"Brightness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was raised high, on stately columns, bright with radiant gold, and carbuncle that rivals the flames; polished ivory covered its highest top, {and} double folding doors shone with the brightness of silver. The workmanship {even} exceeded the material; for there Mulciber had carved the sea circling round the encompassed Earth; and the orb of the Earth, and the Heavens which hang over that orb. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... not, however, reply with its usual brightness to the mellow salute of evening. Wearied and shaken by the long, rough ride, and depressed by the heavy solitude, he hated and almost feared the task which every step brought nearer. As the house rose higher and higher against the red sky, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... his body besmeared with yellow clay. A beautiful shield was displayed on his left arm, and his right hand grasped a long lance. The skin of a raven adorned his head. Shield and lance were flourished, but in vain. Not a cloud obscured the brightness of the noon-day sun. The squaws were crying, and the corn was withering at ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... left the Haven he noticed how the weather had changed. The brightness of the day had passed and the sky was a mackerel grey. The wind, drifting in from the northeast, hummed a weird prelude to the coming storm upon the telephone ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... luminosity of the sea. The pale spectres below the surface sink deeper, and are lost to sight, but the increasing waves are tinged here and there with green and white, and often along a line, where the fresh water is mixing with the salt in an estuary, there is a brightness so intense that boats and shores are visible.... But if such sights are to be seen on the surface, what must not be the phosphorescence of the depths! Every sea-pen is glorious in its light, in fact, nearly every eight-armed Alcyonarian is thus resplendent, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... floated by, dark as her own prospects were. The morning dawned and saw her still there. It was a beautiful morning, but the warble of the bird in a tree near by, as he poured forth his morning song, awoke no echo in the heart of the soldier's wife. All was cheerless within her. The brightness of the morning only acted like a gleam of light at the mouth of a cavern. It made the darkness ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... woman placed me in a rocking chair; would not let me help her otherwise than by rocking the cradle, and made me "feel at home." The room, though it serves them and their two children for kitchen, parlor, and bed room, is the pattern of brightness, cleanliness, and comfort. At supper there were canned raspberries, rolls, butter, tea, venison, and fried rabbit, and at seven I went to bed in a carpeted log room, with a thick feather bed on a mattress, sheets, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and watch. The house was ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... home-lights twinkle across the snow. A hired man came out to take the team, he got down, nearly too numbed to move, and as he stumbled up the steps Sadie met him with a cry of delight. She drew him in and when he stood, half-dazed by the brightness and change of temperature, in the well-warmed room, she took her arm from round his neck and moved back a ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, to the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... chaplet of beads and her missal, Wearing her Norman cap and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings, Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heirloom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations. But a celestial brightness—a more ethereal beauty— Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her. When she had passed, it seemed like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... What brightness! What splendor! The Tree trembled so in every bough that one of the tapers set fire to the foliage. It ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... had been lifting, and sorting, and carrying, in the potato-field, finding in the severe physical exertion the only relief from restlessness. She shook her head irritably and came to stand by the wood fire which Janet had just lit, a welcome brightness in the twilight room. ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bank of the river," says Dr. Thacher, "I had a fine view of this splendid conflagration. The ships were enwrapped in a torrent of fire, which, spreading with vivid brightness among the combustible rigging and running with amazing rapidity to the tops of the several masts, while all around was thunder and lightning from our numerous cannon and mortars, and in the darkness of night presented ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Long after known in Palestine, and named Beelzebub. To whom th' Arch-Enemy, And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:— "If thou beest he—but O how fallen! how changed From him who, in the happy realms of light Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine Myriads, though bright!—if he whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the glorious enterprise Joined with me once, now misery hath joined In equal ruin; into what ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... an animal by a halter. It was a pony of about thirteen hands high, of a dark red colour; it was very much galled all over, the marks of ropes and thongs being visible on its hide. The figure, however, was good, and there was an extraordinary brightness in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... I heard him sigh like a despairing creature; I heard him pray; I perceived that he held his breath in his anxiety. The lamp had gone out—he did not seem to notice it. I blew on the red-hot cinders; they brightened up, and shone on his chalky-white face, and tinged it with a momentary brightness. The eyes had almost closed in their deep sockets; now they opened wider—wider—as if they were ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... from the archives of enemies and discover faults which derogate from the character we have been taught to admire and venerate; they may even point out spots, which we can not disprove, in that sun of glorious brightness which shed its beneficent rays over a century of darkness—but this we know, that whatever may be the force of detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing, even on the admission of his slanderers, for three centuries, and that he now shines as ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... but it is only a damp arbor, and no camp, properly speaking. A forest camp should always admit of a bright fire in front, with a lean-to or shed roof overhead, to reflect the fire heat on the bedding below. Any camp that falls short of this, lacks the requirements of warmth, brightness and healthfulness. This is why I discard ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... On the one hand crag and beetling cliff sweeping in rugged and colossal massiveness above dark waves of pine and fir, far into the keen and clear blue air; the huge mantle of snow, so cumulus-like in its brightness, thrown in many a solid fold over ice-sculptured crest and shoulders; the dark cathedral-like spires and splintered pinnacles, half snow, half stone, rising into the sky like the very pillars of heaven. On the other hand the waving verdure of the valleys below, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... without doubt, the smiling at the image in the tenth week, which was probably occasioned merely by the brightness (Sigismund). Another boy in the twenty-seventh week looked at himself in the glass ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... in the Holy of Holies set apart for it in the Tabernacle; yet no man ever saw it there, a thing of sight. The soul is not to be seen; still less is the Spirit of the Most High; or if one did see it, its brightness would kill him. In great mercy, therefore, it has always come and done its good works in the world veiled; now in one form, now in another; at one time, a voice in the air; at another, a vision in sleep; at another, a burning bush; at another, an angel; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... a rule or pair of compasses, the portions could not have been more regular. All else was obscure. It was a fairy scene!— and to increase its romantic character, among the moving objects, thus divided into alternate shade and brightness, was a beautiful child, dressed with the elegant simplicity of an English child, riding on a stately goat, the saddle, bridle, and other accoutrements of which were in a high degree costly and splendid. Before ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... thirty million miles from them now, or five millions nearer than it had ever been to them before. This reduction in distance, and the clearness of the void through which they saw it, made it a splendid sight, its disk showing clearly. From hour to hour its size and brightness increased, till towards evening it looked like a small, full moon, the sun shining squarely upon it. They calculated that on the course they were moving they should pass about nine hundred thousand miles to the right or behind it, since ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... next night, and in the morning awoke refreshed, and with a feeling of brightness and cheerfulness which she had not expected to feel so soon. Her new life would give her plenty to do, to fill up every hour and to drive out all useless ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... had grown waxen and were criss-crossed by innumerable tiny lines. The light blue of her eyes had faded, and the rich redness of her lips had turned to faint coral. One could trace how Time had day by day touched her with light but unfaltering fingers, now abstracting a fleck of brightness, now lowering by an imperceptible shade a tone of colour, until she had become what I saw her, still the pink and white beauty, but with rose all deadened into white, like a sick pink pearl. Her pink and white character had also suffered the effacement of the years. She was as dainty and as negative ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... his eye would light on the grim black pile of L'Etat, lying out there in the silvery shimmer like some great monumental cairn, a rough and rugged heap of loneliness and mystery—the grimmer and lonelier by reason of the twinkling brightness of its setting. And then his thoughts would play about the lonely pile, and come back with a sense of homely relief to the fairy path which Nance's little feet had trod, in light and dark, and storm and shine, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... and they believed it, and rose into a new life. To be redeemed by the Son of God gave the slave a new self-respect, a new manhood. He astonished people by his truth, his honesty, his cleanness; and there was a new brightness and gaiety about him. So there was about the woman. They sang, they overflowed with good temper. It seemed as if they had been born again. As Clement of Rome wrote, the Holy Spirit was a glad spirit. The word used both ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Charles, when his works were either not acted at all, or if so, very much changed and disfigured, his fame was awhile obscured, only to shine forth again about the beginning of the last century with more than its original brightness; and since then it has but increased in lustre with the course of time; and for centuries to come, (I speak it with the greatest confidence,) it will, like an Alpine avalanche, continue to gather strength at every moment of its progress. Of the future ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the house soon after, and seeing Mary in the orchard with Letty, went to say good-by to her. They made a pretty picture in the western light which brought out the brightness of the apples on the old scant-leaved boughs—Mary in her lavender gingham and black ribbons holding a basket, while Letty in her well-worn nankin picked up the fallen apples. If you want to know more particularly how Mary looked, ten to one you will see ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... other bird, except his companion, or rather, to call things by their right names, his brother robber. The swallows returned in due time to their nest, the male full of joy, which showed itself in the brightness of his eye, and in the nervous kind of motion in his flight; the female rather languid, and heavy with the approach of laying. You can imagine their surprise at finding the nest, on which they had bestowed so ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... rapt in holy vision, beheld His appearing. "God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise. And His brightness was as the light." "He stood, and measured the earth: He beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: His ways are everlasting." "Thou didst ride upon Thine horses and Thy chariots of salvation." "The mountains ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... saw her. Her sunny brown hair was about her shoulders, her knuckles rubbed her sleepy eyes to brightness, and a loose white bodice, none too high nor too carefully buttoned about the neck, showed that her dressing was not done. Indeed, she made a pretty picture, as she leant out, laughing softly, and now shading her face from the sun with one hand, while she raised ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... a little broad daylight. The morning is not morning, the evening is not evening; as in the land of the Lotus, it is ever afternoon, gray, soft, misty, sad, save when the sun, being at his meridian height, pierces the dim streets and sweeps the open places with low, slanting waves of pale brightness. And yet these same dusky streets are thronged with a moving multitude, are traversed ever by ceaseless streams of men and women, flowing onward, silently, swiftly, eagerly. The very beggars do not speak above a whisper, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... can live no longer this dull chrysalid life, in comparison with which, at times, even that past dark dream seems tolerable—for amid its lurid smoke were flashes of brightness. A slave? Well; I ask myself at times, and what were women meant for but to be slaves? Free them, and they enslave themselves again, or languish unsatisfied; for they must love. And what blame to them if they love a white man, tyrant though he be, rather than a fellow-slave? ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the best they had, and the world gave them more than their dues, because they were ranked in mentality at the grade of their strongest faculties, and their weaknesses were overlooked, hidden in fact by the brightness of the few talents they did ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... be in the afternoon; and there would be such a dazzlin' brightness in her eyes, that I used to wonder if it was the fire of immortality a bein' kindled there, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... new tailor, and he showed not the slightest signs of strangeness or gaucherie amongst his unfamiliar surroundings. He looked about him always, with the cold, easy nonchalance of the man of the world. Of being recognized he had not the slightest fear. His frame and bearing, and the brightness of his deep, strong eyes, still belonged to early middle age, but his face itself, worn and hardened, was the face of an elderly man. The more Aynesworth watched him, the more puzzled ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... face can ever become really beautiful. If a woman's soul is without cultivation, without taste, without refinement, without the sweetness of a happy mind, not all the mysteries of art can ever make her face beautiful. And, on the other hand, it is impossible to dim the brightness of an elegant and polished intellect. The radiance of a charming mind strikes through all deformity of features, and still asserts its sway over the world of the affections. It has been my privilege to see the most celebrated beauties that shine ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... ago, And the wild rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow: But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the cold clear heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone from ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... not simply "natural," i. e., due to an unconscious force within them called nature. One of his arguments to prove this is derived from the superiority of the heavenly bodies to our own. Their size, their brightness and their continued duration are all evidence of corporeal superiority. And it stands to reason that as the human body, which is the highest in the sublunar world, has a soul that is nobler than that of plant or animal, so the heavenly bodies must be endowed ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... needs the refining influence of wit. Indeed, it may be said that there is no really fine writing in which wit has not an implicit, if not an explicit, action. The wit may never rise to the surface, it may never flame out into a witticism; but it helps to give brightness and transparency, it warns off from flights and exaggerations which verge on the ridiculous—in every genre of writing it preserves a man from sinking into the genre ennuyeux. And it is eminently needed for ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... which the young girl had devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen, was rather a dandy about shirts and haberdashery in general. Fanny had looked with delight at the fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of his shirt-studs, at his elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white gloves, and at the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The Prince had appeared and subjugated the poor little handmaid. His image traversed constantly her restless slumbers; the tone of his voice, the blue light of his eyes, the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... season of rain-storms and showers, The tree may strike deeper its roots, It needs the warm brightness of sunshiny hours To ripen the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... [Laughter.] Be that as it may, my appreciation of my superiors has evoked from them a marvellous sympathy, has led to the formation of very precious friendships, and has been my elevator unto the higher abodes of brightness and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Apollo's upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass; Man's ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... unquestioned yet unobtrusive consciousness of genius that harden the telling sentences of the Rise of the Dutch Republic and the United Netherlands into blocks of adamant, polished by friction with each other to a diamond brightness, and reflecting only the noblest sentiments, the most profound principles. The dice had been thrown a second time, and Motley had not won a victory. The applause of the press was insufficient to the man, who felt that he had not yet struck the key-note of his destiny. To be counted ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... From head to foot, the sunlight bathed the princess, glistening in her hair until it was alive with light. Even when he gazed into her blue eyes he was conscious of a more flaming glory than lay in the heavens of their depths; a splendent maze that shed a brightness around her. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... is set, Love's brightness closes; Eyes with hot tears are wet, In hearts there linger yet Ashes ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... was another man. He had won the unqualified respect of Hi Kendal and most of the others, for he could beat them at their own game and still be modest about it. Once more his enthusiasm came back and his brightness and his courage. The Duke was not present to witness his triumph, and, besides, he rather despised the game. Bruce was there, however, but took no part in the general acclaim; indeed, he seemed rather disgusted with Moore's sudden leap into favor. Certainly his hostility ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... nothing, it need not excite our surprise that Moses does not employ such a word to describe what God did "in the beginning."—Then it was, in the grey of that far distant morning I mean, that all those glittering orbs which sow the vault of Heaven with brightness and with beauty, flashed into sudden being. "Thou, even Thou, art LORD alone: Thou hast made Heaven, the Heaven of Heavens, with all their host[274]." Suns, the centres of systems, many of them so distant from this globe of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... and S.E. quarters, attended with snow and sleet till the evening. Then the weather became fair, the sky cleared up, and the night was remarkably pleasant, as well as the morning of the next day; which, for the brightness of the sky, and serenity and mildness of the weather, gave place to none we had seen since we left the Cape of Good Hope. It was such as is little known in this sea; and to make it still more agreeable, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... hear the best caddie stories, for is it not likely that a great abundance of them are made and told in the sheds after the day's play is over, and when the golfer's tools are being wiped and cleaned, and his irons burnished to a beautiful brightness? It is then that the caddie is in his happiest vein, his tongue and disposition untrammelled by the presence of the club members. "What're ye doin' cleanin' them clubs so grand?" asked one caddie of another, who was evidently bestowing ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... old Baptist deacon across the street calling his chickens, as she had heard him do every summer morning since she could remember. It was pleasant to waken up in that bed, in that room, and to feel the brightness of the morning, while light quivered about the low, papered ceiling in golden spots, refracted by the broken mirror and the glass of water that held the pinks. "IM LEUCHTENDEN SOMMERMORGEN"; those lines, and the face of her old teacher, came back ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Though he rather shunned the subject as a rule, he admitted to us that the work was journalism and not a sarcastic history of the nineteenth century, on which we felt he would come out strong. Lastly, Jimmy had lost the brightness of his youth, and was become silent and moody, which is well known to be the result of ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... chattering, or maybe a whispered consultation about the arrival of the stranger. We are in the midst of human life, in a busy little town, where the sun pours through the gaps in the dark forest, and flowers give colour and brightness, and where, after all, life is not so very much ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... in a group at the lower end of the hall. Bobby joined them; but somehow even then he felt out of it. Celia's cheeks were flushed bright with the exercise and pleasure. Her spirits were high. She laughed and chatted with Gerald vivaciously. Poor Bobby she included in the brightness of her mood, but evidently only because he happened to be in the circle of it. She was sorry he did not dance; but she loved it, and just now she could think of nothing else but the enjoyment of it. Bobby could not understand that there was nothing personal in this. He saw, with ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... morning, before her mother awoke, placed by her bed a bouquet which had in it a rose from each of the rose-trees. In winter-time Snow-White set light to the fire, and put on the kettle, after polishing it until it was like gold for brightness. In the evening, when snow was falling, her mother would bid her bolt the door, and then, sitting by the hearth, the good widow would read aloud to them from a big book while the little girls were spinning. Close by them lay a ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... The ant crept forth to her daily toil, the butterfly fluttered and basked in the warm rays of the sun; myriads of insects spread their transparent wings, and revelled in their brief but happy existence. Man walked forth, elated with the scene; and all was brightness and splendour. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Marfinka to go back with them to Kolchino until the wedding at the end of October. To his surprise permission was given easily and quickly, and the young people flew like swallows from autumn to the warmth, light, and brightness ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... through the leaves, flecking with light his prostrate form. He dipped his hand in the blood that had welled from his side, and it fell in rubies from his fingers. Could that be his blood—his life-blood; and would it soon all ooze away? Could it be that death was coming through all the brightness of that summer afternoon? ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... The storm now burst in tremendous violence over the hut. The thunder rolled fearfully along the valley, and reverberated from the rocks; the lightnings gave to the thick darkness a momentary illumination equal to the brightness of mid-day, and the rain pouring down in torrents, suddenly swelled the rivulet, near which the frail dwelling was erected, far above its natural channel. Whoever has witnessed a violent storm in the high mountains of a tropical country, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... glass balloons were just running over with brightness that scattered itself everywhere—on the chairs, the cushions, the carpet, and a great round sofa which stood, like a giant cheese, in the middle of the room, all covered with silk, and with a tall flower-pot ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... silent a moment; then Rose asked timidly, "And who spoke of the 'mighty line,' dear? It must have been another great poet. Only three words, and such a roll and ring and brightness in them." ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... head," she nodded, her delicate, vivid face quite grave. "So tired that you might not see as you should, so tired that the medicine of white men could not reach it, but only the words of Mic-co, who knows all things. So tired that a moon was not a moon of lovely brightness. It was a thing of evil fire to scorch. Uncah? Mic-co would say warped vision. I must talk in simpler ways ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the tree-trunks were the most noticeable feature. Thoreau speaks of rain waking the lichens into life, and we saw this as never before. Not only does it bring out the colors and give a brightness and richness they show at no other time, but it raises the leaves—if one may so call them—makes them stand out fresh. The beeches were marvelous with many shades of green, and of pink, from a delicate blush over the whole tree, to bright vermilion ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... importance of a hothouse bloom. In her mind was this thought: He is looking at me with his real self, since he has no reason for armour against me now. At first his eyes seemed masked with their customary brightness, his whole face with its usual decorous formality; then gradually he became so changed that she hardly knew him. That decorousness, that brightness, melted off what lay behind, as frosty dew melts off grass. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... impenetrable mystery, the trip to Sandy Hook, with the visit of inspection which followed, would have been jolly. However, there was so much to be happy and thankful for, anyway, that the spirits of the party partook largely of the brightness ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... her trembling hand. Would you believe it, sir? the poor desolate statue felt the trickling drops, and reason was rekindled by the warmth of pity. Suddenly her eyes, so lately dull and vacant, flashed with recovered brightness. She cast herself at my feet—clasped my knees—and cried out, in tones that might have moved a heart of rock—"Angel of compassion! save me from disgrace?" All present started as if a miracle were worked. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... with a somewhat florid face, which gave a strong relief to the gray, almost white hair that, suffered to grow freely, was pushed back, and lay in heavy masses on his coat collar, entered with a hasty step. He was almost venerable in appearance; yet there was in his dark, quick eyes the brightness of unquenched loves, the fires of which were kindled at the altars of selfishness and sensuality. This I saw at a glance. There was a look of concern on his face, as he threw his eyes around the bar-room; and he seemed disappointed, I thought, at ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... though its half-forgotten strains, dreamily warbled, are oddly mingled with a widely different tune, in a bootless effort at remembrance; but my youth, with its golden promise, which maturer manhood but meagrely fulfilled, turns with the shadowed years veiling its brightness, and looks sorrowfully upon my old age in its solitude and desolation; but my life, with its wasted energies and flagging purpose, rises up before me, darkly and reproachfully reminding me of what I might have done, have ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the luminous dial of Saint Eustache was paling as a night-light does when surprised by the dawn. The gas jets in the wine shops in the neighbouring streets went out one by one, like stars extinguished by the brightness. And Florent gazed at the vast markets now gradually emerging from the gloom, from the dreamland in which he had beheld them, stretching out their ranges of open palaces. Greenish-grey in hue, they looked more solid now, and even more colossal with their prodigious masting of columns upholding ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... rapidity and impatience that the young Poussin fancied a demon, encased with the body of this singular being, was working his hands fantastically like those of a puppet without, or even against, the will of their owner. The unnatural brightness of his eyes, the convulsive movements which seemed the result of some mental resistance, gave to this fancy of the youth a semblance of truth which reacted upon his lively imagination. The old man worked on, muttering half to himself, half to ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... and little beard were tinged with grey, his face was strikingly handsome, nervous and expressive, and his forehead both broad and high. But more remarkable still were his eyes, which shone with a piercing brightness, almost grey in colour, steady as the flame of a well-trimmed lamp, and so cold that they might have been precious stones set in ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... once, as if moved by the same set of nerves, they all turned and fled, for without the slightest warning, a part of the lake shot up some fifty feet in the air, like some great geyser, but instead of boiling water it was fluid rock of dazzling brightness even in the sunshine. Then it fell with a sound of hideous splashing, and as they turned to gaze back there was a little rising and falling, and then all was still once more, and the surface rapidly scummed over ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... vale of the Alzon. I threw open the window of my bedroom and looked out upon the night. It was illumined, not by moon nor by stars, but by lightning flashes, which followed one another with such rapidity that there was no darkness. The quivering flame threw an awful brightness into the great woods upon the tops ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... this lasted, the monk rubb'd his horn box upon the sleeve of his tunic; and as soon as it had acquired a little air of brightness by the friction, he made a low bow and said, 'twas too late to say whether it was the weakness or goodness of our tempers which had involved us in this contest, but be it as it would, he begg'd we would exchange ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... former pair, shall meet thine eyes; Then turn'd toward them, cause behind thy back A light to stand, that on the three shall shine, And thus reflected come to thee from all. Though that beheld most distant do not stretch A space so ample, yet in brightness thou Will own it equaling the rest. But now, As under snow the ground, if the warm ray Smites it, remains dismantled of the hue And cold, that cover'd it before, so thee, Dismantled in thy mind, I will inform With light so lively, that the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the shower that has freshened every thing, and made the birds so musical. You should stand in the door below, as I did just now, to see the fort and the moistened woods stands out from that black sky, with all this brightness blazing on them. ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace; But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for humankind, Is happy as a Lover; and attired With sudden brightness, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... warmth he craved) then the winning invitations for such as he began to present themselves. Saloons, and saloons, and saloons! How many of them were there? Far outnumbering the churches! Pleasant they looked, too; opening doors, ever and anon, revealing brightness and warmth within. They would like to see him inside. Of this Dirk was sure; not that he had money, but he had something that in such places often served him well,—a decided and dangerous talent for imitating any and every ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... to live a laughing life, he ignores the standing-in-the-corner theory, and believes that a penny discreetly bestowed on a youngster during a troubled moment will teach him a better lesson than a shilling's-worth of stick. It is also evident that the brightness and jollity of the children are inherited, not only from father, but mother as well; and it was easy to discern, from the remarks that fell from the subject of my interview, that the touches of artistic taste to be seen about the place were due to the "best of wives and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... And, going, took the brightness from the place, Yet left the June day with a sweeter grace, And my young soul so steeped in happy dreams, Heaven itself seemed shown to me in gleams. There is a time with lovers, when the heart First slowly rouses from its dreamless sleep, To all the tumult of a passion ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... England—but what do I say? This is "sedition." It has this week been decreed sedition to picture Ireland thus.[C] Well, then, they rescued her from what I will call the loving embrace of her dear sister Britannia, and enthroned her in her rightful place, a queen among the nations. Had the brightness of that era been prolonged—picture it, think of it—what a country would ours be now? Think of it! And contrast what we are with what we might be! Compare a population filled with burning memories—disaffected, sullen, hostile, vengeful—with a people loyal, devoted, happy, contented; and England, ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... however pass over many interesting facts, and content ourselves with a mere reference to the empress Maud being besieged here in 1141, and her miraculous flight with three knights, all escaping the eyes of the besiegers by the brightness of their raiment; Maud having just previously escaped from the castle of the Devizes, as a dead corpse, in a funeral hearse or bier. The reader will not be surprised at the decay of the castle, when he is informed that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... those sunny-hearted fellows that people take to be shallow, but under the surface brightness there's a tolerably deep current. And he never nurses a grudge. If anyone should stick a knife in Jo, he'd only make a question mark of his eyebrow and give a ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... we mounted our horses to return to the village, and the rays of the beauteous luminary danced merrily on the rushing waters of the Tagus, silvered the plain over which we were passing, and bathed in a flood of brightness the bold sides of the calcareous hill of Villaluengo, the antique ruins which crowned its brow. . ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... his steps homeward with the glad tidings, a joy that would fill the heart of Elizabeth when she heard the message of God. Soon the consciousness of the babe in her womb would be a growing wonder and a growing happiness. There would be a new brightness in the house where the aged mother waits through the months and the dumb father with his writing tablet at his side meditates upon the meaning of the providence of God and upon the prophecies of the angel ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... and draughty corridor. Odd Fellows' Building, the centre of various business activities by day, looked deserted and forlorn at night, when the suites of offices were dark and closed, and the hall where they danced, gayly lighted and tenanted, was a little island of brightness in the surrounding dark. ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... in its full clarity, had risen high in the heavens, and now shone down with almost daytime brightness on the couple, whom a rude accident had thus brought so close together. In the most intimate proximity the strange man sat by the strange girl; she uttered low moans of pain on his breast, while down his cheeks the tears ran irrepressibly. Round about them the silent solitude ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... pulse beats calmer while His lightnings play! My eye, with earth's delusions waxing dim, Clears with the brightness of eternal day! The elements crash round me! It is He! Calmly I hear His voice and never start. From Eve's posterity I stand quite free, Nor feel her ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... for a second bridal! Hawke and the heiress!" But Harry Hardwicke only smiled and bided his time. His daily morning ride led him to the double gateway, to at least nearby the isolation of the lovely Rose who was filling his heart with all beauty and brightness. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Abigail's message was divine. The Spirit of God, hidden for a while behind his dark passions, like the sun by clouds, shone out clear again, and filled all his soul with light, showing him his duty, and giving back peace and brightness to ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... down on the grass, and smoothed her skirt. It was the best everyday dress she had ever owned and she meant to be careful of it. Her patent leather oxford ties were the nicest she had ever had, and she was not without her pride in their brightness. Fred seated himself near her. His clothes were his Sunday best, and none too good at that; he was painfully conscious of ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... and saw, sitting on a rock that stood out of the stream, a young girl weeping bitterly. She had a very pretty face, and abundant yellow hair of marvellous length, and of such uncommon brightness that even in the shade it shone like gold. She was dressed in grass green, and from her knees downwards she was hidden by the clumps of fern and rushes ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... of light, far exceeding the brightness of the sun's surface was seen to take place, and sweep like a drifting cloud over a portion of the solar surface. This was attended by magnetic disturbances of unusual intensity and with exhibitions ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... when play-going was left pretty much to a loose society, such as is sketched in the Restoration dramatists. If the good people continue to come to the theatre in increasing crowds, the stage, without losing any of its brightness, will soon be good enough, if it is not as yet, to satisfy the best of them. This is what I believe all sensible people in these times see. And if, on the one hand, you are ready to laugh at the old prejudices which have been so happily dissipated; on the ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... to his work again with a lighter heart for this bit of brightness. Somehow he felt that things would come out all right some day, and he would do the best he could to be patient; and, for Clara's sake, while he could not be all she wished, he would make of himself all ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... knowledge not being obstructed by evil works. Sacrifices and similar works being performed day after day have the effect of purifying the mind, and owing to this, knowledge arises in the mind with ever increasing brightness. This proves that the works are the same in either case.—Here terminates the adhikarana of 'the being enjoined' (of sacrifices, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Have they passed thee by? In the filth, despairing, Have they let thee lie? Up! rise up, and follow Yonder folds of white! Thou shalt share their brightness, ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... old comrade, we mustn't stand out here all night with the wind howling in our ears. Let us try and forget our troubles. What is to be, will be. I am nothing, if not a fatalist." Grace forced herself to smile with her usual brightness, and the two girls entered the house arm in arm, each endeavoring, for the sake of the other to stifle ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... her days. As she watched the evening dusk deepen into the darkness of the night, and the outlines of the familiar landscape fade and vanish in the thickening gloom, she felt the dreary monotony of the days and years that were to come, blotting out of her life all tone and color and forms of brightness and beauty. ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... gave my soul away to the sweet silence, and waited. The moonlight falling down through an open space made a cataract of tremulous brightness. It edged all the shadows with a silver whiteness, as of ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... ago, during the administration of the Marquis of Rockingham, an attempt was made to carry on Government without their concurrence. However, this was only a transient cloud; they were hid but for a moment; and their constellation blazed out with greater brightness, and a far more vigorous influence, some time after it was blown over. An attempt was at that time made (but without any idea of proscription) to break their corps, to discountenance their doctrines, to revive connections ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... right woman. He marvelled again at the brightness of spirit that shone in her—like a flame through a fine paper lantern. Susan, at Myrtle Forge. His thought became concrete; he knew now, definitely, that he had determined to marry her. His peace of mind increased. There was ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... great authority and learned in all the arts, and in the end they decided that all was vain. In your highnesses alone remained faith and constancy. Who will doubt that this light was from the holy Scriptures, illumining you as well as myself with rays of marvelous brightness?" ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... beauty he had his own ideas, and his own inclinations. He was by no means indifferent to such attraction. But Marie Melmotte, from that point of view, was nothing to him. Such prettiness as belonged to her came from the brightness of her youth, and from a modest shy demeanour joined to an incipient aspiration for the enjoyment of something in the world which should be her own. There was, too, arising within her bosom a struggle to be something ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... "Susan Clegg" will add materially to her reputation as a writer of popular fiction. "Aunt Mary" and her adventures in New York are simply delicious; and her nephew, Jack, and his college friends, who personally conduct her through the metropolis, are brimful of brightness and humor. A pretty love story runs through the book. "Aunt Mary's" magazine debut delighted thousands of readers, and the publication of the story in a more permanent form, with new chapters, and ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner |
