"Vaporous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hedge as would Mr. de la Mare. He has an aquiline love of soaring and surveying immense tracts with keen eyes. He loves to explore both time and the map, but he does this without losing his eyehold on the details of the Noah's Ark of life on the earth beneath him. He does not lose himself in vaporous abstractions; his eye, as well as his mind, is extraordinarily interesting. This poem of his, Birds, is peopled with birds. We see them in flight and in their nests. At the same time, the philosophic wonder ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... been and he became quite alert and enthusiastic. He showed me why I should not have been alarmed, because ghosts, he said, were scientific facts. He then explained to me at length how the gases from the dead arise and form a nebulous vapor or a vaporous nebula. It sounded very simple and plausible when he told me, but I can't seem to remember it. Fortunately I have it ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... furnaces in the neighbourhood of Glasgow glowed somewhat ominously large as the night wore on, we retired to rest rather in hope than resignation. But dismal, indeed, was the prospect when we awoke. A vaporous grey mist had entirely usurped the heavens, and the plash of weary rain resounded through the pluvious metropolis of the west. Fortunately, we were not ignorant of the fact, that Glasgow is under the peculiar tutelage of the Pleiades; and accordingly we proceeded to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... itself in swelling masses,—miles and miles of beetling height and solid breadth. This morning it was gone; only the great peaks showed themselves, as a far-off, cliff-bound shore, or here and there a green island in a vast, vaporous lake. The night-chill had come down among the heights, condensing the warm exhalations of the valley-bosom that had been shone into all day yesterday by the long summer sun; till, when he lifted himself once ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... accompanying her, and when she drove over Steynham Common, triumphal arches and the odour of a roasting ox richly browning to celebrate the hero's return afflicted her mind with all the solid arguments of a common-sense country in contravention of a wild lover's vaporous extravagances. Why had he not come with her? The disappointed ox put the question in a wavering drop of the cheers of the villagers at the sight of the carriage without their bleeding hero. Mr. Romfrey, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... after, Madame de Frontignac and Mary went out to gather shells and seaweed on the beach. It was four o'clock; and the afternoon sun was hanging in the sultry sky of July with a hot and vaporous stillness. The whole air was full of blue haze, that softened the outlines of objects without hiding them. The sea lay like so much glass; every ship and boat was double; every line and rope and spar had its counterpart; and it seemed hard to say which was the more real, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... scarecrow had nothing for it, but to puff away for dear life. As need was, therefore, it applied itself lustily to the pipe, and sent forth such abundant volleys of tobacco-smoke, that the small cottage-kitchen became all vaporous. The one sunbeam struggled mistily through, and could but imperfectly define the image of the cracked and dusty window-pane on the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown arm akimbo, and the other stretched towards the figure, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... rotation of the sun and its accompanying atmosphere must increase as rapidly as its volume diminishes, the increased centrifugal force generated by the more rapid rotation, overbalancing the action of gravitation, would cause the sun to abandon successive rings of vaporous matter, which are supposed to have condensed by cooling, and to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... of vivid green. The ferny vegetation round him, though so abundant, was quite uniform: it was a grove of machine-made foliage, a world of green triangles with saw-edges, and not a single flower. The air was warm with a vaporous warmth, and the stillness was unbroken. Lizards, grasshoppers, and ants were the only living things to be beheld. The scene seemed to belong to the ancient world of the carboniferous period, when the forms of plants were few, and of the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... figures, of memories, real yet unreal, convincing yet unconvincing. When she did at last lose all awareness of reality the effect was merely to enhance the vividness of those phantoms, to lend substance to her vaporous visions. Constant brooding over the treasure had long since affected Dona Isabel's brain, and as a consequence she often dreamed about it. She dreamed about it again to-night, and, strangely enough, her ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... arrived. Awful day! Prepared for with anxious care, dressed for with silent despatch—nothing vaporous or fluttering now—no white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, compact was the order of the toilette. It seemed to me that I was this day, especially doomed—the main burden and trial falling on me alone of all the female teachers. The others ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Bernina, and here and there a glimpse of emerald lake at turnings of the road. Autumn is the season for this landscape. Through the fading of innumerable leaflets, the yellowing of larches, and something vaporous in the low sun, it gains a colour not unlike that of the lands we seek. By the side of the lake at Silvaplana the light was strong and warm, but mellow. Pearly clouds hung over the Maloja, and floating overhead cast shadows on the opaque water, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... have lasted half the night ere the lamps of Elverslope made constellations in the valley, and the green and red lights of the station loomed out on the hill. They drove into the circle of gaslights, among the vaporous steeds of omnibuses and flies, and entered the station, Phoebe's veil down, and Mervyn shading his dazzled eyes from the glare. They were half an hour too soon; and while waiting, it occurred to Phoebe to inquire whether a telegram for Beauchamp had been received. Even so, and they must have crossed ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that apparitions were so long in realizing their possibilities, in improving their advantages. The specters in classic and medieval literature were malarial, vaporous beings without energy to do anything but threaten, and mortals never would have trembled with fear at their frown if they had known how feeble they were. At best a revenant could only rattle a rusty skeleton, or shake a moldy shroud, or clank a chain—but as mortals ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... learn from the philosopher of the lapstone. He who understands because he endeavours, is a freed man of the realm of human effort. He who has no experience of his own, to him the experience of others is a sealed book. The convictions that in Donal rose vaporous were rapidly condensed and shaped when he found ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Neapolitans accept as winter, came on apace. For some time past the air had been full of that mild chill and vaporous murkiness, which, not cold enough to be bracing, sensibly lowered the system and depressed the spirits. The careless and jovial temperament of the people, however, was never much affected by the change of seasons—they drank ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the deepest in Hester. How should he? With that deepest he had no developed relation. There were worlds of thought and feeling already in motion in Hester's universe, while the vaporous mass in him had hardly yet begun to stir. To use another simile, he was living on the surface of his being, the more exposed to earthquake and volcanic eruption that he had never yet suspected the existence ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the sun was dying out in a riot of colour, and its level rays fell kindlily upon the gaunt pines that were thick about us two, converting them into endless aisles of vaporous gold. ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... and his bulk is not only 1,200 times that of the earth, but exceeds that of all the other planets put together. Nevertheless, his mass is only 200 to 300 times that of the earth, for his density is not much greater than that of water. What we see is evidently his vaporous atmosphere, which is marked by coloured spots and bands or belts, probably caused by storms and currents, especially in the equatorial regions. Jupiter is thought to be self luminous, at least in parts, and is, perchance, a cooling star, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,— A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined On the level ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... with a heave of the whole atmosphere, like the sigh of a weary strong man on turning to re-commence unusual exertion, just as I stand here in the second fosse. That which now radiates from the sky upon the scene is not so much light as vaporous phosphorescence. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... liquid is employed, the refrigerating action is produced by the change in physical state from the liquid to the vaporous form. It is, of course, well known that such a change can only be brought about by the acquirement of heat; and for the purpose of refrigeration (by which must be understood the abstraction of heat at temperatures below the normal) it is obvious ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... absently. He had the papers in his hand, and was running them over. Both men were pulling at their cigars with strong puffs, and the room was so vaporous with smoke that Steering was beginning to see very clearly indeed, as he went through the papers. They were couched in good, clear English, the succinct English that Carington used, with admirable changes here and there, which brought ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... and before stretched a vast panorama. The sun was mounting now in the sky. It brought into strong relief the welter of volcanic waste that extended in bold detail through the clear air far out to the horizon, where, misty and dim, the first vaporous clouds were ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... dangerous or too noisy; now seated herself on the grass beside their mothers and took part with grave and thoughtful interest in their talk. Nisida was more beautiful thus than she had been the day before; with the vaporous cloud of perfume that had folded her round from head to foot had disappeared all that mystic poetry which put a sort of constraint upon her admirers and obliged them to lower their glances. She had become ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... scarcely be imagined than on such an afternoon. It was difficult, even for a light-hearted person, to maintain a uniform cheerfulness where damp exuded everywhere, and the moist thick air seemed to close round one in vaporous folds. Somewhere, no doubt, the sun was shining, and might possibly shine again; but it was hard to realize it—hard to maintain outward or inward geniality ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... nullified by heavy walnut window casings; red and green carpet, red or blue plush furnishings, or vivid hangings would ruin the effect. Pictures in such a room should be preferably water-colors with pale gray mats, and gold or white frames. Oil paintings are only permissible when dreamy and vaporous in tint. Light, delicate colors in upholstery, creamy madras for curtains. The carpet may be a little darker, verging on some of the delicate, woody browns. Any bric-a-brac should be in pale shades of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... demanded of Miss Brown. 'Yes,' she replied, alertly. Even as I spoke I saw the mysterious limb dart out and seize upon a pencil which lay upon the table. Again and again I saw this 'apparition' emerge from that vaporous cloud and handle the pad in the middle of the table. I could see three fingers on the under-side of the pad as it was held before the psychic's face, and these facts I announced to the other members of the circle, who could not see as plainly as I could. Sometimes the arm seemed white, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... That it is extremely probable that air is a fluid naturally existing in a state of vapour; or, as we may better express it, that our atmosphere is a compound of all the fluids which are susceptible of the vaporous or permanently elastic state, in the usual temperature, and under the common pressure. 3dly, That it is not impossible we may discover, in our atmosphere, certain substances naturally very compact, even metals themselves; as a metallic substance, for instance, only a little more ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies, All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow, and silver gleam, With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes; I am ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... now and then into a slow, reluctant rain, cold as icicle-drops in a rock cavern. People passed and repassed in the streets like ghosts in a bad dream; the twinkling gas-light showed them at one moment rising out of the fog, and then disappearing from view as though suddenly engulfed in a vaporous ebon sea. With muffled, angry shrieks, the metropolitan trains deposited their shoals of shivering, coughing travelers at the several stations, where sleepy officials, rendered vicious by the weather, snatched the tickets from their hands with ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... day it must surely be seen that he was very seriously ill. The spirit of Tarautas would again appear to him—and not merely as a vaporous illusion—and put an end to his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pouring over the side a bright stream of water out of his lips; the fat Rajah dozed in a shabby deck-chair,—and at the turn of every bend the two walls of leaves reappeared running parallel along the banks, with their impenetrable solidity fading at the top to a vaporous mistiness of countless slender twigs growing free, of young delicate branches shooting from the topmost limbs of hoary trunks, of feathery heads of climbers like delicate silver sprays standing up without a quiver. There was not a sign ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... dared to sally forth from the coast, to lose sight of land, to venture forth into the blue desert, advised of the existence of islands by the vaporous knobs of the mountains which were outlined on the horizon at sunset. Every advance of this hesitating marine over the Mediterranean had represented greater expenditure of audacity and energy than the discovery of America or ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of Saturn is less than that of water, and its velocity of rotation so great that centrifugal force antagonizes gravitation to such an extent that bodies weigh on it about the same as on the earth. All the fine fancies of the habitability of this vaporous world, all the calculations of the number of people that could live on the square miles of the planet and its enormous rings, are only fancy. Nothing could live there with more brains than a fish, at most. It is a world in formative processes. We cannot ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... The ghost was not supposed to be capable of devouring the gross material substance of the offering; but his vaporous body appropriated the smoke of the burnt sacrifice, the visible and odorous exhalations of other offerings. The blood of the victim was particularly useful because it was thought to be the special seat of its soul or life. A West African negro replied to ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... tombs, of lost liberty and love. Another pause, and some strophes of unbridled gayety burst forth; then again the principal phrase, detaching itself like a flower from its stem, among myriads of winged notes, clusters of vaporous sounds, long spirals of transparent fioritures. Still the violins grew bolder and more impetuous. Franz rose from his seat while watching these men standing with their violins pressed against their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... yea of an infinite need, Cried out within him—rather moaned than cried. And he would sit a silent hour and gaze Upon the distant hills with dazzling snow Upon their peaks, and thence, adown their sides, Streaked vaporous, or starred in solid blue. And then a shadowy sense arose in him, As if behind those world-inclosing hills, There sat a mighty woman, with a face As calm as life, when its intensity Pushes it nigh to death, waiting for him, To make him grand for ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... manifold and all particulars. Where, indeed, does individuality begin? Is it the Hidden Source and Spring alone that is the individual, the Unit, or is it the flowing fountain that fills the ocean, or the ocean itself, or its waves, or the drops, or the vaporous particles, that are the individuals? The Sea and the River—these are each One; but the drops of each are many. The tree is one; but its leaves are a multitude: they drop with the frosts, and fall upon his roots; but the tree still continues to grow, and new leaves come again ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... semblance of a vaporous tissue—an illuminated haze only discernible through the telescope, the private view of the favored few—till it gradually became visible to the unassisted eye of the profanum vulgus, and finally it flamed across the darkling spaces with its white crown of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the storm yesterday, that seemed to shake earth and heaven, to-day is beautiful. Soft glistening steams are rising from every hill and bog and valley, as the hot sun's rays beat upon them. The world seems wrapped in one vast vaporous mist, most lovely to behold. All the woodland flowers are holding up their heads again, after their past smiting from the cruel rain; the trees are swaying to and fro in the fresh morning breeze, thousands of glittering drops brightening the air, as they swing themselves from ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... dispose of her. That very simplicity was another sign of her strength. She was the more priceless on account of it. He went back into the hut. Through the chinks of the shutter the morning stretched a grey finger; the room was filled with a vaporous twilight. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... other bank the prospect was no less wondrous. Against the vaporous background of the Arabian chain, the gigantic pile of the Northern Palace, which distance itself could scarce diminish, reared above the flat-roofed dwellings its mountains of granite, its forest of giant pillars, rose-coloured in the rays of the sunshine. In front of the palace stretched ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the sea—what is that vaporous Titan? And Hesper set in his rosy garland—why looks he so implacably sweet? It is that one has left that bright home to go forth and do cloudy work, and he has got a stain with which he dare not return. Far in the West fair Lucy beckons him to come. Ah, heaven! if he might! How strong and fierce ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... overflowing, bursting gladness! The vaporous exultation not to be confined! .........the animation of delight Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, And bears me as a cloud is ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... thought of, even on a Sunday. For life is a most chillingly vaporous affair (reminding one of washing-day in November) without a liberal sprinkling of liveliness. Recognizing this truth, our religious brethren begin to impart zest to their Sunday services by seizing ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... sort of vaporous dream came the slow sound of carriage wheels bumping along the ruts of the road; then a light which was not of the moon; then a sudden pause in the noise of wheels and the sound of a coarse, strong voice speaking in ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... depressing, and London was full of faint undercurrents of romance, and of soft and rapidly changing effects of light. I went out in the afternoon and spent an hour in the National Gallery. When I came out my mind was so full of painted canvas that I never looked at the unpainted sky, or at the vaporous Square through which streamed the World, opening and shutting umbrellas. I believe I was thinking over some new work of my own, arranged for the future. Now the rain ceased, I went down the steps and walked across the road into ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... would not admit that what he felt for Julia was love; he raged with disappointment at the mere thought of bondage so soon, and especially this bondage. But the sweetness of her stole upon his senses nevertheless, tangling about him like a drifting bit of vaporous mist; he had no sooner detached one section of it than another blew across his eyes, set pulses to beating in his temples, and shook his whole body with ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... It is possible that the earth began as a vaporous, shining sphere, formed by the gathering together of the material of a gaseous ring which had been detached from a cooling and shrinking nebula. Such a vaporous sphere would condense to a liquid, fiery globe, whose surface would become cold and solid, while the interior would long remain ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... had thy lover given To one sweet vaporous wreath that lately graced Thy meditative lip, or how had striven To stay that form ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star Mingling light and fragrance far As the curved ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... azure heavens! Only vaporous wreaths of snowy white Nestle in the grey hill's rugged side; And the golden woods are bathed in light, Dying, if they must, with kingly pride: While the swallows in the blue air wheeling, Circle now an eager fluttering ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... the narration was of times legendary, when dragons and demons moved about the earth in more palpable forms than they usually maintain to-day. A great mist overspread the Empire and men's minds were vaporous, nor was their purpose keen. Later, deities and well-disposed Forces began to exercise their powers. The mist was turned into a benevolent system of rivers and canals, and iron, rice and the silk-worm then appeared. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... lovely little blonde creature about twenty-five years old, dressed in a floating Watteau-like garment of vaporous blue, painted with faded pink roses. She was seated in a large carved and gilded chair, opposite an excessively Louis-Quinze mirror, while her pale golden hair was being brushed out by a brown, inanimate-looking ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... from her sight. It was then that she realised what had been done to her. With the closing of her eyes she opened some back room in her brain, a hot room, now dark, and now charged with a red light, vaporous and vivid, that ran in furious pulses, as it were the currents of her blood made visible. The room thus opened was tenanted by the revolting image of Lady Cayley. Now it loomed steadily in the dark, now it leapt quiveringly into the red, vaporous light. She could not see her husband, but she ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... below, and in front, another hundred feet above, a green amphitheatre of oak, and ash, and larch, shutting out all but a narrow slip of sky, across which the low, soft, formless mist was crawling, opening every instant to show some gap of intense dark rainy blue, and send down a hot vaporous gleam of sunshine upon the white cottages, with their grey steaming roofs, and bright green railings, packed one above another upon the ledges of the cliff; and on the tall tree-fuchsias and gaudy dahlias in the little scraps of court-yard, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... miles off the low jungle-bound coast of the peninsula, and above it a great bank of vaporous clouds, pierced by the molten rays of the early morning sun. As I looked around inquiringly, the captain, bowing, said: "Tuan," and I raised my eyes. Again I saw the lofty mountain peak surmounting the cushion of clouds, standing out bold and clear against the ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... little cloudy all day, but as he left the closer part of the town, the vaporous vault gave way, and the west revealed a glorious sunset. Troubled for the trouble of little Ann, Clare seemed drawn into the sunset. The splendour said to him: "Go on; sorrow is but a cloud. Do the work given you to do, and ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... stars, much like snow. Gold needs more heat to melt it, but crystallizes also exquisitely, as I will presently show you. Arsenic and sulphur crystallize from their vapors. Now in any of these cases, either of melted, dissolved, or vaporous bodies, the particles are usually separated from each other, either by heat, or by an intermediate substance; and in crystallizing they are both brought nearer to each other, and packed, so as to fit as closely as possible: ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... a cold, vaporous dawn, the glass rising, and the wind fallen to a light air still from the north-east. Our creased and sodden sails scarcely answered to it as we crept across the oily swell to Langeoog. 'Fogs and calms,' Davies ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Limehouse Hole—and maybe sometimes of a summer evening, when she stood with folded arms at her shop-door, looking from the reeking street to the sky where the sun was setting, she may have had some vaporous visions of far-off islands in the southern seas or elsewhere (not being geographically particular), where it would be good to roam with a congenial partner among groves of bread-fruit, waiting for ships to be wafted ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... face of the moon had cleared, but tatters and scuds of smoke-colored cloud fled northward, as if scourged by a stormy current too high to stir the sultry stagnation of the lower atmospheric stratum. From its vaporous lair somewhere in the cypress and palm jungles of the Mexican Gulf borders, the tempest had risen, and before its breath the shreds of cloud flew like avant couriers of disaster. Already the lurid glare of incessant sheet lightning ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... no motion in them. Each tree stood like a delicately carven thing, silhouetted against the remote purple of the void. In the profound firmament the stars burned with a tremulous ardour they never show in northern skies. The mystery of this African night rose not from vaporous veils and the long movement of winds, but was breathed out by clearness, brightness, stillness. It was the deepest of all mystery—the mystery of vastness and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens |
