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Kaleidoscope   /kəlˈaɪdəskˌoʊp/   Listen
Kaleidoscope

noun
1.
A complex pattern of constantly changing colors and shapes.
2.
An optical toy in a tube; it produces symmetrical patterns as bits of colored glass are reflected by mirrors.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Kaleidoscope" Quotes from Famous Books



... a chameleon, a kaleidoscope, a Proteus; changeable in every way, open to every kind of polarization; fluid, virtual, and therefore latent—latent even in manifestation, and absent even in presentation. I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many well-dressed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... something occurred to Ishmael which suddenly puts a person in a new light—the slipping of the plane, the freakish turn of the kaleidoscope which makes the new light strike at a fresh angle something seen before and makes it different. He fell in love with Georgie in that moment, staring at her bent neck and the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... in Constantinople, except that it encloses an open court, where a Government band performs every afternoon. Here the finer wares are displayed, and the shadowed air under the vaulted roofs is a very kaleidoscope for shifting color and sparkle. Tea, cotton, leather, wool, and the other heavier and coarser commodities, have their separate streets and quarters. The several nationalities are similarly divided, to some extent; but the stranger, of course, prefers to see them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... above him rose to a screaming, and suddenly it was as though he were tumbling down the entire length of the stairway, fragments of sky and stone and faces flashing past in a kaleidoscope, and the screaming all around him. He almost reached for his bludgeon, but then he realized that he was not Tebron Marl ... he was Lee Rynason, and the screaming was Horng and he was being driven out of those thoughts, tumbling through a thousand memories so fast he could ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr

... but storm signals still showed in the south where the heavy clouds hung over the horizon. Overhead the sun shone, making kaleidoscope effects of the spring flowers in the checkered beds. Against the gray wall of the terraced garden the peach trees had been trained in foreign fashion and were ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... picture well within the frame, low relief, a Velasquez study of tones and a Japanese study of spaces. Let us, dear and patient reader, particularly dwell upon the spacing. A Whistler, or a good Japanese print, might be described as a kaleidoscope suddenly arrested and transfixed at the moment of most exquisite relations in the pieces of glass. An Intimate Play of a kindred sort would start to turning the kaleidoscope again, losing fine relations only to gain those which are more exquisite and novel. All motion pictures ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... replaced the telephone in its cradle and turned again to the Master Selector. Among the kaleidoscope of voices and figures not all were scenes of frustration and discontent. Yet enough of them were so that Mrs. Mimms was seriously disturbed. Then again, the apparatus had its indiscriminate faults: at one scene Mrs. Mimms blushed deeply and flicked the dial to another setting. Suddenly she ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight

... is nothing new, only the conditions are more favorable sometimes than at others. It has always existed and always will exist, independent of earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Nature is ever changing; the movements of the atmosphere more resemble the kaleidoscope than any thing else. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... *Deca ten decasyllable, decalogue *Demos people democracy, epidemic *Derma skin epidermis, taxidermist *Dis, di twice, doubly dichromatic, digraph *Didonai, dosis give dose, apodosis, anecdote *Dynamis power dynamite, dynasty *Eidos form, thing seen idol, kaleidoscope, anthropoid *Ethnos race, nation ethnic, ethnology Eu well euphemism, eulogy *Gamos marriage cryptogam, bigamy *Ge earth geography, geometry Genos family, race gentle, engender Gramma writing monogram, grammar Grapho write telegraph, lithograph *Haima blood hematite, hemorrhage, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... the crowd with wonder, the first Eastern crowd of which he had ever made a part. The thronging pavements were a kaleidoscope of the East—long-coated Persians; small, brown, slant-eyed Japanese; big, yellow, slant-eyed Chinamen; a naked Coringhi, his dark body shining in the lamp-light, and the rings in his nose jingling together; Hindus of all ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... my mind as I struck out in the direction of the Esmeralda. All the sins and omissions of my past life then rose before my mental kaleidoscope, making me conscious of my unpreparedness to die, and yet want of justification to live; but I struck out bravely nevertheless, and I need hardly say, I did not whisper a word of my fears to the mate, who kept silent and motionless the while, without incommoding ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... in which the magnificent jewels of the titled and wealthy women seemed to glow with a subdued and chastened fire. A dance was in progress, and Stafford, as he stood by the doorway and looked mechanically and dully at the whirling crowd, the kaleidoscope of colour formed by the rich dresses, the fluttering fans, and the dashes of black represented by the men's clothes, thought vaguely that he had never seen anything more magnificent, more elegant of wealth and success. But through it all, weird and ghost-like shone Ida's girlish face, with ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... clothing was a dark, brutish face with eyes of almost Indian blackness. For a moment they shone fiercely in the lamplight. They were alive with demoniac purpose. A purpose he had come so many weary miles to fulfil. Then, in a moment, the whole picture changed with the rapidity of a kaleidoscope. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... never intended that they should be glazed. An extraordinary play of light and shade results from this construction. The rose window in the centre of the transept is magnificent: from within, the painted glass produces the effect of a kaleidoscope.—The pediment or gable of this transept was materially injured by a storm, in 1638, one hundred and thirty years after it was completed; and the damage ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... heard without hearing. The platforms ran with a roar and the people were shouting. He perceived women and girls with flowing hair, beautifully robed, with bands crossing between the breasts. These first came out of the confusion. Then he perceived that the dominant note in that kaleidoscope of costume was the pale blue that the tailor's boy had worn. He became aware of cries of "The Sleeper. What has happened to the Sleeper?" and it seemed as though the rushing platforms before him were suddenly ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... It was uncanny. She seemed to have been away for years. And yet, as she looked about and got the familiar scent of the funny little lavender sachets made by Mrs. Nye, she found it hard to believe that Marty and Gilbert Palgrave, the house in New York, all the kaleidoscope of Crystal rooms and restaurants, all the murmur of voices and music and traffic were not the elusive memories of last night's dream. But for the longing for Marty that amounted to an absorbing, ever-present homesickness, it was difficult to accept the fact that she was not still ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... a.m. is perhaps the busiest part of the day in the bazaar. Then is one most struck with the varied and picturesque types of Oriental humanity, the continuously changing kaleidoscope of native races from Archangel to the Persian Gulf, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... the same pleasure we have felt in fairy tales, when some person under trial is helped by a kind fairy to sort the silks and feathers to their different places, till the glittering confusion assumes the order,—of a kaleidoscope. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... envelope of embroidered Manila shawls, and such shawls! Prehistoric African roses of unbelievable measure decorate a texture of turquoise, from which depends nearly a yard of silken fringe. In others mingle royal purple and buff, orange and white, black and the kaleidoscope! The revue, a sublimated form of zarzuela, is calculated, indeed, to hold you in a dangerous state of nervous excitement during the entire evening, to keep you awake for the rest of the night, and to entice you ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... Again the kaleidoscope of changeful life is turned. The Empire falls. The Bourbons are restored. Louis Philippe returns to the palaces of his fathers. In rank, he takes his stand next to the throne. In wealth, he is the richest subject in Europe. At one moment he is caressed by Royalty, ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... of the sixteenth century. The wearers are provided with flutes, whistles, cymbals, flageolets, snare drums, and rattles, or other noise-makers. The result is an indescribable hubbub; a garish human kaleidoscope, accompanied by fiendish clamor and unmusical noises which fairly outstrip a dozen jazz bands. It is bedlam let loose, a scene of ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... burned brighter and social harmony was more conspicuous. In rude stages of society this fancy receives real credit and ranks as a veritable record of the past, forming a Golden Age or Saturnian Era. Turned in the kaleidoscope of the mythus, it assumes yet more gorgeous hues, and becomes a state of pure felicity, an Eden or a Paradise, wherein man dwelt in joy, and from which he wandered or was driven in ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... the opera were a jangle of chords and discords, and the hum of voices was like the murmur of a far-off sea. My eyes remained fixed upon the stage. It was like looking through a broken kaleidoscope. I wanted to be alone, alone with my pipe. I was glad when we at last entered the carriage. Mrs. Wentworth immediately began to extol the singers, and Phyllis, with that tact which is given only to kind-hearted women, answered most of the indirect questions put to me. She was giving ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... varied kaleidoscope of my army life stepped the Indian Agent. And of all unkempt, unshorn, disagreeable-looking personages who had ever stepped foot into our ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... mark the vocation of the writer and the painter. The arabesque, properly speaking, and even in literature, is the first fancy of the artist; he first plays with his material as a child plays with a kaleidoscope; and he is already in a second stage when he begins to use his pretty counters for the end of representation. In that, he must pause long and toil faithfully; that is his apprenticeship; and it is only the few who will really grow ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... tawdriness naked to the eye its bamboo furniture, its imitation parquet, and the cheap distemper of its walls. But of these Mr. Baruch was only faintly aware, for in the middle of the floor, with brown paper and string beside her, Miss Pilgrim knelt amid a kaleidoscope of tumbled rugs, and in her hand, half folded already, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... seemed paralyzed, her limbs stiff and immovable. Like the dizzy whirl of a kaleidoscope, the picture before ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... themselves slowly. In the days of their building, the pace of life was a march. When America was born, the march had already begun to hasten, and as a nation we began, in our first hour, at the quickening speed. Now the pace is a race. New York is a kaleidoscope. I myself can remember it a wholly different thing. One passes down a street one day, and the next there is a great gap where some building is being torn down—a few days later, a tall structure of some sort is touching ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... knows there will be no change in the scene. In the story the reader may need to be constantly alert, as when his hero takes a long and perilous journey the scenes may change with the quickness of a kaleidoscope, and yet all be important to the narrative. The more complex the story, the greater the variety in scene, and consequently the greater the opportunities for study. It is interesting work for children to pick out the scenes, to count them and then to compare them. Some ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... conspicuous there for energy and ability, were the indefatigable Hooton and Guth—men who justly deserved the confidence and respect of their boys. Among the most trying positions in the army, the Surgeon's is first. The minds and dispositions of soldiers are as varied as the colors of the kaleidoscope, and hard to comprehend even in a sound condition, but when fretted by ill health no one man could come out best with all of them. A good Surgeon, like the whimsical pages of Tristram Shandy, is ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear

... Harvey assented, and they seated themselves near the railing, where they could look down on the human kaleidoscope below. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... rest, for no sooner did he close his eyes than the "fever of futile protest" asserted itself in turbulent visions of paper, paint and plastering. Dados danced around in carnival dress; wall decorations went waltzing up and down, changing in shape, size and color like the figures in a kaleidoscope; Chinese pagodas on painted paper dissolved into brazen sconces, and candelabra sat where no light would ever shine; glazed plaques turned into Panama hats and cotton umbrellas, the classic figures in the frieze began to chase the peacocks ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... his room, he did not light the lamp, but crossed to the window and stood looking out into the darkness. The day's impressions, motley as the changes of a kaleidoscope, seethed in his brain, clamoured to be recalled and set in order; but he kept them back; he could not face the task. He felt averse to any mental effort, in need of a repose as absolute as the very essence of silence itself. The sky was overcast; a wayward breeze blew coolly in upon ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... me, as in a moment more I saw our tutors' boat drawing slightly ahead, I had to laugh at the antics of Clump, who was rushing from side to side of his floating staging, dancing up and down like a rheumatic lunatic, tossing his arms wildly about his uncovered head, his face a kaleidoscope of grimaces, while he shouted to each one of us by name, in encouragement, in entreaty, in fear: "Oh, Massa Drake! pull, pull!" "Massa Walter! Massa Walter! dus you let 'em beat!" "Day'se gwine ahead! Oh dear! ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... proscenium, which is placed in the long room fronting the orchestra of the Rotunda. It is entirely lined with looking glass, and has in all probability originated in the curious effect produced by the kaleidoscope, and the looking glass curtains lately exhibited at our theatres. This splendid exhibition is fitted up with ornamented draperies, and presents a fountain of real water illuminated, revolving pillars, palm trees, serpents, foliage, and variegated lamps; ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... touching people at a thousand points all the weeks, being a writer, making lights and shadows and little visions of words fall together just so, seems, suddenly a very trivial occupation—like amusing one's self with a pretty little safe kaleidoscope, holding it up, aiming it and shaking softly one's coloured bits of phrases at a world! Of course, it need not be so. But there are moments when I think of Non ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... sleeves and go down into the muck. A gentleman simply stayed at home and abstained. But you couldn't make a man like Winsett see that; and that was why the New York of literary clubs and exotic restaurants, though a first shake made it seem more of a kaleidoscope, turned out, in the end, to be a smaller box, with a more monotonous pattern, than the assembled ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... gentility patterns. With the law of the imagination we are familiar, which is this: Imagination deals only with materials supplied by the senses. Imagination, in other words, is not strictly originative, but, rather, appropriative, giving a varied placing to images on hand, just as the kaleidoscope makes all its multiform combinations with a given number of pieces. Imagination does not make materials, is no magician, but is an architect. Admitting this law, we can readily see how the creation of a gentleman does not lie in ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... before I had been pushing along the trail to the coast, thinking little where I placed my feet and much of the eating that lay at Dalton Post House; and of other things thousands of miles from this bleak waste, where men exist in the hope of ultimate living, with kaleidoscope death by their side; other things that had to do with women's faces, bills of fare from which bacon and beans were rigidly excluded, and comforts of the flesh that some day I again ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne

... to them . . . "As that toe moves," said Ravenswood Wimble, "I see the heavens Turned into one vast Kaleidoscope . . . all the stars and moons Dance through my soul like flakes of colored glass!" Then waved the toe called Life, and as with one accord each of the company Leapt gasping to his or her feet, as the case ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... remarkable; the insane lucidity of his conclusions the humorous eloquence of his language, or his power of method, bringing the whole of life into the focus of the subject treated, mixing the conversational salad like a drunken god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... pencil-strokes, with which we have tried to outline this figure, will suggest to you what is in reality a moral kaleidoscope with millions of variations. And yet we have not even attempted to bring any woman on to the threshold which reveals so much; for in that case our remarks, already considerable in number, would have been countless and light as the grains ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... to assume a yellowish tinge before entering the house; what color they took afterward it would be difficult to tell; for the wild confusion of its interior, gave to my fancy as many and as mixed hues as one sees in a kaleidoscope. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... took advantage of the opportunity to advance their own interests by placing on the market, articles of use and ornament from all parts of India. Eager crowds, garbed in all the hues of the rainbow created a kaleidoscope of colour as they jostled one another among the booths, bent on bargaining or on sight-seeing. Merry-go-rounds, puppet shows, monkey-dances, juggling, and cocoanut shies, entertained adults as well ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... other, but you will never, while the world endures and man is man, increase its total circumference. It is the one fixed unchangeable thing — fixed as the stars, more enduring than the mountains, as unalterable as the way of the Eternal. Human nature is God's kaleidoscope, and the little bits of coloured glass which represent our passions, hopes, fears, joys, aspirations towards good and evil and what not, are turned in His mighty hand as surely and as certainly as ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... ordered from one of those poetasters to be found in every land, a sort of libretto called, in theatrical parlance, a lyric drama; and to the words of this monstrosity I arranged the very finest airs of my several operas. When I had completed this musical kaleidoscope I called it 'Pyramus and Thisbe.' I dished up my olla podrida, and set it before the hungry English; but they did not relish it. The public remained cold, and, what was far worse, I remained cold myself. I thought over this singular result, and wondered how it was that music which, as ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... But overshadowing all is still the curse, That never shall I be fulfilled by love! Along the parching highroad of the world No other soul shall bear mine company. Always shall I be teased with semblances, With cruel impostures, which I trust awhile Then dash to pieces, as a careless boy Flings a kaleidoscope, which shattering Strews all the ground about with coloured sherds. So I behold my visions on the ground No longer radiant, an ignoble heap Of broken, dusty glass. And so, unlit, Even by hope or faith, my dragging steps Force me ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... I close my eyes now and recall, as in a kaleidoscope, the perfect wilderness of flats we have passed through since then, it seems strange that some dim foreboding of it all did not steal in to rob our hearts of the careless ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Kaleidoscope kalejdoskopo. Kangaroo didelfo. Keel kilo. Keen (sharp) akra. Keep teni, gardi. Keep silence silentigxi. Keeper gardanto. Keepsake memorajxo. Keg bareleto. Kennel hundejo. Kernel kerno. Kettle bolilo. Key sxlosilo. Key (of piano, etc.) klavo. Keyboard ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... day had begun. The row of snickering, plunging, rearing, and curvetting horses had dissolved, as in a kaleidoscope, into a bunch, and a pear-shaped formation with two or three horses streaming ahead as the stem of the pear. Then the stem became separated from the pear-shaped mass by its superior speed, and again this vertical line of horses formed up once more horizontally, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... was leaning up against the doorway, studying her in his turn, and at sight of him Peggy's heart gave a wild dance of agitation. The crowds of gaily dressed visitors whizzed round and round like pieces of glass in the old-fashioned kaleidoscope through which she used to gaze in the vicarage drawing-room; the branches of the palms swayed about in extraordinary fashion, and the face staring into her own grew dim and indistinct. But it was the same face. Oh yes! No one else could possibly possess those deep-set ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... the World's Fair, kindly gave me permission to touch the exhibits, and with an eagerness as insatiable as that with which Pizarro seized the treasures of Peru, I took in the glories of the Fair with my fingers. It was a sort of tangible kaleidoscope, this white city of the West. Everything fascinated me, especially the French bronzes. They were so lifelike, I thought they were angel visions which the artist had caught and bound in ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... endlessly, like the pieces of a kaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand to take care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved his wretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck in the bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. The ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Adventure had followed so fast upon adventure that he was in a more or less dazed condition, and felt as little capable of connecting event with event as if he had been asked to recall the changing pictures of a kaleidoscope. That affair of the packet, now, was it or was it not serious, and would he ever know what it meant or ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... The idea of "fixed" might perhaps be transposed into that of "at home." In sensation no permanent home can be found, because change is the law of this vibratory existence. That fact is the first one which must be learned by the disciple. It is useless to pause and weep for a scene in a kaleidoscope ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... kaleidoscope of crimson and green and dazzling white, warm-hued peoples and sizzling roofs, with echoes from the high endeavor of the Canal and whispers from the unknown Bush; drenched with sudden rain like escaping steam, or languid under the desert glare of the sky, where ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... is a laboratory course in which the children are turned loose among all sorts of interesting materials and apparatus,—kaleidoscope, microscope, electric bell, toy motor, chemicals that effervesce or change color when put together, soft glass tubing to mold and blow, etc. The teacher demonstrates various experiments from time to time to show the children what can be done with these things, ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... Hilarion tries a sort of Modernism, contrasting the contradictions and absurdities of actual religions with a more and more atheistic Pantheism. This failing, the Temptation reverts to the moral forms, Death and Vice contending for Anthony and bidding against each other. The next shift of the kaleidoscope is to semi-philosophical fantasies—the Sphinx, the Chimaera, basilisks, unicorns, microscopic mysteries. The Saint is nearly bewildered into blasphemy; but at last the night wanes, the sun rises, and the face of Christ beams from it. The Temptation ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... an exact niche for Chesterton lies in the fact that he is a bit of everything, and, what is more, these bits are very big and make a large kaleidoscope. He is a theological professor who is so entirely sensible that the public hardly discovers the fact; he does not wear a cap and gown, and quote quite easily from all the Fathers of the ancient Church. He does not apologize ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... kaleidoscope. New patterns all the time. Abraham and wives—perfectly respectable. You take Pharaohs—or kings of that sort—married own sisters. All right then. Perfectly horrible now, of course. But you ask ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... of the finest I have ever seen. Snaefell Jökull, with its snow summit, stood out against the most perfect sky, the colours deepening from yellow to orange, and vermilion to carmine, and constantly changing, like a kaleidoscope. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... buried in the green wood, one of the unknown battles that marked the march of the republic from sea to sea. As the five stared from their covert at the savage army the vivid colors were like those of shifting glass in a kaleidoscope. The whole began to seem unreal and fantastic, the stuff of dreams. To Paul, in particular, whose head held so much of the past, it was like some old tale out of the Odyssey, with Ulysses and his comrades confronting a new danger in ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the boat gently out a little further from the shore, and they sat looking, hardly bearing to take their eyes from the cloud kaleidoscope above them, or to speak, the mind had so much to do at the eyes. Only a glance now and then for contrast of beauty, at the south, and to the north where two or three little masses of grey hung in the clear sky. Gently Winthrop's oars ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... the low horizon of their roofs, and opened its doors to poor and rich alike. The buildings that have so long outlived their inhabitants may be taken as the background—like the permanent stone scenery in a Greek theatre—to the shifting kaleidoscope of many-coloured life in the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... Lake Tahoe is one of varied delights, as the visitor sees not only the Lake itself from every possible angle, but gains an ever shifting panorama of country, and, more remarkable than all, he rides directly over that wonderful kaleidoscope of changing color that is a ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... compelling, some one who would open doors to large, bright vistas, and lead her into a life of beauty. But this was a dream and Franklin was the fact, and to-night he seemed the only fact worth looking at. Wasn't dun-colour, after all, preferable to the trivial kaleidoscope of shifting tints which was all that the future, apart from Franklin, seemed to offer her? Might not dun-colour, even, illuminated by joy, turn to gold, like highway dust when the sun shines upon it? Althea wondered, leaning ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... are like six years to the very young; but soon there was a general rush and a thoroughly cheerful chatter. Tara did not join in it. She stood outside the little dancing dazzle of delight—the confusion of little animated coloured dots is rather like the shake of a kaleidoscope—and she just looked and looked. Then, as we drew her close, the little hands felt and stroked one's face as if the evidence of eye and ear were not enough to make her sure beyond a doubt that her own had come back to ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... surface in the whirlpool of my brain. No wonder!—events are but as gleanings compared to the harvest of many years, although so negligently gathered into store. I have been puzzling myself these last two hours to find out what a man's brain is like. It is like a kaleidoscope, thought I; it contains various ideas of peculiar colours, and as you shift them round and past, you have a new pattern every moment. But no, it was not like a kaleidoscope, for the patterns of a kaleidoscope are regular, and there ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... followed the current; the easy way was his way, and he came back to it again and again. His thoughts shifted and formed and shifted again like the bits of color in a kaleidoscope. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... grave, or was it but the fancy of a wounded head? The impression lingered so vividly that he stood in a reverie, and the words of his hosts fell unheeded on his ears. He knew the face, he had heard the voice of old, but in the kaleidoscope of memory he could see no name to fit them, no incident wherewith they might ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... he was concealed by the curtains of the window Waldron looked out at the approaching bevy of young people. Up the path they came, talking, laughing, shifting like a pattern in a kaleidoscope, gay, handsome, sophisticated, modishly dressed, unconventionally mannered, yet showing, most of them, the traces of that youthful ennui so often betrayed in these modern days by those who of all the world ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... fluttering colors. I do not mean flags and streamers, but colors in the air itself! Colors the most exquisite that ever the eye looked upon! They changed, flickered, melted, brightened, flowed over one another in iridescent waves, mingled, separated, turned the whole atmosphere into a spectral kaleidoscope. And it was evident that, in some inexplicable way, the approaching squadrons were the sources of this marvelous display. Presently from the craft that carried us, answering colors flashed out, as ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... became motionless, his head flapped over on one side, and the twinkling black eyes were fixed upon Otto as though they would read him through. If we could recall the fancies that flitted through our brains at that early stage of existence, what a wonderful kaleidoscope ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... Lucy Bray's death were told to me by others. My childish recollection held every feature of that first awful scene as tenaciously as if the flames had kindled upon me, and not upon my hapless playfellow. What followed is a hazy kaleidoscope, lurid and vague, until my scattered thoughts settled to the perception that I was making a long visit at Uncle Carter's and sharing Cousin Molly ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... things wearisome," said Vane, "a succession of changes is the most. There can be a monotony in variety itself. As the eye aches in gazing long at the new shapes of the kaleidoscope, the mind aches at the fatigue of a constant alternation of objects; and we delightedly return to 'REST,' which is to life what green is ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... not a word of it ready," answered Ella. I thought of something when I spoke, but it was like turning a kaleidoscope; with every turn it became something else. And then I began to listen to Linda, and to Leonora, and my story became so confused with theirs, that you would not know it for a fairy story, if I should tell it to you; but if ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... by Voltaire and Thomas Paine; that the Bible is being subjected to rigorous criticism, in England as well as in France, Holland, and Germany; that its documents are being shifted like the pieces in a kaleidoscope, and every turn of the instrument makes them differ more and more from the orthodox pattern. At present, it is true, the process is almost confined to the Old Testament. There, however, it is nearly completed. Presently it will extend in earnest to ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... curiously marked, fashioned, and equipped with eccentric members that I was startled into biblical phrases. In the market they were strange enough, dead and on the marble slabs, or in green leaves, but in the lagoon they were a kaleidoscope of complexions and shapes. They were the lovely elves to complement the fantastic shellfish, yellow, striped with violet; bright turquoise, with a gold collar; gold, with broad bands of black terminating in winglike fins; scarlet, with cobalt ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... mother and daughter, new, arrogant and unpleasant; and there was such a marked absence of that Southern element which in other days had supplied money to obsequious waiters and green girls to needy fortune-hunters,—that there seemed to have been a complete turn of the kaleidoscope, and it almost puzzled an old habitue to know whether he had not exchanged ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... were symbolical of life, that toy was a kaleidoscope: the showy bits of tinsel, coloured glass, silk, beads, and feathers, with here and there perchance a stray piece of iridescent ore or a pin, each, in its turn of ideal multiplication, filling successively the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... that what there was really in it was very much like what there is in a kaleidoscope, odds and ends, which form all sorts of combinations when you twist and turn them about in the dark tube of a "legal argument." And so poor Bumpkin was deprived of the fruit of his victory. Truly the law is very expeditious. ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... a kaleidoscope of horror. Barrent was climbing a slippery pole, a sheer mountainside, a smooth-sided well. Behind him, gaining on him, was Therkaler's corpse with its chest ripped open. Supporting the corpse on either side were the blank-faced informer and the ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley

... optimism. For myself the gold had but little attraction, but the adventure was very dear to my heart. Once more the clarion call of Romance rang in my ears, and I leapt to its summons. And indeed, I reflected, it was a wonderful kaleidoscope of a world, wherein I, but a half-year back cooling my heels in a highland burn, should be now part and parcel of this great Argonaut army. Already my native uncouthness was a thing of the past, and the quaint mannerisms ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... They make poetry in me, not such as I once wrote, but a full-blooded, living poetry. You see, father, I have drawn inspiration from all this reality. I have felt the true spirit of the universe in this dense-packed encampment on the march of civilisation, this living pattern in Time's kaleidoscope; the same spirit that lies behind the green country and the sweet airs, behind a great idea, a noble deed, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... fire, or in the further darkness lay in front of tents and talked plans. Little groups gathered here or there, then restlessly broke up and shifted as men sought acquaintances for a last word that might be impossible tomorrow. In this shifting kaleidoscope of men I was glad to find Hale, cured of his bronchitis, and with a tale of how at the hospital they locked up the men's clothes, as the only way of preventing them from escaping too soon and rejoining the hike. The camp has been ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... and something she had not thought of since she first left New York flashed into her mind, and she trembled slightly. Then all the vexed and broken, many-coloured fragments of her life clicked and settled into place, quietly and inevitably, as they do in a child's kaleidoscope, and the final pattern stood out, finished. She smiled slightly and thinks that perhaps she ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... Fathers tumbled the whole collection about sadly in their search for material for their mockery, having no historical or scientific object in view; with the result that it now resembles the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, and can no longer be re-arranged on the original Varronian plan. The difficulty is increased by the etymologies and explanations which they offer of the divine names, which, as a rule, are even more ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... his eyes studying the swift kaleidoscope of the doorway. When she reappeared in it, her face was alight with color. "Come." She held out her hand. "I want you to meet him. He likes them—oh, very much!" She pressed her hands together lightly. "I think he will ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee

... take to be a pure invention. This over, he changes into song everything and every person that passes before him. Nothing that is odd, fantastic, or absurd escapes him, or fails to be chronicled and sarcastically commented on in his verse. So he sits all day long, his mind like a kaleidoscope, changing all the odd bits of character which chance may show him into rhythmic forms, and chirps and sings as perpetually as the cricket. Friends he has without number, who stop before his bench, from which he administers poetical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... some former vicar and set amid the clear panes—the legs and scarlet robe of a saint, an angel's wing, a broken legend on a scroll, part of a coat-of-arms, azure with a fesse,—wavy of gold—all thrown together as by a kaleidoscope gone mad. Each of these scraps had once a meaning: so this church held meanings, too long ignored by him, partly intelligible yet, soon to be mixed inextricably in a common downfall. For Clement Vyell might be wise in the history of architecture, but his eye ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... office-box cradles the embryo of a war or dearth. What shocks and vibrations, what deadly thrills does this little thunder-cloud office transmit to far-away provinces lying beyond rising and setting suns! Ah! Vanity, these are pleasant lodgings for five years, let who may turn the kaleidoscope after us. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... spoons, sixteen pairs of various car-rings, twelve finger-rings, two dozen mule harness bells, six elastic heavy brass spring wires, one pound long white horsehair, three combs, one papier-mache tray, one boxwood fife, one kaleidoscope. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... the broad parlor windows, bearing in the fragrance of the vines on the portico outside. It was all so silent and different from the brilliant social life he had left behind in New York. Warren's whole life seemed to flit past him, as he stood there now, with the impersonality of a kaleidoscope. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... powerful to move her to demand it. Even now she lacked self-assurance, but there was that in what she had already experienced which left her a little less than timid. She wanted pleasure, she wanted position, and yet she was confused as to what these things might be. Every hour the kaleidoscope of human affairs threw a new lustre upon something, and therewith it became for her the desired—the all. Another shift of the box, and some other had ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... look, if the streak of blue which bathed his forehead were to fall a little lower and lie across his mouth and chin. Altogether, when the service was ended and the party walked home, Matilda did not feel as if she had got any good or refreshment out of Sunday yet; more than out of a kaleidoscope. ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner

... just an inch or so out of his mental reach. The mental bursts, the trouble the United States was having, Palveri, Queen Elizabeth, Burris, Mike Sand, Dr. O'Connor, Sir Lewis Carter and even Luba Ardanko juggled and flowed in his mind like pieces out of a kaleidoscope. But they refused to form any ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... matter? Who cares, so long as my old friends remember me? Who would have thought, my dear madam, that the map of Europe would have been painted the colors it is to-day? It was a kaleidoscope—the clatter of many stools, and I fell down between them all. Still plain Karl Steinmetz—still very much at your service. Shall I send my check for ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... the habit of always taking the best word too easily becomes the habit of always taking the most ornate word, the word most removed from ordinary speech. In consequence of this, poetic diction has become latterly a kaleidoscope, and one's chief curiosity is as to the precise combinations into which the pieces will be shifted. There is, in fact, a certain band of words, the Praetorian cohorts of poetry, whose prescriptive aid is invoked by every aspirant to the poetical purple, and without whose ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson

... method of putting tale within tale, like the Eastern balls of carved ivory. The stories, as usual, illustrate the method of popular fiction. A certain number of incidents are shaken into many varying combinations, like the fragments of coloured glass in the kaleidoscope. Probably the possible combinations, like possible musical combinations, are not unlimited in number, but children may be less sensitive in the matter of fairies than Mr. John Stuart Mill ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... space—huge arms of flaming gas that writhed out as though to reach and drag back the whirling planets to the parent body. All about the mighty sphere, stretching far into space, a wan glow seemed to ebb and flow, a kaleidoscope of swiftly changing color. It was the zodiacal light, an aurora borealis on a ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... Groups.—A study of the organization and development of social life is mainly a study of the mental and physical activities of individuals associated in permanent groups. Conditions change and there is a continual shifting of contacts as in a kaleidoscope, but the group is a fixed institution in the life of society. But besides the permanent groups there are temporary unorganized associations that have a place in social life too important to be overlooked. They vary in size from a chance meeting of two or three friends ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... thought the fairy. "I almost repent my bargain! However, I will not be discouraged quite yet, perhaps the proper chord has not been struck." Accordingly, she invented for him various pretty toys, since then copied by men: the kaleidoscope, with its infinite variety of shifting figures; the orrery; the prism; the burning-glass; the microscope and the telescope; and the magic lantern, with its vast variety of entertainment. Another magic spell she ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... could be said to be. In London fortunately a clever man was just a clever man; there were charming houses in which a person of Ray's undoubted ability, even though without the knack of making the best use of it, could always be sure of a quiet corner for watching decorously the social kaleidoscope. But the kaleidoscope of the goose-green, what in the world was that, and what such delusive thrift as drives about the land (with a fearful account for flys from the inn) to leave cards on the country magnates? This solicitude for Limbert's subject-matter ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... kaleidoscope Changed still again, and framed love's dearest hope - The trinity of home; and life was good And ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... than have avoided her. But traveling companions were evidently more a matter of chance than choice, for the crowd that turned out of the train at Dover became mixed and mingled like the colored bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Irene realized that for the moment the one supreme and breathless object in life was to cling to the rest of her family, and not to get separated from them or lost, as they pushed through narrow barriers, showed tickets and passports, traversed gangways, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... time. Impossible to reach her, as the morning was densely foggy and she carried no wireless apparatus. An indescribable expression came into the man Grenelli's face as he realized what this new turn of the kaleidoscope meant. But Indiman and I involuntarily ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... through the rock-window. To tell the truth, not one of them was thinking about the sun. I rode beside Princess Mary. On the way home, we had to ford the Podkumok. Mountain streams, even the smallest, are dangerous; especially so, because the bottom is a perfect kaleidoscope: it changes every day owing to the pressure of the current; where yesterday there was a rock, to-day there is a cavity. I took Princess Mary's horse by the bridle and led it into the water, which came no higher than its knees. We began to move slowly in a slanting direction ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov



Words linked to "Kaleidoscope" :   kaleidoscopic, plaything, form, kaleidoscopical, pattern, shape, toy



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