"Dim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moaning of the bards! A pleasant quip! No manufactured gloom to dim that far light! Of dirge's luxury deprive my lip? So suns might say there shall be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... suited me, in journey dark O'er moor and mountain, midnight theft to hatch; To charm the surly house-dog's faithful bark, Or hang on tiptoe at the lifted latch; The gloomy lantern, and the dim blue match, The black disguise, the warning whistle shrill, And ear still busy on its nightly watch, Were not for me, brought up in nothing ill; Besides, on griefs so fresh ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... goes now!" hissed Ned, pointing to a big figure that was approaching the hangar. It was undoubtedly that of the giant, and he could be seen, in the dim ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... other inmates of the chateau. The room was enormous—walls nearly five metres high—the bed looked like an island in the midst of space; there was very little furniture, and the white feathers on the bed-posts nodded and waved in the dim light. She scarcely closed her eyes, could not reason with herself, and asked the next morning to have something less magnificent ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... can command a fine stretch of country; below you on either hand the Piazza del Santo, the Prato della Valle, with their enormous churches, pink and grey; beyond these the city walls, the green plain; lastly, the ragged outline of the far distant hills. It has a courtyard with lemon trees, long, dim rooms empty of all but coolness, shuttered against the glare of noon; above, a great saloon coffered in the ceiling, frescoed on the walls, with a dais and a throne; an open loggia full of flowers; above all this again, raftered bedrooms smelling of lavender. A roomy, stately place for those whose ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... his axe at the mast, Till it falls, with the sails overcast, Like a snow-covered pine in the vast Dim forests of Orkadale. ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... end of this period, sitting one day in his warehouse, he saw in the streets wretchedly habited, lean, and with eyes sunken and dim, his old companion Abou Neeuteen, begging alms of passengers with the importunate cry of distress. Abou Neeut compassionating his miserable situation, ordered a servant to call him to him; and on his arrival, having seated him, sent ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... sort she had sat through, and she would have neglected her privilege and dishonoured her vocabulary—which indeed consisted mainly of the names of dishes—if she had not been proportionately ready to dazzle with interpretations. Preoccupied and overawed, Mrs. Wix was apparently dim: she accepted her pupil's version of the mysteries of the menu in a manner that might have struck the child as the depression of a credulity conscious not so much of its needs as of its dimensions. Maisie ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... landing unattacked. Down the hallway he saw an open door, through which a dim light shone. Before the door were two Mexicans, each armed ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... no one could mistake the crackling authority in that voice. The commander, unseen in the moving, dim light, had been circling the periphery of the camp, to make sure that all was well. He strode toward the two younger men, who stood silently, shocked into immobility. The commander's sword was already in ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... dat band wheel in before us, and march on,—my God! I quit dis world altogeder." I wonder if he pictured to himself the many dusky regiments, now unformed, which I seemed to see marching up behind us, gathering shape out of the dim air. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the right. I think that, in these last years, all opinions have been affected by the magnificent and stupendous spectacle, which Divine Providence has offered us, of the energies that slept in the children of this country,—that slept and have awakened. I see thankfully those who are here; but dim eyes in vain explore for some who are not. They shine the brighter "in the domain of tender memory." The old Greek, Heraclitus, said: "War is the father of all things." He said it, no doubt, as science, but we of this day can repeat it as ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the main road, there dashed past the end of the lane leading up the hill a carriage and pair, traveling at full speed. I could not see who rode inside; but two men sat on the box, and there was luggage on the top. I could not be sure in the dim light, but I had a very strong impression that the carriage was the same as that which had conveyed Mme. Delhasse out of my sight earlier in the evening. If it were so, and if the presence of the luggage indicated that of its owner, ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... of the river under circumstances of some peril. It was in a small flat-bottomed scow. Shortly after leaving the American shore, a tremendous storm of thunder, lightning, rain, and hail burst over the river. The waves, crested with snowy foam which gleamed ghastly in the dim light of our lantern, threatened to engulf our frail bark. The boatman strained every nerve and muscle, but was borne a mile down the river before he made the land. That distance he had to retrace along the rugged, boulder-strewn, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... I thought; I had a dim notion of escaping from the disgrace of being nameless. It was the mad clutch of the engulfed at anything.... Not with any definite view—partly from fright, partly I think for the sake of those who had been ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... have written "swans" in the plural. The scene when I saw it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness: there was one swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan, its own white image in the water. It was for that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Harley, and little dreamed that he was to anticipate a daughter-in-law in the ward, whom he understood Harley, in a freak of generous romance, had adopted, was familiar and courteous, as became a host; but he looked upon Helen as a mere child, and naturally left her to the countess. The dim sense of her equivocal position, of her comparative humbleness of birth and fortunes, oppressed and pained her; and even her gratitude to Harley was made burdensome by a sentiment of helplessness. The grateful long to requite. And what could ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or conversing among themselves, under the brilliant glare of the gilt chandeliers or the subdued light of the Chinese lanterns, which were brilliantly decorated with long silken tassels. On the walls there was a lamentable medley of landscapes in dim and gaudy colors, painted in Canton or Hongkong, mingled with tawdry chromos of odalisks, half-nude women, effeminate lithographs of Christ, the deaths of the just and of the sinners—made by Jewish houses in Germany ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Hale and Policeman Regen of the Morrisania Station were standing in Westchester Avenue near Union Avenue shortly before 4:30 o'clock, when they heard the crashing of a pane of glass. They ran to Union Avenue in time to see the dim shadows of three men running from the corner. The two policemen shouted to the men to stop and fired their revolvers, but the fugitives, returning the fire over their shoulders, darted down Union Avenue, separated, and disappeared into apartment ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... youth saw through a gate, left open he knew not how, the dim, distant mountains glittering in the moonlight. "And if he did not accept, he was a fool," said the little Master, with a grin, echoing ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the sun shining high in the heavens the light was a dim yellow, in the midst of which the few people who remained in the stricken towns, their clothing, hair and beards covered with ashes, moved about in the awful stillness ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... conversation she caught dealt with a world of alien things—how little she was Anglicized, she thought, after all those years! And when she was borne forward into the Cathedral, her heart beat with a sense of dim, remote glories. To have lived so long in London and never to have entered here! She was awed and soothed by the solemn vistas, the perspectives of pillars and arches, the great nave, the white robes of the choir vaguely stirring ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... went to London to establish a branch of the Company business. He was accompanied by Mrs. Allan and Edgar, and the boy was placed in the school of Stoke-Newington, shadowy with the dim procession of the ages and gloomed over by the memory of Eugene Aram. The pictured face of the head of the Manor School, Dr. Bransby, indicates that the hapless boys under his care had stronger than historic reasons for ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... stepped out of the underbrush and advanced. Even in the dim, uncertain light, Martin Hawk could see that they carried rifles. His eyes were like those of the bird whose name he bore. They swept the clearing in a flash. As if by magic, men appeared to right of him, to left of him, in front of him. He counted them. Seven,—no, there was another,—eight. And ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... characteristic of the girl adjusting her new travelling-hat before the dim little looking-glass that, while her heart was beating with excitement which was strangely like grief, she could give herself at once to her stepmother's inquietude and turn it ...
— Different Girls • Various
... divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong. Seek it by study of the laws of being, the laws of nature, the laws of the supernatural: and seek it by making the profound obeisance of the soul to the dim star that burns within. Steadily, as you watch and worship, its light will grow stronger. Then you may know you have found the beginning of the way. And when you have found the end its light will ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... but to the daughter it would be wide indeed. Love could still answer love, even though it was by a sign, a glance, a whisper only; but when to the poor girl it would be said of her mother, "She's gone," dim and fading as the presence had been, manifested chiefly by the burdens it imposed, its absence would bring the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... and quietly closed the door. Irving stood at the window, gazing beyond the shadowy trees to the dim silver line of the pond, touched now by the moonlight. There was a knock on ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... when upon a silent, sullen day, With a Sirocco, for example, blowing, When even the sea looks dim with all its spray, And sulkily the river's ripple's flowing, And the sky shows that very ancient gray, The sober, sad antithesis to glowing,— 'T is pleasant, if then anything is pleasant, To catch a glimpse ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... from his bed and looked at Berners Street glistening in a sunlight that must have warmed the heart of Madame Carlotti herself. With a lazy pleasure in the process, he recalled the picture of Elise Durwent sitting in the dim shadows of the firelit room; he felt again the fragrance of her person as he leaned over her with the lighted match. On the canvas of his brain was thrown the rich colouring of the English girl, with the copper-hued luxury of hair and the eyes that seemed to steal some magic from the fire; ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... In that dim and distant aeon Known as Ante-Mycenaean, When the proud Pelasgian still Bounded on his native hill, And the shy Iberian dwelt Undisturbed by conquering Celt, Ere from out their Aryan home Came the Lords of Greece and Rome, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... character, its tendency. It filled him with the unsentimental, warm, animal love that made him represent man faithfully and catch the very breath of his fellows as it left their bodies. Certainly, it was from his race's dim, powerful sense of the sacrament of pain that his music flows. He himself confessed that it was the sense of another's inarticulate anguish, sympathy with a half-idiotic peasant-boy stammering out his hopeless love, that first stirred the poet within ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... There is a dim tradition that the first settlers in Ceylon arrived from the coasts of China. It is stated in the introduction to RIBEYRO'S History of Ceylon, but rejected by ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... they seem to range over a vast stretch of time, back indeed to the days of primeval, prehistoric man. In short, I think the subconscious in some ways resembles the conscious and natural memory; that which is very far off to it grows dim and blurred, that which is comparatively close remains clear and sharp, although of course this rule is not invariable. Moreover there is foresight as well as memory. At least from time to time I seem to come in touch with ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... which only some dim future was concerned. Just now, in the living, breathing, quivering present there was room for but the one thought: Terry had ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... little he could see her against the sky, a dim hurrying figure, and his own stride quickened. He had never been in this place before, but he knew it for a mere seaboard village with an utterly lonely country on every inland side. She was heading into a black wilderness, and he took his decision at once and increased ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... officiated; and then the Recollet, Father Goyer, who had attended his death-bed, and seems to have been his confessor, mounted the pulpit, and delivered his funeral oration. "This funeral pageantry," exclaimed the orator, "this temple draped in mourning, these dim lights, this sad and solemn music, this great assembly bowed in sorrow, and all this pomp and circumstance of death, may well penetrate your hearts. I will not seek to dry your tears, for I cannot contain my own. After ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the great dim place out of the wet fog, found it again, as he had long since known it to be, a refuge from fogs and other ills of living. Far up, the seven lamps that never go out burned dimly through the blurred ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... of the murdered mortal, who had so showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, in the church, where a few lamps here and there were but red specks on a pall of darkness; and to think of the guilty knights riding away on horseback, looking over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, and remembering ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... among the spreading branches of the trees, or sun themselves on the warm masses of fallen leaves. The most remarkable of these butterflies is the large atlas, whose brilliant blue tints shine out with lustrous radiance in the dim light of the forest. Along the banks of rivers, and especially in hot marshy spots, small musquitoes swarm. The bite of this animal produces an intolerable burning sensation, and often causes considerable inflammation. But more troublesome, and also much more numerous, are the stinging-flies ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... delivered. And this unavoidable inaccuracy must be greater or less, according to the complexity and novelty of the objects defined. When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be, is rendered dim and doubtful by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated. Here, then, are three sources of vague and incorrect definitions: indistinctness of the object, imperfection of the organ of conception, inadequateness of the vehicle of ideas. Any one of these must produce a certain degree of ...
— The Federalist Papers
... breathed hard with satisfaction; it was beyond their wildest dreams of mystery and romance. Even Wan Lee appeared transfigured into a superior being by the potency of his own spells. But an unaccountable disturbance of some kind in the dim interior of the tunnel quickly drew the blood from their blanched cheeks again. It was a sound like coughing followed by something like ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... of great intellectual activity, was, however, as regards cosmology, geology, general physiology or biology, a period of groping in the dim twilight, when the whole truth or even a part of it was beyond the reach of the greatest geniuses, and they could only seize on half-truths. Lamarck, both a practical botanist, systematic zooelogist, and synthetic philosopher, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... worn and hard beset With troubles that thou wouldst forget, Go to the woods and hills! No tears Dim the sweet ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... excursion by a visit to St. John's Church and burying-ground. Cousin Molly Belle's grandfather had heard Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech, and she made the scene very plain to us as we strolled along the dim aisles, streaked with flaming bars of sunset, striking through the western window upon the very spot where the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... a shawl round her, she sat down in the dim light of the lamp, relieved by the stillness, only broken by now and then a louder note of the music down-stairs. It was very comfortable, after all that buzz of talk, and the jokes that seemed so nonsensical and tiresome. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... morning dew chilled our blood, and we felt that uncomfortable feeling which, in the tropics, affects the traveller just at the period when night gives place to day. I led Lucien by the hand, lest, in the dim light, he might fall. He shivered with cold, but was unwilling to complain; I stepped on quickly in order that he might get warm. Perhaps, just at this moment, he regretted his little bed, and thought ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... dictate judicial evidence. My ghosts are what you call spurious ghosts (according to me the only genuine ones), of whom I can affirm only one thing, that they haunted certain brains, and have haunted, among others, my own and my friends'—yours, dear Arthur Lemon, along the dim twilit tracks, among the high growing bracken and the spectral pines, of the south country; and yours, amidst the mist of moonbeams and olive-branches, dear Flora Priestley, while the moonlit sea moaned and rattled against the moldering ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... knight was ravished by his lady to an island, very dim and very fair, known as Avalon. But none has had speech with Launfal and his faery love since then, and for my part I can tell you no more ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... of the last farewell was come for those we loved, and their weakened sight was extinguished forever, it seemed as if our hearts' memory would be eternal, and as if those dear ones would never be forgotten. But time has fled, their memory has grown dim, and other thoughts reign paramount in our forgetful hearts, which barely give them from time to time a ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... made on the reader's mind. And this impression may be of two kinds. Let us imagine a group of young people sitting about the dying embers of a fire on a winter's evening, listening to a ghost story. The black darkness, the sound of the wind howling without, accord with the low tones, the dim light, and the tale of horror within. The minds of the listeners insensibly cast off their ordinary trains of thought, and give themselves up to the unreal impressions of the moment. The incredible circumstances ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... from the partially-blocked stern windows came only a dim, vaporous light. The dull ripple of the water as the ship rocked on the slow swell of the sea made a melancholy sound, and the sick man's heavy breathing seemed to fill the air. The slight noise made by ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... himself back and was shaking with laughter. I had never in my life heard anything so bitter as that noise. It fell like a blight on all the merriment about donkeys, pyramids, bazaars, or what not. Along the whole dim length of the gallery the voices dropped, the pale blotches of faces turned our way with one accord, and the silence became so profound that the clear tinkle of a teaspoon falling on the tesselated floor of the verandah rang out like a ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... seventeen pieces of artillery, some of them of heavy calibre; our infantry using that never-failing weapon, the bayonet, whenever the enemy stood. Night only saved them from worse disaster; for this stout conflict was maintained during an hour and a half ot dim starlight, amidst a cloud of dust from the sandy plain, which yet more obscured every object." This victory, however, was dearly purchased: amongst those who fell was Sir Robert Sale, the hero of Jellalabad, and Sir John M'Caskill. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... landscape. The weary traveller, exhausted with the heat of the scorching Campagna, slowly climbs the ascent towards Tivoli, the haven of cool waters, and pausing now and then upon the path, looks back and sees how the dreary waste of undulating hillocks beneath him seems gradually to subside into a dim flat plain, while, in the far distance, the mighty domes and towers of Rome dwindle to an unreal mirage in the warm haze of the western sky; then advancing again, he feels the breath of the mountains upon him, and hears the fresh plunge of the cold cataract, till at last, when his strength ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... the palace, but among their own associates as well, and here they would take on a more mysterious and alarming aspect to these people shut away from the world, as ghost stories become more terrifying when told in the dim twilight. May this not account in some measure for the attitude assumed by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of 1900, and their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions of spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves invulnerable to ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... of heart; not so am I; For mine is tender, soft, compassionate, And its delight is doing good to all. In the dim caverns of the gloomy Dis, Where, tracing mystic lines and characters, My soul abideth now, there came to me The sorrow-laden plaint of her, the fair, The peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. I knew of her enchantment and her fate, From high-born dame to peasant wench transformed And touched ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... also a function almost diametrically opposed to that which we have just considered; besides harking back to what is oldest it looks forward to what is newest. It may stir us by awakening dim racial recollections; but it may also thrill us by adding to the store of what is already in the mind. In fact, we like to assimilate new ideas, to think new thoughts, to do new acts; we like to read or hear something that we could not have produced ourselves. When we are young and ignorant, ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... happiness here on earth, the attainment of Nirvana. So, too, the priesthood has corrupted the teachings of Christ until the logical mind revolts from the jumble of self-evident absurdities, rejects Revelations as a nursery tale and seeks by the dim light of science to find the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... this, and earnestly. The old Orphic song, with its dim hope of yet once more Eurydice,—the Philomela song—granted after the cruel silence,—the Halcyon song—with its fifteen days of peace, were all sad, or joyful only in some vague vision of conquest over death. But the Johnsonian vanity of wishes is on the whole satisfactory to Johnson—accepted ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... not cleaned from the eye, the cornea may look dim and ulcers may appear. If the ulcer eats through the cornea the iris is apt to be caught in the opening and in the scar resulting from the ulcer. The cornea may later bulge and protrude or the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... his chair near to the open door, where he could keep his eye upon the shop—a needless precaution, as at this hour no customers ever turned into it. He was an old man, and seemed very old and infirm by the dim light. He was thin and spare, with that peculiar spareness which results from the habit of always eating less than one can. His teeth, which had never had too much to do, had gone some years ago, and his cheeks fell in rather deeply. A fine network ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... Felix so triumphantly levelled at idol-loving 'benighted Heathens.' Will any one say the Christian absolutely knows more about Jehovah than the Heathen did about Jupiter? The Author believes that few, if any, who have attentively considered Bishop Watson's queries, will say the 'dim Unknown,' they so darkly shadow forth, is conceivable by any effort, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... earthly use to him, but it was splendid, and, for aught he knew, something dropped from the heavens themselves. Still Mamma made no inquiries, and it seemed to him, in his furtive peeps, as though the shiny stones grew dim. What was the use of a 'parkle cwown if it made a little boy feel all bad in his inside? He had the pink string as well as the other treasure, but greatly he wished that he had not gone beyond the string. It was his first experience of iniquity, and it ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and rode through it for seven hours on the left bank of the Perak river. The loveliness was intoxicating. The trees were lofty and magnificent; there were very many such as I have not seen before. Many run up a hundred feet or more before they branch. The twilight was green and dim, and ofttimes amidst the wealth of vegetation not a flower was to be seen. But as often, through rifts in the leafage far aloft, there were glimpses of the sunny, heavenly blue sky, and now and then there were openings where trees had fallen, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... brushwood-pile, and hurried along to the ridge, for behind him he felt was the wide-awake, sultry world. He reached the lamp in safety, tingling with drowsiness, when a policeman—a common country policeman—sprang up before him and touched him on the shoulder ere he could dive into the dim valley below. He was filled with terror,—the hopeless terror of dreams,—for the policeman said, in the awful, distinct voice of dream-people, "I am Policeman Day coming back from the City of Sleep. You come with me." Georgie knew it was true—that just beyond ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... clamored; she woke to poetry and pleasure. All round her, stretching almost across the canal, the noiseless flock of gondolas—dark, leaning figures impelling them from behind, and in front the high prows and glow-worm lights; in the boats, a multitude of dim, shrouded figures, with not a face visible; and in their midst the barca, temple of light and music, built up of flowers, and fluttering scarves, and many-colored lanterns, a sparkling fantasy of color, rose and gold and green, shining on the bosom of the night. To either side, the long, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... opened, wide and brimful of light, a door of one of the log houses opened, and then another, and out into the night, like dim shadows, trod the moccasined men from the factor's office, and stood there waiting for the word of life or death from John Cummins. In their own fashion these men, who, without knowing it, lived very near to the ways of God, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... thinks the Land Bill or the Land League, or something miraculous will turn up to help her if she keeps possession for a while. Fear that she has done wrong and laid herself open to some greater punishment, and excitement have blanched her face. In the dim evening she sits at the window inside; the children have a gipsy fire and sit under the window outside. When the gloaming has passed and dark night settled down, the police come over from the barracks to see if any of the children have ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... dim hazy idea of what I was doing, except that I sought to wrest from his hand a knife. We clutched each other savagely, and wrestled there on the edge of the pond. Weights seemed to hang upon my limbs, but I felt the stronger ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... earth than others of their brethren are; yea, some are so swallowed up with God, and love to his word and ways, that they are fit to be a pattern or example in holiness to all that are about them; and some again have their light shining so dim, that they render themselves suspicious to their brethren, whether they are of the number of those that have grace or no.[1] But being gracious they shall not be lost, although such will at the day of reward ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... thank you, honest lord. Remember me In all humility unto his Highness. Say his long trouble now is passing Out of this world; tell him, in death I bless'd him, For so I will. Mine eyes grow dim. Farewell, My lord. Griffith, farewell. Nay, Patience, You must not leave me yet. I must to bed; Call in more women. When I am dead, good wench, Let me be us'd with honour. Strew me over With maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste wife to my grave. Embalm me, Then lay me ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... lovely were protected from the satyrs in the audience by an impalpable screen made of light and of ascending music in which strings, brass, and concussion exemplified the naive sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which, occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium, surged round the silhouetted conductor and drove like a cyclone between the barriers of plush and gilt and fat cupids on to the stage—this huge guffaw seemed to indicate what might have happened if the magic protection of the impalpable ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... but love within its proper limits, Was Julia's innocent determination In young Don Juan's favour, and to him its Exertion might be useful on occasion; And, lighted at too pure a shrine to dim its Ethereal lustre, with what sweet persuasion He might be taught, by love and her together— I really don't know what, nor ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... anything about it. It never occurs to them that they are graceful. No child is ever artless to himself. The only difference he sees between you and himself is that you are grown-up and he is little. Sometimes I think he does have a dim perception that when he is sick it is because he has eaten too much, and he must take medicine, and feed on heartless dry toast, while, when you are sick, you have the dyspepsia, and go to Europe. But the beauty and sweetness of children are entirely wasted on themselves, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... down in the little pavilion to watch an autumn sunset of deep red fire and pallid gold. To their left lay Kingsport, its roofs and spires dim in their shroud of violet smoke. To their right lay the harbor, taking on tints of rose and copper as it stretched out into the sunset. Before them the water shimmered, satin smooth and silver gray, and beyond, clean shaven William's Island ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... every downward step into the solemn depths of my own soul, recalls thy oracles, O Jean Jacques! But as these things only glimmer upon me at present, clouds of rose and amber, in the perspective of a long, dim woodland glade, which I must traverse if I would get a fair look at them from the hill-top,—as I cannot, to say sooth, get the works of these always working geniuses, but by slow degrees, in a country that has no heed of them till her railroads and canals are finished,—I need not jot down ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... time For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart a spectre dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions that have passed away And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... and down. It dipped into valleys and meandered round hills. It climbed a mountain spur, slipped through a notch, and plumped sharply into a small mountain park. At the notch the Mexican drew up and pointed a finger. In the dim pre-dawn grayness Joyce could see nothing ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... of sympathy—evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature. He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of nations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting—a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst the deaths of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... picking his way on foot along the canon. Behind a detached rock at the base of one of the sandstone walls Texas Smith lay in ambush, aiming his rifle first at one and then at another of this stumbling trio, and cursing the starlight because it was so dim that he could not positively distinguish which ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... a quiet time she was half conscious that she was not very glad to find herself alone. When she sat down with the Bible in her hand, there fell on her spirit no such blessed sense of rest and peace as used to transform the dim attic into something pleasanter than this pretty green room, and fairer than the ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... of this long period of obscurity, Assyria once more comes into sight, we have at first only a dim and indistinct view of her through the mists which still enfold and shroud her form. We observe that her capital is still fixed at Kileh-Sherghat, where a new series of kings, bearing names which, for the most part, resemble those of the earlier period, are found employing themselves ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... him to enable him to sustain with firmness and fortitude the pains he might be called upon to endure. After which prayer he felt calmer and more composed. Presently, being very hungry, he tried in the dim light to find a small piece of bread which he had not yet eaten. He had placed it on a narrow ledge near to the place where he slept, but in the darkness he pushed it with his hand before he had grasped ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... round-arms without pads, and actually blocked one of them once, and that was more than some of the fellows could say, I could take my header into the pool from the same step as Parkin. And once I had not run away from Hector when he broke loose from his kennel. Even now, but for the dim recollection of that awful automatic machine, I might have pulled myself together sufficiently to strike a light and jog my next-bed ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... sound in the room, and it was some time before her eyes became accustomed to the dim light around her. Then the glimpse she caught, through the half-open door, of one or two familiar objects,—the desk which had been her father's, and the high-backed chair of carved oak in which her mother used to sit so many, many years ago,—assured ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... earth, is to educate Human Nature for that august "politeuma" (Phil. iii. v. 20), that Eternal Commonwealth which awaits perfected Spirits above, when, through infinite grace, they are finally admitted into a "CITY which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." (Heb. xi. 10.) (The dim approximations of Platonic philosophy to certain discoveries in Divine Revelation, have rightly challenged the attention of theological enquirers. The above quotation from St. Paul suggests a reference to one of these, which occurs towards the termination of Plato's ninth book ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to Hakem ben Haschem, from a silver gauze veil worn by him "to dim the lustre of his face," or rather to hide its extreme ugliness. The history of this impostor is given by D'Herbelot, Biblioth['e]que ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... fact no doubt. The better part of her woman's nature saw it. Such a man might, years ago, not now, have changed her nature, and made the issue of her life so different, even after her cruel abandonment. She had a dim feeling of this, and she would like now to stand well with him. The spark of truth and honor that was left in her was elicited by his presence. It was this influence that governed ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... juggling a sizable external debt against the urgent need for expanded public investment. Low prices for key mining and agricultural commodities combined with troubles in the bauxite and sugar industries threaten the government's already tenuous fiscal position and dim ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... admitted and largely acted on in the other, then the method of procedure observable in the evolution of the organs whose history is within our ken should throw light upon the evolution of that whose history goes back into so dim a past that we can only know it by way of inference. In the absence of any show of reason to the contrary we should argue from the known to the unknown, and presume that even as our non-bodily organs originated and were developed through gradual ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... some new land they recognize a locality as being quite familiar to them in all its details. Or it may be the rooms of a house hitherto unvisited by them. Or it may be a conversation of which, when it begins, they already foreknow the sequence and the end, because in some dim state, when or how who can say, they have taken part in that talk with those same speakers. If this be so even in cheerful surroundings and among our friends or acquaintances, it is easy to imagine how much ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... life, Althea, with a sinking heart, felt sure that she had lost something, and that she only knew it lost from seeing that Helen had found it. It had been through Helen's blindness to the qualities in Franklin which, timidly, tentatively, she had put before her, that his worth had grown dim to herself; this was the cutting fact that Althea tried to edge away from, but that her sincerity forced her again and again to examine. It was through Helen's appreciation that she now saw more ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... they came abreast of a certain tent, looming up dim and ghostly in the darkness; "Pedrillo is sleeping just outside this tent. Forward, men; but carefully, for your lives. One false step now, and all will be lost. Come along, and remember—we must be quick and silent at—at the work ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the first five victims of the Russian soldiery were carried after the massacre and there photographed, and, finally, where the great light from the West—Miss Julie P. Mangles—alighted one May morning, looking a little dim ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... he even stepped back a pace to get a better view of the stranger, who had approached so stealthily through the dim light that the agent was unaware of his existence ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... nothing but a hurry and a scrabble, and when we get through, we've nothing to show for it. I've only been here six weeks, but I really feel as if I know you now better than I do mamma." And Katharine rested her head against the back of her chair, while the dark eyes fixed on the fire grew a little dim. ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... great deal of Bill Snyth and it made Jim Bunion angry to hear anything said against him. I hastened to say that the bargain seemed silly though not of course the man who made it; for the sailor was almost threatening, and no wonder for the whiskey in that dim tavern ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... of the last, dim, weird battle in the west, beginning at the bottom of page 240 with the line "A death-white mist slept over land and sea," is one of the most stirring things in the poem, and deserves particularly close ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... their bleeched bones remained behind on some lonely beach. But they were true pioneers. They gambled with luck. Life to them was a glorious adventure. And all the suffering, the thirst and the hunger and the pain were forgotten when their eyes beheld the dim outlines of a new coast or the placid waters of an ocean that had lain forgotten ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... of the shrouded billiard table, with the blinds down and this pale slip of a girl in deep mourning sitting in a basket chair in the dim light, he began ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... Nor, dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist: Then all averred, I had killed the bird That brought the fog and mist. 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... produce the most exquisite crystals, the highest forms of vegetation, of animals, of men. Then came the slow processes of civilising and educating men; the dim instincts of fear and propitiation, merging, by slow degrees, in the first conceptions of Love, as something apart from desire, ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... were all too fierce for him; Our rude winds pierced him through and through; But Heaven has valleys cool and dim, And boscage ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... meekness, indeed, that instead of clothing herself in the robes of martyrdom she ridiculed herself because of one thing: In a pigeonhole of her brain a little back-thought had lurked, a dim hope that if she gave her husband the divorce he implored she might be free to remold her shattered life nearer to her heart's desire—with Jim Dyckman. Her husband, indeed, had taunted her with ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... that Jones had a ship's lantern in his hand, by the dim light of which the cabin was only faintly illuminated; but I could see the water washing about the floor, with a lot of things floating about that had been carried away by the big wave coming in through the broken ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... pupils, William Calvert pored over the pages of a volume as huge of size as it was musty of appearance. It was that pleasant book—quite as much romance as history—the "Knights of Malta," by our venerable father, Monsieur L'Abbe Vertot. Its dull, dim, yellow-looking pages—how yellow, dim, and dull-looking in comparison with more youthful works—had yet a life and soul which it is not easy to find in many of these latter. Its high wrought and elaborate pictures ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... that are apropos and definite rather than comprehensive. Starting with a basic idea, it finds the generic term; it then disregards dim and distant relationships, confines itself rigorously to one of perhaps two or three legitimate senses, and refuses to consider the peculiar twists and devious ways of subsidiary words when they wander from the idea it ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... was deadly. The little grain of sand stopped his heart's beating. Topinard caught him in his arms, hailed a passing cab, and put the poor German into it. He was suffering from congestion of the brain; his eyes were dim, his head was throbbing, but he had enough strength left to put ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... images that in some unaccountable way rose up in his imagination. By the side of this strong and handsome Philip he seemed at this minute to see the nude figure of Kolosoff as an artist's model; with his stomach like a melon, his bald head, and his arms without muscle, like pestles. In the same dim way the limbs of Sophia Vasilievna, now covered with silks and velvets, rose up in his mind as they must be in reality; but this mental picture was too horrid and he tried to drive ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... flame, Filling the room with a mysterious haze, Which rolls and writhes along the shadowy air, Taking a thousand strange, fantastic forms; And every form is lit with burning eyes, Which pierce me through and through like fiery arrows! The dim walls grow unsteady, and I seem To stand upon a reeling deck! Hold, hold! A hundred crags are toppling overhead. I faint, I sink—now, let me clutch that limb— Oh, devil! It breaks to ashes in my grasp! What ghost is that which beckons through the mist? The duke! the duke! and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fifteen minutes to live, poor fellow,' was his reply! I threw on my stole, requested the crowd to stand back a little, and knelt on the bricks beside him, and bowed my ear close to his lips. He had recognized me, and his eyes already dim, lit up with joy; and in faltering and whispered words, he made his short confession. Happily, his conscience was not burdened with mortal sin. He was one of my penitents, and I knew how regular and pious his daily life had been. Quickly I gave ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... great or heroic, and she looked after this boy preacher with newly opened eyes. She suddenly saw as by a flash of white light, that he and the other pioneer men of God—these soldiers of the cross who were bearing it through the trackless wilderness—were of the greatest. Her dim eyes followed the young man—this brave bearer of the awful burden of the divine mission—watching him press on to the river. She thought of the many rivers that he must swim, the forests that he must ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... signs of any attempt to struggle, I shall shoot you. I have the right and the power." Robins, a young man of nerve, whose name stood high on an official list of those who might be relied upon for any desperate enterprise, sat like a numbed thing. Dim visions of the face of this man, only a few feet away from his own, assailed him under some very different guise. It was Crawshay the man, stripped for action, whose lean, strong fingers were gripping the butt of that revolver, and whose eyes ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... theory, indeed, is rather suspiciously confined to those who have previously had the Bible. No such plenary confidence is found in the ancient heathen philosophers, who, in many not obscure places, acknowledge that the path of mortal man, by his internal light, is a little dim. Many, therefore, say, that the 'Naturalists' and 'Spiritualists' are but plagiarists from the Bible, and of course, like other plagiarists, depreciate the sources from which they have stolen their treasures. I think unjustly; for, whatever their obligations to that mutilated volume, I acknowledge ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... deserted. The few who remained apparently buried themselves from the garish light of day in some dim, cloistered recess of shop, hotel, or restaurant; and the perspiring stranger, dazed by the outer glare, who broke in upon their quiet, sequestered repose, confronted collarless and coatless specters of the past, with fans in their hands, who, ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... the young man saw a veil of moisture suddenly dim the grave eyes, and the lips that answered him were a ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... self-luminous; and for the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of vital energy; for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come. Were the sun "a cooling mass," our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to achieve their rounds. There would remain no hope for evoluting humanity; except perhaps in ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Sa@mkhya considered nirvikalpa as the dim knowledge of the first moment of consciousness, which, when it became clear at the next moment, was ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... The hours passed slowly on, but no sound was heard. Then, in the dim morning light, a pirate fleet of eight prahus was seen, lying at a distance of half a mile ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... for his sweet howl in vain, Like the far storm resounding. Brothers Knox ne'er will see Mr. Bruin again, Through the dim moonlight bounding. ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... Harbor on a day of cloudlessness and calm. Incoming vessels, drifting in the smoothness, saluted us with their flags, and the idle seamen stared at us, leaning over their bulwarks. The last of the low headlands grew dim and vanished in the golden haze of the afternoon. "Go away, tiresome old land!" sang out my sister and myself; but my father, standing beside us, gazing westward with a serious look, bade us be silent. Two hundred and ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... visions were deceitful. Ere they were distinctly seen, the phantoms vanished. Or, if such beings do exist, it has experienced the peculiar hardship of never having met with any, in whom both the purpose and the power were fully united. Therefore, with hands wearied with labour, eyes dim with watchfulness, veins but half nourished, and a mind at length subdued by intense study and a reiteration of unaccomplished hopes, it was driven by irresistible impulse to end at once such a complication of evils. The knowledge ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... There was a light burning here as well as in the night-nursery adjoining, for it was his mother who had charge of the children, and who would be the first the nurse would call if anything was the matter. She awoke as one who expects to be called upon at any hour; but the light was too dim to betray the misery on her ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... true, Doctor Heidegger's study must have been a very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... down at the Brockhurst racing-stables. He grew heated in discussion with Lord Fallowfeild. He petted little Lady Constance Quayle. He called Camp, coaxed and chaffed the dog merrily—whereat Lady Calmady rose from her place by the bedside and stood at one of the dim, shuttered windows for a while. He spoke of places, too, and of happenings in them, from Westchurch to Constantinople, from a nautch at Singapore to a country fair at Farley Row. But, recurrent through all his wanderings, were allusions, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... enjoyed life so much as he did, he always thought and spoke of death with cheerful serenity. On the third of December, 1851, he wrote thus to his youngest daughter, Mary: "This day completes my eightieth year. 'My eye is not dim, nor my natural force abated.' My head is well covered with hair, which still retains its usual glossy dark color, with but few gray hairs sprinkled about, hardly noticed by a casual observer. My life has been prolonged beyond most, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... she dwelleth not. Although no home were half so fair; No simplest duty is forgot, Life hath no dim and lowly spot That doth not in her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... yet," answered the old man, looking at Bunny and Sue through his spectacles all dim and dusty with wood dust. "But I haven't got all the sawdust and shavings out yet. I hope to find ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope
... dim, bewildered way at first, as if trying to wake up and make out what was the matter—that dark, vast, heaving, rolling sea, the rocks and capes touched with light, and a great land behind them yet dark and undefined; all so quiet too; and the soft, pink mist that rolled away in smoke-like clouds—rolled ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... paying fifty cents down and knowing that some time in the dim future you would be the owner of property in the very heart of a great city where people would rush to buy. It was glowing enough to attract a people more worldly wise than were these late slaves. They simply fell into the scheme with all their souls; and off their half dollars, ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... protracted, Goliah prowling warily about the house before he would risk entering. He thought he could depend on the young woman, and had therefore come unarmed save for a single revolver in his belt, but he was haunted by a dim presentiment of evil; he pushed open the window to its entire extent and thrust his head into the apartment, calling below ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... then, goaded by the general desire, we pushed forward again, with a common movement, without orders this time. We moved more slowly, firing heavily at every shadow along the sides of the road. Here it seemed more black than ever, for the spluttering torches, which cast a dim light on the raised road itself, left the neighbouring houses in an impenetrable gloom. Whole battalions of Boxers could have lurked there unmarked by us; perhaps they were only waiting until they could safely cut us off. It ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... unpleasantly any longer, but as he shot out from the narrow passage through the flags and saw the little waves laughing in the cool, dim starlight, he suddenly stopped rowing, leaned on his oars, gave a sigh of relief, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... paint had been worn away. It was evidently a long time since any little boy had mounted there, chirruped to the horse, and ridden gloriously away, pursuing a fairy fox through imaginary fields. The eye of the wooden horse was glazed and dim. Life had lost its interest to the poor animal, turned out, as it were, to pasture as best he might in ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... flickering torch of his conductor, had only a dim notion of long cloistered corridors, out of which now and then, as the light flared by, came a golden gleam from some quaint old painting, where the pure angel forms of Angelico stood in the gravity of an immortal youth, or the Madonna, like a bending lily, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... they play trash; but sometimes there comes something beautiful, perhaps only a phrase. But it takes hold of my soul, it makes my eyes grow dim, it makes me shudder. It is all my pent-up agony, it is all my sleeping passion—why, it overwhelms me! And I am helpless—I can not get away ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... John Tranter swung round, latch-key in hand. Behind him, an enormous figure emerged, with surprisingly agile and noiseless steps, from the shadow of the adjoining house—a figure almost grotesque and monstrous in the dim light of the street lamp. The very hugeness of the apparition was so disconcerting that John Tranter drew back with ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... by side: the likeness and the difference of the two are apparent. It is clear that Dilworth served as a model, and that Webster's book started simply as an improvement upon the English original. Even in externals there is a similarity. The early editions of Webster had a dim, hacked-out engraving on wood of Noah Webster, Jr., Esq., to correspond with the scarcely more refined portrait of Tho. Dilworth which prefaces the "New Guide." Both books have long lists of words, proceeding from the simplest combination ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... and musty, and by the dim light of the swinging sea-lamp I saw every bit of available wall-space hung deep with sea-boots, oilskins, and garments, clean and dirty, of various sorts. These swung back and forth with every roll of the vessel, giving rise to a brushing sound, as of trees against a roof or wall. Somewhere ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... chuckle from the speaker, the door slowly opened, and Hank, a ragged figure, with an immense matted beard, long tangled hair and dim blue eyes, that blinked like a ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... paused, arrested by a passing feeling of sentimentality; but it explained nothing, defined nothing, only touched her as a breeze does a flower, and floated away. The dreamy warmth of the fire absorbed her more direct feelings, and for some moments she dozed in a haze of dim sensuousness and emotive numbness. As in a dusky glass, she saw herself a tender, loving, but unhappy woman; by her side were her querulous husband and her kindly-minded mother-in-law, and then there was a phantom she could not ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... of Daphne, he mentions (in some of the finest lines he has ever written) "the voluptuous nightingales, sick with sweet love," to be among the great attractions of the place: while Dean Milman (Martyrs of Antioch), in describing the very same "dim, licentious Daphne," is particular in mention ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... the link in pleasure, In rioting and sin. Others, in forced retirement Of self, in cloisters dim. Some make the world's applauses Their sole reward and aim, Some torture gold to fashion The missed links of ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... soft as a happy sigh came through the pines and gently rocked the lanterns. The dim figures of the worshipers moved swiftly about, as delighted as children in the shadow-pictures made by the twinkling lights, eagerly seeking out remote spots that no grave might be without its welcoming gleam. A long ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a thousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and went eddying again round his head. But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... passed, and there came another of dim, undistinguishable hordes that tore down the crescents and slaughtered the ministers of the strange faith, and gave the domed ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... that covers the steep flank of the mountain of Santa Maria, is one of the thickest I ever saw. The trees are of stupendous height and size. Under their bushy, deep green foliage, there reigns continually a kind of dim daylight, a peculiar sort of obscurity, of which our forests of pines, oaks, and beech-trees, convey no idea. Notwithstanding its elevated temperature, it is difficult to believe that the air can dissolve the quantity of water exhaled from the surface of the soil, the foliage of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... express more in a single stanza, couplet or phrase than many have said in a whole book. A study of his poetry is, therefore, not unlike a journey through a vast country, alternating in fertile valleys, barren plains and lofty heights with entrancing views into far, dim vistas. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... the will became passive, the activity of my imagination was increased, and I experienced a new and strange delight in watching the play of fantasies which appeared to come and go independently of myself. There was still a dim consciousness of outward things mingled with my condition; I was not beyond the recall of my senses. But one day, I remember, as I sat motionless as a statue, having ceased any longer to attempt to control my dead limbs, more than usually passive, a white, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... first floor of this hovel, a little poor furniture had been put; a shabby sofa, an equally shabby arm-chair, a few cane-bottomed chairs, and a deal table. On the table was a tea-pot, a small kettle over a spirit-stove, and a few cups and small cakes. A smoky lamp shed a dim light over this depressing interior, and a handful of coal was smouldering in the ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... felt the hurtful power of injurious age, I, dim-sighted, and hoarse in my tones and in my chest; and all helpful things have turned to my hurt. Now my body is less nimble, and I prop it up, leaning my faint limbs on the support of staves. Sightless I guide my ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... occurred during his travels, or immediately before his illness. He was forced to begin anew his acquaintance with all his friends, even with Roderick; and only by little and little has it grown lighter with him; but slowly has the past with all that had befallen him come again, though still in dim colours, over his memory. He had been removed into his uncle's house, that the better care might be taken of him, and he was like a child, letting them do with him whatever they chose. The first time he went out to enjoy the warmth ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... a strange baby in his arms. Turning, he saw the sinister eyes of the King and of Barrat fastened upon him, and he smiled awkwardly, and in some embarrassment turned the crown about in his hands, so that the jewels in its circle gleamed dully in the dim light of the room. Gordon raised the crown and balanced it on his finger-tips, regarding it severely and ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... keenly what every one was feeling; with the creative gift which belonged to him as a poet, he bodied it forth into visible shape, gave it a local habitation and a name; and so made himself the spokesman of his generation. /Werter/ is but the cry of that dim, rooted pain, under which all thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing: it paints the misery, it passionately utters the complaint; and heart and voice, all over Europe, loudly and at once respond to it. True, it prescribes ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Suddenly a dim figure emerged from the gloom. Another followed it, but they made no sound that could be heard through the rustle of the leaves, and George felt his heart beat and his nerves tingle as he watched them flit, half seen, through the grass. Then ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... He had been a good deal worried the last few days, and had a dim idea that he deserved it, which deprived him of the sense of unmerited suffering—a most valuable consolation in ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... was dinner-time, and, being ushered into a dirty room with a brick floor, dim light and grimy tablecloth, I seated myself at the table with my host, his secretary, the doctor, and a clerk. The dinner was in the usual native style of those days: ribs of beef roasted on the gridiron, beef and ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... please," said I promptly; and seating myself at the writing-table I lit candles (for the lamp was dim), made ready the writing materials and prepared to take ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Cecilia's. Church-going was another of the customs of men and women which Society had taken up, like the Opera, and made into a state function. Here was a magnificent temple, with carved marble and rare woods, and jewels gleaming decorously in a dim religious light. At the door of this edifice would halt the carriages of Society, and its wives and daughters would alight, rustling with new silk petticoats and starched and perfumed linen, each one ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... solid earth, while rows upon rows of sandbags were piled outside the entrance to guard against splinters and stray bullets. The weighty roof was supported, as an additional precaution, on the inside by three stout wooden posts, which, together with the rather dim light, most apparent when descending from the brilliant sunshine outside, gave the bomb-proof the appearance of a ship's cabin; in fact, one of my visitors remarked it much reminded him of the well-known print of the Victory's cockpit when Nelson lay a-dying. The ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... puffed slowly towards St. Michel, and Barbara watched the dim outline of gray stone become clearer, till the full beauty of the Abbaye and the Merveille burst ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... night duty rolled themselves up in their blankets and forgot the cares of the day in heavy slumber. Dave lay near Mr. Carson and Mr. Bellmore. But for some reason or other the young cowboy could not sleep. He stared up at the stars which had been dim, but were ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... never look at the place without feeling an involuntary sensation of horror—the smoky and dirty nooks—the distant groups of dark Spaniards, Moors, and Jews, their sallow countenances made yellow by the fight of dim oil lamps—the unceiled rafters of the rooms above, seen through unshuttered windows and the consciousness of their having covered the atrocious Soto, combine ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... seem to be redundant and overstated, let us remember that the writer, feeble and sorrowful, was penning his last words to his old and perhaps best friend, and its very extravagance at once assumes a childish pathos. The critical eye as it scans the record becomes dim with the sympathetic tear, and reads between the blurred lines only the passionate ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various |
