"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... especially a wary old python like Kaa, very seldom shows that he is angry, but Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing muscles on either side of Kaa's throat ripple and bulge. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... covers it at flood-tides, beating up against the foot of the granite rocks and the granite walls of the ramparts. But at neap tides and eaux mortes, as the French say, there is nothing but a desert of brown, bare sand, with ripple-marks lying across it, and with shallow, ankle-deep pools of salt water here and there. Afar off on the western sky-line a silver fringe of foam, glistening in the sunshine, marks the distant boundary to which the sea has retreated. On every other side of the horizon rises a belt ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... island, in the third summer of its yellow green, that we built our watch-fire; not in the thicket of dancing willow wands, but on the level terrace of fine sand which had been added that spring; a little new bit of world, beautifully ridged with ripple marks, and strewn with the tiny skeletons of turtles and fish, all as white and dry as if they had been expertly cured. We had been careful not to mar the freshness of the place, although we often swam out to it on summer evenings and lay on the ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the shade and turns its head on occasion to look around the corner of a hill, which will seek out obscure villages even though it requires a zigzag course up a hillside, which follows a river for the very love of its company and humors its windings, which trots alongside and listens to its ripple and then crosses, sans bridge, like a schoolboy, with its toes in the water. I love a road which goes with the easy, rolling gait of a sailor ashore. It has no thought of time and it accepts all the vagaries of your laziness. I love a road which weaves ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... with a ripple of laughter. "Oh a mother! I had a lovely, lovely mother once but she's gone away—to Heaven. And is ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the river that wus sweepin' along under sun and moon, bearing on every wave and ripple the glory and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... dawn ushered in the morning on which the great and all-absorbing event was to take place. A clear sky, a sea so calm that scarce a ripple was to be seen, every sail spread to its utmost capacity, and the mellow tints of the rising sun playing over and investing them with a majesty of outline at once grand and imposing. And yet the massive hull scarce moved, so gentle was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... no longer seemed to come from the sea in bright glitters; it was transfused through the air as liquid gold, very mellow and soothing and softened. It was five o'clock when she wakened. Through the open port she could see the sea swelling gently, breaking into a little hesitating ripple of foam here and there. She climbed very carefully down from her bunk; Jimmy was still sleeping soundly. There was no one about save a few deck hands scrubbing up above; they were out of sight of land now, and she gave a deep sigh of exhilaration as she turned on the sea-water ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... himself down on the side of the dune, whence, as he lay, only the high road, the park wall, the temple of the winds, and the blue sky were visible. The vast sea, for all the eye could tell, was nowhere—not a ripple of it was to be seen, but the ear was filled with the night gush and flow of it. A sweet wind was blowing, hardly blowing, rather gliding, like a slumbering river, from the west. The sun had vanished, leaving a ruin of gold and rose behind him, gradually fading into dull orange ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... What sombre gravity in yon cedar, yon motionless pine-tree! What lively but unvarying laugh in yon glossy laurels! Do those tints charm us like the play in the young leaves of the lilac,—lighter here, darker there, as the breeze (and so slight the breeze!) stirs them into checker,—into ripple? Oh, sweet green, to the world what sweet temper is to man's life! Who would reduce into one dye all thy lovely varieties? who exclude the dark steadfast verdure that lives on through the winter day; or the mutinous caprice of the gentler, younger ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have passed away like ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... sleeping. Jane stood watching her for a full minute with awe in her face. She could not but recognize the difference between herself and this fine sweet product of civilization and wealth. With the gold curls tossed back like a ripple of sunshine, and a pathetic little droop at the corners of her sweet mouth, nothing lovelier could be. Jane hurried to the window and turned her back on the bed while she perused the paper, her rage rising at the theories put forth. It was even hinted that her ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... there she was at last laid in her own bed, listening again to the ripple of the waters beneath her, Miss Silence sitting on one side looking as sympathetic as her insufficient nature allowed her to look; the Irishwoman uncertain between delight at Myrtle's return and sorrow for her condition; and Miss Cynthia Badlam occupying ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... refinements of shadow, which are almost invisible except in a strong [65] light, and which the finest pencil can hardly follow. The whole essence of their work is expression, the passing of a smile over the face of a child, the ripple of the air on a still day over the curtain ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... white steam curls upwards; there is a hum, a haste, almost a whirl, for the commerce of the world is crowded into the hour of the full tide. These great hulls, these crossing masts a-rake, the intertangled rigging, the background of black barges drifting downwards, the lines and ripple of the water as the sun comes out, if you look too steadily, daze the eyes and cause a sense of giddiness. It is so difficult to realise so much mass—so much bulk—moving so swiftly, and in so intertangled a manner; a mighty dance of thousands of tons—gliding, slipping, drifting ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... thirty-pound salmon to a minnow. As we got near him, he handled his rod with a skill and dexterity that left the young waterman far behind in the management of his oars; and, after a whisk or too in the upper air, he deposited the hook and line, not on the ripple in the middle of the Usk, but on the bough of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... paddlers the West has ever known. The gentleman in cocked hat and silk-lined overcape, with knee-buckled breeches and ruffles at wrist and throat, had a habit of tucking his sleeves up and dipping his hand in the water over the gunnels. If the ripple did not rise from knuckles to elbows, he forced speed with a shout of 'Up-up, my men! Up-up!' and gave orders for the regale to go round, or for the crews to shift, or for the Highland piper to set the ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... she looked up, and her lips curved and parted; her eyelids fluttered twice or thrice—a movement remindful (Poesy forgive us!) of the tail-wagging of a faithful dog—and a little ripple went through her like the commotion set up in a weeping willow by a puff of wind. Thus she ever acknowledged his coming, were it twenty times a day. If they who sometimes sat over their wine in Coralio, reshaping old, diverting stories of the madcap career of Isabel Guilbert, could have ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... appeared at the diplomatic reception that evening, and we may rest assured no mention was made of a young girl having been run over at the Pincio in the gilded salons where both moved. One does not mention illness and death in gilded salons, amid the ripple of music and laughter. One frequents these resorts to forget, if possible, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... say if United States troops entered the town of Wellesley and raped numerous students at the college, the officers subsequently taking away with them the young ladies who happened to suit them? Yet things of this sort hardly caused a ripple in the country then under the Insurgent flag, and I learned of this particular incident by accident, although I have ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... limitations of time and space, which suspended friendships, would exist no longer, and he could wait for that with a quiet hopefulness. But if it all passed away, and was as though it had never been, if life was but a leaping flame, a ripple on the stream, then how could one have the heart ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tops of some of the tall poplar-trees, rooted far below, were on a level with his eyes. Often he stopped there to watch them swaying like upright plumes against the wind. They swayed now in the silvery April air with a ripple of silvery leaves. His eyes sought out intimately the barely swollen buds on the boughs of other forest trees yet far from leaf. They lingered on the white blossoms of the various shrubs. They found the pink hawthorn; in the boughs of one of those trees ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... is born the wind, the ripple from the still pool, self out of nothingness—so all passes imperceptibly, no man knows how. The little model's moment of self-oblivion passed, and into her wet eyes her plain, twisting spirit suddenly writhed up again, for all the world as if she had said: 'I won't let ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... So did Tom. But when they got to the edge of the brook the only sign of her was an increasing ripple on the surface of a little pool. The stream was not so deep but that the bottom could be studied. And yet they saw nothing of her. Evidently she had the enchanted gift ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... A ripple of low, mild laughter, which only Kipping could have uttered, drifted forward, and the men exchanged glances and looked ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... the time. Does ye credit, Dick. I remember Tom's wife right well, and she was allers a right good housekeeper. Ye can't do too much for her, son. But about that ere fishin' hole, dye know I believe 'twas the same I used to hook 'em out of thirty-odd year ago. Is it the ripple just back o' ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... gray and moss-grown walls, This ivied porch, and trelliced vine, The lattice with its narrow pane, A relic of the olden time; The willow with its waving leaves, Through which the low winds murmuring glide, The gurgling ripple of the stream That ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... me, and I stood and smoked upon it, listening to the ripple of the half-golden, half-shadowy water, watching the revolutions of the green old wheel. I had laid out my plan of action. On my return to the inn I would insist on an interview with Miss Falconer, and would tell her that either she must return with me to Paris or that ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... objection. The court cannot receive it now; for the line just this moment cited, the ink being hardly yet dry, is of the same identical structure. The usual iambic flow is disturbed in both lines by the very same ripple, viz., a trochee in the second foot, placid in the one line, bosom in the other. They are a sort of snags, such as lie in the current of the Mississippi. There, they do nothing but mischief. Here, when the lines ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the swallows are asleep; The bats are flitting fast in the gray air; The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep; And evening's breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream, Wakes not one ripple from its silent ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... to respond. Sky, sea, beach, and village, lie as still before us as if they were sitting for the picture. It is dead low-water. A ripple plays among the ripening corn upon the cliff, as if it were faintly trying from recollection to imitate the sea; and the world of butterflies hovering over the crop of radish-seed are as restless in their little way as the gulls are in their larger ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... vigorously, though harshly, expressed, respecting sublime poetry 'in genere'; but in reading Homer I look about me, and ask how does all this apply here. For surely never was there plainer writing; there are a thousand charms of sun and moonbeam, ripple, and wave, and stormy billow, but all on the surface. Had Chapman read Proclus and Porphyry?—and did he really believe them,—or even that they believed themselves? They felt the immense power of a Bible, a Shaster, a Koran. There was none in Greece or Rome, and they tried therefore by ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Francisco newspapers along in November and December recorded the political ripple of the contest, but the fight was a dead affair, and nobody enthused. The play came to a tame ending when Beardslee nominated Stanton for the Speaker's job and got the Chairmanship of the important Committee on Ways and Means for being ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... of soap, they met once more face to face and alone. She courtesied low, addressed him formally as "sir," and thanked him with due deference for coming; otherwise there was no change in her demeanor. The flat-frilled cap showed within its border a delicate ripple of hair, and above the fair breastplate of linen the face shone with tender warmth like a white rose resting upon snow; and as her lips moved in speech he re-encountered with a fervor of delight that curious quality of look which had ever haunted his dreams—a communicativeness ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... contemplation of the sea and the distant shores which he was approaching. The day, for a winter's day, was bright and sunny: the sky without a cloud; the atmosphere of a frosty clearness; and the sea so calm, that it appeared scarcely to swell into a ripple, except immediately in the ship's wake. The distant promontory, which he suspected to be the point whither he had been washed by the waves, after the explosion of the Halcyon, and which seemed the extremity of a small island, had now ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... territory, from out another vent, springs the Flora River, whose waters ripple over limestone bars in miniature cascades, from pool to pool, like pigmy reproductions of the lost terraces of New Zealand. Follow the edge of the great tableland around, and amongst the deep seams and fissures of its abrupt descent ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... courses are the same in principle, the difference being only one of scale, and the one being a miniature of the other, as a ripple is an Atlantic wave in little; both have their advantages and disadvantages, so that most organisms will take the one course for one set of things and the other for another. They will deal promptly with things which they can get at ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... you may suppose, raised a loud cheer at the sight, and redoubled their efforts to be ready, should a breeze spring up, for again getting within range of our opponent. Scarcely had the hands reached the deck, when we saw a ripple playing over the ocean; the sails were trimmed, and once more, with eager hearts, we steered towards the French ship. We did not suppose that she would hold out long, but after the pluck her captain had exhibited, we fully expected to be at it again. In a few minutes the crew were at their quarters, ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... Fifanti, I took the chair he offered me beside his lady, and presently came the old servant whom already I had seen, bearing meat for me. I was hungry, and I fell to with zest, what time a pleasant ripple of talk ran round the board. Facing me sat my cousin, and I never observed until my hunger was become less clamorous with what an insistence he regarded me. At last, however, our eyes met across the board. He smiled that crooked, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... at first winter-warning, When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning, A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice, That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice, Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold, {220} And another and another, and faster and faster, Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled, Then it so chanced that the Duke our master Asked himself what were the pleasures in season, And found, since ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... not seen Mistress Judith Ogilvie." A faint ripple, that might have been laughter, shook the boy's words. "All men are servants to Mistress Ogilvie, all men who have laid eyes on ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... turning a vivid, scarlet-lipped face, crowned with a ripple of ink-black locks, to the notch of the willow, and said easily, "Hillo, Louis Raincy! What are you doing here, a ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... voices joined in a murmur of assent, but something like a ripple of mocking laughter came from others. And one voice in the gallery laughed outright—it was the man who ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... stairs through the crowded shipping of the Pool, past the floating Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea—when every sound of the tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit—exemplifies in the most striking way the rapidity and instinctive ease of Dickens's observation. ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... and arrows. Felix was so near that he could make out the strings of beads and claws of wild animals about their necks, could see their red skins glisten, and could watch the muscles of their slim thighs move and ripple as they guided their wise little horses more by pressure of the knee than by use of the rude Indian bridles. Not one of them spoke, once a pony snorted in the dust, but that was the only sound as they moved past him and turned into the trail with ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... across the lagoon, cleaving, checkering, and fretting the silence with a lacework of sound even as the moon was fretting and cleaving the water, a ripple of music, a voice breaking itself in a shower of little scales and ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... poised In the blue and buoyant air, Cinctured by bright winds, Treading the sunlight. And the waves which precede you Ripple and stir The sands ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... feet, going down sheer beneath it, or rather by the side of it, to many times that depth. The water was of some colour blacker than black. Even by daylight it is inky and sinister. It flows without foam or ripple. No white showed in the wake of the boat. The ominous shores were without sign of life, save for a rare light every few miles, to mark some bend in the chasm. Once a canoe with two Indians shot out of the shadows, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the islands give the Ohio here "the appearance of a great many broken rivers of foam, making their way over the falls, while the fine islands add greatly to the beauty of the scene;" neither papa with his spectacles, nor I with my keen optics, could see more than a ripple on the surface of the water. These falls, however, are sufficient to prevent vessels of any great burden ascending or descending beyond this point of the river, and hence the necessity of the canal: but this splendid ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... Baxter, and listen. I know this sentimental kind of writing must be irksome to a practical woman like yourself, but in our business we cannot neglect even the slightest detail. Let's see, where was I?—'tenderness,' oh, yes. 'Her hair is of midnight darkness, inclined to ripple, with little whiffs of curls imperiously defying restraint about her temples. Her complexion is as pure as the dawn, touched now and then with a blush as delicate as the petal ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... ripple the gentle flow—which it were more descriptive perhaps to call stagnation—of life in that model village. From week-end to week-end scarcely a boat puts forth from the shelter of its weed-coated pier; for though Kirris-vean wears the aspect of a place of fishery, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... thou thy joys in keeping of the Power Who holds these changing shadows in His hand; Believe and live, and know that hour by hour Will ripple newer beauty to ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... inexplicable psychological emotions, to a wistful interest that faintly responded to his. Ah! that response!—strange, childish, ignorant, restless—but still a response; and from obscure shallows unsuspected, uncomprehended—shallows that had never before warned her with the echo of an evanescent ripple. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... betwixt them, deep and deeper into the wild until the moon was down and darkness shut them in; wherefore Jocelyn drew rein and sat a while to listen. He heard the good steed, deep-breathing, snuff at dewy grass; a stir and rustle all about him; the drowsy call of a bird afar; the soft ripple of water hard by and, over all, the deep hush of the wild-wood. Then upon this ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... finger over the side, so that it made a ripple in the water (the most delightful experience of childhood). Emmeline, with one hand clasped in her uncle's, watched Mr Button with a grave ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... sunk beneath the ocean in a refulgence of glory, its parting rays throwing a ruddy glow over the surface, unbroken by a single ripple. ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... centuries kept, Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept: Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown, Far from Aberffraw's halls and Eryri ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... bare earth floor, stood a big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue-green light floating in the center like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see any other motion. The head seemed the only thing alive about him, except that slow curl and uncurl of the laboring back muscles. Janoo from the bed was breathing seventy to the minute; Azizun held her hands before her eyes; ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... alone. The humour of servants, the sallies of children, the machinations of villains, the tricks of rascals, are not on her canvas; but she differentiated among equals with a firm hand, and with a constant ripple of amusement. The life I led had more breadth and wider interests. The life of Miss Austen's heroines, though delightful to read about, would have been deadly dull to endure. So great a charm have Jane Austen's books had for me that I have ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... paid a fair price for them and had shipped them openly, under the eye of the stock inspector, to the El Paso Meat Company. So far he had kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, and had waited until some ripple on the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... he exclaimed, startled. "I 'd like to set my dog on the beast." His irritation merely elicited a little ripple of amusement, for though she was submissive to his will, she was never afraid of his censure. "Come," he continued; "this is no place to stand. We will go into that new ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... sob and for a moment only the gentle ripple of the waves on the shore and the crickets were to be heard Levine, elbow on knee, chin in hand, looked through the dusk at the shadowy sweetness of Lydia's face, his own face calm ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... resignation, and in the deep quiet they stared at him. Not a hand was lifted in applause. Slowly the big, awkward man slouched back across the platform and sank into his seat, and yet there was no sound of approval, of recognition from the audience; only a long sigh ran like a ripple on an ocean through rank after rank. In Lincoln's heart a throb of pain answered it. His speech had been, as he feared it would be, a failure. As he gazed steadily at these his countrymen who would not give him even a ...
— The Perfect Tribute • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... means that it runs partly in the dark and partly in the light. Here it was in the dark. The trees grew thick and tall on its banks, and their wide branches met and intermingled above its waters that flowed on without a ripple, black to the eye as a river of ink. How strange it seemed when, holding on to a twig, he bent over and saw himself reflected—a white, naked child with a scared face—in that black mirror! Overcome ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... me, something slightly uncanny about this lake, even in repose. The water seemed as translucent as a dark crystal, and as motionless as the surface of a mirror. Nothing stirred its placid surface, not a ripple, not an insect, ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... criticism. And I desire to say, in the outset, that in this lecture I shall endeavor to lift my subject above the plane in which it is ordinarily treated. I don't believe I ever announced a lecture on Matrimony, that I did not detect the ripple of a smile on the face of my audience, as if they regarded the whole subject as a huge practical joke, something wonderfully funny, on no account to be ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... clear and there was not a ripple on the surface of the Big Muddy. By this time, Mr. Creelman had returned to his appetite. At the start he could not think of drinking coffee made from the dirty river water and his stomach turned at the thought of eating blue bacon ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... day, whose sunshine might have found its way even into his black heart. Oh! how soft, and mellow, and pure, the hurricane of the last night had left it! Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath to ripple the water, or to wave the long trailing locks of the hoary willows, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... unlike the excitement of the morning, was at work within him; his blood danced, his brain answered to every fleeting picture. He was in that subtlest of all moods when the mind swings out upon the human tide, comprehending its every ripple with a deep intuition that seems like a retrospective knowledge. He had never until this moment stood alone in a Paris street at night; he had never before rubbed shoulders with a Parisian night crowd; but the inspiration was there—the exaltation—that made him one with ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... ripple in his speech, which disturbed Commodore Trunnion so much, sorely afflicted my worthy grandfather. He muttered something that a snaffle was the safest bit a sinner could place faith in—assumed the mantle of prophecy—foretold, as it would appear, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... with the perfumes of a thousand fragrant shrubs and flowers that bloom along that coast in the rich luxuriance of nature, was hushed and breathless. In its stillness every sound was audible, the rustling of a leaf, the ripple of a wave. She heard the murmur of whispered voices below, and in a few moments she recognised, emerging from the foliage, the form of Pausanias; but he was not alone. Who were his companions? In the deep lustre of that shining and splendid atmosphere she could see ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... delightful season of spring and sunshine. The lark carolled high in the air, the swallows darted on light wings to and fro; and the sea, vast and beautiful, gently heaved and undulated against the shore, with scarcely a ripple to break the long line of golden light, which danced and sparkled on its breast. The church bells were chiming for morning prayer; and the cliffs were covered with happy groups in their holiday attire. Flora, surrounded by friends and relatives, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... has moved on 'in state, as before'—when the shouts of the people, and the triumphal swell and din, have died away, this is the manner in which our two tribunes look at each other. They know their voices would not make so much as a ripple, at that moment, in the tide of that great sea of popular ignorance, which it is their business to sway,—the tide which is setting all one way then, in one of its monstrous swells, and bearing every living thing with it,—the tide which is taking the military hero 'On ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Pluck and play On their twangling harps In a sea-green day; Down where the mermaids, Finned and fair, Sleek with their combs Their yellow hair.... Bates and Giles- On the shingle sat, Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called-called-called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy sigh. Then glum and silent They sat instead, Vacantly brooding On home and bed, Till both ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... the schooner. They climbed on deck and going forward to the jib-boom, leaned over the starboard bulwark and gazed at an object that floated on the water a few strokes ahead of the vessel. It was a small buoy that was rocked by the ripple of the ebbing tide. ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... and somewhat thin remnant was meant for use in covering the head, not for luxurious beauty. All falling laces, all fluttering ribbons, all sparkling jewels were discarded from the severe simplicity of the scholastic gown; and with them had disappeared the glancing ripple that before had sunnily flowed around her, like wavy undulations through a field of corn. Very clear and still were the violet eyes, but their dewy lustre had long ago dried up. Like a flowering tree whose blossoms have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... very affectionate and devoted household, clannish to a degree, and undemonstrative, as mountaineers often are. The deep well of their love did not foam and ripple like a brook, but the water was always there, to draw upon at will. "The shallows murmur, but the deeps are dumb." It was so in the house ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... whole hill country of the south, a hundred lochs, a myriad streams, and a forest of hill-tops. There on the very crest lies the old man, in the heart of his own land, at the fountain-head of his many waters. If you listen you will hear a hushed noise as of the swaying in trees or a ripple on the sea. It is the sound of the rising of burns, which, innumerable and unnumbered, flow thence to the silent ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... The evening clouds drifted across her brow; her shimmering hair lighted the world beneath with sunset. Then, shading her white brow with one hand, she bent, and with the other hand dipped in the sea, she sent a wave rolling at us. Straight out of the horizon it sped—a ripple that grew to a wave, then to a furious breaker which caught us up in a whirl of foam, bearing us onward, faster, faster, swiftly flying through leagues of spray until consciousness ceased and ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... 4.30 on Saturday afternoon, July 31st, being tugged out of the harbour at Granton. The Firth of Forth was then as calm as a lake, scarce a ripple to be seen on its surface. A previous thunderstorm had freshened the air, the rain which had fallen had ceased, and those lovely mists and tints usually to be seen after a storm, had taken the place of the dark clouds now rolling away in the distance. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... she would say if she knew I was Daisy Brooks no longer, but Mrs. Rex Lyon?" she thought, untying the blue ribbons of her hat. And she laughed outright as she thought how amazed Septima would look; and the laugh sounded like the ripple of ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... very dearly, but he was not inclined to "carolling;" and the repression and constraint were soon evident through all the conventional efforts to be "merry." It was the squire who finally hit upon the circumstance which tided over the evening, and sent every one to bed in a ripple of laughter. For, when the piano was closed, he opened his eyes, and said, "Sophia, your mother tells me she has had a very nice Christmas present from the little maid you took such a liking to,—little Agnes Bulteel. It is ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... face, good to look at, with a certain ripple of dimples somewhere about the mouth, and eyes that laughed out the very sunniness of their owner's soul. There was not a severe nor yet a weak line anywhere. He was a well-meaning young fellow, happily dispositioned, and a great favorite with the tribe at Robinson's Post, whither he had ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... Shirley smoothed away the ripple of suspicion which he had mischievously aroused with, "So, that is why fellows like us would not bother with the life. The same physical and intellectual effort expended by a criminal genius would bring ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... mouth asked, calmly enough, how he was to be protected against further demands. The young man explained very clearly. The president had managed thoroughly well: in a few days the recent transaction would be a ripple under water. But during those few days ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... balm of a thousand flowers, but for Angela it was no longer "Parfait d'Amour." The two battleships had long ago finished their speed trial; and trails of floating kelp lay like golden sea-serpents asleep under the blue ripple of the sea. Everything was very beautiful. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... hour was abroad, and even the swiftly flowing river, rushing sullenly along its rocky bed no more than a stone's cast beyond the Indian path, seemed to pretermit its low thunderings. There was never a breath of air astir in all the wood, and the leaves of the silver poplar that will twinkle and ripple in the lightest zephyr ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest," is, in the circumstances, nearly over the verge which divides the sublime from the ridiculous. No wonder that, on the night the play was first acted, Mertoun's song, as he clambered to his mistress's window, caused a sceptical laugh to ripple lightly among the tolerant auditory. It is with diffidence I take so radically distinct a standpoint from that of Dickens, who declared he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, like it; who, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... day David had waked very early, feeling refreshed with his slumbers, and not at all inclined to prolong them. The others were all asleep, and the house was silent. As he lay he could hear the gentle ripple of the water upon the beach, and feel the sweet, balmy air of morning as it tanned his cheeks. For some little time he lay enjoying his situation, and then jumped out of bed and went to ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... same way, in nature, a thing is echoed and repeated throughout its parts. Each leaf on a tree is itself a tree in miniature, each blossom a modified leaf; every vertebrate animal is a complicated system of spines; the ripple is the wave of a larger wave, and that larger wave is a part of the ebbing and flowing tide. In music this law is illustrated in the return of the tonic to itself in the octave, and its partial return in the dominant; also in a more extended sense in the repetition of a major ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... bearing, as it flows, The sails of pleasurable barks! These gleam To-day, to-morrow other passing sails Catch the like sunshine of the vernal morn. 50 Our pleasant days are as the moon's brief light On the pale ripple, passing as it shines! But shall the pensive bard for this lament, Who knows how transitory are all worlds Before His eye who made them! Cease the strain; And welcome still the social intercourse That soothes the world's loud jarring, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... crowning effort. After a recitative that rivaled the silver trumpet, she flung herself with immediate and electrifying ardor into the melody; the orchestra, taken by surprise, fought feebly for the old ripple; but the Klosking, resolute by nature, was now mighty as Neptune, and would have her big waves. The momentary struggle, in which she was loyally seconded by the conductor, evoked her grand powers. Catgut had to yield to brains, and the whole orchestra, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the water-rat. "If I have time, I burrow in the water. I part the surface with the tiniest ripple, keeping my fore feet close packed to my sides, and swim with hind legs only, below the surface, neatly as a natterjack. If I were better treated, I should never burrow in the banks at all. But I must have somewhere to go to when my breath fails me. I eat the mare's ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... me! Nothing sporty or cake-walky, you understand: just quiet and dignified and rich-like, same as any second vice or gen'ral manager would wear. Two-button sack with wide English roll and no turn-up to the trousers—oh, I should ripple! ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... fifty times over," said Mr. O'Connor, after hearing the story. "Your spirit is too martial for a pacific life. If you follow my advice, I will teach you how to ripple the calm current of your existence to some purpose. Marry a wife. For twenty-five years I have given instructions in three branches, viz.—philosophy, knowledge, and mathematics—I am also well versed in matrimony, and I declare that, upon my misery, and by the contents of all ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... she tossed the cushions back on the couch, drew the shades over the window, turned off the lights, and disappeared upstairs. Muffled sounds of a methodical but unhurried preparation for bed drifted faintly down, one last ripple of song, and ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Vindhya range; and it must have been deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe, nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off, beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no other substance to be seen between ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... strain in some voice of the woodwind or a ripple of the harp, it is sung in tense chorus of lower wood and horns,—soon joined by all the voices but the martial brass, ending with a soft echo of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... is sown for the upright. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Manifest your joy and gladness by wearing the smile of contentment and love. It includes a sparkle in the eye, a little ripple on the cheek and the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... laughed over piecing tablecloths together for the long table, and kept a jingling ripple of laughter accompanying the jingling of plated spoons and the thick glasses. Ellen and Grace, as the family debutantes, were inside with the company, but Carrie and Min, the married daughters, were here, with old Mrs. Crowley, who never missed an occasion of this kind, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... the surface of life between Coal City and Shoulder-blade there was no outward ripple; no hint that fires still smouldered which might again leap to eruption. Men who had followed Lute and those who had been enlisted by Bud from time to time "met and made their manners" on the ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... The slightest extra ripple of the waters at New Orleans brings them over the banks and floods the streets, but ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Karivua narrows are about thirty miles in length. They end at the mountain Roganora. Two rocks, twelve or fifteen feet above the water at the time we were there, may in flood be covered and dangerous. Our chief danger was the wind, a very slight ripple ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... within half a cable's length of the poor fellow, when a fearful shriek reached our ears. I instinctively turned round just in time to see his head disappear beneath the bright surface. There was a ripple where he went down, and as we got up to the spot and looked into the depths of the ocean we could see a struggling human form surrounded by a ruddy tinge, and the glittering white of the shark's lower jaws. Ned, who was in the bows, plunged down his boat-hook, but ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... three, she suddenly broke into a little ripple of laughter, and, upon being questioned severely as to the reason of such unseemly mirth, she said, gaily, "I was just wondering what poor Phil will do with three girls, and one his sister, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... garden-seat, lo! all the west was on fire, the mountains in the south had grown dark on their eastern side, and the plain of the sea was like a lake of blood, with the heavy hull and masts of the coaster grown large and solemn and distant. There was scarcely a ripple around the rocks at their feet to break the stillness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... where the green stretches of pasture were here and there broken by clumps of young trees. Huge oxen with almost white skins were lying in the short grass, motionless, as if plunged in peaceful thought. Hills sloped gently up to the horizon, and their velvety contours seemed to ripple in the bright rays of the moon. For the first time in my life I realized something of the voluptuous beauty and divine effluence of the night. I felt the magic touch of some unknown bliss. It seemed that ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... myself in this way, and laughing to myself under a grave face, when all at once I heard three words from the next window. Who said "By no means!" in that soft velvet voice, through which ran a ripple of silvery laughter? I should have known that voice in the desert of Arabia. And the next moment she moved away from the window, and ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... in water to his arm-pits. And what is better, he possessed the happy faculty of imparting his exuberance to his long-faced, homesick, and downcast fellow-privates. His temper was as smooth as a becalmed sea, and seldom was it that a ripple passed over the smooth surface. There was just one word in the soldier's vocabulary that would disturb him, but this word never failed to bring on a typhoon. This innocent yet magic word was "carabao," the name of the water buffalo, the beast of burden that formed ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... landscape veil, Through which the mountains in dim grandeur rise. Silent, alone he crossed the maidan wide Where first he saw the sweet Yasodhara, Where joyful multitudes so often met, Now still as that dark valley of his dream. He passed the lake, mirror of heaven's high vault, Whose ruffled waters ripple on the shore, Stirred by cool breezes from the snow-capped peaks; And heedless of his way passed on and up, Through giant cedars and the lofty pines, Over a leafy carpet, velvet soft, While solemn voices from their branches sound, Strangely ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... ripple of excitement caused by General Abercromby's reported arrival had crowded the railway station. Hugh Johnstone chuckled, "Evidently Hawke knows nothing," as the two old friends drove away in splendid state. But Major Hawke, an hour ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... middle of the night. The stars shone brightly, and there was but a slight ripple on ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... habits." "Do you see that beautiful white sandy beach?" said the bird. "Yes!" he answered. "It is there," continued the Kingfisher, "that they bask in the sun. Before they come out, the lake will appear perfectly calm; not even a ripple will appear. After midday ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... was bordered by a beach of dazzling white coral sand, and all through its water extended reefs of living coral of the more delicate and elaborate kinds. These corals gave the lake a wonderful variety of colors, forming a picture impossible to paint or describe, and with the least ripple from a passing breeze the whole scene changed to new groups of color. The water was very clear, and in some places deep; in others so filled with coral that a boat could barely skim over the surface without scraping ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... few minutes to reach the river, and he walked slowly along the shore. Not a ripple disturbed the surface of the water, and the trees along the bank were mirrored in the clear depths. How good it was to be in such a place where he could think to his heart's content. No sign of human life was here, and the sweet song of a vesper sparrow was the only sound ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... Clarissa gave a long weary sigh, and that painful dizziness passed off in some degree. All she wanted was air, she thought, if there had been any air to be got that sultry night. She rose from the sofa presently, and went out upon the balcony. Below her was the river; not a ripple upon the water, not a breath stirring the rushes on the banks. Between the balcony and the river there was a broad battlemented walk, and in the embrasures where cannon had once been there were great stone vases of geraniums and dwarf roses, which seemed only masses ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... her gravely, and then lay down in the middle of the path, keeping an eye on Agatha's movements. Her voice, pitched at its softest, now seemed to be infinitely enlarged without being made louder. It carried far in among the trees, clear and soft as a wave-ripple. Entranced, Agatha began the second part of the song, just for ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... received and welcomed; Christmas would be kept in hearty English fashion; young men from a neighboring estate would ride over through the darkening woods to court, or dance, or play the fiddle, like Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson; and these simple events were all that made a ripple on the placid stream. Much time was given to sports, rough, hearty, manly sports, with a spice of danger, and these, with an occasional adventurous dash into the wilderness, kept them sound and strong and brave, both in body and mind. There ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... forbears, and he had got his polish of deportment when he was among the English Jacobites in France. The result was that he danced all of a piece, with as near the poetry of movement as a man might attain, and then there was the intimate, intriguing ripple of ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne |
