"Brilliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spent so frightful a half hour as that within the brilliant interior of The Elite Restaurant. Twenty-three minutes of this eternity was consumed in waiting for his order to be served and seven minutes in disposing of the meal and paying his check. Willie's method of eating was in itself a sermon ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... joins the British Legion, which was raised by Sir de Lacy Evans to support the cause of Queen Christina and the infant Queen Isabella, and as soon as he sets foot on Spanish soil his adventures begin. Arthur is one of Mr. Henty's most brilliant heroes, and the tale of his experiences is thrilling and ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... powerlessness? There is nothing 'imperial' about me but the yoke under which I am groaning; and my 'highness' is to be compared only with the crumbs of Lazarus which fell from the rich man's table. And yet there are persons, Nugent, who envy me these crumbs—men who think it a brilliant and glorious lot to be an 'imperial highness,' the brother of a sovereign emperor! Ah, they do not know that this title means only that I am doomed to everlasting dependence and silence, and that the emperor's valet de chambre and his private secretary are more influential men than the Archduke ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... paint. The banks of trees which dipped their boughs right into the stream, instead of looking mysteriously black, were also glowing with colour, and in several parts full of moving life, as birds of brilliant hues flitted from bough to bough, and an excited company of active monkeys swung themselves here and there in their eagerness to get a view of the strange object which had ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... parrots, and other birds of gay plumage, while now and then we caught sight of a brush-turkey running along rapidly over the ground. Many of the butterflies we saw were of magnificent size, and all richly adorned with the most brilliant colours. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hartrick was waiting for his niece. He often said since that he would never forget his first sight of Nora O'Shanaghgan. She was wearing a gray tweed traveling dress, with a little gray cap to match; the slender young figure, the rippling black hair, and the brilliant face flashed for an instant on the tired vision of the man of business; then there came the eager outstretching of two hands, and Nora had kissed him because she could ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... that of my interlocutress, which had begun to trouble me, even to frighten me a little—it was so self-conscious, so unnatural. I made no answer to this last declaration; I only privately consulted Jeffrey Aspern's delightful eyes with my own (they were so young and brilliant, and yet so wise, so full of vision); I asked him what on earth was the matter with Miss Tita. He seemed to smile at me with friendly mockery, as if he were amused at my case. I had got into a pickle for him—as if he needed it! He was unsatisfactory, for the only moment ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... to spend, and at Yale in winter, at Newport and Beverly and Bar Harbor in summer, he had learned how to spend it, had watched admiringly how others spent their wealth. He had begun to educate his family in spending,—in using to brilliant advantage the fruits of thirty years' hard work and frugality. With his cousin Caspar Porter he maintained a small polo stable at Lake Hurst, the new country club. On fair days he left the lumber yards ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a brilliant scene indeed in the cathedral of Limasol. There were assembled all the principal barons of England, together with a great number of ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... Spain becoming inevitable, Queen Elizabeth, throwing aside her simulated coldness, received Drake openly, and expressed her admiration of his boldness, discretion, and brilliant success. The Golden Hind having been brought up to Deptford on the 4th of April, 1581, she went on board in state, and Drake, who knew the tastes of his royal mistress, spared no pains in preparing a worthy banquet. Copies of Latin verses written ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... in another year, or perhaps in half a year, he might turn his back on these hard, eager Florentines, with their futile quarrels and sinking fortunes. His brilliant success at Florence had had some ugly flaws in it: he had fallen in love with the wrong woman, and Baldassarre had come back under incalculable circumstances. But as Tito galloped with a loose rein towards Siena, he saw a future before him in which ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... minutes will lead them to the solitudes of the forests and the mountains. There is a library and reading-room in operation, in the midst of the scene of the revelry. The students spent the afternoon in wandering through these brilliant halls; and some of them observed, with a feeling akin to terror, the operations of rouge-et-noir and roulette. No one spoke at the tables, and no one but players were allowed to be seated. If any of the boys, after the exciting sport had become familiar to them, were tempted to ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... were admitted 'within the railing or body of the House' and 'accommodated with the seats of the members as far as possible.' Outwardly it was all very much the same in principle as the opening of any other British parliament—the escort, guard, and band, the royal salute, the brilliant staff, the scarlet cloth of state, the few and quiet members of the Upper House, the many of the Lower, jostling each other to get a good place near Mr Speaker at the bar, the radiant ladies, the crowded galleries corniced with inquiring faces and ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... emphatic answer, accompanied by a brilliant smile. "I never had such a long ride in my life. 'Twas just like bein' rich. I made believe I WAS rich most all the way, except when a man set down in the seat alongside of me and wanted to talk. Then I didn't make believe none, I ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... nations have a superstition which bears some resemblance to the evil eye, when allowance is made for circumstances. They have no brilliant sun and moon to addle the brain and poison the eye, but the grey north has its marshes, and fenny ground, and fetid mists, which produce agues, low fevers, and moping madness, and are as fatal to cattle as to man. Such disorders ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the intellectual interest of the Count's 'Monks of the West' rests mainly on this, that it is the work of a brilliant and accomplished layman and man of the world, dealing with a class of characters who have generally been left to the arid professional handling of ecclesiastical writers. Montalembert sees their life as a whole, and a human whole; and, with all his zeal as an amateur hagiographer, ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... MARY E. HAGGART, of Indiana, followed with a bold and brilliant argument, presenting the claims of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... then?" young Olaf exclaimed, struck with a brilliant idea. "Ho, Sigvat," he said, turning to his saga-man, "what was that lowland under the cliff where thou didst say the pagan Upsal king was hanged in his own golden chains ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... like a tornado; and literally mingled together, almost fighting hand to hand, they went pell-mell toward the village. Here the flag of truce met them, and soon hostilities ceased. Rarely has a more brilliant and successful attack been executed in modern warfare, and it reflects the highest credit upon Colonel Pattee and his command. Rebel officers who witnessed it spoke in the highest terms of the splendid and reckless courage ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... Mrs. Griffin accompanied by Mrs. David Lane. They left at once in the "Wilson Small," and went up the York and Pamunkey rivers, and to White House, thus tasting the first horrors of war. This experience would form a brilliant chapter in the history of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... grove was not dark, but lighted with the startlingly brilliant phosphorescence of the fungi growing on the trunks, and trimmed into bizarre ornamental shapes. In cages of transparent fibre, glowing insects as large as a hand ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... seen in the British Museum, and in other places where collections of Indian curiosities are exhibited. These effigies were carved in the shape of human beings, with enormous goggle eyes, splashes of bright paint, and strange and immense headdresses of brilliant colors. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... "Life" of Rizal published in Barcelona after his death a brilliant picture is painted of how Rizal might have followed the advice of the rector of the Ateneo, and have lived a long, useful and honorable life as a farmer and gobernadorcillo of his home town, respected by the Spaniards, looked ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... said again, with the brilliant smile, "no! no! I can't. I won't. Not unless"—and this, too, was calculated ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... have been trying to tell Nicholas how he can make some money, and have submitted a brilliant plan to him, but my seed, as usual, has fallen on barren soil. Look what a sight he is now: dull, ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... well-concealed anxiety when the letter was finished. Billy, stretched out, leaning on one elbow, blew a meditative ring of smoke. His cheap workshirt, incongruously brilliant with the gold of the medals that flashed in the firelight, was open in front, showing the smooth skin and splendid swell of chest. He glanced around—at the blankets bowered in a green screen and waiting, at the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... in dance and talk, than the phlegmatic affectation of modern days allows; and there were some bright eyes that, not seeming to look, yet recognised, with a little thrill at the heart, and a brighter flush, the brilliant, proud Devereux—so handsome, so impulsive, so unfathomable—with his gipsy tint, and great enthusiastic eyes, and strange melancholy, sub-acid smile. But to him the room was lifeless, and the hour was dull, and the music but a noise ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... forebodings of a guilty conscience, Glossin now arose and looked out upon the night. The scene which we have already described in the third chapter of this story, was now covered with snow, and the brilliant, though waste, whiteness of the land gave to the sea by contrast a dark and livid tinge. A landscape covered with snow, though abstractedly it may be called beautiful, has, both from the association ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the course of a brilliant career of forty years we have never seen only six cans of peaches that were worth the powder to blast them open. A man that will invent a can opener that will split open one of these pale, sickly, hard hearted canned peaches, that swim around in a pint of slippery elm ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... envy, grief, and anxiety for worldly goods and concerns, were unknown in these poor cells; and he assures us, that the constant peace, joy, and pleasure which reigned in them, were as different from the bitterness and tumultuous scenes of the most brilliant worldly felicity, as the security and calmness of the most agreeable harbor are, from the dangers and agitation of the most tempestuous ocean. Such was the rule of these cenobites, or monks who lived in community. There were also hermits on the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... those duties are imposed upon anybody they will be imposed only upon such persons as are fit for them. But they want that if the majority of the American people think a woman like Queen Victoria, or Queen Elizabeth, or Queen Isabella of Spain, or Maria Theresa of Hungary (the four most brilliant sovereigns of any sex in modern history with only two or three exceptions), the fittest person to be President of the United States, they may be permitted to exercise their ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... light given by the aurora and the low moon seemed to grow fainter; and as I looked behind I saw that the distant glow from the volcanic fires had become more brilliant in the increasing darkness. The sides of the channel grew steeper, until at last they became rocky precipices, rising to an unknown height. The channel itself grew narrower, till from a width of two miles it had contracted to a tenth ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... the lights and decorations were brilliant, and the company gay and splendid. But I should have told you, that I made many objections to being of the party, according to the resolution I had formed. However, Maria laughed me out of my scruples, and so once again I went to ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... villages, canals, and a thousand other agreeable objects! If you turn your eyes on the other side, up towards Ethiopia, how many other subjects of admiration! I cannot compare the verdure of so many plains, watered by the different canals of the island, better than to brilliant emeralds set in silver. Is not Grand Cairo the largest, the most populous, and the richest city in the world? What a number of magnificent edifices both public and private! If you view the pyramids, you will be filled with astonishment at the sight of the masses of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... nerves were steel, he never for a moment lost his head even when assisting at the most sickening operation; his touch was light and sure; and knowledge seemed to come to him intuitively. No wonder that Doctor Humphreys persistently predicted a brilliant and successful ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... the problem was to find a medium on which the heat could be perfectly concentrated and raised to illuminating power. Many experiments have been made with platinum in a Bunsen flame, and a brilliant enough light has been produced, but at a cost altogether outside commercial use. The Vienna chemist, Dr. Welsbach, has discovered a composition which is as good a non-conductor—that is to say concentrator—of heat as platinum, is much more ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... effect of our Abyssinian campaign was immense among all the civilised and half-civilised peoples who heard of it. We ourselves had expected the most salutary results from it, as we foresaw that the brilliant proof of our power which we had given to the world would make our adversaries more cautious and induce them to be more compliant to our just wishes. But the effect far exceeded our most sanguine expectations. The former opponents of economic justice were not merely ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... making a permanent impression. By the time people had fully awakened to the significance of his presence among them he was gone. So there grew up a legend concerning him, but no true biography. He was like a comet, very shaggy and very brilliant, but he stayed so brief a time in a place that it was impossible for one man to give either the days or the thought to the reproduction of his more serious and considered words. A greater difficulty was involved in the fact that the Bibliotaph ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... other, of something like the aurora borealis, but much brighter. It was a scene that is well remembered, for it struck the country with admiration, as such a phenomenon had never before been witnessed in such perfection; and, as far as I could learn, it had been more brilliant over the mountains and pure waters of Westmoreland than any where else. Well, when word came into the room of the splendid meteor, we all went out to view it; and, on the beautiful platform at Mount ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... feeling, had moved a tenth of an inch upward. I gave the order to start. The other parties said, "Good for your pluck! Bon voyage, gute reise," and went to bed. In an hour we had ascended one thousand feet and down again to the glacier. The sky was brilliant. Hopes were high. The glacier with its vast medial moraines, shoving along rocks from twenty to fifty feet long, was crossed in the dawn. The sun rose clear, touching the snow-peaks with glory, and we shouted victory. ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... O'Gorabhain or at the very least, O'Gorman. He is an Irishman by birth, sympathy and conviction. He is a Member of Parliament, pledged to support the cause of Ireland, and this in spite of the fact that he has brains. He might have been a brilliant, perhaps even a successful and popular novelist. He wrote two stories which critics acclaimed, which are still remembered and even occasionally read. He might have risen to affluence as a dramatist. He was the author of one single-act play ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... dear, for a pretty compliment. I can trust my memory. I think I hinted at the obvious objections to an engagement. You and Carmina are cousins; and you belong to different religious communities. I may add that a man with your brilliant prospects has, in my opinion, no reason to marry unless his wife is in a position to increase his influence and celebrity. I had looked forward to seeing my clever son rise more nearly to a level with persons of rank, who are members of our family. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... back to Bartlett & Bangs's, and Mr. Randolph's new secretary was sawing wood in Madam Bartlett's cellar. It was a humble beginning, but he whistled jubilantly as he worked. Already he saw himself climbing, by brilliant and spectacular deeds, to a dazzling pinnacle of security ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... sensibilities and coarse fibre, and at least he is alone with nature, while I—well, a young man of condition and fashion, who knows the right people, belongs to the right clubs, has a safe, possibly a brilliant, future in the Foreign Office—may be excused for a sense of complacent martyrdom, when, with his keen appreciation of the social calendar, he is doomed to the outer solitude of London in September. I say 'martyrdom', ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... so," said Doggie. Then he had a brilliant idea. "But when the war is over, we'll remain the same ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... mid-winter, when the imperial party, wrapped in furs, and in large sledges richly decorated, and prepared expressly for the journey, commenced their sleigh ride of a thousand miles. Music greeted them all along the way; bonfires blazed on every hill; palaces, brilliant with illuminations and profusely supplied with every luxury, welcomed them at each stage where they stopped for refreshment or repose. The roads were put in perfect order; and relays of fresh horses every few miles being harnessed to the sledges, they swept like the wind over the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... his strike the house below had been silent; but early the next morning she had begun again, only this time she was not singing scales. It was grand opera now, in French and Italian; with brilliant runs and trills and high, sustained crescendos that seemed almost to demand applause; and high-pitched, agitato recitatives. She was running through the scores of the standard operas—"La Traviata," "Il Trovatore," "Martha"—but as the week wore along she stopped singing again ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... the Campas. Some of the children wore no clothing at all. Two of the wives wore long tunics like the men. One of them had a truly savage face, daubed with paint. She wore no fillet, had the best tunic, and wore a handsome necklace made of seeds and the skins of small birds of brilliant plumage, a work of art which must have cost infinite pains and the loss of not a few arrows. All the women carried babies in little hammocks slung over the shoulder. One little girl, not more than six years old, was carrying on her back ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... Dom Diego seems not to have been previously identified as a minor epic. The late C. S. Lewis, a few pages before his brilliant discussion of Hero and Leander as an epyllion, refers to Lynche's poem as a "stanzaic novella." See Lewis' English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... sensibility to be entirely destitute of it. It is an element of reason and of sense peculiar to man. As a fabulist once represented a cock in quest of barleycorns, scraping for his breakfast, saying to himself, on discovering a precious and brilliant gem: 'If a lapidary were in my place he would now have made his fortune; but as for myself, I prefer one grain of barley to all the precious stones in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... later, July 5, 1850, he was at Lenox, in the Berkshire Mountains. Mrs. Caroline Sturgis Tappan, a brilliant Boston lady, equally poetic and sensible, owned a small red cottage there, which she was ready to lease to Hawthorne for a nominal rent. Lowell was going there on account of his wife, a delicate flower-like nature already beginning to droop. Doctor Holmes ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and Caroline took her place very frequently in the tower room, where she felt herself to be more than welcome. Indeed, the old lady seemed almost as fond of her as she was of the bright, generous heiress. Caroline would not consent to mingle with the gay crowd which kept up a brilliant carnival all day long in the park, in the vast drawing-room, everywhere, except in that one old tower where the countess spent her quiet life. At the grand festival she had resolved to come forth and do the ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... in fine style,—with Twelfth Night. It is a finish worthy of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the season; New Year's Day the middle of it, or noon; Twelfth Night is the night, brilliant with innumerable planets of Twelfth-cakes. The whole island keeps court; nay, all Christendom. All the world are |338| kings and queens. Everybody is somebody else, and learns at once to laugh at, and to tolerate, characters different from ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... we see that the effects of these brilliant conversions, so well adapted to give pleasure to the Omnipotent and to his court, present nothing advantageous for the inhabitants of this lower world. If the changes produced by grace do not render ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... she venture to take it with her? How pleased Mother had been, she remembered, when the cactus had once rewarded her by producing two bright-red blossoms. That was long ago, and it had never done anything so brilliant again. Content with its one effort it had since remained unadorned, yet as it stood there, with its fat green leaves and little bunches of prickles, it had the air of saying to itself, "I have done it once, and if I liked I could do it a second time." Even now as she bent tenderly ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... unutterably grave, as a new brilliant band of forked lightning glittered outside the windows, and the burst of the thunderbolt sounded as if at their very feet, making a renewal of the same ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... The brilliant and complete success of Sir Garnet Wolseley was highly praised, and the names of Colonel Lanyon, Captain Clark, R.A., and Captain Carrington especially mentioned as deserving a share of the credit for the accurate information they had collected ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... whine of the sawmills on the river-bank, a mile or more to the south, tempered as it was by the distance to the drone of a surly bumble-bee, still vaguely annoyed him. Tiny dots of men in flannel shirts of brilliant hue, flashing from time to time out across the log-choked space between the booms, caught his eye whenever he lifted his head, during the passage of a green-sprayed glass from the veranda rail to his lips, and almost reminded him of ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... truth in what poets have told about the splendor of an American autumn; but when this charm is added, one feels that the effect is beyond description. As I beheld it to-day, there was nothing dazzling; it was gentle and mild, though brilliant and diversified, and had a most quiet and pensive influence. And yet there were some trees that seemed really made of sunshine, and others were of a sunny red, and the whole picture was painted with but little relief of darksome lines, only a few ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she is furious because Nina is going to have a success on this little stage. [Looking at his watch] My mother is a psychological curiosity. Without doubt brilliant and talented, capable of sobbing over a novel, of reciting all Nekrasoff's poetry by heart, and of nursing the sick like an angel of heaven, you should see what happens if any one begins praising Duse to her! She alone must be praised and written about, raved over, her marvellous ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... of later origin. Since the twelfth century, when literature burst the bonds imposed upon it by ecclesiastical domination, the poetic spirit of the Armenians has found expression. It is rich in oriental passion and imagery, brilliant in expression, and intensely musical. But through all the poems we are reminded of the melancholy strain that pervaded the exiles of Jerusalem when "by the waters of Babylon" they "sat down and wept." The apostrophe to Araxes reminds us of the trials of Armenia, of her exiled sons, ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... with Murphy and Smith, was in the automobile, he looked back. The door opened and Cummings and Gibson stepped out. Benton's flashlight gun boomed and a brilliant white light blazed, turning night into day for a fraction ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... hotel-door with an expression of calm satisfaction on his face. As I came up to him, carrying my recent purchases tied in a bandana handkerchief, and stood before him, he scanned me from head to foot, said not a word, but fell back with a roar of laughter. Gay, brilliant Bedinger, whose presence imparted an electric touch to those around him; I shall ne'er see ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... warm that I must keep the windows open; the night without was populous with moths. As the late darkness deepened, my literary tapers beaconed forth more brightly; thicker and thicker came the dusty night-fliers, to gyrate for one brilliant instant round the flame and fall in agonies upon my paper. Flesh and blood could not endure the spectacle; to capture immortality was doubtless a noble enterprise, but not to capture it at such a cost ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ease of a Celimene, pretending to ignore that Calyste was there. La Palferine had the cleverness to depart after a brilliant witticism, leaving the two lovers to ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Lady Lansdowne, Lord and Lady Ellesmere, Lord and Lady Dacre, Sydney Smith, Rogers, were among the persons with whom I then most frequently associated; and in naming these members of the London world of that day, I mention only a small portion of a brilliant society, full of every element of wit, wisdom, experience, refined taste, high culture, good breeding, good sense, and distinction of every sort that can make human intercourse ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... trust I shall be able to arrange matters without compromising Amabel. I wish I could forward your suit more efficiently; but I see no chance of it, and, to deal plainly with you, I do not think a marriage with her would be for your happiness. The brilliant qualities of your noble rival at present so dazzle her eyes, that your own solid worth is completely overlooked. It will be well if her father can preserve her ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Howell, the brilliant Georgian, in his recent address before the Independent Club, set people to talking about him, from Niagara Falls in the East to the Garden of the Gods in the West, by his elucidations of "The Man with his Hat in his Hand;" but I propose to show you to-night ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... frocks, and carrying gorgeously brilliant sweaters, the trio, with Jennie as chaperon, raced off to the lake directly after dinner. The evening was delightfully clear and cool after the shower, and the promise of a row out through the willow-bound water ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... letters, a Tory; and was attached to the political army which is best represented in letters by the virile laughter and leisure of Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae. But he had nothing in common with that environment. It remained for some time as a Tory tradition, which balanced the cold and brilliant aristocracy of the Whigs. It lived on the legend of Trafalgar; the sense that insularity was independence; the sense that anomalies are as jolly as family jokes; the general sense that old salts are the salt of the earth. It still lives in some old songs about Nelson or Waterloo, which are vastly ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... was no very brilliant collection of literature. There was an old Greek Testament and the Eton Latin Grammar; a French pamphlet on the cavalry sword-exercise; an odd volume of Tom Jones with one half of its stiff leather cover hanging to it by a thread; Byron's Don Juan, printed in ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... brilliant point disappeared, the ivy darkened, and a wind arose and shook all its leaves, making them look cold and troubled; and to Elsie's ear came a low faint sound, as from a far-off bell. But close beside her—and she started and shivered at the sound—rose ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... that programming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art; there are lovely gems and brilliant coups hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever, by the very nature of the process. You can learn a lot about an individual just by reading through his code, even in hexadecimal. Mel was, I think, an ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... simply that Philippe's career was swift and brilliant and that, after a probationary term at Luneville and another at Chateauroux, he was appointed professor of history at Versailles. He then published, at a few months' interval, two remarkable books, which caused much heated controversy: The Idea of ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... greatest uneasiness seemed to peep at him out of the imminent impression that almost any acceptance of Paris might give one's authority away. It hung before him this morning, the vast bright Babylon, like some huge iridescent object, a jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be discriminated nor differences comfortably marked. It twinkled and trembled and melted together, and what seemed all surface one moment seemed all depth the next. It was a place of which, unmistakeably, Chad was fond; wherefore if he, Strether, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... it was half-way up, and now, for the first time, it was lifted to its full height and stood a broad oval disc against the background of the forest. The effect was strange. The hangar had been made brilliant by many lamps, and their united glare pouring from its top and illuminating not only the surrounding treetops but the broad face of this uplifted disc, roused in the awed spectator a thrill such as in mythological times might have greeted the sudden sight of ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... if fascinated by the brilliant little vision that had charmed his eyes; and not until an unconscionable time had elapsed did he seem able to tear himself away. When he had gone, Ethel expressed herself approvingly of ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a brilliant laugh. "I clean forgot the hull gist of the thing. Well, we're rich folks now—over thar' on Barren Ledge! That onery brother of mine, Richelieu, hez taken some of his specimens over to Jim Bradley ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... out a single word of either the Old or New Testament, even if they had then been translated from Latin into English; but all, from the poorest peasant or the meanest slave up to the greatest noble, could read the meaning of the Scripture histories painted in brilliant colors ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... vigorous thinking capacity was his chief trait. This sounds commonplace and uninteresting, but a more serviceable qualification could not have been given him. The truth is, that it was part of the good fortune of the country that the President was not a brilliant man. Moreover, he was cool, shrewd, dispassionate, and self-possessed, and was endowed really in an extraordinary degree with an intermingling of patience and courage, whereby he was enabled both to await and to endure results. Above all he was a masterful man; not all the time and in small ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... already at its height, and the hall was brilliant with youth and beauty, when the door was flung wide and Dotterine entered, making all the other maidens look pale and dim beside her. Their hopes faded as they gazed, but their mothers whispered together, saying, 'Surely this is ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... exaggeration. If by happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it is evident enough that this is impossible. A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments, or in some cases, and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is the occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this the philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life were as fully aware as those who taunt them. The happiness which they meant was not a life of rapture, ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... through the rain, attaching to its limpid threads those sharp, brilliant blades of light which justify the proverb "It rains halberds;" the young verdure of the Champs-Elysees, the clumps of dripping, rustling rhododendrons, the carriages drawn up in line on the avenue, the oilcloth capes of the coachmen, all the splendid accoutrements of the horses ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... course, a very magnetic man. His eyes are his most remarkable feature. They are very large, brilliant, and sparkling, and he rolls them in a manner most unusual. While he is always the king and the soldier, he can be genial and charming. One might expect a man in his position to be blase, but that, most ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... oracle—"My niece Rosa is the most artful woman. (You may haw! haw! haw! as much as you like. You have not found out her little game—I have.) What is the aim of all women? To be beloved by an unconscionable number of people. Well, she sets up for a simpleton, and so disarms all the brilliant people, and they love her. Everybody loves her. Just you put her down in a room with six clever women, and you will see who is the favorite. She looks as shallow as a pond, and she is as deep ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... exhibition-room, under various disguises, protesting aloud that the sight was better worth the money than anything they had beheld in all their lives, and urging the bystanders, with tears in their eyes, not to neglect such a brilliant gratification. Mrs Jarley sat in the pay-place, chinking silver moneys from noon till night, and solemnly calling upon the crowd to take notice that the price of admission was only sixpence, and that the departure of the whole collection, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... railway stations, and on their stands, the hackney cabmen, unconscious of what was being done for them, waited, patient as their horses. But since everybody was making this special effort, an exceptionally large, exclusive, and brilliant company reassembled at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Goanese were given leave to march with the band twice a day for the sake of exercise. They refused indignantly. The commandant flew into the rage that is the birthright of all German officials, but suddenly checked himself; he had a brilliant idea. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... bright, and her movements indicate elasticity and strength. She is a native of Neufchatel, Switzerland, and speaks English with a little difficulty, but whenever the reporter's English was a little hard for her a very pretty girl with brilliant eyes and crinkly jet-black hair, who subsequently proved to be a daughter of Mrs. Jeannot, came to the rescue. With the girl's occasional aid, the old ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... yet joined him when (November 1), with only three cruisers and one armed merchantman, he attacked them off Coronel on the coast of Chili; though they were very hard to see, being against the mountains, while his own ships were clearly outlined against a brilliant sunset. Ordering the armed merchantman away he began the fight between the armoured cruisers: Good Hope and Monmouth against Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The German ships were newer, faster, ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... used as stores and homes by the traders, appeared, and the steamer anchored opposite Duke Town. It lay on the right among swamps in a receding hollow of the cliff: a collection of mud-dwellings thatched with palm leaf, slovenly and sordid, and broiling in the hot rays of a brilliant sun. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... after another rolled up; the marquise, dressed in princely style, received her guests in the fairy-like parlors, and soon a brilliant assembly ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... you," said the burglar as if he had been asked to remove his hat, and with his left hand he slipped it off. The face that met Geoffrey's interested gaze was thin, yet ruddy, and tanned by exposure so that his very light brilliant eyes flared oddly in so dark a surrounding. Above, his sandy hair, which had receded somewhat from his forehead, curled up from his temples like a baby's. His upper lip was long and with a pleasant mouth gave his face an expression of humour. His ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... extent it has taken place, under what conditions and laws it has been carried out, and how far it may be regarded as merely auxiliary and supplemental to some deeper law of change and progress, are questions to which, in spite of the brilliant generalisations of Darwin, no satisfactory answer can as yet be given. In the successful solution of this problem—if soluble with the materials available to our hands—will lie the greatest triumph that Palaeontology can hope to attain; ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... neither a disappointed nor an unhappy man. He might have attained a higher development and more brilliant and full life, but that was all; and how few men are there of whom this could not be said! He had become Mr. Tatham of Tatham's Cross, as well as Q.C. and M.P., a county gentleman of modest but effective standing, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the Coropuna "devils" were now appearing to Indians "in the form of" Christians! Anyhow the Indians said that on top of Coropuna there was a delightful, warm paradise containing beautiful flowers, luscious fruits, parrots of brilliant plumage, macaws, and even monkeys, those faithful denizens of hot climates. The souls of the departed stop to rest and enjoy themselves in this charming spot on their upward flight. Like most primitive people who live ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... family of his father that we find indications of those especial qualities of vigour, of courage, of the generous and tolerant outlook of the well-born man of the world, that characterise Henry Fielding. And it is also in these Fielding ancestors that something of the reputed wildness of their brilliant kinsman may be detected. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... not unexcited by the prospect. She would be the mistress of the most splendid place in West Tennessee. She secretly aspired to be a brilliant hostess. She could remember when the doors of Belle Plain were open to whoever had the least claim to distinction—statesmen and speculators in land; men who were promoting those great schemes of improvement, canals and railroads; hard-featured ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... a ridge we slackened speed and my fellow-traveller lifted her veil and asked exultantly what those two splendid stars were that overhung yonder fringe of woods so low and so close to each other. The less brilliant one, I said, the red one, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... orders to you, my darling," I answered, gazing on her face, so brilliant with excitement; "and that is, that you come in at once, with that worrisome cough of yours; and sit by the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... eloquence. The thought in itself does not bear a rigorous analysis; but do not think that the lustrous beauty of the language is only a brilliant veil to what in itself is absurd. We have arrived at darkness, but it is at darkness visible; the cloud is lighted up by the ray that issues from it. Our goodness, finite creatures as we are, is so much the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... N. C. O. and officer, I never heard a single criticism of the government for the Gallipoli business. There is no man who was on the Peninsula who does not admire General Sir Ian Hamilton, and most of the officers believe that Britain has never produced a more brilliant general. That the expedition failed was not the fault of the commander-in-chief nor of the troops. And, anyway, we Australians are good enough sports to realize that there must be blunders here and there, and we're quite ready ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... organisms. He enclosed various substances in carefully sealed watch crystals from which the air was excluded, and found that animalculi appeared in the substance, and argued from this that they developed spontaneously. In 1769, Spallanzani, a skilled experimental physiologist, in a brilliant series of experiments showed the imperfect character of Needham's work and the fallacy of his conclusions. Spallanzani placed fluids, which easily became putrid, in glass tubes, which he then hermetically sealed and boiled. He found that the fluid remained clear and unchanged; if, however, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... adding another link to the important chain of evidence against the phlogiston theory. Cavendish is one of the most eccentric figures in the history of science, being widely known in his own time for his immense wealth and brilliant intellect, and also for his peculiarities and his morbid sensibility, which made him dread society, and probably did much in determining his career. Fortunately for him, and incidentally for the cause of science, he was able to pursue ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... nieces of the Dowager Lady Dalrymple. Another niece also accompanied them, who was a cousin of the two sisters. This was Miss Ethel Orne, a young lady who had flourished through a London season, and had refused any number of brilliant offers. She was a brunette, with most wonderful dark eyes, figure of perfect grace, and an expression of grave self-poise that awed the butterflies of fashion, but offered an irresistible attraction to people of sense, intellect, intelligence, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... All horrent with projected spears. Whose polished points before them shine, From flank to flank, one brilliant line, Bright as the breakers' splendours run Along ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various |
