"Brightness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sixteen months, during which time it kept its place in the heavens without the least variation. 'It had all the radiance of the fixed stars, and twinkled like them; and was in all respects like Sirius, except that it surpassed Sirius in brightness and magnitude.' It appeared larger than Jupiter, which was at that time at his brightest, and was scarcely inferior to Venus. It did not acquire this lustre gradually, but shone forth at once of its full size and brightness, 'as if,' said the chroniclers of the time, 'it had been of instantaneous ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... a mathematician of great powers, has left a different explanation in his teaching on this subject, as I shall now set forth. It is no secret that the moon has no light of her own, but is, as it were, a mirror, receiving brightness from the influence of the sun. Of all the seven stars, the moon traverses the shortest orbit, and her course is nearest to the earth. Hence in every month, on the day before she gets past the sun, she is under his disc and rays, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... and blood, bone and substance that perishes in a brief seventy years or so and crumbles into indistinguishable dust? Surely, ... if, as I conjecture from your words, you have seen one of the fair inhabitants of higher spheres than ours, . . you would not drag her spiritual and death unconscious brightness down to the level of the 'reality of a merely human life? Nay, if ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... situation, and to offer her every consolation in my power. To conclude the history of Orlando and his Rosalind, I may say that I saw them off from Yellowsands by the early morning coach. There was a soft brightness in their faces, as though rain had fallen in the night; but it was the warm sweet rain of joy that brings the flowers, and is but sister to the sun. They are, at the time of my writing, quite old friends ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... height of the season and the summer; the weather was serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses and along the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and some of the warmth and all the brightness of the July day already shone upon the city. He walked at first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing and repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into the labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually mastered by the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the brightness of the summer day. It occurred to her that she was meeting more people than usual, that most of the shops were shut—of course, it was Sunday! She had not thought of that at all. And now that, too, made her glad. Soon she met a very slender gentleman ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... sky grew darker. Venus shone with a marvelous brightness; then other stars lit up, timid ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... ways of birds and fish and animals; but he is so happy in his innocent, ignorant joy that he seems almost to shine with his happiness. There is, literally, a light about him—that light which edges with brightness all sincere action. The trout, or the wild duck, or the sea bass is only an innocent excuse to be alone with the Infinite. To be alone. To be afar. Men sail precarious craft in perilous waters for no reason they could ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... increased. This interest must have been reciprocal, for he seemed to look for my coming; but then, in whom was he not interested? I liked him for his real goodness, was entertained by his erratic ways, and admired his intellectual brightness. Never before had I come in contact with a mind at once so spontaneous and so versatile. It was perhaps his most striking peculiarity, that he seemed always to be looking for something startling to occur; and in ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... that went by. From the wells of forgetfulness he regained the shining words and gay melodies which his childhood had delighted in, and these he sang loudly and unceasingly as he marched. The sun had not yet risen but, far away, a quiet brightness was creeping over the sky. The daylight, however, was near the full, one slender veil only remaining of the shadows, and a calm, unmoving quietude brooded from the grey sky to the whispering earth. The birds had begun to bestir themselves but not to sing. Now and again a solitary wing ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... the morning, Ere thou tread the untried way Of the lot that lies before thee Through the coming busy day; Whether sunbeams promise brightness, Whether dim forebodings fall, Be thy dawning glad or gloomy, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... the mosque is railed off; and the chief priest, who wore a green dress, with a white hat, partly covered by a green shawl, was seated opposite the grand entrance on a red cushion, placed upon a carpet spread upon the floor, which is of chestnut wood, polished to brightness by the constant friction of the dervishes' feet. From the centre of the roof, was suspended an octagonal bar of brass, to which lamps of different sizes were attached, and from the galleries, which are supported by pillars, hung several square pieces of cloth or pasteboard, painted black, and ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... voices. Her thoughts—let us say the thoughts of the deepest region of her being—presented themselves in visual forms, taking the shapes of favourite saints—familiar to her in works of sacred art—attended by an hallucinatory brightness of light ('a photism'), and apparently uttering words of advice which was in conflict with Jeanne's great natural shrewdness and strong sense of duty to her parents. 'She MUST go into France,' and for two or three years she pleaded her ignorance and incompetence. She declined to go. She COULD resist ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... is not buried in matter. This is the spirit- [1] ual dawn of the Messiah, and the overture of the angels. This is when God is made manifest in the flesh, and thus it destroys all sense of sin, sickness, and death,—when the brightness of His glory encompasseth [5] ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Lord coming the Second time. His brightness is as the shining light. In His hands once pierced for such as we is the hiding of His power. Pestilence and burning coals are His vanguard. He stands and measures the earth. He drives asunder the nations. The everlasting mountains are scattered. The perpetual hills bow ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... miles from them now, or five millions nearer than it had ever been to them before. This reduction in distance, and the clearness of the void through which they saw it, made it a splendid sight, its disk showing clearly. From hour to hour its size and brightness increased, till towards evening it looked like a small, full moon, the sun shining squarely upon it. They calculated that on the course they were moving they should pass about nine hundred thousand miles ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... is black, and so is the sand which covers one side of Hecla. The farther the lava and sand are from the mountain, the more they lose this blackness, and their colour plays into iron-colour and even into light-grey; but the lighter-coloured lava generally retains the brightness and ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... glorious faith? Sure all ill stories of thy sex are false! Oh woman! lovely woman! nature made thee To temper man: we had been brutes without you! Angels are painted fair, to look like you: There's in you all that we believe of heaven; Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... the word several times; then, suddenly he called, "Taste, Castro, taste," and a descending brightness, as of a crystal rod hurled from above, shivered to nothing on the upturned face. The light disappearing from before the cave seemed scared away by the inhuman discord of his shriek; and I flung myself forward to lick the splash of moisture on the sill. I did not think of Castro, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... cheer nor counsel. The winds swept the fog off the seas, and the brightness of the sunshine only mocked the gloom ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... fouler than our Moorish Waters; yet is it the only Water the Inhabitants drink, or covet to drink; and every House providing for its own Convenience Cisterns to preserve it in, by a few Hours standing it becomes as clear as the clearest Rock-water, but as soft as Milk. In short, for Softness, Brightness, and Pleasantness of Taste, the Natives prefer it to all the Waters in the World. And I must declare in favour of their Opinion, that none ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... broad-faced, rollicking humor needs the refining influence of wit. Indeed, it may be said that there is no really fine writing in which wit has not an implicit, if not an explicit, action. The wit may never rise to the surface, it may never flame out into a witticism; but it helps to give brightness and transparency, it warns off from flights and exaggerations which verge on the ridiculous—in every genre of writing it preserves a man from sinking into the genre ennuyeux. And it is eminently needed for this office ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the painter found his model among the daughters of earth. Passionate lover of form, feast your eye upon the graceful curve of that neck, those shoulders; gaze upon that pure brow where grace and youth preside; bathe your soul in the soft brightness of that blue and limpid glance; bend to taste the perfumed breath of that smiling mouth; tremble at the touch of those blonde tresses, twined in bewildering mazes behind the head and falling over the temples in waving masses; fervent ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... according to the determination of the will. A man can not say it: "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even can not say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the color of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... love, which had been born in that agony of recognized complicity in his faithlessness, would shrivel up in the vehement flame of jealousy. To Maurice, it was a time of endurance; of vague thoughts of Edith, but of no mental disloyalty to his wife. Its only brightness lay in those rare visits to Medfield, when Jacky looked at him like a worshiping puppy, and asked forty thousand questions which he couldn't answer! They were very careful visits, made only when Maurice was sure Eleanor ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... All the glad brightness faded from the boy's face as he heard this. He did not speak, but he turned aside, and brushed his sleeve hastily across his eyes. Mrs. Martin laid her hand gently ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... tinted. Sometimes it appears in spots, almost like drops of blood, on the green surface; but, come as it will, it is always beautiful. It is said of the red maple that 'it stands among the occupants of the forest like Venus among the planets—the brightest in the midst of brightness and the most beautiful ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... their sons. Man's only relics are his benefits; These, be there ages, be there worlds, between, Retain him in communion with his kind: Hence is our solace, our security, Our sustenance, till heavenly truth descends - Losing in brightness and beatitude The frail foundations of these humbler hopes - And, like an angel guiding us, at once Leaves the loose ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... now lighted—what brightness! What splendor! The Tree trembled so in every bough that one of the tapers set fire to the foliage. It ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... for existence which in the valleys is carried on so eagerly between leaves and branches—the normal offensive and defensive weapons of the plant—and so the struggle becomes refined into the more aesthetic one of colour and brightness between flower and flower. Hence the scant foliage and vivid bloom would be at once the result of a necessary economy, and a resort to the best method of securing reproduction under the circumstances of insect fertilizing agency. Or, in other words, while the luxuriant growth ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... (Aside.) How smoothly to the air Slides that word father from his slippery tongue. Come hither, daughter, let me gaze on thee, For I have dreamed that thou wert beautiful, So beautiful our very duke did stop To smile upon thy brightness! What say'st thou, Bernardo, didst thou ever dream ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... took the brightness from the place, Yet left the June day with a sweeter grace, And my young soul, so steeped in happy dreams, Heaven itself seemed shown to me in gleams. There is a time with lovers, when the heart First slowly rouses from its dreamless sleep, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... love's warm sun is set, Love's brightness closes; Eyes with hot tears are wet, In hearts there linger ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... with the little girl's brightness that I could have kissed the dear child, and I would if she'd been six ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... inquiry, for five shillings, the broken lawyers, skulking bankrupts, sullen homicides, thievish money-lenders, and gaudy courtesans, Dryden's burly rival has painted with a brush full of colour, and with a brightness, clearness, and sharpness which are photographic in their force and truth. In his dedication, which is inscribed to that great patron of poets, the poetical Earl of Dorset, Shadwell dwells on the great success of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... virtue which shone in all brightness when this nation was born, not alone in the hearts of the commander-in-chief and his brother heroes, but in the hearts of the men and women who gave themselves to their country's service. It glowed with all fervor when, a quarter of a century ago, the North fought to sustain ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... violence in courage, a greater determination in willpower, in fine, a more complete expansion of liberty struggling against all native fatalities? And with what a bold relief the episode stands out in history, and still, how wonderfully well it fits in, thereby giving a glimpse of the dazzling brightness and broad horizons of the period. Faces, living faces, pass before your eyes. You meet them only once; but you think of them long afterwards, and endeavour to contemplate them in order that they may be impressed ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... by marble roofs that shone like snow for whiteness, Its foot was deep in gardens, and that blossoming plain Seemed in the radiant shower of its majestic brightness A land for gods to dwell in, free from care ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... great herds, and the buffalo-birds followed them. The sun rose over it as over a sea, and the arched aurora rose red above it like some far gate of a land of fire. Here the Sacs and Foxes roamed free; the Iowas and the tribes of the North. It was one vast sunland, a breeze-swept brightness, almost without ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... was all that really mattered to him, but, as a matter of fact, this resemblance lay chiefly in Vada. She was like her mother in an extraordinary degree. She was well-grown, strong, and quite in advance of her years, in her speech and brightness of intellect. Little Jamie, while he possessed much of his mother in his face, in body was under-sized and weakly, and his mind and speech, backward of development, smacked of his father. He was absolutely dominated by his sister, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... relative position occupied by Shelley as a poet, it will be granted by most of those who have studied his writings, that they are of such an individual and original kind, that he can neither be hidden in the shade, nor lost in the brightness, of any other poet. No idea of his works could be conveyed by instituting a comparison, for he does not sufficiently resemble any other among English writers to ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... outward clothing A reserved plainness use; By their neatness more distinguish'd Than the brightness of their hues. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... these duties taught, The body of our Saviour brought Where she lay upon her bed Without a soul to give her aid. But such brightness there he saw As filled his mind with fear and awe. Covered with a mat of straw The woman lay; but ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... hovered over the tumbled brightness of her hair, loose upon his sleeve, that hot shame in turn disappeared. After the quivering gasps were all but stilled, he twice opened his lips as if to speak, and each time closed them again without a word. He was smiling a faint, gravely gentle smile ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left his father's throne on high to give himself for us; 'who being the brightness of that Father's glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the white-eyed vireo, or flycatcher, deserves particular mention. The song of this bird is not particularly sweet and soft; on the contrary, it is a little hard and shrill, like that of the indigo-bird or oriole; but for brightness, volubility, execution, and power of imitation, he is unsurpassed by any of our northern birds. His ordinary note is forcible and emphatic, but, as stated, not especially musical; Chick-a-re'r-chick, he seems to say, hiding himself in the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... to use articulate speech, and sometimes persists in going on all-fours."—Smith's Ancient History of the East, p. 357.] After a period the cloud passed away, "the glory of his kingdom, his honor, and brightness returned unto him." But it was the splendor of the evening; for the old monarch soon after died at the age of eighty, worn out by the toils and cares of a reign of forty-three years, the longest, most memorable, and instructive in the annals of the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... masquerade was necessary, if he was to raise his composition above the vulgarities and trivialities of the street, the fire-side, the camp, or even the court; if he was to give it the dignity, the ornament, the unexpected results, the brightness, and colour, which belong to poetry. The fashion had the sanction of the brilliant author of the Arcadia, the "Courtier, Soldier, Scholar," who was the "mould of form," and whose judgment was law to all men of letters in the middle years ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... eyes were turned toward the "Golden Rocket." She lay almost motionless, a dark mass on the black ocean. The sun had long since sunk beneath the horizon; and the darkness of the night was only relieved by the brilliancy of the stars, which in those latitudes shine with wondrous brightness. Soon the watches on the "Sumter" caught a hasty breath. A faint gleam was seen about the companionway of the "Rocket." Another instant, and with a roar and crackle, a great mass of flame shot up from ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... about to revisit the earth. There is something very cheering in the return of spring after enduring for a lengthened period the rigors of winter. The waters are loosed from their icy fetters, and sparkle with seemingly renewed brightness in the glad beams of the sun, and all nature seems to partake of the buoyant spirit called forth by this happy season. The song of birds fill the air, and they seem in their own way to offer their tributes of ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... gossip had cast no shadow on its brightness; her voice seemed that of the vulgar chorus of the uninitiated, which stands always ready with its gross prose rendering of the inspired passages of human action. Was it possible a man could take THAT from a woman—take all that lent lightness ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... set in, and the patient had died but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless one, because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be roused to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a feeble moan. The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful brightness of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the recumbent human images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had died aboard the ship and were lying at the bottom of the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... sun shone out. The clouds divided to right and left, following the steep purpling ridges on either side of Eden Valley—and in the middle opening out a long sweet stream of brightness. Little Louis clapped his hands. He ached for the company of his kind. He talked "boys." He dreamed "boys"—not grown-up boys like me, but children of his own age. He despised Irma because she was a girl. Only Agnes Anne could anyways satisfy ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... conversational responsibility: its untranslatable humour of courage and poverty and its unfathomed epics of past tragedy and triumph—all this glorious confusion of family traits, which, in no exaggerative sense, make the Gentiles come to your light and the folk of the nations to the brightness of your house—is a thing so utterly outside my own temperament that I was formed by nature to admire and not understand it. God made me very simply—as he made a tree or a pig or an oyster: to perform certain functions. The best thing he gave me was a perfect and unshakable trust in those ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and the last "news-item" brought out the color in her cheeks and the brightness in ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... our strength! Almighty Power! Our sure defence, our sword and shield, Still guide our hosts in danger's hour, Still lead our armies to the field. In thee we trust—what foe can stand The awful brightness of thine eye? Both life and death are in thy hand, And in thy ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... floor a straight flight of steps led upward to a closed door, from the other side of which shone the dazzling brightness of sunlight, and whence came a strange noise—a soft rustling, a melodious murmur. The boys put their shoulders against the door, which was fastened, and pushed with might and main—once, twice; suddenly the lock gave way, and out they pitched ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... for a little while, thinking, as we must all come to think sooner or later, of the vanished brightness of youth. But he refrained, as one may do in ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... events might have impressed upon my memory, I could scarcely recognise. Instead of the long oak table and the wassail bowl, there stood near the fire a small round table, covered with a snow—white cloth, upon which shone in unrivalled brightness a very handsome tea equipage—the hissing kettle on one hob was vis a vis'd by a gridiron with three newly taken trout, frying under the reverential care of Father Malachi himself—a heap of eggs ranged like shot in an ordnance yard, stood in the middled of the table, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... receiving of King's gallant compliments, and of performing all the courtesies suited to the hostess and queen of the place: it was the air that would have befitted the stateliest castle hall, yet that in its simplicity and brightness still more embellished the old ruinous convent-cell. The King was delighted, he sat down upon one of the three-legged stools, took Rayonette upon his knee, undertook to finish washing the radishes, but ate nearly all he washed, declaring that they put ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was bitter, and the prairie, which rolled back from Lander's in long undulations to the far horizon, gleamed white beneath the moon, but there was warmth and brightness in Stukely's wooden barn. It stood at one end of the little, desolate settlement, where the trail that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two wavy ribands that melted into a waste of snow. Lander's consisted then of five or six ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person."[051] It has been noted that Christ, in speaking to His disciples, never says our Father, but either My Father, or your Father, or both conjoined, never leaving ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... intellect of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the family would not have remained in obscurity without him. In fact, the very brightness of his fame caused the excellence of his brothers to be lost in the shadow. His brother James became the father of Henry Nelson Coleridge, who married his cousin Sara, the daughter of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... readily opened the door, which led into a chamber, in the midst of which were nine pedestals of massive gold, on eight of which stood as many statues, each of them made of a single diamond, and from them darted such a brightness, that the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was seen, did not throw forth so strong a light as to chequer the earth with shadows. At once the clouds seemed to cleave asunder, and lift her in the centre of a black-blue vault. She sailed along, followed by multitudes of stars, small, and bright, and sharp; their brightness seemed concentrated." ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... another house altogether, its ancient site relinquished, its contents planted afresh far northward, with new traditions invoked, though with that of its great friendliness to all of us, for our mother's sake, still confirmed. Here with brief brightness, clouded at the very last, the solution emerged; we became aware, not without embarrassment, that poor Henry at large and supplied with funds was exactly as harmless and blameless as poor Henry stinted and captive; as to which if anything ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... had said, but by a skilful workman he had picked up in great poverty in a remote corner of Williamsburg. Always in dread of some complication, he had provided himself with a second facsimile in paste, this time of an astonishing brightness, and this facsimile he had had set precisely like the true stone. Then he gave the workman a thousand dollars and sent him back to Switzerland. This imitation in paste he showed nobody, but he kept it always in his pocket; ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... covered the entire cope of heaven,—but in this place it thinned away, and white stains of light showed a half eclipsed star behind it,—in that place it was rent asunder, and a star passed across the opening in all its brightness, and then vanished. Such stars exhibited themselves only; surrounding objects did not partake of their light. There were deep wells of knowledge, but no fertilizing rills and rivulets. For the drama, society was altogether ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... come as things of light and lightness! We hear your voice in still small accents tell, Of realms of bliss and never-fading brightness, Where those who loved on ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the airs wandered in from the garden, and a broad ray of sunlight showed the strange incessant gyrations of the dust atoms, that happened to lie within the revealing brightness. The silence ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... mysterious brightness through the silent gloom of night, were the first encouraging, because visible, guides to the adventurous mariners of antiquity. Since then, the sailor, encouraged by a bolder science, relies on the unseen agency ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... them borrowed from the imperial texture of Shakespeare and Milton, others picked up from the rags in the street. We make our very kettle-holders of pieces of a king's carpet. How many overworn quotations from Shakespeare suddenly leap into meaning and brightness when they are seen in their context! 'The cry is still, "They come!"'—'More honoured in the breach than the observance,'—the sight of these phrases in the splendour of their dramatic context in Macbeth and Hamlet casts shame upon their daily degraded employments. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... the brightness that shone, and the hopes we enjoy'd, Are clouded ere noon, and soon vanish away; While the dark beating tempest, on life's stormy tide, Obscures all the sweets of the morning's ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of time in which the zigazag stream of fire from the vault of heaven momentarily lit up the surroundings of the ship, which it did with a brightness that eclipsed the light of day, Mr Meldrum could see the vessel tumbling about amid a chaotic mass of waves, which it was no exaggeration to term mountains high, as if she were in the vortex of a whirlpool; while ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... have no idea of losing sight of you," Miss Enid said with forced brightness. "You must drop in often to tell us how you are getting along and to make mother laugh. You are the only person I know ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... he said that along with their unpleasant qualities they had some exceedingly good ones; and he considered it a great pity that the race had died out. He instanced their invention of the boomerang and the "weet-weet" as evidences of their brightness; and as another evidence of it he said he had never seen a white man who had cleverness enough to learn to do the miracles with those two toys that the aboriginals achieved. He said that even the smartest whites had been obliged to confess that they could not learn ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... heavens adorned with its purple hues and its sparkling sapphires. Aurora, fair harbinger of the day, graciously dispenses smiles; and brightness of the roses which wreath her forehead dissipates the ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected from the rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed in liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and curving arch of eyebrow. Life and youth displayed their treasures in the petulant face and in the gracious outlines of the bust unspoiled even by the fashion of the day, which brought the girdle ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... prayers: and the more closely they are united to God, the more are their prayers efficacious: for the Divine order is such that lower beings receive an overflow of the excellence of the higher, even as the air receives the brightness of the sun. Wherefore it is said of Christ (Heb. 7:25): "Going to God by His own power . . . to make intercession for us" [*Vulg.: 'He is able to save for ever them that come to God by Him, always living ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... The green and brightness of the morning must have been prepared for overnight by spiders and the dew. Everywhere the gleaming nets were hung, and everywhere there rose a tiny splendour from the waterdrops, so clear and pure and changeable it seemed with their fire and colour ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... of the Green Forest Whitefoot seemed to be the only one who was unhappy. And because he didn't know why he felt so he became day by day more unhappy. Perhaps I should say that night by night he became more unhappy, for during the brightness of the day he slept most ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... ran the warning rime, "that sickness or sword-blade shear thy strength from thee, or the fire ring thee, or the flood whelm thee, or the sword grip thee, or arrow hit thee, or age o'ertake thee, and thine eye's brightness sink down in darkness." Strong as he might be, man struggled in vain with the doom that encompassed him, that girded his life with a thousand perils and broke it at so short a span. "To us," cries Beowulf in his last fight, "to ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... day appointed for the departure dawned with such radiant brightness that all along the Terrace it was accepted as a good omen. Early and hurried breakfasts were in order in a number of homes. Dorothy viewing her oatmeal with an air of disfavor, launched into the discussion of a subject which had occupied her thoughts ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... AND POWER.—The chief characteristics of health in a fowl are brightness and dryness of eye and nostrils, the comb and wattles firm and ruddy, the feathers elastic and glossy. The most useful cock is generally the greatest tyrant, who struts among his hens despotically, with his head erect and his eyes ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... retired. Though he rather shunned the subject as a rule, he admitted to us that the work was journalism and not a sarcastic history of the nineteenth century, on which we felt he would come out strong. Lastly, Jimmy had lost the brightness of his youth, and was become silent and moody, which is well known to be ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... Charles II to his throne, restored a gaiety and brightness, not to say frivolity of tone, that had long been absent from English life. The following song in praise of tobacco, taken from a collection which was printed in 1660, is touched with the spirit of the time; though it is really founded on, and to no small extent taken from, some verses ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Bethulie; and there is also some suspicion of an attack on the line between Orange River bridge and De Aar." On November 9th, the arrival of the Rosslyn Castle, the first of the Army Corps transports, brought a gleam of brightness. She was a little late, as she had been warned to go out of her course after leaving Las Palmas, to avoid a suspicious vessel. But Methuen's first engagements seemed to him to be Pyrrhic victories. It was "the old story of charging positions ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Bohemia, and despise these men who jest at your poverty, these women who cast a look of scorn and hate. They scorn and hate you, because they have not your splendid hair, nor the brightness of your eyes, nor your white teeth, nor your fresh smile, nor your suppleness, grace and vigour, nor your bewitching shape; despise them in your turn, but envy them not, them ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... one sonnet, poetry had been an untried field. The one-sided pessimistic pictures that Australian poets and writers present are false in the impression they make on the outside world and on ourselves. They lead us to forget the beauty and the brightness of the world we live in. What we need is, as Matthew Arnold says of life, "to see Australia steadily and see it whole." It is not wise to allow the "deadbeat"—the remittance man, the gaunt shepherd with ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... this day, pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors for the support of our independence. I therefore propose, 'The memory of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. May the brightness of their fame endure as long as patriotism and the love of freedom burn in the breasts of mankind!'" exclaimed Hand. This was drunk standing, ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... of brightness fell upon me in the barrel, and looking up, I found the moon had risen and was silvering the mizzen-top and shining white on the luff of the fore-sail; and almost at the same time the voice of the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... depression through which John Yeardley passed, as described in the last chapter, the new year of 1815 dawned with brightness upon his mind. He now at length saw his spiritual bonds loosed; and the extracts which follow describe his first offerings in the ministry in ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... his brow And calm his burdened, agitated soul. The night had reached that hour preceding dawn When nature seems in solemn silence hushed, Awed by the glories of the coming day. The moon hung low above the western plains; Unnumbered stars with double brightness shine, And half-transparent mists the landscape veil, Through which the mountains in dim grandeur rise. Silent, alone he crossed the maidan wide Where first he saw the sweet Yasodhara, Where joyful multitudes so often met, Now still ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... personal advantages. Her hands and arms, which had always been singularly beautiful, remained smooth and round, and delicately white. Not a wrinkle marred the dignity of her noble forehead. Her eyes, which were remarkably fine, lost neither their brightness nor their expression; and yet for years she had been suffering physical pangs only the more poignant from the resolution with ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... a spot of New Zealand soil to which a name was attached which told of something Christian. The name stood alone as yet, but it contained a promise of the time when the Gentile tribes should come to Christ's light, and their kings to the brightness of ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... dressed in black, against the rough stone; the strong light of a gorgeous gilt lamp that was placed on the floor streamed upward on her white face. Her eyes caught the brightness, and seemed to burn like deep, dark gems, though they appeared so blue in the day. She looked like a person tortured past endurance, so that the pain of the soul has taken shape, and the agony of the heart has assumed substance. Tears shed had hollowed the marble cheeks, and the stronger suffering ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... illness of her darling, and knew that she was threatened with death. Two big tears painfully rose in her wan gray eyes, from which her troubles had worn both lashes and eyebrows, two pearls of anguish, forming within them and giving them a dreadful brightness; then each tear swelled and rolled down the withered cheek, but did ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... and sullied condition, appeared to have suffered much and hard service; buff and other coloured doublets, breast-plates, shoulder-belts with gilt and plain buckles; manacles, some rusty, others of glittering brightness: the muzzle of a small brass swivel projected from beneath a number of flags and emblems of various nations, rolled together with a degree of amity to which their former owners had long been strangers. Over ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Aphrodite still bore women worthy of the goddess. The girl was tall and straight and slim; health and youth gave their warm color to her cheeks; the old Greek beauty reigned in her face, but her blue eyes shone with the brightness of Oriental stars. Her red hair, wine red, blood red, framed her face with amazing color. Something of the composition of the woodland entered into the hues of the garments she wore, the simple garments of ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... conventional hotel bedroom. A dressing-table stood in the window; the bed, curtained and draped, looked inviting in its corner. A lamp stood on a small table littered with books and papers; an array of pipes and cigar-holders were strewn carelessly on the marble mantelpiece. A sense of brightness and commonplace comfort permeated the atmosphere, and were sensibly soothing after the chill of the cool ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... pride of Jemsheed, one of the Persian Sun-heroes, or the solar year personified, was abruptly cut off by Zohak, the tyrant of the West. He was sawn asunder by a fish-bone, and immediately the brightness of Iran changed to gloom. Ganymede and Adonis, like Osiris, were hurried off in all their strength and beauty; the premature death of Linus, the burthen of the ancient lament of Greece, was like ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... what patience wouldst thou sit sewing by a crack in the shutters an inch wide, rejoicing in thy immaculate paint and clear glass! But was there ever a thing of thy spotless and unsullied belongings which a boy might use? How I trembled to touch thy scoured tins, that hung in appalling brightness! with what awe I asked for a basket to pick strawberries! and where in the house could I find a place to eat a piece of gingerbread? How like a ruffian, a Tartar, a pirate, I always felt when I entered thy domains! and how, from day to day, I wondered at the immeasurable ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... once took their seats on the benches of the galley, one foot being chained to a ring in the deck, the other to that of a companion at the oar. The slaves were more cheerful now. As there was no work to do at present, they were allowed to talk, and an occasional laugh was heard, for the sun and brightness of the day cheered them. Many, after years of captivity, had grown altogether reckless, and it was among these that there was most talking; the younger men seemed, for the most part, silent ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... and transitory, as the odour of incense in the fire."—Dr. Johnson. "Terrestrial happiness is of short continuance: the brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel, the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odours."—Id. "Thy nod is as the earthquake that shakes the mountains; and thy smile, as the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sum of her lore consisted in being happy; and when the shadow of the mountains began to slip across the valley, she would dance back along the homeward way, singing with the birds, laughing with the rippling water, and adding her share of brightness to ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... an ancient beech, and they stood in silence to receive the blessing of the place, for surely never is the soul so open to the voice of nature as by the side of running water and in the heart of a wood. The fretted sunlight made shifting figures of brightness on the ground; above the innumerable leaves rustled and whispered; a squirrel darted along a branch and watched the intruders with bright, curious eyes; the rooks cawed from the distance; the pigeons cooed in sweet, sad cadence close at hand. They sat down on the bare roots at their ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... meadow, possessed with its morning brightness, and its summer dress he heard some person singing ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... hard to get warm, as she had tried to eat. When in this way a portion of physical ease and strength had come back to her, she took out the petition from its envelope and read it carefully. As she did so her lip relaxed, her eye recovered something of its brightness. All the points that had occurred to her confusedly, amateurishly, throughout the day, were here thrown into luminous and admirable form. She had listened to them indeed, as urged by Wharton in his concluding speech to the jury, but it had not, alas! seemed so marvellous to her then, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the quay recalled them to the moment. They had barely time to reach the steamer and get on board. A strong, cold breeze was blowing; the sun shone full on the sea, which, near the horizon, was as green as the sky on a summer evening. But clouds were gathering in the north-west, and the peculiar brightness which presages rain lent a fugitive brilliancy to the atmosphere. The town and its spires glittered; the water, frothing round the paddle-wheels, sent its shining spray upon the brown boards of the wharf. Brigit kissed her ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... had not had opportunities of feeling her personal charm. Her looks were certainly not striking at first sight, though to most persons who had known her some weeks she would often seem almost beautiful. To describe her features would give no idea of the brightness and vivacity of her expression, or of that mixture of innocence and mischief, as of a half-child, half-Kelpie, which distinguished her. Her figure was very small but well made, and she was always prettily and daintily dressed. If the outward woman is difficult to describe, what ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... except exercises for the reason, when it has viewed carefully and by examination into their nature the things which happen in life? Persevere then until thou shalt have made these things thy own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all things its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... thread, papers of pins, cards of horn-buttons, and cakes of shaving-soap—and bolts of gaudy riband could be drawn from pepper-boxes and sausage-stuffers. Table-cloths, of cotton or brown linen, were displayed before admiring eyes, which had turned away from all the brightness of new tin plates; and knives and forks, all "warranted pure steel," appealed to tastes, which nothing else could excite. New razors touched the men "in tender places," while shining scissors clipped the purses of the women. Silk handkerchiefs and "fancy" neckcloths—things till ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... the end of the lane, where it met a cross street, and the street lamp flung out an ominous challenge, and, dim though it was, seemed to glare with the brightness of daylight, she faltered for a moment and drew back. She knew where Shluker's place was, because she knew, as few knew it, every nook and cranny in the East Side, and it was a long way to that old junk shop, almost over to the East River, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... her hair in the "Pine-Tree State," by the frown of her massive brows in the "Granite" and "Green Mountain," by the glancing brightness of her smile in the "Old Bay," by her lithe grace of limb in "Little Rhoda," and her firm step and erect carriage in the "Land of Steady Habits;" while to ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... a solitary place, when Romulus appeared to me. At first I was exceedingly terrified. The form of the vision was taller than that of a mortal man, and it was clothed in armor of the most resplendent brightness. As soon as I had in some measure recovered my composure I spoke to it. 'Why,' said I, 'have you left us so suddenly? and especially why did you leave us at such a time, and in such a way, as to bring suspicion and reproach on the ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... her nose, and of squareness to her chin. Her face, when studied, inspired in its owner's mind a doubt of her being even nice to the eye, though she knew that in exercise, and when smitten by a blush, brightness and colour aided her claims. She knew also that her head was easily poised on her neck; and that her figure was reasonably good; but all this was unconfirmed knowledge, quickly shadowed by the doubt. As the sun is wanted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it is the beam of sight. Look which way you will, that centre is everywhere. The universe is flooded with a ray from it, and the light of common day on every object is a refraction or reflection of that brightness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... very thick at the root, and sharpened to a point, and answered, "He! he! he! what do YOU want here?" Then, changing his tone, he continued, with mock humility—"Honoured sir, vouchsafe to withdraw from thy slaves the lustre of thy august presence, for thy slaves cannot support its brightness." A second appeared, and struck in: "You are so big, you keep the sun from us. We can't see for you, and we're so cold." Thereupon arose, on all sides, the most terrific uproar of laughter, from voices like those of children in volume, but ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... as I went to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, at midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... long clouds, shaped like the wings of a hawk, had joined themselves together, so that nothing of the moon showed but a living brightness imprisoned, like the eyes and life of a bird, between those swift sweeps of darkness. This great uncanny spirit, brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan grass, seemed waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and devour, all that intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... turn to the enormous group of moths, which, as I hear from Mr. Stainton, do not habitually expose the under surface of their wings to full view, we find this side very rarely coloured with a brightness greater than, or even equal to, that of the upper side. Some exceptions to the rule, either real or apparent, must be noticed, as the case of Hypopyra. (16. See Mr. Wormald on this moth: 'Proceedings ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... exalted thus, We look for proud exemplars; yet for us It is enough to know Our fathers left us freemen; let us show The will to hold our lofty heritage, The patient strength to act our fathers' part— Brothers on history's page, We wait to write our autographs in gore, To cast the morning brightness of our glory Beyond our day and hope, The narrow limit of one age's scope, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the stairs in obedience to this summons, and stood before his father at the bedside. Hilary lay, back among the pillows, and the brightness of that autumn noonday only served to accentuate the pallor of his face, the ravages of age which had come with such incredible swiftness, and the outline of a once vigorous frame. The eyes alone shone with a strange new light, and Austen found it unexpectedly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... but by Me. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath revealed Him." And therefore we can find boundless comfort in the words, "Such as the Father is, such is the Son and such the Holy Ghost." For now we know that there is A MAN in the midst of the throne who is the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His person—a high priest who can be touched by the feeling of our infirmities, seeing He was tempted in all things like as we are. To Him we can cry with human passion and in human words, because we know that His human heart will ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... mill close to the large square tower that we had previously observed. We halted for luncheon beneath an olive-tree a few yards distant from the aqueduct, in a garden of fruit-trees which were in the brightness of a spring foliage. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... doors the afternoon sun shone with a brightness almost dazzling after the shade of the Court House; but the tonic north-west wind, blowing across the Roads from Cromwell's Sound, held an autumnal chill, and the Commandant shivered as he halted a moment to con ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... mind," I answered, laughing, too glad to have won him back to even temporary brightness, "as long as you and George don't come to blows over the question of where I am to sleep; which after all is chiefly my ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... gladness of a temperament which seemed woven from the beams of light had led Glaucus into pleasure. He obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the dissipations of his time, than the exhilarating voices of youth and health. He threw the brightness of his nature over every abyss and cavern through which he strayed. His imagination dazzled him, but his heart never was corrupted. Of far more penetration than his companions deemed, he saw that they sought to prey upon his riches and his youth: but he despised wealth save as ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... In the brightness of this morning, the lovers went out to look at the storm-wrecks that lay scattered around. Here a tree had been twisted off where the tough wood measured by feet instead of inches; there stood the white and shivered trunk of another sylvan lord, blasted in an instant ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... with some rain; and, for the most part, a dull whiteness prevailed in the sky, that seems a medium between fog and clouds. In general, the tropical regions seldom enjoy that clear atmosphere observable where variable winds blow; nor does the sun shine with such brightness. This circumtance, however, seems an advantage; for otherwise, perhaps, the rays of the sun, being uninterrupted, would render the heat quite unsupportable. The nights are, nevertheless, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... blue mantle over her shoulders when she entered the house, and the touch of boyish self-confidence which had been hers on the ride was gone. In its place there was something even more difficult for Randall Byrne to face. If there had been a garish brightness about her when he had first seen her, the brilliancy of a mirror playing in the sun against his feeble eyes, there was now a blending of pastel shades, for the hall was dimly illumined and the shadow tarnished her hair and her pallor was like cold stone; even her eyes were misted by fear. Yet a ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... a glowing glorious day! Summer in its richest prime, noon in its most sparkling brightness, little white clouds dappling the deep blue sky, and the sun, now partially veiled, and now bursting through them with an intensity of light! It would not do to walk to-day, professedly to walk,—we should be frightened at the very sound! ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... way to the Hills. Till this moment the sight of home, even after a short absence, had, on returning to it, always been delightful to Caroline; but now, for the first time in her life, every object seemed to have lost its brightness. In the stillness of retirement, which she used to love, she felt something sad and lifeless. The favourite glade, which formerly she thought the very spot so beautifully described by Dryden, as the scene of his "Flower and the Leaf," even this she found had lost its charm. New to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Witte had just finished dusting and cleaning her state apartment, and was giving it a last artistic survey. She smiled contentedly, and acknowledged that there was nothing more to be done. The mirrors and windows were of transparent brightness—no dust was seen on the silk furniture or the costly ornaments—it was perfect. With a sad sigh Madame Witte left the room and locked the door with almost a feeling of regret. She must deny herself for the next few days her favorite occupation—there was nothing ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... serve your turn," he said after standing very still for a while, with his eyes upon Mrs. Travers. The brig's swing-lamp lighted the cabin with an extraordinary brilliance. Mrs. Travers had thrown back her hood. The radiant brightness of the little place enfolded her so close, clung to her with such force that it might have been part of her very essence. There were no shadows on her face; it was fiercely lighted, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... earth, trees and meadows swam in a golden haze. Arrows of gold, stealing through alders and willows, conjured mere leaves into discs of pure green light. Clouds of pollen brightened to dust of gold. In the near haze midges flickered; and, black against the brightness, swallows wheeled and dipped, uttering thin cries in the ecstasy of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... her down a narrow, dark hall, squeezed between the stairs and the wall, to a door that opened slantwise into a dining-room the exact counterpart in shape to the parlour at the other side of the house. Only in this case the morning sun and more diaphanous curtains lent an air of brightness, further enhanced by a wire stand of ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... saw a sight that made me scream with fright. Right in front of me was a large sperm-whale's head, with its jaws wide open, and its long row of white, glistening teeth shining from the phosphorescent brightness of the water. With a snap its mouth closed, and it sank out of sight, while I, falling on my knees, asked God to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... title of Baron Macaulay. "His style is vigorous, rapid in its movement, and brilliant; and yet, with all its splendor, has a crystalline clearness. Indeed, the fault generally found with his style is, that it is so constantly brilliant that the vision is dazzled and wearied with its excessive brightness." He has sometimes been charged with sacrificing facts ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... muttering to himself as he led the way. They entered a small dining-room, and here, if Macleod had ever heard of actresses having little time to give to domestic affairs, he must have been struck by the exceeding neatness and brightness of everything on the table and around it. The snow-white cover; the brilliant glass and spoons; the carefully arranged, if tiny, bouquets; and the precision with which the smart little maiden-servant, the only attendant, waited—all these things showed a household well managed. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of Philip, Lord Alverley, and his happy parents gave a ball in honor of the occasion. All the "best people" of the country were present, and all was brightness, music, and gayety,—joyous hearts keeping time to light, dancing feet. But, in the midst of the festivities, the young lord of the fete and Arthur were summoned from the ball-room by Terence O'Neill, the lodge-keeper, who came to tell them that his poor wife had taken ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... in manners and morals. Constant association with a playmate brought up under home influences so different from his own; the wise and kindly words that Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd lost no opportunity of speaking to him; the refinement and brightness of their home; the atmosphere of sunny religion that pervaded it; and all these supplemented by an ever-interesting presentation of common-sense Christianity at the hands of Mr. Silver every Sunday afternoon, had worked deep into Frank's strong, steadfast nature, and without being ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... a very different effect. This would incline me to believe in the validity of that of the apostle's, rather than that of the emperor. Nevertheless, as it respects the facts; he who caused a light at mid-day, above the brightness of the sun, might as easily have painted the sign of the cross on his disk; and he who spake to Saul from Heaven, with an audible voice, in the Hebrew tongue, might as easily have painted letters and words in Greek, so that they might be ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... could hold himself erect, and whose limbs bent in all sorts of odd places whenever he wanted to use them in the ordinary manner. He was nearly forty years old, his face was pale, and almost as long as his way of drawling out his words, his soft blond hair, which had no brightness about it, hung down equally long over his forehead and his coat collar. He had never attempted to divide or curl it. When he was a child his mother had combed it straight down over his brow, and so he had continued to do it, and whenever it had looked a little rough and unkempt, his mother ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... (signifying "the Demon'') of b Persei, a star of the second magnitude, noticed by G. Montanari in 1669 to fluctuate in brightness. John Goodricke established in 1782 the periodicity of its change in about 2d 21h and suggested their cause in recurring eclipses by a large dark satellite. Their intermittent character prompted the supposition. The light of Algol remains constant ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... white promise, hardly making any impression upon the darkness but only set off by it. And upon this one bright spot in earth or heaven, rode the planet of the morning—the sun's forerunner—bright upon the brightness. All else was dusky—except where overhead the clouds had parted again and shewed a faint old moon, glimmering down upon the night it could no ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... some cases, a Kind is sufficiently identified by some one remarkable property: but most commonly several are required; each property considered singly, being a joint property of that and of other Kinds. The color and brightness of the diamond are common to it with the paste from which false diamonds are made; its octohedral form is common to it with alum, and magnetic iron ore; but the color and brightness and the form together, identify its Kind: that is, are a mark to us that it is combustible; that when burned ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... think the better of her in that she had indulged in such a fancy; but in truth his love was sharpened by the opposition which this fancy made. It had seemed to him that his possessing her would give a brightness to his life, and this brightness was not altogether obscured by the idea that she had ever thought that she had loved another person. As a woman she was as lovable as before, though perhaps less admirable. At any rate he wanted her, and now she seemed to be more within his reach than she ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... value with a pathetic intentness the quiet family life. Hugh could trace in old diaries the days his father and mother had spent, the walks they had taken, the books they had read together. There seemed for him to brood over those days, in imagination, a sort of singular brightness. He always thought of the old life as going on somewhere, behind the pine-woods, if he could only find it. He could never feel of it as wholly past, but rather as possessing the living force of some romantic book, into the atmosphere of which it was ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... like listening to a humorous lecture by Marshall P. Wilder, full of wit and brightness, and it will cheer and comfort the most morose man or woman just to read ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... harvesters; And many a creaking wain 10 Bore slowly to the long barn floor Its load of husk and grain; Till, broad and red as when he rose, The sun sank down at last, And like a merry guest's farewell, 15 The day in brightness passed. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the court was again crowded. The judge was again on his bench, prepared for patient endurance; and Lord Killtime and Sir Gregory Hardlines were alongside of him. The jury were again in their box, ready with pen and paper to give their brightest attention—a brightness which will be dim enough before the long day be over; the counsel for the prosecution were rummaging among their papers; the witnesses for the defence were sitting there among the attorneys, with the exception of the Honourable Undecimus ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope |
