"Dulled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is evident; and the junction of the power of office in England with the abuse of authority in the East has not only prevented even the appearance of redress to the grievances of India, but I wish it may not be found to have dulled, if not extinguished, the honor, the candor, the generosity, the good-nature, which used formerly to characterize the people of England. I confess, I wish that some more feeling than I have yet observed for the sufferings of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects in that oppressed part of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... your letter deeply interested me, with the account of your rest so well earned. You had fought your great battle, and might roll in the grass, or ride your pony, or shout to the Cumberland or Scotland echoes, with largest leave of men and gods. My lethargies have not dulled my delight in good books. I read these in the bright days of our new peace, which added a lustre to every genial work. Now first we had a right to read, for the very bookworms were driven out of doors whilst the ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... quill, and destroyed its power to do further harm. Nature had told him the one thing to do to save himself. Most of that day he spent in gnawing at wood and crunching mouthfuls of earth and mold between his jaws. In this way the barb-toothed points of the quills were dulled and broken as they came through. At dusk he crawled under the windfall, and Gray Wolf gently licked his muzzle with her soft cool tongue. Frequently during the night Kazan went to the creek and found ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... by false conditions and surroundings. Where vice has become congenial and the impure reigns supreme, that which rouses and expresses noble aspirations and pure emotions can find no room. Normal instincts may also be dulled, the inner being made, as it were, musically deaf and dumb, by a false education which stifles and dwarfs the finer feelings, or by circumstances which ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... midway up the street, Gower bearing away a sharp contrast of the earl and his countess; for, until their senses are dulled, impressionable young men, however precociously philosophical, are mastered by appearances; and they have to reflect under new lights before vision of the linked eye and mind is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... five blocks from home and still five blocks from the edifice of worship, while Merle appeared as one born to Sunday clothes and shined shoes and a new hat, the Wilbur twin would be one to whom Sabbath finery was exotic and unwelcome. The flawless lustre of his shoes would be dulled, even though he walked sedately the safe sidewalk; his broad collar and blue polka-dotted cravat would be awry, one stocking would be down, his jacket yawning, all his magnificence seeming unconquerably ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... a whole or its treatment in detail; and in every undertaking of any magnitude it is almost certain that flaws and mistakes must occur, which can best be detected by those whose perception has not been dulled by continuous and over-strained application. No honest writer, however much he may wince, can feel otherwise than thankful to anyone who points out errors or mistakes which can be rectified; and, for myself, I may say that I desire nothing more ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... The wine dulled Gay's appetite and Trudy's had been taken quite away by Beatrice's proposed visit. Besides, they put the latest jazz record on their little talking machine, which helped substitute for a decent meal. They danced a little while and then Trudy planned what ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... hard struggle; I am weary from it not from arousing, but from restraining my thoughts. For what I write must be clear and orderly and concise. Readers nowadays are impatient and easily bored, and crave excitement. And they are dulled too, and no longer hear so clearly the true ring of sincere conviction. Yet I have peace, for this will be read. It will strike the summits, and the social system of today is still built so that everything slowly spreads from the summits ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... cheerfully, gold and silver coins clinked merrily, the underground furnace reddened and dulled at regular periods, and much lawful money passed back and forth between the Blue Goose and its patrons. Not that the passing back and forth was equal; Pierre attended to that. His even teeth gleamed between smiling lips, his swarthy cheeks glowed, and day by day his black ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... had dulled into the pallor of old ivory. There were deep, bluish shadows about the eyes and round the mouth, and the hollow at the base of the throat, where the pulse throbbed and fluttered visibly, had grown deep. Her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for my part, that the man was not in his right senses, or that the blow he had received had so dulled his bump of caution, that he could no longer take care of himself; for the next moment he stumbled over a little child, and would have been hurt severely if I had not broken his fall, by catching his arm before he again measured his length on the deck. My timely assistance mollified his ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... her, and partly to put him in the way of finding an equable, tranquil happiness which might satisfy a soul like his. She had ended by judging Godefroid, finding him at twenty-eight with two-thirds of his fortune gone, his desires dulled, his pretended capacities extinct, his activity dead, his ambition humbled, and his hatred against all that reached legitimate success increased ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... lodger had been teaching her for several years her mother died and was buried in the potters' field. Cake managed to keep two rooms of the wretched flat, and no word of his landlady's demise reached the lodger's drink-dulled ears. Otherwise Cake feared he might depart, taking with him her one big chance to reach the light. You see, she did not know the lodger. Things might have been different if she had. But he was never a human being to her, even after she knew ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... much the night before, and was feeling very shaky indeed; but the result was that I simply fell full length in the bath-tub just as you found me. I was unable to move anything except my fingers and toes. I did not appear to be hurt in the least, and my senses, instead of being dulled by the shock, seemed to be preternaturally sharp, and I realized in a moment that if this inability to move remained with me for five minutes I was a dead man—dead, not from the shock, but by drowning. I gazed up through that clear green water, and I could see ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Flowering Dogwood, whose spreading flattened branches whiten the woodland borders in May as if an untimely snowstorm had come down upon them, and in autumn paint the landscape with glorious crimson, scarlet, and gold, dulled by comparison only with the clusters of vivid red berries among the foliage? Little wonder that nurserymen sell enormous numbers of these small trees to be planted on lawns. The horrors of pompous monuments, urns, busts, shafts, angels, lambs, and long-drawn-out eulogies in stone in ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... or two he is cut out by the younger generation knocking at the door. He has learnt nothing; he falls out of work; he wanders from place to place. By the time he is twenty-two, just when the well-to-do are "finishing their education," his mind is dulled, his hope and interest gone, his only ambition is to get a bit of work and keep it. At the best he develops into the average working-man of the regions I have called unknown. Mr. Paterson thus describes ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... follows.—The things of which we are conscious in a dream are negated by our waking consciousness. 'I wrongly thought that I had a meeting with a great man; no such meeting took place, but my mind was dulled by slumber, and so the false idea arose.' In an analogous manner the things of which we are conscious when under the influence of a magic illusion, and the like, are negated by our ordinary consciousness. Those things, on the other ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... powdery drifts. Sunlight pours between them into the ravine. The green and golden forests now join from either side, and now recede, according as the sinuous valley brings their lines together or disparts them. There is a sound of cow-bells on the meadows; and the roar of the stream is dulled or quickened as the gusts of this October wind sweep ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... unfathomed sea Of seeming courtesy sometimes doth hide Offence to life and honour. This descried, I hold less dear the health restored to me. He who lends wings of hope, while secretly He spreads a traitorous snare by the wayside, Hath dulled the flame of love, and mortified Friendship where friendship burns most fervently. Keep then, my dear Luigi, clear and pure That ancient love to which my life I owe, That neither wind nor storm its calm may mar. For wrath and pain our gratitude obscure; And if the truest truth of love I know, ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... would not, in the meantime, suffer this edge and forwardness of his men to be dulled or rebated, by lying still idly unemployed, as knowing right well by continual experience, that no sickness was more noisome to impeach any enterprise than delay ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... of these exhibitions we are to ascribe not only the early extinction of the Roman drama, but generally the inferiority of Rome to Greece in every department of the fine arts. The fine temper of Roman sensibility, which no culture could have brought to the level of the Grecian, was thus dulled for every application.] as much as men, and children intermingled with both, looked on with leisurely indifference, with anxious expectation, or with rapturous delight, whilst below them were passing the direct sufferings of humanity, and not seldom ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... back to Wally. His wrinkled brow cleared at the sight of her, but she could see that the eyes were sunk more deeply in his head, that they were dulled, no doubt with ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... get back to active supervision of her home but found herself in the way, though her children were greatly pleased and her husband sceptical. The need of excitement and change persisted; gradually an intense boredom came over her. Her interest in life was dulled and she began a mad search for some sensation that would take away the distressing self-reproach and dissatisfaction. Shortly after this she lost the power to sleep and had a host of symptoms which ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... was passing away without pain; the injuries she had received had dulled sensation, while they ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... propping the rifle up between the rocks, and adjusted the telescopic sights. The distant doorway sprang into sharp focus. Grunting with satisfaction, he settled down to his vigil. The rifle-barrel had been dulled down against detection by reflection, and Harry's dark glasses protected him against the glare of the morning sun. He might have to wait several hours now, but he didn't care. It had taken him twelve years to come this far, ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... sound, I told myself, for all was silent in the sleeping hotel, and even the rattle of cabs outside was dulled. Still, the impression lingered, and I could hardly persuade myself that I had not heard Harvey Farnham's voice calling my name, and finishing with a gurgling, despairing cry for help, the horror of which had chilled the blood in my veins, even in ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... did the former teacher use the time of her pupils for her own ends, but, even more, she dulled their interest, and the damage thus inflicted cannot be estimated. Many a child has deserted the school because the teacher made school life disagreeable. She was the wet blanket upon his enthusiasm and ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... a chair beside the table like one whose senses had been dulled by an unexpected blow. With a great sighing breath that was almost a sob, he bowed his ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... sitting upon the surface, no hills or mounds of gravel and sand, no clay banks packed full of rounded stones, little and big, no rocky floors under the soil which look as if they had been dressed down by a huge but dulled and nicked jack-plane. The reason is that the line I have indicated marks the limit of the old ice-sheet which more than a hundred thousand years ago covered all the northern part of the continent to a depth of from two to four thousand feet, and was the chief instrument in rounding off mountain-tops, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... she had smoothed her hair, tidied her dress, and washed the tears from her face, but she could not give brightness to the dulled eye or bloom ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... at my own forgetfulness. The light which had attracted my attention came from the room devoted to the display of Miss Murray's wedding-gifts. This I should have known instantly, having had a hand in their arrangement. But all my faculties were dulled that night, save such as responded to dread and horror. Before going back I paused to look at the detective whose business it was to guard the room. He was sitting very quietly at his post, and if he saw me he did not look up. Strange that I had forgotten this man when keeping my own ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... A slight smile dulled the irony of this, but the Governor, evidently concerned for the maintenance of amity, introduced the art of the Aztecs, to which ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... soil and discord of that way, Where savage hordes rushed headlong to the goal, Dead to the best impulses of their youth, Blind to the azure beauty of the skies; Dulled to the voice of conscience and of love, They wandered far from Truth's ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... while I have that remembrance. On the other hand, I renew past sorrows and troubles. They are present; for I distinctly perceive them such as they were formerly, and not the least part of their bitterness and lively sense escapes my memory. But yet they are no more the same; they are dulled, and neither trouble nor disquiet me. I perceive all their severity without feeling it; or, if I feel it, it is only by representation, which turns a former smart and racking pain into a kind of sport and diversion, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... like an exquisite melody in his ears. It was good to be in such a place, to look on such a woman, to breathe such odours, and to hear such tuneful music. A dreamlike, half-mysterious satisfaction of the senses dulled the keen self-knowledge of body and soul for one short moment. In the stormy play of his troubled life there was a brief interlude of peace. He tasted the fruit of the lotus, his lips were moistened in the sweet waters ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... I tried to make plain as we swam along. But whether it was that the salt water he had swallowed had dulled the professor's normally keen intelligence or that our power of stating a case was too weak, the fact remains that he reached ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... and air are dulled with smoke: The streets resound with noise; And the soul sinks to see its peers ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... commonplace idea, accepted by every one, that feelings become blunted by experience. Nothing can be more untrue. You might as well say that by dropping nitric acid slowly on a sore it would heal and become sound, and that torture dulled the sufferings of Damiens. The truth is, that each ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Laodice and her sleeping servant. The mute with the stupor of slumber further to disable his dulled ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... directed to one point. Later, in the period of homelessness and dispersion, it was chiefly religious consciousness that cemented Jewry into a whole, and replaced the severed political bond as well as the dulled racial instinct, which is bound to go on losing in keenness in proportion to the degree of removal from primitive conditions and native soil. In our days, when the liberal movements leavening the whole of mankind, if they have not completely shattered the religious ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... till the tooth of pain is dulled; Wait till the wound is overgrown: Not in a day the moss hath made So fair this once unsightly stone." Then was I silent, but less wroth, Content my heart should have its way. Believing that in God's fit time We ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... from her satchel a glass with which she carefully examined the dulled and lifeless eyes, sitting ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... of Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and acceded to with the brotherly reservations already related. The eye-teeth of Mr. Dennis Farraday were very precious to Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and he had the intention of taking great care that their edges should not be dulled. It was well that he did not know that the eleven-fifteen train he had taken in his flight to New York passed the huge, eight-cylinder Surreness of his beloved Jonathan in its race up the beach for the home ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... without Cairns and Bedient. All the famine and foulness and fever lifted from these two. They forgot blood and pain and glaring suns. The early stars changed to lily-gardens, vast and white and beautiful, and their eyes dulled ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... very often do, appear on the faces of individuals who are far from being innocent or even young, it may well be that Sophie in 1810, servant-maid in a brothel though she was, still kept a look of country freshness and health, unjaded enough to whet the dulled appetence of a bagnio-haunting old rip. The odds are, at all events, that Sophie was much less artificial in her charms than the practised ladies of complacency upon whom she attended. With her odd good looks she very likely had just ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... spikes, and face Helplessly innocent, across the field: He let it run, and blessed it as it ran. At noon returning, something drew his feet Into the barn. Entering, he gazed and stood. Through the rent roof alighting, one sunbeam, Blazing upon the straw one golden spot, Dulled all the yellow heap, and sank far down, Like flame inverted, through the loose-piled mound, Crossing the splendour with the shadow-straws, In lines innumerable. 'Twas so bright, The eye was cheated with a spectral smoke That rose as from a fire. He never knew, Before, how beautiful ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... our chain, Time would have dulled our sense of pain; By service long, and suppliance vile, We might have ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... dulled senses, she heard the great barking yet again, and something immense that was furry and soft brushed against her. She heard the panting of a large animal close to her in the hut, and very feebly she put ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, forever and ever, and listening with comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home-delicious! My! I wish you could try it to-night!" and out of my reverie deceased fetched me a rattling slap with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in a stupor all the evening. He drank some beer because he was parched, but not much, the alcohol made his feeling come back, and he could not bear it. He was dulled, as if nine-tenths of the ordinary man in him were inert. He crawled about disfigured. Still, when he thought of the kicks, he went sick, and when he thought of the threat of more kicking, in the room afterwards, his heart went hot and faint, and he panted, ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... dulled Prince Owain's ear, Her melody he may not hear? No kindly look, or word, or token, His trance of wretchedness has broken, Yet knows she, in that lonely spot, Her presence felt, tho' greeted not; Knows that no foot, save hers, unbidden; Had dared to tread the living tomb, No other hand ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... drift to avoid falling stone, while the younger man attacked the edge beneath the bowlder, inch by inch, trying to find some place where he could pick through to daylight. At last, his arm wearied and the point of his prospecting hammer dulled, he rested. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... perhaps less so, than the realization which she had compelled in him of her lightness and unworthiness. Still, he had wanted her, longed for her, hoped for her. Now that hope was gone. There seemed nothing left to work for, no adequate good beyond the striving. He looked with dulled vision out upon blank days. With a sudden weakening of fiber he turned into a hotel and telephoned McGuire Ellis that he wouldn't be at the office that evening. To the other's anxious query was he ill, he replied that he was tired out and ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... curiously like an old priest, was reading a newspaper. In time he went out to meet the 6.58 train, and, despite his precautions, a gust of polar wind whirled into the room as he opened the door. Besides scattering the cards, it dulled the players to the marrow. The Swede cursed frightfully. When Scully returned, his entrance disturbed a cosey and friendly scene. The Swede again cursed. But presently they were once more intent, their heads bent forward and their hands moving ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... taste, to be compared with that pure and disinterested satisfaction of the mind which results from absorption in serious and difficult scientific labours. In the turmoil of the political and social struggle, even the most splendid civic crown will be dulled by the stifling dust of practical life, which never reaches the ethereal heights of pure science and never rests on the laurels of the thoughtful investigator. However, as I have said, that is a matter of taste. ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... and gravy, was served up in tin plates and passed about the tent. Everybody—married men and women, maidens and young men, girls, boys, and little children—was ravenously hungry, and for a few minutes little could be heard but the plying of the viands. But as the first edge of hunger became dulled the edge of wit sharpened, and laughter and banter rollicked back and forward through the tent. The doctor, now quite sober, took a census, and found the total population to be twenty-eight. These he classified as twelve married, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... the owner of the face could not help it. Yet they had only been a few minutes together before Connie had discovered that, beneath the sunburn, there was a look of tension and distress, and that the young brown eyes, usually so bright and bold, were dulled with fatigue. But to notice such things in Nora was only to be scorned. Connie held ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which Ygerne had inspired in him. It was in the cards that he should come near death; but that he should not die. A man's destiny is characterised at times by an instinct of savagery; it tortures him until his sense of pain is dulled and lost in unconsciousness; then it lets him grow ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... boy can I remember to have experienced so perfect and delicious a repose. Not a dream rippled the surface of my calm brain, and I awakened hours afterward with a sense of satisfaction that must be a foretaste of heaven itself. An incipient headache had vanished. Powers of mind that had been dulled were restored to animation and keenness. Not a trace of irascibility remained; but in its place came trooping the sweet angels that Father Faber says continually hover over the good-humored man. I declare that the metamorphosis was so complete ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... life that is built upon faith like this man's, is a life of buoyant hopefulness till the very end. The hopes of age are few and tremulous. When the feast is nearly over, and the appetite is dulled, there is little more to be done, but to push back our chairs and go away. But God keeps 'the good wine' until the last. And when all earthly hopes are beginning to wear thin and to burn dim, then the great hope of 'the mountain of the inheritance' will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... opens, the quarrel between the two men, each a prominent and well-to-do member of the community, still continued, but its edge had been dulled by time. Both Mr. Edwards and Mr. Hall took active parts in municipal affairs and so were forced to meet often and to even serve together on various committees. They almost invariably took opposite sides on every question, but they did not allow ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... into his mouth. A numbness was creeping over him, his head felt curiously heavy, but he was scheming for his life with the instinctive cunning of a wounded beast rather than reason. There was now a sound behind him, but it was dulled by the roar of the river, which he realized would drown the faint rustle he made, and, when the fern grew scantier, dragged himself across an opening and crawled in amidst the raspberry briars on the ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... his candle; the wisest he who never lets it out. Tomorrow, the next moment, he, a poor, darkened, blurred soul, may need it again to focus the Image better, to take a mote off the lens, to clear the mirror from a breath with which the world has dulled it. ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... observation are generally sharpened, in proportion as the faculties of reflection are dulled, under the influence of an absorbing suspense. While I now waited alone in my room, the most ordinary sounds and events in the house, which I never remembered noticing before, absolutely enthralled me. It seemed as if the noise of a footstep, the echo of a voice, the shutting or opening ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... reaching the period when, at the end of your prescribed curriculum, the whole field and compass of literature lies outspread before you; when, with faculties trained and disciplined, and the edge of curiosity not dulled or worn with use, you may enter at your leisure into the intellectual heritage ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sprinckled with such sweet variety Of all that pleasant is to eare or eye, That I, nigh ravisht with rare thoughts' delight, My tedious travele doe forget thereby; And when I gin to feele decay of might, It strength to me supplies, and chears my dulled spright. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... were severed, how day dulled Till time joined us anew, was chronicled: And arguments and battlings in defence of me That ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... Ulysses by Telemachus's order had a seat and a mess assigned him in the door-way, and he had his eye ever on the lances. And it moved gall in some of the great ones there present, to have their feast still dulled with the society of that wretched beggar as they deemed him, and they reviled and spurned at him with their feet. Only there was one Philaetius, who had something a better nature than the rest, that spake kindly to him, and had his age in respect. He coming up to Ulysses, took him by the hand with ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... followed, moving forward hurriedly, blindly, like one hypnotized. His senses were dulled; his will was inert. When he came to himself he was kneeling beside her on the marble, and he heard the voice of the ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... had thickened over the sky, and much of the world was gray beneath, and the scene had dulled in tint and spirit since last they had had some large outlook upon it. Only on the slopes toward the east did the sunshine rest, and in the midst of a sterile, barren slant it flickered on that ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... down through the trees and trying to penetrate its calm, placid bosom with their warm, loving rays. Far below the sound of the waterfall sung to the dying day, and, as we listened, there came to us the dulled, distant murmur of the combing breakers upon the reef ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the week was one of bitter disillusion, though for Quentin no such despair was possible. For him it was an attempt at joy and beauty that had failed. This dulled, drugged looking girl was not the radiant woman he had hoped to find. Vain and sensitive as he was, he felt, almost immediately, that he had lost his charm for her; that she had ceased to love him. That was the ugly, ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... haze that seemed gathering round Mrs. Gourlay's mind would be dispelled by sudden rushes of fear, when she would whimper lest her son be hanged, or herself come on the parish in her old age. But that was rarely. Her brain was mercifully dulled, and her days were passed in a ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... went by. Major Scott and his clerk, under Larrabee's skilful touch, were gradually regaining strength and beginning to answer questions. At first their senses seemed dulled, as though they could not shake off the frost that benumbed them. At first they could tell little of the cause of the mishap. The ambulance was curtained in, even at the rear, through which the two scared troopers had managed to slip to their doom. Not until the snows melted in the spring, and the ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... now; and so changed was he that his very servants could not read him. Was it remorse, or actually some long-latent affection, reawakened under the shadow of impending loss, that had brought the haggard lines about his mouth, and dulled the fires of those terrible eyes? Sophia herself asked that question of the darkness, as she lay the long night through, watching for what she dreamed ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... tears as she thought of the loneliness of his Christmas, and without that Christmas joy that even her mother's dulled spirit could feel—the joy that bore them through the recollections of this ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bitterness of his lonely life rose up and dulled his mind and soured his tongue, "Why don't yuh get some mineral into yuh?" he yelled with abrupt ferocity. "Why ain't yuh some good tuh a feller? Zing, zing, zing—I hate your old heat a-singin' in my ears all the gosh-blamed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... advanced, and the rich people at the Wegg farm had ceased to be objects of wonder to the Millville folk. The girls were still regarded with curious looks when they wandered into the village on an errand, and Mr. Merrick and Major Doyle inspired a certain amount of awe; but time had dulled the edge of marvelous invasion and the city people were now accepted as ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... am not going to dwell on this retribution, inflicted on Joash, or on that which comes to us if we are like him, through a loud-voiced conscience, and a memory which, though it may be dulled and hushed to sleep at present, is sure to wake some day here or yonder. But I beseech you to ask yourselves what your outlook is. 'Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.' Is that all? Zechariah said, 'The Lord look upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cleared is the job, but there's something left behind; I take up fear with my chisel, fear lies 'twixt me and my plane, And I wake in the merry morning to a new unwonted pain. That's fear: I shall live it down—and many a thing besides Till I win the poor dulled heart which the workman's jacket hides. Were it not for the Hope of Hopes I know my journey's end, And would wish I had ne'er been born the ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... speedy removal of Lenin. The casual way in which these and kindred matters were talked of gave one the measure of the change that had come over the world since the outbreak of the war. There was nobody left in Europe whose death, violent or peaceful, would have made much of an impression on the dulled sensibilities of the reading public. All values had changed, and that of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... told us, but little needed to be told. We have followed Romola thus far with dulled intelligence of mind and soul if we cannot picture it clearly and certainly for ourselves. Love that never falters, patience that never questions, meekness that never fails, truth clear and still as the light of heaven, devotedness that knows no thought of self, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life—he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Established Church. And below these uplifted bones lay the huge and hollow valleys of the English countryside, where the motors went by every now and then like meteors, where stood out in white squares and oblongs in the chequered forest many of the country seats even of those same families now dulled with wealth or decayed with Toryism. And looking over that deep green prospect on that luminous yellow evening, a lovely and austere thought came into my mind, a thought as beautiful as the green wood and as grave as the tombs. The thought was this: ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... of every sufferer from doubting folly to say to himself, "I will perform this act once with my whole attention, then leave it and turn my mind in other channels before I have dulled my perception by repetition." ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... fiber. But he, too, grew silent and there was a certain meal-sack limpness about his attitude. His dulled eyes stared dreamily. All at once with a jerk he roused himself, turned over, and administered to the sleeping Chris a prod ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... night began again to settle over the sea, blotting out one patrol from another. On this as on many other similar nights spent in the bitter frost, thick sea fog or flying spume, in waters infested with mines and hostile submarines, certain senses became dulled, though the brain remained alert and the limbs as active as cramp and cold would allow. But the little incidents of those long hours are lost in blurred memories of cries from the look-out, hulls towering out of the blackness, the flashing of Morse lamps, ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... concentrated watchfulness had taught her, at certain periods of the year. It was in the heats of summer that they were most common and most strongly characterized. In winter, on the other hand, she was less excitable, and even at times heavy and as if chilled and dulled in her sensibilities. It was a strange, paroxysmal kind of life that belonged to her. It seemed to come and go with the sunlight. All winter long she would be comparatively quiet, easy to manage, listless, slow in her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... paintings. It was quite evident that he could not walk alone, but advanced, half-sliding, supported by two tall chamberlains, who each gave him an arm. His eyes were half-closed and his gaze absolutely dulled. The dressed and waxed moustache, which ran to a needle-like point, looked doubly tasteless against his wax mask of a face. He was the incarnation of walking decrepitude, vapid and slack. Quite evidently he had committed the blunder of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,—that was not ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... and her head fell back on his shoulder. As he ran into the house with her he saw his father lying near the door, and he uttered a cry so full of remorse and sorrow that it entered the dulled ears of Baptiste and restored him to consciousness, and he followed his son into the little bedroom, where Pierre laid the brave little mother on the bed. Tenderly the old man put his arms around his son's neck and kissed ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... the soul is well aware that His Majesty knoweth what is expedient herein, and is so far removed from all self-seeking, these acts and desires quickly end, and, as it seems to me, have no strength. Hence the fear I have at times though without disquietude and pain as formerly, that my soul is dulled, and that I am doing nothing, because I can do no penance; acts of desire for suffering, for martyrdom, and of the vision of God, have no strength in them, and, most frequently, I cannot make them. I seem to live only for eating and drinking, and avoiding pain in everything; and yet this gives ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... Madame de Listomere has white teeth, a dazzling skin, and very red lips; she is tall and well-made; her foot is small and slender, and she does not put it forth; her eyes, far from being dulled like those of so many Parisian women, have a gentle glow which becomes quite magical if, by chance, she is animated. A soul is then divined behind that rather indefinite form. If she takes an interest in the conversation she displays ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... the telescope. Not to say anything so harsh as that "familiarity breeds contempt," we must admit that when an operation of any sort becomes a matter of daily business, the sentiments associated with it necessarily become dulled. Now, however, I was filled with the consciousness that I was looking at the stars through the most powerful telescope that had ever been pointed at the heavens, and wondered what mysteries might ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... to attack the rest of the Roman forces in Mesopotamia, or even to attempt the siege of any large town. Perhaps he had really suffered large losses in the earlier part of the day; perhaps he was too much affected by the miserable death of his son to care, till time had dulled the edge of his grief, for military glory. At any rate, we hear of his undertaking no further enterprise till the second year after the battle, A.D. 350, when he made his third and most desperate ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... difficulty, leaving many words unfinished, and helping out his phrases with gesticulations and signs, his father suggesting and assisting as the narrative proceeded. Was it the strong love in St. Aubyn's cry that broke through the spell of disease and thrilled his child's dulled nerves into life? Was it the shock of an emotion coming unexpected and intense after all those dreary weeks of futile watchfulness? or was the miracle an effect of the same Divine grace which, by means ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the poet most dear, 'T was lacking to Virgil, adored by Voltaire, 'T is thou, divine coffee, for thine is the art, Without turning the head yet to gladden the heart. And thus though my palate be dulled by age, With joy I partake of thy dear beverage. How glad I prepare me thy nectar most precious, No soul shall usurp me a rite so delicious; On the ambient flame when the black charcoal burns, The gold ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... with hands outspread like a worshiper in adoration before his god—as In truth he was!—felt the penetrant vibrations of the fire with an inexpressible languor of bliss. This was the last match—the end! But what matter? The lethargy of utter exhaustion dulled familiar suffering. The obsession of the match still held its mastery, and its expression was the hot flame that breathed on him. Donald had no thought of death now, though vaguely he knew that he was prone at the feet ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... either at the request of friends or because the individual has something he wishes to purchase and has not the patience to wait, he borrows from the firm by means of "the ticket in the drawer" plan. He repeats the operation frequently until his conscience is dulled, and he gets the habit. Some day he wakes up to find he has several tickets in the drawer, and resorts to extreme measures, trying to beat the races, or to win money by ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... and rested his head in my lap as I sat down beside him; but no amount of coaxing could get him on his legs. Having administered the salts, which he evidently enjoyed, I proceeded to bleed him by slitting his ear; my knife, however, was not sharp enough, (for everything becomes dulled in this sand) to do the job properly, and he bled but little. I could do nothing but wait, so taking a diminutive edition of Thackeray from my pocket, for I had foreseen this long wait, I read a chapter from "Vanity Fair." Presently I got him on his legs ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... a noise on the stairway. His senses not yet dulled, detected a stealthy tread. Not the careless step of a man unafraid, but the cautious rustle and halt of a marauder. Every nerve bristled to keenest alertness as the faint occasional sounds approached, passed the open end of the bar where he crouched, leading on ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... native house which once had been of some consequence, and which faced the entrance to a mosque, indeed lay in the shadow of the minaret. It was opened from within, although she gave no perceptible signal, and its darkness, to Dr. Cairn's dulled perceptions, seemed to swallow them both up. He had an impression of a trap raised, of stone steps descended, of a ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... more assurance. Either from mortification at his illusion, or more probably from imperfect perception of it, he made no reference to what had passed. Old age possesses a kind of composure, arising from dulled sensibilities, which the most ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... mile or two the zest of the chase was dulled by the Wildcat's habitual languor. He edged over towards the Mud Turtle. "Mud Turtle, 'spec' dese gen'men gwine to give us fo' bits, mebbe, fo' he'pin 'em hunt dese golfs what we ain't seed. Ah feels dismal. ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... guest that there was scarcely a book on those shelves not sought after by book-buyers—not one that was not worth money in the book-market. Here and there the dulled gold of a fine antique binding returned the gleam of the candle, but any gathering of old law or worthless divinity would have ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... may be wise for a student to take up physiography, or its equivalent, early in the college course, irrespective of an ideal preparation in the related sciences. It is unfortunate to defer such study to a stage when the student's natural aptitude for observation and inference has become dulled by neglect or by confinement to subjects devoid of naturalistic stimulus. To permit students to take up earth-science in the freshman and sophomore years, even without the ideal preparation, is therefore probably wiser than to defer ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... her to God. I go to pray Him to speak to her that comfort which she may receive alone from Him. None other can do her any help. To-morrow, maybe—when the vexed brain hath slept, and gentle time hath somewhat dulled the first sharp edge of her cruel sorrow—then I may speak and be heard. But now she is in that valley of the shadow, where no voice can reach her save that which once said, 'Lazarus, come forth!' and which the dead shall hear in their graves ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... awful racket. It was infamous. She would not put up with such treatment. It amounted to desertion, and so forth. Yes, it was a "scene," indeed. But force of habit had utterly dulled its effectiveness as a weapon. Indeed, the only effect it might have been calculated to produce in the mind of the offending party had he not already secured his berth, would be that of moving him to sally forth and carry out that operation ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... on her knees, the chin resting on the palms of her hands, the angle of her thin shoulders outlined through the coarse, worsted shawl—always a pathetic attitude to the daughter:—this old mother broken with hard work and dulled by a ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... trouser round the thigh hung in ribbons, but the fragments lying on the flesh were caked and hard; and beneath him was a pool. His reason worked with difficulty, but clearly. "Some bad injury to the thigh," he thought. "Much bleeding—probably the bleeding has dulled the worst pain. The ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... empty-handed. I suppose that he withdrew again the blessings which he had advanced me, as we pushed out into the canal; but I heard nothing, for the wonder of the city was already upon me. All my nether- spirit, so to speak, was dulled and jaded by the long, cold, railway journey from Vienna, while every surface-sense was taken and tangled in the bewildering brilliancy and novelty of Venice. For I think there can be nothing else in the world so full of glittering and exquisite ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... heavy silence, that absolute immobility of face and limb. If her faculty of hearing was dulled, possibly she would yield to that of touch. Stooping, he laid his hand on ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... head and the sun glaring in my face. For a long time I lay motionless, for those horrible fumes seemed to have loosened my joints and dulled my brain. Sounds came to me from the house—men speaking throatily and the throbbing of a stationary car. There was a little gap in the parapet to which I wriggled, and from which I had some sort of prospect of the yard. I saw figures come out—a servant with his head bound ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... banks, in angry flood, rolling broken trees down stream and strewing ledges and shingle with battered branches. Its hoarse roar echoed across the bush, and Thirlwell felt that there was something daunting in the deep-toned sound. One could understand that a man like Driscoll, whose brain was dulled by liquor, might let it fill him with vague terrors when the ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... his mighty subject, it is because the prophets of old days have communed with him. Who has not been conscious of mysteries within his mind, mysteries of truth and reality, which will not wear the chains of language? Mortal, then the dead were with you! And thus shall the earth-dulled soul, whom I inspire, be conscious of a misty brightness among his thoughts, and strive to make it gleam upon the page,—but all in vain. Poor author! How will he despise what he can grasp, for the sake of the dim glory ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... time and the things that perish, and hearing the warning voice faintly and ever more faintly as the years pass; the aged, steeped and sodden in sin unrepented of, and with the spiritual senses all dulled and blunted by lifelong rebellion, willing now to hear and obey, it might be, but calling in vain on the merciful and long-suffering God they ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... odes understandingly, not in parrot fashion. It was better to submit a blank than a paper scribbled with detached words and phrases. It was all Agnes's fault—every bit. She had forced her to swallow that pill—the pill that had muddled her brain and dulled her hearing—the pill which was causing her to flunk in Latin. She had known that ode perfectly only the previous day. It wasn't her fault—it was entirely Agnes's. She would go instantly ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... edges of his recent fatigue were not yet dulled, but his cuirass sat lightly upon him, the sound of the dangling saber at his side smote pleasantly his ear, and the black Mecklenberg under him was strong and active. To return to Madame's chateau ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... as he was to her charm. The younger man's chivalry was up in arms, and he felt that such a boor did not deserve so bright a jewel. At times Frank was tempted to confront the callous husband and force him to open his dulled eyes to the bravely-borne misery of his neglected wife and realise how fortunate he ought to consider himself in being the owner of such a transcendent being. But the next moment the infatuated youth was convinced that Norton was incapable ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... piles of boxes and supplies, the bright guns, with the sun reflected from their barrels, dulled though these were to prevent that very thing. And I thought of the waste that was involved—of how all this vast product of industry was destined to be destroyed, as swiftly as might be, bringing no useful accomplishment with its destruction—save, of course, that ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... I plodded on, my step heavy, my head bowed, wearied alike in heart and body. My temples throbbed with the heat of the sun, my eyes were dulled, my throat caked by the swirling dust. At a cross- roads a Federal picket halted me, and I aroused sufficiently to hand him the paper which entitled me to safe passage through the lines. He was a man well along in years, with thoughtful eyes and kindly face, and I spoke to him ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... too short but exactly six feet high. We in Ireland thought as do the plays and ballads, not understanding that, from the first moment wherein nature foresaw the birth of Bastien-Lepage, she has only granted great creative power to men whose faces are contorted with extravagance or curiosity or dulled with some ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... obscure reason it is generally supposed that the man who spends his life in agricultural pursuits is bound to have his mental abilities dulled by the continuous round of duties connected with the land and the care of animals. The origin of this idea is difficult to imagine, unless it be that agriculture is the oldest and most necessary pursuit of mankind; but surely the man who has to keep a perpetual watch on wind, weather and workers, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... great truths to the feelings of those who had lived insensible to them lay the chief value of his preaching. He awakened men to believe that there was freshness and reality in things which they had by use become dulled to. There are no doubt minds which rise to the truth most naturally and freely without the intervention of dogmatic expressions, and to these such expressions, as they are a limit and a warning, are also felt ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the bitterest medicine, Melody, that is the most strengthening. This was bitter indeed; yet coming at this moment, it gave me the strength I needed. The sharp sting of this pain dulled in some measure that other that I suffered; and I had no fear of any weakness now. I do not count it weakness, that I wept over my poor father, lying down so quietly to die on the grave of his dear love. In my distraction, I even thought for a moment how well it was with them both, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... account of the swollen condition of the mucous membrane which lines this passage, it is blocked, and the middle ear is filled with fluid; these conditions interfere with the transmission of sound, and consequently its perception is dulled. But even in the absence of a drum-membrane an adult can hear; the vibrations in such cases are transmitted through the bones of the skull, and this very likely also occurs in newly born infants. In most instances, at least, they react to a disagreeable ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... of his wrist he drew from the brown paper a long, thin, highly polished rapier, the highly burnished steel of which was dulled along half its length, as if it had been first ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... the lawyer having doubted whether Uncle John's untrained fingers, dulled by age, could pick out the letters, large as they were. He had nothing more to offer, therefore, and no way of answering the appeal. But that night an order for the New Testament in raised characters for the blind ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of his grief was dulled, John's father did not feel it so keenly his duty to instruct his child and to teach him to reverence his Creator; and when John was about six years of age, the father was kept so busy with his work that he had but little time to ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the attempt to restore lustre to the unclean thing dulled by the touch of many fingers. In her days of prosperity Commander de Jars and the king's treasurer had both fluttered round Mademoiselle de Guerchi, and neither had fluttered in vain. Short as was the period necessary to overcome her scruples, in as short a period it ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... unprecedented contest it was, a battle that was a hundred thousand little battles, a battle in a sponge of ways and channels, fought out of sight of sky or sun under the electric glare, fought out in a vast confusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation, multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition of two hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised by lives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. They had no artillery, no differentiation into this force or that; the only weapon on either side was the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... who envy you, because they are unable to be you, would fain express. To begin with, the buildings of Venice, though of solid stone, seemed made of some ethereal substance. Then the sky was full of variety—here clear and ardent, there dulled and overclouded. What marvellous clouds there were! Masses of them in the centre of the scene hung above the house-roofs, while the immediate part was formed of a grey tint inclining to dark. I gazed astonished ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... was this—her mother's pessimistic way of looking at life was right—there were things too good to be true—she had been too sure of her happiness. The thought, like cold steel, lay against her heart and dulled its beating. But the pain in his eyes must be comforted. She stood up, and gravely took the hand ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... though some opiate Had stung and dulled my brain, a state Acute and slumbrous. It grew late. We stopped, a house stood silent, dark. The old man scratched a match, the spark Lit up the keyhole of a door, We entered straight upon a floor White ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... was set before her; delicious jellied cold soups, and scarlet lobsters with giant claws; and Maria Angelina discovered that excitement had not dulled her appetite. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... I exiled From that bright region, fair and fain, From that life, glad and undefiled, And longing dulled my sense again; I swooned in sorrow for the child, Needs must my heart cry and complain: "O Pearl, dear was thy counsel mild, In this true vision of my brain! If very truth divide us twain; If thou goest crowned, secure from ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... of furniture, delft, china, or silver were unknown; the introduction of delft-ware was considered by many of the backwoods people as a wasteful innovation; it was too easily broken, and the plates dulled ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... support. Then the wonderful fire of the malignant eyes, green, serpentine, opalescent, with the wave-like flux of a glowworm's light seen under a glass, riveted her attention. She had ceased to tremble. Our fear of death varies with our desire for life. Dulled by a great grief, she did not so very much care what became of her. The future's burden was heavy, and if it were necessary she now put it down, there would still be a sense of relief. As this thought passed like a shadow over her consciousness she felt herself irresistibly attracted ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... would allow, and before the reading aloud began, he would often lie on the sofa and listen to my mother playing the piano. He had not a good ear, yet in spite of this he had a true love of fine music. He used to lament that his enjoyment of music had become dulled with age, yet within my recollection, his love of a good tune was strong. I never heard him hum more than one tune, the Welsh song "Ar hyd y nos," which he went through correctly; he used also, I believe, to hum a little Otaheitan song. From his want of ear he was unable ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... duty to his Sultana performed, thought of Pascherette. The little octoroon lay where she had fallen, a pitiful little huddled heap; never once had her pain-dulled eyes left the giant, or the place where he might appear. And now she saw him coming toward her, not as a ministering angel, but like a figure of wrath, swinging his great broad-ax in one hand as easily ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... did not pause to eat the cold potato and bread spread with the grease of bacon trimmings which made his usual noon meal. Curiosity dulled his hunger. Gently he tapped upon that convenient pipe—once, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... mind is roused and works on these Objects with its powers at full tension; just as they who are gazing stedfastly at anything; but afterwards the act of Working is not of the kind it was at first, but careless, and so the Pleasure too is dulled. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... thinning of the shapeless gloom Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down The stale despair of night, must now renew Their desolation in the truce of dawn, Murdering the livid ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... and he could not see that they were full of tears; and for a long time there was silence, in which Sylvester's foot kept time nervously with the music. The girl bitterly reproached her tiredness, which had dulled apprehension so far that she had not realized at once the danger of the situation, nor retreated while there was yet time. She had always dreaded this; and now that it was accomplished, an illimitable vista of the disagreeable consequences broadened out before ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... wayward as a man could be. So far his catalogue of qualities does not seem to pick him as a winner. But he had one great and rare gift. He preserved through all his days a sense of the great wonder and mystery of life—the child sense which is so quickly dulled. Not only did he retain it himself, but he was word-master enough to make other people hark back to it also. As he writes you cannot help seeing through his eyes, and nothing which his eyes saw or ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... edge of the Nurse's joy was dulled. It is a characteristic of great happiness to wish all to be well with the world; and here before her was dry-eyed despair. It was ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lackey. But I will save her from you, Vincent Floyer. Not for her sake"—Orts looked down upon the prostrate woman and snarled. "Christ, no! But I'll do it for the sake of the boy I have been, since I owe that boy some reparation. I have ruined his nimble body, I have dulled the wits he gloried in, I have made his name a foul thing that honesty spits out of her mouth; but, if God yet reigns in heaven, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... but no—it was Three, with a look on his face that could only bear one interpretation. Belinda had been perverse, unkind, icy—had, in fact, thrown him over. You could read it in the angle of his cap, in the broken lace dragging from his boots, in his shuffling progress, and in the dulled gleam of his brass-mounted cans. From that date he became a frowning pessimist, perpetrating wheezes and squeaks and mumblings, quaverings and hoarse murmurs, instead of the customary sportive yelp. 'Tis an unkind world, according ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... home-coming, without pleasure or anticipation. The sense of his loss—the hopeless yearning for Madge—was but little dulled. He felt that he could never take up the threads of his old life again; he wished to avoid all who knew him. He had no plans for the future. His studio was let, and the new tenant had engaged Alphonse—Nevill had arranged this for ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Tom, dulled and stunned, took the story in gradually, and got used to it as he went along. He came and slept at night in the tutor's room, and felt how much worse things might have been had it not been for the stalwart ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in the gusty wind which had followed him in from the street. He dragged it aside, and entered a long, low room which looked as if it had once been a third-rate dancing-saloon. Shrill flaring gas-jets, dulled and distorted in the fly-blown mirrors that faced them, were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors of ribbed tin backed them, making quivering discs of light. The floor was covered with ochre-coloured sawdust, trampled here and there ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... word the platitude might pass unchallenged. But a vague desire for the emphasis and glamour of literature having brought in the word "mother," has yet failed to set the sluggish imagination to work, and a word so glowing with picture and vivid with sentiment is damped and dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted usage to mean no more than "cause" or "occasion." Only for the poet, perhaps, are words live winged things, flashing with colour and laden with scent; yet one poor spark of imagination ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... rest where he was. He must go to her, and tax her with it, repeat what Krafft had said, to her very face. She should suffer, too—and the foretasted anguish and pleasure of hot recriminations dulled all ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... she were about to rise from her chair, but she quieted herself and dulled the responsive look upon ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... become conscious that he was not quite the man that he had been. His mind was darkened and dulled by crime. He was haunted by vague fears and apprehensions. With his frequent and appalling losses of money, he had lost a measure of his faith in himself. His coolness of calculation had been diminished; ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... drifts of twenty feet of snow, cut off equally from incoming teams from the pass and the valley below. During the second year his wife had joined him with four children, but whether the enforced separation had dulled her conjugal affection, or whether she was tempted by a natural feminine longing for the land of promise beyond, she sought it one morning with a fascinating teamster, leaving her two sons and two daughters behind her; two years later the elder of the daughters followed ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the guns in the turrets and casemates were enduring the pains of hell. In the low, ironclad chambers a fiery heat prevailed, which rendered even breathing difficult. The terrific noise and the superhuman excitement of the nerves seemed to have so dulled the men's senses, that they no longer had any clear idea of what was going on around them. Their faces did not wear that expression of rage and exasperation, which Heideck had seen in so many soldiers in the land battle at Lahore; rather, he observed a certain dull indifference, which ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... be broken and fly up in a confusion as to what course she really wished to pursue. By the time she gained the privacy of her own room that night, she felt exhausted by the contradictions of her own beaten heart and she sat down again in the hard chair, too dulled to think. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... God meseemeth he, Nay passing Gods (and that can be!) Who all the while sits facing thee Sees thee and hears Thy low sweet laughs which (ah me!) daze 5 Mine every sense, and as I gaze Upon thee (Lesbia!) o'er me strays * * * * My tongue is dulled, my limbs adown Flows subtle flame; with sound its own 10 Rings either ear, and o'er are ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... to his travels and to his adventures, of which he spoke with the indifference of a man accustomed to danger, his unassuming manner, his frank ways—everything about him awakened her interest. She had supposed that in two years the very faculty of being interested by a man would be dulled if not destroyed; she found to her annoyance that though she had seen Mr. Juxon only twice she could not put him out of her thoughts. She was, moreover, a nervous, almost morbid, woman, and the natural result of trying ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... up and down and showed cavalry massing beneath walnut, oak, and pine. There were trumpet signals and a great trampling of hoofs, but the roaring flames, the swollen torrent, the pattering rain, the flaws of wind somewhat dulled other sounds. A tall man with sash and sabre, thigh boots and marvellously long moustaches, sat his horse beneath a dripping, wind-tossed pine. He pointed to the grey troopers up and down the southern bank. "There's the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... social recognition among whites here"; and in conclusion this editorial said: "The South only pities the daughter that she should have allowed herself to be used by a father whose sensibilities and ideas of the proprieties are so dulled by his asinine qualities that he could not see the ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... she often coughed, and in her eyes I often noticed the expression common to people who are ill, but who for some reason conceal it. In her present cheerfulness there was something childish and naive, as though all the joy which had been suppressed and dulled during our childhood by a strict upbringing, had suddenly awakened in her soul ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... weary of this bootless chase for glory and pelf, resolves to see Ingeborg once more before he dies, and, disguised as a salt-boiler, he enters King Ring's hall. There he sees his beloved sitting in the high-seat beside her aged lord; and the sorrow which the years had dulled revives with an exquisite agony. He punishes with fierce promptitude one of the King's men who insults him; and his answer to the King's rebuke betrays him as a man of rank and station. He then throws away his disguise, without, however, revealing his ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen |
