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Dim   /dɪm/   Listen
Dim

verb
(past & past part. dimmed; pres. part. dimming)
1.
Switch (a car's headlights) from a higher to a lower beam.  Synonym: dip.
2.
Become dim or lusterless.
3.
Make dim or lusterless.
4.
Make dim by comparison or conceal.  Synonym: blind.
5.
Become vague or indistinct.  Synonyms: blur, slur.



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"Dim" Quotes from Famous Books



... on his breast and waited. No one moved or spoke. At the far end of the room, the candles dripped one by one on the bier, falling lower and lower. Occasionally the wax flared up, lighting the darkness; then all was dim. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... D'Arcy's voice joined with Terry's shouting to them to come back? They had, however, got so far on their way that, even had they been certain of the fact, they would not have liked to do so. On they at all events went. Philip kept his eyes fixed on his own hill, but the outline soon became very dim. Thicker and thicker fell the snow; still they were in ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston

... a vein of sadness and of mourning. Neither Aztotl the noble, nor Ixtli the gallant, could so soon be forgotten. And more than one pair of eyes grew dim, more than one voice turned husky, as mention was made of both life and ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... sometimes went for solitary expeditions to various "sights" of London, and, as usual in such expeditions, had never once met anybody she knew. She had gone rather early one summer morning to Westminster Abbey, and was walking slowly through the dim cloistered shades, enjoying the coolness and the quietness, when she came full upon Alan Walcott, who ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Wallace's house on three occasions; the first two were when I was only about eight or nine years old, and my recollections of him at that time are therefore necessarily somewhat dim. Certain things, however, have stuck in my memory. I went there quite prepared to see a very venerable and imposing-looking old gentleman, and filled in advance with much awe and respect for him. As regards his personal appearance I was by no mean disappointed, as his tall, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... where joy and sorrow kiss, Each still to each corrective and relief, Where dim delights are brightened into bliss, And nothing wholly perishes ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... was won when she saw that Madame d'Ache and her daughter stayed at Colmar. But what she had more at heart than either my friendship or Madame d'Urfe's was the jewel-casket; but she dared not ask for it, and her hopes of seeing it again were growing dim. By her pleasantries at table which made Madame d'Urfe laugh she succeeded in giving me a few amorous twinges; but still I did not allow my feelings to relax my severity, and she continued to sleep with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... across the newly ploughed fields, until, at the end of a few minutes' walk, he reached the sunken road that branched off by the abandoned ice-pond. Here the bullfrogs were still croaking hoarsely, and far away over the gray-green rushes a dim moon was mounting the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... I say, never morn broke clear as those On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea, The deep groves and white temples and wet caves: And nothing ever will surprise me now— Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed, Who bound ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... she asked. She had just remembered it. She had almost an air of triumph in remembering it. All these old memories were so dim. But at the awkward difficult moment, by an inspiration she had remembered the great long-cherished aim of Dick Linforth's life. The Road! Dick wondered whether she remembered too that there had been a time ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... indeed, the work of that artist, as the dates corresponded. The formal and marked angles, points and projections of the armour, were a good subject for the harsh pencil of that early school. The face of the knight was, from the fading of the colours, pale and dim, like that of some being from the other world, yet the lines ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... nation requires to be stirred up, and so on. Has Mr. Williams forgotten the story of the little boy who cried "Wolf! Wolf!" when there was no wolf? It is one thing to warn the country of a problematic danger in the dim future; it is another to scream in the market-place that the danger is at our doors. Mr. Williams's book is one long scream—a literary scream, I admit, and therefore in some measure harmonious, but still a scream ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox

... rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine, by assembling in knots in the "towers of the vineyards," and slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till evening. It is pitiful to have dim conceptions of duty; more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... and played on her delicately-moulded mouth—a smile that was like sunlight on clear water, revealing a nature so simple and candid; and deep down, trembling into light, the crystalline soul which had come without flaw from its Maker's hands, and in the midst of evil had caught no stain to dim its perfect purity. It seemed now to Mrs. Churton, as she expounded the sacred doctrines which meant so much to her, that she had not known so great a happiness since her daughter, white even to her lips at the thought of the cruel pain ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... ground the footfalls of the pony made no sound that could be heard any distance away. On ahead of him the lad saw the dim light of a lantern, which he knew was at the camp and his heart leaped exultantly at the thought of what he had accomplished. He wondered if the others or any of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin

... he had linked Wessex in the year when I left home. It did come into my mind that thus in time the descendants of that mighty king would be likely to rule from the Humber to the Channel, but that was a dim thought of years to come. There was Ecgbert ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... the Peace Conference as I knew it from within, I feel convinced in my own mind that not the greatest man born of woman in the history of the race would have saved that situation. The great hope was not the heralding of the coming dawn, as the peoples thought, but only a dim intimation of some far-off event toward which we shall yet have to make many a long, weary march. Sincerely as we believed in the moral ideals for which he had fought, the temptation at Paris of a large ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... say?' said he. 'I thought at first that I had been struck with the plague. My head ached intensely, my eyes became dim, I had a pain in my side, and a nauseous taste in my mouth, and expected to die on the third day; but no, the symptoms still continue, and I am alive. As soon as I arrived here, I enquired for a physician, and was told there were two practitioners in the town, a Jew and a Frank. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... back, and soon after came a great team of powerful horses, drawing a long cart laden with trunks of trees, which John Kane, the carter, was bringing from the woods to be chopped up for firewood for the use of the Hall. At this sight a dim recollection of the past arose in Hetty's brain. Had she not seen this great cart and horses long ago, and was not the face of the man like a face she had seen in a dream? She had not had time to think of all this when John Kane pulled up his team before ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... the dim and hazy light the hobbled horses grazing across the plain a quarter of a ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard

... some form of worship, why should I go to Eleusis and not to Calvary?' He leaned forward and began speaking with a slightly rhythmical intonation, and as he spoke I had to struggle again with the shadow, as of some older night than the night of the sun, which began to dim the light of the candles and to blot out the little gleams upon the corner of picture- frames and on the bronze divinities, and to turn the blue of the incense to a heavy purple; while it left the peacocks ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats

... chord, lingering like fragrance in the room, a silence, and she rose, looking at her father. But he, dim eyes brooding, lay back unconscious of all save memories awakened by her song. And presently she moved across the room to the veranda, stepping out into the moonlit garden—knowing perfectly well what she was doing, though her heart was beating like a trip-hammer, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... of mentality, the actual swelling of the individual in his own estimation as he neared Fairbridge after a few hours' absence, might have been apparent. Take a broker on Wall Street, for instance, or a lawyer who had threaded his painful way to the dim light of understanding through the intricate mazes of the law all day, as his train neared his loved village. From an atom that went to make up the motive power of a great metropolis, he himself became an entirety. He was It with a capital letter. No wonder that under the ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... that Gambara himself had removed them. He opened the wicket for me, and as I stepped out he gave me the paper and whistled softly. Almost at once I heard a sound of muffled hooves under the colonnade, and presently loomed the figures of a man and a mule; both dim and ghostly in the pearly light of dawn—for ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... and Baalim Forsake their temples dim, With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine And mooned Ashtaroth Heaven's queen and mother both, Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine; The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn, In vain the Tyrian maids their ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Jack could see where the searchlights that sent such broadening streamers aloft were stationed. He could also make out a dim pile that must be the German fortress, strengthened particularly to hold up the Americans, even as that at Verdun ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach

... concealed from Hawbury's view. But even this cloud did not seem sufficient to correspond with the gloom of his soul. Other clouds rolled forth, and still others, until all their congregated folds encircled him, and in the midst there was a dim vision of a big head, whose stiff, high, curling, crisp hair, and massive brow, and dense beard, seemed like some ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... as logicians maintain, the consciousness of a representation. For a certain degree of consciousness, which may not, however, be sufficient for recollection, is to be met with in many dim representations. For without any consciousness at all, we should not be able to recognize any difference in the obscure representations we connect; as we really can do with many conceptions, such as those of right and justice, and those of the ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... eyes are dim; my hand trembles, and I see an image of myself in those old me of Homer, whose weakness excluded them from the battle, and who, seated upon the ramparts, lifted up their voices like ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... through me—to recede was vain; Fear lurk'd behind in that sepulchral court, In its mute avenue and grave-like grass; And to proceed—where led my onward way? Ranges of doorways branch'd on either side, Each like the other:—one I oped, and lo! A dim deserted room, its furniture Withdrawn; gray, stirless cobwebs from the roof Hanging; and its deep windows letting in The pale, sad dawn—than darkness drearier far. How desolate! Around its cornices Of florid stucco shone the mimic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... dining-room as he passed was dark, likewise the kitchen, and the rider made the complete circuit of the house, pausing at last under a certain window on the second floor facing the south. It was the girl's room, and, although the shade was drawn, a dim light was burning behind. For perhaps a minute the man on the barebacked broncho hesitated, looking up; then rolling his wide-brimmed hat into a cylinder he moved very close to the weather-boarded wall. The building was low, and, by stretching a bit, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... very thoroughly the period of their tuition. A friendly regard springs up between the pupils and their instructors, and men who have learned to fly, and are now expert pilots, bear with them very pleasant reminiscences of their "school" days. But there were times, and it seems already in the dim and distant past, when learning to fly was a strange, haphazard, and hardly pleasant experience; though it had a sporting interest certainly, and offered such prospects of adventure as commended it to bold spirits who were prepared for hardship, and had a well-filled purse. ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White

... they go with hoot and lurch Long miles, through glare and grime, With here and there a dim cool church Wide open all the time; Where on this lovely day Folk stop to pray That wars, at length, may cease And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... That no love nor passion can stay, Blown like dried leaves we now On the granite pavement of fate. No more thy lip-touch on my brow, Nor thy hands pleading caresses, Thy gifts fall and fade into nothing, Thy vision grows dim in life's sunset-west. ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... chestnut hair, curling from beneath the small round hat of the period, just before the small pink ears, softened as with a breath of worldliness the grave outlines of the serious face. A keen student of women might have seen that the dim religious halo of convent life which still clung to the young girl would soon fade and give way to the brilliancy of the woman of the world. She was not tall, though of fully average height, and although the ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... "mathematically accurate" but mysterious circles and squares, are still pointed to as impregnable to the attacks of this Indian theory. That the rays of light falling upon their origin are few and dim, is admitted; still, we are not left wholly ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas

... flock of caterpillars and vary their age; in vain I change the squad of parasites; in vain I follow events in the jar for long hours, morning and evening, both in a dim light and in the full glare of the sun: I succeed in seeing nothing, absolutely nothing, on the parasite's side, that resembles an attack. No matter what the ill-informed authors say—ill-informed because they had not the patience to see for themselves—the conclusion at which I arrive ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... his gloomy analysis after both he and General Mosby had redirected their patrols to heavier concentrations in Harrisburg's dim-lit and winding side streets. ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire

... Smolny blazed with lights as we drove up, and from every street converged upon it streams of hurrying shapes dim in the gloom. Automobiles and motorcycles came and went; an enormous elephant-coloured armoured automobile, with two red flags flying from the turret, lumbered out with screaming siren. It was cold, and at the outer gate the Red Guards had built themselves ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... somebody's patent rust-preventer to the darling locks, which formerly in better times they had snapped with honest pride. At last the authorities intervened, discharged the turnkeys, and locked up the place. It was a case of Ichabod. The fine gold had become dim and the weapons of war had perished. The officials departed in peace, each vowing that the country was going to the Divil, and each convinced that such a state of things would never come to pass under Home ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... region of fanciful conjecture into that of history. That for four centuries, ending with the fifteenth, the church of Iceland maintained its bishops and other missionaries and built its churches and monasteries on the frozen coast of Greenland is abundantly proved by documents and monuments. Dim but seemingly unmistakable traces are now discovered of enterprises, not only of exploration and trade, but also of evangelization, reaching along the mainland southward to the shores of New England. There are vague indications that these beginnings of Christian ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... imperial Danube or the Rhine.— Or feed the murmuring TIBER, as he laves 120 His realms inglorious with diminish'd waves, Hears his lorn Forum sound with Eunuch-strains, Sees dancing slaves insult his martial plains; Parts with chill stream the dim religious bower, Time-mouldered bastion, and dismantled tower; 125 By alter'd fanes and nameless villas glides, And classic domes, that tremble on his sides; Sighs o'er each broken urn, and yawning tomb, And mourns the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... Paul went upstairs with his letter still unapproved. He hesitated in the dim upper hallway, wondering if Patricia, who had left the men to beer and crackers half an hour earlier, had retired, or was, by happy chance, still gossiping with Mrs. Tolley or Min. While he loitered in the hall, the door of ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... clowns are now by common consent of Tories and Liberals alike transformed into capable citizens. Such a phrase gives us a painful glimpse of the accurate knowledge of their countrymen that is possessed by eminent men who write about them from the dim and distant seclusion of college libraries and official bureaux. If Sir Henry Maine could spare a few evenings from dispassionate meditations on popular government in the abstract, to the inspection of the governing people in the concrete, he would be the first to see that to dispatch ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... fifteen minutes to live, poor fellow,' was his reply! I threw on my stole, requested the crowd to stand back a little, and knelt on the bricks beside him, and bowed my ear close to his lips. He had recognized me, and his eyes already dim, lit up with joy; and in faltering and whispered words, he made his short confession. Happily, his conscience was not burdened with mortal sin. He was one of my penitents, and I knew how regular and pious his daily life had been. Quickly I gave him absolution, after which I administered ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... long shadow on the wall. And now to the four men gazing, the shadow which the stranger cast seemed to have become of more interest than his face—for there were two shadows, one of which followed ominously behind. While the first umbra was dim and blurred, the second was dense and well-defined; moreover it stood by itself, as if cast by an unseen presence, and was in every way different from that of the stranger. It seemed endowed with a separate personality; its actions were independent of those of the man and shadow which it followed. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... ladder, brought from the carriage-house, Mr. Schofield mounted to the top of the sawdust-box. He looked within, and discerned the dim outlines of three quiet figures, the third being ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... all her usual composure, 'and to a man I love with my whole soul, with my whole life. The future may seem dim, but I have little fear when I remember I am Arthur's wife, and that his love will be strong to help me whenever I relieve him of the promise I have obliged him to make not to reveal our marriage. Frank will be three-and-twenty in one year and a half from now; till then, he cannot, without great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... and the most enduring, is that of Argive Helen. During three thousand years fair women have been born, have lived, and been loved, "that there might be a song in the ears of men of later time," but, compared to the renown of Helen, their glory is dim. Cleopatra, who held the world's fate in her hands, and lay in the arms of Caesar; Mary Stuart (Maria Verticordia), for whose sake, as a northern novelist tells, peasants have lain awake, sorrowing that she is dead; Agnes Sorel, Fair Rosamond, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... winding Of bowery roadway, villa-edged and trim, Iron-railed city street, where gas-lamps blinding Glare through the foggy distance, dense and dim?" ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... starlight yet a dim and obscure night, for the moon had for the last hour or two been surrounded by mist and cloud, when at length the carriage arrived; and Mauleverer, for the second time that evening playing the escort, conducted Lucy to the vehicle. Anxious to learn if she had seen ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... as having spent the day in the forest and coming at sunset into full view of the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes. The glooms of the live-oaks and the emerald twilights of the "dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods," have been as a refuge from the riotous noon-day sun. More than that, in the wildwood privacies and closets of lone desire he has known the passionate pleasure ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... was nothing but a wall of ice, clear as glass, admitting a soft light which illuminated the whole place with dim rays, making it a place of mystery and awe. Yet I had not noticed its more dreadful aspect at the first coming; and, when I did so, I gave a cry of horror and turned away my face, fearing to see again that most overwhelming spectacle. For blocks had been cut from the ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... stupid lot, and the odour of the stock yards permeated the room. But when the mystical music begins again, and the dance starts, presto! change, and I am again floating in rhythmic space and the faces and dim lights have changed into one glorious ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... his eyes and looked for the singer, but he did not. The twilight region between sleep and consciousness was too pleasant. He had no responsibilities, nothing to do. He had a dim memory that he had belonged to an army, that it was his business to try to kill some one, and to try to keep from getting killed, but all that was gone now. He could lie there, without pain of body or anxiety of mind, and let vague but bright ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... in the dim candlelight that shone through Marcia's half-open door. I thought of that as I jumped to her, and I would have done better to have thought of Marcia. I could see her from the passage, lying on her bed, purple-faced ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... at the end of the table, with his back to the dim light, eating almost in the dark, urged him to change his seat, and take one opposite to and close under the lamp. Moodie looked askance at the saint, who was bestowing a benediction on those before him, and grumbled out, "Better to eat in the dark, than by the light ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... gladly would we ascend higher mountains than this. For as eager beholders have we come; we wanted to see what brighteneth dim eyes. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... upon the earth than others of their brethren are; yea, some are so swallowed up with God, and love to his word and ways, that they are fit to be a pattern or example in holiness to all that are about them; and some again have their light shining so dim, that they render themselves suspicious to their brethren, whether they are of the number of those that have grace or no.[1] But being gracious they shall not be lost, although such will at the day of reward suffer loss; for this is the will of the Father that sent the Son ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... in his hands, and the others looked about them. They were in a long room with an arched roof. There were wooden tables along it, and one across at the end of the room, on a sort of raised platform. The room was very dim and dark. The floor was strewn with dry things like sticks, and ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... the dim roar o' the dam It 'ud coax us furder still To'rds the old race, slow and ca'm, Slidin' on to Huston's mill— Where, I'spect, "The Freeport crowd" Never WARMED to us er 'lowed We wuz quite so overly Welcome as we ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley

... blind-man's buff, when the necessity of trusting to the touch came abruptly to an end—as if the handkerchief had been suddenly jerked from their eyes. The change was caused by a light streaming in through a side gallery into which they had strayed. It was at first dim and distant, but soon shone upon them with the brilliance ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... quivered, and in the depths of her dim, vague eyes a beam of the golden light of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... lips and her eyes and her hair kisses that resembled a rain of fire: while all the time she offered absolutely no resistance, allowing me to do with her exactly as I pleased. And when at last I stopped to breathe, looking at her with eyes dim with emotion, she said, very gently, with a smile, lying just as she was, fettered in my arms: Hast thou yet bid me good-bye, to thy satisfaction? And I said in a low voice: Nay, not at all. For thou hast not yet kissed me in return, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... What a study is this! To attain a dim reflection of it, is the ambition of angels—higher they can not soar. "To be conformed to the image of His Son!"—it is the end of God in the predestination of His Church from all eternity. "We shall be like Him!"—it is ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... rear of his company in his place as file-closer, listened to these words, and saw in the dim distance and on the darkling heights the throngs of fierce enemies and avalanches of impeding dangers as are likely to oppress the imagination of a young soldier at such unfavorable moments. The conflict and carnage seemed so imminent that he half expected it to begin that very night, and ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... responsibility to protect him from influences attacking the economic basis of life quite as much as from direct forcible assaults. The more advanced governments of my day, by their poor laws and pauper systems, in a dim way admitted this responsibility, although the kind of provision they made for the economically unfortunate was so meager and accompanied with such conditions of ignominy that men would ordinarily rather die than accept it. But grant that the sort of recognition ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... poultry, under many-coloured awnings; the tall white houses with their balconies and galleries shining round about, and the sky above so blue that the best cobalt in all the paint-box looks muddy and dim in comparison to it. There were pictures for a year in that market-place—from the copper-coloured old hags and beggars who roared to you for the love of Heaven to give money, to the swaggering dandies of the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... part we saw, through a long avenue of arches, an iron-grated door; within was a dim light which just sent its feeble rays upon some objects in its neighborhood, not strong enough to show what they were. It required no great effort of the imagination to fancy an emaciated, spectral figure of a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... of the mist of one hundred and ninety years emerges again the dim figure of William Sewell. And who, pray, was William Sewell? Peruke-maker! So called in a deed of trust dated 1766, "William Sewell Peruke Maker," and Elizabeth, his ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... other end of the long hall two young men coming out of the elevator. After the habit of youth, she had rehearsed speech and manner for this meeting; but at sight of him she was straightway trembling so that she feared she would be unable to speak at all. The entrance light was dim, but as he glanced at her in passing he saw her looking at him and his hand moved toward his hat. His face had not changed—the same frank, careless expression, the same sympathetic, understanding look out of the eyes. But he was the city ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... evening! A pensive hour and season, everything memorable brooded there. Crouched back in shadowy ranks, the old tombs were draped in mystery. The mist was swirled by the wind and smoke smeared out, over their dim shapes. Where families sat close about scant suppers, the lights of candles and cruisey lamps were blurred. The faintest halo hung above the Castle head. Infrequent footsteps hurried by the gate. There was the rattle of a belated cart, the ring of a distant church bell. But even on ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... we enter through the portals of the "Ilias" and "Odusseia," and see the peaks of Olympus shining afar off in white splendor like silvery clouds, not looking for or expecting either a loftier or a purer heaven. Somewhere on the bounds of the dim ocean-world we know that there is an exiled court, a faded sort of St. Germain celestial dynasty, geologic gods, coevals of the old Silurian strata,—to wit, Kronos, Rhea, Nox, et al. Here these old, unsceptred, discrowned, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... not secure to Jacob without his father's blessing. So he, with his mother's contrivance, for he was her favorite, deceived his father, and appeared to be Esau. Isaac, old and dim and credulous, supposing that Jacob, clothed in Esau's vestments as a hunter, and his hands covered with skins, was his eldest son, blessed him. The old man still had doubts, but Jacob falsely declared that he was Esau, and obtained what ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... going to the hay-field,—good solid Scotch lassies, who smiled in English, but spoke only Gaelic. The old man could speak a little English, and was disposed to be both communicative and inquisitive. He asked our business, names, and residence. Of the United States he had only a dim conception, but his mind rather rested upon the statement that we lived "near Boston." He complained of the degeneracy of the times. All the young men had gone away from Cape Breton; might get rich if they would stay and work the farms. But no one liked to work nowadays. From ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... situated among the hills. The sacred groves of cypresses were on three sides of the temple, and "to the north the verdant plain of Cos, with the white houses and trees of the town to the right, and the wide expanse of turquoise sea dotted by the purple islands of the AEgean, and the dim mountains about Halicarnassus, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... interpret the scenery and the setting of these Apocalyptic visions with dogmatic confidence, but it seems to me as if the emblems of this final vision coincide with dim hints in many other portions of Scripture; to the effect that some cosmical change having passed upon this material world in which we dwell, it, in some regenerated form, shall be the final abode of a regenerated and redeemed humanity. That, I think, is the natural interpretation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... general, and in the dim light also a trifle mixed. The Rifle Brigade fired into the two Devon companies down in the valley and across the laager. The latter in their turn fired at some Boers trying to escape through the gap left open by the Royal Irish. These were striving with the Boers for the possession of the ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson

... mind, Tanqueray knew his. The possibility of being unhappy with Rose (he had considered it) was dim compared with the certainty that he was unhappy without her. To be deprived of the sight and sound of her for six days in the week, to go down to Fleet, like the butcher, on a Sunday, and find her rosy and bright-eyed with affection, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... a collar, whined at his feet as he pushed on, and licked his hand and followed him like his own. Huge, dim forms rushed alongside the embankment, making unearthly sounds. Dragons could not have seemed more dreadful; but they were only cows. Huge pine-trees bent to the earth with rapid, vibratory motion as if a giant's hand clutched and shook them ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward

... and stared all round him at the wide landscape, and everything looked strange and dim and sorrowful. A shadow passed over the lake, and a murmur came up out of the rushes that was like a voice saying something that he could not understand. A great cry of pain rose from his heart and died to ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.

... which the boy had placed on the ground cast a dim light over the courtyard. All around seemed empty and deserted. Not a trace was visible of the disorder often seen in a country farmyard, and which shows a temporary cessation of the work which is soon to be resumed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... you relieved me; when from your own lips, for the first time, I heard words that praised me, and for qualities that implied I might yet be 'worth much,'—ah!" he added mournfully, "I remember the very words,—a new light broke upon me, struggling and dim, but light still. The ambition with which I had sought the truckling Frenchman revived, and took worthier and more definite form. I would lift myself above the mire, make a ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Virginia Clemenses is a dim procession of ancestors stretching back to Noah's time. According to tradition, some of them were pirates and slavers in Elizabeth's time. But this is no discredit to them, for so were Drake and Hawkins and the others. It was a respectable trade, then, and monarchs were partners in it. In my ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... become as stiff as a board from the ice. It is a very uninviting task and disagreeable procedure getting into an icy bed at night and in the morning getting into icy clothes." When both clothes and food were frozen and even the prospect of getting an occasional piece of driftwood was dim, one can imagine the situation and wonder at the endurance as well as the daring ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... has never yet shone so brightly, as he had hoped and imagined; clouds have, up to this hour, continually overshadowed it. I mean, that the lives of Christians have hindered them from being the light of the world. It has been a light pale and dim, and therefore the works of darkness have continued to abound. But admit this, and what follows? Is it, or can it be, anything else but a more earnest desire not to be ourselves children of darkness, lest what we see to have happened in part should happen altogether; namely, that ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... nations of antiquity a gradual dawn ushered in the day; and in their case too the dawn was in the east. While the Italian peninsula still lay enveloped in the dim twilight of morning, the regions of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean had already emerged into the full light of a varied and richly developed civilization. It falls to the lot of most nations in ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... foul, and days are dim, He makes no lamentation; The primal "fount" of woe to him ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... State which seemed to the historian Eusebius to be no less than the fulfilment of the apocalyptic vision of the New Jerusalem. Beyond this scene stretches to the faint far-off horizon the desert Campagna; a dim, misty, homeless land, where the moan of the wind sounds ever like the voice of the past, and the pathos of a vanished people breathes over all the scene; with here and there a gray nameless ruin, a desolate bluff, or a grassy mound, marking the site of some mysterious Etruscan ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... to offer. There stands the Great King, four times repeated, silent, majestic, superhuman—with features marked by profound repose and tranquillity, touched perhaps with a little scorn, looking out eternally on the grey-white Nubian waste, which stretches far away to a dim and distant horizon. Here, as you sit on the deep pure sand, you seem to see the monarch, who did so much, who reigned so long, who covered, not only Egypt, but Nubia and Ethiopia with his memorials. "You can look at his features inch by inch, see them not only magnified ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... abstract, inasmuch as the Roman view of law had therein divested itself of such of its national peculiarities as it had become aware of; but it was at the same time practical and positive, inasmuch as it by no means faded away into the dim twilight of general equity or even into the pure nothingness of the so-called law of nature, but was applied by definite functionaries for definite concrete cases according to fixed rules, and was not merely capable of, but had already essentially ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... there was no sun in the starlit sky. Many weeks before the sun had slipped below the southern horizon. For a little while a dim halo had marked its passage each day; then that, too, had faded away. But now it was time for the halo to appear again, to herald ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... said, and knocked at her door. An instant later he was inside the room. There was only a dim light, but his mother was sitting up in her bed, a gaunt and yet beautiful, sad-eyed figure of a woman. For a moment Carnac paused. As he stood motionless, the face of the woman became more drawn ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... appeared, bluff, bold and hearty, and soon everything was all right. That evening the young lady played for them on the harpsichord; the father told stories and laughed heartily at them because nobody else did; and Josiah seated in a dim corner recited pages from Thomson's "Seasons," and the next day was frightened ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... make the spot a very solitary one, Bruin perceived he was alone at the rendezvous; so, to while away the time, he strutted to and fro, and meditated, in his usual style, on his own self-importance. He was aroused from his reverie by a slight bark, or cough; and raising his head, he perceived in the dim light a tall ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... over wooded hills, and through tangled valleys, and deep, rocky ravines, surged against each other like angry waves in a storm. And you have heard, too—what is very pitiful to hear—how, when that bloody storm was over, and the sun came out, dim and cold, on the cheerless May morning which followed, thirty thousand men—every one the father, brother, or friend of some young folks at home—lay dead and dying on that awful field. Amid such a host of dead and dying men, you might overlook one ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... my last report I gave you a dim account of the underground department of Congress. In fact, it was so dim down there, that I couldn't see anything clearly. I hope this report will have a little more brightness in it; but of that ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... faces seemed to imitate the possession of very little in common, with the exception of shape alone. The light was not sufficiently strong to give them distinctness, and as a natural consequence, there was upon them a dim gleamy look—a spectral character that was frightful, and filled the mind with an impression that the meeting must have been one of supernatural beings, if not an assemblage of actual devils, in visible shape, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... as well as the human history of the world has its mythical age, lying dim and vague in the morning mists of creation, like that of the heroes and demigods in the early traditions of man, defying all our ordinary dates and measures. But if the succession of periods that prepared the earth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... face Still wears that quiet and peculiar light Like the dim circlet floating 'round a pearl. * * * * * And yet her calm sweet countenance, Though saintly, was not sad; for she would sing Alone ... bird-like, Not dreaming you were near.—Her carols dropt In flakes through that old ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various

... ourselves, I want to go down to see Chechotte or Merzheyevsky. There's some devil in me, brother. In moments of despair and suffering, when the gnats are stinging or the tenors sing, everything suddenly grows dim; you jump up and race round the whole house like a lunatic and shout, "I want blood! Blood!" And really all the time you do want to let a knife into somebody or hit him over the head with a chair. ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... Lord has been in all ages the hope of His true followers. The Saviour's parting promise upon Olivet, that He would come again, lighted up the future for His disciples, filling their hearts with joy and hope that sorrow could not quench nor trials dim. Amid suffering and persecution, "the appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" was the "blessed hope." When the Thessalonian Christians were filled with grief as they buried their loved ones, who had hoped to live to witness the coming ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... at a fearful height, for the family pride which had been appealed to felt a touch of fear, and his other thoughts were confirmed again, besides the dim vision of a possible thwarting of all his plans. Desire almost concentrated itself upon revenge against the object that threatened them. He had thrown himself again towards the weapons which lay beyond his reach, but was met and forcibly ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... basket-chair in the corner by the conservatory. It was 7.45 on a particularly sultry June night, and dinner was about to be served at the Grand Babylon. Men of all sizes, ages, and nationalities, but every one alike arrayed in faultless evening dress, were dotted about the large, dim apartment. A faint odour of flowers came from the conservatory, and the tinkle of a fountain. The waiters, commanded by Jules, moved softly across the thick Oriental rugs, balancing their trays with the dexterity of ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... his soul, unsympathetic his nature who can see the forests and mountains of Luzon, Queen of the Eastern Isles, fade away into dim violet outlines on the fast receding horizon without some pang of longing regret. Not the Aegean, not the West Indian, not the Samoan, not any rival in manifold beauties of earth, sea and sky the Philippine ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... the slightest knowledge of whom had cost her many long and acute suffering; and round whose image for so many years every thought of her intelligence, and every feeling of her heart, had clustered like spirits round some dim and mystical altar, At length she had beheld him; she had gazed on that spiritual countenance; she had listened to the tender accents of that musical voice; within his arms she had been folded with rapture, and pressed to a heart that seemed to beat only for her felicity. ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... of my fathers. We sat down in the Potter pew a few minutes before the service began. There were, by actual count, forty-nine people gathered around the altar of the old church, and behind us a great emptiness and the ghosts of the dead. In my boyhood I had sat in its dim light, with six hundred people filling every seat to the doors and a man of power and learning in ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller

... a mystic shape in the dim distance; and, as the inlet was entered, it was lost entirely to view. By tortuous passages among the marshes, they drew ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.

... the point of turning away, when Arthur exclaimed, "I see something moving high up the igarape, among those huge leaves." I scrambled down to where he was standing, and presently, amid the dim light, a human figure came into view. At first it seemed as if he was standing on the water, but as he slowly approached we saw that a raft of some sort was beneath his feet. He was hauling himself along by the branches, which hung low down, or the tall ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... day. It is possible that you may get a habit of saving money; or it is possible, at a time of great trial, you may yield to the temptation of speaking unjustly of a rival,—and you will shorten your powers arid dim your sight even by this;—but the thing that you have to dread far more than any such unconscious habit, or—any such momentary fall—is the constancy of small emotions;—the anxiety whether Mr. So-and-so will like your work; ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... sinful beings to meet the cravings of his heart for fellowship? Whom could he find among earth's sinful creatures worthy of his friendship, or capable of being in any real sense his personal friend? What satisfaction could his heart find in this world's deepest and holiest love? What light can a dim candle give to the sun? Does the great ocean need the little dewdrop that hides in the bosom of the rose? What blessing or inspiration of love can any poor, marred, stained life give to the ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... interior now, as my eyes become accustomed to the dim light," said Minnie, gazing up wistfully into the vaulted roof, where the edges of projecting rocks seemed to peer out of darkness. "Surely this must be a place for ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... dim Draws round us, then the lonely caterwaul, Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall,— ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... warrants for his deede, Vnkindly left him in that monstrous hell, And fled vnto Alfonso with greate speede, To him their Chieftaines mightines they tell, And how much valure on his soule doth feede, That if preuention, not his actions dim, Twill be too late to saue the shyp ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... or nothing. The names of its parishes, St. Aldate, St. Ebbe, St. Mildred, St. Edmund, show how early church after church gathered round the earlier town-church of St. Martin. But the men of the little town remain dim to us. Their town-mote, or the "Portmannimote" as it was called, which was held in the churchyard of St. Martin, still lives in a shadow of its older self as the Freeman's Common Hall—their town-mead is still the Port-meadow. But it is only by later charters or the record ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... fairest cheek, alas! may fade Beneath the touch of years; The een where light and gladness play'd May soon graw dim wi' tears. I would love's fires should, to the last, Still burn as they begin; And beauty's reign too soon is past, So—has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... craved for. No. He loved her—but it was in a dark, mesmeric way, which did not let her be herself. His love did not stimulate her or excite her. It extinguished her. She had to be the quiescent, obscure woman: she felt as if she were veiled. Her thoughts were dim, in the dim back regions of consciousness—yet, somewhere, she almost exulted. Atavism! Mrs. Tuke's word would play in her mind. Was it atavism, this sinking into extinction under the spell of Ciccio? Was it atavism, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... her husband in a puzzled manner. Burton was quietly but well dressed. His apparel was not such as Ellen would have thought of choosing for him, but in a dim sort of way she recognized its qualities. She recognized, too, something new about him which, although she vigorously rebelled against it, still impressed her ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... did not tell her about the awful bird or the more awful eyes. He told her about his little brother, and the yellow cat they had, and about the great city where he had once lived, and why he was called Aladdin. And when the real began to grow dim, he told her stories out of strange books that he had read, as he remembered them—first the story ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... apex of the loop, a flat space of rock about eighty yards in length by some thirty in breadth, with the star-strewn sky above us. To the south, twenty thousand feet or more below, stretched the dim Plain of Kaloon, and to the east and west the snow-clad shoulders of the peak and the broad brown slopes beneath. To the north was a different sight, and one more awesome. There, right under us as it seemed, for the pillar bent inwards, lay the vast crater ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... the stiff brush that made up the slope. It was hard work; and it seemed to have no end. We arrived at last on a knife-edge summit. Here the trees were fewer. We looked abroad over the country we had traversed, and that which lay before us—a succession of dark, dim, undulating ridges with canons and valleys between, slanting from the great ranges at the right to brown rolling hills and the heat-covered, half-guessed plains. Immediately below us, very far down, was a ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... moment I saw red as I pictured Jim, helpless before approaching death. I could imagine Helen's agony as she saw that dim black shape come closer and closer and screamed in her terror, "Look out, Jim! It's going to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... the cardboard, flush with the edges of the opening so that no stray light could get through, a cardboard slide was inserted from behind, into which was cut the exposed figure. A covered electric light illuminated the figure with a yellowish-white light, so that all the subject saw, besides a dim outline of the apparatus and the walls of the room, was the illuminated figure. An upright strip of steel, 11/2 mm. wide, movable in either direction horizontally by means of strings, and controlled by the subject, who sat about four feet in front of the table, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... found himself completely encircled by lights, which shone upon the worn, haggard face of the duchesse, revealing every feature but too clearly. Aramis fixed a long and ironical look upon her pale, thin, withered cheeks—upon her dim, dull eyes—and upon her lips, which she kept carefully closed over her blackened and scanty teeth. He, however, had thrown himself into a graceful attitude, with his haughty and intelligent head thrown back; he smiled so as to reveal his ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... hid their faces, while the sons took up the axes. I was going to try to pacify them once more, when the sleeping dog awakened suddenly and, raising his head and stretching his neck, looked at the fire with his dim eyes and uttered one of those mournful howls which make travelers shudder in the darkness and solitude of the country. All eyes were focused upon him now as he rose on his front feet, as though haunted by a vision, and began to howl at something invisible, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... face seemed to gleam in the dim light which fell upon it. Langham involuntarily put up his hand in silence and touched his sleeve. Robert gave him a quiet friendly look, and the two men instantly plunged into some quite trivial ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... first half-hour of his solitary journey in speculating how the oil in the lamp got round at the wick. He considered the matter most attentively, and kept his eyes fixed on the dim light until London was miles behind him, and the hedges and grey autumn fields on either hand proclaimed the country. Then his mind abandoned its problems, and for another half-hour he tried with all his might to prevent the beat of the engine ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... being parted; of her being wedded to another, and of her death soon after. She makes a great figure in Dante's Poem; seems to have made a great figure in his life. Of all beings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole strength of affection loved. She died: Dante himself was wedded; but it seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous earnest man, with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... amid the roaring of the crowd, those ten stout fellows that were left went back to their tents to rest for a while and change their bowstrings, for nought must fail at this next round, and no hand must tremble or eye grow dim ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... hand!" The eyes of the two met with a dim smile and a memory of the childhood so near, so utterly gone. "I'd like Dad to respect me again," the boy spoke in a wistful, uncertain voice. "It's darned wretched to have your father despise you." He looked at her ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... run cold when I think on't," proceeded the tramp, looking up into the face of his companion, with blood-stained countenance, and eyes that were sodden with pain and passion. He looked like some prisoner of state doomed to the martyr's stake, as he sat there in the dim light and talked in a solemn monotone that ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton



Words linked to "Dim" :   indistinct, darken, change intensity, efface, weaken, dark, obliterate, undimmed, change, hopeless, focus, low-beam, stupid



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