"Tenseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about a small table which stood in the center of the reception hall, and even Evelyn sensed the undercurrent of tenseness in the air. Her tongue became reluctantly still although she did break in once with a triumphant—"Ain't he like I told you he was?" ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... the House were jammed. Below, in their seats, the legislators sat uncomfortably. There was a tenseness in the air which made men's skin tingle. The Transient Car bill was about to come to a vote. Everything had been done by both sides that could be done. There could be no more outside interference; no more money ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... I!" ejaculated the girl, the angry tenseness of her face changing and her voice breaking as she threw up her hands in a despairing gesture. The pathos of the black figure struck through ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... filled with intense excitement. A few words from Robert Davis would have struck fire, and he knew it. So he quietly sat still without saying a word. The tenseness of the situation was painful. Just then Mary Davis started ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... mass values. It is exhibited by Attilio Piccirilli, the artist who designed the Maine Memorial in New York City. The appeal of "An Outcast" is too direct to need any illumination. Its frank bigness and physical power and tenseness, so suggestive and so desperate, are Rodinesque. But though the work is influenced by that master's school and thought, it is by no means a copy of his method. This sculptor has a number of interesting groups in the exhibit palaces and has been granted a gold medal. The dejected and ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... the window and struck the sill with his fist. The tenseness went out of his body. He breathed a long sigh of relief. He had seen through the mist of puzzling facts and contradictory clues. The rest would ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... courtliness he could muster, and releasing his passive prisoner, pushed her gently into the safe-keeping of the old cniht. Yet he was not so obtuse as to step back, as though the incident were closed; he read the King's inflection more correctly than that. Holding himself somewhat stiff in the tenseness of his feelings, he stood his ground in ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... his shivering frame made him poke too far, and he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering. He tried to poke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the effort, his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went out. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... for the first time his eyes swept the Circle. He still held the attention of every one, but with a difference; the tenseness had given place to a ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... remain silent longer, started forward unnoticed by the others in the tenseness of the moment, but before she had taken two steps Loll had taken charge ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... be a tenseness to the atmosphere of the old store. Louise saw the usual idlers gathered about the cold stove—Washy Gallup on his nail-keg, his jaw wagging eagerly; Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue side by side with their elbows on the counter; Cap'n Joab Beecher leaning forward on his stick—all watching ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... humour and wholesome idealism, and is dramatic with the tenseness of human heart throbs. It is very enjoyable to ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... upon the first act of "Louise." The lights were turned up, the tenseness relaxed, men made dives for their hats, and the unmusical murmured the usual platitudes. Naida leaned forward from the corner of her box to the man who ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... did. Even the most objective of employees is likely to become biased one way or another if he thinks his boss is particularly enthusiastic about an idea. Winstein didn't want yes-men around him; he wanted men who could and would think. And he had a theory that, while the tenseness of an emergency could and did produce some very high-powered thinking indeed, an atmosphere of that kind wasn't a good thing for day-in-and-day-out work. He saved that kind of pressure for the times that he needed it, so that it was ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... anything just then. For he had bowed his head in his hands and was sobbing in great, heart-wrung sobs with Doctor Bartholomew's arms about him, sobs that told of the nerve-strain which gave them birth, that told of the tenseness under which he had lived these last weeks. And now the thread had snapped, and all the broken, jangling nerves of the man had been loosed and torn his ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... rise and ask him to excuse her and retire, when Merrihew and Kitty came into view. There was nothing now to do but wait. She sought ease from the tenseness of the moment in sorting the roses. Hillard stirred the cold dregs in his tea-cup. Cold dregs, indeed! The light of ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... carelessly, but she did not repeat her assertion. A sudden shyness descended upon her, and she became silent. Nick was quiet too, and she wondered what was passing in his mind. But for the tenseness of the arm that encircled her, she could have believed him to be dozing. The silence was becoming oppressive when ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... called exactly for the purpose of doing away with the irresponsible regime, while the Conference, by a formal vote, rejected a coalition with the Cadets. At several meetings of the Democratic Soviet which took place prior to the Revolution, there prevailed an atmosphere of tenseness and utter incapacity for action. The Soviet did not reflect the Revolution's march forward but the dissolution of the parties that ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... immediately traceable than the other two, it was far more impressive than either. In it lay what may be called the linguistic peculiarity of the heath; and being audible nowhere on earth off a heath, it afforded a shadow of reason for the woman's tenseness, which continued as unbroken ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... looked anxiously at Billee Dobb on his panting steed, a far-off look was in the eyes of the ranchman. Bud thought he knew what his father's air portended, and he was eager to speak, but he, as well as the others, felt the tenseness of the situation, and waited ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... the room. The privations of the preceding three days had paled him a trifle. His eyes glittered brightly and there was a hint of nervousness in the tenseness of his ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... part, seemed unaware of a certain tenseness in the attitude of both Desire and John, a symptom which might have suggested many ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... French had approached close enough for their commander to distinguish the faces of the English sailors the tenseness of the French sailors relaxed, and they came on more confidently. The French officer ran his boat close to the one occupied by Frank and Jack and leaped lightly aboard it. The lads rose to ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... He looked up, and saw that her face was turned down the trail. He had caught the quick change in her eyes, the swift tenseness that flashed for an instant in her mouth. The vivid colour in her face had paled. She looked again as he had seen her for that short space at the door in Miriam's room. He followed the direction of ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... unerring sweep and accuracy, as we see in his numerous predella paintings; but even more remarkable is the wonderful plastic quality of his modelling. By this he makes us realise better than any one before him the tenseness of sinew, the resistance of hard muscle, and the supple elasticity of flesh, giving a solidity and weight to his forms that make them impressive as ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing. "'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'? U—m—m." Quite abruptly even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. "But how else, Miss Malgregor," he queried, "How else should a widower with a child proffer marriage to a—to a young girl like ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
