"Unresponsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not altogether unresponsive. It was putting some "krumps" into the neighborhood of the British first line and one of the bands of prisoners ran into the burst of a five-point-nine. Ran is the word, for they were going as fast as they could to get beyond their own curtain of fire, which experience told ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... a little?" said Margaret, letting her eyes rest pleadingly on Mrs. Brand's impassive face. She was not accustomed to being met in this exceedingly unresponsive manner. Wyvis made a slight jesture of impatience, which his mother perfectly understood. She tried, in her difficult, frozen way, to ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... grunt, whether of approval or otherwise she did not know, but not a word was said. She glanced once at Nap, but his face was sphinx-like, utterly unresponsive. He stared straight ahead, with eyes that never varied, at the coffin that was being borne upon men's shoulders to its quiet resting-place in the village churchyard, and throughout the journey thither his expression ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... plumb mistake, Copenny," plained an elder man, whose rifle had not been fired. There was a regretful cadence in his voice akin to tears, and he held his long, ragged red beard in one hand as he peered down into the unresponsive depths. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and oh! I have passed through such a terrible experience! You have been ill, too, have you not, my dearest one? Oh, how thin and pale you are, but just as handsome as ever!" and she clasped him close in a warm embrace, and showered fond, wifely kisses on his cold, unresponsive lips. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... everything he has said to me in the last couple of months. He didn't know it, but I managed to get most everything down in shorthand. I did it at the risk, too, your lordship, of being considered cold and unresponsive by him. It's most difficult to take conversation without the free use of your hands, I must say. But I've preserved in my own black and white, every ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... her in the exuberance of his delight. As he spun round, however, his eyes fell suddenly upon the pale and silent stranger who stood by the door. Hector blushed furiously, and made an awkward sailor bow, standing with Laura's cold and unresponsive ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... girl's impulsiveness, had given her heart unreservedly into the keeping of Ralph Jackson, her first sweetheart. Mary was not naturally cold or unresponsive, neither was she lacking in passion. She had had a healthy girlhood, and a wholesome home life. She had been taught the conventional ideals of the marriage relations that have kept the race strong throughout the centuries. Mary ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... of its beauty, and aged very rapidly. We may indeed regret the fact that Rome, like certain persons of our acquaintance, seemed at times to possess a strong faculty for assimilating the worst of her surroundings, while occasionally curiously unresponsive to the better things; and yet we ought in justice to strive to realise the fact that not only is the Greek spirit at its best an unteachable thing, but that at the historical moment when Rome came under that influence the Greek world was very old and weary. It was Rome's misfortune ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... stood side by side, motionless, unresponsive. It was as though a sword had suddenly descended, cleaving ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... of the boldest came running towards me in the hope of being fed; but, seeing that I made no motion, swerved as though their courage failed them, and stood regarding me sideways with their grotesque little eyes. Finding me still unresponsive, they began to nose in the dried grasses with an affected unconcern which set me smiling; it seemed so humanlike a pretence under rebuff. The rest, as usual, dispersed under the trees and along the nettle-beds ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... to wonder if he had called them here just to ask about Sindy, and for an instant they were sullenly unresponsive. But the heavy lines on their master's face soon reassured them. "Over Buckshot Dan's—just where ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... As he came close to her, she clasped him tightly with both arms. She made no attempt to avoid his kiss, and he, taking this for acquiescence, bestowed the kiss upon unresponsive lips. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... remainder of the subway journey Abe was quite unresponsive to Leon's jibes, a condition which Leon attributed to chagrin, and as they parted at Canal Street Leon could not forbear ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certain quantity of rivets—and ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... against hers; her head had fallen a little back, lips slightly parted, unresponsive under his kiss, yet enduring—and at last burning and trembling to the verge ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... sat in front of him, unresponsive as the sphinx. The rigor of her flat back told him that, though she might have to keep his shameful secret for the sake of her own, he could not presume upon it ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... her face from Sister Seraphine's unresponsive countenance and fixed her eyes once more upon the tree-tops. She was thinking of the long years of secret conflict, known only to Him from Whom no secrets are hid; of the constant cleansing of her thoughts, for which she had so earnestly pleaded; of the fear lest she should never ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Ford acquiesced, in the unresponsive tone of one who says what he must, rather than what he would like to say. "It is all the things you have been saying, and more—when one has the time and the mind to be enthusiastic ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... and brighter for the alteration, but all the living, breathing, sentient creatures—the creatures whose memory has cheered our darkest days of sorrow, whose love we desire most to find unaltered—gone, never to return, swallowed by the cold grave, deaf, silent, unresponsive to our fond affection. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... rudely disturbing his lotos- eater's sense of being. He felt almost annoyed by this well-meaning but indefatigable young man who seemed to think folks should be gadding all the time. His manner was unresponsive ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... son was, in some respects, a great mystery to him. He could not understand, for instance, how his own offspring could be so unresponsive to the attractions of the things of the mind, and so interested in mere machinery and the methods of moving a living or a lifeless object from one spot on the earth's surface to another. Mr. Prohack admitted the necessity of machinery, but an automobile had for him the same status as a ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... with the penalties of the law. He had sold a "love-philtre" (pronounced infallible for recalling errant fiances to a sense of duty) to an amorous kitchen-maid who was seeking to rekindle the sacred flame in the bosom of an unresponsive policeman. The damozel had mingled the potion in a plate of beefsteak pudding, and had handed the same out of the scullery window to her peripatetic swain; with the sole result that that limb of the law had been ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... and overcome with shame and woe, she burst into fresh tears, and buried her face in the unresponsive folds of a linsey-woolsey petticoat which dangled from a peg ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... pleadings as to some wondrous music, yet she was like adamant, and all his lover's desperation could not shake her. It was strange to see this slender, timid slip of a girl so melting and yet so cruelly firm. He appealed to Stephanie, but she was as unresponsive as a bronze image. Seeing that his urging only made matters ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... upwards of thirty years, and never had one single quarrel, but oddly enough, when the rare inharmonious moments came, these groups of trees bridged the fleeting difference of opinion or any slight antagonism of will and purpose; when these unresponsive moments came, one or the other would begin to admire those forest giants, to suggest improvements, to repeat the admiration of others for their graceful outlines—to, in fact, direct thought and conversation into the common channel of love for those trees. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... eloquent to my hands. O beautiful, blind stones, inarticulate and dumb! In the deep gloom of their hearts there is a gleam Of the primeval sun which looked upon them When they were begotten. So in the heart of man shines forever A beam from the everlasting sun of God. Rude and unresponsive are the stones; Yet in them divine things lie concealed; I hear their ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... so?" said Langshaw absently in his turn. He had a momentary sense of being set back in his impulse to confidences that was not, after all, untinged with pleasure. His delightful secret was still his own, unmarred by unresponsive criticism. "By the way, Clytie, I don't like the way George has been behaving lately. He hasn't shown me his report from school in months; whenever I ask him for it he has some excuse. Hello! Is that little ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting
... was so unresponsive that I could have beaten him. "Why, you're duller than you used to be," I thought to myself, and wondered how I could have suspected, in those days, subtle depths and mysterious comprehensions. Vera Michailovna asked him questions about France and London but, quite obviously, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... when he was in one of his reveries, that one would have preferred that he should begin to speak, to move, nay, even, to tell lies. For a lie, spoken by a human tongue, had been truth and light compared with that hopelessly deep and unresponsive silence. ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... with her own powers of intrigue, she smiled to herself, and dismissed Lester's cold face and unresponsive manner ...
— The Trader's Wife - 1901 • Louis Becke
... which followed his last words a big brown moth, attracted by the yellow candlelight, blundered into the room, and began to flutter madly round the unresponsive flame; and in the poignant hush the beating of his foolish wings sounded ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... called a born flirt. She is pretty, charming, and talented; but she is cold, unresponsive, selfish, and futile. She is also eminently respectable after the English middle-class manner. She has ambition, but she lacks the will-power to school herself and the determination to accomplish. She is rich in goods but very poor in goodness. She is often moved profoundly by beautiful thoughts ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... the rebel instinct of modern youth. He wanted to share, to impart his hidden treasure; not to argue the bloom off it. And his father seemed tacitly to discourage rhapsodies over Indian literature and art. You couldn't say he was not keen: only the least little bit unresponsive to outbursts of keenness in his son; so that Roy never felt quite at ease on the subject. If only he could walk into the room now, while Roy's brain was seething with it all, high on the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... she lay back in the comfortably upholstered corner of the brougham, staring straight before her, sullen red mouth unresponsive to the occasional ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... said. "Quick! lemme get in! O God!" she pleaded with desperate entreaty, as Mrs. Kane stood coldly unresponsive, "you have your baby. I haven't seen mine in seven months, and they never wrote. I'll ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... and unresponsive he saluted Livingston the tutor, who came forth to meet him. The Chancellor was expected immediately, for he had ridden in more rapidly by the hill way in order that he might welcome his notable guests to the metropolitan residence of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... She talked very little at home, and it was only when with Bradley that she seemed at all like her old bird-like self. Then she chattered away in a wild delight, if he happened to be in a responsive mood, or feverishly and with a forced quality of gayety if he were cold and unresponsive. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the girlish form that had seemed so fragile when she first came to them was taking on the rounded lines of womanhood. Why should she not be wooed like other girls at her age? Burt was further astray than any one else, and was even inclined to complain mentally that her nature was cold and unresponsive. And yet her very reserve and elusiveness increased his passion, which daily acquired a stronger mastery. Webb alone half guessed the truth in regard to her. As time passed, and he saw the increasing evidences ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... going to put it in this wood shed out of the way." I tried to convey by my tone that I was performing a kind and thoughtful action, for which the railway officials ought to thank me; but he was unresponsive. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... and for Joanna the British stage became synonymous with fluffy heads and whirling legs and jokes she could not understand. The late hours made her feel very tired, and on their way home Albert would find her sleepy and unresponsive. They always went by taxi from Lewisham station, and instead of taking the passionate opportunities of the darkness, she would sink her heavy head against his breast, holding his arm with both her tired hands. "Let me be, dear, let me be," she would murmur when he tried to rouse her—"this ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... her beauteous lips to the slender blowpipe of the bassoon, and, having inflated her lungs to their capacity, breathed into it a respiration that seemed to come from her very soul. But no sound issued from the cold, hollow, unresponsive bassoon. Aurora repeated the effort with increased vigor. There ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... knew that she could not betray herself unreservedly to anybody with the hope of being found innocent. The knowledge made her at first full of terror; and the terror and the successive elaborate self-explanation, given to an unresponsive silence which she could easily suppose to be hostile, made her obstinate; then she became the more passionately afraid. She could have stormed, lied, wriggled; but she could never hope to escape the consequences that ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... low wall. A lane lies along one side of the churchyard and leads from the street to the vicarage gates. The garden, which was Emily's care, where she tended stunted shrubs and borders of unresponsive flowers and where Charlotte planted the currant-bushes, is beautiful with foliage and flowers, and its boundary wall is overtopped by a screen of trees which shuts out the depressing prospect of the graves from the vicarage ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... little conversation, doubtless through deference to the aged Duchessa, who remained absolutely silent and unresponsive to her surroundings. He praised his wine, however, which he said was from their own vineyards, and pressed the Americans ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... the unresponsive company of a cigarette on one side of the car; across the aisle the mayor of Reuton leaned heavily above a card-table placed between two seats. He was playing solitaire. Mr. Magee wondered whether this was merely a display of bravado against scheming reformers, or whether ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... stage-illusion, and rousing its dormant light of intelligence. Its capacity for being profoundly played upon and emotionally excited by the inartistic unrealities of absurd characterisation and of absurd combinations of circumstance had been rendered unresponsive. In vain did the play appeal to its ethical sense, striving to enlist its hope for the ultimate triumph of the Good, the True, and the Wronged. It had begun to view "The Basha's Favourite" in an extremely critical mood, and to manifest its keen sense of the utter ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... was no answer. This was Wilmer's office. Wilmer, who was standing behind me, made them ring it up twice again to make sure. Then I went on to the other eight impossible numbers we had fixed on. They were unresponsive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... Kitty, expecting to see her face aglow with the warmth of it. She stood beside him, the one unresponsive soul in the room, on her lips ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... she had pitifully dreamed of him: "with heart fit to break" sitting desolate in the chill cottage; and even when she was come, he still sat there inert, stupefied as it were by his grief—unresponsive to the joy of her presence, unbelieving in it possibly, since already so often he had dreamed that this might be, and it had not been. But, unfaltering now that she has at last decided, she calls to him, and as even then he makes no answer, sits down beside him and draws his head ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... stay very long, sir," said he in a sad whisper, and for the life of me I couldn't determine what construction to put upon the singularly unresponsive remark. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... his sweetheart's side. His arm fell about her shoulders. She did not offer to remove it, but sat listless, unresponsive, her eyes lifted to a narrow window beyond which the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the great amusement of his guests. No one went to his assistance; he regained his feet by climbing a high-backed chair, hand over hand, and during the dinner he sat for the most part in a comatose state, his eyes bleared and staring, his tongue unresponsive. Lorelei had little opportunity of watching him, since Bert Hayman monopolized her attention. The latter made love openly, violently now, and it added to her general disgust to see that Bob had again fallen into the clutches ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the unresponsive gray sandstone and wrote line after line which he immediately destroyed, Henry Anderson explored the mountain and came in, red faced and perspiring, from miles of climbing with a bright stone in each hand, or took the car to bring in small heaps too heavy to carry that he had ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Miss Bentley, "I liked him. He turned out to be altogether different from my first impressions. That afternoon at the Country Club he seemed rather stiff—nice, assured manners, of course, but unresponsive. But then the way in which we bounced in upon each other was enough to break any amount of ice." She laughed at the recollection, clasping her hands behind ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... Industry knew us better than Dr. Jaeger, better even than we knew ourselves. Its ideal picture of a handsome, snappy young fellow, madly enjoying himself in exquisitely fitting, ready-to-wear clothes, stirred imaginations that had been cold and unresponsive to the doctor's photograph. We admired the doctor for his courage, but we admired the handsome, snappy young fellow for his looks; nay, more, we jumped in multitudes to the conclusion, which has since been partly borne out, that ready-to-wear clothes would make us all look like him. And so, ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... was," he murmured, "it occurred to me that you did not know my name—nor I yours. My own," he added, as she stood unresponsive, "is Ryder—Jack Ryder. You can always get a letter to me at the Agricultural Bank. That is the quickest way. My friend, McLean there, always knows where my diggings are. When in Cairo I stop with him; or at the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... by his seeming a bit unresponsive," Mrs. Phillips would explain. "He's shy with women. What I'm trying to do is to make him feel you are ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... silent. Seeing that he could awake no enthusiasm in that unresponsive mind, he turned to another subject and asked with a change of tone: "And what are you doing for the memory of your mother and your brother? Is it enough that you come here every year, to weep like a woman over a grave?" And ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... moved her head just enough to gain a corner-wise glimpse of a calm and unresponsive face beneath a scarlet Tam; and evidently realizing that she had become a mere support to the maid who ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... volume giving the names in direct house-to-house sequence and having such notations as, "I won't tell you", "What you please", and "Cross woman" against street numbers where he found the occupants suspicious or unresponsive ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... I thought, tried to gain any influence over Matty. She took my gifts, it is true, and wore or otherwise made use of them; but she never showed the slightest token of pleasure in them, or uttered one word of acknowledgment, and she was still entirely unresponsive to any other advances on my part. It was Tony, bright, jolly little Tony, who thanked me with real Irish effusion, always greeted me with the broadest of smiles, and testified his gratitude and appreciation of my efforts for Matty's welfare ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... and a thin fog began to drift in wan streaks above the water. Not a sound, save the suppressed stir of the camp, broke the wide, dreary silence. Oncle Jazon babbled until satisfied that Beverley was unappreciative, or at least unresponsive. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... accustomed words, "They say Yes! They are all saying Yes! now; but this one will say No!" he bent his stiff old back and laid his ear to the unresponsive wood. But the time for no had passed. It was Yes! yes! yes! yes! now, and as his straining ears took in the word, he appeared to shrink where he stood and after a moment of anguished silence, broke forth into a low wail, amid whose lamentations ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... but the expression of her face was unresponsive once more, not to say obstinate. Jealousy, indeed, possessed her. For the first time in her whole experience she realised her husband as an individual, as a human entity independent of herself. To contemplate him otherwise than in the marital relation was a shock to her. She felt deserted, a potential ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and I took shelter under a scraggy pine that had rooted itself in the edge of the rocky slope. The shower soon passed, and I continued my journey, creeping over the slippery rocks, and continuing to show my confidence in the unresponsive trout. The way grew wilder and more grewsome. The thunder began again, rolling along over the tops of the mountains, and reverberating in sharp concussions in the gorge: the lightning also darted down into the darkening passage, and then the rain. Every enlightened being, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... grasp. He stroked the little bloodless hand, and kissed repeatedly the wasted cheek, uttering at the same time low murmurs of entreaty that she would look upon him once more before she died. All in vain. Utterly still and unresponsive as death itself, she lay before him. "Dear mother," he implored, "it is your son, your own Edward that calls you. Can you not hear? Will you not come back to me a single moment? Ah, I cannot let you go; I cannot, I cannot!" His voice sank in a passionate murmur of ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... of it." "But it is only a field's length from the road!" "Well, we never saw it." Ah, but these two friends were lovers. They were so absorbed in each other that they had no spare attention for Warwick Gaol. Their glorious fellowship made them unresponsive to its calls. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... smaller muscles. Many occupations and forms of athletics, on the contrary, place the stress mainly upon groups of fundamental muscles to the neglect of finer motor possibilities. Some who excel in heavy athletics no doubt coarsen their motor reactions, become not only inexact and heavy but unresponsive to finer stimuli, as if the large muscles were hypertrophied and the small ones arrested. On the other hand, many young men, and probably more young women, expend too little of their available active energy upon basal and massive muscle work, and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... attention from the beauty of her contours of cheek and figure, and of her rich soft colouring. The officers in church stood up to look at her; and at the balls and meriendas she attended in vacations the homage she received stifled and annoyed her. She was as cold and unresponsive as Concepcion de Arguello. People shrugged their shoulders and said it was as well. Her mother, Dona Brigida de la Torre of the great Rancho Diablo, twenty miles from Monterey, was the sternest old lady in California. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Hole-in-the-Day was a well-known figure in Minnesota, and scarcely less so in Washington, for he visited the capital quite often on tribal affairs. As I have said before, he was an unusually handsome man, and was not unresponsive to flattery and the attentions of women. At the time of this incident he was perhaps thirty-five years old, but looked younger. He had called upon the President and was on his way back to his hotel, when he happened to pass the Treasury ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... returned. Bob was with him, and was evidently trying to make himself agreeable. He was chatting. Occasionally he laughed. The Admiral was entirely unresponsive. When he got close enough for us to see his face I saw that he looked perplexed and miserable. I was miserable and frightened, but the Admiral ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... hopeless decay. As with all creatures when they have passed their prime, Egypt had begun to grow old, and was daily losing her elasticity and energy. Her spirit had sunk into a torpor, she had become unresponsive to her environment, and could no longer adapt herself to the form she had so easily acquired in her youth: it was as much as she could do to occupy fully the narrower limits to which she had been reduced, and to maintain those limits unbroken. The instinct which made her shrink from the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... matter of avowals the diffident never speak if they can write. That is why my apology for a furtive existence is here set down in solitude instead of being told face to face. You have borne so many years with my unresponsive and incomprehensible ways that shame at last constrains me to this poor defence; for I must either justify myself in your sight, or go far away where even your kindness cannot reach me. The first alternative is hard, but the second too grievous for impaired ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... her, and found her unresponsive. With some of these, jealousies and misunderstandings arose, and led to estrangements, for the most part but temporary. Yet the winner of her heart was scarcely to be envied. She was apt—she has herself thus expressed it—to see people through a prism of enthusiasm, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... The child was seldom out of his thoughts for long together; he loved her as his own; and yet Marjory was not happy—she was lonely, she did not understand her uncle and misjudged him, and he found her cold and unresponsive. There was something wanting between them; both were conscious of this want, yet neither knew how to supply it ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... of Lavina a much more gracious reception. But Mrs. Huzzard was a bit of a philosopher, and if Lavina chose to be somewhat cold and unresponsive to the presence of a cultured gentleman, well, it gave Lorena Jane so much better chance, and she was ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... second and then, somewhat to the other's surprise, assented. He was conscious that he had been, perhaps, just a little unresponsive to the many courtesies which had been offered him here and at the other kindred clubs. They had been ready to receive him with open arms, this little fraternity of brain-workers, and his response had been, perhaps, a little ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... words now, in the triumph of having her back again, his as she had been on the first day of their marriage, did not feel her body unresponsive, her hands cold, nor did he see the appeal, wild and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... you attend?" inquired Speed, politely. The question fell upon unresponsive ears. Cloudy did not stir nor alter the direction ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... his spine. He looked down at the floor, from fear that she might glance in his direction and meet his eyes. Solomon, who felt there was trouble in the air, came nearer and placed his cold wet snout against the clinched hands of his master; but the hands were unresponsive. ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... to suspend the application to certain religious bodies of the interdict fulminated against them by himself and the Republican Government. At last he paused, evidently oppressed by the steady, unresponsive gaze of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... at an unresponsive plaster bust of M. le President, followed her to the door. They had just got into their little victoria when Charlie appeared, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... was as beautiful as usual that evening, but contrary to custom silent and distraite. She did not tell the story of the Man in the Park and his dog. She kept it to herself. She was unresponsive to the visible devotion of a Duke's eldest son, who came up to Lutwyche's standard in all particulars. She did not even rise to the enthusiasm of a very old family friend, the great surgeon Sir Coupland Merridew, about the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Overhead the fog hung, covering the city with a luminous rack which here and there parted, showing segments of dark, star-dotted sky. Passing men looked at her, some meeting a defiant stare, others a face so chastely unresponsive that they averted their eyes as if rebuked. On the car she took an outside seat, for she loved the swift passage through the night with the chill air on her face. The grip man knew her and smiled a greeting, and as ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... can possibly be made of an apparently non-operative piece of apparatus. It must be borne in mind, however, in considering a duplex system, that a differential relay is used AT EACH END of the line and forms part of the circuit; and that while each relay must be absolutely unresponsive to the signals SENT OUT FROM ITS HOME OFFICE, it must respond to signals transmitted by a DISTANT OFFICE. Hence, the next figure (4), with its accompanying explanation, will probably make the matter ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... hysteric emotions, with deep concern. She did not know, even now, that the Cragies were anxious to encourage this first reaching out, in Caroline, toward a member of her own sex, and that her fancies for members of the opposite sex—for severely indifferent teachers, for shocked and unresponsive chauffeurs—were among the family problems, a part of the girl's unfortunate under-development. Caroline's family was innocently surprised to realize that her mind had not developed under the care ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise the dead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though even Jenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fear for Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creed told her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied her faith, and her ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... was still unresponsive, and Hope thinking she ought to be the one to answer, let some indignation creep into her own voice ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... turned away from Ginsburg and his shrapnel helmet half on and half off his head. Ginsburg stooped, putting his hands under the pits of the captain's arms, and gave a heave. The burden of the body came against him as so much dead heft; a weight limp and unresponsive, the trunk sagging, the limbs loose ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... were bad, of course, but Mrs. Seaton found these less difficult to endure than the boy's unresponsive, watchful ways. At last, as the pudding ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... ever, Mr Bunker talked gaily for a few minutes to an unresponsive audience, and then, remarking that he would join the ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... perversely bolstered up in rebellion, and peering through blinds at wrong hours. Isn't there something pathetic in the very idea that a dog may have a behind-your-back attachment of that sort?—that every morning he looks up at an unresponsive blank, and wags, ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... late, was seldom in during the day, and usually returned after midnight. A person with this eccentric scheme of life was not likely to be at home at such hours as I might find it convenient to call. Nevertheless, from time to time I knocked at the unresponsive door of his room. The two notes I had written to him ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... year ago to-day that Helm came to Nauvoo—a silent, pallid young fellow with unresponsive eyes and the bearing of a gentleman. He was cordially detested in Nauvoo. For a year she had watched him enter the post-office, unlock his letter-box, swing on his heel and walk away, with never a glance at her nor ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... which, half unconsciously, she had extended toward him; he was startled by its unresponsive coldness, striving vainly to perceive the truth hidden away beneath ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... forthcoming Sing-song, whereof he was not a little proud. He also intended to write on many other matters which do not concern us, and doubtless would have done so but for the slight feverish headache which made him dull and unresponsive ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... No unresponsive soul had heard That plaintive note's appealing, So deeply "Home Sweet Home" had stirred The hidden ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... his range of vision that might conceivably be the beings that had captured them, so Joyce started to lift his head and look around at the rest of the cavern. He found that he could not move. He tried again, and his body was as unresponsive as a log. In fact, he couldn't feel his body at all! In growing terror, he concentrated all his will on moving his arm. It was as limp ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... matter with pursed lips. "I wish it hadn't happened," he mused, as unresponsive to his wife's relief as he had been to her anxiety. "At ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... in a most extraordinary degree upon the temper of his audience. I have heard him read downright flatly and badly to an unresponsive house, and I have seen him vivified and quickened to the most extraordinary display of genius by an audience of the opposite kind. The first occasion on which he ever read for his own profit was in the old Broad Street ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... realize that a refined, beautiful and educated girl had made so sad a mistake of her life and suffered so many afflictions as a consequence. That old Will had never been a fitting mate for his wife could readily be understood, and yet the man was still devoted to his helpless, unresponsive spouse. The ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... forgotten. There was my poor wife lavishing her immense sorrow on that body on the bed, which had ceased to have any connection with me, which was emphatically not me, and to which I felt the strongest repugnance. I was even jealous of that lifeless, unresponsive, decaying mass. You cannot guess how I tried to yell to my wife to come to me and warm me with her companionship and her sympathy—and I could accomplish nothing, not ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... I knew you had it in you, lad. (She puts her arm round his neck. He is quite unresponsive. His hands ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... looked him in the face with eyes that seemed kinder. He dropped the reins and caught her hand, and she made no resistance, although her touch was unresponsive. But when, throwing one arm round her waist, he sought to kiss her lips, not like a lover indeed, not because he wanted to do so, but as a desperate man who puts his fortunes to the touch, she drew away from him, with a knot ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a poor one; and why he should prefer straight cues to crooked ones; and why he should prefer round balls to chipped ones; and why he should prefer a level table to one that slants; and why he should prefer responsive cushions to the dull and unresponsive kind. I wonder at these things, because when we examine the matter we find that the essentials involved in billiards are as competently and exhaustively furnished by a bad billiard outfit as they are by the best one. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... of the shock which had so thrilled her, but whether it had been caused by pleasure or repugnance he could not tell. He feared the latter, for his sweet bride-elect had, thus far, been very unresponsive to his ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... there'll be no settling down for me—that already I have been with him longer than I expected! Whenever he speaks of "getting home," and what "we" will do after that, it gives me a horrid, choky feeling; and I'm afraid he thinks me unresponsive on the subject of the beautiful old place which he apparently longs to have me see, because my throat is always too shut up, when it is mentioned, to talk about it. I can't do much more than say "Yes" and "No," ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... showed through like familiar trade marks. Strangely enough, the girl also had failed to get the most out of the scene, and this morning, both star and leading woman seemed particularly cold and unresponsive. They lacked the spark, the uplifting intensity, which was essential, therefore, in desperation, Phillips finally tried the expedient of altering their "business," of changing positions, postures, and crosses; but they went through the scene for a second time ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... gathered second by second and were gone. How like those drips, how unlike the scarred, time-chastened rock, that steadfast slip of light which since the dawn of creation had flashed messages across the unresponsive sea. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... skill better to ensure absolute repulsion and horror on the part of the bride. I think that any man who would consider this from the bride's point of view would see that she need not necessarily be cold or unresponsive because, in such circumstances, she needs rest and consideration more than passion. But I wish men could know a little more than this, and understand that to enforce physical union when a woman's psychical and emotional nature does not desire it, is definitely and physically ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... Weary rode home beside Happy Jack and tried to lift him out of the slough of despond. But Happy refused to budge, mentally, an inch. He rode humped in the saddle like a calf in its first blizzard, and he was discouragingly unresponsive; except once, when Weary reminded him that the tableau would need no rehearsing and that it would only last a minute, anyway, and wouldn't hurt. Whereupon Happy Jack straightened and eyed him meditatively and finally growled, "Aw gwan; I betche you put her up to ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... Clara caste and training, Roderick's pale, fat face expressed nothing except an impervious superiority and, as he sat, cold and unimpressed upon the front bench, like a large, white lump, it must be said that he made a discouraging audience "to play to." He was not, however, unresponsive—far from it. He offered comment very chilling to the warm grandiloquence ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... gill its precise content of the complex mixture that fills the puncheon of the whole world's literature, on the other—to change the metaphor—our few small strings may thrill in sympathetic harmony to some lyrical zephyrs and remain practically unresponsive to the deep-sea gale of Aeschylus ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English
... of a singer, but his voice was good and he sang as though he meant it. Outfield sat unresponsive until the verse was nearly done; then he moved restlessly and waited for the chorus, and when it came joined in with the rest; and the strains of Hilltonians rang triumphantly ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Cumshaw's gone?" he remarked to the unresponsive trees. "He went off like a scared rabbit. I'd better hunt for him. I can't get on ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... reaches forth and meets the imagination of an artist which he has embodied in a sculptured form. Although, compared with the life-warm, mobile face of a friend, the marble is cold and pulseless and unresponsive, yet it is beautiful to my hand. Its flowing curves and bendings are a real pleasure; only breath is wanting; but under the spell of the imagination the marble thrills and becomes the divine reality of the ideal. Imagination ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... as a subject was exhausted before very long, for Miss Warren was so very unresponsive that it was hard to continue the discussion of him in just the way it had started. Arethusa felt a shyness descending upon her at the cold reception of her enthusiasm for the Wonderful Being who had so recently come into her life. Rhapsodies ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Unresponsive as all nature to human emotions, the tumbled grass lay about him, a picture of confusion and ruin. The futility of human effort was borne in upon him as he scanned the waste. A pile larger than the surrounding piles separated itself from the scattered heaps at last. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... is new neither in matter nor treatment. "Edna Pontellier," a Kentucky girl, who, like "Emma Bovary," had been in love with innumerable dream heroes before she was out of short skirts, married "Leonce Pontellier" as a sort of reaction from a vague and visionary passion for a tragedian whose unresponsive picture she used to kiss. She acquired the habit of liking her husband in time, and even of liking her children. Though we are not justified in presuming that she ever threw articles from her dressing table at them, as the charming ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... sentence: "We can talk everything over when we meet." A sense of chill struck her when she recalled the words. He was very kind, of course, and invariably meant well; but she had begun to realise of late that there were times when she found him a little heavy and unresponsive. Not that she had ever desired any demonstration of tenderness from him, heaven knew. But the very consciousness that she had not desired this added to the chill. She was not quite sure that she wanted to see him again before he sailed. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the book also runs the idea that in the United States, government is unresponsive to popular desires—a ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... in dumb appeal on the face of unresponsive nature, the sound of nearing wheels sent a pulse of hope through my being; increasing to rapture as I recognised in the approaching vehicle the familiar carriage of the old doctor. If ever a god emerged from a machine, it was when this heaven-sent friend, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... whom we all love and understand; dear Amabel, you who were so unjustly punished for trying to give pleasure to an unresponsive aunt; poor, ill-used, ill-treated, innocent Amabel; blameless, suffering Amabel, we await your words,' that fluttering, tiresome butterfly-thing inside her seemed suddenly to swell to the size and strength of a fluttering albatross, and Amabel got up from her seat of honour on the throne ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... Nature might decree. The surviving cows returned to assure themselves that their young had come to no hurt. And the great black bulls who had escaped serious injury in the struggle stood about in a ring, thrusting and ripping at the unresponsive mountains of flesh. As they satisfied themselves, one after another, that the victory was complete, and that there was nothing more to battle against, they fell to devouring their prey. Ordinarily feeders on herbage and roots, they were like pigs and rats and men, more ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... she could she turned the conversation to local affairs, for Miss Osborne was looking curiously at Miss Jones' unresponsive friend. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... commanded his yacht The Night Moth—most morose and unresponsive of men—paid him the homage of absolute acquiescence. Whatever his private opinions might be, he never expressed them unless invited to do so by his employer. He never criticized by word or look. Saltash was wont to say that if he decided to turn pirate he ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... announcement as if the name alone would explain both his visit and its manner, but I could see, by my companion's unresponsive face, that it meant no more ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be analysed, falls upon us. It falls all over the world as well; but they into whose hearts it has come, they whose faces are turned to it, they receive it in a sense in which the unreceptive and unresponsive darkness of the world does not. The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness will have none of it, and so it is darkness yet. The light shineth upon us, and if by His mercy we have opened our hearts to it, then, according to the profound teaching of this context, we are not only a sun-lighted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... her cleek in the corner, and moved to leave the boat. It piqued the young man to find her so unresponsive. "Tell me what you mean by 'a cry across the Black Water,'" ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... over the prospect of dancing with him. Presently her turn came; she rose with a sudden odd loss of self-possession as he was presented, stood dumb, shy, unresponsive, suffered him to lead her out, became slowly conscious that he danced rather badly. But awe of him persisted even when he ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... dar-ling Peggy, we would not leave you alone!" Mellicent's eyes were wide with horror, she stretched out entreating hands towards the unresponsive figure. To see Peggy cross and snappish like—any other ordinary mortal was an extraordinary event, and quite alarming to her placid mind. "They will ask you, too, dear! I am sure they will—we will all be asked together!" ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... rushed to the open sash. They leaped out, and plunged up the mountain, tempting the assassin's fire, but the assassin was satisfied. The mountain was again as quiet as it had been at dawn. Its impenetrable mask of green was blank and unresponsive. Somewhere in the cool of the dewy treetops a squirrel barked. Here and there, the birds saluted the sparkle and freshness of June. Inside, at the middle of the store, Jesse Purvy shifted his head against his daughter's knee, and said, as one ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... hands.] Radicalism and liquor. Liquor and radicalism, [LAURA is unresponsive; sits stony-eyed and heart-sick.] My poor child. My ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... engineer. He—oh, good-night, Gibbons—he's been all over the globe, so Notya tells us. You'd think he might have picked up a little small talk as well as a fortune, but no. If he's picked it up, he's jolly careful with it. I tell you, I've made a fool of myself, and talked to a thing as unresponsive ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... him; and so were the airy throngs of buttercups afloat on the grass, and the yet more aerial troops of the butterflies flickering above them, white and brown and red and black and gold and yellow and maroon. But in the last choice he loved best of all the silent, unresponsive Sonny, of whose indifference he seemed quite unaware. Sonny, lying on the grass, would look at him soberly, submit to his endearments without one answering wag of the tail, and at last, after the utmost patience that courtesy could require, would slowly get up, yawn, and stroll ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... individual wrinkles made by the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and pleasure. A delicate but impelling odor of bluebells came from it. John took it and looked long and soberly at the unresponsive grenadine. Katy had never been unresponsive. Tears:—yes, tears—came into John Perkins's eyes. When she came back things would be different. He would make up for all his neglect. What was life ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... to friend and foe. Scarce to his foes will generous judgment lean— Foes mean as merciless, and false as mean, Their poisoned pens, which even softening Death, Which hate should hush and stifle slander's breath, May not deprive of venom, prodding still The unresponsive corse they helped to kill, Is an ignoble sight. Turn, turn away! Mean hates pursue the MARMION of our day, A nobler foe, like DOUGLAS, well may rue His fall, and sigh, "'Tis pity of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... and the woman who had already won his heart away from her. The shapely lady, with her queenly ways, her vivacity, her graceful adaptiveness to persons and circumstances, was sharply contrasted with the matronly figure, homely manners, and unresponsive mind of his wife. He pitied his wife, he pitied himself, he pitied his children, he almost pitied the dumb walls and the beautiful furniture ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Lowe's interpretations to his sister she was very unresponsive. She listened but made ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... know why they do things—not even you and I invariably know, though of course we are superior to the unresponsive masses. Many people are even unconscious that they are doing things or being things—being gentle or cruel or creative or parasitic. Quite without knowing it, Father was searching for his place in the world. The New York shoe-stores had decided that he was too ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... carry you in,' I whispered. 'I beg your pardon for it, but it is necessary to the farce.' And following up my words by action, I lifted her from the seat, cold and unresponsive as a stone, and carried her into the house and set her down before the astonished eyes of such servants as had remained to guard ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... the unresponsive ear, as he fastened him in the shade, and gave him a pat and a lump of ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... said harder or fiercer things of his own fellow-craftsmen. His description of Charles Lamb as "a pitiful rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering tom-fool" is not an amiable one! Or take his account of Wordsworth- -how instead of a hand-shake, the poet intrusted him with "a handful of numb unresponsive fingers," and how his speech "for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution" excelled all the other speech that Carlyle had ever heard from mortals. He admitted that Wordsworth was "a genuine man, but intrinsically and extrinsically a small one, let them sing or say what they will." In fact, Carlyle ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... kind, by the memory of long friendship and alliance, and the persistent policy of his kingdom and race. The question was modified besides by other circumstances. England was, as she had but too often been, but never before in James's experience—harsh, overbearing, and unresponsive: while France, as was also her wont, was tender, flattering, and pertinacious. Henry refused or delayed to pay Queen Margaret a legacy of jewels and plate left to her by her father, and at the same time protected certain Borderers who had murdered a Scottish ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... The unresponsive one was the windmill man. He saw himself reduced to the ranks. Never would the thought have occurred to him to declare his apple an emblem. He had intended, after it had been divided and eaten, to create diversion by sticking the seeds against his forehead and naming them for young ladies ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... the prolonged monotones of inarticulate groanings, and the explosive suddenness of seemingly irrelevant Amens. Above all, he tingled from the electric atmosphere of intense religious excitement; he was charged with currents at a pressure so high that his nerves were unresponsive to dull ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... his wife except when forced to do so by some of "her meddling friends"—well meaning people who sought his acquaintance to condole with him or perhaps to attempt to "cultivate" him for Antoinette Seaver Jones' sake. But these found him so unresponsive that they ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... surprised at the unresponsive air with which the boy nodded. John was aware of having recently completed the capture of Benny's heart by replying to questions concerning the gold football on his fob; but to-night there was no lighting of the ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... are good enough for me, sir," he said with a paternal smile. He fired again. Once more the target stared back, blank and unresponsive. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... a few times with their lighter weapons, but, finding the Sirius unresponsive, had soon shut them off and were stolidly plunging along toward Jupiter. Brandon flung out a tractor rod and threw the mass of his cruiser upon it as it locked into those sullen green walls. But as soon as the enemy felt ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith |
