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Silently   /sˈaɪləntli/   Listen
Silently

adverb
1.
Without speaking.  Synonyms: mutely, taciturnly, wordlessly.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Silently" Quotes from Famous Books



... sincere friendship, his sister being a member of the community. On the eve of his arrival, Sister Bourgeois had a singular prediction of the future. She saw in a dream, a grave, venerable-looking man, dressed like an ecclesiastic, standing silently before her. The form and features of the man, who was not then known to her, remained distinctly imprinted on her imagination, and she had an indefinable inspiration that he was to be in some way connected with the work for which God intended her. She related ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.

... door and closed it silently behind her. Her cousins were in bed, her uncle and aunt in the sitting-room with their visitor. Faith would have to pass the sitting-room door and go through the kitchen; the slightest noise would betray her. She had put on her moccasins, the ones Kashaqua had given ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis

... and longing in the reply touched Uncle Bob; Jean and the young Venetian chattered on, but Mr. Cabot walked silently ahead, deep ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett

... Silently shaking hands with Mr Cupples, whose lugubrious expression seemed appropriate to the occasion, Will leaped into the boat and was soon rowing over the bay to the spot where the Roving Bess lay with her anchor tripped and her sails loose. On approaching, he saw ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne

... wrote, the girl looking on sharply, spelling the letters with silently moving lips as ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... fortress; nor, indeed, does it even appear to be mentioned as such, except in the Memoirs of Marshal de Matignon, where a demand is stated to have been made for thirty men to garrison it. In all probability, the change produced in the art of warfare, by the introduction of cannon, caused it silently to pass into insignificance, and then gradually to sink into its present wretched state of dilapidation. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, an hospital was established within its walls; and the same still subsists, but in ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... silently they went to the storeroom. They were not disturbed, for there were several class dinners on that night, and most of the occupants of Wright Hall were out. Andy and Dunk intended ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... was soon so wrapped up in it that he forgot even his pipe. The other passengers, the postmaster, his buxom wife, and their pretty daughters, came dropping in, one after the other. But when this peaceful conventicle had for some time been listening silently, devoutly, and admiringly, lo, they were startled by a stentorian voice bawling into the room the words:—"Gentlemen, the horses are put in." The postmaster, who was indignant at this untimely interruption, begged the musician to continue. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... purply-pink petals! They had had their day, they had had their fill of sunshine, they had been breathed on by the soft breezes of a genial summer, and now all the brightness for them was over; they folded their petals, becoming just like a cross as they silently died away. You see," she looked up with a smile, "even the heather knows that the way of self-sacrifice is the only way that is ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... defiance passed away, and was replaced by an expression of humility that, strangely enough, seemed rather to intensify than diminish his air of fixed resolve. While the instrument of torture was being arranged he turned his face to the Bishop of Galloway, who sat beside Lauderdale silently and sternly awaiting the result, and with an almost cheerful ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... his arm, Ben climbed a fence and running across the fields reached the fork of the road. Here he concealed himself under a hedge, and waited silently till the opportunity for ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... falls fruitless; none can tell How vast its power may be, Nor what results enfolded dwell Within it silently. Work and despair not; give thy mite, Nor care how small it be; God is with all that serve the right, The holy, true, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... he looked round, and, standing near the parchment window he caught sight of the man for whom he was looking. Ainley was rather white of face, but his eyeglass was in its place, and outwardly he was collected and cool. Hubert Stane regarded him silently for a moment, then ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... to spring to her side, but he hesitated, and then with a gesture and look of infinite regret he turned and stole silently away. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... a very strange one, came into my mind; and I stood up silently. The woman's back was towards me, but something in her height, her shape, the pose of her head hidden as it was by her shawl, seemed familiar. I waited while she hung over the fire whispering, and while the goodwife slowly filled ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... were staring into the darkness.... Not a sound; all was quiet. She rose from her couch, her hair streaming, her body all aglow. She donned a flimsy, rose-colored dressing gown, opened her door, crept silently down the hall and went bodily into young Holbrook's room. In a dressing gown and slippers he sat, reading a magazine; he must have been restless, too. "Why Mrs. Reed—Eileen—what ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... bleeding, he tried to rise and stanch the flow, but, already exhausted, he fell back almost fainting from the effort. He called repeatedly for help, but his only reply was the hideous face of his guard, silently leering at him for a moment, then disappearing without a word, At last it occurred to him that he had been left there to die, and he roused all his energies to his aid. How we strive for our lives! But Shirley accomplished nothing, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... looked nice," Esther said hurriedly. She knew Micky had seen her tears, and was silently hating him ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... the old soldiers, their mustaches working, their lips drawn back over their teeth, snarling, sputtering like savage beasts. Here and there mouths were tight shut in a firm line. Here and there men came silently, but mostly they were yelling. And they came up, arms aport, after the precept and example of Dorsenne, le beau Dorsenne, alas, no longer with them, to try conclusions for the last time with the soldiers' white weapon, the bayonet, ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the outer door was closed, and air hissed in to fill the lock. The airlock's inner door then slid open and the newcomers stepped into the ship's interior, unscrewing their transparent helmets as they did so. For a few moments the visitors silently surveyed their new surroundings. ...
— The Sargasso of Space • Edmond Hamilton

... Jack Meredith, lying comfortably somnolent on the outskirts of life, heard light footsteps, but hardly heeded them. He knew that some one came into the room and stood silently by his couch for some seconds. He lazily unclosed his eyelids for a moment, not in order to see who was there, but with a view of intimating that he was not asleep. But he was not wholly conscious. To men accustomed to an active, energetic life, a long illness ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... footsteps of night. Slowly, very slowly the twilight hung its curtains around us. Swiftly, too swiftly the quiet village drew near, but my thoughts were neither of the village nor the night. As I sat and pulled silently upwards, life was entirely changing for me. Old thoughts, old passions, old aims and musings slipped from me and swept off my soul as the darkening river ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the point of death, his friends and relatives array him in his best clothes and boots. They silently bewail him for an hour, after which they prepare for his interment. The body, having been sewed up in his best seal or deer-skin, is laid in the burying-place, covered with a skin, and with green sods; ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... had seen her, so he painted. As at the beginning of life in a cold world, passively meeting the long trouble of it, he painted her a rapt Presence floating evenly to our earth. A gray, translucent sea laps silently upon a little creek, and in the hush of a still dawn the myrtles and sedges on the water's brim are quiet. It is a dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue; and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... in the dark, and whatever noise you hear, whatever passes, only come in or show yourself if I call you." Ali bowed in token of strict obedience. Monte Cristo then drew a lighted taper from a closet, and when the thief was deeply engaged with his lock, silently opened the door, taking care that the light should shine directly on his face. The door opened so quietly that the thief heard no sound; but, to his astonishment, the room was ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... not discovered. On the third day, however, they heard that their departure had become known to the enemy, who was in hot pursuit. It was a terribly anxious time for the invalid missionary, but Captain Maxwell and his men were determined that she should not be captured. Silently and without halting once, even for food, they hurried on hour after hour, and finally arrived at Lagos, having done a six days' journey in less than three and a half. So carefully had Captain Maxwell's men carried Anna Hinderer that she was little the worse for the journey, and after ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore

... Captain," said the physician, leading the way into the parlor. Mr. Kemble silently ushered Mr. and Mrs. Nichol into the sitting-room on the opposite side of the hall and placed them in the care of his wife. He then went into the back parlor in which was Helen, now quiet as women so often are in emergencies. Through a slight opening between the sliding-door she looked, with ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... manufacturing that black powder which has the defect of making a noise when used in killing animals. The curare, which we prepare from father to son, is superior to anything you can make down yonder (beyond sea). It is the juice of an herb which kills silently, without any one knowing ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... one, the distant fires faded, and as some of us still sat there silently, far, far away in the gray east there was a faint flush of carmine where the new dawn was kindling in secret. Underneath that violet bank of cloud the sun was forging his beams of light. The pole-star paled. The breath of the new morrow stole up out of the rosy gray. The wings of the morning ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... hamlet of M——, five versts only from the Position. It was night when we arrived there; no sound of cannon, only on the high hills (the first lines of the Carpathians) that faced us the scattered watchfires of our own Sixty-Fifth Division, and in the little village street a line of cavalry moving silently, without a spoken word, on to the high-road beyond. After much difficulty (the village was filled with the officers of the Sixty-Fifth) we found a kitchen in which we might sleep. Upon the rough earth floor our mattresses were spread, my feet under ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... I took hold of my gun, and by pressing my finger on each trigger in turn, I cocked it silently, and raising myself on one elbow waited for ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... to confirm his impression that these people were a bad lot, and one dark night he "folded his tent like the Arabs and silently stole away," taking with him as a souvenir the little idol, which he had carefully rolled in a blanket and packed on one side of his pack-horse to balance his box of specimens on the other. Fear of possible unpleasant consequences had caused Jones ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... given him pleasure? Then she thought that perhaps her father was living again in the past, and confounding this fearful thing which he was planning for her with his own joyous wedding. Tears flowed afresh, but silently, at the thought of the contrast. Often had her ayah delighted her childish imagination by her glowing descriptions of the magnificence of that wedding, where the festivities had lasted for a week, and the arrangements were all made on a scale of Oriental splendor. She loved to descant upon the beauty ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... of waning hopes and the horrors of pestilence added to the toils and perils of war. It was in this year that the cholera made its first appearance in Europe. It devastated the camps of both armies, affecting the firmest minds with the terror of a mysterious death stalking silently between the piled-up arms and ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... the fire sullenly antagonistic. He did not return to his blanket, but sat silently smoking and thinking. He hated the constant reference to his inexperience on the prairie. If even he did hear a horse galloping in the distance it didn't matter. But it was his ears that had first caught the sound in spite of his inexperience. His companion pigheadedly derided ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... man, a tall, bony, bearded man, about fifty years old, carrying in his hand a long, old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifle. He was dressed all in buckskin, while the moccasins on his feet explained how it was he had been able to slip up on us so silently. ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... her tongue, the guinea henceforward travelled down the stream of Time fast enough though silently, but she took the first opportunity of examining the iron box under the Pacha's bed, thinking perhaps there might be a chink in it. And it was curious how for some time afterwards a fit of extraordinary industry prevailed in the house; there was not a table, a chair, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... nun equally wrapped from head to foot in a large veil. She passed along the altar, stopped in the middle, threw herself on the ground, kissed the floor, and by a sudden effort, without helping herself by her arms, stood upright, advanced silently into the church, and brushed by Durtal, who saw under the muslin a magnificent robe of creamy white, an ivory cross at her neck, at her girdle ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... sound and significance deserves to be reviv'd, I have that reasonable veneration for antiquity, to restore it. All beyond this is superstition. Words are not like landmarks, so sacred as never to be remov'd; customs are chang'd, and even statutes are silently repeal'd, when the reason ceases for which they were enacted. As for the other part of the argument, that his thoughts will lose of their original beauty, by the innovation of words; in the first place, not only their beauty, but their being ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... my costly linen and lace out into the garden. Nothing was spared me, for from the window I could see him and the marauding Jaguar weight their perfumed whiteness down with sticks and stones and clods of earth. I suffered, but silently. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... at the glass, she pointed to the doorway through which her sister had come, and in obedience to her gesture of command, Mistress Anne stole silently away. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... his friend in amazement, and was about to express his astonishment, when Herbert, seeing others approach, drew the arm of his friend within his own, and they hurried silently on toward Major ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... in the bottom of the prau and prayed for strength, and then took up the oars and pulled silently toward the ocean. Near morning he was abreast of one of the largest Suloo forts—the home of his bitterest and ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... slave woman named Fanny, belonging to Mr. Charles Trabue, who lives neat Palmyra, Marion co., Missouri; on the morning after the punishment Fanny was a corpse; she was silently and quickly buried, but rumor was not so easily stopped. Mr. Trabue heard of it, and commenced suit for his property. The murdered slave was disinterred, and an inquest held; her back was a mass ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... you, little girl." And he drew her very close and kissed her lips. "Good-bye." He disengaged himself from her arms and looked again in time to see that the rear of the column had just passed him. Then he rose and leaped quickly and silently ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... need not confine myself to the Greeks. The Indians, when they rise to offer their morning salutation to the Sun, do not consider it enough to kiss their hands after the Greek fashion; turning to the East, they silently greet the God with movements that are designed to represent his own course through the heavens; and with this substitute for our prayers and sacrifices and choral celebrations they seek his favour at the beginning ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... silently into a side street off St. James's, where the chauffeur pulled up sharply at the door of one of the old-fashioned, though now newly-painted houses. Vermont sprang out ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... complete and more magnificent than at five o'clock that January morning among the Vosges mountains. The snow was piled up, softening the rugged outlines of the mountain peaks and through the pale darkness dim shadows were silently moving. These shadows are the brave mountaineers, who have come to defend France at the summons of Simon, who, in spite of his wooden leg, displayed immense activity. Among these there were no youths. The conscription had long ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... mighty forces of the insensate world around, so pitiless, so silently cruel, it seemed to my city-bred soul. It was the spot where Nature spread her wonders before us, one tiny spring dividing its waters east and west for the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, for this was the ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... morning I found lying close to me, stiff, cold, and quite dead, in full regimentals, with his sword drawn in his hand, an old grey-haired conductor named Macgregor, who, utterly exhausted, had lain down there silently to die.' Already defection had set in. One of the Shah's infantry regiments and his detachment of sappers and miners had deserted bodily, partly during the march of the previous day, partly in ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, And as silently steal away." ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... indefinable quality which we call personal magnetism, the power of impressing by one's personality every human being who comes near, was at its height in Mr. Webster. He never, for instance, punished his children, but when they did wrong he would send for them and look at them silently. The look, whether of anger or sorrow, was punishment and rebuke enough. It was the same with other children. The little daughter of Mr. Wirt once came into a room where Mr. Webster was sitting with his back toward her, ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... the balloon, when it first caught the wind, heeled violently over and was longer than usual in righting. I looked down at the old familiar sight of the world rushing away from me. And there were the thousands of people, every face silently upturned. And the silence startled me, for, as crowds went, this was the time for them to catch their first breath and send up a roar of applause. But there was no hand-clapping, whistling, cheering—only silence. And instead, clear as a bell and distinct, without the slightest shake ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... were trading in tobacco, and had collected quantities of the round balls, about the size of nine pounder shot, into which it is formed. One of them owned a woman, whose child had been sold that morning for tobacco. The mother followed him, weeping silently, for hours along the way we went; she seemed to be well known, for at several hamlets, the women spoke to her with evident sympathy; we could do nothing to alleviate her sorrow—the child would be kept until some slave- trader passed, and then ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... Captain Grove about hiring ships for Tangier. I did hint to him my desire that I could make some lawfull profit thereof, which he promises that he will tell me of all that he gets and that I shall have a share, which I did not demand, but did silently consent to it, and money I perceive something will be got thereby. At night Mr. Bland came and sat with me at my office till late, and so I home and to bed. This day being washing day and my maid Susan ill, or would be thought so, put my house so out of order that we had no pleasure almost in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... hands all around. I gave them some hard bread, also some bacon, and we had a good time generally all day resting at this spring. At nightfall they all departed, as silently as shadows, leaving us in full possession of the ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... Griswold was laughing silently and inwardly deriding his gifts when, under cover of the doctor's return, he made decent acknowledgments for benefits bestowed and took his departure. On the pleasant summer-night walk to upper Shawnee Street he was congratulating himself upon the now ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... I silently retired I turned and watched them still, And they came helter-skelter out, Driven forward like a rabble rout Into the world they had so ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... to this remark and for some time they all gazed silently at the spreading flames of the second ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... as he walked silently into the house. She would not now speak to him of the patent; but she recalled some words of Solomon John. When they were discussing the patent he had said that many an inventor had grown gray before his discovery was acknowledged by the public. Others might reap the harvest, but it came, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... have an inclination to wander, told me that I could never find a friend more constant and zealous than himself; that indeed he had made no promises, because he hoped to surprise me with advancement, but had been silently promoting my interest, and should continue his good offices, unless he found the kindness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... sudden thought struck me. I saw myself wandering barefooted, bareheaded, the sun beating on my dark poll. I snatched off my floppy hat and tried hurriedly in the dark to ram it on my other self. He dodged and fended off silently. I wonder what he thought had come to me before he understood and suddenly desisted. Our hands met gropingly, lingered united in a steady, motionless clasp for a second. . . . No word was breathed by either of us when ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... Helas! il est mort, le bon homme. [Why, that was my husband! alas, he is dead, poor man!] Just so little was the consideration shown this worthy creature in his own house! Yet it both pleased and amused him to sit there silently and gaze at the throng of rank, fashion, and learning, assembled in his wife's salon, and ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... Rome, true to her mission as "the mother of the Catholic Church," conceived and brought forth nearly all the peculiarities of the Catholic system. The lady seated on the seven hills was already regarded with great admiration, and surrounding Churches silently copied the arrangements of their Imperial parent. In the East, at least one of the orders now instituted by the great Western prelate, that is, the order of acolyths, was not adopted ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... Christian went out silently. One only thing there was that he could do, and he must not delay. His horror overmastered any curiosity to hear White Fell's smooth excuses and smiling apologies for her strange and uncourteous departure; or her easy tale of the circumstances of her return; ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... a Catholic), which made him involuntarily lift his hat, as did Nicolas, when they passed a calvary; which induced him likewise to make the sacred gesture when they met a priest, with an acolyte and swinging censer, hurrying silently on to the home of some dying parishioner. The sensations were different from anything he had known. He had been used to the Catholic religion in Ireland; he had seen it in France, Spain, Italy and elsewhere; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... his gun, but waited silently. He would not call out. Some chance fisherman, it might be, or any small craft holding the same course along the coast. Still, he did not like the hurry of the sweeps, which presently groaned louder and threw up nebulous ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... the bar, and seeing Bell therein, silently placed a little tract on the counter. No sooner had she left the house than Bell snatched up the tract, and rushing to the door flung it after the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... up the sums, to see if they would enable me to meet the demands upon me. The next thing was to do the same thing over again; and the next, to do it over again a third time. All this was accompanied with long and deep-drawn sighs, which were listened to by a fond and wakeful bedfellow, who silently sympathized with me in all my trials, and who was as restless and anxious as myself. Sometimes I moaned, and sometimes I prayed; and when I was wearied out with my fruitless labors, I fell asleep. It would have been better, if I could have done it, to have "given to the winds my fears," ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... chief, as his thumb-point at will Silently over the sword's edge played. —"Ay!" said the smith, "but there's one thing, still: Who is the smiter, shall smite with this blade?" Jealous, their eyes met; and fury awoke. "I am the smiter!" Antar cried. One stroke Rolled the smith's ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... see the clouds at summer-tide Dappling all the landscape wide— To mark the varying gloom and glow As the seasons come and go— Again the green meads to behold Thick strewn with silvery gems and gold, Where kine, bright-spotted, large, and sleek, Browse silently, with aspect meek, Or motionless, in shallow stream Stand mirror'd, till their twin shapes seem, Feet linked to feet, forbid to sever, By some strange magic fixed ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... country, the speed of the train increased. The smoke and cinders poured into the open window. Timid because of her strange surroundings, she silently accepted the infliction, cowering into her seat without attempting to put the window down. When a man in the opposite seat leaned forward and pulled it down for her, she was too abashed to thank him, but retained her crouching position and ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... in his nature. He shrinks instinctively from the rude touch of a foreign hand. Even when this foreign influence comes in the form of civilization he seems to sink and pine away beneath it. It has been so with the Mexicans. Under the Spanish domination their numbers have silently melted away. Their energies are broken. They no longer tread their mountain plains with the conscious independence of their ancestors. In their faltering step and meek and melancholy aspect we read the sad characters of the conquered race.... Their civilization was of the hardy character ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... addressed, who was lying flat upon his back, gazing silently upward at the rocky front of the cliff, turned cautiously over upon his ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... instance, as these four which follow:—1. Eminent instances of scepticism with regard to the oracular powers, from time to time circulating through Greece in the shape of bon mots; or, 2, which silently amounted to the same virtual expression of distrust, Refusals (often more speciously wearing the name of neglects) to consult the proper Oracle on some hazardous enterprize of general notoriety and interest; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... my stomach so that I might the more readily observe the man's movements, and breathing pianissimo lest he in turn should observe mine, I watched him as he climbed. Up he came as silently as the midnight mouse upon a soft carpet—up past the Jorkins apartments on the second floor; up stealthily by the Tinkletons' abode on the third; up past the fire-escape Italian garden of little Mrs. Persimmon on the fourth; up past the windows of the disagreeable ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... minute, and then he rose, opened the cupboard and put in his hand. There was a click and the cupboard with its interior swung back, revealing another room which was in point of fact an adjoining suite of offices, also rented by Mr. Brown. He stood silently in the opening, his chin on his breast, his hands ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... punctually, and hurried his steps as he approached the house. Just in time, for Betto was placing on the table an appetising supper of cawl and bread and butter, which the two men were soon discussing silently, for the Vicar was more pre-occupied than usual, and Cardo, too, was busy ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... a bow, and the masked face turned fully toward his own, while the hood trembled as if its wearer laughed silently. ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... his faithful Varangian close by his shoulder, melted from the dispersing assembly silently and almost invisibly, as snow is dissolved from its Alpine abodes as the days become more genial. No lordly step, nor clash of armour, betokened the retreat of the military persons. The very idea of the necessity of guards was not ostentatiously brought forward, because, so near ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... before him. He himself had taught this man to trail, had roused in Mahon the quick eye of suspicion that questioned every turned leaf; and now he was to pay for it. Silently he cursed the luck of things. He was satisfied no prying eye about the camp could follow his tracks, but he had not counted ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... a lounge, under a silken mosquito curtain, and was soon sound asleep. Miss Ophelia silently busied herself with her knitting. St. Clare sat down to the piano, and began playing a soft and melancholy movement with the AEolian accompaniment. He seemed in a deep reverie, and to be soliloquizing ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... darkness. It was a long, silent night. At 9.30 the tinkling sound of the wire being fixed was heard, and they knew from this that the digging had commenced—some 800 men, good and true, working silently as they had never ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... proper!" Thank you, Mr. Collins! thank you kindly, Richard Verstegan! You are both excellent and honest men. You cannot have been in collusion. You have not, until now, even reaped the merit of truthfulness and accuracy, which you silently reflect upon each other. The family name, Bacon, then, undoubtedly signifies "of the beechen tree," and is therefore of the same class with many others such as ash, beech, &c., latinized in ancient records by De Fraxino, De ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various

... They moved silently to the room's great barred door, outside which a frog-guard paced. They waited until he had passed the door and on down the hall, then Norman and Hackett and Sarja grasped together one of the door's vertical bars. It was an inch and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... mental impressions which I gathered from that new stage of my growth—impressions which imparted new principles to my view of myself, of men, and of God's world. O good and consoling voice, which in later days, in sorrowful days when my soul yielded silently to the sway of life's falseness and depravity, so often raised a sudden, bold protest against all iniquity, as well as mercilessly exposed the past, commanded, nay, compelled, me to love only the pure vista of the present, and promised me all that was fair and happy in ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... the rear of the drive. All about floated the logs, caroming gently one against the other, shifting and changing the pattern of their brown against the blue of the water. The current flowed strongly and smoothly, but without obstruction. Everything went well. The banks slipped by silently and mysteriously, like the unrolling of a panorama—little strips of marshland, stretches of woodland where the great trees leaned out over the river, thickets of overflowed swampland with the water rising and draining among roots in a strange ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... from the sun—are, indeed, nothing more than the heaped-up motion of the aether waves. It is the calorific waves emitted by the sun which heat our air, produce our winds, and hence agitate our ocean. And whether they break in foam upon the shore, or rub silently against the ocean's bed, or subside by the mutual friction of their own parts, the sea waves, which cannot subside without producing heat, finally resolve themselves into waves of aether, thus regenerating ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... words in the county, and stood high amongst the best. A convulsion of nature may destroy the world in half an hour, as love, it is said, may transform a man into an oyster; but either of these contingencies was as remote as the possibility of Allcraft's failure. Silently and successfully the house went on. For a quarter of a year the sun shone brightly, and profit, and advantage, and honour, looked Michael in the face. Thriving abroad, happy at home, what did he need more? His spirit became buoyant—his heart carefree and light. He congratulated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... hand, and then her arm slid softly around his neck. Her kiss was meant as brief, but he persuaded her differently. They clung together silently until the barracks guard had spun an about-face and headed back ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll

... into the hall; promptly, Mr. Scanlon followed. The sitting-room door was exactly opposite, and they entered silently. Through the shutters a dim light was admitted, and fell across the floor; almost in the center of this a huddled form lay in a twisted, sidelong fashion; the head rested upon a rug, one end of which was thick and ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... his horse. "Now, just hold Gray Cloud and I'll scout on ahead and see what's going on down there in the valley before we show ourselves," and, sliding swiftly from Gray Cloud's back, he tossed his bridle rein to Thure, and, rifle in hand, started swiftly and as silently as an Indian toward a thick clump of bushes that grew directly on the ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... his fingers was left on her delicate wrist as he withdrew his hand; but Pauline was too proud to subject herself to further indignity in the presence of a stranger; and though she read triumph in his insolent eye, she took her place silently at ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... from me as she sat gazing silently at the tumbling, gorgeous mass of clouds that seemed almost to be resting on her lap; Harry was looking at ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... instantly and an Indian soldier stood in the opening. The Brigadier stared full at him for several seconds as if he saw nothing, his lips still moving secretly, silently. Then suddenly, with a stiff gesture, ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... and went back into the kitchen. I knew that I could rely on her. "Come, monsieur," I whispered to De Berquin, and we went silently back to ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... crucifix betokened that our Father the Pope had interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit, whom he had worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness, and pilgrim of the storm, took his place silently in the midst of us. When the first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of the Penobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen, in their summer excursions down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle their birch ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... silently enjoyed the pleasure of seeing his ancient enemies lying before him prostrate in the dust. He then desired them to rise, reassured them, called them brothers, sons, friends of his heart. Distinguishing some of his old acquaintances, he called ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... and in her chamber sat the two brothers and Mr. Marchdale, silently, for she had shown symptoms of restlessness, and they much feared to break the light slumber into which she ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... who have the care of children of both sexes, to bear their possible futures silently in mind; but all talk to them, or before them, all reading upon physiological subjects, during the period of development, should be forbidden, for the reasons that dictated the answer of the specialist; children should be instructed long before ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... caught every word that had fallen from their lips a few minutes back, and felt, indeed, at heart so much distressed on Yan Yang's behalf, that throwing himself silently on his bed, he left the three girls in the outer rooms to prosecute their chat ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... when they were gathering up the remains of the lunch and folding it up in the tablecloth and returning glasses and plates and cutlery to the basket, Joe found himself standing silently beside Hawkins, watching the preparations for leaving. The moonlight was streaming down in a silvery flood through the trees and the bit of green meadow glowed like a fairy ring. There were silvery ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... alive through a universe peopled with shadows. Only a borrowed radiance attached itself now to the persons and objects that had illumined the world for her yesterday. Yet she approached the crisis of her life so silently that those around her did not recognize it beneath the cover of ordinary circumstances. Like most great moments it had come unheralded; and though the rustling of its wings filled her soul, neither her mother nor John Henry heard a stir in the quiet air that surrounded ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... the old one. [27] It was not until the close of the present reign, when the nation began to breathe awhile from its tumultuous career, that the fruits of the patient cultivation which it had been steadily, though silently experiencing, began to manifest themselves in the improved condition of the language, and its adaptation to the highest poetical uses. The intercourse with Italy, moreover, by naturalizing new and more finished forms of versification, afforded a scope for the nobler ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... which were glistening with gold and silver, while bright stones gleamed like so many stars all over the roof of the place. Three little fairy children were playing with golden balls on the floor, and when they saw the dame they stopped in their sport and stood looking silently upon her with great, wide-opened eyes, just as though they were little mortal children. In the corner of the room was a bed all of pure gold, and over the bed were spread coverlets of gold and silver cloth, and in the bed lay a beautiful little lady, very white and ill. Then Dame Margery knew ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... repast; but although the bridegroom could not eat, he could swallow champagne in such copious draughts, that ere long the terror and remorse that the apparition of Jacques Rollet had awakened in his breast were drowned in intoxication. Amazed and indignant, poor Natalie sat silently observing this elect of her heart, till overcome with disappointment and grief, she quitted the room with her sister, and retired to another apartment, where she gave free vent to her feelings ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... the precious document with great satisfaction, carefully folded it up, and placed it in her bag, very much to Rupert's delight, as he silently watched her proceedings. ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... but the great curiosity of modern times is the almost infinite number of applications which these laws and qualities may be made to serve. One may turn at a single glance from the loading and firing of naval guns to the hatching of chickens and the cooking of chocolate by precisely the same means, silently used in the same way. Most of these applications, and all the most extraordinary ones, are of American origin. Their inventors are largely unknown. There is no attempt made here to more than suggest ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... addressing himself at first to the company at large; but, finding their attention gradually diverted to other talk and other objects, he lowered his tone as his number of auditors diminished, until he concluded his remarks in an under voice to a fat-headed old gentleman next him who was silently engaged in the discussion of a huge plateful ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... thoroughly worked out. It contains numerous misprints and errata, and part of the second volume is so difficult as to be almost unintelligible. Some, in fact, consists of notes written for private use and not intended for publication. It seems next to impossible now to mature a work silently for twenty or thirty years, as was done by Newton two and a half centuries ago. But a second edition was preparing, and much might have been improved in form if life had been ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... questions in their breasts revolving Whose deeper meaning science never learns, Till at some reverend elder's look dissolving, The speechless senate silently adjourns. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the boys and girls of far-off Norway sometimes think when they see the dainty, feathery snowflakes flying softly and silently through the air? I don't think there are many of you who do know, so I will ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 10, March 8, 1914 • Various

... blow silently. As yet I have told no one. I have made no inquiries. When a man is betrayed by his best friend and deserted by the woman he loves, time and solitude are the only comforters. Besides, to whom should I go for comfort? I have lived too ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke



Words linked to "Silently" :   silent, taciturnly



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