"Brilliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ship, for he seemed to be engaged in hoisting her foresail and jibs, evidently with the intention of bringing her about so that he could use his guns. The wind was very light, and his chances of accomplishing his purpose were not very brilliant. ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... December, and a deputation proceeded to the royal headquarters at Versailles, where, on the 18th of December, the imperial crown was offered to the brother of the king who had once refused it. Deeply touched, King William accepted, and in the palace of Louis XIV., surrounded by a brilliant assembly of princes, officers, and ministers of state, the venerable monarch was ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the English coast, a heavy mist which hid them, blew away, and the men of England saw the glimmering water fairly black with the wooden vultures of old Spain. The Spaniards had come ready to fight in the way in which they had won many a brilliant victory; with a horde of towering hulks, of double-deckers and store-ships manned by slaves and yellow-skinned retainers, who despised big guns and loved a close encounter with hand thrusts and push of pike. Like a huge, ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... winds blew strong and cold from the north-west. The nights are cool, but fires are not requisite to comfort. The snow-clad mountains, about twenty-five or thirty miles to the east of us, contrast singularly with the brilliant fresh verdure ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... ordered to drive them off, for which purpose he was given a strong body of Infantry, composed of Europeans, Sikhs, and Gurkhas, a troop of Horse Artillery, a squadron of the 9th Lancers, and the Guides Cavalry. The result was a very brilliant little affair. The orders on this occasion were to 'move up silently and take the guns at Ludlow Castle.' The small column proceeded in the deepest silence, and the first sound heard at dawn on the 12th August was the challenge of the enemy's sentry, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... all mounted, had gathered at the beginning of the course when Burton and Ferris rode up that brilliant winter morning. And a little to one side, standing beside a wagon in which were two dog's crates, one containing Arnold's Drake, the other Count Redstone, his ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... occasionally swamps a Mess-table at midnight. Then one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their officers, of orders being given by those who had no right to give them, and of disgrace that, but for the standing luck of the British Army, might have ended in brilliant disaster. These are unpleasant stories to listen to, and the Messes tell them under their breath, sitting by the big wood fires; and the young officer bows his head and thinks to himself, please God, his men shall never ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... Then a brilliant idea struck him. Suppose he tied the painter of the boat under his arms, loosed the boat from the post and jumped into the water. He ought to reach the floating line before the current had taken up the slack of the boat's painter. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... did not intend to inflict a long speech upon them that evening, and as it was nomination day tomorrow he would not be able to have the honour of addressing them again during the election; but even if he had wished to make a long speech, it would be very difficult after the brilliant and eloquent address they had just listened to from Mr Sweater, for it seemed to him (Ammenegg) that Adam Sweater had left nothing for anyone else to say. But he would like to tell them of a Thought that had occurred to him that evening. They read in the Bible ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... of the words as a description of mental anguish must be felt by every reader of the brilliant essay to be ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... patience had been well rewarded. By the year 1881 the Irish Wolfhound had been practically restored, although it has taken close upon a quarter of a century to produce the magnificent champions Cotswold and Cotswold Patricia, those brilliant examples of the modern breed—a brace of Wolfhounds who bear testimony to the vast amount of energy and perseverance which Captain Graham and his enthusiastic colleague Major Garnier displayed in evolving from rough material the majestic ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... wood, so artistically designed, and so delicately wrought, that at the first glance it looked like embroidery in various colors. To produce this effect, the natural brown of the oak had been left in some places. All the rest shone with gold and silver, which was relieved by a beautiful scarlet, brilliant yellow, and the softest sky-blue. The many small figures scattered over the ornaments were highly gilded. From the wooden wainscot arose slight pillars, which, uniting in the Gothic style, supported the heavy beams of the ceiling. Six of these beams were visible: all were covered ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... The beginning of the fight causes the wanderer much trouble. He "is amazed at his own temerity," would gladly turn back from his project, and he can "hardly restrain his tears for fear." He fortifies himself, however, develops brilliant abilities and comes off victor in the fray. A gratification derived from his own ability is unmistakable. The scene, as well as a variation of the preceding examination, adds to it some essentially new ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... a brilliant sight it was! The flowers had faded on the hills, for June was upon them; but gayer than the hills had been was the race-field of Monterey. Caballeros, with silver on their wide gray hats and on their saddles of embossed leather, gold and silver ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... tenor who had sung himself into the hearts of the people by his beautiful voice and exquisite singing of the different arias of the opera in which he excelled. The hall was crowded to overflowing. Never had I beheld such beautifully gowned women and brilliant lights; the tremendous chorus and the full orchestra left a lasting impression upon me which cannot be erased by time. It is over fifty years since I saw such gorgeous splendor and heard the marvelous ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... dined here, and brought for our inspection the splendid sword presented by Congress to General Valencia, with its hilt of brilliants and opals; a beautiful piece of workmanship, which does credit to the Mexican artificers. He was particularly brilliant and eloquent in his conversation to-day—whether his theories are right or wrong, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... art. He and Goethe concluded that "Hesperus" was worth liking, though it was a great pity the author had not better taste; he ought to come up and live with them, in an aesthetic atmosphere, where he could find and admire his superiors, and have his great crude gems ground down to brilliant facets. Schiller said it was the book of a lonely and isolated man. It ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Mississippi Industrial College for Women held its formal opening October 22, 1885, at Columbus. Students had come from all parts of the State. More than 300 had already entered. The occasion was a brilliant one. Speeches were made by Senator E. T. Sykes, Senator J. McMcartin of Claiborne county, Col. J. L. Power of Jackson, Hon. James T. Harrison, Governor Lowry, and Dr. Jones. Mrs. E. G. Peyton of Hazelhurst, to whose efforts the founding ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... they increase, and go on deepening their terrors until one stunning and tremendous burst takes place, which is the acme of the tempest. After this its power gradually diminishes in the same way as it increased—the peals become less loud and less frequent, the lightning feebler and less brilliant, until at length it seems to take another course, and after a few exhausted volleys it dies away with a hoarse grumble in ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... your disposal. Let this spot, then, be our rendezvous, since I am wofully ignorant concerning your local geography. And meantime, my friend, if I may be so bold, I would suggest a little practice in parrying. You are of Boisrobert's school, I note, and in attack undeniably brilliant, whereas your defence—unvarying defect of Boisrobert's followers!—is ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard
... fondhead," he was saying to himself. "Thoo mun hev thy lahtel jawk, thof it crack'th thy own pure back." For he thought that he was driving two great customers away, by the flashing independence of too brilliant a mind; and many clever people of his native place had told him so. "Make a roaring fire ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to bloom the bee begins With flying song, and cowslip wine he sups, Where to the warm and passing southern winds, Azaleas gently swing their yellow cups. Soon everywhere, with glory through and through, The fields will spread with every brilliant hue. But high o'er all the early floral train, Where softness all the arching sky resumes, The dogwood dancing to the winds' refrain, In stainless glory spreads its ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... "Scotty" by taking Baldy and several of the steady dogs out, to give the former as much experience in the wheel as possible; for Baldy was being seriously considered as a permanent wheeler in the Racing Team. His qualifications were not brilliant, but he had proved in the Juvenile Race that he possessed the power to enforce his authority on flighty and reckless dogs; and on the trip to the Hot Springs that his courage ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... captain, but they were at once scattered as the British seamen came aboard. The assailants had 13, and the privateersmen 16 men killed and wounded in the fight. It was certainly one of the most brilliant and daring cutting-out expeditions that took place during the war, and the victors well deserved their success. The privateersmen (according to the statement of the Dolphin's master, in "Niles' Register") ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... eunuchry, with their hands upon their breasts,[FN507] were standing in the attitude of service, and indeed this hall confounded the beholder's wits with what was therein of quaint gilding and rare painting and curious carving and fine furniture. There hung the most brilliant lustres[FN508] of limpid crystal, and in every globe[FN509] of the crystal was an unique jewel, whose price money might not fulfil. So I threw down that which was with me, O Prince of True Believers, and fell to taking of these jewels what I could carry, bewildered as to what I should bear away ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Sante Fe train in pursuit of him. But the Indians roamed the Panhandle, as much at home there as in their reservations—and here they were much more dangerous. Had no savage eye discerned that wagon during the brilliant August day? Might it be that even while he slept at the feet of the dead woman, a feathered head had slipped under the canvas side, a red face had ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... ship, three most beautiful captive boys were brought to him, splendidly adorned with gold and fine clothes. They were said to be the children of Sandauke, the sister of Xerxes, and Artaeuktes. When Euphrantides the prophet saw them, there shone at once from the victims on the altar a great and brilliant flame, and at the same time some one was heard to sneeze on the right hand, which is a good omen. Euphrantides now besought Themistokles to sacrifice these young men as victims to Dionysus, to whom human beings are sacrificed; so should ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... thill-horse being trained to trot rapidly, while the other two, very lightly and loosely harnessed, canter on either side of him. From the ends of the thills springs a wooden arch, called the duga, rising eighteen inches above the horse's shoulder, and usually emblazoned with gilding and brilliant colors. There was one magnificent troika on the Nevskoi Prospekt, the horses of which were full-blooded, jet-black matches, and their harness formed of overlapping silver scales. The Russians being the best coachmen in the world, these teams dash past each other at furious speed, often ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... noble task of saving and reviving New France was thus complete. The Marquis de Tracy was an able and clear-sighted commander, the Sieur de Courcelle a fearless, straightforward official. But the part of Jean Talon in the common task, though apparently less brilliant, was to be in many respects the most important, and his influence the most far-reaching in the ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... one of those human hors d'oeuvres that stimulate the public appetite for sensation without giving it much to feed on. As a mere child he had been precociously brilliant; he had declined the editorship of the Anglian Review at an age when most boys are content to have declined mensa, a table, and though he could not claim to have originated the Futurist movement in literature, his "Letters to a possible Grandson," written at the age of fourteen, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... doubt or denial. An ugly-looking man, a hunch-backed human savage to all appearance, squatting in the aperture of one of the dens, would stretch his arms and yawn, showing with startling suddenness scissor-edged incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliant as knives. Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of some lithe, white-swathed female figure, I would suddenly see (with a spasmodic revulsion) that she had slit-like pupils, or glancing down ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... him to have a woman's companionship; it's what he needs, I firmly believe. It must be a certain sort of woman—the kind who will be good for his nerves, gently stimulating, not exacting. One of the brilliant society women he knows wouldn't do at all. The ideal kind would be—your own kind. But he can't have that." He spoke so decidedly that she smiled, though he did not see it. "It seems to me that Amy, if she puts her heart into it, can give him ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... meagre 30 francs a month, has to content himself with simpler joys than champagne (vintage 1914) and hand-made lace. Instead he partakes of French beer at three sous a glass, and his friends overseas receive hand-embroidered postcards of brilliant but patriotic designs worked by the crippled ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... a very different person to deal with from the low-born little upstart who kept the palace and city of Ranjitgarh agog with her stormy and transitory love affairs. Still, if Sher Singh should have the brilliant inspiration of seeking an interview with Colonel Antony, and having learnt a lesson from his previous failure, present himself merely as a disinherited innocent of pacific tendencies, it was quite likely ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... of Cato's plan, of laying out a farm is found in the agricultural history of the Romans down to the time of the Punic wars. Mommsen (II, 370) gives the facts, and Ferrero in his first volume makes brilliant use of them. There is sketched the old peasant aristocrat living on his few acres, his decay and the creation of comparatively large estates worked by slaves in charge of overseers, which followed the conquest of the Italian ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... agreeable are constantly distressing the optic and olfactory nerves. And yet there are perhaps few places where an artist could find more charming subjects for his pencil—curious bits of architecture mingling with Nature in its most beautiful and grandest aspects, fine touches of brilliant color, and quaint winding streets and bazaars,—everywhere the picturesque. Filth and confusion, indeed, but still it is the very confusion that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... is two-edged," Master once remarked in reference to Kumar's brilliant mind. "It may be used constructively or destructively like a knife, either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate one's self. Intelligence is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... at Yale in winter, at Newport and Beverly and Bar Harbor in summer, he had learned how to spend it, had watched admiringly how others spent their wealth. He had begun to educate his family in spending,—in using to brilliant advantage the fruits of thirty years' hard work and frugality. With his cousin Caspar Porter he maintained a small polo stable at Lake Hurst, the new country club. On fair days he left the lumber yards at noon, while Alexander ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... with productions." Money, it seems, according to dictionary ideas, has no existence in his vocabulary; for Monsieur Say has formed a sort of Berkleian conception of wealth being immaterial, while we confine our views to its materiality. Hence ensues from this "confusion of words," this most brilliant paradox,—that "a glutted market is not a proof that we produce too much but that we produce too little! for in that case there is not enough produced to exchange with what is produced!" As Frenchmen excel in politeness and impudence, Monsieur Say adds, "I revere Adam Smith; he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... taken by Mr. Darling[A] are very elongated, somewhat cylindrical ovals, very obtuse at both ends. In both, the shell is fine, and has an appreciable though not brilliant gloss. In one, the ground is a pale delicate clay-brown, and the markings consist only of a zone about 0.2 wide round the large end of densely set dull brownish-red specks, and a few similar specks inside ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... the small enclosure was a tall old man wearing a brilliant-hued, flowered dressing-gown, that hung open at the neck, disclosing his long brown throat and hairy chest, and flapping negligently about his heels as ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... the brilliant researches of Rowland and of Mr Griffiths on the variations of the specific heat of water, physicists have decided to take as calorific standard the quantity of heat necessary to raise a gramme of water from 15 deg. to 16 deg. C., the temperature ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... domesticate them, but in vain; they become greatly depressed, and soon die. There are nightingales that sing harmoniously near the coolness of the small streamlets, repeating their melodious trills, and gifted with most nimble throats. There are many varieties of parrots of brilliant colors; green, white, and vari-colored pigeons; squirrels or paniquesas, of several distinct species—some are white with a black ring which sets them off well; there are some with wings and some with membranes that facilitate their flight, although that is but short. It is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... tall milestones, and then we reached the entrance to Quebec, which is indeed magnificent! the splendid water-way, with the fine position of Quebec, makes it a grand sight, and I was not disappointed; and the clear and brilliant morning sunshine showed us all to perfection. Then came such a scene of hurry and confusion,—but we were favored: Captain R. Stephenson, the Governor-General's A.D.C., who had been our fellow passenger, received instructions from him, and we were conveyed in a police steamboat ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... the native fashions in ornament. In regard to garments properly so called, they are summed up very easily; for the men, an apron of antelope leather, reaching to the knees, or perhaps a petticoat of a straw material of brilliant colors; for the women, a belt of pearls, supporting at the hips a green petticoat, embroidered in silk, ornamented with glass beads or coury; sometimes they wear garments made of "lambba," a straw material, blue, black, and yellow, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... development and much spoiled by vanity. Before he was twenty years old he had published three works upon problems suggested by Fichte. At twenty-three he was extraordinarius at Jena. He had apparently a brilliant career before him. He published his Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophe, 1799, and also his System des transcendentalen Idealismus, 1800. Even his short residence at Jena was troubled by violent conflicts with his colleagues. It was brought ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... to be dazzled by the false brilliant presented by those who urged the necessity of storming Philadelphia, in order to throw lustre round his own fame, and that of his army; and too much firmness of temper, too much virtue and real patriotism, to be diverted from a purpose believed to be right, by the clamours of faction or the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... a strong light, like that of a brilliant star, was seen on the very pinnacle of the rock; then followed a forked flame, which curled for a moment amid the windings of an enormous pile of brush, and flashing upward in an united sheet, it wavered to ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... one of the happiest of her sex. She retained the most perfect health, though her figure was slight and delicate, and she had been most gently and tenderly nurtured. Not only that, but she had been what is called highly educated, and was not a stranger to the gay and brilliant assemblies of "civilised" life. It was not that she knew no other lot, and therefore esteemed her present one the best; but she had weighed it with many others she did know, and found it immeasurably superior. She knew from experience that worldly rank hides many a heavy or vacant heart ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... dismissed with good wishes. He then travelled through deep dark forests, in the midst of which might be seen a large meadow; out of it grew lovely flowers, and in the centre stood a castle built of gold. It was the home of Dede-Vsevede. So brilliant with light was it that it seemed to be built of fire. When he entered there was no one there but an ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... concerned during the time of the civil war with the government of the city. It was during these years that the Archbishop of Canterbury began to form his household into the most famous school of learning in England, and some of his chaplains in their visits to Cheapside had been struck by the brilliant talents of the young clerk. At Theobald's request Thomas, then twenty-four years old, entered the Primate's household, somewhat reluctantly it would seem, for he had as yet shown little zeal either for religion or for ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... American army, in obtaining this brilliant victory, over a savage enemy flushed with former successes, amounted to thirty-three killed and one hundred wounded:[13] that of the enemy was never ascertained. In his official account of the action, Gen. Wayne says, "The woods were strewed for a considerable ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... any European traveller had penetrated before him, we continued our route over a most beautiful park of verdant grass, diversified by splendid tamarind trees, the dark foliage of which afforded harbour for great numbers of the brilliant yellow-breasted pigeon. We shortly ascended a rocky mountain by a stony and difficult pass, and upon arrival at the summit, about 800 feet above the Nile, which lay in front at about two miles' distance, we halted to enjoy the magnificent view. "Hurrah for the old Nile!" I exclaimed, as I revelled ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... get of New England character are free from any distortion, and their humorous phases are always entertaining. Mr. TROWBRIDGE'S brilliant descriptive faculty is shown to great advantage in the opening chapter of the book by a vivid picture of a village fire, and is manifested elsewhere with equally ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... curiosity would first be gratified by a survey of the room. Its height and spaciousness were imperfectly discernible by starlight, and by gleams from a street-lamp. The floor was covered with a carpet, the walls with brilliant hangings; the bed and windows were shrouded by curtains of a rich texture and glossy hues. Hitherto I had merely read of these things. I knew them to be the decorations of opulence; and yet, as I viewed them, and remembered where and what I was on the same hour the preceding ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... what the polished club-man is in society. In society the man who can repeat the most bon-mots, tell the most amusing anecdotes, and talk most fluently, holds the ear more closely than he that speaks from the heart. So Pushkin holds his place in literature because he is brilliant, because his verse is polished, his language chosen, his wit pointed, his prick stinging. But he has no aspiration, no hope; he has none of the elements which make the writings of the truly great helpful. Pushkin, in short, has nothing to give. Since ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... hay-loft, is genius starving in a garret. Lais, in Paris, must first and foremost find a rich man mad enough to pay her price. She must keep up a very elegant style, for this is her shop-sign; she must be sufficiently well bred to flatter the vanity of her lovers; she must have the brilliant wit of a Sophie Arnould, which diverts the apathy of rich men; finally, she must arouse the passions of libertines by appearing to be mistress to one man only who ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... safety and that of my valise, gliding in and out along those dark unlit streams, a great wave of melancholy swept over me, and then, passing from the minor streets into the Grand Canal, the melancholy was dispelled by the brilliant scene that met my eyes—great floods of light coming from everywhere, the brilliance of each ray re-enforced by its reflection in the silent river over which I was speeding. It was like a glimpse of paradise, and when I reached my palace I was ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... up next door to old Lady Lollipop's belozenged family coach;—I roam through Belgravia, that pale and polite district, where all the inhabitants look prim and correct, and the mansions are painted a faint whity-brown: I lose myself in the new squares and terraces of the brilliant bran-new Bayswater-and-Tyburn-Junction line; and in one and all of these districts the same truth comes across me. I stop before any house at hazard, and say, 'O house, you are inhabited—O knocker, you are knocked at—O undressed flunkey, sunning your lazy calves as you lean against ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from a great distance; at the entrance to the town were tethered innumerable mules and asses, awaiting the hour of return. Modern Catanzaro, which long ago lost its proper costume, was enlivened with brilliant colours; the country women, of course, adorned themselves, and their garb was that which had so much interested me when I first saw it in the public garden at Cosenza. Brilliant blue and scarlet were the prevailing tones; a good deal of fine ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Sunday before Christmas Day I was taking my evening inspection of the orchids, etc., in the glass case when a largish insect flew by my face, and when it settled it looked like a handsome moth or butterfly. It was brilliant orange on the lower wings, the upper being shaded orange brown, very moth-like, but the antennae were clubbed like a butterfly's. At first I thought it was a butterfly that mimicked a moth, but I had never ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the most harmonious and perfect concert. It appeared to me that I had entered a new state of existence, and I was so perfectly lost in the new kind of sensation which I experienced that I had no recollections and no perceptions of identity. On a sudden the music ceased, but the brilliant light still continued to surround me, and I heard a low but extremely distinct and sweet voice, which appeared to issue from the centre of it. The sounds were at first musical like those of a harp, but they soon became articulate, as if a prelude to some piece of ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... of the Pleiad. He was of an illustrious family, but, cut off from a brilliant public career by ill health and deafness, he sought consolation in letters. He even preceded Ronsard in inaugurating the literary reform, issuing the manifesto of the new movement, his Defense et Illustration de ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... had, for the very earth trembled under them, as a terrific detonation sounded, just as though a bolt of lightning had struck a nearby tree. And some of the scouts were ready to declare that the shock had been accompanied by a brilliant electric flash, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... own life. They met only at dinner, or at the entertainments which they gave and which were considered the most brilliant in ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... rich coloring of his handsome face had paled, or been bronzed over; a few lightly traced, but expressive lines were chronicles of mental struggles, and told that he had thought and suffered. There was more contemplation and less gayety in the brilliant brown eyes; more reflective composure and less impulsive buoyancy in his demeanor. Heretofore his bearing, language, whole aspect had ever communicated the impression of possible power; now it bespoke ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... beauty, talent, and amiability are well-known to all readers; as is the fact that her brilliant husband, despite their occasional quarrels, was very much in love with her ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... because, at this moment, it is the absorbing topic of all minds and of all literature. Nowhere has practical philosophy, that which consists in a spirit of abnegation, more deeply penetrated than among this unrecognized nobility. Under a polished, brilliant, and sometimes frivolous exterior, they have a serious soul; the old sentiment of honor is converted into one of patriotism. Set to execute the laws, with force in hand to maintain peace through fear, they feel ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in the East, and gray Till tower and wall flash into fiery clouds, Moving along the verge, stately and slow, Ordered by the old music of the spheres? Perchance it trembles in October's oaks; Or, twining with the brilliant, berried vine, Would hide the tender, melancholy elm. Well might it rest within those solemn woods Where sunlight never falls—whose tops are green With airs from heaven,—its balmy mists and rains,— While underneath black, mossy, mammoth rocks Keep silence with the waste of blighted ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... for having aided us with money and volunteers. Ten thousand of the best troops in Mexico entered Texas and were shortly to be followed by ten thousand more. The President, General Santa Anna, himself came to take the command, attended by a numerous and brilliant staff. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... had hard work to keep his spirits under control when he fairly understood the brilliant exploit that had been performed by ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... fresh game on tonight," said Dermot in a low voice. "This is not the lamp I had before dinner. That was a large and brilliant one. I'm ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... noon, the spot on which the late combat had taken place became the theatre of a stirring and animated scene. Fort Garry, and the space between it and the river, swarmed with voyageurs, dressed in their cleanest, newest, and most brilliant costume. The large boats for the north, six in number, lay moored to the river's bank, laden with bales of furs, and ready to start on their long voyage. Young men, who had never been on the road before, stood with animated looks watching ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... over the pavement (there was scarcely a cab or policeman in sight) is of itself exhilarating. The long loop of Piccadilly, diamond-stitched, shows to best advantage when it is empty. A young man has nothing to fear. On the contrary, though he may not have said anything brilliant, he feels pretty confident he can hold his own. He was pleased to have met Mangin; he admired the young woman on the floor; he liked them all; he liked that sort of thing. In short, all the drums and trumpets were sounding. The street ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... there is no explaining it. Certainly no human watch or ward saved us from destruction at the hands of roving enemies. I was awakened at last by a brilliant light, and the effort made by our two prisoners, still tied together, to crawl across my body. I threw them off me, and sat up, rubbing my eyes and wondering where ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... and in coin respectively. He bestowed them in his pockets with feigned composure and suffered the friendly teller, to whom his father chatted, to take his hand across the broad counter and wish him a brilliant career in after life. He was impatient of their voices and could not keep his feet at rest. But the teller still deferred the serving of others to say he was living in changed times and that there was nothing like giving a boy the best education that money could buy. Mr Dedalus ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... exclaimed the girl, whose large, brilliant black eyes were veiled in tears. "Your father to prison? This cannot be." Stupefied by surprise, she looked alternately at the lapidary, his wife, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... he replied. "I've got to call on—on Chambers. You know Chambers, don't you? No, I remember you don't; a big man you once saw me with.... I ought to have gone yesterday, and—" this he felt to be a brilliant effort—"and he's going out of town this afternoon. To Brighton. I had a letter from ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... forms of specific disease is acknowledged by all but the most sceptical theorists. Even the esprit moqueur of Ricord, the Voltaire of pelvic literature, submits to the time-honored constitutional authority of this great panacea in the class of cases to which he has devoted his brilliant intelligence. Still, there is no telling what evils have arisen from the abuse of this mineral. Dr. Armstrong long ago pointed out some of them, and they have become matters of common notoriety. I am pleased, therefore, when I find so able and experienced a practitioner as Dr. Williams ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the family soon joined him, and the wonderful western night, as the brilliant stars sparkled seemingly so near to earth, had its soothing effect on the perturbed hearts and minds of all present. When Mrs. Brewster finally mentioned that it was bed-time the individuals in the group felt more amiably disposed ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... I love now as I have always loved it, as I loved it when a boy. To halt on that crest of the road, of a fair, still, mild, brilliant afternoon when the sun is already visibly declining and its rays fall slanting and mellow; to view the great city bathed in the warm, even light, its pinnacles, tower-roofs, domes, and roof-tiles flashing and sparkling in the late sunshine, all of it radiant with the magical glow of an ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... moderate from the northwest. Late at night we were awaked by the sergeant on guard to see the beautiful phenomenon called the northern light: along the northern sky was a large space occupied by a light of a pale but brilliant white colour: which rising from the horizon extended itself to nearly twenty degrees above it. After glittering for some time its colours would be overcast, and almost obscured, but again it would burst out with renewed beauty; the uniform colour was pale light, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... she lay in her bed with wide open eyes, going over and over the things they had said. "Cure?"—one of them had scoffed, after telling how brilliant he had been before he "went to pieces"—"why all the cures on earth couldn't help him! He can go just so far, and then he can no more stop himself—oh, about as much as an ant could stop ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... and the captured banners were sent to the cities of Spain as evidences of the great victory. For himself, the king reserved a fine emerald, which he placed in the centre of his shield. Ever since that brilliant day in Spanish annals, the sixteenth of July has been kept as a holy festival, in which the captured banners are carried in grand procession, to celebrate the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... holiday. The Strada Toledo looks to the sober northerner as though a constant carnival were going on. Naples has itself to offer to the visitor, with its never-ending gayety and its many-sided life—its brilliant cafes, its lively theatres, its gay pantomimes, its buffooneries, its macaroni, its lazaroni, and its innumerable festivities. Naples has also a cluster of attractions all around it, which keep their freshness longer than those of any other city. Among these ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... may already know, Jasper Jay was a vain fellow. And it was not only of his brilliant blue suit that he was proud. He was greatly pleased with his own voice, though many of the feathered folk thought it harsh and disagreeable. But, that, perhaps, was because they seldom or never heard Jasper's sweeter, flute-like ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... his ministrations, I pinned a brilliant at my throat—a gift from Lady Coleville—and shook over it the cobweb lace so it should sparkle like a star through a thin cloud. Then passing my small sword through the embroidered slashing of my coat, and choosing a handkerchief discreetly perfumed, I regarded myself ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... shrine of beauty however he needed explaining, especially when I found he had no acquaintance with my brilliant model; had on the mere evidence of my picture taken, as he said, a tremendous fancy to her face. I ought doubtless to have been humiliated by the simplicity of his judgment of it, a judgment for which the rendering was lost in the subject, quite leaving out the element of art. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... the ritual was most highly developed in the other movements. In the Greek public Mysteries[1918] and in those of Mithra[1919] there were (besides ablutions) the old communal meals, processions, striking dramatic performances, and brilliant effects of light and music, and in Mithraism trials of courage for the neophyte after the manner of the old savage initiations. The ceremonies in the Isis cult were less sensational, more quiet and dignified.[1920] In all these cults ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell? What brilliant broken plans, what baffled high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... organs, which were so defective that he was not susceptible of the fine impressions which theatrical excellence produces upon the generality of mankind; secondly, the cold rejection of his tragedy; and, lastly, the brilliant success of Garrick, who had been his pupil, who had come to London at the same time with him, not in a much more prosperous state than himself, and whose talents he undoubtedly rated low, compared with his own. His being outstripped by his pupil in the race of immediate fame, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... President of the United States from 1889 to 1893, died yesterday at 4:45 P.M., at his home in Indianapolis. In his death the country has been deprived of one of its greatest citizens. A brilliant soldier in his young manhood, he gained fame and rapid advancement by his energy and valor. As a lawyer he rose to be a leader of the bar. In the Senate he at once took and retained high rank as an orator and legislator; ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... characteristic of that face was the eyes. Of the most perfect steel blue he had ever seen, they seemed, as they turned upon him in that intense glance, to glint and scintillate like the points of two rapiers in a brilliant sword play, while their look of concentrated fury and malignity, more demon-like than human, was stamped ineffaceably upon ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... all three differed from each other in their views regarding the general plan of the campaign; the last two were men without any previous experience in the handling of large bodies of troops, and without any high military reputation; while the man displaced had already shown the most brilliant capacity in India, and was universally regarded as the best general in the British service. Dalrymple adopted neither the energetic action advised by Sir Arthur nor the inactivity supported by Burrard, but, taking a middle course, decided to advance on the following morning, but not ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... perfect painter. Castiglione considered painting the proper acquirement of the perfect gentleman—Sir Joshua Reynolds thought that to be in mind and manners the "gentlemen," was as necessary to perfect the painter. The friend of Johnson and Burke, and of all persons of that brilliant age, distinguished by abilities and worth, was no common man. In raising himself, he was ever mindful to raise the art to which he had devoted himself, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... heart to scold her too severely. Of her own choice, I am afraid, Winnie would never have opened a book, but she managed to get up her subjects for her classes, and was a conscientious, painstaking mistress, if not a brilliant one. ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... waves, was apparently oblivious. Nor did he manifest the slightest interest in the animated scene before him until a tall, heavy-set young priest emerged from the entrance of the dormitory below and stopped for a moment in the middle of the road to bask in the brilliant sunlight and fill his lungs with the invigorating ocean breeze. Turning his eyes suddenly upward, the latter caught sight of the man ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the old Chaldeans recovered their political importance, probably by an alliance with the Medes, and Nabopolassar obtained undisputed possession of Babylon, and founded a short but brilliant dynasty. He obtained a share of the captives of Nineveh, and increased the population of his capital. His son, Nebuchadnezzar, was sent as general against the Egyptians, and defeated their king, Neko, reconquered all the lands bordering on Egypt, and received the submission of Jehoiakim, of Jerusalem. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... passage by which we were retreating, and whose guns were loaded, and discharged as they became heated. We escaped these also, and while urging the ketch onwards with sweeps, the crew were commenting upon the beauty of the spray thrown up by the shot between us and the brilliant light of the ship, rather than calculating any danger that might be apprehended from the contact. The appearance of the ship was, indeed, magnificent. The flames in the interior illuminated her ports, and, ascending her rigging and masts, formed columns of fire, which, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... its name from the well-known aventurine-glass of Venice. This is a reddish brown glass with gold-like spangles, more brilliant than most of the natural stone. The story runs that this kind of glass was originally made accidentally at Murano by a workman, who let some copper filings fall into the molten "metal," whence the product was called avventurino. From the Murano ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... A young queen approaches, brilliant with diamonds and flowers—this was always my sylph. She seeks me at midnight, amidst orange groves, in the corridors of a palace washed by the waves, on the balmy shore of Naples or Messina; the light sound of her footsteps on the mosaic floor mingles with the scarcely ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... order. Since they had been taken from the water, the sailor had bestowed great care upon them. How many hours he had spent, in rubbing, greasing, and polishing them, and in cleaning the mechanism! And now the pieces were as brilliant as if they had been on board a frigate of the ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... stout trolling line, and far in their wake the spinning, silvery bait came leaping and flashing from the northward slope of each succeeding wave, and Pancha, who had seen the previous day a dolphin hauled in to die in swiftly changing, brilliant hues upon the deck, tested the taut lanyard with her slender fingers, wondering whether she alone could triumph over the frantic struggles of the splendid fish, or what she would do if she found she could not. It was an hour to breakfast time. Only Loring and herself ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... brilliant contrast with the violet and flower enwoven tunics, with the myrtle-crowned perfumed love-locks of the Roman feasters, were seen the gay and many-chequered plaids, the jewelled weapons, and loose lion-like tresses of the Gallic Highlanders, and the wild blue eyes, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... your letter, dear lover, and as I read it, all my lilies changed once more to roses—as they did, you remember how often, while you were here. This is your miracle, my Philip, for in the South you know we do not have the brilliant colour so noticeable in your Northern women. But now I have only to think of you, to whisper your name, to recall something you said or did, and immediately I feel the red rose of love burn out on cheek and brow. Indeed, I think it was this magic of colour ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... rise in the scale of being—material, intellectual, and moral—the more certainly we quit the region of the brilliant eccentricities and dazzling contrasts which belong to a vulgar greatness. Order and proportion characterize the primordial constitution of the terrestrial system; ineffable harmony rules the heavens. All the great eternal forces act in solemn silence. The brawling torrent that dries up in summer ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the mass of brilliant vital endeavor is a new burden and a source almost of dismay. Why should we omit so melodious a work as Moskowski's Jeanne d'Arc,—full of perhaps too facile charm? It was, of course, impossible to treat all the wonderful ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Stixon (armed with a brilliant cane bought for this occasion), and knowing that Sir Montague Hockin was not there, I arrived at Bruntlands in the afternoon, and received a kindly welcome from my dear friend Mrs. Hockin. Her husband was from home, and she grieved to say that now he was generally doing ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... fool I was not to think of this before. That chap down below is the occasion of all these troubles; I'll go and hunt him up, confound him!" Thereupon he doubtless slapped his thigh, as is the wont of sailors when they solve a difficulty or hit on a brilliant idea; after which he descended "into the sides of the ship," whither Jonah had gone. There he found the prophet slumbering as peacefully as a weanling child, with a smile of satisfaction playing over his Hebrew features. ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... constantly and solemnly invoke."—Hope of Is. cor. "Whoever or whatever owes us, is Debtor; and whomever or whatever we owe, is Creditor."—Marsh cor. "Declaring the curricle was his, and he should have in it whom he chose."—A. Ross cor. "The fact is, Burke is the only one of all the host of brilliant contemporaries, whom we can rank as a first-rate orator."—Knickerb. cor. "Thus you see, how naturally the Fribbles and the Daffodils have produced the Messalinas of our time."—Dr. Brown cor. "They would find in the Roman list both the Scipios."—Id. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... himself, in imagination, the idea of being whirled rapidly through the Boulevards, on such a pleasant summer evening, in a carriage which he should have all to himself, with the top down so that he could see every thing all around him, and of the brilliant windows of the shops, the multitudes of ladies and gentlemen taking their coffee at the little round tables on the sidewalk in front of the coffee saloons, the crowds of people coming and going, and the horsemen and carriages thronging the streets, the view was so enchanting ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... a Breton, Roscellin, the early instructor of Abelard. From him the brilliant, fearless boy learnt two terrible lessons: (1) that universals, instead of being real substances, external and superior to individual things, are mere names (hence Nominalism) for common qualities of things as recognized ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the earth below, and as the water is of a more crystal purity, and the sky perhaps bluer, so do all colours and all sounds have a purity and vividness and intensity beyond that of other places. I see it in the yellows of hawkweed, rock-rose, and birds'-foot-trefoil, in the innumerable specks of brilliant colour—blue and white and rose—of milk-wort and squinancy-wort, and in the large flowers of the dwarf thistle, glowing purple in its green setting; and I hear it in every bird-sound, in the trivial songs of yellow-hammer and corn-bunting, and of ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... careful calculation has proved, that one eighteenth of the mercantile shipping alone, entirely devoted to the enterprise, is competent to carry it into complete consummation. And why might not our brilliant and growing navy aid to some extent the humane and patriotic cause? If necessary, why might not the marine of other lands be chartered? Strange indeed it is if shipping enough could be found half a century ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... colorless facetted stone is placed in the sunlight and a card held before it to receive the reflections, it will be seen that rainbow-like reflections appear on the card. These spectra, as they are called, are caused by the dispersion of light. With a diamond the spectra will be very brilliant and of vivid coloring, and the red will be widely separated from the blue. With white sapphire or white topaz, or with rock crystal (quartz), the spectra will be less vivid—they will appear in pairs (due to the double refraction ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... nothing like the brilliant counterpart she merited. It was as if she had offered her beauty to a glass, and found a reflection in dull metal. He smiled calmly from her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... upon a close-cropped sward of red grasslike vegetation, and about me stretched a grove of strange and beautiful trees, covered with huge and gorgeous blossoms and filled with brilliant, voiceless birds. I call them birds since they were winged, but mortal eye ne'er rested on such odd, ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... suburbanites mostly, in a hurry for their trains. Very soon the whole audience followed, commissionaires were busy with their whistles, the servants eagerly looking right and left for their masters. And then Elizabeth! She came out in the midst of half-a-dozen others, brilliant in a wonderful cloak and dress of turquoise blue, laughing with her friends, to all appearance the gayest of the party. Tavernake stepped quickly forward, but at that moment there was a crush and he could not advance. She passed within a yard of him, escorted by a couple of men, and ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brilliant, the air mild. The hotel on the Peak had the aspect of a fairy castle. The streets were full of colour. O'Higgins wandered into this street and that, studying the signs and resenting the Britisher's wariness in using too much ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... deep human interest, or broad-sighted satire. In The Canterbury Tales, we see, not Chaucer, but Chaucer's times and neighbours; the artist has lost himself in his work. To show him honestly and without disguise, as he lived his own life and sung his own songs at the brilliant Court of Edward III, is to do his memory a moral justice far more material than any wrong that can ever come out of spelling. As to the minor poems of Spenser, which follow The Faerie Queen, the choice has been governed by the desire to give at once the most interesting, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... in a handsome uniform,— A scarlet coat, black facings, a long plume, Waving, like sails new shiver'd in a storm, Over a cock'd hat in a crowded room, And brilliant breeches, bright as a Cairn Gorme, Of yellow casimere we may presume, White stocking drawn uncurdled as new milk O'er limbs whose ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... minds thus affected are generally capable of, and frequently indulge in, the strictest logical deduction and analysis. Sometimes they acquire the reputation of being exceptionally brilliant thinkers because of this power. But the fact is that their initial ideas, upon which everything is pivoted, are derived emotionally and are not the results of a deliberate weighing of available evidence. The initial movement is one of feeling, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... walls rose up sheer above their heads, appearing to narrow towards the top, though this was an optical delusion. All was bright and glorious in the sunshine. The trees and shrubs were of a vivid green, the grass was brilliant with flowers; and running in serpentine waves through the middle of the lovely prairie that softly sloped down to it on either side, and whose sedges and clumps of trees dipped their tips in its sparkling waters, ran the river, dancing ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... great injustice. The life and conduct of General Grant were analyzed, and praised or blamed according to the bias of the speaker or writer. Mr. Blaine always had a warm and ardent support by the younger Republicans in every part of the United States. His brilliant and dashing manner and oratory made him a favorite with all the young and active politicians, but, as he was a bold and active fighter, he had enemies as well as friends. My strength and weakness grew out of my long service in the House, Senate and cabinet, but, as my chief active ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... against the French conqueror when that far-sighted minister George Canning sent Sir Arthur Wellesley to Portugal to take command of the British forces in the Peninsula. Wellesley had recently returned from India, where he had achieved a brilliant reputation for thoroughness of organization, precision of manoeuver, and unvarying success, qualities which at that time were lamentably rare among British generals. In Portugal first, and later in Spain, the sterling qualities of ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... has vigor, sagacity, memory, motion, and velocity; these are all great, divine, eternal properties. What its appearance is, or where it dwells, it is not necessary even to inquire. As when we behold, first of all, the beauty and brilliant appearance of the heavens; secondly, the vast velocity of its revolutions, beyond power of our imagination to conceive; then the vicissitudes of nights and days, the fourfold division of the seasons, so well adapted to the ripening of the fruits of the earth, and the temperature ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... memories beside the vividness of his desperate need. He had no knowledge of her, or of any efforts to secure his comfort. He talked incessantly, sometimes in a soft, unintelligible murmur, sometimes in loud and emphatic tones. His eyes were brilliant but wandering, his movements were abrupt or violent, heedless or feeble, as the moment decreed. He talked about the dingy, nasty fo'cas'le, the absurdity of his not being able to get around, the fine outfit of the Sea Gull, the chill of the water. He sometimes swore softly, almost apologetically, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the German clavichord players, and, reacting, became one of the determining agents of the piano music and style of playing of the Vienna school. Thus arose a fluent execution of a rich figuration and brilliant passage playing, with but little inclination to sonorousness of effect, lasting from the time of Mozart's immediate followers to that of Henri Herz; a period of half a century. Knee-pedals, as we translate "geuouillres," were probably in vogue ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... noble array of names and virtues, and a vast multitude of good, kind, and brave deeds, but he will not forget to take note also of the silent agencies, and the unobtrusive but ever-present influence of woman which will be found to outweigh the potency of the stronger and more brilliant virtues with all the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... these brilliant supple figures; they demanded the background of grey hangings, scant carpet, spindle-legged chairs, and hard sombre prints. To these very cultivated, very artificial and picturesque personages, a family sitting-room was but a stage, where lively, capricious, yet calculating ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... and texture of white marble, and were very effective. Round a cluster of arc-lights in the roof there was a sort of revolving cage of different coloured panes of glass; these threw variegated beams of light over the brilliant kaleidoscopic crowd below. Previous Governors-General had, in opening the fete shuffled shamefacedly down the centre of the rink in overshoes and fur coats to the dais, but Lord and Lady Lansdowne, being both expert ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... unerring aim, made a long overhand throw to basket that brought forth deafening applause from the spectators. The sophomores managed to gain two more points, but the juniors again managed not only to gain two points, but to pile up their score until a particularly brilliant play to basket on the part of Elfreda closed the last half with the glorious reckoning of seventeen to twelve in favor of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... were in the midst of an avalanche of lucrative orders promising a brilliant winter season she took it into her head to withdraw her husband from the firm, in which he was a silent partner. Her decision was apparently based on the extreme efforts she had once seen me making to raise five hundred ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the beginning of the New Year, when I was preparing to return to France. It was a very contented letter. He seemed to have been fairly well treated, though he had always a low standard of what he expected from the world in the way of comfort. I inferred that his captors had not identified in the brilliant airman the Dutch miscreant who a year before had broken out of a German jail. He had discovered the pleasures of reading and had perfected himself in an art which he had once practised indifferently. Somehow or other he had got a Pilgrim's Progress, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... The motive for so desperate an attack he felt unable to fathom. His intellect was still affected by bodily weakness, and he inclined at first to think he had been mistaken for somebody else. The real truth only dawned on him by degrees. Its first ray originated with no less brilliant a ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... of the personal Self is killed out and the "astral" has been reduced in consequence to a cipher, that the Union with the "Higher Self" can take place. Then when the "astral" reflects only the conquered man, the still living, but no more the longing, selfish personality, then the brilliant Augoeides, the divine Self, can vibrate in conscious harmony with both the poles of the human Entity—the man of matter purified, and the ever pure Spiritual Soul—and stand in the presence of the Master Self, the Christos of the mystic Gnostics, blended, ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... flushed as it was beneath its fringe of disordered feathery hair, was literally—transfigured. A glory, similar to the glory he had seen that same evening upon the face of the housekeeper, still shone and flickered about the eyes and forehead. The signature of the soul, brilliant in purity, lay there, transforming the insignificance of the features with the grandeur and nobility of its ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... breakfast in a private house, no matter how simple, has greater distinction than the most elaborate collation in a public establishment. Why this is so, is hard to determine. It is probably that without a "home" atmosphere, though it may be a brilliant ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... did the work this time, and in a brief period a wide, brilliant stripe of red hid the uneven letters from sight. But somehow Mr. Hartman did not think the barn had been improved very much when he found it, and was wrathfully; setting out in search of the artist when the fluttering ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... May, 1730: a brilliant enough little soldier under his Brother, full of spirit and talent, but liable to weak health;—was Father of the "Prince Louis Ferdinand," a tragic Failure of something considerable, who went off in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... brilliant, talented, impulsive seventeen-year-old girl, who is suddenly required to fill her mother's place at the head of a household, with a literary, impractical father ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... calculated to conduct its pupils through the highest branches of a liberal education and to afford them advantages similar to what may be obtained in the distant Universities of this country and Europe." A course of study equal to that of any college of the country was announced, and a brilliant Faculty appointed; but the time was not yet come for a great college in Baltimore and the institution languished away. In 1843, the Commissioners of Public Schools petitioned to have it transferred to the city as a High School, ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... allow this advancing prosperity to catch me asleep again, and I firmly concluded to empty that little tin trunk of its musty land scrip. True enough, the present boom was not noticeable on the frontier, yet there was a buoyant feeling in the air that betokened a brilliant future. Something enthused me, and as my creed was land and cattle, I made up my mind to plunge into ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... rouse her jealousy by flirting with Miss Lee, who was by no means adverse to his attentions. But Margie hailed the transfer with a relief which was so evident, that Mr. Linmere, piqued and irritated, took up his hat to leave, in the midst of one of Miss Lee's most brilliant descriptions of what she had seen in Italy, from whence she had just returned. He went over to the sofa ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... book go forth on its mission of consolation and encouragement to the sorrowing and suffering poor: it will teach them to prize their sorrows and their afflictions as the virgin gold of which their crown is to be formed, and the brilliant gems which are to adorn it forever. Let it go to the counting-house of the merchant, to the desk of the banker—and they will know that there is another and a truer wealth more worthy of their ambition. Let the great ones ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... she began emphatically, fixing him with eyes which he but now perceived were swollen, "don't think to hurry me. I've come here on serious business. Men call you an eminent lawyer, a brilliant man. Now we'll see if you are sufficiently able to save your only sister's only child from an ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... enough that all good criticism is praise. Pater boldly called one of his volumes of critical essays Appreciations. There are, of course, not a few brilliant instances of hostility in criticism. The best-known of these in English is Macaulay's essay on Robert Montgomery. In recent years we have witnessed the much more significant assault by Tolstoy upon almost the whole army of the authors of the civilized world from AEschylus down to Mallarme. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... been known as a very eminent lawyer at the Virginia Bar, author of two excellent law books. He had served a single term in the National House of Representatives. He had won a National reputation there by a very beautiful and brilliant speech at the completion of the Washington Monument. There were two notable orations at the time, one by Mr. Daniel and one by Robert C. Winthrop. These gentlemen were selected for the purpose as best representing two sections of the country. Mr. Winthrop was, beyond all question, the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... broken by an exclamation from von Rittenheim. Morgan followed the German's eyes, and saw above them against the fleckless blue of the heavens the brilliant figure of the girl, her hands straining against her breast, her face a field where anxiety and grief flitted like clouds across the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... brilliant and busy ones; and gladly, did space permit, would I give details of those brilliant adventures which make this part of his life that of a true knight-errant. But they are mere episodes in the history; and we must ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... something that needed attention, and, with the aid of the brilliant moonlight. Ashman watched the craft and its occupant as closely as if his own fate were wrapped up in its movements—a supposition which it was not improbable was ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... repeat, exceedingly interesting. The player at such a game becomes eager, even to passion. He throws himself into the work as if he were composing an epic. To be very mean, and to attack that which is great, is in itself a brilliant action. It is a fine thing to be ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo |
