"Blur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blur became visible in the nearer sky—moving blobs of silver luminosity in the mud-brown light of the Zed-ray. A hundred or more moving silver blobs. They were taking form. The silvery phosphorescent look faded, became grey-white. Took definite shape. Waving ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... blur before the eyes of the Belgian. No! The man should not have her. She was for him and him alone. He would not be ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... going to treat you with still greater frankness. I do not approve of your preface, and I will tell you why: if your work should deserve attention, it is a blur on the very face of it. Disadvantages of education, etc., ought, in my opinion, never to be pleaded with the public in excuse for defects of any importance, because if the writer has not sufficient strength of mind to overcome the common ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... exactly known people have somehow or other contrived to misapprehend and misapply. They have preferred the evidence of Horace Walpole to that of their own senses. They have suffered the brilliant antitheses of Lady Mary to obscure and blur the man as they might have found him in his work. Booth and Jones have been taken for definite and complete reflections of the author of their being: the parts for the whole, that is—a light-minded captain of foot and a hot-headed and soft-hearted young man about town for adequate presentments ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... living from the stones and sand of the hillside farm, one must be up and at work betimes. Then Harry, Tom, and Nellie must be roused, dressed, fed, and made ready for the half-mile walk to the red schoolhouse at the cross-roads. After that the day was one blur of steam, dust, heat, and stifling fumes from the oven and the fat-kettle, broken always at regular intervals ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... Mazatzal in a sky cloudless and glinting with myriad points of fire. The nights were cold and still, the days soft yet brilliant in the blaze of an unshrouded sun. An almost Sabbath-like calm hovered over the valley, for even signal smokes had ceased to blur the horizon. Not a hostile Indian had been heard of since the coming of Freeman's couriers. The brawling gang of "greaser" gamblers had stolen away from the "ghost ranch." Even the ghost himself seemed to walk no more. Something ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... him for her, but she refused for more than a moment to contemplate anything so flat. Something must come of that adventure, that vital intensely personal moment when their eyes had met above flames so tiny the wonder was they could see anything but a white blur on the dark. She was as sure of meeting him again as that she trod on air after she had ordered a new gown or brought an inordinately becoming hat. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... dark they softly stir, Till arrowy dawn the shadow-blur Dispels—God's tingling kiss of morning On oak and ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... wander over its massive crossbeams, its leaning gables, its rows of gleaming lattices, and so up to the great sign swinging above the door—an ancient sign whereon a weather-beaten hound, dim-legged and faded of tail, pursued a misty blur that, by common report, was held to be a hare. But it was to a certain casement that his gaze oftenest reverted, behind whose open lattice he knew his father lay asleep, and his eyes, all at once, grew suffused with a glittering brightness ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... depth of the sea. While it was slightly disturbed on the surface by the passage of the Euphrosyne, beneath it was green and dim, and it grew dimmer and dimmer until the sand at the bottom was only a pale blur. One could scarcely see the black ribs of wrecked ships, or the spiral towers made by the burrowings of great eels, or the smooth green-sided monsters who came by flickering this ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... came to a small field of Indian corn, the fresh green blades shimmering in the moonlight and giving forth a pleasant, crooning sound as the wind blew gently upon them. Beyond, on the crest of the hill, he saw a dark line that was a palisade, and beyond that a blur that was roofs. This obviously was Fort Prescott, and Henry examined it with the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... problem to metaphysics. This is that which throws him into natural history, as a main production of the globe, and as announcing new eras and ameliorations. Things were mirrored in his poetry without loss or blur: he could paint the fine with precision, the great with compass, the tragic and the comic indifferently and without any distortion or favor. He carried his powerful execution into minute details, to a hair point, finishes an eyelash or ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... he whispered to Paul, and the boy, too, then opened his eyes. The rest of it, the mad whirlings and jumpings of the warriors, was becoming a blur before him, confused and ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... passed before they noticed its effects, and the two friends began to believe that it must have been lost in space. "It will not strike . . . it will not strike," they were thinking. Suddenly there surged up on the horizon, exactly in the spot indicated over the blur of the woods, a tremendous column of smoke, a whirling tower of black vapor followed ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was never to forget that moment wherein he waited behind the door, and through the crack between the half-open door and the door-frame saw Guenevere approach irresolutely, a wavering white blur in the dark corridor. She came to talk with him where they would not be bothered with interruptions: but she came delightfully perfumed, in her night-shift, and in nothing else. Jurgen wondered at the way of these women even as his arms went about her in the gloom. He remembered always the feel ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... months. It changed her feeling toward the town, for now she had a foothold here. It changed her feeling toward Amy, whose picture had begun to blur. But that queer sensation of intimacy, of being in her sister's place, was even deeper than before. For now she was mothering Amy's child—her child ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... of a camera there is a flattened glass ball called the lens. If you were to remove it, the camera would not take any pictures; it would take a blur of light and shade ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... commenced to fade. As the light strengthened, the wide panorama of the plains and the far off mountains unfolded and the individual patches of scrub and single trees began to stand out distinctly from the general blur of the darker reaches. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... a shadow, as swift, Attusah is on his feet. At the back of the great niche, so high that none could conceive that it might afford an exit, a fissure lets in a vague dreary blur of light from spaces beyond. Leaping high into the air, the lithe young warrior fixes his fingers on the ledge, crumbling at first, but holding firm under a closer grasp. The elder man, understanding ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... then full vision came on. The planet on which they would land loomed huge before them, its north pole toward them, and its single satellite on the port side. There was no sign of any rocket-boat in either side screen, and the rear-view screen was a blur of yellow flame from ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... before us, we can make some headway. I believe the V-shape is the lower end of the mountain, probably a headland, and the arrow points to a place 30 leagues to the,—see here, in the last line is a W. and there is a blur before it and after it. That may be SWE, EWS, SWW, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... shady spot just off the road two sidewinders were coiled on a rock, beady eyes watching the jeep's passage. The snakes were the color of mottled sand, the "horns" on their diamond-shaped heads clearly identifiable. Their tails were a blur, and he knew they were rattling a warning, but the distinctive buzz couldn't be heard above ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... battleship. It greeted them with a hoarse blast of her whistle as the flying boat shot by at the rate of two hundred miles an hour. On either side tiny islands, or cays, appeared, then vanished as if by magic. Finally a blue blur straight ahead began to loom even larger, and in a few minutes the "Winged Arrow" landed in the ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... no answer. By now the white jacket was no more than a blur moving in that deep gloom. He cried ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... hear a bell in some tower tolling the hour of nine as they circled a busy city that lay beyond and below, them, a blur of light. Dave at the levers kept the Monarch II at a fair height, constantly scanning an expanse to the north dotted only here and there with lights. Once past the outskirts of the city ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... the captain and Hippity-Hop out at once. The old man's arms went about Jan's neck, and the dog gave little whines of delight, his tongue touched the wrinkled hands, and his tail went around so fast that it did not look like a tail, but just a blur of ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... mind became an incoherent blur. A stately limousine glided up; Mary Ellen was handed in by a footman and Excalibur was stuffed in after her in installments. The grand gentleman entered by the opposite door and sat down beside her; but Mary Ellen was much too dazed to ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... the bowl is naught but ash. Even my dear General Catalogue begins to blur before me. Slip it under the pillow; gently and kindly lay the pipe in the candlestick, and blow out the flame. The window is open wide: the night rushes in. I see a glimpse of stars ... a distant chime ... and fall asleep with the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... effort to hold him; but Duke was not to be detained. Unnatural strength and activity came to him in his delirium, and, for the second or two that the struggle lasted, his movements were too rapid for the eyes of the spectators to follow—merely a whirl and blur in the air could be seen. Then followed a sound of violent scrambling and Penrod sprawled alone at the top ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... the night, and the moon now in its middle quarter. And down below, the houses and shanties along the opposite side of the street, the fantastic tufts of the pawpaws, the long white road stretching away into the ragged blur of gum-forest. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... to slide into strait layers, and soft settlement of vapor. Loops of hanging moisture marked the hollows of the land-front, or the alleys of the waning light; and then the mass abandoned outline, fused its shades to pulp, and melted into one great blur of rain. Janetta thought of her Sunday frock, forgot the boat, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... a blur before the lady's eyes—a buzzing in her ears—and the footfall she had listened for so long was now unheard as it came slowly to her side. But the light touch upon her arm—the well-remembered voice within her ear, calling her "Madam Conway," ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... is the sweetest light. Elsewhere colour mars the simplicity of light; but there colour is effaced, not as men efface it, by a blur or darkness, but by mere light. The bluest sky disappears on that shining edge; there is not substance enough for colour. The rim of the hill, of the woodland, of the meadow-land, of the sea—let it only be far enough—has ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... in the stern watching the two figures on the bluff until one of them went away and there was only one, slender and of but little stature, with soft dark curls, and eyes whose tender glow I could feel long after the figure was but one indistinct blur, with a ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... standing in their usual position on the fore-deck, gazing eagerly ahead, each anxious to be the first to sight the enemy, when Harry caught his friend's sleeve, and, pointing into the darkness at a faint blur ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... is rich in color and fine in effect, but the northerner is painfully imprest by the black and white horizontal stripes which, running from vaulting to pavement, seem to blur and confuse the vision, and the closely set bars of the piers are positively irritating. In the hexagonal lantern, however, they are less offensive than elsewhere, because the fan-like radiation of the bars above the great gilded statues breaks up the horizontal effect. The ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... seen the day pass into night, surrounded by these wonderful scenes, now we saw the night pass into day, and the elemental grandeur on every hand reborn before us. There was not a wisp of cloud or fog below us or about us to blur the great picture. The sun came up from behind the vast, long, high wall of the Pacific that filled the eastern horizon, and the shadows fled from the huge pile of mountain in the west. We hung about the rim of the great crater or sat upon the jagged rocks, wrapped ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... I never gave her a thought, but on the third her shy side-glances suddenly loomed up in my mind and would not leave it. Just her black, serious eyes and those shy looks of theirs gleaming out of a white, strikingly interesting complexion. Her face in general was a mere blur ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... always a confused blur in Magda's memory—a series of pictures standing out against a dark background of haste and ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... red church; he could picture it all down to the smallest detail, even the plaster on the gate and the calves that were always grazing in the church enclosure. Three-quarters of a mile to the right of the church there was a copse like a dark blur—it was Count Koltonovitch's. And beyond ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of attack. That, too, Raleigh has to do, and moreover to lead it; and lead it he does. Under the forts are seventeen galleys; the channel is 'scoured' with cannon: but on holds Raleigh's 'Warspite,' far ahead of the rest, through the thickest of the fire, answering forts and galleys 'with a blur of the trumpet to each piece, disdaining to shoot at those esteemed dreadful monsters.' For there is a nobler enemy ahead. Right in front lie the galleons; and among them the 'Philip' and the 'Andrew,' two of those who boarded the 'Revenge.' This day there shall be a reckoning for ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... on obtruding themselves on our senses. What we do not attend cannot be suddenly removed from the stage. Every change which is needed must be secured by our own mind. In our consciousness the attended hand must grow and the surrounding room must blur. But the stage cannot help us. The art of the theater ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... women who carry heavy weights. A little later a marriage procession would strike into the Grand Trunk with music and shoutings, and a smell of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the dust. One could see the bride's litter, a blur of red and tinsel, staggering through the haze, while the bridegroom's bewreathed pony turned aside to snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim would join the Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing the couple a hundred sons and ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... convenience, Sandy—the "Biggest of Them All." But Cynthia's ideal bore little likeness to the actual Sandy, and her letters had become but the outpourings of a heart that must create its own Paradise or perish. Sandy Morley had faded into an indistinct blur, but the romance he had awakened bore the girl far and away from the common ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... had not camped on the open coast as had been our custom, but in a sun-warmed meadow a few paces inland, where there were birds, and tasseling grasses, and all kinds of glancing lights and odors to steal into a man's blood. I parted the trees. The blur of gray ashes from our fire was undisturbed; our canoes lay, bottom upwards, waiting to have the seams newly pitched, and the cargo was piled, untouched, against a tree. All was as we left it. And ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... in the South Seas. On an eminence above the town, solitary and aloof like a monastery, and nestling deep in its garden of lemon-trees, it commands a wide prospect of sea and sky. By day, the Pacific is a vast stretch of blue, flat like a floor, with a blur of distant islands on the horizon—chief among them Muloa, with its single volcanic cone tapering off into the sky. At night, this smithy of Vulcan becomes a glow of red, throbbing faintly against the darkness, a capricious and sullen beacon immeasurably removed from the path of men. Viewed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... from behind the barn in the opposite direction something attracted them. It was a glare of light, and the guards noticed it at the same time. A last year's straw stack next to the barn was afire. Jane Mason was standing in the back door of the house, and in the hurried blur of moving events John divined that she had slipped out and fired the stack. In an instant there was confusion. The men were on their feet. They must fight fire, or the barn would go. Dolan ran with the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... was already almost out of sight. Two men in round hats and nankeen breeches, one of whom, a tall, lean man of a wild, unkempt aspect, had a blur on one eye and resembled Tallien, met him at the corner of an avenue, looked at him askance and passed on, pretending not to recognize him. When they had gone far enough to be out of hearing, they ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... floorboard, a vague, misty blur almost at his side, and still Lee saved his fire. Quickly he lifted the big revolver, held welded to a grip of steel, throwing it high above his head and striking downward. There was almost no sound; ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... know how. The ship swept on, ten miles a minute, tearing through thin puffs of cloud. Ten minutes. The Big Bend was glistening redly in the sunlit haze, but Litchfield was still hidden inside its curve. Six. Four. The Countess Dorothy was losing speed and altitude. Now he could see it, first a blur and then distinctly. The Airlines Building, so thick as to look squat for all its height. The yellow block of the distilleries under their plume of steam. High Garden ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... enemy's guns were reducing it from an inhabited place into a rubbish heap. They could not well have chosen a brisker hour for the promised visit. The shells were coming in three and four to the minute. There was a sound of falling masonry. The blur of red brick-dust in the air, and the fires from a half dozen blazing houses, filled the eyes with hot prickles. The street was a mess over which the motor veered and tossed like a careening boat in a heavy seawash. In the other car, their leader, brave, perky little ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... waking experience of one who is both deaf and blind. They think that I can know very little about objects even a few feet beyond the reach of my arms. Everything outside of myself, according to them, is a hazy blur. Trees, mountains, cities, the ocean, even the house I live in are but fairy fabrications, misty unrealities. Therefore it is assumed that my dreams should have peculiar interest for the man of science. In some undefined way it is expected that they should ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... again their rarity you had to send for the woman. What was above all remarkable for our young man was that Miriam Rooth fetched a fellow, vulgarly speaking, very much less than Julia at the times when, being on the spot, Julia did fetch. He could paint Miriam day after day without any agitating blur of vision; in fact the more he saw of her the clearer grew the atmosphere through which she blazed, the more her richness became one with that of the flowering work. There are reciprocities and special ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... seemed to mean—" Sylvia halted, not able to remember in her bewilderment what it had been that Father had said. In a blur of doubt and clouded perceptions she lost all definite impression of what she had heard. Evidently, as so often happened, she had grown-ups' affairs all twisted up in her mind. Aunt Victoria was touched with kindly amusement ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... he should recover himself when the music and motion began, but he did not. He looked down at the delicate head which reached barely to his beating heart, and a blur came before his sight; the light and the crowd of dancers dazzled and confused him. The whirling movement made him dizzy, and he had not expected to be dizzy. He began suddenly to be conscious of his own immensity, the unusualness of his position, and of the fact that ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had been supreme that summer. It had dominated her so completely as to blur slightly the clearness of her intellectual vision. To be doing things for him, making him as comfortable as possible, to find occupation for him as one does for the convalescent, to hover about him, showering him with manifestations ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... lark and the first motor-bus at the other end of the Terrace, no false modesty deters him from making himself known; he gives a view-halloo that startles every drooping cat in the district. He informs Number Two, while that person is yet nebulous, a mere blur on the cosmos, that he went to the local Empire last night, and that it was a bit of all right. With an intermittent rumble he elicits the information that Geor-r-rge (that's Number Two's name) went to his local Palace ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... himself warm or sedately tramping Hither and thither, paced his beat; Or peered where out of the blizzard's welter Some wretched being had crept to shelter, And now, drenched through by the sleet, a muddled Blur of a man ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... bird shapes floated on aerial currents or sped in jubilant flight. From the chaparral came the scents of sun-warmed foliage, the pungent odor of bay, the aromatic breath of pine, and the sweet, frail perfume of the chaparral flower. This flecked the hillside with its powdery blossom, a white blur among the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... quiet clusters of the bees To powdery drift; He tosses them away, He drives them like spray; He makes them veer and shift Around his blustering path. In clouds blindly whirling, In rings madly swirling, Full of crazy wrath, So furious and fast they fly They blur the earth and blot the sky In wild, white mirk. They fill the air with frozen wings And tiny, angry, icy stings; They blind the eyes, and choke the breath, They dance a maddening dance of death Around their work, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... tributary of the great river discovered by Gray, the Columbia. Then, before they realize it, comes the danger of going with the current on a river with rapids. The stream sweeps to a torrent, mad and unbridled. The canoe is as a chip in a maelstrom, the precipices racing past in a blur, the Indians hanging frantically to the gunnels, bawling aloud in fear, the terrified voyageurs reaching, . . . grasping, . . . snatching at trees overhanging from the banks. The next instant a rock has banged through bottom, tearing away the stern. The canoe reels in a ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... cold till dawn. Douglas was too weary, too much menaced by the cold, to think coherently; for now, conscious of the depletion of his strength, even his new-found happiness could not blur the fact that he and Judith were playing with death on Black Devil Peak. He kept the fire going and fought the desire to sleep until, far below and to the east, the Indian Range turned black against a crimson sky. Then he ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... intent, Will he not wake, and in a desperate rage Post hither, this vile purpose to prevent? This siege that hath engirt his marriage, This blur to youth, this sorrow to the sage, This dying virtue, this surviving shame, Whose crime will ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... which was a queer thing; for ordinarily the swamp boy seemed to be as cool and self-possessed as an Indian brave, who thought it a blur on his manhood to display emotion in ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... queer craft approached the water closely enough, and at such an angle, that Smith looked eagerly for a reflection. However, the water was exceedingly rough, and only a confused brownish blur could be made out. Once he caught a queer sound above the noise of the water; a shrill hiss, with a harsh whine at the end. "Just like some kind of suction apparatus," as he ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... terrible as that calm of the ocean which lets the eye penetrate the fathomless abysses below. Thou showest us in ourselves depths which make us giddy, inextinguishable needs, treasures of suffering. Welcome tempests! at least they blur and trouble the surface of these waters with their terrible secrets. Welcome the passion blasts which stir the wares of the soul, and so veil from us its bottomless gulfs! In all of us, children of dust, sons of time, eternity inspires an involuntary anguish, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from wood torches were clustered about the nearest side of the phanti corral. A dark blur of figures were ringed in a half-circle, and from it came yells of delight and almost hysterical laughter. The Hawk's eyes were chilling to look at when he saw, through gaps in the circle of black shapes, the figure of a huge negro, ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... corner in a blur of lamplight and shadow, tipped over a large stone and disappeared down the high-banked lane, leaving Helen with an impressive, half-alarming memory of the two jolted figures, black, with white ovals for faces, side by side, and Zebedee's ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... it. So I have not defined the outlines; I have suffused them with a haze of half-tints warm or golden, in such a sort that you can not lay your finger on the exact spot where background and contours meet. Seen from near, the picture looks a blur; it seems to lack definition; but step back two paces, and the whole thing becomes clear, distinct, and solid; the body stands out; the rounded form comes into relief; you feel that the air plays round it. And yet—I am not satisfied; I have misgivings. Perhaps one ought not to draw a single line; ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... stirred on her pillow's space, And moaned in pain and fear, Then looked in her little daughter's face Through the blur of a ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... military figure to which uniform was becoming, and a kind of animal good looks which would deteriorate early. His colour would fix and deepen with the aid of steady daily drinking, and his features would coarsen and blur, until by the time he was forty the young jowl would have grown heavy and would end by ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the officers, she started up, and stood erect, face to face with the husband: "the opprobrious blur against all peace and joy and light and life"—for he was standing against the window a-flame with morning. But in her terror, that seemed to her the flame from hell, since he was in it—and she cried to him to stand away, she chose hell ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... when he returned to his window, but the far shore was only an indistinct blur of gloom. The fires were brighter. One of them, built solely because of the rivermen's inherent love of light and cheer, threw the blaze of its flaming logs ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... not speak to her, nor touch her—not even touch her busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... lingered in poor Maria's face was the somewhat smoky light of the scene between them. If the light however wasn't, as we have hinted, the glow of joy, the reasons for this also were perhaps discernible to Strether even through the blur cast over them by his natural modesty. She had held herself for months with a firm hand; she hadn't interfered on any chance—and chances were specious enough—that she might interfere to her profit. She had turned her back ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... in the mail awaiting him at Venice. The day was associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying episode of the cigars—the expensive cigars that Susy had wanted to carry away from Strefford's villa. Their brief exchange of views on the subject had left the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness, and he still felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few hours the prospect of life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and it was just at that moment that he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with its almost irresistible invitation. If ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... unicorn's throat, swerving its charge, and the unicorn plunged past him. The unicorn swung back, all the triumph gone from its squeal, and the prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, the horn of the unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks of the prowler like the swift, relentless thrusting of ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... Susan asked, a little sadly. "Aren't we all born pretty much as we're going to be? There are so many lives—-" She had tried to keep out the personal note, but suddenly it crept in, and she saw the kitchen through a blur of tears. "There are so many lives," she pursued, unsteadily, "that seem to miss their mark. I don't mean poor people. I mean strong, clever young women, who could do things, and who would love to do certain work,—yet ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... a sea voyage so tempestuous as ours had been. For the first few moments I was inclined to agree with her, and said so; but very shortly my opinion was altered by the fact that what I saw first as an indistinct blur gradually assumed a definite shape, and I then found there were six little swallows in front of me, apparently connected with each other by a waving ribbon, or so it appeared ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... a time when he took pride in his strength. Something in Joe's supreme effort and in the gloom of the Indian's eyes made Shefford curious about this stone. He bent over and grasped it as Joe had done. He braced himself and lifted with all his power, until a red blur obscured his sight and shooting stars seemed to explode in his head. But he could not even stir ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... ever again?" The meadows swam in a blur before her eyes, and she thought of the purple velvet slippers which ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... myself to the end of the block and turned into Lexington Avenue just as the six-o'clock whistles began to blow. So much I remember very distinctly, but after that all is an indistinct blur of clanging street-cars, of jostling crowds. I do not know whether I had lost my senses from the physical agony I was enduring, though still able to perform the mechanical process of walking, or whether it was a case of somnambulism; but I know that I walked on, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... marks blur badly and become illegible in a few months. Remember, you may be using the notebook twenty years hence, therefore ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... to convey to Henry the fact that all the hill-folk were solidly behind him, but he knew better than to come out flat with commiseration. Then, too, Standish was conscious of a vague cloud which had come up to blur their relationship. He didn't suspect for an instant the true cause of it, which was his remark, some months ago, that he wouldn't employ in his office a friend such as Henry; but he felt it, and was keenly concerned about it. Nevertheless, his own unselfish interest never faltered, and he waited ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... too great for him, and he lets go. Before reaching the end of the track the operator moves the front rudder, and the machine lifts from the rail like a kite supported by the pressure of the air underneath it. The ground under you is at first a perfect blur, but as you rise the objects become clearer. At a height of 100 feet you feel hardly any motion at all, except for the wind which strikes your face. If you did not take the precaution to fasten your hat before starting, you have probably lost it by this time. The operator moves a lever: ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... Wilson in an extraordinary joint session of Congress, held on the 2d of April. In this, possibly his greatest speech, he was careful not to blur the idealistic principles which, since the spring of 1916, he had been formulating. War existed because Germany by its actions had thrust upon the United States the status of belligerent. But the American people must meet the challenge with their purpose clearly before them. "We ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... of the slender saplings, stopping every few yards to half- stretch himself out in the soft mass through which he was struggling, panting with exhaustion. He shouted when he gained the top of the ridge. Up through the white blur of snow on the other side there came to him faintly a shout; yet, in spite of its faintness, Jan knew ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... star-tracks fogged, coiled, turned colorless worms of light, went into a single vast blur. Dimly Bart saw old Rugel slump forward, moaning softly; saw the old Lhari pillow his bald head on his veined arms. Then darkness took him; and thinking it was death, Bart felt only numb, regretful failure. I've failed, we'll always fail. The ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... an open space, or maidan, corresponding to a drive in an English preserve, but on the grand scale, divided it from the jungle—all our thoughts being set upon lunch—when suddenly across this open space passed a blur of yellow and black only a few yards from the nearest elephant. It was so unexpected and so quick that even the trained eyes of my companion were uncertain. "Did you see?" he asked me in a voice of hushed and wondering awe. "Could that have been a tiger?" ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... from his eyes, and reviewed his situation. His first thought was of the bateau, but a shoreward glance revealed only the swiftly gliding trunks of the forest wall with the bateau and the gesticulating crowd but a blur in the distance. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... small as a rat, or it might have been a part of something as large as a man. At any rate, it proclaimed that something in that spot was alive. At one time she saw it plainly and at other times it vanished, because her fixture of gaze caused her occasionally to greatly tangle and blur those peculiar shadows and faint lights. At last, however, she perceived a human head. It was monstrously dishevelled and wild. It moved slowly forward until its glance could fall upon the prisoner and then upon ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... mouth. Emma never tired of studying them—these girls with their firm, slim throats, their lovely faces, their Oriental eyes, and their conscious grace. Often, as she looked, an unaccountable mist of tears would blur her vision. ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... devourer. She had no wish to meet him again. Without telling herself why, she would have shunned the meeting. Disturbers that thwarted her simple happiness in sublime scenery were best avoided. She thought so the more for a fitful blur to the simplicity of her sensations, and a task she sometimes had in restoring and toning them, after that sweet morning ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when the Major was a blur in a cloud of dust and the horsemen were specks in the distance, "this looks like home to me somehow. There ought to be great sheep feed over there in the foothills and summer range in the mountains. What do ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... permitted idle paddles because a wind would do the work, you know not the ways of the great explorer. He bade us ply the faster, till the canoe sped between earth and sky like an arrow shot on the level. The shore-line became a blur. Clumps of juniper and pine marched abreast, halted the length of time an eye could rest, and wheeled away. The swift current raced to meet us. The canoe jumped to mount the glossy waves raised by the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... parade winds through one of our village streets could not exceed for egotism the temper of a new man in the cab of a train like this one. This valkyric journey on the back of the vermilion engine, with the shouting of the wind, the deep, mighty panting of the steed, the gray blur at the track-side, the flowing quicksilver ribbon of the other rails, the sudden clash as a switch intersects, all the din and fury of this ride, was of a splendor that caused one to look abroad at the quiet, green landscape and believe that it was of ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... used to introspective analysis, and the efforts to grapple with the subtleties of his own subconscious memories brought a tendency to his mind to lose the clear-cut edge of a fact in a blur of misty vision. No longer did the memory of Nora Burke irritate him. Had he associated her with Kitty the betrayer, the irritation would never have passed; but as it was Kitty the charmer her voice ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... were,— For your name—just to hear it. Repeat it, and cheer it, 's a tang to the spirit As salty as a tear;— And seeing you fly, and the boys marching by, There's a shout in the throat and a blur in the eye And an aching to live for you always—or die, If, dying, we still keep you waving on high. And so, by our love For you, floating above, And the sears of all wars and the sorrows thereof, Who gave ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... in silence as they moved nearer; saw the red-lights blur and fade into green as the vessels changed direction and headed shoreward; noted one twinkling light running far in advance of its fellows; saw it swerve and double again into red and green. That meant that the Fuor d'Italia was bearing down upon ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... see nothing through the porthole save a dark blur, but he heard the creaking of cordage and the slatting of sails. He did not doubt that the slaver had told the truth when he said the schooner would soon start, and there was no possibility of escaping before then. Nevertheless, he tried the door, but could not shake it. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... directed towards the adjacent star. Finally, an exposure of ten hours made by Barnard with the Willard lens indicated the singular fact that the entire group is embedded in a nebulous matrix, streaky outliers of which blur a wide surface of the celestial vault.[1569] The artist's conviction of the reality of what his picture showed was confirmed by negatives obtained by Bailey at Arequipa in 1897, and by H. C. Wilson at Northfield (Minnesota) ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... obscure definitions, which must blur the margins with interpretations and load the memory with doubtfulness: but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with or prepared for the well-enchanting skill of music and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you—with a tale which holdeth children ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... appeared to be a sort of ferris-wheel, except that it was revolving in a horizontal plane. The structure was completely enclosed in metal, and was whirling too fast for even the central shaft to be anything but a hazy, silver-blue blur. ...
— Minor Detail • John Michael Sharkey
... have been a glorious experience. She had seen Central Park more than once, and had walked there, miserable in her loneliness. Now, though she looked out of the window, it was to let Beverley feel that she was not being stared at. The girl saw only a blur of colour, as if a ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... reading over St. Louis newspapers of last week's vintage, and never failing to glance at the death notices. For one week an advertisement under PERSONAL appeared, which every time she encountered it was sure to blur over ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... soft breath of the hills. Steadily he had jogged across the desert toward the range. Afternoon had brought him to the foothills, where a fine rain blotted out the peaks and softened the sharp outlines of the landscape to a gentle blur of green loveliness. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... thought; it felt as though a furnace were open at his back; and he went out to the silence, the coldness, of the terrace flagging on the lawn. The lower window shades had been pulled down, but, except in the dining-room, they showed no blur of brightness. Through the walls the chords of the piano were just audible, and the volume of voices was ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... wheat And leagues of golden corn The fragrance of the wild-rose bloom And elder-flower is borne; But earth's appealing loveliness We do but half surmise, For oh, the blur of battle-fields ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Paris and London can possibly last a hundred years. I recently visited that Palace of Art, the South Kensington Museum, in London, and saw there a large fresco by Sir Frederick Leighton. It had just been completed, I was informed. It was already fading! Within a few years it will be a blur of indistinct outlines. I compared its condition with the cartoons of Raphael, and a superb Giorgione in the same building; these were as warm and bright as though recently painted. It is not Leighton's fault that his works ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... to San Francisco, where the only memory that remains is that of a confused blur of preparations for leaving—packing, ticket-buying, and melancholy farewells—for the time had come to return to old Scotland to introduce a newly acquired American wife to ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... acquaintances and even by persons hardly known to me by sight, who congratulated me on the Emperor's public championing of me against my powerful Sabine neighbors, I felt my strength ebbing and sometimes saw a gray blur between my eyes ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... meant when he said that the antelope had not begun to run. At the first shot every animal in the herd seemed to flatten itself and settle to its work. They did not run—they simply flew across the ground, their legs showing only as a blur. The one I killed was four hundred yards away, and I held four feet ahead when I pulled the trigger. They could not have been traveling less than fifty-five or sixty miles an hour, for they were running in a semicircle ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... the boy slipped into a tangle of brush that marked the upper end of his patch of timber. The bare summit of the ridge stretched away in the half-light to merge in a mysterious blur with the indistinct valley of the Ten Bow. The wind was blowing gently from the ridge and the boy figured that if the wolf pack followed the summit as he hoped, they must pass within twenty yards of him. "If it don't go and cloud up before they get here I can see 'em plain ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... colour, composition and form, that constitutes her appeal and gives it the supreme heroic grace. The chariot of fire favours fusion rather than promotes analysis, and leaves much of that first June picture for me, doubtless, a great accepted blur of violet and silver. The various hours and successive aspects, the different strong passages of our reverse process, on the other hand, still figure for me even as some series of sublime landscape-frescoes— if the great Claude, say, had ever used that medium—in the immense gallery of a palace; ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... full with horrors. His bloody base mind is all a blur with gore. But he is resolute in evil still. At the end he sees too late that he ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... coping, topped by a tall iron grill, and laden with screening vines. The two men mounted this masonry and clung to the iron bars, as the crowd was driven back from the street by the outriders. Before Benton's eyes the whole mass of humanity swam in a blur of confusion and vertigo. The passing files of blue and red soldiery seemed wavering figures mounted on reeling horses. The King's carriage swung into view and a crescendo of cheering went ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... doctor away from the piano, and thus there was no one near to see how at last the bright color began to fade from her cheeks as the notes before her ran together, and the keys assumed the form of one huge key which Maddy could not manage. There was a blur before her eyes, a buzzing in her ears, and just as the dancers were entering heart and soul into the merits of a popular polka, there was a sudden pause in the music, a crash among the keys, and a faint cry, which to those nearest to her sounded very much like "Mr. Guy," ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... he had loved about this world was its leisure. What he had hated about his own world above was its constantly increasing speed. Like a squirrel caught in a cage, his world had gone faster and faster until reality had vanished into a mad blur of turning wheels and running feet. Oh, well, he thought, a man is like a pup. Contented enough until life takes him by the scruff of the neck and shakes him up and proves to him that things change and a pup's world changes and he had better ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... felt that he must have a more varied diet soon, if he was to preserve his strength. He looked again for the clouds which were to bring the great rain, destroyer of great snows, but the skies were clear, frosty and starry, and his eager eyes did not find a single blur. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his nose, and sank into the long sleep. For an hour the frost bit hard upon the fields, stiffening to stone the bodies but now so hot with eager life. Then the snow came thick and silent, filling the emptiness with a moving blur, and buried away all witness of ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... doubtful if he saw her depart, for the entire room was merely an indistinct blur. He was too desperately angry even to swear. In this emergency, Mr. Wynkoop, dimly realizing that something unpleasant had occurred, sought to attract the attention of his new parishioner along ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... motionless, the earth asleep. Even the stream beyond the laurel shrubberies ran silently. Dimly he made out the garden lying at attention, the flower-beds like folded hands upon its breast; and further off, the big untidy elms in pools of deeper shadow, their outlines blurred as dreams blur the mind. Yet, though he could detect no slightest movement, he was keenly aware that other things beside the stars were looking at him. The night was full of carefully- screened eyes, all fixed upon him. Framed in the lighted window, he was so easily visible. Night herself, calm and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... last survey from his bank steps at three o'clock, some one yelled, "Hello, Amzi!" A piece of brick flung with an aim worthy of a nobler cause whizzed past his head and struck the door-frame with a sharp thwack and blur of dust. Amzi looked down at the missile with pained surprise and kicked it aside. His clerks besought him to come in out of harm's way; and yet no man in Montgomery had established a better right than he to stand exactly where he stood ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... observation—never left the shelter of the bushes. He had all the skill of the old forest runners, because his footsteps made no sound as he passed and he knew how to keep his figure always in the shadows until it became a common blur with them. ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rose from the supper-table, and went into the sitting-room. He took up the evening paper, and she began sewing. His eyesight was not very good. He wore glasses, and to-night they seemed to blur up. He couldn't see the print distinctly. It must have been the glasses, of course. So he took them off, and wiped them with great care, and then found the paper was upside-down. And she tried to sew. But the thread broke, and she couldn't seem to get ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... in my eyes, and I am seeing things all wrong. We have anchored for the night.... I am watching the misty green blur, which is all that is left to me of India, grow more and more indistinct as darkness falls. Soon it ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... did arrive at his desired haven, late in the afternoon, when dusk was beginning to fall and blur with her gentle hand the sharp lines of hill and tree, we acknowledged his wisdom, for in the window beside the door, where we creakingly but joyfully alighted, were visible, although no longer distinctly, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... Look how close together the marks are! Unfortunately, that's about all we're likely to deduce from them, and I doubt if a finger-print expert will be able to help us. Observe, there are no finger-prints—merely faint marks of the middle of the fingers, and a kind of blur for the thumb. But the thing is suspicious, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the country is full of the descendants of families that have "died out." How long it takes to blot out or blur the finer features and expression we do not know, and the time probably varies according to the length of the period during which the family existed in its higher phase. The question which confronts us is: Does the higher or better nature, the "inward perfections" which are ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... grew deathly pale. A blur came before his eyes. He rubbed them to dispel it, and ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... clothed her; wedded her; Her Cophetua: when, lo! All the hill, one breathing blur, Burst in beauty; gleam and glow Blent with ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... was open. The thick, wet fog came pouring in like smoke. I moved up boldly through the heavy smother and looked down into the field. There was the blur of the small coop, but ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... in the soft cushions, sped through the dusk like a fell spirit. A confused jumble of shadows flew past, and strange, unfamiliar noises rose from the animated streets. The lights shimmered on the moist glass. It was confusing. The girl ceased trying to read any meaning in it. It all fused into a blur; and she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the novel sensations stimulated by her first ride in a carriage propelled—she knew ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... additional gas rushed into the bag. Jack pulled a lever. The big motors roared and a queer, sickly smell of burned gas filled the air. The propellers began to revolve slowly and then increased their speed till they became a mere blur. ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... loud delight of laugh and jest, They plied their subtle alchemy with zest— Till, sudden, high above their tumult, welled Out of the sitting-room a song which held Them stilled in some strange rapture, listening To the sweet blur of ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... "the other side of the hills,"—a land of sheep-ranches, for the most part; rather barren and level, unlike the rolling green prairie of the cattle-country she loved. They could see the Judson's wagon winding its way across the plain, until only a blur of dust marked its course ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... standing on the station platform at Wellmouth Centre, and the train which was taking Emily back to South Middleboro was a rapidly moving, smoking blur in the distance. The captain, who seemed to have taken a decided fancy to his prospective neighbor and her young relative, had come with them to the station. Thankful had hired a horse and "open wagon" at the livery stable in East Wellmouth and had intended engaging a driver ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... line, Till I enveloped thee from verge to verge And hid thee in the hollow of my being? And still, because between us hung the veil, The myriad-tinted veil of sense, thy feet Refused their rest, thy hands the gifts of life, Thy heart its losses, lest some lesser face Should blur mine image in thine upturned soul Ere death had stamped it there. This was thy ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... view the very spot at which I had landed with the captain for the first time, and from which I had re-embarked the day before we sailed. I had already been gazing for some seconds, before my attention was arrested by a blur on the sea-line; and stooping to look, I recognised the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... are things I do not know. I only know that you may lie Day long and watch the Cambridge sky, And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass, Hear the cool lapse of hours pass, Until the centuries blend and blur In Grantchester, in Grantchester . . . Still in the dawnlit waters cool His ghostly Lordship swims his pool, And tries the strokes, essays the tricks, Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx; Dan Chaucer hears his river still Chatter beneath a phantom mill; Tennyson notes, with studious eye, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... hesitated, for she felt the color coming into her face, while a strange blur confused every object in the room. "I'm very, very sorry," she added, hastily, after a moment. "I ought not to have come. I'm not equal to this. It wouldn't take you very long to drive home with me, and then you could return. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... presence here is or is not a menace to the state. If they are here on private concerns which in no wise touch Ehrenstein, it would be foolhardy to declare war. Your highness is always letting your personal wounds blur your eyesight. Some day you will find ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath |
