"Numbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his antagonist in bodily as in spiritual strength, was about to treat the Great Adversary to a back somersault, when he suddenly felt the long nails of the stranger piercing his flesh. A new fear seized his heart, a numbing chillness crept through his body, and he struggled to free himself, but in vain. A strange roaring was in his ears; the lake and cavern danced before his eyes and vanished; and with a loud cry he sank senseless to ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... he was suffering so intensely from the icy nip of the water that he felt no disposition to talk, and simply pushed ahead for all he was worth, hoping that by dint of violent exertion he might be able to conquer the numbing sensation that ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... which the shepherds, at their festivals, Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils. And, as the old swain said, she can unlock The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell, If she be right invoked in warbled song; For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift To aid a virgin, such as was herself, In hard-besetting need. This will I try, And add the power of some ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... teeth. The dread he would not acknowledge hung like a numbing weight upon him. Somehow, inexplicably, he knew that he was nearing the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... pedant, into the dreariest of mechanical routine. How many a sweet-voiced chorister, even in our own days, reaches manhood with a love for music? It needs music in his soul. Haydn's soul withstood the numbing influence of pedantry. He realized that it lay with himself to develop and nurture the powers within his breast of which he was conscious. "The talent was in me," he remarked, "and by dint of hard work I managed to get on." Shortly before his death, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... before had he seen me for the first time any day, without giving me a kiss; never before, it seemed to me, had he spoken to me without a smile: I had been lost and was found, and he was not glad! The strange reception fell on me like a numbing spell. I had nothing to say, no impulse to move, no part in the present world. He caught me up in his arms, hid his face upon me, knocked his shoulder heavily against the door-post as he went from the room, walked straight through the hall, ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... it was a marvel he had borne it so long. Only a numbing blow such as he had received could have stunned his faculties into acquiescence with this sleepy, uneventful existence; and now, suddenly, his soul awoke from its peaceful slumber and demanded life, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... and was anxious to start straight with the clergy, etc., and, if possible, to see something of the local life. It was a market-town—as tiny a one as England possesses—and had for ages served that lonely valley, and guarded our marches against the Kelt. In spite of the occasion, in spite of the numbing hilarity that greeted her as soon as she got into the reserved saloon at Paddington, her senses were awake and watching, and though Oniton was to prove one of her innumerable false starts, she never forgot it, nor ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... concentration on these things, Determined now, that long have wasted him, Have left him in a numbing lethargy, From which I fear he may not rouse to strength For speech with ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... He walked up the steps as in a dream, neither slowly nor fast. No one was ever more unhappy, though he scarcely felt as yet the depths of his own humiliation. It was more like a stab—a numbing assassin-like stab. He could hear the beatings of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Milo at such an angle as to rap the latter's right elbow with a numbing force that sent the pipe flying half way across the hall. The tobacco jar must have gone too, had not one of Gavin's outflung hands caught it in mid-air, as a quarterback might catch ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... yet experienced. The noise was ear-splitting; the explosions filled the quivering air; the ground seemed to shudder beneath them. Branches fell crashing to the ground; it seemed as if a god was flogging the tree-tops with a huge scourge. The din was awful, petrifying, numbing. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... soonest spied). Unto her was he led, or rather drawn By those white limbs which sparkled through the lawn. The nearer that he came, the more she fled, And, seeking refuge, slipt into her bed; Whereon Leander sitting, thus began, Through numbing cold, all feeble, faint, and wan. "If not for love, yet, love, for pity-sake, Me in thy bed and maiden bosom take; At least vouchsafe these arms some little room, Who, hoping to embrace thee, cheerly swoom: This head was beat with many a churlish billow, And therefore let it rest upon thy ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... but she also wanted to find careers for women. She, like Vivien Warren, was a nascent suffragist—perhaps a born suffragist, a reasoned one; because the ferment had been in her mother, and her grandmother was a friend of Lydia Becker and a cousin of Mrs. Belloc. John's death had been a horrible numbing shock to Honoria, and she felt hardly in her right mind for three months afterwards. Then on reflection it left some tarnish on her family, even if the memory of the dear dead boy, the too brilliant boy, softened from the poignancy ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... that no amount of reasoning could change his Indian superstition; and with a word more of expostulation I left him standing there, and sought a place where I might lie down. Already the numbing sensation of supernatural fear had left me, for in the breaking up of that odd-formed cloud I realized its cause; and now the physical fatigue I felt overmastered all else. I found a quiet corner, and, with a saddle for a pillow, was soon ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... for one of the Boers had clubbed his rifle in the midst of the melee and struck at my head. I was too quick for him, wrenching myself sidewise; but the rifle glanced all down one side, giving me for the moment a terrible numbing sense of pain. Yet my head was quite clear, and I rode on, feeling a wild kind of exhilaration from the knowledge that with one quick thrust I had passed my sword through his shoulder. Now I was urging on poor bruised and frightened Sandho to keep up ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... girls in general; when she could write without orthographical errors, and could play by rote a few pieces of pianoforte music, her education had been pronounced completed. In the profound moral revolution which her nature had recently undergone her intellect also shared; when the first numbing shock had spent itself, she felt the growth of an intellectual appetite formerly unknown. Resolutely setting herself to exalt her husband, she magnified his acquirements, and, as a duty, directed her mind to the things he deemed of importance. One of her impulses took the form of a ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... clattering. His days of usefulness were not over, but he had reached the age when one is willing to spend more time looking on. He had always been tired at this hour of the day, but it was only of late that fatigue had had a certain numbing effect, which disinclined him to think of the tasks of tomorrow. He came to this period of repose rather earlier nowadays, and after less sturdy labor—somehow, a great deal of the sturdy labor ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... The numbing sensation of the wound was giving place to hot, stabbing pain, while in spite of the sultriness of the air a cold sweat oozed from ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... after him, "plash!" with the noise of my plunge still echoing as I rose above the waters—echoing in a strange whisper along the arched roof. But oh! the painful, numbing sensation of intense cold that struck to my heart! It was fearful, and before I had taken a dozen strokes I felt that I ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... would fain promise myself in it."[237] To pluck so gracious a flower of hope on the edge of the sombre unechoing gulf of nothingness into which our friend has slid silently down, is a natural impulse of the sensitive soul, numbing remorse and giving a moment's relief to the hunger and thirst of a tenderness that has been robbed of its object. Yet would not men be more likely to have a deeper love for those about them, and a keener dread of filling a house with aching hearts, if they courageously realised ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Mother and her Child, The last, pale, low-burnt taper flickered out, But in the darkness, smooth and fathomless, Still twinkled like a star the holy lamp That cast a dusky glow upon her face. Then through the numbing cold peace fell on me, Submission and the gracious gift of tears, For when I looked, Oh! blessed miracle, Her lips had parted and Our Lady smiled! And then I knew that Love is worth its pain And that my heart was richer for his sake, Since lack of love is bitterest ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... be said, with surety, that Otah in that ultimate moment felt pain. It is fairly certain that both finitely and cosmically the initial numbing shock did register; and it may be assumed that he jolted rather horribly at the splintering bite of bone into brain. But who can say he did not reach a point-of-prescience, that his neuro-thalamics did not leap to span the eons, and gape ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... to answer. A blast that whirled the drifts up met her in the face, numbing all her faculties and rendering breathing difficult. The hand that held the bridle was stiffened into uselessness. Still, while life pulsed within her, she was going on, and swaying in the saddle, she ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... tangent, leaving Jeffreys, cool in body and mind, to await his return. To an ordinarily excitable person, the position was a critical one. The water was numbing; the ice at the edge of the hole was rotten, and broke away with every effort he made to climb on to it; even Julius, floundering beside him, bewildered, and at times a dead weight on his arms and ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Hildegarde of Barscheit! My gloves and riding-crop slipped from my nerveless fingers to the floor. A numbing, wilting sensation wrinkled my spine. The Princess Hildegarde of Barscheit! She stood opposite me, the woman—ought I not to say girl?—for whom I had been seeking, after a fashion, all these months! The beautiful ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... turning: all aglow Thou shouldst have reached me, with a purple show Along far-mountain tops: and I would post Over the breadth of seas though I were lost In the hot phantom-chase for life, if so Thou camest ever with this numbing sense Of chilly distance and unlovely light; Waking this gnawing soul anew to fight With its perpetual load: I drive thee hence— I have another mountain-range from whence ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... these two exceptional cases, there are of course hundreds and even thousands of teachers whose personal influence is a partial antidote to the numbing poison which is being distilled but surely, from the daily Scripture lesson. But the net result of giving formal and mechanical instruction on the greatest of all "great matters" is to depress the spiritual vitality of the children of England ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... feeling himself over-balanced by his own ineffective violence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see what had happened. The Chief recovered himself, and the two lashed out at each other so exactly together that the great clubs met in mid-air. So shattering was the force of the impact, so numbing the shock to the hairy wrists behind it, that both ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... for the first time, I think, in my life, panic gripped me, the sheer, blind fear which destroys the reason. It swept over me in a wave, that numbing terror which comes to one in dreams. Indeed, the thing had become dream-like. I seemed to be standing outside myself, looking on at myself, watching myself heave and strain with bruised fingers at a ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... elements! I know— Ye know it too—it hath been granted me Not to die wholly, not to be all enslaved. I feel it in this hour. The numbing cloud Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free, Is it but for a moment? —Ah, boil up, ye vapours! Leap and roar, thou sea of fire! My soul glows to meet you. Ere it flag, ere the mists Of despondency and gloom Rush over ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... numbing her from a realisation of her purpose, held until she disappeared into the huge archway of the tower and began to ascend the narrow stairs. But here her spirit failed her, and she paused. Standing motionless in the gloom, she could hear her heart beating wildly, and the folly of her intention ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the sacrifices Offered to her of him continually. Therefore she turned aside from Argive men The might of Aias. As a terrible storm, Whose wings are laden with dread hurricane-blasts, Cometh with portents of heart-numbing fear To shipmen, when the Pleiads, fleeing adread From glorious Orion, plunge beneath The stream of tireless Ocean, when the air Is turmoil, and the sea is mad with storm; So rushed he, whithersoe'er his feet might bear. This way ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... in the reaction of relief from the horde's hideous menace. Then he grimly fought to clear his fast-numbing senses long enough for the one final task that he knew ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the world. And it can be done—do not let us be afraid—it can be done without in the least degree impairing the skill of our handicraftsmen or the manliness of our national life. It can be done without blunting or numbing the practical energies of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... and was an extension of the two that preceded it. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Canst thou prevent the revival of all the forces of nature in the springtime?" and "Canst thou loose the bands of Orion; canst thou free the ground from the numbing frosts of winter?" ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... away, and the river would soon be frozen from bank to bank. Already the wild geese had gone South in great wedge-like battalions, and any day the wild nor'easter might sweep down, and with the blast of its cruel breath strike rivers, lakes, and babbling brooks into a numbing silence. ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... was a curious fact that, although Gerard had felt the awakening of love for Flavia Rose from his first glimpse of her, he never had aided Corrie for his sister's sake. Even when he had dragged himself from the overwhelming blackness of pain and the numbing effects of anaesthetics to defend the driver whose foul blow had struck him down, it was of Corrie alone he thought, not of Flavia, Corrie whom he had shielded from disgrace and open punishment. Man to man they had dealt together, no woman, however dear, entered between them. So when ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... sense of reality, whirled her into the clouds, that gave to her will the directless energy of a chip of wood on stormy waters. But before the Grieg concerto was done, she knew that she was free. Free! All the fine ecstasy, without the numbing terror. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... numbing sense of astonishment passed away, it left her cold with anger. Kitty was a dignified young lady, and she would not tolerate such an affront from any man alive. It was more than an affront; it was a dire catastrophe. What should she ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... array'd! Oft will daring Fancy stray Far in the central wastes, where Night Divides no cheering hour with Day, And unnamed horrors meet her sight; There thy form she dimly sees, And round the shape unfinish'd throws All her frantic vision shews When numbing fears her spirit freeze— But can mortal voice declare If Fancy paints thee as thou art? Thy aspect may a terror wear Her pencil never shall impart; The eye that once on thee shall gaze, No more its stiffen'd orb can raise; The ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... coaching, namely, to sit tight and hang on. No sea that ever ran can sink a canoe. Wood is buoyant. So long as she could hold on, the submerged craft would keep her head and shoulders above water. But it was numbing cold. Fed by glacial streams, Roaring Lake is icy in ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... LIV. "But numbing age hath made the blood run cold, And turned my strength to dulness and decay. Had I the youth that stirred these bones of old, The youth he boasts, no need of guerdon, nay, Nor comely steer to tempt me to the fray. Glory I care for, not a gift," he cried, And, rising, hurled into ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... said Mr. Hoskyn, and then laughed at his repartee until he became aware of the vicinity of Cashel, whose health he immediately inquired after, shaking his hand warmly and receiving a numbing grip in return. As soon as he saw that Lydia and Cashel were acquainted, he slipped away and left them to entertain ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... there presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition, the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence. The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it as ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... over him, numbing his senses—paralysing his brain. This man seems their evil genius, the red firelight playing on his tall slim figure, transforms him in Philip's eyes to a crimson Mephistopheles. Eleanor pours out a fresh cup of ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... transformations of human character are not in the order of nature, and, due allowance made for the numbing hand of time, the youthful Goethe remained essentially the same Goethe to the end. Behind the mask of impassivity which chilled the casually curious who sought him in his last years there was ever that etwas weibliches which Schiller noted in him in his middle ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... the caravanserai the trails fork, and, taking the wrong one, I wander some miles up the mountains ere discovering my mistake. Retracing my way, the right road is finally taken; but the gale increases in violence, the cold is numbing to unprotected hands and ears, and the wind and driving snow difficult to face. At one point the trail leads through a morass, in which are two dead horses, swamped in attempting to cross, and near by lies an abandoned camel, lying in the mud and wearily munching at a heap ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... other white man had ever had before? He leaned far back as if he were trying to fold himself up, and then bent forward in the same manner, trying, with a desperation like death, to relieve the weakness that was numbing his limbs. He suddenly felt dizzy as he looked at the hot distance where some big leaves were waving—dizzy as he knew that he ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... numbing in its vastness. This was the concave, inner surface, doubtless deep within the atom of some material substance. A little empty ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... being certain to triumph over might wedded to wrong. Publicists pitied the Teutons in anticipation of the fate that was fast overtaking them. Paeans of victory resounded, allaying the apprehensions and numbing the energies of the leagued nations. The German, it was asseverated, had shot his bolt and was at bay. Russia had laid siege to Cracow, and would shortly occupy that city as she had occupied Lemberg. The Tsar's troops might then be expected to push on to Berlin, and to reach ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... wilder and more daring flights. She determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them. Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... formless winter clouds, without falling in any rain. Then she realised that she was very tired. She wrapped herself in a rug and lay down on the couch to rest. And rest came as it comes after a sleepless night, not in sleep deep and restorative, but in a gentle numbing of the brain. She woke out of her stupor refreshed. The cloud had rolled away, and she could work again. She sat down to the ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... dream of nothing else. His wrath against judge and jury, and the rest of them—though if he could have slain them all with a word he would have uttered it—was slight compared with the vehemence of his fury against those three at Gethin. Rage possessed him wholly, and, though without numbing him to the painful sense of his miserable doom, rendered him almost unconscious of what was going ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... pageant or a play to them themselves that were having their first taste of war. Though I gave and took some knocks as the others did, and shouted as they shouted, I had at the time no fear, not because of my valor, but because of a sudden numbing of my wits, which left me with no intelligence to do otherwise than charge and shout and lay ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... frugality, and gathers them before they are ripe, throwing down the shrivelled and unfilled, that the boys may not annoy him with stones and sticks. In winter he is the happiest of all the woodland family. He does not yield to the drowsy, numbing influence of the cold, nor to the depression of a season of scanty fare, but bounds along from tree to tree, inspired by the subtle spirit of winter and revelling in the joy of ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... he got his breath again; and now began to see his own misfortune. Yet not all at once to realize it, so sudden and numbing was the stroke. He staggered on, but scarce feeling or caring whither he was going; and every now and then he stopped, and his arms fell and his head sank on his chest, and he stood motionless: then he said to himself, "Can this thing be? this must be a dream. 'Tis scarce five minutes ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... stream of years encrust her With a numbing mail of stone, Till her laugh lose half its lustre, And her truth forswear its tone, And she see God's might and mercy darkly through ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... fain have selected his pleasures; but by dint of using his eyes, thinking and musing, a fever began to possess him, caused perhaps by the gnawing pain of hunger. The spectacle of so much existence, individual or national, to which these pledges bore witness, ended by numbing his senses—the purpose with which he entered the shop was fulfilled. He had left the real behind, and had climbed gradually up to an ideal world; he had attained to the enchanted palace of ecstasy, whence the universe appeared to him by fragments and in shapes ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... lad a sharp blow upon the shoulder, numbing it. Behind him the lad heard rocks and other debris crashing to the bottom. Holding his breath, he waited for the blow he felt sure must come from above and unconsciously his right hand stretched out toward where he ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... stupor that I was in did not hold fast my inner consciousness; being rather a numbing cloud surrounding me and separating me from things external—though not cutting me off from them wholly—while within this wrapping my spirit in a way was awake and free. And the result of my being thus on something less than speaking terms with my own ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... sign of the extreme of desperate poverty. Her shoes were much scuffed, were even slightly down at the heel; her sailor hat would have looked only the worse had it had a fresh ribbon on its crown. This first hint of winter had stung her fast numbing faculties into unusual activity. She was remembering the misery of the cold in Cincinnati—the misery that had driven her into prostitution as a drunken driver's lash makes the frenzied horse rush he cares not where ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Souci carps may live to be a thousand years old and have nothing to tell but that one day is like another; and the history of friend Goody Twoshoes has not much more variety than theirs. Hard labor, hard fare, hard bed, numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger most days. That is her lot. Is it lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank heaven, I am not as one of these?" If I were eighty, would I like to feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing? to have to get up and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my concentration of will. Even then my body was numbing and prickling through the loss of circulation. I directed my will to the little toe of my right foot, and I willed that toe to cease to be alive in my consciousness. I willed that toe to die—to die so far as I, its lord, and a different thing entirely from ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Anatole had always been a magnet that drew me to Brinkley Court with my tongue hanging out. Many of my happiest moments had been those which I had spent champing this great man's roasts and ragouts, and the prospect of being barred from digging into them in the future was a numbing one. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the invisible blight of sleep, like the greater numbing that once fell on the hosts of Sennacherib, enfolded all opposition. All who would have stood against the Legion, simply sighed once, perhaps spoke a few disjointed ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... of animals, we find some curious facts having relation to this power. The electrical eel, for instance, has the faculty of overcoming and numbing his prey by this means. And among the Arabs, according to Gerard, the French lion-killer, whoever inhales the breath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... whistle draws back the life it has given. I return to my job. My shoulders are beginning to ache. My hands are stiff, my thumbs almost blistered. The enthusiasm I had felt is giving way to a numbing weariness. I look at my companions now in amazement. How can they keep on so steadily, so swiftly? Cases are emptied and refilled; bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled away; jars are washed, wiped and loaded, and still there ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... degenerating effects upon even those who recover from its attacks have been still more injurious. It has been held by careful students of tropical disease and conditions that no small part of that singular apathy and indifference which steal over the mind and body of the white colonist in the tropics, numbing even his moral sense, and alternating with furious outbursts of what the French have termed "tropical wrath," characterized by unnatural cruelty and abnormal disregard for the rights of others, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... taken the only way.' She looked at her friend with a fresh appeal in her eyes. But his were wearing their new cold look. She seemed to nerve herself to meet some numbing danger of cowardice. 'The old rule used to be patience—with no matter what wrong. The new feeling is: shame on any one who weakly suffers wrong! Isn't it too cheap an idea of morals that women should take credit for the enduring that keeps the wrong alive? You won't say women have no stake ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... men. 'Twas terrible! Morning or evening, waking or asleep, I had no peace. Sighs, groans, and standing tears, Counted my moments through the blessed day. And then to this there was a dull, strange ache Forever sleeping in my breast,—a numbing pain, That would not for an instant be forgot. O! but I loved him so, that very feeling Became intolerable. And I believed This false Giuseppe, too, for all the sneers, The shrugs and glances, of my intimates. They slandered me and him, yet I believed. He was a noble, and his love to ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... forward, and before I could recover from the first numbing shock of surprise was peering intently ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... faint, sweet, overpowering perfume were a kind of anodyne, that was mercifully, during those early days, lulling her senses into lethargy. To the end of her days the scent of the white lily would bring back to her the feeling of actually living again through that first time of numbing grief. How many hours, how many days and nights she and her father had lived within that quiet sanctuary they could not have told—lived in the dark stillness, with one room, the stillest of all, containing the beloved something strangely ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... felt aggrieved. An arrow had burst to pieces unaccountably in his bow, numbing his arm and wounding him on the chin, and now he was outpaced at his own game of cold silence. He grew angry and dug David in the ribs ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... countenance, a joyless life found silent history. She felt that her life was passing rapidly, unimproved, and aimless; she knew that her years, instead of being fragrant with the mellow fruitage of good deeds, were tedious and joyless, and that the gaunt, numbing hand of ennui was closing upon her. The elasticity of spirits, the buoyancy of youth had given place to a species of stoical mute apathy; a mental and moral paralysis was stealing ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that at one junction, close to London, the trains pass for some hours at the rate of two in five minutes. Consider how that service is done by the myriads of men employed, and this in all seasons and weathers in overwhelming heat, in numbing cold, in blinding storm, in midnight darkness. Is not this an army pretty well disciplined, though its object is not bloodshed? If we see masses full of practical energy and good sense, but wanting ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... in her place rigid—half frozen with a cold, numbing fear. He had sent for her, then, only to mock her. She had failed! They were not even to have the money! Speech was ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pall over the miserable shacks huddled along the dead stream. It was the dull, hopeless, numbing terror of the victim who awaits the blow from the lion's paw in the arena. Weeping wives and mothers, clasping their little ones to them, knelt upon the frozen ground and crossed themselves. Young men drew their newly-wed mates to their ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... sluttikin! YES, MIGHTY LIKE INDEED, IS NOT IT?(18) Pisshh, do not talk of writing or reading till your eyes are well, and long well; only I would have Dingley read sometimes to you, that you may not lose the desire of it. God be thanked, that the ugly numbing is gone! Pray use exercise when you go to town. What game is that ombra which Dr. Elwood(19) and you play at? is it the Spanish game ombre? Your card-purse? you a card-purse! you a fiddlestick. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... it came in the spirit of the Monks of Thelema. But his father's reception of the news of last night's escapade and the few words he had said had given him pause. Life had taken on of a sudden a less simple aspect. Dimly, for he was not accustomed to thinking along these lines, he perceived the numbing truth that we human beings are merely as many pieces in a jig-saw puzzle and that our every movement affects the fortunes of some other piece. Just so, faintly at first and taking shape by degrees, must the germ of civic spirit have come to Prehistoric Man. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... suffocatingly full of a thousand flying, disconnected pictures. The talk with Agnes had changed her mood. The dull, leaden weight of that numbing burden of inarticulate pain was broken into innumerable fragments. For a time, before she could collect herself to self-control, her thoughts whirled and roared in her head like a machine disconnected from its work, racing furiously till it ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... away together, and from Paris Richard wrote and broke to the girl who loved him, and had been his betrothed wife, the common, vulgar, horrible little truth. Bridget-Mary had been deceived by both of them from the very beginning. Estimate the numbing, overwhelming weight of that blow, delivered by a hand so worshipped, upon so proud a heart. Those who saw her, and should have honoured her great grief with decent reticence, say that she was mad for a while; that she grovelled ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... by the suddenness of the catastrophe that had overtaken them. The horror of Dean Rawson's going; the fearful reality of those "devils from hell" that old Riley had seen—it was all too staggering, too numbing, for easy acceptance. Time was required for the truth to sink in; and through the balance of the night Smithy had ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... it was their great love of bodily exercise, their very revels of literature that had protected them against the numbing influence of their ordinary surroundings. They never entered a cafe, they had a horror of the streets, even pretending to moult in them like caged eagles, whereas their schoolfellows were already rubbing their elbows over the small marble ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... eleven-inch hand. "I mistrusted 'twould do you sights o' good; an' this shows I weren't mistook in my jedgments." A smothered chuckle on deck caught his ear. "I am very seldom mistook in my jedgments." The eleven-inch hand closed on Harvey's, numbing it to the elbow. "We'll put a little more gristle to that 'fore we've done with you, young feller; an' I don't think any worse of ye fer anythin' the's gone by. You wasn't fairly responsible. Go right abaout your business an' you ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... Evelina walked among them, her face unveiled. Golden masses of bloom were spread at her feet, starred here and there by stately blossoms as white as the blown snow. Her ragged garments touched the silken petals, her worn shoes crushed them, bud and blossom alike. Always, the numbing, sleepy odour came from the field. Dew was on the petals of the flowers; their deep cups gathered it and held it, never to be surrendered, since the dew of the poppies ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... of Tommy's doing. He had invited friends aboard for luncheon, and was now daring one of them to play this joke. But my glance turned to the room, to its equipment and toilette articles which were large and curiously shaped, and the numbing truth crept into my brain that the stupid boatman had put me on the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... days passed, each filled with a sort of numbing dread. Sally thought of the business, of her future, of Toby—from whom she had received several letter reflecting his moods of ferociousness and resentment,—and of the bonds which kept her tied to the house. She knew during all ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... part in it for the first time defies expression. A peculiar sensation creeps annoyingly slowly along the spinal column, subtly affecting every member of the body. There's a gripping of the heart and a numbing of the brain, and the tongue persistently cleaves to the roof of the mouth, which seems as dry as powdered chalk. A choking sensation accompanies every effort to cough. You may be in the stepping-off trench or lying face-down ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... the ground in front of the Ducal Palace—dead. With a loud wail I threw myself upon the corpse. The people came running round us, but as soon as the dreaded cry 'The pestilence! the pestilence!' was heard, they scattered and flew apart in terror. At the same moment I was seized by a dull numbing pain, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and disease were inseparable, subdue the first and the latter ceased to exist as an active ill, and a dexterously wielded hypodermic needle left behind him a trail of narcotized and relieved sufferers. Bottles of patent medicines, exhilarating or numbing as the purchaser might require, lined the shelves ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... raised instantly into an axiom of life. The community, in that case, becomes itself the unit, the indivisible atom of existence. Socialism, then communism, then nihilism, follow in inevitable sequence. That even the Far Oriental, with all his numbing impersonality, has not touched this goal may at least suggest that individuality ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... the mischievous principle of fees by results has disappeared for ever from the National Schools, it still clings to Intermediate Education, numbing and constricting, like some remorseless ivy limb, the growth and free exercise of the central stem and its branches, and preventing the natural sap from rising and vitalising the whole. It is not as though ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... followed hers to the ground and he saw a red stain creeping from Tenney's boot into the snow. Tenney also glanced at it indifferently. It was true that, although the cold was growing anguish to a numbing wound, he was hardly aware of it as a pain that could be remedied. This was only one misery ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... As Science, Freedom, Truth, arose, And, shaking off their numbing spell, Closed in stern conflict with their foes: And onward still, with unbowed head, Faith's dauntless legions held their way, Marking with heaps of martyred dead The pathway that ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... stunts just often enough in front of the right audience to keep his disability checks coming in, while managing to act sane enough to be allowed to live comfortably at home instead of in the hospital. By keeping to my program he could stay off mind-numbing psychotropic medication if he kept up his megavitamins and minerals. This compromise was tolerable from his point of view, because there were no side effects like ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... Winged by the mystic spell, And, hurled a hundred leagues away, In ocean's flood he fell. Then Rama, when he saw the foe Convulsed and mad with pain 'Neath the chill-pointed weapon's blow, To Lakshman spoke again:— "See, Lakshman, see! this mortal dart That strikes a numbing chill, Hath struck him senseless with the smart, But left him breathing still. But these who love the evil way And drink the blood they spill, Rejoicing holy rites to stay, Fierce plagues, my hand shall kill." ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... strain, the cessation of the anxiety that had become a part of her very being, was more intolerable than the sense of desolation itself. It lay upon her like a physical, crushing weight, this absence of care, numbing all her faculties. She felt that the worst had happened to her, the ultimate blow had fallen, and she cared ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... of toil. We had to climb up the shoulder of the hill, now among tremendous rocks, now through water unfrozen, now upon wind-swept ice, but the snow—the snow—the heartless snow was our constant companion. It stood in walls before, it lay in ramparts round us, it wearied the eye to a most numbing pain. Unlucky were they who wore trews, for the same clung damply to knee and haunch and froze, while the stinging sleet might flay the naked limb till the blood rose among the felt of the kilted, but the suppleness of the joints ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... sorrowful thoughts induced had the effect of numbing his keen, perceptive faculties, so that the advancing savages were almost upon him before he became aware that he was no longer alone upon ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the willows. Looking upward, he saw the shadowy figures of the men on the bluff. He realized they ought to see him, feared that they would. But he kept on, cautiously, noiselessly, with a heart-numbing slowness. From time to time his elbow made a little gurgle and splash in the water. Try as he might, he could not prevent this. It got to be like the hollow roar of a rapid filling his ears with mocking sound. There was a perceptible current ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... To toil all day in the bow or stern of a boat in the scorching heat of the pitiless sun, or walk over blistering rock and dazzling sand; to sleep at night inside a square of good British bayonets, chilled by the numbing wind from the north; to rise at the bugle-call and go at it again—that was the unvarying programme. Cataract and sand plain succeeded cataract and sand plain with such deadly monotony, that all sense of time, place, and progress was blotted out. They seemed stationary in an ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... particularly &c adj.; in particular, in propria persona [Lat.]; ad hominem [Lat.]; for my part. each, apiece, one by one, one at a time; severally, respectively, each to each; seriatim, in detail, in great detail, in excruciating detail, in mind-numbing detail; bit by bit; pro hac vice [Lat.], pro re nata [Lat.]. namely, that is to say, for example, id est, exemplia gratia [Lat.], e.g., i.e., videlicet, viz.; to wit. Phr. le style est l'homme ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to her since that night he had lost faith in her. His voice seemed harsh; it fell upon her, numbing her senses. Her body went cold as if a ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... to the boat just in time, for I could not have held on much longer. The cold was numbing me, and if I stopped swimming I must have sunk with the weight of mail. None of our old summer tricks of floating and the like were of any use with that weight on me. The arrows were coming thickly by that time, and I was glad to get to the far side of the boat and rest ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... or mind, or who lack nervous, mental, and physical stamina, must sink down, sometimes rapidly, sometimes step by step, to the bottom. Accident, by disabling an efficient worker, will make him inefficient, and down he must go. And the worker who becomes aged, with failing energy and numbing brain, must begin the frightful descent which knows no stopping-place short of ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... minutes passed without reaction, they glanced at each other in consternation. Brown and Martin raced up the ramp while the others waited. Within a few minutes the tubes began to fire and warmth slowly drove back the numbing cold. ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... rose the long abysmal wailing of a populace just finding its voice of fear after a stunning, numbing catastrophe. ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... no perfect characters. Even his good women, such as Helen and Laura Pendennis, are capable of cruel injustice toward less fortunate sisters, like little Fanny; and Amelia Sedley is led, by blind feminine instinct, to snub and tyrannize over poor Dobbin. The shabby miseries of life, the numbing and belittling influences of failure and poverty upon the most generous natures, are the tragic themes which Thackeray handles by preference. He has been called a cynic, but the boyish playfulness of his humor and his kindly spirit are incompatible with cynicism. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... these hapless creatures small To sweet seeds that the withered grasses hold?— The little children of men go hungry all, And stiffen and cry with numbing cold. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... were numbing, and he must have fallen asleep soon after, for when he awoke it seemed to him that he had been asleep a long time, several hours at least, so many things had happened or seemed to have happened; but as he recovered his mind all the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... an inexplicable feeling of discomfort seized me. It seemed to me as if some unknown force were numbing and stopping me, were preventing me from going farther and were calling me back. I felt that painful wish to return which oppresses you when you have left a beloved invalid at home, and when you are seized by a presentiment that he ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... a country he had never visited, but hoped to; I responding as well as I could, striving to meet his mood, acquit myself like a man, draw zest instead of humiliation from the irony of our position, but scarcely able to make headway against a numbing sense of defeat and incapacity. A queer thought was haunting me, too, that such skill and judgement as I possessed was slipping from me as we left the land and faced again the rigours of this exacting sea. Davies, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... peril he has found; that He will not let him be crushed he believes. Shadowed and modest hopes are the brightest we can venture to cherish. The protection which we have is protection in, and not protection from, strife and danger. It is a filter which lets the icy cold water of sorrow drop numbing upon us, but keeps back the poison that was in it. We have to fight, but He will fight with us; to sorrow, but not alone nor without hope; to pass through many a peril, but we shall get through them. Deliverance, which implies ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... when his brain began to throw off the numbing stupor, he comprehended the terrible fact. The crime gave him no satisfaction; it never occurred to him that he was a free man now. On the contrary, a dull remorse stirred within him. He remembered his wife as she had been five years before, when she had loved him with as much sincerity as ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... colder and more drearily about her life. She took no interest in the household, but left everything to the management of Agnes Barker. The very presence of the young woman was oppressive to her, yet so drearily had her high spirit yielded itself to the one numbing thought of James Harrington's absence, that she had no power even to repel this repulsion, much ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Charing Cross. "Can these smudgy, dirty, evil-smelling creatures compose the dominant race?" is the thought of even the most "loyal" Indian as he moves among the crowd of English workpeople. And it is only the numbing power of habit that silences the question in ourselves. Cheap as English clothing is, second-hand it is cheaper still, and I suppose that out of that quarter-million people on the Heath every fine Bank Holiday hardly one per cent. wears clothes that no one has ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... fine weather, the rain and cold came accompanied by famine, by drubbings before the empty cupboard, and by dinner-hours with nothing to eat in the little Siberia of their larder. Villainous December brought numbing freezing spells and the black misery ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... stopped short. He had wondered at that curiously sluggish feeling in his mind. Now, with a start he had trouble concealing, he suddenly realized a mind-numbing fact! ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... upon life. Even the best had begun to pall, the sameness of it had commenced its fatal work. More than once lately a touch of that heart languor, which is the fruit of surfeit, had startled her by its numbing and depressing effect. Here at last was a new type—a man with clean pages before him—young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for his awful clothes he was well enough to look upon, he had no affectations, his instincts were apparently ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... numbing sensation stole down my spine and made my legs grow suddenly weak. Beads of perspiration gathered on my forehead as I slowly rose to my feet and ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... Silvertip and the guard had fled into the woods, frightened by the appalling moan which they believed sounded their death-knell. And Joe believed he might have fled himself had he been free. What could have caused that sound? He fought off the numbing chill that once again began to creep over him. He was wide-awake now; his head was clear, and he resolved to retain his senses. He told himself there could be nothing supernatural in that wind, or wail, or whatever it was, which had risen murmuring ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... came also the revival of activity in traffic and commerce, and in all the busy intercourse of daily life. A numbing load was taken off each heart and brain, and once more men bought and sold, and formed their plans fleely, as had been done before the dire Carthaginians came into Italy. Hannibal was, certainly, still in the land; but all felt that his power to destroy was broken, and that the crisis of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... see that my lord is in danger of his life?" she cried. "Nay, I forgot, thou hast no vision. Take it now from me and look again;" and laying her hand, from which a strange, numbing current seemed to flow, upon my head, ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... the aged lion steals The instinct of approaching death, Whose numbing grasp he vaguely feels In trembling limbs and labored breath, He shuns the garish light of day, And leaving mate and whelps at play, ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... noticed that aside from their hunting-knives the men of Kro-lu bore no weapons about the village streets. There was an atmosphere of peace and security within that village that I had not hoped to experience within Caspak, and after what I had passed through, it must have cast a numbing spell over my faculties of judgment and reason. I had eaten of the lotus-flower of safety; dangers no longer threatened for ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... time, his head supported on his hand, for he still felt giddy, thinking painfully and earnestly. The numbing effects of the odour he had inhaled testified to its poisonous nature, but no precautions, he reflected, had been taken to ensure its effect; on the contrary, its immediate result was to alarm and warn ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... it. I might insist that the closing lines of 'Ulysses' nobly refute all the numbing ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... his own rooms, and walked without hesitation to the window, which was still open. The fresh air was almost a necessity, for he felt himself being slowly stifled. His knees were shaking, a cold icy horror was numbing his heart and senses. A feeling of nightmare was upon him, as though he had risen unexpectedly from a bed of delirium. There in front of him, a little to the left, was the broad empty street amongst whose shadows she had disappeared. On one side was the Park, ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cattle-barons, had borne hardly on the men huddled in sod-hovel, and birch-log shanty, swept by the winds of heaven at fifty degrees below. They had no thick furs to shelter them, and many had very little food, while on those who came from the cities the cold of the Northwest set its mark, numbing the half-fed body and unhinging the mind. The lean farmers from the Dakotas who had fought with adverse seasons, and the sinewy axe-men from Michigan clearings, bore it with grim patience, but there were here and there a few who failed to stand the strain, and, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... am strongly of opinion that without enthusiasm rubbing is of all occupations the most irksome, except perhaps for the quadrumana (who seem more adapted for this exercise), the most painful for the spine, the most cramping for the thighs, the most numbing for the fingers. It is a profession, Henry, demanding, above every other, enthusiasm in the operator. Now Tom's enthusiasm for rubbing as an art was from ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... back impetuously to stop them, under a hail of bullets from the enemy rallying in the bushes. A sudden numbing pain in his arm made him drop the reins, and he had only time to realise that Sher Singh's pursuing horsemen were on the heels of the fugitives before their rush swept him from the saddle, and he went down into a cruel welter of hoofs. Then ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... its dangers, and its fatigues, had a numbing effect on me. It took me away from any painful reflections which might have arisen in my mind. Besides, it freed me from the immediate tyranny of John. However, after the death of my grandfather, when our band degraded ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... were in vain. Sticks reach farther than fists, and his hands both received stinging blows, one on his right, numbing it for the moment and making him pause to wonder what such an ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... as he swung the weapon that the shrieks had ceased, then smiled grimly in the numbing horror as he realized that Ruth Allaire was beside him. A piece of oak was in her hands, and she was striking with desperate and silent fury ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... disorientation had been caused by that crack on the head he had received when the ship crashed; his exploring fingers found a swollen rawness on his skull. He must have a brain concussion, that would explain his earlier inability to move or think straight. The cold air was numbing his face and he willingly pulled the hairy skin back over ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... no abatement. Across a thousand miles of plain the ice-laden wind swept down upon them with the relentless fury of a hurricane, driving the snow crystals into their faces, buffeting them mercilessly, numbing their bodies, and blinding their eyes. In that awful grip they looked upon Death, but struggled on, as real men must until they fall. Breathing was agony; every step became a torture; fingers grasping the horses' bits grew stiff and deadened by frost; they reeled like drunken men, sightless ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... hale the seyne. Amongst the rest, we got here cavallies, breams, mullets, soles, fiddle-fish, sea eggs, and lobsters; and here, and in no other place, met with that extraordinary fish called the Torpedo, or numbing fish, which is in shape very like the fiddle-fish, and is not to be known from it but by a brown circular spot of about the bigness of a crown-piece near the centre of its back; perhaps its figure will be better understood ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... magazines of nitric stores, Azotic charms and muriatic powers; Hail, with its glassy globes, and brume congeal'd, Rime's fleecy flakes, and storm that heaps the field Strike thro the sullen Stream with numbing force, Obstruct his sluices and impede his course. In vain he strives; his might interior fails; Nor spring's approach, nor earth's whole heat avails; He calls his hoary Sire; old Ocean roars Responsive echoes thro the Shetland shores. He comes, the Father! from his bleak domains, To ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... argue that the numbing fear of his rival's genius and of its influence on his patron to which Shakespeare confessed in the sonnets was more likely to be evoked by the work of George Chapman than by that of any other contemporary poet. But Chapman had produced no conspicuously 'great verse' till he began his translation ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... faint of the starlit sky The gleaming snow-drifts lay wide and high; O'er hill and dell stretched a mantle white, The branches glittered with crystal bright; But the winter wind's keen icy breath Was merciless, numbing and ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... was to see that the night was brilliantly clear, and that there was a gleam of water somewhere down far below on his right, for the stars were reflected from it. But it seemed more restful to lie there waiting, and, cold as he was, it was a dull, numbing cold that was far less painful than trying ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... she was a separate entity in the midst of an unseparated obscurity, that she must go somewhere, she must become something. And she was afraid, troubled. Why, oh why must one grow up, why must one inherit this heavy, numbing responsibility of living an undiscovered life? Out of the nothingness and the undifferentiated mass, to make something of herself! But what? In the obscurity and pathlessness to take a direction! But whither? How take ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... I have never known such intense and numbing fear as that which now descended upon me. Perhaps I may be forgiven it. A more dreadful situation it would be hard to devise. Knowing that I was on the fifth story of a house, bound, helpless, I knew, too, that a second mystic guardian of the slipper was come to accomplish the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... purposely measured and calm, so that they should not be mistaken by our assailants: I have good reason to remember them, for they were the last I ever uttered on American ground as a free agent. They had hardly passed my lips, when a rifle cracked; I felt a dull numbing blow inside my left knee, and a sensation as if hot sealing-wax was trickling there; at the same instant, Falcon dropped under me—without a start or struggle, or sound besides a horrible choking sob—shot ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Brian had just passed the tall, white column disappearing into the street which leads to the Borgo Ogni Santi. Erica turned to begin her new chapter of life heavily handicapped in the race for once more that deadly faintness crept over her, a numbing, stifling pressure, as if Pain in physical form had seized her heart in his cold clasp. But with all her strength she fought against it, forcing herself to count the hateful little bits of paper, and thankful that her father was too much taken up with the arrangement ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... always. As though with malicious intent, the snow swooped down again and the world became an unreal, nightmare world, wherein was nothing save shifting, blinding snowfloury and wind and bitter, numbing cold. ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... inert as though she had received a numbing blow. Miss Leigh rose and came tremblingly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... transcendentalism of terror. The threat of the cannon's mouth is trivial in its effect on the mind in comparison with the menace of a Shadow. It is the pestilence that walketh by night that is intolerable. As for myself, I confess to being pervaded with a nameless and numbing awe during all those weeks. And this feeling appeared to be general in the land. The journals had but one topic; the party organs threw politics to the winds. I heard that on the Stock Exchange, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... to this new home in the West. Riggs would follow her, if he could not accompany her, and to gain his own ends he would stoop to anything. Helen felt the startling realization of being cast upon her own resources, and then a numbing discouragement and loneliness and helplessness. But these feelings did not long persist in the quick pride and flash of her temper. Opportunity knocked at her door and she meant to be at home to it. She would not have been Al Auchincloss's niece if she had faltered. And, when temper was ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... the cold, keen air, picked bits of bark from the edges of the ragged wound where the end of a broken branch had snagged the soft flesh of her face. The wound stung, and she held a handful of snow against it until the pain dulled under the numbing chill. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... death. During this excursion I walked very ill—with more pain, in fact, than I ever remember to have felt—and, even leaning on John Lockhart, could hardly get on. Baad that, vara baad—it might be the severe weather though, and the numbing effect of the sitting in the carriage. Be it what it will, I can't ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... little beyond the unceasing pain in his joints and the leaden heaviness of his limbs. The recollection of that march haunted him like a horrible nightmare long afterwards, when each sensation and incident emerged from the haze of numbing misery. He remembered that he stormed at Charly, who lagged behind now and then in a fit of languid dejection, and that once he fell heavily, and was sensible of a half-conscious regret that he was still capable of going on, when the Indian dragged him ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss |
