"Soundless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hospitality to the big buttress of the church. Another buttress, corresponding with this (the two, between them, sustain the gable of the north transept), is planted in the small cloister, of which the door on the farther side of the little soundless Rue de la Psalette, where nothing seems ever to pass, opens opposite to that of Mademoiselle Gamard. There is a very genial old sacristan, who introduced me to this cloister from the church. It is very small and solitary, and much ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... some one came and took me by the hand. I gazed, but could not see the form that led me, And went unquestioning, I cared not whither. We came into a street I seemed to know, Came to a house that I had seen before. The shutters were all closed; the house was dead. The door went open soundless. We went in, And entered yet again an inner room. The darkness was so dense, I shrank as if From striking on it. The door closed behind. And then I saw that there was something black, Dark in the blackness of the night, heaved up In the middle ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... lock. Unlike the soundless discharge of his special gun in the outer airlessness, the blast of air that came into the waiting chamber was like a hurricane in noise and force, as the room filled in ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... individual life? They had had fears together, just as they had had joys, but all of hers, at least, had been for what equally concerned them. Here of a sudden was a question that concerned him alone, and the soundless explosion of it somehow marked a date. He was on her mind, he was even in a manner on her hands—as a distinct thing, that is, from being, where he had always been, merely deep in her heart and in her life; too ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... more terrible stigma to bear than an accusation of dishonesty, however well authenticated. And even their very manner of expressing legitimate mirth was not the same, for Mrs. Guthrie Brimston laughed aloud, while Evadne's laugh was soundless. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... looking with flaming eyes of rage into his, and added something, but not audibly. Only her lips moved, her teeth chattered, and her eyes rolled—they were soundless words. What could she have said? Timar stared in a dazed way like a sleep-walker, then suddenly raised his head to ask Athalie something. He was alone—only the key grasped in his hand showed that ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... eye might trace its curve and assign to each separate star its degree of magnitude. Beyond the harbour's mouth the riding-lights of the Mevagissey fishing fleet ran like a carcanet of faint jewels, marking the unseen horizon of the Channel. The full spring tide, soundless or scarcely lapping along shore, fell back on its ebb, not rapidly as yet, but imperceptibly gathering speed. Below the Town Quay in the dark shadow lay the boats—themselves a shadowy crowd, ghostly, with a glimmer of white paint ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... there is an undeniable exhilaration in conflict. Corrie puckered his lips to a soundless whistle, settled back in his seat, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... him sprang the rampart of the mountains, magnificently drawn against the eastern sky. To either hand lay the fallow fields, rolled the brown hills, rose the shadowy bulk of forest trees, showed the green of winter wheat. The evening was cold, but without wind and soundless. The birds had flown south, the cattle were stalled, the sheep folded. There was only the earth, field and hill and mountain, the up and down of a narrow road, and the glimmer of a distant stream. The sunset had been red, and it left a colour that ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... door opened and Florimel glided in, the painter sprang to his feet to welcome her, and she flew softly, soundless as a moth, into his arms; for the study being large and full of things, she was not aware of the presence of Malcolm. From behind a picture on an easel, he saw them meet, but shrinking from being an open witness to their secret, and ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... mountain-hen, calling her scattered young together, and now and then the shrill response of a snipe to the cry of its lonely mate, fell upon the summer night, not as an interruption, but as an outgrowth of the very silence. Augusta stole with soundless tread through the transparent gloom which lingered under those huge black crowns, and Arnfinn followed impatiently after. Suddenly she motioned to him to stand still, and herself bent forward in an attitude of surprise and eager observation. On the ground, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... morning of August 10th, Jane, while waiting in the court for Lassiter, heard a clear, ringing report of a rifle. It came from the grove, somewhere toward the corrals. Jane glanced out in alarm. The day was dull, windless, soundless. The leaves of the cottonwoods drooped, as if they had foretold the doom of Withersteen House and were now ready to die and drop and decay. Never had Jane seen such shade. She pondered on the meaning of the report. Revolver shots had of late cracked from different ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... flowers such as can be bought in the street generally diffused a slight scent through the air, making another peculiarity which had its effect on Sidney's imagination. When Jane moved about, it was with a soundless step; if she placed a chair or arranged things on the table, it was as if with careful avoidance of the least noise. When his thoughts turned hitherwards, Sidney always pictured the old man sitting ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... at her stern was the only sound in the world. The shore lay plunged in the silence of the deeper slumber. I watched the town recede still and soundless in the hot night, till the abrupt hail, "Steam-launch, ahoy!" made me spin round face forward. We were close to a white ghostly steamer. Lights shone on her decks, in her portholes. And the same ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... haze, with purple bases melting into the horizon; southward were other mountains, equally distant and mysterious; northward—so far away that they blurred in the vision—were still other mountains. Intervening on all sides was the stretching, soundless, aching void of desolation, carrying to the rider its lurking threat of death, the promise ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... been borne irresistibly upward on the human tide, there was one overpowering moment of fear and clamor, in which the cry of "The Prophet! The Prophet!" dominated her consciousness; then, to her, the world became suddenly and mercifully sightless, soundless, and void. ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... to make me cross to his threshold and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds—a figure prowling for a sight, the visitor with ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... unknown; yet she murmured, or seemed to murmur—for there was no sound—a complaint of Lord Ormont. And she, or some soundless mouth of woman, said he was a splendid military hero, a chivalrous man, a man of inflexible honour; but had no understanding of how to treat a woman, or belief in her having equal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... O, yes, and soundless too; For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony, And very wisely ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... like that of Black Friday the sluice-gates of passion open. Cloaked in the masquerade of genuine distrust, came forth whispers whose only origin was in ancient enmities, long-treasured spites, the soundless depths of unquenchable malignities. Firms of staunchest reputation felt the rapier-stroke of old angers. The knowledge that certain houses were large holders of particular stocks was the signal of attacks upon the shares. Despite of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... French widower had shaded the grave: of his Elmire or Celestine with a brilliant thicket of roses, amidst which a little tablet rising, bore an equally bright testimony to her countless virtues. Every nation, tribe, and kindred, mourned after its own fashion; and how soundless was the mourning of all! My own tread, though slow and upon smooth-rolled paths, seemed to startle, because it formed the sole break to a silence otherwise total. Not only the winds, but the very fitful, wandering airs, were that afternoon, as by common consent, all fallen ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... laws which rule the timeless changes of events. Out of this colorful world of the senses, science creates a system of abstract concepts, in which the true nature of things is conceived to exist—a world of colorless and soundless atoms, despoiled of all their earthly sensuous qualities. Such is the triumph of thought over perception. Indifferent to change, science casts her anchor in the eternal and unchangeable. Not the change as such but the unchanging form of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... with a momentary smash that was swallowed to silence immediately. Underneath the sulky, heaving water lurked death, silent and sharp, from which the shoals of flying fishes escaped for the moment by soundless, silvery, aimless poising in the blue air, only to fall back exhausted again into the green water and the waiting white jaws. Some of the fishes flopped on board, and were put out of life by the blows of the sailors who dried and stuffed them and sold them afterwards to the passengers. ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... joys of hearth and home and love, Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide, All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above Word or ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the meadows of white poppies were long shadows blue as the blue lagoons of the sky among drifting snow-white moors of cloud. Three white aspens on the pastures were in a still sleep: their tremulous leaves made no rustle, though there was a soundless wavering fall of little dusky shadows, as in the dark water of a pool where birches lean in the yellow hour of the frostfire. Upon the pastures were ewes and lambs sleeping, and yearling kids opened and closed their onyx eyes among the garths ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... tongue and lips, the maiden's dumb; But if by quick and apprehensive look, By motion, sign, and glance, to give each meaning, Express as clothed in language, be term'd speech, She hath that wondrous faculty; for her eyes, Like the bright stars of heaven, can hold discourse, Though it be mute and soundless. —OLD PLAY. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... if death Be visited by stealthy dreams; A vagrant note from soundless themes That ring the comet-paths of space, Seemed vibrant in the windless air That trembled with its presence there. Out beyond the nameless place Where neither fields nor clouds exist, Grey from the background of the mist, I saw three vague forms ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... his queer green eye over his shoulder he sauntered by a devious path out of the dell. Forgetful of thorn and brier, trickery and wantonness, we clambered down after him, out of the moonlight, into a dark, clear alley, soundless and solitary amid these ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... peace, O God Deep as the soundless sea, Which falls like sunshine on the road Of those who trust ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... close to the dark bulks of the houses, resolutely pursuing, and bent on overtaking him. Faster! His footfalls rang hollowly and loud on the moonlit pavement, and in contrast with their rapid thuds he felt it as something peculiarly terrible that the furtive thing behind, slunk after him with soundless feet. Faster, faster! Traversing only the most unfrequented streets, and at that late hour of a cold winter night, he met no one, and with a terrifying consciousness that his pursuer was gaining on him, he desperately strode on. He did not dare to look behind, dreading ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... his pony, making him rear. The sheep plunged ahead, those in front swerving as they came to the canon's brink. The crowding mass behind forced them on. Fadeaway reined up. A great gray wave rolled over the cliff and disappeared into the soundless chasm. A thousand feet below lay the mangled carcasses of some five hundred sheep and lambs. A scattered few of the band had turned and were trotting aimlessly along the edge of the mesa. They separated as the rider swept up. One terror-stricken lamb, bleating piteously, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... pack—and in defending him with the devotion of the dog, he had ripped with the peculiar flank-slash that is the death thrust of the wolf. Later, in the tent, he had fawned dog-like upon his master—but, wolf-like, the fawning had been soundless. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... was considerably above the medium height, and added to the sense of grandeur conveyed by her presence. Her carriage was erect to the verge of stiffness, and her step too firm to be quite soundless. Advancing years had not produced any unseemly embonpoint, nor had her figure fallen into the opposite extreme, and sharpened into meagre angularity; its outline retained sufficient roundness not to lose the curves ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... intentioned adult intruder to even the most hypocritically polite child at such a moment. A sense of duty, however, impelled him to step beyond the schoolhouse, where to his astonishment he found the adjacent woods empty and soundless. He was relieved, however, after penetrating its recesses, to hear the distant sound of small applause and the unmistakable choking gasps of Johnny Stidger's pocket accordion. Following the sound he came at last upon a little hollow among the sycamores, where the children ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... full and slumbery Fal seemed nearly a soundless thing. But all the real river-noises were there; the birds were singing endlessly in the groves; the gulls with their hoarse language were flying seawards from the mud-flats of Truro; the water was gently lapping the sides of the boat; and voices could be heard from the distances higher up and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... he carried nearer to the window and read its contents hurriedly; a soundless whistle relieved his emotions when he had finished its perusal. He was ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the black and silent river, Cold, cold and soundless ever; But there our feet were stayed—unloosed our clasping fond, And he has ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... him seemed the most perfect of its kind. His will was its will, his thought was its impulse, his breath was the breath of its existence. He felt all this confusedly, without ever shaping this feeling into the soundless formulas of thought. To him she was unique and dear, this brig of three hundred and fourteen tons ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... hall, where people might speak to her, she took the short cut through the sun-pavilion, which would bring her nearer to the stairs. But on throwing open the door she stood still on the threshold with a little soundless gasp. "Oh!" ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... preconcerted arrangement they divided into two parties, and keeping within the deepest patches of shadow, bore down upon the nearest pickets with a fierce, soundless rush,—the most disconcerting form of attack to sleepy sentries in the small hours, when life and courage are at their lowest ebb. But the picket sentries happened to be Sikhs; and they are ill men to tackle at close quarters or to spring ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Being soundless, and devoid of perfume, the Desert's message reached him through two senses only—sight and touch; chiefly, of course, the former. Its invasion was concentrated through the eyes. And vision, thus uncorrected, went what pace it pleased. The Desert played with him. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... watercourse with margin of cottonwoods or willow thickets flowed here to stripe the dingy, yellow world with interrupting green, nor were cattle to be seen dotting the distance, nor moving objects at all, nor any bird in the soundless air. The last gate was shut by the Virginian, who looked back at the pleasant trees of the ranch, and then followed on in single file across the alkali of No ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... the captain surmised his soundless words. They were insults. It was the insult of the man of the superior hierarchy to his faithless servant; the pride of the noble official who accuses himself for having trusted in the loyalty ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... something about it all—about the bluish silvery half-light, the spotless floors and walls, the abnormally noiseless maid in her flamboyant cap and apron—that arrested attention and fixed it. The soundless brightness of the house was as conspicuous as the contrast between the maid's black gown and her snow-white cuffs. There was nothing subdued about anything, although the long, silvery blue curtains were drawn over ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the sentinels walking back and forth, gun on shoulder, and waiting until they were farthest apart, Prescott touched the woman on the arm. "Now is our time," he said, and they slid with soundless footsteps between the sentinels and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the remains of the night with an iron crutch. The half-extinguished Cafe Kloesschen, a gleaming fragment, lay still in the soundless morning. In the background sat the last customer. Kuno Kohn had let his head sink back on his trembling hump. The scrawny fingers of his hand covered his forehead and face. His whole body cried ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... the soft sandy-soil received and deadened the impact of her hoofs. Off she flew through the grey of the morning, soundless ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... the pillows, breathing heavily, the perfect picture of exhaustion. Jarvis came near on soundless feet and applied a wet cloth ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... more at the river-side, once more bending over her with starting eyes, once more the attentive ear listening for the soundless breath. No sound! not even a sigh! Oh! what would he have given for her shriek of anguish! No change had occurred in her position, but the lower part of her face had fallen; and there was a general ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... eyes behind the mask, his delicate, thin lips grew tense in what seemed to be a smile—or a soundless ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... smiled and followed her guide obediently. And Spargo said nothing, marching stolidly along with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, his fingers playing soundless tunes outside, until he had installed himself and his companion in a quiet nook in the old tea-house he had told her of, and had given an order for tea and hot tea-cakes to a waitress who evidently knew him. Then he ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... Casa Guidi, to sit in our own chairs and sleep in our own beds; and here we shall stay as late perhaps as March, if we don't re-let our house before. Then we go to Rome and Naples. You can't think how we have caught up our ancient traditions just where we left them, and relapsed into our former soundless, stirless hermit life. Robert has not passed an evening from home since we came—just as if we had never known Paris. People come sometimes to have tea and talk with us, but that's all; a few intelligent and interesting persons sometimes, such as Mr. Tennyson ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Lincoln's voice was swept away and drowned, and a rash of people followed on the heels of the tumult. These intruders came towards him and Lincoln gesticulating. The voices without explained their soundless lips. "Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!" was the burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... in some dreamy twilight he met, through his own tears, the fixed eyes of those shadows of the great dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his soul; or fancied that their lips moved in dread reproof or soundless exhortation? And if but for one out of many this were true—if yet, in a few, you could be sure that such influence had indeed changed their thoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and reckless youth, who would have cast away his ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... It was only a coasting vessel, which had come rather close to the shore, and was sailing swiftly by, before the freshening breeze; but Its broad, white sails, with the moonlight upon them, and its gliding, soundless motion, gave it an unearthly effect, as of a phantom of light floating between the dark sea and sky, or a great white-winged spirit sweeping past. When it had vanished into the distance and darkness, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... in the middle of the glade, with his elders as a wall around him. Henry smiled. He had foreseen the result, and it was wholly to his liking. He passed around the opening, not wishing to disturb the animals, and went northward, always on soundless feet. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... It hung soundless and silent except for a soft roar, a scant thousand feet in the air. And its huge bulk was dwarfing the giant pines, the rounded buildings; it threw the men's familiar surroundings into a new ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... mountains! 'Silence—silence!' now is aye your soundless voice, Lifted in an awful patience o'er the world's uproarious noise; O'er its jarrings and its greetings—o'er its loving and its hate— Silence! Bare thy brows all dumbly to the snows of ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... and year after year they climbed these steeps seeking peace and help, pinning their hopes to burning joss stick and tinkling bell and mystic words, and in Western lands were other pilgrims entangled likewise in the mazes of dogma and form. But here among the stars, in the empty, soundless space of the white night, the gods that man has created seemed to vanish, and there stood out clear the hope that when ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... hath a moon, Staining all the cloudy white; Sinking with a soundless tune Deep into the spirit's night. Then a morning clear and soft, Amber on the purple hills; Warm high day of summer, oft Cooled by ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... And the enjoying of the Spring Fades as does its blossoming: Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too Blushing through the mist and dew Cloys with tasting: What do then? Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear faggot blazes bright, Spirit of a winter's night; When the soundless earth is muffled, And the caked snow is shuffled From the ploughboy's heavy shoon; When the Night doth meet the Noon In dark conspiracy To banish Even from her sky. —Sit thee there, and send abroad ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... word and sweet good-night on the door-step Lingered long in Evangeline's heart, and filled it with gladness. Carefully then were covered the embers that glowed on the hearth-stone, And on the oaken stairs resounded the tread of the farmer. Soon with a soundless step the foot of Evangeline followed. Up the staircase moved a luminous space in the darkness, Lighted less by the lamp than the shining face of the maiden. Silent she passed through the hall, and entered the door of her chamber. Simple ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... of soundless music Through the vision of the seer, More of feeling than of hearing, Of the heart than of the ear, She knew the droning pibroch, She knew the Campbell's call "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... soon! The great adventure was upon them before he had realized. The reconnaissance—the flashes—and then Chet had gone! And now he was alone in a silent ship that rested quietly in this soundless world. The silence was heavy upon him; it seemed pressing in with actual weight to bear him down. It was shattered at the last by the faintest ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... into her own bed with a soundless sigh of exhaustion. She did not blow out the candle, but lay staring at it. Her dream was annihilated. She foresaw an interminable, weary and futile future in and about Moze, and her mother always indisposed, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... safely in the circle of Air Guardsmen. There was a small hospital plane standing beside it in a moment, and as Arcot's ship released it, and then hung motionless, soundless above it, the people watched it in wonder and excitement. They wanted to see Arcot perform; they clamored to see the wonderful powers of this ship in operation. Air Guardsmen who had witnessed the flying game of tag ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... solemn curve of the Shadow touched the great disk. No one spoke: they stood—a handful of little human creatures, staring up into immensity; specks of consciousness on a whirling ball that was rushing forever into the void, and, as it rushed, its shadow, sweeping soundless through the emptiness of Space, touched the watching Moon ... and the broad plaque, silver gilt, lessened—lessened. To half. To a quarter. To a glistening line. Then ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the horror of the great empty space opened up between him and Nicky, deep and still and soundless, but for the two words: ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... Viewless—soundless—stalks the spectre Thro' the city chill and pale, Which like bride, this morn, had decked her For the advent of that sail. Oft by Bergen women, mourning, Shall the dismal tale be told, Of that lost ship home returning, With "THE ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... above, Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled and sustained of love. As a sea-mew's love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden for rapture's sake Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight of the soundless lake: As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought's space more Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of the darkness from shore to shore. Might life be as this ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... his outworks. Once more he roused himself, heard the storm raving on—over buried graves and curtained beds, heedless of human heeding—fell a-listening to its shriek-broken roar, and so into a soundless and dreamless sleep. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... most silent woman I ever met. She could pass a whole day without uttering a word, and did not seem to suffer any ennui from her silence. In the house she wore always, like the other inhabitants of the village, men and women, soundless felt socks, which slipped readily into the wooden sabots used for walking out-of-doors. I was beginning to learn to walk in sabots myself, for the time was drawing rapidly near when otherwise I should ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... inward fright seized her; the curious soundless crash of her own senses followed—as though all within had ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the shining, retreating container. It exploded with a monstrous, soundless, violence. It had been a rocket's war head. There could have been only one reason for it to be introduced into a Plumie ship. Baird ceased to be shaky. ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... converse in the wastes, for there is something about the silence of the wilderness which discourages speech. And no land is so grimly silent, so hushed and soundless, as the frozen North. For days they marched through desolation, without glimpse of human habitation, without sight of track or trail, without sound of a human voice to break the monotony. There was no game in the country, with the exception of an occasional bird or rabbit, nothing ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... charm. In their sultry calm, their love of heat, I read once more the burning page Of nature under cloudless skies. O pitiless and splendid land! Mine eyelids close, my lips are dry By force of thy hot floods of light. Soundless as oil the wind flows by, Mine aching ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... constituted everything that made life worth living. But these emotions had passed away. What evolvement of civilization could equal the beauty of a dew-scented, sun-sparkling prairie morning, or the grandeur of a soundless, star-dotted prairie night, wherein the very limitlessness of things, their immensity, was a never ending source of wonder? Verily, all changes and conditions of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... both stood, and not a word to say, By silence overborne, until at last The young man breathed, "Look how the end of day Falls heavily, as though the earth were cast Into a shapeless soundless pit, where ray Of heavenly light never the verge has past. Yet will the late moon's light anon shine here, And then gray light, and then the sun's ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... soundless valley Thunders, and dark is here; And the wind blows, and the light goes, And the night is full ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... long, soundless nights that had the cold stillness of infinite space, Bruce always had the sensation of being the only person in the universe. He felt alone upon the planet. Facts became hazy myths, truths merely hallucinations, nothing seemed real, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... tender note which he had found in the hut on the island? But he had no time for reflection; the pair were moving rapidly toward the mansion—and Wagner unhesitatingly followed, his footsteps being soundless on the damp soil of the borders of flowers, and his form being concealed by the shade of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Just behind them came Ned and Will. They went very slowly in order to keep the horses' feet from making any sound that listening Mexican sentinels might hear. They were fortunate in the sand, which was fine and soundless like a carpet. Ned thought that the Mexicans would not make any attempt upon the grove until late at night, and then only with skirmishers and snipers. Or they might not make any attempt at all, ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his way back through the underbrush until he was again in sight of the cross-roads. Here, concealed behind a tree, he waited patiently some five or ten minutes. At the end of that time, Chamberlain's mild and kindly face lighted up with unholy joy. He opened his mouth and emitted a soundless "haw-haw." ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the change. Beneath him, in a space between the quays bridged by the gangway, a number of rowboats, a putative score, lay moored for the night and gently rubbing against each other with the soundless lift and fall of the river. For all that Kirkwood could determine to the contrary, the lot lay at the mercy of the public; nowhere about was he able to discern a figure ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... ominous and gravely impressive in this interminable line of dark figures, close-pressed, soundless; a crowd, yet absolutely still; a close-packed, silent file, waiting, waiting in the vast deserted night-ridden street; waiting without a word, without a movement, there under the night and under the slow-moving mists ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... the detective's hand, and while his blood-shot eyes vainly sought to master the few lines there written, Mr. Poindexter attracted the attention of Mr. Gryce, and, fixing him with his eye, formed his lips with three soundless words: ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... small change from personally conducted parties. But when the move was made—that move which carried us some mile and a half down the stream to be tied up to an altogether muddier and shabbier quay—then indeed the desolation of solitude became our lot. It was a complete and soundless stagnation; for as we had the ship ready for sea to the smallest detail, as the frost was hard and the days short, we were absolutely idle—idle to the point of blushing with shame when the thought struck us that all the time our salaries went on. Young Cole was aggrieved because, as he said, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... think nothing will——" began Major Carstairs, but he got no further, for with the extraordinary aptness of conjunction which we are wont to call coincidence, though another word might more fitly be employed, the door opened almost noiselessly and a hooded figure crept on soundless ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... One Trojan waking yet. As when a wolf, With hunger stung to the heart, comes from the hills, And ravenous for flesh draws nigh the flock Penned in the wide fold, slinking past the men And dogs that watch, all keen to ward the sheep, Then o'er the fold-wall leaps with soundless feet; So stole Odysseus down from the Horse: with him Followed the war-fain lords of Hellas' League, Orderly stepping down the ladders, which Epeius framed for paths of mighty men, For entering and for passing forth the Horse, Who down them now on this side, that ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... girl bent and he caught the pallor of her hands, searching swiftly, and then a muffled clink.... Next moment, a wraith with soundless steps, she was back at his side again, urging him on with her. They passed the stairs; he felt the soft yield of carpet beneath his feet; they passed that recumbent figure and now he heard the rhythm of a sleeper's heavy breath, escaping muffledly from the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... his eyes upon the darkening surface of the river, as it swept down upon him from out the purpling hills. As of old, its mystery held him, the mystery of its ceaseless coming, the mystery of its ceaseless going on and on, until it lost all individual existence in the soundless, boundless sea. To-night, in the apathy which held his senses in subjection, he watched it through the dying twilight, until it ceased to be to him a river, but appeared to him as an embodiment of life itself, coming, coming, coming down to him out of the purpling ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... of the gray dawn, while the house was in utter stillness, and rising at once, rose and dressed herself with soundless haste. It was hard indeed to go and leave James thus in danger, but she had no choice! She held her breath and listened, but all was still. She opened her door softly; not a sound reached her ear as she crept down the stair. She had neither to unlock nor unbolt ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... dare such divine conflict prevail. Night after night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the forehead; the supplicant may cry for mercy with that soundless voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the Invisible. "Spare my beloved," it may implore. "Heal my life's life. Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my whole nature. God of heaven, bend, hear, be clement!" And after this cry and strife ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... laughter came again, bursting out as though it had been suppressed and could be held back no longer. Clear, merry, ringing and completely soundless, it ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... cirro-stratus clouds, the true mares'-tails, flung out across the vault, their ends stretching to the centre of the storm. At the horizon, a wicked, dull glare gave threat of the typhoon's approach. All as yet was soundless, only the far-flung clouds told of the fury which was hurling them ahead of ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... toward the foothills: the sluggish stream they had paralleled all day ran swift here. Once, where the trail twisted near the bank, they heard the rush of rapids, and a mile farther on they came in sight of a curiously soundless waterfull. They had reached the Bogobo country but the afternoon quiet was unbroken by the sound of agongs. Fear had reached ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the sky—a soundless, streaking, purple glow, moving faster and faster until it ripped at the trees, crashed through them and struck sickeningly against a hill. Momentarily it ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... again, deep down from vulgar ken, Shall the pure gushing of her soul rejoice, And we stand silent, as to hear the voice Of waters falling to a soundless glen. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... there had been no call. A profound silence spread itself through the sleeping house. Outdoors the wind had died down. Only the loud brawl of the river broke the stillness under the stars. But all through this silence and this vibrant song there rang a soundless menace which brought me out of bed and to my feet before I was awake. I heard Paul say, "What's the matter?" in a sleepy voice, and "Nothing," I answered, reaching for my dressing gown and slippers. I listened for a moment, my head ringing with all the frightened tales of the morbid ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the pistol and walked slowly over to the rough table where he laid it down noiselessly, as though with that quietness he were doing something to offset the fatal blatancy with which it had just spoken. He looked down at the lifeless figure with burning eyes entirely devoid of pity, then went with a soundless tread, in spite of his heavy-soled boots, to the bed and spoke softly to the woman—who was ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... hands. He pressed them closely between his own, that were strangely cold, and lifted them to his lips. Then she swayed forward unsteadily; and in an instant her face was hidden against his shoulder, her whole frame shaken with soundless sobs. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... would none of us. He struggled out of my clasp and disappeared over the long grasses with soundless leaps. He was no longer our tame, domestic, well acquainted Paddy. He was a strange, furtive animal—a ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of all that splendor of color. He lifts a box from the ooze: he appears to have uncorked the world. The hold is a bottomless chasm. Every indentation, every acclivity that casts a shadow, gives the impression of that soundless depth. The bottom of the sea seems loopholed with cavities that pierce the solid globe and the dark abysses of space beyond. The diver is surrounded by pitfalls, real and imaginary. There is no graduation. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... for a time, until at last the soundless night became too oppressive, and Holden was forced ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... the experiment. One of them is the precious science of patience, which teaches us that we should take our education as we would take a walk in the country, leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of every sort. Such knowledge floods the soul unseen with a soundless tidal wave of deepening thought. "Knowledge is power." Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... she glided away from him with soundless footsteps. Close, close behind her he followed till they reached the threshold of the Cave Hall. There he tarried out of sight, yet where his eyes could still keep ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... in my eyes and I was talking excitedly; that and the odor of brandy I remember—and something else, a steady roaring in my ears; then darkness, out of which came a voice, empty, meaningless, finally soundless. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... night when the posse had entered Showdown. He had thought of her while riding to the Ortez rancho—and now he was thinking of her again . . . He raised his head and glanced around. The starlit desert was as soundless as the very sky itself. The soft creak of the saddles, the breathing of the horses, the sand-muffled sound of their feet . . . Directly ahead loomed a wall of darkness. Pete touched Brevoort's ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... hush of peace—a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; Mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony, That I could never dream, till earth was lost ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... a few minutes earlier, the Light Cruisers that had been invisible on the quarter now emerged from behind the curtain of the mist and were rapidly moving up to a new position. Presently the same mysterious, soundless voice spoke again: ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... surrounded by beings he can neither see, feel, hear, nor smell; and that, notwithstanding the excellence of his own eyes, ears, and nose, the universe the materialist is mapping out so deftly is, and must be, monophysical, lightless, colourless, soundless—a phantasmagoric show—a deceptive series of undulations, which become colour, or sound, or what not, according to the organism upon which ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... SOUNDLESS. Places assumed formerly to be bottomless, but thousands of fathoms are now measured. Our elders little thought of a submarine ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... gazed over and into the black void. But for the awful sense of depth she would not have known the Canyon to be there. A soundless movement of wind passed under her. The chasm seemed a grave of silence. It was as mysterious as the stars and as aloof and as inevitable. It had held her senses of beauty and proportion ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... was nothing to stay her progress, for the great mastiff Hero, since Hugo Jocelyn's death, had taken to such dismal howling that it had been found necessary to keep him away from the house in, a far-off shed where his melancholy plaints could not be heard. Treading with light, soundless footsteps down the stairs, she reached the front-door,— unbarred and unlocked it without any noise, and as softly closed it behind her,—then she stood in the open, shivering slightly in the sweet coldness ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... Rachel and I had lived in this silent, limited partnership. My home was cool and soundless as the grave, a place in which the mind could stretch its shriveled wings, where everything could be done mechanically and without fear of a sudden jar into disagreeable reality. When of an afternoon I stepped from the hurrying world into the first quiet woods ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... should they, her botch-work, turn about And stare disdain at me, her finished job? Why was the place one vast suspended shout Of laughter? Why did all the daylight throb With soundless guffaw and dumb-stricken sob? ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... through the still darkness of the forest. The pony's unshod feet made scarcely a sound on the soft, moist earth. There had been no frost to thin the thick branches hanging low over their heads. The few leaves which had drifted down were still unwithered, and only made the hoof-beats more soundless on the yielding earth, so that there was not a rustle at the noiseless passing of the pony and his rider. Only a sudden gust of wind now and then sent a murmur through the dark tree-tops and gently swayed the sombre boughs. And so they sped on, drawing ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... him in his musical efforts,—he who could not turn a tune,—he knew that Jones had himself well in hand. In his left hand the Secretary held a formal-looking paper with which he was quietly tapping the table in front of him as though keeping time to his soundless and imaginary ditty. With his chin well down, he was looking from under his heavy eyebrows with ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... washed the sands of a white beach, the cocoa-palms waved and whispered in the breeze; and as the oarsman lay on his oars to look a flock of bluebirds rose, as if suddenly freed from the treetops, wheeled, and passed soundless, like a wreath of smoke, over the tree-tops of the higher ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... then the outline of the woman apart from the others with the children about her. Henry now lay entirely flat, and his motions were genuinely those of a serpent. It was by a sort of contraction and relaxation of the body that he moved himself, and his progress was absolutely soundless. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was there any phantom memorial of life, nor wing of bird, nor echo, nor green leaf, nor creeping thing, that moved or stirred upon the soundless waste.—DE QUINCEY. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... waved his hand, as for her to enter. There was a spacious and lofty chamber, scantily furnished, some huge chests, and many sacred garments. At the extreme distance her mother was reclined on a bench, her head supported by a large crimson cushion, and her father kneeling by her mother's side. With a soundless step, and not venturing even to breathe, Venetia approached them, and, she knew not how, found herself embraced by ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... been expecting me and was ready. She gave a long slow soundless headshake, merciful only in being inarticulate. This mercy didn't prevent its hurling at me the largest finest coldest "Never!" I had yet, in the course of a life that had known denials, had to take full in the ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... clockwork. Heavy curtains were withdrawn by servitors half seen in the twilight, and the visitors were committed to the care of an Austrian groom of the chambers, who, wearing the aspect of a king who had stepped out of the Almanach de Gotha, led the way over soundless carpets to a library. This was furnished with a number of deep armchairs; and I recollect how, on the first occasion of my entering it, each of these chairs was monopolized by a drowsy Persian cat. For a moment, the light being dim, these cats, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... fighting in his heart, he had for the hundredth time arrived thus far, all at once it seemed as if a soundless voice in the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the two men sat in silence. Kano leaned forward from time to time, filling the small cup which Tatsu—half in revery it seemed—had once more drained. The old servant now and again crept in on soundless feet to replace with a freshly heated bottle of sake the one grown cold. So still was the place that the caged cricket hanging from the eaves of Ume's distant room beat ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... white, were almost gone. The flags were at half-mast and sinking fast. The annunciation lilies were bending their white foreheads to the near kiss of death, but the pinks were fragrant, the poppies were poised on slender stalks like brilliant butterflies at rest, the hollyhocks shook soundless pink bells to the wind, roses as scarlet as June's lips bloomed everywhere and the richness of ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... narrow stairs after him wearily. The door of the drawing-room was ajar, and the chatter of thin feminine voices could be heard within. George Cannon gave a soundless warning whisper: "The Watchetts." And Sarah Gailey frowned back the information that she did not wish to meet the Watchetts just then. With every precaution against noise, George Cannon opened two other doors, showing bedrooms. And then, as it were, hypnotized by him, the women climbed another flight ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... length of the Mall, together with—flung against the sky—the multitudinous lighted windows of Central Park West, the high rippling shimmer of the monumental lifted electric signs on Broadway. Other cars passed, swift and soundless, he saw their occupants and then they were gone: an aged man whose grey countenance might have been moulded in sand with a frigid trained nurse; a couple desperately embracing in a taxi-cab; a knot of chattering women in dinner dresses and open furs; another alone, painted, at once ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... did it a peculiar consciousness of himself suffused him like the first fumes of a deadly narcotic. He began to see that he was lifting his feet stealthily, advancing them stealthily, stealthily setting them down, with the soundless fall of a cat's foot on velvet. Reaching his desk, he half fell into a chair there, a thin line of white froth between his lips, his big face purplish. "Eh, God?" he cried, "what's ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... flag: a terrible fascination still constrains us to look, and a dim, rocky shore looms on her lee: then comes the dreadful cry of "Breakers ahead!" the crew stand appalled, and the master's trumpet is soundless at his lips. This is the uproar of nature, and we feel it to be true; for here every line, every touch, has a meaning. The ragged clouds, the huddled waves, the prostrate ship, though forced by contrast into the sharpest angles, all agree, opposed as they seem,—evolving harmony ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... struggling with poverty, and continued to cite eighteenth-century examples by way of encouraging Goldthorpe and animating his zeal. Whilst the young man was at work Mr. Spicer moved about the house with soundless footsteps. When invited into his tenant's room he had a reverential demeanour, and the sight of manuscript on the bare deal table caused him to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... and Henry looked at Sol. A ray of moonlight fell upon their tanned and stern faces. Then as they looked a twinkle appeared in the eye of each. The twinkle deepened and the two broke simultaneously into a soundless laugh. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was ready! She nodded her head sharply, as though in imperative self-command, and running back, her footfalls soundless on the rich, heavy rug, she picked up the plush-lined necklace case. She dropped this again, open, on the floor, halfway between the safe and the window. With the case apparently burst open as it fell, and ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... and forth, his lips forming soundless words, his big hands working as though the fingers were at the throat of the thief that had stolen into his home. His mind was going over certain words that Hagar had answered to his questions, just before Ruth's ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... She was not yet accustomed to the soundless naked feet of the servants whose presence might be betrayed by a ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... This conjoined itself still with another, the really stupefying consciousness of a question that he would have allowed to shape itself had he dared. What did everything mean—what, that is, did she mean, she and her vain waiting and her probable death and the soundless admonition of it all—unless that, at this time of day, it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? He had never at any stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper of such a correction; ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... the same musical instruments—pipes, cymbals, long reed-like trumpets. The story, indeed, included the building of an organ, just such an instrument, only on a larger scale, as was standing in the old priest's library, though almost soundless now, whereas in certain of the woven pictures the hearers appear as if transported, some of them shouting rapturously to the organ music. A sort of mad vehemence prevails, indeed, throughout the delicate bewilderments ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... half turned. There was a soundless flash beside me, a tiny level beam leaped down the corridor—that horribly intense actinic white beam. It struck the guard, and his figure fell forward in the grille doorway. When we reached him, there was but a crumpled ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... could hear it in a dense wood at my right, the murmur of it rising and falling in ceaseless volumes of sound, riven at intervals by a horrid scream or a thunderous roar which shook the earth; and always I was haunted by that inexplicable sensation that unseen eyes were watching me, that soundless feet dogged my trail. I am neither nervous nor highstrung; but the burden of responsibility upon me weighed heavily, so that I was more cautious than is my wont. I turned often to right and left and rear lest I be surprised, and I carried my rifle at the ready in my hand. Once I could have sworn ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cinder-hill cabin. He ran swiftly over the pit-banks, and stole along by the limekilns and the blacksmith's shop, for under the heavy door he could see a little fringe of light. How loudly the dry cinders cranched under his careful footsteps! Yet, quiet as the blacksmith's shop was, and soundless as the night without, the noise did not reach the ears of those who were lurking within, and Stephen went on in safety. There stood the master's house at last, black and massive-looking against the dark ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... sealing my door and turned away; started forward along the deck. I followed. My steps were soundless in my elastic-bottomed shoes. Anita swaggered with a noisy tread. Near the door of the smoking room a small incline passage led downward. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various |
