"Brilliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart, and about eleven o'clock he found time to stop at the village haberdasher's and to select a new tie, which he had wrapped and stuffed in his pocket. And which, inspected in broad day later on a country road, gave him uneasy qualms as to its brilliance. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sought because of her beauty and brilliance, she was admired and courted by many men without ever feeling the least quickening of her heart, which was ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... The brilliance of the house and the guests, together with Rosamond's gracious greeting as she met her and led her to be introduced to the hostess, soon worked a cure for her low spirits and she began to enjoy herself ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... table at which I am seated, adjoins a window at the farthest corner; and to the left of my chair as I recline in it, there is a large table before an empty grate, around which there are many chairs, where the cabinet used to assemble. The carpet is trodden thin, and the brilliance of its dyes is lost. The furniture is of the formal cabinet class, stately and semi-comfortable; there are book cases sprinkled with the sparse library of a country lawyer, but lately plethoric, like the thin body which has departed in its coffin. They are taking away Mr. Lincoln's private effects, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... close to dawn. The issue between Sandy Bourke and Plimsoll, crowded aside for the moment, was now paramount. Some craned for sight of the two-gun man, others glanced toward the eastern sky. The stars seemed to be losing their brilliance, the golden moon turning silver, the high horizon, jagged with mountain crests, appeared to be gaining ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... was the whitening of the hair, it was effective in enhancing the beauty of Aurelia's dark arched brows, the soft brilliance of her large velvety brown eyes, and the exquisite carnation and white of her colouring. Her features were delicately chiselled, and her face had that peculiar fresh, innocent, soft, untouched bloom and undisturbed repose which ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he sat down under a big bare tree and leaned his back against it. Far off in the distance the lights of Yorkburg twinkled like fireflies in the hazy darkness, and at his left a soft, luminous ball was gathering into shape and brilliance. With a roar it rushed through the outskirts of the little town before its long black tail of cars could be defined, and as its vibrations reached him John struck a match and took out ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... two, never smiled, never stretched its hands to her, never spoke; never had a glance of recognition for her in its big black eyes, which could only stare fixedly at any glitter, but failed hopelessly to follow the brilliance of a sun-ray slipping slowly along the floor. When the men were at work she spent long days between her three idiot children and the childish grandfather, who sat grim, angular, and immovable, with his feet near the warm ashes of the fire. The feeble old fellow seemed to ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... all the methods of artificial illumination at his command—with incandescent bulbs thrown on by switches, with the flare of lighted gas jets, with the tallow dip's slim digit of flame, and with the kerosene wick's three-finger breadth of greasy brilliance. As he fumbled, in a very panic and spasm of fear, with the latchets of his front gate Squire Jonas' wife heard him screaming to Aunt Kassie, his servant, to turn on the lights—all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... grown ugly. She was too young and strong for that, and excitement had flushed her into new brilliance. ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of youths, In whom respect is of the rarer gifts. Likewise by the consent of accidents, More than his worth, society, so called, In that great northern city, to its rooms Invited him. He entered. Dazzled first, Not only by the brilliance of the show, In lights and mirrors, gems, and crowded eyes; But by the surface lights of many minds Cut like rose-diamonds into many planes, Which, catching up the wandering rays of fact, Reflected, coloured, tossed ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... rhythm of her breathing. From the pale yellow surface of her dress, below the neck, protruded a strange, edged something, dun-colored, sharply defined and alien, which the man's surprised eyes failed to identify. Slowly the edge parted and flattened out, broadwise, displaying the marbled brilliance of the butterfly's inner wings, illumining the pale chastity of the sleeping figure as if with a quivering and evanescent jewel. Banneker, shaken and thrilled, closed his eyes. He felt as if a soul had opened its secret glories to him. When, commanding ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... accompaniment of whispers, thousands of awed, ritualistic sibilants which would carry no knowable meaning and only one avowed purpose. Soft music, soft, soft; not soft as to volume, for the volume grew and grew, but soft with the softness of clouds which are soft for all their mountain-size and brilliance; soft and living as a tiger's throat, soft as a breast, soft as the act of drowning, ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... of his rank as a poet; but we know that his success was so great that Cicero considered him the prince of Roman song, that Virgil was indebted to him for many thoughts and expressions, and that even the brilliance of the Augustan poets did not lessen his reputation. His utterances were vigorous, bold, fresh, and full of the spirit of the brave old days. He found the language rough, uncultivated, and unformed, and left it softer, more harmonious, and possessed of a system of versification. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... judgment equal. She wound in and out among the huge vehicles with perfect composure; and on those occasions when, the traffic being interrupted, the oratorical powers were useful to fill up the time, she shone with singular brilliance. The West End is too often in debt to the City, but, in the matter of chaff, it was not so this day; for whenever she took a peck she returned a bushel; and so she rattled to the door of Solomon Oldfield, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... flaming daffodils from her side and slipped them into the empty vase. She stepped back to survey their sunlit brilliance, resting a gloved hand upon the chair she had deserted. She was conscious that another hand was bearing down heavily upon her slender ringers. The weight crushed and pained her, yet she felt ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Indian islands, was decried in a medley of pomposity, ignorance and amazingly cheap humour. The extracts given sounded weak and foolish enough, taken by themselves, but the writer of the letter had interlarded them with comments of his own, which sparkled with an ironical brilliance that was Cervantes-like in its polished cruelty. Remembering her ordeal of the previous evening Francesca permitted herself a certain feeling of amusement as she read the merciless stabs inflicted on the newly-appointed Governor; then she came to ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... blinding flashes of light. A little later, when the veil had lifted, it became a mirror for the hills and crags, the blue reaches of the sky. The stinging air was spiced with balsam. Revealed was the incredible brilliance of another day,—the arsenic-green of the spruce, the red and gold of the maples, the yellow of the alders bathing in the shallows, of the birches, whose white limbs could be seen gleaming in the twilight of the thickets. Early, too early, the sun fell down behind the serrated forest-edge ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... display the early promise of scholarship at the age of eight or more, had he been outside the bars. His utmost travel had been to lecture here and lecture there. His student phase had culminated in papers of quite exceptional brilliance, and he had gone on to lecture with a cheerful combination of wit and mannerism that had made him a success from the beginning. He has lectured ever since. He lectures still. Year by year he has become plumper, more rubicund and more and more of an item for the intelligent visitor to see. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... that I could not see it, but my sense of touch told me that it was small and, as it seemed to me, painfully thin. But although I did not see the hand I saw something else, and that was the orange and ruddy flashes of a jewel on the thumb, the brilliance of which was so great that it made itself manifest even through the silken veil in which it was enveloped; and I immediately remembered the "potent amulet", containing a stone "which shines like the sun at eventide", mentioned ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... gait was so modest and proud, her countenance so melancholy and pure, her looks so open and confident, that even before she spoke every heart was hers. Joan was now twenty years of age; her magnificent beauty was fully developed, but an extreme pallor concealed the brilliance of her transparent satin skin, and her hollow cheek told the tale of expiation and suffering. Among the spectators who looked on most eagerly there was a certain young man with strongly marked features, glowing ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to another he wandered, each executed with greater brilliance than the last, but he failed to excite anything more than a mild interest and approval. The old songs which on other occasions had been wont to let loose the song birds of the battalion seemed to have lost their ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... and tankards of ale, and feasting, stories and minstrelsy held the hours till the midnight bell called to the first mass and ushered in Christmas Day. Caedmon, coming back from the frosty chapel, saw the stars shining in the brilliance of winter skies. His heart was suffused with all he had heard the pilgrims repeat; for the first time it entered his mind that the same stars that he saw twinkling, held their course at that glad time when "the morning-stars sang together, and ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... performers did not dim her brilliance by reason of their own. There was her own dear husband, whose serious recitation was the one entertaining number. There was a Rabbit Inspector who rapped out "The Scout" in a defiant barytone, and a publican whose somewhat uneven tenor was shaken to its depths by the simple ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... cowardice seizes him in the very onset of the battle, and drives him frantic with terror. "Giddiness came over him at the sight of the horrors, grimness, and rapidity of the Gaels; at the fierce looks, brilliance, and ardor of the foreigners; at the rebounding furious shouts of the embattled tribes on both sides, rushing against and coming into collision with one another. Huge, flickering, horrible, aerial ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... man of superb literary genius, and of rich, daring, and original mind. The problem with which he deals is one of inexhaustible interest, and his treatment of it is everywhere characterized by a psychological insight, an intellectual courage, and a fertility and brilliance of resource which are nothing less than astonishing. Opinion has been divided as to how the book should be classified, whether as epic, dramatic or didactic poetry. It is didactic at any rate in the sense that the poet, who wrote it with his heart's blood, intended to read his ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... thing," said Raffles Holmes, holding up one of the gems to the light, where it fairly coruscated with brilliance. "These are the other two ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... blaze up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull printer's ink expended on the assemblage of the few letters that form the ship's name to the anxious eyes scanning the page in fear and trembling. It is like the message of reprieve from the sentence of sorrow suspended over many a home, even ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... most difficult observation achieved; and even now it cannot be done by the absolute methods then attempted; but, as so often happens, Bradley, in attempting one thing, hit upon another, and, as it happened, one of still greater brilliance and importance. Let us trace the stages of ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... by the thin broken line of twinkling lights from the windows of the buildings, which gave them the direction of the main street, and the few dull glowing tent houses, whose tenants were at home. Overhead the desert stars shone with a brilliance that put to shame the feeble efforts of the earth-men, while about the little pioneer town the desert night drew close with its circling ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... snares in sight of those innocent birds that perch on the tree of life in paradise. As Arthur's soul (it was a vain soul) preened its wings before her, Aggie never inquired whether the brilliance of its plumage was its own, or merely common to all feathered things in the pairing season. Young Arthur's soul was like a lark, singing in heaven its delirious nuptial hymn. Aggie sat snug in her nest and marvelled at her mate, ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... of mechanical capacity for ascertaining whether two really is half four, etc.; but when you are near me I can fancy that I too shine, and vainly suppose it to be my proper light; whereas by my extreme darkness when you are not by, it clearly can only be by a reflected brilliance that I seem aught but dull. Then for the moral part of me: if it were not for you and little Odden, I should feel by no means sure that I had any affection power in me.... Even the muscular me suffers a sad deterioration in your absence. I don't get up when I ought to, I have snoozed in my chair ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a comfortable little room, though its inlaid mahogany chairs and ancient sofa, covered with horsehair, had a certain look of hardness, no doubt. A shepherdess and lamb, worked in silks whose brilliance had now faded half-way to neutrality, hung in a black frame, with brass rosettes at the corners, over the chimney-piece—the sole approach to the luxury of art in the homely little place. Besides the muslin stretched across the lower part of the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... where the kine wound out from pasture, stole faintly over the lake, reflected dyes suffused it and spread around them sheets of splendid color, outlines grew ever dimmer on the distant shores, a purple tone absorbed all brilliance, the shadows fell, and, bright with angry lustre, the planet Mars hung in the south and struck a spear, redder than rubies, down the placid mirror. The dew gathered and lay sparkling on the thwarts as they touched the garden-steps, and they mounted and traversed ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the first chapter of the Inquiry reveals Reid as a personality who was not dazzled to the same extent as were his contemporaries by the brilliance of ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... our examination of the orbs which surround us, we naturally begin with our peerless sun. His splendid brilliance gives him the pre-eminence over all ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... crowd must have emphatic warrant! Theirs the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance, Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat. Never dares the man ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... ceased to be built. St. Paul threw away something which drew attention to her and which gave her character. Moreover, I am told this mania went so far that when folders were issued for the purpose of advertising the region, they were designed to suggest the warmth and brilliance of the tropics. Had St. Paul a bad climate, instead of a peculiarly fine one, we might feel sympathetic tolerance for these performances, but a city which enjoys cool summers and dry, bracing winters has no apologies to make upon the score of climate, and only need ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write than to understand." In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and discern of what it actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance of a flash of lightning." In the constitution and continuity of his style, Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, bold similes, naturally fertile in metaphors that are never detached from the thought, but that seize it in its very centre, in its interior, that join and bind it. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... would be famous if they were tried by this latter test alone, and Mr. Gladstone was not one of them. It is only by a rare combination of gifts that one who speaks with so much readiness, force, and brilliance as to charm his listeners is also able to deliver such valuable thoughts in such choice words that posterity will read them as literature. Some few of the ancient orators did this; but we seldom know how far those of their speeches which have been preserved are the speeches ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... his sombrero. "Dick would revel in you. You would whip him into brilliance. I know it. You ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... generally known that finger-pressure has much to do with tone-quality. The correct poise of the left hand, as conspicuously shown by Heifetz for instance, throws the extreme tips of the fingers hammerlike on the strings, and renders full pressure of the string easy. Correctly done, a brilliance results, especially in scale and passage work, which can be acquired in no other manner, each note partaking somewhat of the quality of the open string. As for intonation—that is largely a question of listening. To really listen to oneself is as necessary as it is rare. It would ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... brilliance of his intelligence and the strength of his mind, Cecil Rhodes will always be found inferior to the present Viscount Milner as a statesman. Rhodes could not and would not wait. Milner spent his whole existence in waiting, and waited so successfully that ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... sheathed—you might say molded—in a tight-fitting black dress. Rubies, like drops of blood, sparkle on her shoes. Her slender waist is encircled by a girdle of enormous pearls, and from this dress, which makes an intensely dark background for the stony brilliance of the jewels, the arms and shoulders shine out with another brilliance, that of a flower-like flesh,—fine, white flesh, through which flows blood perpetually invigorated by the air of the country ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... shaded lamp threw a circle of brilliance upon the table, and brought out its distinctive features with singular distinctness against a background of olive-green wall and velvet curtain. Its covering of glossy white damask, its ornaments of Venetian glass, the delicate yet vivid colours of the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... stars are no better than gleaming patches of vapor. We are the exclusive autocrats of all immensity. Whewell has followed up this species of thought with quite remarkable adroitness, force, and brilliance.35 Whether his motive in this undertaking is purely scientific and artistic, or whether he is impelled by a fancied religious animus, having been bitten by some theological fear which has given him the astrophobia, does ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... extinction of his pernicious brilliance, and intrigued for his recall. She made no attempt to conceal her hostility, nor did she love him any the better because he met her frigid haughtiness with an ironical urbanity that seemed ever to put her in the wrong. And then one day ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... time large, wide-winged, diurnal moths and glistening butterflies flew up from where they had settled on the dew-drenched herbage and fluttered before them. Not far onward a flock of finches flew from the tops of the green banks, twittering loudly as they displayed the brilliance of the blue and yellow and green of their plumage and its varying shades. But this was only for a time. The jungle growth rose higher on either side till it shut out the sunshine, and once more the elephant-path wore the aspect of a deep, shadowy tunnel, while ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... the crystalline lens. By what nice interlacement of filaments the fibrous ring that margins the pupil, or aperture through the iris, regulates the admission of light, contracting or expanding, yet always preserving its circular form, according as the brilliance is excessive or deficient; how the humours or lenses are continually varying in figure and relative position so as to concentrate every pencil of light admitted on that point exactly where the retina is spread out to receive it; how, according as the object looked at is near at hand or far off, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... named in this passage, called her creative powers into action, and gave her followers irresistible weapons. She brought into being also various monsters—giant serpents, sharp of tooth, bearing stings, and with poison filling their bodies like blood; terrible dragons endowed with brilliance, and of enormous stature, reared on high, raging dogs, scorpion-men, fish-men, and many other terrible beings, were created and equipped, the whole being placed under the command of a deity named Kingu, whom she calls her "only husband," and to whom she delivers the tablets of fate, which ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... prevailed, it came to pass that the dead became restless and awoke from their sleep. They were astonished when they were able to see again; the moonlight was quite sufficient for them, for their eyes had become so weak that they could not have borne the brilliance of the sun. They rose up and were merry, and fell into their former ways of living. Some of them went to the play and to dance, others hastened to the public-houses, where they asked for wine, got drunk, brawled, quarreled, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... consideration that a general must seem to have attained some success if he hoped to have his command prolonged for another year. The senate, it is true, might have insight enough to see that success in a war such as that in Numidia could not be gauged by the brilliance of the results obtained; but how were they to defend their verdict to the people unless they could point to exploits such as would dazzle the popular eye? But although a feverish policy seemed the readiest mode of escape from public suspicion ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... talk rattled through my hesitations and embarrassments like a brisk northwester sweeping the dry leaves from its path. Even his daughter showed the sudden brilliance of a lamp from which the shade has been removed. We were all surprisingly vivid—it felt, somehow, as though we were ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... a barometer hung in gimbals, and the other by a tell-tale compass. Such an elegant little apartment naturally demanded that all its appointments should correspond, and so they did, for the table—which we afterwards found to be made of solid walnut, polished to the brilliance of a mirror—was covered with an immaculate tablecloth of snowy damask, upon which glittered a table equipage of solid silver, cut glass, and dainty porcelain, with a handsome silver centrepiece filled with recently cut flowers, apparently ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... none of the "dim, religious light" in the interior decoration of white and gold, the subtle colouring of the symbolic frescoing and the brilliance of the gold and brazen altar furnishing. At a service celebrated especially for the Papal Zuaves, the picturesque red and grey of their uniform, the priests in gorgeous canonicals of scarlet, stiff with gold, the acolytes in white surplices and the venerable archbishop in cardinal and purple, ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... spreading its brilliance on all around, permits Florence to see that his face is grave and thoughtful, and—yes, as she gazes even closer, she can see that it is full of pain ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... leaves only the monstrous sierras of Broadway jagged against the vault. It deepens this incredible panorama into broad sweeps of gold and black and peacock blue which one may file away in memory, tangled eyries of shining windows swimming in empty air. As seen in the full brilliance of noonday the bristle of detail is too bewildering to carry in one clutch of the senses. The eye is distracted by the abysses between buildings, by the uneven elevation of the summits, by the jumbled compression ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... rustled its young leaves lazily, so that the sunlight peeped through the green lattice-work and shone on the faces of these two handsome girls, stretched in graceful postures on the cool sward below—their white teeth sparkling in its brilliance, while their soft laughter made music for me. In the fulness of my ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... upon my sensations as I walked between my guards, a man on the threshold of eternity, with hundreds of men and women gaping at me—men and women who would live for years to gape upon many another wretch in my position. The sun shone with a brilliance that to such eyes as mine was a very mockery. Thus would it shine on through centuries, and light many another unfortunate to the scaffold. The very sky seemed pitiless in the intensity of its cobalt. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... without a title, without any insignia of rank, able to transmit to posterity no family privilege. If our hearts swelled with pride that we could create something just as good as royalty, that the republic had as many men of distinguished appearance, as much beauty, and as much brilliance of display as any traditional government, we also felicitated ourselves that we could sweep it all away by a vote and reproduce it with new actors ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to turn to him, to communicate with him, to share with him the pleasure of some idea, some little discovery about men or things in which he would have taken pleasure, increasing our own by the gaiety of his enjoyment, the brilliance of his appreciation. We may say, as Scott said at the grave of John Ballantyne, that he has taken with him half the sunlight out of our lives. That he was sympathetic and interested in the work of others (which ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... diverse nature of his duties, half civil, half military, the personal appeals made on all sides by the people of the country for advice, for help, for settlement of disputes, for information which his well-instructed mind could give—all these modified the romantic brilliance of his intellect, made it and himself ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... believed it to be the great diamond of Borneo, captured many years before from the pirates of that fierce land. Piang did not care which it proved to be, as long as it shone and sparkled with beauty. All agreed that its brilliance dazzled the eye, that its magnificence was unrivaled. Ganassi had waited a hundred years for the charm boy who was destined to wear it, and at last the star had proclaimed Piang to be the lucky boy. Through Piang's dreams flitted the visions of shimmering jewels of gold, and the happy ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... that the voice is used properly, and never forced beyond its natural capabilities. The voice, at the age of eleven or twelve, is far stronger, and is capable of more sustained effort than at the age of six or seven years, and, for the year or two preceding the break of voice, the brilliance and power of boys' voices, especially in the higher tones, is often phenomenal, and in all cases is far superior to ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... prancing strings and harp with slowly ascending curve. In farther journey comes a spring of the higher wood and soon a firm note of horns and a blast of trumpets on a chirruping call, till the whole panoply of solar brilliance is shimmering. Now with the continuing pulse (of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... and rested not. With swiftest flight and truest aim Upon the giant hosts they came. Each smote, each stayed a foeman's breath As fatal as the coil of Death. Each arrow through a giant tore A passage, and besmeared with gore, Pursued its onward way and through The air with flamy brilliance flew. Unnumbered were the arrows sent From the great bow which Rama bent, And every shaft with iron head The lifeblood of a giant shed. Their pennoned bows were cleft, nor mail Nor shield of hide could aught avail. For Rama's myriad arrows ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... to her feet, alert, fearful. With a swing of her arm, she pulled the great oaken door to and dropped the bar into its place. Over the dead she spread a clean white sheet. Into the fire she thrust pine-knots. They glared in vague red, and shadowy brilliance, waving and quivering and throwing up thin swirling columns of black smoke. Then standing beside the fireplace with the white, still corpse between her and the door, she took up her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... places him higher in the scale of sovereigns than the improvement of the roads and the construction of those remarkable bridges. Kaotsou loved splendor and sought to make his receptions and banquets imposing by their brilliance. He drew up a special ceremonial which must have proved a trying ordeal for his courtiers, and dire was the offence if it were infringed in the smallest particular. He kept up festivities at Singanfoo for several weeks, and on one of these occasions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... respects, he might be compared, Isaac Newton being one and Abelard the other. All three were men in whom, owing to causes either natural or accidental, the intellect was able to absorb all the energies of the nature. The intellect thus acquired extraordinary power and brilliance, and appropriated to itself, in a sort of image, as it were, the qualities which no longer possessed manifestation on the material plane. Nothing out of the way would, therefore, be noticed, unless or until some combination of circumstances should bring the exceptional ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... to a great career for him: he had so many qualities to ensure success: a sharp, keen mind, which proved its literary quality also at Oxford, an unfailing earnestness and high purpose and a white character: no one could deny the brilliance and the steadiness ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... much beauty of color in the woodland undergrowth. Tall torches touched with the crimson of the sunset sky are made of the shell-bark hickory whose inner bud scales enlarge into enormous, leathery bracts, often crimsoning into rare brilliance. Circles of creamy white here and there among the hazel brush mark the later blossoms of the sweet viburnum. Sweeping curves like sculptured arms bearing thickly clustered hemispheres of purplish white are seen on the rocky slope where the nine-bark grows above the lingering ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Family in the Louvre, S. Elizabeth's hand is painted across S. John, and shows the shadow underneath it, being grey at that part. Though more solid, he could not paint light over dark without injuring his brilliance of colour. ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... Imagination, and Spirituality; that of Spurzheim is well expressed by the term Ideality, and the description given, but the word Poetry is rather too limited as the definition of Gall's organ. It gives brilliance to prose and to oratory, or even conversation, as ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... around him, brilliant yellow in texture now. And with the increasing brilliance of the light, the feeling ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... lifelong acquaintance as to constitute one large family. Well-born, well-bred, and distinguished by charming and singularly simple manners, they were content to be what they were, and the Darwinian competition for merely fashionable or intellectual brilliance, however prevalent elsewhere, was, with few exceptions, to them virtually unknown. Yet whenever anything in the way of formal pomp was necessary, they were fully equal to the occasion. The well-known dinners ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... kept in the middle of the great stream, and sometimes it seemed pleasanter to be near the shore. The midsummer flowers were coming into blossom, and the grass and trees had long since lost the brilliance of their greenness, and wore a look of maturity and completion, as if they had already finished their growth. There was a beautiful softness and harmony of color, a repose that one never sees in a spring landscape. The tide was in, the sun was almost down, and a great, cloudless, infinite ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... clearly the difference between the epic of the people and the epic of art—between Homer and Ariosto. Both, he said, are true painters of the world and Nature; but Ariosto pleases more by his brilliance and wealth of colour, Homer by purity of form and beauty of composition. Ariosto achieves through general effect, Homer through perfection of form. Nature is more naive in Homer, the subject is paramount, and the singer disappears; in Ariosto, Nature is sentimental, and the poet always remains ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... along the railed catwalk, making a perfect target he knew, silhouetted against the glow. He cursed under his breath, reaching the end of it. Here he made an even more perfect target, with the single bright light that poured down brilliance on the bench and landing platform spotlighting him against the darkness of the night. The bench was thin iron grillwork. ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... alway: I ask not to stay Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way; Where seeking for rest we but hover around, Like the patriarch's bird, and no resting is found; Where Hope, when she paints her gay bow in the air. Leaves its brilliance to fade in the night of despair, And joy's fleeting angel ne'er sheds a glad ray, Save the gleam of the plumage that bears ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... accustomed lightness, he knew instinctively that she had sought him less for diversion than for advice, and that her reckless pen had been guided by some hidden agitation. When he thought of her it was with a sympathy hardly justified by the outward brilliance of her life—wealth, beauty, power, all the things which he would have called desirable were hers, and the vague compassion she awoke in him appeared to him the result of a simple trick of pathos which she knew how to assume at times. To be sorry for Gerty was absurd, he had always ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... want with me?" said Betty. The brilliance in her eyes which had been so remarkable a few minutes ago had now faded; her cheeks looked pale; her small face ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... Christianity is not, as some of its friends, and some of its foes, mistakenly concur in supposing, that it weakens interest in, and energy on, the Present, but that it heightens the power of action. A life plunged in that jar of oxygen will glow with redoubled brilliance. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the coachman for me, Cosmo?" said Lady Joan when they reached the door—with a flash of her white teeth and her dark eyes that bewitched the boy. Then first, in the morning light, and the brilliance of the snow-glare, he saw that she was beautiful. When the shadows were dark about her, the darkness of her complexion obscured itself; against the white sheen she stood out darkly radiant. Specially he noted the long eyelashes that made a softening twilight ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... almost blinded by the light that burst upon her. No one would ever have guessed that that little black box could have held such a quantity of beautiful things! Rings, crowns, girdles, necklaces—all made of wonderful stones; and they shone with such brilliance that not only the stepmother and her daughter but all the people round came running to see if the house was on fire. Of course the woman felt quite ill with greed and envy, and she would have certainly ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... youth, with a long, cadaverous countenance and sallow, unhealthy complexion, illumined, however, and redeemed to a certain extent by black eyes of extraordinary brilliance, "it is the Prince of Wales!" The drawling, awe-struck tones, in the silence that had fallen, were audible to all in the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... struck with astonishment in view of the magnificence of the court, the polished address and the dignified manners of the nobles, the rich costume of the courtiers, and, particularly, with the jeweled and golden brilliance of the throne, upon which was seated a young monarch decorated in the most dazzling style of regal splendor, and in whose presence all observed the most respectful silence. Chanceller presented to Ivan IV. the letter of Edward VI. It was a noble letter, worthy of England's ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... their light is diffused, because of the same medium. But here, what a contrast! They saw the utter, absolute darkness of the complete absence of all light: and upon that indescribable blackness they beheld superimposed the almost unbearable brilliance of enormous suns concentrated into mathematical points, dimensionless. Sirius blazed in blue-white splendor, dominating the lesser members of his constellation, a minute but intensely brilliant diamond upon a field of black velvet—his refulgence unmarred ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... twinkling through the gloom, but in the silver glory of the moon, Mr. Selwyn, walk errant damozels and ladyes faire, and again, if you don't see them, the loss is yours." As I spoke, away upon the terrace a grey shadow paused a moment ere it was swallowed in the brilliance of the ball-room; seeing which I did not mind the slightly superior smile that curved Mr. Selwyn's very precise moustache; after all, my rhapsody had not been altogether thrown away. As I ended, the opening bars of a ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... of her discovery, dazzled by the surprising brilliance of the Princess's capture, stupefied by the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and ruining her idol's bizarre triumph, poor Miss Portman staggered as Virginia helped her to ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... laid aside; he wears One golden bracelet on his wasted arm; His lip is scorched by sighs; and sleepless cares Redden his eyes. Yet all can work no harm On that magnificent beauty, wasting, but Gaining in brilliance, like a ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... legal studies I have succeeded in taking my Arts Degree. At present I am seeking that of Doctor of Law. My examinations have been passed meritoriously, but without brilliance; my tastes run too much after letters. My professor, M. Flamaran, once told me the truth of the matter: "Law, young man, is a jealous mistress; she allows no divided affection." Are my affections divided? I think not, and I certainly do not ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... behind her, and pushed the key under the waterbutt as usual, being quite content with that prudent precaution against robbers which had served Antoine all his days. Was it possible, this wonderful joy?—her cheeks were like her roses, her eyes had a brilliance like the sun; the natural grace and mirth of the child blossomed in ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... suggested itself to me. It was, that one of the inner planets had fallen into the sun—becoming incandescent, under that impact. This theory appealed to me, as being more plausible, and accounting more satisfactorily for the extraordinary size and brilliance of the blaze, that had lit up the ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... had seized upon a packet of photographs, which she was rapidly turning over. Her impatient fingers rejected Madame Doulce, bedecked with lace, Fagette, radiant, her hair dissolving in its own brilliance; Tony Meyer, with close-set eyes and a nose drooping over his lips; Pradel, with his flourishing beard; Trublet, bald and snub-nosed; Monsieur Bondois, with timorous eye and straight nose set above a heavy moustache. Although not in a mood to bestow any attention ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... gods; Anu, King of the spirits of heaven 3 and the spirits of earth, the god, Lord of the world; Bel, 4 the Supreme, Father of the gods, the Creator; 5 Hea, King of the deep, determiner of destinies, 6 the King of crowns, drinking in brilliance; 7 Rimmon, the crowned hero, Lord of canals;[1] the Sun-god 8 the Judge of heaven and earth, the urger on of all; 9 (Merodach), Prince of the gods, Lord of battles; Adar, the terrible, 10 (Lord) ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... of recollection, her assurance of prophetic anticipation, faded from her, and of the recollection itself remained nothing but a ruin! And all the time it took to dawn into brilliance and fade out into darkness, had measured but a few weary steps by the side of her companion, lost in the meditation of a glad sermon for the next Sunday about the lost sheep carried home with jubilance, ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... of her reasons for disliking Lord Coombe. She could not have told him of them. He did not dislike his relative himself and in fact rather liked him in spite of the frigidity he sometimes felt. He, at any rate, admired his cold brilliance of mind. Robin could not therefore let herself detest the man and regard him as an enemy. But she did not like the still searching of the grey eyes which rested on ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suffused with tears, the brilliance of her cheek faded, and her bosom heaved with emotion. What a girl she would be a few years hence. His dear Sieur had married a child—was he really in love with her? But his ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... birds and flowers the child added moths and butterflies, because she saw them so frequently, the brilliance of colour in yard and garden attracting more than could be found elsewhere. So she grew with the wild, loving, studying, giving all her time. "I fed butterflies sweetened water and rose leaves inside the screen of a cellar window," Mrs. Porter tells us; ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... quality—often, indeed, poor goose-berry—yet it bubbled and frothed gaily. Besides, there were great sweeping tunes—such as the hackneyed prayer—and plenty of really dainty, if very Weberesque, melodies. All that Meyerbeer had to teach was there, and the stolid Dresdener gazed with delight on the brilliance of the latest Parisian musical fashions. So Wagner gained his first success, and deserved it. It was not the Paris success he had dreamed of a few years before, when fame, money and all worldly things desirable were to be his. But it meant bread-and-butter without drudging ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... now she observed with some girlish anxiety the young man's unwonted solemnity, the strange brilliance of his eyes. A certain nervousness began to show through her cold calm: her unconscious hand wound the taut sheet round and round the tiller, an injudicious business in view of the gusty breeze. How to be rid most quickly of the interloper?... She might, of course, put ashore with him: but ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... otherwise. With a contemptuous snort at his rival's performance he opened his epic. He was splendid. For one and three-ninths hours he descanted on the glories of field life, on the freshness of the night, on the brilliance of the June foliage; for the next two hours he ardently proclaimed the surpassing beauty of Thisbe's eye, the glossiness of her plumage, the neatness of her claw, and he wound up with a mad twenty minutes of piercing monotony as he depicted the depth of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... as good as its name or half as good as some of the undeniably clever things it contains, it might be accepted as a very fair book of its kind. It was written with the evident intention of saying brilliant and witty things; but this brilliance and wit sometimes miss their effect, as, for instance, on the very first page, where Dick Steele's famous compliment is bestowed upon Lady Mary Wortley Montagu instead of the Lady Elizabeth Hastings. We might mention other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... obtained. It is a good plan to start work in a neutral bath, and then when the material has become thoroughly impregnated with the dye-liquor to add the acetic acid. The shades obtained from these Eosine reds are remarkable for their brilliance, but unfortunately their fastness to light, washing, etc., is but slight, although it may be increased by treating the dyed wool in a bath of alum ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... the viper whose poison, stealing through all a man's veins, is emulation. My only desire, my only aim in life was to beat all the men of my year, to astonish all the authorities of the hospital to which I was attached by the brilliance of my attainments and my achievements, I was ambition incarnate, and such mad ambition is the most cruel thing in the world. And my child interfered with my ambition. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Observer. There were the three wild young spirits of The Planet, Stables, who had launched it with frightful impetus into space (having borrowed a sum sufficient for the purpose), Maddox, who controlled its course, and Rankin, whose brilliance made it twinkle so brightly in the firmament. With them, but emphatically not of them, was Horace Jewdwine, of Lazarus, who had come up from Oxford to join the staff ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Not until now had the wonderful intelligence in their purple-green depths struck me so forcibly. From the orange-tinted lamps before her on the table the light which shone up in her face seemed to increase their brilliance, accentuate their expression and their power. It imparted, too, to her extraordinary complexion a peculiar, livid tint, while the masses of her burnished, red-brown hair, coiled about her head in great ropes and ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... bannisters and looked down amusedly at the party in the hall. Her face was a little poked forward—a small oval face, pale except for the redness of a rather thin-lipped mouth—the upper lip like a scarlet bow—and the brilliance of the eyes, deep-set under finely-drawn brows and with thick lashes, golden-brown, and curling up at the tips. Peculiar eyes: Mrs Gildea, who knew them well, never could decide their exact colour. The nose was a delicate aquiline, the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... was some association between the crooked engineer and the disappearance of the safes. It seemed to fit too well. The scientific nature of the phenomena, Tony Costello's well known reputation for scientific brilliance, and his recent affluence; what else could it mean? In some way, Tony was getting at these safes. But how? And how prove it? Most exhaustive searches failed to reveal any traces of the safes anywhere. If any fragment of one of them had ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... had no vision of the purity and pride of that braid-bound head, of the brilliance of the dark eyes against the satin skin, of the troubling glamour of the red little mouth. In the clear definition of the delicate features, the arch of the high eyebrows, the sweep of the shadowy lashes, her childish hope had ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... light and life, a strength and power were given BECAUSE OF THE ENEMIES, greater and of more immediate influence, than to the seers and proclaimers of a clearer day: even as the first reappearing crescent of the eclipsed moon shines for men with a keener brilliance than the following larger segments, previously to its ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... worked for Owen Rose, Millicent had begun to change her views. At first she had merely been attracted by his brilliance, as any clever girl might have been, had found it stimulating to work with him, and had been pleased and proud when he selected her to be his coadjutor in the task of writing his first book. She had been, in truth, so keenly interested in the author that she had ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... is the first compilation of the recent experiments in Spectra. It is the aim of the Spectric group to push the possibilities of poetic expression into a new region,—to attain a fresh brilliance of impression by a method not so wholly different from the methods ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... have the finish, in their way, of Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, primarily, to the taste and the ear: always, perhaps, to the head rather than to the heart. There is something of "hard brilliance" in Praed: he writes for effect, he is epideictic. Of course, this is one object ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... unknown; whatever slight attention his earlier struggles for recognition may have attracted was long ago forgotten. And now he blazed forth overnight, with meteoric suddenness, with a strange, fantastic, intense brilliance which could only emanate from a star ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... solemn leave- taking which Ronald had not anticipated. Sybil, moreover, made a great effort, for she was anxious to help Joe as much as possible in her difficulties. She talked to Ronald with a vivacity that was unusual, and Joe herself was astonished at the brilliance of her conversation. She had always thought Sybil very ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford |
