"Glimmering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breathless gasps, and bade him send to Mr. Allardyce for assistance, and to follow me, if he could, along the byroad to Deuxhill. The man was not too quick-witted, and I could have beaten him for his slowness to comprehend the urgency of the affair. But some glimmering of it dawning upon him, he promised to borrow a horse from Farmer Grubb close by, he having none of his own, and to send a messenger back to the Hall. Without further parley I left him, and set off along the byroad, scarce giving a ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... thing was that he also thought "these things": at least, he had a glimmering of them, and Christophe's words roused many doubts in him: but he had not the courage to confess it, or openly to agree—half from fear of compromising himself, half from modesty ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... these simple folk. Their ruling passion, I afterwards found, was hatred and fear of the Boers, and their dearest wish to possess guns and ammunition to join the English in driving them back and to defend their cattle. In the distance we could see the glimmering blue waters of a huge dam, beyond which was the farm and homestead of a loyal colonial farmer named Keeley, whose hospitality I had been told to seek. Close by were the barracks, with seven or eight occupants, the same sort of depot as ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... with extraordinary celerity. Then gradually all became clear; she was lying in the sick room where patients suffering from non-infectious complaints were taken. The pressure at her head was giving way, allowing glimmering flashes of memory. What was it?—a terrible, terrible nightmare; a horror as of falling from a great height; a sudden, numbing crash... Where has she been? What had she done? And then with ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... now opened the door, which completely shut out the faint glimmering of light, which, till then, it was still possible to perceive, and led us to the inmost centre of this dreary temple of old Chaos and Night, as if, till now, we had only been traversing the outer courts. The rock was ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... her court; "and there were not a few who declared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning them from the mouth of the chasm." [16] Tannhauser was a Frankish knight and famous minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Horselberg, "saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before him and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he went up to meet her, whom he knew to be none other than Venus. He descended to her palace in the heart of the mountain, and there passed seven years in careless ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... at dinner-time; when I came upon deck again, night had fallen. We were somewhere near Sorrento; behind us lay the long curve of faint-glimmering lights on the Naples shore; ahead was Capri. In profound gloom, though under a sky all set with stars, we passed between the island and Cape Minerva; the haven of Capri showed but a faint glimmer; over it towered mighty crags, an ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... colossal Chinese gates, guarded by giant statues; the lions and lanterns of bronze and stone; the enormous suspended [200] bells, sounded by swinging-beams; the swarming of dragon-shapes under the caves of the vast roofs; the glimmering splendour of the altars; the ceremonial likewise, with its chanting and its incense-burning and its weird Chinese music,—cannot have failed to inspire the wonder-loving with delight and awe. It is a noteworthy ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... tells of the restless activity beneath of a great school of fish the schooner is headed straightway for the spot. Perhaps forty or fifty other schooners will be turning their prows the same way, their red and green lights glimmering through the black night on either side, the white waves under the bows showing faintly, and the creaking of the cordage sounding over the waters. It is a race for first chance at the school, and a race conducted with all the dash and desperation of a steeple-chase. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... while her heart adoring still to the God exhales, Speech from his glimmering lips on the silent air prevails: —"Child of this earth, bewilder'd in thine aerial dream, Turn thee to Powers that are, and not to those that seem. All of fairest and noblest filling my graven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... been so much noise in that wood for sixteen years. For no sooner did the old man begin to weep, than the trees began to rustle, and the birds began to sing, and the frogs began to croak; and over it all came a faint glimmering of white light, as though the sun were beginning to stretch himself ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... neve, scarcely distinguishable to the eye, represents to one observer nothing but a trifling undulation; a second, perhaps, knows that it means a crevasse; the mountaineer remembers that it is the top of a huge chasm, thirty feet across, and perhaps ten times as deep, with perpendicular sides of glimmering blue ice, and fringed by thick rows of enormous pendent icicles. The marks that are scored in delicate lines, such as might be ruled by a diamond on glass, have been cut by innumerable streams trickling in hot weather from the everlasting snow, or ploughed by succeeding avalanches that have ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... am not sufficiently spiritual for ghostly communication. At all events, I met with no disturbance of the kind, and slept soundly enough till six o'clock or thereabouts. The forenoon was spent with the pen in my hand, and sometimes I had the glimmering of an idea, and endeavored to materialize it in words; but on the whole my mind was idly vagrant, and refused to work to any systematic purpose. Between eleven and twelve I went to the post-office, but found no letter; then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... this fascination. The outer world is vague in the moonlight. Objects out of our ranks are lost. I see only glimmering steel and glittering buttons and the light-stepping forms of my comrades. Our array and our step connect us. We move as one man. A man made up of a thousand members and each member a man is a grand creature,—particularly when you consider that he is self-made. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... We went down well, and I squeezed his throat as we went. As soon as he was still we naturally rose, and I turned on my back and got him by the head. I looked about for the hole, and saw it glimmering above me like a moon in a fog, ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... glimmering up endlessly, obscured Glosterville, but the wind, from some hidden house among the hills, bore to him wood-smoke scents with a mingling of the abhorrent odors of man. It made many an old scar of spur-gore ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair, Who called me by my name and ran And ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... work getting our supply to throw it to the dogs. Let the lazy curs run along, and find some for themselves. Besides, it's too good to think of wasting it. I want the rest of the fellers to taste our venison. Mine went glimmering, and I hope it half choked that villainous crowd. Anyway you vowed it was a whole lot tougher than this haunch; and ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... stratagem comes to the aid of his boldness. Let loose from all further calculations, freed from all concern for the future, boldness and stratagem intensify each other, and thus collect at one point an infinitesimal glimmering of hope into a single ray, which may likewise ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... a good kind of crossness that is only disagreeable, and there is a bad kind of crossness that is very nasty indeed. So she came up with her neck stretched out, and her head at the end of it, and her eyes foremost of all, like a snail's, peering into the night to see what it could be that went on glimmering white before her. When she did see, she made a great exclamation, and threw up her hands. Then without a word, for she thought Diamond was walking in his sleep, she caught hold of him, and led him towards the house. He made no objection, for he was just in the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... other's face until a glimmering intelligence came to him. "Hold on!" he cried, as St. Vincent started to speak, "I got my finger on you. You were smooth-faced then. Let's see,—'86, fall of '87, summer of '88,—yep, that's when. Summer of '88 I come floatin' a raft out of Stewart River, loaded down with quarters ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... equity," he shook his head. "Oh, I know it seems a preposterous change of view. But at this late day I have made the discovery of the ancient truth that women are different from men. All I have learned of book and theory goes glimmering before the everlasting fact that the women are the mothers of our children. I... I still had my hopes of children with you, you see. But that's all over and done with. The question now is, what's in your ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Nevertheless it's got to be done." Just then I got the glimmering of an idea. "Tell me, Jim, are they doing much scouting here. Undersea, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... heat; clear, golden, dry. The society columns in the papers assured him that everyone was out of town; but the Avenue seemed plentifully crowded with beautiful, superb creatures. Far down the gentle slopes of that glimmering roadway he could see the rolling stream of limousines, dazzles of sunlight caught on their polished flanks. A faint blue haze of gasoline fumes hung low in the bright warm air. This is the street where even the most passive are pricked by the strange ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... thoughtfully. "You won't." He glanced through the brass tube and paced up and down the room. "You telephone for someone to repair my car," he said suddenly and abruptly. "I am going to stay here and work this thing out. I've got just the glimmering of an idea. But I'll need my car in running order, in case we have to go out and get ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the mellow tones floated above the heath where the gipsies camped, only one, perchance, might listen, lifting her bright eyes with pleasure and longing in them, dumbly, as a child might, yet showing for a moment some glimmering promise of a soul. But to many in the village close at hand the chime brought comfort. It seemed to assure the sick, counting the slow hours, that they were not forsaken, and helped them to bear their pain with patience; it seemed to utter to the wayworn a word which told them their trouble ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... very bright lawyer had a glimmering of an idea that Uncle Marmaduke's last words had some meaning to them. He inquired of the ladies of the house, and learned that the late Mr. Marmaduke had been exceedingly fond of reading Dickens, and that he was greatly attached to his own well-worn set of the great author's works. 'Ah, ha!' ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... Shine, ye professing Christians, for "ye are the lights of the world"—shine with a holy and steady radiance in the church of God, and pray for daily supplies of the oil of grace, that your light may not degenerate into a feeble glimmering or totally expire; otherwise you may become accessary to the fall and ruin of others, and "their blood may be upon you!" Such a pious union, such holy friendship as that of Elizabeth and Zacharias, will be perpetuated through infinite ages. It is not a transient ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... side by side at the slow Spanish trot. Hooper called my attention to the buildings of Fort Shafter glimmering part way up the slopes of the distant mountains, and talked entertainingly of the Indian days, and how the young officers used to ride down to his ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... until all sounds of their going grew to a hush mingling with the whisper of leaves and murmurous gurgle of the brook; and ever the shadows deepened about him, a purple solitude of misty trees and tangled thickets, depth on depth, fading to a glimmering mystery. ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... too, as in a landscape, is the rhythm of the Eternal; here are the Basic Forms. I doubt if the evidence of the annalists is ever worth much, unless they had an eye to penetrate to these. When one sees behind the supposed fact narrated and the judgments pronounced the glimmering up of a basic form, one guesses one is dealing ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... at night and watched the ragged armies of the air drift in from the bay and take possession of the whole city. Such fogs. Not distilled from pea soup like the London fogs; moist air-gauzes rather, pearl-touched and glimmering; so thick sometimes that it is as though the world had veiled herself in mourning, so thin often that the stars shine through with a delicate muffled lustre. By day, even in the full golden sunshine of ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... gives a mottled effect surpassing the most delicate and richly-shaded marbles and onyxes. Watered-silks of the most perfect manufacture are but childish and puerile attempts at reproduction, and finest Turkish shawls, Bokhara rugs or Arab sheiks' dearest-prized Prayer Carpets are but glimmering suggestions of what the Master Artist himself has ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... in such a startling tone that the old man raised sharply his bowed head, glimmering silvery white under the points of the little tricorne. For a ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... to the little old woman who had been so kind to him first, but wandered all day in the wood, waiting for the moontime. Again he waited at the edge of the dell, and when the white moon was high in the heavens, once more he saw the glimmering in the distance, and once more the lovely maiden floated toward him. He knew her name was the Princess Daylight, but this time she seemed to him much lovelier than before. She was all in blue like the blue of the sky in summer. (She really was more lovely, ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... we could move, the man had emerged again. As he came out into the glimmering patch of light, we saw that he carried something white under his arm. He looked stealthily all round him. The silence of the deserted street reassured him. Turning his back upon us he laid down his burden, and the next ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... withdraw herself. There was a strange feeling that it brought her the answer to her prayer.—They hurried on through the lower walks of the Park—plunging now through tunnelled depths of shade, and now emerging into spaces where sunset and moonrise rained a mingled influence on glimmering water, on the dim upturned faces of Ceres or Flora, or the limbs of flower-crowned nymphs and mermaids. It seemed impossible to turn homeward, to break off their conversation. When they reached the 'Bassin de Neptune' they left the Park, turning ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gone glimmering now—and yet as I sit here, there are the trees, and there are the flowers, very much as planned, in the soft blue-grass lawn; about the only thing lacking being ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... necessary in locating the wires, to descend into a vault beneath the apartment, which had not been opened for a long period. A man preceded the artist with a lamp. As they passed along the subterranean chamber the latter's attention was excited by something white glimmering through the darkness. In approaching the object, what was his surprise to find himself gazing upon his long-lost Hercules, which he had not seen for twenty years. A little reflection explained the apparent ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... comprehended many who did not exercise the offices of religious ministry. But even the clergy were, for a long period, not very materially superior, as a body, to the uninstructed laity. An inconceivable cloud of ignorance overspread the whole face of the Church, hardly broken by a few glimmering lights, who owe almost the whole of their distinction to the surrounding darkness.... Of this prevailing ignorance it is easy to produce abundant testimony. Contracts were made verbally, for want of notaries capable of drawing up charters; and ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... mountaineers gazed upon them. Great piles of wood showed how the forests were being rifled for fuel. Many trees had been felled in provident foresight, and lay along the ground in vast lengths, awaiting the axe; so many that adown the avenues thus opened toward the valley a wan glimmering caught the girl's eye, and she recognized the palings ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... The rustle of the bushes and the plants from which the rain was still dripping, alone broke the stillness of the night. After a few turns up and down he turned his steps to the vegetable garden, through which his way to the fields lay. Here and there a glimmering star hung above in the dense darkness, and before him the village lay like a dark spot on the dark background of the indistinguishable fields beyond. Suddenly he heard a slight noise from the old ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... great blast on his horn, which was heard in the land for miles round.... The sound of Wat's horn ... wakened a young maid, who, stealing on tiptoe to the window, looked over the bay and beheld the glimmering of spears and helms upon the sands.... 'Awake, mistress,' she cried, 'the host of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... with something indefinitely unpleasant. And she could not reconcile this with his appearance. However, the train of unlinked ideas which she pursued began to form the semblance of a chain. Coupling his name with Quarrier's, and with a club, aroused memory; vague uneasiness stirred her to a glimmering comprehension. Siward? Stephen Siward? One of the New York Siwards then;—one of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... burns before an obscure votive shrine. Many pass through life with this taper unlighted, despite the pomps and pleasures of the conjugal comedy. But others carry in the little chapel of their hearts a solitary glimmering lamp of love which only flames out with death. Zora knows this glimmering light is not love, but renunciation. Is not she the wife of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... understand. It flashed across her, not clearly but indistinctly, that the chief element in her suffering had been the shame of defying law and propriety rather than let her father undergo a just penalty. In some way or other this had been all transferred to Bart, and in the glimmering understanding of his character which was growing within her, she perceived that he had it in him to suffer under it far more intensely than she had suffered. It was very strange that just when she obtained the promise ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... Heaven, he said, to place Scotland (doubtless for the sins of their ancestors in 1642) in a more deplorable state of darkness than even this unhappy kingdom of England. Here, at least, although the candlestick of the Church of England had been in some degree removed from its place, it yet afforded a glimmering light; there was a hierarchy, though schismatical, and fallen from the principles maintained by those great fathers of the church, Sancroft and his brethren; there was a liturgy, though wofully perverted in some of the principal petitions. But in Scotland it was utter ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... thing to men that are on this side of heaven; it is that which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man: only the Christian has a word and Spirit that at times give a little of the glimmering thereof ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... He stood looking very suspiciously out, and so good was his acting, if it was acting, that Caius, who came and looked over his shoulder, had a superstitious feeling when he saw the blank, untrodden snow stretching wide and white into the glimmering night. He remembered that the one relative he believed the lady to have had appeared to him in strange places and ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... wary, not permitting the canoe to approach within rifle range. Clouds of ducks, and some Canada geese, as well as brant, kept up a continuous flutter as they rose from the surface of the water. Away to the southeast extended the glimmering bosom of the sound, with a few islands relieving its monotony. The three or four houses and two small storehouses at the landing of Currituck Court House, which, with the brick court-house, comprise the whole village, are situated on the west bank; and opposite, eight miles to the eastward, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... of thought came over the widow's mind that perhaps the signora's friendship was real, and that at any rate it could not hurt her; and another kind of thought, a glimmering of a thought, came to her also—that Mr. Arabin was too precious to be lost. She despised the signora, but might she not stoop to conquer? It should be but the smallest ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... twinkled. And when Tim fished a damp cigarette from his shirt, nonchalantly scraped a match on his host's table, blew a cloud of smoke, and sprawled back with one leg dangling over a chair arm, formality went a-glimmering. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... voluntary exile had he applied his mind to the subject in the hope of stumbling on a solution. To be sure, he had had a slight glimmering of the truth; he had realized in a sort of vague, general way that he had not been treated fairly at home, but he had not been able to provide a definite and final explanation, perhaps because he had never considered it necessary. But his return home, the review of the army of memories, had ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... commodious lodges, to interweave their nests with such art, to rear their young with such care, to teach them to shift for themselves when grown up, to hoard provisions for the winter, to produce such inimitable works as wax and honey, are instances perhaps of a glimmering of reason; but because destitute of speech, all the extraordinary things they do can not distinguish them from the brute part of creation. Let us consider dumb persons: how does the heavenly soul, which takes form in their bodies, operate in them? We perceive, indeed, that ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... hands were soon at work, loosening the queen's hair; and it glistened, as it fell, like glimmering gold. He surveyed it with such looks of enthusiasm as a statuary might bestow upon the spotless block of marble, whence he will fashion, ere long, the statue ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ignored. We see the heroes driving to battle in their chariots, guarded by shield and helmet, flourishing sword and spear. We learn what Ulysses did not know of foreign lands.. We hear Achilles' famed lament amid the dead, and note the vague glimmering idea of a future life, which the Greeks had caught perhaps from the Egyptians, perhaps from the suggestive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Pre-Raphaelite landscapes, let us imagine ourselves straightway turning to one of the numerous scenes by Whistler of the Thames at twilight, with its glimmering lights and ghostly shapes of bridges and hulks of steamers. Nothing is outlined, nothing is clearly defined, but the mystery of London's river is caught and pictured for ever. Let us look, too, at his 'Valparaiso,' bathed in a brilliant ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... bids thick night before the morning flee, And lingering day retains for mortal sight. O Promethean workman, thee I hail, Thee hallowed, thee unparalleled, thee bold To affront the reign of sleep and darkness old, Thee William, thee AEneas, thee I sing; Thee by the glimmering taper clear and pale, Of light, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did end the passing peale Which gaue the warning to a dismall end, And as his words last knell began to faile, This damned Nauie did a glimmering send, By which Sir Richard might their power reueale, Which seeming conquerlesse did conquests lend; At whose appearance Midelton did cry, See where they come, for ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... light of a cloudy winter sunset lay behind her. Ahead of her, now veiled, now splendidly revealed, there hung a marvellous, glimmering star. A little weight of sadness was dragging at her heart, but she would not give it place or so much as acknowledge its presence. She hummed a carol as she went, stepping lightly through ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars. ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... happened. The son, a man of thirty-one, died of the smallpox. No sooner was this over than the father came down with fever and went to the hospital for three months. Then he was done for. He came out weak, debilitated, no strong young son to stand by him, his little business gone glimmering, and not a farthing. The thing had happened, and the game was up. No chance for an old man to start again. Friends all poor and unable to help. He had tried for work when they were putting up the stands for the first Coronation parade. "An' I got ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Dog-Post-Day, the paragraph commencing, "Wehe groeszere Wellen auf mich zu, Morgenluft!" "Thou morning-air, break over me in greater waves! Bathe me in thy vast billows which roll above our woods and meadows, and bear me in blossom clouds past radiant gardens and glimmering streams, and let me die gently floating above the earth, rocked amid flying flowers and butterflies, and dissolving with outspread arms beneath the sun; while all my veins fall blended into red morning-flakes down to the flowers," etc. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... she singing all the way, and Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked after them until they reached the top of the staircase—not without halting to rest by the way—and passed out of his sight; and then he still stood gazing upwards, until the dull rays of the moon, glimmering in a melancholy manner through the dim skylight, sent him back ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... as well as the conditions permitted. Round me, on the bare ground, the men and the boy from the Sus lay wrapped in their haiks—the dead could not have slept more soundly than they. The two fires were glimmering very faintly now, M'Barak was stretching a blanket for himself, while Salam collected the tin plates and dishes, his last task before retiring. Somewhere in the far outer darkness I heard the wail of a hyaena, and a light cold breeze sighed over the plain. ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... lit With fire beneath this sun. At night, the glow Is magical; but at this height of day, When all the branches and the flowers and rocks And the far glimmering rivers shake and writhe In the fierce blaze, I feel a hideous ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... streak, pencil; sunbeam, moonbeam; aurora. day; sunshine; light of day, light of heaven; moonlight, starlight, sunlight &c (luminary) 432; daylight, broad daylight, noontide light; noontide, noonday, noonday sun. glow &c v.; glimmering &c v.; glint; play of light, flood of light; phosphorescence, lambent flame. flush, halo, glory, nimbus, aureola. spark, scintilla; facula; sparkling &c v.; emication^, scintillation, flash, blaze, coruscation, fulguration^; flame &c (fire) 382; lightning, levin^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... we not been tempted by the magnificent steamer "South America," which came up from Rio on the way to New York. On the moonlit night of the 7th of January, when the ice-king had thrown his white robes over the North, we turned our backs upon the glimmering lights of Para, and noiselessly as a canoe glided down the great river. As the sun rose for the last time to us upon the land of perpetual verdure, our gallant ship was plowing the mottled waters on the edge of the ocean—mingled ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... since all things call us, the living and the dead, And o'er the weltering tangle a glimmering light is shed. ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... Some glimmering of the botanist's feelings strikes through to my slow sympathies. Of course—a strange man! I put out a restraining hand towards his arm. "I told you," I say, "that very probably, most probably, she would have met some other. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Ruth seemed to feel that the glimmering shaft was a promise of happiness to come, for when Lawler turned, her eyes were shining with a light that caused his own to deepen with ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... expect to." Hadria was standing by the window looking out over the glimmering fields and the shrouded white hills. "Life is as white and as unsympathetic as this," she said dreamily. "We just dance our reel in our garret, and then it is all over; and whether we do the steps as our fancy would ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the spatter of musket-fire ceased. Soon the fugitives heard Blackbeard's harsh voice damning all hands. That thick skull of his had not been cracked by the impact of the solid cheese and he had been released from his brimstone inferno. The ghosts rested on their oars. They could watch the glimmering canvas of the brig and see what her procedure might be. Soon she filled away and forsook the attempt to find the boat. Blackbeard had wisdom enough to avoid blundering about and putting the brig aground in a chase so ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... or answered him. Fearful, even while he cried to them, of attracting attention, he was silent. By-and-by he saw, as he looked from his grated window, a strange glimmering on the stone walls and pavement of the yard. It was feeble at first, and came and went, as though some officers with torches were passing to and fro upon the roof of the prison. Soon it reddened, and lighted brands came whirling ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... much interrupted by the difficulties of the way, in which Antony rendered such aid that she was each moment more impelled to trust to him, and relieved to find herself in such familiar hands. On reaching the summit the light of day could be seen glimmering in the extreme distance, and the maiden's heart bounded at the sight of it; but she found herself led somewhat aside, where in a sort of side aisle of the great bell chamber were standing together ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ascertain whether the tide had not fallen sufficiently far to yield us a passage; but we found the waves chafing among the rocks just where the tide-line had rested twelve hours before, and a full fathom of sea enclasping the base of the promontory. A glimmering idea of the real nature of our situation at length crossed my mind. It was not imprisonment for a tide to which we had consigned ourselves, it was imprisonment for a week. There was little comfort in the thought, arising, as it did, amid the chills and terrors of a dreary midnight; and I looked ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... intercept thee, and then I should lose the very glimmering of Hope. A few Weeks, perhaps, may reconcile us all. Shall ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... o'er a man, When the poor brain is as an empty bowl, And the thought-spirit, weariful and wan, Turning from that which yet it loves the best, Sinks moveless, with life-poverty opprest:— Watch then, O Lord, thy feebly glimmering coal. ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... the water exultantly and were a triumphant challenge to the soul. Folks came from far and near to see them. Then, one winter, my friend thought he would clean out his pond, so he had all the nasty, slimy mud scraped away till you could see the silver gravel glimmering on the bottom. But the lilies, with all their haunting ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... A glimmering idea of this necessity seems lately to have dawned upon some of them. It is quite possible that they have also felt the want of something for their own souls to believe; for an Infidel has a soul, a poor, hungry, starved soul, just like other men. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... appurtenances can in any sense be called modern, they represented ideas and conditions which are far enough away now. There was nothing about them more modern than the early days of Miss Austen. The dining-room sideboard, with its long row of knife boxes, whose sloping lids when lifted showed a glimmering of silver handles, would have seemed familiar to Mr. Knightly, Mr. Woodhouse, and Sir Thomas Bertram. Opposite the dining room was a library, very carefully kept, the contents of which were a curious mixture. Besides great folio editions of the classics and the Christian Fathers, were collections ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... garment. There being no window, nor aperture to admit the light, in these wretched cabins, except the door, we found ourselves often in almost total darkness for the first moment of our entrance. But a faint glimmering of a handful of burning straw in one end would soon reveal to us the indistinct images of wan-faced children grouped together, with their large, plaintive, still eyes looking out at us, like the sick ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt
... him the faintest glimmering of a sense of humour he would never have appealed to me, choosing the silent and ghostly middle of the night for the performance, to decide his point of honour for him. What am I that he should imagine me capable of settling high questions of that kind? An expatriated Irishman, ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... head before the wind, and steered with one hand whilst I got some breakfast with the other. I thanked God for the brightness of the day and for the sight of that strange white line of land, that went in glimmering blobs of faintness to the trembling horizon where the southern end of it died out. The swell rose full and brimming ahead, rolling in sapphire hills out of the north-east, as I have said, whence I inferred that that extremity of the land did not extend very much further than I could see it, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... 'mid the hills,—so lone Clouds are not lonelier,—the forest lay In emerald darkness 'round us. Many a stone And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way; And many a bird the glimmering light along Showered the golden ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... the rats were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously still. Far and near the view suggested the same dreary impressions of solitude and decay, and the glorious brightness of the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... preference for "Tam o' Shanter," where the weird superstitious element that has played so great a part in the imaginative work of this part of our island is brought more prominently forward. Few passages of description are finer than that of the roaring Doon and Alloway Kirk glimmering through the groaning trees; but the unique excellence of the piece consists in its variety, and a perfectly original combination of the terrible and the ludicrous. Like Goethe's Walpurgis Nacht, brought into closer contact with real life, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... evening's repast, when the moon (for they had taken thought to appoint the meeting at the time of the full moon) began to show its disc above the dark summits of the distant mountains, while a few stars were seen glimmering in the west. Then the service began. The whole constituted a temple worthy of the grandeur of God. An old man in a dress of the quaintest simplicity ascended a platform, wiped the dust from his spectacles, and, in a voice of suppressed emotion "lined the hymn," of which that vast multitude ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... get a glimmering of why you're in high school," Dick went on. "When you compare the railway president and the laborer, the difference between them lies a good deal in the difference in their natural abilities. Yet a lot depends, too, upon the difference in their training. You don't find many college ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... Gilles de Gurdun back among his people, and the same found Jehane caged in a hoop of steel. So he affronting and she caught up stood together, for a moment. With one mailed hand he held her fast under the armpit, with the other he held a fidgety sword. His head was thrown back; through glimmering eyelids he watched them—as one who says, What next?—breathing short through his nose. It was the attitude of the snatching lion, sudden, arrogant, shockingly swift; a gross deed, done in a flash which was its ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Or was it some glimmering perception of the old Greek saying—'Character is Fate;' some sudden sense of the universal truth that all are in bond to their own natures, and what a man has most desired shall ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... espied a glimmering light through some trees, which seemed very near to them. He immediately cried out in a rapture, "Oh, sir! Heaven hath at last heard my prayers, and hath brought us to a house; perhaps it may be an inn. Let me beseech you, sir, if you have any ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the luminous phenomena which are observed in the Cuchivano? The column of air which rises from the mouth of a burning volcano* is sometimes observed to shine with a splendid light. (* We must not confound this very rare phenomenon with the glimmering commonly observed a few toises above the brink of a crater, and which (as I remarked at Mount Vesuvius in 1805) is only the reflection of great masses of inflamed scoria, thrown up without sufficient force to pass the mouth of the volcano.) This light, which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... A great glimmering light shows now in the east and at length the full moon rises, not blood-coloured as in our climates but straightway very luminous, and surrounded by an aureole of a kind of mist, caused by the eternal dust of the sands. And when we return ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... to the Spirit—a something very different from the idea conveyed by the often-repeated phrase, "And God said." What that something may be it is hard for us to conceive, harder still to express, but the following considerations may perhaps throw some glimmering of light ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... first clumsy eolith of rudely chipped flint to the first implements of polished stone, was two or three thousand centuries, ten or fifteen thousand generations. So slowly, by human standards, did humanity gather itself together out of the dim intimations of the beast. And that first glimmering of speculation, that first story of achievement, that story-teller bright-eyed and flushed under his matted hair, gesticulating to his gaping, incredulous listener, gripping his wrist to keep him attentive, was the most marvellous beginning ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... coming, was already glimmering into light. In that same year of King Charles' Pragmatic Sanction (1438), though yet unknown to warring princes and wrangling churchmen, John Gutenberg, in a little German workshop, had evolved the idea of movable type, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... into the mountains behind the town, inquiring at every grass hut we passed whether the band of ladrones had passed that way, but only once was even a trace of them found. Then it was learned that at a certain place they had separated into groups of three or four and gone glimmering through the dream of things that were. This place was in a secluded nook of the mountains where in years gone by some adventurous Spaniard had erected a primitive water mill to grind his sugar-cane. We had now marched ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... as he spoke, the candle cast an awful glimmering on his countenance. "To slash is, speaking grammatically, to employ the accusative, or accusing case; you must cut up your book right and left, top and bottom, root and branch. To plaster a book is to employ the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reign, sent messengers to look for "the holy man of the West." Now this period corresponds with the commencement of the Christian era: and allowing for discrepancies unavoidable in such a calculation, could it not have been possible that a faint glimmering of the "Star of Bethlehem" had crossed this monarch's vision, and that, but for their dilatory footsteps, these ambassadors of the Chinese Emperor might have knelt by the side of those other "wise men of the East," who were guided by its beams to the cradle ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... have been, nor what I might have been but for the combined forces of circumstances. I might have been the dearest and only one for her, attaching her to life and happiness; now it will be quite different. But as long as there is a glimmering spark of feeling for me I will not leave her, because I cannot; I ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... petitioners. It is not the Dissenters, he cried, whom you have to fear, but the men who, "not contented with endeavouring to turn your eyes from the blaze and effulgence of light, by which life and immortality is so gloriously demonstrated by the Gospel, would even extinguish that faint glimmering of Nature, that only comfort supplied to ignorant man before this great illumination.... These are the people against whom you ought to aim the shaft of the law; these are the men to whom, arrayed in all the terrors of government, I ...
— Burke • John Morley
... gave the general; while I, in my endeavor to save General Laborde when unhorsed, was cut down through the helmet, and so stunned that I remembered no more around me. I kept my saddle, it is true, but I lost every sense of consciousness, my first glimmering of reason coming to my aid as I lay upon the river bank and felt my faithful follower Mike bathing my temples with water, as he kept up a running fire of lamentations for my ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... I saw a glimmering light down the beach at a little landing. I ran to it, hoping some gondolier might be found who would row me over to the city. There was one boat at the landing and in it a hunchback, sound asleep, covered with a canvas. It was Gian Bellini's boat. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Omicron, the criminal) has nothing in this world to do but run the house—and see how she runs it! No order! No method! Has she ever studied housekeeping scientifically? Not she! Does she care? Not she! If she had any real sense of responsibility, if she had the slightest glimmering of her own short-comings, she wouldn't have started on the ring question. But there you are! She only thinks of spending, and titivating herself. I wish she had to do a little earning. She'd find out a thing or two then. She'd ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... impersonation of the heroic faults and virtues which 'the mirror,' that professed to give to 'the very body of the time, its form and pressure,' could not fail to show, are glimmering here constantly in 'this ancient piece,' and often shine out in the more critical passages, with such unmistakeable clearness, as to furnish an effectual diversion for any eye, that should undertake to fathom prematurely the player's intention. For 'the gentleman who wrote the late ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... represented to her—that it was allotted to the vanishing light to rise again in new and radiant splendour—she would maintain for the present, though the best success could scarcely lead to anything more than merely fanning the glimmering spark ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... subject of the expenditure of material force in maintaining those forms of mental action which are carried on through the medium of bodily organs, it must be admitted, is involved in great obscurity; for it is only a glimmering of light which science has yet been able to throw into this field. It is, however, becoming the settled opinion, among all well-informed persons, that the soul, during the time of its connection with a material system in this life, performs many of those functions which ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... found a seat on the opposite side of the deck, resolved to accept Bassett's own definition of their relations—markedly expressed in Bassett's back and shoulders that were stolidly presented to him. Dan, searching out the lights that were just beginning to blink on the darkling shores, found the glimmering lanterns of Mrs. Owen's landing. Sylvia was there! It was Sylvia he had come to see, and the coldness with which Morton Bassett turned his back upon him did not matter in the least. It was his pliability ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... whose specific genius for their occupation triumphs over our tyrannous system and even finds in it its opportunity? For that matter, it is possible, if difficult, to find a solicitor, or even a judge, who has some notion of what law means, a doctor with a glimmering of science, an officer who understands duty and discipline, and a clergyman with an inkling of religion, though there are nothing like enough of them to go round. But even the few who, like Ibsen's Mrs Solness, have "a genius for nursing the souls of little children" ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... pillar posts. The rising sun sent a deflected ray from chimney-pot or steeple to welcome him—when fog and smoke permitted. The noon-tide beams broiled him in summer and cheered him in winter on his benignant path of usefulness. The evening fogs and glimmering lamps beheld him hard at work, and the nightly returning stars winked at him with evident surprise when they found him still fagging along through heat and cold, rain and snow, with the sense of urgent duty ever present in his breast, and part of the recorded hopes, joys, fears, ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... there was no standing, I groped in the dark; my heart panted, my strength failed, and the light of mine eyes seemed gone out. I was weak with my groaning; in the night I made my bed to swim with my tears; yet even then, by that same covenant by which I was suffering, light sprang out of darkness, glimmering hope in the midst of despair. I remembered the years of thy right hand; in the multitude of my thoughts within me—the provision made in this covenant—thy comforts delighted ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... and most rugged of walls whispers, and some light escapes through a cranny. A vague glimmering is now and then to be perceived through solid and sombre piles of building. Even to examine the envelope of a fact may be to some purpose. The instinct of us all is to leave between the fact which interests us and ourselves but the thinnest possible ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... vessels worked by steam, and of an air-balloon which might have been constructed by Montgolfier. "Such," said Zee, with an air of meditative wisdom—"such were the feeble triflings with nature of our savage forefathers, ere they had even a glimmering perception of the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was able to feel distinctly. Mr Townshend did not fail to ask me occasionally if I could see him or my sister without opening my eyelids; but this was always impossible, and all that I could say I had seen was a glimmering of light, interrupted by the black and confused images of the objects presented to me; a light which appeared to me a little less clear than that which we commonly see when we shut the eyelids opposite the sun or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... began to suck down his upper lip and agitate his eyelids and stand uneasily, glimmering signs of the setting in of the tide ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a first glimpse of what the mystery of worship meant. The dim towering arches, through which the dusty richly-stained sunbeams poured, the far-away murmurous melodies that floated down from the glimmering choir, the high thin pealing organ, all combined to give her a sense of the unfathomable depths of the Divine Majesty—an element that was lacking in the clear-cut personal Puritan creed, in spite of the tender associations that made it fragrant for her, and the love of the Saviour ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the multifarious beauty of our millionaires! Who can doubt that we've triumphed over the world, the flesh and the devil? Have not the Spanish inquisition and the English Court of High Commission gone glimmering? Do we bore the tongues of Quakers or amputate the ears of non-conformists as in Auld Lang Syne? Do we not run troublesome wives into the divorce court instead of into the river, as was once our wont,—scientifically roast our criminals with electricity instead of pulling their heads off with ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... this unlooked-for, kind, even tender reception, had wrought an almost instantaneous change. He had come home with a feeling of despair tugging at his heart. Nothing appeared before him but ruin. Now the light of hope, feeble though were the rays, came glimmering across ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... similar cry in the far distance. Soon after the shepherd returned, and, taking his companion by the hand, led him into the cave which, a few paces from its mouth, was profoundly dark. Almost immediately a glimmering light appeared. A few steps farther, and Wallace found himself in the midst of ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... "money, patronage, or other improper means, sought to influence," not the action of any individual member or members of Congress, but "the action" of the entire body "of Congress" itself "or any committee thereof." The President might have had some glimmering of the nature of the offense to be investigated had his accuser pointed to the act or acts of Congress which he sought to pass or to defeat by the employment of "money, patronage, or other improper means." But the accusation is bounded by no ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... I knew little or nothing. My memory hardly reached farther back than the advent of my uncle at Lake Adieno, and all my early associations were connected with the cottage and its surroundings. I had a glimmering and indistinct idea of something before our coming to Parkville. It seemed to me that I had once known a motherly lady with a sweet and lovely expression on her face; and I had a faint recollection of looking ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... was still steeped in the golden light of full afternoon, but the small windows only looked on to the courtyard and let little of the gleam into the low-ceiled room; dimness veiled the corners, and through it each plate on the old dresser held a faintly glimmering crescent of light. On a sheet of iron laid upon the open hearth the last loaves of barley-bread were baking under a crock, and Vassilissa Beggoe was preserving the leaven for next week's breadmaking by the simple process ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... if God so much abhorred, and so severely punished these worldly respects in the men of the world; if God was so angry with poor purblind heathen, who had no other light for their guide, but the glimmering light of nature; how will His anger not only kindle, but flame in the avenging of such baseness upon Christians, a people of His own, who have the glorious light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to discover to them higher and heavenly ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two. EXTERNAL OBJECTS furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and THE MIND furnishes the understanding with ideas ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... di'monds fade in flames, 'twas foolish, Curtius! And then methought how strange and lone it seem'd, For till thou cam'st I seem'd to be alone, On the vin'd terrace, prison'd in the gold Of that still noontide hour. No widows stole Up the snow-glimmering marble of the steps To take my alms and bless the Gods and me; No orphans touched the fringes of my robe With innocent babe-fingers, nor dropped the gold I laid in their soft palms, to laugh, and ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... opening and shutting each door without a sound, and scrutinising the interiors by the light of his torch. They were empty and deserted, as he had seen them the previous afternoon. On reaching the end of the passage he glanced over the head of the staircase, but there was no light glimmering in the square well of darkness and no sound in the lower part of the house to suggest that anybody was stirring downstairs. He turned away, and made his way back along the passage, trying the doors on the other side with ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... was time to rise, there was but a glimmering of daylight, and we had candles on the breakfast-table at nearly ten o'clock. All abroad there was a dense dim fog brooding through the atmosphere, insomuch that we could hardly see across the street. At eleven o'clock I went out into the midst of the fog-bank, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Dancers," and Captain de Camp busy, there, screwing his empty trunk to the floor, that it might appear heavy, and full of valuables; and whilst, between the villas in the rear, there might be seen a glimmering candle, and by that light be found—one not unknown to Brown—a poor little musician, in a little second-floor room, containing a little organ much too large for it, and a litter of dirty soft papers,—who is not a little perplexed at a note, from Mrs. Brown, dispensing with his services:—he, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner |
