"Spark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is gunpowder, that a single spark of fire, lighting upon any of it, will cause it to explode with immense force; and instances have occurred, when any store or magazine of it has taken fire, that have been attended with the most fatal effects. It is useful to ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... could be roasted, so he gave his whole attention to the felling of dry trees and cutting them up into logs for the fire. Jasper was also hungry, and a slight shower had wetted all the moss and withered grass, so he had enough to do to strike fire with flint and steel, catch a spark on a little piece of tinder, and then blow and coax the spark ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... all of a faint lemon-colour along the horizon, deepening in some places to the very tenderest tone of pink—a pink that suggested in a dim way that the soft lemon sky was about to see at once another dawn. Low down on the horizon one bright white spark struck itself ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... words other than those the playwright had given his Christ to say—words that told her he knew the height and the depth of her sacrifice and forgave it, "Neither do I condemn thee...." In his exultation he saw what it was to perform miracles, to remit sins. The spark of divinity that was in him glowed to a white heat; the woman on the stage warmed her hands at it in two consciousnesses. She was stirred through all her artistic sense in a new and delicious way, and wakened in some ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... wrote, that it was winter. This was the time to maul the wretches. The nights were so long, the mountain tops so cold and stormy, that even the hardiest men could not long bear exposure to the open air without a roof or a spark of fire. That the women and the children could find shelter in the desert was quite impossible. While he wrote thus, no thought that he was committing a great wickedness crossed his mind. He was happy in the approbation of his own conscience. Duty, justice, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Virgin Mary. I believe his birth was as natural as his death was cruel and untimely. You believe that—he was divine. I believe he was a man of like passions as we ourselves are,—a Son of God only as every noble spirit is a spark struck off from the heavenly Original. You believe that he bears our sins upon a tree. I believe that every soul must bear its own burdens. What is there in common between us? What good could it do to you or to me to take Sunday ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... with him; and then she sat resting against her aunt, closed her eyes, and half dozed in the rattle of the train, not moving in the pause at the stations, but quite conscious that Colonel Mohun said, 'Not a spark of feeling for anybody, not even for that man! As ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inspector grunted suspiciously and wanted to know if the auxiliary batteries were properly charged. With a faint smile, Moore hooked up the auxiliary apparatus, tapped the key, and a crinkly blue spark snapped between the brass points above the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... without a word. She was getting a little afraid of him. They inspected the library and wandered back into the picture gallery. It was she, now, who was silent. She had shown him all her favorite treasures without being able to evoke a single spark of enthusiasm. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have passed the big landing-place yet. If we have, only just. Yes, that must be it, and this must be the spot. Oh! if we could only see a spark of light from the Residency we should know where ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Mermaid, the Seagull. They employ none but Englishmen in their stables, which are of English design, with English fittings. They have English dogs,—fox-terriers, bull-terriers, collies,—also with English names, Toby, Jack, Spark, Snap, and so forth. They speak English with only the remotest trace of foreignness—were they not educated at Eton, and at Trinity College, Cambridge? And they would fain Anglicise, not merely the uniform of the Italian police, but the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... strongest interest and sympathy. I stated briefly the mortifying disappointments to which Charles Edward was exposed in France, the hopelessness of his cause, and the indifference generally shown to him by the continental courts, which so much preyed on his mind as finally to stifle every spark of his former character, so that he gave himself up to a listless indifference, which terminated in his becoming a sot during the latter years of his life. On turning round to the Prince, who had been listening to these details, I perceived ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... we were at Margaret's," Jennie returned, "for then we could romp around and not care anything about what happened to our clothes." Jennie hadn't a spark of vanity and cared so little for dress as to be a surprise ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... One who declared it to be a legitimate source of joy to every mother that a child was born to the world? upon One whose love to all whom He has made is to our love as the light of the mighty sun to a fire-fly's spark wandering ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... of "Men from Mars!" Excited men came into the station about nine o'clock with incredible tidings, and caused no more disturbance than drunkards might have done. People rattling Londonwards peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and saw only a rare, flickering, vanishing spark dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke driving across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a heath fire was happening. It was only round the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... as necessary to the author as to the grocer, the solicitor, the dentist, the barrister, the soldier. Nothing but nature can give the aptitude; diligence must improve it, and experience may direct it. It is not enough to wait for the spark from heaven to fall; the spark must be caught, and tended, and cherished. A man must labour till he finds his vein, and himself. Again, if literature is an art, it is also a profession. A man's very first duty is to support himself and those, if any, who are dependent on him. If he cannot do ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... rather several interviews—with a reigning monarch would have been considered in those days as a first-rate chance for anyone who had a spark of ambition. Nothing would have been easier than to put in a plea for a benefice or a bishopric; but Vincent, who was both humble and unselfish, had no thought of his own advancement. His only desire was to get his business over and to leave the ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... Austria a young crown prince, Francis Ferdinand, was murdered. It was the spark which set off the powder mine of Europe. But not for him are they fighting. Behind him stood the two contending forces of the growing nationalism of Serbia and the expanding commercialism of Austria. These two forces clashed in conflict, but not for them are they fighting. Behind these ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... was not a big man, but he supported my considerable weight with apparent ease. A deadly nausea held me, but the rough handling had served to restore me to consciousness. My hands and feet were closely lashed. I hung limply as a wet towel: I felt that this spark of tortured life which had flickered up in me must ere ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... leads to marriage should no doubt be spontaneous. Who does not feel that? Young love should speak from its first doubtful unconscious spark,—a spark which any breath of air may quench or cherish,—till it becomes a flame which nothing can satisfy but the union of the two lovers. No one should be told to love, or bidden to marry, this man or that woman. The theory of this is plain to us all, and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... cloud rock, until there was not a spark left alight, and rushed down through the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... government of subversion has saved Italy from utter ruin, it is nothing less than the zeal and devotedness of its pastors. In the remonstrance referred to, they declare that notwithstanding all the contradictions, the trials, the obstacles they have had to encounter, "not one spark of charity, of zeal, of pastoral and fatherly solicitude has been quenched in our souls. We solemnly affirm it, with our anointed hands on our hearts, and with the help of God's grace, these sentiments shall never depart from us ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... and grass stains; his flame-coloured tie was twisted under one ear; his new straw hat was mashed quite out of shape; and in his eyes was a light that sundry citizens, on meeting him, could only interpret to be a spark struck from ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... sedulously inculcated the natural equality of mankind, and the tyranny of artificial distinctions; and the poorer classes, still smarting under the exactions of the late reign, were by the impositions of the new tax wound up to a pitch of madness. Thus the materials had been prepared; it required but a spark to set the whole ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... without having studied at the college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding his services, from a case of common surfeit-suffocation to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant Cannabis outwardly. But though he declineth not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... think of nothing else. He would not buy it for her. He thought her too silly to trust. But, if it were Robin's—it would be hers also. A girl couldn't turn her own mother into the street. Amid the folds of her narrow being hid just one spark of shrewdness which came to life where ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... funny little smile flitted over Arlee's face; not once did she glance at Billy, but for all her air of unconsciousness he felt that she was subtly sharing her thoughts with him and a quick spark of gladness flashed ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the United States he embarked from Havre on the packet ship Sully, in the autumn of 1832 and in a casual conversation with some of the passengers on the then recent discovery in France of the means of obtaining the electric spark from the magnet, showing the identity or relation of electricity and magnetism, Morse's mind conceived, not merely the idea of an electric telegraph, but of an electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph; ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... things and visions lately made familiar to his thoughts. Mounting from philosophy to religion, he indulged in his large ideas upon life and nature: of the stars that now came forth in heaven; of the laws that gave harmony to the universe; of the evidence of a God in the mechanism of creation; of the spark from central divinity, that, kindling in a man's soul, we call "genius;" of the eternal resurrection of the dead, which makes the very principle of being, and types, in the leaf and in the atom, the immortality of the great human race. He was sublimer, that gray old man, hunted from ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... politician and false friend, bawling rabble and undiscriminating soldiery, the host of indifferent or approving faces of the public behind them—they seem strangely familiar to us. They have been, they are still, alive by turns in us. The harmless spark of electricity that greets the touch of one's hand on a metal knob on a winter's day is one with the bolt of lightning that wrecks a giant oak. The selfish impulse, the narrow prejudice, the ignorant suspicion, the callous indifference, the self-satisfied ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... mayors was so little to Haydon's taste that by the close of this year we find him in deep depression of spirits, unrelieved by even a spark of his old sanguine buoyancy. 'I candidly confess,' he writes, 'I find my glorious art a bore. I cannot with pleasure paint any individual head for the mere purpose of domestic gratification. I must have a great subject to excite public feeling.... Alas! I have no ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... themselves in, and a spasm of fresh strength and fury lifted the line and heaved it forward. So far the fire of its fury brought it; and there the hosing shrapnel met it, swept down and washed it away, and beat it out to the last spark ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... we can always refer to contemporary numbers of "Punch," the fact that I was for the most part walking sedately either with my mother or my aunt, or even with my sister and her governess, caused the spark of my vision that they were armed for conquest, or at the least for adventure, more expansively to glow. I am not sure whether as a general thing they honoured me at such instants with a sign of recognition; ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... ourselves or friends, and struggle against such fate as we struggle against death itself. It is a foolish sentiment perhaps, for when the soul leaves the body a mere handful of clod and marl, the spark of divinity forever quenched, it really does not matter what happens to the body, nor where it crumbles into dust. But we cherish the sentiment, nevertheless, and dread having to fill pauper graves. And when ten per cent, of those who die in the richest ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... difference deeply. He also came direct from Copenhagen, where he had heard it said that I had read in company one of my own poems. He looked at me with a penetrating glance, and commanded me to bring him the poem, when, if he found in it one spark of poetry, he would forgive me. I tremblingly brought to him "The Dying Child;" he read it, and pronounced it to be sentimentality and idle trash. He gave way freely to his anger. If he had believed that I wasted ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... her, for he was as poor as a church mouse, and did not know that his beauty was the equal in her eyes to all the treasures of the world, was not taken in her trap, but continued to ride the high horse with his hand on his hips. This disdain of her passion irritated Madame to the heart, which by this spark was set in flame. If you doubt this, it is because you know nothing of the profession of the Madame Imperia, who by reason of it might be compared to a chimney, in which a great number of fires have been lighted, which had filled it with soot; in this state a match was sufficient to burn everything ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... sure and safe guides. His gratitude soon received the additions of esteem and admiration, and the young disciple felt the growth of desires which it is difficult to believe were real, but which became so pressing, that they revived in a heart nearly extinct a feeble spark of that fire with which it had formerly burned. Mademoiselle de l'Enclos refused to accede to the desires of her lover until she was fully eighty years of age, a term which did not cool the ardor of the amorous Abbe, who waited impatiently and on ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... drear and dark,[sn] And reason half withheld her ray— And Hope but shed a dying spark Which more misled my lonely way; In that deep midnight of the mind, And that internal strife of heart, When dreading to be deemed too kind, The weak despair—the cold depart; When Fortune changed—and Love fled far,[so] And Hatred's shafts flew thick and fast, Thou wert ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... upward at the elbow at the side. Again and again he tried this Sylvester method of inducing respiration, but with no more result than Dr. Burnham had secured. He turned the body over on its face and tried the new Schaefer method. There seemed to be not a spark of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... our two souls have somewhere been acquainted In former beings, or, struck out together, One spark to Africk flew, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... a spark of it in the breasts of those collected about that cottage, in which lies the corpse of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... would wish to show that had it not burned thus strangely concentrated and pure, the poets of succeeding ages could not have taken from that white flame of love which Dante set alight upon the grave of Beatrice, the spark of ideal passion which has, in the noblest of our literature, made the desire of man for woman and of woman for man burn clear towards heaven, leaving behind the noisome ashes and soul-enervating vapours of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... she actually dropped her knitting-work on the floor and rushed out of the room crying, "Fire!" though there was not a spark of fire ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... wires that were attached to the receiving and sending apparatus. These wires were on a reel, and would he uncoiled as the balloon arose. The earth-end would be attached to the telephone receivers and to the apparatus, consisting of a spark-gap wheel and other instruments designed to send into space the electrical impulses that could be broken up into dots, dashes and spaces, spelling out words according to the Morse ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... a most thirsty-looking level, the low brushwood on which cracked and snapped as we walked through it, with a brittle dryness that testified how perfectly parched-up was everything. A single spark would instantly have wrapped the whole face of the country in one sheet of fire. Slight blasts of heated withering air, as if from an oven, would occasionally strike the face as we walked along; sometimes ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... hearing what I said, exclaimed, "Massa, me got light, nebber fear!" Groping about, he soon found two pieces of dry wood, and fashioning them with his knife, he began to rub one against the other in a way which at length produced a bright spark. I had a handful of leaves ready, and we had quickly a capital fire blazing up just inside the cave. How grateful we ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... precaution was used to prevent persons sick of the small-pox from breathing fresh air. When Mrs. Ramsay had this disease in Charleston, S.C., her friends, supposing that life was extinct, caused her body to be removed from the house to an open shed. The pure air revived the vital spark. The result probably would have been different, had she been kept a few hours longer in the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... degree of social value, because it rises above the idioms of person or race and is universally acceptable in form and essence. Such is the intrinsic nature of the process, and the historical circumstances of its beginnings make it clear. It was the quick mind of the Greek which acted as the spark to fire the trains of thought and observation which had been accumulating for ages through the agency of the priests in Egypt and Babylonia. The Greeks lived and travelled between the two centres, and their earliest ...
— Progress and History • Various
... with the visage of a madman. "A woman base, without a spark of kindliness—an adventuress! This is the picture of that Eleanor Gwyn! Where is a champion to take up the gauntlet ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... a swarthy spark Still lightens in the sunburnt native's eye; The stately port, slow step, and visage dark, Still mark enduring pride and constancy. And, if the glow of feudal chivalry Beam not, as once, thy nobles' dearest ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... I not tell ye, when ye wad take away the boy Harry Bertram, in spite of my prayers,—did I not say he would come back when he had dree'd his weird in foreign land till his twenty-first year?—Did I not say the auld fire would burn down to a spark, but wad ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... monster in the gloom He points his pistol quick, and fires; Before the powder spark expires He hears a sea-bird's ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... understand him as, though Greek by birth, Romanior ipsis Romanis: Greek body, but ultra-Roman ego. One may see the like thing happen with one's own eyes at any time: men European-born, who are quite the extremest Americans. In his case, the spark of his Greek heredity set alight the Roman conflagration of his nature. He was born in Calabria, a Roman subject, in 239; and had fought for Rome before Cato, then quaestor, brought him in his train ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... principle. He wished to render me ridiculous and do me harm. A man who could act as he did, cannot possess a spark of honourable feeling. Does a good fountain send forth bitter waters? Is not a tree known by its fruit? When a man seeks wantonly to insult and injure me, I discover that he wants principle, and wish to have no more ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... voice, though he showed a spark of feeling presently. The fire, however, was for his dead father, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... trust then I was misinformd when I was told that it was countenanced by those who of all Men ought to pay the most sacred Regard to the Law. Are we arrivd to such a Pitch of Levity & Dissipation as that the Idea of feasting shall extinguish every Spark of publick Virtue, and frustrate the Design of the most noble and useful Institution. I hope not. Shall we not again see that Sobriety of Manners, that Temperance, Frugality, Fortitude and other manly Virtues wch were once ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... they attempted to kindle a fire. Their matches were wet and useless. Their flint-lock gun would give forth a spark, but without some dry material that would readily ignite, it ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... move a table, a la Palladino, he failed to do so, but whenever he lifted his hands away from the table, "sparkling" took place between his hands and the table-top, closely resembling the electric spark which jumps from point to point when the tension has reached ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... Berith there is a pile of tree-branches. The Shechemites look out from the windows of the temple upon what seems to them childish play on the part of their enemies. But soon the flints are struck, and the spark begins to kindle the brush, and the flame comes up all through the pile, and the red elements leap to the casement, and the woodwork begins to blaze, and one arm of flame is thrown up on the right side of the temple, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... night was cold, and the wind piercing as it whipped across the water. For protection she drew around her shoulders a blanket which had been placed over her body when she was unconscious. That the Indians must have done this was a faint ray of light in the darkness of her despair. There must be some spark of feeling in their savage hearts, at any rate. She longed to see their faces. Were they hard and brutal, or did they exhibit some signs of friendliness? She thought of Dane and Pete. How soon they would hasten to her assistance if they ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... spark. "You might help me!" she exclaimed. "At least you need not make it harder for me—" she checked herself, and went on in a carefully even tone. "I am so ashamed of myself!" she said. "I thought when I came here that I had quite got myself in hand; the other day taught me a lesson. I was abominably ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... artificial; his tricks and mannerisms showed through like familiar trade marks. Strangely enough, the girl also had failed to get the most out of the scene, and this morning, both star and leading woman seemed particularly cold and unresponsive. They lacked the spark, the uplifting intensity, which was essential, therefore, in desperation, Phillips finally tried the expedient of altering their "business," of changing positions, postures, and crosses; but they went through the scene for a second time as mechanically ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... mock me in the brighter air, Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty, Unfit for working or to be refined, That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye, I turn away from that base cave, the mind. Yet had I but the power to crush the stone There are strange metals hid in flakes therein, Each flake a spark sole-hidden and alone, That only cunning, toilsome chemists win. All this I know, and yet my chemistry Fails and the ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... long lines of railway running off through the forest, and wait for the coming train. The evening fell while we looked; the train was late; and at last when it came I could only know it in the distance by the red spark of its ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... did the chamois stand so fair a mark, Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed With novel births of wonder? Not one spark Of pity in that steel-grey glance which gleamed At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped Idly the granite? Let me glide unseen From thy proud presence: well may'st thou be queen Of all those strange ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... marks the progress of consumption—and the healthy, but not robust frame of its victim, became emaciated and feeble. The fall of the year 179-, brought the chilling blasts of November to quench the flickering spark of life in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... the Paduans to insult, and that the hot youths came to blows. In an instant the standard of St. Mark was thrown down and trampled under the feet of the furious Paduans; blood flowed, and the indignant Trevisans drove the combatants out of their city. The spark of war spreading to the rival cities, the Paduans were soon worsted, and three hundred of their number were made prisoners. These they would willingly have ransomed at any price, but their enemies would not release them except on the payment ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... nerve to solder the wire again. Cogs told me that they had just fitted up the Naguadavick stations with Bain's chemical revolving disk. This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric spark passes through it, is changed to Prussian blue. Your despatch is noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines. Just as the disk started on that fatal despatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his spirit-lamp blew up,—as the dear ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... robes are soil'd and dark, To yonder shining ground; As this pale taper's earthly spark, To yonder argent round; So shows my soul before the Lamb, My spirit before Thee; So in mine earthly house I am, To that I hope to be. Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far, Thro' all yon starlight keen, Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... spark o' Nature's fire, That's a' the learning I desire; Then, though I trudge thro' dub an' mire At pleugh or cart, My Muse, though hamely in attire, May touch ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... laughed so much afterwards, that the quinsy was gone; for the Captain had anecdotes suited to all times and seasons—he only wanted listeners, and off he went like an alarum. Sunday put him in mind of that day twelvemonths; and that day put him in mind of Richard Spark, of the Native Infantry; Rich. Spark put him in mind of how they got that Hindoo millionaire, Makemuchjee Catch-muchjee, into a Christian church, by walking him between them, in a state of ether; how he (the Hindoo) was mollified by the sermon, and went ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... convicted, I cannot and will not recant. Here I stand - I cannot do otherwise - God be my help, Amen.' It is evident enough that to this man all popes, cardinals, emperors, devils, all hosts and nations were but weak, weak as the forest with all its strong trees might be to the smallest spark of electric fire." ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... he had been unjust in bringing her into troubled waters. They had loved each other, and therefore, whatever might be the troubles, it was right that they should marry each other. There was not a spark of anger against him in ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... have killed him then, I hated him so. At least, I thought I could; but just then Tom sent a spark out of the corner of his eye to me ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... knew it, for you've let your fire go down confoundedly. Why Winthrop! there's hardly a spark here! What have ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... shell. How it could have come there I do not know, except it was thrown overboard from some Chinese craft and washed up there. Well, that bit of china was of more use to us than its weight in gold. Taking it in my hand, and beginning to strike it against the back of my knife, what was my joy to see a spark fly from it. It was but one; but one little spark was, I knew, enough to kindle a great fire. Well, we dried our tinder in the sun, and then began to strike away with the flint and china. Roger Trew took it in hand first, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... who went and left my heart to pine alone fore'er, No spark of life remains in me, since ye away did fare! I have an eye that doth complain of sleeplessness alway; Tears have consumed it; would to God that sleeplessness would spare! When ye departed, after you the lover did abide; But question of him what of pain in absence he doth bear. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... parapeted wall; there was space below me, depth I could not fathom, but hearing an endless splash of waves, I believed it to be the sea; sea spread to the horizon; sea of changeful green and intense blue; all was soft in the distance; all vapour-veiled. A spark of gold glistened on the line between water and air, floated up, appeared, enlarged, changed; the object hung midway between heaven and earth, under the arch of the rainbow; the soft but dark clouds diffused behind. It hovered as on wings; pearly, fleecy, gleaming air streamed ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the faint, vital spark to smoulder down or leap out. The moor was very unfrequented at this hour; at certain periods of the day, portions of it, intersected by meandering tracks, were crossed by men labouring in the adjacent fields or quarry; but till then it was ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... The spark in question was called Ruggieri da Jeroli, a man of noble birth, but of lewd life and blameworthy carriage, insomuch that he had left himself neither friend nor kinsman who wished him well or cared to see him and was defamed throughout all Salerno for thefts and other knaveries of the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... had the divine spark. She may have possibly deserved the epithet of the "tenth Muse," bestowed on her by ancient writers, or of "the Poetess," as Homer was "the Poet." Among the one hundred and seventy fragments preserved some are of great beauty—the following, for example, which is as delightful as a Japanese ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... much less ten days, fasting and praying and waiting upon God for His anointing that should fill them with heavenly wisdom and power for their work. They are like a great gun loaded and primed, but without a spark of fire to turn the powder and ball ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... social system. They had a 'discussion crowd' and the point of abolishing the clubs was brought up by some one—everybody there leaped at it—it had been in each one's mind, more or less, and it just needed a spark ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... is from the south," he said, "and a spark of the hot refuse shot down the bank has been blown into ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... his feet nervously against the cold, cupping his cigarette in his hand to suck up the tiny spark of warmth. The night air bit his nostrils and made the smoke tasteless in the darkness. Atmosphere screens kept the oxygen in, all right—but they never kept the biting cold out. As the light disappeared he dropped the cigarette, ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... having made an End, and put to Silence all the other Boasts, there was a young Prodigal Spark that had wasted a fair Estate in being a Customer to her House, thought he had now a fit opportunity to put her in Mind of his own ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb That carries anger, as the flint bears fire; Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark, And straight is ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... the barrister. "You never had the slightest spark of moral courage," he observed aloud, in pained tones. "What ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was darkness for a while, and he was beginning to feel the calm of certainty as regarded their being perfectly free from observation, when, from the nearest point where he had made out the watchers, he suddenly became aware of how close one party was by seeing the faint spark of light which the next minute deepened into a glow, and the wind wafted to his nostrils the odour of ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... had never remarked it before; but now it flashed across me like lightning—and like lightning vanished; for Lillian's eye caught mine, and there was the faintest spark of a smile of recognition, and pleased surprise, and a nod. I blushed scarlet with delight; some servant-girl or other, who stood next to me, had seen it too—quick-eyed that women are—and was looking curiously at me. I turned, I knew not why, in my ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... most blithe to hear. And so let that be my last word of Oscar. Cornelius, bring in the lawyer body, and let us be ower wi' it; for I think it verra needfu' that the two lads should even pack their mails and take train this day for the West. You'll have an eye on this young spark, Mr. Boland? And gie him a bit word of counsel from time to time, should ye see him temptit to whilly-whas and follies? I fear me he is ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the pair seized the handle to pomp the fatal electric spark along the wire to the hidden mine under ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... crank-case oil. Replace the latter with one of lighter grade; have the radiator filled with a good anti-freeze in sufficient quantity so that you will be safe on the coldest days against the hazard of a frozen radiator; have the ignition system thoroughly overhauled and new spark points put in the distributor. Most important of all, get a new storage battery if the one you have is more than ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... Wright's preface, and his letter to the Athenaeum, May 19, 1888. He is very hard (too hard it seems) on Robert, of whose work he says: "As literature it is as worthless as twelve thousand lines of verse without one spark of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... kindling to the spark which seemed to leap towards him from the other, answered without a moment's ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... flat wood, turn it nimbly by holding it between both their hands. In doing this, they often shift their hands up, and then move them down, with a view of increasing the pressure as much as possible. By this process they obtain fire in less than two minutes, and from the smallest spark they carry it to any height or extent with great ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... procure them a night's lodging at the Grange, and after the morning's mass and meat, sped them on their way with his blessing, muttering to himself, "That elder one might have been the staff of mine age! Pity on him to be lost in the great and evil City! Yet 'tis a good lad to follow that fiery spark his brother. Tanquam ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one of her deepest and truest feelings, she would glance around, suddenly alert and suspicious to surprise the twinkle in her auditor's eye. But in the clear blue of Milly Flaxman's quiet eyes, she had ceased to look for that tormenting twinkle, that spark which seemed destined to dance about her from the cradle to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... was his gallant steed bestrode, And forth upon his way he rode, As spark flies from a brand; Upon his crest he bare a tower, And therein stuck a lily flower: ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... bade her stand still, turned round, went back alone to the loft where the tallow candle stood guttering and flaring planted in the middle of the gunpowder, resolutely put an untrembling hand beneath it, took it out so steadily that no spark fell, carried it down, and when she came to the bottom of the stairs dropped on her knees, and broke forth in a thanksgiving aloud for the safety of the household in this frightful peril. This high-spirited lady lived to be ninety years old, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little girl, twelve years old now, nine when her first volume of verses appeared, Hilda Conkling is not so much the infant prodigy as a clear proof that the child mind, before the precious spark is destroyed, possesses both vision and the ability to express it in natural and beautiful rhythm. Grace Hazard Conkling, herself a poet, is Hilda's mother. They live at Northampton, Massachusetts, in the academic atmosphere ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... he lit the punk—a firecracker caught a spark,— Then rockets and wheels and bombs went off—no longer the place was dark! The explosions made a fearful noise, the flames leaped high and higher, The village folk awoke and cried, "The town hall is on fire!" So the strike of the fireworks ended ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... quite a duke's son, has been speaking to her Grandmama, and to-day, this morning, the venerable old lady quite as much as gave me to understand that an union between our brother and her son's child would sweetly gratify her, and help her to go to her rest in peace. Can I chase that spark of comfort from one so truly pious? Dearest Juliana! I have anticipated Evan's feeling for her, and so she thinks his conduct cold. Indeed, I told her, point blank, he loved her. That, you know, is different from saying, dying ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... white as the fair amaille,[10] A goodly chain of small orfeverie,[11] Whereby there hang a ruby without fail Like to a heart yshapen verily, That as a spark of lowe[12] so wantonly Seemed burning upon her white throat; Now if there was good, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... never knew, I never guessed until long after you had come into my life, and gone away again, how much I owed to you. Then I began to see, first in gleams, and then plainly. Your momentary attraction towards me was a tiny spark of the Divine love, a sort of little lantern leading ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... in Histories if an outbreak in the kitchen should crown them; and to promote that prospect she had through Susan's eyes more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions are prepared. To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark applied to the inflammables and already causing them to crackle would prove to have been the circumstance of one's being called a horrid low thief for refusing to part with one's own. The redeeming point of this tension was, on the fifth day, that it actually appeared to have had to do with ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... and well, before he was threatened with the coming malady, how amusing he was—such a cheery companion! I have often thought, when we left his company, that I would put down his clever, witty rejoinders—they were legion! and never a spark of ill-nature. I never remember his saying an unkind word of ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... censure when merited than of praise where praise is due; entering, almost without the help of language from me, into my inmost thoughts; assisting me, if I may so speak, to comprehend myself; and raising to a steadfast and bright flame the spark that my wayward fancy, left to itself, would ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... once became universal and all- pervading. This love had undoubtedly existed before, as it could scarcely have originated and swollen to such proportions all at once; but as the stroke of the hammer reveals the spark, so the force of opposition enkindled the flame and caused it to burst forth into view. At the first blow it showed itself throughout the island, and thus the people ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... to your Lordship, delivered his Catholic Majesty, King Philip the Fourth, in a condition utterly deplored by most, though with a little spark of hope in some, even physicians, upon a lightening that showed itself before death as it proved, his Majesty giving up the ghost this morning between four and five of the clock, witnessed immediately by all the bells in the town; this being somewhat observable in my opinion, that neither his ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... over again, an impudent leer in his eyes. 'A lady?' he exclaimed. 'Umph! I could understand a young spark going in for such—but that's your ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... described the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him with sparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe the features. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He could not imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said, gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turning his head he found the Shape close ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... this idea has long been familiar to believers in magic. In more than one Italian legend which I have collected a sorceress or goddess evolves a life from her own soul, as a fire emits a spark. In fact, the fancy occurs in some form in all mythologies, great or small. In one old Irish legend a wizard turns a Thought into a watch-dog. The history of genius and of Invention is that of realizing ideas, of making them clearer and stronger and ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... was to be asserted, true or false, to blacken the reigning dynasty. . . to find this truly diabolic idea presented to him by a brother of whom he speaks as the partner of all his thoughts, etc., has consumed every spark of favour in which he was held throughout the whole nation, except, perhaps, in those whom party will make deaf and blind for ever to what opposes their own views and schemes. I do not envy Lord Grey for being a third in such an intercourse, an intercourse teeming with inventive plots ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... of peace. What repulsion, what grievances will be found in all relations, in all questions! And from a grievance to war, from war to negro insurrections, what will be the distance, I ask? The South will be then an immense powder magazine, to which the first spark will set fire. And the South will not lose its habits of arrogance, it will be quarrelsome as always. Has it not already announced in its journals that, on the first encouragement given to its fugitive slaves, it will draw the sword? Now, such encouragement certainly ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... what a great fire a mere spark may kindle, and accordingly the war, on what proved to be a very vexed subject, waged fast and furious. The picture papers inserted cleverly-illustrated articles pro. and con.; the peace of families was temporarily wrecked, for people were of course ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... opening. A gruesome place it was in which she found herself. Grim enough by daylight, it was now doubly so; for the blackness seemed like something tangible, some shapeless monster which was gathering itself together, and shrinking back, inch by inch, as the little spark of light moved forward. The gaunt beams, the jagged bits of iron, bent and twisted into fantastic shapes, stretched and thrust themselves from every side, and again the girl fancied them fleshless arms reaching out to clutch her. ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... as Nathan said. Almost while he was yet speaking, the light, which all now clearly beheld, at first a point as small and faint as the spark of a lampyris, and then a star scarce bigger or brighter than the torch of a jack-o'-lantern, suddenly grew in magnitude, projecting a long and lance-like, though broken, reflection over the wheeling current, and then as suddenly shot into a ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... appeals of her admirer, we must admit, with satisfaction; and though his addresses were not distasteful, she felt a pang in her heart that plainly told her it was already possessed by another. It required but this spark to kindle the flame that had long been smoldering in her breast; and at the moment when, had she not known John Ferguson, she would have been pleased and flattered with the protestations of her suitor, she felt disappointed and distressed that those proposals had not ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... the empire, he resolved that the holy city of the Jews should be rebuilt as a Roman colony, and its name changed to AElia Capitolina; and the Jews were forbidden to sojourn in the new city. By this and other measures the spark of revolt was once more kindled among the religious and patriotic spirits of the Jewish nation. The Jews in Palestine flew to arms, A.D., 132, encouraged by the prayers, the vows, and the material ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... of affairs it needed but a spark—I do not say a suggestion, I do not say a hint—from this butterfly Brierly; this rejected rival, to cause the explosion. I make no charges, but if this woman was in her right mind when she fled from Washington and reached this city in company—with Brierly, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is a garden tired with autumn, Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark, In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April, The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark; ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... With such rest indulging, he girded his loins with roughest hair-cloth, the which had been dipped in cold water; lest haply the law of the flesh, warring in his members against the law of the Spirit, should excite any spark of the old leaven. Thus did Saint Patrick with spare and meagre food, and with the coarsest clothing, offer himself a holy and living sacrifice, acceptable unto God; nor suffered he the enemy to touch in him the walls of Jerusalem, but he inflicted on his own flesh the penance ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... good nature itself, and is adored by both his master and fellow-workmen. Notwithstanding his extraordinary skill and abilities, he has been working all this time as a common journeyman, contented with a few shillings a week more than the rest; but I believe your uneasy friend has kindled a spark in his breast that he never felt ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... glasses to the Virginian for him to see when the figure opened the door and disappeared in the dark interior. As I watched the square of darkness which the door's opening made, something seemed to happen there—or else it was a spark, a flash, in ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... restraint that he chafed at upon him, for he had when he first saw her been struck by the change in the girl. She was graver than he remembered her, and, it seemed, very much more reserved. He had tried and failed, as he thought of it, to strike a spark out of her. She did not respond, and he became uneasily conscious that he could not talk to her as he could, for instance, to Sally Creighton. There was something wanting in him or her, but he could not at the moment tell ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... signs of this was the cessation of his accustomed labors; but while doing nothing (with him how plain a proof that nothing could be done), he would frequently anticipate a coming period of his usual industry. His mind, while any spark of its reasoning powers remained, was busy with its old day-dreams—the History of Portugal—the History of the Monastic Orders—the Doctor—all were soon to be taken in hand in earnest—all completed, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... went toward the bed, and at its side I took a twitching hand in mine, and as I did so the staring eyes turned to me. Too nearly gone for aught save faint returning, light struggled back in a supreme and final effort, and with life's last spark of energy she clutched my fingers with her work-worn, weary hands. Miss White, the district nurse, who was standing at the foot of the bed, nodded to me, and from a far corner the sobbing of a man and woman in shabby clothes, and crouched close together, reached across the ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... Monro, our gallant Colonel, went back to the French camp to protest and petition; but while he was gone the spark kindled. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... A spark shot out of Madeline's great, black eyes. Then she laughed unpleasantly. "There's something in the wind ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... obstacles of long-distance wireless telegraphy. The sending of a message across the garden in far-away Italy was a simple matter—the depressed key completed the electric circuit created by a strong battery through the induction coil and made a spark jump between the two brass knobs, which in turn started the ether vibrating at the rate of three or four hundred million times a minute from the tin box on top of a pole. The vibrations in the ether circled wider and wider, as the circular waves spread from the spot where a stone ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... we were at breakfast, a great big splendid Manton car—my car—came whisking up the drive and stopped in front of the house, and the expert—they had thrown him in for a week for nothing—him and an odometer and an ammeter, and a new kind of French spark-plug they wanted me to try—and a gasoline tester —the Mantons are such nice people to deal with in all those little ways—and the expert sent in word: would Miss Hardy come out and see her new car? And, of course, Miss Hardy, went out, and Mr. Hardy ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... Perry, Ronk, lay hold quick, and break this fellow's clasp," he cried, briefly. "The girl retains a spark of life yet, but the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... part of His great plan according to our strength and ability?) 0 believe we cannot live one moment for ourselves, one moment of selfish repining, and not be failing him at that moment, hiding the God-spark in us, letting the flesh conquer the spirit, the evil ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... at the bottom. I groped forward in the intense darkness, feeling with outstretched hands. The first object encountered was a rough table, the surface of which I explored, discovering thereon a candlestick with flint and steel beside it. With relief I struck a spark, and a yellow flame ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... were whirled down and buried in that crushing avalanche; how they clung to the lashed planks and with these spiraled in mad sarabands among the whirlpools and green eddies; how they were flung out into smoother water, blinded and deafened, yet with still the spark of life and consciousness within them, and how they let the frail raft bear them, fainting and dazed, all their senses concentrated just on gripping this support—all this they never ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... doubt that I allowed myself the expression of some sarcastic remarks on this hypocritical method of interpreting the unfortunate constitution, into which they had endeavoured to prevent the entrance of the smallest spark of liberty. ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein |
