"Dimness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... put out his hand to clasp David's, and missed it partly because of their natural dimness and partly because of the tears that rushed to them. ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... moderation. Warm clothing should be worn and flannel next the skin; exposure to cold and draughts should be carefully avoided. If the more special symptoms appear, such as persistent headache, vertigo, ringing in the ears, black or bright spots floating before the eyes, dimness of vision, an abortion of miscarriage should be induced without delay. Fortunately such cases are rare and with care from the beginning seldom occur. Pregnant women should inform their family physician at the beginning of pregnancy of their condition, and in the great majority of cases serious ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the Young Doctor and the others had accustomed themselves to the dimness, they saw at the end of the chamber—for such, in effect, it had been made with its trappings and decorations—a figure seated upon the ground. Near by the figure, on either hand, there were standards bearing banners, and the staffs holding the banners were, bound in white silk, with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... change was no longer matter for doubt. Day by day Charlotte grew weaker and paler; day by day that bright and joyous creature, whose presence had made an atmosphere of youth and gladness even in that prim dwelling-place, receded farther into the dimness of the past; until to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the image of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, so sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a perpetual perplexity ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the smile still on the parted lips, but with a patient forlornness in the sad blue eyes, as if the seeing-sense that was left, mourned always for the hearing and speaking senses that were gone—he marked all these things in an instant, and felt that his heart was sinking as he looked. A dimness stole over his sight; a suffocating sensation oppressed his breathing; the lights in the circus danced and mingled together; he bent down over the child's hand, and took it in his own; twice kissed it fervently; then, to the utter amazement of the laughing crowd about him, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... made him alert, savage. A moment later, his head pushing up to the level of the shoulder of the mountain, he saw his quarry. In the dimness of that early dawn he made out the form of a sleeper huddled in blankets, but it was enough. That must be Riley Sinclair. It could not be another, and all ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... sweeping the corridor outside the bedrooms, pale and composed, and neat as ever in her modest print dress. I noticed a curious dimness and dullness in her eyes—not as if she had been crying but as if she had been looking at something too long. Possibly, it was a misty something raised by her own thoughts. There was certainly no object about her to look at which ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... had become accustomed to the dimness within, he saw that the interior was like that of the other church, only in a more dilapidated state. There were but few benches; and the brick altar, poorer in construction, had crumbled away at one side. Dust, mold, and cobwebs covered everything; but the air was gratefully ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... more closely. It wasn't just a slight resemblance; the girl really seemed to be Gerda Symes. Her long blonde hair shone in the dimness. Forrester couldn't see her very clearly, but his imagination was working overtime. Her magnificently curved figure, her wonderful face, her fiery personality were as much a part of his dreams as the ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Cupid's wing, dear, At the least touch flies, Even lips may brush to dimness; Kiss ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... light was fading; it was getting darker; there was a slight sense of chill, a growing dimness in the air. They realised vaguely that the Tramp was leaving them, and that with him went the light, the heat, the brilliance out of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... there would be no consequences; but—had he really meant it? Was it possible ever to awake wholly from so perfect a dream? Was it not rather the great reality of things to which she had suddenly come, and all her past life a mere background of shadows? How could she ever go back into that dimness now that she felt the glorious rays of this new radiance upon her? And he also—was it possible that he could ever forget? Surely it had ceased to be just a game to either of them! Surely, surely, the wonder and the rapture ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... these shades, Alone with nature,—but it may not be; I have to struggle with the stormy sea Of human life until existence fades Into death's darkness. Thou wilt sing and soar Through the thick woods and shadow-checkered glades, While pain and sorrow cast no dimness o'er The brilliance of thy heart; but I must wear, As now, my garments of regret and care,— As penitents of old their ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... had been persuasive. Kenny saw beyond in the dimness cobs and an empty basket. The farmer was gone. He lay down again in deep disgust, merely reaching a pleasant stage of drowsiness when the sound of voices near the corncrib ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... unnumber'd lie, 10 While through their ranks in silver pride The nether crescent seems to glide! The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe, The lake is smooth and clear beneath, Where once again the spangled show Descends to meet our eyes below. The grounds which on the right aspire, In dimness from the view retire: The left presents a place of graves, Whose wall the silent water laves. 20 That steeple guides thy doubtful sight, Among the livid gleams of night. There pass, with melancholy state, By all ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... be true? Why should not Karen come to love him? She would be with him, free, knowing how deep and tender was his love for her, and that it made no claim. Would not her heart answer his one day? And as if guessing at his thoughts Madame von Marwitz added, the dimness of tears in her own eyes: "See, my Franz, let it be in this wise. I bring Karen to your mother in a few days; she will be strong enough for travel in a few days, is it not so? She will then be with you and yours in Germany, and I watching over you. So you will see her from day to day? So you ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... now (to speak of less grave matters) when all I had to say about Growing Old seems very poor, do I see it rightly? Do I see it as my reader would always have seen it? Or has it faded into falsehood, as well as into distance and dimness? When I look back, and see my thoughts as trash, is it because they are trash and no better? When I look back, and see Ailsa as a cloud, is it because it is a cloud and nothing more? Or is it, as I have already suggested, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... we are following walked slowly across the house-top to a tower built over the northwest corner of the palace. Had he been a stranger, he might have bestowed a glance upon the structure as he drew nigh it, and seen all the dimness permitted—a darkened mass, low, latticed, pillared, and domed. He entered, passing under a half-raised curtain. The interior was all darkness, except that on four sides there were arched openings like doorways, through which the sky, lighted with stars, was visible. In one ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... middle of the bad place that dread came to him. What if anything had happened to her? It was dusk here, and never had the weeds seemed so thick, dimness so dismal, the tendrils of the vines so gin-like. Then he lost his way—he who was so sure of his way always! The hunter's instinct had been crossed, and for a time he went hither and thither helpless as a ship without a compass. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... that nothing ever could shake the traditional attitude born from the physical conditions of the service. It was always the ship, bound on any possible errand in the service of the nation, that has been the stage for the exercise of seamen's primitive virtues. The dimness of great distances and the obscurity of lives protected them from the nation's admiring gaze. Those scattered distant ships' companies seemed to the eyes of the earth only one degree removed (on the right side, I suppose) from the other strange monsters of the deep. If spoken of at all they ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... and wiped her eyes. Not that she was weeping, but over and above her short-sightedness she was troubled with a dimness of vision, which afflicted her more at some times than others. As she was in the habit of endeavouring to counteract the evils of a too constantly laborious and sedentary life, and of an anxious and desponding temperament, by large doses of calomel, her malady ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... intrinsically to the subject. In perusing them, the uninitiated student is mortified at seeing so much powerful thought distorted, as he thinks, into such fantastic forms: the principles of reasoning, on which they rest, are apparently not those of common logic; a dimness and doubt overhangs their conclusions; scarcely anything is proved in a convincing manner. But this is no strange quality in such writings. To an exoteric reader the philosophy of Kant almost always appears to invert the common maxim; its end and aim seem not ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... glare of the red road, how deliciously cool was the damp breath and twilight dimness of the stately pines. How they seemed to welcome him in their deepest recesses, ranging themselves silently around him as he ran, shutting out the world and its schoolhouses, and the pursuit of indignant parents and vindictive teachers. How in the forest ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and presently his gun went bang! bang! then bang! came again from the second gun he had taken with him, and we imagined the water strewn with ducks. But he reported only one. It floated to him and was picked up, so we need not go out. In the dimness and silence we rowed up and down the shore in hopes of starting up a stray duck that might possibly decoy. We saw many objects that simulated ducks pretty well through the obscurity, but they failed to take wing on our approach. The most pleasing ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... furtive, desolate hoarseness in the dusk. The cows in the far fields had long ago wandered home to be milked, scarcely a bird moved in the high silences, the gnats had hidden themselves away in the deep, rugged bark of the trees, and, through the dimness, the heavy beetles were hurling like stones, and dropping and rising ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the spot where the devoted girl closed her earthly sorrows. Spirits are ever hovering near the scene. The laugh of the Dahcotah is checked when his canoe glides near the spot. He points to the bluff, and as the shades of evening are throwing dimness and a mystery around the beauty of the lake, and of the mountains, he fancies he can see the arms of the girl as she tosses them wildly in the air. Some have averred they heard her voice as she called to the spirits of the rock, and ever will the traveller, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... souls to serve Brahman's purpose, and would not it be better served by living gladly in the phenomenal world than by passing beyond it? But such an idea has rarely satisfied Indian thinkers. If, on the other hand, Maya is an evil or at least an imperfection, if it is like rust on a blade or dimness in a mirror, if, so to speak, the edges of Brahman are weak and break into fragments which are prevented by their own feebleness from realizing the unity of the whole, then the mind wonders uneasily if, in spite of all assurances to the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... good as it was," he whispered. "There's a dimness before my face, lad! Can you see anything up there?" ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... located in the back of the head, and may be accompanied by dizziness, noises in the ears, or dimness of sight. There may be a feeling of unsteadiness when walking, or a sense of being in motion when at rest. The headache varies in intensity; it is worst in the morning, is increased by thinking, diminished after eating, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... Lannes, struggling against the dimness that was coming over his eyes and the weakness permeating his whole body. "Be careful, Oh, be careful as you can, and then, in your American language, a lot more. Slowly! Slowly! Yes, I can move alone. Drag yourself over me, and I can slide ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... obedient to a telephone call from Betty, presented himself at the door of Morena's house, just east of the Park, off Fifth Avenue; a very beautiful house where the wealthy Jew had indulged his passion for exquisite things. Prosper entered its rich dimness with a feeling of oppression—that unanalyzed mood of hot and cold feeling intensified to an almost unbearable degree. In the large carved and curtained drawing-room he waited for Betty. The tea-things ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... sudden dread that she might oversleep herself and some one would come in and see the letter on the writing-desk. She had not solved the problem even by the time she got into bed; the fire opposite the foot was burning down, but there was a red glow penetrating the dimness. She had forgotten to draw the blind, and she saw the clear stars shining peacefully in the sky. She looked and looked at them and they led her thoughts away from the problem once more. She seemed to be lying in Victoria Park, looking up with innocent mystic rapture and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... previous thoughts that he regarded her with a wholly new sympathy. There was nothing dull about this girl. On the contrary, she had intelligence and feeling. There had been a rich vibrance in her voice as she told of that frightful ordeal; a dimness had come into her eyes as she spoke of her mother gabbling feverishly of the green hills and babbling brooks; she had yearned maternally at mention of those wretched little children. No, there was a sincere emotional quality concealed in this young giantess, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of rosy muslin, bouffant and billowy, a pink flower in her hair, and Celia's pink-and-white cameo at her whiter throat Ailsa Paige descended the carpeted stairs and came into the mellow dimness of the front parlour, where there was much rosewood, and a French carpet, and glinting prisms on the chandeliers,—and a young man, standing, dark against a bar of sunshine in which golden ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... were not turned. In the beautiful dimness the greatest tragic actress in the world and the greatest dramatic poet in the world gazed at each other, seeking and ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... watched him. Kazan, the one-eyed leader, glared from him into the dimness of the night, whining softly. A low, mourning wind swept through the spruce tops, and from Jan's throat there burst sobbingly words which he had heard beside this same grave more than seventeen years before, when Williams' choking voice ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... In the dimness of the gloomy vault, in solitude and solemn silence, Honorius knelt down, and Marcellus bowed himself ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... Polkington reasoned, seeing light at last in the dimness of the depression which had possessed him. Quite how much he really believed, or even if he were capable of real reasonable belief at this stage of his career, it is not easy to say. It is possible he may have ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... It was four o'clock of the summer's morning; the sun had not yet reddened the east, but the stars were extinct, or glimmered faint points immeasurably withdrawn in the vast gray of the sky. At that hour there is a hovering dimness over all, but the light on things near at hand is wonderfully keen and clear, and the air has an intense yet delicate freshness that seems to breathe from the remotest spaces of the universe,—a waft from distances beyond the sun. On the land the leaves and grass ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... In the dimness, as he walked back and forth hunting for the fan or bringing her the water, he looked weirdly large—like, she thought dully, a fairy giant curiously draped. But the serenity of his expression touched her. She was ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... work, and, the fear of "supper-time" in our hearts, we pushed on at extra speed toward our night's lodging at Mount Morris. The oak-trees gloomed denser on our right as we plowed along a villainously sandy road. Labourers homing from the day's work greeted us now and again in the dimness, and presently one of these, plodding up behind us, broke forth ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... and badly lighted. Before she could distinguish her lover in the dimness, he was upon her, calling her name over and over, crushing her hands in his. She cried out, and lifted her face, and his lips met hers, warm and living. It was the same as though nothing had happened since last ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... narrow-peaked silk caps and grease-splotched overalls got round to it, with an air of as much personal indifference as if they were mere mechanical agencies, it would be pulled and pushed into the dimness of the interior, cool, and pleasantly smelling of pine, and hemp, and flour, and dried fruit, and coffee, and tar, and leather, and fish. There it would abide, indefinitely again, till in the same large impersonal ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... it is said:—"Taking the astrolabe in hand, and ascertaining the Antarctic Pole, they did not see any star like our Pole Star; but they related that they saw another manner of stars very different from ours, and which they could not clearly discern because of a certain dimness which diffused itself about those stars, and obstructed the view of them." Also the Kachh mariners told Lieutenant Leech that midway to Zanzibar there was a town (?) called Marethee, where the North Pole Star sinks below the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... went up, and was startled by a groan. He had to stand a few seconds, to let the darkness grow into light, ere he could see; and, when he could discern outlines in the dimness, there was given to him the picture of Uncle John, lying helpless amid and upon the nubbins that had been piled over his ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... whom he seeks to interest us. They are all figures rather than characters—they are all pictures rather than persons. But if their reality is light and vague, it is sufficient, and it is in harmony with the low relief and dimness of outline of the objects that surround them. They are all types, to the author's mind, of something general, of something that is bound up with the history, at large, of families and individuals, and each of them is the centre of a cluster of those ingenious ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory grew DAZED.' Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: 'and a dimness and giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn't seem to mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a little water brought him out of his DAZE.' Mr. Tope repeats the word and its emphasis, with the air of saying: 'As ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... his monument with such cordial affection as I felt for that of the versatile and volatile old letter-writer James Howell, which also I found in that triforium, half-hidden behind a small organ, with an epitaph too undecipherable in the dimness for my patience. It was so satisfactory to find this, after looking in vain for any record of him at Jesus College in Oxford, where he studied the humanities that enabled him to be so many things to so many masters, that I took all his ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... leaves burned faster. The flame was ready to expire when, with a great leap, he bounded on the mat. The wind of his leaping blew it out; and with that the beach was gone, and the sun and the sea, and they stood once more in the dimness of the shuttered parlour, and were once more shaken and blinded; and on the mat betwixt them lay a pile of shining dollars. Keola ran to the shutters; and there was the steamer tossing ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... depths that Blake could take rod readings, he plunged over into the stream, with a curtly cheerful command for Ashton to prepare to follow. Too dejected even to resist, the younger man silently obeyed. When Blake signaled to him through the dimness, he held the rod on the last turning-point of the previous day, and lowered himself from the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... the room, and through its dimness the little portrait on the wall was visible, no longer shrouded in somber weeds, but in its brightness and simplicity gazing down upon the two loving ones beneath it, and seeming to share in their ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... She was defenceless. If she had been well, she would have gone straight along the balcony, to discover the cause of her alarm; but she was ill, and she shrank back in her chair, watching the pulsing dimness. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Arianism and Socinianism, and thus of preparing the mind for a docile reception of the great idea itself—I admit and value the testimonies from the writings of the early Fathers. But alas! the increasing dimness, ending in the final want of the idea of this all-truths- including truth of the Tetractys eternally manifested in the Triad; —this, this is the ground and cause of all the main heresies from Semi-Arianism, recalled by Dr. Samuel Clarke, to the last setting ray of departing faith in ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it with a trembling hand, for a strange feeling of dread had seized possession of his heart, and he could scarcely bring himself to look upon it. He summoned up courage, however; but at the first glance his hand fell down by his side, and a dimness came over his eyes, for the word "POLE STAR" was engraven on the handle. He would have fallen to the ground had ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... worse weather than ever. One night the wind rose so that by nine o'clock it was hardly possible to stand in the open. The sky was like iron, and the dull red which had appeared in the West at sundown changed to a cold, neutral dimness. The birds were in great trouble, the gulls especially wailing with a peevish sharpness that made the skin creep. I looked out twice into the roaring darkness, and could see nothing except the flash of the "white horses" as they trampled and reared far out at sea. The fire was better than ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... white face toward his, and through the dimness of sight from his straining efforts, he saw her try to smile, as she obeyed him to the letter, and without a sound. "O, brave girl!" he thought, and threw the ground ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... thought flashed across his mind like an inspiration: his riverside hiding-place was found! The spire was isolated from the church, and was entirely of wood, save for a stone stump. Great beams crossed and recrossed one another, in an ever-narrowing pyramid, for about two hundred feet. Up in the dimness and final darkness near the apex was ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... sense. The wonder came by degrees to overshadow my thoughts with a sense of expectant awe, and to permeate all the urgent concerns of my life with its shadowy presence. Even the thought of Cynthia, who indeed was always in my mind, became obscured with the dimness of ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... A dimness rose in Thornly's eyes, and a respect for the awkward fellow grew in his heart. He arose and stood before Tapkins, his hand resting ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... there was a group, and that it seemed in the dimness to be alike in colour and design, suggested mystery of some sort; and, besides, it was almost impossible to imagine ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... whose worldly lives had been cut short, now lived, safe from the sorrows and temptations of this world, Jacqueline seemed for the first time to understand why Giselle regretted that she might not share forever the blessed peace enjoyed in the convent. A torpor stole over her, caused by the dimness, the faint odor of the incense, and the solemn silence. She imagined herself in the act of giving up the world. She saw herself in a veil, with her eyes raised to Heaven, very pale, standing behind the grille. She would have to ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... feeling of exultation that Jill, from her elevated seat, looked down into the Arab's face, outlined in the scented dimness of the garden by the snow-white head-cloth, and her brilliant mouth widened in a low laugh of pleasure as she pulled down a bough of fluffy mimosa to sniff its perfume, and she also gave a little shriek of dismay as ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... off again. Yet she had a consciousness of tunnels and hills and of broad marshes pallid under a moon and a coming dawn. And in the dawn there was Pisa. She watched the word hanging in the station in the dimness: "Pisa." Ciccio told her people were changing for Florence. It all seemed wonderful to her—wonderful. She sat and watched the black station—then she heard the sound of the child's trumpet. And it did not occur to ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... up, and the dimness of coming eventide had already spread over the water, but there was no rain. In fact, it had turned too cold for that. A fine baffling mist was falling, however, and this was condensing into a ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... J. F. Smith (who abides in all lodging houses) tucked into the frame of the mirror. Will Mrs. Smith please call Stockton 6771, it said. A carpeted stair with a fine old mahogany balustrade rose into the dimness. Aubrey, who was thoroughly familiar with lodgings, knew instinctively that the fourth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth steps would be creakers. A soft musk sweetened the warm, torpid air: he divined that someone was toasting marshmallows over a gas jet. He knew ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... paler and paler—the towering arches which sprang, as it were, from slender stem-like side-columns up to full-flowering boughs of Gothic ornamentation, crossing and re-crossing above the great High Altar, melted into a black dimness,—and then—all at once, without any apparent cause, a strange, vague suggestion of something supernatural and unseen began suddenly to oppress the mind of the venerable prelate with a curious sense of mingled awe and fear. Trembling a little, he knew not why, he softly drew a chair from ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of the bed-clothes, a faint murmur, and the sufferer languidly turned her eyes upon the speaker. A dimness was in those sunken orbs; a clamminess upon her wan brow, and her breast heaved wildly beneath the linen that lay in snowy waves across it. But she did not appear to have heard the inquiry of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... itself now and then in the good-night song of some bird. Now it was the lullaby of the song sparrow or the swamp sparrow. Once the tender, ringing, infantile voice of the bush sparrow stood out vividly for a moment on that great background of silence. "Zeep," "zeep," came out of the dimness six or eight rods away. Presently there was a faint, rapid whistling of wings, and my companion said: "There, he is up." The ear could trace his flight, but not the eye. In less than a minute the straining ear failed to catch any sound, and we knew he had reached his climax and was circling. Once ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... This dimness of significance indicates the limitation of sculpture, and inclines some of those who feel its charm to assert that the sculptor seeks to convey no intellectual meaning, that he is satisfied with the creation of beautiful form. There is sense in this revolt against the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... I can do!" the little man muttered; and the perspiration stood upon his forehead. Again he began: "David, after I saw ye this afternoon steppin' doon the hill—" Again he paused. His glance rested unconsciously upon the coat. David mistook the look; mistook the dimness in his father's eyes; mistook the tremor ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... their work, bore no symbol of the storms that might come beneath the firmament; the purple and gold and crimson of nature's gala dress seemed to fling their soft luxury around the beholder, enfolding him, as it were, from all the dust and the dimness and the dullness of this world's working days for evermore. So it was to Diana; and all the miles of that long drive, joggingly pulled along by Prince, she rode in a chariot of the imagination, traversing fields of thought and of space, now to Evan and now with him; and ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... so he refused to leave. He saw them on board the ship and took an affectionate farewell of his old friends. Before parting, the Captain insisted on his accepting a small loan which he said he could return to Nassau whenever he felt like it. There was a suspicious dimness in his eyes as he crushed Paul's hand in his own, while Betsy cried outright as she heartily kissed him good-bye. When the weather became mild again, Paul engaged a small fishing craft and went down the coast to the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... and hence essentially free from all impurity; but as they are liable to impurity caused by their limiting adjuncts—in the same way as the face reflected in a mirror is liable to be dimmed by the dimness of the mirror—they may be the abodes of Nescience and hence may be viewed as the figments of wrong imagination. Like the dimness of the reflected face, the imperfection adhering to the soul is a mere error; for otherwise it would follow ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... think, as, with folded arms, he stood there gazing. Ah! who shall say what he did think? for, from the hour that voices had said, in the dying chamber, "she is gone," it had been all a dreary mist, a heavy "dimness of anguish." He had heard voices around him; he had had questions asked, and answered them; they had asked him when he would have the funeral, and where they should lay her; and he had answered, impatiently, that he ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... face wore a brooding, puzzled look, 'Poor little soul, she is feeling her growing-pains!' said Mistress Mary. It was a mind sitting in a dim twilight where everything seems confused. The physical eye appears to see, but the light never quite pierces the dimness nor reflects its beauty there. If the ears hear the song of birds, the cooing of babes, the heart- beat in the organ tone, then the swift little messengers that fly hither and thither in my mind and yours, carrying echoes of sweetness ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the nails could again get hold. Vermin did not molest me; the dampness of my den was inimical to them. My limbs never swelled, because of the exercise I gave myself, as before described. The greatest pain I found was in the continued unvivifying dimness in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... all had gone well and hopefully, and the enthusiasm of the moment had brought a flush to the cheek and a dimness to the eye of many a weather-beaten tar among the little crew. But enthusiasm is fleeting in these practical days, and the sound of the last cheer had scarcely died away upon the summer breeze ere the scene changed, and the true nineteenth century spirit resumed its sway. The ceremony of hoisting ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... of the elevator in a rock cavern and walked a hundred feet. They passed two guards and went through a steel door. They were in a big room, dimly lighted by red bulbs. Giant didn't like the dimness and he didn't like the smell. He tried ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... was a doorway, and even to Alfaretta it suggested deeds of darkness and treachery. The utmost Montgomery had yet been able to persuade her to do was to peep fearfully up that uncanny stair-way, from the dimness below to the utter gloom at top. To ascend it, as he did, nimbly hand over hand—the mere thought of it ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... evening dimness of old Mrs. Maldon's sitting-room stood the youthful virgin, Rachel Louisa Fleckring. The prominent fact about her appearance was that she wore an apron. Not one of those white, waist-tied aprons, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... very day fixed for his departure, by being deterred both by ill omens, and the hazard of the voyage. For while he was making the circuit of the temples, having seated himself in that of Vesta, when he attempted to rise, the skirt of his robe stuck fast; and he was instantly seized with such a dimness in his eyes, that he could not see a yard before him. In Achaia, he attempted to make a cut through the Isthmus [580]; and, having made a speech encouraging his pretorians to set about the work, on a signal given by ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... white dress made her conspicuous in the dimness. Her cloak had fallen from her, and she seemed unaware ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... mist rose toward the hot sky and vanished, but the dry haze remained and the low sun shone through it with a peculiar diffusion of coppery light. Even when it reached the zenith, the warm, faintly yellow dimness still rose high above the horizon, throwing its soft spell upon all objects far or near, and melting through the dim blue on the distant hilltop into the hot azure ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... Inn door. Every face expressed astonishment as it was pushed sufficiently apart to admit the entry of a slender and graceful boy in the rich habit of a page. The boy came a little way into the room, looking cautiously about him. He acted as if at first he took the room in its dimness to be unoccupied, and he seemed to be somewhat disconcerted at discovering that it contained so many occupants. He stood still while his bright eyes ran rapidly, and indeed fearfully, over the somewhat ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... our enemies may be of much more use to us than our friends. They may, they generally do, exaggerate our faults, but the exaggeration gives them a relief and depth of colouring which may enable the accusation to force its way through the dimness and heavy-sightedness of our self-deception. Examine yourself, then, with respect to those accusations which others bring against you in moments of anger and excitement; place yourself in the situation of the injured party, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... him disappear round the turn of the hill, and then came out of the sunshine into the dimness of the deserted room, where her baby lay in his cradle, a sense of being utterly forsaken came over her, and for the moment she sank beneath it. The want to which her children might be soon exposed, the danger of temptation which she had so dreaded for her husband, and the bitter feeling of ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... Christmas Day, will enable the reader to appreciate the singular discrepancies often existing between the Septuagint and the original text as it stands in our Bible. The passage begins in the English version with the words, "Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation." In the translation of the Septuagint it ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... a kindness? But the poor young nobleman did not choose! The sadly comic of his keeping to the pledge of his word—his real wife—the tyrant of the tyrant—clothed him; the vision of him at the altar, and on the coach, and at the Royal Sovereign Inn, and into the dimness where a placidly smiling recollection met a curtain and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... impression of Lola Brandt in the dimness of the room was that of a lithe panther in petticoats rising lazily from the depths of an easy chair. A sinuous action of the arm, as she extended her hand to welcome me, was accompanied by a curiously flexible turn of the body. Her hand as it enveloped, rather than grasped, mine seemed ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... round the stall through a door in the side of the screen. As we went out, in his turnings, the old bishop gave us the benediction. Then the door closed on the glory of his robes, and in a minute, in the darkness we were rustling down a circular narrow staircase into the dimness of a crypt, lit by the little blue flame of an oil lamp. From above came sounds like thunder, immense, vibrating; we were immediately under the choir. Through the cracks round a large stone showed ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... spirit sad? Because 'tis parting, each succeeding year, With something that it used to hold more dear Than aught that now remains; Because the past, like a receding sail, Flits into dimness, and the lonely gale O'er ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the corner above Julia's, as he passed, a hoarse and unctuous voice, issuing out of an undistinguishable lawn, called his name: "Noble! Noble Dill!" And when Noble paused, Julia's Uncle Joseph came waddling forth from the dimness and rested his monstrous arms upon the top of the fence, where a street light revealed them as shirt-sleeved and equipped ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... ward off a face that had been pressing on his own. Were the eyes that had burned his brain still glaring above him? He looked about him in drunken wonder. From a sky-window a shaft of golden light came slanting into the loose-box, living with yellow motes in the dimness. The world seemed dead; he was alone in the silent building, and from without there was no sound. Then a panic terror flashed on his mind that those eyes had actually been here—and were here with him still—where ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... "Nobele Rose" we spent some golden days. The name of the town is variously pronounced by the people Foorn, Fern, and even Fearn. I doubt if many travelers in the Netherlands ever heard of it. Yet the town is one of great antiquity and renown, its origin lost in the dimness of the ages. ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... suspicion of red and no more, and a waviness that turns to curl at the ends. She has a good forehead, arched a little, not without a look of habitation, though whence that comes it might be hard to say. There are no great clouds on that sky of the face, but there is a soft dimness that might turn to rain. She has a straight nose, not too large for the imperfect yet decidedly Greek contour; a doubtful, rather straight, thin-lipped mouth, which seems to dissolve into a bewitching ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of that night ride were most extraordinary. As the sun sank, and twilight shaded into night, the atmosphere was filled with a hazy dimness; not merely fog, nor smoke, nor yet a pall of suspended dust, but rather what one might expect in a blending of those three. Only a tinge of moonlight from above softened the dull hue. It was not darkness as night usually is dark. ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... habitudes of a past and peculiar generation, fast fading from remembrance, are worthy of being preserved, though little accordant with romance, perhaps with poetry. So rapid has been our progress as a people, that dimness gathers over the lineaments of even our immediate ancestry. Yet traits at one period despised, or counted obsolete, may at another be diligently sought after ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... scintillating, according to what it strikes, or in its holier moods, absorbing and enfolding all things in the deep fulness of its repose, and then again losing itself in bewilderment, and doubt, and dimness; or perishing and passing away, entangled in drifting mist, or melted into melancholy air, but still,—kindling, or declining, sparkling or still, it is the living light, which breathes in its deepest, most entranced rest, which ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... will be pining, Tober Mhuire. Thou art deep and sweet and shining, Tober Mhuire. In the dimness I'll be dying, And my soul for thee is sighing With the blessings ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... for a minute or so, attentively regarding it, I saw it put out one wing and turn over on its side. I at once took it up in my hand, and found that it was already quite dead. It was a large example of its species, and its size, together with a something of dimness in the glossy purple colour of the upper plumage, seemed to show that it was an old bird. But it was uninjured, and when I dissected it no trace of disease was discernible. I concluded that it was an old bird that ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... It wipes no dimness from the glass Where I am flattening my poor nose, In hope to see beyond my toes, Though I accept my pedigree, Yet where, pray tell me, is the key That should unlock a private door To the Great Mystery, such no more? Each offers his, but one nor all Are much ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the hands; a constant tremulousncss pervaded the whole system, while separate small vibrations of the fibres on the back of the hand were plainly visible to the eye. To these symptoms should be added a dimness of sight often so considerable as to prevent the recognition of objects even at ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... perhaps it was the first time that she had really asked herself how long her present mode of existence was to continue, how long she was to lie half-hidden, as it were, in the sombrely respectable dimness of the Macomer establishment, how long she was to remain unmarried. Knowing the customs of her own people in regard to marriage, as she did, it was certainly strange that she should not have heard of any offer made to her uncle and aunt for her hand. Surely the mothers of marriageable sons ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... corn, in shy gazelles Running the sand where no man dwells; In horses scared at the prairie spring; In the dun deer noiseless, hurrying; In fish in the dimness scarcely seen, Save as shadows shooting in a shaking green; In birds in the air, neck-straining, swift, Wing touching wing while no wings shift, Seen by none, but when stars appear A reaper wandering home may hear A sigh aloft where ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... Spitalfields as being perhaps the worst specimens of human habitation which we should find, and he offered to be my guide. I entered a cellar-like room in a basement, which, till one's eyes got used to the dimness, seemed pitch-dark. I felt, rather than saw, the presence of a woman, and, when we began to talk, I discerned by her voice that she was not a Londoner. "No, sir," she replied, "I come from Wantage, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... prove an interesting mistress; why, I cannot remember, and I am glad to put her out of my mind, for I want to think of the strange poet whom we heard reciting verses, under the aspen, in which one of the apes had taken refuge. Through the dimness of the years I can see his fair hair floating about his shoulders, his blue eyes and his thin nose. Didn't somebody once describe him as a sort of sensual Christ? He, too, was after the commercant's wife. And didn't he select her as ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... and coat tails whipping in the breeze, and feel that exhilaration that thrills in one's hair and quivers down his back bone when he knows that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel cleaving through the waves at her utmost speed. There was no darkness, no dimness, no obscurity there. All was brightness, every object was vividly defined. Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every calabash of poi; every puppy; every seam in the flooring; every bolthead; every object; however minute, showed sharp and distinct ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dimness that comes before dawn found his white face at the window looking out upon the great ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... kind resort, And Phoebus your father, with his streames red, Adorns the morrow, consuming the sort* *crowd Of misty cloudes, that would overlade True humble heartes with their mistihead.* *dimness, mistiness New comfort adaws,* when your eyen clear *dawns, awakens Disclose and spread, my ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Its dimness and shadowed coloured light suited Brandon to-day. He wanted to be where no one could see him, where he could gather together the resistance with which to meet the world. He paced up and down, his ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... we leave to the learned, who could no doubt dispose of him suitably in connection with the highly convenient solar myths, as a Potent Rescuing Power! As for us, we meddle not with the mists: we rather like the delicious glow of their luminous dimness, which glorifies the past if it clouds it; and which softens off the hardness of our prosaic modern life, as a summer haze our ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... even unimaginable. Shargar's shilling was likewise spent. So Robert could but go on pocketing instead of eating all that he dared, watching anxiously for opportunity of evading the eyes of his grandmother. On her dimness of sight, however, he depended too confidently after all; for either she was not so blind as he thought she was, or she made up for the defect of her vision by the keenness of her observation. She saw enough to cause her considerable annoyance, though it suggested nothing inconsistent ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... with last fond words to say after the farewell; and this excess of either regard for the priest's feelings or else a devoutness he had not suspected in her quickened Gerald's attention. And there in the dimness he saw what he had not seen in the broad light of day, that his friend's little face, which had presented the effect of a house with all the blinds drawn down, was lighted up behind the blinds—oh, lighted ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... treasure inexhaustible,—watching the cloud still march before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure that, to the end of time and to the length of eternity, the mysteries of its infinity will still open farther and farther, their dimness being the sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. I know there are an evil mystery and a deathful dimness,—the mystery of the great Babylon—the dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do not let us confuse these ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... revealed what I felt to those eyes which were bent so earnestly upon me. My damp clothes, my long, dishevelled hair, my eyes heavy with watching, my pale and anxious looks, the pious enthusiasm with which I bent before the holiness of suffering beauty, my emotion, joy, and surprise, the dimness of the room in which I durst not take a step for fear of dispelling the enchantment of so divine a dream, the first rays of sun, which showed the tears still glistening in my eyes,—all conspired to lend to my countenance ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... main Columbia views, rising at every turn, solitary, majestic, awe-inspiring, the ruling spirit of the landscape. But, like mountains everywhere, it varies greatly in impressiveness and apparent height at different times and seasons, not alone from differences as to the dimness or transparency of the air. Clear, or arrayed in clouds, it changes both in size and general expression. Now it looms up to an immense height and seems to draw near in tremendous grandeur and beauty, holding the ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... A dimness suffused the stars of Arabia; the surrounding heights, that had risen sharp and black in the clear purple air, blended in shadowy and fleeting masses, the huge branches of the cypress tree seemed to stir, and the kneeling pilgrim sank upon ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... history of a farmer's wife, aged forty, who wounded her leg against a sewing-machine, and by lay advice applied a handful of chopped wet tobacco to it, from which procedure, strange to say, serious nicotin-poisoning ensued. The pupils were dilated, there were dimness of vision, confusion of thought, and extreme prostration. The pulse was scarcely apparent, the skin was white and wet with clammy perspiration. Happily, strychnin was given in time to effect recovery, and without early medical assistance ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... cheery voice, the dimness of his eyes, the smile on his lips, and the gesture with which he returned the pressure of the hand upon his arm, told the little romance of the good major's life more eloquently than pages of fine writing, and touched the hearts ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... are always rejoiced to get back into their dull twilight: it is harder to me to understand how Mr. Dempster could be so comfortable in his own mind that he never wanted to get out of it, even at the risk of being beside himself; but no doubt the dimness of its twilight had a good deal to do with his content. And then there is that in every human mind which no man's neighbour, nay, no man himself, can understand. My neighbour may in his turn be regarding my ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... been a glimpse of the "glory to be revealed" breaking through the dimness of death; for he did not see the dear face so close to his, and if he heard her voice, he was past all answering now. Just once again his lips moved, murmuring a name—the dearest of all—"Jesus;" and then he "saw ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... not proved how freely words essay To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess The might, the majesty of Loveliness? Such was Zuleika, such around her shone The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone— The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... ancients Fumitory was named Capnos, smoke: Pliny wrote "Claritatem facit inunctis oculis delachrymationemque, ceu fumus, unde nomen." They esteemed the herb specially useful for dispelling dimness of the sight, and for curing ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... wonderful after the resurrection from illness. It is a resurrection of all nature. But somehow or other I was not satisfied with the daisies. They did not seem to me so lovely as the daisies I used to see when I was a child. I thought with myself, "This is the cloud that gathers with life, the dimness that passion and suffering cast over the eyes of the mind." That moment my gaze fell upon a single, solitary, red-tipped daisy. My reasoning vanished, and my melancholy with it, slain by the red tips of the lonely beauty. This was the kind of ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... his eyes and a little to one side, and strolled on, humming an old Mexican air. His walk was the swagger of a young Mexican gallant, and in the dimness they would not notice his Northern fairness. Several pairs of eyes observed him, but not with disapproval. They considered him a trim Mexican lad. Some of the men in the doorways took up the air that he ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... A debility and dimness of the imaginative power, and a consequent necessity of reliance on the immediate impressions of the senses, do, we know well, render the mind liable to superstition and fanaticism. Having a deficient portion of internal and proper warmth, minds of this class seek in the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... who has follies to bewail, and a God to trust in. Johnson and Goldsmith, with numerous others, at some seasons were plunged deep in the waters of adversity, but halcyon days awaited them: and even those sons of merit and misfortune whose pecuniary troubles were more permanent, in the dimness of retrospection, only stand ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... for a few moments; then he left, promising to send some one to care for the sick woman that night. He drove home very fast, and a strange dimness came into his eyes every now and then, as he thought it ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... beehive, small and low, Stands like a maiden in the snow; And the old door-slab is half hid Under an alabaster lid. All day it snows: the sheeted post Gleams in the dimness like a ghost; All day the blasted oak has stood A muffled wizard of the wood; Garland and airy cap adorn The sumach and the wayside thorn, And clustering spangles lodge and shine In the dark tresses ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... white, in the rising sun, and projecting far to the westward their long gigantic shadows." And Malcolm, in the exercise of a similar faculty with that of Burns and of Scott, surrounds them, in his description, with a somewhat similar atmosphere of partial dimness ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller |
