"Torch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love, her passionate desire of elevating the soul of Sardanapalus, so as to justify her devotion to him, the earnest yet sweet severity that reigned over her gentlest qualities, showing her faithful and fearless, capable of sustaining with, a firm hand the torch that was to consume on the sacred pile (according to her religion) both Assyrian and Greek; all these combinations are the result of the purest sentiments, the noblest art. The last words of Myrrha on the funereal pyre are in good keeping with the grand conception ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... between the Greek and the Christian idea of death. It is strikingly presented in a visible form on a fine antique sarcophagus in the gallery of Florence, which exhibits, in relief, the whole series of ceremonies attending a wedding in ancient times, from the formal offer to the evening when Hymen's torch lights the happy couple home. Compare with that the Christian coffin, draped in mournful black and surmounted with a crucifix! How much significance there is in these two ways of finding comfort in death. They are opposed to each other, but ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... further window. Outside the rain was pattering and there was absolutely no light. In the pocket of her raincoat Nan had slipped the electric torch she had brought from home, something of which Aunt Kate cordially approved, and was always begging Uncle Henry to buy ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... attended with comrades or rivals, though thou comest in peace yet thy object is hostile:—for one single moment that my mistress associated with a rival, it went well-nigh to slay me with jealousy. Smiling, she replied: "O Sa'di! I am the torch of the assembly; what is it to me ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... contemptuously at the captive, and motioned the men to bring a burning stick from the fire. Several at once hastened to obey, tumbling over one another in their eagerness. One, more active than the rest, extricated himself, seized a flaming torch, and rushed toward the prisoner. He had almost reached him, and Reynolds felt that the moment of doom had arrived. But just at this critical instant a peculiar noise fell upon his ears, and he listened intently. Then his heart bounded with hope, for it was the sound of galloping horses. His ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... frogs are croaking, Kindle but a torch's fire; Ha! how soon they all are silent; Thus Truth ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... wail of the men at the wells was as near to the voice of Nature as the sighing of wind, or the breaking of waves which has never ceased since the world began. Sometimes the horizon was opal, sometimes it throbbed with azure fire, or blazed ruby red, as the torch of sunset swept west and east before the emerald darkness fell. When our Enchantress landed, great flocks of kites, like in form and wing to the sacred vulture of Egypt, flew to welcome us with swoopings of wide purple wings. Their shadows on the water were like passing ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... with Henry's been entwined, And love's soft voice had waked the sacred blaze Of Hymen's altar; while, with him combined, His cherub train prepared the torch to raise: ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... has once charmed them into order and concert? Man has but to learn Nature's language and obey her voice, and she clothes him with plenipotence. The mad warring of her forces turns to rational speech and music when he holds the torch of reason before them and makes it shine full in their faces. Let him but set himself steadfastly to understand and observe her laws, and her mighty energies hasten to wait upon him, as docile to his ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... or touches the curtain produces a sort of earthquake, which has a double effect. The sky is made from certain bluish rags suspended from poles or from cords, as linen may be seen hung out to dry in any washerwoman's yard. The sun (for it is seen here sometimes) is a lighted torch in a lantern. The cars of the gods and goddesses are composed of four rafters, squared and hung on a thick rope in the form of a swing or seesaw; between the rafters is a cross-plank on which the god sits down, and in front hangs a piece of coarse ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... up his residence with his chum. It was shortly after midnight that Ned was awakened by hearing someone prowling about his room. At first he thought it was Tom, for the shorter way to the bath lay through Ned's apartment, but when the lad caught the flash of a pocket electric torch he knew it could not ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... the carriage and made her way hastily into the tent which had already been pitched for her. The doctor lighted his torch and set his stock of goods in order while David, obeying his directions, began to move among the people to study their habits. Elbowing his way here and there, he contemplated the crowd in the light of the quack's philosophy, and as he did ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... redoubtable Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. When the adventure was over, Don Quixote questioned his squire on this name, and Sancho replied, "I have been staring upon you this pretty while by the light of that unlucky priest's torch, and may I never stir if ever I set eyes on a more dismal countenance in my ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... he who claims thy tender heart, Deserve its love as I have done! For, kind and gentle as thou art, If so beloved, thou 'rt fairly won. Bright may the sacred torch remain, And cheer thee ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the introduction to the great era. The bourgeois conscience of the West has no inkling of what it means. To this conscience, the war was a huge violation of decency, contrived by bandits; its victory is the final triumph of a capitalist, rationalistic civilization; the torch lit in the East means murder and incendiarism, and the upward migration of the people from the ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... crown of splendour glowing, Dear destroyer of Eve's ill, Noble torch of Love far-showing, Fruitful stock of ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... If there is any one who can look back over a literary life which has pictured our old and helped our new civilization, it is yourself. Of course your later books have harder work cut out for them than those of any other writer. They have had "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for a rival. The brightest torch casts a shadow in the blaze of a light, and any transcendent success affords the easiest handle for that class of critics whose method is the one that Dogberry ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... pitch black around, save when the lightning zigzagged through space, and lighted up all creation with its electric torch. ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... calm, most bright! The fruit of this, the next world's bud; Th' indorsement of supreme delight, Writ by a Friend, and with His blood; The couch of time; care's balm and bay:— The week were dark, but for thy light; Thy torch doth show the way. ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... believe there is one God only. The Presbyterian clergy are loudest; the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical and ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could be now obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus, because, he could not find in his Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... whites occasionally did wrong to their red neighbors—but to the short-sighted treachery and ferocity of the savages themselves, and especially to the machinations of the tories and British agents. The latter unceasingly incited the Indians to ravage the frontier with torch and scalping knife. They deliberately made the deeds of the torturers and women-killers their own, and this they did with the approbation of the British Government, and to its merited and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... or a basket of cooked rice, and a bamboo tube of basi or tapui. Many persons had also several small pieces of pork and a chicken. As they passed out of the pueblo each carried a tightly bound club-like torch of burning palay straw; this would ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... serious and not a simple antithesis made in pleasantry, as the conceit of a heart that has known no real experience. The gambler who leaves the table at break of day, his eyes burning and hands empty, may feel that he is at war with nature, like the torch at some hideous vigil; but what can the budding leaves say to a child who mourns a lost father? The tears of his eyes are sisters of the rose; the leaves of the willow are themselves tears. It is when I look at the sky, the woods and the prairies, that I understand ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... before the altar. Deep-toned bells were touched by small boys whose shaven heads and priestly robes denoted that they, like little Samuel, were being brought up within the courts of the temple. The Princess took a great bunch of incense in her two hands, one of her attendants lit it with a torch prepared for that purpose, the flame and smoke ascended amid the deep tones of the bells, as she prostrated herself before the goddess. She looked like a beautiful fairy herself as she stood with the flaming bunch of incense held high above her head. Three ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... torch-bearers, human candlesticks, and valets de chambre, and I'll get me to bed," commanded the duke, standing in the center of his room, and the trooper with the fierce red mustaches waved a swarm of pages, cup-bearers and attendants from the door and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... he was a hero, who had gone forth to fight the death of which she still heard word and whisper all about her. Croisset's wife and Iowaka told her that he had done the bravest thing that a man might do on earth. She spoke proudly of him to the Indian children, who called him the "torch-bearer." She noticed that he was as tall as Croisset, and taller by half a head than Jean, and that he lifted her now with one arm as easily as if she were no heavier than a ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... could; that is, for a five-minute stretch. And while he's restin' up I tackles it. I didn't last so long, either. Rupert, though, comes out strong. He makes the sand fly at a great rate. Vee stands by, holdin' an electric torch, while ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... it must be on Northern, not on Southern, soil. A glorious future is before us. The grass will grow in Northern cities where the pavements have been worn off by the tread of commerce. We will carry war where it is easy to advance, where food for the sword and torch await our armies ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... deny that this war has grievously stained the reputation of Europe. Even if the verdict of history confirms the opinion that the conspiracy which threw the torch into the powder-magazine was laid by a few persons in one or two countries, and that the unparalleled outrages which have accompanied the conflict were ordered by a small coterie of brutal officers, we cannot forget that these crimes have been committed ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... sir," came the answer, while a bearer holding a torch lit up that part of the hall by the wall against which Jules and his fellow-prisoner had been stationed. "He's dead—a piece of masonry, dislodged by the explosion, fell ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... stay, for half his task was not yet done; and he longed for sunlight and Lily-Bell. So, taking a kind farewell, he hastened through the torch-lit path up to the light again; and, spreading his wings, flew over hill and dale till he reached the forest where Lily-Bell ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... last absolutely blown over. Spain has sent us word she is disarming. So are we. Who would have expected that a courtesan at Paris would have prevented a general conflagration? Madame du Barri has compensated for Madame Helen, and is optima pacis causa. I will not swear that the torch she snatched from the hands of Spain may not light up a civil war in France. The Princes of the Blood[1] are forbidden the Court, twelve dukes and peers, of the most complaisant, are banished, or going to be banished; and even the captains of the guard. In short, the King, his ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... to him. The priest, who had descended from the altar, held the little monstrance; the girls' procession was moving before him. Durtal passed in front of the line of nuns who did not take part in the ceremony, and torch in hand he followed the beadle, who carried behind the priest ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... down our garden path, chatting innocuously and amiably, until of a sudden they caught sight of the little Love, the gay, charming, naked little Love, holding his torch above his curl-crowned head. You miss him, when you come up the broad drive from the front gate, for Nicholas Jelnik put him in the secretest, greenest, sweetest spot in all our garden, and you must go down a ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... him. Even those who are most virulent against Napoleon's memory, feel their wrath melt when they think of his son; and when at the Church of the Capuchins, in Vienna, a monk lights with a flickering torch the dark tomb of the great captain's son, who lies by the side of his grandfather, Francis II., who was at once his protector and his jailer, deep thoughts arise as one considers the vanity of political calculations, the emptiness of glory, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... say that I have had worse, but I have almost as bad. I will apply the Promethean torch, and soon vivify that rude ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... as he encountered on his way he removed by the might and strength of his forces, as an elephant lifts his ponderous foot to crush a pigmy lying in his path. His march was through burning villages and devastated fields; the glare of his torch illumined the sky, the blood of his victims reddened the earth. Austria's desponding hopes were concentrated upon the Duke of Lorraine; for the King of Poland had not arrived, and the Elector of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... rosary in hand, knelt before the dark-robed figure of a confessor, while at a short distance lay, on a couch of deer-skins, the sleeping Leonard Ashton. Before the looped-up curtain that formed the door was Gaston d'Aubricour, on one knee, close to a huge torch of pine-wood fixed in the earth, examining by its flaring smoky light into the state of his master's armour, proving every joint with a small hammer. Near him, Eustace, with the help of John Ingram, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by pages and torch-bearers, the new-wed pair repassed those dim and stately halls, the bride, veiled, mysterious, fateful; the bridegroom, empty-eyed, like one who wanders in his sleep. Thus they reached their chamber, and its carved doors shut ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... past hath strewn, the shears of fate, But forth to braver days. O, Liberty, Burthen of every sigh!—thou gold of gold, Beauty of the beautiful, strength of the strong! My soul for ever turns agaze for thee. There is no purpose of eternity For faith or patience; but thy buoyant torch Still lighted from the Islands of the Blest, O'erbears all present for potential heavens Which are not—ah, so more than all that are! Whose chance postpones the ennui of the skies! Be thou my genius—be my hope in thee! For this were heaven: to ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... small, lovely, and winning in gypsy dress of red and black, relieved here and there with soft white ruffles. Upon her golden curls rested a dainty little padded cap, and strong boots protected the tender feet. From her gloved fingers swung a torch not ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... minute threw myself into the water, which a mighty large basin or cistern of white marble contained, of a compass that forty men might have hid themselves in it; they had pursued me so hard, they fancied they heard me press the gravel near the fountain, and with the torch they searched round about it, and beat the fringing flowers that grew pretty high about the bottom of it, while I sometimes dived, and sometimes peeped up to take a view of my busy coxcomb, who had like to have made me burst into laughter ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... died out. So after a vain attempt by groping in darkness, she crawled back to the exterior apartment and knelt down in front of the hearth to fan the coals with her breath and thus obtain another torch for her explorations. At that moment the deerskin robe closing the entrance to her grotto was timidly lifted, and a feeble voice called the usual greeting. "Opona," replied Shotaye, turning toward the doorway. A lithe figure ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... rideth the waste, when, lo, on a morning of day, From out of the tangled crag-walls, amidst the cloudland grey, Comes up a mighty mountain, and it is as though there burns A torch amidst of its cloud-wreath; so thither Sigurd turns, For he deems indeed from its topmost to look on the best of the earth; And Greyfell neigheth beneath him, and his heart is full ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... torch upward, flashing it once to aid Jack in locating it in the darkness. Again Jack straightened up carefully. Holding the flat little flashlight between his teeth, he gripped the edge of the opening and chinned ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... partner of your fortunes, of your happiness, and of your sorrows, and when in the midst of the common offspring of both of you, she asks you: "Is there any danger of civil war? Is there any danger of the torch being applied to any portion of the country? Have you settled the questions which you have been so long discussing and deliberating upon at Washington? Is all peace and all quiet?" what response, Mr. President, can you make ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... brother, the Lord Ferdinand, Is come to visit you, and sends you word, 'Cause once he rashly made a solemn vow Never to see you more, he comes i' th' night; And prays you gently neither torch nor taper Shine in your chamber. He will kiss your hand, And reconcile himself; but for his vow ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... symptoms the differential signs, and applies the remedy. Da Costa aptly remarks: "No one aspiring to become a skillful observer can trust exclusively to the light reflected from the writings of others; he must carry the torch in his own hands, and himself look ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... horrible nightmare is over, dearest," whispered Ellen Estabrook to Lee Bentley as their liner came crawling up through the Narrows and the Statue of Liberty greeted the two with uplifted torch beyond Staten Island. New York's skyline was beautiful through the mist and smoke which always seemed to mask it. It was good ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... changes effected by Jeroboam; and the Levitical cities within his dominions were regarded with an unfriendly eye by the Israelite monarch, who saw in them hotbeds of rebellion. He had not ventured to make a direct attack upon them himself, since he would thereby have lighted the torch of civil war within his own borders; but, having now an Egyptian army at his beck and call, he used the foreigners as an instrument at once to free him from a danger and to execute his vengeance upon those whom ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... two apostles stepped a few paces in total darkness; then the elder man produced a small electric torch, which he wig-wagged above his head. There was a series of answering flashes at a distance; and next moment a door, let into the side of the ravine, opened right ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... hurried in the darkness, which was now at the very deepest of the night; now and then a torch was borne across the street, and most of the houses had lights in the upper windows, for few Londoners slept on that strange night. The stained glass of the windows of the Churches beamed in bright colours from the Altar ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in he perceived a young female tied up to a beam by her wrists, entirely naked, and in the act of involuntary writhing and swinging; while the author of her torture was standing below her with a lighted torch in his hand, which he applied to all the parts of her body as it approached him. What crime this miserable woman had perpetrated he knew not; but the human mind could not conceive a crime warranting ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... chirp and chaffer, come and go For pleasure or profit, her men alive— My business was hardly with them, I trow, 35 But with empty cells of the human hive— With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle, or nave, Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch, Its face set full for the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... got so far into the hole in the rocks that they had to make use of Jack's pocket electric torch, and they proceeded, still on a down grade, and finding the way a bit rough in spots, but at last finding it better traveling and ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... an ungratified glance on a large mirror, which, hanging on one side of the apartment, and illuminated by the torch-light, reflected her beautiful face and person. "Our hostess grows complaisant," she said, "my Fleming; we had not thought that grief and captivity had left us so well stored with that sort of wealth which ladies prize ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... evaporate, but see that the hall is completely closed and throw up some powdered varnish among the fumes and this powder will be supported by the smoke; then go into the room suddenly with a lighted torch and at once it will be ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... inscription. "What a pity! This once held a statue of Hebe holding a torch. It was struck by ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills! For there no noisy railway speeds, Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds; But noon and night, the panting teams Stop under the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... into the wave with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the fagot and the torch were behind us. We have waked this New World from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... distinguished from the general level. His whole figure soon came into view against the background of gray cloud. He was half naked, half clad in skins. His hair was unkempt, his beard long and ragged. In one hand he carried a bow and arrow; the other held a blazing torch with a long trail of black smoke. He walked slowly and with caution, as if he feared falling into some open grave concealed by the tall grass. This strange apparition surprised but did not alarm, and taking such a course as to intercept ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... help," Harris agreed. "Alden's hands are tied. He's only an ornament right now and folks have come to believe he's real harmless. But Alden is playing his own game single-handed the best he can. One day he'll get his hooks into some of these torch-bearers so deep they'll never shake them out. The homestead laws can't be defied indefinitely. The government will take a hand and send marshals in here thicker than flies. Then the outfits that have hedged themselves in advance are on top. The ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... had the leadership and wit; but these things they lacked. They were still massed on the front porch, pell-mell, in a turbulent group, ramping, raging, thirsty for action, but as yet ineffective; though one of them had at that moment set a match to a torch of newspapers and kindling wood. Delay had loosed the hunter's instinct in the half-drunken band: it broke into flame at sight of the quarry. Varney had scarcely shown himself in the half-opened door when some one struck him a savage blow on the chin ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... wasn't so easily discouraged. He had come prepared for a stubborn piece of rock. He went to the rumble seat of his car and took out a blowtorch and a sledgehammer, ignited the torch and focused it on ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... the Valley before told them they had nothing to expect but insult and injury, for their bold, proud Virginia blood would not suffer them to bend the knee in silent submission. Their sons and husbands had all given themselves to the service of their country, while rapine and the torch had already done its work too thoroughly to fear it much now or dread its consequences. But the presence alone of a foreign foe on their threshold ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Southern civilizations, and to some extent adopted their ideals. Not so the Angles and Saxons, who came pouring into Britain from Schleswig-Holstein. They were uncontaminated pagans. In scorn of Roman luxury, they set the torch to the villas, and temples and baths. They came, exterminating, not assimilating. The more complaisant Frank had taken Romanized, Latinized Gaul just as he found her, and had even speedily adopted ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... sweetest of sighs; 'Tis feather'd with ringlets my mother might wear, And the barb gleams with light from young eyes; But it falls without touching—I'll break it, I vow, For there's Hymen beginning to pout; He's complaining his torch burns so dull and so low, That Zephyr might puff ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... with nectar crown'd, Thro' the grove its beams display, It can shed a lustre round, Brighter than the torch ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... chilly and dark. The sky was covered with heavy clouds. Not the faintest trace of the moon, not a star was visible. In order that they might not lose their way, and see the bridge across the Rhine, a man, bearing a torch, had to precede the carriages. But the gale moved the flame so violently that it now seemed near going out, and then again flared up and cast a glare over the long procession of the carriages. Then every thing once more became dark and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... seemed illuminated, and it was light enough to read with perfect distinctness. The vessel was loaded with some three thousand bales of cotton, and in landing at a point above us, the sparks from the torch—a wire basket filled with pine knots, and used after dark to light the loading and unloading of the steamer,—had set the cotton afire. The motion of the boat and the perfect draft from her construction, peculiar to nearly all the river craft, ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... indicating the most characteristic colors or habits, or partly descriptive of the bird itself. The common names of this beautiful Warbler are Orange-throated Warbler and Hemlock Warbler. Some one has suggested that it should be called the Torch Bird, for "half a dozen of them as they flash about in the pines, raising their wings and jerking their tails, make the darkest shadows seem breaking into little ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... everywhere. On the winding bed of the river, lying piled like a gray eider-down coverlet; folding itself over the forest trees; floating up to the Mountain House, and hanging about the rocks. But overhead the sky looked bright, and Sirius waved his torch which the vapour had filled with coloured lights. As ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... Bullard was leaning half out of the window, directing the ray from an electric torch on the ground below. An incessant murmuring came from the ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... anyhow, he'd better not air it when Tim is about. He nearly bit my head off in the gym because I said that Don was a chump to give up like this a week before the Claflin game. Tim flared up like—like a gasoline torch and wanted to fight! I didn't mean a thing by my innocent remark, but I had the dickens of a time trying to prove it to Tim! And he almost jumped into you, ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and wickedness of the world might cause a holy antiperistasis(194) in a Christian, by making the grace of God unite itself, and work more powerfully, as fire out of a cloud, and shine more brightly, as a torch in the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... God's Slave, who lights her torch, Lest men should slip between the bars, And run aground on Heav'n, and scorch To death upon a bank ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... genius of the cavern," said Mr Twigg, taking a torch and advancing a few steps towards an object which had a wonderful resemblance to a statue carved by the sculptor's hand. It was that of a venerable hermit, sitting in profound meditation, wrapped in a flowing robe, his arms folded and his beard descending to his waist. His head was bald, his forehead ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... sides in amphitheatre fashion, the queen, the king, the court, and the dignitaries of the two clerical parties were there in special boxes, and again were the people much in evidence, but this time much in doubt as to the final outcome. When all was ready, the torch was applied to the pile and the two volumes were committed to the flames. The book which was not consumed by the fire was to be considered acceptable to God. To the chagrin of the papal party, the Roman book was utterly consumed, but the Gothic missal came forth unscathed. Although there was great ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... them a few visits, and been warmly welcomed; and when, in his last address, he told them they would see his face no more, "it seemed," said a peasant who related the incident to Neff, "as if a gust of wind had extinguished the torch which was to light us in our passage by night across the precipice." And even Neff's ministry, as we have above seen, only lasted for the short space of about ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... all the nonchalance born of the feeling that the further we went the worse it was. Then one remembered. The pocket was near and he struck out for it, the rest following as best we could through the thick night, the guide occasionally lighting a torch of grass. After a quarter of a mile he stopped in the bottom of a deep basaltic gulch. Here was the place. The Uinkarets threw down their loads and squatted glum and silent. From the hill Jones and I scraped together an armful of brush and got a small fire started in the bottom of the desolate ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... as though he had held a torch aloft into the green branches of a living tree. A twitch of surface agitation on her face ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... are," he said, and, taking an electric torch out of his pocket, he cast a dim beam over two or three blackened sections of tree trunk, scooped out into the semblance of pipes, which were lying forlornly in a little ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... torch a wave, and sending the black curls of fume eddying upward, to hang along the stone ceiling. Then he ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... brave creatures; yea, a world they will Have in each star, though it be past their skill To make it manifest to any man, That reason hath, or tell his fingers can.[13] But I have too long held thee in the porch, And kept thee from the sunshine with a torch. Well, now go forward, step within the door, And there behold five hundred times much more Of all sorts of such inward rarities As please the mind will, and will feed the eyes With those, which if a Christian, thou wilt see Not small, but things of greatest moment be. Nor do thou ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... illuminated flag-draped buildings, under festoons of colored electric lights, the street parades, with their spectacular colored floats, their bands, their negro torch-bearers, their strangely costumed masked figures, throwing favors into the dense crowds, are glorious sights for children ranging anywhere from eight to eighty years of age. Public masking on the streets, on the day of Mardi Gras, is also an ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... and extreme excitability of the French, render such men as Monsieur Thiers extremely dangerous to monarchical power. His genius, his eloquence, and his boldness, furnish him with the means of exciting the enthusiasm of his countrymen as surely as a torch applied to gunpowder produces an explosion. In England these qualities, however elevated, would fail to produce similar results; for enthusiasm is there little known, and, when it comes forth, satisfies ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... torches, and it was something worth seeing—the wild flame, the young fellows striking the fish coming to the light—how splendid they looked with the light on their scales, coming out of the darkness—the stumblings and quenchings suddenly of the lights, as the torch-bearer fell into a deep pool. We got home past midnight, and slept as we seldom sleep now. In the morning Adam, who had been long up, and had been up the "Hope" with his dog, when he saw we had wakened, told us there was four inches ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... swiftly leaping from bough to bough and treetop to treetop, it spread with such astonishing celerity that he found it hard on his heels, or whirling in a hot cloud over his head, at every pause he made to throw in a new but now unnecessary torch, in his rapid and constantly quickened run through the slash. And when, after running some distance into the open field, to escape the stifling smoke and heat by which he was even there assailed, he turned round to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... bad attack of indigestion after serving dinner, and I promised to look in and see how she was during the night. Just as I came out of her room I thought I heard groans and rushed upstairs; found the studio door open, and by aid of my electric torch, found ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... October, 1492, he continued steering W. S. W. until sunset, when he returned to his old course of west, the vessels running at the rate of three leagues an hour. At ten o'clock he and several of his crew saw a light, which seemed like a torch carried about on land. He continued running on four hours longer, and had made a distance of twelve leagues farther west, when at two in the morning land was discovered ahead, distant two leagues. The twelve leagues which, they ran since ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... maidens in a double row, Each singing soft and low, And each on high a torch upstaying: Unto her lover lead her forth with light, With music, and with singing, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sand as a reserve. I found a piece of wreckage and used part of it for a shelter. One part had a long spike in it and that I sharpened by scraping it on some of the shells. Then I got a piece of fat pine that had washed ashore and made me a torch. With this sharp spike and the torch I went fishing at night and got three dandy ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... arrived before the close of this session; but hopes being entertained that the late bill would have the effect of conciliating the Americans, it was deemed proper to abstain from any investigation, lest it should relight the torch of discord. The session terminated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... enemy's camp. We were huddled in the dirt of a field, with four sentries over us, and three thousand soldiers round about us. Just across the country road, twenty-six little yellow-brick houses were blazing, the homes of the peasants of Melle. Each house was a separate torch, for they had been carefully primed with oil. The light of them, and almost the heat, was on our faces. It was a clear, warm evening. The fires of the cottages burned high. A full moon rose blood-red on the horizon, climbed to the dome and ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... how Apollo, fair-haired god, Draws in and bends his golden bow, While on the left fair Dian waves her torch". ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... early blushes spread,(219) Now rose refulgent from Tithonus' bed; With new-born day to gladden mortal sight, And gild the courts of heaven with sacred light: When baleful Eris, sent by Jove's command, The torch of discord blazing in her hand, Through the red skies her bloody sign extends, And, wrapt in tempests, o'er the fleet descends. High on Ulysses' bark her horrid stand She took, and thunder'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... eight pictures for the Escorial, three of which were burned. His picture of the "Nativity" is celebrated for its lights, of which there are three; one is from the Divine Babe, a second from the glory above, and a third from a torch in the hand of St. Joseph. The group of shepherds is the best part of the picture, and when Tibaldi saw the picture he exclaimed, "O! gli belli pastori!" and it has since been known as the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... that her father was a congressman, she'd never get by with it," Amy had said, "but as it is, if you'll just remember that she's been reared on rhetoric and torch-light parades, you can understand that little abrupt way she has. I think it's rather interesting to be a 'Jinx,' it's so different, and the boys only have mascots. This way, it shows we have a fine, proud disregard for the slings and arrows ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... figures had been seen running along the outside of the connecting corridor, in this direction. But before we ever got there, a new alarm came. A brigand was crouching at a front corner of the main building! His hydrogen heat-torch had already opened ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... get any man, unless it's yourself, to come near enough to carry a torch to it. You can easily have me out of this without burning the house. Tell your father I am ready to ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... causes thereof, besides the great coldness of the middle region of the air, by which these fiery exhalations, when they ascend there, are suddenly driven back with great force. Daily experience teaches us, by the whizzing of a burning torch, what a noise fire occasions in the air, and much more so when it strives and is inclosed with air, as seen in guns; and even when air alone is inclosed, as in organ pipes and other wind instruments: For wind, according to philosophers, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... discharge of their arms, the assailing force, guided by their torch-bearers, made a rush for the Court House. As they approached the door, Woodburn, who had kept his post, unhurt, on one side of the steps, sprang forward to dispute their passage, and, after knocking up the swords and bayonets that were aimed at his breast, laid about him so ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... went to her women and suffered herself to be made ready. Then came the King in to her and began to woo her; but she, looking strangely upon him by the light of the torch in the wall, sat up and held him off with her hand. "Touch me not, Menelaus," she said, "touch me no more until I know whether thou art ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett
... excitement] It is the Undershaft inheritance. I shall hand on my torch to my daughter. She shall make my converts and preach ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... by heavy iron bars, slipped into stone slots. Behind this gateway glimmered a faint light that brightened into a red star; and soon, a figure clad in the long, black monastic gown, and bearing a huge torch of blazing pitch pine, emerged from the bowels of the earth. There was the rattle of a chain, the creak of a pulley, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... above a man to equal me; Put all your brave Heroes into one, Your Kings and Emperours, and let him come In person of a man, and I should scorn him: Must, and will scorn him. The god of love himself hath lost his eyes, His Bow and Torch extinguish'd, and the Poets That made him first a god, have lost their fire 253] Since I appear'd, and from my eyes must steal it. This I dare speak; and let me see the man, Now I have spoke it, that doth, dare deny; Nay, not ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Rome on a scale of magnificence hitherto unknown. Vitellius then gratified the rabble and scandalized all decent people by building altars in the Martian Plain, and holding a funeral service in honour of Nero. Victims were killed and burnt in public: the torch was applied by the Augustales, members of the college which Tiberius Caesar had founded in honour of the Julian family, just as Romulus ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... crouching in their kennels instead of barking. I chid them, and called to them, but even the fiercest would not follow me. Then, thought I, I must show you the way to set to work; so I grasped my sword firmly, I set my torch on the ground close beside me, and I let the gates fly open without further delay. For I well knew that it would be no easy matter for any one to come in against my will. A loud laugh greeted me, and I heard these words, 'Well, well, what mighty preparations are these before one small man ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... to praise. If want of skill, or want of care appear, Forbear to hiss—the poet cannot hear. By all, like him, must praise and blame be found, At best a fleeting gleam, or empty sound. Yet, then, shall calm reflection bless the night, When lib'ral pity dignify'd delight; When pleasure fir'd her torch at virtue's flame, And mirth was ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... heart had become benumbed with its own pain, and was sleeping after its long, weary waiting. He was sure, however, that if not interfered with he could awaken it at last to content and happiness. This letter, however, might be the torch which would kindle the old love with tenfold intensity. Long hours he fought his temptation like a gladiator, for fine as had been Mildred's influence over him, he was still intensely human. At last he gained the victory, and went home quiet, but more exhausted than he had ever been ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... diminutive females around him are Ignorance and Suspicion. Opposite to them, Calumny advances, betraying in her countenance and gesture the savage rage and anger working in her tempestuous breast: her left hand holds a flaming torch; while with her right she drags by the hair a youth, who, stretching his uplifted hands to Heaven, is calling on the immortal powers to bear testimony to his innocence. She is preceded by a man of a pallid and impure ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the first day a race was run on foot, in which each of the runners carried a lighted torch in his hand, which they exchanged continually with each other without interrupting their race. They started from the Ceramicus, one of the suburbs of Athens, and crossed the whole city. The first that came to the goal, without having put out his torch, carried the prize. In the afternoon ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... CHUNDELA. The "Spotted sole" of the settlers. Very common in all the shallow bays in the summer time, where it may be taken by the seine. The natives detect it when its body is buried in the sand, by the glistening of its eyes, and spear it. When fishing with the torch, in the night time, the natives feel for this fish with their naked feet. Specimen caught by seine, August, 1841. This ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... "watch out to the left" or "to be careful to the right" or "to mind your footing." As the trail led off on the side of the Bottomless Pit they halted, and the usual ceremony was gone through. They twisted several newspapers together into a torch and, lighting them, dropped them into the pit. They watched as the torch went down and down and down, lighting the way for a fleeting instant into the very depths of the earth; past ugly, jagged rocks, past flat shelves of limestone, ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... turned on his pocket electric torch, approached an immense pile of illustrated magazines stacked in a corner. He struck three blows on it, saying in ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the frequent intercourse of that country with Greece probably accounts for its introduction there. The Greeks are said to have used it first in the Trojan war, when it took the place of the rough conch shells, which had in their turn replaced the ancient battle signal of the flaming torch. One of the coveted prizes of the Olympic games was awarded for the best trumpet solo, and we hear of one fortunate person, Herodotus of Megara, who gained this honour more than ten times. It must have taken real genius to have roused melody from the primitive ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the Red Tower, which looked towards the court-yard, I saw the whole array come in. I watched the prisoners unceremoniously dismounted and huddled together against the coming of the Duke. There was but one man among them who stood erect. The torch-light played on his face, which was sometimes bent down to a little child in his arms, so that I saw him well. He looked not at all upon the rude men-at-arms who pushed and bullied about him, but continued tenderly to hush his charge, as if he had been a nurse in a babe-chamber under ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... is sane meaning to this double method—it is this: as much may be said along one line of reasoning as the other. Each is a non-sequitur to the other. Each negatives the other and leaves us with reason's torch inverted—the light out, the darkness deeper than ever; and standing on the threshold of the grave we are forced to cry out in the sharp agony of ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... curate in La Vendee before the Revolution, and one of those priests who lighted the torch of civil war in that unfortunate country, under pretence of defending the throne of his King and the altars of his God. He not only possessed great popularity among the lower classes, but acquired so far the confidence of the Vendean ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith |
