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Illuminating   Listen
adjective
Illuminating  adj.  Giving or producing light; used for illumination.
Illuminating gas. See Gas, n., 2 (a).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Illuminating" Quotes from Famous Books



... illuminating than the painful way in which many people cultivate a knowledge of public affairs because they have a conscience and wish to do a citizen's duty. Having read a number of articles on the tariff and ploughed through the metaphysics of the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... essayed a comparison between the value of acetylene and other illuminants on the basis of "illuminating effect" instead of on the misleading basis of pure "illuminating power," a distinction which they hope and believe will do much to clear up the misconceptions existing on the subject. Tables are included, for the first time (it is ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... various species of turtle, the crocodile, and the pelican, have a similar reputation. It is said to be of a very penetrating nature, and, owing to this property, it is highly prized for preserving leather, such as harness, &c. The illuminating powers of this oil are said to be very high." ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... camp or town in which this motley assemblage dwelt from one year's end to the other, far from civilization, was illuminating to the two sea-faring men. It must be confessed, however, that a sound reluctance to swallow the tale without the proverbial grain of salt caused them to watch closely for the slightest sign that might reveal to them the always-to-be expected ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... ray of hope illuminating his drawn countenance, Cyril carefully laid the baby down and picked up the other. Almost confidently now he began the jouncing and ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... and terrible winter, so comfortable, sweet, and desirable and welcome to the poor birds and beasts of the field, as this day will be to the church of God. Darkness! it was the plague of Egypt; it is an empty, forlorn, desolate, solitary, and discomforting state. Wherefore light, even the illuminating grace of God, especially in the measure that it shall be communicated unto us at that day, it must needs be precious. In light there is warmth and pleasure. It is by the light of the sun that the whole universe ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... time, but it isn't," went on Andy in that quiet voice. "Look, it's seven o'clock," and he held out his watch, illuminating it with ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... him seven miles to work out this simple problem may seem ridiculous. Possibly it is. In any case it is highly illuminating, for it shows that the love which he bore Miss ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... was a compound turbine, reciprocating engines having proved extravagant in fuel. There were both a high and a low pressure turbine on the same shaft, which also drove the dynamo for the searchlight and the lamp illuminating the compass, and for igniting the explosive mixture. By means of an eccentric, moreover, the shaft worked a pump for compressing the mixture of hot air and petrol before ignition, the air being heated by ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... lest I should be too happy. Frank's wonderful face grew delicately flushed. The room resounded with discreet chatter, and the tinkle of glass and silver and porcelain. The upper part of it remained in shadow, but every table was a centre of rosy light, illuminating faces and jewels and napery. And in my sweet illusion I thought that every face had found the secret of joy, and that even the old had preserved it. Pleasure reigned. Pleasure was the sole goddess. And how satisfying ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... them again in the dim, musty old library, illuminating the scene extravagantly with five candles. Three sides of the room were lined with book-shelves, reaching nearly to the ceiling. The girls surveyed the bewildering rows of ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... lasts there is a great light in the firmament in which all may walk in security, hope, and happiness. It is a light reaching far down the depths of futurity cheering and guiding the steps of our children. It is a light shining to the remotest corner of the earth—raising up the down-trodden and illuminating the homes of the victims of oppression. But let that light be now eclipsed, go out in blood and darkness, and the hopes of mankind ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... 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 Vulcan's smithy ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... there was only the glimmer of night lights in red glasses, and now and then all through the night matches were lighted, illuminating the room for a second, followed by the glowing end of a cigarette shining like a star ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... reflected rays from the cornea, the front of the lens and the back, and can much more easily detect any cloudiness, opacity, or lack of transparency. The examination can be made much more satisfactory by placing the horse in a dark chamber and illuminating the eye by a lamp placed forward and outward from the eye which is to be examined. Any cloudiness is thus easily detected, and any doubt may be resolved by moving the lamp so that the image of the flame may be passed in succession over the whole surface of the transparent cornea and of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... led her through a series of spiteful anecdotes bearing on her own social mishaps and rebuffs, which were none the less illuminating because of the teller's anxious effort to give them a dignified and disinterested air. Then, when neither she nor her plight were any longer amusing, he took his leave, exchanging another skirmishing word or two on the staircase with Lady Selina, who it appeared was "going on" as he was, and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... bought a quantity of David's orange-coloured wincey, and finding that it wore like iron, wished to order more. She used the word 'reproduce' in her telegram, as there was one pattern and one colour she specially liked. Perhaps the context was not illuminating, but at any rate the word 'reproduce' was not in David's vocabulary, and putting back his spectacles he told me his difficulty in deciphering the exact meaning of his fine-lady patron. He called at the Free Kirk manse,—the meenister was no' at hame; then to the library,—it was ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... compatriots with intellectual laziness, but they are not so lazy as to leave him to do their thinking for them. That he sometimes—and oftener in the past than now—says illuminating things is true, but firm reliance cannot be placed upon his freakish mental processes, exemplified in his writings about the war. He has played with effect the part of jester to the British public, but when, as now, his jests are empty ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... be asked what the difference is between presumption or effrontery and the poise that we have in mind, this simple illustration should be illuminating. ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... mind of the unfortunate guide. Hank, though familiar with the legend in its general outline, obviously did not welcome the turn the conversation had taken. He contributed little, though that little was illuminating. For he admitted that a story ran over all this section of country to the effect that several Indians had "seen the Wendigo" along the shores of Fifty Island Water in the "fall" of last year, and that this was the true reason of Defago's disinclination to hunt ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... written by the monks, generally on parchment or vellum, and beautifully illuminated with a border round every page, in brilliant colours intermixed with gold. In every monastery some of the monks were always employed in making copies of the manuscripts their libraries contained, and others in illuminating them; but these written books were so expensive that none but very rich people could afford to buy them. Lady Clifford, however, possessed a few of these valuable works, and was intending that her son, who was now in his seventh ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... And what do you think? He said he once did the same to my mother! ... No, Lin, Dad'd never kill you for anything except a fury about horses. All the fights he ever had were over horse deals. The two men—he—he—" Lucy faltered and her shudder was illuminating to Slone. "Both of ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... determined to fulfil the sphere of his offence. He signed to Innes (whom he had just fined, and who just impeached his ruling) to succeed him in the chair, stepped down from the platform, and took his place by the chimney-piece, the shine of many wax tapers from above illuminating his pale face, the glow of the great red fire relieving from behind his slim figure. He had to propose, as an amendment to the next subject in the case-book, "Whether capital punishment be consistent with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... discover the illuminating thoughts which came to the minds of these men; and, on the other hand, it is amusing to see how recklessly they launched themselves on boundless seas when they were unprovided with chart and compass. They ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... Professor Du Bois at Hull-House on a Lincoln's birthday, with apparently no consciousness of that race difference which color seems to accentuate so absurdly, and upon my return from various conferences held in the interest of "the advancement of colored people," I have had many illuminating conversations with my ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... impossible for so true a lover of Vergil as Silius. The Homeric method of necromancy is wisely preferred, and the Sibyl reveals the past and future of Rome as the spirits pass before them. But there are no illuminating flashes of imagination; the best feature of the episode is an uninspired and frigid appropriateness. Nothing serves better than the failure of Silius to show at once the daring and the genius of Vergil, when he ransacked the ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... whole force of the Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no such person, of course,) than say the best things I might by any chance find myself capable of saying. Of course, if I come across a real thinker, a suggestive, acute, illuminating, informing talker, I enjoy the luxury of sitting still for a while as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... harmful ones—because unity is strength. There are many grains of good to be got out of all new ethical teachings, if only they can be sifted by common sense. The unfortunate part is, that very often it is only the faddists who expound them, and they go off at a tangent. One reads several pages of illuminating matter, and then, perhaps, one comes upon a chapter devoted to proving that mankind must train itself to live upon nuts or uncooked vegetables! Or that the only way to learn concentration is for the pupil to school himself mentally to stare for so many minutes at ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn

... unprotected woodwork. Electric bells, when properly put up and cared for, are a great convenience in a house; but when they don't work, they are about as aggravating as the law allows. Cheap pushbuttons cause a great deal of annoyance. Silver-plated faucets and trimmings blacken with illuminating and sewer gases. Nickel-plating is perhaps a less pleasing white, but is cheaper and does not discolor readily. Windows are in most respects a great blessing; but there may be too much of a good thing. It is unreasonable to expect that one grate or stove ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... the fire, his shadow looming in gigantic proportions on the white canopy of a covered wagon. Fitful gusts of wind fretted the blaze; it roared and crackled and sputtered, now illuminating the still forms, then enveloping them in fantastic obscurity. Hare shivered, perhaps from the cold air, perhaps from growing dread. Westward lay the desert, an impenetrable black void; in front, the gloomy mountain wall lifted jagged peaks close to the stars; to the right ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... not find it among the Teutons. There is greater evidence of discrepancies than of agreement in all the European religions, but these have not been dwelt upon by scholars. Professor York Powell, in one of his illuminating studies on Teutonic heathendom, is the only authority I know of who argues against the idea of a systematised religion. "It is important that we should at once throw aside the idea that there was any system, any ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... members of the Stricte Observance, since Chefdebien was a member of this Order, in which he bore the title of "Eques a Capite Galeato." The correspondence that passed between Chefdebien and Salvalette de Langes, recently discovered and published in France, is one of the most illuminating records of the masonic ramifications in existence before the Revolution ever brought to light.[441] To judge by the tone of these letters, the leaders of the Rit Primitif would appear to have been law-abiding and loyal gentlemen devoted to the Catholic religion, yet in ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... that space forbids any further incorporation of Doctor Urquhart's very illuminating note at this place. It may appear at some time as a separate essay ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... not so easily disposed of. It is in fact so difficult of acceptance by some persons that we must make very plain its absolute validity. Furthermore, its elucidation will bring forth many illuminating facts that will give you an entirely new conception of the mind ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton

... stump-studded lands as along the railway are not encountered. Further on are the abrupt precipices of the Pacific slope, and above them rises the high volcano of Colima with its everlasting crest of smoke, breaking in leaden spirals against the sky by day, and illuminating the night scenery of haciendas and palm groves with its fitful flames. Colima is the only active Mexican ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... the Father, alone unbegotten and invisible; and in His only begotten Son, our Lord and God, the fashioner and maker of all creation, not having any one like him—therefore there is one God of all, who, in our opinion, is God—and there is one Holy Spirit, the illuminating and sanctifying power—as Christ said to his apostles for correction, "Behold I send the promise of my Father to you, but remain ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be indued with power from on high"; and again, "And ye shall receive ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... accordance with his engagement, he continued the story of the great storm in Hili-li; "and hastened on toward his home. Arrived there, he went directly to the cellar, where he found the three large lamps alight, brilliantly illuminating and comfortably warming the apartment; but Lilama was missing, though he found there one of her maids. This girl told Pym that Lilama had, some four hours earlier, taken with her her maid Ixza, and hastened from the house. Questioned closely, she said that after Pym had gone, Lilama ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... Yet his fellow-pilgrim struck him as on the whole but scantly devilish and as still less occupied with the prefigurement of so plain a man's emotions. Indeed he threw a glamour of romance over Nick; tossed off toward him such illuminating yet mystifying references that they operated quite as a bait to curiosity, invested with amusement the view of the possible, any wish to follow out the chain of events. He learned from Gabriel that Nick was still away, and he then felt he could almost submit to instruction, to initiation. The loose ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... towards the surface of Ganymede she crossed his northern pole, and the nearer they got the plainer it became that a light very like the terrestrial Aurora was playing about it, illuminating the thin, yellow clouds with a bluish-violet light, which made magnificent contrasts ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... about a curve in the road her headlights for a brief instant aiding the moon in garishly illuminating a scene to be remembered. Blenham had turned in his saddle, startled perhaps by the sound of the oncoming car or by the gleam of the headlights; his uplifted quirt fell heavily upon the sides of his running horse; rose and fell again upon the rump of Temple's mount, and the two men, ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... In one illuminating passage Chesterton defends what seems at first sight merely his own habit of getting dates and events in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... he believed Jan-an had voiced the words, but they had been spoken days ago by Mary-Clare during one of those illuminating talks of theirs and here were some old letters of the doctor's. Were these Mary-Clare's letters? Why were they ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... anniversaries. All the young people were encouraged to participate in the effort to make these rallying days, occasions of special instruction and delight. A number of pretty, and sometimes elaborate, designs were devised to add their illuminating effect to the exercises. Two of these designs, a temple and an arch, both having for their object, a visible representation of the divinely appointed elements of a good character, according to the apostle Peter, and ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... stern and anxious moderns who had made England's middle-class the fashion, occasionally drew a well-bred and attractive man from life....She turned to him with a smile that banished the somber ironic expression of her face, illuminating it as if the drooping spirit within had suddenly lit a torch and held it behind ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... and hurled in every direction and punctured like a sieve with nearly a hundred great circular holes. Through these gaps we could see clearly a large region of the planet's surface, with many airships floating above it, and the blaze of innumerable electric lights illuminating it. The Martians had created an artificial ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... in his illuminating criticism of Taine, writes that the journals are a very important source of the history of the French Revolution, provided they are revised and checked by one another, the statement seems in accordance with the canons of historical writing; and when he blames Taine for using two journals only ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... shortcomings are slurred over by the enthusiastic critics of Scandinavia, yet they call for indulgence. The fact is that Lady Inger is a brilliant piece of romantic extravagance, which is extremely interesting in illuminating the evolution of Ibsen's genius, and particularly as showing him in the act of emancipating himself from Danish traditions, but which has little positive value ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... Seccombe's manual of English literary history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed criticism. Little can be said, except that everything is just as it ought to be: the arrangement perfect, the length of the notices justly proportioned, the literary judgements sound and illuminating; while the main purpose of conveying information is kept so steadily in view that, while the book is worthy of a place in the library, the student could desire no better guide for ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... had been first tried. By her command, accordingly, the archbishop of Seville, Cardinal Mendoza, drew up a catechism exhibiting the different points of the Catholic faith, and instructed the clergy throughout his diocese to spare no pains in illuminating the benighted Israelites, by means of friendly exhortation and a candid exposition of the true principles of Christianity. [28] How far the spirit of these injunctions was complied with, amid the excitement then prevailing, may be reasonably doubted. There could ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... boast to lose no favourable opportunity, and taking wings like a dragon, I have subdued the east, chastised the west, punished the south, and smitten the north. Speedy and great success has attended my career, which has been like the rising sun illuminating ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... o'clock in the evening the anchor was lifted and we sailed by the Czar's palace, which was brilliantly lighted, and amid the booming of cannon, and the shooting of rockets, and a blue light illuminating our ship we bade farewell to a scene which I shall treasure as one of the ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold

... some drowsy old brother used to read the lives of saints to the monks eating below. We walked over the graves of abbots, and through the scriptorium, which reminded me of the exquisite scene in the Golden Legend, of the old monk in the scriptorium busily illuminating ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... limits, duplicated in historical processes, and it is illuminating at least to see wherein men failed and wherein they succeeded in the things they set themselves to do. The history of labor legislation certainly testifies to the effectiveness of "collective bargaining" in securing improved labor ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... a bright parting light over Alton Wood, illuminating the gray lichens that clung to the rugged trunks of the old oak trees, and shining on the smoother bark of the graceful beech, with that sidelong light that, towards evening, gives an especial charm to woodland scenery. The long shadows ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... anything taking place that might not occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie. Why he imposes this hard condition on himself, and "drags at each remove a lengthening chain" of his own forging he can explain in ten thick volumes without illuminating by so much as a candle's ray the black profound of his own ignorance of the matter. There are great novels, for great writers have "laid waste their powers" to write them, but it remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... immediately; no food has reached us to-day. Urgently want illuminating cartridges and hand grenades. Is the hospital corps never coming ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... you have chosen to imagine your caterer for the good things of fashionable life in London, you may discern to your dismay that a lord—a real lord, alive and kicking, has made a Bude-light of himself, illuminating the shadows of your ignorance: you may read a preparatory memoir, informing you how these ideas of ours were collected in a coach and four, and transmitted to paper in a study overlooking the Green Park; with paper velvet-like, and golden pen ruby-headed, upon rose-wood desk ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... first session the Regents of the future University of Michigan. Unfortunately we do not know the particulars of this meeting; not even in what country lawyer's office or public hall it was held; still less are we able to profit from any of the illuminating details or personal comments a modern observer would have given us. Our knowledge of the character of the men, and the official report of what they did, is all we have to reveal the spirit in which they set ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... a flood of new ideas in Sir Richmond's mind. "This is illuminating," he said. "You dislike Lake acutely. You always ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... described as "one that shone out at once over Provence and all the south of Europe, like an electric flash in the midst of profound darkness, illuminating all things with the splendor of ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... strange design. And we had reason to believe it was controlled by radio. I was puzzled at the time. I didn't think of radio controls. But your remarks about the officers at Massachusetts Tech. were illuminating. I see now that this plane must ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... consideration—the light which they throw upon the characters; and the characters themselves appear to us from only a very few carefully chosen points of view. The narrowed and selective nature of Moliere's treatment of character presents an illuminating contrast when compared with the elaborately detailed method of such a master of the romantic style as Shakespeare. The English dramatist shows his persons to us in the round; innumerable facets flash out quality after quality; the subtlest and most elusive shades of ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... town with the car's headlights illuminating the road, Steele Weir blessed the drizzling mist that dampened the dust so as to leave a tire's imprint. Almost at once he picked up the track, for not more than twenty or twenty-five minutes had elapsed since Sorenson's flight and not even a horseman ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... involves the submission of questions to pupils of a particular age or grade, collecting and classifying their answers, and basing conclusions upon these. Much work in this direction has been done in recent years by certain educators, and much illuminating and more or less useful material has been collected. A good deal of light has been thrown upon the apperceptive material that children have possession of by noting their answers to such questions as: "Have you ever seen the stars? A robin? A pig? Where does milk come from? Where do potatoes come ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... fellow!" said the bishop, twisting the ear of his secretary as he motioned to the space between the island and the suburb of Saint-Etienne which the last gleams of the setting sun were illuminating, and on which the young abbe's eyes were fixed. "That is the place where justice should have ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... brief intervals that the illumination might almost be said to be continuous; while the deep, hollow rumble of the thunder might very well have been mistaken for the booming of a distant cannonade. The effect of the incessant flicker of the lightning was very weird; the tremulous greenish-blue glare illuminating the ponderous masses and contorted shapes of the black clouds overhead, the surface of the ink-black sea around us, the distant proas, and the hull, spars, sails, and rigging of the barque, with the moving figures aloft and at the jib-boom end, and suffusing ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... although working in another plane, it is governed by similar laws and gives rise to similar results; or falling leaves are a symbol of human mortality, because they are examples of the same law which operates through all manifestation of life. Some of the most illuminating notes ever written on the nature of symbolism are in a short paper by R. L. Nettleship,[2] where he defines true mysticism as "the consciousness that everything which we experience, every 'fact,' is an element and only an element in 'the fact'; i.e. that, in being what it is, it is ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... generated somewhere in the far west, and aided by the prevailing trade winds had swept relentlessly across the country, reaching the city at a most unusual time. It had not come unheralded, however, for the sun of yesterday had gone down a blazing red, illuminating the sky like rays from a mighty furnace, and tinging the evening landscape with the reddish and purplish hues of an Indian summer. And what a blanket of humidity accompanied it! Like a cloak it settled down upon the land, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... photograph to an inexperienced eye is not a very illuminating thing; one makes our roads, blurs of wood, and rather vague buildings. But the examiner has an eye that has been in training; he is a picked man; he has at hand yesterday's photographs and last week's photographs, marked maps ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... illuminating, and Valentine often watched the page grow under his clever hand. How beautiful would then be the gospel story in brightly-coloured letters, with dainty flowers, bright-winged butterflies, and downy, nestling ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... that enables us to live as He lived. Also He gave us the point of view from which to estimate life. The writer of the Epistles to the Hebrews uses a striking phrase when he speaks of "the power of an endless life." Is not that an illuminating phrase when we think of our relation to our Lord? His revelation of the meaning of human life has brought to us the vision of what that life may become and the power to attain that end. The fact of our endlessness at once puts a certain order into life. Things, interests, occupations fall ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... from which motives arise and storms of emotion, which acts and reacts constantly and in untraceable way with my conscious mind. And that consciousness itself hangs and drifts about the region where the inner world and the outer world meet, much as a patch of limelight drifts about the stage, illuminating, affecting, following no manifest law except that usually it centres upon the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... tapers illuminating the altar which enclosed St. Gall's mortal remains was an instantaneous cure for toothache, diseased eyes, and total deafness; a vase used by the martyred Willabrod for bathing thrice a year, still holding its partially solidified water by divine ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... there was no one, either rich or poor, who did not take delight in illuminating his house or his garret. It was only a short time after his arrival at Paris that the First Consul learned of the death of General Kleber. The poniard of Suleyman had slain this great captain the same day that the cannon of Marengo laid low another hero of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... in New York City began in 1900. It seemed that if the Zoological Society did not take up the matter, the slaughter would continue indefinitely. The white man's burden was taken up; and the story of the war is rather illuminating. Mr. G.O. Shields, President of the League of American Sportsmen, quickly became interested in the matter, and entered actively into the campaign. For months unnumbered, he spent every Sunday patroling the woods and thickets of northern New York and Westchester county, usually accompanied by John ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... and he took occasion in conveying his congratulations to his friend, to make some illuminating reflections upon the great event. 'MY policy throughout,' he wrote, 'was never to propose you DIRECTLY to the Pope, but, to make others do so, so that both you and I can always say that it was not I who induced ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... inconvenience. When the hut gets too warm and close even for Esquimaux, the seal gut is folded back and the outer air rushes in to the great refreshment of the occupants; when the hut is cool enough the gut is replaced. A skylight is far and away the best method of illuminating any single-story structure, and this membrane is remarkably translucent, while the snow that falls or frost that forms upon such a skylight is quickly removed by beating the hand upon the drum-like surface. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... to the gangway (for it was now very dark), when, in an instant, every one of the electric lights in the ship flashed out at their fullest brightness, brilliantly illuminating the deck, and turning night into day for fully a mile round, and, under the clear steely radiance thus unexpectedly furnished him, the king slowly made his way to the ground, mounted his horse in silence, and galloped ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... Lord wanted Cornelius to arise and mount a higher plane in the life of righteousness: a high plane of holy intelligence and knowledge respecting himself and his people. The Holy Ghost falling upon him and the rest brought with it the illuminating power, in verification of the Lord's words: "The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things." This inflowing power, teaching, quickening, regenerating the soul, is what Jesus means by a man's being born of the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... over a mental ice pond. She always seemed to leave a subject open to more than one interpretation and by the lifting of Markham's eyebrows or the raising of his eyes she chose her footing. The raising of his keen eyes under the shaggy brows was very disconcerting and illuminating. ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... high in the heavens. Lighting up the tower of the cathedral, illuminating its pinnacles, glittering through the elm trees, bringing forth into view even the dark old ivy on the prebendal houses. A fair night—all too fair for the game that was going to be played ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... bravely and steadfastly. "No. If you know so much, you know also why I took it, and why I gave it to her." And then, the radiance of unselfish love illuminating her pallid face, "I would do it again were it to do," she said. "And again, and yet again! For you, I have done you wrong; I have robbed you, and you may punish me. I must bear it. But as to him," pointing to Messer Blondel, "I am innocent! Innocent," she repeated firmly. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... it against that of this new critic. It need only be said that he realizes, as does Mr. Van Doren, the singularity of Peacock's genius; that, though neither has succeeded in showing precisely why it is unique, the English critic has brought forward some highly illuminating suggestions; and that reduction by a half would be the greatest improvement that either ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... a favorite material for lamps, as it was for all other domestic utensils. It was specially in favor for the lamps for whale oil and the "Porter's fluid," that preceded our present illuminating medium, petroleum. A rare form is the pewter lamp here shown. It is in the collection of ancient lamps, lanterns, candlesticks, etc., owned by Mrs. Samuel Bowne Duryea, of Brooklyn. It came from a Salem home, where it was used as a house-lantern. With its clear bull's-eyes of unusually pure ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... the inanimate things to surrender their deep meaning. Ought this hill-slope to be questioned? Or that forest? Or the houses of this hamlet? Or was it among the insignificant phrases spoken by that peasant yonder that he might hope to gather the one little illuminating word? ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... grass all around them became brilliantly lighted, as if from a thousand tiny electric lamps. Twinkle looked closely, and saw that a vast number of fireflies had formed a circle around them, and were illuminating the ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

... blazed, and the northern sky was red with a lurid light. There, too, higher up, the moon was shining overhead, the sky was gleaming with stars; and all over the heavens there shone the lustre of the aurora australis, brighter than any I had ever seen—surpassing the moon and illuminating all. It lighted up the haggard faces of the devils around me, and it again seemed to me as though I had died and gone to the land of woe—an iron land, a land of despair, with lurid fires all ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... "But," says the latter, whose narrative of his friend's last illness is marked by a deep and reserved tenderness that does him much honour, "this last visit to Sheffield Place became far different from any he had ever made before. That ready, cheerful, various and illuminating conversation which we had before admired in him, was not always to be found in the library or the drawing-room. He moved with difficulty, and retired from company sooner than he had been used to do. On the 23rd of December his appetite began to fail him. He observed to me ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... 1912, Dr J. C. Bose, who had gone to Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, on a holiday trip, gave an illuminating discourse on ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... most of them of the open country, and all of them with a strikingly advertising coloration, are interesting because of their beauty and their habits. They are also interesting because they offer such illuminating examples of the truth that many of the most common and successful birds not merely lack a concealing coloration, but possess a coloration which is in the highest degree revealing. The coloration and the habits of most of these birds are such ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... the Hebrew poet opens, so to speak, the floodgates of his heart, and pours forth the stream of his thoughts and emotions just as they have sprung into being there. Because he is under the sanctifying and illuminating influence of the divine Spirit, they are high and holy thoughts. Because they come forth in their primitive form, they are natural and fresh; and for this reason the lapse of ages does not diminish their power ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... light upon them that we are aware of the light; but they are never the same. Yet the ray has a seeming identity, though even the very ripples of light that cause it are themselves ever changing, ever renewed. Could not the soul be such a ray, illuminating the atoms that pass through it, and itself a ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... wonders at once attracted universal attention. The spiritual authorities were not slow to detect their tendency, as endangering the doctrine that the universe was made for man. In the creation of myriads of stars, hitherto invisible, there must surely have been some other motive than that of illuminating the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... extraordinary emphasis to sentences already sufficiently forcible. We sometimes encounter extravagant varieties of type, humorously intended, but the use of which seems a game hardly worth Mr. Reade's candle, which certainly possesses enough illuminating power of its own, without seeking additional refulgence by such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... considering matters exceedingly earnestly all the while Miss Tibbutt had been talking to her, and she had come to one very definite conclusion. She felt perfectly certain now, that it would ease the situation considerably if Pia knew who this Michael Field really was. It had come to her in an illuminating flash, that the same reason which had caused him to hide his identity, was responsible for his odd behaviour towards Pia. Now, of course, if Pia could see some even possible reason and excuse for the ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... illuminating moment when Martin regarded the other's passion-heated countenance, he beheld something that soothed his rage, checked his panic, and made his heart suddenly swell with pride and tenderness for his ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... but the summit of the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why the torch of Europe, that is to say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it on to Italy, who handed it on to France. Divine, illuminating ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... startled wonder, striving to take in all the details of the strange scene, the misty, brooding vapour lifted still further, and a patch of sky cleared overhead. Through this opening the pale moon shone down, illuminating the landscape with her sickly green light; but she also threw such deep shadows that everything looked weird and unreal, the perspective being dwarfed here and magnified there to so great an extent that the ship's masts appeared ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... instrument, because of the danger to the patient of a possible "grounding" of the circuit during the extensive moist contact of a metallic endoscopic tube in the mediastinum. The battery shown in Fig. 8 should be used. The most frequent cause of trouble is the mistake of over-illuminating the lamps. The lamp should not be over-illuminated to the dazzling whiteness usually used in flash lights. Excessive illumination alters the proper perception of the coloring of the mucosa, besides shortening the life of the lamps. The proper degree ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... illuminate. But as it had no claim on Thee for a life, which could be enlightened, so neither now that it was, had it any, to be enlightened. For neither could its formless estate be pleasing unto Thee, unless it became light, and that not by existing simply, but by beholding the illuminating light, and cleaving to it; so that, that it lived, and lived happily, it owes to nothing but Thy grace, being turned by a better change unto That which cannot be changed into worse or better; which Thou alone art, because Thou alone simply art; unto Thee it being not one thing ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... social perspective and sanity of judgment come only from contact with social experience; that such contact is the surest corrective of opinions concerning the social order, and concerning efforts, however humble, for its improvement. Indeed, it is a consciousness of the illuminating and dynamic value of this wider and more thorough human experience which explains in no small degree that new curiosity regarding human life which has more of a moral basis than ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... perusing this illuminating anecdote, eight bells sounded, and, from the commotion overhead, the watch changed. A little later the companion-way door slammed open and shut, and Captain Stryker—or Stranger; whichever you please—fell down, rather than descended, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance



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