"Ray of light" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a moment, one dim ray of light Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night! Of darkness visible so much be lent, As half to show, half veil the deep intent. Ye Powers! whose mysteries restored I sing, To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing, Suspend a ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the house, seated immoveable before him,—all these conspired to produce a strong impression on his mind. The windows were closed and darkened; a single pane in the upper part of one of them admitted a strong ray of light. My father forgot the strange repute of his sitter in zeal for his art. 'How splendidly the fellow's face is lighted up!' he thought to himself, and set to work with furious eagerness, as though fearful of losing the favourable moment. 'What vigour! what light and shade!' he exclaimed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... very bowels of the earth, as it seemed to Leonora, was Florestan's dungeon. There he sat, manacled, despairing, with no ray of light to cheer him, and his thoughts occupied only with his visions of the beautiful home he had known, and of his wife, Leonora. When Leonora and Rocco entered the dungeon, Florestan had fallen, half sleeping, half dreaming upon the floor of his cell, and Leonora groped her way fearfully toward ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... another moment of silence. Then Block took up the refrain with variations. But just as he began to speak, a brilliantly luminous ray of light struck Rose. She could have answered Goldsmith's arguments—would have done so, but for her preoccupation with that trifling sum in arithmetic. But it was incomparably better tactics not to answer ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... matter how he may arrange his groups against his background. He can darken the whole stage, slowly or suddenly, as he sees fit. Much of the intense effect attained by Sir Henry Irving in the trial-scene of the 'Bells' was due to the very adroit handling of the single ray of light that illumined the haunted burgomaster, while the persons who peopled his fatal dream were left in the shadow, indistinct and doubtful. Perhaps the most moving moment in Mrs. Fiske's production of Paul Heyse's 'Mary of Magdala' was after night had ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... and had proceeded with it a considerable way—to the close of a thick first volume, containing a new treatment of the theory of value; but when at work on the classical theory of capital, I made a discovery which at once threw a ray of light into the obscurity that had until then made the practical realisation of the forms of social organisation impossible. I perceived that capitalism stops the growth of wealth, not—as Marx has it—by stimulating 'production for the market,' but by preventing the consumption of the surplus ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... capital. While the court and the nobility were concealing their grief and their sorrows in the interior of their palaces, the populace rushed into the streets, anxiously inquiring for later intelligence, and still hopeful that God in His mercy might perhaps send down some ray of light that would dispel this gloom of anguish ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... assumed, forbade all notion even of her power of movement. Only in the dead of night when, as she believed, every human eye that could watch her was sealed in sleep, and then in those dark habiliments which (even as might sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake) a chance ray of light struggling through chink or shutter could scarcely distinguish from the general gloom, did she steal to the chamber and infuse the colourless and tasteless liquid [The celebrated acqua di Tufania (Tufania water) was wholly without taste or colour] in the morning draught, meant to bring ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blacker than the blackest ink, more dense than the darkest night, lowered upon the dreamer's eye; but as he looked at the dismal horizon the storm-clouds slowly parted, and from a narrow rent in the darkness a ray of light streamed out upon the hideous waves, which slowly, very slowly, receded, leaving the old mansion safe and firmly rooted ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... save his oil, and was lying at full length on the cold floor, a prey to the most gloomy thoughts. All sorts of fantastic forms seemed to mock at him out of the darkness. He could almost hear their jeering laughter, and was rapidly giving way to terror and despair, when a ray of light flickered for a moment on ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... Betsy, but at that other Brian—at him who this night only had declared his love. She looked at him with despair in her eyes, humbly beseeching him to stand between her and this loathed wedlock. But there was no sign in his sad countenance, no indication except of deepest sorrow, no ray of light to guide her on her path. The Colonel had spoken with such perfect common sense and justice, he had so clearly right on his side, that Brian Wendover, as a man of principle, could say nothing. Here was this woman he loved, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the tireless Sheridan, with that lately developed arm of the Federals, the cavalry, raided right and left and struck hard blows at the crumbling cause where they were least expected. Yet in this same dark hour there had been a ray of light. Once the Confederacy had come within hairbreadth of overwhelming success, for Early's hard riding troopers had made a dash for Washington but a few weeks before and, with the prize almost in their grasp, had only been turned back by a great ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... against the side of the ship in the madness of despair. I measured the misery of those around me by what I myself suffered. Shut up in the dark with ninety-nine distressed young men, like so many galley slaves, or Guinea negroes, excluded from the benefit of the common air, without one ray of light or comfort, and without a single word expressive of compassion from any officer of the ship. I never was so near sinking into despair. We naturally cling to life, but now I should have welcomed death. To be confined, and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... walls of Capua, and observe that they are not yet manned. But the besieged are throwing out troops by thousands into the field before our lines. We remark one large body drawn up in the shelter of the shadow cast by a large building. Every now and then, from out this shadow, a piercing ray of light is shot, reflected from the helm or sword-case of the commanding officer, who is gallantly riding up and down before his men, and probably haranguing them in preparation for the expected conflict. All these things strike the attention with a force and meaning far different from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... river and the plain beyond, but he merely looked into a wall, cold, white and impenetrable. No ray of light or life came from it. The hospital camp had been blotted out completely. But from the north came a faint sullen note, and he knew that it was the throb of a great gun. Julie heard ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... operating after dark. The searchlights with which the Zeppelins are equipped are provided merely for illuminating a supposed position. They are not brought into service until the navigator concludes that he has arrived above the desired point: the ray of light which is then projected is merely to assist the crew in the discharge of the missiles ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... original production. He would find the records of this long history in the library around him. In every age, the thought, born of pain, has been reproduced with travail. It did not do its mission at once, penetrate like a ray of light into the heart of the race, and leave a chemical effect which should last forever. No, the blood of man's spirit was not purified,—only an external application was made, and that application must be repeated with torture upon every generation. Was this designed to be the function of thought, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... continued growth it then forcibly breaks through the ground; but as it is continually striving to circumnutate this will aid its emergence in some slight degree, for we know that a circumnutating hypocotyl can push away damp sand on all sides. As soon as the faintest ray of light reaches a seedling, heliotropism will guide it through any crack in the soil, or through an entangled mass of overlying vegetation; for apogeotropism by itself can direct the seedling only blindly upwards. Hence probably it is that sensitiveness to light resides in ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... piercing as it whipped across the water. For protection she drew around her shoulders a blanket which had been placed over her body when she was unconscious. That the Indians must have done this was a faint ray of light in the darkness of her despair. There must be some spark of feeling in their savage hearts, at any rate. She longed to see their faces. Were they hard and brutal, or did they exhibit some signs of friendliness? ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... missing because he had lost hope. He believed that Christ was dead. He believed that the cause for which he had stood was lost and lost forever more. He believed that right was forever defeated; that wrong was forever enthroned. Over his head was a blackened sky. For him there was not one single ray of light nor one ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... it was the sweetest name on earth. I repeated it over to myself again and again, and the birds, who sang to me overhead, sang to me songs about her. And as I trudged along, I tried to think again how I should buy back Pennington, not for revenge, but because of my love. But no ray of light shone to reveal to me the way. I could see nothing for it but that I, poor and friendless, must forever remain poor and friendless still. And yet all the while birds sang love songs and told me of ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... acquisition of well-founded notions. All that we may hope is that with time the uncertainty of the problem will gradually diminish, demonstrating if not what the geminations are, at least what they cannot be. We may also confide a little in what Galileo called "the courtesy of nature," thanks to which a ray of light from an unexpected source will sometimes illuminate an investigation at first believed inaccessible to our speculations, and of which we have a beautiful example in celestial chemistry. Let us ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... is a grand cathedral with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... behind the horizon, the halo faded from the shining hair and every ray of light from the childish face. There came in its place that deep, wondering sadness which is more touching than any maturer sorrow,—just as a child's illness melts our hearts more than that of man or woman, it seems so premature and so ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a faint smile flitting like a ray of light across her features. She always said she was better, but never got well. Her quiet ways and tones had led to ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... ahead at a depth of twenty meters. Of course we are "blind" under such conditions and can regulate our movements only by means of the depth recorder and that precious little jewel of the boat, our compass. No ray of light reached us any longer from without, the periscope was submerged long ago and the steel safety covers over the windows were closed. We had been ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... to have answered it?" ran his soliloquy: for though he had frequently taken counsel with himself concerning this letter before, he recurred again and again to the subject, pleasing himself with the hope that still, in some way, a fortunate ray of light might be struck out; "but, if I had, what should I have gained by it? It's as well not to have risked putting any thing on paper; and if she really has the proofs she talks about, I shall hear from her again, and soon, for she knows which is my wedding-day; and ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... say they—they walked, but saw no ray of light to cheer them—saw nothing, felt nothing that they could recognise. At times they thought they must be far into the mountain— perhaps miles from the entrance of the cavern; at other times they fancied they had gone several times through the same passage; ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... he noticed a ray of light in a dark corner of his room, and on examining the panelling, found that a crevice existed through which he could see perfectly into his sister's room. There she still lay slumbering peacefully, and it suddenly ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... published by Watts and Co.), the magic illumination, the necessary power of "synthetising" things, might be vouchsafed to them. In any case, the lack of some such disciplinary, co-ordinating measure will amply explain many disastrous stocktakings. The manner in which one single ray of light, one single precious hint, will clarify and energise the whole mental life of him who receives it, is among the most wonderful and heavenly of intellectual phenomena. Some men search for that light and never find it. But most men ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... were going, as they should, in rather a dull fashion with Duncan Dempster. His chariot wheels were gone, and he drove heavily. The weather was good; he seldom failed of the box-seat on the omnibus; a ray of light, the first he had ever seen there, visited his table, reflected from a new window on the opposite side of a court into the heart of his dismal back office; and best of all, business was better than usual. Yet was Dempster ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... were arranged, the lamp turned low, and in a short time all on board the boat were sound asleep. No ray of light had entered the cabin when Amuba was awakened by a movement of the boat, caused by a stir among the crew. He felt his way to the door and threw back the hangings and looked out; there was a faint greenish-yellow ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... light of heaven, while among themselves they appear as men. This is of the Lord's mercy, that they may not appear as loathsome to one another as they appear before the angels. But this appearance is a fallacy, for as soon as any ray of light from heaven is let in, their human forms appear changed into monstrous forms, such as they are in themselves (as has been described above). For in the light of heaven everything appears as it is in itself. For this reason they shun the light ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... would be able to catch the little station as it went by. With one eye on our watches, therefore, we all had also one anxious eye on him where he sat with his head hidden under the shade that was drawn behind him, a blanket held over the crevices to shut out every ray of light, and his face pressed close against the glass. The minutes passed slowly—one, two, three, four, five! Whiting must be very near, and—but just as we began to fear that he had missed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... did inquire; but not a ray of light did he succeed in letting in upon the mystery. The inquiry might, however, have lasted longer and been more successful, had not lord Herbert just then come home, with the welcome news of the death of Hampden, from a wound received in attacking ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... spoken to the conductor. Then, fearing that he might turn his head and see her eye at the small aperture, she reached up and covered the lamp, leaving her own room in complete darkness. The double covering, which closed over the semi-globular lamp like an eyelid, kept every ray of light from penetrating into the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... face which was so charming from every point of view that he painted it in five positions. Grouping the heads in a circle, he added wings after the manner of the cherubs of the old Italian masters, surrounded them with clouds, and lighted the composition with a broad ray of light streaming diagonally ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... eternal possession of God, I do not feel any joy therein, for I sing only of what I wish to believe. Sometimes, I confess, a little ray of sunshine illumines my dark night, and I enjoy peace for an instant, but later, the remembrance of this ray of light, instead of consoling me, makes ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... he unwittingly lured to his death and then died in the effort to save. And in all the great company of those who have laid their dead there in love or in honour, there is none to question old Peter's presence or the colonel's right to lay him there. Sometimes, at night, a ray of light from the uplifted torch of the Statue of Liberty, the gift of a free people to a free people, falls athwart the white stone which marks his resting place—fit prophecy and omen of the day when the sun of liberty shall shine alike upon ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... was made until midnight, when the forest woman reined in and directed a ray of light against a huge ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... and Morvyth rose quietly, and donned dressing-gowns and bedroom slippers, then, with a final signal to their fellow mystics, crept cautiously out of the room. The passage was very dark, but Morvyth had brought her electric torch, and flashed a ray of light in front of them. It felt decidedly spooky, and they were thankful to be together. They went up the stairs towards the servants' quarters, and along an upper landing. By the aid of the torch it was not difficult to find the secret door among the panelling. The little lumber-room looked horribly ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... is certain that the Kaiser, with full knowledge that Austria had consented to renew its conferences with Russia, and that a ray of light had broken through the lowering war clouds, either on his own initiative or yielding to the importunities of his military camarilla, directed the issuance of the ultimatum to Russia and thus blasted ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... reader will not have forgotten the house in the Rue Clovis, where the reverend father had an apartment, and where also was the lodging of Philemon, inhabited by Rose-Pompon. It is about three o'clock in the afternoon. A bright ray of light, penetrating through a round hole in the door Mother Arsene's subterraneous shop, forms a striking contrast with the darkness of this cavern. The ray streams full upon a melancholy object. In the midst of fagots and faded vegetables, and close to a great heap of charcoal, stands a wretched ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... legs to carry him down the steps and reluctantly, yet briskly, he propelled his pink-hued person toward the ray of light that streamed out through the grated window-opening and fell ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Tertullian said, we can call Christ "God" when we speak of him alone; but if we mention him with the Father, then we must call the Father "God," and call Christ only "Lord." "For a ray of light shining into a room, we may call the sun shining there; but if we speak of the sun at the same time, then we must distinguish the ray, and call it not sun, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... flooring of the barracks. We crawled out at night and had put fifteen miles between us and the camp before we were finally caught. I got seven days' "black" that time, solitary confinement in a narrow stone cell, without a ray of light, on black bread ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Whether the sorrow-stricken wife ever afterwards heard of her husband, or the father of his two little children, the writer is unable to say. It is possible that this narrative may reveal to the mother and her offspring (if they are still living), the first ray of light concerning the missing one. Indeed it is not unreasonable to suppose, that thousands of anxious wives, husbands and children, who have been scattered in every direction by Slavery, will never be able to learn as much of their lost ones as is contained in this ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... but a moment before, while looking upon that of the elder lady. They were the same face—using a figure of speech—the type transmitted from mother to daughter: the same high front and facial angle, the same outline of the nose, straight as a ray of light, with the delicate spiral-like curve of the nostril which meets you in the Greek medallion. Their hair, too, was alike in colour, golden; though, in that of the mother, the gold showed ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Electricity, dips into Rivers, draws science from Springs, goes into Volcanoes, through which he is drawn into a knot of Earthquakes, comes to the surface with Gaseous Emanations, and sliding down a Landslip, renews his journey on a ray of Light, goes through a Prism, sees a Mirage, meets with the Flying Dutchman, observes an Optical Illusion, steps over the Rainbow, enjoys a dance with the Northern Aurora, takes a little Polarized Light, boils some Water, sets a Steam-Engine ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... ray of light shines through a crack in the door of the room.... Swiftly the door opens, a girlish figure appears on the threshold, a lighted lamp in her ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... with the feeling of good fortune, interrupted him, and said: "If you do that, you will spoil everything. It will be much better to tell me what to do. He will become more and more obstinate and bitter, if some ray of light does not soon fall on what he ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... more narrow and penable, and they stood one on the other in a kind of shed, so that there was a free passage all round them. Instead of a door, they had an opening so low that you had to creep through it. No friendly ray of light ever penetrated to them, and they were surrounded by ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... accidents, merely, of our senses. By way of instance, the sniff of a rotten apple will set a man off as on seven-league boots to the valleys of his childhood. The dry rustling of November leaves re-lights the fires of youth. It was only this afternoon that so slight a circumstance as a ray of light flashing in my eye provided me an agreeable and unexpected truantry. It sent me climbing the mountains of the North and in no less company than that of Brunhilda ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... which was the right way of the three, and knowing that the other two would lead to almost certain death, in the ruggedness and darkness,—for how could a man, among precipices and bottomless depths of water, without a ray of light, have any chance to save his life?—I do declare that I was half inclined to go away, and have ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the storm, and on my form The winds in fury beat; A racking pain, torments my brain, And sore these weary feet; No ray of light illumes the night, And here, alas! I roam, Where tempests howl and wild beasts growl; Oh, ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... in pink tights, appears from afar as if he were naked, and the same ray of light distinctly reveals his immense shoulders, rounded chest, small waist, and legs too short in proportion ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... was black as the tomb. There was no window to let in the faintest ray of light, and as the corridor upon which it opened was itself in semi-darkness, even the open door shed no relieving rays within. Feeling before him upon the floor with the butt of his spear, Tarzan entered the Stygian ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and still, and impregnated with the sense of desertion. But with this man beside her, who, she knew, would do anything he could to help, the place did not look quite so bad to Gladys as it had done the day before. There was a ray of light now where, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... sigh, then the noise of a fall, and one of the sentries at the mouth of the cave came rolling to our feet. A random shot had struck him, and as he just fell in, a ray of light which entered the grotto, we were able to see him writhing in the agonies of death. Mademoiselle Zephyrine seized my hands, and I felt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... that too," said Hilda, "and used to think of it as very probable indeed; but now a ray of light has been let into my mind, and I see what manner of man he is. That boy"—and she again pointed to the portrait—"was the one who misled me. Such a one as he might have been so animated by hate that he might keep away so as not to be forced to see his detested wife. But this man is ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... self-abnegation springs to life within me, and tells me that my whole being should be consecrated to and annihilated in the beloved object. I long to merge myself in one of her glances; to diffuse and exhale my whole being in the ray of light shot forth from her eyes; to die while gazing on her, even though ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... be, if around thee Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw,— If no silken cord of love hath bound thee To some little world through ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... out and dazzles in your eyes. You are warm, you sing for joy. In the back of your mind a voice may say, "The clouds will shut up again, this is not to last." For the moment you are happy and do not care for what will come. You just hold out your arms to the warm ray of light. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... kind!" cried the little woman. The poignancy of her voice cut into his disappointment like a sharp ray of light. "Even then—to think of me. But don't you understand that he wouldn't want me to—to take anything that I felt I ought ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... can but glance at it. The worst cannot be told. Crimes may be spoken of; but things monstrous and inhuman should for ever be concealed. We can but stand at the cavern's mouth, and cast a single ray of light into its dark depths. Were we to enter, our lamp would be quenched by the foul things which would ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the speaker, since no ray of light penetrated into the passage. He stretched out a groping hand, and, although he was conscious of an odd revulsion, touched the shoulder of the man in front of him and maintained that unpleasant contact whilst they walked on and on through apparently endless passages, extensive as a catacomb. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... things, which participate more fully of its likeness, to the lowest things which participate of it in a lesser degree, there is said to be a kind of procession and movement of the divine wisdom to things; as when we say that the sun proceeds to the earth, inasmuch as the ray of light touches the earth. In this way Dionysius (Coel. Hier. i) expounds the matter, that every procession of the divine manifestation comes to us from the movement of the Father ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Greek Life of St. Nicon the Armenian was found in the Sforza library, and translated into Latin by the Jesuit Sirmond, for the use of Cardinal Baronius. This contemporary legend casts a ray of light on Crete and Peloponnesus in the 10th century. He found the newly-recovered island, foedis detestandae Agarenorum superstitionis vestigiis adhuc plenam ac refertam.... but the victorious missionary, perhaps with some carnal aid, ad ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... board for the weeks that followed was far from comfortable. We were within sight of the enemy, and at every movement of the opposing fleet it was "clear away for action." Steam was kept up continually. Our cabins were without air ports and no ray of light even penetrated the ward-rooms. There was nowhere to walk but on the upper grating—a modern prison is far more comfortable. Sometimes the sailors waded on the submerged deck, giving rise to the superstition among the darkies that they were the crew of the "debble ship" ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... light streaming from the open door of a small house between Front Street and the cooper shop. Wishing, for reasons of his own, to avoid observation, Warwick did not turn the corner, but walked on down Front Street until he reached a point from which he could see, at a long angle, a ray of light proceeding from the kitchen window of the house ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to each other hinders their improvement," and so the adult whose movements are no longer directed by his eyes, feels utterly helpless and bewildered, as one who finds himself on a strange road, very late at night, with no ray of light to guide him. As the blinded soldier is uppermost in our thought today, I am considering the mental condition of an adult suddenly deprived of eyesight, not that of the man whose blindness ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... suspicious, could find no clue to the real perpetrators of the murder. He knew it had not been Angelique herself in person. He had never heard her speak of La Corriveau. Not the smallest ray of light penetrated ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the room blankets had been suspended, so no ray of light could shine out into the night to betray the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... grew And o'er the mouth its tendrils threw. Thence issued crane, and swan, and drake, And trooping birds that love the lake. The Vanars rushed within to cool Their fevered lips in spring or pool. Vast was the cavern dark and dread, Where not a ray of light was shed; Yet not the more their eyesight failed, Their courage sank or valour quailed. On through the gloom the Vanars pressed With hunger, thirst, and toil distressed, Poor helpless wanderers, sad, forlorn, With wasted faces wan and worn. At length, when life seemed lost for aye, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and at that very moment, through the bit window in the back-end of the house, there came a ray of light. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... at last managed to raise myself and the girl from the water, and place her unconscious form upon a flat slab of rock. And now I endeavoured with such simple skill as I could command to restore her exhausted animation. This was a task I was little fitted for; but just as the last faint ray of light died away and left the cavern in darkness, I had the satisfaction of hearing her draw a deep breath and ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... wiser, happier than the purest angels will ever know, though they go on learning it to eternity. When I say to you God is infinitely good, and wise, and happy, you cannot understand that, and neither can I; but one thing about it I can understand, and this I will tell you. Just as every joyous ray of light and heat comes to us from the sun, so all wisdom, all goodness, all beauty, all joy, flow forth from God, and are His, alone. Our very souls would go out of existence like the flames of a lamp when the oil is spent, if, for the least ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... into the far shadows. He could see that beyond her somewhere a ray of light filtered blue, but he halted at the entrance, puzzled at the black roof where all the rock of the mountain was gray and white except where mineral streaks were of reds and russets and moldy greens. Then he put his hand up and touched the roof and understood. Soot from ancient ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... these lovers. One night they were sitting in Emma's chamber talking confidentially together. The great palace was veiled in darkness, no ray of light, no star was to be seen in the heavens. As Eginhard was about to leave the chamber, he perceived that the courtyard below was covered with snow. It would have been impossible to pass across it without leaving a trace behind him, but at all risks he ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... stairway and the commissioner stepped to the first of the two doors which opened onto the upper corridor. He turned the key which was in the lock, and opened the door, but they found themselves in a room as dark as was the corridor. From somewhere, however, a ray of light fell into the blackness. The official stepped into the room, pulling Berner in after him. The poor old man was in a state of trembling excitement when he found himself in the house where his beloved young lady might already be a corpse. ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... far away in the storm and darkness? Why no, of course not. Sallie was only a little child sleeping quietly in her own little room. See, the door was ajar and a ray of light from the lamp in Sallie's room was streaming across the kitchen floor. He must go in and extinguish the light before it awakened the sleeping child. Why had Martha left the lamp burning? Surely she must know it would disturb the child. Well, as soon as he was rested ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... version of Papias, we certainly gain an intelligible account of what otherwise is far from intelligible, viz., the falling headlong. But all the rest is a dismal heap of irrationalities; and the single ray of light which is obtained, viz., the suggestion of the fig-tree as an elevation, which explains the possibility of a headlong fall, is of itself an argument that some great disturbance must have happened to the text at this point, else how could so material a circumstance have silently dropped ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... fellow-student with Perugino in the bottega of good old Andrea del Verrocchio. It seems the master painted a group and gave Leonardo the task of drawing in one figure. Leonardo painted in an angel—an angel whose grace and subtle beauty stand out, even today, like a ray of light. The story runs that good old Verrocchio wept on first seeing it—wept unselfish tears of joy, touched with a very human pathos—his pupil had far surpassed him, and never again did Verrocchio ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... The last ray of light that fell on the "Devil" was on a memorable spring evening in 1751. Dr. Johnson (aged forty-two), then busy all day with his six amanuenses in a garret in Gough Square compiling his Dictionary, at night enjoyed his elephantine ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... fell Upon the ear in childhood's early morn; And wandering thence along the rolling years, I see the shadow of my former self Gliding from childhood up to man's estate. The path of youth winds down through many a vale, And on the brink of many a dread abyss, From out whose darkness comes no ray of light, Save that a phantom dances o'er the gulf, And beckons toward the verge. Again, the path Leads o'er a summit where the sunbeams fall; And thus, in light and shade, sunshine and gloom, Sorrow and joy, this ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Yet there was a ray of light and hope in his darkness. He jumped up and ran back to the room—to her, to her, his queen for ever! Was not one moment of her love worth all the rest of life, even in the agonies of disgrace? This wild question clutched at his heart. "To her, to her ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... failed to discover her accomplice or accomplices, or the man with the ebony walking-stick and the tortoise-shell glasses whom the waiter at the Cafe du Pont-Neuf had described to Mazeroux and who seemed to have played a singularly suspicious part. In short, there was not a ray of light thrown upon the subject. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the player upon the lute, and she saw a faint ray of light upon the sand by the tent she had not entered. She buttoned her fur jacket, twisted her gloves in her hands, and looked towards the ray. There was a hard throbbing in her temples, and just beneath her shoulders there came a ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... was entirely afloat, launched on the seas of doubt without chart or compass. The life and well-being of the race seemed to hang on the slender thread of such traditions as were handed down by-ignorant mothers and nurses. One powerful ray of light illuminated the darkness; it was the work of Andrew Combe on "Infancy." He had, evidently watched some of the manifestations of man in the first stages of his development, and could tell, at least, as much of ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... every kind was practiced, especially, the extortion of money for titles to land which had been guaranteed to the colonists by the Mexican government. Austin went to Mexico to remonstrate. He was thrown into a filthy dungeon, where for many a month he never saw a ray of light, nor even the hand that ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... the theory of Natural Selection itself, I shall always maintain it to be actually yours and yours only. You had worked it out in details I had never thought of, years before I had a ray of light on the subject, and my paper would never have convinced anybody or been noticed as more than an ingenious speculation, whereas your book has revolutionised the study of natural history, and carried away captive the best men of the present age. All the merit I claim is the having been the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... she had proposed searching them; one or two they tried and found fastened. She stood at her own door, after having put down the candle on her table, still giving a lingering look-out, when, through the darkness in the gallery at the further end, she saw a ray of light on the floor, which seemed to come from under the door of a room unoccupied—Mr. Mapletofft's room; he had gone to town with Lord Davenant. Helen went on tiptoe very softly along the gallery, almost to ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... cookery that has ever existed. But, on the contrary, as far as Australia is concerned, the state of affairs in the culinary art with the bulk of the people is simply deplorable, and it seems. well nigh hopeless for any improvement to be brought about. There is, however, one little ray of light at the end of this dark tunnel we are in, and it is the knowledge that the cookery classes in the public schools will by-and-by bring about important changes, resulting in the amelioration of the whole of the culinary ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Another ray of light, too, had come to cheer the invalid. A new power was rising upon the horizon in the growing thoughtfulness and development of women, now banding together in clubs, societies, and confederations, with their own journals, newspapers, and publications, and with the ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... a thin little ray of light began to break into the obscure business. Here, at last, was a connection between these people and beetles. Sir Thomas Rossiter—he was the greatest authority upon the subject in the world. He had made it his lifelong study, and had written a most exhaustive work upon ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... against me, and although we talked over a dozen things together, no ray of light came ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... anointing, and the patriarchal seal, as the Lord had directed me, we kneeled and in solemn prayer asked God to accept the work we had done. During the time of prayer there appeared over our heads in the room a ray of light forming a hollow square, inside of which stood a company of heavenly messengers, each with a banner in his hand, with their eyes looking downward upon us, their countenance expressive of the deep interest they felt in what was passing ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... a part of what the speaker was saying. He was gazing at this form half hidden in the shadows, a figure with hands drooping, with face upturned, and just caught barely by one vagrant ray of light which left the massed shades piled strongly about the heavy hair. There came upon him at that moment, as with a flood-tide of memory, all the vague longing, the restlessness, the incertitude of life which had harried him before ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... visible to men, and to make themselves heard by them, we must first of all explain what is vision, which is only the bringing of the species within the compass of the organ of sight. This "species" is the ray of light broken and modified upon a body, on which, forming different angles, this light is converted into colors. For an angle of a certain kind makes red, another green, blue or yellow, and so on of all the colors, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... call in my guard all, and march immediately with the utmost silence." Hitchcock's Rhode Islanders carried their baggage and camp equipage to the boats on their shoulders "through mud and mire and not a ray of light visible." The embarkation was made from the ferry—the present Fulton Ferry—where General McDougall superintended the movements. Between seven and eight o'clock the boats were manned by Glover's and Hutchinson's men, and they went to work with sailor-like ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... complexion. They cast me, then a young and nursing mother, Into a dungeon of their prison house. There was no bed, no fire, no ray of light, 210 No touch, no sound of comfort! The black air, It was a toil to breathe it! I have seen The gaoler's lamp, the moment that he enter'd, How the flame sunk at once down to the socket. O miserable, by that lamp to see 215 My infant quarrelling with the coarse ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... some time before any ray of light was thrown on this dark mystery. "Whoever made it up will have to explain it," Amy declared for the tenth time. "It's Peggy, of course, for she hasn't helped in the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... to note the more important objects. We were much struck by the Scala Regia, a fine staircase by Bernini, in the centre of which is a gigantic equestrian statue of Constantine, so placed that a fine ray of light falls on it from above. This probably is typical of his conversion ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... difficult to believe that the sun was shining brightly outside. No ray of light pierced the blackness of the cavern, and the dead silence was unbroken by the first sound, though at that very moment the Gallas and the Abyssinians were probably waging a bloody battle almost overhead. ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... Marya smiled. The last ray of light smouldered in her tiger-red hair; the warm, fragrant, breathing youth of her grew vaguer, merging with the shadows; only the beryl-tinted eyes, which slanted slightly, ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... ray of light in the darkness, however. The municipal employees had refused to strike, and only by force would the city go dark that night. It was a blow to the conspirators. In the strange psychology of the mob, darkness was an essential to violence, and by three o'clock ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... getting demoralized. They began to whisper about the size of the town—'as big as Plymouth'—with perhaps a whole battalion of the famous Spanish infantry, and so on. It wanted an hour of the first real streak of dawn. But just then the old moon sent a ray of light quivering in on the tide. Drake instantly announced the dawn, issued the orders: 'Shove off, out oars, give way!' Inside the bay a ship just arrived from sea was picking up her moorings. A boat left her side and pulled like mad for the wharf. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... attire. Bettina had been despatched to Rennes on the day previous to procure this material for Bertha's ball-costume, and had not returned until late in the evening; yet the dress was cut out and fitted before Madeleine closed her eyes that night. The first auroral ray of light that stole into her chamber the next day fell upon the lithe figure of the young girl folding tucks that were to be made in the skirt, measuring distances, placing pins here and there for guides; and, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... was slightly raised and covered with mats of woven palmetto-leaves. A narrow chink in the wall admitted a faint ray of light, enabling us to perceive dimly the few objects which the room contained. Apparently it was Padre Felipe's sleeping apartment and the chapel vestry combined in one. There was a curtained doorway that gave access to the chapel itself; pushing aside the hangings, we could see the dim interior, ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... was as a ray of light. Aunt had changed her will, after this incident, in favour of Francis, and not, it was clear, for purposes of revenge. Now I felt more bound than ever to win the love of Francis, and to marry her; and I confess my inclinations were tending in that ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... not long in coming, for to his astonishment the ray of light grew brighter and brighter, and broadened out full of dancing motes when he had been an hour at work, teaching him that he had not dropped off to sleep for a minute or two, but long enough to give him a good night's ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... Then suddenly a ray of light shone through the clouds. The ever-cheerful Signor Nitti, after a conference with Lloyd George and Clemenceau—no Yugoslav being present, whereas Signor Nitti was both pleader and judge—was authorized to say that the December memorandum had been shelved. Terms more favourable ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... sense of the ludicrous varies in accordance with memory, imagination, observation, and association. The minds of some are so versatile, and so richly endowed with intellectual gifts, that their ideas sparkle and coruscate, they splinter every ray of light into a thousand colours, and produce all kinds of strange juxtapositions and combinations. (This exuberance has probably led to the seemingly contradictory saying that men of sentiment are generally men of humour.) No doubt their ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... fundamentals of mine engineering six thousand eight hundred years ago. If I have contributed one sentence to the accumulated knowledge of a thousand generations of engineers or have thrown one new ray of light on the work, I shall have done ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... young trout till they hid so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I thought) was satisfied. Sometimes it was the baccalaureates that displayed their talents to the unbidden visitor, flashing out of sight, cutting through the water like a ray of light, striking a young trout on the bottom with the rapidity and certainty almost of the teacher. It was marvelous, the diving and swimming; and mother bird looked on and quacked her approval of the young graduates.—That is another peculiarity: ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the crew at that moment, for right overhead the blackness opened, and a clear, bright ray of light shot down upon the deck, quivered, faded, shot out again, and then rapidly ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... consideration of her townspeople could not serve to throw a ray of light on the mystery. It was now the latter part of September and not a word of encouragement had come from David Nesbit, who had returned to the lumber country to pursue his lonely search until Mr. Blaisdell should again join him. True, David kept the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... hour after this conversation Bert knocked at the door of the big house as directed. The place seemed deserted, and there was not a ray of light ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... the invisible sister, who asks your will; and she answers you in good Italian and cultivated intonation. You hear the voice quite distinctly, but as if it was far, far away. She is really separated from you by a slender slice of wood, but she is absolutely invisible. Not the smallest ray of light, nor the smallest chink is visible between you and her. Sound travels through the barrel, but sight is absolutely excluded. These nuns live on charity, keeping two Lents in the year—one from November to Christmas, the other the ordinary Lent of Catholic Christendom. Living, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... could not be helped. In the terrible nebulous welter in which his people found themselves, it was not unnatural that each man should grope towards his separate ray of light. The Russian, too, was equally bewildered, and perhaps all this profusion of theories came in both from the same lack of tangibilities. Both ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the man and the sweet-faced girl who hovered over him like a ray of light, no one may know. That he had trod the glowing embers of hell, his cavernous, deep-lined face and whitening hair well testified. It was said afterward that on that third day he had opened his eyes and looked straight into those of the girl. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... lesser plants to nestle in their branches, another world to fatten round their feet. There are humble and modest plants, too, here—and those some of the loveliest—which have long since cast away all ambition, and are content to crouch or perch anywhere, if only they may be allowed a chance ray of light, and a chance drop of water wherewith to perfect their flowers and seed. But, throughout the great republic of the forest, the motto of the majority is—as it is, and always has been, with human beings—'Every one for himself, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... was wrapped the warm, strong feeling of his hand on hers. What did she mean that he would tell her father? There seemed to be a deep, hidden self in her. Up out of these depths came a whisper, like a ray of light, and it said to her that there was more hope for Lin Slone than he had ever had in ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey |
