"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breath, he got up, they had crossed the plain and were in a grove of beeches. Directly in front of him ran a swift stream, which was divided at the rocky head of what appeared to be a wooded island. There was only a slight ripple and fall of the water, and, after a second glance, it was evident that the point of land was not an island, but a portion of the mainland which divided the stream. The branches took ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... worst of fears, leaned from the window towards him. A slanting ray caught the floating cloud of her amber hair, her face glowed rosily, her eyes beamed on the new-comer, and she broke into such an enchanting ripple of laughter as he had never heard from those soft lips since it had been his privilege to kiss them. Then something happened within him. Upon his lonely walk he had been overcome by a depression against which he had every day been struggling. He had been disappointed in ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... mother would come back, and urge, and help him; but it was of little use. He was not strong enough; and the last glimpse I always had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where the little fellow still paddled away, doing ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... beside the river Long ago, my Love and I, Where the willows droop and quiver 'Twixt the water and the sky. We were wrapped in fragrant shadow, 'Twas the quiet vesper time, And the bells across the meadows Mingled with the ripple's chime. With no thought of ill betiding, "Thus," we said, "life's years shall be For us twain a river gliding ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... pleasing aspect, but it lacks the grandeur, the stern sublimity of Quebec. The fine mountain that forms the background to the city, the Island of St. Helens in front, and the junction of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa—which run side by side, their respective boundaries only marked by a long ripple of white foam, and the darker blue tint of the former river—constitute the most remarkable features in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... been keyed up to the pitch of his nerves, for to me the night remained as voiceless as a subterranean cavern. I became intensely irritated with him; within my mind I cried out against this infatuated pantomime of his. And then, of a sudden, there was a sound—the dying rumour of a ripple, somewhere in the outside darkness, as though an object had been let into ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... sunk beneath the ocean in a refulgence of glory, its parting rays throwing a ruddy glow over the surface, unbroken by a single ripple. ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... sing In silent silver chords I too could hear? Or smile to see a starlet shake with fear Whenever winds disturbed the lake's repose, Or when in mocking mood they form in rows, And stare up at their parents—so sedate— Then break up laughing 'neath a ripple's weight? ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... spread deep and still and cool over its white sandy bottom, in the stone-walled inclosure where it was confined (over half of which stood the ample milk-house), and then gurgling along the stony outlet ran away over the ripple-marked sands of its worn channel, to join the waters of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... character, with nothing bold in its aspect; but I think its beauties will grow upon us, and make us love it the more, the longer we live here. There is a brook, so near the house that we shall be able to hear its ripple in the summer evenings, . . . . but, for agricultural purposes, it has been made to flow in a straight and rectangular fashion, which does it infinite damage as a picturesque object. . ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the reports of the Weather Bureau it appears that the average number of calm days at Key West is only ten per annum. In 1895 only three days were calm, and in 1894 there were only twenty-seven hours, of day or night, in which there was not breeze enough to ripple, at least, the pale-green water of the harbor. For all practical purposes, therefore, the sea-breeze at Key West may be regarded as perennial and incessant. It varies in strength, of course, from day to day and from hour to hour; but in the two weeks that ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... way all questions about man may be considered from two standpoints; the physical and the spiritual. The danger is in making the physical alone interpret the spiritual and in declaring that "man is simply a ripple on the sea of human events and human life, merely on episode marking a particular stage in the cooling of a nebula." This method of interpretation leads to the ruling out of any personal responsibility on the part of man for his ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams - Midsummer days! Midsummer days! The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze, While ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... was a little shy, and more so at having been discovered by so grand a gentleman with her petticoats gathered a little high about her bare shins. She looked down, therefore, upon the water at her feet, and then she saw a ripple of blood, and then another, ring after ring, coming and going to and from her feet. She cried out the sacred name in horror, and, lifting her eyes, the courtly gentleman was gone, but the blood-rings about her feet spread with the speed ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... looked fifty. In that face there was no childishness whatever. It was a thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her features were small and pinched, her hair, which was of inky blackness, fell on her shoulders in long, straight locks, without a ripple or a wave in them. She looked like an elf, but still this elfish little creature was redeemed from the hideousness which else might have been her doom by eyes of the most wonderful brilliancy. Large, luminous, potent eyes—intensely black, and deep as the depths of ocean, they seemed to fill her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... southern pole To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires, That smoulder under ocean, heave on high The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush; sweet airs Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flowers, Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look On thy creation and pronounce it good. Its valleys, glorious with their summer green, Praise thee in silent beauty, and its woods, Swept ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... age of the most lasting impressions. Dr. Carmichael, of the Hobart School of Finance of Manhattan University, came and went, but he made no appreciable ripple in the placid surface of Jerry's philosophy. He cast stone after stone into the lovely pool of Jerry's thoughts, which broke the colorful reflections into smaller images, but did not change them. And when ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... sparrow is, like the poor, always with us, at least near the coast, but we think none the less of him for that, and besides, that fact is true in only one sense. A ripple in a stream may be seen day after day, and yet the water forming it is never the same, it is continually flowing onward. This is usually the case with song sparrows and with most other birds which are present summer and winter. The individual sparrows which flit from bush to bush, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... traditions in school life as firmly established as the doctrine of infant damnation in the good old days of theology. Secretly, however, Skippy adored the first warm contact of the tentative toes, the slow ecstasy of the mounting ripple over the sinking body and the long, drowsy languor of complete submersion. It was the apotheosis of happiness when all the aches and vexations of the day disappeared in a narcotic reverie, when he could forget ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... fountain moves without a wind: but shall The ripple of a spring change my resolve? No. Yet it moves again! The waters stir, Not as with air, but by some subterrane 80 And rocking Power of the internal world. What's here? A ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... his back against the rough bark of a teakwood tree to protect his rear and to face out toward the pitch-black night. More than once the big cadet felt the sudden ripple of a crawling thing moving around him, across his toes or down the tree trunk. There was a sudden thrashing in the underbrush near by and he brought the shock rifle up quickly, ears tuned for the growl, or scream, or ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... marsh and emerged mud-spattered and indignant. Briers tore at him. Below the sun-mottled river glided endlessly on in sylvan peace. The other shore looked better. There the wind-bent shag of trees was greener save when, with a hint of rain, the breeze turned up an under-leaf ripple of silver. He met no one; no one but a madman, he reflected, would explore the tangled ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... in the skies; the Square was quiet and deserted; I listened with delight to the song of the Lady fair, as it mingled with the ripple of the fountain. All at once I perceived a white figure approach from the opposite side of the Square and go directly toward the little garden door. I peered eagerly through the dazzling moonlight—it was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... My horse's breath rose like steam, and whenever we stopped he smoked all over. The cornfields got back a little of their colour under the dazzling light, and stood the palest possible gold in the sun and snow. All about us the snow was crusted in shallow terraces, with tracings like ripple-marks at the edges, curly waves that were the actual impression of the stinging lash in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... he put the photograph back in his pocket, and filled his pipe again, while it was almost dark before he had smoked it out. The thrush had gone, and only the ripple of the water broke the silence, until he heard footsteps on the stones behind him. Then, looking round, he saw a young woman moving towards the river, and he watched her with a quiet interest, for ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the weird spot as the noise of their spades became monotonous, relieved only by the throwing aside of the great lumps of moist earth; a mist was rising from the river flowing near, of which in the first stillness of our coming I could just catch the ripple of the water. It seemed to me that those who were long buried there had in life perhaps had some association with the river—even an affection for it—and had wished to be laid there near its soft murmur while ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... and joined the group. The padre smiled. It was a situation such as he loved to study: a strong man and a strong woman, at war. But nothing happened; not a ripple anywhere to disclose the agitation beneath. The man laughed and the woman laughed, but they spoke not to each other, nor looked once into each ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Snail from a green, shelving bank, and shoved her off with the long sticks we carried. The wind caught her sail and drove her forward in fine style; she made a great ripple as she went. Once she caught in a drowned bush; but the current swung her clear, and she cut across the course of the brook like a Falmouth Packet. Hugh and I ran along the causeway, and over the bridge, to catch her on the other side. We had our ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... a laugh, but dangerous, for it is the greatest test of an orator's control of his audience to be able to land them again on the solid earth of sober thinking." I have known him at the very end of a sermon have a ripple of laughter sweep freely over the entire congregation, and then in a moment he has every individual under his control, listening soberly ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... wondrously old! Babble such as this fell from a child's lips thousands of years ago, in the morning of the world; it sounded on through the ages, infinitely reproduced; eternally a new beginning; the same music of earliest human speech, the same ripple of innocent laughter, renewed from generation to generation. But he, listening, had not the merry, fearless pride of fathers in an earlier day. Upon him lay the burden of all time; he must needs ponder anxiously on his child's heritage, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... only idol was her father, and for him she would have done anything in her power. She counted on him being good to live for ever, along of his cautious habits, and she'd give over all thought of any change in the home when the crash came and the even ripple of their lives was broke for her by a ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... interesting, no doubt, to have dined with him in Paris; to have quarried lions in their African fens; to have heard archaic hymns ripple through the rushes of the Nile; to have lounged in the Academe, to have scaled Parnassus, and sailed the AEgean Sea; but, a history and an arm-chair aiding, the traveller has but to close his eyes and the past returns. Without disturbing so ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... Bellingham in 1840. The sleepy old town in its previous existence had never felt a ripple of excitement more moving than a sewing bee, a travelling phrenologist or temperance lecturer, a summer picnic or a winter revival. Now it was invaded on one hand by Millerism and on the other by the Dorr War. ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... with the powerful current toward the open waters of Lake Erie. In this dilemma, his only resource was to paddle with his hands, and attempt by this tedious method to force his craft to the nearest shore. While he was thus awkwardly engaged, there came it ripple of laughter from close beside him, and he started up just in time to gaze squarely into the laughing face of an Indian girl, who instantly impressed him as the most graceful creature he had ever seen. She occupied, with a girl companion, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... of Elmwood was quiet and practically deserted when they drove into it. The farmers were too busy with the harvest to "come to town for trading" except on Saturdays, and the arrival and departure of the two daily trains did not cause more than a ripple of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... ripple of talk allowed Roger Montrose A few needed moments to calm and compose His excited emotions; to curb and control The turbulent feelings that surged through his soul At ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... revelation of the wonderful works of God in creation her acquaintance with us had been. She would gaze through the microscope at awful forms, and would persevere until the silver rim which marked the confines of the drop of water under inspection would ripple inwards with a flash of light and vanish, because the drop itself had evaporated. 'Well, I can only say, how marvellous are Thy doings!' was a frequent ejaculation of Miss Wilkes, and one that was very well received. She learned the Latin names of many of the species, and it seems quite pathetic ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... turned her face a little and nodded. "Yes, Alaska," she said, and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor in her voice. "Your Alaska, ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... When Pao-yue raised his eyes, he noticed that Shih Jung, Prince of Pei Ching, wore on his head a princely cap with pure white tassels and silvery feathers, that he was appareled in a white ceremonial robe, (with a pattern representing) the toothlike ripple of a river and the waters of the sea, embroidered with five-clawed dragons; and that he was girded with a red leather belt, inlaid with white jade. That his face was like a beauteous gem; that his eyes were like sparkling stars; and that he was, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... on a pond. They spread out and reached places where there were instruments to detect them, and that was that. Radar made the same kind of waves, only smaller, which bounced back to where there was an instrument to detect them. These were ripple waves. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... up in that sack, row her well out across the lake, fix a weight to her feet, and drop her quietly overboard. She was to wear everything which she had brought with her to the house. Mlle. Celie would have disappeared for ever, and left not even a ripple upon the water ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... know if he had heard a noise or not, Jake looked round and saw a long gray object slide out of the mist. It was indistinct and very low in the water, but he knew it was a shooting punt. It drifted up the channel towards him; a faint ripple indicating that somebody was steering it with a short paddle. A blurred figure lay in the well behind a bunch of reeds, and the only bold line was the barrel of the big punt-gun that would throw a pound of shot. Jim could not see the punt, because he was looking the other ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the battle of Pydna the Roman state enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there on the surface. Its dominion extended over the three continents; the lustre of the Roman power and the glory of the Roman name were constantly on the increase; all eyes rested on Italy, all talents and all riches flowed thither; it ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... brilliancy in the deep blue atmosphere; and now muttering peals of thunder were faintly heard rolling behind the mountains. The river, hitherto still and glassy, reflecting pictures of the sky and land, now showed a dark ripple at a distance, as the breeze came creeping up it. The fish-hawks wheeled and screamed, and sought their nests on the high dry trees; the crows flew clamorously to the crevices of the rocks, and all nature seemed conscious ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... end of two years, when she was twenty-two, a ripple of excitement came into her life; another Shelton girl married, and caused even greater relief to her family than had Deena, for she married a Boston man with money. He had been a student at Harmouth and had fallen in love with Polly Shelton's violet eyes ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling, and within a certain depth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... all rank with rotting weeds, Close by the pines there at the highway side; No ripple on its green and stagnant tide, Where only cold and still the horse-leech breeds— Ugh! might not here some ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... this, that he would come Whenever Nala called—for everywhere Hutasa shineth, and all worlds are his; Yama gave skill in cookery, steadfastness In virtue; and Varuna, King of Floods, Bade all the waters ripple at his call. These boons the high gods doubled by the gift Of bright wreaths wove with magic blooms of heaven; And those bestowed, ascended to their seats. Also with wonder and with joy returned The Rajas and the Maharajas all, Full of the marriage-feast; for ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... length fairly come, Throgmorton was led to a room overlooking an angle of the moat. Thence he was lowered with every precaution; the ripple of his swimming was audible for a brief period; then a black figure was observed to land by the branches of a willow and crawl away among the grass. For some half-hour Sir Daniel and Hatch stood eagerly giving ear; but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fountain of the Central Heart; a scintillation, from how afar off! of the Immeasurable Love, of the Eternal Pity; though it seemed hardly more human than the play of kits and puppies, or than the anerithmon gelasma (the soulless, uncontrollable titter) of the tossed spring spray, or the blue, breezy ripple, for which overhaul your Prometheus, master Tom, and when found, make a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... off the southern coast of Africa, and was about one hundred miles from the Lagullas coast; the morning was beautiful, a slight ripple only turned over the waves, the breeze was light and steady, and the vessel was standing on a wind at the rate of ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... meadows as of yesteryear. The moon will fee the world with silver coin. And all across the earth men will traffic on their little errands until nature calls them home. I am a stone cast in a windy pool where scarce a ripple shows. Life 's but a candle in the wind. Mine ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... barked, far away, raising a ripple on the placid night; there a cock crowed, and there another caught his cry; it passed on, on, fading away eastward, traveling like an alarm, like a spreading wave, until it spent itself against the margin of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... pause. From the kitchen region came much slamming of light wire door, and the sound of hissing and steaming, high-keyed remarks from the Chinese and the Portuguese girls, and now and then the ripple of Manzanita's laughter. A farm-hand crossed the yard, with pails of milk, and presently a dozen or more men came down the steep trail that led ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... dark about thy ways, Shot through and through with arrows; let thine hair Lighten as flame above that nameless shell Which was the moon, and thine eyes fill the world And thy lips kindle with swift beams; let earth Laugh, and the long sea fiery from thy feet Through all the roar and ripple of streaming springs And foam in reddening flakes and flying flowers Shaken from hands and blown from lips of nymphs Whose hair or breast divides the wandering wave With salt close tresses cleaving lock to lock, All gold, or shuddering and unfurrowed snow; And all the winds about thee with their ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... joy within, that she strove in vain to hide. And every now and then her eyes grew a little brighter, and there came a flush over her face, and a little tremor ran as it were all over her, like the ripple that comes and goes upon the bosom of a lake, stirred by ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... children took a walk to the lake. At this early hour there were few of those superb equipages to be seen that appeared later in the day. The lake was lovely, with white swans dotting it here and there, and now and then a gentle ripple shook its surface, and miniature waves dashed against the fringe of old willows on ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... us, up to the trenches and back again! We have slept in the same old barns with cobwebs in the roof and straw (p. 233) deep on the floor. We have sung songs, old songs that float on the ocean of time like corks and find a cradle on every wave; new songs that make a momentary ripple on the surface and die as their circle extends outwards, songs of love and lust, of murder and great adventure. We have gambled, won one another's money and lost to one another again, we have had our disputes, but were firm in support of any member ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... space and air soft with colour were about him. Across this space, on a little sloping plateau near him, there crept an animal. It seemed to Lawless that he could see the lithe stealthiness of its muscles and the ripple of its skin. But that was imagination, because he was too far away. He cried out, and swung his gun shoulderwards in desperation. But, at the moment, Pourcette turned sharply round, saw his danger, caught his gun, and fired as the puma ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hard at the two men, so sour in his wrath, so comical in his unmatched ugliness, that Lambert could not restrain a most unusual and generous grin. Taterleg bared his head, bowing low, not a smile, not a ripple of a ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... pronounce a burial-service. It was an ocean grave. The mists alone shrouded the burial-place. No spade prepared the grave, nor sexton filled up the hollowed earth. Down, down they sank, and the quick returning waters smoothed out every ripple, and left the sea as if it had not been. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... stirred into mild excitement by our expected departure. Exchanges of farewells, amid occasional shouts and a continuous ripple of laughter, were passing between those on board and those ashore. The usually quiet life of St. Mary's was bubbling up in its periodical agitation. By the outgoing and incoming of the steamer the islanders touched the great ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these lines true; the whole value of your careful drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect.[35] When you are taking pains, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... this was certainly not a natural woman, for nothing human seemed to emanate from her. Her face expressed no emotion, either good or bad, beyond a voluptuousness at once sensual and divine. She doubtless noticed my suffering, for she asked with a voice as clear as the ripple of a ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... then perhaps these limitations of time and space, which suspended friendships, would exist no longer, and he could wait for that with a quiet hopefulness. But if it all passed away, and was as though it had never been, if life was but a leaping flame, a ripple on the stream, then how could one have the heart to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wings took hold of me. Sometimes a field became fairyland as I walked through it; or a tree poured out a scent that its blossoms never had before or after. I think now that those must have been moments when you too were in like contact with earth,—had your feet in grass which felt a faint ripple of wind, or stood under a lilac in a drench of fragrance that had grown ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... think that many of the gentle and pure-souled people who read this amiable writer go on their way through his pages without discerning this quiver, this ripple, this vibration, of "miching mallecho." On softly-stepping feline feet, the great sleek panther of psychological curiosity glides into very perverse, very dubious paths. The exquisite tenuity and flexibility of his style, light ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... swiftly and greatly to the delight of Sam was speeding over the smooth waters. Scarcely a ripple was to be seen. The reflection of the sunlight increased the discomfort of the Go Ahead boys and all four were rejoiced when at last Cape Vincent was ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... stars. Before long half the sky was overspread. Evidently motive power lay in the cloud itself, for there was not a breath of wind. Absolute calm reigned in the atmosphere; not a leaf stirred on the tree, not a ripple disturbed the surface of the water. There seemed to be scarcely any air even, as though some vast pneumatic machine had rarefied it. The entire atmosphere was charged to the utmost with electricity, the presence of which sent a thrill ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... with the lovely scene upon which the curtain rises. Again the wide summer-land lies stretching away over sunlit moor and woodland. In the foreground wave the forest trees, and I hear the ripple of the woodland streams. Invariably throughout the drama, in the midst of all human pain and passion, great Nature is there, peaceful, harmonious in all her loveliest moods, a paradise in which dwell souls who make ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... timidly at first, he dipped, and catching Quick breath, with tingling shudder, as the waters Swirled round his limbs, and deeper, slowly deeper, Till on his breast the river's cheek was pillowed; And deeper still, till every shoreward ripple Talked in his ear, and like a cygnet's bosom His white, round shoulder ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... and young love-laughter Ripple and run among the roses; Memory's echoes, murmuring after, Fill the dusk when the long ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... detached rocks present varied and life-like forms. The air has suddenly become still. The butterflies hover over the foxgloves. The wild strawberry is at your feet. The sloeberries ripen around you. The sea before you might be the Mediterranean, so gently does it ripple up to the very edge of the hundred tiny plants that force their way amid the sand. Great rock bastions shut you in on either side, and behind, the green slope you had descended rises upward till it meets the blue sky beyond. You might be in the south of England ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... the ignominious flight of the plotters. Then from behind a tree stepped a white figure and a cautious voice called softly: "Come on, girls. They have gone. We must hurry and let Elfreda out of that awful house." At this command a ripple of subdued laughter rose from all sides and the ghosts began to appear from their ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... afraid beneath that overpowering serenity, watched him turn his head slowly from side to side with a "majestical countenance," as his enemies confessed, as if he were on the point of speaking. Silence seemed to radiate out from him, spreading like a ripple, outwards, until the furthest outskirts of that huge crowd was motionless and quiet; and then without apparent effort, his ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... silence. Everything is hushed and still; but, by listening attentively, the number of faint sounds that reach the ear in an undertone is surprising. The soft soughing of the wind in the trees; the gentle rustle of the grass as it is swayed by the passing breeze; the musical ripple of water as it gurgles from the spring; the piping of the quail as it calls to its mate; the twitter of little birds flitting from bush to bough; the chirp of the cricket and drone of the beetle are among the sounds that are ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... shout of warning, and with the shout Barry sprang below to his cabin. He returned on the run with a big-game rifle in time to hear a ripple of relief run from end to end of the ship; and his eyes opened wide with astonishment when ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... will help to make it clear to us. If we throw a pebble into a quiet pool (Fig. 90), waves or ripples form and spread out in all directions, gradually dying out as they become more and more distant from the pebble. It is a strange fact that while we see the ripple moving farther and farther away, the particles of water are themselves not moving outward and away, but are merely bobbing up and down, or are vibrating. If you wish to be sure of this, throw the pebble near a spot ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... battles, often destroying property and sometimes even killing their employers. Those who have read Charles Reade's novel, "Put Yourself in his Place," have not forgotten the terrible scenes depicted. While those starving men sometimes bettered their condition financially, they never made a ripple on the surface of political thought. No member ever championed their cause on the floor of Parliament. If spoken of at all, it was as our politicians used to speak of the negroes before the war, or as they speak of the Chinese today—as nuisances ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the children wandered here and there over the island. It was larger than they at first supposed, and Bunny was glad of this. It was very still and quiet there, the ripple of the water, the wind in the trees, and the birds making the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... laborer, the door open, and the single room exposed to the view. The man ruddy and yellow-haired, stood leaning upon the spade wherewith he had been at work upon the garden patch. From behind him came the ripple of a happy woman's laughter, and two young urchins darted forth from the hut, bare-legged and towsy, while the mother, stepping out, laid her hand upon her husband's arm and watched the gambols of the children. The hermit frowned at the untoward ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... observed to be broadly rippled. (M. Siau on the "Action of Waves" "Edin. New Phil. Journ." volume 31 page 245.) One may, therefore, be allowed to suspect, from the appearance just mentioned in the New Red Sandstone, that at greater depths, the bed of the ocean is heaped up during gales into great ripple-like furrows and depressions, which are afterwards cut off by the currents during more tranquil weather, and again furrowed during ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... alone, think not of the rushing torrents of this world! Envy not even the crystal stream which winds among the meadows. The ripple of its waters is sweet indeed, but it can be heard by creatures. Besides, the Field-flower could never contain it in its cup. One must be so little to draw near to Jesus, and few are the souls that aspire to be little and unknown. "Are not the river and the brook," they urge, "of more ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... save them," replied Katherine with a ripple of laughter. "And incidentally we also saved the lives of a ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... with us. Having washed down decks and got breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o'clock the regular northwest wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and were ready for a start ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... lisp of the lip of the ripple just under— The half-awake nightingale's dream in the yews— Came up from the water, and down from the wonder Of shadowy foliage, drowsed with the dews,— Unsteady the firefly's taper—unsteady The poise of the stars, and their light in the tide, As it struggled and writhed in caress ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... modesty of his demeanor than by eclat of lineage or the romantic incidents which had befallen him. In the words of a distinguished writer, who well knew him at that day: 'So unostentatious was his deportment, so correct, so pure his life, that even the ripple of scandal can not appear plausibly upon its surface.' We have inquired of those who entertained him as their guest, of those who tended at his sick-bed, of the artist who painted his miniature, of his lady friends (and he was known to some who ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Dick. I remember Tom's wife right well, and she was allers a right good housekeeper. Ye can't do too much for her, son. But about that ere fishin' hole, dye know I believe 'twas the same I used to hook 'em out of thirty-odd year ago. Is it the ripple just back o' Banker ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course of events ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... which Sheila had placed a garden-seat, lo! all the west was on fire, the mountains in the south had grown dark on their eastern side, and the plain of the sea was like a lake of blood, with the heavy hull and masts of the coaster grown large and solemn and distant. There was scarcely a ripple around the rocks at their feet to break the stillness of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... England; and villages full of picturesque old houses, thatched, and ivied, or perhaps overrun with roses,—and a stately mansion in the Elizabethan style; and a quiet stream, gliding onward without a ripple from its own motion, but rippled by a large fish darting across it; and over all this scene a gentle, friendly sunshine, not ardent enough to crisp a single leaf or blade of grass. Nor must the village church be forgotten, with its square, battlemented tower, dating back to the epoch of the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stretched out along that trunk, with the Berbalang's knife still pinned through my hand. I was staring down into the water. Aoodya and my child never rose again; but the Berbalang came to the surface at once and floated, bobbing for a while on the ripple, his head thrown back, his brown chest shining up at me, and the blood spreading on the water ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their means of expression among those last refinements of shadow, which are almost invisible except in a strong light, and which the finest pencil can hardly follow. The whole essence of their work is EXPRESSION, the passing of a smile over the face of a child, the ripple of the air on a still day over the curtain of a ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... if shame, surprise, wonder, and joy filled her heart too full and made a few happy tears drop on the hands so worn with hard work, when they ached to be holding a pen and trying to record the fancies that sung in her brain as ceaselessly as the soft sough of the pines or the ripple of the brook murmured in her ear when she sat here alone. She could not express the vague longings that stirred in her soul; she could only feel and dimly strive to understand and utter them, with no thought of fame or fortune,—for she was a humble creature, and never ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... unknown. The scarcely audible whisper of soft airs through the trees morning and evening, rain drops falling gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges far below, alone break the stillness. No ripple ever disturbs the great expanse of ocean which gleams through the still, thick trees. Rose in the sweet cool morning, gold in the sweet cool evening, but always dreaming; and white sails come and go, no larger ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... perhaps, you now regret, And crave a titled suitor yet; Hearts that are anchored side by side, No surface-ripple can divide." ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... that offers to the shore Accumulated opulence and force, So does my heart, which thought it loved of yore, Carry increasing passion down the course Of time to proffer thee. Oh! not the faint First ripple of the sea should be its pride, But the great climax of its unrestraint, Which ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of dazzling white coral sand, and all through its water extended reefs of living coral of the more delicate and elaborate kinds. These corals gave the lake a wonderful variety of colors, forming a picture impossible to paint or describe, and with the least ripple from a passing breeze the whole scene changed to new groups of color. The water was very clear, and in some places deep; in others so filled with coral that a boat could barely skim over the surface without scraping the keel. After crossing a long reef, one day, they entered on a sheet of water ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... Mary repeated, still in the dream that was made of music and moonlight, the ripple of the sea and the stirring of something new in her nature of which all these sweet and beautiful things seemed part. "Love! I never thought this ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... off southwards with his wife. And while they were rowing, they saw a black ripple on the sea ahead. When they came to the place, they saw that it was the sea-lice. And the outermost layer of skins on the boat was eaten away ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... sad thoughts came to him as the voices floated out to him, mixed up with the low ripple of waves on ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in dealing with the small volume of 116 pages called Ionica, long ago ushered into the world so silently that its publication did not cause a single ripple on the sea of literature. Gradually this book has become first a rarity and then a famous possession, so that at the present moment there is perhaps no volume of recent English verse so diminutive which commands so high a price among collectors. When the library of Mr. Henry Bradshaw ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... adaptation of the crane to get his living in that manner. "See," said he, "how his legs are formed for wading! What a long slender bill he has! Observe how nicely he folds his feet when putting them in or drawing them out of the water! He does not cause the slightest ripple. He is thus enabled to approach the fish without giving them any notice of his arrival." "My son," said he, "it is impossible to look at that bird without recognizing the design, as well as the goodness ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... dove!" and Sah-luma, rising from his couch, kissed her neck lightly, thus causing a delicate flush of crimson to ripple through the whiteness of her skin—"Think no more of such folly— thou wilt anger me. That a doting graybeard like Khosrul should trouble the peace of Al-Kyris the Magnificent, ... by the gods— the whole thing is absurd! Let me ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... crocodiles to-night," he finally said, pointing toward the log where a slight ripple, widening into vanishing rings, closed over a ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... sea which trembles.—Ver. 136. The ripple, or shudder, which runs along the surface of the sea, when a breath of wind is stirring in a calm, is very beautifully described here, and is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... week there were daily bulletins of her condition published always in more and more remote corners of the paper, until the little ripple that had been made in the stream of life passed; and no further mention was made of the matter save occasionally when they sent for some famous specialist: when they took her to the shore to try what sea air might do; or when they brought ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... outline. There was a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky—the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume helped to mark the Greek severity of her figure. She wore a short skirt of some coarse hempen stuff, covered with a ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and harmless occupations—if occupations they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper to ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nature, that even he, who knew him as did none other, was momentarily taken by surprise. For suddenly, inexplicably, Nap's hardness had gone from him. It was like the crumbling of a rock that had withstood the clash of many tempests and yielded at last to the ripple of ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... something almost terrifying in the pleasures that besieged me in the darkness. Wonderful tremors filled me; my head swam in the most delirious but enjoyable manner; and the bed softly oscillated with me, like a boat in a very gentle ripple. It does not make me write a good style apparently, which is just as well, lest I should be tempted to renew the experiment; and some verses which I wrote turn out on inspection to be not quite equal to Kubla Khan. However, I was happy, and the recollection ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... away to conceal the broad grin of triumph that spread over her vast face, like a ripple on a lake. "Little simpletons!" she muttered to herself, as she marched up to the house. ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... a bank of fog through which his ear caught the lazy ripple of water. He woke up with a start. The fog was ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... swimming pond in the neighborhood of his residence, which is always located in the river's bank. This is not true; for, in every stream which he inhabits, if this was his sole object, he could select many natural places where the water is without a ripple and where it is both deep and broad. The animal has a wiser object in view; and, it consists in providing against the pinching wants of hunger during winter, when nearly everything green has lost its sap and nutrition, and is, as a body, without blood and animation. He therefore chooses a place ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... ripple of laughter Ran over the parted lips So quick that she could not catch it With her rosy finger-tips. The people whispered "Bless the child," As each one waked from a nap, But the dear, wee woman hid her face For shame in her ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... her hands around her knees, and watching the grass ebbing and flowing in the wind, sang, "O Spring!" and Maurice, listening, his eyes following the brown ripple of the river lisping in the shallows around the sandbar, and flowing—flowing—like Life, and Time, and Love, sighed with satisfaction at the pure beauty of her voice. "The notes are like wings," he said; "give us ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... servant who was driving his master's gig to the Cartmel shore, and was to return with the horse the same evening. He had of course no time to lose, and had begun his journey at the earliest possible hour. We found the sands firm and level, except the slight wrinkles produced by the ripple of the waves; but they were still wet, having only just been left by the sea. The guide appeared to drive with caution, and in no place went farther than a mile from land. We had a good deal of conversation, and I found him intelligent and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... N. roughness &c adj.; tooth, grain, texture, ripple; asperity, rugosity^, salebrosity^, corrugation, nodosity^; arborescence^ &c 242; pilosity^. brush, hair, beard, shag, mane, whisker, moustache, imperial, tress, lock, curl, ringlet; fimbriae, pili, cilia, villi; lovelock; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Indeed, all the world was silent. The calm valley lay unwinking in the sun. The grave mountains stood about unperturbed, unagitated, calm. The blue sky swept above, peaceful, unflecked by any moving cloud. There was not a leaf in all that land to give a rustle, nor any water which might afford a ripple. It was a world silent, finished, past and beyond life and its frettings, with nothing to trouble, and with nothing which bade one think of any world gone by. Here was no place for memories or dreams. The ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... pull!" but he could not speak, only watch the thin, keen, yellow man, whose eye glittered beneath his rough hairy cap as he slowly tightened the line, drawing it up till it was above the surface of the water, which began to ripple and play about it in long waves running off in different directions. There was so great a length that it was impossible to draw it tight without moving the spreader poles; and as the lads both thought of what the consequences would be if the line broke, the movement at ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... delegates asked if, in view of the great scarcity of men to take the various fields, and the increased number of vacancies, the theological course in their colleges would be opened to women? And the report said, "A ripple of amusement ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... dreaming lies, Idly abloom, and nothing sings or moves, Nor bird, nor bee; and even the butterflies, Languid with noon, forget their painted loves, Nor hath the woodland any talk of doves. Only at times a little breeze will stir, And send a ripple o'er the sleeping stream, Or run its fingers through the willows' hair, And sway the rushes momently agleam— Then all fall ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... thing that was going on about him to the contemplation of the sea and the distant shores which he was approaching. The day, for a winter's day, was bright and sunny: the sky without a cloud; the atmosphere of a frosty clearness; and the sea so calm, that it appeared scarcely to swell into a ripple, except immediately in the ship's wake. The distant promontory, which he suspected to be the point whither he had been washed by the waves, after the explosion of the Halcyon, and which seemed the extremity of a small island, had ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey |
