"Vivid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imposing combination of great qualities. Endowed with broad human sympathies, massive energy, manly and affectionate simplicity, and rich, if sometimes coarse humor, he is at the same time a spiritual genius. His intuitions of divine truth were bold, vivid, and penetrating, if not comprehensive; and he possessed the art which God alone gives to the finer and abler spirits that He calls to do special work in this world, of kindling other souls with the fire of his own convictions, and awakening them to a higher consciousness of religion ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... color in the part of the cloud occupied by these crystals. The color will, of course, not be undiluted; for other crystals will send forward white light, and this, blended with the colored light, will produce delicate shades in cases where the corresponding colors of a soap bubble would be vivid. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... Gilpin" originated during one of his illnesses. With the hope of diverting his mind during an unusually severe attack of gloom, Lady Austen related to him the history of the renowned citizen, which she had heard in her childhood. The tale made a vivid impression, and the next morning he told her that the ludicrous incident had convulsed him with laughter during the night, and that he had embodied the whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... before," Mrs. Manstey pursued, taking them up the stairs to their rooms, "but not you!" She gave Edith's shoulder an affectionate little pat. She thought the younger girl extremely beautiful—which she was, with a vivid, piquant ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... it is not the facts as such that are important, but the emotional appreciation of the facts, and to this end, the coloring must be rich, the pictures vivid, the contrasts sharply drawn. The successful teacher of history has the gift of making real the past. His pupils struggle with Columbus against a frightened, ignorant, mutinous crew; they toil with the Pilgrim fathers ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... then, a vivid italicized prototype, on slim tall heels that clicked and a very small red hat set just at the angle of sauciness. They moved off together after a bickering over luggage, the slim silhouette with the chin sharply flung up and the accentuated sway-back figure of the little mother, her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... into his life of vivid action the splendor of romance. His figure stands foremost in any picture of the war as that of the most dashing and daring cavalier of his time; but if his bearing was that of a young hero of fiction, his deeds were ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... moment Alison's belief in what she had herself seen was staggered by Jim's words and the ring of pain in his voice, but only for a moment. The thought of Louisa and the tender way he had looked at her, and her bold words of passion, were too vivid to be long suppressed. Alison's voice took a note of added scorn as ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... with the paper, that I should continue to lead the same life. Of course I should! How could I do otherwise? And even if I had changed somewhat in my ideas and my outlook on life, I certainly did not feel even remotely attracted towards the sort of society Caroline referred to. I had a vivid recollection of once accompanying her to an at home, given in a crowded drawing-room, where the heavily-gilded Louis XV. mirrors and Sevres vases and ornaments, with their scrolls and flourishes, all seemed to have developed the flowing wigs which characterised the Roi Soleil, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... from Italy" still holds a high and distinctive position. That the descriptions, whether of places and works of art, or of life's pageantry, and what may be called the social picturesque, should be graphic, vivid, animated, was almost a matter of course. But a priori, I think one might have feared lest he should "chaff" the place and its inhabitants overmuch, and yield to the temptation of making merriment over matters which hoar age and old associations had hallowed. We can all imagine the kind ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... delightful old-fashioned books of fairy tales without a moral, and closing with 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Don Quixote,' and Plutarch's 'Lives of Illustrious Men.' In the last two books I took a real and vivid interest, though I now suspect that it was strictly limited in range. They seemed to open a new world to me, the world of the past, in which I could see men moving about and doing the most remarkable things. Both of these books appeared to me equally ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... made upon me by Father Haugoult's harangue that evening is one of the most vivid reminiscences of my childhood; I can compare it with nothing but my first reading of Robinson Crusoe. Indeed, I owe to my recollection of these prodigious impressions an observation that may perhaps be new as to the different sense attached to words by ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... perceptible, the melon, the pea, and the bean. The pumpkin lay ripening on its frosted vines, its sunny side already changed to a bright golden color; and the turnip spread out its green mat of leaves in defiance of the season. Everything around realized the vivid ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... broke cover a vivid flash of lightning cleaved the black cloud that had almost reached the zenith by now, and the deep rumble of thunder changed to a sharp chatter; then followed a second ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... down in one of the little stalls that stood open to the main promenade, and saw his friend thread his way among the moving figures, and address his cousin. As she turned to speak with Stanton, the artist received again that vivid impression of beauty, which her face ever caused before time was given for closer scrutiny. Indeed from his somewhat distant point of observation, and in the less searching light, the fatal flaw could scarcely be detected. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... stated that he carried a tinder-box about with him to light his pipe. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed out. And as memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile, Mr. Snell gradually recovered a vivid impression of the effect produced on him by the pedlar's countenance and conversation. He had a "look with his eye" which fell unpleasantly on Mr. Snell's sensitive organism. To be sure, he didn't say anything particular—no, except that about ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... the appointment made between them, Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting, conveys so vivid a picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now becoming, I cannot refrain ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... a year—on that terrible little sand-spit, and on the night I am describing I went to bed as usual, feeling very despondent. As I lay asleep in my hammock, I dreamed a beautiful dream. Some spiritual being seemed to come and bend over me, smiling pityingly. So extraordinarily vivid was the apparition, that I suddenly woke, tumbled out of my hammock, and went outside on a vague search. In a few minutes, however, I laughed at my own folly and ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... gate where the syringa and lilac bushes leaned over and arched the way, and the honeysuckle climbed about the fence in a wild pretty way of its own and flung sweetness on the air in vivid, erratic whiffs. ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... nights were turned into days; and, during the few hours of sleep—but not of repose—which gave me strength to return to the gaming-table, the rattling of the dice and the shuffling of the cards haunted me in my dreams, with alternations of exultation and despair, as vivid though not as distinct, as in my waking hours. At first, (the old history of all such cases,) I won immensely, and this encouraged me to play higher and higher stakes, which, when the tide of fortune turned, involved me, almost before I was conscious of it, in debts of ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... power of insight"; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived morbidness, wherever it existed, instantly, as if by the illumination of his own steady cheer; and he had the plastic power of putting himself into each person's situation, and of looking ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Those who desire to further investigate the utter misery of female authorship may be referred to Whyte's vivid description of an interview with Mrs. Clarke (the daughter of Colley Cibber), about the purchase of a novel. It is appended to an edition of his own poems, printed at Dublin, 1792; and has been reproduced in Hone's "Table Book," ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of "Dido, Queen of Carthage," was probably completed for the stage after that irreparable and incalculable loss to English letters by Thomas Nash, the worthiest English precursor of Swift in vivid, pure, and passionate prose, embodying the most terrible and splendid qualities of a personal and social satirist; a man gifted also with some fair faculty of elegiac and even lyric verse, but in nowise qualified to put on the buskin left behind him by the "famous gracer of tragedians," as Marlowe ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... slaughter, that merciless driving away of hundreds of innocent women and children, the natural pity for the youth and helplessness of many of the victims has lasted down to our own time. Even to us the outrage is a thousand-fold more vivid than the provocation which led to it. How much more then to the English Protestants of that day? To them it was simply a new massacre of St. Bartholomew; an atrocity which the very amplest and bloodiest vengeance would still come far short ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... about again, the sunlit air seemed brighter, the coloring of lake and land more vivid and alive. Once during each of this world's short days, but no oftener, he permitted himself to look at the star hyacinth. It was a ritual adhered to with almost religious strictness, and it had ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... horsemen: she jolted the cart off into the stones to let them pass, seeing Mr. Holmes's face in the carriage as she did so. He did not look at her; had his head turned towards the gray distance. Lois's vivid eye caught the full meaning of the woman beside him. The face hurt her: not fair, as Polston called it: vapid and cruel. She was dressed in yellow: the colour seemed jeering and mocking to the girl's sensitive instinct, keenly alive to every trifle. She did not ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... hotel of your great affliction, which must be doubly painful, your husband being absent." Hubert glanced searchingly at his cousin's face. He had vivid remembrances of Thornton Rush, and held the conviction, that however much he might have changed for the better, he could be still anything but an agreeable life-companion. He discovered nothing by his searching glance, for Althea was thinking of her child, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... employed himself in vigorously making friends with Janet Leighton, keenly alive all the time to that vivid and flower-like vision of Miss Henderson at the farther end of the table. But some instinct warned him that beside the splendid fellow in khaki his own claim on her could be but a modest one. He must watch his opportunity. It was natural that certain misgivings had ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unchallenged. But a vague desire for the emphasis and glamour of literature having brought in the word "mother," has yet failed to set the sluggish imagination to work, and a word so glowing with picture and vivid with sentiment is damped and dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted usage to mean no more than "cause" or "occasion." Only for the poet, perhaps, are words live winged things, flashing with colour and laden with scent; yet one poor spark of imagination ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... we thought of our author's poetry. It would probably have gone out of date with the immediate occasion, even if he himself had not contrived to banish it from our recollection. It is not to be denied that it had great merit, both of an obvious and intrinsic kind. It abounded in vivid descriptions, in spirited action, in smooth and flowing versification. But it wanted character. It was poetry "of no mark or likelihood." It slid out of the mind as soon as read, like a river; and would have been forgotten, but that the public curiosity was fed ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... and through it the intellect. The modern writers of history especially, seize upon scenes and situations which involve strong dramatic effect, endeavoring, as it were, to reproduce the past, by painting its events with the most vivid colors of description. They do not give the polished, stately bas-reliefs of the old historians, but glowing pictures, perhaps less distinct in their outlines, but conveying a stronger impression of real life. The works of Prescott, (who ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... business," said Haigh. "I'll bet you five hundred pounds that we make the islands in the next twenty-four hours. I.O.U.'s accepted." He slipped off the after-hatch, and dragged up from the counter a venerable relic of a spinnaker, which was one vivid mottle of mildew. The sail was duly mocked and set. The wind was freshening, and our pace increased. The cutter and her parasitical escort kicked up enough wake for a ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... orator, and such an one is portrayed by Mme. H. Dreyfus, in her dramatic poem God's Heroes, under the name of 'Ali. I will quote here a little speech of 'Ali's, and also a speech of Ḳurratu'l 'Ayn, because they seem to me to give a more vivid idea of the scene than is possible for a mere narrator. [Footnote: God's Heroes, by Laura Clifford Barney [Paris, 1909], ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... convey even a faint idea of the wild and hugely fantastic sight that met our gaze. With us it was a single, vivid flash to the astonished brain. ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... general advantage. Nor is he in less estimation with the masters, who are loud in their praises of his assiduity and proficiency in school pursuits. Horatio is not exactly a genius: there is nothing of that wild eccentricity of thought and action which betokens the vivid flights of imagination, or the meteoric brightness of inspiration; his actions are distinguished by coolness, intrepidity, and good sense. He does not pretend to second sight, or a knowledge of futurity; but on ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of the troop commanders of the Tenth Cavalry bring out a few more particulars which serve to give us a more vivid conception of this moving line. The entire cavalry division advanced together, and notwithstanding the roughness of the ground, Major Norvell assures us the line was pretty well preserved. Troops A, B, E and I were in the First Squadron, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... the great poets of the world, not so much through vividness of imagination as through his singleness of nature, his vivid impressibility, and his keen perception. He received the gifts of the passing hour so happily that to produce pure and lasting poetry it was enough for him to utter in natural words something of the fulness of his heart. He says on every occasion exactly what he wanted ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... There are vivid descriptions of sundry encounters, including one between Achilles and Aeneas, wherein both heroes indulge in boastful speeches before coming to blows. At one time, when Aeneas is about to get the worst of it, the gods, knowing he is reserved for greater things, snatch him ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... capital, where I was reporting the debate, Old Oracle, with every fact at hand from "In the beginning" to the exact popular vote in 1876, talked two hours of accurate historical data from all the French histories, after which a young lawyer replied in fifteen minutes with a vivid picture of the popular conditions, the revolt and the result. Will it be allowable, in the interest of conveying exact impression, to say that Old Oracle was "swiped" off the earth? No other word will relieve my conscience. After it was all over I asked the young lawyer where ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... writes like Sankara, he also has the note of the Psalms and Gospels. He has the sense of sin: he thinks of God in vivid personal metaphors, as a lord, a bridegroom, a ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the vivid secret of the present had wiped out from my mind much of our long estrangement. Something, too, had changed in her. I had had some hint of it in her letters, but now I saw it plainly. I came out of my study upon ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... daisies and pink and red sweet williams are in full bloom at one end of the border, and summer-flowering cosmos holds sway at the other end, while the flax, bachelor's buttons and daisies fill the center with blue and white. By the middle of July the calendulas, coreopsis and annual larkspur make a vivid display where the narcissus was before. These four make a very good combination, for if the bed is well made and the narcissus planted deep, the coreopsis and larkspur seed themselves, and with ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... Christianity in its monotheistic tendencies, its sacraments, its comparatively high morality, its doctrine of an Intercessor and Redeemer, and its vivid belief in a future life and judgment to come. Moreover Sunday was its holy-day dedicated ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... varied pink, or worn-out, washed-out, sun-dried green. All the tones were beautiful and modest, fitting the sun yet not competing with it. In London the colour would break the level of dull tints and angrily protest, growing scarlet and vivid and wrathful. And just as I looked away from the river and the vine-clad terrace there was a scurrying rush of little school-boys from a steep side-street. They ran down the slope, and passed me, going quickly ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... And most vivid do these scenes and people become when the vague and irrecoverable boy who walks among them carries a rod over his shoulder, and you detect the soft bulginess of wet fish about his clothing, and perhaps the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... of 69½°, appearing in the (true) south-east quarter as a bright luminous patch five or six degrees above the horizon, almost stationary for two or three hours together, but frequently altering its intensity, and occasionally sending up vivid streamers towards the zenith. It appeared in the same manner on several subsequent nights in the south-west, west, and east quarters of the heavens; and on the 20th a bright arch of it passed across the zenith from S.E. to N.W., appearing to be ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... brow of a distant mountain. The shores of the lake were suffused with the serene effulgence, and every object was so distinct, that the eye was pained by the lights of the villages, that every instant became more numerous and vivid. The bell of a small chapel on the opposite shore, and the distant chant of some fishermen still working at their nets, were the only sounds that broke the silence which they did not disturb. Reclined in his boat, George Cadurcis watched the vanishing villa ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... But most vivid of all, Saxon saw the fight at Little Meadow—and Daisy, dressed as for a gala day, in white, a ribbon sash about her waist, ribbons and a round-comb in her hair, in her hands small water-pails, step forth into the sunshine on the flower-grown open ground from the wagon circle, wheels interlocked, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of many which Hyacinth gave to such expeditions. The work of Mr. Quinn's office was not so pressing as to necessitate his spending every day there when he was in Ballymoy, and a holiday was always obtainable. The lake scenery remained vivid in his memory in after-years, and had its influence upon him even while he enjoyed it, unconscious of anything except the present pleasure. There was something besides the innocent gaiety of the girls and the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... his knees, the old man leant his hands upon it, with a meditative and judicial air. The boy stood looking down at him, a broad smile lighting up the dark and vivid face. Old 'Lias supplied him with a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fled instantly, and completely. The memory of Antonio's dark face as he had stood threateningly before the little fellow, at midnight by the window, returned with all its vivid, terrorizing power. Springing to the farthest reach of the room Ned crouched there, wide-eyed and trembling, and, of course, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... portrait. Both of these heads were feminine, but one was thin-faced and sharp-featured, and gray-haired, while the other was like a full moon—a full moon with several chins—and its hair was a startlingly vivid black parted in the middle and with a series of very regular ripples on ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the waggons, just distinguishable as such by their white canvas tilts—the latter in contrast with the surface of vivid green over which they are progressing. Slowly crawling along, they bear similitude to a string of gigantic termites bent on some industrial excursion. Still the forms of mounted men—at least forty in number, can be distinguished. Some riding in front of the train, some in ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... believers in dreams. These, they say, are sent by the Sun to enable us to look ahead, to tell what is going to happen. A dream, especially if it is a strong one,—that is, if the dream is very clear and vivid,—is almost always obeyed. As dreams start them on the war path, so, if a dream threatening bad luck comes to a member of a war party, even if in the enemy's country and just about to make an attack on a camp, the party is likely to turn about and go home without ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... disguise. The panic which had beset him when first he saw the dark brown walls of Berber, the night in the ruined acres, the stumbling search for the well amongst the shifting sandhills of Obak,—Ethne had vivid pictures of these incidents, and as she thought of each she asked herself: "Where was I then? ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... was a joker, and his statements were apt to be somewhat embellished by his vivid imagination, so that we accepted them with caution; but now he looked exultant, and we believed him, especially as he took his hat and stick ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... excited feeling went out of Mrs. Martindale's face. I saw it but for an instant after this reply from her husband; but like a sun-painting, its whole expression was transferred to a leaf of memory, where it is as painfully vivid now as on that never-to-be-forgotten evening. It was pale and convulsed, and the eyes full of despair. A dark presentiment of something terrible had fallen upon her—the shadow of an approaching woe that was ...
— The Son of My Friend - New Temperance Tales No. 1 • T. S. Arthur
... king, no royal family upon which can be centered the loyal emotions of a great people. To us the only representative of the whole people is the glorious banner "thick sprinkled" with stars and striped with vivid ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... his; the latent grace and mobility of her nature, all roused and vivid under his influence, transfigured her face, making it delicately lovely. A great pang of ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... rose-bud" grew in beauty, and after some months had gained strength sufficient to allow of her being brought back to Alencon. Her memory of this short but happy time spent with her sainted Mother in the Rue St. Blaise was extraordinarily vivid. To-day a tablet on the balcony of No. 42 informs the passers-by that here was born a certain Carmelite, by name, Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. Fifteen years have gone since the meeting in Heaven ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... well said, "still climbed the clear cold altitudes of song." His ambition was always for the heights, a region naturally ice-bound at periods, but always a country of clear atmosphere and bright, vivid outlines. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... finished and (if I may so express it) clean cut; never long-winded or prosy; enlivened by vivid illustrations. He was an excellent raconteur, and his stories had a stamp of their own which would have made them always and everywhere acceptable. His sense of humour and economy of words would have made it impossible, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... the tile elevator, his flashing smile getting a vivid response from the Armenian elevator boy. He ran a good part of the way home and burst into the house with a slam, utterly unlike his usual quiet, unboyish steadiness. He was dashing past the library door on his way upstairs to his mother, when he caught a glimpse of her sitting near the library ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... temperature, the light also assumed greater intensity; and if it had not been for the screen of vapor interposed between the sky and the island, the irradiation which would have illumined all terrestrial objects would have been vivid beyond all precedent. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... account may dispel many false ideas which still obtain in Europe and America regarding the position of various Powers in China—ideas based on data which have long been declared of no value by those competent to judge. In the third place, the vivid and terrible description of the sack of Peking by the soldiery of Europe, showing the demoralisation into which all troops fall as soon as the iron hand of discipline is relaxed, may set finally at rest the mutual recriminations which have since been levelled ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... proper compensation, in Joe's establishment,—that is, anything that could possibly be required by the most exacting sauvage or sauvagesse, from a strap of sleigh-bells to a red-framed looking-glass. Out of that store, too, comes a deal of the vivid drapery displayed upon the Fete Dieu, and much of the art-union resource combined in the attractive cheap lithograph element so edifying to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... longer the courage to revert again to what she had wanted to confess to Wolfgang that night. Besides, what was the good? She had the vivid feeling that there was no getting at him any more, that he could not be helped any more. But she felt weighed down as though she had committed a terrible crime. And the feeling of this great crime made her gentler towards him than she would otherwise have been; she ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... no more do we find the vivid faith of Plato, the mature intellect of Aristotle, the manly self-control of Zeno. Greek philosophy is ending in garrulity and mysticism. It is leaning for help on the conjurer, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... rode into the glare of lamplight, skirts and hair in disarray, laughing like a young Bacchante, the spirit of youth and joy incarnate. Now he drew her out very skilfully, so that he might watch the changing expressions on her vivid face as she talked, or smiled, or bent broodingly over the child in her arms. Here, he thought, was temperament as well as talent. Properly handled, the girl had ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... College football squad, his behemoth bulk swathed in heavy blankets and crowded into a narrow bunk, shifted his vast tonnage restlessly. He was dreaming of the wild and woolly West, and like a six-reel Western drama thrown on the screen in a moving-picture show, he visioned in his slumbers a vivid and spectacular panorama. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... adopted was to lead Darius's horse out to the ground that evening, in company with another, the favorite companion, it seems, of the animal. Now the attachment of the horse to his companion is very strong, and his recollection of localities very vivid, and Oebases expected that when the horse should approach the ground on the following morning, he would be reminded of the company which he enjoyed there the night before, and neigh. The result was as ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... small, hard, and woody; radical leaves lyrate, vivid green, and without any appearance of the glaucous bloom for which the biennial sorts are so distinguished; the stem-leaves are slightly glaucous, smooth, or nearly so,—the lower ones cut on the borders, the upper ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... coarsest and most dangerous blows, or of presenting the work of its adversaries in the most questionable guise. It was his habit to thread the mazes of economic and fiscal discussion, and he was never so eloquent or apparently so contented as when he was painting a vivid picture of the burdens under which he imagined the country to be suffering, or giving a fanciful sketch of what might have been if Democratic rule had continued. From the beginning of the war he had illustrated the highest accomplishments of political oratory in bewailing, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... interesting to say of the past. His eyes brightened, and his tongue became voluble with a thousand memories. Had I been present to listen to him then, I should doubtless have been enabled to add considerably to my stock of early anecdotes. He seemed to have brought away from this visit a peculiarly vivid recollection of "poor crazy Joe Gibson." This demented being was sometimes easily controlled, and willing to be useful; at other times, he was perfectly furious and ungovernable. Few people knew how to manage him; but Isaac's parents acquired ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... had not too much affection of the deeper kind to spare for any one. The figure of Roger Sterne alone stands out with any clearness by the side of the ceaselessly flitting mother and phantasmal children of Laurence Sterne's Memoir; and it is touched in with strokes so vivid and characteristic that critics have been tempted to find in it the original of the most famous portrait in the Shandy gallery. "My father," says Sterne, "was a little, smart man, active to the last degree in all exercises, most patient of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... defiance, but with an unchanging, if unspoken, insistence. Her native land and the Empire should be glad of her for what she was and for what she stood; her native land and the Empire should be glad of her for the work, interesting, vivid and human, which she has done. It will preserve her memory. In an age growing sordid such fresh spirits as she should be welcomed for what they are, for what they do. This book by Pauline Johnson should be welcomed for what she was ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... to tell her story. No one could tell a story better. She made her narrative quite absorbing. For these girls, who had never known anything of life, she drew so vivid and fascinating a picture that they almost wished to be present at such a scene as she described. She spoke of the girls of the London world in their pretty dresses, and the matrons in their richer garments; of the men who moved about with polite deference. She spoke of the summer air, the beautiful ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... yet changeless in tide and restraint—was as bright and sparkling as at midsummer. Along the distant beaches the white ruffle of the surf seemed to have just been laundered. The green of the shallows and the blue of the deeper sea were equally vivid. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... ballads of Robin Hood; in spite of deep and sometimes disastrous changes of national policy, that note is still unmistakable in Shakespeare, in Johnson and his friends, in Cobbett, in Dickens. It is vain to dream of defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, "Well, you know holly—mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this logical ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... inspired in Doctor Hoff's mind by this pronouncement was augmented in the next few days by the fact that Roderick was very busy about town in his motor-car, and was changed to vivid alarm immediately thereafter by the young man's disappearance. To all intents and appearances, Roderick Hoff had dropped off the earth on or about April twelfth. By April fifteenth New York, Pittsburg, Chicago, Washington and other clearing-houses for the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Ireland, however, the vivid details in J. Clyn of Kilkenny, Annales Hibevnia: ad annum 1349, ed. R. Butler, Irish Archaological ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... under the domination of an impulse born of a too-vivid impression are rarely in a state of mind that can be depended upon to judge sanely and impartially. They nearly always overshoot the mark at which they aim. They are like runners dashing forward at such a high speed that they can not bring themselves ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... twenty-seventh day of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with the person whom he sought. The first Sunday Kirstie had managed to stay away from kirk on some pretext of indisposition, which was more truly modesty; the pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too vivid for that public place. On the two following, Frank had himself been absent on some of his excursions among the neighbouring families. It was not until the fourth, accordingly, that Frank had occasion to set eyes on the enchantress. With the first ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lived to watch on a strange shore a black and youthful Nausicaa, with a joyous train of attendant maidens, carrying baskets of linen to a clear stream overhung by the heads of slender palm-trees. The vivid colours of their draped raiment and the gold of their earrings invested with a barbaric and regal magnificence their figures, stepping out freely in a shower of broken sunshine. The whiteness of their teeth ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... rest of that night are, for the most part, vague and indistinct; but in spots they stand out clear and vivid. The first thing I knew definitely was when Smith bent over me, cutting the ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... feet, may be conceived; such is the momentum of this immense volume of fluid, that, when it strikes the rocky bed at the base of the cataract, it rebounds in a thick cloud of vapour—and when the sun's rays intercept it, as was the case when I arrived there, a beautiful rainbow of vivid colours encircles the area of the chasm, and, together with the natural curiosities and situation of the entire scene, presents to the amazed beholder, the effect of a highly-executed picture in a frame of sun-light, although far surpassing the productions of human skill, which may well be said, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... topics of trade restrictions, conflicts between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and hostilities with the Dutch, it contains more than usual matter which sheds light on social conditions in Manila and the internal affairs of the colony. A vivid and picturesque description of social life in Manila is furnished in the document on "Royal festivities;" and educational interests are represented in others, regarding aid to the Jesuit college there, and a school for orphan boys. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... had a good look round the place upstairs and down; and, so sure as I passed an open window, I felt about with my hands for wires, the memory of that powder-tin being too vivid ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... Speculative, the famed Debating Society where Jeffrey first met Scott. There Stevenson encountered his contemporaries in years and social standing, his superiors in debate, and he, "the lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student," as he calls himself, enjoyed "its atmosphere of good-fellowship, its vivid and varied interests, its traditions of honourable labour and success." "Speculative evenings," says R. L. S., "form pretty salient milestones on our intellectual journey." He had gripped a deal ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... had deepened in her thin, oval face, with its straight brows, and large, grey eyes. Her hair, brushed in fine, high curves back from her forehead, was going grey, like his own, and this greyness made the sudden vivid colour in her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have been bitterly contested elections in this country before. Party spirit is always rife, and in such vivid, excitable, disputatious communities as ours are, and I trust always will be, it is the very soul of freedom. To those who reflect upon the means and end of popular government, nothing seems more stupid than in grand generalities to deprecate party spirit. Why, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... time when the Fenian scare was damaging Killarney as a tourist resort, Sir Michael Morris—as he then was—was staying at Morley's Hotel in London, and saw in the American paper lying on the table a vivid account of how the Fenian army had attacked a British garrison, and would have easily captured the stronghold had not an overpowering force of English cavalry and artillery hurried up to deliver ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the excesses of the evening, it did not take the young men long to lose all clear and vivid remembrance of this recent experience; for the time had come when Nature was offering her last resistance, and their brains were badly awhirl. Of all the four, Jefferson Locke was the only one who retained ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... accounts of Ferdinand Columbus and Peter Martyr were based upon the same original, a lost narrative of the Admiral. It will be remembered, however, that Ferdinand accompanied his father on this voyage, and although only a boy of thirteen his narrative contains several passages of vivid personal recollection. The editor has carefully compared Ferdinand's narrative with the account in this letter and ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... on her unawares in the din of a noisy city. She will answer us where the waves are lashing themselves against the rugged cliffs of our own British coast, or we may find her where the great yellow pillars of fallen temples lie hot in the sun close to the vivid blue water of the African sea. At nightfall, on the lonely northern moors, she mimics the cry of a wailing bird that calls for its mate, but it is she who prolongs the roll of the great organ in a ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... overhang the lakes appeared to me, in my young days (and I have not seen them since), to be clothed with a short soft verdure, of a hue so dark and vivid as I ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... geographical description and entirely similar in matter and style to other works of voyagers and colonizers that illustrate the expansion of England. They contain the materials of history in a form of good Elizabethan narrative, always vigorous in language, often vivid and picturesque. John Smith (1579-1631) wrote the first of these, A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as hath happened in Virginia (1608), and he later added other accounts of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I forgot," explained Dot, trying to fold over a pleat so that the vivid streaks of green paint would not show. "I guess I kind of brushed ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... Venus and Adonis, which is finer than that of Titian,—a classic and most exquisite idyl of love and sleep, cool shadow and golden-sifted sunshine. His most considerable work in the gallery is a Christ teaching the Doctors, magnificent in arrangement, severely correct in drawing, and of a most vivid and dramatic interest. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... 9 o'clock, and all became still as death, save the groaning of the wounded soldiers in the hospital, or the calls and cries of those left upon the battlefield. Oh, such a night, the night after the battle! The very remembrance of it is a vivid picture of Dante's "Inferno." To lie during the long and anxious watches of the night, surrounded by such scenes of suffering and woe, to continually hear the groans of the wounded, the whispered consultations of the surgeons over the case of some poor boy who was soon to be ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... a creature this would be, by and by! But in the meantime, what was to become of her? Without a mother, or a sister, or a brother; all alone; with nobody near who even knew what she needed. What would become of her? It was not stagnation that was to be feared, but too vivid life; not that she would be mentally stunted, but that the growth would be to exhaustion, or lack the right hardening processes, and ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... roses were out in bloom. Sara had always loved those red roses—they were as vivid as herself, with all her own fullness of life and joy of living. And, besides these, a miracle had happened in Old Man Shaw's garden. In one corner was a rose-bush which had never bloomed, despite all the coaxing they had given it—"the sulky rose-bush," Sara had been wont to call it. Lo! ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a perfect day, Jane's birthday, like a young June day, a day of the sun, of white distances and vivid foregrounds. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... faith in Constantine. I know there is something in him. He thinks in images; his stories are vivid and full of colour, and always affect me deeply. It is only a pity that he has no definite object in view. He creates impressions, and nothing more, and one cannot go far on impressions alone. Are you glad, madam, that you have an author for ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... was more implacable than all the rest. He called Henry's action the deed of Joseph's brethren, and viewed the matter as the responsible head of a family; he had a more vivid contemporaneous knowledge of the Axworthy antecedents, and he had been a witness to Henry's original indignant repudiation of such a destiny for his brother. He was in the mood of a man whose charity had ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... studied his kangaroo-like action. Miss Vining even bent over and felt of his ankles doubtfully, and to his vivid confusion Miss Darrell strolled up, made him sit down on a log, placed one soft, white finger on his mouth, and, opening it coolly, examined the interior. Then they drew together, consulting in whispers, then Miss Challis came with a stethoscope and ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... What vivid dreams arise as I dose by the hedge amidst those autumn scenes! Whether clouds bear me company or the moon be my mate, I can't discern. In fairyland I soar, not that I would become a butterfly like Chang. So long ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless and implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen; if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, Ellis Bell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation. Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree, loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its matured ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... not look for vivid colouring; what there may be of this is furnished by the wares in the shops, not by foliage or atmospheric effects; but in the country some brilliancy and vividness seems to be instinctively expected, and there ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the fire with fresh peat, paused and looked down upon her. His long, lank face, his weather-stained clothes, his great, twisted hand were all of the same colour—the colour of wintry grass and lichened rock. But his eyes were bright and blue, and a vivid streak of white hair fell across his high forehead. As the girl asked her question, the old man's air of fatherly concern became ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... vivid. He is familiar with the older figures in the history of the County. He tells tales of having travelled by oxen to West Texas for flour and being gone for six months at a time. He remembers the Keechi and the Kickapoo ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... his accustomed seat at the head of the table. As a sign of devotion, he tried to step on Dorothy's foot under the table, after a pleasing habit of their courtship in the New York boarding-house, but he succeeded only in drawing an unconscious "ouch" and a vivid blush from Miss St. Clair, by which he impressed Dorothy more deeply than he could have hoped ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... the succession of ideas in our mind. Vivid sensation, of either pain or pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the common phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our ideas. If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute, by the clock, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... his back on her and was going in doors. In front of the house Porphyrius and Karnis were standing in eager colloquy. The news that Marcus' mother Mary had sent for Herse had reached the singer, and his vivid fancy painted his wife as surrounded by a thousand perils, threatened by the widow, and carried before the judges. The merchant advised him to wait and see what came of it, as did Damia and Gorgo who were attracted to the spot by the vehemence of the discussion; but Karnis ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lay beneath his glance, a vivid exposition of the vast, half-tamed valley's bounty, spoils, and promise; of its motley human life, scarcely yet to be called society, so lately and rudely transplanted from overseas; so bareboned, so valiantly preserved, so young yet already ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... It is, as I have frequently had occasion to remark, and as my young friend here will readily admit, one of the many forms of the love of ideal beauty, which, without being in itself religion, exerts on vivid imaginations an influence that is very often ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... holy book To brothers, sisters dear; How calm was my poor mother's look Who leaned God's word to hear! Her angel face—I see it yet! What vivid memories come!— Again that little group is met Within the halls ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... vivid picture in her mind, gathered at some later visit, of a soft hillside, a small white church standing under its balm-of-gilead tree, and herself sitting by a stone in the old churchyard, listening to the strains of a hymn which floated ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... color your words as rashly and with as vivid colors as you choose, Nolla, but I say that when you begin to infer that the coloring is of my choosing and that I am in hearty sympathy with the way you win out in matters, then I will balk and if necessary, deny it in the future. ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... reads like a faction fight in a whiskey-shop. You can hear the trailing of coats, the crack of shillelaghs on thick Irish skulls, the yells of hurroosh, whirroo, and O'Donnell aboo! Towards the end your high-wrought imagination can almost smell the sticking plaister, so vivid is the picture. "The bare-faced slanders of this hireling scribe from the slums of Birmingham" were hotly denounced, but nobody said what they were. The clergy and their serfs were equally silent on this point. I steadfastly adhere to every syllable of my Tuam ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... smoothed his approaches to Kate. It made the latter accessible as she hadn't yet begun to be; it set up for him at Lancaster Gate an association positively hostile to any other legend. It was quickly vivid to him that, were he minded, he could "work" this association: he had but to use the house freely for his prescribed attitude and he need hardly ever be out of it. Stranger than anything moreover was to be the way that by the end of a week he stood convicted to his own sense of a surrender to Mrs. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... her eyebrows knit, flames darted from her eyes, her mouth was all twisted. Her whole appearance was horrible; the devil was once more in possession. During this paroxysm, which lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, Lebrun, who stood near, got such a vivid impression of her face that the following night he could not sleep, and with the sight of it ever before his eyes made the fine drawing which—is now in the Louvre, giving to the figure the head of a tiger, in order to show that the principal ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE |
