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verb
Mute  v. t.  To cast off; to molt. "Have I muted all my feathers?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mute" Quotes from Famous Books



... I fail the wintry frost to feel, And drenching rains unheeded round me pour, If Delia comes at last with mute appeal, And, finger on her ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... tale was the more impressive because of Crozier's deep baritone voice, capable, as it was, of much modulation, yet, except when. he was excited, having a slight monotone like the note of a violin with the mute upon the strings. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... profound slumber in which it lay enchained, and so motionless were they in their increasing suspense and expectation, that time seemed to have come to a standstill in this little room. There was one break. The lips which had hitherto remained mute opened in a quiet murmur, and Mr. Harper, watching his client, saw him clutch the headboard in sudden emotion before he finally rose and, with looks still fixed on the bed, approached him ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... have preferred the Hapsburg Duke, whose Alsatian possessions were only divided from his own by the Vosges; but his generous and romantic spirit could not choose but be gained by the proceeding of Count Ferry, and the mute appeal in the face and attitude ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... know what that stupid lubber is up to now," ejaculated the captain. "He's an ignorant ass, and as slow as a mute at a funeral. I'm sorry I had to ship him; but I had no alternative, for my old steward was taken suddenly ill, and I had to put up with this substitute whom he sent me just ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... tears stood in Philip's eyes as he looked upon the group of females—some weeping and straining their children to their bosoms; some more quiet and more collected than the men: the elder children mute or crying because their mothers cried, and the younger ones, unconscious of danger playing with the first object which attracted their attention, or smiling at their parents. The officers commanding the troops were two ensigns newly entered, and very young ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... thought to herself, "Querida!" But the second time she remained mute; and when the daylight was waning to a golden gloom in the room she came a third time and stood with one hand on his arm, her eyes fixed upon the dawning mystery on the canvas—spellbound under the sombre magnificence already vaguely shadowed forth ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... him faintly—and he turns. Her hat is awry, her hair coming down, and she has torn her pretty dress on some projecting branch, yet He thinks she never looked more beautiful, as he answers the mute appeal of those tearful eyes, and takes her in his arms. Deep silence reigns. Then, from the depths of a penitent heart, she sobs out loving, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Swinburnian—and clear to the marrow I am—I hold human nature in sufficient honor to believe there are eighty million mute Russians that are of the same stripe, and only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... here, lecher? O intemperate king! Wilt thou not see me? Come, come, show your face, Your grace's graceless, king's unkingly face. What, mute? hands folded, eyes fix'd on the earth? Whose turn is next now to be murdered? The famish'd Bruces are on yonder side, On this, another I will name anon; One for whose head this garland I do bear, And this fair, milk-white, spotless ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... simple peasant girl, looked on in mute amazement when her mistress entered the room ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... let thy tongue be mute. With thy first question, thy first expression of astonishment, we ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... of earth unknown, Herschel looked heavenwards in the starlight pale; Lost in those awful depths he trod alone, Laplace stood mute before the lifted veil; While home-bred Humboldt ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... they do not err Who say, that when the poet dies, Mute nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies; Who say, tall cliff and cavern lone For the departed bard make moan; That mountains weep in crystal rill; That flowers in tears of balm distil; Through his loved groves that breezes sigh, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... without these jewels of the Arctic will forever look barren and unfinished to me after this. Even the sailors, who know too well what a menace they are to their craft, yield to their beauty a mute and grudging homage. To sit in the sun or the moonlight, and watch a heavy sea hurling mountains of water and foam over one of these ocean monarchs is a never-to-be-forgotten experience. So too it is to listen to the thunder of one of them "foundering"; for their equilibrium ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... bestowed on them by the Boy, of "young table-cloths"—the little Colonel made haste to fold his also. Both rose from their chairs at the same instant, and the twain, having received their hats from the attentive Iorson, vanished, still mute, ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... deceived in early youth, 14 Pale o'er yon spring may hang in mute distress; Who dream of faith, of happiness, and truth, Of love—that ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... true! Too true! Beneath you on the floor Lay blent in ruin all the obscure things That were the sofa's strength, a scattered store Of tacks and battens and protruded springs. Through the rent ticking they had all been spilt, Mute proofs and mournful ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... matter. By his grave All gentle hearts should bow them down and weep. For where a hero and a saint have died, Or where a poet sang prophetical, Dying as greatly as they greatly lived, To give memorial to all after times, Of lofty worth and courage undismay'd; There, in mute reverence, all devoutly kneel, In homage of the thorn and laurel wreath, That were at once their glory and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... number may be represented in foliage, such as the date of a year in which a birthday, or other event, occurs, to which it is desirable to make allusion, in an emblematic wreath or floral picture. Thus, if I presented my love with a mute yet eloquent expression of good wishes on her eighteenth birthday, I should probably do it in this wise:—Within an evergreen wreath (lasting as my affection), consisting of ten leaflets and eight berries (the age of the beloved), I would place a red rose bud (pure and lovely), ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... water and commence swimming for the shore. The dog being kept in motion, the ducks will not arrest their progress until within a few feet of the water's edge, and oftentimes will stand on the shore staring, as it were, in mute and silly astonishment at the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... shamed by the exquisite pain of anticipation that had coursed through her in that moment of waiting. She never could quite account for the temporary weakness that assailed her and left her mute and helpless under the spell of his eyes. She only knew that she waited expectant,—for something that never came! What she might have said in response, what she might have done if he had uttered the ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... her hands to him, unable to speak; but the man of the sneer struck down her arms and laughed in her face. In mute terror she fled to ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... as in life. Many times in my slumber, and in my waking fancies did I see her pale, troubled face, with her pitying eyes looking on me as from that bed of pain and death, and at such times I reached out my hands toward her in mute pleading for forgiveness, forgetting or not knowing that she was dead. But the moment soon came when the truth was flashed through the blackness of night upon me, and then my misery was more than I could bear. For years before her death I had lain in my bed and listened ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... of an undertaker's mute (a calling he had followed in his day), was laying out his master's clothes as mournfully as though his master were in them, instead of chatting genially ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... Mute was Phoebus in this grievous anguish. All herbs he sought, and strove to win some wise healing art, and he anointed all the wound with nectar and ambrosia, but remedeless are all the ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... are grimy, and hairy, and dun With the wear of the wind, the scorch of the sun; But their picks fall slack, their foul tongues are mute— As the maiden ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... triple round of applause hailed every speech uttered by the generous Spartan. The painter of the Sabines, of Brutus, of the Horatii, of the Coronation, seemed to heed neither the noisy acclamations nor the deep silence that succeeded each other. Mute, motionless, transfixed, he heard not the plaudits: it was not Talma he saw, not Talma he was listening to. He was at Thermopylae by the side of Leonidas himself; ready to die with him and his three hundred heroes. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... that—not that!" Her eyes, dark with horror in the colorless oval of her face, met Ronador's with mute appeal. "It—it can not be," she added quietly. "The ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... these words, Roderick covered his face with his hands, and for some time sat in silence; and all his courtiers stood mute and aghast, and no one dared to speak a word. In that awful space of time passed before his thoughts all his errors and his crimes, and all the evil that had been predicted in the necromantic tower. His mind was filled ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... but mute; and the other was puzzled at the want of feeling shown, which he could not account for even as a national trait. "Perhaps there's some ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang'd To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... suddenly and painfully conscious of his verbal forwardness, the little lamplighter sank back into the grateful gloom of his corner and was mute. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... as if to ask: "Do you know anything about this?" Fitzgerald, catching the sense of this mute inquiry, nodded affirmatively. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... the hangings of the palace gateway, before them stood the mother of Mindon, the Lady Dwaymenau, pale as wool, having heard the shout of her boy, so that the two Queens faced each other, each holding the shoulders of her son, and the ladies watched, mute as fishes, for it was years ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... from the trembling string When wizard fingers sweep Dreamily, half asleep; When through remembering reeds Ancient airs and murmurs creep, Oboe oboe following, Flute answering clear high flute, Voices, voices—falling mute, And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... little Mother again—who, however, again, in her way, all timorously and tenderly, has never mentioned it: any more than she has ever mentioned her own, which she would think quite indecent. This is precisely one of the things that, while it passes between us as a mute assurance, makes me feel myself more than the others verily HER child: more even than poor little Peg at the ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... them; so their assembly has, in a like supine, senseless manner, conducted themselves with reference to this last and most alarming instance. Notwithstanding all that has been remonstrated against it, and in favor of the reformed religion, they have remained mute and silent, which indeed evidences them not to be truly deserving of the character of venerable and reverend, which they assume to themselves, but rather that of an association; or, in the words of the weeping prophet, an assembly ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... remembered and recorded the goodness of God in taking such a wife, releasing her saintly spirit from the bondage of weakness, sickness, and pain, rather than leaving her to a protracted suffering and the mute agony of helplessness; and, above all, introducing her to her heart's desire, the immediate presence of the Lord Jesus, and the higher service of a celestial sphere. Is not that grief akin to selfishness which dwells so much on our own deprivations as to be oblivious of the ecstatic ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... plants, kept in perfect order by Aunt Abby, who loved the work, and who tended them every day. Not a leaf was crushed, not a stem broken, and the scarlet geranium blossoms stood straight up like so many mute ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells

... energetic he becomes. Tremulous whimpers escape him as a matter of doubt occurs, and he is all eagerness as he hits again on the scent. The Clumber breed of spaniels have long been celebrated for their strength and powers of endurance, their unerring nose, and for hunting mute—a great qualification where game abounds. This breed has been preserved in its purity by the successive Dukes of Newcastle, and may be considered as an aristocratic apanage to their country seats. Nor should ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... afternoon, Caroline opened her heart to Adela. Hitherto little had passed between them, but those pressings of the hand, those mute marks of sympathy which we all know so well how to give when we long to lighten the sorrows which are too deep to be probed by words. But on this evening after their dinner, Caroline called Adela into her room, and then there was once more ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... all are the bereaved wives and mothers. The reader will find many of them in the good Chaplain's book, and they will bring the war closer than anything else. Sometimes they stand mute under the blow, looking on the dead face without a sound, and then dropping unconscious to the floor. Sometimes they cry wild things to heaven. The Chaplain's work in either case is not easy, and some of his most ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... of the great assembly blurred and wavered before Olivia, and the low hum of the talk in the room was relative, like the voices of passers-by. She looked up at the prince and away from him in mute appeal to something that ought to help her and would not. For Olivia was of those who, never having seen the face of Destiny very near, are accustomed to look upon nothing as wholly irrevocable; and—for one of her graces—she ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... flower and the leaf. The rapture that springs into love at the sight of the world's exultation Takes not a sense of rebuke from the sense of triumphant awe: But the spirit that quickens the body fulfils it with mute adoration, And the knees would fain bow down as the eyes ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... and within it, I would build the great dream of the coming of one from the Father's House. The Coming to you.... Would you hesitate to make ready for that Guest?... The thousands come in and out and pass to the unprepared houses. They are mute—suffering is unspoken in their eyes. Even their faces and hands are unfinished. They leave no gift nor message. Nature who brought them does not spare them from the infinite causes ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... one of the mangers, and there the child was. The lantern was brought, and the shepherds stood by mute. The little one made no sign; it was as others ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... the garden wakes to sound, for not a bird is mute: The robin pipes the piccolo; the blackbird plays the flute; While high upon a cedar-top a thrush with bubbling throat Lifts up to this accompaniment her ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... now the sole observer of the stupendous spectacle that spread out around and above me; the most sublime feature in this imposing scene appeared to be the silence which reigned supreme over all. The heavens were as mute as the sea. It looked as if the earth had been engulfed by a second deluge, and all living nature had perished utterly from the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... to His glow;— And gave thy lips a golden trump, that, though Long years have passed since other angels came To work the mighty wonders of His name,— In God's own name and man's, thyself shalt go Forever on strong pinions to and fro, And round the earth reverberating blow The mute, world-shaking music of the mind; That thou might'st make as naught all space and time, And thrill in mystic oneness through mankind, Yet ...
— The Angel of Thought and Other Poems - Impressions from Old Masters • Ethel Allen Murphy

... our seats and never stir, We allow our flowers to fade in peace, and avoid the trouble of bearing fruit. Let the starlights blazon their eternal folly, We quench our flames. Let the forest rustle and the ocean roar, We sit mute. Let the call of the flood-tide come from the sea, ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore

... and would resort from her own rooms to theirs, assisting at their awful rites, and endeavoring to get them up as charmingly as possible, that they might lure away her trouble. It was in vain that Marlboro' tried to reopen the subject of their mute warfare with St. George. St. George would not condescend, neither would he sully Eloise's name by bandying it about with another lover. If Marlboro' begged him to toss up for chances, St. George answered that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... that he should not get into milking position. She kept her broad, white-starred face toward him, and her large, liquid eyes on his, turning, turning, turning, as he tried over and over to approach her flanks, while the others stood watching in mute expectancy. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... head sadly, and the girl, gaining courage from this mute negation, cried with an ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... more in despair, for already the orchestra and a part of the audience had noticed what was happening and was laughing at him. He kicked Dobek in the face and suddenly stood mute and motionless, gazing with a blank expression at the public, for Dobek, having received a kick in the teeth, grabbed Glas by the ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... mother and two children. He thought of the piece of meat—a long untasted luxury—he meant to buy; of the tea his mother so much craved, and hesitated. Could he give these up? But the streaming eyes of the children, and the mute despair on the face of the mother, took down the scale. He ran several blocks and found an empty basement; hired it for four dollars; enlisted the sympathy and help of a colored boy to carry the furniture; put up the stove, bought a bundle of wood, pail of coal, ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... stuck close to Pompeius, and was considered to be speaking in violent terms, Pompeius said that Marcellinus, of all men, showed the least regard to fair dealing, because he was not grateful to him in that he was the means of Marcellinus becoming eloquent, though he was formerly mute, and of now being so full as to vomit, though formerly he was ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... paled. The breath of the new morrow stole up out of the rosy gray. The wings of the morning stirred and trembled; and in the darkness and chill and mysterious awakening, eyes looked into other eyes, hand sought hand, and cheeks touched each other in mute caress. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... all its attending demands are causing havoc with the health of women who are under its terrible strain. The number of women undergoing operations in our public and private hospitals from day to day bears witness to the ravages of the strenuous social life and mute testimony of the neglect of the laws of nature. Good health is the fruition of eternal vigilance and a blessing that money cannot buy. The conduct and health of our women represents the life of our nation; individually, in a measure at least, health governs the happiness of the home. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... young Prince, gazing down upon his dead father, remembered how many times those mute lips had related to him the legend of the czardas, that legend, symbolic of the history of Hungary, summing up all the bitter pain of the conquest, when the beautiful dark girls of Transylvania danced, their tears burning their cheeks, under the lash of the Osmanlis. At first, cold ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... severally declined, with a polite but solemn smile—all except one, a large, savage-looking Turk, with a most ferocious scowl, and the largest black beard I ever beheld. He did not content himself with a mute refusal of our offer, but stopping suddenly, he raised up his hands above his head, and muttered some words in Turkish, which one of the party informed us was a very satisfactory recommendation of the whole company to Satan for their ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... and the LATE Kaiser Conrad's young Boy, who one day might have swept the ground clear of them, perished,—bright young Conradin, bright and brave, but only sixteen, and Pope's captive by ill luck,—perished on the scaffold; "throwing out his glove" (in symbolical protest) amid the dark mute Neapolitan multitudes, that wintry morning. It was October 25th, 1268,—Dante Alighieri then a little boy at Florence, not three years old; gazing with strange eyes as the elders talked of such a performance by Christ's ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... a complaisant Senate, a mute legislative body, and a Tribunals which was to have the semblance of being independent, by the aid of some fine speeches and high-sounding phrases. He easily appointed the Senators, but it was different with the Tribunats. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... enthusiasm many of the circumstances of the discovery seemed to lend probability to such a supposition. The disorder in which the bodies were found, one with its head crushed down upon the bosom, the half-shut eye of one of the mute company, and other indications, seemed to point to such haste in the interment as might have been expected in the case of a King and his companions who had met with so tragic a fate. Accordingly, the discoverer announced in his famous telegram ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... over some time or other. So they first visited the church, a building in the form of a cross, with an imposing battlemented tower. Here David asked to inspect the registers and found therein (while the old gentleman silently prayed or sat in mute thankfulness in a sunny corner)—the record of his father's marriage to Mary Vavasour twenty-six years before (Mary was twenty-three and the Revd. Howel forty at the time) and of his own baptism ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... that his sight was free, and that it never wandered from her face face an instant That when she looked towards him' In the obscure dark corner, her speaking eyes, more earnest and pathetic in their voiceless speech than all the orators of all the world, and impeaching him more nearly in their mute address, met his, and did not know it! That when she bent her head again over her work, he drew his breath more easily, but with the same attention looked upon her still—upon her white brow and her falling hair, and busy ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... remained gazing at the figure in mute astonishment, during which it maintained the same motionless posture. At length he was able to murmur forth the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... convalescent caused her to retire within herself. She got into the habit of talking in a low voice, of moving about noiselessly, of remaining mute and motionless on a chair with expressionless, open eyes. But, when she raised an arm, when she advanced a foot, it was easy to perceive that she possessed feline suppleness, short, potent muscles, and that unmistakable energy ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... niche of the gray rocks of Egere, that Morhange stopped. The unlooked for waters rolled upon the sand, and we saw, in the light which mirrored them, little black fish. Fish in the middle of the Sahara! All three of us were mute before this paradox of Nature. One of them had strayed into a little channel of sand. He had to stay there, struggling in vain, his little white belly exposed to the air.... Morhange picked him up, looked at him for a moment, and put him back into the little stream. Shades of St. ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... Treville took two or three turns up and down the apartment, silent, and with a contracted brow, passing each time before Porthos and Aramis, who remained mute and immoveable as if upon the parade ground. Suddenly he stopped, and measured them from head to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... and admiration as his eyes rested upon the picture—upon the pure, sweet face, surrounded by a wealth of golden, glossy hair, and the sylph-like form, so perfect in every contour. But a charge of silence from Harris, made him mute. ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... that he may hear Her answering whistle, soft and clear; Out of the greenwood, leafy, mute, Pipes her mimicking, silver flute, And, though her mellow measures are Always behind him half a bar, 'Tis sweet to hear her falter so; And Ted calls back, "Bravo, bravo!" "Bravo, bravo!" Comes from ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... ascensions have made some noise in the world. Experience is the sister of practice, but it is also first cousin to theory, and I have long and deeply studied the aerostatic art. It has affected my brain," added he, sadly, falling into a mute torpor. ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne

... the child is a deaf-mute or that it is mentally deficient, although this is occasionally seen in children ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... the swiftness and cunning that baffle its pursuer, who, he too, when the chase is over, bears it no ill will at all for its escapade. I know families that have sat for hours, for hours after bedtime, mute, in a dim light, pressing a table with their finger-tips, and ever bringing to bear the full force of their minds on it, in the unconquerable hope that it would move. Conversely, nothing is more dismal than to see set in permanent rigidness a thing whose aspect is linked ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... tell him that she believed him that now,—but something in her forbade the untruth. She could do no more than leave him, with a mute gesture of farewell. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... by any chance, quite kept his word, though there was a moment in every case when he seemed to imagine doing what he said, and he took with mute patience the rakings which the ladies gave him ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... Isabel was mute. . . "I don't know what you're talking about, Isabel. Has he been with you all that time? Very stupid of him when I particularly wanted you to have a quiet afternoon. When ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... mad terror, he screamed aloud. A nurse ran to the bed, and Gervaise was sent away, mute with horror ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... over the festal board. Von Ibn was mute and his companion felt that, the preceding remarks considered, she would be dumb herself. The entire meal was accordingly eaten in absolute silence, until, when she had finished, she could not refrain from stealing one amused glance in ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... he; mute we waited, Kneeling round-a faithful few, Staunch and true,— Whilst above, with thunder freighted, Wild the boisterous north wind blew, And the carrion-bird, unsated, On slant ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... the air was instantly filled with flying objects. A square package hit him on the nose, a round one landed in his open mouth, while a pop-gun thumped him rudely on the back; and by the time the cracker had burned itself out, he was standing in mute amazement, gazing upon the fulfillment of his wish far beyond ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... bowing with deep emotion before Maria, he then, with a movement quick as thought, plunged a poniard in his bosom, and fell to the ground. "Go, tell the queen," he said to the officer of justice, who had stood a mute spectator of this scene—"tell her what you have witnessed; and add, that my promise has been fulfilled. And you, Augustus Glinski—will not this suffice? The assassin of the duke lies here before you. Oh, take her by the hand!" Then, looking his last towards Maria, he murmured—"And I, too—loved!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... audience are swayed, as the tides that follow the moon, was in large measure the heritage of the handsome man who held the eyes of the jurymen in an almost unwinking gaze; and when his uplifted arm slowly fell to his side, Judge Dent grasped it in mute congratulation, and Mr. Churchill took his hand, and shook ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... began performing our ablutions in the boat, much to the amusement and delight of the naked groups of Dyaks who were assembled at the landing place, and who eyed us in mute astonishment. The application of a hair brush was the signal for a general burst of laughter, but cleaning the teeth with a tooth brush caused a scream of wonder, a perfect yell, I presume at our barbarous customs. There were many women among the groups; they appeared ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... Joachim was mute. He had a voice, though not a remarkable one, but he had shirked the labour of trying to improve it by practice. He made one effort to sing like the Master, but overpowered by a sense of incapacity, his voice failed, and he felt disposed ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... him from some distant ridge or hidden glen the tinkling of a cow-bell, as the herd wandered here and there grazing upon the green uplands. Once—for an instant only—a mirage appeared upon the southern sky, as if in mute testimony to the transitory character of all earthy things, the fleeting phases of human life. It seemed to Paul, with a score of years dimming the vista of his young manhood, not more shadowy and unreal than the wonderful scenes in which ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... beautiful and still, Its light, fair clouds in pencilled gold and gray Pause motionless above the pine-grown hill, Where the pines, tranced as by a wizard's will, Uprise as mute and motionless as they! ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various

... Sweet now, silence: Iuno and Ceres whisper seriously, There's something else to doe: hush, and be mute Or else our ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... do," explained his teacher. "It is what we call a mute 'e'; but it exercises a modifying influence on ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... to this conjecture is, that the queens brought up by M. Schirach's method, are perfectly mute; neither do the workers form any guard around their cells, nor do they retain them in captivity a moment beyond the period of transformation, and, when they have undergone it, they are allowed to combat until ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber

... to me that I shall propose to the Dowager Duchess of ——, and offers his own right honourable intervention to bring so beautiful a business to bear. I am struck dumb with the assurance of his folly—absolutely mute and speechless—and how to prevent him making me further a fool is not easy, for the wretch has left me no time to assure him of the absurdity of what he proposes; and if he should ever hint at such a piece of d——d impertinence, what must the lady think of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... whisky the easier his speculation would be managed. Mr. Yancy on his part believed that if Murrell went to bed reasonably drunk he would sleep late and give him the opportunity he coveted, to quit the tavern unobserved at break of day. Gradually the ice of silence which had held them mute at supper, thawed. At first it was the broken lazy speech of men who were disposed to quiet, then the talk became brisk—a steady stream of rather dreary gossip of horses and lands and negroes, of speculations past and gone ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... those which had contained the letters Grace received from her father. And on the scrap was her name, but the envelope had been spoiled by a blot of ink in writing the address. It had been torn up and thrown away, to remain a mute bit ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis

... straight through the heart of the city is a mute witness to the squad's effective work. Three men did this. They were ordered to save San Francisco. They obeyed orders, and Captain MacBride and his two gunners made history on that ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... wanted to ask Nels. Strange as anything on this terrible ride was the absence of speech. As yet no word had been spoken. Madeline wanted to shriek to Link to hurry. But he was more than humanly swift in all his actions. So with mute lips, with the fire in her beginning to chill, with a lifelessness menacing her spirit, she watched, hoped against hope, prayed for ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... vibrating way before Eve's foot was in Eden. Where that milky light is new universes are forming themselves. The book of their genesis yet remains to be written. Think of the worlds forming themselves. Think of the worlds shining, and the darkened suns and systems mute in the night of time. To us—to us—what does it all say more than the sea says to the rainbow in one tossed bubble of foam? And yet to us it must say something, seeing that we are born of it, and how can we be out of tune with it, seeing that ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... a mute look of imploring at her mother, who was too much preoccupied to afford her the protection ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... enough. On the morning on which she had left her husband's house she and Mairi had been driven up to Euston Square Station before she seemed capable of coming to any decision. Mairi guessed at what had happened with a great fear at her heart, and did not dare to speak of it. She sat, mute and frightened, in a corner of the cab, and only glanced from time to time at her companion's pale face and troubled and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... the execution, but it fell through on a rumor of confession. The Monday papers contained a last masterly letter from Grodman exposing the weakness of the evidence, but they knew nothing of a confession. The prisoner was mute and disdainful, professing little regard for a life empty of love and burdened with self-reproach. He refused to see clergymen. He was accorded an interview with Miss Brent in the presence of a jailer, and solemnly asseverated his respect for her dead ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... and the deep root Of life and sufferance make its firm abode In bare and desolated bosoms: mute[ma] The camel labours with the heaviest load, And the wolf dies in silence—not bestowed In vain should such example be; if they, Things of ignoble or of savage mood, Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay May temper it to bear,—it is but for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... looking down, held mute by warring emotions. The impossible had come to pass. The girl for whom the whole world would be searching in a day or two, had stepped out of the unknown and, by the most whimsical jest of fate, into the custody of the one person ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... perceived the sneer; some great calamity had befallen her, of which she as yet scarcely knew the extent; she sat mute and bewildered—too bewildered to ask why all this ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... am ready to do anything reasonable and now that I have had a good reason given me, I'll be as mute ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... and her tears fell fast as she felt his hand moving slowly over her dress, pressing her round arms, pausing for a moment upon her white neck, tarrying still longer upon her glowing cheeks, and finally resting in mute blessing upon her braids of hair, where the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... arches—Nature's Gothic, re-frescoed now in the delicate tints of spring by the brush of Nature's Master—beneath which all life seemed breathlessly poised as though in this dim-lit, sun-dappled cathedral of the forest a mute service were in progress. But the man—he did not seem to see, or feel, or be. Thus, without a sound except for the muffled shuffle of the old mare's ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this aide of the grave; there are no voices, O Rhodope! that are not soon mute, however tuneful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... surface of the sea. The strongest cried like very devils in their despair, whilst the women and children, the weak and the helpless, gasped vainly for breath, and worn out by their efforts to sustain themselves above the water, sank at last to the bottom with a look of mute agony I shall never forget. Among the whole number, we did not see one of the ship's crew. Like desperate men, they had sunk with their vessel. We fished up about one half of the unhappy blacks, but the direst necessity compelled us to leave the rest of them, as it was impossible for us ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... here, I'll come across the boy, being schoolmaster, and I'll do for him as I'd have done for my own.' Jan, I've seen nigh on seven generations of lads pass through this school, but HE'S NEVER COME! Society's quit of that blame. There's been no 'mute, inglorious Miltons' here since I come to this place. There's been many a nice-tempered lad I've loved, for I'm fond of children, but never one that yearned to see places he'd never seen, or to know things he'd never heard ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... left by nature just a beer-loving serf, devoid of grief for his dead wife, devoid of longing for the nearest he could get to her again, devoid of susceptibility to this young man's influence? And the thought of all that was before the mute creature, sitting there in heavy, hopeless patience, stung Felix's heart so that he could hardly bear to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled. So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er, And hearts that once beat high for praise, Now feel that ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... by a mute but expressive piece of pantomime and took me back to the bar, where the good landlady ratified all that her husband ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... the pointing finger, Pierre saw one of those mute tragedies of the gambling hall. Cochrane, an old cattleman whose carefully trimmed, pointed white beard and slender, tapering fingers set him apart from the others in the room, was rather far gone with liquor. He was still stiffly erect in his ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... the cruel shaft they did not dare attempt to withdraw, even if the barbed steel would permit, and drooping fainter with each swift moment, he was still conscious, still brave and uncomplaining. His dimmed and mournful eyes looked up in mute appeal to his young commander. He knew that he was going fast, and that whatever rescue might come to these, his surviving fellow-soldiers, there would be none for him; and yet in his supreme moment he seemed to read the ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... death of every tender sentiment in his wife, as brought home to him by this mute and undesigned evidence of her sale of his portrait and gift, was the conclusive little stroke required to demolish all sentiment in him. He paid the shilling, took the photograph away with him, and burnt it, frame and all, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... ever," Bridges continued impressively. "Yes, thanks, I'll take a Scotch highball," he added, in response to Philip's mute invitation, "plenty of ice, Mick. There wasn't a seat to be had in the house, and I wouldn't like to say what old Fink had to go through before he could get his box for ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... which blossom out thickly over the nature of modern man to themselves are mute. The flower exhibits itself at the tip of the vine; the instinct develops itself at the farthest outreach of life; and the point where it clamors for satisfaction is at the greatest possible distance from its birthplace. For all these instincts ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... name; nor could he comprehend the danger that his nation ran, nor could he desire to go forth and spend his life-blood in defence of things unknown to him. He was only a peasant, and he could not read nor greatly understand. But affection for his birthplace was a passion with him, mute indeed, but deep-seated as an oak. For his birthplace he would have struggled as a man can only struggle when supreme love as well as duty nerves his arm. Neither he nor Reine Allix could see that a man's duty might lie from home, but in that home both were alike ready to dare ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... remember and find parallel passages; but alongside of these surviving powers, were lapses as remarkable, she misbehaved like a child, and a servant had to sit with her at table. To see her so sitting, speaking with the tones of a deaf-mute not always to the purpose, and to remember what she had been, was a moving appeal to all who knew her. Such was the pathos of these two old people in their affliction, that even the reserve of cities was melted and the neighbours ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ten seconds more of mute and agonised suspense, and men's fingers tightened their grip on the revolvers. Then the upturned straining eyes looked upon such a sight as human eyes will never see again save perchance those which, in the fulness of time, may look upon the awful pageantry ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord, its various tone, Each spring, its various bias: Then at the balance, let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... which the children even became mute, the Sachem arose with dignity and commenced his brief story in a solemn, serious manner, becoming himself ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah

... watched the scene with a degree of excitement so intense, that it almost deprived her of breath. She could not believe that the lad could perish within the reach of help, and so near the shore. The shrieks of the mother, and the mute despair of the old fisherman, who had been summoned to the spot, too clearly corroborated the report of Lyndsay, that the lad was ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... my soul! Not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks, and silent ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs! all ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... to do this. It usually did. He shook his mane and tossed his head; but Jewel kept patting his slender leg and offering her hand, until, with much gentle pawing and lifting his little hoof higher and higher, he finally rested it in the child's hand, although looking away meanwhile, in mute protest. ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... this platform was reared a capacious temple, within whose walls the high-priests gathered from different quarters at stated seasons, celebrated their mystic rites, while the swarming multitudes below looked up with mute adoration." Mr. Breckenridge, whose writings we have already referred to, at the time of his first visit, "everywhere observed a great number of small elevations of earth, to the height of a few feet, at regular distances apart, which appeared to observe some order: near ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... started back in shame and sorrow. That vote in his hand might have answered the prayer so lately on his lips now dumb, and perhaps averted the awful calamity. Fathers, may not the hands of the "thousands slain" make mute appeal to you? Your one vote is what God requires of you. You are responsible for it being in harmony with His law as if on ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw

... the window-sill, their young faces tinted by the changeful hues of the sky, both thoughtful and mute, until Rosa broke the silence by ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... anxiety, chatted of the novel, of the people at the boarding house, of anything and everything he could think of likely to divert attention from the one important topic. The answers he received were more and more brief and absent. At last, when Edwards again appeared, appealingly mute, at the entrance to the dining room, Captain Elisha, with a sigh which was almost ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... frosted with snow dust, clustered in golden curls over her fair white brow; her little hands were folded meekly over her breast; her sweet lips were parted, and disclosed the pearly teeth; the gentle eyes no longer looked forth with their piteous expression of mute appeal; and her hearing was deaf to the words of love and pity that were ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... she got. Gone mad, had she?—well, it was a warning! And these aristocratic matrons sniffed and turned up their noses. They felt that Angela, by going mad and creating a public excitement, had entered a mute protest against the recognized rules of marriage sale- and-barter as practised in this country—and Zululand. Having daughters to dispose of, they resented this, and poor Angela was for years afterwards spoken of among them as that ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... Wilhelm. The days went by, and still he was as much a stranger as on the evening of his arrival. He never voluntarily addressed any one. To all remarks or even questions he replied in the fewest words and curtest phrases possible. A smile was never seen on his face. He sat at the table like a mute at a funeral, ate without lifting his eyes, and silently rose as soon as his own meal was finished. He had soon selected his favorite seat in the kitchen. It was on the right-hand side of the big fireplace, in a corner. Here he sat ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... his mute agreement, and thirty seconds later the tiny jet boat was blasting out of the ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... battle-scarred, for at several places there were blank squares marking the spots where pieces had been cut out at each of the "Farthests" of its brave bearer, and left with the records in the cairns, as mute but eloquent witnesses of his achievements. At the North Pole a diagonal strip running from the upper left to the lower right corner was cut and this precious strip, together with a brief record, was placed in an empty tin, sealed up and buried in the ice, as ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson

... connubial Fondness hung Mute o'er the couch where Pollio lay; Love, Hope, and Sorrow, fixed her tongue, Thro' sable night ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... resumed his sitting posture; but the smile faded and was replaced by a gaze of mute astonishment as he observed that he had depicted Waller's right eye upon his chin, close beneath his nose! There seemed to be some sort of magic here, and he felt disposed to regard the thing in the light of some serious optical illusion, when, on closer inspection, he discovered ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... of that long corridor through which she had monotonously journeyed, denied of her one triumph, lost in inconsequential shadows—and she continued firmly to the door which closed behind her with a normal mute smoothness, an inanimate silence. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... had never quite named the boss. But those same orders, if they ever became known, would call in the rapacious sheepmen like vultures to a feast, and the bones of his cattle—that last sorry remnant of his father's herds—would bleach on Bronco Mesa with the rest, a mute tribute to ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... have ever been born to this continent, or I may say to our mother-land. He adopted in full the tenets of Garrison, which were excessively disagreeable to the whole public mind. The ground which he took was that which Garrison took. Seeing that the conscience of the North was smothered and mute by reason of the supposed obligations to the compromises of the Constitution, Garrison declared that the compromises of the Constitution were covenants with hell, and that no man was bound to observe them. This extreme ground Mr. Phillips also took,—immediate, unconditional, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... greyer, with an appealing look and an extended, tremulous arm. It was for her now to take the hand of that wronged man more helpless than a child. But where could she lead him? Where? And what was she to say to him? What words of cheer, of courage and of hope? There were none. Heaven and earth were mute, unconcerned at their meeting. But this other man was coming up behind her. He was very close now. His fiery person seemed to radiate heat, a tingling vibration into the atmosphere. She was exhausted, careless, afraid to stumble, ready to fall. She fancied she could hear his breathing. A ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... living in seclusion in an old house, attended only by a deaf-mute negro. The secrecy and mystery of his life excite all sorts of ugly rumors, and he is mobbed by a crowd of mischievous boys and loafers, receiving injuries that cause his death. The story that his house is haunted ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... object yet appeared, except the Dairyman's dog, keeping a kind of mute watch at the door; for he did not, as formerly, bark at my approach. He seemed to partake so far of the feelings appropriate to the circumstances of the family, as not to wish to give a hasty or painful alarm. He came ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... the front room with the negress whom Madame had brought with her. They were not talking. I supposed then this was because Lindy did not speak French. I did not know that Madame de Montmery's maid was a mute. Both of them went into the bedroom, and I was left alone. The door and windows were closed, and a green myrtle-berry candle was burning on the table. I looked about me with astonishment. But for the low ceiling and the wide cypress puncheons of the floor the room might have been a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... their fondness for pantomime, of which the art was carried to the greatest perfection in the time of Augustus. Prom the names of the most celebrated of the performers, Pylades, Bathyllus, &c., it would appear that it was Greeks that practised this mute eloquence in Rome; and the lyric pieces which were expressed by their dances were also delivered in Greek. Lastly, Roscius frequently played without a mask, and in this respect probably he did not stand alone; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... Man of Uz, like one o'erspent, Feeling the fallacy of argument With auditors like these, his thoughts withdrew Into the shroud of silence, and he spake No more unto them, standing fix'd and mute, Like statued marble. Then, as none replied, A youthful stranger rose, and while he stretch'd His hand in act to speak, and heavenward raised His clear, unshrinking brow, he worthy seem'd To hold the balance of that high debate. Still, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... stop thief! a highwayman! Not one of them was mute; And all and each that passed that way Did join ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... use a, and when an, in a sentence? Use a before all words beginning with a consonant sound, and use an before words beginning with a vowel sound, h mute, or h initial, if the accent is on any other syllable than ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway

... captain's statement. He is as old as I am and is dressed to look like thirty; but a very pleasant fellow for all that. I struck my sister-in-law dumb by accepting the proposal without a moment's hesitation. Mrs. Glenarm and Lady Lundie looked at each other in mute amazement. Here was a difference about which two women would have mortally quarreled; and here were two men settling it in the friendliest possible manner. I wish you had seen Lady Lundie's face, when I declared myself deeply indebted to Captain Newenden for rendering ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... shadow of complete estrangement had fallen between Margery and me. True to her word, given in that moment when I had besought her not to speak aloud for her own safety's sake, she had never opened her lips to me; and for aught she said or did I might have been a deaf-mute ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... Bostil mute and motionless. Then he seemed to expand. His huge bulk jerked into motion and he bellowed like ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... surroundings. He visits the British Museum, and encounters only disappointment at the mutilated sculptures of the Parthenon; but out of this confession, which is truth, slowly arises the higher truth of that airy yet profound response with which he greets the multiform mute company of marble or painted shapes that form the real population ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... bed!" growled the sexton. Raissa remained mute. But suddenly her eyelashes flickered and there was a gleam of attention in her eye. Savely, all the time watching her expression from under the quilt, put out his ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... electrified Europe. We often spoke of Paris, which Akimova knew well, but she evinced little or no interest in the political questions of the day, and I never once heard her murmur a word of complaint. Nevertheless she is here for life. Zimmermann was another example of mute resignation, but I fancy that in his case years of exile had somewhat dulled the edge of a once powerful intellect. Strajevsky, Miskievitch, and the others were enduring a life of captivity and suffering for offences which, in any country but Russia, would scarcely have subjected ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... know what to believe when you talk of very bad and very indifferent doings of yours. Dearest, I read your 'Soul's Tragedy' last night and was quite possessed with it, and fell finally into a mute wonder how you could for a moment doubt about publishing it. It is very vivid, I think, and vital, and impressed me more than the first act of 'Luria' did, though I do not mean to compare such dissimilar things, and for pure nobleness 'Luria' is unapproachable—will prove ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... years I have been, with close personal acquaintance and association with Mr. Nye, his going away fills me with selfishness of grief that finds a mute rebuke in my every memory of him. He was unselfish wholly, and I am broken-hearted, recalling the always patient strength and gentleness of this true man, the unfailing hope and cheer and faith of his child-heart, ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... not resist the impulse of following Matilda. Her eyes were so often cast down on meeting his, that Isabella, who regarded Theodore as attentively as he gazed on Matilda, soon divined who the object was that he had told her in the cave engaged his affections. While this mute scene passed, Hippolita demanded of Frederic the cause of his having taken that mysterious course for reclaiming his daughter; and threw in various apologies to excuse her Lord for the match ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole

... the boys, pressing close to one another, drifted far away from the breath of life, even as their pigeons were far from earth; at this moment they are merely children, knowing neither envy nor anger; free from everything, they are near to one another, they are mute, judging their feelings by the light in their eyes—and they feel as happy as ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... we know at present, the sedan came from Italy in the 16th century, and it is there, among derivatives of Lat. sedere, to sit, that its origin must be sought, unless indeed the original Sedan was some mute, inglorious Hansom.[41] ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... a busy forenoon for all on board the steamer. The revenue cutters took off the passengers. Representatives of the underwriters came out from Wood's Hole on a tug. The huge Montana, set solidly into its bed of sand, loomed against the sky, mute witness ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... the Theatre at night, when the performances are by command of Colonel Fitz-Sordust and the officers of the garrison—what a splendid sight it is! How sternly the defenders of their country look round the house as if in mute assurance to the audience, that they may make themselves comfortable regarding any foreign invasion, for they (the military young gentlemen) are keeping a sharp look-out, and are ready for anything. And what a contrast between ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... their navigation. They perceived a crowd of soothsayers who were offering a sacrifice to their famous idol of Ratscha, conjuring it to save them from these terrible strangers. The idol remained mute, the Russians advanced with their "thunder," and the frightened soothsayers ran to hide themselves in the thickness of the forests. It is there that the colony of Ratscha is found to-day, above the Demiansk. Farther on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... the bosom of the air. Suddenly the Nightingale returned into the garden, but he met neither the bloom of the Rose nor fragrance of the spikenard; notwithstanding his thousand-songed tongue, he stood stupified and mute, for he could discover no flower whose form he might admire, nor any verdure whose freshness he might enjoy. The Thorn turned round to him and said: "How long, silly bird, wouldst thou be courting the society of the Rose? Now is the season ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... exhibitions, mute and still, 260 Others of wider scope, where living men, Music, and shifting pantomimic scenes, Diversified the allurement. Need I fear To mention by its name, as in degree, Lowest of these and humblest in attempt, 265 Yet richly graced with honours of her own, Half-rural Sadler's Wells? [Q] Though ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... (which, indeed, is but the orthodoxy of the cultivated private circles), perceive well enough, even by the HENRIADE, and its talk of 'tolerance,' horror of 'fanaticism' and the like, what this one's 'DOXY is; and how dangerous he, not a mere mute man of quality, but a talking spirit with winged words, may be;—and they much annoy and terrify him, by their roaring in the distance. Which roaring cannot, of course, convince; and since it is not permitted to kill, can only provoke a talking spirit into still ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... when the tea-things were removed and I began to look restlessly at my watch and talk of an errand I must go, a shadow of anxiety came into my father's eyes. Mother looked at me with mute appeal. They were still as far from the truth as ever. A wild notion that I had come for some other man's daughter had entered their minds, or else, God help me, that I had lost mine. I kissed mother and ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... prohibition would come. How could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet made it impossible. She could perfectly understand her husband's wish for the event; she didn't, to be just, see how he COULD like her to be with her cousin. Ralph never said a word against him, but Osmond's sore, mute protest was none the less founded. If he should positively interpose, if he should put forth his authority, she would have to decide, and that wouldn't be easy. The prospect made her heart beat and her cheeks burn, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... for it. Margery stepped on board swiftly and silently, and I pushed well out into the stream, following until the water rose to my middle and so standing while the fellow challenged again. For a minute we kept mute as mice. The footsteps hesitated and came to a halt by the water's edge a full twenty yards below, and I guessed that the fog had blurred for him the distance as well as the direction of the sound. Very quietly I heaved myself over the stern ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... some reason for these exclamations, for Captain Lee stood gazing in mute amazement at young Gurwood, while the latter returned the compliment with his eyebrows raised to the roots of his hair. The similarity of their expressions did not, however, last long, for Edwin became gradually confused, while the captain grew ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... idea of the enormous extent of these confiscations falling chiefly on the wealthiest portion of the burgesses. It was altogether a fearful punishment. There was no longer any process or any pardon; mute terror lay like a weight of lead on the land, and free speech was silenced in the market-place alike of the capital and of the country-town. The oligarchic reign of terror bore doubtless a different stamp from that of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen



Words linked to "Mute" :   muteness, silent person, dull, muffle, inarticulate, tongueless, wordless, deaf person, sordino, tone down, dumb, silent, sourdine, damp, soften, dummy, deaf-and-dumb person, mute swan, dampen, acoustic device, unarticulate



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