"Speck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a very large place, so large that our own country looks only like a tiny speck upon it, and an express train would take nearly a month to travel round it. Yet even our whole globe is nothing in size compared to the sun, for it only measures 8000 miles across, while the ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the lantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. A rather hard couch, formed ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... cousin Hepzibah's, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment of cultivating flowers, and—with her recluse habits, and tendency to shelter herself within the dismal shadow of the house—would hardly have come forth under the speck of open sky to weed and hoe among the fraternity of beans ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long chase we had no chance whatever with a canoe which held nearly a hundred warriors. Nevertheless, we resolved to do our utmost to escape, and paddled with a degree of vigour that kept us well in advance of our pursuers. The war-canoe was so far behind us that it seemed but a little speck on the sea, and the shouts, to which the crew occasionally gave vent, came faintly towards us on the morning breeze. We therefore hoped that we should be able to keep in advance for an hour or two, when we might perhaps reach the land ahead. But this hope was suddenly crushed by the supposed ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... a bit ashamed, not one speck regretful. Merely, he was sweet-hungry. And now that the sugar was gone, he wanted one of those apples mightily. Finally she gave him one, and then the other, feeding them to him rapidly, but not more rapidly than he wanted them. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... no word, but saluted deliberately, and watched his brother's boat recede, till it was a speck upon the sea, as it moved towards ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of this fourteen years' experience as a public advocate of the cause of my enslaved brothers and sisters? The time is but as a speck, yet large enough to justify a pause for retrospection—and a pause it must ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Bon Ami and I clean this mirror. A damp cloth and a little Bon Ami are all one needs. When the Bon Ami film has dried—a few brisk rubs with a dry cloth and presto! every speck of dust and ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... haven't one speck of feeling for that blessed darling, you naughty boy! To talk of such a thing in such a way with not a tear on your face! And to think of him laying there a helpless cripple, and him the owner of the biggest ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... Betty," said Wetzel as he stepped to the mark. He fastened his keen eyes on the stake. At that distance the head of the nail looked like a tiny black speck. Wetzel took one of the locks of hair that waved over his broad shoulders and held it up in front of his eyes a moment. He thus ascertained that there was not any perceptible breeze. The long black barrel started slowly to rise—it seemed to the interested ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... bridges, and the life of art and study and pleasure that filled each mighty artery to bursting. Now the spectacle was before him in its glory, and as he looked out on it he felt shy, old-fashioned, inadequate: a mere grey speck of a man compared with the ruthless magnificent fellow he had ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... hungrily, and when in the direction of Sixty Mile a dark speck appeared for a moment against the white background of an ice- jam, he cast an anxious eye at the sun. It had climbed nearly to the zenith. Now and again he caught the black speck clearing the hills of ice and sinking into the intervening hollows; ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... such a little thing! A mind truly opened to what science has to teach must see that it is a little thing. It may be that save in this little planet, this speck of cosmic dust, invisible long before the nearest star could be attained—it may be, I say, that nowhere else does this thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our way towards—Why, even on this earth, even among living things, what pain ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... quietly on with my work, but when the stream threatened a group of stanchions, so highly polished that I could not endure the notion of a speck on their brightness, I lifted them out of harm's way, and with the clatter of this movement drew the attention of the plier of ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... positive prohibition—no, the thing was impossible! I saw plainly that a good, old-fashioned squirt of tobacco-juice would ruin such a country as this, where every room in every house was inimical to the habit, and every speck of ground throughout the length and breadth of the land adapted to some useful or ornamental purpose. Why, sir, I assure you that in the little duchy of Nassau—where it is said the grand-duke is unable to exercise his soldiers at target-shooting ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... deck on this bright morning, the island of Nepenthe resembled a cloud. It was a silvery speck upon that limitless expanse of blue sea and sky. A south wind breathed over the Mediterranean waters, drawing up their moisture which lay couched in thick mists abut its flanks and uplands. The comely outlines were barely suggested through ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... for the harbour where the "Lady Alice" lay, she kept round the island to another on the other side. What she was, or why she had come to the island, I could not conjecture, I was about to return when I caught sight of a speck of white canvas above the horizon. "That probably is the 'Eagle,'" I thought. "In a few days I shall have to bid my kind friends farewell and go back to my duties ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... "like a snail in a dream" whenever she fetched me to carry her things on these short expeditions, she would leave me in the hotel to mend her clothes; whereupon I became actually servile in my ministrations. I brushed a microscopic speck of dust off her gown; I pushed in a hairpin; I tucked up a flying end of veil; I straightened her toque, and made myself altogether indispensable; for the bare idea of being left behind was a box on the ear. I could not endure such a punishment—and the front seat ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... as briefly as possible what happened after I was left behind in that horrible place. By the light of the moon I saw them go—from the ridge I saw them put out to sea. I watched them until the boat was a mere speck on the luminous waters, and finally vanished from sight. I was left alone, a desperately wounded man, on an arid sulphurous island, without food ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... order some, and they come to the table, they are little bits of things, not bigger than a radish? Do you expect to get to heaven on such small potatoes, when you use big ones for a sign?" asked the boy, as he took out a silk handkerchief and brushed a speck of dust off his ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... it is not all the same. There are great rivers which you cannot cross by swimming; mountains you cannot climb; forests you cannot penetrate—dark, and inhabited by dangerous beasts, and so vast that all this space your eyes look on is a mere speck of earth ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Grandpapa, I will," declared Joel eagerly, and hopping up and down; "I'll do every single speck of the work. Now do let us hurry ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... 23rd ult., that I found a picture of Mrs. Newcome and Charles too, and of both their spectacles, quite like. I put it away, but some rogue, I suppose, has stolen it. He has done me and Hannah too. Mr. Speck, the artist, laughed and took it home, and says he is ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on the strand, became a speck in the distance and then disappeared from his view. The heart of the husband overflowed with bitterness, and he turned from the taffrail where he had been standing and walked ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... or two. Beyond was inky darkness. If only a speck of light were down below! Why did I shut the door? Go on I could not. I turned my face upward, where the friendly light, packing up its robes of every hue for the journey of a night, looked kindly in. And so I went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... can be sure he didn't take his shoes with, him." Hazard rolled over on his back and lazily regarded the speck of flag fluttering briskly on the sheer edge of the precipice. "Say!" He sat up ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... "matter." We see in operation a wonderful something called "force" or "energy" in its countless forms of manifestations. We see things that we call "forms of life," varying in manifestation from the tiny speck of slime that we call the Moneron, up to that form ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... late—that night as the moon swept from the south toward Karva. She was a long way off, coming down from her hill, a white speck on the gray moor. He pulled up his horse and waited below the point where the track she followed struck the high road; he even got out of his trap and examined, deliberately, his horse's hoofs in turn, spinning out the time. When he heard her he drew himself ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... foreber!" shouted the negro; "I neber 'speck to see dat sight, while I not'ing but ole brack Bingo! I can lib to de end ob my days wid joy at de sight ob dat! it am next to finding poor Phillis hersef. Pray, missy, did you find dat in some accidental cotton bag? or am Bosting only the Christian name for wicked old Kintuck? I shouldn't ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... Lydia set sail. It pained us to see the vessel taken out of port by Carver Kinlay; but when she had rounded the Ness, Jessie and I went up to the head of the cliffs and watched the white sails over the sea, until they became a mere speck on the far horizon. Then, as we were coming back, and I remarked the tears in Jessie's eyes, I learned what I had already partly guessed—that Captain Gordon had asked my sister to ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... bet you sixpence she "finds herself" (I know nobody finds old maids). There now, didn't I tell you so? See,—she moves a little table up to the window and holds the table-cloth close up to her eye-lashes, to see if there's a speck of dirt on it, and then twitches, and pats, and pulls it into line and plummet order; then she places thereon a small tea tray, with only one cup and saucer. I declare it makes me feel quite melancholy! Then she throws up the window, lifts the cover off the tin-pail, and turns about a thimble ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... it is all daddy's on this side of the river down to where you see the white railings a long way down near the poplars, and that is the road we go to tea with Aunt Eleanour; and do you see a little blue speck on the hill over there? You could see if you had a telescope. Daddy showed me once; but you must shut your eye. That is Quarley Beacon, where ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... my attempt to get away. I carted out my feed and saddles, and when all was ready I sat on the pier and watched the burnished water of the bay for the dim speck which a steamer makes in rounding the distant island. At last the cry arose, "A steamer from the north!" I hurried for Ladrone, and as I passed with the horse the citizens smiled incredulously and asked, "Goin' to take the horse with ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... me intense pleasure. Especially did my heart leap when I took the Countess to the window a little to the right, and, pointing with one hand upwards, put the Count's binocular into her hands. The sun of the mid-noon was shining on a black speck floating from the topmost cliff of the Piz Langrev. As she looked she flung out her hand to me, still continuing to gaze with the glass held in the other. She saw her own scarlet favour flying from the pine-branch. That cry of wonder ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... knows its own mind sufficiently well, and has enough faith in its own powers of achievement. When these two requisites are wanting, the strongest giant cannot lift a two-ounce weight; when they are given, a bullock can take an eyelash out of its eye with its hind-foot, or a minute jelly speck can build itself a house out of various materials which it will select according to its purpose with the nicest care, though it have neither brain to think with, nor eyes to see with, nor hands nor feet to work with, nor is it anything but a minute speck of jelly—faith ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... constantly from midnight until seven in the morning, printing the daily edition. The rooms and machinery are kept in the most perfect order. Nothing is allowed to be out of place, and the slightest speck of dirt visible in any part, calls forth a sharp rebuke from Mr. Bennett, who makes frequent visits to every department of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... help himself. But all in vain. The clock struck one, And there was Jim A little bit gone. At half-past five You scarce could see A glimpse of his flapping Handkerchee. And when came noon, And we climbed sky-high, Jim was a speck Slip - slipping by. Come to-morrow, The neighbours say, He'll be past ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... is in the wind! I lay my cheek to the cabin side To feel the weight of his giant hands— A speck, a fly in the blasting tide Of streaming, pitiless, icy sands; A single heart with its feeble beat— A mouse in the lion's throat— A swimmer at sea—a sunbeam's mote In the grasp of a tempest of ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... blue above me, A tiny speck in the sky, Rained down from its bosom's fulness A shower of melody, Dropping through the golden sunlight, And sweetly ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... always that dragging of the general down to the particular, that circumscribing of everything by the personal, every rose a token, the moon something to kiss by, flowers prostituted into bouquets. She thought how happy she was this morning, feeling a little tiny speck of the miracle of life instead of trying to catch it like a wasp under the wine ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... these would-be murderers to know how their trick failed. That's the reason I didn't pound the brute to a jelly on the bed, for it would have made such a mess on the sheet. Now there isn't a speck on it. I'll take the vase with me into my room and finish the cobra off. In the morning I'll get rid of its body somehow. When these devils find tomorrow that you're not dead, they'll be very puzzled. Now, the question is, what are you going ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... any in the dirt, appears in 'colours', grains, or little nuggets along the base of the half-moon of sand. The more gold there is in the dirt, or the coarser the gold is, the sooner it appears. A practised digger can work off the last speck of gravel, without losing a 'colour', by just working the water round and off in the dish. Also a careful digger could throw a handful of gold in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off in dishfuls, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... to my room and found all my books intact ... in better condition even, than when I was home with them ... there was not a speck of dust anywhere. Evidently my father was not too sick to keep the place clean ... but then, I meditated he would attend to that, with ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... cupfuls of flour, one pint of rich cream, four table- spoonfuls of butter, four of grated Parmesan cheese, a speck of cayenne, two eggs, three quarts of clear soup stock. Mix flour, cream, butter, cheese and pepper together. Place the basin in another of hot water and stir until the mixture becomes a smooth, firm paste. Break into it the two eggs, and mix quickly and thoroughly. ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... separated from the rest will toughen and taste leathery, besides failing in the special purpose of giving lightness to the mixture. After mixing lightly and perfectly all such preparations should be cooked at once. The white "speck" always should be removed from a broken egg, as it is easily distinguished after cooking, and in anything of a liquid nature, such as custards, sauces, etc., it would be hard ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... the cook's tent and crept under the flap. Plainly he had been there before. Flies are everywhere by the million, but he knew where they were particularly plentiful. Half an hour ago I saw a brilliant speck of light on a piece of heath, which I thought was too bright to be the reflection of the moon from some bright object. I found it came from an insect nearly one inch long, jointed like a lobster, the glow coming from the last ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no [-nigher-] {higher} aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... eyes and looked hard at the window. The dim outline of Stark mountain off in the distance began to grow into form, and what was that? A speck of light? It must be his eyes. He rubbed them sleepily and looked again. Yes, a light. Alert at once with the alertness that comes to all boys at the sound of a fire bell or some such alarm, he slid from his bed noiselessly and stole to the window. It was gone! Aw, Gee! He had been ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... dreams—since I am quite sure that the reality would be far less satisfactory than it seems in anticipation. There is "always a fly in the amber" as the saying goes, and my experience is, that the truth more nearly resembles a great big fly with a tiny speck of amber sticking somewhere to its back. For in our dream voyages we overlook the fleas, the mosquitoes, the hunt for lodgings, the struggle with languages, the hundred-and-one disturbances of the spirit which are inseparable ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... of amusement, for in the comprehensive glance which the old lady cast across the library, a glance keen to detect disorder and from which no speck of dust could hope to conceal itself, there remained a trace of that grimness which he had detected at the moment of her entrance. In short, she was still bristling from a recent encounter. So much so that detecting something sympathetic in Harley's smile she availed herself of the presence of ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... he looked the sky suddenly brightened in a tiny spot out to sea. A long pencil of light shot up from the water, and a cloud was tinged with a speck of ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... time she stood and gazed, marveling at the beauty and recalling some of the things her companion of the afternoon had said about his impressions of the place; then suddenly there loomed a dark speck in the near foreground of her meditation, and, looking down annoyed, she discovered the minister like a gnat between the eye and a grand spectacle, his face turned admiringly up to her window, his hand ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... while obeying instructions, in traveling as fast as possible, that one day, the sixth of October, 1846, the party discerned something which, at first, looked like a mere speck moving on the prairies. Watching it with intense anxiety, the little speck increased in size until they saw it emerge, as it were, from the apparent junction of the heavens with the earth, and form a visible line; as the front of this column came nearer ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... applause that the public gave to an acquisition so beautiful and so unique. This diamond was called the "Regent." It is of the size of a greengage plum, nearly round, of a thickness which corresponds with its volume, perfectly white, free from all spot, speck, or blemish, of admirable water, and weighs more than 500 grains. I much applauded myself for having induced the Regent to make ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to-night for wood and water?" we began to ask of each other; for the sun was within an hour of setting. At length a dark green speck appeared, far off on the right; it was the top of a tree, peering over a swell of the prairie; and leaving the trail, we made all haste toward it. It proved to be the vanguard of a cluster of bushes and low trees, that surrounded some pools of water in an extensive hollow; so we ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... reached the level of the table and became visible to Dr. Speer. They were expressly made at my side, instead of, as usual, at my back, so that I might see them. They seemed to develop from a very bright speck, about the size of a pea, until they attained the size of a soda-water tumbler, and showed a soft luminosity like pale moonlight. They seemed to be covered with drapery and to be held by a hand. They faded slowly out, remaining visible about thirty or forty seconds, or perhaps a minute. The ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... glass case than for struggles with the elements which she had so lately gone through, while the canoe lay on the narrow beach, just out of reach of the waves that came booming upon the land, a speck upon the shingles. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... following that of the king and queen, till only one, apparently the princess' own boat, remained. But she did not want to go home even yet, and the prince thought he saw her order the boat to the shore without her. At all events, it rowed away; and now, of all the radiant company, only one white speck remained. Then the prince began ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... blue moor of the sea where, under the shadow of the high coast of Arran, a vessel appeared as a mere speck upon ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... blessings we enjoy, one of the greatest blessings a people can enjoy, is liberty. But every good in this life has its allay of evil. Licentiousness is the allay of liberty. It is an ebullition, an excrescence; it is a speck upon the eye of the political body, which I can never touch but with a gentle, with a trembling hand; lest I destroy the body, lest I injure the eye, upon which it is apt to appear. If the stage becomes at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... had been using a small but powerful telescope, uttered an exclamation, and focussed the instrument on a speck that seemed moving along on the ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... rust expires. All have their manes, and those manes bear: The few, so cleans'd, to these abodes repair, And breathe, in ample fields, the soft Elysian air. Then are they happy, when by length of time The scurf is worn away of each committed crime; No speck is left of their habitual stains, But the pure ether of the soul remains. But, when a thousand rolling years are past, (So long their punishments and penance last,) Whole droves of minds are, by the driving god, Compell'd ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... moves them forth from the kingdom, almost along the Verde, whither he transferred them with extinguished light.[4] By their [5] malediction the Eternal Love is not so lost that it cannot return, while hope hath speck of green. True is it, that whoso dies in contumacy of Holy Church, though he repent him at the end, needs must stay outside[6] upon this bank thirtyfold the whole time that he has been in his presumption,[7] if such decree become not shorter ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... can raise the chains that support it; for he only knows the secret of their machinery. He has left the place for the night. He lives three miles and a half away, at a little village yonder, which looks only a black speck in the distance, and he will not return till some ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. Then the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side, the little room, swept away from under me and vanished, as a speck of foam vanishes down ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... ships come with their strange men from other ports of the world. I saw them unfurl their snowy sails and speed over the blue waters bound for the shores of other climes. I watched them until they were but a speck of white down on the blue horizon, and I longed to be on board—to feel the ship roll upon the billows and hear the wind whistling through the rigging, to climb aloft and view the limitless expanse of ocean and ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the moving hull remaining ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... he quitted the near view, and let his eye run along the edge of the horizon, until it rested upon a small speck, which he knew to be the lofty spire of Saint Paul's Cathedral. If, as he supposed, the Fair Geraldine was in attendance upon Anne Boleyn, at the palace at Bridewell, she must be under the shadow of this very spire; and the supposition, whether correct ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mass of the planet filled the sub-atomic sky. My hands gripped the rim of the box with excitement. On its surface began to form continents, seas. Good God! was all this really materializing from a speck of matter under the lens of a super-microscope? I was looking down from an immense height upon an ever clarifying panorama. Mountains began to unfold, plains, and suddenly beneath me appeared a mighty ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... preachment, made a mountain. Still, it was a huge disorder to come from a trifle! At the same time who knew better than he upon what a merest trifle nervous excitement will fix the attention! or how to the mental eye such a speck will grow and grow until it absorb the universe! Only a certain other disquieting thought, having come once, would keep returning—that, thoroughly as he believed himself acquainted with her mind, he had very little knowledge of her ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... and they pulled an Irish halfpenny, with the harp on, from their pockets, and moistened it with saliva—which in English means spat on it—and then threw it into the pocket on the other side of body. But none of these accredited appeals to heaven put a speck upon the sea where the boats ought to have been, or cast upon the clouds a shade of any sail approaching. Uneasily wondering, the grannies, wives, and little ones went home, when the nightfall quenched all eyesight, and told one ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Cuddy hatched a new plot. Right across the feeding-ground, almost the only good one now in the Stormy Moon, he set a row of snares. A cottontail rabbit, an old friend, cut several of these with his sharp teeth, but some remained, and Redruff, watching a far-off speck that might turn out a hawk, trod right in one of them, and in an instant was jerked into the air to dangle by ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... ma," he said lightly. "There's not a speck in the lot of them too fine for my eyes." And he knelt down beside the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... holds its quarter-million species of living beings, animal and vegetable, to be progressive modifications of one great fundamental unity, an unity of so-called mental faculties as well as of bodily structure. And this is the jelly-speck. He scoffs at the popular idea that man is the great central figure round which all things gyrate like marionettes; in fact, the anthropocentric era of Draper, which, strange to say, lives by the side of the telescope and the microscope. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... plenty to do in a short while, but meanwhile he enjoyed the sensation of being on a tiny world in space with only a handful of Planeteers for company. He smiled. "King Foster," he said to himself. "Monarch of a thorium space speck." It was a rather nice feeling, even though he laughed at himself for thinking it. Since he was in command of the detachment, he could in all truth say that this was his own personal planet. It would be a good bit of space humor to spring on the ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... he will look upon thee as a fiend-like tempter—he will rush from thy sight—he will never see thee more; his love will be suddenly converted into hatred! Yes, man demands that woman should dishonor herself for his sake; but he will not allow a speck to appear upon what he calls his good name—no, not to save that poor, confiding, lost creature from the lowest depths and dregs of penury into which her frailty may ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... while the barren speck loomed up lore plainly. As they approached closer the boys eagerly scanned the shores for a sight of he mysterious man, or the wrecked motor boat. But they saw nothing, even through the ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... And do you know what a speck means?" demanded Mrs. Caldwell, with no chance in the troubled expression of ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked exactly like her. You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar to flake off even a tiny speck of her. When I had waited for my head to be cracked, until I had time to remember that a Crusader didn't dodge and hide, I looked up, and there she stood with the ruler lifted; but now she had turned just the shade of the wattles on our fightingest ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... George Washington, for in such minutiae did the value of the stamp reside. Did a single hair spring up above the count, it would invalidate the issue. Such values, got by circumstance or accident—resting on a flaw—founded on a speck—cause no ferment ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... The car shot violently forward, with shrieks and a huge buzzing noise, and leaped up the slope of the street. Rachel, still in the porch, could see Mr. Batchgrew's head wagging rather helplessly from side to side, just above the red speck of the tail-lamp. Then the whole vision was swiftly blotted out, and the warning shrieks of the invisible car grew fainter on the way to Red Cow. It pleased Rachel to think of the old man being casually bullied and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... two fine lads go up the gangplank, each carrying a red handkerchief containing his worldly goods. As the good ship moved away we lifted a wild wail of woe that drowned the sobbing of the waves. Everybody cried—I wept, too—and as the great, black ship became but a speck on the Western horizon we embraced ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion, a sort of massage. For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily, then went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort of incantation. He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body—the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed it all warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing the toes swiftly, till he was almost exhausted. Then ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... he left the room, and at the moment was unable not to turn a rapid glance upon the book. There it was, safe in its place. How well he knew the appearance of the volume! On the back near the bottom was a small speck, a spot on the binding, which had been so far disfigured by some accident in use. This seemed to his eyes to make it marked and separate among a thousand. To him it was almost wonderful that a stain so peculiar should not at once betray ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... here on the river," said Thrale, "an' ef we don't keep well in the middle uv it they kin reach us with thar bullets. But we won't be able to see the least speck or sign ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wean her from this one sad vice! Wipe out this only speck in her rich volume! Then, all my woes should cease; then, would I write, In truth's fair characters, her matchless worth, Nor blush to boast the fondness of ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... stood there long before a black speck at the end of the avenue expanded into a motor that was presently throbbing at the entrance. Undine, at its approach, turned from the window, and as she moved down the gallery her glance rested on the great tapestries, with their ineffable minglings of blue ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... about this harbour. No stockyards, cattle, nor even smoke, although at the highest northern point of the bay I saw a mass of white objects which might have been either tents or vessels. I perceived a white speck, which I took for breakers or white sand, on the projecting point of the north-eastern shore. (B.) On that day nine years exactly I first beheld the heads of Port Jackson, a rather singular coincidence. Thus the mountain on which I stood became an important ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... heart now grieved so bitterly. Aphiz Adegah's life had been a bold one, he knew no fear. The air of his native hills was not freer than his own spirit and as he looked off once more at the tiny white speck in the distance that marked the spot where Komel was, his resolution was instantly made, and he swore to ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... beating the eggs. He cut up the meat into small pieces, and when he was finished, took the egg-beater away from her. He turned it so energetically that a speck of foam ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... orchards that flourish, rank and wild, no longer cared for by pious and loving hands. From the rough road that climbs the mountains to Assunto, the convent is invisible, a gnarled and ragged olive grove intervening, and a spur of cliffs as well, while from Palermo one sees only the speck of white, flashing in the sun, indistinguishable from the many similar gleams of desert monastery or ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... I falsely thought my father, had gone back to Australia with pretended news of Richard Wharton's death. He had sought my widowed mother in her own home up country, and told her a lying tale of his devotion to her husband in his dying moments on that remote ocean speck in the far Southern Pacific. By this story he ingratiated himself. He knew she was rich: he knew she was worth marrying: and to marry her, he had left my own real father, Richard Wharton, to starve ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... up in great alarm at my cheek—but seeing that it was not bleeding, and had no hole in it, she patted it softly with her little tender dimpled hand, and said: "Aunt Fanny, Aunt Fanny," in a little speck of a whisper to herself a ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... and will occasionally lift up his little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow would give the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage, though it is a wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he never has a speck on his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was rather gay for a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of the milk-and-water of human kindness, and ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to him with his eyes on the ground, for in thought he was with those who were descending to the village. They soon came in sight of the inn, which was scarcely visible, so small did it look, a mere black speck at the foot of that enormous billow of snow. When they opened the door, Sam, the great curly dog, began to ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... following the languid tide and the soft southern breeze, you would perceive that the cobble of rock was a rugged hill with a few bushes and stunted trees growing in the crevices, and that the gleaming speck near the summit must be some kind of a building—if you were on the coast of Italy or Spain you would say a villa or a farm-house. Then, as you floated still farther north and drew nearer to the coast, the desolate hill would detach itself from the mainland and become a little mountain-isle, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... of the universe. When the flesh was taken away the man ceased to be cowardly, and was ready to fly with the angel past galaxy after galaxy, and infinity after infinity, and so man and angel passed on, viewing the universe, until the sun was out of sight—until our solar system appeared as a speck of light against the black empyrean, and there was only darkness. And they looked onward, and in the infinities of light before, a speck of light appeared, and suddenly they were in the midst of rushing worlds. But they passed beyond that system, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... is coming," said Ned who was in advance. The boy had shaded his eyes from the sun, and his uncommonly keen sight had detected the black moving speck before any of ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a moving speck on the water caught his eye. For a few minutes he watched it in suspense, then ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Ropeyarde and the other yards to do several businesses, he and I also did buy some apples and pork; by the same token the butcher commended it as the best in England for cloath and colour. And for his beef, says he, "Look how fat it is; the lean appears only here and there a speck, like beauty-spots." Having done at Woolwich, we to Deptford (it being very cold upon the water), and there did also a little more business, and so home, I reading all the why to make end of the "Bondman" (which the oftener I read the more I like), and begun "The Duchesse of Malfy;" which seems ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of jelly with some power of slightly varying its actions in accordance with slightly varying circumstances and desires—given such a jelly-speck with a power of assimilating other matter, and thus of reproducing itself, given also that it should be possessed of a memory and a reproductive system, and we can show how the whole animal world can have descended ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... gallant captain, And stood upon the deck; In velvet coat, and ruffles white, Without a spot or speck; And diamond rings, and triple strings Of ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... between God and man, such that the one cannot be defined in analogy with anything human. Neither wisdom, nor goodness, nor justice apply to him; yet the goodness, wisdom and justice of man depend upon him. Man is a finite speck set over against divine infinitude. His life is a constant struggle for survival with forces which have each an equal claim on divine regard with man. Man's salvation, herein, consists in knowing these ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... I—I mean, Mr. Merryweather—I beg your pardon! are actually grim beside Judge Gay; aren't they, Tommy? Did you ever see a grim kitten, Mr. Merryweather? Wouldn't it be too horrid for anything? Well, but what I meant to say is, the only weeniest speck of a fault I ever had to find with the Snowy—darling thing!—was that she was a little bit—just the tiniest winiest scrap—too serious. If your name were Tombs, you know, or Graves, or Scull,—I knew a girl named Scull,—of course you would have to be serious to live up to it; but when your ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... was distinctly coming on. Billy opened one eye, then the other, and hastily scanned the sky in either direction for an aeroplane, but the sky was as clear as crystal without a speck, and the sound was ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... baby, and fondly believed it to be a human wonder. He was solicitous on the score of its infantile ailments, and loaded it with gifts and toys beyond the scope of its enjoyment. He went about the house whistling more exuberantly than ever. There was no speck on his horizon; no fly in his pot of ointment. It was he who urged that the child should be christened promptly, though Dr. Glynn was not disposed to dwell on the clerical barbarism as to the destiny of unbaptized infants. Babcock was cultivating ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... destructiveness. Don't you understand me? You hate sin, you know. Well, I hate disease. Moral evil is your devil, and physical evil is mine. I hate it, little or big; I hate to see a fellow sick; I hate to see a child rickety and pale; I hate to see a speck of dirt in the street; I hate to see a woman's gown torn; I hate to see her stockings down at heel; I hate to see anything wasted, anything awry, anything going wrong; I hate to see water-power wasted, manure ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley |
