"Blink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... particularly by such biologists as Watson and Jennings,[1] instincts have come to be regarded not as general and purposive but as specific and automatic. Thus it is no instinct of self-preservation that drives the child to blink its eyes at a blinding flash of light; it is solely and simply the very direct and immediate tendency to blink its eyes in just that way whenever such a phenomenon occurs. It is no deliberate intent to inhale the oxygen necessary to the sustenance of life ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... ferry-hand, giving an extra twist to the wheel as the chains came clanking in, "she puts the bunch on the blink ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... like me to wish ye joy an yer lad hurled awa frae yer side i' the blink o' an ee, by thae wild telegrams. I dinna see what joy's to come o't; it's ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... took counsel with his Senate colleagues. Being consulted, the word of those grave ones proved the very climax of flattery. Senators Vice and Price and Dice and Ice, and Stuff and Bluff and Gruff and Muff, and Loot and Coot and Hoot and Toot, and Wink and Blink and Drink and Kink—statesmen all and of snow-capped eminence in the topography of party—endorsed Senator Hanway's ambition without a wrinkle of distrust to mar their brows or a moment lost in weighing the proposal. The Senate became a Hanway ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... alleged brain a bit. What I don't know about ranching would fill a library; but there's this much, anyway. There won't be any more ditch-digging for a certain game little lady in this Cove." He gave the shoulder another pat, and he smiled down at her in a way that made Billy Louise blink. And Marthy, who had probably never before been called a game little lady, came near breaking down and crying before ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Sardanapalus puffed up his cigar and swallowed another half-glass of liquor. The pungent smoke made Austin cough and blink. "It must indeed be an exciting life," he ventured; "quite delirious, to judge ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... also drew more to the southward than before. At daylight, therefore, we found ourselves seven or eight miles from the land; but no ice was in sight, except the “sludge,” of honey-like consistence, with which almost the whole sea was covered. A strong blink, extending along the eastern horizon, pointed out the position of the main body of ice, which was farther distant from the eastern shore of the inlet than I ever saw it. Being assisted by a fine working breeze, which at the same time prevented the formation of any more ice to obstruct ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... With the first blink of spring, the old frenzy of the previous few years reasserted itself, and business in land and ranches and town property showed early signs of breaking ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... it really is. . . . I look and I cannot believe my eyes: for what devilry has destiny driven us to this accursed inn? What did she want to show by it? Life sometimes performs such 'salto mortale,' one can only stare and blink in amazement. Have you ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... greasy shadows. Look downward and the river throws back its innumerable hues—all the coal tar dyes plus all the duns and drabs of Thames mud. The tide is out and along the south bank a score of squat barges are high and dry upon the flats. Opposite, on the embankment, the lights are beginning to blink, and from the little hollow behind Charing Cross comes the faint, far-away ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... differing once so much, are now compeers, Prepared, when each has stood his time, to sink Into the dust. Erewhile a sterner link United us; when thou in boyish play, Entered my dungeon, did'st become a prey To soul-appalling darkness. Not a blink Of light was there; and thus did I, thy Tutor, Make thy young thoughts acquainted with the grave; While thou wert chasing the winged butterfly Through my green courts; or climbing, a bold suitor, Up to the flowers whose golden progeny ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... towards the city, and when he was close to it he gave a little cry, hastily stifled, for fear some one should hear him and come down and send him to bed. He stood and gazed about him bewildered and, once more, rather giddy. For the city had, in a quick blink of light, followed by darkness, disappeared. So had the drawing-room. So had the chair that stood close to the table. He could see mountainous shapes raising enormous heights in the distance, and the moonlight ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... expecting something of him; they were looking at him that way. For once in his life he was at loss for the correct thing to say. He tried closing his eyes two or three times to see if he could not blink them into vanishing; but when he looked again there they were, ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... down the crick We could see the old mill stick Its red gable up, as if It jest knowed we'd stol'd the skiff! See the winders in the sun Blink like they wuz wonderun' What the miller ort to do With sich boys as me ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... stumbling to their feet, holding their skins around them, the only signs of life in that immense waste of gritty sand. On one side a ridge of dunes cut off sight of the sea, but he could hear the dull boom of waves on the shore. White frost rimed the ground and the chill wind made his eyes blink and water. On the top of the dunes a remembered figure suddenly appeared, the armored man, doing something with what appeared to be lengths of rope; there was metallic tinkling, suddenly cut off. ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... behind, and they were kept by the wind close to their parent mass; the sea ran so high and was so regular as to convey the idea of a very considerable extent of "fetch;" and, lastly, there was neither ice nor ice-blink to be seen anywhere along the whole stretch of the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the second cigar Rupert shifted under his master's patent-leather boots and raised his huge head. His eyes blinked out of their sleep, then ceased to blink and became attentive. Then his ears, which had been lying down on each side of his head in the suavest attitude which such features of a dog can assume, lifted themselves up and pointed grimly forward as he listened to something. His flaccid ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... gaed a blink up the burn," said Mysie, "for the young lady has been down on her bed, and is no just that weel—So I gaed a gliff up ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... flyin' blind at a five thousand-foot ceilin',—Jack, he c'n see the land by usin' the night glasses, so it's a good thing I c'n get tips from him right along. Gee! this sure is gettin' some monotonous, keepin' this old motor hummin' when it's on the blink so bad. Must be a wheen past midnight, I'd say, an' we ought to be clost to them Ten Thousand Islands ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... Cathedral, he looked up at the sky obscured with flying wrack of cloud, felt the rain drive across his face, heard the elms in the neighbouring garden creaking and groaning, saw the lights of the town far beneath the low wall that bounded the Precincts sway and blink in the storm, his heart beat with such pride and happiness that it threatened to burst the body that contained it. There had not been, perhaps, that day anything especially magnificent to elate him; ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... as a stern piece of sarcasm; but it had the effect of causing the porter to blink, stare, drop the suit case and then blurt out, "Good Lord! You're Jimmy Gollop what travels for the Columbus Chocolate Company, ain't you? You're Jim Gollop what has stopped here for years, ain't you? ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... work he had begun was unchecked. It was plain that in the midst of his suffering, with death close by, he found great comfort in that assurance. But his mind was so realistic, his integrity so great that he could not blink the fact that there had been a defeat. Steffens was pointing out the explanation: "you did not show the people what you saw, you gave them the details, you fought their battles, you started to build, but you left them in darkness as to the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... audacity. He did not hesitate, but improvised a dance unknown to all bygone choreography. It was a step the originality of which obtained an incredible success, and that has been celebrated under the title of "regrets and sighs." It was all very well for the three thousand jets of gas to blink at him, Rodolphe went on at it all the same, and continued to pour out a flood of ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... "Say, Blink, I'll have to choke you," interrupted Pan, laughing. "Now, you meet my friends here, Miss Louise—and ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... guest-chamber of the little inn, hung in air high above the jumbled roofs of Duerkheim. To the right, the valley split to form a niche for a beetling, ruined castle. Far out on the plain the lights of Darmstadt and Mannheim began to blink. Beyond and above them Heidelberg signaled ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... he had gone she sat there until it was well into the evening, until the stars began to blink and nod and wrap themselves in the great cloak of the night, as they kept a silent vigil over the subdued silence which had settled down upon the ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... of figures and species with an astonished blink, and now protested energetically that he had had not the slightest intention of precipitating any such flood. "Great Scott, Page, catch your breath! If you're talking to me, you'll have to use English, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... stranger. "By Jove!" said I aloud; "that draught's a strong one!" and, taking the matches from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner, to relight the corner again. My first match would not strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily, and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I rose ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... guard rail to either side, then shut his eyes as the steps went over the edge and became what felt like vertical. An instant later he forced his eyes open, unclipped a hand from the rail and touched the second switch beside his headlamp, which instantly began to blink whitely, as if he were a civilian plane flying into a ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... shoulder Lennon saw the reddened eyes blink and the muscles of the gray face twitch. The muzzle ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... the professor of physiology in the University of Oxford, was examined before the late Royal Commission on Vivisection, he testified that under curare an animal could not even blink an eye, so complete is the immobility produced by this drug. Yet to the eye of the experimenter would there not be something to tell him whether or not the animal was ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... w' rattlin tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon, At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon; Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous tune For ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, will a gazer think, "To him this must have ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... southern horizon, there stretched a dazzling white band. English whalers have given this the name "ice blink." No matter how heavy the clouds may be, they can't obscure this phenomenon. It announces the presence of a pack, or shoal, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... There wasn't a blink of it for me all night. I was so mixed up with new feelings that I was sick in my stomach, and my old conscience got so sanctimonious that if I could have ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... the buttons at once, and instantly felt obliged to blink. The blink over, she saw on the cushion by her side a silver tray with vanilla ice, boiled chicken and white sauce, almonds (blanched), peppermint creams, and mashed potatoes, and a long glass of lemonade—beside the tray was a book. It was Mrs. Ewing's Bad-tempered Family, and ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... short advance up the glen, the bottom of which we had attained by this ugly descent, brought us in front of two or three cottages, one of which another blink of moonshine enabled me to rate as rather better than those of the Scottish peasantry in this part of the world; for the sashes seemed glazed, and there were what are called storm-windows in the roof, giving symptoms of the magnificence of a second story. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... her on graceful limb; The onyx decked his bosom—but her smiles were not for him: With ME she danced—till drowsily her eyes "began to blink," And I brought raisin wine, and said, "Drink, pretty ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... Phoebus, while on nothing ill thought he, Jilted he was, for all his jollity; For under him, his wife, at her heart's-root, Another had, a man of small repute, Not worth a blink of Phoebus; more's the pity; Too oft it falleth so, in court and city. This wife, when Phoebus was from home one day, Sent for her lemman then, without delay. Her lemman!—a plain word, I needs must own; Forgive it me; for Plato hath laid down, The word must suit according ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... and ornaments in the whole room were all so brilliant to the sight, and so vying in splendour that they made the head to swim and the eyes to blink, and old goody Liu did nothing else the while than nod her head, smack her lips and invoke Buddha. Forthwith she was led to the eastern side into the suite of apartments, where was the bedroom of Chia Lien's ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... green lights down the track," explained Freddie. "They blink so funny and come up ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... Donakins! I say, old sport, do stir yourself and blink an eye! What a dormouse you are! D'you want shaking? Rouse up, you ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... low-arched hall, a soldier would arouse and turn his body to a new position, the experience of his sleep having taught him of uneven and objectionable places upon the ground under him. Or, perhaps, he would lift himself to a sitting posture, blink at the fire for an unintelligent moment, throw a swift glance at his prostrate companion, and then cuddle down again with ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... a facer, and it made Cai blink. "We haven't discussed these things much—not of late," he ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... were baith keen fishers an' graun' at it. The minister was for liftin' his hat to his faither an' gaun by, but the auld man stood still in the middle o' the fit-pad wi' a gey queer look in his face. 'Wattie!' he said, an' for ae blink the minister thocht that his faither was gaun to greet, a thing that he had never seen him do in a' his life. But the auld man didna greet. 'Wattie,' says he to his son, 'hae ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... construct an organism at once, without making several previous tentative efforts, undoing to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and repeating for centuries the same tentatives in the same succession. Do not let us blink this consideration. There is a traditional phrase much in vogue among the anthropomorphists, which arose naturally enough from a tendency to take human methods as an explanation of the Divine—a phrase which becomes a sort of argument—'The ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... breathed in gasps; and sometimes the water he swallowed was fresh and sometimes it was salt. For the most part he kept his eyes shut tight, as if suspecting his sight might be destroyed in the immense flurry of the elements. When he ventured to blink hastily, he derived some moral support from the green gleam of the starboard light shining feebly upon the flight of rain and sprays. He was actually looking at it when its ray fell upon the uprearing sea which put it out. He saw the ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... sometimes an hotel de ville, sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a dwelling-house, sometimes a chateau with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and watched over by extinguisher-topped turrets, and blink-eyed little casements; are the standard objects, repeated over and over again. Sometimes we pass a village inn, with a crumbling wall belonging to it, and a perfect town of out- houses; and painted over ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... men themselves amaze! The stars began to blink, An art that there were few to praise, Nor any drop ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... suddenly appear in her coach-and-six, to reclaim her beloved child; or his repentant grandfather, with his pockets stuffed out with banknotes, would come to atone for his past cruelty, by heaping his neglected grandchild with unexpected wealth. Sure was Nurse Jamieson, "that it wanted but a blink of her bairn's bonny ee to turn their hearts, as Scripture sayeth; and as strange things had been, as they should come a'thegither to the town at the same time, and make such a day as had never been seen in Middlemas; ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... a well-educated Bengal Civilian in the year of grace 1885, presumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in terror from my sweetheart's side by the apparition of a woman who had been dead and buried eight months ago. These were facts that I could not blink. Nothing was further from my thought than any memory of Mrs. Wessington when Kitty and I left Hamilton's shop. Nothing was more utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall opposite Peliti's. It was broad daylight. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... uplifting themselves in a second verse when they were stopped by a scurry and a yell. Barker had bounded into the street with a cry of "South Kensington!" and a drawn dagger. In less time than a man could blink, the whole packed street was full of curses and struggling. Barker was flung back against the shop-front, but used the second only to draw his sword as well as his dagger, and calling out, "This is not the first time I've come through the thick of you," flung himself ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... moon had been in full glory but few observations could have been made. At this season of the year an immense curtain of snow, an icy carapace, covers up the polar surface. There was none of that ice "blink" to be seen, that whitish tint of which the reflection is absent from dark horizons. Under such circumstances, how could they distinguish the shape of the ground, the extent of the seas, the position of the islands? How could ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... and strapping in their teens, Their sacks, instead o' creeshie flannen, Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen! Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair, I wad hae gien them off my hurdies, For ae blink o' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the three-cornered arm-chair, with the sun-dazzle off a burnished mug on the dresser shimmering into her eyes, and making her blink quaintly, she said, with rather severe solemnity, that "she hoped the young fellow had had time to repint of his sins, or else it was very apt to be a bad look-out for him, and he after comin' widin a shavin' of takin' another man's life no time at all ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... with him up to the house, and noticed that instead of following us in, the cats ran up a flight of steps into a narrow loft which seemed to be their home, two of them seating themselves at once in the doorway to blink ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... fell in with the ice blink on the 17th, in 70 degrees 33 minutes North, 197 degrees 41 minutes East, rather earlier than had been expected, and soon afterwards with the ice itself in the shape of a large field extending as far as the eye could reach ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... blink as the light grows stronger behind the pinkish clouds in the east. The dark cloud settles into solid land. You see it clearly. Sharply outlined against the sky stands, forty miles long, a mammoth ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... some little time the man began to blink, as if the intense light troubled him. Then his eyes began to roll slowly round, taking a wider and wider circle, till at last they included Aleck in their field of view and remained fixed, ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... just the same," answered the kind Fireflies. "We are glad to have helped you with our little lanterns," and they flew away to the Sunny Meadow to wink and blink like little stars ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... came shivering back for hose and doublet, and I should be in no better case than I was now. Meanwhile his weapon was levelled at me, and I could see the bolt-point set straight for my breast, and glittering in a pale blink of the sun. The bravest course is ever the best. I should have thrown myself on the earth, no doubt, and so crawled to cover, taking my chance of death rather than the shame of obeying under threat and force. But I was young, and ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... underground life, for the most part, coming up from the underworld to blink in the sunlight, to mutter a prayer or a curse or two, to gaze for a moment at any change made by a new day's bombardment, and then to burrow down again at ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... go back, And would not if I could. Until blindness come, I must wait And blink at ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... cried he, without even stopping to give Stepka the greeting of the day, 'where did you get this fine legacy from? It makes one's eyes blink ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... sixty pounds, and as he had never shaved, had a downy beard all over his face. His great shock of brown hair tumbled to his shoulders. His face was bronzed, his hands big and bony, and his dark gray eyes looked out of their calm depths straight into yours—eyes that did not blink, eyes of love and patience, eyes like the eyes of an animal that does not know enough ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... even at that distance I could see them gleaming. On the other hand, evidently middle age was far behind him; indeed, from his appearance it was quite impossible to guess even approximately the number of his years. There he sat, red in the red light, perfectly still, and staring without a blink of his eyes at the furious ball of the setting sun, as an eagle is said to be able ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... the future life are the same inscrutable mysteries to us as to them. If we have constructed or adopted a more comfortable theology, it is probably because we are less logical than they. It is perhaps because we have forgotten or refused to look at some things at which they did not blink. ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... did not even blink. Johanna drew several threads across a hole she was darning, before she repeated, in the same decided tone: "Do you hear me, mother? There is something I wish to speak ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... some flip-flops slow and easy-like. Then Uncle Wiggily tried them, and, though he couldn't do them very well at first, he practised until he was quite good at it. Then Fido showed him how to stand on one ear, and wiggle the other, and how to blink his eyes while standing on the end of his little tail, and then Uncle Wiggily thought of a ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... marvelous world that the little cubs looked upon when they came out to blink and wonder in the June sunshine. Contrasts everywhere, that made the world seem too big for one little glance to comprehend it all. Here the sunlight streamed and danced and quivered on the warm rocks; there deep purple cloud shadows rested for hours, as if asleep, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... torches blink dully, the time drags heavily. But at last the lagging daylight asserts itself, the torches are extinguished, and a mellow radiance suffuses the great spaces. All features of the noble building are distinct now, but soft and dreamy, for the sun ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... again looked into the fire for a few moments, but not long enough to cause his bright, sharp eyes to blink, he quickly thrust the tongs into it, lifted out the red-hot piece of iron, laid it on the anvil, pounded it with the hammer so that the sparks flew in all directions, clapped the still glowing piece of iron down on the broken place in the tire, hammered and welded ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... on the thick purple carpet under the amber light, all too brilliant for her. She had come from a world of darkness, owl-like she must blink before the blaze. Some one came forward to her, some one so kind and comforting, so easy and unsurprised that Maggie suddenly felt herself steadied as though a friend had put an arm around her. Before she had felt: ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... smile and blink, And bear the teasing patiently? I think he'd wink a sleepy wink, And say, not over pleasantly, "O giant, please to ...
— The Nursery, July 1877, XXII. No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... around to nudge Farley in the ribs with the toe of his cowhide boot. The badly wounded man stirred and opened his haggard eyes to blink at the disturber. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... was now frankly asleep with his head upon the table, and the Spahi began to blink. I, too, felt very tired, but I had something still to say. Speaking softly, I ...
— The Desert Drum - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... pagin!" said my friend, Private O'RAMMIS, for it was indeed he. "Hould on there till I've tould ye. Fwhat was I sayin'? Eyah, eyah, them was the bhoys for the dhrink. When the sun kem out wid a blink in his oi, an' the belly-band av his new shoot tied round him, there was PORTERS and ATHUS lyin' mixed up wid the brandy-kegs, and the houl of the rigimint tearin' round like all the divils from hell ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... morning; and a brown blink on the horizon which shows that more is coming. I have the odd feeling that I have never really seen my house before, the snow lights it all up so strangely, tinting the ceilings a glowing white, touching up high lights on the top of picture-frames, and throwing the lower part ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on the one hand, and the tyranny of ruling opinion on the other—of Catholicism or Jacobinism. Geneva should be to La Grande Nation what Diogenes was to Alexander; her role is to represent the independent thought and the free speech which is not dazzled by prestige, and does not blink the truth. It is true that the role is an ungrateful one, that it lends itself to sarcasm and misrepresentation—but ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she is not there. A pale blink in the wild sky eastward hints to the night lookouts of hot drink, food, and welcome rest. The Chief stands beside the comfortless camp-bed, where the hope of a high old House is flickering out. The Doctor holds the wet and icy wrist, where the pulse has ceased to be perceptible. The ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... represent that they had left Paris that morning, and with no design but of getting back within the day—if she had so sized-up, in the Woollett phrase, their necessity, she knew best her own measure. There were things, all the same, it was impossible to blink and which made this measure an odd one—the too evident fact for instance that she hadn't started out for the day dressed and hatted and shod, and even, for that matter, pink parasol'd, as she had been in the boat. From what did the drop in her assurance proceed as the tension increased—from what ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... above and beyond men, are for that very reason more deeply interested than others in cherishing the integrity and worthiness of man himself. Apart, however, from the immorality of such reasoned hypocrisy, which no man with a particle of honesty will attempt to blink, there is the intellectual improbity which it brings in its train, the infidelity to truth, the disloyalty to one's own intelligence. Gifts of understanding are numbed and enfeebled in a man, who has once played such a trick with his own conscience ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... ascending levels. Wherever the shelf was of sufficient breadth a battery of cannon was mounted, and such a flood of light fell from above and flashed on polished steel and brass as to make the little dog blink in bewilderment. And he whirled like a rotary sweeper in the dusty road and yelped when the time-gun, in the half-moon battery at the left of the gate and behind him, crashed and shook ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... she chided and he closed down his jaw like a steel-trap. She watched him covertly, then her eyes began to blink and she turned her head away. The desert rushed by them, worlds of waxy green creosote bushes and white, gnarly clumps of salt bush; and straight ahead, frowning down on the forgotten city, rose the black cloud-shadow ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... get that?" Miss Oliver's eyes were notoriously sharp. Her voice rapped out the question in a way that made 'Biades blink and clasp the coin again as he cast a desperate look behind him in ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... at to-morrow's blink And make all lucid to the Emperor. For us, I wholly can avow as mine The cordial spirit ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... his way up the ladder, and was just emerging from the hatch, when the sudden glare of the sun caused him to blink and then sneeze. He caught his toe on the last step, stumbled, dropped his prize, and fell forward on to the deck. The canister struck the step, jolted twice, plunged to the bottom with ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... weeds (I'd already flung away all the loose dirt, flingin' it at the rattler), I whipped 'em across them devilish leetle eyes as hard as I could. It was a kind of a child's trick, or a woman's, but it worked all right, fer it made the eyes blink. That proved they were real eyes, an' I felt easier. After all, it was only a bear; an' he couldn't git any closer than he was. But that was a mite too close, an' I wished he'd move. An' jest then, not to be gittin' too easy in my mind, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... it? Some twitch in the moon's face (observe), Wet blink of her eyelid, tear dropt about dewfall, Cheek flushed or obscured—does it make the sky swerve? Fetch the test, work the question to rags, bring to proof all— Find what ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... into the Preparation room and sat at his desk with his brows on his hand and his eyes on his book. The print danced before his gaze: letter rushed into letter, word merged mistily into word, line into line, till all was a grey blur. A blink of the eyes—an effort of the will—a sort of "squad, shun!" to the type before him—and the words jumped back into their places, letters separated from their entanglement and stood like soldiers ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... master of the latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the course of disembarkation; but observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked a la papier, he dropped it into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed in a blink of fine weather; but we had not been two minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale, and the rain began to patter on our shoulders. We sat as close about the Etna as we could. The spirits burned with great ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sat down in her low rocker by the south window, sewing in thrifty haste. The sun fell hotly through the panes, and when she looked up, the glare met her eyes. She seemed to be sitting in a golden shower, and she liked it. No sunlight ever made her blink, or screw her face into wrinkles. She throve in it like a rose-tree. At ten o'clock, one of the slow-moving sleds, out that day in premonition of a "spell o' weather," swung laboriously into her yard and ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... have sounded reasonable to me. Two years ago, when I walked down Broadway at night, a fifty-foot electric sign at Forty-second was just an electric sign to me. Just part of the town's decoration like the chorus girls, and the midnight theater crowds. Now—well, now every blink of every red and yellow globe is crammed full of meaning. I know the power that advertising has; how it influences our manners, and our morals, and our minds, and our health. It regulates the food we eat, and the clothes we wear, and the books we read, and the ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... billion!" Carmencita's arms were outstretched and her hands came together with ecstatic emphasis. "If I didn't stop to blink my eyes between now and Christmas morning I couldn't buy fast enough to fill all the stockings of the legs I know if I had the money to buy with. There's Mrs. McTarrens's four, and the six Blickers, and the ashman's eight, and the Roysters, and little Sallie Simcoe, and old Mr. Jenkinson, and Miss ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... blink, still dazed as it were, she smiled and added: "You were bidding Rome goodbye. What ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... after all has been said and done, one problem that has yet to be faced. You may minimise the difficulty every way, and it is your duty to do so, but no amount of hopefulness can make us blink the fact that when all has been done and every chance has been offered, when you have forgiven your brother not only seven times but seventy times seven, when you have fished him up from the mire and put him on firm ground ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... woman know any thing of Olivia? I looked at her more earnestly and critically. She was not a person I should like Olivia to have any thing to do with. A coarse, ill-bred, bold woman, whose eyes met mine unabashed, and did not blink under my scrutiny. Could she be Olivia's step-mother, who had been the ruin ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... lass o' Inverness, Nae joy nor pleasure can she see; For e'en and morn she cries, Alas! And aye the saut tear blink's her ee: Drumossie moor—Drumossie day— A waefu' day it was to me! For there I lost my father dear, My father dear, and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Diana's mind was like a stormy sea, where the thunder and the lightning were not wanting any more than the wind. Once in a while, like the faint blink of a sun-ray through the clouds, came an echo of the words Basil had quoted—"In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge"—but they hurt her so that she fled from them. The contrast of their peace with her turmoil, of their ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... what? For he had sold out of the English service, and was to receive the money in a couple of days. How long would the money support him? It would not pay half his debts! What, then, did this pursuit of Emilia mean? To blink this question, he had to give the spur to Hippogriff. It meant (upon Hippogriff at a brisk gallop), that he intended to live for her, die for her, if need be, and carve out of the world all that she would require. Everything appears possible, on Hippogriff, when he is going; but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... softly about, hang more snow-flakes on the chimney, even over his eyes and nose and mouth, which show dimly through the snow. His eyes blink now ...
— Down the Chimney • Shepherd Knapp
... was falling fast, the stars began to blink; I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!" And, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied A snow white mountain-lamb with a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... murder?" Win's clear eyes didn't blink at the word; "no, not much in my hearing. But Mrs. Schuyler wasn't in the room all the time. And I know Mr. Lowney—isn't he the detective?—was there ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... seem to be people who spend their lives here, and who probably blink like owls, when, once or twice a year, perhaps, they happen to climb into the sunshine. All along the corridor, which I believe to be a mile in extent, we see stalls or shops in little alcoves, kept principally by women; they were of a ripe age, I was glad to observe, and certainly robbed England ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... confidence in Frank Merriwell. I know what he can do on the slab, and, with Bart Hodge behind the bat, he'll show yeou some twists and shoots that'll make ye blink." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... centers. These give rise to certain reflex actions which are as entirely independent of consciousness as are those of the spinal cord. These acts take place independently of the will, and often without the consciousness of the individual. Thus, a sudden flash of light causes the eyes to blink, as the result of reflex action. The optic nerves serve as the sensory, and the facial nerves as the motor, conductors. The sudden start of the whole body at some loud noise, the instinctive dodging a threatened blow, and the springing back from ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... got his own way now. He's got a man who wouldn't blink at throttling his own brother, if it'd do him any good. Tarboe is iron and steel; he's the kind that succeeds. He likes to rule, and he's going to get what he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... coatless men devoting it in silence. In our bedroom, the stove would not burn, though it would smoke; and while one window would not open, the other would not shut. There was a view on a bit of empty road, a few dark houses, a donkey wandering with its shadow on a slope, and a blink of sea, with a tall ship lying anchored in the moonlight. All about that dreary inn frogs sang their ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boors Their blurred eyes blink, their eyelids fall: Thought's eager sight Aches—overbright! Within low doors the boozy boors ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... obtrusiveness of this fact apparently made her husband's bright sympathetic eye blink ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... railing to look past the car and the dovecote station shading her eyes to shut out the snow-blink from the sun-fired peaks. ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... level with human sciences, I cannot understand at all how, supposing it to be true, it can fail, considered as knowledge, to exert a powerful influence on philosophy, literature, and every intellectual creation or discovery whatever. I cannot understand how it is possible, as the phrase goes, to blink the question of its truth or falsehood. It meets us with a profession and a proffer of the highest truths of which the human mind is capable; it embraces a range of subjects the most diversified and distant from each other. What science will not find one part or other of its province ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... appearance and as it was hustled into the circle of bright light, those who had been dancing, quarreling and throwing dice on the other side of the fire fell over each other to join the mob that surrounded it. The leaping flames threw a weird, uncertain brilliance upon the scene that made Jeremy blink his eyes to be sure that it was real. With every moment he had become more certain what manner of ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... heat of June, though we are only in mid-April, and the freshness of the prune. The leaves on the trees are but tender and tiny, and through them the sun sends his might. The tulips are all a-blaze and a-stare, making one blink with the dazzle of their odorless beauty: the frolicsome young wind is shaking out their balm from the hyacinth-bells, and the sweet Nancies—my flowers—blowing all together, are swaying and congeeing ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton |
