"Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wits of either Charles' days, The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease, Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more, Like twinkling stars the Miscellanies o'er, One simile, that solitary shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines, Or lengthened thought that gleams through many a page, Has sanctified ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... beautiful. Some of our men are talking in groups on the thresholds of the doors, others, rolled in their blankets, are lying on the ground asleep. In the upper storeys of some of the houses lights are still twinkling through the muslin curtains; lower down all is darkness. Scarcely a sound is to be heard, only now and then the rumble of a heavy cart, or perhaps a cannon in the distance; and nearer to us the sudden noise of a musket that slips from its resting-place on to the pavement. Every ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... fearless course we held: Beneath the glist'ning wave the god of day Had now five times withdrawn the parting ray, When o'er the prow a sudden darkness spread, And, slowly floating o'er the mast's tall head A black cloud hover'd: nor appear'd from far The moon's pale glimpse, nor faintly twinkling star; So deep a gloom the low'ring vapor cast, Transfix'd with awe the bravest stood aghast. Meanwhile, a hollow bursting roar resounds, As when hoarse surges lash their rocky mounds; Nor had the black'ning wave nor frowning heav'n The wonted signs of gath'ring tempest giv'n. Amazed we stood. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... or polar star last night for the first time, a few degrees above the horizon, peeping at us with its twinkling eye, as much as to say, welcome home! Hailed it as a link connecting us with our native land. How many eyes of persons dear to us, look upon that star, when they think of us. Its ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... Bong withdrew his trunk, but just in time to save it from being mangled. For an instant he stood with the member held high in air, bewildered by what seemed to him such a gratuitous attack. Then his twinkling little eyes began to blaze, and he trumpeted shrilly with anger. The next moment, reaching over the fence, he brought down the trunk on Last Bull's hump with such a terrible flail-like blow that the great buffalo stumbled forward upon ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... change in my life as complete as it had been sudden. In the twinkling of an eye I was transformed from a sailor into a "beach-comber'' and a hide-curer; yet the novelty and the comparative independence of the life were not unpleasant. Our hide-house was a large building, made of rough ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... bubble rose in the twinkling fire-fly light. At first it was all of a gray-dark color; but out of this dark, like the sun breaking through the mist, bright golden and ruby tints began ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... were dim and the circle of lights above the model stand was twinkling brightly when Patricia peeped in at the crack of the ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... man, with a foreign air, and quick, restless manner. His features were small, a heavy beard and mustache covered his face, his brow was low, and his eyes black and twinkling. A sharp, furtive glance which he gave at Brandon attracted the attention of the latter, for there was something in the glance that meant ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the riders in sight of the twinkling light of the camp, just as the stars came out. It lay in a little hollow, where a small stream ran through a sparse grove of young white oaks. A half dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled at a little distance, and a group of men sat ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... is the past. That, if any thing, will give a clue. And, looking back only through your time, what was the earliest feat of this same transcendentalism? The rays of the new moral Drummond Light were first concentrated to a focus at Paris, to illuminate the universe. In a twinkling it consumed the political, religious and social systems of France. It could not be extinguished there until literally drowned in blood. And then, from its ashes arose that supernatural man, who, for twenty years, kept affrighted Europe in convulsions. Since that ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort, and that effort might have been unavailing; but to have risen to the level of such an effort would have rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to your ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... one hand employ'd In letting fall the curtain of repose On bird and beast, the other charg'd for man With sweet oblivion of the cares of day: Not sumptuously adorn'd, nor needing aid, Like homely-featur'd night, of clust'ring gems; A star or two, just twinkling on thy brow, Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine No less than her's, not worn indeed on high With ostentatious pageantry, but set With modest grandeur in thy purple zone, Resplendent less, but of an ampler round. Come then, and thou shalt find thy vot'ry calm, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... artificial opening. He puts his fingers into the extraordinary pocket, and lo, another brood of a dozen or more young, scarcely larger than a pea, are hanging in clusters on the teats. In pulling the creature about, in great amazement, he suddenly receives a gripe on the hand; the twinkling of the half-closed eye, and the breathing of the creature, evince that it is not dead: and he adds a new term to the vocabulary of his language, that ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... looked it. Her face was as round and smooth as an infant's, with an absurd little dab of a nose, a mouth with baby dimples at the corners, and small white teeth that seemed more like first than second ones, and dark eyes which, when they did not happen to be twinkling, were capable of putting on a bewitching innocence of expression calculated to deceive almost any teacher, however experienced, save the ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... twinkling stars to-night Look down with soft and silvery light And tell the majesty divine Of Him who gives them leave to shine. Oh, what an atom must I be, And yet He ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... thou flaunting God of Day! Awa, thou pale Diana! Ilk Star, gae hide thy twinkling ray, When I'm to ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the elephant cub thou must become For easy entrance; rest where gems enhance The glory of the hill beside my home, And peep into the house with lightning-glance, But make its brightness dim as fireflies' twinkling dance. ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... wounded another soldier with an arrow. When the effrontery of the Moros was seen, and that they could do us some injury with their artillery, it was decided to attack them. [32] Therefore in the twinkling of an eye, the Spaniards attacked and took the palisade, hurling down the bombardiers with linstock in hand, giving them no chance to fulfil their duties. After this first artillery had fallen into ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... still was it to lie in the sleigh snugly wrapped in furs, and watch the inky sky powdered with stars—Ursa Major (now almost overhead) sprawling its glittering shape across the heavens, and the little Pleiades twinkling like a diamond spray against dark velvet. At times I could make out every lonely peak and valley in the lunar world, and even distinguish far-away Polaris twinkling dimly over the earth's great mystery. The stars are never really ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the priest, with twinkling eyes, "it isn't likely that we could improve upon Almighty God's design. We're very simple, you know. . . . Look, he's signalling. We're going to start. Come to the prow. We ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... that she could peer through the rattling glass window. Close at hand, higher up the steep, many lights were twinkling ling against tile blackness, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... slave-girls unique in beauty and dight with the most magnificent dresses, that they wend with my mother to the royal palace; and let every handmaid be robed in raiment that befitteth Queen's wearing." The Slave replied, "To hear is to obey;" and, disappearing for an eye-twinkling, brought all he was bidden bring and led by hand a stallion whose rival was not amongst the Arabian Arabs,[FN164] and its saddle cloth was of splendid brocade gold-inwrought. Thereupon, without stay or delay, Alaeddin ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... spread it out over the copper, and forced it into the surface of the block until the thin coating was at every point in molecular contact with the copper beneath it—a perfect job of plating, and one done in the twinkling of an eye. He then cut out a piece of the treated copper the size of a pea, and other forces rapidly built around it a structure of coils and metallic tubes. This apparatus he suspended in the air at the extremity of ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... wigwam sat the Red Fox, Hushed the wail of Waub-omee-mee, Weeping for her absent mother. With the twinkling stars the hunter From the forest came and Raven. "Sea-Gull wanders late," said Red Fox, "Late she wanders by the sea-shore, And some evil may befall her." In the misty morning twilight Forth went Panther and the Raven, Searched the forest and the marshes, Searched for leagues along the lake-shore, ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... be on the left hand side, somewhere about the Villa Aldobrandini. The tall pines round the villa looked feathery light against the starry sky. The night was icy but serene; the Torre delle Milizie lifted up its massive bulk, square and sombre among the twinkling stars; the laurels on the wall of Servius slumbered motionless in the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... in the wake of the jingling sleighs. Distant flames were still twinkling ahead, and the wind carried faint sounds of merriment back to him. Then ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... on a level with one of the windows, which happened, very conveniently, to have been left wide open: so in flew the pheasants, car and all, and alighted on the hearth-rug. 'Jump out—be quick!' cried the Fairy. The cat did not wait to be told twice—she was out in a twinkling; but before she could turn her head round, car, Fairy, and pheasants had vanished, and she was left alone in the strange room. 'To be sure,' she exclaimed to herself, 'was there ever anything so extraordinary?' What an adventure! And what a room it ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... seen ruined men before now—he had seen criminals convicted of their wrong-doing—he had seen old and young in adversity, and, what is more dangerous still, in prosperity—but he had never seen a young face grow old in the twinkling of an eye. The banker was only thinking of this matter as a financial crisis, in which his great skill made him take a master's delight. There must inevitably come a great crash, and Mr. Wade's interest was aroused. Cornish was realizing that the ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... still twinkling far in the western sky. The crescent moon still shone serene, marshaling her attendant constellations. Eastward the prairie still lay in deep shadow, its long rolls outlined by the deeper shadows lying in the hollows between. Over the ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... met the shrewd, twinkling eyes of the Captain. Perhaps he had caught the words, for he asked encouragingly, "Did you ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... night, floated over Walter's reeling brain; darkness, pierced by a thousand gleaming, twinkling lights, brilliant as stars, then came a void and nothingness. Slowly at last he felt himself struggling up out of the void, battling, fighting for consciousness, then came a delicious sort of languor. If this was dying, it was very pleasant. Forms seemed to be flitting before ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and the same moment—in the nave, under the porch, and in the choir. Like the Diable boiteux he must, bestriding his crutch, have soared above the heads of the congregation, to pass as he did in the twinkling of an eye from Morlot, the deputy, who, being a freethinker, had remained in the parvis, to Marie-Claire kneeling at the ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... twinkling, Roger's despair was changed to something entirely different. "Oh," he cried, "I do hope Fido will die. Do you think there is any chance?" he asked, eagerly, ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... be up and at work before the sun, Mr. Leach," said the captain, speaking clearly, but in a low tone, as they approached the camel. The head of the animal was tossed; then it seemed to snuff the air, and it gave a shriek. In the twinkling of an eye an Arab sprang from the sand, on which he had been sleeping, and was on the creature's back. He was seen to look around him, and before the startled mariners had time to decide on their course, the beast, which was a dromedary trained to speed, was out of sight in the darkness. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... to beat up into the anchorage off Fremantle. Night closed upon us ere we reached the spot proposed, and we passed the interval in walking the deck and noting the stars come forth upon their watch. The only signs of life and of human habitation were in the few twinkling lights of the town of Fremantle: all beside, on the whole length of the coast, seemed to be a desert of sand, the back-ground of which was occupied with the dark outline of an ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... the way of Signor Arias de Londona, and to look out for a new berth in his register; but as I was on my way to No Thoroughfare, who should come across me but Doctor Sangrado, whom I had not seen since the day of my master's death. I took the liberty of touching my hat. He kenned me in a twinkling, tho I had changed my dress; and with as much warmth as his temperament would allow him, "Heyday!" said he, "the very lad I wanted to see; you have never been out of my thought. I have occasion for a clever fellow about me, and pitched upon you as the very thing, if you can read and write." ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... varied delightfully with the Highland Fling by Pipe Major Johnson of the 42nd, and the Sword Dance by Piper Reid of the 43rd followed by an encore, the "Shean Rheubs" which I defy any mere Sassenach to pronounce or to dance, at least as Piper Heid of the twinkling feet danced it that night. For he did it "in the style of Willie Maclennan," as a piper said, "the best of his day and they have not matched him yet." The massed pipe bands play "The 79th's Farewell at Gibraltar." Forty-one ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... from both sides; and our captain, chearing his men to behave gallantly, ascended the half-deck, where he had not been above ten minutes when a great shot from the quarter of the carack deprived him of life in the twinkling of an eye. It hit him fair in the breast, beating his heart and other parts out of his body, which lay round him among his blood. After he was slain, our master continued the fight for about half an hour, when, considering that another person ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... will see that the Protestant churches of America exist only by and through the numerical power of Protestantism, but should Romanism ever become powerful enough in this country she would, within the twinkling of an eye, destroy or confiscate every ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... cloistered in the leafy shades fill the air with murmurs and drowsy noises. Behind the dark foliage a swarm of fireflies illumines the gloom, until to the looker-on in the river the depths of the solitary island take to themselves the fantastic guise of a great city far away, with its gaslights twinkling merrily. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... expounds upon the planets and teaches to construe the accidents by the due joining of stars in construction. He talks with them by dumb signs, and can tell what they mean by their twinkling and squinting upon one another as well as they themselves. He is a spy upon the stars, and can tell what they are doing by the company they keep and the houses they frequent. They have no power to do anything alone until ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... in the twinkling of an eye. Just now congratulating himself on the complete success of his manoeuvres, on the retreat of his enemies, on the flight of Jackson and the helplessness of Lee, Hooker saw his strong intrenchments taken in reverse, his army scattered, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... naked man; that the nature of the wolf is such that if the man sees him first, the wolf is deprived of force and vigor, but if the wolf first sees the man, his power of speech will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Furthermore, there were curious ideas current concerning the mystic power of precious stones, and many were the lapidaries which were written for the edification of the credulous world. The diamond was held in somewhat ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... may fill the heaven all over with stars, bright and thickly set as those in the whitest spot in the galaxy, and it will be night still. Day needs the sun, and the sun is one, and when it comes the twinkling lights are forgotten. You cannot make up for God by any extended series of creatures, any more than a row of figures that stretched from here to Sirius and back again would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... twinkling lights of Las Estrellas, seeming at first fallen stars caught in the mesquite branches, swam into view. Plainly Tony's accident had stimulated much local interest; among the few straggling houses men came and went, while a knot of women, children, ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... But you see I don't expect to get back much before the tenth of October, and college will have started by then. I don't want," he continued, his eyes twinkling with fun, "to rob the other fellows of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... a bull, a well-shaped head covered with straight, close-cropped, brown hair, innocent of kink or curl; a florid face, bronzed and tanned by years of life in sun and wind and storm; clean-shaven but for the drooping brown moustache that conceals the rugged lines of his mouth, and twinkling blue-gray eyes that peer out with searching gaze from under their shaggy brows. Firmness, strength, self-reliance, even sternness, can be read in every line; but around the gathering crowsfeet at the corners of his eyes, and lurking under the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... met deep underground in the dim galleries, their little oil-lamps twinkling like stars, and there they listened to the Word of God, and prayed and ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... instead of touching the ground, we found ourselves at the Devonshire arms, in Princetown, where the comely bar-maid appeared more than mortal. The sight of her rosy cheeks, shining hair, bright eyes, and pouting lips wafted our imaginations, in the twinkling of an eye, across the Atlantic to our own dear country of pretty girls. I struck the fist of my right hand into the palm of my left, and cried out—"O, for an horse with wings!" The girl stared with amazement, and concluded, I guess, that I was ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... children without knowing what tracks led to school and home, and what to the wonderful realm of play and fancy. Moreover, his anticipations were always aroused when Elizabeth changed her habit, and he had seen in the twinkling of his eye that she was bare-legged and bare-headed and provided with a pole. So he barked joyously and scampered away ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... de Mendoza," said the father, "will satisfy you on that point in a twinkling. 'If a gentleman,' says he, in a passage cited by Diana, 'who is challenged to fight a duel, is well known to have no religion, and if the vices to which he is openly and unscrupulously addicted, are such as would lead people to conclude, in the event of his refusing to fight, that he is actuated, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... dark; but this was no inconvenience to my guide, who moved on, as formerly, with instinctive security of step, so that we soon reached the bottom, and I could see lights twinkling in the cottage which had been my place of refuge on a former occasion. It was not thither, however, that our course was directed. We left the habitation of the laird to the left, and turning down the brook, soon approached ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the ridges and chains on her surface, began to be plainly visible through the telescope; whilst, on the shaded side, several volcanoes appeared upon her disc, like the flashes of our fire-fly, or rather like the twinkling of stars in a frosty night. He remarked, that the extraordinary clearness and brightness of the objects on the moon's surface, was owing to her having a less extensive and more transparent atmosphere than the earth: adding—"The ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... damsel was in distress. She stood poised on a stone in midstream, like a bird desiring, yet not daring, to fly. A long leap was needed to land her on the next stone, and she paused, perplexed, evidently mindful of her eggs. Gilbert came quickly down the bank, his eyes twinkling. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... tissue wrappings, a fragrant bouquet of violets. An envelope enclosing a card fell to the floor. With suppleness hardly to be expected from one of her years, she stooped to pick it up, and in a twinkling had ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... especially struck everybody who saw him and listened to him in his own home. I can recall summer Sunday afternoons at Addiscombe, with Henley sitting on a rug spread on the lawn behind his house, Mrs. Henley at his side, his eyes following with twinkling tenderness his little daughter as she ran backwards and forwards busy with the manifold cares of childhood, while all the time, to his Young Men gathered round him, he was thundering against the last book, or ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... will lay on the floor, the general's wife kneeling on it, as on a prayer carpet, in an attitude of prayer, her clasped hands on the window sill, her wet eyes fixed on a faintly twinkling star, as though calling heaven to witness her inconsolable grief ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... returned the keeper (for whose arrival he had been sitting up), with twinkling eye ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... making a first transatlantic trip. No one should ever do it. Everybody should begin with the second or third trip. Yet I remember a little Kansas City lawyer I met on the New Amsterdam, who didn't seem to be ashamed of owning up. He was bald-headed and, despite the twinkling eyes behind his spectacles, solemn-looking. His bald head felt a draught from an open port-hole during dinner on the first night out, and it was when he asked the "waiter" to "close the window" that the "seasoned traveller" (as they love to call themselves) snapped ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... after dark on Sunday evening, and found the little cove and the neighboring roadstead filled with transport steamers, whose twinkling anchor-lights—or rather adrift lights, for there was no anchorage—swung slowly back and forth in long curves as the vessels rolled and wallowed in the trough of the sea. As soon as a boat could be lowered, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... ever you show your twinkling feet at the Opera, you will be the 'fashion'—and will you remember ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... ladder, but she dragged it over to the window and put it in place and mounted it, all in the twinkling of an eye. By stretching to her full height, she was able to raise the creaky window, but to her dismay the roof offered a very long drop. She had not realized how high she ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... lightened the aerial grey; then sunshine set a million gems twinkling on the great bejewelled bosom of the valley. Under this magic heat an almost instantaneous shadowy ghost of fresh vapour rose upon the riparian meadows, and out of it, swinging along with the energy of youth and high spirits, came a lad. Phoebe smiled ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... lives a bitter, stagnant life, Who follows after every ill And knows not either Faith or Love, (For Faith in deeds alone doth live). Eternal woe shall be his doom - More torments he shall then behold Yea, in the twinkling of an eye Than any age ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... history was to record only the lives and expressions of those great in power. The artist is ever the servant of such, but may he not have had his own private thoughts, unpurchaseable, unsold, and therefore only for our divining. There must have been a sense of humour then as now, and twinkling eyes with which to ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... twinkling of an eye the whole changed to a deep, blood-red crimson—so bloodlike, so terrible, so dazzling, so awful, that the brave man was crushed down, terrified and subdued before this blinding display of the omnipotent ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... began to breathe more freely. "It is not too late to make up that loss, monsieur." Liane Delorme was actually chuckling in appreciation of his readiness, pleased with him even in the moment of her own discomfiture; her eyes twinkling merrily at him above the fan with which she hid a convulsed countenance. "Surely two people so possessed with regret at never having known each other should lose no time improving their acquaintance! Dear Athenais: do ask us ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... a knock at the door." They listened. It sounded again. Steve hustled the things back into the bag and slammed the lid shut in a twinkling. ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... The boys finished their play, and went into the house, and I saw lights twinkling in the windows. I felt lonely and miserable in this strange place. I would not have gone back to Jenkins' for the world, still it was the only home I had known, and though I felt that I should be happy ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Leo stooped to stroke the head of her Siberian hound, crouching on the velvet rug at her feet; then she frankly met the twinkling black eyes that peered over their ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... feel my atmosphere! There's awe in your face! None may be in this atmosphere and not be thus affected; for it is the very atmosphere of heaven. I go thither and return, in the twinkling of an eye. I was made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago, by angels sent from heaven to confer that awful dignity. Their presence filled this place with an intolerable brightness. And they knelt to me, King! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no more. He was on his feet and across the room at the window in a twinkling. And the smiling eyes of the Englishman gazed after him. In the other's absence he picked up the paper which had fallen upon the floor, and looked again at the portrait of the man, and ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... seemed rather caverns which swallowed up the gloomy waters of the river, than apertures contrived for their passage. With the advancing night the stillness of the scene increased. There was yet a twinkling light occasionally seen to glide along by the stream, which conducted home one or two of the small parties, who, after the abstinence and religious duties of the day, had partaken of a social supper—the only meal ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... with flat palms pressing down, and feet hanging, with heels drumming against the coffer-dam sides. After he had done he pushed himself up by the palms of his hands, rearranged his row of tin letter-files, shifted his electric bulkhead light, picked up a fat folk-lore volume and waited, with eyes twinkling down on us, for ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... dine on becaficas, To see the Sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow, Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as A drunken man's dead eye in maudlin sorrow, But with all Heaven t'himself; the day will break as Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers Where reeking ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to bear them over the polished floor of a ball-room as lightly as swallows' wings. The flirting of their intelligent fans, the flashing of those quick smiles where eyes, teeth, and lips all did their dazzling duty, and the satin twinkling of those neat boots in the waltz, are harder to forget than things better ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... there and everywhere about me, sometimes tickling me with their sharp little claws until I, too, was forced into making a tour of discovery, in order to bring them once more to the light. But let a stranger enter the room, and, presto! they were gone in the twinkling of an eye. I left home on one occasion and was gone for two months. When I came to my room and sat down at my desk, I looked about for my little pets, and could not see them. I had come to the conclusion that they had either died or escaped from the room, when suddenly I saw a tiny little head ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... horrible, swaying head was darting down toward the playing boy! The monster's jaws were spread wide, its black tongue was leaping out and in like lightning, the sickening saliva was dripping upon the sand, and its awful eyes were blazing like coals. And then in a twinkling the huge jaws seized the child, the head reared back, the jaws closed, stifling the lad's screams, and it started to draw back into ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... only hope Angus may go off in a dead faint the first time I'm sick and get better, as he did the other day. We haven't let him in much lately, for fear of agitating you, but I think," says Trixy, with twinkling eyes, "you could stand it now—couldn't ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... short headlands—such exquisite gradations of distance and such capricious interruptions of perspective—that one could only say that the land was really trying to smile as hard as the sea. The smile of the sea was a positive simper. Such a glittering and twinkling, such a softness and blueness, such tiny little pin-points of foam, and such delicate little wrinkles of waves—all this made the ocean look ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... not speak, but gazed back at her father with a suppressed laugh twinkling about the corners ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... call into the hot chases, and even when resting between encounters, spreads his tail, flutters his wings, and erects his crest in a most warlike manner. The little dame was not a whit less vigilant than her spouse. Let but a blackbird pass over and she was off in a twinkling, pursuing him, pouncing down upon him savagely, and all the time uttering her plaintive "pe-o-wee!" till her mate joined her, and made it so uncomfortable for the big foe that he departed, protesting to be sure in vigorous black-birdese, but taking good care to go. So persistent ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... Almost in a twinkling of time after that the machine was lifted from the track in sections, and finally, still in sections, was carried to a highway near at hand, where it was put together again, minus the iron wheels. But there were other wheels concealed in that commodious body, ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... "drew a good bow at the battle of Hastings, and never shot at such a mark in his life—and neither will I. I might as well shoot at the edge of our parson's whittle, or at a wheat straw, or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak which ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... Susan." Miss Dorothy's eyes were twinkling now. "And, by the way, where is Mr. Burton? I haven't ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... was a man. He was young. Barbara saw three things—that he had kindly gray eyes, which just now were twinkling at her amusedly; that the handkerchief about his neck was clean; and that the line of his jaw was unusually clear cut and fine. An observant person would have noticed further that the young man carried a rifle and a pack, that he wore a heavily laden belt about his waist, and moccasins on his ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... fiercest glare, Broods over the hazy, twinkling air; Along the level sand The palm-tree's shade unwavering lies, Just as thy towers, Damascus, rise To ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... cuffs, and light blue silk lining, is quite a demi-official, small-and-early arrangement. It is compatible with a patronising and somewhat superb flirtation in the verandah; nay, even under the pine-tree beyond the Gurkha sentinel, whence many-twinkling Jakko may be admired, it is compatible with a certain shadow of human sympathy and weakness. An A.D.C. in tail-coat and gold buttons is no longer a star; he is only a fire-balloon; though he may twinkle in heaven, he can descend ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... and Foremost slowly raised his arms, and in a twinkling his hairy skin fell from him and he appeared before the astonished Nome as a beautiful woman, clothed in a flowing gown of pink gauze. In her dark hair flowers were entwined, and her face was ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the flyer did not stop at Dunraven, the baggageman and helper went home at six o'clock and she was absolutely alone save for this half witted boy. The section house was a mile and a half away to the east. A mile away, to the south were the twinkling lights of the village, while but one short mile to the west was Peach Creek, with the bridge gone out, and the flyer thundering along towards it with its precious load of human freight. How could it be warned. The boy hadn't sense enough to pound sand. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... play," said Sancho; "give me my dinner, and then let it rain cases and questions on me, and I'll despatch them in a twinkling." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... her husband's arm, looked down meekly from a pair of wicked twinkling eyes—she could be a sweet clinging creature if she wished, and this was her special charm to ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... of Manhattan and Greater New York twinkling below. The Empire State Building tower was still above us, as the plane banked over the ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... float long rafts. Purling streams moisten the earth's surface. The sun approaching, melts the crusted snow. The slumbering seas calmed the grave old hermit's mind. Pale Cynthia declining, clips the horizon. Man beholds the twinkling stars adorning night's blue arch. The stranger saw the desert thistle ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... by there seemed—there was—a twinkling dawn of returning reason. Slowly, peacefully, with an increase unseen from day to day, the light of reason came into the eyes, and speech became coherent; but withal there came a failing of the wrecked body, and the doctor said that monsieur ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... She sat silent for a moment or two while Helen tried to fit easily into the conversation. It was not likely that Bo would long be at a loss for words, and also it was immensely probable that with a flash of her wonderful spirit she would turn the tables on her perverse lover in a twinkling. Anyway, plain it was that a lesson had sunk deep. She looked startled, hurt, wistful, and finally ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... chief of the sowars and Kiftan Sahib lead the way. Many of the horses are pretty badly fagged, they have had nothing to eat all day and next to nothing to drink, and the party are straggling along the trail for a couple of miles back. At length lights are observed twinkling in the darkness ahead. Half an hour later we dismount in a nomad camp, and one after another the remainder of the party come straggling in, some of them leading their horses. Both men and animals ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... that Jack killed," he said; and then and there began the funniest story you ever heard. Only I can't tell it in the funny words and with the merry, twinkling glances ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... of a sudden it seemed as though space had no bars for her, for she awoke, or thought that she awoke, in the guest-hut of Sigwe, since she could hear the breathing of Sihamba at her side, and stretching out her hand she touched her face. But in the twinkling of an eye there came a change, for, still wide awake, now she was standing in the stead at home just within the door of her own sleeping-room. There upon the bed lay her husband, fevered and unconscious, but muttering to himself, while ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... literature lay all before us; certes, we had no thought of ever writing a daily column! And finally, after our small lanterns were lit and cast their little fans of brightness along the flowing road, we ascended a rise and saw Buxton in the valley below, twinkling with lights— ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... immediately by Midshipman Charles Morris. A minute passed before their companions could join them, but the Turks were too terrified to sweep the daring officers from the deck, as they might have done in the twinkling of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... stripped off his overcoat and wrapped it about her. But she was hardly conscious of what he was doing, for suddenly everything seemed to be spinning round her. The lights of the torches bobbed up and down in a confused blur of twinkling stars, the sound of voices and the trampling of feet came faintly to her ears as from a great way off, while the grim, black bulk of the piled-up coaches of the train seemed to lean nearer and nearer, until finally it swooped ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... grandfather's eyes had been twinkling, and at last he said to the boy: "Now that you have been under fire, general, you need some strengthening. Come and join ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... snatching his cane, he opened the door and proceeded to the place where the black trumpeters were posted. There, without further hesitation, he began to belabour them both; and exerted himself with such astonishing vigour and agility, that both their heads and horns were broken in a twinkling, and they ran howling down stairs to their master's parlour-door. The squire, following them half way, called aloud, that the colonel might hear him, 'Go, rascals, and tell your master what I have done; if he thinks ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... moment, in rounding a bend in the path, they saw Ike Hardman in front, moving stealthily in the same direction with themselves, but the rogue was watchful and caught sight of them at the same moment. As before, he was off like an arrow, the winding trail allowing him to pass from sight in the twinkling of an eye, as ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... on the order of the service, but helped themselves greedily, and left his basket empty in a twinkling. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Already you have told me more than it is good for me to know. I will endeavour to forget it, and I will ask you, sirs," he added, glancing at his officers, "to forget it also." But he winked into the twinkling eyes of Captain Blood; then added matter that at once extinguished that twinkle. "But since Diego cannot come to me, why, I ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... while I was wondering what I could do to get back, Mrs. Pettigrew passed with five of the children in the buggy and asked if I knew there was a telegram for me at the station. I told her I did not, and my heart got right where hearts always get when telegrams are mentioned, and in the twinkling of an eye Skylark's bridle was on and I on Skylark, and we raced ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher |
