"Ray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he did not care much who sank, who swam. Then he remembered the vessel, whose flashing guns had shed a human ray on the unearthly horror of the black hurricane. He looked ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... right, Grizzel," he whispered, "we'll find the diamond— let my arm loose a moment." He groped round, and in another minute the stone was in his hand. He turned it over, and a pale-green ray darted out, more unearthly than ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... ray that glanced upon a Bed, As if with awful aim direct and certain To show the BLOODY HAND in burning red ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... be honest to the other, in which each would wish and strive for the other's welfare, so that thus their joint welfare might be insured. Then, in those early girlish days, it had meant a total abnegation of self. The one was of earth, and therefore possible. The other had been a ray from heaven,—and impossible, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... piercing the maze of her own mind. A hundred thoughts whirled together, and all around them was wrapped the warm, strong feeling of his hand on hers. What did she mean that he would tell her father? There seemed to be a deep, hidden self in her. Up out of these depths came a whisper, like a ray of light, and it said to her that there was more hope for Lin Slone than he had ever had in one of ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... in love's glad, golden day, Is like the dawning, ere the radiant ray Of glowing Sol has burst upon the eye, But yet is heralded in earth and sky, Warm with its fervor, mellow with its light, While Care still slumbers in the arms of night. But Hope, awake, hears happy birdlings sing, And thinks of all a summer day ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... still, and overhead the sun threw down broad remembrancers of where he was and where he had been. The low hills in the distant north were all in sunlight; as the little boat pulled over the river they were lost behind the point of Shahweetah, and the last ray was gone from the last mountain ridge in view. Cool shadows and lights were over the land, a flood of ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... pleasant guest-chamber usually facing southward, but in mid-winter the Okak mission-house lies in the shadow of a great hill for weeks, and at other stations the sun describes a low curve over the opposite mountains, and does little more than shed a feeble ray of ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... There was one ray of light in the darkness, however. The municipal employees had refused to strike, and only by force would the city go dark that night. It was a blow to the conspirators. In the strange psychology of the mob, darkness was an essential ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... her, and the sound of her silvery laughter mocked him among the olive trees beyond. He was up and after her in a second, following her slim whiteness in and out of the old-world grove, as she flitted lightly, her hair flying in the wind, her figure flashing like a ray of sunlight or the race of foaming water—till at last he caught her and drew her down upon his knees, and kissed her wildly, forgetting who and where and what ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... nothing strange about it; there was something trying. The hunger of my heart for one word from him or of him, grew sometimes rapacious; it was a perpetual fast day with me, and nature cried out for relief. That cloud cast a shadow always over me now; only except when now and then a ray from the eternal sunshine found a rift in the cloud, or shot below it, and for a moment my feet stood in light. I had letters from the Sandfords; I had even one from Miss Cardigan; it did me a great deal of good, but ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... contrast between the Assyrian sanctuaries lighted only from the door and by the yellow glare of torches, and the mysterious twilight of the Egyptian halls, where the deep shadows were broken here and there by some wandering ray of sunshine shooting downwards from holes contrived in the solid roof, and making some brilliant picture of Ptah or Amen stand out against the surrounding gloom. But the Chaldaeans might, perhaps would, have equalled the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... inclosed with four solid stone walls, with not a window or aperture through which a ray of light could be ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... horizontal bands encase a wide white band; centered on the white band is a disk with blue and white wave pattern on the lower half and gold and white ray pattern on the upper half; a stylized red, blue and white ship rides on the wave pattern; the French flag is used ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... for calm. This the odor of the flowers and their pure expression promised me. A tall, thick-leaved camellia stood half-way down the border, and before it was a garden-chair. The moonlight shed no ray there, but through the sashes above streamed cool and fair over the blooms that clung to the wall and adorned the parterres and vases; for this house was set after a fashion of my own, a winter-garden under glass; no stages filled the centre. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... my Lord." Hereupon the fiends appearing again, renewed the attack, and alarmed him with terrible clamors, and a variety of spectres, in hideous shapes of the most frightful wild beasts, which they assumed to dismay and terrify him; till a ray of heavenly light breaking in upon him, chased them away, and caused him to cry out: "Where wast thou, my Lord and my Master? Why wast thou not here, from the beginning of my conflict, to assuage my pains!" A ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... bulletin from across the sea the uncertainty deepened. Every hour they waited for news of a great victory for the fleet. The second day of the war a rumour of such a victory had come across the wires and had raised hopes for a day which next day were dashed to despair. One ray of light, thin but marvellously bright, came from Belgium. For these six breathless days that gallant little people had barred the way against the onrushing multitudes of Germany's military hosts. The story of the defence of Liege was to the Allies like a ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... ye might be hungry, Scraggy; so I brought ye this bread," said Lem, lifting the hook and sending a ray from the lantern upon the woman. "Can I ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... these discouragements came a bright ray of sunshine—the brightest that could possibly have shone on the pathway of the ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... slackened; the city seemed to rise from a deluge that had overwhelmed it, its roofs all streaming, and every street filled with a river of water from which vapor still ascended. But suddenly there was a burst of light; a ray of sunshine fell athwart the shower. For a moment it was like a ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... speak. Rose sent him a ray from eyes full of a new divine shyness. He smiled gently in answer to it, and full of her own young emotion, and of the effort to conceal it from all the world, she noticed none of that change which ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as yon silver ray, that sleeps Upon the ocean's trembling tide; Soft as the air, that lightly sweeps Yon sad, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... o'ershadows the spirit engulfed in woe. This suffering may be selfish, or be merged in a general sorrow. As I write the simple sentence, Brann is dead, a pall settles over my spirit, and, groping blindly in the dark, I feel there remains on earth scarce a single ray of light. I knew this man, and to know him was to love him—knew his faults and his virtues; loved him in spite of one and for the other. His faults were human; his virtues were Godlike. For years we trod together Life's unequal pathway—at times I felt ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sat gnawed by pain, with surgical instruments on his table, and sombre thoughts of suicide in his head, the ray of a little episode of romance shone in incongruously upon the scene. Two ladies in Paris, absorbed in the New Heloisa, like all the women of the time, identified themselves with the Julie and the Claire ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... niente, yet I confess that it was with a shock of surprise I heard our guide and servant saluted by a lounger in Valstagna with "Sior conte, servitor suo!" I looked narrowly at him, but there was no ray of feeling or pride visible in his pale, languid visage as ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Tiffles. Everybody liked Wesley Tiffles; even those who bore the burden of his unlucky financial schemes uniting in cheerful testimony to his charming, companionable qualities. His presence was like a ray of sunlight to Marcus Wilkeson's beclouded mind; and when Wesley Tiffles hooked an arm in his (as he did to everybody on the second day of their acquaintance), Marcus felt his perplexities passing away from him, like electricity on a ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of the great lace industry known and imported to all the towns engaged in making it. Italy could procure nothing so fine and eminently suitable to the delicate work she made her own as this fine thread, grown in Flanders, and spun in dark, damp rooms, where only a single ray of light was allowed to enter. The thread was so fine, it is said, that it was imperceptible to the naked eye and was manipulated by touch only. The cost of this thread was L240 a pound, and one pound could be made into lace worth L720! Real Flanders lace thread even now, spun ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... guide extinguished his torch, when, bold as they were, and well accustomed to subterranean regions, a sensation of awe crept over them. Their first impulse was to feel for the wall, for in vain their eyes sought a ray of light, as in vain, also, their ears listened for ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... it is," they said. "It is the Beech that is the death of us. He steals the sunshine for his own leaves, and does not allow us a single ray. He is ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... airless Moon. Striking an intensely cold surface, their warming radiations, without atmosphere to aid them, were slow to act. Even in a blasting heat-beam a man in his Erentz helmet-suit could withstand the ray for several minutes. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... ray of hope. Everything perfect, wonderful, real. It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Secretary with his thoughts born centuries before their time. As in The Prince, so in the Art of War, he closes with a passionate appeal of great sorrow and the smallest ray of hope. Where shall I hope to find the things that I have told of? What is Italy to-day? What are the Italians? Enervated, impotent, vile. Wherefore, 'I lament mee of nature, the which either ought not ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... and then a ray of hope shot through the gloom pervading the White House and Capitol. The stirring victory of the Constitution over the Guerriere in August, 1812, had almost taken the sting out of Hull's surrender at Detroit, and other victories at sea followed, glorious in the annals of American naval ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... of a letter by Roland, Oct 4, and others of the same kind.—Letter of the municipal officers of Ray, Sept 24.—Letter of M. Desdouits, proprietor, Sept 30.—Letter of the permanent council of Aigle, Oct ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... nat longe before our dayes Whan men with honest ray coude holde them self content. Without these disgised: and counterfayted wayes. Wherby theyr goodes ar wasted, loste, and spent. Socrates with many mo in wysdom excellent. Bycause they wolde nought change that cam of nature Let growe theyre here without ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... gorgeous sunset ushers in the night, Sunset and city mirrored in the stream. Broad marble steps upon the river-bank Lead to a garden where a blaze of bloom, A hedge of rose-trees, forms the outer wall; An aged banyan-tree,[4] whose hundred trunks Sustain a vaulted roof of living green Which scarce a ray of noonday's sun can pierce, The garden's vestibule and outer court; While trees of every varied leaf and bloom Shade many winding walks, where fountains fall With liquid cadence into shining pools. Above, beyond, the stately palace stands, Inviting in, calling to peace and rest, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... reading for distance—another for direction—and while he was doing it he was vaguely conscious of one single sharp flash in the sky above that far-off cloud. In his range-finder it showed once, like a glittering star; then it vanished, but the trained eye of O'Rourke observed its passage like a ray of light overhead. ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... closets, and so continue to plead for these loved ones to the last." These meetings, though varied in character, were always of thrilling interest. Now there was an overwhelming sense of sin, as committed against a holy God, and then, as a ray of hope appeared, a weeping voice would implore, as on one occasion, that "the Holy One would walk over the hills of Judea, find Golgotha, and let them live." Again, the sight of manifold transgressions prompted the ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... But Lucy, what ails you is you have been so used to care and sorrow that you don't dare to catch the least ray of sunshine that comes to you. Now, that's all wrong. You ought to talk with my mother. Come and see us some day, on the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... undetected by those sightless ones that she knew showed nothing to the singer—nothing but a black void. The pathos of the air backed by the pathos of a voice that went straight to her heart, made of it a lament over the blackness of this void—over the glorious bygone sunlight, never a ray of it to be shed again for him! There was no one in the room, and it was a relief to her to have this right to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to him, for he appeared in great pain. However, he soon recovered, and before the ill-fated eel could reach its element, he caught up a large stone and made it dearly atone for the pain it had inflicted. We made another haul, but were not so successful, as we only caught some ray, crabs, and an alligator three feet long, which had torn the net. We stunned him by a blow with one of the boat's stretchers, threw him into the boat, and after taking in the net, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... of the 22d of May, 1809, the fatal day inscribed in blood-stained letters upon the pages of history, the day which brought to Napoleon the first dimming of his star of good fortune, to Germany, and especially to Austria, the first ray of dawn after the long ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... and making certain no one was watching him, he jumped off the slidewalk and hurried to a clump of bushes a few hundred yards away. He disappeared into the thick foliage and then reached inside his tunic and pulled out a paralo-ray gun. ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... of the mounting Sun! I 1 O brightest, fairest ray Seven-gated Thebe yet hath seen! Over the vale where Dirce's fountains run At length thou appearedst, eye of golden Day, And with incitement of thy radiance keen Spurredst to faster flight The man of Argos hurrying from ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... determined to suppress the letter altogether, in hopes that Lucy's impatience would induce her to condemn Ravenswood unheard and in absence. In this she was disappointed. The time, indeed, had long elapsed when an answer should have been received from the continent. The faint ray of hope which still glimmered in Lucy's mind was well nigh extinguished. But the idea never forsook her that her letter might not have been duly forwarded. One of her mother's new machinations unexpectedly furnished her with the means ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the dresser, purred as if her internal machinery were running down to final collapse, and her contracting and dilating eyes borrowed infernal fires from the chance ray of sunshine in which she sat. The brute's rusty red head, so lit, fascinated Dick, and the mingled rhythms of her purring and the wizard's mounted and mounted, until to his bewildered mind the whole world seemed filled with their murmur, and the demoniac ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the whole service through; and, with the last hallowed vibrations of the benediction, he turned his eyes, brimful of love-light, greedily, eagerly, fearful lest one single ray should be wasted on intermediate and ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... vertical bar of whiteness again—the edge of the marble slab that was the entry door, reflecting the blazing light at a different angle. Behind it, McGillis's tightly grinning face. Under McGillis's face, the stab of blue-white light reflected a glancing ray from the old-fashioned solid-missile service pistol that Jason had insisted all four men arm ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... dismal a night as ever I spent, with no ray of hope to lighten my darkness, and only the feeling that I could have done no other, to keep ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Sir Ray Lancaster, K.C.B., F.R.S., in an article in The Daily Telegraph, December, 1909, wrote: 'It is very generally asserted by those who advocate a purely vegetable diet that man's teeth are of the shape and pattern which we find in the fruit-eating, or in the root-eating, animals allied to ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... Catholic Church does not allow of insurgents rising up against them by independent action (proprio marte), lest the tranquillity of order be more and more disturbed, or society receive greater injury thereby: and when things are come to such a pass that there appears no other ray or hope of preservation, the same authority teaches that a remedy must be sought in the merits of Christian patience and in earnest prayers ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... too reverently towards the noble spirits in whom God has set some ray of this light," said the Bishop, addressing Lolotte. "Yes, poetry is something holy. Poetry implies suffering. How many silent nights those verses that you admire have cost! We should bow in love and reverence before the poet; his life here is almost always a life ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... among the dead an honoured name, over whom the grave has recently closed. Saintship is not the exclusive property of the Church. Medicine has also her calendar. Not a few physicians of the mind have deserved to be canonized; and to our psychological Hagiology, I would now add the name of Isaac Ray. With his fellow-workers in the same field, among whom are men not less honoured, I would venture to express the sympathy of this Association in the loss they have sustained. Nor can I pass from these names, although departing ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... theure Mann Gottes, mein verehrter Luther'! reason, will, understanding are words, to which real entities correspond; and we may in a sound and good sense say that reason is the ray, the projected disk or image, from the Sun of Righteousness, an echo from the Eternal Word—'the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world'; and that when the will placeth itself in a right line with the reason, there ariseth the spirit, through which the will of God floweth into ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to you that all you have to do is to bend an X-ray to an angle-value of 8.4 and refract it with a parabolism, and there ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... screen of black and gold on which a red-tongued dragon coiled its embroidered length and, by the light of a yellow lantern just above (there was also a tiny blue lantern that flung down a caressing ray upon her smooth dark hair and adorable shoulders) she glanced at some loose leaves taken from an old diary. Then, nerving herself for the effort, she began in a low, ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... voice, these gauche words, this raw accent; but it was powerful and vengeful, and it was full of purpose. Billy quivered, yet his adroit senses caught at a straw in the words, "as rob me!" Charley was counting it a robbery of himself, not of the widows and orphans! That gave him a ray of hope. In a paroxysm of fear, joined to emotional excitement, he fell upon his knees, and pleaded for mercy—for the sake of one chance in life, for the family name, for Kathleen's sake, for the sake of everything ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to the hall wistfully, drawn by the well-remembered sound as by a magnet, and step by step ascended the stairs. A door at the left was ajar and through it came a warm ray of light ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... A ray of hope entered the mind of the field-cornet. He took off his broad felt hat, and held it up to the full stretch of his arm. The wind was blowing from the north, and the swarm was directly to the west ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... record all; hating learning as they hated poison; indulging at the baths in conduct which had best be left undescribed; and "complaining that they were not born among the Cimmerians, if amid their golden fans a fly should perch upon the silken fringes, or a slender ray of the sun should pierce through the awning;" while, if they "go any distance to see their estates in the country, or to hunt at a meeting collected for their amusement by others, they think that they have equalled the marches ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the face of the moon, and a slant ray fell upon the hideous features of the vampire. He looked as if just rescued from some charnel-house, and endowed for a space with vitality to destroy all beauty and harmony in nature, and drive some benighted soul ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... eyes met at length—met, melting and swimming with love. Mine had escaped from my control. For some moments I could not turn them aside, but surrendered them to the impulse of my passion. It was mutual. I doubted it not. I felt as though the ray of love-light was passing between us. I had almost ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... thinking how little you realized what the real life of the city is like, and how much you have that the 'fine ladies,' as you call them, would give fortunes for, and how little they have after all that could add one ray of ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... Causes. A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in general, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in particular. From the German of ERNST HAECKEL, Professor in the University of Jena. The translation revised by Professor E. Ray Lankester, M.A., F.R.S., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Illustrated with Lithographic Plates. In 2 vols., ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... cupboard, and a hammer and some nails. I'm thinking there are few flies in the gardener's cottage, half of it being underground; but hasten and nail up the linen cloth over the window, for the first sun ray will awaken any that are in the cottage, and, if there aren't any, flies will come streaming in from the garden as soon as the light comes, following the scent of blood. No, not there, a little to the right, he heard her crying, and, finding a piece of ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... morning ramble. It was eight o'clock in the evening, she dreamt, and there was some one waiting for her under the pear-tree in the garden. The night air was fresh and fragrant. The moonlight shone on the white blossoms overhead, which clustered so close that no ray penetrated to the ground beneath, so that there all was shadowy, but still she could see that there was some one standing in the shade, and she knew that he was waiting for her. She had never seen him before, yet she knew him well and hurried ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... return safely, and complaining little. One day, in early spring, they had set out with a clear sky and fair wind, and had had one of the most fortunate voyages of any they had yet made on the Breton coast, when, just as they were within sight of the Point de Ray, which raises its bare and jagged head three hundred feet above the noisy waves which brawl at its base, an ominous cloud suddenly overspread the heavens, and the symptoms of a coming storm were but too apparent. With silent awe the solitary mariners ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... A ray of sunlight, piercing the stained glass window above the altar, fell on her face and slim figure; her voice was quite clear and steady, though a little sad perhaps, as she slowly repeated the words after the ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... perchance, where worldliness, discord, and egotism have severed hearts that should be united. God grant the number of the latter may be few! Happy should we be, could we know that our arrival would bring one more smile to the lips of the gay, a single ray of support or consolation to the souls of the sorrowing—could we cause the world-worn to dream of better and brighter things than mere matter can ever afford, give the thinker a pregnant thought, soothe earth's weary art-children with the hope of wider comprehension and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... guarded in the apartments of the Stadholder, while the country and very soon all Europe were ringing with the news of his downfall, imprisonment, and disgrace. The news was a thunder-bolt to the lovers of religious liberty, a ray of dazzling sunlight after a storm to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thought himself to be defective; my recommendation is vulgar, common, and popular; for who ever thought he wanted sense? It would be a proposition that would imply a contradiction in itself; 'tis a disease that never is where it is discerned; 'tis tenacious and strong, but what the first ray of the patient's sight nevertheless pierces through and disperses, as the beams of the sun do thick and obscure mists; to accuse one's self would be to excuse in this case, and to condemn, to absolve. There never was porter ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... these children are to learn in that little red school-house which will determine the future of Western Canada, and not the yearly tale of forty-bushel wheat. In the past, nations out of their very fatness have decayed. Many signs are full of hope. Last winter Mrs. Ray travelled alone with dog-sled all the way from Hudson Bay to Winnipeg to place her children in school. Her husband is a fur-trader and could not leave his post. At all hazards the bairns must be educated, so the brave mother ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... is regarded as the rough material of literature, but it does not become literature until the artist's imagination, as with a divine ray, has penetrated the mass and inspired it with an ideal existence. Among the numerous attempts of his contemporaries to define the creative faculty of the poet, this comparatively simple one of Hazlitt's is worth noting. "This ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... I would never take advantage of your forgiveness, that I would never tempt you to forget yourself, your friends, your family, for me, an unknown outcast. When I found you pitied me, and listened to my love—I was too weak to forego the one ray of sunshine in my wretched life—and, thinking that I had a prospect before me in an idea I promised to reveal to you later, I swore never to beguile you or myself in that hope by any act that might bring you to repent it—or myself to dishonor. But I taxed myself too much, Maruja. I ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... but a little season nought answered Reidmar the wise, But turned his face from the Treasure, and peered with eager eyes Endlong the hall and athwart it, as a man may chase about A ray of the sun of the morning that a naked sword throws out; And lo from Loki's right-hand came the flash of the fruitful ring, And at last spake Reidmar scowling: 'Ye wait for my yea-saying That your feet may go ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... palms to the oil flame, and watching the X-ray-like effects of the light and shadow upon her fingers, she added indifferently, as one idly letting drop a remark requiring no comment, negligently with the voice of one saying "Tomorrow is Tuesday," or "It's mutton today,"—"Of course they're ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... slight ray of light coming from some slit or grating. The dawn had broken outside, and I could dimly see the long, curving sides of several huge casks, which made me think that perhaps this was where the Mayor kept his reserves ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the flames incessantly consume it, and as it disappears the soul reflects more and more perfectly the true sun, who is God. Its contentment increases as this rust wears away, and the soul is laid bare to the divine ray; and thus one increases and the other decreases until the time is accomplished. The pain never diminishes, although the time does; but, as to the will, so united is it to God by pure charity, and so satisfied to be under His divine appointment, that these souls can never say ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... world Night spreads her mantle dun, In dreams, my love, I see those stars, thine eyes, Lighting the dark: but when the royal sun Looks o'er the pines and fires the orient skies, I bask no longer in thy beauty's ray, And lo! my world is bankrupt of delight. Murk night seemed lately fair-complexioned day; Hope-bringing day now seems most doleful night. End, weary day, that art no day to me! Return, fair night, to me the best of days! But O my rose, whom in my dreams I see, Enkindle with like bliss my waking ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... was, that stole so softly through the night, it continued to approach us. Assuredly its captain must know perfectly the channels and shores of Black Rock Creek, since he ventured here in such darkness. Not a light showed upon the deck. Not a single ray from within the ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... joy, became a condition of unending grief. They were on the two sides of a bridgeless river, in plain sight of each other, but forever debarred from hearing the voice or pressing the land of the one beloved, doomed to perpetual toil unlit by any ray of joy or hope. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... education, and for this reason few people get beyond a certain point of mediocrity. It is easy to them to practise the lessons which they have learned, if they practise them in intellectual darkness; but if you let in upon them one ray of philosophic light, you dazzle and confound them, so that they cannot even perform their customary feats. A young man,[33] who had been blind from his birth, had learned to draw a cross, a circle, and ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... Russian realism. Not one lovable character appears in that gloomy picture of merchant life in Moscow; even the old mother repels us by her stupidity more than she attracts us by her kindliness. No ray of light penetrates the "realm of darkness"—to borrow a famous phrase from a Russian critic—conjured up before us by the young dramatist. In "Poverty Is No Crime" we see the other side of the medal. Ostrovsky had now been affected by the ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... Down the near terrace to the farther bank, And only one spot left from out the night Glimmered upon the river opposite— breadth of watery heaven like a bay, A sky-like space of water, ray for ray, And star for star, one richness where they mixed As this and that wing of an angel, fixed, Tumultuary splendours folded ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... a low, creaking sound, which was repeated at short intervals, accompanied by a sliding, shuffling noise. It sounded in the direction of the opening by which the ladder led up from below. Looking there, he saw a ray of light, faint and flickering, yet visible enough in that deep darkness; and as the grating, shuffling sounds succeeded one another at regular intervals, even so did the faint, flickering ray of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... party verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rods to measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in comparison to that, Newton's mind or Pascal's or Shakspeare's was any loftier than mine; as if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots. Measured by that altitude, the tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quickly to his lady a letter in a plate of cucumbers, to advise her of her approaching widowhood, and the hour of flight, with all of which was the fair citizen well content. Then at dusk the soldiers of the watch being got out of the way by the queen, who sent them to look at a ray of the moon, which frightened her, behold the servants raised the grating, and caught the lady, who came quickly enough, and was led through the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... dense and awful growth of impenetrable jungle around us; those stately natural pillars—a glorious phalanx of royal trees, bearing at such sublime heights vivid green masses of foliage, through which no single sun-ray penetrated, while at our feet babbled the primeval brook, over smooth pebbles, in soft tones befitting the sacred quiet of the scene! Who could have desecrated this solemn, holy harmony of nature? But just as I was thinking ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... total darkness: not a ray of light came from the window, and in our confusion we had lost our bearings. Neither of us had the least idea in what direction the other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... ever afterwards heard of her husband, or the father of his two little children, the writer is unable to say. It is possible that this narrative may reveal to the mother and her offspring (if they are still living), the first ray of light concerning the missing one. Indeed it is not unreasonable to suppose, that thousands of anxious wives, husbands and children, who have been scattered in every direction by Slavery, will never be able to learn as much of their lost ones ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... private game and bird preserve of Dr. Ray V. Pierce, at Apalachicola, known as St. Vincent Island, containing twenty square miles of wonderful woods and waters, is performing an important function for the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... rested with the testimony of this man, without one ray of hope for Danvers Carmichael that I could see, unless some of the jurymen were enlightened enough to refuse a conviction in a capital case on any evidence which was circumstantial or conjectural. Motive, abundant motive, had been proven; nearness to the crime at the time of the murder; ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... disappeared. A third time the fire shone, and with such intensity, that no lightning could surpass its brilliance. All around the heavens were lit up, and, through the black needle-shaped eye of the symbol, as from the flare of a beacon, or the search-light of a ship, one fierce ray shot across the sea of mountain tops and the spaces of the desert, straight as an arrow to the lofty peak on which we lay. Yes, it lit upon the snow, staining it red, and upon the wild, white faces of us who watched, though ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... old proverb mean, that if a woman nurses for one year, it takes seven years to recover from the effects of it? Ray has a very ungallant note on the English version of this: "Because, feeding well and doing little, she becomes liquorish, and gets ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... simply comes to this: A little Greek, (not too much,) and a strong self-relying imagination, and you may interpret Holy Scripture as well as—Mr. Jowett!" (p. lxii.) ... Benighted himself, the unhappy author of this Essay is so apprehensive lest a ray of light from Heaven shall break in upon one of his disciples,—even sideways, as it were, from the margin of the Bible,—that he carefully prohibits "the indiscriminate use of parallel passages" as "useless and uncritical." ... Yet may ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... and secured the whiskey bottle. Kemp stared at the devouring dressing gown. A ray of candle-light penetrating a torn patch in the right shoulder, made a triangle of light under the left ribs. "What were the shots?" he asked. "How did the ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... plague had so ravaged Rome that there were not even robbers and thieves left to steal To the survivors, since genuine piety as they knew it was all but universal among the Romans, it was some small comfort, a faint ray of hope, a sign that the gods were not inexorably wrathful, that, after Rabulla's death, there was no case of pestilence in the Atrium, not even among the servitors, that no Vestal so much as sickened. Through it all the six ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... again deep enough to have staved the boat against the rocks. If we went to wreck, the current was setting strongly out to sea; and the Boca was haunted by sharks, and (according to the late Colonel Hamilton Smith) by a worse monster still, namely, the giant ray, {111a} which goes by the name of devil-fish on the Carolina shores. He saw, he says, one of these monsters rise in this very Boca, at a sailor who had fallen overboard, cover him with one of his broad wings, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... a, in the object will send a ray to every point, a', b', c', of the sensitive surface; every point of the retina will therefore be similarly affected, since each will receive rays from every ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... wood distillation and gas making. Unfortunately, Lebon was obliged to undertake too many things at once. He prepared the gas, and produced acetic acid and tar that he had to send to Harve for the use of the navy. Despite all his trouble and fatigue, he had something like a ray of hope. He believed that he saw the day of fortune dawning. His works were visited by numerous scientists, and among others the Russian princes Galitzin and Dolgorouki, who, in the name of their government, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... fiend, man! there thou wast lying like a lord in thy elbow chair, as sound asleep as a judge, when, hadst thou been a lover of any spirit, thou wouldst have been watching the east for the first ray of the sun. But there thou layest, snoring I warrant, thinking nought about her, or anything else; and the poor girl rises at peep of day, lest any one else should pick up her most precious and vigilant Valentine, and wakes thee with a grace which—so help me, St. Macgrider!—would have put life ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... in writing such letters as these, foolish though they might be. That idea of distant wanderings with Miss McCroke was the one faint ray of hope offered by the future—not a star, assuredly, but at least a farthing candle. The governess answered in her friendly matter-of-fact way. She would like much to travel with her dearest Violet. The life would be like heaven after her present drudgery in finishing the Misses Pontifex, ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... A ray of joy lighted up Wilhelmine's face as she listened, but it disappeared with the tears which flowed afresh. "I am a poor, unfortunate child," she sobbed, "whom every one despises, and fears not to injure, who has no one to counsel or protect her, and who is lost if God does not ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... III.vii.13 (421,6) ray lord of Glo'ster] Meaning Edmund, newly invested with his father's titles. The steward, speaking immediately after, mentions the old duke ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... they promise me farther success in Soudan and Bornou. Alas! God alone knows what is reserved for us; but we must not despair after these, events of Aheer. At first all was black, without one solitary ray of light; now, all the Sultans of Aheer are determined they say, conjointly, to afford us protection: whilst the people are showing themselves ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... water from the ravine, and promised eyes of favor if his Infernal Majesty would build an aqueduct to her door before morning. He worked all night, like the Devil, and the maiden, opening her black eyes at sunrise, saw him putting the last stone in the last arch, as the first ray of the sun lighted on his shining tail. The Church, we think very unfairly, decided that he had failed, and released the coquettish contractor from her promise; and it is said the Devil has never trusted a Sego-vian out of his ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... evening fell, deepening the gloom into darkness—the one last, bright ray had long been past, when a youth came from the adjacent valley. That grave but yesterday received one who was to have been his bride—his betrothed from childhood, for whose sake he had been to far lands ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... minutes to let the captain get clear away, then leaving his hiding-place and again keeping on the grass, he passed down the drive and out on to the road. He was profoundly disappointed. He had failed in his purpose, and the only ray of light in the immediate horizon was that last remark of Archer's. If it meant, as he presumed it did, that the men were to communicate by the secret telephone at eleven in the morning, all might not yet be lost. He might learn then ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... with you in the abstract most heartily; but the only bold thing that I have seen Miss Burton do was to run under the feet of my horses. You might as well call a ray of sunshine bold and forward; and people like sunshine when it is as nicely tempered as her manner is. I confess that when I first learned who she was, and before I had met her personally, I was greatly ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... be alone together in the temple. I seized that opportunity of investigating the state of his thoughts. After a pause, which he seemed in no wise inclined to interrupt, I spoke to him—"How almost palpable is this dark; yet a ray from above would dispel it." "Ay," said Wieland, with fervor, "not only the physical, but moral night would be dispelled." "But why," said I, "must the Divine Will address its precepts to the eye?" He smiled significantly. "True," said he, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... was speaking he thrust his hand into the inmost fold of his girdle and drew out three great gems—one blue as a fragment of the night sky, one redder than a ray of sunrise, and one as pure as the peak of a snow mountain at twilight—and laid them on the outspread linen ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... a ray of brightness on her face, "but not earthly hope. That is over, and I am more at rest and peace than I can remember to have been since I was a babe at my mother's knee. But, little one, I must preserve thee for thine Humfrey and for happiness, and so thou must be gone ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... text of Ammianus, we read Asper, quidem, sed ad lenitatem propensior; which forms a sentence of contradictory nonsense. With the aid of an old manuscript, Valesius has rectified the first of these corruptions, and we perceive a ray of light in the substitution of the word vafer. If we venture to change lenitatem into lexitatem, this alteration of a single letter will render the whole ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... in due place and subordination. The motions of immortal man did begin within. The lamp of reason did shine and give light to it, and till that went before, there was no stirring, no choosing, no refusing, and when reason—which was one sparkle of the divine nature, or a ray of God's light reflected into the soul of man,—when once that did appear to the discerning of good and evil this power was in the soul, to apply the whole man accordingly, to choose the good and refuse the evil. It had not been a lively resemblance of God to have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... that we ought to do something about furnishing better quarters for the men?" he asked. "I have had the matter on my conscience for months. Look at that tenement of the Turners! It is old, out of date, crowded and stuffy. There isn't a ray of sunshine in it. It's a disgrace to herd a family into such a place. And I suppose there are ever so many others like ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... A, which is the same angle as, for instance, a ray of light, B, which falls on a mirror, C. The line D ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... connection with the inspection and testing of aircraft parts, particularly in the case of metal, was the experimental application of X-ray photography, which showed up latent defects, both in the material and in manufacture, which would otherwise have passed unnoticed. This method was also used to test the penetration of glue into the wood on each ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... joy the grand chaos of struggling forms dissolves into a harmonious sea of oblivion. When the ray of happiness breaks in the last tear of longing, Iris is already adorning the eternal brow of heaven with the delicate tints of her many-colored rainbow. Sweet dreams come true, and the pure forms of a new generation rise up out of Lethe's waves, beautiful as Anadyomene, and exhibit their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... all the way, but arriving at nothing. He was trying to make bricks without straw. Pinckney did not drink, nor did he gamble, and he was far too good a business man to be had in that way. However, all things come to him who waits, and next morning's post brought him a ray of light in the midst of ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... sweet fancies around this hero of her dreams, and she began unconsciously to look forward to the time when she should meet him again. Well for her that it was so! for she was a "pale meek blossom" unsuited for rough blasts, and the only ray of sunshine which was ever to fall across her life lay in the love ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... when the sun shone on the lingering raindrops, Lyddy was gone out, and Esther chose to sit in the kitchen. She was not reading, but stitching, and as her fingers moved nimbly, something played about her lips like a ray. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... last words were almost inaudible: it was very wonderful for her to say so much. And a new ray of light seemed to flash on Jacinth's path as she listened. If such a thing were possible, if it could come to pass that Lady Myrtle should reinstate her nephew and his family in their natural place in her affection and regard, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... not come back!"—justifies us, I think, in inferring that Justina Chopin was a woman of the most lovable type, one in whom the central principle of existence was the maternal instinct, that bright ray of light which, dispersed in its action, displays itself in the most varied and lovely colours. That this principle, although often all-absorbing, is not incompatible with the wider and higher social and intellectual interests ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... I had told him a little of my errand, for I was working on the hunch that this man I was after concerned not only the United States, but France and the Continent as well. And what Foulet told me served only to strengthen my conviction. So, meeting him in Constantinople was a thin ray of light in my disgusted darkness. At least I could ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... corturnix, Lin.) are birds of passage from the coast of Barbary to Italy, and have frequently settled in large shoals on ships fatigued with their flight. (Ray, Wisdom of God, p. 129. Derham. Physic. Theol. v. ii. p. 178,) Dr. Ruffel, in his History of Aleppo, observes that the swallows visit that country about the end of February, and having hatched their young disappear about the end of July; and returning ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... without a ray of hope for Hollingsworth; but the reader can perceive one in the generous devotion of his single-minded wife, even if Hawthorne ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... by Heaven, grows bright With more than rapture's ray, As darkness shows us worlds of light, We never ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... typical shadows of the Mosaic dispensation, fixed the attention of patriarchs, and prophets, and saints, for four thousand years:—and upon this otherwise obscure and insignificant female beamed the first ray of that evangelical morning which rose upon the world with such blissful radiance, and is increasing to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... the placid day, A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly; The south wind sows with ripple and with ray The pleasant waters; and the gentle sky Looks on the homestead like ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... of medicine. The physiological researches of Willis first threw light upon the structure of the brain. Woodward was the founder of mineralogy. In his edition of Willoughby's "Ornithology," and in his own "History of Fishes," John Ray was the first to raise zoology to the rank of a science; and the first scientific classification of animals was attempted in his "Synopsis of Quadrupeds." Modern botany began with Ray's "History of Plants," and the researches of an Oxford professor, Robert Morrison; while Grew divided with Malpighi ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... monarch's call The best of hermits told him all, How in the grove with him they dwelt, And slaughter to the demons dealt. Then wonder filled the monarch's breast, Who tended well each royal guest. Thus entertained, the princely pair Remained that night and rested there, And with the morn's returning ray To Mithila ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI |
