"Luminous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... head above the ground, was composed of myriads of glow-worms all holding on to each other, and so forming a dazzling canopy over the fairy ring. There were thousands of little people looking on, but they were in shadow and drab in colour compared to the glorious creatures within that luminous circle, who were so bewilderingly bright that Maimie had to wink hard all the ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the story," said the young lady. "The light betrayed it, not in the sun but in darkness. Is there so little light in these rooms, Monsieur, that a poor glowworm can show so brightly? I thought we were in a luminous atmosphere, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... not hesitate to begin by quoting at length a luminous passage from Grimm's great work. In the preface to his second ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... are clever you already see me As one who moves forever in a cloud Of warm bright vanity: a luminous cloud Which falls on all things with a quivering magic, Changing such outlines as a light may change, Brightening what lies dark to me, concealing Those things that will not change . . . I walk sustained In a world of things that flatter me: a sky Just as I would have had it; trees and ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... Positive terminal. T Negative terminal. -T Magnet forming the field. FM Current indicator (amperemeter). AM Tension indicator (voltameter). MV Electro-magnet. EM Luminous intensity of a lamp, in candles. c.p. Resistance of the armature. R{a} Resistance of the magnet forming the field. R{m} Resistance of the external circuit. R{o} Intensity in the armature. C{a} Intensity in the coils of the magnet. C{m} Intensity in the external circuit. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... so luminous, so queenly, she dissipated his cloud of doubts and scruples, and the tremor of the boyish lover came back into his limbs as he turned to meet her. His voice all but failed him as he answered ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... "It is refreshing to meet with so luminous a mind as yours. There were many dangers, many risks to take. The train might have been stopped, lots of things might have happened. It would be far better for the man to leave the express. And he ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... witnesses pass within its folds, leaving the disciples without, and that separation seems confirmed by Matthew's saying that the voice 'came out of the cloud.' Our evangelist points to its brightness as singular. It was not merely bright, as if smitten by the sunlight, but its whole substance was luminous. It is almost a contradiction to speak of a cloud of light, and the anomalous expression points to something beyond nature. We cannot but remember the pillar which had a heart of fire, and glowed in the darkness over the sleeping camp, and the cloud which filled the house, and drove the priests ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the life of this child of Thagaste, the son of Monnica, were not intermingled so deeply with ours, though he were for us only a foreigner born in a far-off land, nevertheless he would still remain one of the most fascinating and luminous souls who have shone amid our darkness and warmed our sadness—one of the most human and most divine creatures who ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... this being a modification of phlogiston, it is probable that all light is a modification of phlogiston also. Indeed, since no other substances besides such as contain phlogiston are capable of ignition, and consequently of becoming luminous, it was on this account pretty evident, prior to these deductions from electrical phenomena, that light and phlogiston are the same thing, in ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... but tardy simplifications which the union of Europe and the democratic federation of the continent will some day bring forth, what will be in France, the form of the social edifice, of whose ill-defined and luminous outlines the thinking man already has a glimpse, through ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... veranda was ideal. He was generally ready when we arrived, a luminous figure in white flannels, pacing up and down before a background of sky and forest, blue lake, and distant hills. When it stormed we would go inside to a bright fire. The dictation ended, he would ask his secretary ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was wrought of a shell Luminous as the shine Of a new-born star in a dewy dell,— And its strings were strands of wine That sprayed at the Fancy's touch and fused, As your listening spirit leant Drunken through with the airs that ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... magnificent display of black cotton grammatically inscribed with "Port Hudson and Vicksburg is ours," garnished with a luminous row of tapers, and, drunk on two bits' worth of lager beer, he has been shrieking out all Union songs he can think of with his horrid children until my tympanum is perfectly cracked. Miriam wants to offer him an extra bottle of lager ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... "And beyond this luminous moment," suggested the man,—his the speculative imagination,—"there must lie other levels of intimacy, of comradeship. If we could go on into the years like this, why, the world would ever be new,—we should go deeper into the mysteries every ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... reader will find a luminous, eminently simple, and popular account of the discoveries of each of those distinguished individuals, of a kind constituting in fact a brief history of the particular branch of science to which he was devoted. And in ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... library, by one Jans van Hounym, which told of an experience very similar to ours, which had befallen that worthy Dutchman in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and which resulted in the discovery of a luminous diamond. This tale it was which had come into Tom's head as he listened to honest Dick Wharton's ghost-story, while the means which he had adopted to verify his supposition sprang from his own fertile ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... fairness towards all whose attempted systems he has analysed. He is hearty in appreciating talent of every kind, but he is discriminating in his judgment of ideas, and rarely sympathetic. Where the best thoughts of the ablest men are to be displayed, it would be tempting to present an array of luminous points or a chaplet of polished gems. In the hands of such artists as Stahl or Cousin they would start into high relief with a convincing lucidity that would rouse the exhibited writers to confess that they had never known they were so clever. Without transfiguration the effect might be attained ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... whole lower portion of the house to be thrown open and a multitude of lights to be placed in convenient and effective positions. Such a marshalled wealth of ancient candlesticks and flambeaux I had never beheld. Niched against the dusky wainscots, casting great luminous circles upon the pendent stiffness of sombre tapestries, enhancing and completing with admirable effect the variety and mystery of the great ancient house, they seemed to people the wide rooms, as our little group passed slowly from one to another, with a dim expectant ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... Frederick Pollock has pointed out, Spinoza has in a manner "counted thought twice over" while treating of the only two infinite attributes cognizable to us, we need not, on that account, surrender his luminous idea of God as a Being absolutely infinite, that is, "Substance consisting of infinite Attributes, whereof each one expresses eternal and infinite being." Nor need we abandon his supplementary but essential idea of "Modes" ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... the beautiful effects produced by the Photogenic art, while others give sufficient reasons for doubting the correctness of the assumption. That the results are effected by a principle associated with light and not by the luminous principle itself, is the most probable conclusion. The importance of a knowledge of this fact becomes most essential in practice, as will presently be seen. To this principle Mr. Hunt ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... psychic distinctly. I could discern the color of his coat and the expression of his face. He stood at least six feet from the opening in the curtain. At his second cry, in which I detected a note of entreaty, I saw a luminous form, taller than himself, suddenly appear before the curtain and stand bowing in silence. I could perceive neither face, eyes, nor feet, but I could make out the arms under the shining robe, the shape of the head and the shoulders, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... "liberty." It contained the principles of holy freedom, faithfully and affectionately applied. This must have made it precious in the eyes of such men "of low degree" as were most of the believers, and welcome to a place in the sacred canon. There let it remain as a luminous and powerful defense of the cause ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... He abandoned the Greek cross, and adopted the Latin form by adding an elongated nave. The central piers were left in their places; the three terminal apses of the choir and transepts were strengthened, simplified, reduced to commonplace. Bramante's ground-plan is lucid, luminous, and exquisitely ordered in its intricacy. The true creation of a builder-poet's brain, it illustrates Leo Battista Alberti's definition of the charm of architecture, tutta quella musica, that melody and music of a graceful edifice. We are able ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... body, for the two luminous objects shone as if set in a ground of ebony. But I did not stay to scan in what they were set. My piece was up. I glanced hastily along the barrel. I sighted between the eyes. I pulled the trigger. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... in this paragraph, which asks more than a marginal note to disentangle. Briefly, the process of acquirement is confounded with the order of the truths when acquired. A tinder spark gives light to an Argand's lamp: is it therefore more luminous? ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that the prayer would have a speedy answer. The fires were burning clearer now, leaping up in broad dragon's tongues of flame from the outer edges of the fagot piles to curtain off all that lay beyond. Through the luminous flame-veil the capering savages took on shapes the most weird and grotesque; and when I had a glimpse of the dead men's row, each hideous face in it seemed to wear a ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... talking then, But held our constant course along the track, Where spirits thickly thronged the wooded glen. And we had reached a point whence to turn back Had not been far, when I, still touched with fear, Perceived a fire, that, struggling with the black, Made conquest of a luminous hemisphere. The place was distant still, but I could see Clustered about the fire, as we drew near, Figures of an austere nobility. "Thou who dost honor science and love art, Pray who are these, whose potent dignity Doth eminently ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... is confined to a limited area, the most rapid and certain cure is obtained by excision; larger areas are scraped with the sharp spoon. The ray treatment includes the use of luminous, Rontgen, or radium rays, and possesses the advantage of being comparatively painless and of being followed by the least amount ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... that opened out into a small space on the cliff top. It was a lonely spot, out of the way of strolling visitors at that time of night: the bench in the middle of the gravelled space lay empty in the luminous sea-twilight with a great arch of sky overhead and the waves below catching a gleam from moon and stars on every ripple. Though Thorhaven might not be beautiful on a Gala evening, with futile little lamps and starved visitors blown about by the wind, it had, on such nights as these, an ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... forest. Occasionally a lily-pad would brush along the bottom, and stooping low I could hear a faint murmuring of the water under the bow: else all was still. Then almost as by magic, we were encompassed by a huge black ring. The surface of the lake, when we had reached the center, was slightly luminous from the starlight, and the dark, even forest-line that surrounded us, doubled by reflection in the water, presented a broad, unbroken belt of utter blackness. The effect was quite startling, like some huge conjurer's trick. It seemed as if we had crossed the boundary-line between the real ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... The flotilla entered the port safe and sound and he went back to the camp, where the sports and amusements prepared for the soldiers commenced, and in the evening the brilliant fireworks which were let off rose in a luminous column, which was distinctly seen from the English coast.—[It appears that Napoleon was so well able to cover up this fiasco that not even Bourrienne ever heard the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... 'It is a luminous idea. Why shouldn't we publish a special number of The Glow Worm before the end ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, are tremendously large—many times the size of the earth, and resemble the sun more than the earth in their physical appearance and condition. They are globes of gases and vapors so hot as to be practically self luminous. They probably contain a small solid nucleus, but the greater part of them is nothing but an immense gaseous atmosphere filled with minute liquid particles and heated to ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... city, over which the moon was hanging, filling the valleys and hills with strange, fantastical shadows, they remembered the black, shaggy eyebrows, the luminous eyes, and the bitter, penetrating voice, and they remembered the gait, the long striding legs as they hastened up the steep path; even the pinched back often started up in their memory. And the next three or four days they sought him in the crowds that assembled to make the triumphal ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... Maggiore and the vivid green of Lugano, comes the violet-blue of Como, with its luminous landscape, its banks covered with olives, Roman ruins, and modern villas. Never have I felt the air so clear. Here for the first time I said to myself: "This is the spot where I would choose to dwell." I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... spoken before. They were sitting, one at either end, on that seat on the stony summit of Primrose Hill which looks towards Regent's Park. It was night. The paths on the slope below were dotted out by yellow lamps; the Albert-road was a line of faintly luminous pale green—the tint of gaslight seen among trees; beyond, the park lay black and mysterious, and still further, a yellow mist beneath and a coppery hue in the sky above marked the blaze of the Marylebone thoroughfares. The nearer houses in the Albert-terrace ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... spring-beetle. The light proceeds from two eye-like spots on the thorax and from the segments underneath. It feeds on the sugar-cane. On the Upper Amazon we found the P. clarus, P. pellucens, and P. tuberculatus. At Bahia, on the opposite coast, Darwin found P. luminosus, the most common luminous insect.] ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... taking exercise; nor have I been once able to circulate my blood by motion since our arrival, except perhaps by climbing the beautiful tower which stands (as every thing else does) in St. Mark's Place. And you may drive a garden-chair up that, so easy is the ascent, so broad and luminous the way. From the top is presented to one's sight the most striking of all prospects, water bounded by land—not land by water.—The curious and elegant islets upon which, and into which, the piles of Venice are driven, exhibiting clusters of houses, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... head; he was dizzy for a moment; he heard his heart thump heavily; he saw, or he fancied he saw, the luminous distention of Leander's eyes as this Goliath of his battles was thus delivered into his hands. To meet him here proved nothing; the law was not violated by Nehemiah in the mere knowledge that illicit whiskey was in process of manufacture; a dozen different errands might have brought him. But this ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... still be borne in mind that, while gravitation is certainly the principal force governing the motions of the heavenly bodies, there may yet be a resisting medium in space, and there may be electric and magnetic forces to deal with. There may, further, be cases where the effects of luminous radiative repulsion become apparent, and also Crookes' vacuum-effects described as "radiant matter." Nor is it quite certain that Laplace's proofs of the instantaneous propagation ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... There is often something luminous in the face of a good man, and Dr. Morrison had this peculiarity in a remarkable degree. His face seemed to radiate light; moreover, he was a man anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, and John no sooner felt the glow of that ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the trend of political opinion and the portent of public affairs, and I can truly say that during the fifty years that passed thereafter I never discussed any topic of current interest or moment with him that he did not throw upon it the side lights of a luminous understanding, and at the same time an ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... went on to explain that in the progress of the universe no faintest throb of energy is lost. It might pass from form to form; heat might appear as a mode of motion, of weight, of elasticity, but no smallest unit perished. So the lecture flowed on into a luminous and comprehensive exposition of the great doctrine of the conservation and correlation of force. It was Asa Gray who brought us into touch with this new science just then announcing itself to the world. He was a co-worker and a compeer of the pioneers who at that moment were breaking a ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in the English woods. Though many glades intervene, we said; for thou seest that BELLE ISLE is not all one various flush of wood, but bedropt all over—bedropt and besprinkled with grass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, some tree-shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some luminous as small soil-suns, on which as the eye alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, and gifted with a profounder power to see into the mystery of the beauty of nature. But what are those living Hills of snow, or of some ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... extensive luminous ring including, the sun or moon, whose light, passing through the intervening vapour, gives rise to the phenomenon. Halos are called lunar or solar, according as they appear round the moon or sun. Prismatically coloured halos indicate the presence of watery vapour, whereas white ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the foot-lights "wos oncommon grand," which was an unquestionable fact, for they consisted of six tin lamps filled with seal-oil, from the wicks of which rose a compound of yellow flame and smoke that had a singularly luminous effect. Amos Parr guessed that the curtain would be certain sure to get jammed at the first haul, and several of the others were convinced that O'Riley would stick his part in one way or another. However, an end was put to all remarks ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... flowing water, the course of which was directed most artistically, and diffused a refreshing coolness. Their Majesties left the Hotel de Ville about half-past eleven, and returned to the Tuileries by the light of most beautiful illuminations and luminous emblems, designed in most exquisite taste. Perfect weather and a delightful temperature favored ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... honourable than the right, which at that time was not the case in China proper, though it is now. The "Borough-English" rule of succession in Ts'u was to give it to one of the younger sons; this statement is repeated in positive terms by Shuh Hiang, the luminous statesman of Tsin, and will be further illustrated when we come to treat of that subject specially. The Lu rule was "son after father; or, if none, then younger after eldest brother; if the legitimate heir dies, then next son by the same mother; failing which, the eldest son by any mother; if ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... examining a luminous watch, received him at the charge as he fell into an English first-line trench. They struggled wildly together in the mud to the accompaniment of startling language on the part ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... roof of seamless cloud. As I rose, coming closer and closer to it, it seemed a ceiling just above my reach, then my head merged in it. A kind of dry mist surrounded me—and for ten or fifteen minutes I mounted through this luminous, strangely shrouding, all pervasive, mountain cloud. My horse, feeling his way with cautious care, steadily mounted and soon we burst out into the clear sunlight above. While still the mist curled about my horse's hoofs, I looked ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... began to sink. The sunset flooded in from the Berkshire uplands and the far Oxford plain, and lay in gold and purple on the falling woods and the green stretches of the park. The distant edges of hill were extraordinarily luminous and clear, and Aldous, looking into the west with the eye of one to whom every spot and line were familiar landmarks, could almost fancy he saw beyond the invisible river, the hill, the "lovely tree against the western sky," which keep for ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... followed. Immediately there was the raucous call of the general alarm siren and a flashing light from the bastion that paled the red mists to a sickly, luminous pink. Full gravity coming down with crushing ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... in the west With great bright eye, Rain down thy luminous arrows in this breast With influence calm and high, And speak to me of many things ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... Jr., and Risler, Sr.—glory and wealth flowed in upon him, while envy scarcely touched him, so unspoiled was he and so continuously and eminently lovable. One seemed to see in his career a reflection of his luminous nature, a revised myth of the golden touch, a new version of the fairy-tale of the fair mouth dropping pearls. Then, as though grown weary of the idyllic romance she was composing, Fortune donned the tragic robes of Nemesis. Years of pain followed, which could ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... suffered to drop in consequence of the positive refusal of Child and his associates to accept the offered terms. He objected to every part of the plan; and his objections are highly curious and amusing. The great monopolist took his stand on the principles of free trade. In a luminous and powerfully written paper he exposed the absurdity of the expedients which the House of Commons had devised. To limit the amount of stock which might stand in a single name would, he said, be most unreasonable. Surely a proprietor whose whole fortune was staked on the success ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... twofold majesty of darkness and solitude; he was speechless, and looked by turns both at the earth and the sky. The stars appeared glittering in the blue heaven, and were reflected on the motionless surface of the neighboring water. Suddenly a luminous ray seemed to dance over the lake, and then to divide into a shower of sparks. It was the reflection of our fire, to which l'Encuerado had just ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... leaned against the oak as she listened, and lifted up her clear eyes with a light in them that was like a flash out of the deep, luminous eye of day, which caused the ditch tender the greatest possible satisfaction. He did not think it strange, immediately he had her answer, to hear the titter of the leaves of the lilac and the sudden ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... tone of character, and a line of conduct, superior and something contradictory to that of natural or merely human feeling. Its heroines frequently resembled portraits shown by an artificial light—strong and luminous, and which placed in high relief the objects on which it was turned; but having still something of adventitious splendour, which, compared with that of the natural day, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... necropolis with an extraordinary feeling of release, of exultation; it seemed to me I was born into life again, that I could be young once more, and rejoice in the creation of the good God, of which I had lost all hope in those funeral vaults. The bland and luminous air wrapt me round like a soft robe of fine wool, and warmed my body frozen in that cadaverous atmosphere; I was saved from that architectural nightmare, which I thought never would end. I advise people who are so fatuous ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... of fear or hope Dare I to cast thy horoscope! Like the new moon thy life appears; A little strip of silver light, And widening outward into night The shadowy disk of future years; And yet upon its outer rim, A luminous circle, faint and dim, And scarcely visible to us here, Rounds and completes the perfect sphere; A prophecy and intimation, A pale and feeble adumbration, Of the great world of light, that lies Behind all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... possessed his brain. Then an autumn wood rose on his vision. He was gazing down a vista of yellow leaves; a long, deep slanting cleft, framed in lit foliage. Leaves, leaves; everywhere yellow leaves, luminous, burning. He saw them falling through the lucid air. The scene was as vivid as fire to his brain, though of magic stillness. Then the foliage changed suddenly to great serpents twined about the boughs. Their colours were of monstrous beauty. They ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... "But the ghost wore the luminous blue head. Any clients would think that was mighty peculiar, to put it mildly, unless they knew they were being ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... jaguar went prowling past, looked at him with green fierce eyes, snarled low, and went on. Vultures alighted near him, but they too passed by; they could wait. Then it was night, and many of the insect pests grew luminous. They flitted and danced before his eyes till tortured nature could bear no more, and insensibility ended ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... spell Upon the silent listeners fell. His solemn manner and his words Had touched the deep, mysterious chords, That vibrate in each human breast Alike, but not alike confessed. The spiritual world seemed near; And close above them, full of fear, Its awful adumbration passed, A luminous shadow, vague and vast. They almost feared to look, lest there, Embodied from the impalpable air, They might behold the Angel stand, Holding the sword ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... young Lampyris, l. 288. The fire-fly is at some seasons so luminous, that M. Merian says, that by putting two of them under a glass, she was able to draw her figures of them by night. Whether the light of this and of other insects be caused by their amatorial passion, and thus assists them to find each other; or is caused by respiration, which is so analogous ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... forward with downcast eyes, and only in offering her hand could at length look at him who stood before her. She saw at once that Peak was unlike himself; he too had unusual warmth in his countenance, and his eyes seemed strangely large, luminous. On his forehead were drops ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... far meridian pride, the Twins Build, side by side, their luminous thrones; And Sirius and Procyon pour A ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Dante has told us nothing that shall serve to make the ages yet to come understand what the woman was like that a man could love with so rapturous a madness of passion. Sometimes I have thought, in my gropings after the phrase to express her, that the word "luminous" was, perhaps, of all single words, the word that seemed to hold shut in its casket the most of the meaning that I sought to convey. There seemed to be about her, even to me that was never her lover, a radiancy, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of their talk, and Eustacia left him. Clym watched her as she retired towards the sun. The luminous rays wrapped her up with her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting sedge and grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat of the scenery overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... walked for'ard. The beauty of the night was extraordinary. The yacht seemed to be veneered with a soft luminous paint that gave us the appearance of a ghostly ship skimming over ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... girl quietly. Her gaze had not wavered from his face, but her eyes shone luminous through the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... and a low cry of horror broke from their lips. The depths were swarming with monstrous, luminous forms, a moon-bright, crawling, sliding field of claws and feelers, and broad, flat backs, and dreadful, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... boiling-point thermometers specially constructed for very great altitudes; two aneroids, one to 20,000 feet, the other to 25,000 feet; three artificial horizons (one mercury, the others plate-glass with levels); a powerful telescope with astronomical eyepiece and stand; a prismatic, a luminous, a floating, and two pocket compasses; maximum and minimum thermometers, a case of drawing instruments, protractors, parallel rules, tape rules, a silver water-tight half-chronometer watch and three other watches, section paper in books and in large ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... round holes, bored in the form of a cross in the leaden plates which covered the window of the belvedere, sparkled like so many luminous points, as if some one in the house ascended with a light ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... is a Scuola with ceilings by the dashing Tiepolo—very free and luminous, with a glow that brought to my mind certain little pastorals by Karel du Jardin, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... capable of the feat, many of us are seen to practise it. But two such novels as these, two such immemorial epics, caught up together and written out in a couple of thousand pages, inadvertently mixed and entangled, and all with an air of composure never ruffled or embarrassed, in a style of luminous simplicity—it was a feat that demanded, that betokened, the genius of Tolstoy. War and Peace is like an Iliad, the story of certain men, and an Aeneid, the story of a nation, compressed into one book by a man who never so ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... the region about the Galeria Pass the silence of the dry Arizona air seemed luminous and eternal. Whoever climbed to the crotch of that V, cut jagged against the sky for distances yet unreckoned by tourist folders, might have the reward of pitching the tents of his imagination at ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... commanders. The signals, which must not be visible to the enemy, may be made with a white handkerchief or a white flag, if the night be not too dark; with an electric flashlight, a dark lantern or luminous disk. The light of the flashlight or lantern must be screened, so it cannot be seen by the enemy. The ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... sudden radiance which leaped from the horizon far up the sky. It had in it the scintillation of the diamond, for the flickering brilliance changed to evanescent blue and rose from pure white light. Spreading in a vast, irregular arc, it hung like a curtain, wavering to and fro and casting off luminous spears that stabbed the dark. For a time it blazed in transcendental splendour, then faded and receded, dying out with Unearthly glimmering far back in ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... clicking from the Throgs. A blaster bolt cracked, its spiteful, sickly yellow slicing into the nearest tongue of gray. But that luminous fog engulfed the blast and was not dispelled. Shann forced his head around against the support which held him. The mist crept across the field from all quarters, walling ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... breathing, and rapid pulse. The course of the poisoning is usually rapid, terminating in either recovery or death within three days. The toxic dose for cattle is from 5 to 30 grains. If taken in large quantities the excreta are occasionally noticed to be luminous when examined ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... aisles of the forest sparkled with moving lights. The fire-flies were abroad in thousands; and their phosphoric lamps, more than usually luminous, also betokened ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... wicket where he remained immovable, such was the picture which Jacques Ferrand perceived. In the midst of the luminous horizon formed by the undulating light of the fire, Cecily, in a position full of languor, half reclining on a divan of pink satin, held a guitar, from whence she drew ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... a dark, mild evening of early spring. As the fleet of vessels dropped slowly down the river, they suddenly became luminous, each ship flaming out of the darkness, a phantom of living fire. The very waves of the Scheldt seemed glowing with the conflagration, while its banks were lighted up with a preternatural glare. It ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sixty-four. I have calculated on the middle number, fifty-nine. Still they take but a very small proportion of their own demand; we furnish the rest. Theirs is the only market to which we carry that oil, because it is the only one where its properties are known. It is luminous, resists coagulation by cold, to the forty-first degree of Fahrenheit's thermometer, and fourth of Reaumur's, and yields no smell at all: it is used, therefore, within doors, to lighten shops, and even in the richest houses, for antichambers, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... theory of the American system was undermined, and he could speak only halting and dubious words. He was as much terrorized by the possible consequences of any candid and courageous dealing with the question as were the prosperous business men of the North; and his luminous intelligence shed no light upon a question, which evaded his Constitutional theories, terrified his will, and clouded the radiance of his ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... impossible to attain divine union by the way of meditation alone, or even by the affections, or by any luminous or understood prayer. There are several reasons. These ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... pure non-differenced intelligence, shine forth by itself, so as not to need—for its cognition—other means of knowledge. And that that self-luminous knowledge which you declare to be borne witness to by itself, really consists in the knowledge of particular objects of knowledge—such knowledge abiding in particular cognising subjects—this also has been proved previously. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... the distance the clouds break away, The gate's glowing portals I see, And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay The song of the sailors in glee. So I think of the luminous footprints that bore The comfort o'er dark Galilee, And wait for the signal to go to the shore To the ship that is ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... and our thoughts in its kindly refuge. Rising, I crossed to the window and drew the curtain aside. A surging wind had swept the sky clear, all but one bank of low-lurking, western cloud shot through with naming crimson. In that luminous setting the ancient house across Our Square, grim and bleak no longer to my eyes, gleamed, through eyes again come to life, with an inconceivable glory. Behind me in the shadow, the measured voice of the witness ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... balcony that overlooks the sunny garden. Up each of the light pillars from which spring the graceful arches that support this balcony climbs a mass of blooming vines that weave their delicate tendrils round the railing above and then trail downward again in festoons of swaying colour. Behind, in the luminous shadow, she lay coiled and half asleep; with a large fan of bronze turkey-feathers in one lazy hand, the other teasing the tawny hound which was stretched ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... people were standing in groups. They were all there, Patterson the M.P.P., and Dr. Kane the Opposition candidate, Reeve Robertson, for ten years the Municipal head of his county, Inspector Grant, a little man with a massive head and a luminous eye, Patterson's understudy and generally regarded as his successor in Provincial politics, the Reverend Harper Freeman, Methodist minister, tall and lank, with shrewd kindly face and a twinkling eye, the Reverend Alexander Munro, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... with the true state of the case. He had requested that gentleman to obtain from one of the counsel in London, Mr. Crystal, a full account of the case for his—Mr. Aubrey's—own guidance; and on obtaining a remarkably clear and luminous statement, and also consulting the various authorities cited in it—such at least as could be supplied to him by Mr. Parkinson—the vigorous practical understanding of Mr. Aubrey, aided by his patient application, soon mastered the whole case, and enabled him to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... in contact with the stigma of the next flower visited, and so cross-fertilize it, has been told in the account of the great purple-fringed orchis of similar construction. To that species the interested reader is, therefore, referred; or, better still, to the luminous description ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... dropped on a thick, velvet mat of moss and sobbed himself to sleep. When he awoke, Jack was licking his face and he sat up, dazed and yawning. The sun was dropping fast, the ravines were filling with blue shadows, luminous and misty, and a far drowsy tinkling from the valley told him that cows were starting homeward. From habit, he sprang quickly to his feet, but, sharply conscious on a sudden, dropped slowly back to the moss again, while ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... that there is a vast quantity of self-luminous gaseous matter in space, incapable of being reduced into stars, however powerful the telescope through which it is observed. Hence the old opinion once more prevails, that this is the matter of which the sun and stellar systems have been formed, and that ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... unrest and dejection in the friendship of Frau von Stein. Her beneficent influence effected his new-birth into calm self-control and harmony of spirit. On August 7, 1779, Goethe wrote in his diary: "May the idea of purity, extending even to the morsel I take into my mouth, become ever more luminous in me!" If Orestes is Goethe, Iphigenia is Frau von Stein; and in the personal sense the theme of the drama is the restoration of the poet to spiritual purity by the influence ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... watching the luminous spot, saw suddenly beside a jet of red flame, as the heavy gun roared the welcome signal that all was well; and scarcely a half moment later a still heavier report called the perplexed and wearied party to the shore, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... scholastic verbalism and formalism. This reaction brought back as a value the experience of feeling, and afterwards with Romanticism gave its right place to the imagination. Vico, in his Scienza nuova, may be said to have been the first to draw attention to the imagination. Although he makes many luminous remarks on history and the development of poetry among the Greeks, his work is not really a history, but a science of the spirit or of the ideal. It is not the ethical, logical, or economic moment of humanity which interests ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... her lips. I had never seen her before, that was sure—nor did I ever think to see her like again; I could say that even then, even in the half light. Just a trifle foreign, the face; somewhat dark, but not too dark; the lips full, the eyes luminous, the forehead beautifully arched, chin and cheek beautifully rounded, nose clean-cut and straight, thin but not pinched. There was nothing niggard about her. She was magnificent—a magnificent woman. I saw that she had splendid jewels at her throat, in her ears—a necklace of diamonds, ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... comestibles, From Slater, and Fortnum and Mason; Billiard, ecarte, and chess tables; Water in vast marble basin; Luminous books (not voluminous) To read under beech-trees cacuminous; One friend, who is fond of a distich, And doesn't get too syllogistic; A valet, who knows the complete art Of service—a maiden, his sweetheart: Give me these, in some rural pavilion, And I'll ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of courtly love, "O thou God of Love, hearken unto me. If my fatal beauty is destined sooner or later to bring about my death, let this flame within me be, at least, the pyre that shall kindle the song of the poet! Let my beauty be the luminous star exalting men's ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... mould. All who have read the autobiographic Apologia will remember the fine passage in which its author tells us that ever since his conversion there have been two, and only two, absolutely self-luminous beings in the whole universe of being to him,—God and his own soul. Now, I do not remember that Newman even once speaks about Teresa in any of his books, but I always think of him and her together in this great respect. GOD is to them both, and to ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... seat beside him and was standing up. She was trembling violently, and her face seemed changed from the round and mobile softness of youth to the worn pallor and thinness of age. Her eyes were luminous with a ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... to sky, From humming and hot perfume To scorching, quivering light, Empty blue!—Why, As I bury my face afresh In a sunshot vivid gloom— Minute infinity's mesh, Where spearing side by side Smooth stalk and furred uplift Their luminous green secrets from the grass, Tower to a bud and delicately divide— Do I think of the things ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... I'd just stay quietly indoors. There's a lot of rough people about—" Perhaps there was an undercurrent of warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous grey eyes. ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... this feat forms one of the most stirring chapters in the history of science. Next follows an account of the telegraph as it dispenses with metallic conductors altogether, and trusts itself to that weightless ether which brings to the eye the luminous wave. To this succeeds a chapter which considers what electricity stands for as one of the supreme resources of human wit, a resource transcending even flame itself, bringing articulate speech and writing ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... should be understood that she was not in the habit of "shouting before getting out of the swamp." The order of her work was solemn, steady, earnest, and in mighty faith; but when the struggle was over, the victory gained, sometimes that solemn countenance would become suddenly luminous and her shrill shouts would pierce the very heavens. These loud exultations, however, were indulged in in no meetings but those of her own people, and grew less frequent as age crept on, giving place to tears of joy ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... of it! Some folks say topaz, but they're fools. Nor sherry. There's a dark sardine base, but over it real seas of light, clear light; there isn't any positive color; and once when I was angry, I caught a glimpse of them in a mirror, and they were quite white, perfectly colorless, only luminous. I looked like a fiend, and, you may be sure, recovered my temper directly,—easiest thing in the world, when you've motive enough. You see the pupil is small, and that gives more expansion and force to the irides; but sometimes in an evening, when I'm too gay, and a true ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... works of Nature, the human eye included, are theoretically perfect. The eye has grown for ages towards perfection; but ages of perfecting may be still before it. Looking at the dazzling light from our large battery, I see a luminous globe, but entirely fail to see the shape of the coke-points whence the light issues. The cause may be thus made clear: On the screen before you is projected an image of the carbon points, the whole of the glass lens in front of the camera ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... glance, luminous, grateful, so like a shaft of light passing from one to another that it set Prescott's blood ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... it with the greatest indifference or will only be moved to anger at its presence. Here was this nightingale singing in the rain, seeing but not heeding me; while beneath the hedge, almost directly under the twig it sat on, a black cat was watching it with luminous yellow eyes. I did not see the cat at first, but have no doubt that the nightingale had seen and knew that it was there. High up on the tops of the thorn, a couple of sparrows were silently perched. Perhaps, like myself, they had come there to listen. After I had been standing motionless, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... her head in tired content on his shoulder, and together they watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished. Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colors hurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament. Then the canopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deep sea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing woof and flashing warp, till the most delicate of tulles, fluorescent and bewildering, was daintily and airily shaken in the face of ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... supported by no pillar and yet firmly fixed; the second, great thick clouds hanging over us, and yet no ground upon which they rested, or vessel in which they were contained; and then, after they had greeted us with a gloomy countenance and passed away, came the luminous rainbow, which like a frail thin roof nevertheless bore the great weight of water.' If anyone amidst the present troubles was not satisfied with the power of faith, Luther would compare him to a man who should seek for pillars to prevent the heavens from falling, and ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... available. The Wild Man caused some excitement before we sat down to dinner by introducing us to a beast he called a "railway insect." It certainly strongly resembled a railway train, with its green light on its head, red at the tail, and luminous yellow lights all over its caterpillar-like body; it was a most interesting discovery, and the Wild Man went up in everyone's estimation for a few minutes. The Oriental again served us with silent steadiness. It was suggested that one of our "boys" ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... and with a bold, swift step I walked past the fearful spot. No sooner had I passed than there came another crackle; I turned and beheld a luminous eye between the branches. Whether I turned pale with fright or not, I cannot tell; but a hand came forth, a foot, then, with considerable difficulty, an entire body; and on the path before me stood my dishevelled friend, covered ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... forefinger which seemed luminous with solution. "Don't you bother," she said, "I'll do it for you; I'll write it myself. My 'prentice hand I'll try on Rosy, and you shall have the result ready to print on Tuesday morning. Will ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... not crumble to pieces like a ruinous hovel, then the wisdom of the Magians is a lie, the course of the stars has nothing to do with the destinies of the earth and its inhabitants, the planets are mere lamps, the sun is no more than a luminous furnace, the old gods are marsh-fires, emanations from the dark bog of men's minds—and the great Serapis. . . . But why be angry with him? There is no doubt—no if nor but. . . . Give me the diptychon and I will show you our ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... closed the door. Those West-country voices awoke in me haunting memories of my childhood, and, in a flash, I saw once again a ring of ruddy faces on a frosty night, illuminated by the candle in a shepherd's horn lantern, their breath a luminous vapour in the still air, and my mother holding me up at the window of our Wiltshire house, as I looked out from the casement of the nursery upon the up-turned faces of the choristers below and wondered mazily whether they had brought ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... right and to the left it breathed through slender tubes of exit—narrow, somnolent ravines, cobble paved and unlighted. Accommodating a rise in the street to the right was reared a phantom flight of five luminous steps of limestone, flanked by a wall of the same height and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... was shadowy with a peculiar shade. The strange luminous semi-opacities of fine autumn afternoons and eves intensified into Rembrandt effects the few yellow sunbeams which came through holes and divisions in the canvas, and spirted like jets of gold-dust across the dusky blue ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... here, both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... stranger, "that when any luminous rays cross a medium such as the air, they are deflected out of the straight line; in other words, they undergo refraction. Well! When stars are occulted by the moon, their rays, on grazing the edge of her disc, exhibit not the least deviation, ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... responded to her father's caress but languidly, turning to him her face, with its luminous, stationary beauty. He pointed to the house, and then waved his hand toward the bench where she sat; and she, in response to this, nodded slightly. Upon which the General, after another kiss of histrionic paternity administered to her forehead, left her sitting and ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... open Mr. Max Muller's translation of the Rig-Veda at random, say at page 49. In the second verse of the hymn to the Maruts, Mr. Muller translates, "They who were born together, self-luminous, with the spotted deer (the clouds), the spears, the daggers, the glittering ornaments. I hear their whips almost close by, as they crack them in their hands; they gain splendour on their way." Now Wilson translates this passage, "Who, borne by spotted deer, were ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... in the gloom of the undergrowth three pairs of eyes as luminous as the glowworm, vaster than any human; and beside the souls of the dead King-Gods were terrible hands. Warriors and wizards, all save Bakahenzie and Zalu Zako, literally leaped for the forest and village in one convulsive bound and grunt. Zalu Zako had remained ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the last wave of an ocean of shining sand, Nefta sits in immemorial contemplation of the desert and vividly green oasis which flows, like a grand and luminous river, into the very heart of its flat dwellings. There is a note of passionate solemnity about the place. All too soon, I fear, the railway to Tozeur will have done its work; dusty boulevards, white bungalows, eucalyptus trees and bureaux ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Pellew suddenly became luminous about the facts, owing to a connecting link. "Of course! Mrs. Marrable was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... The luminous mist which the poor things wist was dawn arriving across the sky, When dawn is far behind the star the dust-lit town ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... ineffectual against children. From time to time the adamantine gates fell ajar, and in we slipped. It seemed a heavenly place, tenanted by a being possessed of every attribute that our imaginations could ascribe to an angel. The room and its tenant glimmer before me as I write, luminous with the sunshine of more than fifty years ago. Both were equipped for business rather than for beauty; furniture and garments were simple in those Salem days. A homely old paper covered the walls, a brownish old carpet the floor. There was an ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... parasol again, and looked full at him; the white shadow of the silk made the dark amber of her unsmiling eyes singularly luminous. "No," she said; "your mother did not change her mind. Nannie thought she did, but it was not so." She spoke with stern certainty. "Your mother didn't mean you to have that money. She ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland |
