"Sleepless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was aware that his heart was breaking, and that now and then there came intervals in his sleepless nights and days when he did not feel at all or think at all. Sometimes for a few minutes he could not see. After these intervals of dull, amazed quiescence, when he was stupid and cold even to the heart, there were terrible times when he seemed ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... was for me a hope, also—almost my only one," said Delcasse. "I did not believe that he could fail. And if he has failed, do you know what it means for France, Lepine? It means destruction. Oh, I have spent sleepless nights, I have racked my brain! Germany's attitude is that of a nation which desires war and which is ready to provoke it. You know, of course, how strained ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... privations, want of rest and food, the army remained hopeful, for their king shared their danger, wants, and sleepless nights. He was always with them—he hungered and worked with them. If the soldiers were deprived of their rations, they had at least the consolation of knowing that the king suffered likewise. This strengthened ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... obliquing May never meet again—oh! say not never— For while thus speaking, still my soul is seeking Some hope our parting may not be forever— And like the drowning straggler on the billow, Or he that eager watches for the day, With throbbing brain upon a sleepless pillow— 'Tis catching ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... energetic men, in reorganizing the whole structure of society in France. If toil pays for greatness, Napoleon purchased the renown which he attained. And yet his body and his mind were so constituted that this sleepless activity ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... raving fierce and shrill, And chides with angry moan the frosty skies; The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still. We reck not of the wild night's gloom and chill, Housed from its rage, dear friend; and fancy flies, Lured by the hand of beckoning memories, Back to those summer ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... Very high up, indeed, in the social scale must be the woman who could resist the temptation to stick her card to the Brownings in her mirror frame, where the eyes of her women friends must inevitably fall upon it, and yearly hundreds of matrons tossed through sleepless nights, all through the late summer and the fall, hoping against hope, despairing, hoping again, that the magic card might really be delivered some day in early December, and her debutante daughter's social position be placed beyond criticism once ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... come to his final decision without much argument with himself. His head said Go, but he could not quite convince his heart that he was right in leaving Lawyer Ed so soon. He had argued the question with himself during many sleepless nights, but the lure of success had proved the stronger. And he was going late in the autumn to take up his ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... doomed to lie sleepless, Many a desolate night, And dream of approaching conquests ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Feeling feverish and sleepless, she slipped on her gray Shaker cloak and stole quietly downstairs for a breath of air. Her grandfather and grandmother were talking on the piazza, and good humor seemed to have been restored. "I was over to the tavern tonight," she heard him say, as she sat down at a ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... she really did get, and her nerves, with confinement and worry and relaxation, would by-and-by be in a condition for any sort of an outburst if we attempted the least reasoning with her. She would become, for one thing, as sleepless as an owl; then she was thoroughly sure she was going to be insane, and down would go the hydrate of chloral till the doctor forbade it on pain of death. After the chloral, too, such horrid eyes as she had! ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... In the long, sleepless nights which followed his mother's death, when grief held his soul in iron claws, he had fled from the melancholy image of the deceased to his books. Like a mole he burrowed his way through the dark theories, and ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... in the heavens the sun was glowing; Around him the white clouds, like waves, were flowing; The sea was very still and grey. Dreamily thinking as I lay, Close by the gliding vessel's wheel, A sleepless slumber did o'er me steal; And I saw the Christ, the healer of woe, In white and waving garments go; Walking in giant form went he Over the land and sea. High in the heaven he towered his head, And his hands in blessing forth he spread Over the ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... in the thick of terrible happenings being told, an unexpected voice comes. Clearly it is the Lord Jesus Himself speaking. It is as though He were standing by all the time throughout all these pages, watching with a sleepless concern. Now He speaks out. Listen: "Blessed is he that watcheth," that keepeth ever on the alert against the subtle temptations, and the compromise that fills the very air, "and keepeth his garments;"[52] sleeplessly, kneefully, takes care that no breath of evil get into ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... properly fell within the business of their own art. Tailors, horse-milliners, shoemakers, friseurs, drapers, mercers, tradesmen of every description, and servants of every class and denomination, were summoned to a sleepless activity—each in his several vocation, or in some which he undertook by proxy. Artificers who had escaped on political motives from Nuremburg and other imperial cities, or from the sack of Magdeburg, now showed their ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the wrong, and regret having gone too far; but both wait and watch and do not even write a few lines about nothing, which would restore peace. No, they let day succeed day, and there are feverish and sleepless nights when the bed seems so hard, so cheerless and so large, and habits get weakened and the fire of love that was still smoldering at the bottom of the heart evaporates in smoke. By degrees both find some reason for what they wished to do, they think ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... storm passed away, and the late-rising moon threw a sickly gleam on the tumultuous waters, Eva looked from her window with sleepless eyes, thinking sadly and bitterly of the past and future. Suddenly a dark figure appeared on the beach in the track of the moonlight. She snatched an opera-glass, but could not recognize the solitary form. The thought would come, however, that ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... snowstorm on the top of the Stormberg; had we not been able to drive the oxen into a sheltered kloof they would assuredly have perished. We shivered sleepless all night under one of the carts in a freezing gale. Next morning was cloudless; the ranges far and near were heavily, covered with glistening snow. A few days later we picked up two men, who were tramping towards the diamond-fields. One ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... often seen her father suffering under an attack of nervous excitement. She had witnessed his spells of ungoverned rage that left him white and trembling with exhaustion. She had known his fears that he tried so hard to hide. She knew of his sleepless nights, of his dreams of horror, of his hours of lonely brooding. But never had she seen her father like this. It was as if Adam Ward, believing himself unobserved, let fall the mask that hid his secret self from even those who loved him most. Sinking ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... the case with infinite brutality. She was a kindly old lady, of more than seventy years. She slept during part of the trial, probably being fatigued by the journey, in which she had been carried on horseback from Moyle's Court to Winchester, and the sleepless nights which would naturally have followed. She was sentenced to be burned at the stake. But the sentence was commuted to beheading, at the intercession of the gentry of the neighborhood. She had disapproved ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... for a generation. If more mischief happens in Turkey it will be on you that public displeasure will fall, and you may need a bridge for yourselves and not find one. I croak like a raven. Perhaps you may set it down to an almost totally sleepless night." ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... how still I am! But should there dart One moment through my soul the soft surprise Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,— Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart Sleepless with cold ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... to rejoice or to lament. For an hour she sat in her close hot room, unable to think clearly on the subject, oppressed with a weak drowsy feeling she could not account for. At last she remembered that she had spent an anxious sleepless night, and had taken no refreshment during the day, and rousing herself she went downstairs to ask the landlady to give her some tea. It refreshed her, and lying down without undressing on her bed, she fell into a deep sleep, from ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... be a very pleasant bed-fellow, poor thing! with her shaking old limbs and cold feet. She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure, not thinking of happy old times, for hers never were happy; but sleepless with aches, and agues, and rheumatism of old age. "The gentleman gave me brandy-and-water," she said, her old voice shaking with rapture at the thought. I never had a great love for Queen Charlotte, but I like her better now from what this ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cannot possibly leave her out of anything," had been said. "He has somehow established her as if she were his mother or his aunt—or his interpreter. And such clothes, my dear, one doesn't behold. Worth and Paquin and Doucet must go sleepless for weeks to invent them. They are without a flaw in shade or line or texture." Which was true, because Mrs. Mellish of the Bond Street shop had become quite obsessed by her idea and committed extravagances Miss Alicia offered up contrite prayer to atone for, while Tembarom, simply ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... end of the week an urgent appeal for money had entered the door of every house in Fairville. The minister had spent sleepless nights and weary days in composing this masterly letter. His faithful mimeograph had saved the expense of printing, and his youngest boy's willing feet had obviated the necessity of postage stamps. The First Congregational ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... fought against fearful odds, with sleepless nights and fasting days sapping her strength; and when the battle ended, though the will was unfaltering, physical exhaustion triumphed, and delirium mercifully took the tortured spirit into ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... glad of the free place's glory; The wind that sang them all his stormy story Had talked all winter to the sleepless spray, And as the sea's their ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... afflictions*, etc. In March 1801 Coleridge wrote to Godwin: "In my long illness I had compelled into hours of delight many a sleepless, painful hour of darkness by chasing down metaphysical game, and since then I have continued the hunt, until I found myself unaware at the root of pure mathematics.... The poet is dead in me." And years afterward in a letter ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not possibly expect Joseph till the morning. Accustomed as Rachel was to lean upon her husband's strength, at this moment his strength seemed harshness. The night was long. A hundred horrid visions passed before her sleepless eyes. The sun rose upon the Ghetto, striving to slip its rays between the high, close-pressed tops of opposite houses. The five Ghetto gates were thrown open, but Joseph did not come through any. The Jewish pedlars issued, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lose her! Paint themselves pure white, to the obliteration of minor spots Quixottry is agreeable reading, a silly performance Real happiness is a state of dulness Reluctant to take the life of flowers for a whim Rewards, together with the expectations, of the virtuous Sleepless night Smoky receptacle cherishing millions Terrible decree, that all must act who would prevail Vowed never more to repeat that offence to his patience Was not one of the order whose Muse is the Public Taste Wife and ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... not feel, I have ever scorned to affect. But, at the distance of twenty-five years, I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal city. After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... sunrise did Henry Lennox go to his own chamber, but his sleepless night proved a needless precaution, for Septimus May gave ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... city, and was now participating in the nocturnal fights of the interior. It had been at San Fernando de Pampanga for a little more than a month and both officers and men showed the wear and tear of sleepless nights and tropical climate, which tested the hardihood of ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... diminished in intensity and perhaps not palpable. If there is pain, with or without pericarditis, it is often referred to the epigastrium, especially in children. The patient is often nervous, restless and sleepless. In simple endocarditis emboli rarely occur. If they do, of course the signs will be in the part in which the infarct occurs. Besides the diminished intensity of the apex beat and its greater diffusion, the valve sounds may be ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... there was a lull. Philippe, exhausted by so many sleepless nights, ended by dozing off and, while still asleep, heard the sound of footsteps coming and going over the pebbles in the garden. Then, suddenly, pretty late in the morning, he was awakened by ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... who work either with head or hands—who fight their way—who plan to gain and plan to spend, so that the latter shall counterbalance the former—who lie sleepless in their beds, intent on how to make both ends meet—who are lucky and unlucky—who travel the ups and the downs of life, here grasping fortunes, there turning out the linings of penniless pockets: these are the people whose ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... a mortal life was saved by dint of sleepless care, warm coddling, and perpetual doctoring, it was the precious life of Master Lancelot Yordas Carnaby. In him all the mischief of his race revived, without the strong substance to carry it off. Though his parents were healthy and vigorous, he was of weakly ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... up astern of the Rosan with a cheery yell and let go his anchor, ordering the dories over the side in the same breath. But his aspirations received a chilling setback from none other than Bijonah Tanner himself. The old man had been sleepless for a week, trying to nose out the Lass for the top haul of the fleet, and here was a young scapegrace who came and cast anchor within a hundred yards of ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... visit to the abode of Elias Droom, Eddie Deever strolled into the office of Bobby Rigby. He looked as though he had spent a sleepless night. Mr. Rigby was out, but Miss Keating was "at home." She was scathingly polite to her delinquent admirer. Eddie's visits of late to the office had not been of a social character. He devoted much of his ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... go home that night till the spring dawn was in the sky. Catherine was sleepless with anxiety about him. When she heard him come up the stairs, she opened her door and peeped out. Roger went along the hall without seeing her. His brilliant eyes stared straight before him, and there was something in his face ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hours, until the guard was changed, the only signs or sounds of life were the glowing of Brown's pipe, the steady footfalls of the sentries and occasional creakings from the hell-hot guard-room, where sleepless ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... sleepless night after the attempt to poison her which had miscarried and resulted ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... very gradually. As she grew weaker, she became more exacting; and though never betrayed into any expression of affection for Agnes, yet she was not willing to have her out of her sight for a moment. The consciousness of being useful to her mother, was sufficient reward for sleepless nights and days of close confinement; and Agnes resisted all Lewie's entreaties that she would leave the sick room for a while each day, and take a stroll ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... twilight. With reference to this point teachers knowing the true tradition of the Vedanta have made the following declaration, 'When the individual soul which is held in the bonds of slumber by the beginningless Maya awakes, then it knows the eternal, sleepless, dreamless ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... tireless sinews of electric motors—which ask no wages when they stand unemployed. Similar motors already enjoy favour in working the elevators of tall dwellings in cities. If a householder is timid about burglars, the electrician offers him a sleepless watchman in the guise of an automatic alarm; if he has a dread of fire, let him dispose on his walls an array of thermometers that at the very inception of a blaze will strike a gong at headquarters. But these, after all, are ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... torture ready to his hand before inventing a new and strange one? Moreover, why did he voluntarily burden himself with the obligation of surrounding a prisoner with such numberless precautions and such sleepless vigilance? Must he not have feared that in spite of it all the walls behind which he concealed the dread mystery would one day let in the light? Was it not through his entire reign a source of unceasing anxiety? And yet he respected the life of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... months, laughed to make others laugh. To-day he shall laugh for himself alone. The very river seems glad, and tosses its shaggy waves like a faithful dog; and over yonder in Sidon, where the sun is building a shrine of gold and pearl, Esther, sleepless too, all night, waits at a window like ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... grin at me and never said a word. He never even looked for them and calmly let my poor sick Baron suffer. Nothing is missing, not even the tiniest picture or trifle, and he had to come back to a terrible waste! All my sleepless nights were not in vain, but I had not the slightest idea that it could be as bad as that. The worst of it is that it ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... labors, who exposed My life continual in the field, have earn'd 395 No very sumptuous prize. As the poor bird Gives to her unfledged brood a morsel gain'd After long search, though wanting it herself, So I have worn out many sleepless nights, And waded deep through many a bloody day 400 In battle for their wives.[12] I have destroy'd Twelve cities with my fleet, and twelve, save one, On foot contending in the fields of Troy. From all ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... worry, with its sleepless nights and kindred torments; for melancholy and despair, with their train of physical and ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... the ever sleepless, who, distraught at the prospect of losing all he has schemed and worked for hurls himself from the cliffs ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... treachery to their former master, and instant surrender to the victor of the hour. For this capital defect in the tenure of Roman power, no matter in whose hands deposited, there was no absolute remedy. Many a sleepless night, during the perilous game which he played with Anthony, must have familiarized Octavius with that view of the risk, which to some extent was inseparable from his position as the leader in such a struggle carried on in such ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... am writing this morning with a broken heart after a sleepless night of great mental suffering. R. came up last evening like a maniac, and almost threatening his life, looking like death, because the letters of the World were published in yesterday's paper. I could ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... she could have brought herself to say so if she had been looking into Nellie Mayo's blue eyes, which looked tired and a little less blue than as I remembered them. They had pathetic purple shadows under them, which told of sleepless nights with the babies, and there were fine lines around her mouth; but her light-brown hair was as smooth and her dress as ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... for Christopher was in constant attendance on Aymer, and gave but the residue of his time to the rest of the little world. His suspicions as to Aymer's well-being vanished away, for the latter betrayed by no outward sign the sleepless nights and long days spent in wrestling with intangible dread of impending evil and the return of almost forgotten black hours. Indeed, Christopher's steady dependable strength and vigorous energy seemed to renew belief and confidence ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkeyland. Aye, and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for as the Turks say, 'water sleeps, and the enemy is sleepless.' Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the 'bloody sword,' or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... 13th he sat up for some time, after a sleepless night, and still complained of pain in his ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... in which it seems to be the mind that causes the tossing rather than the body. Preachers after earnest preaching are in many cases sleepless and restless too; so are almost all persons when currents of exciting thoughts have been set agoing in their minds. Then, no doubt, it is necessary to get at relief from the spiritual side, by means of thought fitted ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... faithfully promised to be up at dawn to see the travelers off, but an apology came from him to the effect that the morning air was too damp for his lungs, and that he had spent a sleepless night owning ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... here Beatrice now lay in his arms, stricken by some strange malady. He could not know the cause—the sleepless nights, the terrible toil, the shattering nervous strain of catastrophe, of nursing, of the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... was slowly consumed by a dull rage that grew with every sleepless hour; but the object of my resentment was not Diana. She had only done what as a woman she was amply justified in doing after the pointed slight I had apparently inflicted upon her. Her punishment was sufficient already, for, of course, I guessed that she had only accepted the ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... encompass us! Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep. Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all! Thou that in all and over all, and through and under all, incessant! Thou! thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless, calm, Holding Humanity as in the open hand, as some ephemeral toy, How ill to ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... some reason best known to herself, chose that room out of all the big old house as the scene of her midnight perambulations. When, therefore, on one or two subsequent occasions, I was disturbed in a similar way, I was no longer frightened, but only rendered sleepless and uncomfortable for the time being. I felt at such times, so profound was the surrounding silence, as if every living creature in the world, save Lady Chillington and myself, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... seem as if they were going to repay us for the care and toil we gave them? When they were in the transition stage of life, as Austin's children now are, did they show the effect of our efforts as we wished them to? I think not. I remember sleepless nights and care-worn days when it seemed that one or the other would surely bring us sorrow. And there were two of us of mature years. Wait till Austin's children have another ten years on their heads and then you can ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... on his ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the world. It was the night ushering in the new year, a night on which every star receives from the archangel that then visits the universal galaxy its peculiar charge. The destinies of men and empires are then portioned forth for the coming year, and, unconsciously to ourselves, ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chose to let himself drift and vacillate, and the aid that he asked of her was that she should drift near enough for him to have her companionship. He was like a wakeful child who required that she, too, should be sleepless that ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... had gone, came a long, confidential conversation with Mrs. Follingsbee, in which every word and look was discussed and turned, and all possible or probable inferences therefrom reported; after which Lillie often laid a sleepless head on a hot and tumbled pillow, poor, miserable child! suffering her punishment, without even the grace to know whence it came, or what it meant. Hitherto Lillie had been walking only in the limits ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... strength failed him, but his mind remained clear, and was perhaps too active for his frame. Anxieties and disappointments which had previously sapped his constitution, doubtless aggravated his present complaint and rendered him sleepless. In reply to an inquiry of his physician, he acknowledged that his mind was ill at ease. This was his last reply; he was too weak to talk, and in general took no notice of what was said to him. He sank at last into a deep sleep, and it was hoped a favorable crisis ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... furiously, and I was so vexed with myself besides, that I could not sleep. The schooner was deathly still; there was not apparently the faintest murmur of air to awaken an echo in her; nothing spoke but the near and distant cracking of the ice. It was miserable work lying in the cabin sleepless and reproaching myself, and as my burning head robbed the cold of its formidableness, I resolved to go on deck and take ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... comfort, until he is deprived of them. To realize this, lose yourself, good reader, wander off a great distance from everywhere, and be benighted in a wild country, with nothing but your rifle and hunting-knife. You will then find yourself dinnerless, supperless, houseless, comfortless, sleepless, cold and miserable, if you do not know how to manage for yourself. You will miss your dinner sadly if you are not accustomed to fast for twenty-four hours. You will also miss your bed decidedly, and your toothbrush in the morning; but if, on the other hand, you are of the right ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... was the loneliness that frightened her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she saw that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past eleven—there were hours and hours left of the night! And she must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed—and the darkness would frighten her, and if she left the light ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... thinking. At the sound of the word garden, unheard, unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous colour, of sweet scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair. Yes. That was a distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had found in the sleepless anxieties of my responsibility during a week of dangerous bad weather. The Colony, the pilot explained, had suffered from unparalleled drought. This was the first decent drop of water they had had for seven months. The root crops were lost. And, trying to be casual, but with visible interest, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... am here. Poor mamma is in the hospital. I am allowed to see her twice a day. At all other times I remain alone, praying and weeping. I trust that monsieur has passed a good night. For me, I was sleepless, thinking of mamma. I ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... several days, without explaining why or where, she felt the barrier between them even while he kissed her good-bye. He had made a vigorous declaration of independence that night at dinner, and now he had gone away to let her think it over, not even noticing that her eyes were heavy from a sleepless night. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... conferred upon us, on the part of the Republic, Commander's and Officer's Insignia of the French Legion of Honour. "A reward," as the Minister of the Republic expressed himself, "for the blood of the brave and the sleepless nights of the learned." After that an official dinner and reception by M. Jules Ferry.—On Sunday the 4th, an address was presented from the Scandinavian Union, under the presidency of Herr Fortmeijer. In the evening a brilliant entertainment on a large scale given by ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... aye distilling, Every nerve with torment filling; Thus shall he in horror languish. By him, still unwearied kneeling, Sigyn at his tortured side,— Faithful wife! with beaker stealing Drops of venom as they fall,— Agonising poison all! Sleepless, changeless, ever dealing Comfort, will she still abide; Only when the cup's o'erflowing Must fresh pain and smarting cause, Swift, to void the beaker going, Shall she in her watching pause. Then doth Loki Loudly cry; Shrieks of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... was no hope, offered to furnish Miss Fussell with the money necessary to clothe, rear, educate and care for a family of ten orphans of soldiers, and bring them up to maturity, if she would furnish the motherly love, the years of hard labor and self-sacrifice, the sleepless nights and endless patience needed for the work. After a few days of prayerful consideration she accepted, and in the fall of 1865 ten orphans were gathered together in Indianapolis from various parts of the State from among those who had no friends able or willing to care for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Tardif and his mother had gone up-stairs to their rooms in the thatch; and I lay wearied but sleepless in my bed, listening to these dull, faint, ceaseless murmurs, as a child listens to the sound of the sea in a shell. Was it possible that it was I, myself, the Olivia who had been so loved and cherished in her girlhood, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... remembered Gordon's pitiful plea to him to remain. Finally he went into his room, to find that Emma, in her absurd malice, had left only the coverlid on the bed. She had stripped it of the sheets and blankets. He lay down with his clothes on and passed a sleepless night. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... distracted, lonely, outcast, and wandering bird? Which is not a bird of heaven, nor yet a beast of earth, But ever roveth, homeless,—a creature of strange birth. Wings hath it, but it flies not. And yet within its breast Are strange and sleepless drivings, so that it may not rest; Half-formed, half-conscious impulses, with its half-formed pinions given, Too strong for rest on earth, too weak to bear to heaven;— And madly it beats its wings, but vainly, against its side, For the light wind ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name, and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... evening dew fell in silence. Thinking the young panthers might return for their dam, he had placed her in a sleeping position in a conspicuous place, to draw them to her side if they came within sight. Mayall waited in sleepless anxiety, thinking that when the embers of his fire died away the young panthers might approach. In the midst of his watchfulness the moon arose and showed her maiden face, and walked among the stars, ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... the strain be wild and deep, Nor let the notes of joy be first; I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep, Or else this heavy heart will burst; For it hath been by sorrow nursed, And ached in sleepless silence long; And now 'tis doomed to know the worst And break at once—or ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... We began to feel very secure in that room, watched as it was by the sleepless sentry, Fear. One night I ventured to ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... committee, or at least a public meeting in the cabin, to follow up the blow. By the aid of the latter, could he but persuade Mr. Effingham to take the chair, and Sir George Templemore to act as secretary, he thought he might escape a sleepless night, and, what was of quite as much importance, make a figure in ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... night, when hope seemed yielding to despair, Sleepless he lay upon the earth—his bed— When suddenly a white and dazzling light Shone through the cave, and all was dark again. Startled he rose, then prostrate in the dust, His inmost soul breathed forth an earnest prayer[1] That he who made the light would make ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... quietly on my back; now I fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust it against the board of the bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort was in vain; I groaned with vexation as I felt that I was in for a sleepless night. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... small fort called Oorghundee, remarkable chiefly for being the head-quarters of the oft-mentioned thieves, of whom I daresay the reader is as tired as we were after the mere dread they inspired had caused us to pass two sleepless nights. But we were now determined to assume a high tone, and summoning the chief of the fort, or, in other words, the biggest villain, into our presence, we declared that in the event of our losing a single article of our property ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... which was preying upon the vitals of the Cardinal silently work its insidious way, and reveal its baneful power by sleepless nights, burning fever, and sharp bodily pain; but his powerful mind and insatiable ambition enabled him to strive successfully against these enervating influences; and Saint-Preuil was scarcely laid in ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... with your head lower than any other point of your body and throw the pillows away. The monotony of a sleepless night will then be relieved by the novelty of having apoplexy or heart failure, either of which diseases is much more ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... sleepless brain and racked soul went on, through that unending night, the terrible tragedy of doubt, tempered by spells of spasmodic prayer. A God, or a Man? A Messiah undergoing his Father's last temptation; or a martyr on the eve of horrible ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the more "probable and safe" course. But as yet his suit was in very embryo. He could not even tell whether Rose knew of his love; and he wasted miserable hours in maddening thoughts, and tost all night upon his sleepless bed, and rose next morning fierce and pale, to invent fresh excuses for going over to her uncle's house, and lingering about the fruit ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... mind of Kwaiba. Then came up the affair of Tamiya—the threatening curse of O'Iwa San. Iemon's counsel lasted but over night. With soberness and morning Kwaiba straightway showed the results of wrecked nerves and distorted imagination. Sleepless nights he now visited on his friends by an increasing irritability. The first few days of this state of Kwaiba were laughable. He spoke of O'Iwa San; not freely, rather with reticence. He made his ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... all times the great things of human history. In the sanctuary of unrevealed bosoms, in the 'silent, secret sessions' of thought, and in the glow of individual feeling, in the field, at the fire-side, in the closet, or on the sleepless bed, there is man's history: there, unfolding to act, or infolding itself to die, the soul is in its greatness, is in labor with itself, and struggling with big, burning thoughts, and 'truths that wake to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... hide his emotion. Every hour of that day he watched over the invalid, and from time to time tempted him with bits of broiled bird, heron soup and sips of hot tea made from leaves of the sweet bay. Ned's acquaintance with sickness was slight and his apprehension great, so that the night was a sleepless one and the day that followed brought no relief to his mind. Another day brought new anxieties. Dick was no better, and Ned couldn't bear to leave him, for the invalid's thirst was continuous, but now the supply ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... slightly indeed, thank God; the type of the disease is much less severe than it was at first. One lad of about sixteen, Hofe from Ysabel Island, died last Friday morning. The fever came on him with power from the first. He was very delirious for some days, restless, sleepless, then comatose. The symptoms are so very clearly marked, and my books are so clear in detail of treatment, that we don't feel much difficulty now about the treatment, and the nursery and hospital work we are ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... authority we know not, that his royal highness, after passing a sleepless night in vain conjectures, despatched at an early hour, one of his privy- counsellors to Brummel, offering carte blanche if he would disclose the secret of that mysterious cravat. But the "atrox animus Catonis" disdained the ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... long hours, Washington! Brief words with many men—and discouragement! The seat of government of the United States was a city of despondent men, weary, hopeless, but fighting. There was a look of strain on every face; the eyes told a story of sleepless nights and futile thinking and planning. Blake's elation was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... that his brain did not work furiously at it; the search for a clue, for the hidden motive, was now his eternal occupation. But to her he was silent, sheerly from the dread of again receiving the answer: take me as I am, or leave me! In hours such as the present, or in the agony of sleepless nights, these thoughts rent his brain. The question was such an involved one, and he never seemed to come any nearer a solution of it. Sometimes, he was actually tempted to believe what her words implied: that it had been wilfully done, with a view to getting rid ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... that slightly bent, spare, though large and tall frame, and always placid face, and realized for the first time that what we imputed to him as a fault was the hindrance of disease, and possibly of sleepless nights; and I would have given a world for an opportunity ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... with some difficulty over to his side. There were no sheets—not even one—and the coarse blankets, which had a close acrid odour that she had never noticed before, seemed almost to scratch her flesh. She had hardly been to bed that early since she had left home, and she lay sleepless, watching the firelight play hide and seek with the shadows among the aged, smoky rafters and flicker over the strings of dried things that hung from the ceiling. In the other corner her father and stepmother snored heartily, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... received what he thought was definite information, he was anxious to go to the island that had been mentioned, consequently the night proved a long and sleepless one to him. He awaited further news from his father, ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... toilet in the surf, they ate a hurried breakfast with keen relish. Judith had forgotten her aching joints and lame muscles, and Jemmy Three had forgotten his sleepless night. Victory lay just ahead of them, and who cared for ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... that even in this momentary inaction he had cause for bitter self-reproach and even for contempt—and yet he could see no way now to take. In the last three days, as Smarlinghue, as Jimmie Dale, yes, even as Larry the Bat again, working with feverish intensity, with almost sleepless continuity, he had exhausted every means and effort within his power of running Marre, alias Clarke, to earth. There seemed nothing now left to do but to wait until Marre should resume his own identity; nothing ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... been erected on the hospital, told me that the siege had begun. I shall pass over its horrors. Yet, what is all war but a succession of horrors? The sights which I saw, the sounds which I heard from hour to hour, were enough to sicken me of human nature. In the gloom and pain of my sleepless nights, I literally began to think it possible that a fiendish nature might supplant the human condition, and that the work before my eyes was merely an anticipation of those terrors, which to name startles the imagination and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... and was leading him back for the enlivening knife and burning tallow, he watched by him for four days and four nights without closing an eye, thus earning for himself the distinction of being called the 'Sleepless One.' There is no such necessity for his keeping awake now. Let his dreams waft him in spirit to the Happy Hunting Grounds. As for me, I am getting an old man, whose arrow-hand lacks strength to pull back the string of the bow. It can be but a few short ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... day which they call Thargeelyah, the day more sacred than any other to their idol, Apollon. Long before sunrise the natives were astir; indeed, I do not think they went to bed at all, but spent the night in hideous orgies. I know that, tossing sleepless through the weary hours, I heard the voices of young men and women singing on the hillsides, and among the myrtle groves which are holy to the most disreputable of their deities, a female, named Aphrodighty. Harps were twanging too, and I heard the refrain of one of the native songs, "To-night ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... cave, and then closed again till she could dream again her dream and drink in slow sips its rapture; how he feared to meet her waking glance, lest it should rebuke his madness of the night; how, as her eyes noted the haggard look of sleepless watching and of pain, her heart flowed over as with a mother's pity for her child, and how she longed to comfort him but dared not; how he thought of the coming days and feared to think of them, because in them she would have no place or part; how she looked into ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... unrequited love. But his constant reference to Ibsen's motif in the "Wild Duck," though it fails in its primary object of convincing me that he is familiar with Ibsen's plays, does in truth tell me that some fair one gave him sleepless nights. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... eyes, blurring their vision and damping their material. Coristine, who longed for a sight of fresh young life after the vision of death, did not know what kept that young life within, and, like an unreasonable man, was inclined to be angry. He was overwrought, poor fellow, sleepless and tired, and emotionally excited, and, therefore, ready for any folly ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... a hundred religions have decayed, leaving the old air heavy with exhalations—this India slowly takes shape in Mr Kipling's native stories. Her physical immensity and pressure is felt in stories like The End of the Passage and William the Conqueror. Her sleepless tyranny, which has made men intricate and incalculable, driving them to subterranean ways of thought and fancy, rules in every page of a tale like The Return of Imray. Imray was an amiable Englishman who incautiously patted ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... upper room of the plain brick house, on her hard white bed with her hard white thoughts, lay Pansy—sleepless throughout the night of Marguerite's ball. The youngest of the children slept beside her; two others lay in a trundle-bed across the room; and the three were getting out of sleep all that there is in it for tired, ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Firmiani? I don't wish you to visit her." This remark is rich in meanings. Madame Firmiani! dangerous woman! a siren! dresses well, has taste; gives other women sleepless nights. Your informant belongs ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... Swetman's one-handed clock on the stairs, that is still preserved in the family. Christopher heard the strokes from his chamber, immediately at the top of the staircase, and overlooking the front of the house. He did not wonder that he was sleepless. The rumours and excitements which had latterly stirred the neighbourhood, to the effect that the rightful King of England had landed from Holland, at a port only eighteen miles to the south-west of Swetman's house, were enough to make wakeful and ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... realized that Stephen Irving was not coming back. But, Anne, a broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is in books. It's a good deal like a bad tooth . . . though you won't think THAT a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it. And now you're looking disappointed. You don't think I'm half as interesting a ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sleepless nights in the diligence, and be ferried at day-break over "ancient rivers." You shall tread the grass-grown streets of Ferrara, and the deserted halls of Bologna, where the wisdom-loving youth of ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... not forget thy mother, Or despise thy dearest mother, For it was thy mother reared thee, And her beauteous breasts that nursed thee, From her own delightful body, From her form of perfect whiteness. Many nights has she lain sleepless, Many meals has she forgotten, While she rocked thee in thy cradle, Watching fondly o'er ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... now they reach A wide expanded den where all around Tremendous furnaces, with hellish blaze, Flamed dreadful. At the heaving bellows stood The meagre form of Care, and as he blew To augment the fire, the fire augmented scorch'd His wretched limbs: sleepless for ever thus He toil'd and toil'd, of toil to reap no end But ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... see both Vera and Ethel; but after a while Ethel seemed to become almost uninteresting by comparison with the younger woman. He was not passionately in love, as he had been with Lalage. The thought of Vera gave him no sleepless nights. In fact, now he slept far better than he had done for many months past. He had a sense of restfulness to which he had long been a stranger, as though he had taken some mental opiate to soothe the pain of remembrance. London, and the flat, and the grinding drudgery of Fleet Street, the ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... a lodge of branches, And a bed with boughs of hemlock, And a fire before the doorway With the dry cones of the pine-tree. 240 All the travelling winds went with them, O'er the meadow, through the forest; All the stars of night looked at them, Watched with sleepless eyes their slumber; From his ambush in the oak-tree 245 Peeped the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Watched with eager eyes the lovers; And the rabbit, the Wabasso, Scampered from the path before them, Peering, peeping from his burrow, 250 Sat erect upon his haunches, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... room, undressing by the light of a single candle, the brief interest and curiosity which Seagreave had aroused in her faded from her mind. For hours she lay sleepless upon her bed, listening to the rushing mountain stream not far from the cabin, its arrowy plunge and dash over the rocks softened by distance to a low, perpetual purr, and hearing the mountain wind sigh through the pines about the cabin: but not always did her ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... faint soft-lowing Io Panted in those starry eyes, When the sleepless midnight meadows Piteously implored ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a white waistcoat and a dress-coat put his head in at the door, advanced, straightened the chairs, closed the book the Doctor had opened, put the gas out and went away, shutting the door for the night, and leaving the room to its recollections. What sleepless nights the chairs and heavy-gilt glasses and gorgeous carpets of a hotel must pass, puzzling over the fragments of history that are ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Raffles, dropping into his chair and drinking thoughtfully; "and so he will be till we wake him up. It's a ticklish experiment, Bunny, but even a splitting head for the first hour's play is better than a sleepless night; I've tried both, so I ought to know. I shouldn't even wonder if he did himself more than justice to-morrow; one often does when just less than fit; it takes off that dangerous edge of over-keenness which so ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... useful as she is, she is terrible as an army with banners to her poor, harassed, delicate, struggling neighbor across the way, who, in addition to an aching, confused head, an aching back, sleepless, harassed nights, and weary, sinking days, is burdened everywhere and every hour with the thought that Mrs. Exact thinks all her troubles are nothing but poor management, and that she might do just like her, if she would. With very little self-confidence or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... fool, fool, fool! I thought him absent; thought mid-day would bring My hero back, and pass'd this sleepless night In prayers, and sighs, and vows for his return; While scorned all oaths, forgot all faith, all honour, Clasped in Estella's wanton arms he lay, And mock'd the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... sleepless eye, I watched that wretched man, And since, I never dare to write As funny ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour. Mr Pickering's rare interviews with his subconscious self had happened until now almost entirely in the small hours of the night, when it had popped out to remind him, as he lay sleepless, that all flesh was grass and that he was not getting any younger. To-night, such had been the shock of the evening's events, it came to him at a time which was usually his happiest—the time that lay between dinner and bed. Mr Pickering at ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Often the child is sleepless from feverish heat instead of coldness; then cooling applications should be used (see Children in Fever). These may take the form of two caps for the head of thickest cotton cloth: one, tight fitting, to be wrung out of cold water and put on, the other, looser ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... his character, a far likelier if a far less creditable reason. After the Restoration Brodie's life, if life it could be called, was spent in a constant terror lest he should lose his estates, his liberty, and his life in the prelatic persecution; but, with his sleepless management of men, if not with the blessing of God and the peace of a good conscience, Alexander Brodie died in his own bed, in Brodie Castle, on the 17th of ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... my fingers interlaced with his and words died on my lips. As quietly as if no fight had been fought, no sleepless nights endured, no surrender made at cost of pride beyond computing, he answered me, but in his face was that which made me turn my face away, and in silence I clung to him. The room grew still, so still we could hear each other's ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... error they fall into or mishap they meet with will be construed against them, not in their favor. In short, under the outward forms of liberty, they are still in prison, and are often discouraged from doing their best by this sleepless fear of ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... two sleepless nights, had drunk so much at the fete that for the first time in his life his feet would not carry him, and he ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... his past in many ways—a quick, sensitive, in some ways even a fantastic- minded man, yet with a strange solidity and common-sense amid it all, just as though ferns with the veritable fairies' seed were to grow out of a common stone wall. He looked like a man who had not been without sleepless nights—without troubles, sorrows, and perplexities, and even yet, had not wholly risen above some of them, or the results of them. His voice was "low and sweet"—with just a possibility in it of rising to a shrillish key. A sincere ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... very hard the next day that he was feeling ill, for an almost sleepless night, spent in trying to find some way out of his difficulties, had left him hollow-eyed and pale. Breakfast had been a farce and dinner a mere empty pretence, and between the two meals he had ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... whose sleepless eye, Observed my tender years; And blessed me with parental love, Parental ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... I weep, From faithless thing like thee to sever? Or let one tear mine eyelids steep, While thus I cast thee off for ever? I loved thee—need I say how well? Few, few have ever loved so dearly; As many a sleepless hour can tell, And many a vow breath'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... recognized Captain Bodine and Mara. He crossed the street so as not to meet them, and they passed in low, earnest conversation. If Miss Ainsley had been in the furthest star, he would not have cared. Every drop of his Southern blood was fired, and, with clinched hands, he strode homeward, and passed a sleepless night. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe |
