"Luminous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... problem. Grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings of primaries and secondaries, that is, modifications of the tertiaries, are quite as quiet in effect and quite as beautiful as any, but they are also more luminous; they are live color instead of dead color. Grays made by mixing black with everything are the reverse, and should not be used except when you use black as a color (which it is in pigment), giving a certain color quality to the gray ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... of yourself, while the real soul of you is active, planning, light. "I wanted thought like an edge of steel and desire like a flame." Eager with sympathy, you and your work are reflected from many angles. You have become luminous. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... faded old rug, and with it a faint perfume of tobacco. Instantly the young girl's senses were transported as they had never been before to those far-off Southern battle-fields. She saw men lying in swamps, puffing their kindly pipes, drawing their blankets closer, canopied with the same luminous dusk that shone down upon her comfortable weakness. Her mind wandered amid these scenes till recalled to the present by the swinging of the garden-gate. She heard a firm, well-known tread crunching the gravel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... on a cold February afternoon, bearing a small bag in her hand. She crossed Westminster Bridge on foot, just after dusk, and saw a luminous haze hanging over each well-lighted street as it withdrew into distance behind the nearer houses, showing its direction as a train of morning mist shows the course of a distant stream when the stream itself is hidden. The lights along the riverside towards Charing Cross sent an inverted palisade ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... three o'clock in the morning. I did not look at my watch, as its luminous facings had faded away months before and I did not wish to disturb my companions by lighting a match. A sigh or a groan came from one part of the room or another, showing that our bombardment was troublesome ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... reference to things large and remote, distances, unknown mysteries of light and matter, the thought of mountains, cool white wildernesses and driving snowstorms, or great periods of time. Such were the luminous transfigurations that would come to her at the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... when urged to do so with a view to the gradual removal of troops without withdrawal of entire units. It is hardly necessary to add that the author is an old literary hand, with a pleasantly clear and luminous style of his own, though one is free to admit he splits his infinitives almost as much as Sir IAN HAMILTON split his forces, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... it remains the magnetic centre, towards which, from every part of the world, the sympathies of people most naturally converge. And Geneva—the proud, miniature Republic—is to-day what she has been for three long centuries, the Mecca of Switzerland, a luminous altar of freedom of thought and of intellectual independence, from which bold opinions have sprung and radiated, and around which every son of Liberty has rallied. The Republic of Geneva stands alone in her celebrity. So small ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... way in the establishment of libraries, art galleries, museums, institutes of training and research out of what were but waste if spent as some millionaires spend their profits. All these things upon the hills are by-products of the steel-mills down in the ravine. In every luminous ingot swung in the mills that were his, there is something toward the pension of a university professor out in Oregon, something for an artist in New York or Paris, something for an astronomer on the top of Mount Wilson, something for the teacher in the school ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... at once," said Miss Weesa's mistress in so clear and even a tone that Evilena, who was startled at the news, was oppressed by a sudden fear that all the warmth in the nature of her fascinating Marquise was centered in the luminous golden brown eyes. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... solitary bush—broke the monotony of the scene: but far away against the moonlit horizon rose a wild and craggy steep, and on the summit of that steep appeared a massive tower, with black and ruined battlements, that stood out grimly against the luminous sky. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... it did not thicken into blackness. It became luminous, brightening to a dazzle and dimming again to a colored mist, and then it cleared, while Benson stood at raise pistol, as though on a target range. He was facing a big desk at twenty feet, across a thick-piled blue rug. ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... Luminous jets of boiling vapor Topple into sudden rifts, Open into yawning chasms, Break in tortured whirling drifts, Panting, surging, rocking, reeling, Cradling in their hearts the storm, Spirit, power, passion flashing, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to where Desmond sat trussed up, hand and foot, in his chair. Bellward's eyes were large and luminous, and as Desmond glanced rather nervously at the face of the man approaching him, he was struck by the compelling power they seemed ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud. We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... to entertain no very favorable idea of it. But in the great variety of human geniuses, there are some which, though they see their object clearly and distinctly in general, yet, when they come to unfold its parts by discourse or writing, lose that luminous conception which they had before attained. All accounts agree in ascribing to Cromwell a tiresome, dark, unintelligible elocution, even when he had no intention to disguise his meaning: yet no man's actions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... it that it continued its course and spread out horizontally, thinning and spreading for maybe a mile before it lost all coherence and visibility. As far as I could see mountain peaks I could see the snow banners, all pointing one way, all waving, all luminous and shimmering in the sun-rays. It was a very noble sight, and I gazed a long while entranced, not knowing how ominous it was. When we reached the valley and left the shelter of the gulch we struck the full force of that fearful ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... after-glow, play over the scene as we paddle across the lake to the N.N.E.—our canoe leaving a long trail of frosted silver behind her as she glides over the mirror-like water, and each stroke of the paddle sending down air with it to come up again in luminous silver bubbles—not as before in swirls of sand and mud. The lake shore is, in all directions, wreathed with nobly forested hills, indigo and purple in the dying daylight. On the N.N.E. and N.E. these come directly down into the lake; on N.W., N., S.W., and S.E. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... separated from every Salvation Army comrade, she prayed especially. She wrote him regularly. Once, motherlike, she inquired if there were anything he would like her to send him. Tommy is a contented soul; the only thing he could think of was a luminous watch. Kate Lee managed to send him one, and as in the darkness of night the shining figures spoke to Tommy, so Kate Lee's faith and love made the Saviour's face to shine for him in the darkest hour. She rejoiced exceedingly that not only did Tommy refuse to sin, but that he let his ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... now and then, we noticed that the fog was thinning; and at one place there seemed a luminous blur, indicating perhaps where the steamer lay. We wondered whether running so close upon Gadabout was what had determined the captain to cast anchor. And then we wondered other things about fogs and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... luminous distinctness and common sense, "you are better off than I. I have hardly a penny in the world—I am staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance. I am better educated than you—and I don't love you a bit: that's my side of the case. Now yours: you are a farmer just beginning; ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... handed down to us is that Constantine, in his struggle with Maxentius for the empire of the West, saw in the sky, above the mid-day sun, a great luminous cross, marked with the words, "In hoc signo vinces" ("In this sign conquer"). The whole army beheld this amazing object; and during the following night Christ appeared to the emperor in a vision, and directed him to march against his enemies under the standard ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... girl! It almost seemed as though she were endowed with something more than earthly beauty. In her the strength and grace of the deer and panther were blended with the ethereal delicacy and beauty of the flower. But it was her face that bespoke the luminous nature of the soul which dwelt within her. So close was the bond of sympathy and mutual understanding between them, that she instinctively half divined his thoughts and it gave ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... beings. And to his regret Vail ceased now to regard his friend any more, but looked about him at the Huckleberry Street angels, who seemed to be pulling him away. He and they vanished slowly, and on the wall there shone some faint luminous letters, which Vanderhuyn tried to read, but the light of the Christmas dawn disturbed his vision, and he was able to see only the latter part, and even that was not clear to his eyes, but he partly read and partly remembered the words, "When ye fail on earth they may ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... laws as is necessary and expedient for the general advantage of the public."[34] In the same sense Austin defines it as "the liberty from legal obligation which is left or granted by a sovereign government to any of its own subjects."[35] But the most luminous definition is that of Montesquieu, who says: "La liberte est le droit de faire tout ce que les lois permettent."[36] Those who would understand what true civil or political liberty is, and what are its necessary limitations, should imprint this profound utterance upon their ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... Sometimes at waking, in the street sometimes, Or on the hillside, always unforwarned. A grace of being, finer than himself, That beckons and is gone,—a larger life Upon his own impinging, with swift glimpse Of spacious circles luminous with mind, To which the ethereal substance of his own Seems but gross cloud to make that visible, Touched to a sudden glory round the edge, 450 Who that hath known these visitations fleet Would strive ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... her face grew radiant and when she raised the letter impulsively to her lips her eyes were luminous with happiness. He loved her—he had told her so—that fact was paramount. It overshadowed everything else, even her disappointment. The conditions against which she rebelled so fiercely suddenly shrank to ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... their occupations of late, had taken his seat beside them, meekly enough, at first with the manner of a mere suppliant for the [163] crumbs of their high studies. But, straightway again, he surprises by more than racing forward incredibly on the road to facts, and from facts to luminous doctrine; Prior Saint-Jean himself, in comparison, seeming to lag incompetently behind. He can but wonder at this strange scholar's knowledge of a distant past, evidenced in his familiarity (it was as if he might once have spoken them) ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... up stairs, whether the sun were a luminous body to himself or no, feeling herself at that moment dull enough. Bright was she, to others? nothing seemed bright to her. Every old shadow was darker than ever. Her uncle's unchanged gloom her aunt's unrested face Hugh's unaltered, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... face is better that a Full; for one reason, that I think the Sitter feels more at ease looking somewhat away, rather than direct at the luminous Machine. This will suit you, who have a finely turned Head, which is finely placed on Neck and Shoulders. But, as your Eyes are fine also, don't let them be turned too much aside, nor at all downcast: but simply looking as to a Door ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... winds,—the tocsin begins clanging, 'the Village illuminates itself.' Very singular: how these little Villages do manage, so adroit are they, when startled in midnight alarm of war. Like little adroit municipal rattle-snakes, suddenly awakened: for their stormbell rattles and rings; their eyes glisten luminous (with tallow-light), as in rattle-snake ire; and the Village will sting! Old-Dragoon Drouet is our engineer and generalissimo; valiant as a Ruy Diaz:—Now or never, ye Patriots, for the Soldiery is coming; massacre by Austrians, by Aristocrats, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was no bad actor. In place of the tremulous, shrinking trader there lolled against the corner an all but naked, ash-smeared, ochre-barred, dusty-haired Saddhu, his swollen eyes—opium takes quick effect on an empty stomach—luminous with insolence and bestial lust, his legs crossed under him, Kim's brown rosary round his neck, and a scant yard of worn, flowered chintz on his shoulders. The child buried his face in his amazed ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... regions of the world (all courts excepted) where eyes can say everything. To communicate to the eye the full power of the soul, to give it the value of speech, needs either the pressure of extreme servitude, or complete liberty. Adam, the Marquis du Rouvre, and Clementine did not observe this luminous by-play of the old coquette and the old diplomatist, but Paz, the faithful watchdog, understood its meaning. It was, we must remark, an affair of two seconds; but to describe the tempest it roused in the captain's soul would take far too much space ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... opening of its flower,—not at all, in any strain of modesty, hiding itself, though it may easily be, by grass or mossy stone, 'half hidden,'—but, to the full, showing itself, and intending to be lovely and luminous, as fragrant, to the uttermost ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the world must look to-night to Edna! This enchanting evening world with its dreaming waves, and myriad spires of fragrant firs stretching toward the luminous sky strewn thickly with pulsing stars. She shook off some thought that insinuated itself into her conscious desire. No, no. Her place was here with Aunt Martha. Her thought must dwell only on the possible artistic achievements of her future; her heart ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... enabled him to bring instantly to bear on the subject in hand. No writer before him, except Defoe, had such a wide knowledge of the technicalities of different men's occupations, and of all sorts of the processes of daily business, nor could enlighten an abstract matter with such a wealth of luminous analogy. It is this characteristic of his style which has led to the common comparison of his writing with Shakespeare's; both seem to be preternaturally endowed with more information, to have a wider sweep of interest than ordinary men. ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... to be present. asno ass. asolador-a destructive, racking. asomar to show; vr. to appear, begin to appear. asombrar to amaze. asombro amazement. asombroso astonishing. aspero rough. aspirar to aspire. astilla splinter. astro star, luminous body. asturiano of the province of Asturias (in N. Spain.) asunto subject, matter. asustar to frighten. atacar to attack. atalaya watchtower. atar to tie. ataud m. coffin. atencion ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Mitter. He stopped against the rail. The yacht was burying her nose now, and the white drift from her cut-water seemed strangely luminous as it swirled obliquely away in the fading twilight. Hildegarde von Mitter. Was she to be the flaw in the chain? No, no; there should be no regret; he had steeled his heart against any such weakness. She ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Addison's contributions to the Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his critical papers. Yet his critical papers are always luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst of them must be regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the school in which he had been trained is fairly considered. The best of them were much too good for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our generation as he was before his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the main mass of the Tinjar people, came down the broad straight reach. It was that most beautiful half-hour of the tropical day, between the setting of the sun and the fall of darkness — the great forest stood black and formless, while the sky and the smooth river were luminous with delicate green and golden light. The Lirongs were in full war dress, with feathered coats of leopard skin and plumed caps plaited of tough rattan, and very effective they were as they came swiftly on over the shining water, sixty to seventy warriors in each canoe raising ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the luminous glow emitted by mercury in a barometer tube when shaken. It was first observed by Jean Picard, and formed the subject of many experiments at the hands of Francis Hawksbee. The latter showed that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... The searchlight rolled, luminous, along the floor; its glowworm light showed Poole's unmasked and twisted face. Pete snatched the bunch of keys and raced up the stairs, bending low to avoid a possible bullet; ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... career! He, who had so constantly pursued one idea, must then have felt that that idea had been an error; that he had all in all been wrong; that he had waded through the blood of his countrymen to reach a goal, which, bright and luminous as it had appeared, he now found to be an ignis fatuus. Nothing was then left to him. His life had been a failure, and for the future he had no hope. His body was wounded and in tortures; his spirit was dismayed by the insults of those ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... few steps in silence, then Alice paused. Kitty's delicate face and cloud of hair made a pale, luminous spot in the darkness of the calle. Alice looked at ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the poisoning is usually rapid, terminating in either recovery or death within three days. The toxic dose for cattle is from 5 to 30 grains. If taken in large quantities the excreta are occasionally noticed to be luminous when examined in ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... clear, as, for example, in the Sonnets, the subtleties of his thought. A great artist, by his comprehensive grasp of the main issue of his work, even in a short lyric or a small picture, and by his luminous representation of it, suggests, without direct expression of them, all the strange psychology, and the play of character in the situations. And such an artist does this excellent thing by his noble composition, and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... expressed in words bearing a figurative sense. For whereas, in describing the infirmities of Old-age, the injuries of the operations of the mind, as the most grievous of all, were not to be pretermitted; so these could not be more clearly expressed, than by the obscuration of the coelestial luminous bodies, which rule our orb, and cause the vicissitudes of times and seasons. Moreover it is particularly to be observed here, that the author mentions the defects of sight lower down, and most certainly he would have avoided repeating ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... his belief that no greater object could be aimed at than to sweep away once and for ever all this sham knowledge and all that supported it, and to lay an entirely new and clear foundation to build on for the future; his assurance that, as it was easy to point out with fatal and luminous certainty the rottenness and hollowness of all existing knowledge and philosophy, so it was equally easy to devise and practically apply new and natural methods of investigation and construction, which should ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... Lozenge (geom.) lozangxo. Lozenge pastelo. Lucid klara. Luck sxanco, bonsxanco. Lucky sxanca, bonsxanca. Lucrative profita. Ludicrous ridinda. Luggage pakajxo. Lukewarm varmeta. Lull kvietigi. Lullaby lulkanto. Luminary lumigilo. Luminous lumiga. Lump bulo. Lunacy lunatikeco. Lunar luna. Lunatic lunatikulo. Lunch tagmezomangxo. Lung pulmo. Lurch sxanceligxi. Lure trompi, logi. Lurid malhela. Lurk sin kasxi (insideme). Luscious bongusta. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Corrie, too, became livid, and both were rooted to the spot in unutterable horror; but when the ghost at length actually came into view, and (owing to Poopy's body being dark, and her garments white) presented the appearance of a dimly luminous creature, without head, arms, or legs, the last spark of endurance in man and boy went out. The one gave a roar, the other a shriek of terror, and both turned and fled like the wind over a stretch of country, which, in happier circumstances, they ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... disease is confined to a limited area, the most rapid and certain cure is obtained by excision; larger areas are scraped with the sharp spoon. The ray treatment includes the use of luminous, Rontgen, or radium rays, and possesses the advantage of being comparatively painless and of being followed by the least amount of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... of soul and fate hang, ready to be unleashed at a look. But there is another class of persons, with whom the fire of affection is harmless. Like those weird heat-lightnings that play in the firmament on summer evenings, it retains the lambent warmth and luminous loveliness, without the blasting violence. Of the intellectual and sensual regions, only the former is surcharged; the latter is either exhausted, or separated by an insulation so sure that it cannot possibly flash into the other. The unclean electricity of lust cannot find its way through ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the now waning moon, which had shone so brilliantly over the frozen floods a day or two before, was venturing out again among the scudding clouds. The lights in Christ Church Hall were out, but the beautiful city shone vaguely luminous ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... far meridian pride, the Twins Build, side by side, their luminous thrones; And Sirius and Procyon pour A splendor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Black Tom was there, new thatching the back of the house, and Caesar was making sugganes (straw rope) for him with a twister. There was a soft feel of autumn in the air, pigeons were cooing in the ledges of the mill-house gable, and everything was luminous and tranquil. Kate had climbed to the fork of a tree, and was throwing apples into Nancy's apron, when the orchard gate clicked, and she uttered a little cry of joy unawares as Philip entered. To cover ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... to begin by quoting at length a luminous passage from Grimm's great work. In the preface to his second edition he ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Maud had been for an hour to Our Lady of the Rosary, and found it difficult to make her way back. The street lamps were mere luminous blurs upon the clinging darkness, and the suspension of the wonted traffic made the air strangely still. It was cold, that kind of cold which wraps the limbs like a cloth soaked in icy water. When she knocked at the door of her aunt's house, and it was opened to her, wreaths of mist swept in ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... In the luminous after-saloon the other party was seated at a table white with snowy damask, and gleaming with silver, which was at once the pride and care of ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... time to wash the dishes, to mend the clothes, to make the beds, and to play the mother to her little brothers and to her doll. And so, and naturally, as the skin upon her little hands thickened and grew rough and red, the expression in her great eyes became more and more luminous, translucent, and joyous. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Yellow and large; from forest floorways, strewn With flowers, and fields that tingle with new birth, The moist smell of the unimprisoned earth Comes up, a sigh, a haunting promise. Soon, Ah, soon, the teeming triumph! At my feet The river with its stately sweep and wheel Moves on slow-motioned, luminous, grey like steel. From fields far off whose watery hollows gleam, Aye with blown throats that make the long hours sweet, The sleepless toads are murmuring in ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... sweeping generalisations, the absurd irrelevant particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, eloquence and bathos, each startling in its kind, and yet all luminous in the admired disorder of their combination. A talker of a different calibre, though belonging to the same school, is Burly. Burly is a man of great presence; he commands a larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a grosser mass of character than most men. It has been said of him that ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... purpose. After twenty years of blood and strategy, he succeeded in placing the Great Wall between him and the retreating Mongols. Proud of his victory he assumed for the title of his reign Hungwu, "Great Warrior," and chose Ming, "Luminous," for that of ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... splendour, fair luminous bow? From light's golden chalice thy radiance must flow; Thou look'st from the throne of thy beauty above On this desolate earth, ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... poising one night, between earth and stars, discovered a single brilliant and resonant spot, set in the midst of the dark, quiet town like a jewelled music-box on a black cloth. Sounds of revelry and the dance from the luminous spot came up through the summer stillness to the weary guardians all night long, until, at last, when a red glow stole into the east, and the dance still continued, nay, grew faster than ever, the celestial watchers found the work too heavy for their strength, and forthwith departed, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... whatever advantages you may possess, and however good you may be, you have not been singled out, by the God who made you, from all the other girls in the world, to be especially informed respecting His own nature and character. You have not been born in a luminous point upon the surface of the globe, where a perfect theology might be expounded to you from your youth up, and where everything you were taught would be true, and everything that was enforced upon you, right. Of all the insolent, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The world ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... and logically irrational, science has lately taken a more decisive step, and demonstrated it to be actually false. The universe has boundaries, and we have seen them. The proof is simple, and easily demonstrable. That broad band of luminous cloud which stretches across the heaven, called the Milky Way, consists of millions of stars, so small and distant that we can not see the individual stars, and so numerous that we can not help seeing the light of the mass; just as you see the outline of the forest at a distance, but are unable ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... at Sault Ste. Marie are as white and luminous as the Milky Way. The silence which rests upon the solitude appears to be white also. Even sound has been included in Nature's arrestment, for, indeed, save the still white frost, all things seem to be obliterated. The stars have a poignant brightness, but they ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... the plague-stricken city, gilding the changing woods and mountain peaks with ruddy light; the river mirrored back the gorgeous sky, and moved in billows of liquid gold; the very air seemed lighted up with heavenly fires, and sparkled with myriads of luminous particles, as I gazed my last ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... straightforward, almost defiant in its strength. Turn to the portrait of A Jewish Rabbi. Here is Idealism. You peer and peer, and from the brown background emerges a brown garment, relieved by the black cap, and the black cloak that falls over his left shoulder. Luminous black and luminous brown! Brown is the side of the face in shadow, brown is the brow in shadow. All is tributary to the glory of the golden brown on the lighted portion of the face. The portrait composes into ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the gods are ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... precipice and spanning sombre gorge with bridge and aqueduct, affords superb views of the unrivalled plains. Waterfalls foam over granite cliffs; a sinuous river flings a silver chain round the symmetrical base of Kaleidon, and from our lofty vantage point we gaze into the luminous green of a million palms, where the warm heart of a deep forest opens to display the lustre and colour of molten emeralds. The Soendanese quarter of the island gives place to the ancient Javanese territory, and Malay characteristics, though ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... clear luminous eyes on the shifting countenance of her cousin, "your offer is, no doubt, kindly meant—but I cannot accept it. I would not, Helen, if you offered me half your fortune, live in a house so unblessed, as I fear—as I fear yours ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... have been much easier and more natural to put his head under his pillow, and so shut out the unpleasant spectacle. That is the course I have invariably pursued, and it has never failed me. The most luminous ghost man ever saw is utterly powerless to shine through a comfortably stuffed pillow, or the usual Christmas-time quota of woollen blankets. But upon this occasion I preferred to await developments. The real truth is that I was about written ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... in the luminous west, leaving behind a long track of orange and purple light; the growing moon flung its yellow rays across the troubled waters, melting into the million phosphorescent gleams that sparkled and quivered along the surface like living jets of fire. Frank had never before seen ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... recent long and luminous discourse by a distinguished United States Senator upon the subject of the funding bill, it is respectfully suggested that a part of the amount to be saved to the nation by this financial scheme shall be devoted to the erection of a "palace lifting ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... period, that pure spirit, luminous intellect, and devoted adherent of the Constitution, the great statesman of South Carolina, invoked this remedy of State interposition against the Tariff Act of 1828, which was deemed injurious and ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... and the damnation of almost everybody. As I told you in the first place, I believe in the religion of freedom. O liberty! thou art the god of my idolatry. Thou art the only deity that hates the bended knee. In thy vast and unwalled temple, beneath the roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy worshipers stand erect. They do not bow or cringe or crawl or bend their foreheads to the earth. Thy dust hast never borne the impress of lips, upon thy sacred altars mothers do not ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... my option yet. The opposition get ground as little as either: Mr. Pitt talks by Shrewsbury clock, and is grown almost as little heard as that is at Westminster. We have had full eight days on the Pennsylvania regiment. The young Hamilton has spoken and shone again; but nothing is luminous compared with Charles Townshend:—he drops down dead in a fit, has a resurrection, thunders in the Capitol, confounds the treasury-bench, laughs at his own party, is laid up the next day, and overwhelms the Duchess ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... out and named with the large and small letters of the alphabet, are certain of the prominent Fraunhofer's lines (see A, B, C, a, d, etc., Fig. 16). We speak, for example, of the soda yellow-line as coinciding with D of the spectrum. These, then, are spectra produced by luminous bodies. ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... personal observation and local tradition which he has brought to bear upon it. Might not his account of the capture of Monmouth derive some few additional life-giving touches, from the same invaluable sources of information. It is extremely interesting, as every thing adorned by Mr. Macaulay's luminous style must necessarily be, but it lacks a little of that bright and living reality, which, in the account of Sedgemoor, and in many other parts of the book, are imparted by minute particularity and precise local ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... Robsart entered, Cuthbert Laurance felt a strange magnetic thrill dart through every fibre of his frame; his sluggish pulse stirred, and as her mesmeric brown eyes, luminous, overmastering, met his, he drew his breath in quick gasps, and his heart in its rapid throbbing seemed to pour liquid fire into the bounding arteries. Some vague bewildering reminiscence danced through the clouded chambers of his brain, pointing ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... so awful as between the tropics. The sea, according to the description of Columbus, boiled at times like a caldron; at other times it ran in mountain waves, covered with foam. At night the raging billows resembled great surges of flame, owing to those luminous particles which cover the surface of the water in these seas, and throughout the whole course of the Gulf Stream. For a day and night the heavens glowed as a furnace with the incessant flashes of lightning; while the loud claps of thunder ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... and a low cry of horror broke from their lips. The depths were swarming with monstrous, luminous forms, a moon-bright, crawling, sliding field of claws and feelers, and broad, flat backs, and dreadful, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... much from the luminous field of philosophic disquisition to the sterile regions of polemic divinity, and the still more thorny paths of ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... moment, he walked less quickly toward his house, on the deserted paths winding on the heights. In him, the chaos of other things, of the luminous "other places", of the splendors or of the terrors foreign to his own life, agitated itself confusedly, trying to disentangle itself—But no, all this, being indistinct and incomprehensible, remained ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... would give the needed touch, the magic shake. We had perfectly, we had admirably calculated. The elements were all in his mind, and in the secousse of a new and intense experience they just struck light." She positively struck light herself—she was literally, facially luminous. I stammered something about unconscious cerebration, and she continued: "He'll come right home—this ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... the night all over the valley, calm and still. The stars in their allotted places, he said: as they have always been and always will be. He stood watching them. Behind the stars that twinkled were stars that blazed; behind the stars that blazed were smaller stars, and behind them a sort of luminous dust. And all this immensity is God's dwelling-place, he said. The stars are God's eyes; we live under his eyes and he has given us a beautiful garden to live in. Are we worthy of it? he asked; and Jew though he was he forgot God for a moment in the sweetness of the breathing of earth, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... lamp-black upon white marble. Beyond the boat's bluntly rounded nose the East River stretched its restless, dark reaches, glossy black, woven with gorgeous ribbons of reflected light streaming from pier-head lamps on the further shore. Overhead, the sky, a pallid and luminous blue around the low-swung moon, was shaded to profound depths of bluish-black toward the horizon. Above Brooklyn rested a tenuous haze. A revenue cutter, a slim, pale shape, cut across the bows like a hunted ghost. Farther out ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... edge of its plot of light—there could be no doubt of it. It had also moved its arms, for, look, they are both in the shadow! A breath of cold air struck Byring full in the face; the boughs of trees above him stirred and moaned. A strongly defined shadow passed across the face of the dead, left it luminous, passed back upon it and left it half obscured. The horrible thing was visibly moving! At that moment a single shot rang out upon the picket-line—a lonelier and louder, though more distant, shot than ever had been heard ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... darksome veil. But there is no gloom; thousands of stars far brighter than those of northern lands glitter in the firmament, and are mirrored in the chrystal waters; fiery meteors dart through the heavens, and the whole surface of the ocean is covered with luminous insects. ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... it, she played dreamily for a half hour. Her arms were bare, and as her fingers reached out lingeringly and caressingly to draw the pure, golden chords from the golden instrument, her soft bosom pressed against the broad sounding board. There is about the tones of a harp well played something luminous, like rich, warm sunlight. When the girl muted the strings at last, it seemed to Orde as though all at once the room had perceptibly darkened. He took his leave finally, his ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... by means of pitch is one of the strongest in music. Vibrations increasing beyond two hundred and fifty trillions a second become luminous. It is a curious coincidence that our highest vibrating musical sounds bring with them a well-defined suggestion of light, and that as the pitch is lowered we get the impression of ever increasing obscurity. To illustrate this, I have but to refer ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... cumulative effect is due to the continuous reflection and radiation of heat from the clouds as well as from the vapour-laden strata of air in our lower atmosphere, which latter, though very transparent to the luminous and accompanying heat rays of the sun, are opaque to the dark heat-rays whether radiated or reflected from the earth's surface. We are therefore in a position strictly comparable with that of the interior of some huge glass house, which not only becomes ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... was setting. It was one of those lurid sunsets peculiar to autumn, which look like a distant conflagration obscured by a veil of smoke. The western sky was aglow with a dull, murky crimson flecked by clouds of the deepest indigo, from behind which there seemed to shoot up luminous pulsations like the reflection of unseen flames. The effect of this red, throbbing light upon the garden in which he stood was almost unearthly, something resembling that of an eclipse viewed through warm-coloured glass; ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... understanding may confidently rest; and thus it is that geography, even with a view to other purposes, must engross, in the first instance, a considerable share of our attention. The sense in which Dr Arnold understands a knowledge of geography, is explained in the following luminous and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... arrow from its bow we shot out into the current. Overhead the stars were beginning to brighten in the intense blue of the twilight heavens; far away to the north, where the river ran between wooded shores, the luminous arch of the twilight bow spanned the horizon, merging the northern constellation into its soft hazy glow. Towards that north we held our rapid way, while the shadows deepened on the shores and the reflected stars grew ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... at her command through the clear green into the luminous depths below, he caught glimpses of these gardens of the sea where goldfish darted like tropical birds among the branches of tall tree-like stalks of swaying seaweed, and strange shapes of jade and ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... delicate, very movable organs, by means of which the sensation of light or colour is experienced: these give to the brain a distinct perception, in consequence of which, man forms an idea, generated by the action of luminous or coloured bodies: as soon as the eyelids are opened, the retina is affected in a peculiar manner; the fluid, the fibres, the nerves, of which they are composed, are excited by shocks which they communicate to the brain; to which they delineate the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Conciliation is rich in them—owe their charm and effectiveness to this emotional capacity. They were evidently written in moments of absolute abandonment to feeling—in moments when he was absorbed in the contemplation of some great truth, made luminous by his ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... worked tense and quick at the luminous eyes. He broke a long silence by asking, "What's ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... adamantine gates fell ajar, and in we slipped. It seemed a heavenly place, tenanted by a being possessed of every attribute that our imaginations could ascribe to an angel. The room and its tenant glimmer before me as I write, luminous with the sunshine of more than fifty years ago. Both were equipped for business rather than for beauty; furniture and garments were simple in those Salem days. A homely old paper covered the walls, a brownish ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... himself had in his mind a comprehension both of what he was and of what he was doing which was luminous as the sun. But it was one of the most pathetic aspects of his earthly ministry that he could not tell all his mind to his followers. They were not able to bear it; they were too rude and limited to take it in. ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... view. It was the school in a silent procession, following the tall masks, out of the forest trail on to the glimmering plain, the advent of that new civilization before which the forest lords, once the poetic bands of the old Umatillas, were to disappear. Over all a solitary eagle beat the luminous air, and flocks of wild geese made their way, like V-letters, ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... conscientious calmness. But the two Italian dramas upon which his fame is justly founded, by right of which he stands alone among the playwrights of all literatures, are marked by a peculiar and wayward mannerism. Each part is etched with equal effort after luminous effect upon a back-ground of lurid darkness; and the whole play is made up of these parts, without due concentration on a master-motive. The characters are definite in outline, but, taken together in the conduct of a single plot, they seem ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Sir JAMES FRAZER'S luminous resume of the investigations of the MACKIE Expedition amongst the Banyoros has only one defect. He omits all reference to the subsequent and even more fruitful visit of the Expedition to the adjoining Noxas ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... girl quietly. Her gaze had not wavered from his face, but her eyes shone luminous through the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Union, of the Constitution, of the country, and of the administration to which he was opposed. Released from the bonds of party and the narrow confines of class and corporation advocacy, his colossal intellect expanded to its full proportions in the field of patriotism, luminous with the fires of genius, and commanding the homage not of party but of country. His magnificent harangues touched Jackson in his deepest-seated and ruling feeling, love of country, and brought forth the response which always came from him when the country was in peril and a defender ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... were conversing and lamenting together on this occasion, there suddenly appeared a beam of light, which, darting powerfully upon my eyes, caused me to look up: and lo! the whole heaven above us appeared luminous; and from the east to the west in an extended series we heard a GLORIFICATION: and the angel said to me, "That is a glorification of the Lord on account of his coming, and is made by the angels of the eastern and western heavens." From the northern ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Niebuhr has adopted, and of the theory which he advances respecting the Institutions of Rome. The appearance of the book is really an era in the intellectual history of Europe, and I think that the Edinburgh Review ought at least to have given a luminous abstract of it. The very circumstance that Niebuhr's own arrangement and style are obscure, and that his translators have need of translators to make them intelligible to the multitude, rendered it more desirable ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... lay very quiet in a thin fog made luminous by a full moon. The long man walked with his feet turned a little inwards, accommodating his gait to the shorter stride of his companion. Mr. Stanton, having recovered from his momentary annoyance, was curious about this odd member ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... of the three thousand and ten wore not the same aspect as his crowned brethren; a star, smaller than the rest, and less luminous. The countenance of this star was not impressed with the awful calmness of the others; but there were sullenness and ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and watch. The house was rather large for a cottage, and the door, which opened immediately into the living-room, stood ajar, so that a ribbon ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... encouragement to any of us who have been accustomed in the past to look to the old and hallowed Book as a storehouse of Divine wisdom. We shall find that the clearer light will make the rough places smooth and the dim places luminous, and that of the treasures of knowledge hidden in the ancient volume the half ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of all thought and activity; as avidya veils it or perfumes it, the world-appearance springs forth, but as the pure thatness also perfumes the avidya there is a striving for the good as well. As the stage of avidya is passed its luminous character shines forth, for it is the ultimate truth which only illusorily appeared as ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... irreparable loss is that of the great stained glass windows, which the mysterious artists of the thirteenth century so religiously composed, in meditation and dream, gathering the saints by hundreds, with their translucent draperies, their luminous halos. There also German scrap-iron rushed in great stupid bundles, crushing everything. The masterpieces, which no one will ever reproduce, have scattered their fragments on the flagstones, forever impossible to separate, the golds, the reds, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Lucrative Help Auxiliary Heart Cordial, cardiac Hire Stipendiary Hurt Noxious Hatred Odious Health Salutary, salubrious Head Capital, chief Ice Glacial Island Insular King Regal, royal Kitchen Culinary Life Vital, vivid, vivarious Lungs Pulmonary Lip Labial Leg Crural, isosceles Light Lucid, luminous Love Amorous Lust Libidinous Law Legal, loyal Mother Maternal Money Pecuniary Mixture Promiscuous, miscellaneous Moon Lunar, sublunary Mouth Oral Marrow Medulary Mind Mental Man Virile, male, human, masculine Milk Lacteal Meal Ferinaceous Nose Nasal Navel Umbilical ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... I, reclining at the foot of the tree, were looking at the still and starry surface of the lake, over which numbers of bats were darting after insects; and I recollect that I was just about to speak, when, of a sudden, the silent and luminous surface of the water was shattered as with a subterranean explosion; a geyser of scintillating spray shot upward flashing, foaming, towering a hundred feet into the air. And through it I seemed to catch a glimpse of a vast, quivering, twisting mass of silver falling back with a crash into the ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... inaudible command. From the full frenzy of motion horse and man were suddenly moveless. Then Dan slipped from his seat and stood before his mount. At once the ears of the stallion, which had been flat back, pricked sharply forward; the eyes of the animal grew luminous and soft as the eyes of a woman, and he dropped the black velvet of his muzzle beneath the master's chin. As for Dan Barry, he rewarded this outburst of affection with no touch of his hand; but his lips moved, and he seemed to be whispering a secret to his horse. The wolf in the meantime ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... house, as the stair clock sounded the smallest hour of the night, Miranda, seeing the chink under Anna's door to be still luminous, stole to the spot, gently rapped, and winning no ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... plans in the rear of this he is silent; speaks only by hints, by innuendoes, to the proper parties. But ripening or ripe, plans do lie to rear; far-stretching, high-soaring; in part, dark even at Versailles; darkly fermenting, not yet developed, in Belleisle's own head; only the Future Kaiser a luminous fixed point, shooting beams across the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... mocking my dismay, and about this figure you must conceive a great wide space of moonlit grass, rimmed by the looming suggestion of distant trees—trees very low and faint and dim, and over it all the domed serenity of that wonderful luminous night. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... understand,' she said, 'how you ever came to care about me! It always was a puzzle,and never so much as to-night.' The brown eyes were strangely soft and luminous and humble. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... stone could have been no colder as she stood in the light of the fire, her face still and strong, the eyes darkling, luminous. There was on her the dignity of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... France, and other parts of Europe, as well as from Portugal, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, a few years later. [19] Indeed, the spirit of persecution did not expire with the fifteenth century, but extended far into the more luminous periods of the seventeenth and eighteenth; and that, too, under a ruler of the enlarged capacity of Frederic the Great, whose intolerance could not plead in excuse the blindness of fanaticism. [20] How far the banishment of the Jews was conformable to the opinions of the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... Only one luminous point was to be seen, at first, in all the wide and splendid landscape. It shone from Threlfall Tower, a dark and indistinguishable mass amid ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they were proceeding, the concourse without still lingered round the house; that boys beat upon the drum with their fists, and imitated Punch with their tender voices; that the office-window was rendered opaque by flattened noses, and the key-hole of the street-door luminous with eyes; that every time the single gentleman or either of his guests was seen at the upper window, or so much as the end of one of their noses was visible, there was a great shout of execration from the excluded mob, who remained howling and yelling, and refusing consolation, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... or high chief, came the crowning discovery. This was a necklace of pierced amethysts. And on the breast of this figure was a flat plate of gold with sixteen radiating points, each of these terminating in a large luminous unpierced ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, were she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... halting, obscured, shivering with all the vibrations of her voice; but he could see through it, down to the sources of her thinking, to something secret, luminous, and profound—her ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... wavy, greenish light. These are the leaves, and the stems are grey with lichens. The sky and sea—two blues, one full of sunlight and the other purple—set these fountains of perennial brightness like gems in lapis-lazuli. At a distance the same olives look hoary and soft—a veil of woven light or luminous haze. When the wind blows their branches all one way, they ripple like a sea of silver. But underneath their covert, in the shade, grey periwinkles wind among the snowy drift of allium. The narcissus sends its arrowy fragrance ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... would that with sleepy, soft embraces The sea would fold me—would find me rest, In luminous shades of her secret places, In depths where her marvels are manifest; So the earth beneath her should not discover My hidden couch—nor the heaven above her— As a strong love shielding a weary lover, I would have her shield me with ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... found the way in which to love. I love and grow richer. I am mad. Yet how admirable my madness is! My eyes and senses are enslaved by a radiant phantom. As I talk your outlines grow luminous. Your eyes become like conquered Satans. They crawl inside my brain like amorous spiders. Your lips are the libretto of a dream. Your breasts are little blind faces raised in prayer. Your body flutters like ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... manifestation of the author in the totality of his nature. But while the point of view is thus identical, there is little similarity in the treatment. In the one case a powerful imagination causes the figure to stand out in bold relief, while a luminous humor plays upon every feature. The method of the Portraits—again we cite the author's own language—is "descriptive, analytical, inquisitive." We are led along through a series of details, each lightly touched, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... very little of our writing of any sort can we afford to neglect the first of these elements, and in very little of it do we care to leave the second out of account. Even in exposition of the simpler sort we may give to our writing the distinction of a more luminous style and the stronger appeal of a warmer personal interest, if we shape it into organic unity and make evident in it "the ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... but only one dead, black, colourless present. After a time, however, he began to find that fancies, almost ridiculously trivial, arrested and absorbed his attention; even as when our eyes have become accustomed to darkness, every light-coloured mote shows luminous against the void blackness of night. So we are tempted to unseemly frivolity in churches, and at funerals, and all most solemn moments; and so Lancelot found his imagination fluttering back, half amused, to every smallest circumstance of the last few weeks, as objects of mere curiosity, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... vacantly at me without apparently realising my presence, and in a feeble, plaintive voice made some remark in Russian. Kosinski was at her side immediately and answered her in soothing tones, evidently pointing out my presence. The woman fixed on me her large eyes, luminous with fever. I stepped nearer. "Is there anything I can do for you?" I inquired in French. "No one can do anything for me except God and the blessed Virgin," she replied peevishly, "and they are punishing me for my sins. Yes, for my sins," she went on, raising ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... journal, the cabin was filled from end to end with Marquesans: three brown-skinned generations, squatted cross-legged upon the floor, and regarding me in silence with embarrassing eyes. The eyes of all Polynesians are large, luminous, and melting; they are like the eyes of animals and some Italians. A kind of despair came over me, to sit there helpless under all these staring orbs, and be thus blocked in a corner of my cabin by this speechless crowd: and a kind of rage to think they were beyond the reach of articulate communication, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sunny summer, I took a stroll to the top of one of the mountains of Wales, carrying with me a telescope to assist my feeble sight by bringing distant objects near, and magnifying small ones. Through the thin, clear air, and the calm and luminous heat, I saw many delightful prospects afar across the Irish sea. At length, after feasting my eyes on all the pleasant objects around me, until the sun had reached his goal in the west, I lay down upon the green grass, reflecting, how fair and enchanting, from my own country, the countries ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... there was that starry twinkle of mirth and mischief, that sunny beam of audacious devilment, which had been my undoing two months before, which was to undo me as often as he chose until the chapter's end. Yet for once I withstood its glamour; for once I turned aside that luminous glance with front of steel. There was no need for Raffles to voice his plans. I read them all between the strong lines of his smiling, eager face. And I pushed back my chair in the equal eagerness of ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung |
