"Stop war? Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... forgot for a moment her hard bed and sleepless night, and ran to the king to thank him for ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... event, it meant for him a lot of trouble, and he was in a fiendish temper, when, after a sleepless night, he came downstairs. He responded gruffly to the greetings of the others, and favored Teddy with a black stare that showed that ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... passed a long sleepless night, and in the morning the result of the whole was to abide by Molly, and to think ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... g-get your consent to a court-martial? You had b-better by half g-give it, Your Eminence; it's only w-what all your b-brother prelates would do in your place. 'Cosi fan tutti;' and then you would be doing s-such a lot of good, and so l-little harm! Really, it's n-not worth all the sleepless nights you have been spending ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... did not believe in the profession, and, after a long conference, took him to see Micheline. The doctor examined her, and declared it was nothing but debility. Madame Desvarennes was assailed with gloomy forebodings. She spent sleepless nights, during which she thought her daughter was dead; she heard the funeral dirges around her coffin. This strong woman wept, not daring to show her anxiety, and trembling lest Micheline should ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... under the shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree, free from the bustle of a camp, and the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments, of which the soldier, who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman, whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if this globe was insufficient for us all, and the courtier, who is always watching the countenance of his prince, in hopes of catching a gracious smile, can have very little ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... that John was seriously in love with Miss Dunton. If he had been he would have found some means of communicating with her. A thousand spies with sleepless eyes all round their heads can not keep a man from telling his love somehow, if he really have a ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... attended by Mr. Ferdie Sedgwick, both sadly disheveled and bearing marks of a sleepless night. Francis Charles spoke hurriedly to ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... their places in full uniform, which looked a little creased as if they had slept in it. The eye that has sternly reviewed the Warwickshire Yeomanry Cavalry, lacks something of its wonted brightness; whilst ROYDEN's black velvet suit sets off the added pallor of a countenance that tells of sleepless vigil. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... could have known, it would have saved me sleepless nights. For now you're mine, my dearest, just as I am yours. Nothing can take ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... In that struggle his youth of reveries and day-dreams passed away. Such furnace-blasts of proof, such pangs of transformation, seem necessary for exceptional natures. The bread eaten in tears, of which Goethe speaks, the sleepless nights of sorrow, are required for a clear vision of the celestial powers. Fortunately the same qualities that occasion the conflict insure the victory also. From days of gloom and depression, such ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... new idea presented itself to his mind he used to make a note of it; he even invented a system by which he could take notes in the dark, if some happy thought or ingenious problem suggested itself to him during a sleepless night. Like most men who systematically overtax their brains, he was a poor sleeper. He would sometimes go through a whole book of Euclid in bed; he was so familiar with the bookwork that he could actually see the figures before him in the dark, and did not confuse the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... abject obedience; and the endless, sleepless night it gave me; and the roofs of the houses opposite standing out at last against the blue-gray London dawn. I wondered whether I should ever see another, and was very hard on myself for that little expedition which I had made on my ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Pox of the States-man that's witty, That watches and plots all the sleepless Night, For seditious Harangues to the Whigs of the City, And piously turns a Traitor in spite. Let him wrack, and torment his lean Carrion, To bring his sham-Plots about, Till Religion, King, Bishop, and Baron, For the publick Good, be quite ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... stifled their cries with kisses and laid them tenderly back in their bed, and they were soon happy and merrily playing together. Meanwhile the father, not even taking off his boots, threw himself on the bed with a weary air. His face was white from exhaustion and a sleepless night; he did not close his eyes ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... sleigh against the fence, going home, and threw out the master, who scarcely recollected the accident; while to Ellen the issue of this unfortunate drive was a sleepless night and so high a fever in the morning that our village doctor was called to Mr. Kingsbury's ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... garden, unheard, unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous colour, of sweet scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair. Yes. That was a distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had found in the sleepless anxieties of my responsibility during a week of dangerous bad weather. The Colony, the pilot explained, had suffered from unparalleled drought. This was the first decent drop of water they had had for seven months. The root crops were lost. And, trying to be casual, but with visible ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... go up and up, to fall Through twilight to the sleepless dusk again, Like tortured flies upon a window pane. Wingless or broken-winged, They crawl and crawl ... Meaningless, striving—nowhere after all, Till one is tired of heeding. Tired. A stain of drab unloveliness the days remain ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... more grieved or wondered; Leicester, Hatton and Walsingham loudly exclaimed that ruin impended over the church, the country, and the queen. The ladies of the court alarmed and agitated their mistress by tears, cries, and lamentations. A sleepless and miserable night was passed by the queen amid her disconsolate handmaids: the next morning she sent for Anjou, and held with him a long private conversation; after which he retired to his chamber, and hastily throwing from him, but as quickly resuming, the ring ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... really did get, and her nerves, with confinement and worry and relaxation, would by-and-by be in a condition for any sort of an outburst if we attempted the least reasoning with her. She would become, for one thing, as sleepless as an owl; then she was thoroughly sure she was going to be insane, and down would go the hydrate of chloral till the doctor forbade it on pain of death. After the chloral, too, such horrid eyes as she had! the eyes, you know, that ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... New Year's night, an old man stood at his window, and looked, with a glance of fearful despair, up the immovable, unfading heaven, and down upon the still, pure, white earth, on which no one was now so joyless and sleepless as he. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... whisky dealers. He took greater precautions in his work, for the growing mist of haunting anxiety in Lydia's eyes began to call to him that there were other claims than those of the nation. His splendid zeal had brought her many a sleepless night, when she knew he was scouring the forests for hidden supplies of the forbidden merchandise, and that a whole army of desperadoes would not deter him from fulfilling his duty of destroying it. He felt, rather than saw, that she never bade him good-bye but that she was prepared ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... is human nature, which nobody can deny; and, uncultivated save in military matters, and rough as he was, Bill Gedge was as human as he could be. He had just had a tremendous tramp for a whole day, a sleepless night of terrible excitement and care, a sudden respite from anxiety, a meal, and the glow of a hot sun upon a patch of rock which sent a genial thrill of comfort through his whole frame. These were the difficulties which were weighing ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... whom Mr Rose had not done many an act of kindness; and to most of them far more than they ever knew. Many a weary hour had he toiled for them in private, when his weak frame was harassed by suffering; many a sleepless night had he wrestled for them in prayer, when, for their sakes, his own many troubles were laid aside. Work on, Walter Rose, and He who seeth in secret will reward you openly! but expect no gratitude from those for whose salvation you, like the great tender-hearted ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... the warmth of the glance which she bestowed upon Shirley. From the angle of an audience, he was beginning to observe a phase of this double play of personalities which was unseen by either of the participants. Two sleepless nights, after such a first evening together, and what then? He imagined the denouement, with a growing enjoyment of his vantage-point as ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... child, has been so ill, that every day, a week or less, threatened to terminate her existence. There had much need be many pleasures annexed to the states of husband and father, for, God knows, they have many peculiar cares. I cannot describe to you the anxious, sleepless hours these ties frequently give me. I see a train of helpless little folks; me and my exertions all their stay: and on what a brittle thread does the life of man hang! If I am nipt off at the command of fate! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... satisfied!" [CARLOS turns away. This silent sorrow, which for eight long moons Hath hung its shadows, prince, upon your brow— The mystery of the court, the nation's grief— Hath cost your father many a sleepless night, And many a tear of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... her from him with a heavy sob and hastily left the room, oblivious in the confusion of his faculties of the boon he conferred on the lovers. Concha dried her eyes, but her face was deathly pale. It had not been all acting, by any means, and she was beginning to feel the tyranny of sleepless nights; and the joy and wonder of the morning had left her with but a remnant of endurance for ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... freshness has gone, and she now looks in years what in reality she is, close on thirty-five. Her lips are pale and drooping, her cheeks colorless; her whole air is suggestive of deep depression, the result of sleepless nights and days filled with grief and suspense ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... persisted in his attempts to push in where we were. A cloud came up at dusk, but, to our extreme anguish, passed over without discharging itself. It is quite impossible to conceive our sufferings from thirst at this period. We passed a sleepless night, both on this account and through ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... during a sleepless night, and during the following days carried out as a working model, which gives highly satisfactory results. It is ingenious in its simplicity, and a direct realization as a mechanism of the principles explained in connexion with fig. 21. The line B'B is represented by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... his bed for seven sleepless hours, Barnes arose and gloomily breakfasted alone. He was not discouraged over his failure to arrive at anything tangible in the shape of a plan of action. It was inconceivable that he should not be able in ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... night in early spring when fear and horror of herself had suddenly checked a custom which she had hitherto supposed to be nothing worse than foolish, twice—at times inadvertently, at times deliberately—she had sought relief from sleepless nervousness and this new depression in the old and apparently harmless manner of her girlhood. For weeks now she had exercised little control of herself, feeling immune, yet it scared her a little to recognise again in herself the restless premonitions of desire. For here, in the sunshine of the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... observance had been maintained, without major friction occurring in the life of the group. Lectures were given regularly, and schools were organized. Though it is recorded that the men became melancholy, sleepless, and irritable because of the long Arctic night, temper was still in so good a state that an honor system within the camp meted out extra duty to ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... was written from Tortona, on June fifteenth, 1796. Life is but a vain show because at such an hour he is absent from her. His passion had clouded his faculties, but if she is in pain he will leave at any hazard for her side. Without appetite, and sleepless; without thought of friends, glory, or country, all the world is annihilated for him except herself. "I care for honor because you do, for victory because it gratifies you, otherwise I would have ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... her elaborately, but I knew she was right. Heat and sleepless nights and those early days of fear had told on me. And although I usually disregard Maggie's cosmetic suggestions, culled from the beauty columns of the evening paper, a look in the mirror decided me. I went downstairs ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... though a passing wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly in the shut-up bedroom. A storm of lust disordered their brains, plunged them into the delirious imaginations of the flesh. The old pious terrors of their sleepless nights were now transforming themselves into a thirst for bestiality, a furious longing to walk on all fours, to growl and to bite. One day when he was playing bear she pushed him so roughly that he fell against ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Londonwards as fast as continual relays of post-horses could convey him; and on the morning after he had received the letter from Lady Eversleigh, a post- chaise covered with the dust of the roads, rattled up to the Clarendon Hotel, and the traveller sprang out, after a sleepless night of impatience ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... us ever expected to see either you or Helen again, and oh! we are so happy. Do not go away again. You are a man; you do not know, you cannot understand all a woman feels. She must sit and wait, and hope, and pray for the safe return of husband or brother or sweetheart. The long days! Oh, the long sleepless nights, with the wail of the wind in the pines, and the rain on the roof! It is maddening. Do not leave us! Do not leave me! Do not leave Helen! Say ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... urged me to begin at once with the Old Testament. That was a most stupendous work. Before commencing it I passed many sleepless nights. It was the wish of all that I should undertake it. I did so, and went on with the work from time to time, as I had leisure, daily and nightly. I stuck to it till I had got as far as the end of Kings, when I became completely done up. The Directors were afraid that ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... has been a chief popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in the victor. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... days, three sleepless nights, the chief For Oscar searched each mountain cave Then hope is lost: in boundless grief His locks in grey ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... you do not know what it is to lie awake all night, sleepless and trembling, between sheets that are made of lava, and to hear footsteps and the clanking of armour and to see Rinaldo shining in the dark and threatening you as he holds over you his sword, Fusberta, and shouts in your ear: 'How dare you applaud ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... closes far astern: The silent oars now dip their level wings, And weary with strong stroke the whitening wave. Others, afraid of tardiness, return: Now, entering the still harbour, every surge Runs with a louder murmur up their keel, And the slack cordage rattles round the mast. Sleepless with pleasure and expiring fears Had Gebir risen ere the break of dawn, And o'er the plains appointed for the feast Hurried with ardent step: the swains admired What so transversely could have swept the dew; ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... quite as sleepless a condition as Toby; Aunt Olive had invited him to remain overnight, so that he might see everything that was going on, and as he lay in the soft, geranium-scented bed, his eyes were kept wide open by his delight with what seemed to him ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... "You have had a sleepless night," she told me. "It must have been hard to keep awake after all the work you have done ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... of all the sleepless hours he had had, and in the morning he was up and out before Charlotte was ready for him. Jerry had breakfasted, when Raven came on him in the barn. He expected Tenney to go chopping, and he wanted the chores done, to get off early. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... sleep! the evening gun resounds Over the waves that rock thee on their breast: The bugle blare to kennel calls the hounds Who sleepless watch ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... and Thorn, having disappeared from Somerset and sought new fields of usefulness. The intervening months passed rapidly away, and I fear that I did not make much progress, yet I thought I should be able to pass the preliminary examination. That which was to follow worried me more and gave me many sleepless nights; but these would have been less in number, I fully believe, had it not been for one specification of my, outfit which the circular that accompanied my appointment demanded. This requirement was a pair of "Monroe shoes." Now, out in Ohio, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... being wrecked. Unlike the last, this was as still as a summer night. I thought, as I lay there, half awake and half asleep, looking upward through the window at the lights above my head, how many sleepless eyes from far out on the ocean-stream—mariners of all nations spinning their yarns through the various watches of the night—were directed toward ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... mind is sleepless in the pursuit of knowledge. It is ever seeking new fields of conquest. It must advance: with it, standing still is the precursor of defeat. If necessary it invents new methods of attack, and rests not until it gains its objective point, or demonstrates ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... and the advance swept onwards. On all sides the pressure was becoming unendurable. The burghers in the valley below could see all day the twinkle of British heliographs from every hill, while at night the constant flash of signals told of the sleepless vigilance which hemmed them in. Upon July 29th, Prinsloo sent in a request for an armistice, which was refused. Later in the day he despatched a messenger with the white flag to Hunter, with an announcement of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Sleepless I wander in the night, And, wandering, watch for day; Earth sleeps, yet, high in heaven, the night Awakens, faint and far away, ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... indeed, to our cost," the general said; "save the two leaders in Jerusalem, he was the most dangerous; and was by far the most troublesome of our foes. Many a score of sleepless nights has that fellow caused us; from the time he well-nigh burnt all our camp before Gamala, he was a thorn in our side. One never knew where he was, or when to expect him. One day we heard of him attacking a garrison at the other ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... come, of course—and quickly. That is the program. This artillery has been posted here to be captured. And it will be captured within an hour or two at furthest, perhaps within a few minutes, for Sheridan is sleepless and his force is not only on our flank, but in front of us. There is very little left of the Army of Northern Virginia. It can fight no more. It is going to surrender here, but in the meantime there may be a tidy little scrimmage in this strip of woods, and I for one ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Ruth, sleepless, weary, restless with the oppression of a sorrow which she dared not face and contemplate bravely, kept awake all the early part of the night. Many a time did she rise, and go to the long casement window, and look abroad over the still and quiet town—over ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... which ordinarily a general officer would not permit himself to be troubled with, might need attention and action from him at such a time. Irascible and impetuous as General Floyd seemed to be by nature—his nerves unstrung, too, by the fatigues of so many busy days and sleepless nights—and galled as he must have been by the constant annoyances, he yet showed no sign of impatience. I saw him give way but once to anger, which was, then, provoked by the most stupid and insolent pertinacity. It was interesting to watch the struggle which would sometimes occur between ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... dawn found the priest staring in sleepless, wide-eyed terror at the ceiling above—days crowded with torturing apprehension and sickening suggestion—days when his knees quaked and his hands shook when his superiors addressed him in the performance of his customary duties. No mental picture was too frightful or abhorrent ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... by sorrow nursed, And ached in sleepless sorrow long; And now 't is doomed to know the worst, And break at ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... elegant arts which then began to form a prominent part in the education of Athenian youths; he applied himself with much more zeal to the pursuit of practical and useful knowledge. This, as well as the numerous anecdotes about his youthful wilfulness and waywardness, together with the sleepless nights which he is said to have passed in meditating on the trophies of Miltiades, are more or less clear symptoms of the character which he subsequently displayed as a general and a statesman. His mind was early bent upon great things, and was incapable of being diverted from them by reverses, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... And whence that difference? Whence but from himself? For see the universal Race endowed With the same upright form. The sun is fixed And the infinite magnificence of heaven Fixed, within reach of every human eye; The sleepless ocean murmurs for all years; The vernal field infuses fresh delight Into all hearts. Throughout the world of sense, Even as an object is sublime or fair, That object is laid open to the view Without reserve or veil; and as a power Is salutary, or an influence sweet, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... pretend very hard the next day that he was feeling ill, for an almost sleepless night, spent in trying to find some way out of his difficulties, had left him hollow-eyed and pale. Breakfast had been a farce and dinner a mere empty pretence, and between the two meals he had fared illy in classes. It was scarcely more than an exaggeration to tell ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... midnight—not like the one I told of when the story began, white with snow and glittering with the keen polish of frost. But a soft, still night, drowsy yet sleepless, with an itch of thunder tingling in the air—and, indeed, already the pulsing, uncertain glow of sheet-lightning coming and going at long ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... stole away my nights and sold them to sleepless torment; ah, whither now hath the happy ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... in that case provided, and is besides impossible to be carried out in the present circumstances of the Colony. The Model Nation has its national debt of one thousand pounds, due to the Commissariat chest; and this burthen of the State costs his Excellency many a sleepless night, spent in vain conjectures as to the best mode of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... unless under the influence of opium, was sleepless, his mind was clear, and he gave the impression of being extremely ill, although not ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... died nor gone mad when the day came—the last complete day that George was to see on earth. It was Sunday; and, after a sleepless night, I saw the red sun break through the grey morning. I always sleep with my window open; and, as I lay and watched the sunrise, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... did he spend the nights, as from puppyhood, in his beloved "cave" under the piano in the music room. On one pretext or another, he would manage to slip out of the house, during the evening. Twice, in gray dawn, the Master found him crouched beside the mound, where, sleepless, he ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... would have to go to bed supperless. Ah! to bed indeed. Perhaps there would be neither bed nor sleep that night: for how could they slumber upon those hard branches? Should they lose consciousness for a moment, they would drop off, and tumble down upon their sleepless besieger! Even should they tie themselves in the tree, to go to sleep upon such narrow couches would be ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... fixed the cushions on the porch, I wondered whether God, while wandering Through his big house, the World, householderwise, Does also quietly set things aright, Gives sleep to sleepless wives in Germany And gently smooths the battlefields of France? Dear Father God, the children in their play Have tossed their toys in saddest disarray— Wilt Thou not, like a kindly nurse at dusk, Pass through the playroom, make it neat ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... was not the only person in the castle who had passed a sleepless night. Of the host of his enemies many had been kept awake by the anticipation of his downfall on the morrow; and among these was Anne Boleyn, who had received an assurance from the king that her enmity should ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... below. The man was sweating more than ever, so that, under the single, low-turned gas jet, his crooked face had a greasy shine to it. A church clock down in the next block struck twelve slowly. The sleepless flies ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... on, and Joseph noted that Teddy was apt to be from home a bit and would often go away for a day or two. And the new head-keeper, who was sleepless on the job, traced where a car had come across one of the drives in Oakshott's by night, for the wheels had scored the grass; and where the thing had stood was a dead bird the blackguards ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... this of all times! And Pete Carlin at the bottom of it! With her nerves frayed raw by two nights of sleepless vigil and the memory of the Curlew's disabled motor rankling within her, Dickie Lang brushed by a group of men and confronted a bullet-headed man in a ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... raving fierce and shrill, And chides with angry moan the frosty skies; The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still. We reck not of the wild night's gloom and chill, Housed from its rage, dear friend; and fancy flies, Lured by the hand of beckoning memories, Back to those summer evenings on the hill Where we together ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... then locked herself in her bedroom, leaving the key in such a position in its hole that you might just as well go straight back to the kitchen. Within a few hours of the arrival of these ghostly letters, tongues were wagging about them, but to the two or three persons who (after passing a sleepless night) bluntly asked Miss Ailie from whom they came, she only replied by pursing her lips. Nothing could be learned at the post-office save that Miss Ailie never posted any letters there, except to two Misses and a Mrs., all resident in Redlintie. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... cast one glance back; she did not exist; she would never again exist. All that he was doing and thinking, the sleepless nights when he called to her in loving appeal, the long hours when he stood gazing at her pictures,—all would be unknown to her. And when he died in his turn, the silence and loneliness would be still greater. The things which he ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... then, to the 'alafranga' hostelry; but Rashid, having heard the story of my sleepless night, would not allow me to put up there. I paid my debt to the proprietor, and then he found for me an empty house to which he brought a mattress and a coverlet, a lot of cushions, a brazier, and the things required for making coffee, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... into the dining-room—"I have to go, nurse. Fardy can't have his breakfast with you!"—and rushed out. A minute previously he had felt a serious need of food after the long, sleepless morning. The need vanished. He scurried up Elm Park Gardens like a boy in the warm, fresh air, and stopped a taxi. He was extremely excited. None but Lois knew the great secret. He had kept it to himself. He might have burst into the kitchen—for he was very apt to be informal—and said: ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... third evening, kneeling on the damp ground, she drew from the little tunnel in the adobe a thin slip of wood covered with the labour of sleepless nights. She hid it in her smock—that first of California's love-letters—then ran with shaking knees and prostrated herself before the altar. That night the moon streamed through her grating, and she deciphered the fact that ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... one half of New York is sick. Doctors are in demand. Headaches and various other ailments caused by "punch" are frequent. Business men have a weary, sleepless look, and it requires one or two nights' rest to restore mind and body to their proper condition. Should you call on a lady friend, you will probably find her indisposed—the cause of her sickness you can easily imagine. The Police Courts are busy on the Second ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... animation, when he awoke from his semi-delirium; then, recovering full self-possession for a few moments, he would speak, in disconnected phrases which had perhaps haunted him for a long while on his bed of suffering, during weary, sleepless nights. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... tread, Like stars that guard the skies, Go watch each bed where rest the dead, Brave songs, with sleepless eyes. ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... another word, but walking or rather shuffling disdainfully away, muttered to herself, "Dat is de very meanest man, for a white man, I ever did see; he looked at dat 'ere punkin which has cost me so many anxious days and sleepless nights—which I have watched over as though it had been my own child—which I planted wid dis here hand of my own, and fought for agin the June bugs and the white frost, and dat mouse dat's been tryin ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... she noted, was changed. He had the jaded look of the sleepless, and a new and reserved expression, in which her quick sensibilities felt something not propitious, took the place of his half-smile ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... articles which many of them appeared to stand greatly in need of, but which we had not to part from. Their pertinacity exceeded the bounds of civility, as I thought; but I was not in a good humour, for the fleas, bugs, and other vermin, which infested our miserable lodgings, had caused me a sleepless night, by goring my body until the blood oozed from the skin in countless places. These ruinous missions are prolific generators, and the nurseries of vermin of all kinds, as the hapless traveller who tarries in ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... proud scene was o'er, But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more.[255] 90 Now mayors and shrieves all hushed and satiate lay, Yet eat, in dreams, the custard of the day; While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep. Much to the mindful queen the feast recalls What city swans once sung within the walls; Much she revolves their arts, their ancient praise, And sure succession down from Heywood's[256] days. She saw, with joy, the line immortal ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... for what it is worth—it came upon me that I must not kill him. Why? That Englishman would laugh. I am inclined to laugh myself. Well, I was only twenty-four, and, moreover, in a state of high tension, fresh from great emotional excitement and a sleepless night. Because he was one of my people, and great among them; because he might do great things for them; because he was one of those given to me, for whom I was answerable. I can get no nearer to it—it ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... sleepless night the cardinals might hear the din at the gate, the yells of the people, the tolling of the bells. There was constant passing and repassing from each other's chamber, intrigues, altercations, manoeuvres, proposals advanced and rejected, promises of support given and withdrawn. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 17th August, the day after the departure of the Bulows (whose stay had been the only reason for detaining me), I got up at early dawn after a sleepless night, and went down into the dining-room, where Minna was already expecting me to breakfast, as I intended to start by the five o'clock train. She was calm; it was only when accompanying me in the carriage to ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner |
