"Unresponsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a moment at the top of the steps while Monck, his dark, lean face wholly unresponsive and inscrutable, took out a cigar. The night was a wonderland of deep spaces and glittering stars. Somewhere far away a native tom-tom throbbed like the beating of a fevered pulse, quickening spasmodically at intervals and then dying away again into mere monotony. The air was scentless, ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... on the terrace to-day. Still Jesus did not answer him, and feeling that nothing venture nothing win, he struck boldly out into a sentence that change of air is the best medicine after sickness. Jesus remaining still unresponsive, he added: sea air is better than mountain air, and none as beneficial as the air ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... to put it in this wood shed out of the way." I tried to convey by my tone that I was performing a kind and thoughtful action, for which the railway officials ought to thank me; but he was unresponsive. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... as I remember, in a most extraordinary degree upon the temper of his audience. I have heard him read downright flatly and badly to an unresponsive house, and I have seen him vivified and quickened to the most extraordinary display of genius by an audience of the opposite kind. The first occasion on which he ever read for his own profit was in the old Broad Street ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... then suddenly smiled into the unresponsive faces before him. He held out his hand and shook ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... offer was to suspend the application to certain religious bodies of the interdict fulminated against them by himself and the Republican Government. At last he paused, evidently oppressed by the steady, unresponsive gaze of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... "Unresponsive to mediocre passions, he is carried away alternately by good as well as evil, and he bounds from spiritual pole to spiritual pole. He dies at the age of thirty-six, but he has completely exhausted the possibilities of joy and grief. He has adored death, loved ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... mendicant,—ah, believe me, Matthiette, that atones for aught which follows now. Come what may, I shall always remember that once in old days you loved me, and, remembering this, I shall always thank God with a contented heart." He bowed over her unresponsive hand. "Matthiette," he whispered, "be happy! For I desire that very heartily, and I beseech of our Sovereign Lady—not caring to hide at all how my voice shakes, nor how the loveliness of you, seen now for the last time, is making blind my eyes—that you may never know unhappiness. You have chosen ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... XXXVIII. Meantime Ilmarinen, after grieving three months for the loss of the Rainbow Maiden, proceeds to fashion himself a wife out of gold and silver, but, as she is lifeless and unresponsive, he offers her to Wainamoinen,—who refuses her,—and travels northward once more to woo a sister of his former bride. On arriving at Louhi's house,—undeterred by many evil omens which have crossed his path,—Ilmarinen sues for a bride. Louhi reproaches him for the treatment ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... however, or mother would have mentioned it to me, for she always told me everything that I said during the night." I might perhaps sum up this activity in her sleep after this fashion: Day and night she is studying for the beloved but unresponsive teacher and strives to win and to keep her good will as well as that of the mother through the repeating of sermons and relating of all the events ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... of my life, Your ample waist Just fits the gown I fancy for my wife, And suits my taste; Yet there you stand, flat-footed, square and deep, An unresponsive, elephantine heap, Coquetting with the stars while I'm asleep, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... an hour while four of the guests finished their "rubber." Penelope observed that the party displayed varying emotions. It afterward transpired that the hunters had spent most of the afternoon in her ladyship's distant lodge playing bridge for rather high stakes. Little Miss Folsom was pitifully unresponsive to the mirth of Mr. Odwell. She could ill afford to lose six hundred dollars. Lady Bazelhurst was in a frightful mood. Her guests had so far forgotten themselves as to win more than a thousand dollars of the Banks legacy and she was not a cheerful loser—especially ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... to wonder if he had called them here just to ask about Sindy, and for an instant they were sullenly unresponsive. But the heavy lines on their master's face soon reassured them. "Over Buckshot Dan's—just where ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... out every hour of every day under the Great Taskmaster's eye. Many country ministers again,—we, miserable men that we are, are never happy or well placed,—complain continually that their people are so few, and so scattered, and so ignorant, and so uninteresting, and so unresponsive, that it is not worth their toil to go up and down in remote places seeking after them. It takes a whole day among bad roads and wet bogs to visit a shepherd's wife and children, and two or three bothies and pauper's hovels on the way home. 'On the morrow,' so runs many an entry ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... lord, the woman to her husband, and children to their parents. The early Christians too sincerely despised the prizes of this world—including the greatest of all, liberty—to struggle for possession of any of them; unresponsive to the lure of earthly honours and treasures, they fixed their desires on things eternal. Slavery continued to coexist with Christianity: children were sold publicly in the markets of Bristol during the reign of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well, but what I wanted ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... ever impossible for her to respond, and only yesterday, when he had suddenly caught her in his arms, kissing her fiercely yet feeling her lips lie stiff and unresponsive beneath his own, he had almost flung her from him. Then, gripping her by the arm until the delicate flesh showed red and bruised beneath the pressure, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Himself as essential truth and very life. He condensed duty into such love as He manifested toward men. He embodied the heroism of meekness, the courage of self-sacrifice, the vision of goodness. He was an example of all that is strong, serene, sacrificial, in the midst of the lowest and most unresponsive conditions. So much we see, and the rest we dimly, but ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... level with Miss Martha's as she stood two steps above him on the piazza, and he pressed her hard, little, unresponsive hand. But if her hand was hard her heart was not, and it was with much appreciation of the visitor's attractive personality that she urged him to take his choice of ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... gayly rallied Charlie Hardy on his flirtations; predicted seeing him yet brought up with a round turn in a breach-of-promise case; seemed highly edified by Frankie Taliaferro's efforts to appear unconcerned at these pleasantries; railed openly at Clinton Frost's being so unresponsive to the general mirth around him; shivered visibly at that gentleman's icy retorts; playfully called attention to his wife's endeavors to frown him into silence; and, in spite of Sallie's angry glances, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... by the fervor of the moment, I made my way to her side. Ah, God, how still! With what a mockery the closed lips and lids confronted my demanding gaze! A stone could not have been more unresponsive. ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... a woman came to the door—a young woman whose rather unresponsive face wakened somewhat ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Bob was with him, and was evidently trying to make himself agreeable. He was chatting. Occasionally he laughed. The Admiral was entirely unresponsive. When he got close enough for us to see his face I saw that he looked perplexed and miserable. I was miserable and frightened, but ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... stay very long, sir," said he in a sad whisper, and for the life of me I couldn't determine what construction to put upon the singularly unresponsive remark. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... is partly our own fault, because we have pampered, flattered, and indulged them too much. Ah! and just as often the reverse is true—the child whom in our hearts we called Jabez; the slow, dull child so hard to teach, so unresponsive, or perhaps so wilful and obstinate that we never thought or spoke of him save with secret fears and misgivings—the child who was always to be a burden and a cross to us, develops by-and-by in beautiful and unexpected ways, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... impressed with the audience, which, nevertheless, seemed rather chilly and unresponsive. A dignity prevailed which either could not or dared not give way to any decided demonstration, in marked contradistinction to the enthusiasm which characterized the ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... occasion; and since we remain empty of imagination, we find it impossible to enjoy ourselves. Our feeling in regard to a bad play might be phrased in the familiar sentence,—"This is all very well; but what is it to me?" The piece leaves us unresponsive and aloof; we miss that answering and tallying of mind—to use Whitman's word—which is the soul of all experience of worthy art. But a good play helps us to enjoy ourselves by making us aware of ourselves; it forces us to think and feel. We may think differently from the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... for upwards of thirty years, and never had one single quarrel, but oddly enough, when the rare inharmonious moments came, these groups of trees bridged the fleeting difference of opinion or any slight antagonism of will and purpose; when these unresponsive moments came, one or the other would begin to admire those forest giants, to suggest improvements, to repeat the admiration of others for their graceful outlines—to, in fact, direct thought and conversation into the common channel of love for those trees. This peculiarity was noticeable to ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... the early sun there was no sign of discovery from its silent pickets. When within a hundred yards, in response to the commanding war-cry of the Fire Eater, they rose like ghosts from the sage and charged fast on the stockade. The gray logs stood stiffly unresponsive and gave no answering shots or yells as the Indians swept upon them. The gate was high, but the attacking force crept up on each other's bent backs as they strove for the interior. A tremendous commotion arose; rifles blazed ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... became more excited. "He don't know but I know," he shouted, stopping to gaze down into the dumb, unresponsive face of the half-wit. "I know too well. I can't stand it. When we lived out here it was different. I worked and at night I went to bed and slept. I wasn't always seeing people and thinking as I am now. In the evening, there in town, I go to the post office or to the depot to see ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... for so long an imperious and instinctive delight, had become a mere burden. She longed to creep into some quiet place, alone with Oliver, out of reach of this army of servants and dependents, these impassive and unresponsive faces. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the unresponsive tone of one who says what he must, rather than what he would like to say. "It is all the things you have been saying, and more—when one has the time and the mind to be ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... considered the matter with pursed lips. "I wish it hadn't happened," he mused, as unresponsive to his wife's relief as he had been to her anxiety. "At first, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... hand, and thanked him for his admirable achievement, with all the ardor and sincerity of his enthusiastic and honest nature. Hiram was undisturbed by it. His cold, clammy palm rested in the vigorous, cordial grasp of his employer unresponsive and unsympathizing. But Mr. Burns was in too happy and active a mood himself to be affected by that of his clerk. For the time, his was the ruling influence; and Hiram was the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in the box with her nephew, Mrs Peagrim continued for some moments in the same vein, innocently twisting the knife in the open wound. It struck her from time to time that darling Otie was perhaps a shade unresponsive, but she put this down to the nervous strain inseparable from a first night of a young author's ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... which enveloped Iscariot in the deep silence of secrecy, when he was in one of his reveries, that one would have preferred that he should begin to speak, to move, nay, even, to tell lies. For a lie, spoken by a human tongue, had been truth and light compared with that hopelessly deep and unresponsive silence. ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... his renewed love, he still remained a stranger to his children. He seemed proud of their healthy beauty, and glad of Mary's happiness in them; but their nearness bored and tired him, and they, quick to perceive this, became hopelessly unresponsive in his presence. Ellie would back solemnly away from the approaching chair, and Rosamond would hang mute upon her mother's shoulder. "It's strange," Mary said to the Sparrow, who was quick to notice any failure to appreciate her adored charges; "they're ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... 9, 1918, the State Republican convention included a suffrage plank in its platform. On the 10th representative suffragists appeared at the Democratic State convention urging one but the plea fell upon dull ears and unresponsive hearts. The latter part of May the State Federation of Women's Clubs with 8,000 members endorsed equal suffrage with but two dissenting votes. In June the State Trained Nurses Association unanimously endorsed it. During September petitions signed by hundreds of college students and letters ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... lectured on astronomy and published the first city directory in 1785, a unique volume giving the names in direct house-to-house sequence and having such notations as, "I won't tell you", "What you please", and "Cross woman" against street numbers where he found the occupants suspicious or unresponsive to ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... bad, of course, but Mrs. Seaton found these less difficult to endure than the boy's unresponsive, watchful ways. At last, as the pudding was being served, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... ebb and flow of the evening Howat was left with Ludowika for a little, and he bent over her, kissing her sharply. She was coldly unresponsive; and he kissed her again, trying vainly to bring some warmth to her lips. She did not avoid him actually, but he felt that something in her, essential, slipped aside from his caress. His emotion ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... clung to the skirts of the theatre for a bit. But the theatre, aching to be "in it", flung them off. The intellectual drama had no use for them, no use at all. And so they found themselves (out of it indeed) busking on the pavement, doing tricks and tumbling and singing silly songs to the unresponsive profiles of long lines of ladies (high-nosed or stumpy-nosed ladies), waiting admittance to the matinees of some highly intellectual play. And with glasses on those noses they'd be reading while they waited the book of ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... the open sash. They leaped out, and plunged up the mountain, tempting the assassin's fire, but the assassin was satisfied. The mountain was again as quiet as it had been at dawn. Its impenetrable mask of green was blank and unresponsive. Somewhere in the cool of the dewy treetops a squirrel barked. Here and there, the birds saluted the sparkle and freshness of June. Inside, at the middle of the store, Jesse Purvy shifted his head against his daughter's knee, and said, as one ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Jimmy would hold up a warning finger for silence, while the outsider shot through the keyhole such remarks as "Jimmy Mason, loosen up. You've mixed my clothes again;" or, "Hi, Jimmy! give me the markings;" or, possibly, hurled a mass of unrepeatable terms at the unresponsive door. Perhaps his roommate, Marion, would come in when the lights went out; then Jimmy would call a breathing-spell, during which, while "Nosey" went to bed behind the portieres, he drew his lamp from its hiding-place ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... and while they were being told tattoo was sounded, and then Mrs. Stannard asked if she might not creep up-stairs and see Miriam; she thought she might cheer her a bit. This left mother and daughter alone together, and again, and even more painfully, Mrs. Sumter noted how sad and unresponsive was Kate at mention ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... fell upon the unresponsive night and was swallowed up in blackness, solitude, dead heavy silence. The windows were full ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... of the traits that distinguished him later on. For one thing he disdained the drudgery of committee work: he chafed at the confinement of the conference room; eagle-like he yearned to spread his wings. His forte was talking. He loathed to mull over dull and unresponsive reports. He frankly admitted a disinclination to work, and it makes him one of the most superficial of men in what the world calls culture. His intelligence has more than once been characterised as ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... a silent, unresponsive figure, seeking only to make his escape. With difficulty he broke in upon ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wheeling past them, blankly unresponsive to casual stares and smiles. They seemed to hear the rotten flood-gates, shut so long ago, creak on ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... large part in producing variety of tone quality. Each vowel, every word can be colored, as by magic, by well controlled play of the lips. When lips are stiff and unresponsive, the singing is colorless. Lips are final resonators, through which tones must pass, and lip movements can be ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... had, nothing could divert attention from the beauty of her contours of cheek and figure, and of her rich soft colouring. The officers in church stood up to look at her; and at the balls and meriendas she attended in vacations the homage she received stifled and annoyed her. She was as cold and unresponsive as Concepcion de Arguello. People shrugged their shoulders and said it was as well. Her mother, Dona Brigida de la Torre of the great Rancho Diablo, twenty miles from Monterey, was the sternest old lady in California. It was whispered ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... lingers awhile looking up wistfully at the unresponsive windows of the sleeping-cars, behind which are the happy circus-actors. Perhaps the show-boy that stands up on top of his daddy's head will look out. If he should raise the window and smile at you, and get to talking with you maybe he would introduce you to his pa, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... down her cheeks, and she thrilled to his pleadings as to some wondrous music, yet she was like adamant, and all his lover's desperation could not shake her. It was strange to see this slender, timid slip of a girl so melting and yet so cruelly firm. He appealed to Stephanie, but she was as unresponsive as a bronze image. Seeing that his urging only made matters worse, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the poor. His friend, Madame Arnaud, helped to administer a charity. Olivier got her to allow him to help. But at the outset he had more than one setback: the poor people who were given into his charge were not all worthy of interest, or they were unresponsive to his sympathy, distrusted him, and shut their doors against him. Besides, it is hard for a man of intellect to be satisfied with charity pure and simple: it waters such a very small corner of the kingdom of wretchedness! Its effects are almost always ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... God. That is an utter fallacy. They are not living without God. They only think they are. They are the supreme examples of the work of the unrecognized God. One wishes that those men and women would recognize God. God can do much more through responsive than through unresponsive lives. But we may not say that they are living without God. There, in the center of their life, in the ideals they work for, in the service they render, in the love they lavish, in the mission that has mastered ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... have tried and failed;—an honest failure very often brings a wholesome sense of incompetence;—but they are generally persons who think that they have never had a chance of showing what is in them, speakers who have found their audiences unresponsive, writers who have been discouraged by finding their amateur efforts unsaleable, men who lament the unsuitability of their profession to their abilities, women who find themselves living in what they call a thoroughly ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "No," they said, "we hadn't a glimpse of it." "But it is only a field's length from the road!" "Well, we never saw it." Ah, but these two friends were lovers. They were so absorbed in each other that they had no spare attention for Warwick Gaol. Their glorious fellowship made them unresponsive to its calls. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... his arm, and Maxwell was a little at a loss, though anxious not to seem unresponsive to ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... the door for some time, waiting until he could wait no longer. He faced Caffyn now, unflinchingly enough to outward appearance; but the hand Mabel held in a soft close clasp was strangely cold and unresponsive. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... rudely disturbing his lotos- eater's sense of being. He felt almost annoyed by this well-meaning but indefatigable young man who seemed to think folks should be gadding all the time. His manner was unresponsive ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... eliminated from memory could they do so. The latter had never yet spoken reprovingly to his wife, but this night he felt that something must be said. Just in proportion as her manner to her hostess had been unresponsive and cold so had her assumption of little wifely airs and proprietorship been comical. She seemed bent on extracting from Percy public and frequent demonstration of his lover-like side, and her appeals and endearments had furiously embarrassed him. They went home early, met callers at their own ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... who commanded his yacht The Night Moth—most morose and unresponsive of men—paid him the homage of absolute acquiescence. Whatever his private opinions might be, he never expressed them unless invited to do so by his employer. He never criticized by word or look. Saltash was wont to say that if he decided ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... calmed and unresponsive to the slower vibrations, but responsive to the quicker ones, a peace and calm pervade one's mind, and it becomes consciously receptive to higher vibrations of vital energy. Immune from the lesser harmonies, one opens himself to the greater ones, which ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... said; but when "of course" is added in this connection, it is sadly eloquent! The poor whom she visited were basely ungrateful for her doles, and when she approached empty-handed, took the occasion to pay a visit to a neighbour's back yard, leaving her to flay her knuckles on an unresponsive door. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity. Under these conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may be seen or heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousness alluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, unresponsive. ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... moved Fanny like a new and pleasing experience. When Therese touched her caressingly, or gently stroked her limp hand, she started guiltily, and looked furtively around to make sure that none had witnessed an exhibition of tenderness that made her flush, and the first time found her unresponsive. A second time, she awkwardly returned the hand pressure, and later, these mildly sensuous exchanges prefaced the outpouring of all Fanny's woes, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... And the memorial which should speak to men,— A cold unyielding stone like yonder one! But then comes art, and with a friendly hand She gathers flowers from the breast of nature And hides the ugly, unresponsive stone With snow-white lilies, ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... was no answer. This was Wilmer's office. Wilmer, who was standing behind me, made them ring it up twice again to make sure. Then I went on to the other eight impossible numbers we had fixed on. They were unresponsive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... Miss Bentley, "I liked him. He turned out to be altogether different from my first impressions. That afternoon at the Country Club he seemed rather stiff—nice, assured manners, of course, but unresponsive. But then the way in which we bounced in upon each other was enough to break any amount of ice." She laughed at the recollection, clasping ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... must be admitted, are not beautiful at all. In order to be beautiful, they should be alive, and alive all over, as a piece of sculpture is alive; there should be no unresponsive surfaces or details; but most of our buildings are dead—dead walls, dead lines, oblong boxes, neat and commodious, but dead. The practical problems which the architect has to solve are so complex and difficult, and the materials ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... tipped far off its balance by coincidences which a better man than myself would have found it embarrassing to explain. I recognised all this, I say, in the momentary glance I cast at their stern and unresponsive figures; but the courage which had served me in lesser extremities did not fail me now, and, kneeling down before my dead betrothed, I kissed her cold white hand with sincere compunction, before attempting the garbled and probably totally incoherent story with which I endeavoured ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... lavender cape Cleo had discarded when she climbed through the window, while Mary stood like a statue, in her clinging white, with Cleo beside her, looking as if she had stepped out of a comic opera in her blue bird pajamas. But the audience was unresponsive. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... Sing-song whereof he was not a little proud. He also intended to write on many other matters which do not concern us, and doubtless would have done so but for the slight feverish headache which made him dull and unresponsive at mess. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that. I'm only afraid of what you might say!" He stalked to her; took her unresponsive hand. "Carol! You have been happy here tonight? ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the side streets that led to the car line which took her home. Overhead the fog hung, covering the city with a luminous rack which here and there parted, showing segments of dark, star-dotted sky. Passing men looked at her, some meeting a defiant stare, others a face so chastely unresponsive that they averted their eyes as if rebuked. On the car she took an outside seat, for she loved the swift passage through the night with the chill air on her face. The grip man knew her and smiled a greeting, and as she mounted the step she answered cheerily. Now and then ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... it all for?" he asked himself, bitterly. "Look at the handsome alien creature there, with four young around her, and the other with that unresponsive little brat. Any one of those children, from the looks of their faces, is capable, if left to its own unguided proclivities, of murdering the very parent who is now caressing him; any one of them is hardly capable ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... should like it above all things, and looked the scraps gloomily over. One Elfrida had called "A Street Minstrel." Seeing him unresponsive, Golightly read it ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... of being deserted helped the girl to rise in spite of bruises and shock. She lifted imploring hands to the unresponsive cars as they hurried by her—one, two, three, with bright windows, each showing a passenger, comfortable and safe ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... towering forms Of unresponsive rocks and snow Are heartless as their wintry storms, And heed not if ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Double is seen by persons in the house, or in the neighborhood... the Double may be seen or heard; when seen it shows the dreamy hazy consciousness alluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, and unresponsive.... This astral corpse remains near the physical one, and they disintegrate together; clairvoyants see these astral wraiths in churchyards, sometimes showing likeness of the dead body, sometimes as violet mists or lights. Such an ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... terms and a new condition be introduced, then the acceptance really becomes an offer, and if the one who made the original offer goes ahead, it can be assumed that he has agreed to the modifications of the unresponsive acceptance. If X writes to Y making an offer, one of the conditions of which is that it must be accepted within ten days, and Y accepts in fifteen days, then X can, if he likes, disregard the acceptance, but ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... out "crowse"—the midmorning lunch—to the men, and he wandered about with the crowds of stray children and patted the unresponsive dogs, and was admired by the women and bored by them, and himself partook of big saffron buns, that Marjorie said would spoil his dinner, but that didn't. Nothing, he felt, could have spoilt anything ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... this, for Ruth had always seemed so cold and unresponsive, that it didn't seem as if she had any affection ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... laid the telegram on it, and pushed them both in. Then he stood up, and eyed the unresponsive panels with the set look of a man who does not easily yield ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... creatures exchanging a reluctant rub of uninviting cheeks—as two savages might have rubbed noses—proved the finishing impetus to hysteria. They were so hideous, these two, and so ghastly comic and fantastic in their unresponsive glumness, that the poor girl lost all hold upon herself and broke into a ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Unresponsive as all nature to human emotions, the tumbled grass lay about him, a picture of confusion and ruin. The futility of human effort was borne in upon him as he scanned the waste. A pile larger than the surrounding ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Max slouched in the unresponsive company of a cigarette on one side of the car; across the aisle the mayor of Reuton leaned heavily above a card-table placed between two seats. He was playing solitaire. Mr. Magee wondered whether this was merely a display of bravado against scheming reformers, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... round the ring of grinning, unresponsive faces, it was plain to see that all sympathy was against the stranger, as is the way of bird, beast, fish, but especially man, the world over—and I experienced a sudden sense of loneliness which was, I think, only natural. Yet, as I put ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... cool, chilly; frigid, gelid, icy; nipping, bleak, raw, frosty, freezing; unresponsive, phlegmatic, passionless, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... walls with her small fists,—kicked the unresponsive stone with her thin little shoes,—her blows gave out no sound. If she only had something ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... had to have their say, and they did not make pleasant reading to any of the Dyckmans. Kedzie took a little comfort from reading what the papers had to say about Mrs. Cheever's divorce, but she found that Jim was unresponsive to her gibes. This did not ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... are good enough for me, sir," he said with a paternal smile. He fired again. Once more the target stared back, blank and unresponsive. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Ceaselessly I talked of our old days together—camping trips to the Northern woods of Canada, wonderful weeks of idling down the river in our launch, days of ideal happiness, spent together. I appealed to his love for me, his old love, and the memory of our early married life. He was unresponsive, and I could feel the restlessness of his fingers in ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... cues to crooked ones; and why he should prefer round balls to chipped ones; and why he should prefer a level table to one that slants; and why he should prefer responsive cushions to the dull and unresponsive kind. I wonder at these things, because when we examine the matter we find that the essentials involved in billiards are as competently and exhaustively furnished by a bad billiard outfit as they are by the best one. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... to cast him in upon himself entirely. Later on he remembered that he had felt at that time that he had nothing to say to any one. He had wondered what the others could have thought of him, and had thought how dreadfully unresponsive they must be finding him. His sister should have been of some use. But she can only think of herself then as of some strange figure, veiled and petrified with grief—grief not for her mother, but for the young hero whose magnetism had thrilled through every moment of her life—yet pointing ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... Langshaw absently in his turn. He had a momentary sense of being set back in his impulse to confidences that was not, after all, untinged with pleasure. His delightful secret was still his own, unmarred by unresponsive criticism. "By the way, Clytie, I don't like the way George has been behaving lately. He hasn't shown me his report from school in months; whenever I ask him for it he has some excuse. Hello! ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting
... sure of his self-control. But again he mastered that, and again paced the streets, now in a grim resolution to tire mind and body, so that these visions should have nothing to work on and, finding blank unresponsive weariness, should go their ways and leave him in an insensible fatigue. Ever since he disclaimed his inheritance he had been living in a stress of excitement that had given him a fortitude half unnatural; now this support seemed to fail, and with it ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... so little as I thought it, when night was closing in the men at the village were trying to launch a boat. Miles of ice lay between them and me, and the angry sea was hurling great blocks against the land. While I had considered myself a laughing-stock, bowing with my flag at those unresponsive cliffs, many ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... a little cry and fell to hugging all her family. "We can all go back—we can go next week!" and she almost danced up and down on the unresponsive clay floor. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... side. His arm fell about her shoulders. She did not offer to remove it, but sat listless, unresponsive, her eyes lifted to a narrow window beyond which the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the town, a shameless crew, Over the way he sees Propitiate with lavish purr An unresponsive customer, Or, meek with sycophantic fur, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... he wants to have put into writing. Dictating is not an easily acquired accomplishment in business—as many a man will testify. Modern office practice has intensified the difficulty. It may be rather disconcerting to deliver well-constructed, meaningful sentences to an unresponsive stenographer, but at any rate the receiver is alive. But to talk into the metallic receiver of a mechanical dictaphone has an almost ridiculous air. Men have to train themselves deliberately to speak well when they first begin to use these ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... traditionary bond of a much stronger kind, by the memory of long friendship and alliance, and the persistent policy of his kingdom and race. The question was modified besides by other circumstances. England was, as she had but too often been, but never before in James's experience—harsh, overbearing, and unresponsive: while France, as was also her wont, was tender, flattering, and pertinacious. Henry refused or delayed to pay Queen Margaret a legacy of jewels and plate left to her by her father, and at the same time ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... purposefully unresponsive, "he probably thinks himself forced to seem insistent by the part he's playing. His father doesn't know of this entanglement; he'd disinherit Bayard if he did; naturally, Bayard wouldn't dare to seem reluctant to hasten matters, for fear of rousing ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... he sat silent, unresponsive to the openings I tried to make for a beginning. Not till I had exhausted small talk of current events and asked after his family in particular instead of his ancestors in ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... the peculiar down twist of his mouth, glanced darkly at Tessibel, but the girl's unresponsive, serious face turned his ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... had kept her standing near him, and he gave her his earnest, thin, unresponsive glance again. "I want you to make me a promise, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... not answer; unresponsive as a statue, she did not move. The sun shot beneath an obstructing branch, and long, searching shafts found access to the room. Mauville moved forward impetuously, until he stood on the verge of the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... German artillery was not altogether unresponsive. It was putting some "krumps" into the neighborhood of the British first line and one of the bands of prisoners ran into the burst of a five-point-nine. Ran is the word, for they were going as fast as they could to get beyond their own curtain of fire, which experience ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... her for an hour after their Sunday-noon dinner. She had been to church; had confessed indeterminate sins to a formless and unresponsive deity. She felt righteous, and showed it. Phil caught the cue. He sacrificed all the witty things he was prepared to say about Mrs. Gray's dumplings; he gazed silently out of the window till she wondered ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of popularity which had greeted his arrival in Europe was already dimmed; the Paris Press jeered at him openly; his political opponents at home were taking advantage of his absence to create an atmosphere against him; England was cold, critical, and unresponsive. He had so formed his entourage that he did not receive through private channels the current of faith and enthusiasm of which the public sources seemed dammed up. He needed, but lacked, the added strength of collective faith. The German ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... hard by the glimmer of his wretched lamp, until, overwearied, he fell fast asleep, and slept like one dead. When he awoke, lo! a man of light, lovely and grand, who stood where he had been so wearily carving the unresponsive stone! He rose and drew nigh. Behold, it was an opening in the wall, through which his freedom shone! The man of light was the door into the universe. And he ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... kissed her since that kiss at their first interview, which threw her into such a paroxysm of weeping. But one evening, when she had been more silent and dull than usual, and more unresponsive to his efforts to interest her, as he rose to go he drew her a moment to his side and pressed his lips to hers, as if constrained to find some expression for the tenderness so cruelly balked of any outflow in words. He went quickly out, but she ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... laugh at many things, partly from sheer high spirits, partly from youthful cynicism, and the habit of sharpening her wit against her neighbour's. It is commonly believed that she is an unduly serious young person with an insatiable craving for knowledge; in reality she is often as healthily unresponsive as is her Yale or Harvard brother. If she cannot yet weave her modest acquirements into the tissue of her life as unconcernedly as her brother does, it is not because she has been educated beyond her mental capacity: it is because social conditions are not for ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... opened wider, but they gathered no information from the unresponsive profile that smoked the cigarette. "You know where Mr. Nat Verney is?" she breathed, almost in a whisper. "You don't say! Then—then you weren't really watching out for him at ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... place at home at the same time finds none of the fine inspiration which comes from fitting herself into a social scheme and helping to do its work. The spirit of the age is social. She feels its call, she sees how unresponsive, even antipathetic, to it her home is. She concludes that if she is to serve she must seek something to do in some remote city. The attraction the Social Settlement has for the girl finds its base here. The loss to communities of their educated young women, who find no response to their need, ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... down on the far side of the lounge and gazed straight before her. A frown had gathered between her eyes. Anthony sank down beside her and closed his hand over hers. It was lifeless and unresponsive. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... nonchalantly and uninvitingly through the streets, quite unresponsive to the exhilaration ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... I was singularly unresponsive to all these forms of emotional appeal, although I became unspeakably embarrassed when they were presented to me at close range by a teacher during the "silent hour," which we were all required to observe every evening, and which was never broken into, even by a member of the faculty, unless the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... rather appeased her, calmness agitated. She wished her beloved to be spared from a disappointment, thinking he deserved all successes, because of the rigours inflicted by her present tonelessness of blood and being. Her unresponsive manner with him was not due to lack of fire in the blood or a loss of tenderness. The tender feeling, under privations unwillingly imposed, though willingly shared, now suffused her reflections, owing to a gratitude induced by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sat gazing blankly out of the window; but when he sat on, mute and unresponsive—in point of fact not knowing what to say—she turned to look at him, and the glare of a passing lamp showed her countenance profoundly distressed, mouth tense, brows knotted, eyes clouded with ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... fell, and lo! Another face was bared to friend and foe. Scarce to his foes will generous judgment lean— Foes mean as merciless, and false as mean, Their poisoned pens, which even softening Death, Which hate should hush and stifle slander's breath, May not deprive of venom, prodding still The unresponsive corse they helped to kill, Is an ignoble sight. Turn, turn away! Mean hates pursue the MARMION of our day, A nobler foe, like DOUGLAS, well may rue His fall, and sigh, "'Tis pity of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... the friend's limp, unresponsive hand and pressing it, "I know now why you keep silence last night. I reason with myself. I see you love her. Do not turn away. I have seen her. I have given her back her promise. I give her up to you whom she loves; and now—I go away, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... call of my career. For some reason I wanted to preach—to talk to people, to tell them things. Just why, just what, I did not yet know—but I had begun to preach in the silent woods, to stand up on stumps and address the unresponsive trees, to feel the stir ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... Nantes called her anything else than "the beautiful Mademoiselle des Touches." Led to enter society by one of the imperishable sentiments in the heart of a woman, however superior she may be, the worship she inspired found her cold and unresponsive. Hurt by her aunt and her cousins, who ridiculed her studies and teased her about her unwillingness for society, which they attributed to a lack of the power of pleasing, Felicite resolved on making herself coquettish, gay, volatile,—a woman, in short. But she expected in return an exchange of ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... of an apparently non-operative piece of apparatus. It must be borne in mind, however, in considering a duplex system, that a differential relay is used AT EACH END of the line and forms part of the circuit; and that while each relay must be absolutely unresponsive to the signals SENT OUT FROM ITS HOME OFFICE, it must respond to signals transmitted by a DISTANT OFFICE. Hence, the next figure (4), with its accompanying explanation, will probably make the matter clear. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... neither ecstasy nor dreaming. He was anxious and beset. As he bore her along he spoke to her, encouraging her with gentle words of sympathy and hope. But her fainting condition left him no reward, and her half-closed eyes, filled with unshed tears, remained dull and unresponsive. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... dining-car luncheon on the last day's run, Penelope, languishing at a table for two with an unresponsive Ormsby for a vis-a-vis, made sly mention of the possible recrudescence of one David Kent at a place called Gaston: this merely to note the ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... patronise the more serious drama, and for Joanna the British stage became synonymous with fluffy heads and whirling legs and jokes she could not understand. The late hours made her feel very tired, and on their way home Albert would find her sleepy and unresponsive. They always went by taxi from Lewisham station, and instead of taking the passionate opportunities of the darkness, she would sink her heavy head against his breast, holding his arm with both her tired hands. "Let me be, dear, let me be," she would ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... conversation that one afternoon, when the editor was alone, Mr. James Bowers entered the editorial room with much of the hesitation and irresolution of his previous visit. As the editor had not only forgotten him, but even, dissociated him with the poetess, Mr. Bowers was fain to meet his unresponsive eye and manner ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... little?" said Margaret, letting her eyes rest pleadingly on Mrs. Brand's impassive face. She was not accustomed to being met in this exceedingly unresponsive manner. Wyvis made a slight jesture of impatience, which his mother perfectly understood. She tried, in her difficult, frozen way, to say ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... naturally as they breathed, and with a rich and overflowing innocent joy in the art which Nature had taught them. They sang loudly, swingingly, glancing full of naive hope up at the windows of the vast, unresponsive hotel. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... delicate shadings. He quarrelled with the piano manufacturers for their obstinate adherence to the old-fashioned clumsy action; everything had been improved but the keyboard—that alone was as coldly unresponsive and inelastic as a half-century ago. He had fugitive dreams of wires that would vibrate like a violin. The sounding-board of a pianoforte is too far from the pianist, while the violinist presses his strings as one kisses the beloved. Little wonder it is the musical ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... could you be expected to see any one after leaving—her?" But Gov.'s arm was linked in his at the very instant and led him glowering away, leaving her close to the edge of the crowded dock, smiling sweetness, blessing and bliss upon a silent and unresponsive group, and waving kerchief and kisses to them until, far from shore, the Doric headed ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... indeed in the other forms of art, his pacific and militant moods. Nor are these moods, of necessity, incompatible. War may become the price of peace, and peace may so decay as inevitably to bring about war. Of the dully unresponsive pacificist and the jingo patriot, quick to anger, the latter no doubt is the more dangerous to the cause of true freedom, yet both are "undesirable citizens." He who believes that peace is illusory and ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... Rateau would, no doubt, have protested loudly, but the fresh outer air had evidently caught his wheezy lungs, and for a minute or two he could do nothing but cough and splutter and groan, and cling to his unresponsive comrade for support. Then at last, when he had succeeded in recovering his breath, he said dolefully and with a ludicrous attempt at ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy |
