"Flash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beauty such as this No woman could give birth; The quivering lightning flash Is not ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... of those men and the gleam of their split-pupiled stare. They are haughty, punctilious, inflammable: self-absorbed too, however. They will probably not even notice you; but if they do, you are lost. They take offense in a flash, abhor strangers, despise hospitality, and would think nothing of killing you or me on their way ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... until a flash of fire burst out, a few yards in front. His horse fell dead under him and, before he could extricate himself from it, he was surrounded by Austrians. An officer shouted to him to surrender and, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, he at ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... every one feels that Diderot's performance, while equally vivid, is marked by greater depth of spirit; comes from a soil that has been more freely broken up, and has been enriched by a more copious experience. The ancient turned upon these masterpieces of depravation the flash of intellectual scorn; the modern eyes them with a certain moral patience, and something of that curious kind of interest, looking half like sympathy, which a hunter has for the object ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... not answer that we issue literary productions as soon as possible after their completion. The impatient readers demand chapters by chapters, as they are spun from the brain and the heart of the author; facts, upon the instant of their discovery; and suggestions, as they flash from the contact of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... up to him as he was passing through the yard, and snatched a pistol from his belt. The yard caught its breath, and the attendant warder, hearing the click of the lock, instinctively turned his head away, so that he might not be blinded by the flash. But Kavanagh did not fire. At the instant when his hand was on the pistol, he looked up and met the magnetic glance of Frere's imperious eyes. An effort, and the spell would have been broken. A twitch of the finger, and his enemy would have fallen dead. There was an instant ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... vain—the all-composing hour Resistless falls: the Muse obeys the power. She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold Of Night primeval and of Chaos old! Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sickening stars fade off th' ethereal plain; As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppressed, Closed one by one to everlasting rest: Thus at her felt approach, and secret might, Art after art goes out, and all is night. See skulking ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... it?" Hedwig demanded, looking up at him suddenly with a flash of her old spirit. "It will ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sounded, and the gladiators made ready for their contest. Then it was that Marcella's heart beat wildly with fear. She saw her father advance together with the other gladiator; she saw their swords flash; she heard the people around her call out the name now of Naevus, and now of Lucius; she heard one near ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the sea again—something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line. It is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash. But when they heard, "And naow to thee, O Capting," booming out of the fog, the crew of the We're Here took heart. The dory swirled alongside well loaded, Tom Platt yelling for ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... to breathe but air, Quick as a flash 'tis gone; Nowhere to fall but off, Nowhere ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the great gulf of the unseen. The unseen is the obscurity of infinitude, and nothing is more alluring. In that sombre vastness fires flash, and furrow and color the abyss with fancies like those of Martin. For a busy man like Canalis, an adventure of this kind is swept away like a harebell by a mountain torrent, but in the more unoccupied ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... the glasses carefully and after a few minutes saw a flash of movement there, as if something had slipped in or out. Nothing else happened for about an hour. Then the grass along one of the trails began to wave and a large beast, similar to the one he had shot, trotted into sight. It slipped in ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... Sherman slid down the bank with his boy into the grove beside Stephen. Suddenly there was a struggle. A corporal pitched the drunkard backwards over the bank, and he rolled at Mr. Sherman's feet. With a curse, he picked himself up, fumbling in his pocket. There was a flash, and as the smoke rolled from before his eyes, Stephen saw a man of a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... searching for a flare in his web belt. It was a risk ... the Ranger ship might pick up the flash ... but he had to take it. He was unscrewing the fuse cap from the flare when he saw Greg and Johnny leap up ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... caprice of imagination was it that the sight of this false beard lying at Bourgonef's feet thrilled me with horror? In one lightning-flash I beheld the archway—the stranger with the startled eyes—this stranger no longer unknown to me, but too fatally recognized as Bourgonef—and at his ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... this occasion, just as 'Gene had his cane raised to strike him, a horseshoe fell from the flies above, struck the villain square on the top of the head, and knocked him cold. 'Gene saw the climax of his scene going, but quick as a flash raised his hand ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... mark and make the poor victim wince (as you could see by her flushing face and eyes filling with tears), or which again worked her up to anger and retort, when, in answer to one of these heavy bolts, she would flash back with a quivering reply. The pair were not happy; nor indeed was it happy to be with them. Alas that youthful love and truth should end in bitterness and bankruptcy! To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... upon the soldiers like dogs upon a jackal, battering them with their bare fists. The soldiers defended themselves with swords; the overseers plied their hide whips; women screamed, men shouted. The captain whom I had seized began to get the better of me; at least I saw his sword flash above me and thought that all was over. Doubtless it would have been, had not Seti himself dragged the man backwards and thus given the four Nubian guards time to seize him. Next I heard the Prince cry ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... visible and glorious return, Satan summons "the kings of the earth and their armies, gathering them together to make war against Him that sat on the horse and against his army" (Rev. xix:19). But then his defeat has come. The King of kings and Lord of lords appears in glory. The glory-flash, the brightness of His Coming strikes down the beast and the false prophet (Antichrist). The battle of Armageddon of short duration is over. Satan and all his hosts are utterly defeated. In Revelation xx we have the record of what will ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... near it. Suddenly, a great wind came roaring down the chimney, and scattered the ashes about the floor; a tremendous rain followed, and fell hissing on the embers; the moon was swallowed up, and there was darkness all about her. Then a flash of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder, so terrified the princess, that she cried aloud for the old woman, but there came no ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... enginery of war, the clamor of workmen throwing up barricades, the shouts of the mob, and often, rising above all, the soul-stirring strains of the "Marseillaise Hymn," pealed forth from thousands of impassioned lips, together with the darkness of the night, the flash of torches, the blaze of bonfires, presented a spectacle sublime beyond comprehension. The "Marseillaise Hymn" is unquestionably the most powerful composition in the world, both in its words and its music, to rouse the populace to ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Emperor." "This is passing strange," says the smith. "I received the order but a moment since; how comest thou to know of it?" "Heaven has a voice which is heard upon the earth. Walls have ears, and stones tell tales.[39] There are no secrets in the world. The flash of the blade ordered by him who is above the clouds (the Emperor) is quickly seen. By the grace of the Emperor the sword shall be quickly made." Here follows the praise of certain famous blades, and an account of the part they played in history, with special reference to the sword ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... silent pain the little figure beside him. Once at some violent term of abuse she looked up, and glanced for a moment at the speaker; he just caught a swift, indignant flash from her bright eyes, then her head was bent lower than before over her notebook, and the carnation deepened in her cheek, while her pencil sped over the paper fast and furiously. Presently came a sharp retort from Raeburn, ending with the perfectly warrantable ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Like a burning flash she seemed to see two things: Jude's true understanding of her blundering words; and her possible future, after she had made him understand. For, of course, she must go back and make him understand, and then—well, after such a scene, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... fertile fields of ascertainable fact. And I may, therefore, further suppose that the publication of the Darwin and Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the 'Origin' in 1859, had the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has lost himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we were looking for, and could not find, was a hypothesis ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... said Sam. "Now I see why they took you off the street and made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say. Especially are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in elevators, but they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses; they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across restaurant tables under red candle shades, when you ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... and architecturally impressive building that had attracted Constans's attention, and a flash of intuition enabled him to pronounce upon its true character at first sight. He was now at the very heart of the city's social and intellectual life; here, if anywhere, he might expect to find one of the magnificent libraries upon which the ancient municipality had ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... it is the right remedy; so don't let me keep you; and you had better make haste, for the woodman is on his way to fell a tree by the spring, and if a branch falls into it, the water will be troubled; so off with you! But carry with you a flash of green fire from my right eye, and give it to Hen-alie with my love, and I hope she'll soon ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... come hither and stand upon the sea, the ocean would be in tumult; if on land, the wind would blow, the sun be darkened, the rain fall, the thunder crash, the lightning flash, the mountain tremble, the land would be flooded, the ocean reddened, at the coming of ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... praise thee, and hymn forever thy power. Thee the wide heaven, which surrounds the earth, obeys; Following where thou wilt, willingly obeying thy law. Thou holdest at thy service, in thy mighty hands, The two-edged, flaming, immortal thunderbolt, Before whose flash all nature trembles. Thou rulest in the common reason, which goes through all, And appears mingled in all things, great or small, Which, filling all nature, is king of all existences. Nor without thee, O Deity, does anything ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... gift; a few other modern poets recall them too; but with these, with every one of them, it is the exception when they resemble the great masters. They have their own styles, which abide with them; it is only now and then, by a flash of genius, that they break through their own styles, and attain the one immortal style. Just the contrary of this is true of Matthew Arnold. It is his own, his usual, and his most natural style which recalls the great masters; and only when he does not write like himself, does he cease ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... pack, and was badly bogged; he was the only one that did not appear distressed when filled with water, the other two lay about in evident pain until morning. About the middle of the night thunder was again heard, and flash after flash of even more vivid lightnings than that of the previous night enlightened the glen; so bright were the flashes, being alternately fork and sheet lightning, that for nearly an hour the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... up, and sketched the stiff and limping figure he had seen. It was over in a flash. He ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dart up the brook, and, poised on wings moving with almost invisible velocity, clothed in purple, golden, or emerald glory, hang suspended in the air; gazing with startled look at the intruder, with a sudden jerk, turning round first one eye, then the other, and suddenly disappear like a flash of light. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... came with such suddenness that food supplies in homes were whisked away by the torrent that reached to second floors in almost the flash of an eye. Skiffs skirted the edge of the flooded districts attempting to take food to those whom it was impossible to carry off, but the fierce current discouragingly ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... breath away and bending the tall maple in front of the house with such sudden fury that a branch snapped off; then the wind died in the distance with a rushing sound and the breaking tree was illumined by a flash ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... thought, an hour, after which he walked a mile or two, and then broke into a run again. The grass was short; he struck no brush, and the ax did not encumber him. He imagined that dawn must be getting near when a dazzling flash swept the prairie and there was a long reverberatory rumbling overhead. He was almost blinded and bewildered, doubly uncertain where he was going; and then a great stream of white fire fell from the zenith. The thunder that ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... has little to do with history or even with national feeling. It is pure humanity in an unusual development, an episode in the life of the poet such as has many less important parallels, but scarcely any so fully representative and typical. It discloses to us suddenly, as by a flash of light striking into the darkness, the persons, the entertainments, the sentiments of a hundred years ago. We make improvements daily in external matters, but society—we had almost said humanity—rarely learns. There is ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... that, Pablo; but if the people are coming from the intendant's, they will see the flash and perhaps hear the report, and it will let them know what ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... forward a stride, I saw an arm go up to the head, both these became exposed in a open space of moonlight, and a glimmer reached me from something in the hand. Like a flash it came across me that I was in the presence of the extraordinary act of suicide. The glimmer was from the barrel and mountings of a ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... (Valentine starts nervously; for the sound made by Philip, though but momentary, is like cutting a sheet of silk in two with a flash of lightning. It is the result of long practice in checking Dolly's indiscretions.) The fact is, Mr. Valentine, we are the children of the celebrated Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon, an authoress of great repute - in Madeira. No household is complete without her works. We ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... superior to Hunt; Lowell and Gilder beyond the lesser poets,—but all fade before the master. They treat of the vision of Hell, with its whirling wind; of the two in close embrace; there is the kiss that ends the reading of a self-same love; there is the flash of a dagger that joins them eternally in death. These are the themes for the songs. The artists have done with brush and pencil, what the poets have tried in sonnets and verse. But it is ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... he thought. Then, with a blinding flash the truth struck through his brain. He gave a loud cry between a sob and a shriek and, flinging his arms at full length upon his desk, buried his face between them and ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... his mind was cleared as if by a lightning flash. He almost lost presence of mind from emotion. The country needs men, many men, hundreds of thousands, even a million, two millions. And here are men! The only need was to turn to Asia, seize all whom they might meet on ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... this than the other, for the same preference is unhesitatingly accorded to the same effect in nature herself. Whatever beauty there may result from effects of light on foreground objects, from the dew of the grass, the flash of the cascade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the fair daylight hues of darker things, (and joyfulness there is in all of them), there is yet a light which the eye invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the preacher was right. This was his punishment for the part he had taken in the fraudulent personation of Clifford Matheson. It came to Dean like a blinding flash of light that God was demanding of him whether he would repent or no—whether he would vow to run straight ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... of a comma between the end of the congregation's closing syllable and the beginning of the next petition. They do it well, but it always spoils my devotion. To save my life, I can't help watching them, as I watch to see a duck dive at the flash of a gun, and that is not what I go to church for. It is a juggler's trick, and there is no more religion in it than in catching a ball ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so near to him?" I asked myself. "Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... among the gay and gallant, combated, however, internally, by more prudential considerations, the bonnet maker made an attempt to cross the street. But the revellers, whoever they might be, were accompanied by torches, the flash of which fell upon Oliver, whose light coloured habit made him the more distinctly visible. The general shout of "A prize—a prize" overcame the noise of the minstrel, and before the bonnet maker could determine whether it were better to stand or fly, two active young men, clad in fantastic masking ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... morrow he was seized with childish fear. He would not hear of the windows being opened wide. 'By-and-by,' he muttered, 'later on.' He was fearful, he dreaded the first beam of light that would flash upon his eyes. Evening came on, and still he had been unable to make up his mind to look upon the sun. He remained thus all day long, his face turned towards the curtains, watching on their transparent tissue the pallor of morn, the glow ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... head," cried the voice, rather a harsh voice. Peter looked, then all in a flash it came to him who it was Chebec had meant by the handsomest member of his family. It was Cresty the Great Crested Flycatcher. He was a wee bit bigger than Scrapper the Kingbird, yet not quite so big as Welcome Robin, and more slender. His throat and breast were gray, shading ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... a moment, and in the silence the heavy boom, boom of the surf on the beach below came distinctly to their ears. Then there was a vivid flash of lightning and a terrific thunder crash, followed instantly by a ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... It all came to me one night when I was about nine years old. I seemed to see the past and the future, although I could grasp neither. Such a long, long past and such an infinite future. I don't know what I saw, and still see sometimes. It comes in a flash, and is in a flash forgotten. My mind cannot hold it. It is too big for my mind; you might as well try to pack Dr. Jeffreys there into this wineglass. Only two facts remain written on my heart. The first is that there ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... rocky point well before them there was a flash of light. Jared Nye, on Drew's left, took off his hat and waved a wide-armed signal to answer Greyfeather's mirror. Two of the Pimas were scouting ahead on this two-day drive, and the Anglo riders were keeping the herd to a trot. Apaches, Kitchell, ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... a marked slenderness; a completed slenderness, I might say—a slenderness so palpably finished as to details that I can only describe it as felicitous in the extreme. It seemed almost certain that her appearance had once been disarming, that the threat in her eye-flash and tilted head was a trick learned by contact with many young ladies who needed finishing more than they ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... travelled softly and cautiously across the dark vault as though groping through every inch of it for that invisible danger. The sound of guns shocked into the silence, with dull reports. From somewhere in Paris a flame shot up, revealing in a quick flash groups of shadow figures at open windows and ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Leroy dropped in to see me while I was laid up, Raymond," remarked the lieutenant, with a broad grin, as he saw how his words caused the color to flash into the ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... Jenny caught her breath. She half turned away, like a shy horse that fears the friendly hand. He had been sure of her, then. Oh, that was a wretched thought! She was shaken to the heart by such confidence. He had been sure of her! There was a flash of time in which she determined not to go; but it passed with dreadful speed. Too late, now, to draw back. Keith was waiting: he expected her! The tears were in her eyes. She was more unhappy than she had been yet, and her heart ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... the least, must have elapsed from the announcement of the enemy's approach before he actually appeared. Then a white cloud of dust arose towards the verge of the horizon, below which a part of the plain began soon to darken; presently gleams of light were seen to flash out from the dense mass which was advancing, the serried lines of spears came into view, and the component parts of the huge army grew to be discernible. On the extreme left was a body of horsemen with white cuirasses, commanded by Tissaphernes; next came infantry, carrying the long wicker shield, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... has given the name of Death; And note the least among yon knot of lights, And recognize your native orb, the earth! For we are spirits threading fields of space, Whose gleaming flowers are but the countless stars! But now, dear love, adieu—a flash from heaven— A sudden glory in the silent air— A rustle as of wings, proclaim the approach Of holier guides to take thee into keep. Behold them gliding down the azure hill Making the blue ambrosial with their light. Our paths are here ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Smiff had a flash of temper to-night. He said: "Keepin' me here starin' at green walls this way! Nothing ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... half a score of policemen suddenly hemmed in the fighting mass. Druce, struggling blindly to make a pathway for himself, suddenly looked up to see Mary Randall standing on a table on the opposite side of the room directing the police. A wave of maniacal anger overwhelmed him. In a flash his hand went to his pocket and reappeared ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... Book, doubting not its words, and was pleading earnestly with God for a better understanding of them, until flash after flash of heavenly light filled her soul, making her face shine ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... an age of watching that made his eyes hot and weary, he caught a swift, almost fanciful, yet undoubted flash of light at a porthole in the quarter. It was the sort of flash that would be seen through an imperfectly curtained porthole of a stateroom if the door from the lighted saloon were quickly opened ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... A flash of flame had betrayed the hiding place of the last German on deck. Two of the British rushed for him. The German accounted for both of them before ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... It was no use talking to him. Talk! I've talked to him until three o'clock in the morning. Why, it was I made him send his first Chinatown story to the International Magazine, and they took it like a flash and wrote him for more, but he blew in the check they sent him and didn't even answer their letter. He said after he'd had the fun of writing a story, he didn't care whether it was published in a Sunday paper or in white vellum, or never published at all. And so long as he ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... Council met for the last time. As the first of the Fathers stepped forward to declare his vote, a storm of thunder and lightning suddenly burst over St. Peter's. All through the morning the voting continued, and every vote was accompanied by a flash and a roar from heaven. Both sides, with equal justice, claimed the portent as a manifestation of the Divine Opinion. When the votes were examined, it was found that 533 were in favour of the proposed definition and two against it. Next day, war was declared ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... what was happening? For the hateful voice faltered, the grasp on her shoulder weakened, the blaze of the fierce eyes turned from her. A cry was heard, a wild, inarticulate cry of rage, of defiance; the next moment something rushed past her like a flash; there was a brief struggle, a shout, an oath, then a heavy fall. When the bewildered child could clear her eyes from the mist of fright that clouded them, Le Boss was lying on the ground; and towering over him like an avenging spirit, his blue eyes ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... yellow lights were gleaming in windows here and there, above, the great sky rounded upward from a faint glow on the horizon through imperceptible gradations of tint, to pure depths of transparent blue overhead, where stars were beginning to flash and tremble; within, in the gloom, the musician sat playing a sacred melody of Spohr's, and as Madelon listened, some subtle affinity between this hour and the first one she had spent in the church touched her, and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... attempted to describe the effect which the poet made upon them. They had none of them liked him, she said, "because"—she hesitated for the word—"because he was so spectral." This gives us just the flash we want; it reveals to us for a moment the distempered youth, almost incorporeal, displayed wandering about at twilight and in lonely places, held in common esteem to be malevolent, and expressing by gestures rather than by words sentiments of a nature ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... eye; morbid irritations may produce the same effect. Milner Fothergill, in his book on Indigestion, vividly describes the appearance of the eyes sometimes seen in ovarian disorder: "The glittering flash which glances out from some female irides is the external indication of ovarian irritation, and 'the ovarian gleam' has features quite its own. The most marked instance which ever came under my notice was due to irritation ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and insignificant, would pretend to make himself useful. And then one day a wild-looking creature came into the Havens office, and began tearing the wrappings off some package that shone like metal—and quick as a flash he and Havens flung themselves down on the floor upon their faces. Then, as nothing happened, they looked up, and saw the puzzled stranger gazing over the railing at them. He had a patent churn, made of copper, which he wanted Havens ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... prevented the use of the French aeroplanes, but it cleared the air, and, helped by brilliant sunshine, it was possible to follow the smoke of the battle for fifteen miles. The wind was blowing toward our right, where we were told were the English, and though as their shrapnel burst we could see the flash of guns and rings of smoke, the report of the guns did not reach us. It gave the curious impression of a bombardment conducted ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... cypresses. He steps aside before a pasha or priest of high rank, who rides by on his noble steed, surrounded by a brilliant retinue; he encounters Turks in splendid costumes, and Turkish women with eyes that flash through their veils like fire; he beholds Persians with their high caps, Arabs with their nobly-formed features, dervises in fools'- caps and plaited petticoats like women, and, now and then, some carriage, beautifully painted and gilt, drawn by superbly ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... them skulking. Finally they submitted, but they cursed him, and willingly would have wrung his neck and flung him into the bay. As for Hamilton, there was no compromise in him, even then, where his enemies were concerned. He enjoyed their futile wrath, and would not have lifted his finger to flash it into liking. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... how to flash a new light into the picture out of his own experience. He spoke of the combat with self, and of the wrestling with dark spirits in solitude. He spoke of the demons that men had worshipped for centuries ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... passion of tears. With that sudden flashing out into vehement emotion so characteristic of him, and so significant of his enfeebled self-control, he recognises David's generous forbearance and its contrast to his own conduct. For a moment, at all events, he sees, as by a lightning flash, the mad hopelessness of the black road he is treading in resisting the decree that has made his rival king—and he binds him by an oath to spare his house when he sits on the throne. The picture moves awful ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... black cook stared in surprised inquiry at the semicircle of grim bronzed faces, now dimly lit by the flickering embers and then for a moment sharply outlined by the flash of a cigarette deeply inhaled by nervous lips. The situation was tense. In each man emotions long dormant, or perhaps by some never before experienced, were tumultuously surging; surging the more tumultuously for their long dormancy or first ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... from public affairs. He is a placid Epicurean; he is a Pythagorean philosopher; he is a wise man—that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so? One can imagine the downcast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which they emit. Swift's eyes were as azure as the heavens; Pope says nobly (as everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good and noble), "His eyes are as azure as the heavens, and have a charming ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of an hour when, the fire catching a splinter of fir-wood, a flash of light broke out, the shaving twisted and flamed, and a few rays of light flared to the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... begins at one End, and pursuing its Aliment proceeds to the other Extremity, and so the whole Mass of Powder is fired; we may from thence account for the Phaenomenon of Thunder. For in like Manner those inflamed Tracts which are suspended in the Air, flash from a Flame that runs from one Extreme to the other, wherever the Vein of Nourishment leads it. Hence those Rays of Thunder, which seem to be brandished through the Air, and sometimes to be split in two or more Tracts, and sometimes to return back, ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... could bring her peace and salvation, to feed greedily on the pages of a foolish romance. It matters not that some of the finest minds have given their powers to this style of writing; that bright gems of intellect flash along their pages. The danger is so much the greater; for the jewels scattered by Genius, blind even while they dazzle. "Some of the greatest evils of my life," said a remarkable woman, "I trace to the eager perusal of what are called 'well-written novels.' I lived in a world of delusion. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... his strained, frowning face. Again it came over me in a flash, the years he had spent in holes like this, in this hideous, rotten world of his, while I had lived joyously in mine. And as though he had read the thought in my disturbed and ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... suddenly, as in a flash of light, I saw great Nature working out her plan; Through all her shapes, from mastodon to mite, Forever groping, testing, passing on To find at last the shape ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... and entered. On a table, several wigs and beards were lying spread; about the walls hung an incongruous display of suits and overcoats; and conspicuous among the last the young man observed a large overall of the most costly sealskin. In a flash his mind reverted to the advertisement in the Standard newspaper. The great height of his lodger, the disproportionate breadth of his shoulders, and the strange particulars of his instalment, all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honour to her infamous rival. But knowing how unavailing reproach would be, she held her peace; and feeling how obtrusive her sorrow would seem, she hid her tears. Now and again, however, a look would flash in her eyes, and an answer rise to her lips, which showed how deeply she felt her bitter wrongs. "I wonder your majesty has the patience to sit so long adressing," said my Lady Castlemaine to her one morning when she found her yet in the dresser's hands. "I have so ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... has got to keep a hold of themself or they will loose their quarry so I kind of forced a smile and said "Well I guess they would have kept going if they could of." And then he says "Yes but they half to stop every once in a wile to bring up Van Hindenburg." So I had him traped Al and quick is a flash I said "Who told you their plans?" And he says "Oh he—ll my mother in law" and ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... that the long-expected transferal had come. Thereupon I dreamt that I was fleeing with Elsje and that I carried her across a great plain of ice. The ice cracked under my feet and every crack was a snapping spark of bluish fire like a flash of lightning. This betokened ill, but Elsje was ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... went, and her feet rattled in the stirrups. Suddenly the remembrance flashed across her of the wolf whom she had put to flight, and waving her sword, she rushed so violently on the lion that he had barely time to spring on one side, so as to avoid the blow. Then, like a flash, she ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... look around. To his horror he saw a lion making toward him. As quick as a flash Bar Shalmon ran to the tree and hastily scrambled into the branches. The lion dashed itself furiously against the trunk of the tree, but, for the present, Bar Shalmon was safe. Night, however, was coming on, and the lion squatted at the foot of the tree, ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... is prompt, mon petit Armand—a flash of the brain. Hark ye! Let the Vandals come to Paris and invest it. Whatever their numbers on paper, I don't care a button; they can only have a few thousands at any given point in the vast circumference of the capital. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are some rings from the far East. See these emeralds and rubies; how they flash in ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... time, And gray in years, grow gray in crime; While youth, that every eye makes glad, And beauty, all in radiance clad, And goodness, cheering every heart, Come, but come only to depart; Sunbeams, to cheer life's wintry day, Sunbeams, to flash, then ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... very largely of a capacity for almost infinite drudgery. A prominent engineer once said to us that all great inventions which become commercially practicable are the joint product of a genius and a drudge, or rather, of a genius and a corps of drudges. The genius, in a flash of inspiration, conceives a new idea. Having conceived it, he can only sit down and wait for a new inspiration, while the drudges take his idea, work out its details, modify and conform it to conditions, and, finally, harness it to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Pacific. The wind was now at times unfavourable and the heat oppressive, notwithstanding the frequent rain showers accompanied by lightning and heavy squalls. In such unfavourable weather on the 31st August the mainmast of the Vega was struck by lightning, the flash and the report being of excessive violence. The vane was broken loose and thrown into the sea along with some inches of the pole. The pole itself was split pretty far down, and all on board felt a more or less violent shaking, the man who felt it most standing at the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... There was a flash and a report, and one of the men just behind Max gave a gasp and staggered. He recovered himself, however, and with the rest of the band charged madly down upon the sentry and the guard, who were now rapidly tumbling out of the entrance of the ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... An angry flash leaped up Mrs. Barry's spine. That settled it. This exquisite creature must not stay where that charwoman could speak ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... to take Ida's hands from the wheel again, but she seemed to have lost her head. The big car was still careening toward them, though the brakes were slowing it up. Then Ida, with a flash of instinct, did the only thing possible. Instead of putting on brakes and trying to stop, she pressed the accelerator pedal, and the little car shot forward at a momentarily increased speed. Between them Ida and Sid managed to steer it ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... touching tokens of friendship; and whenever he chanced to be standing, always held out his hand to Ivan Ivanovitch with his snuff-box, saying: "Do me the favour!" And what fine managers both were!—And these two friends!—When I heard of it, it struck me like a flash of lightning. For a long time I would not believe it. Ivan Ivanovitch quarrelling with Ivan Nikiforovitch! Such worthy people! What is to be depended upon, then, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... mad, it was no conduct at all,' cried the girl, with a flash of colour, 'and showed you did not care one penny ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... A lightning-flash from the blond beauty's eyes and a mocking smile from the dandy rewarded this courteous forbearance. But the mocking smile changed the next instant to a sudden expression of disquiet, if not of actual fear. Manasseh Adorjan stood in the doorway, and Blanka noted a swift interchange of ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... but straight as a ramrod in his natty khaki uniform. And he was holding up his right hand just like the big policeman on the corner downtown. As he dropped it to shake hands with Bob, there was a sudden flash of green. ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... there was a singular agitation visible in the multitude. The sky was veiled with a portentous gloom, and currents of excitement seemed to flash through the crowd like the thrill which shakes the forest on the eve of a storm. A secret tide was sweeping them all one way. The clatter of sandals, and the soft, thick sound of thousands of bare feet shuffling over the stones, flowed unceasingly ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... misplaced, say that she was weary and strained beyond her power, say what you will in excuse, I allow it all. Yet it was not reason to fling my last guinea into the sea. A flash of petulance is well enough and may become beauty as summer lightning decks the sky, but fury is for termagants, and nought but fury could fling my last guinea to the waves. The offence, if offence there were, was too small for ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... sometimes freely expressed as in "Imperial Purple," but more often suggested by plot, phrase, or scene. He kills more people than Caligula killed during the whole course of his bloody reign. Murders, suicides, and other forms of sudden death flash their sensations across his pages. Webster and the other Elizabethans never steeped themselves so completely in gore. In almost every book there is an orgy of death and he has been ingenious in varying its forms. The poisons of rafflesia, muscarine, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... thou golden flash of the lightning! oh, ye divine shafts of flame, that Zeus has hitherto shot forth! Oh, ye rolling thunders, that bring down the rain! 'Tis by the order of our king that ye shall now stagger the earth! Oh, Hymen! 'tis through thee that he commands the universe ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... don't know ourselves! It comes to us suddenly. Like a flash of light we see your future—then it fades. It's a sixth sense that's given to the poor gipsies. They're born with it, and they can't explain it any more than you can explain the breath ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... didn't you BOY one?" Mrs. O'Dowd said; and both Amelia and William Dobbin thanked her for this timely observation. But beyond this neither of the ladies rallied. Amelia was overpowered by the flash and the dazzle and the fashionable talk of her worldly rival. Even the O'Dowd was silent and subdued after Becky's brilliant apparition, and scarcely said a word more about Glenmalony ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... space of a second or so the colonel stood with a perfectly stony expression of face; then, as Captain Mitchell flung out an arm towards the table as if to snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of alarm, bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming it after him. Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell's fury. Behind the closed door Sotillo shouted on the landing, and there was a great tumult of feet on the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of terror and a certain vague curiosity they glanced rapidly from the pistol to the fateful ace, which slowly descended, quivering in the air. At the moment it touched the table Vulich pulled the trigger... a flash in the pan! ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... are mere birds of winter That haunt some barren island of the north, Where, if a famishing man stretch forth his hand, They think it is to feed them. I have left him To solitary meditation;—now For a few swelling phrases, and a flash Of truth, enough to dazzle and to blind, And he is mine ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... were the ones into which she put a prayer. The prayer was a little pattern which she made for a picture of one of the gods. Sometimes it was a wild animal and sometimes it was a bird. Sometimes it was the flowing river and sometimes a mountain peak. And sometimes it was a flash of lightning, and sometimes it was ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... had been somewhat curious. Walks with Rachel—a whirligig of streets, faces, words. A dance and a flash of words, as if he were exploding into phrases. As if his vocabulary desired to empty itself before Rachel. His garrulity amazed him. Everything had to be talked about. There was a desperate need for talk. And when there was nothing to talk about for the ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... she marvelled, "how he knows about Mr. Brand's affairs. They must be the very closest friends or he could never know so much about Mr. Brand's ambitions and how he feels about his art. And yet there was a flash in his eyes every time Mr. Brand's name was mentioned, and he looked just as if he were trying to control an angry feeling. Still, they are surely friends.... His mustache is very handsome. I wonder why he doesn't ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... best; a little point of time, scarcely discernible on the map of ages; his aspirations, his hopes, his ambition, more transient than the lightning's flash; but his opinions may tell for good upon that little point occupied by his generation, and he should 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may aid in illuminating the darkness of the present, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may have some influence ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... for her like a flash of lightning framed in the darkness which had beset her on all sides, showing a deadly precipice right under her feet. With a convulsive movement she sat up straight, but had no power to rise. Ricardo, on the contrary, was on his feet on ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... France to the American Republic is a colossal brazen statue of Liberty, which is to be a Pharos to light the shipping of the world into New York harbor. It will stand on Bedloe's Island, and from the torch in its uplifted hand will flash a calcium light. Only the hand and arm were finished in time to be sent to the Exposition; but these were on so gigantic a scale that a man standing in the little gallery which ringed the thumb holding the torch seemed like an ant or a fly creeping ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... find him already awakened by the noise, and issuing from its entrance, his drawn sword in his hand. The wind, which had a few minutes before but curled the triumphant banners, now circulated the destroying flame. It spread from tent to tent, almost as a flash of lightning that shoots along neighbouring clouds. The camp was in one continued blaze, ere a man could dream of ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... prominence as a social and civic worker in New York. Mary Antin, who was brought from a Russian ghetto at the age of thirteen, gave us in The Promised Land a most impressive interpretation of America's significance to the foreign-born. The very title of her book was a flash of inspiration. ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... fully knew the poetry and the wealth of ideas that lay hidden in my companion's heart and brain. It was not till I was thirty years of age, till my experience was matured and condensed, till the flash of an intense illumination had thrown a fresh light upon it, that I was capable of understanding all the bearings of the phenomena which I witnessed at that early time. I benefited by them without understanding their greatness or their processes; ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... cypress trees. A great whooping crane waded into view and flapped away in clumsy fashion. A flock of teal duck, flying swift and true as an arrow, came winging their way to the river. At the water hole where the crane had been feeding the yellow eyes of a wildcat, cheated of its prey, shone for a flash and withdrew. By use of his field glasses Payne saw a mother turkey, low-crouched and stepping softly, leading her brood to shelter in the scrub. Farther away the glasses picked out the antlers and head of a small deer, ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... arranging the various natural history objects brought home. Now and then, so pleasant were the recollections of the exciting trip, the boys have brought the blood flushing into the dusky cheeks of Coffee and Chicory, and a flash into their father's eyes, on saying that they wonder whether their father will ever organise another such trip, while Dinny has been heard to say spitefully that they may drive in that waggon to Novy Sembley, New Zealand, or the big islands of the say, he don't care ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... flash and leapt for the side aisle: two steps and he was at the door which led to the royal box. It was empty. He passed quickly through the retiring room—empty also, but the private entrance giving on to the street ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... sinking into twilight. Suddenly my mysterious rival turned his horse full upon me, and to my utter amazement discharged a pistol at my head. The discharge was so close that I escaped only by the swerving of my horse at the flash. I felt my face burn, and in the impulse of the pain made a blind blow at him with my whip. He had drawn out another pistol in an instant, which the blow luckily dashed out of his hand. No words passed between us, but I bounded on him to seize him. He slipped away from my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... its neck, nor pandered to its passion, nor suffered its foaming hate or its exulting enthusiasm to touch the calm poise of his regnant soul. He moved in solitary majesty, and if from his smooth speech a lightning flash of satire or of scorn struck a cherished lie, or an honored character, or a dogma of the party creed, and the crowd burst into a furious tempest of dissent, he beat it into silence with uncompromising iteration. If it tried to drown ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... travelling-bag three volumes of what appeared to me a new novel of the full regulation size, and with intense interest commence the first volume at the title-page. At the same instant the last bell rang, and away started our train, whizz, bang, like a flash of lightning through a butter-firkin. I endeavoured to catch a glimpse of some familiar places as we passed, but the attempt was altogether useless. Harrow-on-the-Hill, as we shot by it, seemed to be driving pell-mell up to town, followed by Boxmoor, Tring, and Aylesbury—I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... many guns could be brought to bear upon the enemy. 'Five,' was the answer. 'Then fire, and shift the colors,' were the orders. The cannons poured forth their deadly contents, and, with the first flash, the American flag took the place of the British ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... going?" said I; for, as quick as a flash, the thought came into my mind that Rectus's heart had failed him, and that he would like ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... out Bobby! Don't let him hurt me, Bobby, and Bobby snarled like a wild animal and jumped at daddy and bit his wrist so bad the blood spurted out. Daddy shouted and dropped the belt and kicked at Bobby but Bobby was too quick. He jumped for daddy again and I saw his white teeth flash and heard him snap close to daddy's throat and then Bobby was snarling and snapping and I was excited and I shouted hurt him, Bobby, he's been bad to me too and he wants to hurt me and you've got to ...
— My Friend Bobby • Alan Edward Nourse |
