"Brightness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continuance, The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel; the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors. The vigor of Omar began to fail; the curls of beauty fell from his head; strength departed from his hands, and agility from his feet. He gave back to the caliph the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... all its beauty, and appears black and ugly. To restore its beauty I must clean and polish it. Thus the soul blackened by sin must be cleaned by God's grace. If the soul is in mortal sin—altogether blackened—then sanctifying grace brings back its brightness and makes it pleasing to God; but if the soul is already bright, though stained or darkened a little by venial sin, then grace makes ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... as everywhere else, they only led a tolerated, reviled, and derided existence. They possessed no rights, only duties; no honor, only insults; no dignities, but humiliation and disgrace. Now they were called on to give up the last and only thing which shed some gleam of brightness on their poor, down-trodden existence—their gold ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... waved, or a pillar of gold rose up amid the greenness. Over among the valleys, were sudden, shifting sparkles from half-hidden brooks, and the pond gleamed in the sunshine without a cloud to dim its brightness. In the broken fields that sloped towards it, and in the narrow meadows that skirted that part of the Merle river which could be seen, there were tokens of life and busy labour—dark stretches of newly-turned mould alternating with the green of the pastures, or the bleached stubble ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... amiableness which the world, I find, by common consent, allows to her. I only feared that she might have been too perfect—too precisely excellent—too matter-of-fact a paragon for you to coalesce with comfortably; and that a person whose perfection hung in more easy folds about her, whose brightness was softened down by some of 'those fair defects which best conciliate love,' would, by appealing more dependently to your protection, have stood a much better chance with your good nature. All these suppositions, however, I have been led into by my intense anxiety to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... navigators had not seen before. One of them was adorned with a most beautiful blue, in every respect equal to the ultramarine. With this blue all his claws and joints are deeply tinged; while the under part of him was white, and so exquisitely polished, that to colour and brightness it bore an exact resemblance to the white of old china. The other crab was also marked, though somewhat more sparingly, with the ultramarine on his joints and his toes; and on his back were three brown spots of ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... eyes there seemed to be growing a dreadful sort of beauty; there was fire in them, the luminous brightness of the tortured. On both cheeks a splendid colour glowed and waned; the slightly ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... brightness was afforded by our view of the Wartburg, which we passed during the only sunlit hour of this journey. The sight of this mountain fastness, which, from the Fulda side, is clearly visible for a long time, affected me deeply. A neighbouring ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... with a sweet ring. Her black hair was tossing in the spring wind, her whole face showed variations and under-meanings of youthful bloom and brightness in ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... days of brightness, On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns, Should ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... to the most civilized man. Color, too, if distinct, not over-bright, nor too much extended in field, is in itself pleasing. The single colors have been the object of comparatively little study. Experiment seems to show that the colors containing most brightness—white, red, and yellow—are preferred. Baldwin, in his "dynamogenic" experiments, based on "the view that the infant's hand movements in reaching or grasping are the best index of the kind and intensity of its sensory experiences," finds that the colors range themselves ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... that unquestioned yet unobtrusive consciousness of genius that harden the telling sentences of the Rise of the Dutch Republic and the United Netherlands into blocks of adamant, polished by friction with each other to a diamond brightness, and reflecting only the noblest sentiments, the most profound principles. The dice had been thrown a second time, and Motley had not won a victory. The applause of the press was insufficient to the man, who felt that he had not yet struck the key-note of his destiny. To ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... its way to Standish, lighted her face even beyond the glow from the lamps which she switched on. For an instant his heavy countenance flared into brightness. Dick Allport sighed almost imperceptibly as he turned to me. I had a feeling that such a fire as the Burtons kindled for each other should have sprung up in the moment between Dick and me, for we had fought ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that great struggle of which as a star he was the leader, of unclouded brightness, drawing over its mournful history a splendor which is reflected from every sentence of its chronicle. He was an example of a man, who, though branded because of defeat, still, by his exalted character, gave a dignity and nobility to a cause which, doubtless, is forever ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... from the parallax of a star by no means halts with the disclosure of the distance of that body. Distance known, the proper motion of the star, hitherto only to be reckoned as so many seconds of arc, may readily be translated into actual speed of progress; relative brightness becomes absolute lustre, as compared with the sun; and in the case of the double stars the absolute mass of the components may be computed from the laws of gravitation. It is found that stars differ ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Japanese women get hold of a man," the American went on, "they seem to drain the brightness out of him. Why, you have only got to stroll around to the Kobe Club and look at the faces. You can tell the ones that have Japanese wives or housekeepers right away. Something seems to have gone right out of ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... great fire began to tell strange stories to the child, and the wind in the chimney roared a corroborative note now and then. The great black mouth of the chimney, impending high over the hearth, received as into a mysterious gulf murky coils of smoke and brightness of aspiring sparks; and beyond, in the high darkness, were muttering and wailing and strange doings, so that sometimes the smoke rushed back in panic, and curled out and up to the roof, and condensed itself ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... and was bareheaded. Montignac was attired rather like a soldier than like a scribe, having on a buff jerkin and wearing both sword and dagger. His breeches and hose were of dull hue, so that the only brightness of color on him was the red of his hair and lips. It was, doubtless, from an excess of precaution that he went so well armed in the chateau at so late an hour. Yet I smiled to see weapons on this slight and fragile-looking youth, whose strength lay in his brain ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to the fairylike brightness of the island in the lagoon. The green leafage of the shrubbery was suffused in tender light; the waters reflected calmly all their drapery, but none of the savage desolation of the pyre in the Court of Honor. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... mounted Marduk the mighty in battle. To right and left he looked, lifting his eye. His terrible brightness surrounded his head. Against her he advanced, went on his way, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the swarms of luceoli or fire-flies which were dancing around me and that appeared flitting and sparkling amidst the gloom and darkness of the ruins, but which were no longer visible when they rose above the horizon, their feeble light being lost and utterly obscured in the brightness of the ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... would light on the grim black pile of L'Etat, lying out there in the silvery shimmer like some great monumental cairn, a rough and rugged heap of loneliness and mystery—the grimmer and lonelier by reason of the twinkling brightness of its setting. And then his thoughts would play about the lonely pile, and come back with a sense of homely relief to the fairy path which Nance's little feet had trod, in light and dark, and storm and shine, since ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... what respite they should have from their fits, as sometimes a day or two or more, which fell out accordingly. One of the afflicted said she saw him, in her fit, and was with him in a glorious place which had no candle nor sun, yet was full of light and brightness, where there was a multitude in white, glittering robes, and they sang the song in Rev. 5, 9; Psal. 110, 149. She was loath to leave that place, and said, "How long shall I stay here? Let me be along with you." She was ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... stain is neither something positive in the soul, nor does it denote a pure privation: it denotes a privation of the soul's brightness in relation to its cause, which is sin; wherefore diverse sins occasion diverse stains. It is like a shadow, which is the privation of light through the interposition of a body, and which varies according to the diversity ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... of rooms was coming into fashion, and beds were being banished from kitchens and parlors. There were more beds also, and fewer people in each, than in former years. On the walls of the rooms paint and paper were taking the place of tapestry, and light colors, with brightness and cleanliness, were displacing soft dark tones, dirt, and vermin.[Footnote: Babeau, Les ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the next night, and in the morning awoke refreshed, and with a feeling of brightness and cheerfulness which she had not expected to feel so soon. Her new life would give her plenty to do, to fill up every hour and to drive out all useless regrets ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... reason to complain. Every Saint in heaven will have as much happiness as he can hold.' Mr. Dilly thought this a clear, though a familiar illustration of the phrase, 'One star differeth from another in brightness[840].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... letter has, at any rate, made me feel that it would be impossible for me to return to England, and it is not likely that you will soon come here again. I will not even ask you to do so, though your presence gave a brightness to my life for a few days which nothing else could have produced. But when the lamp for a while burns with special brightness there always comes afterwards a corresponding dullness. I had to pay for your visit, and for the comfort of my confession ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... carefully formed, and the beautifully ruled lines. Cissy adored him. He took her on his knee, and she leaned her hollow cheek against his handsome face. She would have probably rushed to death to serve him. His height, his brightness, his rings, his spotted neckties—all seemed so perfect, so beautiful, to her; and when he brought his fiddle she would sit and look at him, her little hands clasped with an intensity of love that was strange and pitiful. Swaying ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... hydrochloric acid, while the three next are not notably affected. Cochineal is turned by the potassa to a violet-red, orchil to a violet-blue, and alkanet to a decided blue. Lac-dye presents the same reactions as cochineal, but has less brightness. Ammoniacal cochineal and carmine may likewise be distinguished by the tone ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... was not grieving for a gift given and taken away, but for a treasure which had never for an instant come within his reach. She went away in the gathering dusk with a heart full of sympathy. Had the "vanished hand" guided her into the path of his solitary life that she might shed a ray of brightness there? ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... pool, cold as the tide that flows Where monstrous bergs beyond Varanger stray, Rising from sunless depths that no man knows; Thither as clustering fireflies have I seen At fixed seasons all the stars come down To wash in that cold wave their brightness clean And win the special fire wherewith they crown The wintry heavens in frost. Even as a flock Of falling birds, down to the pool they came. I saw them and I heard the icy shock Of stars engulfed with hissing of faint flame— Ages ago before the birth of men Or ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... Till this moment the sight of home, even after a short absence, had, on returning to it, always been delightful to Caroline; but now, for the first time in her life, every object seemed to have lost its brightness. In the stillness of retirement, which she used to love, she felt something sad and lifeless. The favourite glade, which formerly she thought the very spot so beautifully described by Dryden, as the scene of his "Flower and the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Judah as ignorant and uncivilized. Does it not seem as if the very heavens must have been shrouded and the course of nature changed during the perpetration of such bloody crimes? Does it not seem as if a natural darkness must have overspread the land? And yet it was not so. The sun shone in his brightness, the skies were as serene, the rain and the dew descended, the vine and the olive ripened, and the flowers shed forth their sweetness, and all the bustle and show of life went on, as at other times. The people were oppressed, but the courts ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... till the sun has risen, and now look. It is sparkling like a diamond; and if you look at it from another side, it will be glowing like a ruby, and presently gleaming like an emerald. The poor little drop has become one of the brightest and loveliest things you ever saw. But is it its own brightness and beauty? No; if it slipped down to the ground out of the sunshine, it would be only a poor little dirty drop of water. So, if the Sun of Righteousness, the glorious and lovely Saviour, shines upon you, a ...
— Morning Bells • Frances Ridley Havergal
... everything was gaiety and brightness. But for the limping soldiers, my own battered machine, and the ominous grey ships in the harbour, it might ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... looking at them with a smile of expectancy on her face, as if a scene from the drama of the younger generation were being played for her benefit. She was a remarkable-looking woman, well advanced in the sixties, but owing to the lightness of her frame and the brightness of her eyes she seemed to have been wafted over the surface of the years without taking much harm in the passage. Her face was shrunken and aquiline, but any hint of sharpness was dispelled by the large blue eyes, at once sagacious and innocent, which ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... tattered hangings with a wonderful neatness, and the hours she spent at work in the chamber were to her almost as sacred as hours spent at religious duty, or as those nuns and novices give to embroidering altar- cloths. There was a brightness in the room that seemed in no other in the house, and the lingering essences in the air of it were as incense to her. In secrecy she even busied herself with keeping things in better order than Rebecca, Mistress Clorinda's woman, had ever had time to do before. She also contrived ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... darkness; but the recess was redly lighted by the fire. The wood had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of flames, which the draught of the chimney brandished to and fro. In this strong and shaken brightness the Senora continued pacing from wall to wall with disconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth her arms, throwing back her head as in appeal to heaven. In these disordered movements the beauty and grace of the woman showed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vary in brightness. Some of this variation is due partly to actual differences among the stars themselves and partly to varying distances. If all the stars were alike, then those which were farthest away would be ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... of thy sex are false! Oh woman! lovely woman! nature made thee To temper man: we had been brutes without you! Angels are painted fair, to look like you: There's in you all that we believe of heaven; Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... whilst losing part of its usual character had approximated in some degree to the voltaic spark. When the electricity retarded by water was discharged between pieces of charcoal, it was exceedingly luminous and bright upon both surfaces of the charcoal, resembling the brightness of the voltaic discharge on such surfaces. When the discharge of the unretarded electricity was taken upon charcoal, it was bright upon both the surfaces, (in that respect resembling the voltaic spark,) but the noise ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... first discovered at a distance, gradually disclosing white splendours, which are his wings and garments. He comes in a boat, of which his wings are the sails; and as he approaches, it is impossible to look him in the face for its brightness. Two other angels have green wings and green garments, and the drapery is kept in motion like a flag by the vehement action of the wings. A fifth has a face like the morning star, casting forth quivering beams. A sixth ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... was getting dark and snowing pretty heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... noise and discomfort behind, and reaching Aunt Hester. If she could fall awake she would feel and hear none of it. It would all be unreal and she would know that only the lightness and the air like flowers and the lovely brightness were true. Once, as she tossed on her cot-bed, she broke into a low little laugh to think how untrue things really were and how strange it was that people did not understand—that even she felt as she lay in the darkness that she could not get away. And she could not get away unless the train ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Him, and having 'a desire to the work of His hands,' as if His heaven would be incomplete without His servant. But the rapture and the vision pass, and the rest of the chapter is all clouded over, and the devout hope loses its light. Once again it gathers brightness in the twenty-first chapter, where the possibility flashes out starlike, that 'after my skin hath been thus destroyed, yet from my ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... massive, but at the same time gorgeous with colouring suited to eyes accustomed to Oriental brightness of hue; the chancel walls were inlaid with the porphyry, jasper, and marble, of exquisite tints, that came from the mountains around; the shrines were touched with gold, and the roofs and vaultings painted with fretwork of unapproachable brilliance and purity of tints; ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen, was rather a dandy about shirts and haberdashery in general. Fanny had looked with delight at the fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of his shirt studs, at his elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white gloves, and at the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The prince had appeared and subjugated the poor little handmaid. His image traversed constantly her restless slumbers; the tone of his voice, the blue light of his eyes, the generous ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her marriage the Queen's private life shows like a little isle of brightness in the midst of a stormy sea. Within and without our borders there was small prospect of settled peace at the very time of that marriage. We have said that Lord Melbourne was still Premier; but ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... graces, Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia, the Spartans originally worshipped but one—(Aglaia, splendour) under the name of Phaenna, brightness: they rejected the other two, whose names signify Joy and Pleasure, and adopted a substitute in one whose name was Sound (Cletha,)—a very common ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... afar off above the sea a small white cloud, as bright as silver. And it came on, nearer and nearer, till its brightness dazzled ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... complained continually. Every thing went wrong. Each article put into the boxes cost her a flood of tears. Each friend who dropped in, renewed the sense of loss. She scarcely noticed her mother's pale face at all. All the brightness and busy-ness in her was changed for selfish lamentations, and still the burden of her complaint was, "I shan't have any flowers in Redding. My garden, oh, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... mused within herself: 'Better be first with him, Than dwell where fairer Margaret sits, Who shines my brightness dim, For ever second where she sits, 100 However fair I be: I will be lady of his love, And he shall worship me; I will be lady of his herds And stoop to his degree, At home where kids and ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... alarmingly in brightness. It occurred to Weaver that he must be traveling with enormous speed, although he had no sensation of movement at all. There was a position on the scale around the steering arm that he thought would put the engines into ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... that night, as was then my somewhat dangerous practice, on deck upon the cockpit bench. A stir at last awoke me, to see all the eastern heaven dyed with faint orange, the binnacle lamp already dulled against the brightness of the day, and the steersman leaning eagerly across the wheel. "There it is, sir!" he cried, and pointed in the very eyeball of the dawn. For a while I could see nothing but the bluish ruins of the morning bank, which lay far along the horizon, like melting icebergs. Then the sun rose, pierced ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little estate; and the sojourn had evidently been of benefit to her. Good air, the good meals with which Letty had provided her, and a sort of sympathy which had sprung up in a very sudden way between her and everything on the place, had given brightness to her eyes. She even looked a little plumper than when she came, and certainly very pretty. She climbed Pine Top Hill without making any mistake as to the best path, and went directly to a low piece of sun-warmed rock which cropped out from the ground not far from the bases of the cluster of pines ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... Thus Caesar spoke: from the propitious sky Descending eagles, boding victory, Drive the slow winds before 'em as they fly. From the left side of a dark wood proceed Unwonted crys, which dying, flames succeed. The sun-beams with unusual brightness rise And spread new glories round the gilded skies. New fir'd with omens of the promis'd day, Caesar o're untrod mountain leads the way; Where th' frozen earth o're-clad with ice and snows, At first not ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... meadow, possessed with its morning brightness, and its summer dress he heard some person singing not ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... sometimes it only illuminates the sky, and shows the clouds near the horizon; at others, it discovers the distant hills, and again leaves all in darkness; when, in an instant, it reappears in vivid and successive flashes, and exhibits the nearest objects in all the brightness of day. During all this time the distant thunder never ceases to roll, and is only silenced by some nearer peal, which bursts on the ear with such a sudden and tremendous crash, as can scarcely fail to strike the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... lee of the heavy snips, a quarter of a mile distant, each vessel keeping her relative position, by close attention to her canvass. Further than this, nothing was in sight. The sea had that wild mixture of brightness and gloom, which belongs to the element when much agitated in a dark night, while the heavens were ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Lord Jesus comes and shows Himself to us as our Master and speaks to us. When we have Jesus with us, and when we go every footstep with the thought that it is Jesus wants us to go, it is Jesus who sends us and is helping us, then there will be brightness in our testimony, and it will help other believers, and they will begin to understand; "I see why I have failed. I took the word, I took the blessing, and I took, as I thought, the life, but I ...
— 'Jesus Himself' • Andrew Murray
... unnatural echo, and I fancied our forms appeared gigantic, whilst the air was piercing cold. The prospect was altogether very sublime, and filled the mind with awe! On the one side, the boundless horizon, heaped up with clouds of silvery brightness, contrasted with some of darker hue, enveloping us in their vapour, and, passing rapidly away, gave us only casual glances of the landscape; and, on the other hand, the sterile and cindery peak, with its venerable head, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... by children with bright expectant faces; the said articles having been in process of collection and arrangement for a month or six weeks previous, in anticipation of the journey which now lies, in all its length and brightness, the length and brightness of a long northern summer's day, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... was full of life. It was a young child's eye set in a death's head; the light quivered in the depths of its youthful liquid brightness. Shaded by the long dark lashes, it sparkled like the strange lights that travelers see in lonely places in winter nights. The eye seemed as if it would fain dart fire at Don Juan; he saw it thinking, upbraiding, condemning, uttering accusations, threatening doom; ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... more peculiarly directed to the genius of the Sun, the Apollo of Greek and Roman mythology; and he was pleased to be represented with the symbols of the God of Light and Poetry. The unerring shafts of that deity, the brightness of his eyes, his laurel wreath, immortal beauty, and elegant accomplishments, seem to point him out as the patron of a young hero. The altars of Apollo were crowned with the votive offerings of Constantine; and the credulous multitude were taught ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... employment enough around her. A sleigh and horses better than anything else Quarrenton had been known to furnish, were carrying her rapidly towards home; the weather had perfectly cleared off, and in full brightness and fairness the sun was shining upon a brilliant world. It was cold indeed, though the only wind was that made by their progress; but Fleda had been again unresistingly wrapped in the furs and was for ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows,—such things as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." The Scottish elders were John Maitland and Archibald Johnston. Maitland in after years renounced the Covenant and became a powerful foe ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... and the coast offered its feast of inexhaustible pleasure to the children, who never wearied of its charm. The moon shone with the most unusual brightness, it seemed to Otto, who, at last, had the cleverness to suggest that all the children should collect on the hillside at seven o'clock to take advantage of its beauty for an ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... is by nature dark, and uses this as an argument of its being also the first cold; for that its darkness is opposite to the brightness, and its coldness to the heat of fire. Moving this in his First Book of Natural Questions, he again in his treatise of Habits says, that habits are nothing else but airs; for bodies are contained by these, and the cause that every one of the bodies contained in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... here as we are doing now. She pulled at the sweet rushes and crushed them in her hand. She adds a remembered brightness to ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... there Afric's lineage stood, And poured out copiously its best blood; Of them I would sing, my lyre's restrung, And allures not diffidently to the song, Paternal muse with thy patriot valor reign Supreme, and the brightness of ages regain, In the deep recess of the past Lower me, to where the battle's blast Has been given to oblivion, the sigh Of dying patriots let greet me nigh. And my thoughts waft on memory's wing, To where ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... stand as symbols of that unfathomable cosmic cruelty which he sees as the motive power of life itself. More, even, than his women, he makes them poignant, vivid, memorable. The picture of old Gerhardt is full of a subtle brightness, though he is always in the background, as cautious and penny-wise as an ancient crow, trotting to his Lutheran church, pathetically ill-used by the world he never understands. Butler is another such, different in externals, but at bottom the same dismayed, questioning, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... see the angel coming to us. Sorrow forsakes its own nature, and leads in its own opposite, when sorrow helps us to see God. It clears away the thick trees, and lets the sunlight into the forest shades, and then in time corn will grow. Hope is but the brightness that goes before God's face, and if we would see it we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Heaven; like eastern thresholds is[519] The place where Death's grand cause is argued o'er, And souls despatched to that world or to this; And therefore Michael and the other wore A civil aspect: though they did not kiss, Yet still between his Darkness and his Brightness There passed a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... and wife looked at each other for a few moments. In fact, since the autumn they had planned taking as an apprentice some young girl who would live with them, and thus bring a little brightness into their house, which seemed so dull without children. And their decision ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... excitement," said Mrs. Pendleton, nodding toward Sally; and they all looked in wonder at the unnatural flush on the girl's cheeks and the strange, dazzling brightness ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... and, when she sat sewing, smiled unconsciously as if some deep satisfaction made sunshine from within. Heart and soul seemed to wake up and rejoice as naturally and beautifully as flowers in the spring. A soft brightness shone in her eyes, a fuller tone sounded in her voice, and her face grew young and blooming with the happiness ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... aflame. Men nearest the door hasten to light the candles of horsemen outside who speed away on the mission of torchbearer to every home, so that by nightfall the candles on every altar burn with a new brightness that has been transmitted from the holy fire. Likewise the fire of inspiration, kindled in the great soul of Anna Howard Shaw, touched into flame the zeal and courage of her messengers, who in turn reached the homes throughout the nation with her ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... so, Sir Kenneth," she said. The old woman looked tired and confused. Somehow, a lot of the brightness seemed to have gone out of her life. "That's right," she said. "I didn't realize there was so much of it going on. You see, Sir Kenneth, you're the only one I can pick up at a distance who has been having ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... nightingales singing from the apple-trees of the close. Then from out of the shadowed orchard shall we come into the open town-meadow, and over its daisies shall the moonlight be lying in a grey flood of brightness. ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than archangel ruined and the excess Of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... lightness and brightness when Terry came home. His mother said fondly that it was like the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty where life hung in suspense between his goings and comings. The mere presence of this one young man seemed to put all ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth Magnitude; so that should they be distinguish'd thereby, those six Magnitudes would, at least, afford no less then thrice that number of Magnitudes, plainly enough distinguishable by their Magnitude, and brightness; so that a good twelve foot Glass would afford us no less then twenty five several Magnitudes. Nor are these all, but a longer Glass does yet further, both more nicely distinguish the Magnitudes of those already noted, and also discover ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... rarely occasion to enjoy. They are coming away from London parties at this time: the dear little eyes are closed in sleep under mother's wing. How far off city cares and pleasures appear to be! how small and mean they seem, dwindling out of sight before this magnificent brightness of Nature! But the best thoughts only grow and strengthen under it. Heaven shines above, and the humble spirit looks up reverently towards that boundless aspect of wisdom and beauty. You are at home, and ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... retired. Though he rather shunned the subject as a rule, he admitted to us that the work was journalism and not a sarcastic history of the nineteenth century, on which we felt he would come out strong. Lastly, Jimmy had lost the brightness of his youth, and was become silent and moody, which is well known to be the result of ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... sunk, out shone the lamp with sudden brightness, as if the island bade them welcome. Dan furled the sail; and, drifting with the tide, they floated in, till the waves broke softly on the shore, and left them safe ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... which he touched with the cloth, and then wiped both his eyes. Each person who received it went through a similar performance, and as ophthalmia and other diseases of the eyes were extremely prevalent, several of the party had eyes that had not the brightness of the gazelle's; nevertheless, these were supposed to become brighter after having been wiped by the holy cloth. How many eyes this same piece of cloth had wiped it would be impossible to say, but such facts are sufficient to prove the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... here and there, glimpses of different traits, in acts, incidents, and anecdotes remembered by neighbors and friends near and remote. Were it not that his children are withheld, by this delicate veneration, from giving to the public facts known to them alone, the moral beauty and brightness of his life would shine out upon the outside world with warmer rays and larger rayons. I hope that a single passage from a letter written by one of them to a friend, even under the injunction of confidence, may be given here, without rending the veil which they hold so sacred. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... future. It seemed to him that nothing would ever move again in the dim room, where for this fraction of a second everything was motionless except the dust motes that danced in the beam slanting through the low window, wreathing this way and that like steam within the strip of brightness, but ceasing to be visible at the edge as sharply as though they ceased to exist—as though an impalpable line ruled in the air would not allow the twisting coils to pass beyond, even when the pattern demanded it. Ishmael stared at this aerial path of living ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... persecuted, the more shining man (Acts 6:15). The prison is the furnace, thy graces are the silver and the gold; wherefore, as the silver and the gold are refined by the fire, and so made more to show their native brightness, so the Christian that hath, and that loveth righteousness, and that suffereth for its sake, is by his sufferings refined and made more righteous, and made more Christian, more godly (Zech 13:9). Some, indeed, when they come there, prove lead, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... streets of the city being paved with gold. In that country are oceans of lager beer and drinks of every kind, all free; pretty women also, and pleasures of endless variety exceeding the dreams of Mohammed as far as the brightness of the meridian sun exceeds the dim twinkle of the glowworm! Program for the voyage: embarkation amid the melody of the best band in the world; that music that so attracted you this morning not to be mentioned ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... putrid carcase, that mother of all evil—the French Revolution." It reminded him of the accursed things that crawled in and out of the mouth of the vile hag in Spenser's Cave of Error; and he repeated the nauseous stanza. Mackintosh was to be the faithful knight of the romance, the brightness of whose sword was to flash destruction on ...
— Burke • John Morley
... men marching to and fro where at the most he had had two; and he groaned in spirit for a time as he went over again the occurrences of the past night. But far on high the sky began to be dappled with orange and golden clouds, which increased in brightness till the whole east was one glory of light, bringing with it hope; while the soft cool breeze he drank in gave him fresh courage and the strength to act the part he had to play,—that of one too proud to ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... dividing curtains. In a few moments Zal and Rustum came in bearing between them a gilded litter curtained with crimson silk. Setting this upon the ground, they drew the curtains and bade Perpetua come forth. As Perpetua emerged from the litter the brightness of the light after her long journey through the night dazzled her, and for a moment she put her hands to her eyes to shield them from the unexpected light. In that moment Zal and Rustum had lifted up the litter ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... how long after it was that I sprang from my blankets in half-doubting fright. But I had dreamed nothing. A second long, wild yell now gave me (I must own to it) a horrible chill. I had no pistol—nothing. In the hateful brightness of the moon my single thought was "House! House!" and I fled across the lane in my underclothes to the cabin, when round the corner whirled the two cow-punchers, and I understood. I saw the Virginian catch ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... An evil something began to move in his heart. 'What a fool I am!' he said to himself. Then he grew angry, and was just going to throw the bird from him and whistle, when a brightness shone all round him. He lifted his eyes, and saw a great globe of light—like silver at the hottest heat: he had once seen silver run from the furnace. It shone from somewhere above the roofs of the castle: it must be the great old princess's moon! How could she be there? Of course ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... is at the moment of the awaking of the three disciples, one not daring to look up again, but bowing his head and folding his hands in prayer. They are dazzled with the glory. This glory is a cloud of brightness which envelops the three figures of Christ, Moses, and Elijah, or as the Greeks called him, Elias. The Saviour looks heavenward with ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... sure of that; but the goodness is only the recipient and modifying element, not the creative one. Consider carefully what delights you in any original picture of Angelico's. You will find, for one minor thing, an exquisite variety and brightness of ornamental work. That is not Angelico's inspiration. It is the final result of the labour and thought of millions of artists, of all nations; from the earliest Egyptian potters downwards—Greeks, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... azure mystery of Inspiration Point: nothing could dim the brightness of the Bridal Veil, seen from a new point of view. So near that a strong wind might have driven the spray into their faces, they saw the white folds of the waterfalls, embroidered with rainbows, and the dark rocks behind its rushing flood, stained deep red, and gold and blue, as ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... breeze had fallen lighter, though a long ripple still lapped noisily upon the beach, and a half-moon had just sailed up above the clustering pines. Their ragged tops rose against the sky black as ebony, but the pale radiance they cut off from the beach stretched in a track of faint silvery brightness far athwart the lake. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... topaz gleam upon its dress. It never soils them with the dust of earth, and its aerial life scarcely touches the turf an instant. Always in the air, flying from flower to flower, it has their freshness as well as their brightness. It lives upon their nectar, and dwells only in the climates where ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... lowering storm, as she walked up and down upon the beach, listening and waiting. She wondered that Thurston had not been there ready to receive her; but this thought gave her little uneasiness; it was nearly lost, as the storm and darkness also were, in the brightness and gladness of her own loving, generous emotions. There was no room in her heart for doubt or trouble. If the thought of the morning's conversation and of Angelica entered her mind, it was only to be soon dismissed with fair construction and cheerful ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Your poor father found no outlet for the overpowering joy of life that was in him. And I brought no brightness into his home. ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... was soon sent packing, for there were wild scenes when the ale flowed freely, though his father, King Ironbeard, ruled his hall with a strong hand. From the speech of his elders Biorn made his picture of the world beyond the firths. It was a world of gloom and terror, yet shot with a strange brightness. The High Gods might be met with in beggar's guise at any ferry, jovial fellows and good friends to brave men, for they themselves had to fight for their lives, and the End of All Things hung over them like a cloud. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... know what you mean, I'm sure," said Lady Winterbourne, sighing again. Then she looked at the pair beside her—at the alert brightness in the man's strong and quiet face as he sat stooping forward, with his hands upon his knees, hardly able to keep his eyes for an instant from the dark apparition beside him—at the girl's evident ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... parties. Both the Kurus and the Pandavas, O bull of Bharata's race, beheld the darts hurled from heroic arms course like meteors through the welkin. The entire welkin, O monarch, shrouded with falling swords of great brightness, seemed to become exceedingly beautiful. The aspect presented, O chief of the Bharatas, by the lances hurled all around, became like that of swarms of locusts in the welkin. Steeds, with limbs bathed in blood in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... never expected to have another occasion to sing a public "In Memoriam." It made my hair stand on end,—metaphorically, of course. From my childhood I had been extremely precocious. There were anecdotes of preternatural brightness, picked up, Heaven knows where, of my eagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and of my arduous struggles with chill penury, which was not able (as it appeared) to repress my rage, until I entered this institution, of which I had ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and Ambrosia mix'd: With these the magic dews which Evening brings, 5 Brush'd from the Idalian star by faery wings: Each tender pledge of sacred Faith he join'd, Each gentler Pleasure of th' unspotted mind— Day-dreams, whose tints with sportive brightness glow, And Hope, the blameless parasite of Woe. 10 The eyeless Chemist heard the process rise, The steamy Chalice bubbled up in sighs; Sweet sounds transpired, as when the enamour'd Dove Pours the soft murmuring of responsive Love. The finish'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... years old, generally a very pretty age, were less pretty that Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in face, sharp in feature, with a muddled complexion, wild sun-burnt hair, and eyes, whose very brightness had in them something startling, over-informed, super-subtle, too clever for her age. At twelve years old she had quite the air of a little old fairy. Now, at seventeen, matters are mended. Her complexion has cleared; her countenance, her figure, has shot up into height and brightness, and a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... The lamps along the wharves gleamed like a rosary of fire. Red snakes of light coiled and writhed out over the placid waters of the basin. Stars, green and scarlet, shone from the peak of every mast. The sea was catching the ashen brightness of the nocturnal sky, and boats and buildings stood out in dark outlines of indigo against a vast background of nickel gray. "They're off! They're off!" Sails were being hoisted one by one, and in the night the canvas filtered the harbor lights as through ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... blotted out. They looked back: a white bank of fog was rolling in from the sea. It flowed over the hills like a flood, reaching long wisps down into the hollows, setting inertly in the flats and valleys, the upper part rolling on and over in a cascade. Beneath its shadow the warmth and brightness of the world ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... that moment a flash of lightning illumined the whole arch of the heavens, lighting the prairie as with a thousand torches. It was none of the pale lavender-coloured light, seen in northern climes, but a brilliant blaze, that appeared to pervade all space, and almost rivalled the brightness of day. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... and years, have passed away, and the great day of examination has arrived—that day for which that youthful group has looked so long, with mingled feelings of pleasure and embarrassment. This day broke on the capital of Chaldea with unusual brightness. The sun shone brightly in a cloudless firmament, and Nature had put on her sweetest smile. In the vicinity of the king's palace it was evident that something of more than ordinary interest was that day to be attended to. Officers hurried to and fro. Dignitaries ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... replied. "That brightness is of an essentially electrical nature. Besides, see, see! it moves; it is moving forwards, backwards; it is darting ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... This implies both brightness and illusion. spells. A spell is properly a magical form of words (A.S. spel, a saying): here it refers to the whole enchantment employed. spongy air: so called because it holds ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... unravel it himself. The woman was so constantly alone! And then, though she was ill-dressed, untidy, almost unkempt on occasions, still, through it all, there was something attractive about her. There was a brightness in her eye, and a courage about her mouth, which had made him think that, in spite of her appearance, she would be worth his attention—just for the voyage. When he had been speaking to herself they had been on the deck together, and it had been dusk and he had not been able to look ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... deposited it safely, where misfortune can not tarnish it, where malice can not blast it. Favored of Heaven, he departed without exhibiting the weakness of humanity. Magnanimous in death, the darkness of the grave could not obscure his brightness. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... beside another, with fern and deep heather in between them where the vipers breed. Any way the wind was, it was always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring like a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the breakers that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I can live no longer this dull chrysalid life, in comparison with which, at times, even that past dark dream seems tolerable—for amid its lurid smoke were flashes of brightness. A slave? Well; I ask myself at times, and what were women meant for but to be slaves? Free them, and they enslave themselves again, or languish unsatisfied; for they must love. And what blame to them if they love a white man, tyrant though he be, rather than a fellow-slave? If the men of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... had little of comfort and brightness in it except the fire of pine logs which roared and crackled in the adobe chimney. The air would have been too warm but for the strong west wind and rain which entered the open door freely. There was no other light than the ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... was there he could see us clearly, though we could not well see him, for we were in full brightness. ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... Infinite from which it springs; and therefore this Harmony conducts us at once into the presence of the innermost undifferentiated Life. Thus Beauty is in most immediate touch with the very arcanum of Life; it is the brightness of glory spreading itself over the sanctuary of the Divine Spirit. For if, viewed from without, Beauty is the province of the artist and the poet, and lays hold of our emotions and appeals directly to the innermost feelings of our heart, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... then in their breathing—the way little children do, you know, after they have been crying a good deal; and I sat quite still, staring out at the gloomy-looking country that we were whizzing through, the bare trees and dull fields, so different from the brightness and prettiness of even a flat unpicturesque landscape on a summer day, when the sun lights up everything, and makes the fresh green look still fresher and more tempting. And it seemed to me that the sky and the sun and all the outside things were looking dull because of our trouble, ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... lightest touch, his lightest look, his very presence beside her in the dark common street, were like glimpses of an enchanted world, which it was natural for jealousy and malice and all meanness to be unable to bear the brightness of, and to gird at ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit and flavor and brightness and laughter and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various |
