"Dimmer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for they were in the mood for anything. There stood Colonel Clark in the dimmer light of the background. "We must keep 'em screwed up, Davy," he had said ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and darker! Hardly a glimmer Of light comes in at the window-pane; Or is it my eyes are growing dimmer? I cannot disentangle this skein, Nor wind it rightly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a scene! Yon rosy mists on high careering,— The Moorish cavaliers who fleet With hawk and hound and distant cheering,— The dipping sail puffed to the gale, The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,— How can they fade to dimmer shade, And how this day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... calmer, we talked of the past, of the early days in Iowa, of the dimmer, yet still more beautiful valleys of Wisconsin, till mother sighed, and said, "I'd like to see the folks and the old coulee once more, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and wave, more and more widely apart. Each, with its quiver of color, seemed a life afraid,—trembling on the blind current that was bearing it into the outer blackness.... Are not we ourselves as lanterns launched upon a deeper and a dimmer sea, and ever separating further and further one from another as we drift to the inevitable dissolution? Soon the thought-light in each burns itself out: then the poor frames, and all that is left of their once fair colors, must melt forever into ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... had begun to pull along the shore, compelling me to keep outside the line of surf and thus follow it till the rocky headland loomed up on the other side of the bay, then past the reefs again till another bay curved inward,—nothing to be seen but fog, dim white surf, and dimmer rocks. Once, when passing an outlying point, I saw, for a moment, a couple of men fishing; they shouted something which the surf rendered inaudible; then rock and fishers melted away into the mist. After rowing in this manner for about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... behind the desert. He watched it sink, while the golden-red flood of light grew darker and darker. Thought seemed remote from him then; he watched, and watched, until he saw the last spark of fire die from the snow-slopes of Coconina. The desert became dimmer and dimmer; the oasis lost its outline in a bottomless purple pit, except for a faint light, like ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... the evening, still daylight, though in the darkened house dimmer than without. Olive drew the blind aside, took one long gaze into the cheerful sunset landscape to strengthen and calm her mind, and then walked with a firm step to the chamber-door. It was not locked this time, but closed ajar. The child ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... path grows dim, and dimmer still; Now up, now down, the Rover wends, With all the sail that he can carry, Till brought to a deserted quarry—[27] And ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... aching limbs beside the fire, and languidly watched the firs grow dimmer and the mists creep in ghostly trails down the steep hillside. Presently Carroll ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... the waters, the hush Of the grey expanse where he floats, Freshening its current and spotted with foam As it draws to the Ocean, may strike Peace to the soul of the man on its breast— As the pale waste widens around him, As the banks fade dimmer away, As the stars come out, and the night-wind Brings up the stream Murmurs and scents ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... is it after all? A few gray hairs, a wrinkle here and there, a slower step, perhaps a dimmer glance. That is all it is—the quiet, sunny channel between the sea of earthly joy and the ocean of heavenly happiness. The breeze of love still fills the sails, wafting us softly onward through the narrows, never failing, though it be softer and softer, till we glide out, scarce ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... in silent acquiescence; the knot of men bowed quickly and stiffly; and Max found himself being led across the bare, sawdust-strewn floor into an inner and larger room—a holy of holies—where the light was dimmer and the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... about her into the dimmer corners of the lamplit room, "just a little while ago, I—I thought I heard Oom Peter call me.—I was upstairs in my room. And it seemed to me I could hear that dear old call he used to give. It was so vivid, so distinct, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... you first—ah, when did I first meet you? When I was full of wonder, and innocent, Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent, While dimming day grew dimmer In the pulpit-glimmer. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... found my feet Were wet; and, underneath the seat On which I sat, I heard the sound Of gurgling waters, and I found The boat aleak alarmingly. . . . I turned and looked upon the sea, Whose every wave seemed mocking me; I saw the fishers' sails once more— In dimmer distance than before; I saw the sea-bird wheeling by, With foolish wish that I could fly: I thought of firm earth, home and friends— I thought of everything that tends To drive a man to frenzy and To wholly lose his own command; I thought of all my waywardness— Thought ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... paused where ripples still ran in, endlessly bringing lines of dimmer and dimmer light. A rocking boat was tied to a stake. Anchored and bare-masted, farther out in the mouth of the bay, a fishing-smack tilted slightly in rhythmic motion. While they stood a touch of crimson replaced the sky light in the ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... corresponding big, oblong hole in the ceiling, and one could see above, over the fence of the top floor, some machinery; and right away overhead was the glass roof, and all light for the three storeys came downwards, getting dimmer, so that it was always night on the ground floor and rather gloomy on the second floor. The factory was the top floor, the warehouse the second, the storehouse the ground floor. It ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... behind a corner of green cloth beyond suspicion; that opened, for all that, when the edge was coaxed with a finger-nail. It had been her first experience of a secret, and a fascination hung about it still. That confused image of a second mother, growing dimmer year by year in spite of a perfunctory system of messages maintained in the correspondence of the parted twins, had never utterly vanished; and it had clung about this workbox, a present from Maisie to Phoebe, even into these later years. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... replenish the fire, the light had grown dimmer, but a quick, shadowy flitting told Fred the brute was moving briskly about, only a few paces from where the lad was straining his vision to ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... I knew it was coming. The light was getting dimmer every day. I could hardly see your face this morning when ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... lay Tawny on thick ferns and gray On dark waters: dimmer, Lone and deep, the cypress grove Bowered mystery and wove Braided lights, like those that love On the pearl plumes of a dove Faint to ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... last long: But when the Air grows thick by Degrees, and the Sun, Moon, and Stars shine dimmer and dimmer, then it is like to rain ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... fell and moorland, And salt-sea foreland, Our noisy norland Resounds and rings; Waste waves thereunder Are blown in sunder, And winds make thunder With cloudwide wings; Sea-drift makes dimmer The beacon's glimmer; Nor sail nor swimmer Can try the tides; And snowdrifts thicken Where, when leaves quicken, Under the heather the ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to the open country, he stood for a moment quite bewildered and uncertain. A dark wild twilight country lay before him, confused dim shapes of trees near at hand, and a hollow below his feet, and the further hills and woods were dimmer, and all the air was very still. Suddenly the darkness about him glowed; a furnace fire had shot up on the mountain, and for a moment the little world of the woodside and the steep hill shone in ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... lights are wheeling White sword-blades in the sky, The misty hills grow dimmer, The last lights blink and die; Oh, land of home and beauty, Good-bye, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... dimmer And goodlier they glow For the eyes of the swimmer Who scans them below As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of sunshine ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... is not the wind That is lifting it now: and it is not the mind That hath moulded that vision. A pale woman enters, As wan as the lamp's waning light, which concenters Its dull glare upon her. With eyes dim and dimmer There, all in a slumberous and shadowy glimmer, The sufferer sees that still form floating on, And feels faintly aware that he is not alone. She is flitting before him. She pauses. She stands By his bedside ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... effect upon the heart which administered them, and all that the recurring image of Menelaws could do to fight against these rising predilections was so far unavailing, that that very image waxed dimmer and dimmer, while the present object was always working through the magic of sensation. Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by day fonder of her protege, until at length she got, as the saying goes, "over head and ears." ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... the moonlight, with the stars shining peacefully down upon him. His heart at the moment was a divided one—one half being given to Leoline, and the other to the Midnight Queen and her mysterious court. The farther he went away from Leoline, the dimmer her star became in the horizon of his thoughts; and the nearer he came to Miranda, the brighter and more eagerly she loomed up, until he spurred his horse to a most furious gallop, lest he should find the castle and the queen lost in the regions of space when he got there. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... him. They expressed neither grief nor anxiety: they looked smaller and dimmer. Her face was pale; her slightly parted lips had ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... rolling and writhing in helplessness, snarling viciously, and now and then howling, as it tried to rise to its feet. Rube could see the brute's big round eyes flashing brightly at first and then becoming smaller and dimmer. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... master's whiskers with it, "Better wait, and let him come round," thought Mary; "I never did see him so put out." Then she ran up the stairs to the window on the landing, and watched her dear father grow dimmer and dimmer up the distance of the hill, with a bright young tear for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... was still invisible, but it was not very far ahead, for at times the snapping of a stick or a rustle of disturbed underbrush came sharply out of the woods. The light was getting dimmer and the snow was falling ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... yachts, boats, and canoes. Upon the green shore the colours of the gaily painted villas could still be seen among the trees, and most conspicuous of all the great barn-like boat-house of the Syndicate, which was painted red. By and by the light grew dimmer and stars came out in the sky; then one could no longer distinguish the outline of the shore, but in every window a light ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... Finding himself then in the sixth section, still hovering about the places and persons with which he was most closely connected while on earth, the average man, as time passes on, finds the earthly surroundings gradually growing dimmer and becoming of less and less importance to him, and he tends more and more to mould his entourage into agreement with the more persistent of his thoughts. By the time that he reaches the third level he finds that this characteristic has ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... beautiful. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." Ah! but we must have eyes to see it. This springtime is lovely, if we have the eyes to see it; but, if we have not, its loveliness is nothing to us, and if we miss seeing it we shall have dimmer eyes to see it next year and the next; and if we cannot now see beauty and truth through the glass darkly, we shall be unable to gaze on them when we come to see them face ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... fiery eyes looking in at the window, huge, and wide apart. Next, I saw the outline of a horse's head, in which the eyes were set; and behind, the dimmer outline of a man's form seated on the horse. The apparition faded and reappeared, just as if it retreated, and again rode up close to the window. Curiously enough, I did not even fancy that I heard any sound. Instinctively I felt for my sword, but ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... at the switchboard to make up for the loss at half-load. At full load, his voltage at the end of the line would be 121 minus 18, or 103 volts; his motor would run a shade slower, at this voltage, and his lights would be slightly dimmer. He would probably not notice the difference. If he did, he could walk over to his generating station, and raise the voltage a further 7 volts by turning the rheostat handle ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... years ago; in those ten years the memory had, I must confess, grown dimmer. In our busy western life a man had not much time for sentimental recollections. Yet I had never been able to care for another woman. I wanted to; I wanted to marry and settle down. I had come to the time of life when a man wearies of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... now The lake bears only thin reflected lights That shake a little. How I long to take One from the cold black water—new-made gold To give you in your hand! And see, and see, There is a star, deep in the lake, a star! Oh, dimmer than a pearl—if you stoop down Your hand could almost reach it up ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... even with the assistance of much time and care, sound the depth of these most necessary truths. And, indeed, we see that these philosophers are themselves almost always enshrouded in uncertainties; that at every step the natural light which illuminates their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have as yet only discovered a small number of conflicting notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of years, without either laying a firmer grasp on truth, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a time she was silent. Some new emotion seemed to move her. Her face was softer than he had ever seen it, her beautiful eyes dimmer. His mind was filled with ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lead me into that still more hidden and dimmer region where Thought weds Fact, where the mental operation of the mathematician and the physical action of the molecules are seen in their true relation? Does not the way to it pass through the very den of the metaphysician, strewed with the remains ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... English-writing world. SUSTAINED. I entrench myself behind that protecting word. There are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does, but only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas Howells's moon sails cloudless skies all night ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shadow which can be looked upon from the higher parts, only through the crimson glory of the departing light. And now the sun has disappeared—is gone—but still how beautiful is the fading splendor that sleeps for a little on the mountain tops, then becomes dimmer and dimmer—then a faint streak which gradually melts away until it is finally lost in the soft shadows of that thoughtful hour. And even thus passeth away all human glory! The ruin which we have mentioned stood about half way between the residence of Brian M'Loughlin ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... statue, silent again as death, the man watched as the dark spot on the horizon grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded at ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... sat his horse beside Hard-winter Sims and looked back over the white mass that grew dimmer and dimmer in ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... under Roy's care played snowballs, he sat and watched the sky. At first there was only a cloud or two in the west; then a sudden wind sprang up and drove the fine, powdery snow in drifts. But still the sun shone, though it seemed to grow a little dimmer, a little paler; finally, about two hours after the others had left, Foster-father felt uncertain whether it was all drift that seemed to fill the air with a fine white film, or whether fresh ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with a material grasp. Owen Warland felt the impulse to give external reality to his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters who have arrayed the world in a dimmer and fainter beauty, imperfectly copied from ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its sweet welcomes, its cleanliness and order, its familiar furniture and cheerful fires, its easy-chairs and quaint fragrant air, as if every thing had lain in dried rose-leaves; the mother love and tears, the smiles out of dimmer eyes, and cousin Jane Morgan's hearty greeting; to say nothing of his delicious supper and his own bed, where sleep seemed awaiting ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... way," said Robert quickly. He was eager to escape from the room, not alone for the sake of air, but because the place choked him. After a period of excitement and mental intoxication the reaction had come. The colors were growing dimmer, the perfume in the air turned to poison, and he ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... Glaucon clambered the giddy cordage to the ship's top above the swelling mainsail. On the narrow platform, with the stars above, the dim tracery of the wide sail, the still dimmer tracery of the long ship below, they seemed transported to another world. Far beneath by the glimmer of the lanterns they saw the rowers swaying at their toil. In the wake the phosphorous bubbles ran away, opalescent gleams springing upward, as if torches of Doris and her dancing ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... shining level with the lower window, and we knew it was getting late. After a while the twilight began to get dimmer and grayer. There isn't much out there when the sun goes down. Then the judge ordered the lamps to ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... he said to himself, and walked steadily on, looking neither to the right nor to the left. It was evening by the time he reached the edge of the plain: everything was growing dark. The endless vapours and the high banks of cloud in which the whole of this world was sunk grew dimmer and dimmer. In front of him was an empty level space, and about two miles further on the huge mushrooms stood out, tall and wide like the monuments of some prehistoric age. And underneath them on the soft carpet there seemed to move a myriad ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... thoughts were did not long remain in doubt. Dimmer and dimmer grew the vision of the distant sailor face, clearer and clearer the image of the vast palace, of the queenly power, of the diamonds, the gold, the ambitious future. It all lay at her ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... along some great picture gallery with which he was perhaps even over familiar. His hands would be in his pockets, his indifferent eyes upon the clouds about him. And as he strolled along that path, the darkness closed in upon him. His figure became dim and dimmer. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... running uphill, with a group of sheds, another wall, and a still steeper and rougher field beyond. His bulk told against him; and behind him he heard the quick thump of Oscar's feet on the turf. The starlight grew dimmer through tracts of white scud; the surface of the pasture was rougher to the feet than it appeared to the eye. A hound in the Claiborne stable-yard bayed suddenly and the sound echoed from the surrounding houses and drifted off toward the ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... stirring neither hand nor foot; as immovable, in fact, except for my breathing, as a figure cut out of stone. Looking and wondering still, after a time it seemed to me that the lights were growing dimmer, that the room was growing colder; that some baleful presence was beside me with malicious intent to gradually numb and chill the life out of me, to freeze me, body and soul, till the two could no ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... amid the stillness, more and more solemn, more and more impressive, as one accusation followed the other in swift succession; the candles dropping low in their sockets, the light growing dimmer, the room larger and lower and more ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... the last projection of light Ycleep'd Shamajim, which is liquid fire (It AEther eke and centrall Tasis hight) Hath made each shining globe and clumperd mire Of dimmer Orbs. For Nature doth inspire Spermatick life, but of a different kind. Hence those congenit splendour doth attire And lively heat, these darknesse dead doth bind, And without borrowed rayes they ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... typical as any. About three-fourths of the whole business was for effect and therefore harmless, ended at the door of the cafe, soon enough for the five-o'clock train back to Yale or Princeton; about one-fourth continued on into the dimmer hours and gathered strange dust from strange places. Their party was scheduled to be one of the harmless kind. Fred Sloane and Phoebe Column were old friends; Axia and Amory new ones. But strange things are prepared even in the dead of night, and the unusual, which lurks least ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... destroyed. He was more easily discouraged than a child who sets out to tell its parent a story, and is all silence and shamefaced blushes at the first whisper of laughter or semblance of a smile. The works of poets dazed him, disheartened him, and secret ambitions toward performance grew dimmer with every book he laid his hands on. Ambition to create began to die; the dream scenery of his ill-controlled mental life more and more seldom took shape of words on paper; and there came a time when thought grew wholly wordless for him; a mere ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Baron, and we find our way through the now quieter and dimmer thoroughfare to the Catholic Cathedral behind the Plaza. The occasional candle gives out too dim a light for us to form much of an idea of the interior, but it is cool and damp and mysterious. Mrs. Steele, who is a thorough and highly intelligent ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... transparent here almost to the sea bed. His eyes were wide with reverie. He seemed another boy, not the gay singer of five minutes ago. But then he had been in the blaze of the sun. Now he was in the shade. And swiftly he had caught the influence of the dimmer light, the lack of motion, the delicate hush at the feet ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... wouldn't mind going blind so much then? When I'd sit facin' them I'd just say to myself: 'Now I know just how they look. I'm seeing them just as if I had my eyes!' The doctor says my sight'll just kind of slip away, and when I look my last look, when it gets dimmer and dimmer to me, I want the last thing I see to be them mountains where William and me worked and was so happy! Seems like I can't bear it to have my sight slip away here in Chicago, where there's nothing I want to look at! And then to have a little left—to have just a little ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... rest. The sky had clouded over a little, and a cooler wind was blowing across the breast of the hill. Fairfield yonder, that long smooth slope of verdure which a little while ago looked emerald green in the sunlight, now wore a soft and shadowy hue. All the world was greyer and dimmer in a moment, as it were, and Coniston Lake in its distant valley disappeared beneath a veil of mist, while the shimmering sea-line upon the verge of the horizon melted and vanished among the clouds that overhung it. The weather changes very quickly ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... very little after, except that the lights shone dimmer through the cigar-smoke, that there was much noise from popping corks, and occasionally a breakage of glass, and I think I made another speech. Next morning I awoke with a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... and Syd lay gazing at a great bright star which he could see peering through a slit between two outstretched sails. Then that star passed out of sight and another moved in, followed by another, which grew dim, then dimmer, and finally disappeared, for the simple reason that Syd's eyes had closed and he ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... dimmer. The high ceiling was lost in murky shadows. All the room was dark save where that light struck upon walls and floor to make them glow blood-red. The waiting lighted shell seemed a haven of refuge. To get inside, close the door, lock out some of this ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... caution. Then he rebuilt his fire, pausing every few moments in the operation to listen for a suspicious sound. It was very cold. He noticed, after a little, that the weird sound of the lights over the Pole had become only a ghostly whisper. The stars were growing dimmer, and he watched them as they seemed slowly to recede farther and farther away from the world of which he was a part. This dying out of the stars always interested him. It was one of the miracles of the northern world that lay just ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... him to herd sheep in a better land. Death from exposure, Dingley, the vet., gave it; but as little M'Adam, his eyes dimmer than their wont, declared huskily; "We ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... continually run down Gervaise to everyone. On the other hand, Madame Lerat took the young wife's side. Mother Coupeau tried to get along with everybody. She only wanted to be welcomed by all three of her children. Now that her eyesight was getting dimmer and dimmer she only had one regular house cleaning job but she was able to pick up some ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... and recoiled. Like a vapour that lessens as the sun pierces and pervades it, the form shrank cowering and dwarfed in the dimmer distance, and through the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the snow in their faces, and the stones they could not see slipping beneath their feet; and the light grew dimmer as they proceeded. A bitter wind swept down the gully and drove their wet clothing against their chilled bodies, while the hillside, growing steeper, pushed them nearer the brink of the awful hollow. The slope of the latter, as far down as they could ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... in very few seconds, and the posse was riding through the river, still a long shot off, when Barry drew his rifle from its case on the saddle. Moreover, the failing light which had made the sheriff's hit so much a matter of luck was now still dimmer, yet Barry snapped his gun to the shoulder and fired the instant the butt lay in the grove. For another moment nothing changed in the appearance of the riders, then a man leaned out of his saddle and fell full ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... sitting-room of the Waterfall Cottage threw its cheerful rosy light out over the road. The bedroom window above showed a dimmer light. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... then, when the influence of the wilderness and its immensity and desolation were so strong, that he might have lived in some such time himself, ages and ages ago. It might have been the stories of Paul or it might have been some dim heritage from a dimmer past that made him, as he lay there under the soaking bushes, call up visions of the great beasts that once stalked the earth, the mammoth and the mastodon, the cave bear, the saber-toothed tiger, gigantic leopards and hyenas, and back of them the terrific stegosaurus in his armor-like ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... O, subtle Frau Baumbach back of the desk!" said I. "Others may fit their shops with mirrors, and cut-glass chandeliers and Oriental rugs and mahogany, but you sit serenely by, and you smile, and you change nothing. You let the brown walls grow dimmer with age; you see the marble-topped tables turning yellow; you leave bare your wooden floor, and you smile, and smile, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... to levity than we were, we could not but have felt the earnestness of the appeal made to us—the importance of the subject—the awful truths uttered by our companion. Darker grew the night—the sea-birds screamed above us—the distant cliffs grew dimmer, their outline less distinct—the rushing tide earned us rapidly onwards—the cold wind pierced through our wet clothes, and sent the spray dashing over us. Shivering, benumbed, hungry and faint, I felt as if I could no longer retain my hold. Death—death, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... with her to the sick bed and helped her to raise the dying man. The dawn came in feebly now, and made the guttering candle dimmer. Death was all that was written on the grey face, and the body laboured for breath. The flicker of light in the mind, that had been roused, perhaps, by those rites which had passed in her absence, had faded; there was not the faintest sign of intelligence in the eyes now; the hands were cold ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... practically or theoretically, in the Great War, is just now prophesying of the future, simply because it looks vaguer and dimmer than ever. So I will hazard my guess at truth before ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... at her through eyes dimmer still, then rose, waggling the bent forefinger. "But not one day over ten weeks, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... but the Indians had been gone a long time and it was filled with leaves, dim and not easy to follow. It ended as nearly all trails do; it branched off to right and left, grew dimmer and slimmer, degenerated to a deer path, petered out to a squirrel track, ran up a tree and ended in a knot hole. I was not sorry. It left me free to follow my nose, my inclination ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... pilots in their pilot-houses, The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels, The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset, The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening, The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of the granite store-houses by the docks, On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flanked on each side by the barges—the hay-boat, the belated lighter, On the neighbouring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... saints who guard the portals of a French cathedral. Well educated, well endowed, and not deficient physically, he remained in the grip of a certain devil whom the modern world knows as self-consciousness, and whom the medieval, with dimmer vision, worshipped as asceticism. A Gothic statue implies celibacy, just as a Greek statue implies fruition, and perhaps this was what Mr. Beebe meant. And Freddy, who ignored history and art, perhaps meant the same when he failed to imagine Cecil ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... was more that passed through her mind—sensations of tiredness and loneliness; trampling squadrons and shadowy armies of vague feelings and vaguer prompting; and deeper and dimmer whisperings and echoings, the flutterings of forgotten generations crystallized into being and fluttering anew and always, undreamed and unguessed, subtle and potent, the spirit and essence of ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... was what I had expected, for I thought that there had been below this grave a vault, the roof of which had given way and let the earth fall in. But as soon as my eyes were used to the dimmer light, I saw that it was no such thing, but that the hole into which I had crept was only the mouth of a passage, which sloped gently down in the direction of the church. My heart fell to thumping with eagerness and surprise, for I thought I had made a wonderful discovery, and ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... even looked out the window, so close was he on the heel of his work. "It shall be my master-bit," he kept saying to himself. The light got poorer and dimmer and there was a shorter lasting of it. Less light meant longer work; so it was thirty days and thirty nights before he got it anywhere near finished. No, it wasn't fully done. How could it be? The Summer Fellows never finished anything complete, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I know it," said Tom, whose visions of grandeur, though dimmer, were not to be brought down ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Europe, of course, for neither was eager to return to America "where everybody worked and there was nothing fit to eat," according to Archie. Adelle's ideas of America, never extensive, were growing dimmer every season, and the occasional friends who returned from the other shore described their native land in unflattering terms. Adelle thought that every American who could lived as much of the time as possible somewhere in Europe, but she did not think much about ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... recurring to her—the beating on the door, the voices in the hall, the shouts, and the arms of Andrew Lanning around her, and his tense, desperate face close to hers. It became less dreamlike that moment. She began to understand that if she lived to be a hundred, she would never find that memory dimmer. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... Merriton curtly, and turned the key in the lock as the door closed. He stood for a moment thinking, his eyes upon the winking, flickering points of light that seemed dimmer in the fast growing light. "Now why did he make that bloomer about dates, I wonder? Uncle's been gone five years—and Borkins knew it. He was here at the time, and yet why did he suggest that old wives' tale as a possible ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... on, the lights in the house became dimmer, and the sound of the music and the tread of the dance reached them ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the red and green lights of the Mary Thomas grow dimmer and dimmer. Then a faint hallo came over the water from the Russian prize crew. Still nobody heard. The smoke continued to pour out of the cruiser's funnels, and her propellers throbbed as ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... morning mist comes up from the river, and the sun, which has just risen from behind the purple hills, away off where the sky touches them, turns the mist into shifting and shimmering silver, so that it makes the whole scene look brighter instead of dimmer. On the hill across the river is a glorious sight. It is a castle, the grandest and most beautiful you ever saw. Its walls are thick and strong enough for a fortress, yet its towers and battlements look so light and graceful that you would think they might ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... and away. The red-ribbed wall of the great chasm, shattered and broken as by some inconceivable disaster, some cosmic cataclysm, fell away and away, downward, dimmer and more dim, until it faded gradually into a blue haze, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... board the destroyer and hauled hers up. The other was backed to the ladder and they came on board. A silent salute passed between Oscarovitch and the lieutenant, and a few minutes later the yacht's boat was hoisted to the davits, and the white shape was growing smaller and dimmer amidst the light haze that lay on the water shimmering under the slanting rays ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... given us a shepherd, you have given us a guide, And the light of Heaven grew dimmer when you sent Him from your side,— But He comes to lead Thy children where the gates will open wide To welcome His returning ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... personage, when his wife appeared at the dining-room window and called him in to tea. She smiled as he looked up, and he rose hastily and walked in, wondering whether he were not a little 'queer,' so strange were the dim emotions and the dimmer impulses that ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... green light, which was all they could see, and which they could see only when they were on top of a wave, moved steadily away from them, withal it was working up to windward, and grew dim and dimmer. Duncan called out loudly and repeatedly, and each time, in the intervals, they could hear, very faintly, the voice of Captain Dettmar ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... yon window of the sacristy The ever-burning lamp sends up its glimmer, And round the edge grows ever dimmer, Till in the gloom its flickerings die! So in my bosom ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Psalmist's cry for the perpetuity of the fleeting deeds of dying generations will be answered in that region in which his dimmer eye saw little but the sullen flood that swept away youth and strength and wisdom, but in which we can see the solid land beyond the river, and the happy company who rejoice with the joy of harvest, and bear with them the sheaves, whereof the seed was sown on this bank, in tears ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... interest the reader. Why stir up more of them? I am content to have brought this fact into prominence: the first glimmers of light penetrating into the dark chambers of the mind leave an indelible impression, which the years make fresher instead of dimmer. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... hasty breakfast, Winston, who had business at several outlying farms, mounted and rode away. It was evening before he returned, and found Courthorne lying in a big chair with a cigar in his hand, languidly debonair but apparently ill. His face was curiously pallid, and his eyes dimmer than they had been, but there was a ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... or more a modification had been going forward in my mental condition, and was growing more and more marked. My insight into the minds of those around me was becoming dimmer and more fitful, and the ideas that crowded my double consciousness became less and less dependent on any personal contact. All that was personal in me seemed to be suffering a gradual death, so that I was losing the organ through which the personal ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... it was! Even the sound of voices had ceased; and out through the open door there was no sign of movement. The light seemed dimmer, also, as though the sun had sunk below the opposite cliffs, and night was slowly descending upon the valley. What could be happening out there? Were those men planning some new attempt? Or had they decided it was better to wait for a larger force? The silence and uncertainty were harder ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, the other aspects which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age in which we are passes on from century to century, from millennium to millennium, knowledge becomes dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer, those who repeat far out-number those who know; and those who speak with clear vision of the spiritual verity are lost amidst the crowds, who only hold traditions whose origin they fail to understand. The priest and the prophet, ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... as these passed through Madden's mind as he pursued his reckoning through trigonometric tables. The light fell redder and dimmer through the ports and he hurried to finish his work before darkness required a lamp in the steamy cabin. A furnace-like breath, laden with malodorous ship smells, drifted in upon him. Madden's thin undershirt clung sweatily to the muscular ridges down his back ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... face to face upon the same, may perhaps try it by this method as hopefully as by another. Here is an irregular row of beacon fires, once all luminous as suns; and with a certain inextinguishable crubescence still, in the abysses of the dead deep Night. Let us look here. In shadowy outlines, in dimmer and dimmer crowding forms, the very figure of the old dead Time itself may perhaps be ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... with corrugated brow, Wet towels bound about his pow, Locked legs and failing appetite, He thought so hard he couldn't write. His soaring fancies, chickenwise, Came home to roost and wouldn't rise. With dimmer light and milder heat His goose-quill staggered o'er the sheet, Then dragged, then stopped; the finish came— He couldn't even write his name. The Thundergust in three short weeks Had risen, roared, and split its cheeks. Said Pondronummus, "How unjust! ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... through the arches of the sky, Whereat a myriad echoes leapt Forth from the darkness 'mid which they slept, Shouted an answer in fierce surprise, That rumbled far into faintest sighs, Then slowly sank to their rest again, And left the Night to her silent reign. On we went whilst the sounds grew dimmer, Till stars afar began to glimmer Like flashing lights on a lonely mere, Like tapers dim round a sable bier; Onward, till many a radiant world In solemn glory across us whirl'd, Shaking the air in their mighty march, Like thunder beneath its prison arch; Ever louder the swift wind bore ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... flickering brightness of chivalry in Chaucer's time, even then growing dimmer and more fitful, and soon to "pale its ineffectual fire" in the light of a growing civilization. Its better principles, which were those of truth, virtue, and holiness, were to remain; but its forms, ceremonies, and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... than its predecessor. This effect of progressive size was enhanced by a thin haze of faintly phosphorescent blue incense that thickened as one advanced, and robbed even the nearer figures of clearness. I seemed to advance continually to something larger, dimmer, and ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... dull red spark of Sirius become increasingly dimmer. Then, quite suddenly, a pale violet disc in front of them ballooned out of nowhere and slid ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... eyes of the old woman moistened and grew dimmer than age had made them; she smiled still, but the smile had the sweetness of a blessing in it, and no longer the kindly banter of humour. "You love him, my little one?" she said, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... and dimmer, What do ye know of my weal or my woe? Was I born under The sun or the thunder? What do I come from? ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... when eyes are dimmer, Old Death will have his chance to scoff; For up his sleeve he's got a trimmer Bound to come a yard from the off! It'll do me down! But if he's a chap, Sir, Able to tell a job well done, No doubt he'll give his foe a clap, Sir, Walkin' out of ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... swimmer; Dawn was a flaming fan; dusk was a glimmer Like undersea where sly dreams haunt the coral. The garden sang of fame when the golden shimmer Of sun glowed on the proud leaves of the laurel,— But time and love fought out their ancient quarrel; The songs are fainter now; the lights are dimmer. ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... months' absence, I perceived unwelcome change. She was not as alert mentally or physically as when I went away. A mysterious veil had fallen between her wistful spirit and the outer world. Her vision was dimmer and her spirit at times withdrawn, remote. She laughed in response to my jesting, but there was an absent-minded sweetness in her smile, a tremulous quality in her ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... look around him. Hitherto he had given that part of the wood nearest the plain his greatest attention. His glance now sought its darker recesses. Suddenly he became breathless. Was it a beam of sunlight that had pierced the groined roof above, and now rested against the trunk of one of the dimmer, more secluded giants? No, it was moving; even as he gazed it slipped away, glanced against another tree, passed across one of the vaulted aisles, and then was lost again. Brief as was the glimpse, he was not mistaken—it was the figure ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... her, blotting out the vision of those faces, making the uproar slightly dimmer. Mr. Meier advanced and lifted her to her feet. He moved weakly, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... these things make not desolate.' He looked upon her seriously; Then said: 'Arise and follow me.' The path that lay before them was Nigh covered over with long grass; 110 And many slimy things and slow Trailed on between the roots below. The moon looked dimmer than before; And shadowy cloudlets floating o'er Its face sometimes quite hid its light, And filled the ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... be expressed properly in words. In, behind, and around each statement, other, dimmer nuances of thought gleam through. Each thought tells the receiver much more than can be put down in crude ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... he lay back with eyes closed again was another of his smiles, only dimmer now with a faint bitter-sweetness. She knew it was like asking a man if his pain is better when it is killing him. Nevertheless, the ground of common, practical things was the only one to keep to, so she went on: "But you won't ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the deck of the gallant vessel that bore them away, and as she saw the land she loved so well slowly fade from view and grow dimmer and dimmer as the distance lengthened, until it seemed as a haze upon the dreary waste of waters, there was a feeling of inexpressible sadness took possession of her. She involuntarily drew closer to her husband, and gave expression to the emotions of her soul by sobbing ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... and drifted through the open window into the empty room; the few remaining flowers were hustled from their stalks; the red eye of the stove grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally faded into darkness, and the colored drawing of the patent derrick broke loose at another corner, and flapped and fluttered against the wall in ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... o'clock when Rupert announces cheerful: "By George! She's falling behind. Those searchlights are getting dimmer." ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... nothing changed around him. Then the moon grew dimmer, and a strange, new radiance began to illuminate the landscape. It increased so imperceptibly that it was some time before he recognised it as the Muspel-light which he had seen in the Wombflash Forest. He could not give it a colour, or a name, but it filled him with a sort of stern ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... too bad for me, I know. I ain't whining none. I just lie here and watch the world getting dimmer until I begin to be seeing things out of my past. That shows the devil ain't losing no time with me. But the thing that comes back oftenest and hits me the hardest is the sight of your mother, lying with you in the hollow of her arm ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... be journeying along Death's road to the Garden of Paradise!' said the Prince, but the Eastwind never answered a word, he only pointed before them where a beautiful blue light was shining. The blocks of stone above them grew dimmer and dimmer, and at last they became as transparent as a white cloud in the moonshine. The air was also deliciously soft, as fresh as on the mountain-tops and as scented as down among ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen |
