"Wordless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... past him peered at her visitor, and the visitor smiled his most winning smile. He recognized Leslie's ribbon, and noted the wondrous beauty of the small white face, now slowly flushing the faintest pink with excitement. Still clinging she smiled back. Wordless, Douglas reached over to pick up the doll. Then the right thought ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... wordless shout from Mr. Yardo; a bright dot hurtles across the screen and at the same time I see a streak of blue flame tearing diagonally downwards ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... and Chet. A gripping of hands; a perfunctory, "Good work, old man!"—and that was all. They housed the two ships, closing the great doors to keep out the arctic cold; and then Chet Bullard threw himself exhausted upon a cot, while he stared, still wordless, at the high roof overhead. But his hands that gripped and strained at whatever they touched told of the reaction to ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... named the neat By those who love him, I bequeath A helmless ship, a houseless street, A wordless book, a swordless sheath, An hourless clock, a leafless wreath, A bed sans sheet, a board sans meat, A bell sans tongue, a saw sans teeth, ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... The wordless cry of affright came from Mrs. Carl Walraven. Dr. Oleander stood paralyzed, his eyes starting from their sockets, his face like the face ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... at times—on a few occasions to such an extent as to transcend Tennyson's idea of the law "broadening from precedent to precedent" and to amount to something strongly resembling a juridical revolution, bloodless but not wordless. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... was wordless rage. He dismounted and made his way up to the lamed horse; Gloria, from where she lay, thought at first that of course he was coming to her. But he kept his back to her as he lifted the horse's fore-leg and felt tenderly at the wrenched muscle. Gloria, without stirring, and without ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... A groan of wordless horror went up from the wreckers. For a moment they stared at the thing rocking and sidling in their midst, with grotesque motions of life and the face and hands of a terrific death; and then, as one man, they started to splash, beat and plunge their way to the companion-steps. The water was ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... shadowy trees seem to interrupt their secret whispers till you are gone past. There is no sense of loneliness anywhere, but rather a host of teeming lives on every hand, palpable though hidden, remote from us though touching our lives, calling to us through the gloom with wordless voices, inviting us to enter and share with them the mystical life of this miraculous earth, great mother of us all, The dark is full ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... did wrong thee, Beloved! Perchance," she told him archly, "thou didst not think to see me so soon, or in this garden? Perchance surprise hath robbed thee of thy wits—and thy tongue as well, O wordless one? Or thou art overcome with joy, as I am overcome, and smitten dumb by it, as I am not? Aho, Lalji! was ever a woman at loss for words to voice her happiness?" And nestling to him she laughed quietly, with a note ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... bull-frog he went down, down, down into the hole And up, up into the sky! And then he went down into the hole And up into the sky! And he went down and up and down and up And down and up and down and up And down and up and down and up And down and up And down and up And down and up Down and up—— (to wordless song.) ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... but Mrs. Herrick was clever enough to see that such attributes failed to endear her to Toni; and since to Eva's perverted mind her husband's companionship was unendurable, she quickly determined to make a friend of this soft-hearted, unworldly little girl who was evidently sorry for her in her wordless fashion; and was too candid herself to suspect ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... adventure for ever, and His courage and adventure flowed into and submerged and possessed the being of the man who beheld him. And this presence of God stood over the bishop, and seemed to speak to him in a wordless speech. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... came with two white-faced ostlers, who, between them, bore a heavy burden through the crowd, stumbling awkwardly as they went; and, as men saw that which they carried, there came a low, deep sound —wordless, inarticulate, yet full of menace. But, above this murmur rose a voice, and I saw the Postilion push his way to the steps of the inn, and turn there, with hands clenched and raised above ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... poet has generally the greatest influence over the minds of the young? Surely not for the mere charm of novelty? The reason is that he, living amid the same hopes, the same temptations, the same sphere of observation as they, gives utterance and outward form to the very questions which, vague and wordless, have been exercising their hearts. And what endeared Tennyson especially to me, the working man, was, as I afterwards discovered, the altogether democratic tendency of his poems. True, all great poets are by their office democrats; seers of man only as man; singers of the joys, the sorrows, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Right Worthy my fellow-thegns, if ye could read my heart at this moment, believe that you would not find there the vain joy of aspiring man, when the greatest of earthly prizes is placed within his reach. There, you would see, with deep and wordless gratitude for your trust and your love, grave and solemn solicitude, earnest desire to divest my decision of all mean thought of self, and judge only whether indeed, as king or as subject, I can best guard the weal of England. Pardon me, then, if I answer you not as ambition alone would answer; ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... O God! for the waters are come into my soul!" That was the wild, wordless prayer of her heart. Her life was wrecked, her heart was desolate; she must go forth a beggar and an outcast, and fight the bitter battle of life alone. And love, and home, and Charley might have been hers. "It might have been!" Is there ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... A wordless carol of life and love, Of nature free and wild; And the three monks paused in the evening shade, Looked up at each ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... Ben cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward him. He faced ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... wordless cries, grunts, strange laughter sounded. And, withal, the major's hands and arms in one of the pits made a dry, slithering slide and click as he kneaded, worked, and stirred the gems, dredged up fistfuls and let them rain down ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... gave his wordless cry—a cry like the shrill hail of a mute. It brought the man face about. Another second, answering, he stood up, shook off the quilts to free his arms, reached down and caught ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... other nature yours than of a child Whose dumbness finds a voice mighty to call, In wordless pity, to the souls of all, Whose lives I turn to profit, and whose mute And constant friendship links ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... forth a sort of modulated breath, wild, rude, yet harmonious. It struck the auditor as at once the strangest and the most natural utterance that had ever reached his ears. Any idle boy, it should seem, singing to himself and setting his wordless song to no other or more definite tune than the play of his own pulses, might produce a sound almost identical with this; and yet, it was as individual as a murmur of the breeze. Donatello tried it, over and over ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... summer wind Sings like a distant sea. O harps of green, your murmurs find An echoing chord in me! On Carmel shore the breakers moan Like pines that breast the gale. O whence, ye winds and billows, flown To cry your wordless tale? ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... fearless ones went through the days and weeks in twofold terror of themselves and each of the other, and the slow, wordless tragedy was acted before eyes that saw but did not understand. Still Gianluca refused to go away, and still Veronica refused to send for the syndic. She would not yield to the Duchessa, who found herself opposed both by her ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Williams, ugly and wordless as ever, followed them with a proud smile till they entered the handsome suite of rooms which had been reserved for them. "There's nothing too good for Marshall Haney and his side-partner," he ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... uninfluenced by their varying moods. He watched them in sunlight when they were all shining white and violet and soft purple, with great shadows spread over their slopes where the forests stood deepest; and they heartened him, gave him a wordless promise that better times were to come. He saw them swathed with clouds, and felt the chill of their cold aloofness; the world was a gloomy place then, and friendship was all false and love a mockery. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the palm creepers which tapestried it he heard a noise of lamentation. The noise came from the village and was general enough to assure him that a chief was dead. It rose in a chorus of discordant howls, low in note and long-drawn out—wordless, something like the howls of an animal in pain and yet human by reason ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... cried. And he saw, perplexed, that Adelaide had risen with a faint, wordless cry, and was gazing at him as though she were puzzled and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of every beast of the great forests, but never a scream like that which came from Mercer's lips now. It was not the cry of a man. To Kent it was the voice of a fiend, a devil. It did not call for help. It was wordless. And as the horrible sound issued from Mercer's mouth he could see the swelling throat and bulging eyes that accompanied the effort. They made him think of ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... Miss Bruce-Drummond who had met up with them for a week-end at Stirling, "those poor children are so pitifully what Gelett Burgess calls 'the gagged and wordless folk'; it would be so much easier—and safer—for them if they belonged to his ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... fluttering glances which he occasionally surprised from her, the look of mutual appreciation which sometimes passed between them at a quaint bit of philosophy or naive remark, started his pulses dancing and set the whole world singing a wordless song ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... after Prescott's tour of guard duty began three wild wails, wordless, smote the air, one after the other. Dave, Tom ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... threw herself prone on the rough pine box; or the wild, wordless wail of sudden widowhood was torn from the inmost heart of some stricken creature who had hoped ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... front was our wire barely discernible in the fog. The Major interrupted five wordless reveries by expressing, with what almost seemed regretfulness, the fact that in all his fighting experience he had never seen it "so damn quiet." His observation passed without a remark ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... spring. Away in the distance, faintly heard, arose the bleating of lambs. Near at hand, throned among the purple flowers above their heads, a thrush was pouring out the rapture that thrilled his tiny life. The whole world pulsed to the one great melody—the universal, wordless song. Only the man and the woman were silent as intruders in ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... welcomed him. Left to his own devices, he had promptly laid his arms upon his desk and his head upon his arms. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Isidore's brilliant head still rested on his folded arms and Teacher felt that she must make some effort to comfort his wordless misery. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... into her prince's eyes; Then, caught and clasped against her prince's heart, Upon her breath her answer wordless dies, And leaves her gratitude to sweeter art,— To lips from which the bloom shall never part, To looks wherein ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... in the light of stars, A wordless lore which summons me away— This ignorance belongs to earth which bars The spirit in these darkened walls of clay, And stifles all the soul's aspiring breath;— True knowledge only dawns within ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... back up the hill toward the corral where he had left his horse, he was filled with a wordless disgust of the town and its people. The night was still and cool, almost frosty. The air so clear and so rare filled his lungs with wholesomely sweet and reanimating breath. His head cleared, and his heart grew regular in its beating. The ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... there was our poor little top-hamper of intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like—like a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... the governor swapped looks and nods which indorsed an understanding that was wordless ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the big wagon-box filled with our things and Olie sitting there waiting, viewing me with wordless yet respectful awe. Olie, in fact, has never yet got used to me. He's a fine chap, in his rough and inarticulate way, and there's nothing he wouldn't do for me. But I'm a novelty to him. His pale blue eyes look frightened and he blushes when I speak ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... yielded, and a drowsy consciousness returned, memory and reason being still partly in abeyance. His heavy, half-closed eyes rested on darkness. A crooning sound was in his ear,—a nursery lullaby, wordless but soothing. Where was he? Had he been ill? Was he in his cradle at home? Was Salome sitting by to watch him and give him his medicine? Yes, very ill he was, but would be better in the morning; and meanwhile he would be a good ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Mrs. De Peyster lay wordless, limp, all a-shiver. Beside her sat the limp and voiceless Matilda, gasping and staring wildly. How long Mrs. De Peyster lay in that condition she never knew. All her faculties were reeling. These crowding events seemed the wildest series of unrealities; seemed the frenzied, ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... to Lur for help. She might read minds and use the wordless speech of Lur. But his people knew the art of such communication long before the first priest of Asti had stumbled upon their secret. Let Lur now quiet ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... once the girl, with a wordless cry, sank on her knees beside the vast looming bulk of the tower. She covered her face with both hands, and through her fingers the tears of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... so gallantly into the flight where all defensive power was denied themselves! He paused long enough to pat the firm gray neck, to feel the answering pressure against his hand. Then he raised his rifle again and took careful aim, as he breathed a wordless prayer that chance might guide his bullet into the man who had scarred his faithful friend. Another Boer dropped; Weldon hoped it was by his own bullet. Then both he and the gray broncho pricked up their ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... as pale and as disturbed as the chevalier, came back into the room, carrying in his hands a glass and a pistol, and double-locked the door behind him. Terrified at this spectacle, the marquise half raised herself in her bed, gazing voiceless and wordless. Then the abbe approached her, his lips trembling; his hair bristling and his eyes blazing, and, presenting to her the glass and the pistol, "Madame," said he, after a moment of terrible silence, "choose, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... lest, in the turbulent whirl of life, the Curse should craze, and not slay her. For sleep had vanished with wordless moans and frighted aspect from her pillow,—or if it dared, standing afar off, to cast its pallid shadow there, still there was neither rest nor refreshing in the troubled spell. Nor could the thirst that consumed her quench itself with red wine or crystal water, translucent grapes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... following the ultimatum she could hear the soft, wordless murmur from the other compartments, the undertone of anxiety like a dark thread through it. In every compartment parents and children, brothers and sisters, were seeing one another for the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... laughed in frank delight, his brown cheeks colored, his eyes sparkled. "Gosh!" said he. "I—like you!" For some time thereafter he remained red and silent, but he kept one big hand in the pocket where lay the gold cigarette case. There was a wordless song in Buddy Briskow's heart, for—he had made a friend. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... and I've had my breakfast, and it's too glorious a morning to stay indoors, so I'm going to walk down to the water and look at Sir Richard's boat, and send off my card to him by a sailor or something. Then, if he's a good boy, he will turn up to-day, and then—!" The end of Anne's sentence was wordless ecstasy. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... The others sat in wordless enthralment as Pete stood pat and the dealer, with a smile, laid down the pack untouched. The betting proceeded cautiously at first, then by leaps and bounds as Pete lost his head ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... can still stop it," Brion said, shrugging off the feeling of gloom. Telt's only answer was a wordless sound of disgust. ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... And in some mystical manner all the doubt and unhappiness which had been gone over in labored volumes of thoughts by each alone, melted to nothing, at two or three broken sentences. There seemed to be nothing to say, for everything was said in a wordless, clear mode of understanding, which lovers and saints know. There was little plot to it, yet there was no lack of interest. In fact so light-footed were the swift moments in the rose-scented dark garden that ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... minute of this hushed, wordless calm continued, Sylvia was aware that something new was happening to her, that something in her stirred which had never before made its presence known. She felt very queer, a little startled, very much bewildered. What was that half-thought ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... with thousand varying tones, Whilst I but one poor sound can offer thee Of tenderness and truth. At times, indeed, This too may have its power,—but then it lasts One and the same forever, sounding still Unalterably like itself alone; A wordless prayer to God for what we love, 'Tis more a whisper than a sound, and charms Like new-mown meadows, when the grass exhales Sweet fragrance to the foot that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... appearance, possibly in her early twenties, the boy being at least four years younger. She was not pretty, but as her eyes lighted upon the sisters, she too smiled so pleasantly, they were at once drawn to her, and returned the wordless greeting with more than civility. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... a long breath. He had had his bad half-hour before McLean came; had had to stand by, wordless, and see Harmony trying to smile, see her dragging about, languid and white, see her tragic attempts to greet him on the old familiar footing. Through it all he had been sustained by the thought that a day or two ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tiny, wordless sound. But presently, "I take my doom," the Queen proudly said. "I shall be lonely now, my only friend, and yet—it does not matter," the Queen said, with a little shiver. "No, nothing will ever greatly matter now, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... anywhere within the palazzo, save deep down in the heart of the Lady Fiorenza, who had never been one with her family in worldly ambitions; and far below the giddy current of the day's happenings ran the ceaseless flow of the mother's wordless prayer, enfolding her child—pleading that that which was to come to her should make and keep ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... does?" The eyes of the son were steady in their wordless accusation. "It's this way, father: If you never married this woman Maria, it ought to be easy enough ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... in such an unexpectedly mild tone that Cumshaw was left wordless for the nonce, though his face showed in all their fulness the emotions that were stirring within him. Doubt, indecision, fear of ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... and who could not be comforted, even by the children, who were out of school at three. He wanted his "Wawa," and no one else. It was really pathetic to see how the little fellow clung to her, hiding his pretty wet eyes in her neck, and lovingly patting her shoulder, as he crooned his wordless reproaches in her ear, and Mrs. Hoffstott, looking on, thought this must indeed be a good sister to win such hearty affection, and felt her own motherly heart warm to the forlorn little orphaned brood. But, ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... flung him a glance of wordless contempt. Beezy ran and tangled herself in the tall ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... memory of his bride, rose-veiled, secret to them both, that made them one, by subduing him. For it was a charm; an actual feminine, an unanticipated personal, charm; past reach of tongue to name, wordless in thought. There, among the folds of the incense vapours of our heart's holy of holies, it hung; and it was rare, it was distinctive of her, and alluring, if one consented to melt to it, and accepted for compensation the exorcising ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Arithelli stood motionless, still with her hands pressed tightly over her eyes, trying to command her brain to work clearly. Her will and her limbs seemed paralysed. She could only wait for Vardri's approach. Once she prayed an inarticulate wordless prayer, that inspiration might be sent her to find a way out of this impasse in which there seemed neither ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... been glad many times since that old John never knew; glad that the frenzied curses that came boiling up out of that inner hell were wordless. I contrived to hold in while Runnels was hurrying me through the station office and past the sleepy sergeant at the desk. But when the cell door had opened and closed for me, and old John's heavy footsteps were no longer echoing in the iron-floored ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... on, and as their intimacy seemed to grow closer and ever closer, there came across Sylvia a deep wordless wish—and she had never longed for anything so much in her life—to rescue her friend from what he admitted to be his terrible vice of gambling. In this she showed rather a feminine lack of logic, for, while wishing to wean him from his vice, she did not herself give up ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the insignificant episode, but even as she turned away from her sister's imagined mocking smile, she felt an odd certainty that to Rankin there was also a glamour about their doings. It was as though the occasional contact of their bodies as they moved along the narrow path were a wordless communication. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of it!" murmured Mr. Duffy. But the boy stood wordless, as the irresistible giant current caught the trusting birds and swept them, with a hideous, overpowering force, to the very brink of the Horseshoe Fall. The boy, thrilling with the horror of it, shut his eyes, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... had come a wonderful event in the history of the company's post. A new life was born into the little cabin of Cummins and his wife. After this the silent, wordless worship of their people was filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife was a mother! She was one of them now, an indissoluble part of their existence—a part of it as truly as the strange lights for ever hovering over the pole, as surely as the countless ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... standing off and gazing wordless for a moment at this new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with bits of ribbon on the breast of it,—tried to say how proud he was and choked instead, it was for ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... life-giving. The prayers to Christ are always a refreshment, but prayers to the Father may suddenly be turned without any previous thought or private intention into a most awful grief for the abominations of the whole world of us, a terrible wordless burnt-sacrifice of the soul, of unspeakable anguish. And high petitioning is a fearful and profound strain upon the soul and ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... turmoil subsided, but it left her weak, inert, impotent. The impulse to pray came to her, but the prayer that went up from her trembling heart was voiceless and wordless. She had no means of expression in which to cloak her utter need. Only the stark helplessness of her whole being ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... her ears her husband's fame, Won in the fields of fruitful Italy; And decks with praises Collatine's high name, Made glorious by his manly chivalry With bruised arms and wreaths of victory: Her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express, And, wordless, so greets ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... they wont be tempted to take any," she thought, her heart full of a wordless prayer for them. But her anxiety was soon relieved by seeing Sam forcing his way toward her with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... his son's silence; he would rather have had stormy argument than a wordless acceptance of the situation. Chaffering in these sorts of bargains means that a man can look after his interests. "A man who is ready to pay you anything you ask will pay nothing," old Sechard was saying to himself. While he tried to follow his son's train ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... no more likely to hide out from danger than a hill. An' while they differs from each other, yet they're all different from sech folks as Silver Phil. Boggs, goin' to war, is full of good-humoured grandeur, gala and confident, ready to start or stop like a good hoss. Cherokee Hall is quiet an' wordless; he gets pale, but sharp an' deadly; an' his notion is to fight for a finish. Peets is haughty an' sooperior on the few o'casions when he onbends in battle, an' comports himse'f like a gent who fights downhill; the same, ondoubted, bein' doo to them book advantages ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... four adherents, Crevel alone was exempted from the rule—Crevel, the master of the little "bijou" apartment; and he displayed on his countenance an air of really insolent beatitude, notwithstanding the wordless reproofs administered by Valerie in frowns and meaning grimaces. His triumphant paternity ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... in his place Bowed his head a little space, And the leaves by soft airs stirred, Lapse of wave and cry of bird, Left the solemn hush unbroken Of that wordless prayer unspoken, While its wish, on earth unsaid, Rose to heaven interpreted. As, in life's best hours, we hear By the spirit's finer ear His low voice within us, thus The All-Father heareth us; And His holy ear we pain With our noisy words and vain. Not for Him our violence Storming at the gates ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... whose aims, since they were no longer his, must be disappointed. He was sorry for Cynthia, and in his remorse he was fonder of her than he had ever been. He felt her magnanimity and clemency; he began to question, in that wordless deep of being where volition begins, whether it would not be paying a kind of duty to her if he took her at her word and tried to go back to Bessie Lynde. But for the present he did nothing but renounce all notion of working at his conditions, or ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... later droughts not yet appearing. The shrunken woods expand; the stringent, sparkling wintry stars grow mild and liquid, shining with a tremulous and tender light; the whole world seems larger, happier, more full of untold, untried possibilities. The air vibrates with wordless promises, calls, messages, beckonings; and fairy-tales are told by ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... supplication which, under the circumstances, was the best she could have offered. She did not even try to form her petitions into words—the depths in which her soul lay were too deep for that; it was a wordless cry which went up to God. But its substance was an entreaty that the Father would do His will, and would bend her will to it; that whatever He saw fit to give her, He would always give His presence and His love; that whatever He was pleased to ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... cried. And he saw, perplexed, that Adelaide had risen with a faint wordless cry, and was gazing at him as though she were puzzled and alarmed a ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... me! Through thy complaint I hear the wordless blow Of two high-throned, who rule without restraint Of Pity. Heaven forfend What evil ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... with undisguised and wordless amazement. Then the appalling thought darted through his brain that she contemplated this supreme sacrifice in order to save him. A clammy sweat bedewed his brow, but by sheer will ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... woods when she went in search of food, she generally left him hidden in a thicket or behind a bush or a fallen tree. There he spent many a long, lonely hour, idly watching the waving branches and the moving shadows, and perhaps thinking dim, formless, wordless baby thoughts, or looking at nothing and thinking of nothing, but just sleeping the quiet sleep of infancy, and living, and growing, and ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... have genuine dramatic value—just as much as an important speech would have in a "legitimate" dramatic production. In the pictured drama the leader really fills in a significant part of the plot which could not be portrayed by wordless action. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... prayer from the depths of her soul—a wordless invocation. She is close to the jungle now, and the pleasant shade of the ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... clergyman came she met him quietly, and he found himself not a little disconcerted by the steady gaze of the mournful grey eyes. He was not accustomed to dealing with such wordless grief, and he found his favorite phrases sadly inadequate to the occasion. There was ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... unprotected hospitals, leaving behind them the dead, the dying and the tortured. Hunger with its sunken cheeks, and pestilence with its green eyes, its slavering lips have trod the earth till horror with wordless anguish has kept vigil by the blackened hearthstones of ruined homes ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... his gaze. "Yogananda, must I bring out into the cold realms of speech the warm sentiments best guarded by the wordless heart?" ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... He will occupy every moment in communion and we shall bring every thing to Him as it comes, and pray it out in our spiritual consciousness before we act it out in our lives. We shall, therefore, find ourselves taking up the burdens of life and praying them out in a wordless prayer which we ourselves often cannot understand, but which is simply the unfolding of His thought and will within us, and which will be followed by the unfolding ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... as I have whenever I stand before a certain sixteenth-century portrait in the National Gallery: a sense or an illusion of being in the presence of a living person with whom I am engaged in a wordless conversation, and who is revealing his inmost soul to me. And it is only the work of a genius that can affect you ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... small purse from the string that suspended it around her neck. The boy suddenly was a demon, flying at his father with fists and teeth. It lasted only a second or two. The father kicked him into a corner where he lay, still glaring, wordless and dry-eyed. The mother had not moved; her husband's handmark was still red on her face when he hulked out, clutching ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... Ice closed in.... One day the men of our tiny clearing were but a score. We huddled about our dying fire of bones and stray logs. We said nothing. We just sat, in deep, wordless, thoughtless silence. We were ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... resolutely stemmed the tide pouring eastward, he had turned down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile of recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message in the dark splendors of the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the daisies, from the soil Upbreathing wordless messages of love, Soothing of earth-born brethren the toil And ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... later the two gentlemen were bowling along the pleasant country road leading to the Court. It was a very silent drive, for the baronet sat moodily staring at vacancy, his mouth set in hard, wordless pain. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... viols are playing That grand old wordless rhyme; And still those two ate swaying In perfect tune and time. If the great bassoons that mutter, If the clarinets that blow, Were given a voice to utter The secret things ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and vistas, again to peace restored; To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas beyond—to the south and the north; To the leavened soil of the general Western World, to attest my songs, To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace, To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi, To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods, To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide, To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... never forsake him. He derided the poor woman in every way, and tortured her morally, seeking out the most painful spots. She would only keep silent, sigh, weep, and getting down on her knees before him, kiss his hands. And this wordless submission irritated Horizon still more. He drove her away from him. She would not go away. He would push her out into the street; but she, after an hour or two, would come back shivering from cold, in a soaked hat, in the turned-up brims of which the rain-water splashed as in waterspouts. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... alone appeared serenely undisturbed. When he had saluted the Ironside with royal courtesy, he met his sword as though he were beginning a practising bout with his foster-brother. Smoothly, evenly, without haste or fury, the blades began to sing their wordless song to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... around on the outskirts until the killing's done and then come in to share the loot get what they deserve—wordless orders, well backed up, to be on their way at once. Sometimes they even catch an after-clap of the murder urge, if it hasn't all been expended on the first victim or victims. Yet they will do it, trusting I suppose ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... unuttered meanings, Hurling on caverns his heart. Of the summer night, what to communicate, eager? Perchance the secret of peace. The lure of the silver to gold, of the pale unto colour, Of the seen to the real unseen; Of voices away to the voiceless, of sound unto silence, Of words to a wordless calm; Of music doomed unto wandering, still returning, Ever to heaven and home. The lure of the beautiful woman through flesh unto spirit, Through a smile unto endless light; Of the flight of a bird thro' evening over the marsh-land, Lingering in Heaven alone; Of the vessel disappearing over ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... life was this into which she had now entered! She felt the certainty that her courage would be sufficient for it, but with all her resolution she could not always keep back the bitter tears of her wordless, hopeless, uncontrollable longing. At times this was a thing so mighty that she had the feeling that, if her body were only as strong as her spirit, she would be able to swim through those thousands of watery miles that separated them, only to tell him the truth, ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... little ones each he has caught to his breast, And clasped them, and kissed them with fervent caress; Then wordless and tearless, with hearts running o'er, They part who have never been parted before: He springs to his saddle,—the rein is drawn tight,— And Beechenbrook Cottage is lost to ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... Hand had sown the sky thickly with stars, and more fell to their appointed places as the moments passed. A bull-frog boomed out his guttural note, and Fido began to whine and gnaw at the rail just below my feet. He was getting hungry, and I acquiesced to his wordless plea to go home. Night had now come, and the air was chilly, so I buttoned my coat close up to my chin, and moved briskly. We were some distance from home, but the lights of the city were reflected in the sky, and besides, it was not dark, because ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... from the position he had steadily maintained before the doorway. He stepped to one side, and bowed formally to the three women, who rose promptly as they realized the significance of his action. Cicily, too, stood up, wordless in her suffering. For the moment, at least, her indomitable spirit was overwhelmed by this crowning misfortune, and she felt all her ambition hopelessly baffled. Through this last catastrophe, her benevolent scheming must be brought to nought. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... nurse" broke into a beaming smile when she saw Hansie on the scenes once more, the people crowding round her with their questions. Why did she come back? Was she going to stay? Didn't she go to Pretoria yesterday? Who was that with her? etc. Mothers pulled her aside and pointed in wordless grief to their tents, to what lay there in still repose since last night. Children clung to her skirts—"We thought you had ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... not tell what was meant, nor whether my apprehension was true or false. I knew only that the night had taken her and the dawn denied her, and that, dream or no dream, I stood there with a pang of loss that even now leaves me wordless. ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... some things that you very much want? Petition is an element in prayer, and that it shall be crystallised into words is necessary sometimes; but there are prayers that never get themselves uttered, and I suppose that the deepest and truest communion with God is voiceless and wordless. 'Things which it was not possible for a man to utter,' was Paul's description of what he saw and felt, when he was most completely absorbed in, and saturated with, the divine glory. The more we understand what ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... second thought. The next moment the long-haired Mr Helder was bowing over Claire's hand, and professing his delight. The little group in the corner were pressing forward to obtain a point of vantage, and throughout the company in general was passing a wordless hum of excitement. Mr Helder was seating himself at the piano, a girl in a white dress had ascended the impromptu platform and now stood by his side, a pretty girl, a very pretty girl, a girl who acknowledged the scattered applause with a smile ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... took the sun—cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons and the unemployed. Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs were swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the innumerable talk of trees—their sapient, wordless conversation over the affairs of men. It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad movement of the million little separate leaves, each shaped differently, flighting never twice alike, yet all obedient to the single spirit of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was in a state of wordless delight. "It's just as well I wasn't for scoldin' Bugsey for cryin' over his suit," she said at length; "for if it wasn't that I'm feart o' spottin' some of these, I'd be for doin' a cry myself. ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... second evening of his coming. Helen was playing dreamily, and humming Some wordless melody of white-souled thought, While Roy and I sat by the open door, Re-living childish incidents of yore. My eyes were glowing, and my cheeks were hot With warm young blood; excitement, joy, or pain Alike would send swift coursing through each vein. Roy, always ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... breath. Ah, if you had seen her! I forgot the King in Zenda. I forgot the King in Strelsau. She was a princess—and I an impostor. Do you think I remembered that? I threw myself on my knee and seized her hands in mine. I said nothing. Why should I? The soft sounds of the night set my wooing to a wordless melody, as I pressed my kisses ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... mean that we are finally convinced not by the sort of evidence we are looking for, but by the sort of evidence we are not looking for. We are convinced when we come on a ratification that is almost as abrupt as a refutation. That is the point about the wireless telegraphy or wordless telepathy of the Bedouins. A supernatural trick in a dingy tribe wandering in dry places is not the sort of supernaturalism we should expect to find; it is only the sort that we do find. These rocks ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... A dozen things, and she did; things about as satisfying as theology at the grave. He did not answer nor respond. When he relaxed at last it was simply to her arms around him, his head on her bosom, her wordless notes of ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... morning. The rose and amber radiance of dawn fell into all the hearts of all the birds; and wordless songs came pulsing up from roots of growing things. The sambhur lifted high his head again and spread the fan of one ear toward the wind, while one breathed twice. Then there fell a sudden rustling on the branches; and swift along the river's ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... pages still joined as her fingers had left them. He was summoning his courage to face what might be the final solution. When he must, she had said, he was to open and read. Well ... he must. He could bear it no longer, the wordless uncertainty. He lifted down the volume, gently parted the fastened pages and read. From out the still, ordered lines, there rose to him the passionate cry of protest ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... deepened and shook with the strain under which she laboured, "I want you to let me slip out the back door here, put my saddle on Selim, and go home, quiet, without tellin' the old folks. I was goin' home by daylight in the mornin' anyhow, to get the boys' breakfast," as the girls stared at her in wordless surprise. "I've got a reason why I'd ruther go now—and I'd ruther the old folks didn't know. Will ye do ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... of Negro music: where the white man would sing, 'Go down Moses,' the Negro chants, 'Go down, Moses,' while a phrase like 'See my Mother,' becomes in the mouth of the colored singer 'See my Mother.' These identical accents are found in even the wordless vowel refrains of native African songs. Rhythmically the Negro folk-song has far more variety of accent than the European; it captivates the ear and the imagination with its exciting vitality and with its sense of alertness and movement. For this reason Negro rhythms and white ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... sixteen—first read, with full Scotch accent, one of the hard-rhymed psalms used in the Scotch service. Then, after a short pause, he read with a low, solemn voice a chapter in the Bible. A few minutes of silence succeeded, as if a wordless prayer was going upward upon the still wings of thought, which made no audible beating in their flight. It was very impressive; an incident that I shall ever hold among the most interesting of all I met with on my walk. They were not brothers evidently, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the night before 'Tonio's coming, and now, in the silence of midnight, as the two sat smoking on the veranda, while Lilian lay in her little white room listening in wordless rapture, in sweet unrest, to the murmurous sound of the deep voice that had enthralled her senses, while Mrs. Archer, wife and mother, slept the sleep of the just and the wearied, the old general turned again to that subject that weighed so heavily ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... transfigured with joy, aflame with love, radiant with smiles, and her tall figure fleecy white, rimmed in gold. Up the shining path of light she steadily advanced toward his door. Then the Harvester understood, and from his exultant heart burst the wordless petition: ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... crowds that hurry past— Bright faces like a sunlit tide— Some eyes the gifts of friendship cast Upon me, as I walk aside, Kind, wordless welcomes understood, The Spirit's ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... warmth and uprightness of heart that were already his. Harry Denvil's present need was for a tacit wiping out of the past, an unquestioning trust in regard to the future; and his Captain, after the wordless manner of men, gave him full assurance of both. It is just this power to draw out the best and strongest by the simple habit of taking it for granted that marks the true leader; the man who compels because he never insists; whose ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... toward them, each felt already repaid for any loss of freedom they might experience hereafter, and gave unanimous consent. Upon receipt of which Sylvia felt inclined to dance about the three and bless them audibly, but restrained herself, and beamed upon them in a state of wordless gratitude pleasant to behold. Having given a rash consent, Mark now thought best to offer a few obstacles to enhance its value and try ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... up the dog, tucked it under his blue-sleeved arm and went across the room to the door. He did not speak but Miss Beaver received the vivid impression that his visit would be repeated the following night; it was as if her sensitive intuitions could receive and register a wordless message from that other ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in him towards men. Raut went out, and then, after a wordless look at her, her husband followed. She stood motionless while Raut's light footfall and her husband's heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed down the passage together. The front door slammed heavily. She went to the window, moving slowly, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... weak heart-pulses shiver In wordless woe for thee, Thy wasted tenderness, thy love that ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe |
