"Unseeing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... maker refrained from adding what was in his and his hearers' thoughts, that ὑβρις {hubris}, once engendered, breeds αιη {aiê}—the complete and certain destruction into which the sinner walks with unseeing eyes. But the whole moral mystery, to its remorseless end, was uttered again and again in passionate words by Aeschylus, who consciously discarded the primitive magical determinism in which Herodotus afterwards vainly ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... but carrying himself with a palpable effort at control, shouldered his way into the room in his characteristic fashion, as if he were meeting and hurling back a foot-ball rush. Epstein, breathless and obviously greatly excited, actually stumbled over the threshold in his unseeing haste. Laurie, slowly following the two, alone wore some resemblance to a normal manner. He was very ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... little army, reenforced from four to six by the addition of a "plain clothes man" and Dillingham, the Bulletin's star reporter, invaded the place. Before a word was spoken, Feeney, the plain clothes man, presented Scales with a writ, which the latter attempted to read with unseeing ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... dawn on me at first. I—I was sort of excited. I liked to look at her, but didn't think." And now consciously her face was called up, infinitely sweet and more impelling for the deliberate memory. Flash of brown skin, smooth and clear; level gaze of dark, wide eyes, steady, bold, unseeing; red curved lips, sad and sweet; her strong, clean, fine face rose before Jean, eager and wistful one moment, softened by dreamy musing thought, and the next stormily passionate, full of hate, full of longing, but the more mysterious ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... mouth of an old woman, and her eyes—in which that stark terror was still visible, as though it had been rendered indelible by the violence of the shock that had called it into being—seemed looking through the figures around her, with the intense yet unseeing gaze with which one might look through shadows in search of an object ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... walk in their sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, clomb the walls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the edge of unguarded battlements, and down dilapidated stair-cases deep as draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, and unseeing eyes, unharmed, to their beds at midnight? It is all the work of the soul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the agony of a mother's passion—who sees her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her breast, hurried ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Tobacco scented the atmosphere of the hut with a heaviness that was depressing. Each man sat upon his blankets alternating between his pannikin of coffee and his pipe, with eyes lowered in deep thought, or turned upon the glowing stove in earnest, unseeing contemplation. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... before a viewing screen. Theoretically he was on watch. Actually his eyes were unseeing, there was nothing to see. The star pattern changed so slowly as to be ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and heart were stirred and torn by emotions such as only a woman can understand, only a woman can feel. The ancient battle of titanic forces, which had brought into existence that world of stupendous might upon which her unseeing eyes gazed, was as nothing, it seemed, to the passionate struggle going on in her torn heart. To her there was nothing beyond her own regretful misery, her own dread of the future, her passionate revulsion ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... his porridge absently. His appetite had been poor all winter, and to-night he could not eat. He sat staring ahead of him with sad, unseeing eyes. Suddenly Collie raised his head and sniffed suspiciously. A quick bounding footstep was crunching the snow on the little pathway to the gate. The dog leaped up with a joyous bark and the next instant the door flew open, and a young man burst ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... column—cavalry, artillery, infantry—scarcely a face lifted to glance toward the house, with here and there a straggler limping to the roadside, or an aide spurring past—just a stream of armed men, who had been plodding on since daylight, footsore, hungry, unseeing, yet ready to die in battle at their commander's word. It was war; ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... some ways she was very observant though in other ways strangely unseeing, that all the flowers were of the bedding-out varieties; there were luxuriant creepers, but not a single garden that she passed had that indefinable look of being an ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... replied absently, looking out with unseeing eyes at the lengthening woodland shadows, "a church or two more, some brick sidewalk, and a few stores and homes—just added on, not improved. I miss Jim Shirley everywhere. The older folks seem the same, but ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of unwilling drinkers! Where the bodies and souls of thousands of girls are annually destroyed, because the young are irresistibly drawn toward joy, and because we, all of us, good people, busy people, indifferent people, unseeing people, have permitted joy to become commercialized, have turned it into a commodity to be used for money profit by the worst elements in society. Could a more inverted scheme of things have ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... dread of growing middle-aged impressed him as puerile. Whatever his age, she would always keep pace with him. She was the same age as he was. Had he been younger or older, he might have missed her or gone by her with unseeing eyes. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... very well for Hal to be a main feature in her life, blessing it with her friendship, while she turned kindly, unseeing eyes away from the corners where the murky shadows lay: Hal, who knew about the mad, discreditable marriage and its violent termination, and probably also of her mother's insatiable thirst for admiration and excitement at ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... much feeling, even to a sister; left her—not to repose in peaceful, slumbers, but to walk up and down her room till early morning, and look out at daybreak on the Castle gardens and the purple woods beyond, with a haggard face and blank unseeing eyes. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... unhurried note rang, echoed, and began to die away as they saw Brant's hand fall on Bob Floyd's shoulder. The crew captain whirled and leaped, unseeing, through the crowd. A great shout rose; all over the campus the people surged like a wind-driven wave toward the two rushing figures, and everywhere some one cried, "Floyd has gone Bones!" and the ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... opened unseeing eyes and closed them again heavily. "I found the money, Carlotta mia; you didn't know that, did you?" he muttered; and then the narcotic seized ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... bright, soft eyes upon the young man and he recognized in them the unseeing quality that he had found in Sir Basil's—that happy preoccupation with inner gladness. She made him think of the bird alighted to sing on the swaying blade; and she made him think of a fountain released from winter and springing through sunlight in a murmur and sparkle of ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... up into a half-sitting position by pillows under her back and head. She seems to have grown much thinner. Her face is pale and drawn, with deep hollows under her cheek-bones. Her eyes are dull and lustreless. She gazes straight before her into the wood with the unseeing stare of apathetic indifference. The door from the hall in the room behind her is opened, and Miss Howard enters, followed by Bill Carmody, Mrs. Brennan, and Mary. Carmody's manner is unwontedly ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... was very still—dark and still. Very still was it within The Quiet Room, and the darkness that came stealing through the open window was a thick and heavy darkness. The Pilgrim lay upon his couch staring with blank, unseeing eyes into a blackness wherein there was not even a spot of gray to ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... not sleep: she lay motionless as the slow hours passed; gazing into the darkness with wide, unseeing eyes, while she thought of all that the coming day would bring. The end of her incredible journey was at hand. The Grand Vizier's word was pledged. The Grand Turk himself would grant her an audience before the hour of noon, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... o'clock taking a stroll in the Champs Elysees. Of his fondness for riding on the tops of omnibuses I have already spoken. These long rides, when he traverses Paris from one end to the other, are his periods of composition. He sits plunged in a profound reverie, with vague eyes gazing unseeing into space. So well are his moods understood by the conductors and habitual travellers on those lines that he is always left undisturbed. Sometimes the greater part of the day will be passed in these excursions, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... tears were dried, the brown face grew white and tense, the whole slender body rigid with passion, and with unseeing eyes Tabitha stared straight ahead of ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... He could imagine so well what would happen if indeed she found Ashton. He walked over to the window and stood looking into the street with unseeing eyes. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... others, no more expecting anything from anybody. She was not dramatic in her new independence; she did not cry defiance to the golden mist or the larks or the hidden sun; she only walked on and on, stumping forward in her clumsy boots, her eyes hard and unseeing, her hands ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... and bowed my chest right down to my knees; I was almost distracted. When it got dark I jogged along to the Town Hall—God knows how I got there—and sat on the edge of the balustrade. I tore a pocket out of my coat and took to chewing it; not with any defined object, but with dour mien and unseeing eyes, staring straight into space. I could hear a group of little children playing around near me, and perceive, in an instinctive sort of way, some pedestrians pass me ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... world with unseeing eyes. He had lived here long and the country had not changed. It would never change. Nothing ever changed here ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... alone in the darkness. For a little while memory may support us, but memory grows faint. On every side is the thick, cheerless pall and that stillness through which no sound comes. We are alone, quite alone, cut off from the fellowship of the day, unseeing and unseen. More especially is this so when the dungeon is of our own making, and we ourselves have shot its bolts. There is a natural night that comes to all, and in its unwavering course swallows every mortal hope and fear, for ever and for ever. To this we can more easily resign ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... He threw the soiled and scribbled missive down on the table and sat with unseeing eyes fixed on the studio wall. So, they had cast him out of their councils! They already thought of him ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the rushing waters, then climbing painfully up the arrested white valley-side, plumed with clusters of young pine-trees, into the paler white radiance of the snowy upper regions, where the wind cut fine. Joey seemed to watch all the time with wide, anxious, unseeing eyes, brilliant and inscrutable. As I drew near to Tible township, he stirred violently in the bag, though I do not know if he had recognised the place. Then, as I came to the sheds, he looked sharply from side to side, and stretched his neck out long. I was a little ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... was Youth, And the dead man that wrote it I, The face was Beauty, the name Truth— And thus, with an unseeing eye, I ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... only one girl!—and she is there at the foot of the carriage-steps, a corner of her ribbon or handkerchief or cotton petticoat stuffed into her mouth, to keep her from bursting into sobs. The mothers now are dry-eyed and silent. They look with dull, unseeing gaze on this railway train, the engine, the carriages, which will take their lads away from them. Many have climbed up on the steps of the carriages, hanging on to the handrails, so as to be near the lads as long as possible. Their position is a perilous one, the sergeants ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... spoke and left the room with a quicker step than usual. But half an hour later when Ida went into the library she found him absorbed in his books as usual, and he only glanced up at her with absent, unseeing eyes, as she stood beside him putting on her gloves, her habit skirt caught up under her elbow, the old felt hat just a little askew ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the absence of all love, the absence of all sorrow; he felt weariness, a great weight, the advance of a mortal drowsiness. Once more he fell into stupid contemplation of the noise of the river, and fixed his unseeing eyes upon the dark woods of the Francolano. Before his mental vision passed slowly, automatically, the image of the evil priest, who had lived there with his court of harlots. He felt weary from kneeling, and let himself sink to ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... looking out of the window with unseeing eyes. There was a troubled expression upon her face. There were tears in her eyes, and a lump in her throat. What was the trouble? An hour before she had been singing as blithely as a song-bird. Her morning devotions had ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... dull, almost unseeing, opened again, he swayed forward as though in great pain, then with an effort he flung himself backwards, settling himself against the unyielding back of the seat; his face looked drawn and grey, nor did he attempt ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... if it had hurt nobody, then—then why all this—? Jeffrey Whiting rose from his chair as though to go. He did not look at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... To BE, the glorious light Has never paused or rested, But travelled day and night. Yet pigmy man, unseeing The purpose of his being, Demands escape and freeing From universal force. But law is law for ever, And like a mighty lever It thrusts him tow'rd endeavour, And speeds him on ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the tune of "Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre," which she hummed beneath her breath, while the baby's foolish little head, in its white cap from which protruded one tiny straight wisp of brown hair, with its beady, unseeing black eyes and its round mouth dribbling peacefully, bobbed over ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... at recognizing a lady approaching from the opposite direction. It was Madame Laurier. . . . Would she recognize Julio? He noted that the youth turned pale and began looking at the other people with feigned interest. She continued straight ahead, erect, unseeing. The old gentleman was almost irritated at such coldness. To pass by his son without feeling his presence instinctively! Ah, these women! . . . He turned his head involuntarily to look after her, but had to avert his inquisitive glance immediately. He had surprised Marguerite motionless behind them, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... looked out upon the stock-selling pandemonium with unseeing eyes. The chance—the heaven-sent hour that strikes only once in a life-time for the builders of empire—had come: and he was only waiting for the arrival of the president to find himself rudely thrust aside from ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... first at the rendezvous. She ensconced herself on a red velvet seat, and gazed at the Turners with unseeing eyes until she saw the familiar ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... again—he was gone. A great silence,—a horrible oppression and loneliness fell upon Walden's heart. He sank into his accustomed chair and stared before him with unseeing eyes,- -mechanically patting his dog Nebbie while gently pushing the animal back in its attempts to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... knowing what they said, or of caring who came near her. Her husband's earnest pleas, Starr's tears, drew from her no faintest expression that might have been even imagined from a fluttering eyelash. There was nothing but that stony stare, that almost unseeing gaze, that yet followed, followed wherever one would move. It was a ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... tiptoed away, his ungainly body swaying about as he stole across the heavy pile carpet. He went out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. He left Greve sunk in a reverie at the desk, gazing with unseeing eyes upon the dead face of the master ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... slight, pale, boyish-looking fellow, with an abstracted, musing look in his large dark eyes. Mrs. Grant noticed with amusement that he wore a white straw hat in spite of the season. His eyes were directed to her face with his usual unseeing gaze. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the snowy landscape outside growing blurred and misty as the record of the old man's devotion gradually unfolded. Before the Major had finished the Colonel's hand had crept to the bell at his side, and, as the darky's shuffling footsteps echoed along the corridor, he turned again and stared with unseeing eyes at the outline of the old barn. Dick shifted the log and a crimson glow irradiated the old library, making a halo of soft fire about the figure of the old darky as he paused ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... "Watcher unseeing! what of the night! 'Tis past and gone. I know th' advance and joy of light! Look how for it all things put on Such hues as in comparison The earth and sky to darkness turn, Hues of the sard, and chrysolite And sapphire herald ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... royalist estates were confiscated at that time. Doubtless, again, our Government, to encourage settlement, sold land in such large parcels in early days. Incurious Abingdon cares for none of these things. Singular Abingdon! And yet are these folk, indeed, so singular among citizens? So unseeing a people? Consider that, within the memory of men living, the wisdom of America has made free gift to the railroads, to encourage their building, of so much land as goes to the making of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... prisoner's apartment, but found it deserted. The Graevenitz was taking the air upon the ramparts. He found her leaning over the stone parapet, gazing, as usual, into the distance with those terrible, haunted, unseeing eyes. In vain the valley was radiant with Spring's tender treasury; she gazed unseeing at the wealth of blossom, the feathery green of the beech-trees, and at the rounded hills so rich in sombre firs enhancing the wondrous youth ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... deem the foolish flowers vain. So take it, and if still too slight, too small It seem, think 'tis a bloom that grew anear, In other Springtime, the old garden wall. (That pale blue flower you will remember, dear. The heedless world, unseeing, passed it by, And left it to the bee and you.) Then say, "Because the hands that tended it are nigh No more, and little feet are gone away That round it trampled down the beaded grass, Sweeter to me it is than musky spray Of Southland; and dearer than days that pass In ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... anyone, yet," he urged, and stepped down from the veranda, his unseeing gaze still fixed upon the slow advance of ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... In their decorous niche at the upper right hand of the stove sat the two kitchen gods, small ancient idols, with hidden hands and crossed feet, gazing out upon a continually hungry world. Since time was they had sat there, ensconced at the very root of life, seemingly placid and unseeing and unhearing, yet venomously watching to be placated with food. Opposite the stove, on the white wall, hung a row of brass hooks, from which dangled porcelain spoons with pierced handles. On a serving-table stood the piled bowls for the day, blue-and-white rice patterns, of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... he cried, knowing in a flash, yet denying it in his mind at the same time. Stunned, he stared at the perky ears, the dull staring and unseeing eyes, the leather thongs that held the head and body of a dog to the metal encasement. Carol ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... came in, cutting away the bridge under Captain McKinstry's feet, and throwing him to the deck below; the fall incapacitated him from remaining at his station, and Lieutenant-Commander N.W. Thomas took command of the Monongahela. Meanwhile the Mississippi had passed, unseen and unseeing, in the smoke, and had herself grounded a little farther up near the head of the spit. She was observed to be on fire as the Monongahela again drew near the bend, and at the same moment the latter vessel's engines ceased to move, a crank-pin being heated. ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... who, unaware of Robert's proximity, had been standing on the other side of the porch, saw that look, as he hurried past her, unseeing. A moment before her dark eyes had been flashing with anger at Aunt Isabel's words; now the anger was drowned in a ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... immense effort. The boat was throbbing violently as the wheels gyrated, the violet light had become a pillar as thick as a man, and shot straight up to a height of fifty feet, before it rolled away. Lucille was lying where she had been, her eyes still staring up unseeing at the stars. Old Parrish was whining and whimpering as he crouched in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... ran through her mind, movements of old symphonies, memories of her vicarious raptures before the altar in the convent, glimpses of hillsides and valleys and woods in the winter rain which she had seen unseeing that she might reserve their deeper meaning for this deeper sight of the spirit. "I wonder if this is not happiness; if Heaven will not be so?" she thought. It came, too, that if this exaltation lasted a moment longer, she should know with God the meaning of ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... have done me the honour of coming, I am glad that you should be here to witness the conclusion of last night's experiment. This lady," he continued, pointing to my aunt, who still stood with fixed, apparently unseeing eyes, holding out the parcel towards him—"this lady, you will remember, considered the hypnotic phenomena exhibited at last night's entertainment as a clever imposture—those were the words, I think. To one who, like myself, is an enthusiast on the subject, such words were hard, nay, impossible ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... the letter to its envelope, and after looking up Gaston on the time-table fell into a heart-stirring reverie, with unseeing eyes fixed on the restful blackness of the night rushing rearward past the ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... he had talked more than ever before; the flush on his cheeks was like the flush of wine or the sun which had fired his blood. As he had talked the more, so had she grown the more silent. She was sitting now with her hands clasped and her head thrown back, looking up at the stars with unseeing eyes. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... life itself she craved for, and she could not get it. All these young men, handsome and healthy in their flannels and ready to be pleasant, she found dull, while the figure of the loose-jointed Charles, his vague gestures, his unseeing eyes screening the activity of his brain, became heroic in their difference. She never saw him; she did not visit Mrs. Batty; she was afraid of falling tearfully on that homely, sympathetic breast, but Mrs. Batty, as usual, issued ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... little waif of humanity before her, for she was a lover of children, and was never happier than when she was surrounded by these little creatures—the very babies crowed a welcome to her from their mother's arms. But this evening Margaret's eyes had a strange unseeing look in them; they were searching the winding shore for some expected object, and she scarcely seemed to notice the little one ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... communion with her. A sense of fundamentals. She was a—simplifier of ideas. Plain and straightforward even in her enchantments. That moon they were waiting for.... Already she was looking down upon a pair of lovers, somewhere,—a thousand pairs!—with her bland unseeing face. And later to-night, long after she had risen on them, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... hands, turning away from her, his eyes staring unseeing out of the window. A moment she continued looking at him, her dry eyes anxiously pleading. Then she buried her face within her hands and waited, her whole body trembling. Twice Winston sought to speak, before sufficient courage came to him ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... for two days, clanged to on Ridgway. He stared out with unseeing eyes into the silent wastes of snow. The roaring in his ears and the mountainsides that churned before his eyes were reflections of the blizzard ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... chance suddenly return. For it is one of the dangers of the retrospective habit that it incapacitates us for the realization of the present hour. Much dwelling on last year's snow will make us forget the summer flowers. Dreaming of fair faces that are gone, we will look with unseeing eyes into the fair faces that companion us still. To the Spring we say: "What of all your blossom, and all your singing! Autumn is already at your heels, like a shadow; and Winter waits for you like a marble tomb." To the hope that still ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... risen, and she, too, looked with unseeing eyes upon the busy street. There was reproach in her voice, Dave thought, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... back, gazing with unseeing eyes at the ceiling, one thin arm tossed across the pillow. ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... with his unseeing gaze straight ahead, his body tense and motionless. On the desk within reach lay the revolver. Cautiously Susan half extended her hand toward it, then drew it back. She glanced again at Keith's absorbed face, then turned and made her way quietly down ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... seat, staring at me with unseeing eyes. A sound reached us through the drawing room which told us that Madame de Staemer's chair was being taken upstairs, a task always performed when Madame desired to visit the upper floors by Manoel and ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... that first drive. I, for my part, saw with unseeing eyes. My sister had seen it all before, so she had the power of speech. Occasionally she prodded me and cried, "Look, oh! look quickly." But I never swerved. "I can't look. If I do I shall miss something. You attend ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... and power, yet will use none of these gifts. This is the case, and the habit of ignorance has become so confirmed, that now none will see with the inner vision till agony has made the physical eyes not only unseeing, but without tears—the moisture of life. To be incapable of tears is to have faced and conquered the simple human nature, and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotions. It ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... Sarah, and she went into the sick-room. It was a relief not to see her father lying there with unseeing eyes and breathing so heavily; but, somehow, Sarah felt very uncomfortable under his keen glance to-day. Still, she managed to say, 'I am glad ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... Professor. We, or rather most of us, are in a very unhappy state of mind. Thus, what might three days ago have been a very simple thing, takes on for all of us perhaps a grossly exaggerated importance. Mr. Flynn there," glancing toward one of the men who was looking with dull unseeing eyes at the table, "has an important errand at his home. His home is in Pleasantville, N.Y. That is not far from New York City. We are really perplexed as to whether we ought to let him go." Justice Higginbotham ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... and looked past her, unseeing, at the wall. "I guess I've known it for quite a while," he said at last. "I didn't want to believe it, so I wouldn't. Are you engaged ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reasonable safety, in a glimmer of light. And no available track so easy but man, however capable, will blunder therein, if he walks in darkness; nay, the more resolute and conscientious he is, the more certainly will he stub his big toe on a root, and impale his open, unseeing eye on a dead twig, and tread on nothing, to the kinking of his neck-bone and the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... chair Sylvie leaned back her head and pressed her hands to her unseeing eyes. She was not sorry that Hugh had left her, for she was oppressed and unnerved by her own emotions. Until he had kissed her hair, she had not known that she loved him—or rather loved an invisible presence that had enveloped her in an atmosphere of sympathy, of protection, that ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... moment Filmer looked at his visitor with unseeing eyes, then his consciousness travelled back from its far place, and a soft welcome spread over the drawn face. So glad was he to see Drew that he forgot to be patronizing. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... warrior who grinned proudly at the honor of being selected to help a guest of the great chief, he followed the departing column out into the sunshine, where the entire tribe was assembled. And when the stalwart band had filed into the shadows of the trees and vanished he stood for a time unseeing and gulping at something ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... did. Then she wondered if she had not better stop and stand still, for fear she would go wrong. How awfully dark it was, and the air was chilly. Did she really know which way home was? And she strained her unseeing eyes intently for a moment, and then closed them, to let the way come into her mind. That must be the way, and she would go in that direction until she thought she could make them hear; and then she would ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... her last look at him on the platform, when the train had carried her off, an observer, seeing the way the color faded out of her face, and the look in the eyes, which, so wide open and so unseeing, stared straight ahead, would have said that the benefit hadn't lasted long. There was about her the look of somber terror, just verging on panic, which you have seen in a child's face when he has been sent up-stairs to bed alone in ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... himself with his small charge, reading and walking with her most of the days. Isabelle was conscious of the odd figure Vickers made, in his ill-fitting Italian clothes, with an old Tyrolean cloak of faded green hanging about him, his pale face half hidden by a scrubby beard, his unseeing eyes, wandering over the great steamer, a little girl's hand in his, or reading in a corner of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... spoken for a long time. Twice he bent and kissed her, and each time her lips met his shyly and her body made its happy, nestling movement. She clung to him, unable to release herself, and he sat, half supporting her in his arms, as he gazed with unseeing eyes at the blur of the great city across the bay. For once there were no visions in his brain. Only colors and lights and glows pulsed there, warm as the day and warm as his love. He bent over her. She ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... milk-cart, the gleaming brass cans clanking from side to side; through the open window came the faint indescribable scent which distinguishes a continental from a British city. Claire stared with unseeing eyes, her heart beating with heavy thuds. She conjured up the image of a man's face—a strong kindly face—a face which might well make the sunshine of some woman's life, but which made no appeal ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said lamely. "Thank you, Miss Cohen; I'll make a memorandum of it." He went over to the commercial agency book and scanned three or four pages with an unseeing eye. Then he repaired to the sample room, where ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... no wasting moon Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours: Only the soft, unseeing heaven of June, The ghosts of great ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... if for support, looking off with unseeing eyes into the night. Lights along the river-side were reflected in the water; here and there a bridge made a long low arch of lamps; more lights sprinkled the suburban hills, making a fringe to the pall of stars. They grew pale, even while ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... stupid, unseeing eyes. She! his wife, so long the object of his desire, so fondly idolized! A great shudder passed through his frame and he awoke to consciousness of his situation. What had he done? why had he remained ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... majority of men have to spend fifty-two weeks of every year. Very delightful, too, is the type of man thus produced—charmingly learned, sweetly innocent, guileless, impracticable; walking the path of life with head in air, with eyes unseeing and ears unhearing the things that fill the thoughts of common men. Holding fellowship with the immortals, eating the bread of philosophy, doctrinaire, drinking the wine of poetry—how good would it be to live with such men if only ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... leafy wall a well-known voice cried, "Hail to thee, my twining vine!" Ivy turned and looked up, with the uncertain, inquiring smile we often wear when conscious that, though unseeing, we are not unseen; and presently two hands parted the leaves far enough for a very sunshiny smile to gleam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... up, Ricardo had vanished, letting himself down outside so lightly that she had not heard the slightest noise. She stood up then, bewildered, frightened, as if awakened from a drugged sleep, with heavy, downcast, unseeing eyes, her fortitude tired out, her imagination as if dead within her and unable to keep ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... crypt, a winding stairway in the wall led up to a chamber above the choir, whence, unseeing and unseen, the White Ladies of Worcester daily heard the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... gone up to his room to lock the door and then to stand long at the window, staring with unseeing eyes down into the village street. By good rights, he should have seen one future, if not the other, opening out before him in ever-widening vistas. At nineteen or so, however, one is not too imaginative. Scott merely saw a vagrant ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... fire by rubbing sticks together. One was intently leaning forward, as if in the act of blowing. Among the figures behind the group stood a man with an infant in his arms, vividly characterized by the unseeing eyes. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... and Peer Gynt, this strangely motionless one who has thrown the west side into an uproar. There is no drama around him. He is a dead young man in uniform walking slowly, limply through three acts. This is all one remembers—that his eyes were open and unseeing, that his arms hung like a scarecrow's and that the fingers of his hands were curled ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... well written over, and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps the postscript. He was absorbed unusually in his cogitations, and nibbled into bits the feathery end of the gray goosequill of which he had been making such excellent use. While he meditates, unseeing, we will use the liberty of an old acquaintance to scan the letter—for such it is—which he has been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from it some matters which it may ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... thought, looking into the fire, and we were still beside him. The queen moved away to the seat where Eadward had been sitting and took his place, staring out of the window with unseeing eyes. And I was glad that she was no longer ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... were in waiting to greet the faintest flicker of animation on the grave, dark face, but it did not come. Mr Elgood's deep-set eyes stared at her with an unseeing gaze—stared as it were straight through her, without being conscious of her presence. She might have been a chair, a table, a post of wood by the wayside, for all the notice bestowed upon her by the man whose favour she had travelled some hundreds ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... advertisement had been answered; and not by a village applicant, no, no!—this letter was from away off yonder in the dim great world to the North; it was from St. Louis. She sat on her porch gazing out with unseeing eyes upon the shining reaches of the mighty Mississippi, her thoughts steeped in her good fortune. Indeed it was specially good fortune, for she was to have two lodgers instead ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he stared unseeing out into the corral. He would no longer play the part of a pawn. Thus far Bram had held the whip hand. Now he would take it from him no matter what mysterious protestation the girl might make! The wolf-man had given him a dozen opportunities to deliver ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... construction of the rooms. He gave the essential points from the evidence of the several witnesses, quoting the exact times at which various episodes had taken place. Mary Kerry, looking straightly before her with unseeing eyes, listened in silence until he ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... were holding a family indignation meeting on the broad porch when the Van Ramps came contentedly down for a walk, and brushed by them with unseeing eyes. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... happiness," he muttered, as he took his place at the office table. "Well, I suppose no one could expect such pleasure as I have had these last three months to continue; but, whatever happens, Saidie and I will stick together." He sat musing for a moment, staring with unseeing eyes at the pile of ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... food, she walked listlessly into the library and sank into a huge chair. Spring was well advanced, yet there was an open fire. Elbows upon the arms of her chair, hands clasped under her chin, she turned unseeing eyes upon the flickering flames. Motionless, barely breathing, she was a picture ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... in the matter of grief. Kent's lips trembled, but he made no attempt to comfort Lydia. He only held her tightly and watched the fire with bright, unseeing eyes. And after what seemed a long, long time, the sobs grew less. Finally, he slipped a pocket handkerchief into Lydia's hand. It was gray with use but ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... kind of danger that threatened her employer. Peter had believed her then. He saw no reason to disbelieve her now. She had known as little as Peter about the cause for McGuire's alarm. And here he had found her staring with the same unseeing eyes into the darkness, with the same symptoms of nervous shock as McGuire had shown. What enemy of McGuire's could frighten Aunt Tillie into prostration and seal her lips to speech? Why wouldn't she have dared to tell Peter what she had seen? What was this secret and how could ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Judy rambled on, confessing her sins and moaning like a person in mortal pain. She had worked herself into a fever, her face was hot and she looked at the girls with burning, unseeing eyes. ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... dips down into the field, another peasant is driving a team of oxen at a plow. The distant figures are aglow with golden mellow light, the last light of day, which deepens the gloom of the shadowing hillside. The sower's cap is pulled tight about his head, hiding under its shade the unseeing eyes. The mouth is brutal and grim. The heavy jaw flows down into the thick, resistive neck. The right arm swings powerfully out, scattering the grain. The left is pressed to his body; the big, stubborn hand clutches close the pouch of seed. Action heroic, elemental; the dumb bearing of the universal ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... idyl began. Ygerne, staring straight out before her with wide, unseeing eyes, spoke swiftly, her voice a low monotone that fitted in well with the musing eyes. She loved him; she told him so in a strangely quiet tone and Drennen, wishing to believe, believed and thrilled under her words like the strings ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... words for this touching spectacle, stretched out his hand and with a reverent and fatherly touch pressed down the lids over the unseeing eyes. This office done to the innocent dead, he asked if anything had been found to establish ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... the drive towards him—a long loping figure that covered the ground rapidly. With a last horrified look in the water, David Cable, craven for the moment, turned and fled through the night along the broken sea wall—fled aimlessly, his eyes unseeing, his feet possessed of wings. He knew not whither he ran, only that he was an assassin fleeing ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... already far removed, came to him suddenly, strangely and vividly. Pantin was there before him, animated and throbbing in this greenish and dull mirror into which his unseeing eyes plunged. A hallucination transported him far from Fontenay. Beside reflecting the street, the mirror brought back thoughts it had once been instrumental in evoking, and plunged in revery, he repeated to himself this ingenious, sad and comforting composition he had ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Marjorie watched with unseeing eyes the angular form of the teacher as she retreated to her platform. If Miss Merton had dealt her a blow on her upturned face, it could have hurt no more severely than had this unlooked-for reprimand. She was filled with a choking sense of shame that threatened to end in a burst of ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... shiver seemed to pass through him; underneath his tanned skin he was paler, and the blood in his veins was cold. His eyes, fixed upon the flying landscape, were set in a fixed, unseeing stare—surely the fields were peopled with evil memories, and faces in the trees were mocking him. So he remained for several moments as though in the grip of a nightmare, and the lady watched him. There was a ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... her taunt. He was thinking. The words of a cowpuncher came back to him as he sat and regarded with unseeing eyes the Indian woman. The cowpuncher had said: "When a feller rides the range month in and month out, and don't see nobody but other punchers and Injuns, some Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes begins to ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... in her lap, and she gazed with unseeing eyes at the hills. After all, Patricia, mourning her lover, had not known ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... nicely and let me look at you," and, slipping her hand beneath the chin, she turned the face up to hers. She was prepared for tear-drenched eyes and trembling lips but she found neither. Isidore's dark-lashed lids drooped heavily over his unseeing eyes, his head rolled loosely from side to side, and he began to slip, silently and ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... way with the others. Banion rode straight through the gap, with no more than one unseeing glance at Woodhull, near whom sat Jackson, a pistol resting on his thigh. He came to the place under a wagon where they had made a hospital cot for Molly Wingate. It was her own father and mother who lifted her out as Will ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... out a second glass slowly. The wine bubbled up to the brim and overflowed. He had been looking at the glass with unseeing eyes. He set the bottle down impatiently. Fool! To have gone to Burma, simply to stand in the golden temple once more, in vain, to recall that other time: the starving kitten held tenderly in a woman's arms, his own scurry among the booths to find the milk so peremptorily ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... herself down in the window-seat and looked toward Main Street with unseeing eyes. A wonderful voice murmured in her ears, speaking a new language. She tried to recall what had been said as she crouched at her mother's feet, her head in her lap, before the fire in Amzi's living-room; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... stood up. It was as if mere distress or dismay at first worked in him, and was in fact a wave of deep and irresistible emotion which made him, on his feet, sway as in a great trouble and then, to correct it, throw himself stiffly toward the window, where he stood and looked out unseeing. The road, the wide terrace beyond, the seats, the eternal sea beyond that, the lighted lamps now flaring in the October night-wind, with the few dispersed people abroad at the tea-hour; these things, meeting and melting into the firelit hospitality at his elbow—or was it ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... not to hear her cousin. Having gathered up her things, she bent an unmoved face and an unseeing gaze full upon him, and glided from the room without ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... the ticking of the clock and the wailing of the wind outside. Mrs. de Noel gazed into the fire with intent and unseeing eyes. Its warm red light softly illumined her whole face and figure, for in her abstraction she had let the hand-screen fall, and was stroking mechanically the little sleek head that nestled against her. Meantime I stared attentively at her, thinking I might do so without offence, seeing she ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... abruptly and stood at the window, looking out with unseeing eyes. "Lorance—Lorance," he murmured to himself. I think he did ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... park. Now they stand forlornly cheek by jowl with new yellow brick. Actaeon, from one great pillar, gazes on less divine pictures than a goddess bathing; Artemis, on the other pillar, drapes herself for unseeing eyes. A papered notice-board lolls against the superb ironwork of the gates. Hunter and huntress, pillars and wrought ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... us; and thrust my hands deep into my pockets, and, finding there my tobacco-pipe, brought it out and fell to turning it aimlessly over and over. I would have spoken, only I knew that my voice would tremble, and so I sat mum-chance, staring at my pipe with unseeing eyes, and with my brain in a ferment. And presently came her voice, cool and sweet ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... make his skin look less blue and the mouth less drawn! The wide eyes were still fixed upon her, immovable and unblinking. Once only had she seen the lids fall slowly downward, to rise again over the unseeing eyes. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... lamentable. The priest was there, and recited the last prayers over him. They raised the old man on his pillow. He opened his eyes slowly, and they seemed no longer to obey his will. He breathed noisily, and with unseeing eyes looked at the faces and the lights, and suddenly he opened his mouth. A nameless ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... one to send her Glance into the vale, And, unseeing, toward him bend her Angel visage pale. And thus sat he, staring wanly, His last morning there: Toward her window still the ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... movement of the mare like a reed in the wind, but otherwise seemed to take no notice of horse, or man, or moon, or untoward circumstance; he hung on for a moment to the silken mane and stared up into the girl's unseeing eyes; then, with a ringing shout, let go and jumped nimbly to ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... movement the going or coming of a few individuals was a matter of no concern. The hood that Julie Lannes had drawn over her hair and face, and her plain brown dress might have been those of a nun. She too passed before unseeing eyes. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... patient-faced women, whose quiet demeanor was more heartrending than tears would have been. Some gave them the welcome that those who are united in the bonds of affliction give each other; others only stared at them with stony, unseeing eyes. Whose turn would be the next? was the thought that filled every breast. Oppressed and saddened, Peggy thoughtfully took the seat assigned her, and, as Sally sank down beside her, she slipped her hand into her friend's protectingly. Sally responded ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... she said, looking up into the Indian's face with unseeing eyes. "Don't let him see that I ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... roasting in the ashes, or fresh fish sizzling on hot stones gave a charm to the learning of wood-lore that it never could have possessed otherwise. At first with the heedlessness of city-bred boys, they crashed through the under-brush with unseeing eyes, and unhearing ears, but it was not long until they had learned the alertness of young Indians, following by signs of bark and leaf and fallen feather, trails more interesting than any ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... room the music rose and fell and swelled again into ecstasy as he took her white young lightness in his arm and they swayed and darted and swooped like things of the air—while the old Duchess and Lord Coombe looked on almost unseeing and talked in murmurs ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... open fireplace in the hall. Motes danced in the beam, and the house somehow seemed less despairing, less alone. A portrait of Colonel Kent, in uniform, hung above the great mantel. Rose smiled at it with comprehension, but the painted lips did not answer, nor the unseeing eyes swerve from their ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed |
