"Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man accustomed to unhampered movement to bear is the close confinement. All at once he loses his illusion of freedom of will. Activity, the thing that in the eyes of the European endows life with its sublimest charm, cannot in the twinkling of an eye turn into absolute passivity. Nevertheless, despite these novel, distressing experiences, despite throbbing pulses, over-stimulated senses, and nerves tautened to the snapping point, the situation is by no means ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... confusion of the enemy was [not] unlike that which will be when the last trump shall sound. They endeavored to form in streets, the heads of which we had previously the possession of with cannon and howitzers; these, in the twinkling of an eye, cleared the streets. The backs of the houses were resorted to for shelter. These proved ineffectual; the musketry soon dislodged them. Finally they were driven through the town into an open plain beyond. Here they formed in an instant. During the contest in the streets measures ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... charming oval and a sweet weak expression, like that of most of the Venetian maidens, who, as a general thing—it was not a peculiarity of the land- lady's niece—are fond of besmearing themselves with flour. You soon recognise that it is not only the many-twinkling lagoon you behold from a habitation on the Riva; you see a little of everything Venetian. Straight across, before my windows, rose the great pink mass of San Giorgio Maggiore, which has for an ugly Palladian church a success beyond all reason. It is ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... a queer old buffer, the boss, isn't he?' asked Walter, his eye twinkling again as he jerked his thumb towards the door. 'They say he's awful rich, but he's a miserable old wretch. I'd rather be ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... them to her confirmation. Rosalie and Emmy Lou went. The great doors at Mary Agatha's church opened and closed behind them; it was high and dim; there were twinkling lights and silence, and awe, and colour. Something quivered. It burst forth. It was music. It was almost as if it hurt. One drew a deep breath and shut one's eyes a moment because it hurt; then one opened them. The aisles were filled with little girls ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... swarm upon him before he can extricate himself, and is first made aware of their presence by feeling sharp stinging pains in various places, especially the neck, caused by their bites. A small firefly (a species of Lampyris) is plentiful, showing out at night like a twinkling phosphorescent spark, slowly flitting about from tree to tree or resting on the leaves wet with dew. Nor must I omit a very splendid day-flying moth (Cocytia durvillei) which is common on the skirts of the woods and thickets; several even came on ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... wriggled out of his grasp, and a few minutes later an opening presented itself for trying the "cross-buttock" throw. There was not a moment to be lost. Seizing the big man round the thigh I drew him forward, pulled him over on my back, and in the twinkling of an eye—certainly before I myself had time to realise what had happened—he was hurled right over my head outside the enclosure. The spectators—sportsmen all—frantically slapped their thighs, and I knew then that I had gained their sympathies. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... was disarming, despite the patent crafty deceit in his face. It seemed as if it could not be very deep or guileful, it was so frankly expressed. It was suggestive of the roguish machinations of a child. He had twinkling brown eyes, and reddish hair, plaited in a club and tied with a thong of leather. His features were blunt, but his red, well-shaped lips parted in a ready, reassuring smile, and showed teeth as even and white as the early corn. Both men were arrayed in the buckskin shirt and leggings ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... do all the fussy things in travelling—taking the tickets, and counting the luggage, and all that—they're such big men, aren't they?" said Denny, with mischief in her twinkling ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth
... grown up from puppyhood to doghood with these 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
... mounting, we turned our mules' heads towards the east, just as the grey light of dawn appeared above the mountain-tops, the stars still shining with a calm light out of the deep blue sky above our heads, not glittering and twinkling as in northern climes. We were thus initiated by our friend in the use of the ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... over her shoulders to conceal the fact that half the buttonholes on her dress were burst out. In spite of all her shabbiness the girl was pretty and fresh. Nana, of course, danced on unsuspiciously. Her airs and graces were beyond belief. She curtsied to the very ground and then in a twinkling threw her foot over her partner's head. A circle was formed, and she was ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... everything in God. Only thus will you be able to bridle those cravings which else tear the heart. The presence of the king awes the crowd into silence. When the full moon is in the nightly sky, it sweeps the heavens bare of flying cloud-rack, and all the twinkling stars are lost in the peaceful, solitary splendour. So let delight in God rise in our souls, and lesser lights pale before it—do not cease to be, but add their feebleness, unnoticed, to its radiance. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the twinkling eyes of his neighbor were observing him keenly. For some moments evidently he had been absent-mindedly staring down the table. He turned quickly and looked at the doctor with frankness. This time it was impossible to avoid speech of ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... upon the Blue goal. As he neared Bert, who was running in a diagonal line to head him off, he swerved sharply to the right in an attempt to pass this last obstacle between him and a touchdown. But in a twinkling Bert had launched himself against him, gauging the distance unerringly, and they both came heavily to the ground on the ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... 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. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... that rod, I give him the bucklers—or rather I yield to the devil that is in his jerkin, and not to any human skill; a man can but do his best, and I will not shoot where I am sure to miss. 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 ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Of course there is. Just as if your hens couldn't hatch ducks' eggs. Now you just wait till one of your hens wants to sit, and you put ducks' eggs under her, and you'll have a family of ducks in a twinkling. You can buy ducks' eggs a plenty of old Sam under the hill. He always has hens hatch ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is all-sufficient: This moment is too precious to be lost; he can turn the Heart in the twinkling of an Eye, as well as in twenty Years. Hear me then; mind what I say to you: I will convince you immediately. You Hereticks do not believe in Transubstantiation, and yet did not our Saviour say in so many Words, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... dross into gold. It is held to be the great educator, not only as regards races, and under the influence of time, which is in a measure true, but as regards individuals and classes of men, and that in the twinkling of an eye, with magical rapidity. Were this theory practically sound, the vote would really prove a talisman. In that case we should give ourselves no rest until the vote were instantly placed in the hands of every Chinaman landing in California, ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... snowy peaks of the Rundan Fjeld; but as the direction of the river changed they disappeared, the valley contracted, and its black walls, two thousand feet high, almost overhung us. Below, however, were still fresh meadows, twinkling birchen groves and comfortable farm-houses. Out of a gorge on our right, plunged a cataract from a height of eighty or ninety feet, and a little further on, high up the mountain, a gush of braided silver foam ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... case is little known, even by the French, yet altogether interesting and appealing. They are foreigners on whom the outbreak of war laid no formal compulsion. But they had stood on the butte in springtime perhaps, as Julian and Louise stood, and looked out over the myriad twinkling lights of the beautiful city. Paris—mystic, maternal, personified, to whom they owed the happiest moments of their lives—Paris was in peril. Were they not under a moral obligation, no less binding than [that by which] their comrades were bound legally, to put their breasts between her and destruction? ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... let in. We had so little confidence in others that we acted as our own turnkeys in the fortress. John rose and took down the keys, but he stopped immediately on hearing a second blast of the horn. This meant that Laurence was bringing in a prize, and that we were to go and meet him. In the twinkling of an eye all the Mauprats were at the portcullis, torch in hand—except myself, whose indifference at this moment was profound, and whose legs were ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... has emerged into vigorous modern life since then, but the Cathedral remains the same and still calls me with the same voice. It seems but yesterday that I entered it. And there, at the same spot, in the second northern bay, the same little lamp is still twinkling, each faint throb seemingly the last, as in memory it has ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Williams, you may go. Now, follow me, Stukely," continued the physician, the moment that the butler had departed. "I'll do it now. I am a physiognomist, and I'll tell you in the twinkling of an eye if we are right, You mark him well, and so will I." The doctor seized his map and road book, and before I could speak was out of the room. When I overtook him, he had already reached the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... small cottonwoods and a fenced irrigated square of green growing garden hid the tiny adobe home like a nut, smooth and hard and dry in their clustered midst. The lightest air that could blow among these limber, ready leaves set going at once their varnished twinkling round the house. Their white and dark sides gleamed and went out with chasing lights that quickened the torpid place into a holiday of motion. Closed in by this cool green, you did not have to see or think of ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... answered, twinkling. "The girls got round him, and tried to persuade him, but they only made him worse, especially when they all declared that when they came of age they meant to do something, too! He said that he was afflicted with the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... painted frauds in spite of the careful ostentation of their costumes. Steve's shiny leathers and dusty hat missed the picturesque, but he looked indigenous and they did not. He was at his restful ease, this slender, brown man, negligent, careless, eyes twinkling but alert. The brand of the West was ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... in the twinkling of an eye. I have never seen a Channel steamer so quickly empty itself. It was as though the people were stricken by a sudden impulse to dash away from the poor craft at any cost. At the Customs, amid all the turmoil and bustle, I saw neither my young friend and his sister, ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... parlour, whilst Mrs. Bubb hovered about her with indignant consolation. Gammon, silent as yet, stood looking on. As he watched Mrs. Clover's countenance his own underwent a change; there was a ruffling of the brows, a working of the lips, and in his good-humoured blue eyes a twinkling of half-amused, ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... fowl with truffles. Solon devoured his portion in the twinkling of an eye, and as he was prone to coveting the property of others, he fixed his eyes, full of affectionate longing, on his neighbor's plate. Active, adroit, and watching his opportunity, he seized the moment when the priest was carrying his glass to his lips; to extend his paw, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... definite picture came out, a picture which was continued until it was finally complete. This picture represented a tall arch, through which the artist had painted the most beautiful effect of evening sky—the evening sky when sunset is fading into blue-green and the first stars are twinkling. And around this arch was chalked a kind of heavy festoon of drooping ostrich feathers. The picture when finished was certainly very beautiful, and I have it in my possession at the present moment. But it ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... old sailor to row him to the rock. Twilight was brooding over the valley of the Rhine when the boat approached the gigantic cliff; the departing sun had long sunk below the mountains, and now night was creeping on in silence; the evening star was twinkling in the deep blue firmament. Was it his protecting-angel who had placed it there as a warning ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... downright furious speedy trot; his limbs were now thoroughly lithy, and he brandished his fore legs in a manner perfectly wondrous; the mule of Antonio, which was a spirited animal of excellent paces, would fain have competed with him, but was passed in a twinkling. This tremendous trot endured for about a mile, when the animal, becoming yet more heated, broke suddenly into a gallop. Hurrah! no hare ever ran so wildly or blindly; it was, literally, ventre a terre; and I had considerable ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... is only a sign of rejoicing at Bakou, might prove a fearful disaster on the waters of the Angara. Whether it was set on fire by malevolence or imprudence, in the twinkling of an eye a conflagration might spread beyond Irkutsk. On board the raft no imprudence was to be feared; but everything was to be dreaded from the conflagrations on both banks of the Angara, for should a ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... assistant. But the only spectators within hail happened to be two errand boys who had not seen a circus for some time and evinced no desire to interrupt the entertainment. So off he started again, his white spats twinkling beneath his flapping overcoat, and covered the first fifty yards in such promising fashion that he was able to strike the revolving rim a series of smart raps with his umbrella before the wind had recovered its breath. Then suddenly up leapt the hat, cannoned ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... moonlight that flowed over all. In the hush he could hear the gurgling of water in the ditches, and the sighing of the pines beyond the hill. Then he looked up at the firmament, and as he did so a star shot across the twinkling field. Presently another, and then another. The phenomenon suggested to Mr. Hamlin a fresh augury. If in another fifteen minutes another star should fall—He sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... pilgrimage lain just on the beaten track, I would not—at least I think so—have been o'ercome by ony perswasions to do what I have done; but as will be seen, in the twinkling of half-an-eye, by the judicious reader, I am a man that has witnessed much, and come through a great deal, both in regard to the times wherein I have lived, and the out-o'-the-way adventures in which it has been my fortune to be engaged. Indeed, though I say it myself, who might as well be silent, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... indeed at all their compliments, the conduct of Pietro Vanucci was peculiar. That signor had left off staring, and gaping bewildered; and now sat coiled up snake-like, on each, his mouth muffled, and two bright eyes fixed on the' lady, and twinkling and scintillating ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... bed. The floor felt cool and pleasant to his bare little feet as he crossed to the door. He had almost reached the head of the stairs when, looking up, something so pretty met his eyes that he stopped to admire. It was a star, shining against the pure sky like a twinkling silver lamp. It seemed to beckon, and the ladder to lead straight up to it. Almost without stopping to think, Dickie put his foot on the first rung and climbed nimbly to the top of the ladder. The star was just as much out of reach when he got there as it had been before, but there were ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... churches; Spalato, with the grandeur of Diocletian's palace, are denied to the traveller; Lesina, proudly calling itself the Nice of Austria; Curzola, whose mighty Venetian bastions stand out into the sea, and many another delightful little town and island, only show a twinkling light or two in the darkness as the steamer ploughs by. At daybreak we are nearing Gravosa, Ragusa's modern port. As we leave again, and round the peninsula of Lapad, glorious in a mass of semi-tropical vegetation, Ragusa bursts upon our view. Seen on a sunny ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... deserted reaches along the riverside may be seen such lonely farmhouses or taverns as suggest the aspect of the alehouse, "not unknown to smuggling adventurers"—for the "owling", that is, the smuggling industry had flourished for centuries in these parts—to which the fugitives were led by a twinkling light in the window up a little cobbled causeway, and where Dickens placed that amphibious creature, "as slimy and smeary as if he had been low-water mark too", who exhibited a bloated pair of shoes "as interesting ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... United States cavalry as he had seen them on the alkali plains of New Mexico and Arizona. It was again my duty to station our pickets and out-posts, and as I came back after placing the sentries, the fires were twinkling all over the plaza and throwing grotesque shadows of the men and the mules against the white walls of the houses. It was a ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... "It seemed to me," says Taylor, "like the tolling of the clock of destiny. And when at 'Number six, fire!' the roar throbbed out with the flash, you should have seen the dead line, that had been lying behind the works all day, come to resurrection in the twinkling of an eye, and leap like ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Vera Cruz, a region at that period terribly infested with brigands. Garcia was not lucky enough to escape these outlaws. They pounced on the little cavalcade, and the hard-earned wealth of the singer, amounting to nearly a hundred thousand dollars, passed out of his possession in a twinkling. The cruel humor of the chief of the banditti bound Garcia to a tree, after he had been stripped naked, and as it was known that he was a singer he was commanded to display his art for the pleasure ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... struck her that Cornelia's anxiety as to her own condition had died a remarkably sudden death with the disappearance of Mrs Greville from the room. A pantomimic display was not the best way to ensure quiet and repose, nor was there much sympathy to be read in the expression of the twinkling golden eyes. Elma found herself blushing before their gaze, and ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... other in despair, and it was terrible to each, in this dire emergency, to meet only the beautiful eyes of perfect strangers, instead of the merry, friendly, commonplace, twinkling, jolly little eyes of ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... observation to Brian when he came in from his work for dinner. During the afternoon, they both saw boats on the quiet waters of The Bend, and at supper told each other what they had seen. And in the evening they together watched the twinkling lights of the clubhouse windows, and once they heard voices and laughter from somewhere on the river as though a boating party ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Gilberte had her plan ready. She was on the lookout; and, as soon as she heard the carriage stop, she ran to her room, undressed in a twinkling, and went to bed. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... have said already, bluff and good-natured, with a pair of hazel eyes, of the smallest—but, at the same time, of the very merriest—twinkling from under the thick black eyebrows, which were the only hairs suffered to grace his clean-shaved countenance. An indescribable pug nose, and a good clean cut mouth, with a continual dimple at the left corner, made up his phiz. For the rest, four feet ten inches did Tim stand in his stockings, about ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... to sweeter night, And twinkling stars come out on high, Like sentinels in armor bright, To watch amid the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... But, woe to that poor, worthless wight Who 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 ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... level he fixed his gaze on her, and, stopping suddenly, he ducked under her arm and was inside the house in a twinkling. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... before us as if under the light of a cloudless sun. The lawn, the blue lake, the distant Alpine summits, the landscape around, with its pines, villas, and vineyards, all leaped out of the womb of night, stood in vivid intense splendour before the eye, and in a twinkling was again gone. This amazing transition from midnight to noonday, and from noonday to midnight, was repeated again and again. I was now to witness the sublimities of a thunder-storm on ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... its twinkling stars swept the Dartaway, and Sam gave the direction to be taken by consulting the tiny pocket compass he carried. Of course these directions were crude, but they were better than nothing, and soon Tom ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... during the engagement was on the middle-deck, where I was quartered with another boy, to bring powder to the aftermost gun; and here I was a witness of the dreadful fate of many of my companions, who, in the twinkling of an eye, were dashed in pieces, and launched into eternity. Happily I escaped unhurt, though the shot and splinters flew thick about me during the whole fight. Towards the latter part of it my master was wounded, and I saw him carried down to the surgeon; but though I was much ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... twinkling star, That, when the sun has gone, Is shining out the first afar, To tell ...
— Cousin Hatty's Hymns and Twilight Stories • Wm. Crosby And H.P. Nichols
... deal,' I answered with a smile. For it was quite delightful to me, to find him so pleasant. He was a twinkling-eyed, pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright all over his head; and as he stood with one arm a-kimbo, holding up the glass to the light with the other hand, he looked ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... door was opened, Mr Wentworth saw at a glance that there was agitation and trouble in the house. Lights were twinkling irregularly in the windows here and there, but the family apartment, the cheerful drawing-room, which generally threw its steady, cheerful blaze over the dark garden, shone but faintly with half-extinguished lights and undrawn ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... At last the 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
... All unconscious, I think,—gallantly posed against the wall, thy slouch hat brought forward to the point of thy long cigar, the arms of thy velvet jacket folded on thy breast, and thy ear-rings softly twinkling ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... idea, there alone in the woods cabin, with the stars in their deep velvet canopy twinkling through the window at him and the glow of his ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... one at the wheel the Maggie shot off at a tangent and the hawsers slacked immediately. In the twinkling of an eye Mr. Gibney had cast them off, and as the ends disappeared with a swish over the stern he ran back to the pilot house, rang for full speed ahead, put his helm hard over, and headed the Maggie in the general direction ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... attention, for I was taking my first lesson in handling a boat, and I was deeply interested. Skilfully he navigated the crowded river, and I hauled in and let out the sheet twenty times before we reached the broad lake. The drawbridges were whisked open in the twinkling of an eye, and in about half an hour we ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... took off her cap, and let down her beautiful hair. I unlaced her corset, and in the twinkling of an eye I had before me such a siren as one sees on the canvas of Correggio. I could not look upon her long without covering her with my burning kisses, and, communicating my ardour, before long she made a place for me beside ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... words and manner meant, and in a twinkling the thirteen men were in their saddles, and, with their gallant leader at their head, galloped forth ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... the mining company is almost free from them, and in the beautiful light evenings one can sit under the verandahs undisturbed, watching the play of the moonbeams on the silky leaves of the bananas, the twinkling north star just peeping over the range in front, with "Charlie's Wain" in the upper half of its endless circlings, whilst in the opposite direction the eye rests on the beautiful constellations of the southern hemisphere. On the darkest nights innumerable fire-flies flash their intermittent ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... of Manhattan and Greater New York twinkling below. The Empire State Building tower was still above us, as the plane banked over ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... varied interests there collected and then reflect that out on the ocean, at night, the sole indication of the existence of this elaborate structure was given by the few beams of light that happened to radiate from it. Now raise your eyes to the stars; there are the twinkling lights. We cannot see what those lights illuminate, we can only conjecture what untold wealth of non-luminous bodies may also lie in their vicinity; we may, however, feel certain that just as the few gleaming lights from a ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... 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 ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... sparkled full of sun, and a breeze from the south-west frolicked with the twinkling leaves of the overarching elms, and made their shadows dance on the crisp roadway, packed hard by the rain, and faced with clean sand, which crackled pleasantly under Mrs. Munger's phaeton wheels. She talked incessantly. "I think we'll go first ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... and determined, he was only one man against a score, nearly all the bystanders being tenants or laborers on the Compton estates; and spite of his furious efforts, and menaces of law and vengeance, Clara was torn from him in a twinkling, and himself hurled with some violence prostrate on the road. "Do not let them hurt the man," said Lady Compton, as the servants placed the insensible girl in the carriage (she had fainted); "and tell ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... slightly grazed the pig; but what I confess to being perfectly unprepared for was the boar charging violently down-hill on poor unoffending me, with his head on one side ready for the fatal backward jerk, champing and foaming as he came, with what Mr. Weller would call his "vicked old eye" twinkling with rage. Helen could not realize the situation at all. I tried to turn her, and so get out of the infuriated brute's way; but no, she would press on to meet him and join the other horses at the top of the hill. I had very little control over her, for I was ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... red-hot plowshares of resistance. Now almost at the summit she looks back to see following her an army with banners. May she long worship where she stands at Truth's mountain altar, as, with the royal sunset flush upon her brow, she catches the beckoning of the lights twinkling on the heavenly shore.... The South is a maiden well worthy of the allegiance of this cause, and when her aid is given it will be as devoted as it has been reserved. The South is the land where has lingered latest ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the raging ocean wave The gloom o' night is spread, If lemes the twinkling beacon-light, The sailor's heart is glad; In hope he steers, but, 'mid the storm, If sinks the waning ray, Dees a' that hope, an' fails his saul, O'erpress'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... these three were shattered in the twinkling of an eye, something else broke, too. And he gradually emerged from chaos, indifferent to all that had formerly been a part of him, a silent emotionless, burnt out thing, callous to all that he had once ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... glass empty. The last drop had tasted like vinegar. Always one has to fight, and for a while I sat in silence before my table piled now with dishes of fruit. My hands gripped the sides of my chair, my eyes were fixed upon a twinkling light which had shot out from the distant hillside. Always one has to fight for the things worth having—and ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Dr. Thornton used to drop in for a few minutes, 'most every practice afternoon?" replied Hudson. "I can remember just how his full, kindly old face, with the twinkling eyes, used to encourage the fellows up to the prettiest work that was in then. Oh, he was a ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... to the unsteadiness of the air that stars are seen to twinkle. A night when this takes place, though it may please the average person, is worse than useless to the astronomer, for the unsteadiness is greatly magnified in the telescope. This twinkling is, no doubt, in a great measure responsible for the conventional "points" with which Art has elected to embellish stars, and which, of course, have ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... ears and brain alert, however, he waited. He knew that all he required to know would reach him through a channel that was quite effortless to himself. Again he stretched himself out on the bench, and his twinkling eyes closed luxuriously. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Anyway the die was cast; it was too late now to regret. Bell returned full of apology and explanation, expressing a desire that the weapons be changed to pistols. Hardy arose from his chair, his eyes twinkling behind heavy lashes. ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... The ruffians hastened to extricate him, and raise him up. Carl, who, with an open knife concealed in his sleeve, had been waiting for an opportunity, darted at the tree, cut the negro's bonds in a twinkling, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... children's dresses, in order to prepare them for bed, not a single costume would come off. The buttons buttoned again as fast as they were unbuttoned; even if they pulled out a pin, in it would slip again in a twinkling; and when a string was untied it tied itself up again into a bowknot. The parents were dreadfully frightened. But the children were so tired out they finally let them go to bed in their fancy costumes and thought ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Wait till we have passed this uneven ground. Mares always travel faster on rough roads than on smooth country." And so it happened, for when they arrived in the plain, Dahir shot forward like a giant, leaving a trail of dust behind him. It seemed as if he went on wings, not legs; in the twinkling of an eye he had outstripped Ghabra. "Here," cried the Absian to the Fazarean groom, "send a messenger from me to the family of Beder, and you yourself drink the bitter cup of patience behind me." Meanwhile Shidoub, swift as the north wind, kept ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... thrown back, his white throat exposed, his tail raised, his whole body gathered together, prepared to bound away into the deep forest in the twinkling of an eye, he stands a splendid specimen of the cervine tribe. We will not kill him; we look and admire! A doe suddenly gives that imperceptible signal to which I have formerly alluded, and the next moment the whole herd has dashed through the bamboo ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... they dragged Lampaxo on the poop, her outcry rose to a tempest till Lars the Etruscan clapped his hand upon her mouth. Her screaming stilled, but his own outcry more than replaced it. In a twinkling the virago's hard teeth closed over his fingers. Two ran from the oars to him. But the woman, conscious that she fought for life or death, held fast. Curses, blows, even a dagger pried betwixt her lips—all bootless. She seemed as a thing possessed. And ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... with so living a voice of sadness as does this old Byzantine church. The human element is at Paestum too far away,—too utterly dead and forgotten. In St. Apollinare life still lingers. Life, flickering in its last spark, like the twinkling of a lamp which the next moment will extinguish, is still there. Life more suggestive of death, than any utter absence of ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... sudden darkness, deepened by the shadowy trees, a false step might precipitate cart and passengers into the deep water. Any advance becomes dangerous on the winding way, which follows every curve of the irregular shore, so a halt is called, while the boy rides on towards some twinkling lights denoting a lakeside campong. After a long wait, he returns in triumph with three matches and a piece of flaming tow in a bottle. By observing due precaution, we can now follow his guidance, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... of steps and voices; they listen; they glance in the direction of the sound, and perceive a detachment of armed men, one of those that were out in search of them. The servants take to flight; but Lampagie, too weary, cannot follow them, nor can Abi-Nessa abandon Lampagie. In the twinkling of an eye they are surrounded by foes. The chronicler Isidore of Bdja says that Abi-Nessa, in order not to fall alive into their hands, flung himself from top to bottom of the rocks; and an Arab historian relates that he ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the butte. A full quarter of a mile ahead of them flickered a large fire, with several smaller blazes twinkling here and there about it. Shadowy figures were observed moving back and forth, some with rapid movements, others in slow, ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... these were placed in a tube made of sheet copper. It was tested on distant objects; and behold! they were magnified by three. Would this tube show the stars magnified? Galileo knew of no reason why it should not, but he paced his room in hot impatience, waiting for the night to come with its twinkling wonders, that he might verify his convictions. When the first yellow star appeared in the West, Galileo turned his tube upon it, and behold! instead of twinkling points of light, he saw a round mass—a world—moving through space, and not a scintillating object with five points. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... as an Indian well might be. Before my companions and self had had time to sit down and make choice of any particular dish, all was disappearing like a dream. A general opposite to me took hold of a fowl, and in the twinkling of an eye, severed the wings and legs. I thought it was polite of him to carve for others as well as himself, and was waiting for him to pass over the dish after he had helped himself, when, to my surprise, he retained all he had cut off, and pushed the carcase of the bird away from him. ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... up and opened his palms, with a twinkling of pendant emeralds. 'I am royal,' he answered, with naive dignity, 'and the tiger is a royal beast. Kings know the ways of kings. If a king kills what is kingly, it owes him no grudge for it. But if a common man or a low caste man ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... the subject treated, mixing the conversational salad like a drunken god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... train pulled up to the station. The December evening was clear and crisp as southern Kansas Decembers usually are. The lights of the town were twinkling in the dusk. Out beyond the river a gorgeous purple and scarlet after-sunset glow was filling the west with that magnificence of coloring only the hand of Nature ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... tufts of heather on the verge of the cliff, he swung himself on to firm ground, and proved to be a boy of about ten years of age; thin and wiry, with a dark face and bright twinkling eyes. His thin brown wrists had grown a long way out of the sleeves of his jacket; and he had torn a hole in the knee of ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... to neck and heel to heel, with the starry sky above and the long level of the plain before them. Mead glanced to the north, where the Big Dipper, pivoted on the twinkling pole star, was swinging its mighty course through the blue spaces of the sky, and said, "It's about midnight, boys." The dim, faintly gleaming, dusty gray of the road contracted to a lance-like point in front of them and sped onward, seeming to cleave ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... in his head and smiled. It was a particularly good-looking head, with twinkling brown eyes, and ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... thousand a year to accept the presidency of Blaines College. And this was how they rewarded him. To him, as he sat long in his office brooding upon the darkness of life, there came a visitor, a tall, angular, twinkling-eyed, slow-speaking individual who perpetually chewed an unlighted cigar. He was Plonny Neal, no other, the reputed great chieftain of city politics. Once the Post, in an article inspired by West, had referred to Plonny as "this notorious ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... shouts and the tramping of feet—sounds which brought the flying jhampanis back in a twinkling, surcharged with voluble valour and explanations. Resistance was useless. Moreover, to the fanatic, death is the one great gift. With stoical indifference the man found himself overpowered and disarmed. Zealous villagers, unrolling turbans and kummerbunds, made fast his ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... projected out a very little beyond the surrounding portions of the wall, just far enough to be perceived by the touch. She pressed upon it to ascertain if it was really unmovable, and, as she did so, open flew a small door, barely large enough to admit a single person through its portals. In a twinkling her labors of the past day and night came to remembrance, and ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... spake the Son of Sigmund, and beheld no man anear, And again was the night the midnight, and the twinkling flames shone clear In the hush of the Glittering Heath; and alone went Sigmund's son Till he came to the road of Fafnir, and the highway worn by one, By the drift of the rain unfurrowed, by the windy years unrent, And forth ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... faint—it meant so much more than I could say "yea" to on the spot. In a flash, somehow, all was different; the tremendous wave I speak of had swept something away. It had knocked down, I suppose, my little customary altar, my twinkling tapers and my flowers, and had reared itself into the likeness of a temple vast and bare. When Neil Paraday should come out of the house he would come out a contemporary. That was what had happened: the poor man was to be squeezed into his horrible age. I felt as if he had been overtaken on ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... twinkling of an eye she was undressed and in the arms of her little wife, whom she proceeded to treat as an amorous husband. My sweetheart laughed, and Sara, having contrived in the combat to rid herself of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... out of which to gather makeshift navies, until it could find leisure to build stancher ships. Manifestly the Government had no time for such a work. The existing Medical Bureau was hardly equal to the task. Organized to take charge of an army of ten thousand men, in the twinkling of an eye that army became five hundred thousand. At the beginning of the war the medical staff must have been very busy and very heavily burdened. With great hospitals to build, with troops of willing, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... sort was made by the boats in the river. Over the stockade and the Rajah's buildings Brown saw their lights on the water. They seemed to be anchored across the stream. Other lights afloat were moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to side. There were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of houses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others isolated inland. The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs, black piles as far as he could see. It was an ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... changed. Here was the companion of so many former dangers, the man who had taught me my profession, one that I can truly say I loved, quite near me, and possibly dying for the want of that aid which I might render! I was on deck in the twinkling of an eye; the sheets were eased off, and the helm put up. Obedient to my wishes, the ship fell off, and I soon got a glimpse, from the spot where I stood, at the wheel, of the wreck a little clear of the weather cat-head. By this time, the wind was so light, and the ship had got to be so deep in ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... leaning to the radical party. But when on the first of August, 1764, Thomas Hancock died of apoplexy, leaving his Beacon Hill mansion and fifty thousand dollars to his widow, Lydia Hancock, and to John his warehouses, ships, and the residue of his estate, in the twinkling of an eye the young man became a prominent factor in the business world of the day, as the sole owner of an extensive export and import trade. But more important to him than the fortune which he had inherited was the knowledge that he was now at liberty ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... sly and somewhat greedy act with a twinkling eye. When the dervish had drained the dish, the host filled a glass full to the brim with vinegar, and, with fierce joviality, bade him drink it. The poor man hesitated, and said something about wine and a mistake, but the Pasha repeated "Drink!" with such a roar, and threw his sword ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... boys," she answered, her eyes twinkling at the thought of being able to fleece us, as she led us into a small room at the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... exterminate (our forces) even thus! Let thy heart's anguish, however, be dispelled. I tell thee truly that with Vasudeva as my ally, I can, on a single car, exterminate the three worlds with even the immortals, indeed, all mobile creatures that were, are, will be, in the twinkling of the eye. This is what I think. That terrible and mighty weapon which the Lord of all creatures (Mahadeva) gave me on the occasion of my hand-to-hand encounter with him (in the guise of) a hunter, still existeth with me. Indeed, O tiger among men, that weapon which the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... stars were out. Helouan, with her fairy twinkling lights, lay silent against the Desert edge. The sand was at the flood. The period of the Encroaching of the Desert was at hand, and the deeps were all astir with movement. But in the windless air was a great peace. A calm of infinite stillness breathed everywhere. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... George, and in the twinkling of an eye he seized hold of the alarm-bell rope and in an instant awakened the tired sleepers of the ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... breathing, the snap of the fire, or the crack of a timber in the deadly frost broke the silence. Inside it was warm and bright and home-like; outside it was twenty degrees below zero, and like some vast tomb where life itself was congealed, and only the white stars, low, twinkling, and quizzical, lived-a life of sharp ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his head with a single blow. I was tempted by curiosity, once while on the station, to attend the execution of some ordinary criminals; and I can testify to the deftness and instantaneousness with which one head fell, in the flash of a sword or the twinkling of an eye. I did not care to view the fates of the three others condemned, but it was clear that no judicial death could be more ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... darkness. He was what I expected, a bedraggled vagabond with tear-stains on his dirty cheeks and a vast shock of hair which I well knew would look, in daylight, like a burning haycock. And as I examined him he just as carefully examined me. I could see his shrewd blue eyes twinkling. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... graybeard, his bright eyes twinkling merrily as he turned toward the tempting Daemon. "The boys and girls are never so noisy and fretful after receiving my presents, and if I can make them happy for one day in the year ...
— A Kidnapped Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... to the use of his name, he had believed that Maryanne would at last be true to him. Poppins, indeed, had hinted his suspicions, but in the way of prophecy Poppins was a Cassandra. Poppins saw a good deal with those twinkling eyes of his, but Robinson did not trust to the wisdom of Poppins. Up to that hour he had believed in Maryanne, and then in the short flash of an instant the truth had come upon him. She had again promised herself to ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... she doesn't like your company, Dave," he mused aloud, eyes twinkling. "She seemed kinder fond of ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... blackened unlovely prospect, but now cheerfully and with hope; for the eastern sky was piled up range beyond range with the scarlet and purple splendour of cloud-land, and, as darkness gathered, we saw the lightning, not twinkling and glimmering harmlessly about the horizon, as it had been all the summer, but falling sheer in violet-coloured rivers behind the dark curtain of rain that hung from the black edge ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... obliged to endure all the noonday heat, that, when the sun was at the highest and we looked eagerly every way for even a dry and leafless bush that we might crouch down beneath its shade, we saw at a distance before us the tall trunk of a cedar, bleached to ivory, and twinkling like a pharos under the hot rays. We slowly approached it, Hadad, my Ethiopian, knowing it as one of the pillars of ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... back the water was up to the last windows of houses that were three storeys high. All the belongings of the householders were floating about, and people were sinking through the water, their lives going out as swiftly as twinkling bubbles. In an attic window he saw a young girl loosen her hair, she was singing a song, preparing to meet death as if she were making ready for a lover. A man at the top of a ladder was gulping whiskey from a bottle, and when the water sprang at his throat ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... louder and louder the pattering of geta over the bridge. It is a sound never to be forgotten, this pattering of geta over the Ohashi -rapid, merry, musical, like the sound of an enormous dance; and a dance it veritably is. The whole population is moving on tiptoe, and the multitudinous twinkling of feet over the verge of the sunlit roadway is an astonishment. All those feet are small, symmetrical—light as the feet of figures painted on Greek vases—and the step is always taken toes first; indeed, with geta it could be taken no other way, for the heel touches ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... this particular joke. The comedy of a judge's being addressed as an Irish bastard did not strike him. I doubt if half-a-dozen members of the House of Commons realised the beauty of the joke till Sir Hamar Greenwood got up and explained it. "I happen to know the judge," said the twinkling Chief Secretary. "He told the story himself with great glee, and here it is. Mr Justice Wylie, the last, and one of the best judges appointed in Ireland, was riding on a tramcar to a hunting meet. When he got to the end of his ride, there were some policemen ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... trek! He waved the twinkling-eyed, curious landlord back, and went up into the foremost waggon, drawing the canvas close. He faced the truth in there, and realized with a throe of mortal anguish that the burial must be soon—very soon. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves |
