"Blackness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between the two, and whether it is a late supper or an early breakfast that the coffee-rooms and stalls are furnishing, can hardly be determined by one who has elected to know how the market receives and how it distributes its supplies. In November fog and mist, or the blackness of early winter, with snow on the ground, or cold rain falling, resolution is needed for such an expedition, and still more, if one would see all that the deep night hides, and that comes to light as the dawn struggles through. This business of ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... wide window near my bed and gazed out upon the yet luminous City of Occupation. The picture was of surprising strangeness and beauty. Far off, until melting into the encroaching edges of an outer blackness, the City extended its folds and surfaces of light. The streets were empty, the music of the Chorus Halls stilled. Here and there, a spirit was moving slowly through the streets, a half-made Martian; a breeze soft and salubrious stirred the thickly ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... war-time. The streets were plunged in almost Stygian darkness. Omnibuses and taxicabs crawled painfully through the gloom; pedestrians were cannoning into each other at every step. The only relief to the blackness were the two search-lights from the Admiralty Arch that swung like gigantic pendulums across the dark ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... little room the girls could hear a swollen creek rushing; rich, loamy odours drifted in from the forest that had been soaked with long April rains. Cherry saw a streak of light under the door of Hong's cabin, a hundred yards away; there was no moon, it was blackness unbroken under the trees. The season was late, but the girls felt with a rush of delight that summer was with them at last; the air was soft and warm, and there was a general sense of being freed from the ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... anxious, aching heart with monkish legends of unattested miracles, and in place of the pure worship of God, gives us mummeries nearer akin to pagan rites! I thank God that I am released from my thraldom. I see now the tissue of falsehood so plausible in which all things were wrapped. Blackness and deceit in the garb of truth and purity! And it is horrible, to think that he who so led me astray claims to be my brother! Mary, Mary, how can I tell Mr. Stewart this?—tell him that I have wandered from the true faith—that I have knelt in confession ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... he rolled himself up in the blankets, placed a pillow which Polly had brought him under his head, and lay and looked at the fire; but it was not until the flames had died down, and the last red glow had faded into blackness that he fell ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... of a rock-bound cedar, swung himself over the cliff, and called to Bucks to follow. Bucks acted wholly on faith. The blackness below was impenetrable, and perhaps better so, since he could not see what he was undertaking. Only the roar of the river came up from the depths. It sounded a little ominous as Bucks, grasping the cedar root, swung ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... again into the shadow of the tree from which he had just emerged, and clung to its trunk lest he should fall. Another seemed to creep out of the court in his person, and totter across the white glare of the campo and down the blackness of the calle. In the intersected spaces where the moonlight fell, this alien, miserable man saw the figure of a priest gliding on ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... sands swarmed over them, and the norther shrieked in their ears, and the earth's blackness swallowed them up until they seemed alone as a man and a woman ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... the eye wherein appeareth the resemblance of a little man, and thereupon seemeth to be called in Hebrew Ishon which is a man. And as that part is blackish so this word is also used for other black things as the blackness of night. The apple so we call that which the Hebrew here calleth bath and babath that is the babie or little image appearing in the eye." Anger receives this definition: "ire, outward in the face, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... carefully refinished as natural wood. The old safety valve was replaced, as already mentioned. Rejacketing the boiler with simulated Russia iron produced a most pleasing effect, adding not only to the authenticity of the display but making the engine appear lighter and relieving the somber blackness which was not characteristic of a locomotive of the 1850's. Several minor replacements are yet to be done; chiefly among these are the cylinder-cock linkage and ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... sat to wait for darkness, and made a hearty meal of biscuit. It was a night out of ten thousand for my purpose. The fog had now buried all heaven. As the last rays of daylight dwindled and disappeared, absolute blackness settled down on Treasure Island. And when, at last, I shouldered the coracle, and groped my way stumblingly out of the hollow where I had supped, there were but two points visible ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soft, beloved voice whispered, "I have come to ask your help...." It was so dark, he could not see her; he knew where she was only by the glitter of the jewel on her neck-chain as it arced through the blackness. ...
— The Blue Tower • Evelyn E. Smith
... was hidden by blackness. A fearful tempest burst over the land. The people on the other islands saw Polobulac wrapped in seven huge ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... fourth, while in the intervals Fairchild's eyes sought out the sulky, sullen form of Maurice Rodaine, flattened against the wall, eyes evil, mouth a straight line, and the blackness of hate discoloring his face. It was as so much wine to Fairchild; he felt himself really young for the first time in his life. And as the music started again, he once ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... moon, Struggling, darts snatches of uncertain light. No form of star is visible! That one White stain of light, that single glimmering yonder, Is from Cassiopeia, and therein Is Jupiter. (A pause.) But now The blackness of the troubled ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that one through. "Bail!" I ordered, and they took their cups to it, while I did all I could with the long punt paddle to make some sort of course. Now and then the blazing trail of the Belle Helene's search-light swung across as we rolled, to leave us, the next instant, in blackness. As the seas permitted, we could see her, riding and rocking, sometimes, alight from stern to stern and making a gallant fight for her life, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... sat in the chair the blackness of the night enveloped him. He heard no sound from the other part of the house and he finally decided to find and confront his father. He stood erect, lit the cigarette and threw the match from him, accidentally striking his hand against the back of the chair on which he ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... she gave a slight start: she was far too miserable to be terrified at anything. Before I had finished, she stood erect on her feet, facing me with the whiteness of her face glimmering through the blackness ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... bride to the ruler of another land, with a fabulous dowry of jewels and a thousand gifts besides. But the ship that bore her and her splendid treasures had been turned from its course by a terrible storm. Day after day it was driven through a waste of blackness and foam,—the sails rent, the masts swept away, the shattered hulk hurled onward like a straw by the fury of the wind. When the tempest had spent itself, they found themselves in a strange sea under strange stars. Compass and chart were gone; they knew not where they were, and caught in some unknown ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... nothing below in the blackness, but now something like a dead man's eye looked out of it, and seemed to ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... been abroad alone in moonlight nights. She seems to be waging continual war with the clouds in your behalf. Yet we fancy the clouds to be her foes also. She comes on magnifying her dangers by her light, revealing, displaying them in all their hugeness and blackness,—then suddenly casts them behind into the light concealed, and goes her way triumphant through a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... mercy. God, in himself, is a consuming fire, and sin has made the best of us as stubble is to fire; wherefore, they may not, they cannot, they dare not approach God's presence for help but by and through a mediator and intercessor. When Israel saw the fire, the blackness and darkness, and heard the thunder, and lightning, and the terrible sound of the trumpet, 'they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.' (Exo 20:19, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... came to them, the freckled man found he could by a peculiar movement of his legs and arms encase himself in his bathing-dress. The tall man was compelled to whistle and shiver. As night settled finally over the sea, red and green lights began to dot the blackness. There were mysterious shadows ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... There was nothing. Then, in an instant, the blackness vanished from the screen and it framed a vista of such cosmic, stunning splendor that Kieran could not ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... may be accounted in some sort a degree of comparison, by which the signification is diminished below the positive, as black, blackish, or tending to blackness; salt, saltish, or having a little taste of salt; they therefore admit no comparison. This termination is seldom added but to words expressing sensible qualities, nor often to words of above one syllable, and is scarcely used in the solemn ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... underground again and began to descend through another darker and narrower tunnel. In the upper one there had been one or two roofless stretches where one could straighten one's back and breathe; but here we were in pitch blackness, and saved from breaking our necks only by the gleam of the pocket-light which the young lieutenant who led the party shed on our path. As he whisked it up and down to warn us of sudden steps or sharp corners he remarked ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... you can say such a thing, Scribe, still I ask you to say it if you can. As to why I fear, it is because I seem to feel the near shadow of some woman lying cold upon me and building a wall of blackness between ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... of beautiful things, but, when the tale of our inner-life possesses the torments of Hell, we can turn to them in our despair because we know that their glory will ease our pain, will help us to forget awhile, will give us renewed courage to go on fighting until the end. But where all is blackness, those inner-torments must assume gigantic proportions. Nothing can take them away—except time and the weariness of a soul too utterly weary to care any longer. But time works so slowly, and the utter weariness of the soul ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... water now breast-high, with slimy walls above him and around, seeing naught by reason of the pitchy blackness, and hearing only the smothered splash of those behind, and gasping breaths that boomed hollow in the dark. Yet presently he saw a gleam before him that broadened with each step, and, of a sudden, was out beneath the sky—a narrow strip wherein stars twinkled, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... young officers, who, capturing a cannon, uttered a wild huzza. On the instant, bugles sounded alarm; drums beat a crazy tattoo, and every man leaped from his place in the grass, hand on pistol. The next second the blackness of the night was ablaze with musketry; the soldiers were firing blindly; officers were shouting orders that nobody heard; troops were dashing here, there, everywhere, lost in the darkness, the heavy artillery horses breaking tether ropes and stampeding over ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... saying that the Germanic soul awoke in France and attacked the Latin influence in Germany. On the advantages of this method I need not dwell: if you are annoyed at Jack Johnson knocking out an English prize-fighter, you have only to say that it was the whiteness of the black man that won and the blackness of the white man that was beaten. But about the Italian Renaissance they are less general and will go into detail. They will discover (in their researches into 'istry, as Mr. Gandish said) that Michael Angelo's surname was Buonarotti; ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... herself must have been of a very dark complexion; and in favour of this idea they quoted this text from the Canticles, "I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem." But others say that her complexion had become black only during her sojourn in Egypt. At all events, though the blackness of these antique images was supposed to enhance their sanctity, it has never been imitated in the fine arts, and it is quite contrary to the description of Nicephorus, which is the most ancient authority, and that which is followed in ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... (Mr. O'Brien and himself) did our best to avert such a calamity. We called upon the Government not to persist in working out this bill in all its details of blackness and horror." ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... peopled desolation that men of but little nerve or resolution find insupportable. To me, trained to a serenity of stoicism, it could make no demoralizing appeal. I had out my matchbox, opened it at leisure, and, while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to tick and rustle with secret movement, took a half-dozen vestas into my hand, struck one alight, and, by its dim radiance, made my way through the building by the passages we had penetrated in the morning. If at all I shrank or perspired on my ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... gusts diminished in frequency and force, the hail ceased, the core of blackness was passing over to the eastern sky. Fanny ran out into the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... place. There was no sign whatever from inside the house,—nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall, and the blackness of Amir ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... courage. And I have no poison to eat, no gas to turn on.... Then the mood goes and the day is bright and I look in the glass and say, 'Die? Die for you? Kill all this beautiful young thing that has such joy to dance and sing? Never! Some day I will be out of this and laugh at the memory of such blackness.' And so I practice my voice and my steps—and I wait my chance. When you came, yesterday, first I was furious to be pushed out, then I think it is the chance, maybe. I think you would be glad to ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... this was necessary, as the tide could not be high enough yet to permit its coming directly across to where we were. We watched its course anxiously. Finally it seemed to be heading toward us, but we were not certain. Then it disappeared altogether and there was nothing but blackness and ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... seemed possible to seize upon this curtain and draw its edge yet closer, so dense was it. The white and raging waters were blotted out, and even the lightning seemed unable to penetrate that intense blackness. A large, warm drop of rain fell upon Rex's outstretched hand, and far overhead rumbled a wrathful peal of thunder. The shrieking which he had heard a few moments ago had ceased, but every now and then dull but immense shocks, as of some mighty bird flapping the cliff with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the wind went down, the dust settled, and night mantled Benton. The roar of the day became subdued. It resembled the purr of a gorging hyena. The yellow and glaring torches, the bright lamps, the dim, pale lights behind tent walls, all accentuated the blackness of the night and filled space with shadows, like specters. Benton's streets were full of drunken men, staggering back along the road upon which they had marched in. No woman now showed herself. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... more humble and disregarded aspect than Mickle Street. It is a little cobbled byway, grimed with drifting smoke from the railway yards, littered with wind-blown papers and lined with small wooden and brick houses sooted almost to blackness. It is curious to think, as one walks along that bumpy brick pavement, that many pilgrims from afar have looked forward to visiting Mickle Street as one of the world's most significant altars. As Chesterton wrote once, "We have not ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... lightning shone with a ghastly glare through the watery curtains around us, and lent additional horror to the scene. Yet we longed for those dismal flashes, for they were less appalling than the thick blackness that succeeded them. Crashing peals of thunder seemed to tear the skies in twain, and fell upon our ears through the wild yelling of the hurricane as if it had been but a gentle summer breeze; while the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... I was to danger, the situation set my pulses throbbing—the intense blackness, the silence, the memory of that dead face, utterly unnerving me. I imagined things—a presence in that deserted hall through which I groped. Some unknown horror close at hand, even a spectral passing down the stairs. I listened, clinging to the banister-rail, ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... the dash and desperation of a steeple-chase. The skipper of each craft is at his own helm, roaring out orders, and eagerly watchful of the lights of his encroaching neighbors. With the schooner heeled over to leeward, and rushing along through the blackness, the boats are launched, and the men tumble over the side into them, until perhaps the cook, the boy, and the skipper are alone on deck. One big boat, propelled by ten stout oarsmen, carries the seine, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... upward. "Come," we heard, "Come, blessed of my Father." Such the sounds, That hail'd us from within a light, which shone So radiant, I could not endure the view. "The sun," it added, "hastes: and evening comes. Delay not: ere the western sky is hung With blackness, strive ye for the pass." Our way Upright within the rock arose, and fac'd Such part of heav'n, that from before my steps The beams were shrouded ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and women, of books and prints; one of the founders, I believe, of the Rhodesia Company; faultlessly dressed, infernally rich and, when he chose—which was fairly often—preposterously brutal. Neither manner nor face were winning. He was swarthy almost to blackness, quite un-English in looks, with rather long hair, a most menacing moustache and the fiercest eyes imaginable; a king of the gipsies, so far as features went. Something sinister hung about his personality. A predatory type, unquestionably; never so happy as when pitting his wits or ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... has understood Rome best, in this respect, is Piranesi. His edifices, always immensely too big, his vegetation, extravagantly too luxurious, are none too much to render Rome. And those pools of blackness ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... announced the hour of five. Johnnie fed the fire and put the supper over. Still the man stayed. Once he got up and walked about, stared into the blackness of Big Tom's bedroom, and held the lamp so that he might have a look at Cis's closet. He grumbled to himself when ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... time must be our last, they entered a white foaming slough (a branch of the river), and drew up on the bank. They announced to us then that we were to walk a mile through the woods, to a house. I think no white man, even the most surly of our drivers, would have asked us to do that,—in perfect blackness, the trees wet and dripping,—but would have managed to bring us to some inhabited place. They started off at a rapid gait, and we followed. We could not see their forms; but one carried something white in his hand, which we faintly discerned in the darkness, which served ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... less of anything spiritual. I perceived and also saw that the interiors of their minds were so closed up as to appear black (for in the spiritual world such things become visible), and in consequence they were unable to endure any heavenly light or admit any influx from heaven. This blackness which their interiors presented was more intense and extended with those that had confirmed themselves against the Divine by the knowledges they had acquired. In the other life such accept all falsity with delight, imbibing it as a sponge does water; ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... violet sky overhead sprinkled with silver. But a touch of autumn decay was in the air, which was heavy and still, and a white mist was rising in thick, sluggish clouds from the green, stagnant surface of the lake. The wood was veiled in blackness, in which the trunks of the trees were just visible, standing in straight, regular ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... reference to the Incident Light is Chang'd, why may not the Whiteness be accounted Emphatical too, which I shall shew anon to be Producible, barely by such another change in Black Horn? and yet this so easily acquir'd Whiteness seems to be as truly its Colour as the Blackness was before, and at least is more Permanent than the Greenness of Leaves, the Redness of Roses, and, in short, than the Genuine Colours of the most part of Nature's Productions. It may indeed be further Objected, that according as the Sun or other Luminous Body changes ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... observed that the bystanders uncovered, but I had hardly needed this sign to tell me that the King was of the party. I was familiar with his features, but he seemed to me even a more swarthy man than all the descriptions of his blackness had led me to expect. He bore himself with a very easy air, yet was not wanting in dignity, and being attracted by him I fell to studying his appearance with such interest that I came near to forgetting to remove my hat. Presently ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... however, the blackness became less intense. All at once I thought I noticed a shadow gliding past, quite near me. I shouted, a voice replied; it was a fisherman. I called him; he came near and I told him of my ill-luck. He rowed his boat alongside of mine and, together, we pulled at the anchor ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... new-comer had announced himself, led the way back for a short distance over the route just pursued by our travellers, and then striking off to the left, rode briskly forward for several miles. The light gray clouds which had long been gathering in the western sky had deepened into blackness as they proceeded, and flashes of lightning were darting across their path, and large drops of rain were falling upon them when they neared a house constructed of logs, yet bearing some evidence of taste in the grounds around ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... Cameron's reflections. He bent his head listening. A soft wind fanned the paling embers, blew sparks and white ashes and thin smoke away into the enshrouding circle of blackness. His burro did not appear to be moving about. The quiet split to the cry of a coyote. It rose strange, wild, mournful—not the howl of a prowling upland beast baying the campfire or barking at a lonely prospector, but the wail of a wolf, full-voiced, crying out the meaning of the desert ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... to the narrow-gauge engine; Latisan went as close as he dared. There was no room for concealment on that miniature train. It puffed away promptly, its big neighbor on the standard-gauge roared off into the night, and Latisan was left alone in the blackness before the dawn. And he felt peculiarly and helplessly alone! In spite of his best efforts to keep up his courage, the single-handed crusader was depressed by Craig's command of resources; there was a sort of insolent swagger in the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... about. It is a small room, dark, dark, ... and there is a heavy smell in the air, ... and there are fiends with black cloth over their faces. They hold a draught of hell to your mouth, and they make you drink it; ... it burns, burns. And then you go down, down, down, into everlasting blackness." She broke off, and shuddered violently, then ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... in a full heavy sheet of green transparent water, falling straight and unbroken; there dashing along a narrow channel, with a violence that makes one dizzy to see and hear. In one place an unfathomed pool shows a mirror of inky blackness, and as still as night; in another the tortured twisted cataract tumbles headlong in a dozen different torrents, half hid by the cloud of spray they send high into the air. Despite this uproar, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... the stars were shining, while every now and then there was a flash as of lightning followed by an intense blackness in which the pained eyes seemed to repeat the form ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... forests that rose in rounded swells of leafage, each over each—above all points of snow that were as flickering silver flames in the farthest blue. This was the country of Bhanavar, and she gazed mournfully on the glades of golden green and the glens of iron blackness, and the wild flowers, wild blossoms, and weeds well known to her that would not let her memory rest, and were wistful of what had been. And she thought, 'My sisters tend the flocks, my mother spinneth with the maidens of the tribe, my father ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... forward, his uneasiness becoming fear, and again stood motionless, listening, gripped by the oppressive stillness of the desert. It crept upon him, this death-quiet, seemed to close about him suffocatingly. Suddenly he started. Out of the dense blackness had come a voice, weak and plaintive. He turned tense ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... would see the starshells, going up and bursting like rockets, and coming down With a wavering slow settling motion, as white and bright as burning magnesium wire, shedding a kind of dust of light upon the trench and making the blackness intense when they went out. These lights, the glimmer in the sky from the enemy's guns, and now and then the flash of a shell, were the things seen by most of our men ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... the gulf surrounding the plateau on which the palace stood. All the way around that gulf a sheet of flame seemed to leap upward through smoke, and then, paralyzed, helpless, hypnotized by the spectacle, they saw the plateau and the palace sink and disappear into the blackness of a great void. Then, like a black funeral pall, the smoke rolled up about them and shut off ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... beyond his conception. And in a second now, that abruptly was altered. He conceived the vehicle as of actuality it was—a globe as large as the ball of Saturn itself! And simultaneously he envisaged the present reality of Saturn. Out in the inky blackness it hung—not a giant ringed world millions of miles away, but only a little ringed ball no bigger than the spaceship—a ringed ball only eight or ten times as big as Lee himself. It hung there for an instant beside them—only a mile or so away perhaps. And ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... and found in work the one unfailing resource. If he were robbed of this, what stay had life for him henceforth? He could not try to persuade himself that his suffering would pass, sooner or later, and time grant him convalescence; the blackness ahead was too profound. He fell again into torpor, and let the days go as they ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... the two acts while what varies are merely the distinctive attributes of consciousness; just as when we see at first a black and then a white cow, the distinction of the two perceptions is due to the varying blackness and whiteness while the generic character of the cow remains the same. The difference of the one permanent factor (from the two—or more—varying factors) is proved throughout by the two varying factors, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... spoke, the skipper turned to step into the pilot house. Lord James faced about to the eastern sky, where the gray dawn was beginning to lessen the star-gemmed blackness above the watery horizon. Swiftly the faint glow brightened and became tinged with pink. The day was approaching with the suddenness of the tropical sunrise. In quick succession, the pink shaded to rose, ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... impossible. It is all knocked to pieces with traffic, and frequently pitted with shell holes, and as a rule very narrow. There is no moon, which is just as well, and no lights can be carried. The driver feels his way through inky blackness by some sixth sense begotten of many such journeys. Every now and then a flare lights up the broken cobbles for a few seconds. His wheels are only a couple of feet from the mud on either side, and if he goes into ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... spur of hill between us and part of the town, for the light seemed to glide from behind it as we held on, but its mass was lost in the shadows. I was watching the lights as they came, one by one, to view, and then of a sudden, on the blackness of the cliff above the hall, shone out a cross of light, tall and bright and clear, as it were a portent, or as set there to guard the place. So suddenly did it come that I started, and I heard Father Phelim draw in his breath with some words which ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... quite different to Bertie as he entered it. Was it only a few hours before, he wondered, that he had stood there by the window in the act of taking that life which had become too great a burden to bear? And in the blackness of his despair, when he saw no glimmer of hope, the clouds had rolled away. He glanced at the pistol, harmlessly resting on a shelf, and a rush of gratitude filled his heart and brought tears to his eyes. ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... an island cradle curled Of comfort, may make offerings to you, Who in the day of all denial blew A bugle through the blackness of the world, ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... inspected them all, and was himself inspected, to make sure that no tell-tale streaks remained. Finally he nodded, satisfied, and then, with infinite caution, he slid back a panel and peered out into blackness—having first extinguished their little light. There was no sound. He slipped out of the door, and returned ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... he could not see the farther end, stood up blacker than the trees. As he dismounted, cramped and sore, he could scarcely stand. Lash came alongside. He spoke, and some one with a big, hearty voice replied to him. Then it seemed to Dick that he was led into blackness like pitch, where, presently, he felt blankets thrown on him and ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... serving up to it the commonplace expressions to which it is used; it was by the same process that Swann infuriated M. Verdurin. In his case as in theirs it was the novelty of his language which led his audience to suspect the blackness of his designs. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and caught the train specified at Twenty-Second Street. The doctor was looking for me from the rear platform of a car. It was a local train, and crept slowly out through the smoky blackness of South Chicago, illuminated here and there by the flaming chimneys of her great iron furnaces, to the little city of pungent smells, of petroleum tanks and oil refineries, in Northern Indiana. The doctor was explaining the difficulties he had experienced ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... crystal roof of his jet boat. He breathed as lightly as he could, taking short, slight breaths, holding them as long as he could and then exhaling only when his lungs felt as if they would burst. He could see Regulus overhead, and Sirius, the two great stars shining brilliantly in the absolute blackness of space. He raised himself slowly on one elbow and looked at the oxygen indicator. He saw that the needle had dropped past the empty mark. He knew it wouldn't be long now. And he knew what he had to do. He took a last long look at ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... and killed another animal, much in the same way as the first; and having secured their skins, we returned to the farm, and afterwards set off on our way home. As we emerged from the forest we saw that clouds of inky blackness were collecting rapidly overhead, and ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... later, staring into the blackness while she slept as softly as a child by his side, he could not help smiling a little to himself. It was all so different from what ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... said to Khusrau Shah, "These two royal brothers so comely and stalwart and this lovely Princess, their sister, are thine own lawful children to whom the Queen thy Consort gave birth. The midwives, thy sisters-in-law, by reason of the blackness of their hearts and faces bore them away as soon as they were born: indeed every time a child was given to thee they wrapped it in a bit of blanket and putting it in a basket committed it to the stream which floweth by the palace to the intent that it might die an obscure ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... inflexible courage and his clear vision manifested themselves in the very darkest period of our history, when hope seemed at times to have gone out in every other heart. There is a letter in his Memoirs, written April 12, 1861, which, as I remember the gloom and blackness of that time, seems to me one of the sublimest utterances in our history. The letter was written to his brother William, afterward the General, who had been offered a place in the War Department, which Mr. Chase urged him to accept, saying that he would ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... crawled slowly over every limb, whilst the beaded drops of perspiration would start to my brow, and my limbs would shiver until the bed rattled again. Strange lights would dance before my eyes, and then suddenly the very blackness of darkness would appall me by its dense gloom. All at once, while gazing at a frightful creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness. I knew a candle was burning in the room but I could not see it, all was so pitchy dark. I lost ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... along the road when, miraculously as it seemed, the light of the moon broke through the trees by the wayside and lit up his figure. For a moment it fell upon his head like a halo, and touched the knapsack of dreams with glory. Then all was lost in the blackness ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... in the further vegetation, that had been hazy blue in the daylight, grew black and mysterious. I pushed on. The colour vanished from the world. The tree-tops rose against the luminous blue sky in inky silhouette, and all below that outline melted into one formless blackness. Presently the trees grew thinner, and the shrubby undergrowth more abundant. Then there was a desolate space covered with a white sand, and then another expanse of tangled bushes. I did not remember crossing the sand-opening ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... in frothing maelstroms through a thousand rocks, filling the night with a low thunder. To John Aldous the sound of it might have been a thousand miles away. He did not hear. His eye saw nothing in the blackness. For a few moments the question he had asked himself obliterated everything. If they found Joanne's husband alive at Tete Jaune—what then? He turned back, retracing his steps over the trail, a feeling of ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... almost immediately the darkness descended, as though the light had been turned off at a switch. The earth shrunk to a pool of blackness, and the heavens expanded to a glory of tropical stars. All visible nature contracted to the light thrown by the flickering fires before the tiny white tents. The tatterdemalion crew had, after the curious habit of Africans, cast aside its garments, and sat forth in a bronze and savage nakedness. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... personal sufferings added to the native stoicism of his race, but he made an odd, smothered sound now, and caught up the trailing end of her bright serape and pressed his face against it for an instant. Then he crept away into the soft blackness of the tropic night and Honor went back into the empty sala. She wished that she had seen his face; she was mournfully sure she would never see it again. It did not seem humanly possible for any one to go into the very midst of their besiegers encamped about the well, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... both, and sat brooding, clothed in the blackness that blindness brought when it suddenly loomed before him as the wall between him and his life's desires. The brief instant Claire had been in his arms had made him feel that his life was intolerable without her, and that ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... still saying it, over and over,—demanding, entreating, threatening, to know if it wanted any more,—when he felt the fellows of his gang laying hands on him, patting him on the back and trying to put his coat on him. And then came a sudden rush of blackness and oblivion. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the bottom he paused in indecision. He could make out nothing in the inky blackness, and with every sense alive to danger, he waited. But apparently his entrance had disturbed no one, and taking heart of grace, he pulled out a tiny flashlight and ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... reflection, stared into his fire. He was absorbed in meditation on this great misery which contained so many different miseries, and yet within which he could see the ineffable joys of the many triumphs of paternal and filial love; they were gems shining in the blackness of the pit. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... been strangely silent since dinner. The doctor's figure in the wicker armchair drawn close to her own, showed dimly in the dusk. Tree toads croaked in the blackness beyond the veranda rail; the air smelled of rain. All growing things seemed to have ceased living; the air was heavy and laden with a resinous, dreamy vapour—magnetic, intoxicating. Such a night plays havoc with some women. Under these stifled conditions she is no longer normal; she becomes ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... at present that I find the nigs rather more agreeable, on the whole, than I expected; that they are much to be preferred to the Irish; that their blackness is soon forgotten, and as it disappears their expression grows upon one, so that, after a week or so of intercourse with a plantation, the people are as easily distinguished and as individual as white ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... secret of that unpretentious little house below us? We peered out in the gathering blackness eagerly in the direction where we knew it must be, nestled among the trees. Whoever it sheltered was still there, and we could locate the place by a single gleam that came from an upper window. Whether there were lights below, ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... unconcernedly grazing within a few yards of one of the cowardly beasts. Had the wistful singers been timber wolves, the animal soon would have come hobbling in near the fire; but Ashton did not know that. He flung on brush and crouched down near the blaze, rifle in hand, peering out into the blackness. Every moment he expected to hear that terrible cry of which he had read, the death-scream of a horse, and then to hear the crunching of bones between the jaws ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... unfolding down the darkening walls. I scarcely dared to shut my eyes for one moment, for fear of losing the least glimmer of this precious light. Every instant it seemed about to vanish and the dense blackness to come rolling ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Jesus, lying in a blue shirt prostrate beneath the cross, the blackness of which bedimmed the gold of His aureole. Then, with her glance wandering ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... breeding of domestic animals, the elimination of those individuals, though few in number, which are in any marked manner inferior, is by no means an unimportant element towards success. This especially holds good with injurious characters which tend to reappear through reversion, such as blackness in sheep; and with mankind some of the worst dispositions, which occasionally without any assignable cause make their appearance in families, may perhaps be reversions to a savage state, from which we are not removed by very many generations. This ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... porch, and many a latticed oriel, a long shadow stretched eastward, like a death flag streaming in a wind unfelt of the body—or a fluttering leaf, ready to yield, and flit away, and add one more to the mound of blackness gathering on the horizon's edge. It was the main street of an old country town, dwindled by the rise of larger and more prosperous places, but holding and exercising a charm none of them would ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... with his shapely hands resting on his knees, and his handsome face turned toward the hearth, where the logs had burned down and emitted only a low and fitful flame. The little room was scarcely lighted by it, and looked all the darker for the blackness of the small uncurtained window, through which the ebony face of night was peering in. This bare, uncovered casement troubled him, and from time to time he turned his eyes uneasily toward it. But what need could there be of a curtain, when they were a mile away from any habitation, and where ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... yellow stars looked down from the blackness above; under the wheels the rotten planking and worn girders of the Long Bridge groaned and complained ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... of ambition has smouldered into blackness, we ought to make the eternal star of religion our guide. To take spiritual treasures away without replacing them by better ones is robbery. The cynical authors who deal chiefly in ridicule and satire, or in what they call solid facts, the alternate levity and bitterness ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... an old head on young shoulders," at last he said approvingly. "He speaks truly when he says that the air is thick with danger. When the blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... alienated from her by her own act; and then the drink, for which she had sold herself body and soul, she must be without it, she must crave and not be satisfied—the thought was intolerable, it was madness. But there was a farther future; there was in the far distance the blackness of darkness for ever, yet rendered visible by the glare of a coming hell. Evening thickened round her, but she sat on. The air all about her seemed crowded with spirits of evil; her misery became deeper and deeper; she did not, she could not ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... essential oil of Hyssop, from one to two drops [279] should be the dose. Pliny said: "Hyssop mixed with figs, purges; with honey, vomits." If the herb be steeped in boiling water and applied hot to the part, it will quickly remove the blackness consequent upon a bruise or blow, especially in the case of "black" or ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... be far from La Dorada now,' said Toffy, steering between the lines of stakes; 'but I can't see any signs of the steamer in this blackness.' ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... are cases of disappointment. Bright hopes have darkened almost to the blackness of very despair. A brother whose conversion, (must I say apparent conversion?) has seemed to be unusually clear; whose walk as a Christian seemed, while he was with us, to be well-nigh perfect; whose spirit was singularly ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 2, February, 1889 • Various
... Like a dirty ragged bit of fireworks, throwing tiny handfuls of sparks into the blackness. Something glowed red for a while, and ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... abide in safety amidst the wreck and horrors of a sinking world? And when conscience writes bitter things against him, and makes him possess the iniquities of his youth; when the heavens are gathering blackness, and before him he sees, at the opening into eternity, the piercing eyes of Omniscience looking fully on him through the terrors of insulted, incensed omnipotent justice: does the believer need any compulsion to drive him out of his own lying refuges, and constrain him to betake ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... pretence of sheltering him from the storm and giving him a hearty welcome at his table? Who could believe that even devils in human shape could cut the throats of two traveling strangers to obtain two watches, $80 and a pair of saddle-bags? I shudder at the blackness of the crime. It occurred only yesterday, and we are at this moment near the spot where the horrid deed was committed. Two other murders have lately been committed near this place. A stranger was found hung on a tree and a traveler ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... Namasket. They then thought it best to conceal themselves until after dark, that they might fall upon their foe by surprise. Captain Standish led the band. To every man he gave minute directions as to the part he was to perform. Night, wet and stormy, soon darkened around them in Egyptian blackness. They could hardly see a hand's breadth before them. Groping along, they soon lost their way, and became entangled in the thick undergrowth. Wet, weary, and dejected, they toiled on, and at last ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... trip mainly to see the canon in its winter garb. Soothingly I was informed that this was an exceptional season, and that the good snow might arrive at any time. After waiting a few days, I gladly hailed a broad-browed cloud coming grandly on from the west in big promising blackness, very unlike the white sailors of the summer skies. Under the lee of a rim-ledge, with another snow-lover, I watched its movements as it took possession of the canon and all the adjacent region in sight. Trailing its gray fringes over the spiry tops of the great temples and towers, it gradually ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... were concealed behind the gun shield, which protected us pretty thoroughly from the front fire and were congratulating ourselves on our haven of safety when Ping! Ping! again from our rear came the messages from a sniper hidden there. In glancing back over my shoulder I noticed in the pitchy blackness the flash of a rifle simultaneously with the report, and it seemed to come from a haystack about 200 yards ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... the young grain and covering for the soil; but Fleda's spirits just then in another mood saw in it only the cold refusal to hope and the barren check to exertion. The wind had cleared the snow from the trees and fences, and they stood in all their unsoftened blackness and nakedness, bleak and stern. The high grey sky threatened a fresh fall of snow in a few hours; it was just now a lull between two storms; and Fleda's spirits, that sometimes would have laughed in the face of nature's soberness, to-day sank to its ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... 150 In the sun's beams; the arid level glows; In part they gather, and in part they tread The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes Here put their blossom forth, there, gather fast Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme Flow'rs of all hues smile all the year, arranged With neatest art judicious, and amid The lovely scene two fountains welling forth, One visits, into ev'ry part diffus'd, The garden-ground, the other soft beneath 160 The threshold ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer |
