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Beacon   Listen
noun
Beacon  n.  
1.
A signal fire to notify of the approach of an enemy, or to give any notice, commonly of warning. "No flaming beacons cast their blaze afar."
2.
A signal, such as that from a lighthouse, or a conspicuous mark erected on an eminence near the shore, or moored in shoal water, as a guide to mariners.
3.
A high hill near the shore. (Prov. Eng.)
4.
That which gives notice of danger. "Modest doubt is called The beacon of the wise."
5.
(Navigation) A radio transmitter which emits a characteristic signal indication its location, so that vehicles may determine their exact location by locating the beacon with a radio compass; also called radio beacon.
6.
(fig.) That which provides guidance or inspiration; the Constitution has been a beacon for civil rights activists.
Beacon fire, a signal fire.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beacon" Quotes from Famous Books



... is a very proper thing to point out to an Emperor the virtues he ought to display, it involves a heavy responsibility to do so and it has rather a presumptuous look, whereas to eulogise an excellent ruler and so hold up a beacon to his successors by which they may steer their path, is not only an act of public service but involves ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... conflagration like a menacing shadow move With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable, The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the firmament. For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon- fire, And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day's apparition forth. Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering: Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate hours: Lo, the ravish'd beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... seeds of freedom, and had scattered them abroad upon soil quick to receive them. The flame of Liberty, kindled on the shores of the Western Continent, was reflected back upon the Old World. France beheld its beams, and hailed them as a beacon-light, which should lead the nations out from the bondage of ages. Inspirited by the success attending the struggle in the British colonies, the French people, long crushed beneath a grinding despotism, resolved ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... what it was—a beautiful allegory, the fondly dreamed fulfilment of a world-old desire. And bringing thus a sharpened critical sense to bear on the Scriptures, Mahony embarked on his voyage of discovery. Before him, but more as a warning than a beacon, shone the example of a famous German savant, who, taking our Saviour's life as his theme, demolished the sacred idea of a Divine miracle, and retold the Gospel story from a rationalistic standpoint. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... a view was obtained of this beacon, the progress of the adventurers became swifter and more certain. In a few minutes they got to the edge of the circle of little huts. Here they stopped to survey their ground, and to concert their movements. The darkness was so deep ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... wanted to take ever so humble a part in it, but without your hearing a word or a sigh from me. Besides, I had you always before me as an example; because I knew that you would have done it for me—indeed that you had already done as much. Your example was like a shining beacon to ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... moonlight. But Carne, in another moment, thought that the man who had passed must be Scudamore, probably fraught with hot tidings. And the thought was confirmed, as he met two troopers riding as hard as ride they might; and then saw the beacon on the headland flare. From point to point, and from height to height, like a sprinkle of blood, the red lights ran; and the roar of guns from the moon-lit sea made echo that they were ready. Then the rub-a-dub-dub of the drum arose, and the thrilling ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... thine, To quicken and inspire! Fabled Prometheus well might dare To steal from heaven such fire. For 'tis a beacon light to guide To rapturous joy and peace, In this our present earthly home, And where ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... amelioration, unless, by forcing them up slippery paths and to the utmost verge of possibility, they can dash them down the precipice the instant they reach the promised Pisgah. They think it nothing to hang up a beacon to guide or warn, if they do not at the same time frighten the community like a comet. They do not mind making their principles odious, provided they can make themselves notorious. To win over the public opinion by ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... of mind, which the captain of the Culloden himself experienced for so many eventful hours. There was but one consolation which could offer itself to him, in the midst of the distresses of his situation—a feeble one, it is true—that his ship served as a beacon for three other ships, viz. the Alexander, Theseus, and Leander, which were advancing, with all possible sail set, close in his rear: and which, otherwise, might have experienced a similar misfortune; and ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... the slope from the cook tent. We were too tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were white and splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great beacon lights. The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by amphitheatric mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls of rock. The night grew cold and very still. The bells on the horses tinkled distantly. There was a soft murmur ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... near the shore, And the beacon lights expire, The surf-capped waves swell more and more, And threaten with ruin dire; But only the surface sea is rough; The ocean's depths are calm, And a star affords me light enough, The ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... which stood out as a beacon light in an ocean of literature worthy of the Stone Age, was a small pamphlet issued by the Michigan Agricultural College on luncheons in rural schools. Sound doctrine was preached on the need of the children for substantial and warm noon meals, and the comparative ease and economy ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... St. Renan stood in the shadow of a dense trellice in the garden, watching the moment when that love-beacon should expire. The clock of St. Germain l'Auxerre struck twelve, and at the instant all was darkness. Another minute and the lofty wall was scaled, and Melanie was in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... [23:1] By these symbolical discourses He at once blinded the eyes of His enemies, and furnished materials for profitable meditation to His genuine disciples. The parables, like the light of prophecy, are, to this very day, a beacon to the Church, and a stumbling-block ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... disciples of Luther instead of Luther; while Methodists have followed Wesley and not Wesley's disciples. The Dutch, Swedish and German Lutherans in the east, all learned English. We say it was a transition, but was it not a revolution? Their history stands forth as beacon lights of warning to the polyglot Lutherans migrating to the ends of earth and learning all languages. They will no more keep up their faith with one language than the English nation will keep up their trade by refusing to learn other ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... of the party was broken up, the fire which had burned hitherto in but a single beacon was scattered upon a thousand hills. Nevertheless, the first breaking up of the party was eminently disheartening to its living members. But it was not by external violence that it was broken, but by the development within itself of a distinctive Romeward bias. Dr. Newman lays ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... beacon ever fired Stands up on Heaven's Hill to show The limit of the thing desired, Beyond which man may ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson

... lies a great shoal or sand called the Black Tail, which runs out near three leagues into the sea due east; at the end of it stands a pole or mast, set up by the Trinity House men of London, whose business is to lay buoys and set up sea marks for the direction of the sailors; this is called Shoe Beacon, from the point of land where this sand begins, which is called Shoeburyness, and that from the town of Shoebury, which stands by it. From this sand, and on the edge of Shoebury, before it, or south west of it, all along, to the mouth of Colchester ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe

... a rolling cloud of smoke Would hang on the sea-limits, faint and far, But through the night the beacon-flame upbroke From some rich island-town begirt with war; And all these things could neither make nor mar The joy of lovers wandering, but they Sped happily, and heedless of the star That hung o'er their ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... of the warnings, the flagship was found to have been somehow equipped, by Mekin, with a tiny, special microwave transmitter which used a frequency not usual on Kandar. It was, in effect, a radio beacon on which enemy missiles could home. Also, the lead ship of a cruiser-squadron had been mysteriously geared to reveal its exact position, course and speed while in space. There were other concealed devices. Some would make the controls of predetermined ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wagstaff and accepts with great pleasure their invitation to meet the Governor of the Fort on the evening of June fifteenth. 215 Beacon Street, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... 1874 appeared four pictures, the most important being the heroic painting,—Clytemnestra from the Battlements of Argos watches for the Beacon-fires which are to announce the Return of Agamemnon. In this picture, the figure of Clytemnestra is seen standing erect, with hands folded, supporting the drapery that clothes a majestic form. For further description, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... the Kymore, like that of Rotas, here projects to the bed of the river, and was blazing at night with the beacon-like fires of the natives, lighted to scare the tigers and bears from the spots where they cut wood and bamboo; they afforded a splendid spectacle, the flames in some places leaping zig-zag from hill to hill in front of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... moral exhortation is, therefore, to analyse it and find out its true signification. For all such concepts as justice, rights, freedom, chivalry—and it is with these that we shall be specially concerned—are, when properly defined and understood beacon-lights, but when ill understood and undefined, stumbling-blocks ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... excellent Gift of Love shall enable us to read together the whole Booke of Sanctity and Virtue, and emulate eache other in carrying it into Practice; and as the wise Magians kept theire Eyes steadfastlie fixed on the Star, and followed it righte on, through rough and smoothe, soe we, with this bright Beacon, which indeed is set on Fire of Heaven, shall pass on through the peacefull Studdies, surmounted Adversities, and victorious Agonies of ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... plunged into the court. She could see the loge at the far end, up a flight of three shallow steps. Light streamed out of the wide glass double doors so frequently seen in this type of building; she aimed her faltering steps towards it as to a beacon. Within the doors she saw a brightly lit, stuffy room overcrowded with machine-carved furniture, the central table covered with a red chenille cloth, on which lay a string-bag bursting with vegetables and parcels. No ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... to generation, which, while it never enslaved nor constrained the mind, showed it the road followed by past ages, and established the communion of a whole nation in its light. Many a German spirit—like birds strayed in the night—came winging towards the distant beacon. But who is there in France can dream of the power of the sympathy which drives so many generous hearts from the neighboring nation towards France! So many hands stretched out: hands that are not responsible for ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... expressed to Mr. Littlewood a hope that after his execution his name would never be mentioned again, but before they parted he asked Mr. Littlewood, as a favour, to preach a sermon on him after his death to the good people of Darnall. He wished his career held up to them as a beacon, in order that all who saw might avoid his example, and so his death be of some service ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... of self. It will be the nucleus round which will gather the timid but anxious, and then will be lighted that fire which no waters can quench. It burns for the liberty of thought. Let human nature once feel the warmth of its beacon fires, and it will march onward, defying all obstacles, braving all perils till it be won. Human nature is ever reaching for the unattained. It is that little spark within us that has an undying life. When we can no longer use it, it ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... a beacon," smiled Dick, as he rested against a tree trunk just off the road. He was about to take a step when ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... always kept to the comparatively low lands to the west of Jordan, while the barbarous mountaineers of the eastern range never did anything,—had but one Elijah to show among them. Shakspeare never saw a hill higher than Malvern Beacon; and yet I suppose you will call him a poet? Mountaineers look well enough at a distance; seen close at hand you find their chief distinctions to be starvation and ignorance, fleas and goitre, with an utter unconsciousness—unless travellers ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... strengthened and rendered nearly impassable. Smaller missiles, that might be hurled even by the hands of the younger children, but which would prove, from the elevation of the place, exceedingly dangerous, were provided in profusion. A pile of dried leaves and splinters were placed, as a beacon, on the upper rock, and then, even in the jealous judgment of the squatter, the post was deemed competent to ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." But while the despoiled tombs of the Pharaohs mock the vanity that reared them, the name of the Hebrew who, revolting from their tyranny, strove for the elevation of his fellow-men, is yet a beacon light to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... Province, it will complete our sketch of the military organization of the frontier over which Talbot had the chief command. The whole or any portion of this force could be assembled in a few hours to meet the emergencies of the time. Signals were established for the muster of the border. Beacon fires on the hills, the blowing of horns, and the despatch of runners were familiar to the tenants, and often called the ploughman away from the furrow to the appointed gathering-place. Three musket-shots fired ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... the mansion, inherited from his uncle, on Beacon Street, facing the Common. There was a chariot and six horses for state occasions, much fine furniture from over the sea, elegant clothes that the Puritans called "gaudy apparel," and at the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... bounds Set for their progress, they must topple and fall Into that gulf of ruin which has swallowed All ancient Empires, States, Republics; all Perishing, in like manner, from the selfsame cause! The terrible conjunction of the event, Close with the provocation, stands apart, A social beacon in all histories; And yet we take no heed, but still rush on, Under mixed sway of greed and vanity, And like the silly boy with his card-castle, Precipitate to ruin ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... the narrow road leading to Chantebled, where the lamp shone out like a beacon. When Mathieu had bolted the front door they groped their way upstairs. The ground floor of their little house comprised a dining-room and a drawing-room on the right hand of the hall, and a kitchen and a store place on the left. Upstairs there were four bedrooms. Their scanty ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... that he had estimated Verminet's character correctly, and the relations of the Marquis de Croisenois with this very equivocal personage assumed a meaning of great significance to him. He felt now that he had gained a clue, a beacon blazed out before him, and he saw his way more clearly into the difficult windings of this labyrinth of iniquity which he knew that he must penetrate before he gained ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... with the Muses, that for Melissos too we kindle such beacon-blaze of song, a worthy prize of the pankration for ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... my sake, now away! And yet a word. By all thy hopes most dear, be true to me! Go now!—yet stay! Clifford, while you are here, I'm like a bark distressed and compassless, That by a beacon steers; when you're away, That bark alone and tossing miles at sea! Now go! Farewell! My compass—beacon—land! When shall my eyes be blessed with ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles

... stormy wave, The beacon's light appears, When yawns the seaman's watery grave, And his lone ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... retrogression, nowhere better or worse, nowhere sense or consistency at all. Systems, however imposing, structures, however vast, fly into dust and powder at a touch. The stars fall from the human firmament; the beacon-lights dance like will-o'-the-wisps; the whole universe of history opens, cracks, and dissolves in smoke; and we, from an ever-vanishing shore, gaze with impotent eyes at the last gleam on the wings of the dove of ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... and beacon fires glared out on every hill and mountain-top. Coressus and Pion were aflame, great torches whirled and rushed wildly up and down the mountain-side, and moved in fiery lines throughout ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... he walked to the edge of the nearest canal, and gathered a bushel or so of dried Martian moss. He returned and began polishing the shiny exterior of the wrecked space ship. It had to really glitter if it was to be an effective beacon ...
— Say "Hello" for Me • Frank W. Coggins

... Dawn came with dull beacon fires on the near hill tops, and, far in the East, roses over the Sierran snow. Birds twittering in the alder fringes a mile below, and the creaking of wagon wheels,—the wagon itself a mere cloud of dust in the distant road,—were ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... the north across the island of Pharos, and the shallows of Diabathra in the great harbour of Alexandria. The water, usually so placid, rose in high waves, and the beacon on the lighthouse of Sastratus sent the rent abundance of its flames with hostile impetuosity towards the city. The fires in the pitch-pans and the torches on the shore sometimes seemed on the point of being extinguished, at others burst with a doubly brilliant blaze through ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... arbitrary, was fitter for conspiracy than action: the ardour of his mind was excessive, but concentrated. He shed neither those lights nor those flames which kindle enthusiasm—that explosion of ideas. It was the lamp of the Gironde party; it was neither its beacon nor ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... Beacon, Bon Chretien, Clapp's Favourite, Fertility, Conference, Marie Louise d'Uccle, ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... my driver reassured me. 'Nay, oo'be to home, theer's a light i' yon winder,' he said, pointing with his whip where a faint streak of yellow shone like a beacon into the surrounding gloom. The moon was struggling through the clouds, and I could dimly discern the outline of the quaint gabled front of the house, with its mullioned windows, and masses of clinging ivy. Dismounting at the old stone porch, I seized the knocker and beat a mighty tattoo. There was ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... bearings on that mountain-peak or some other beacon," said the captain. "He's got ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... disappearance of this beacon came lassitude and sleep, through whose hazy atmosphere floated wild sentences from the sick tent, which showed that the patient was back again in Nevada, quarreling over the price of a horse which was to carry him beyond the reach of some ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... becoming for them an inspiring example; its history, with all its experiences of hope and fear, its occasional failures but frequent successes, its struggles when environed by poverty or other untoward circumstances, and its final triumph over all obstacles, serving as a guide, a beacon indeed, to illumine their pathway as they climb the same difficult but glorious ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... captain telling them to leave him alone, as he felt quite well enough to remain by himself. Each man carried a bundle of drift-wood, some dry grass, or branches from the numerous low bushes they found in sheltered spots, to assist in lighting a beacon, should the vessel not draw near till nightfall. A tinder-box had enabled the other party to obtain a light. Bill went for it. When he told them of the ship being seen, ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... to the bare, fern-covered slope of Pook's Hill that runs up from the far side of the mill-stream to a dark wood. Beyond that wood the ground rises and rises for five hundred feet, till at last you climb out on the bare top of Beacon Hill, to look over the Pevensey Levels and the Channel and half the naked ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... Supreme Court of the new State. His admiration for the dispensing hand appears as follows: "Wisdom and integrity, with other noble qualities, gave Governor Bond a high standing with his contemporaries. Wisdom and integrity shed a beacon light around his path through life, showing him to be one of the noblest works ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... air seemed purer and cooler, and the current was not so strong. Mark looked up and saw a star—yes, actually a star—twinkling down at him like a beacon light. He was in water up to his shoulders, but the current was not strong; he could maintain his footing and ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... struggling alone Over life's desert sand; Faith, hope, and courage together are gone; Reach him a helping hand; Turn on his darkness a beam of your light; Kindle, to guide him, a beacon fire bright; Cheer his discouragement, soothe his affright, Lovingly help him ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... and attaches grace and integrity to the whole. One of the most novel features of the dome will be the arrangement of the tower, crowning its apex, into a light-house, which, from its extreme power and height, it is supposed, will furnish guidance to vessels as far out at sea as that afforded by any beacon on the neighboring coast. This is the suggestion of the architect, Mr. Kellum, but, whether or not it will be carried out in the execution of the design, Mr. Tucker, the superintendent of the work, is unable to say. The interior of the edifice is equally elaborate and complete, and several ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... and he put in not only bins, but barrels—chancing a faulty perspective in the hoops. All these things formed a repellent background of chill gray-blue, but they brought out the Squash. It shone. Yes, it shone like a beacon-light calling the weary and sophisticate town-dwellers back to the peace and simplicity of country life. And it was inclosed by four neatly mortised lengths of fencing, lichened and silvered by a half-century, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... and my poor driver breathed hard from the continual getting down and up. In the end a long and heavy cart-track brought us to the loneliest light that I have ever seen. It shone on the side of a hill—in the heart of an open wilderness—as solitary as a beacon-light at sea. It was the light of the cottage which was to be my ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... stories were told of the death of a woman who had come there with a man, and had not lived to go away with him. The roof of the adjoining stable had fallen in, the bars of the corral were missing. The house was dark but for a feeble light that glimmered in one window, the beacon that had been lighted, night after night, against Jim's coming. It added a further note of apprehension, peering through the dark, still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye, keeping a long and unrewarded vigil. Judith felt the consummation of the threatening ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... broke as she crouched far back against the wall; her hands over her ears, her eyes tightly closed. She was safe from wind and rain, but not from the sounds of that awful conflict. The lantern lay at her feet, sending its ray out into the storm with the senseless fidelity of a beacon light. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... said, probably," answered the engineer. "He's heading for Deimos, I suppose. I hear they're landscaping the whole moon—it's only about five miles in diameter—and building a new space station for a radio beacon and relay." ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe

... laughed again, but nevertheless dropped herself down into the further field; then, leaning her arms upon the cross-bar, she informed the young man: 'No, I don't wanter spoil your walk. You were goin' p'raps ter Beacon Point? ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... your ancestor, Cultivating your virtue, Always seeking to accord with the will (of Heaven):-So shall you be seeking for much happiness, Before Yin lost the multitudes, (Its kings) were the correlates of God'. Look to Yin as a beacon i The great appointment ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... Beacon Street came, a few minutes later, with welcomes and congratulations, Alfred bestowed a different sort of glance on his cousin Eulalia, and they both blushed; as young people often do, without knowing the reason why. Rosen Blumen and Lila had been studying with her the language ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... as well as on nearby Howland Island - but was disrupted by World War II and thereafter abandoned. Presently the island is a National Wildlife Refuge run by the US Department of the Interior; a day beacon is situated near the ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... world indeed, where Love is lord and Death is driven forth? or dost thou seek to soothe us with lying pictures of Paradise, such as the shipwrecked mariner in tropic seas beholds beneath the sultry brine? Is thy beacon in very truth a star; shining eternal in our cimmerian sky, a guide infallible to life's worn voyager; or a wandering fire such as the foolish follow,—a lying flame that leads the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... lantern with the thought of extinguishing it. But he changed his mind. There was no window that the light might become a beacon. He would close the door and ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... his spirit like a living flame, consuming dross and waste and evil, lighting up the future with its shining beacon, its message of hope to the hopeless, of rest and cheer and peace to all who labored and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... upon the fire, in addition to bundles of spruce branches; these made a blaze 20 feet high, and would form a beacon as a guide in the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... An assignation with that man, on the very first afternoon when his tender watchfulness left her for an hour! No, it could not be borne that he should read her so! She must clear herself! And thought, leaping beacon-like from point to point told her, at last, that for Gertrude too, she had chosen wrongly. Thank Heaven, there was still time! What could a girl do, all alone—groping in such a darkness? Better after all lay the case before Mark's ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... United Kingdom. I wish to draw your attention to the social distinction of the men upon that platform. No real nobleness will be imperiled by impartial listening to our plea. Would you rest secure in our respect, first feel secure in your own. If ten Beacon Street ladies would go to work, and take pay for their labor, it would do more good than all the speeches that were ever made, all the conventions that were ever held. I honor women who act. That is the reason ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... hauled down and true ones run up to the masthead, and many an immortal soul is warned to steer off in time from the pirates, rocks and quicksands of temptation. He's a regular revolving light, is the Captain,—a beacon always burning and saying plainly, 'Here are life-boats, ready to put off in all weathers and bring the shipwrecked into quiet waters.' He comes but seldom now, being laid up in the home dock, tranquilly ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... what I'm not sure about." Damaris spoke slowly, gravely, her glance again fixed upon the beacon light set for the safety of passing ships on the further horn of the bay. "If I could be sure, I should know what to do—know whether it is right to keep on as—as ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... was the beacon ray that lured him on. It lit his path on plain and mountain height, In wooded glade and on the flow'ry lawn— Where'er he strayed, ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... fire, as night fell, to serve both as beacon and as a defence against the cold. He felt himself weirdly remote in this vigil. From his far height he looked abroad upon the tumbled plain as if upon an ocean dimly perceptible yet august. "At this moment," he said, "curious and perhaps guilty eyes are wondering what my ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... together to make these next four years the best four years in America's history, so that on its 200th birthday America will be as young and as vital as when it began, and as bright a beacon of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... our climes vie in popular fame with the Glow-worm, that curious little animal which, to celebrate the little joys of life, kindles a beacon at its tail-end. Who does not know it, at least by name? Who has not seen it roam amid the grass, like a spark fallen from the moon at its full? The Greeks of old called it lampouris, meaning, the bright-tailed. Science employs the same term: it calls it the lantern-bearer, Lampyris noctiluca, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... Electa Pratt was seated in the awe-inspiring reception-room of Mrs. J. Mortimer Van Deuser's residence in Beacon Street. The two ladies were engaged in ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley

... the west country would hobble away to some high ground whence they obtained a view of the most prominent high hill, such as Bartinney-Chapel, Cambrae, Sancras Bickan, Castle-au-dinas, Cam-Gulver, St. Agnes-Bickan, and many other beacon hills far away to the north and east which vied with each other in their midsummer night blaze. They counted the fires, and drew a presage from the number of them. There are now but few bonfires to be seen on the western heights; ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... severe restraint, of earnest and measured enthusiasm. What the Psalm of Life is to the people who do not think, Rabbi ben Ezra might and should be to those who do: a light through the darkness, a lantern of guidance and a beacon of hope, to the wanderers lost and weary in the selva selvaggia. It is one of those poems that mould character. I can give only one or two of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... Harting to Elsted runs under the hills, which here rise abruptly from the fields, to great heights, notably Beacon Hill, like a huge green mammoth, 800 feet high, on which, before the days of telegraphy, lived the signaller, who passed on the tidings of danger on the coast to the next beacon hill, above Henley, and so on to London. In the days of Napoleon, when ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... Sheer o'er the howling edges of the world; Of how himself by God's good providence Was hurled into the strait Magellanus; Of how on the horrible frontiers of the Void He had watched in vain, lit red with beacon-fires The desperate coasts o' the black abyss, whence none Ever returned, though many a week he watched Beneath the Cross; and only saw God's wrath Burn through the heavens and devastate the mountains, And hurl unheard of ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... he born in Beacon Street, no, he was not. Dreadful as it may seem to you, I know nothing of either his father or his mother. But you will learn when you are a little wiser, that genius in order to be recognized and admired is not obliged ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... mind. It was then that he made Moore's acquaintance, and that of other clever men, among whom we may cite Rogers and Campbell. Moore especially, introduced under circumstances that brought out strongly the most amiable and estimable qualities of heart and mind, was to Lord Byron as a beacon-light amid the clouds external and internal harassing him then; and their sympathy was mutual and instantaneous. Lord Byron wrote ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... afternoon they sighted a group of islands of which the largest at once attracted their attention. A prominent feature of Rattlesnake Island, as outlined on the map, was a big dead pine, situated like a beacon, at the summit of the peak into which ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... the ultimate realisation of those ideals for which thousands of our race have sacrificed their lives, the spark of nationality which, even since Tone's death, has repeatedly leaped into flame, still glows fitfully to remind us that come what may it remains undying and unquenchable, a beacon to light us on the path to freedom should disappointment and dashed hopes again ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... given to the enemy. In action the chariots occupied the centre, the bowmen the left, the spearmen the right flank. Elephants were sometimes used in attack. Spy-kites, signal-flags, hook-ladders, horns, cymbals, drums, and beacon-fires were in use. The ears of the vanquished were taken to the king, quarter being rarely if ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... "sacred flame," because it was kindled solely with the idea of service—a beacon to keep young men from shipwreck traversing those straits made dangerous by the Scylla of Conventionality, and the Charybdis of License. The labour his writing cost him was enormous. "I shall never again make so great a sacrifice for the younger ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... blood-red sea of rage and hate The frenzied world rolls forward to its doom. But high above the gloom Flashes the fulgent beacon of thy fame, The nations thou hast saved exalt thy name— Albert ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... event, the purpose, it commemorates, that column rises, stern, even severe in its simplicity; neither niche nor molding for parasite or creeping thing to rest on; composed of material that defies the waves of time, and pointing like a finger to the source of noblest thought. Beacon of freedom, it guides the present generation to retrace the fountain of our years and stand beside its source; to contemplate the scene where Massachusetts and Virginia, as stronger brothers of the family, stood foremost to defend our common ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... mine have found at last Their apt solution; and from out the Past There seems to shine as 'twere a beacon-fire: And all the land is lit with large desire Of lambent glory; all the quivering sea Is big with waves that wait the Morn's decree As I, thy vassal, wait thy beckoning smile Athwart the splendors ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... particular in my inquiries at the keepers of the lighthouse regarding the sunk rocks lying off the Land's End, with the sets of the currents and tides along the coast: that I seemed particularly to regret the situation of the rocks called the Seven Stones, and the loss of a beacon which the Trinity Board had caused to be fixed on the Wolf Rock; that I had taken notes of the bearings of several sunk rocks, and a drawing of the lighthouse, and of Cape Cornwall. Further, that I had refused the honour ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... something if a Loadstar, in the eternal sky, do once more disclose itself; an everlasting light, shining through all cloud-tempests and roaring billows; ever as we emerge from the trough of the sea: the blessed beacon, far off on the edge of far horizons, towards which we are to steer incessantly for life? Is it not something; O Heavens, is it not all? There lies the Heroic Promised Land; under that Heaven's-light, my brethren, bloom the Happy Isles,—there, O ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... they died, the ancients say that Athene took them up to the sky. All night long Perseus and Andromeda shine as a beacon for wandering sailors, but all day long they feast with the gods, on the still blue peaks in the home ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... bright ascended Dead, Who scorned the bigot's yoke, Come, round this place your influence shed; Your spirits I invoke. Come, as ye came of yore, When on an unknown shore, Your daring hands the flag of faith unfurled, To float sublime, Through future time, The beacon-banner of another world. ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague

... those who knew it; but, upon the other side, it looked upon a waste of shoal, dotted, here and there, at lowest tide, with craggy breakers, and, at high water, smooth, smiling, and deceitful, with the covered dangers. Here, then, upon certain dark and stormy nights, the flaming beacon of destruction would glow brightly against the black sky, and wildly lighten up the cruel faces of those who stood by and piled on the fagots, while gazing eagerly out to sea to mark the effect of their evil machinations. Nor was it until some thirty years ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... Scarborough declare, that the cabbage soup and black bread of the poorest French peasants are really better suited to the sustenance of healthy life than the "messes" that pass for food in many parts of rural New England.—The Beacon. ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... he'd spent his whole life where money hardly whispered, let alone talked, and he was going now where it would shout. Wanted to know what was the use of being a nob if a fellow wasn't the nobbiest sort of a nob. Said he'd bought a house on Beacon Hill, in Boston, and that if I'd prick up my ears occasionally I'd hear something drop into the Back Bay. Handed me his new card four times and explained that it was the rawest sort of dog to carry a brace of names in your card holster; that it gave you the drop on the ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... grand, just showing their ragged outlines along a sky glowing with "the pomp that shuts the day"; while the nearer valleys and narrow plains were mysterious, yet soft, under the deep shadows they cast. Pianosa lay nearly opposite, distant some twenty miles, rising out of the water like a beacon; Elba was visible to the northeast, a gloomy confused pile of mountain at that hour; and Ghita once or twice thought she could trace on the coast of the main the dim outline of her own hill, Monte Argentaro; though the distance, some sixty or seventy miles, rendered this improbable. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... in the blue sky on the following morning (April 8). Clarence Island showed clearly on the horizon, and Elephant Island could also be distinguished. The single snow-clad peak of Clarence Island stood up as a beacon of safety, though the most optimistic imagination could not make an easy path of the ice and ocean that separated us from that ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... Hosmer's cause, but some other person got the commission. I remember, too, that my mother, at Mrs. Mann's request, was at great pains to make drawings for the face of the statue which now confronts from the slopes of Beacon Hill the culture and intelligence of Boston, which Horace Mann did so much to promote. But he was not a subject which accommodated itself readily to the requirements of plastic art. There is a glimpse of Miss Hosmer in one of my father's diaries, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... sign On each poor grain he lent to build the reef, As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay, Or deem his patient service all in vain? What if another sit beneath the shade Of the broad elm I planted by the way, —What if another heed the beacon light I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel, Have I not done my task and served my kind? Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown, And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world With noisy wind to swell a fool's renown, Joined with some truth be stumbled blindly o'er, Or ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... hill that emigrants first saw of the far-famed western mountains—especially its snow-covered crest, a veritable beacon, its summit glistening in the morning sun as its rays fell upon it, the majestic hill ever pointing out the direction which the earnest ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... are missing, this deponent has no doubt, were either murdered upon the steamboat or found a watery grave in the cataract of the Falls; and this deponent further says that immediately after the Caroline was got into the current of the stream and abandoned, as before stated, beacon lights were discovered upon the Canada shore near Chippewa, and after sufficient time had elapsed to enable the boats to reach that shore this deponent distinctly heard loud and vociferous cheering at that point; that this deponent has no doubt that the individuals who boarded ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... on bravely for another half hour. By this time it had become perfectly dark, and we could not discover the land ahead, but the black fellows seemed to guide their course by instinct, for I could see no welcoming beacon on the shore. To our satisfaction the wind did not increase, though the canoe tumbled about a good deal, and not for a moment were we able to cease baling. The blacks paddled on bravely through the pitchy darkness. Suddenly a flash of lightning burst ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... gentle Teme watering the verdant meadows through which they pass. All these hills and dales were once the Royal Forest, and afterwards the Royal Chase, of Belvern, covering nearly seven thousand acres in three counties; and from the lonely height of the Beacon no less than ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the chance as a wind-blown beacon-fire under press of shades. Changeing her hawkish manner toward the simple pair, she gave them view of a smile magical by contrast, really beautiful—the smile she had in reserve for serviceable persons whom she trusted—while thanking them and saying, that her anxiety ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ponds is appended to the passage quoted above, but the source of supply still remains obscure. The best dew ponds seem to be on the Sussex Downs, where far more fog and cooling cloud accumulates than on the more inland chalk ranges, because of the nearness of the sea. Near Inkpen Beacon, in Hampshire, there is a dew pond at a height of nine hundred feet, which is never dry, though it waters a large flock of sheep.[3] Dew ponds are often found where there are no other sources of supply, such as the wash ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... discovered the George River, which they named in honor of King George the Third, and then proceeded to the Koksoak, which they ascended to the point of the present settlement. The natives received them well. They erected a beacon on a hill, tarried but a few days and then turned back to Okak. Upon their return they gave glowing accounts of their reception by the natives and the great possibilities for profitable trade, but they did not deem it advisable ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... had known him was the most generous, most quick-tempered of mortal men; in other words his anger would flare to a prodigious beacon, under almost no provocation, only to be quenched again under a gust of no less impulsive kindliness. Thus the moment Darcy had spoken, an apology for his hasty question was half-way up his tongue. But there was no need for it to have travelled even ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... deck, along its top rail, was strung a row of heads watching the tender's approach—old heads—young heads—middle-aged heads—Miss Jennings's among these last—their eyes taking in the grim Breakwater with its beacon light, the frowning casemates specked with sentinels, and the line of the distant city blurred with masts and spent steam. They saw, too, from their height (they could look down the tender's smokestack) the sturdy figure of her Captain, ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith



Words linked to "Beacon" :   beacon light, pharos, direct, visual signal, guide, signal fire, conduct, lighthouse, radio station, beam, lead, signal light, tower, beacon fire, shine, take, radar beacon, radio beacon, Beacon Hill



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