"Livid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... malignant triumph flitted for a moment over the livid face of Riley. Then its expression brightened into one ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... against the rock. My companion's face was livid, and his lips worked as though fingers were plucking at them, but made no sound. I never saw such abject, hopeless terror. We waited thus for a full minute, and then I ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lips, where smiles seductive hung, And the weak accents linger on their tongue; Each roseat feature fades to livid green,— 210 —Disgust with face averted ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... description of Ewing's performance, concluding with a glowing eulogy on that personage, and which was received with tremendous cheering. Understanding Lane's feelings towards Ewing, I watched his face while these events were passing. It plainly showed his vexation. It was almost livid with suppressed emotion. But the time for him to resume his address had come. What would he do was the question I asked myself. He answered it very promptly. Jauntily stepping forward with his countenance ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... he was as suddenly filled with a blind, unreasoning sense of repulsion and fury, and lifted his eyes to the man as he approached. What the stranger saw in Clarence's blazing eyes no one but himself knew, for his own became fixed and staring; his sallow cheeks grew lanker and livid; his careless, jaunty bearing stiffened into rigidity, and swerving his horse to one side he suddenly passed Clarence at a furious gallop. The young American wheeled quickly, and for an instant his knees convulsively gripped the flanks of his horse to ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... grew the import of the speeches as the men stood hoarsely muttering their meaning out with set teeth and livid looks. After a fierce and terrible oath had been sworn, a number of pieces of paper, one of them marked, were shuffled in a hat. The gas was extinguished; each drew a paper. The gas was re-lighted. Each examined his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... social stupidity. Many great free spirits there have been who possess this orientation of the race and have brought us tidings of the promised land. How many thundering spirits have commanded us to march by the tongued and livid lightning of their prophetic souls, but how few of us have done so! Why, to me, this world is a halting hell of hitching-posts and of truculent troughs for belching swineherds. The universe has no goal that we know of unless Eternity be the aim; let ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... brocades on a polished floor, came terrible shrieks and groans that made the heart of each wedding guest stand still. There could be no doubt from which room they came, and the panic-struck company dashed upstairs like a breakaway mob of cattle. The best man, livid-faced and with a shaking hand, unlocked the door, and on the threshold stumbled over the body of the bridegroom, terribly wounded and streaming with blood. At first they could see no bride, and then, in the corner of the wide chimney, they ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... feet again, and his eyes sought a chance to escape. Seeing none—for the windows and doors were crowded with the lookers-on—he fell into a chair. The fellow appeared the image of terror, wrought up to paroxysm. On his livid face, black and blue, were visible the marks of the blows he had received in the struggle; his white lips trembled, and he moved his jaws as if he sought a little saliva for his burning tongue; his staring eyes were bloodshot, and expressed the wildest distress; his body was ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... livid and his eyes blazing with rage. An instinct warned him that to surrender to passion would be only to trap himself more deeply. The man blocking the door filled its breadth with his strong shoulders. Louis ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... sharply, and for a moment I thought his face seemed to change from a livid white to an apoplectic red, although it may have been only the play of the weird light. When he spoke it was with no show of even ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... reached the child's room, the young doctor was bending anxiously over the little frame. The little lips had become livid, the little nails, lying against the white sheet, were blue. The child's efforts to breathe were most distressing, and each gasp cut the father like a knife. Mrs. Carteret was weeping hysterically. "How is he, doctor?" asked ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... at the same time of fierceness, untempered by any trace of a softer emotion. A shaggy sand-coloured beard, slightly grizzled; eyebrows like a chevaux de frise of hogs' bristles; eyes of a greenish-grey, and a broad livid scar across the left cheek—are component parts in producing this aspect; while a red cotton kerchief, wound turban-like around the head, and pulled low down in front, renders its expression ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... if ever a woman's face betrayed hunger and passionate longing, hers did at that moment. All her beauty was gone. There was nothing but a livid mask with two burning eyes. A pitying look crossed Ravenal's face. He was not an ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Conquerors. Here is another:—"Reverting to the father and mother, his idea of a positive injury, that was not without its congratulations, sank him down among his disordered deeper sentiments, which were a diver's wreck, where an armoured livid subtermarine, a monstrous puff-ball of man, wandered seriously light in heaviness; trebling his hundredweights to keep him from dancing like a bladder-block of elastic lumber." And while you are about it, pray inform the Court what you mean by "the vulgarest ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... livid; in the effort to make his explanation, whether shaken by the recollections he described or by fear of her contempt, she saw that his limbs were actually trembling ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... that hung above the mountainous peninsula of Lower California. I had a qualm about flying into it in our untested machine. But Charlie leaned tensely forward and sent the Golden Gull on at the limit of her speed. Gray vapor swirled about us, rent with livid streaks of lightning. Thunder crashed and rumbled above the roar of our racing engine. Wild winds screeched in the struts; rain and hail beat against us. The plane rose and fell; she was swirled about ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... dissemination of diseased action, causing destruction of the parts affected. It, in fact, appears like a parasite, living by the destruction of surrounding tissues, literally absorbing them and "thriving on death." It begins with a red, livid color, slight aching and burning pains, the part swells and is elevated some like a boil, except that it does not "point," but has a broad base rising like a cone and flattened at the top. It feels soft and spongy, and will appear to fluctuate, but if punctured, ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... were a dozen natives in the room. A brawny buck with a livid scar on his right cheek lunged at Johnny. He speedily joined his friend in oblivion. A third man leaped upon Johnny's back. Johnny went over like a bucking pony. Finally landing feet first upon the other's abdomen, ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... lighted up with colored fires one night for the Khedive, its ravaged magnificence tinted with rose and livid green and blue, its pylons glittering with artificial gold, its population of statues, its obelisks, and columns, changing from things of dreams to things of day, from twilight marvels to shadowy specters, and from these to hard and piercing realities at the cruel will of ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... whether by providences, or by books, or by His own word, does something with us. It is never vain. Either it melts or it hardens. The sun either scatters the summer morning mists, or it rolls them into heavier folds, from whose livid depths the lightning will be flashing by mid-day. You cannot come near the most inadequate exhibition of the pardoning love of Christ without being either drawn closer to Him or driven further from Him. Each ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... understood his speech. Her face twisted and grew livid with fury. She put down Tota and literally sprang at Indaba-zimbi as a monkey springs. But weary and worn as he was, the old gentleman was too quick for her. With an exclamation of genuine fright he ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... incredible and evil aspect from the tiny seed of instinctive suspicion,—even such a breeze had enough strength to tear the placid mask from the face of the sea. To Sterne, gazing with indifference, it had been like a revelation to behold for the first time the dangers marked by the hissing livid patches on the water as distinctly as on the engraved paper of a chart. It came into his mind that this was the sort of day most favorable for a stranger attempting the passage: a clear day, just windy enough for the sea to break on every ledge, buoying, ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the room. For a moment the music ceased. The conductor, who was responsible for the disturbance, was sitting motionless, his hand hanging down by his side. His features remained imperturbable, but the gleam of his white teeth, and a livid little streak under his eyes gave to his usually good-humoured face an utterly altered, almost a malignant expression. Ferrani stepped across and spoke to him for a moment angrily. The man took up his instrument, ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... before they are warmed into active life, the hive-bees, natives of Europe, and with habits not perfectly adapted as yet to our flora (nor our flora's habits to theirs - see milkweed), are out after pollen. Where would they find any so early, if not within the skunk cabbage's livid horn of plenty? Not even an alder catkin or a pussy willow has expanded yet. In spite of the bee's refined taste in the matter of perfume and color, she has no choice, now, but to enter so generous an entertainer. At the top of the thick rounded spadix within, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... ally itself with persons of your class; and is promised to a gentleman whose ancestors were dukes and peers when Mr. Newcome's were blacking shoes!" Instead of finding his pretty blushing girl on arriving at Woolwich, poor Tom only found his French master, livid with rage and quivering under his ailes de pigeon. We pass over the scenes that followed; the young man's passionate entreaties, and fury and despair. In his own defence, and to prove his honour to the world, M. de Blois determined that his daughter should instantly ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the following summer at the Samson Inn, in Peterhoff, where he served our breakfast with an affectionate solicitude which somewhat alarmed us for his sobriety. He was very much injured in appearance by long hair thrown back in artistic fashion, and a livid gash which scored one side of his face down to his still unbrushed teeth, and nearly to his unwashed shirt, narrowly missing one eye, and suggested possibilities of fight in him which, luckily for our peace of mind, we had not suspected ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... not I," said the man, whose face was livid and his eyes burning with fever. "A cherry-stone tickled my shoulder, by way of a ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the size of frogs and yelped, "We are the sins of Amos come out of the grave." The vision passed and another appeared. Three Sisters of Charity stood at the footboard of his bed. They were looking down on him with sorrowful eyes. One of them lifted her hand and all was a livid flame. Amos raised his head and gave one prolonged ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... of vision. The third property was that he never failed to be warned in dreams of things about to happen to him; and the fourth was that premonitory signs of coming events would display themselves in the form of spots on his nails. The signs of evil were black or livid, and appeared on the middle finger; white spots on the same nail portending good fortune. Honours were indicated on the thumb, riches on the fore-finger, matters relating to his studies and of grave ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... changed as utterly as if he had removed a mask. From flushed that it had been it was livid now and the eyes were blazing, the mouth twitching. Thus a moment he glowered upon his enemy. Then standing in his stirrups ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... weeks, carried off so many. All of us who had read sea-stories had read much of this disease and its horrors, but we had little conception of the dreadful reality. It usually manifested itself first in the mouth. The breath became unbearably fetid; the gums swelled until they protruded, livid and disgusting, beyond the lips. The teeth became so loose that they frequently fell out, and the sufferer would pick them up and set them back in their sockets. In attempting to bite the hard corn bread furnished by the bakery the teeth often stuck fast and were pulled out. The ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... mussy, what ails the man? 'asked Mrs. Mountain, as Samson stood looking round the room. She had never seen such an expression on her husband's face before. The skin was livid under its rude bronze, and his ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... blissful seats, To dismal realms, and regions void of peace, Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss. O'er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh, And pois'nous vapours, black'ning all the sky, With livid hue the fairest face o'ercast, And every beauty withers at the blast: Where e'er they fly their lover's ghosts pursue, Inflicting all those ills which once they knew; Vexation, Fury, Jealousy, Despair, Vex ev'ry eye, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press;* and with no chance of being buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in the ravening bellies of wild beasts and birds; with reverence be it spoken for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... pillar-like, her two hands clenched against her sides. Her lips were quite livid. They moved soundlessly for several seconds before she spoke. "I—was ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... topmost step Caligula caught sight of him, and the intensity of his rage was such that his cheeks turned livid and blotchy and hoarse inarticulate sounds escaped his ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... him, lifted his head and painfully raised himself on one elbow. He was a pitiable-looking object. His hair, all dishevelled and matted, hung down over haggard-looking eyes; his cheeks were hollow from hunger, his ghastly pale face, livid from the cold, was covered with several weeks' growth of beard. From head to foot he was filthy and neglected from lack of the necessaries of life, and there was in his staring eyes a haunted, terrified look—the look of a man who has been face to face with ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... beyond its usual size, and a bluish discoloration surrounded the livid line where ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... be almost upon the quarry, for the scent spoor was becoming stronger and stronger, when the jungle was suddenly shot by livid lightning, and a deafening roar of thunder reverberated through the heavens and the forest until the earth trembled and shook. Then came the rain—not as it comes to us of the temperate zones, but as a mighty avalanche of water—a deluge which spills tons instead ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... see before me the image of my expiring father;—I hear the words that issued from his death-like lips;—my soul feels the weight of his injunctions;—again in my imagination I seal the sacred promise on his livid hand;—and my heart bows before Sir James with all that duty which is indispensable from a ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... of diamonds tries his wily arts, And wins (oh shameful chance!) the queen of hearts. At this the blood the virgin's cheek forsook, A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look; She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and codille. And now (as oft in some distempered state) On one nice trick depends the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... hid behind a lifeboat to await the result. Soon he heard a sputter and a shriek of rage, and the two men came racing down the boat as if pursued by some terror. Up came Frohman, his face livid ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... moonlight. When the train had passed he followed it, walking stumblingly along. As he walked, following the blinking lights at the end of the train, he thought of the scene in the hospital and of Sue lying dead for that—that ping livid and shapeless on the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... undoubtedly human—but what humans! Tall and reedy they were, with enormous barrel chests, topped by heads which, though really large, appeared insignificant because of the prodigious chests and because of the huge, sail-like, flapping ears. Their skins were a strikingly, livid, pale blue, absolutely devoid of hair; and their lidless eyes, without a sign of iris, were chillingly horrible in their stark contrast of enormous, glaring black pupil and ghastly, transparent ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... their respective notaries in presence of Monsieur de Reybert, the ex-steward walked with slow steps to his own house. There he entered the salon and sat down without noticing anything. Little Husson, who was present, slipped into a corner, out of sight, so much did the livid face of his mother's ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... tragedy which it seemed that I alone had witnessed. For there had been a little puff of sound, so slight that no other ears had noticed it. The seat in front of me was empty, and the man on my right had fallen forwards, his hand pressed to his side, his face curiously livid, patchy with streaks of dark colour, his eyes bulbous. Waiters still hurried to and fro, the hum of conversation was uninterrupted. And then suddenly it came—a cry of breathless horror, of mortal unexpected agony—a cry, it seemed, of death. The waiters stopped ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the slumbering inmates. There was a sound in the forest as of sobbing Dryads, waiting for the swift death and the frosty tomb. The blue haze of dreams which had overspread the land changed into an ashy, livid mist, dragging low, and clinging to the features of the landscape like a shroud to the limbs ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... poles that supported the awning, who attracted all our attention. He was enveloped in a torn blanket, his head uncovered, and his feet bare, and was glaring upon the table with his great dark, haggard-looking eyes, his brown face livid, and his expression bordering on despair. It needed no one to tell us that on the table was his last stake. What will such a man do but go upon ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... domes of Venice rising from them; around a framework of six bending saints; in front two kneeling Doges in full ducal robes with a black curtain of clouds between them. The clouds roll back to reveal a mighty glory, and in the heart of it the livid figure of a dead Christ taken from the cross. Not one eye of all the nobles gathered in council could have lifted itself from the figure of the Doge without falling on the figure of the dead Christ. Strange as the conception is it is hard to believe that in a mind so peculiarly ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... are called the Lovers, fondly entwined, their faces livid with despair, go up to TIME ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... clearness. He could feel,—ah, that was the hell of it. That quivering response to the subtle nuances of thought! A profound change had come upon him, yet essentially he, the man, was unchanged. Except for those scars, the convoluted ridges of tissue, the livid patches and the ghastly hollows where once his cheeks and lips and forehead had been smooth and regular, he was ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Just one or two minute black featureless figures of men toiled amidst these monster shapes. They did not seem to be controlling them but only moving about among them. These gas-works have a big chimney that belches a lurid flame into the night, a livid shivering bluish flame, shot ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... while he put it all out of mind, and again returned to his problem. He lay beside the brook and pondered, and finally fell asleep in the hot air, which increased in venom, until the rattle of thunder awoke him. It was very dark—a strange, livid darkness. "A thunder-storm," he muttered, and then he thought of his new clothes—what a misfortune it would be to have them soaked. He arose and pushed through the thicket around him into a cart path, and it was then that he saw the thing which proved to be the stepping-stone ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to his feet again, his hand shook so that he could hardly put the mouse back in the cage, and his face was of a faint livid yellow hue ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... then they went forward by thousands. Over them still thundered the voice of the preacher, denouncing the sin of this world and announcing the glory of the world to come. Clouds swept up the heavens and the fires burned lower, but no one noticed. Before them flashed the livid face and burning eyes of the preacher, and he moved them with his words as the helmsman ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... grew livid with rage and shame as the truth dawned upon her, while poor feeble Gus lost his poise utterly and stood like ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... subsided; out of it emerged the livid face of Hatburn; and then, quite easily, he pitched David back across the floor. He lay there a moment and then stirred, partly rose, beside the mail bag. His pistol was lying before him; he ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... student, said Wetmore Story, he and Story went to Faneuil Hall to hear Webster. They meant to hoot him for his remaining in Tyler's cabinet. It would be easy, they reasoned, to get the three thousand people to join them. When he begun, Lowell turned pale, and Story livid. His great eyes, they thought, were fixed on them. His opening words changed their scorn to admiration, and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... young lady was much bruised and excoriated. The fact that it had been thrust up the chimney would sufficiently account for these appearances. The throat was greatly chafed. There were several deep scratches just below the chin, together with a series of livid spots which were evidently the impression of fingers. The face was fearfully discolored, and the eye-balls protruded. The tongue had been partially bitten through. A large bruise was discovered upon the pit of the stomach, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... face of the grand prima donna, I was seized with an indescribable sadness, with a keen pang of remorse. Perfect artiste though she be, and with powers in her own realm of art which admit of no living equal, I saw at once that I had pained her: she had grown almost livid; her lips were quivering, and it was only with a great effort that she muttered out some faint words intended for applause. I comprehended by an instinct how gradually there can grow upon the mind of an artist the most generous that jealousy which makes the fear of a rival annihilate ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Miko was livid with suppressed anger. They had stripped the cloak from me, and flung me back in my cubby. Miko was now confronting me; at the door Moa stood watching. And Anita was behind her. I sat outwardly defiant and sullen on my bunk. But I was alert and tense, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... agonized man, again clutching the sinewy arms of his host, and forcing his livid face and fixed eyes within a few inches of Captain Dick's, "hear me! You must and shall hear me. I've been in jail—do you hear?—in jail, like a common felon. I've been sent to the asylum, like ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... as if a stone were ground to dust; as if white sparks flew from a livid whetstone, which was his spine; as if the switchback railway, having swooped to the depths, fell, fell, fell. This was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... tempestuous sea: upon its waves you behold five ships; four of them are already wrecks,—their masts are broken, the waves are dashing through the rent planks, they are past all aid and hope: on each of these ships lies the corpse of a woman. See you not, in the wan face and livid limbs, how faithfully the limner hath painted the hues and loathsomeness of death? Below each of these ships is a word that applies the metaphor to truth. Yonder, you see the name of Carthage; the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... through this miraculous issue, forming a human torrent that flowed between two steep banks of green waters. An innumerable race marked with two millions of black dots the livid bottom of the gulf, and impressed its feet upon mud which the belly of the leviathans alone had rayed; and the terrible wind still blew, passing over the heads of the Hebrews, whom it would have thrown ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... 46. A little woman, and very much deformed. Asthmatical for many years. For several months past had been worse than usual; appetite totally gone, legs swollen, sense of great fulness about her stomach, countenance fallen, lips livid, ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... in the centre of the table, Longfellow remembered a supper Webster was at, where he lighted some chemical in such a dish and held his head over it, with a handkerchief noosed about his throat and lifted above it with one hand, while his face, in the pale light, took on the livid ghastliness of that of a man hanged ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mentioned, and which all the common people believed—but the scientific facts so far as they were known. Yet even his imagination failed to realize that this flaming head, with its strange halo of darkness, and its horrible hair of livid green light, was four million times greater than the earth; or that its luminous veil—woven of star-dust so fine that other stars shone through—streamed across one hundred million of miles, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... neglected animals. Possibly, in former days, she might have possessed that fleeting attraction called the beaute du diable; but now she looked almost as old as her wretched mother-in-law. Sorrow and privation, excessive toil and ill-treatment, had imparted to her face a livid hue, reddening her eyes and stamping deep furrows round about her temples. Still, there was an attribute of native honesty about her which even the foul atmosphere in which she had been compelled to live ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... wrath made livid, for among them were Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in care To feast him. Fear had long since taken root In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit, The ripe hate, like a wine; to note the way It worked while ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... their labors; and for a distance of many miles the sea was filled with black bulks dragged slowly along by the waves—men floating on their backs, immovable, with their glassy eyes fixed on the sky; children with their fair hair clinging like masks to their livid face; corpses of mothers pressing to their bosom with cold rigidity little corpses of babies, assassinated before they could even ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... livid. He wanted to say something awful, something that would crush the fearless lad before him—but the words would not come. He caught up his silk hat and waved it fiercely in the face of Ralph and ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... door, the Count's great carcass sprawled upon the table, and at a glance it was evident that both men had been dead some hours. The old Camorrist had the stem of a liqueur-glass between his swollen blue fingers, one of which had been cut in the breakage, and the livid flesh was also brown with the last blood that it would ever shed. His face was on the table, the huge moustache projecting from under either leaden cheek, yet looking itself strangely alive. Broken bread ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... first time, he glanced at the newcomer, and was almost stupefied to discover that the man, despite his faultless professional attire, was a Chinaman. Moreover, this Chinaman bore a livid scar down the left side of his face, and his eyes were set horizontally, a sure sign of Manchu descent, because all Southern Chinese have the oblique Mongolian eye. Though prepared for treachery of some kind, the very simplicity of ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... face had darkened, his cheeks were almost livid. His eyes followed the two with an expression which terrified the girl who ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... autumnal. There was a fiery red spot out at sea, where the sun had set, and, above it, over a chill, clear, saffron sky, were reefs of purple-black clouds. The river, below the Carewe homestead, was livid. Beyond it, the sea was dark and brooding. It was an evening to make most people shiver and forebode an early winter; but Thyra loved it, as she loved all stern, harshly beautiful things. She would not light a lamp because it would blot out the savage grandeur of sea ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... energy of despair, Josepha sat erect in her bed, and with her livid, bloody hands, wrote a letter which Van Swieten, at her earnest entreaty, delivered to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... indeed,—a walking sermon on the perils that may follow what are termed "good times." His face would have been pale, except that his nose, which was as puffy as an omelette soufflee, and his left eye with a drooping lid sustained by a livid crescent, gave it a rubicund expression. His knees were shaky, his pulse feeble, his head top-heavy. He declined assistance rather sulkily, and descended holding by the stair-rail and stepping ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... that war and disease, between them, had left very little of a husband to take under nursing when she got him again. An attack of scurvy had filled my mouth with sores, shaken every joint in my body and covered me all over with scars and livid spots, so that I was unlovely to look upon. A smart knock on the ankle joint from the splinter of a shell that burst in my face, in itself a mere bagatelle of a wound, had been of necessity neglected under the pressing and insistent calls ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... date. Having all of them occupied their places on several previous occasions, they seemed very much at their ease, and Gamelin envied them their unconcern. His own heart was thumping, his ears roaring; a mist was before his eyes and everything about him took on a livid tinge. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack, flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye. One's gaze went with infinite relief from the scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green softness ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... seemed to have no effect upon the cruel man, and he continued to whip the boy, despite his cries and entreaties, until his arm fairly ached from the exertion and Toby's body was crossed and recrossed with the livid marks of ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... terrible purpose; that the governors of the provinces were all in the league of blood; and that the bakers of Paris had received an order from Versailles to put poison in all their loaves within the next twenty-four hours. 'Frenchmen,' exclaimed this livid villain, tearing his hair, and howling with the wildness of a demoniac, 'do you love your wives and children? Will you suffer them to die in agonies before your eyes? Wait, and you will have nothing to do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... midst of this wild tumult of the elements, they beheld a new object of alarm. The ocean, in one place, became strangely agitated; the water was whirled up into a kind of pyramid or cone; while a livid cloud, tapering to a point, bent down to meet it; joining together, they formed a column, which rapidly approached the ship, spinning along the surface of the deep, and drawing up the water with a rushing sound, it passed the ship ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... Giovanni, with a smile; "where you tell me I learned so much that was bad. He looks frightened," he added in a low voice, as he glanced at Del Ferice's livid face. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... he reasoned, not without plausibility, when could he more rationally hope for a place in Aurelia's thoughts than at that witching and suggestive period? She might surely think of him when she had nothing else to do! Had she really nothing else to do? And Otto grew sick and livid with jealousy. It of course frequently occurred to him to doubt and deride the virtues of the ring, and he was several times upon the point of flinging it away. But the more he pondered upon the appearance and manner ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... southward. The vapour had broken up and lay in masses round about us—long, white twisted folds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top of those heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, with a little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist, which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There was nothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I saw there was nothing to be seen. This smote ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... the boat still lived. Borne high upon the shoulder of the next rolling hill, we looked north, south, east, and west, and saw only a waste of livid, ever forming, ever breaking waves, a gray sky streaked with darker gray shifting vapor, and a horizon impenetrably veiled. Where we were in the great bay, in what direction we were being driven, how near we might be to the open sea or to some fatal ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... assured of the truth, rose instantly, and went into the hall, where, when he saw the African magician dead, and his face already livid by the strength of the poison, he embraced Aladdin with great tenderness, and said, "My son, be not displeased at my proceedings against you; they arose from my paternal love; and therefore you ought to forgive the excesses to which it hurried me." "Sir," replied Aladdin, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... livid with passion, "that your slave has struck me—me, a Roman patrician. I will lodge a complaint against him, and the penalty, you know, ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... probably foreseeing what would be the result of Mrs. ——-'s visit. The next morning C—-n sent for him and dismissed him, giving him a month's wages, that he might not be tempted to steal from immediate want. His face grew perfectly livid, but he made no remark. In half an hour he returned and begged to speak with C—-n. He confessed that the crime of which he concluded he was accused, he had in fact committed; that he had been tempted to a gambling house, while he had in his pocket ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Noord Canal the hope of seeing my first Dutch sunset was disappointed by another sudden change in the weather. The sky was obscured, the waters became livid, and the horizon disappeared behind a ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... order was pressing; Guenaud quickly obeyed it. He found his patient stretched on his bed, his legs swelled, his face livid, and his stomach collapsed. Mazarin had a severe attack of gout. He suffered tortures with the impatience of a man who has not been accustomed to resistances. On seeing Guenaud: "Ah!" said ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... one of my ears was frozen. He ran up to me and rubbed the affected part with a handful of snow till the circulation was restored. I asked him how he had noticed my state, and he said he had remarked the livid whiteness of my ear, and this, he said, was always a sign that the frost had taken it. What surprised me most of all is that sometimes the part grows again after it has dropped off. Prince Charles of Courland assured me that he had cost his nose in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... name of this terrible goddess (who holds the same place in the Brahmin religion as the Evil One in our own) the swarthy faces turned perfectly livid, and more than one stalwart fellow was seen to shiver ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Moses, who was hoeing a small garden patch in the rear of an adjoining cabin. Delphy was a large mulatto woman, with a broad, flat bosom and enormous hands that looked as if they had been parboiled into a livid blue tint. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... peril. And even while that I felt so utter in this thing, there came a great thudding of monstrous feet; and there ran four great men out of the night, and went past the hollow very quick. And three did be dull coloured and seeming much haired and brutish; but the other did be an horrid white, and livid-blotched; so that it did seem to my spirit that there went by, a thing that did be a very man-monster filled of unwholesome life. And surely they did be gone from out of the shine of the fire, in one moment, as we do say; and again into the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... chair; and I never see such a dreadful picture of despair as there was in the face of that retchid man!—he writhed, and nasht his teeth, he tore open his coat, and wriggled madly the stump of his left hand, until, fairly beat, he threw it over his livid pale face, and sinking backwards, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chamber was filled with armed men. The abbot slowly advanced towards the earl. His deportment was dignified and firm, even majestic. The exaltation of spirit, occasioned by the interview with Demdike and his wife, had passed away, and was succeeded by a profound calm. The hue of his cheek was livid, but otherwise he seemed ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Pinnegar, in a sudden changed voice. She had gone a livid yellow colour. And she gave a queer, sharp little rap on ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... his breath, every one thought, that very soon two souls would escape to the threshold of the Divine Court and two dead bodies remain on the snow, and the lips, as well as the cheeks of the women turned pale and livid at that thought; the eyes of the men again gazed steadfastly at the opponents as at a rainbow, because every one was trying to forecast, from their postures and armament alone, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... interruption. They held their breath and waited. The conversation which had started harmlessly enough had become a duel. The grim shadow of tragedy seemed suddenly to have stalked in amongst them. Hassen sprang to his feet, livid, his coal-black eyes on fire. Reist was facing him, his head thrown back, passionate, contemptuous, bitter. With a swift, threatening gesture he threw out his ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... dismantled corpse of a ship floating on a grey sea ruled by iron necessity and with a heart of ice—there crept into view one by one, cautious, slow, eager, glaring, and unclean, a band of hungry and livid skeletons. Falk faced them, the possessor of the only fire-arm on board, and the second best man—the carpenter—was lying ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... merchants in Haddington, beheld four men, clad like West-country Whigamores, standing round some object on the ground. It was at the two-mile cross, and within that distance from their homes. At last, to their horror, they discovered that the recumbent figure was a livid corpse, swathed in a blood-stained winding-sheet. {5a} Many thought that this apparition was a portent of the deaths connected with the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... single instant is sufficient to dispel the charm: often without apparent cause, sensation and motion cease at once; the body loses its warmth, the eyes their lustre, and the lips and cheeks become livid. These, as Cuvier observes, are but preludes to changes still more hideous. The colour passes successively to a blue, a green, and a black; the flesh absorbs moisture, and while one part of it escapes in pestilential exhalations, the remaining part falls down into ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... at Darjeeling brought me the nest, which was said to have been placed high up in a large tree; it was composed of twigs and roots and a few bits of grass, and contained two eggs, livid white, with purplish and claret spots, and of ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... escaped from Imbrie, but his smooth face turned hideous with rage; the lips everted over the clenched teeth, the ruddy skin livid and blotchy. He quickly untied the bond between him and Stonor. The woman, with a wicked smile, drew the knife out of her moccasin, and offered it to him. He eagerly snatched it up. Stonor's eyes were fixed unflinchingly on his face. He ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... the Caliph's helmet with a crash, cleaving it clean through. 'Ah, pagan,' said he, 'you will never boast now of the prizes you have taken in battle.' Then 'Roland! Roland!' he cried, and Roland came. When he saw Oliver before him, livid and bleeding, he swayed on his horse as if he should faint. Oliver's sight was weak and troubled from loss of blood, and not hearing Roland's voice he mistook him for an enemy, and struck him a hard blow on his helmet. This blow restored ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... me with his sword," he protested, bewildered by the contempt that seemed to shine livid on her ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... previous night, and had there disgraced himself by intoxication, they had known already. That he had been found dead that morning had been already announced. They could only stand round and gaze on the square, sullen, livid features of the big-framed man, and each lament that he had ever heard the name ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... fell upon their knees, and then upon their hands; their heads still wavered for a few minutes alternately to the right and left, and from their open mouth some agonizing sounds escaped; at last it fell in its turn upon the snow, which it reddened immediately with livid blood; and their ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... to Zeitoon. We threaded toward the heart of opal mountains along tracks that nothing on wheels—not even a wheel-barrow—could have followed. Perpetually on our right there kept appearing brilliant green patches of young rice, more full of livid light than flawless emeralds. And, as in all rice country, there were countless watercourses with frequently impracticable banks along which fugitives felt their way miserably, too fearful of pursuit to risk following ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... with a muttered oath; his face went livid and a muscle worked in his throat; his fingers contracted like the claws of some big and powerful cat. But, out of respect for Cleggett's pistol, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... difficult. By degrees he appeared to recover; I gave him more of the contents of the pannikin, and at last he could speak, although with great pain and difficulty. As he did so he put his hand to his side. He was indeed a ghastly object, with his sightless eyeballs, his livid lips, and his face and beard matted ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... it may be said, even though we may be quite unimpressed by the value of its moral significance. Nevertheless, this view of our own mental processes may be held to the illusory. What really strikes us is the UNITY of the conception. The lurid sky, the dark, livid faces of the dead—the whole color scheme, in short, is so contrived as to impress directly, as previously explained, without the medium of an idea, with that particular tinge of emotional tone which ought to be also the accompaniment ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... wrong, were women crying aloud, throwing up their arms in imprecation, showering down abuse as hearty and rapid as if they had been a Greek chorus. Their wild, famished eyes were strained on faces they might not kiss, their cheeks were flushed to purple with anger or else livid with impotent craving for revenge. Some of them looked scarce human; and yet an hour ago these lips, now tightly drawn back so as to show the teeth with the unconscious action of an enraged wild animal, had been soft and gracious with the smile ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... aware of the figure of her husband standing before her. He had come out of the laurels in front. His pale face was livid with anger, his hair dishevelled, there was garden mould and greenness upon his knees and upon ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... was startled by a half-stifled moan, and turned to see where the sound came from. Mrs. Bennett was crouching on the sofa behind me; her face livid, her eyes starting from her head. I followed her glance and saw Captain Lloyd standing directly under ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... this time with a livid, sobered face, into the open pistol of the man he had provoked, the professional officer of death. The fine, cool face behind the pistol was concise, grave, and eloquent now as a judge's pronouncing the last sentence of the law. The next instant the boy was biting and clawing ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... piece, out of the very forlornness of his surroundings, out of the debris and litter of his half-ruined dwelling, out of the rotting branches of the dim misty forest, out of the stakes and piles of his broken-down wharf, out of the livid mud of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Her voice had struck him with pain; her countenance still more distressed him. Nothing could afford a more complete contrast to the soft and glowing visage that a few moments before he had beheld in the fane of Apollo. She was quite pale, almost livid; her features, of exquisite shape, had become hard and even distorted; all the bad passions of our nature seemed suddenly to have concentred in that face which usually combined perfect beauty of form with an expression the most gentle, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... said, could see them both; she, standing up, pale and disdainful. He, not pale, but livid, agitated ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... little puffs of smoke were coming from it, and a red colour glowed at the tip. The moment the robbers caught sight of this apparition there was a yell of fear which paralysed the children into rigid statues. The men's faces were livid with terror, and some seconds passed before either had recovered his senses sufficiently to act. Then one man, with a great sweep of his arms, caught up all the children into one tumble bunch, and flung them screaming ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... the back of the old man's head on a level with his eye, and just beyond, growing hugely on his gaze, the face of the leading Grenadier, livid beneath ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... father. But it was not the discovery that she was a tradesman's daughter that galled him; it was the thought that his father was bought for the altar out of the county jail! It was those cutting words, "Sold even your name." His face, before very crimson, became livid; his head sank on his breast. He walked towards the old gloomy house by Fairthorn's side, as one who, for the first time in life, feels on his heart the leaden weight ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strangely horrible to Eleanor. Her eyes start from their sockets, staring, bloodshot, fixed. Her lips are livid, her limbs stiff, she is still drawn up against the wall at bay; but for its support she would fall ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... however, did not lose, but gained by such slipshod methods and by the dull, heavy colour scheme. The original idea of "Death" soon disappeared of itself; and so Yourii proceeded to depict "Old Age" as a lean hag tottering along a rough road in the dusk. The sun had sunk, and against the livid sky sombre crosses were seen en silhouette. Beneath the weight of a heavy black coffin the woman's bony shoulders were bent, and her expression was mournful and despairing, as with one foot she touched the brink of an open grave. It was ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... had the features of a very sad man,—one in profound sorrow. His livid countenance betrayed fathomless dejection. He wore his white beard and his hair short; his brows fell like brushes over ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... me, who am lifeless and dead, back from the abode below, and hath brought me again into upper air, let him pay full penalty with his own death in the dreary shades beneath livid Styx. Behold, counter to my will and purpose, I must declare some bitter tidings. For as ye go away from this house ye will come to the narrow path of a grove, and will be a prey to demons all about. Then she who hath brought our death back from out of void, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... The woman's livid face appalled the girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed, nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs, showing the swollen knees and thin calves; her hands, with distorted joints, protruded painfully from her sleeves. All about her was the ever recurring wealth and cheer of nature that ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland |
