"Mirror" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into them that every man is just a charnel-house skeleton of unclean bones. Our "understanding," our science and idealism have produced in people the same strange frenzy of self-repulsion as if they saw their own skulls each time they looked in the mirror. A man is a thing of scientific cause-and-effect and biological process, draped in an ideal, is he? No wonder he sees the skeleton grinning ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... spread out below the navigators of the air like some mirror of silver in a setting of green fields. Tom could see a winding river, that flowed into the lake, and he noted towns, villages, and even distant cities, interspersed here and there with broad farms or patches of woodlands, like a ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... and word was sent up that her escort had arrived, Rose ran down, devoutly hoping that he had not come in a velveteen jacket, top-boots, black gloves, or made any trifling mistake of that sort. A young gentleman was standing before the long mirror, apparently intent upon the arrangement of his hair, and Rose paused suddenly as her eye went from the glossy broadcloth to the white-gloved hands, busy with an unruly lock that would ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the museum, crossed the street, and walked up Kasr El Nil past the Modern Art Museum and the Automobile Club. Scotty took a pair of sunglasses from his pocket. They were of the silvered one-way mirror type that cuts down light transmission much as a neutral-density filter does for ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... to face." From this it appears that there is a twofold knowledge of God; the one, whereby He is seen in His essence, according to which He is said to be seen face to face; the other whereby He is seen in the mirror of creatures. As was already shown (Q. 12, A. 4), an angel cannot have the former knowledge by his natural principles. Nor does vision through a mirror belong to the angels, since they do not derive their knowledge of God from sensible things, as Dionysius observes (Div. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... up, back to back, in front of a long mirror, and Chad's shaggy hair rose at least an inch above the Major's thin locks of gray. The Major turned and looked at him from head ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... rocky banks shelter these deep bays (called fiords) from almost every wind; so that their waters are usually as still as those of a lake. For days and weeks together, they reflect each separate tree-top of the pine-forests which clothe the mountain sides, the mirror being broken only by the leap of some sportive fish, or the oars of the boatman as he goes to inspect the sea-fowl from islet to islet of the fiord, or carries out his nets or his rod to catch the sea-trout or char, or cod, or herrings, which abound, in ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... "You are a coward—a pitiful coward," she told him. "Consult your mirror. It will tell you what a palsied thing you are. That you should dare so speak ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... us, even when we have very good sight, and that on the contrary our ears do not deceive us? Let your well-informed ear hear "You are beautiful, I love you"; it is quite certain that someone has not said "I hate you, you are ugly": but you see a smooth mirror; it is demonstrated that you are mistaken, it has a very uneven surface. You see the sun as about two feet in diameter; it is demonstrated that it is a million times bigger ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... middle-age, heavy-jawed, blue-eyed, with a curving yellow moustache, and a brick-red face which turned to an ivory white where his helmet had sheltered it. He was bald, with a shining, tightly stretched scalp, at the back of which, as in a mirror, it was a favourite mess-joke of the subalterns to trim their moustaches. As a soldier he was slow, but reliable and brave. The colonel could trust him where a more dashing officer ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before the parlor mirror, gazing into it, seeing—not the reflected image of her own elfish figure, or pretty, witching face, with its round, polished forehead, its mocking eyes, its sunny, dancing curls, its piquant little nose, or petulant little lips—but contemplating, as through ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... before a mirror for an hour at a time, making faces while he spoke his lines, smiling, frowning, or grimacing as best seemed to fit the part, until the boy grew fairly weary of his own looks. Then sometimes, more often as the time slipped by, Carew would clap his hands with a boyish ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... there are some delightful scenes. A moonlight night, with the clear heavens and the dark glittering sea, and the white sails filled by the soft air of a gently blowing trade-wind, a dead calm, with the heaving surface polished like a mirror, and all still except the occasional flapping of the canvas. It is well once to behold a squall with its rising arch and coming fury, or the heavy gale of wind and mountainous waves. I confess, however, my imagination had painted something more grand, more terrific ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... moment in front of the little mirror, turning his face from side to side. Melisse handed him the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... neck-tie in a moment; but the distended windpipe pressed so against the shirt-button they could not undo it. Then they seized the collar, and, pulling against each other, wrenched the shirt open so powerfully that the button flew into the air, and tinkled against a mirror a long ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Club. Fun is like cant, like humour, a word which is untranslatable. Fun is to farce what pepper is to salt. To get into a house and break a valuable mirror, slash the family portraits, poison the dog, put the cat in the aviary, is called "cutting a bit of fun." To give bad news which is untrue, whereby people put on mourning by mistake, is fun. It was fun to cut ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the Ilam gardens of Europe; and whoever has seen that singular spot in Derbyshire belonging to Mr. Port, has seen little Lucca in a convex mirror. Some writer calls it a ring upon the finger of the Emperor, under whose protection it has been hitherto preserved safe from the Grand Duke of Tuscany till these days, in which the interests of those two sovereigns, united by intimacy as by blood and resemblance ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... her to learn worsted-work for my sake. So there, again, how useful I was! From the ceiling hung a brilliant glass chandelier, a birthday present from Edward to Rose; and the mantel-piece was adorned by a splendid mirror cut out of a broken looking-glass by Willy, and framed by his hands. I cannot say that Willy ever seemed to care for me personally, but he took considerable interest in my upholstery, and much of my handsomest furniture was manufactured by him. He made my dining-room and drawing-room tables; ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... especially delighted to represent a gloating exultation over human distress. And often in the midst of his clouds of demon faces, would some one who knew him recognise the painter's own likeness, such as the mirror might have presented it to him when he was busiest over the incarnation ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... realistic and graphic appeals to the popular and uneducated taste, not that which is conventional, regulated, and refined according to rule and standard. That which is realistic reproduces all the facts of life. If the mirror is held up to nature it will show some nasty things. The social taboos began in superstitious fear, but they formed a series of conventional folkways under which some acts and facts of life were veiled from sight, knowledge, speech, and publicity. Other ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... is that no object has its limitation in the mirror but in the eye which sees it in the mirror. For if you look at your face in the mirror, the part resembles the whole in as much as the part is everywhere in the mirror, and the whole is in every part of the same mirror; and the same is true of the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... mirror towards you, you would wish To be different. There's the beauty you cannot see, myself and him Balanced in glorious equilibrium, The swinging beauty of equilibrium, ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... the Alsatian advised, "il faut frotter bien!" A number of fellow-captives were regarding my toilet with surprise and satisfaction. I discovered in the mirror an astounding beard and a good layer of dirt. I worked busily, counselled by several voices, censured by the Alsatian, encouraged by Judas himself. The shave and the wash completed I ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... straightened himself up and turned to report his sudden decision to Dave. But the chair by the window was empty. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder. Dave had changed his seat and was sitting behind him. They were back to back, but a mirror hung in such a way the Doctor could ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sky; He is floating back from Cloud-Land now, Borne by the fragrant air. Spread wide your leaves, that he may choose The flower he deems most fair." Then the wild rose glowed with a deeper blush, As she proudly waved on her stem; The Cowslip bent to the clear blue waves, And made her mirror of them. Little Houstonia merrily danced, And spread her white leaves wide; While Daisy whispered her joy and hope, As she stood by her gay friends' side. Violet peeped from the tall green ferns, And lifted her soft blue eye ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... Realenzyklopaedie 10, 138.) They were followed by confessional booklets, prayer-booklets, and also by voluminous books of devotion. Apart from other trash, these contained confessional and communion prayers instructions on Repentance, Confession, and the Sacrament of the Altar; above all, however, a mirror of sins, intended as a guide for self-examination, on the basis of various lists of sins and catalogs of virtues, which supplanting the Decalog were to be memorized. Self-evidently, all this was not intended as a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ and to faith in the ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the mirror in her bedroom, gazed critically at her own reflection. Chrissie's clever fingers had pulled and twisted the crinkled paper into the most becoming of peasant caps, the large bead ear-rings, tied on with silk, jangled on to her neck, her paper sleeves stood out like lawn, the ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... audience. In other words, his orchestra forms a kind of pictorial and psychological background from which his characters detach themselves and actually speak. If they speak falsely, the ever present orchestra, forming as it were a halo, unmercifully tears away the mask, like the mirror in old fairy tales. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... very favourable specimen of the way in which the stage holds the mirror up to nature. We may suppose that a certain character of effeminacy attached to a tailor in that olden time when he was the fashioner for women as well as men; but now that he has no professional dealings with the fair sex but when ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... the aforesaid border of trees,—the water being, not rippled, but its glassy surface somewhat moved and shaken by the remote agitation of a breeze that was breathing on the outer lake,—this being in a sort of bay,—in the slightly agitated mirror, the variegated trees were reflected dreamily and indistinctly; a broad belt of bright and diversified colors shining in the water beneath. Sometimes the image of a tree might be almost traced; then nothing but this sweep of broken rainbow. It was like the recollection of the real scene ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... It brought a deliverer and a prophet to Israel, an intercessor and a preacher to the people of God. May the daughters of Hannah and the sons of Elkanah be multiplied among our people. She is a mirror into which we may look, to learn how to forsake our evil ways. Let us, like her, build up the kingdom of our Lord ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... slumber's deep recesses, I thy mirror'd image see; Fancy mocks the vain caresses I would lavish like ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... life of Johnson, observes:—'Although it is said of plays that they teach morality, and of the stage that it is the mirror of human life, these assertions are mere declamation, and have no foundation in truth or experience. On the contrary, a play-house, and the regions about it, are ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the only trustworthy record of the Divine mind in things pertaining to God. Man's reason, conscience, and affections are the only true revelation of his Maker." But what if God were only man's own image reflected in the mirror of man's mind? What if man were the creator, not the revelation of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... touch of boyish self-confidence which had been hers on the ride was gone. In its place there was something even more difficult for Randall Byrne to face. If there had been a garish brightness about her when he had first seen her, the brilliancy of a mirror playing in the sun against his feeble eyes, there was now a blending of pastel shades, for the hall was dimly illumined and the shadow tarnished her hair and her pallor was like cold stone; even her ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... something more—an outbirth from loving principles—the body of a creating soul. The sea, upon whose restless surface we are gazing, is something more than a briny fluid, bearing ships upon its bosom—something more than a mirror for the arching heavens—something more than a symbol of immensity and eternity. There is a truth in nature far deeper, more divine, ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... trapped more easily than old. Cases showing the limitations of mammalian intelligence are interesting in this connection. A cat which wished to look out and find the cause of a noise outside, when all the windows were closed by wooden blinds, jumped upon a stand and looked into a mirror. Her inference as to the general use of glass was correct; all its uses had not yet come within the range of her experience. A monkey used to stop a hole in the side of a cage with straw. The keeper, ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... and has a plump, dimpling figure. Her hair is bright brown, and her nose is an exquisitely cut little straight one. (Here I observed Dawn casting surreptitious glances in the mirror opposite.) Her eyes are bright blue with long dark lashes, and she has a mouth too pretty to describe, fitted up with a set of the loveliest natural teeth one could see in these days of the dentist; it is so perfect that it seems unnatural and a sad pity that ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... mirror for you. See! One sheet from floor to ceiling! Look into it, Salute its mistress! Dost ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... now at liberty to talk since he had delivered his call for help. "You see, I talk into this transmitter. The simplest transmitter for this purpose is a plane mirror of flexible material, silvered mica or microscope glass. Against the back of this mirror my voice is directed. In the carbon transmitter of the telephone a variable electrical resistance is produced by the pressure on the diaphragm, based on the fact ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... himself in all parts of the dramatic action. The whole world of mankind is at the service of the dramatist, and there is no type of humanity that may not be brought upon the stage. The ancient world of history or of tradition may be represented, or the stage may hold up the mirror to ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... night before, but discretion kept him reluctantly silent. They chatted for a few moments in the hall upon indifferent topics and so separated for the night. Mr. Ricardo, however, was to learn something more of Celia the next morning; for while he was fixing his tie before the mirror Wethermill burst into his dressing-room. Mr. Ricardo forgot his curiosity in the surge of his indignation. Such an invasion was an unprecedented outrage upon the gentle tenor of his life. The business of the morning toilette was sacred. To interrupt it carried a subtle ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... Mail. It had quite a long piece about it. And the Honorable Frederick's photograph and the young lady's were in the Mirror. Mrs. Adams clipped them out and put them in an album, knowing that your lordship was a member of ours. If I may say so, your lordship—a beautiful ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Contemplative but will feel bewildered and at fault, if they descend from their starry region of light into the grosser atmosphere that girdles in this world of action. The works of artists are their minds' mirror; they cannot express what they do not feel; each class dwells apart and seeks its ideal in a distinct sphere of emotion,—their object is different, and their success proportioned to the exclusiveness with which they pursue that object. A few indeed there have been in all ages, monarchs ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... There was a small mirror upon the wall of the room. Her eye in accordance with an instinct feminine, fell swiftly upon it. She lifted her veil to see how far the experiences she had gone through had affected her most ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... who had been instrumental in holding up the mirror so that his stubborn sister could see herself as others saw her. Although she had quarreled frequently with him, she had secretly respected his high standard of honor and fine principles. The fear that he despised ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... are in a shield supported by a merman and mermaid, the latter with a mirror in her hand. The Keys refer to St. Peter, the Patron ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... mild and warm, the lake was as clear and calm as a mirror, and in joyous mood our little party embarked and paddled up the lake, first to Ship Island, but this did not detain them many minutes; they then went to Grape Island, which they so named from the abundance of wild vines, now rich with purple clusters ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... passions," says he, "you must beget a temperance that may give it smoothness." And yet, at the same time, he very justly observes, "The end of playing, both at the first and now, is to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature." No one can deny but that violent passions will naturally emit harsh and disagreeable tones; yet this great poet and critic thought that this imitation of nature would cost too much, if purchased ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... himself to be handsome.[54] And in a letter to Mirabeau, he describes pleasantly how sometimes in moments of distraction he pictures himself with an air of loftiness, of majesty, of penetration, according to the idea that is occupying his mind, and how if by chance he sees his face in the mirror, he is nearly as much amazed as if he saw a Cyclops or a Tartar.[55] Yet his nature, if we may trust the portrait, revealed itself in his face; it is one of the most delightful to look upon, even in the cold inarticulateness ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... and that to his ear there is music in the wild piping of the wind, and that his eye beams afresh when it descries tempest in the horned moon, and lightning in the cloud. To him the ocean is indeed 'a glorious mirror,' where the form of the Highest 'glasses itself in tempests;' dear to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... but little, my whole mind having been concentrated on base-ball and billiard playing, and the particular fit of my coat or the fashion of my trousers caused me but little concern. From that afternoon on, however, things were different, and I am afraid that I spent more time before the mirror than was really necessary. I also began to hunt up excuses of various kinds for visiting the house of the Fiegals, and some of these were of the flimsiest character. I fancied then that I was deceiving the entire family, but I know now that I was ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... and manners, in all their tendencies, combinations, and contrasts. There is not a single picture of his containing a representation of mere pictorial or domestic scenery." His object is not so much "to hold the mirror up to nature," as "to show vice her own feature, scorn her own image." "Folly is there seen at the height—the moon is at the full—it is the very error of the time. There is a perpetual error of eccentricities, a tilt ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... darling; and she wished that they could have remained quick in her memory for ever, instead of being absorbed in loving pride for the present boy. But these were only fanciful regrets, flitting like shadows across a mirror. Peace and thankfulness were once more the atmosphere of her mind; nor was her unconsciousness disturbed by any suspicion of Mr Farquhar's increasing approbation and admiration, which he was diligently nursing up into love for her. She knew that he had sent—she ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... what kindred he was come. Sir, said he, men calleth me Melias de Lile, and I am the son of the King of Denmark. Now, fair sir, said Galahad, sith that ye be come of kings and queens, now look that knighthood be well set in you, for ye ought to be a mirror unto all chivalry. Sir, said Sir Melias, ye say sooth. But, sir, sithen ye have made me a knight ye must of right grant me my first desire that is reasonable. Ye say sooth, said Galahad. Melias said: Then that ye will suffer me to ride with you in this quest of the Sangreal, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... exalted her voice in a squawk like the deathwail of a stuck pig, and dashed affrighted through the window. A smell of scorching fur pervaded the place, and under cover of it the aged spectre walked into the mirror, vanishing like a dream. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... in the light of its appropriate evidence. We are not concerned to deny that it is "a great endowment" which enables men to discern in Nature a manifestation of God; it is a great endowment, but not too great for the mind of man, if he was made in "the image and likeness of God;" a small mirror may reflect the sun. Is it presumptuous in the mind of man to scale the heavens, and trace the planets in their course, and calculate their distances, their orbits, and their motions in the illimitable fields of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the mountains, but every relief of middling importance, amphitheatres, yawning craters, such as exist on the visible face. Then immense tracts, no longer arid plains, but veritable seas, oceans which reflected in their liquid mirror all the dazzling magic of the fires of space. Lastly, on the surface of the continents, vast dark masses, such as immense forests would resemble under the rapid illumination of a ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Old English History; Allen's Anglo-Saxon England; Cook's Life of Alfred; Asser's Life of King Alfred, edited by W.H. Stevenson; C. Plummer's Life and Times of Alfred the Great; E. Dale's National Life and Character in the Mirror of Early English Literature; Rhys's ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... thousand acres: the Academy, professors' houses, hotel, &c., are built upon a large plateau, commanding a magnificent view of the Hudson both ways. The day I was there, the scene was quite lovely; the noble stream was as smooth as a mirror; a fleet of rakish schooners lay helpless, their snow-white sails hanging listlessly in the calm; and, as the clear waters reflected everything with unerring truthfulness, another fleet appeared beneath, lying keel to keel with those that floated ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... mirror of quick-silvered glass, which moves with the index, and is designed to reflect the image of the sun or other object upon the horizon glass, whence it is again reflected to the eye ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... and certain splendid garments, with a jewelled sword, left flung upon them, as if the owner had just put them off; but all was disordered wildly, as if by the dying struggles of a madman, and the gorgeousness seemed to add to the horror of it. I trembled as I looked at the glimmering mirror and thought of what it might have reflected; our cousin's image seemed to rise up in all his pride and bravery as I last saw him, but with the ghastly face of death; so I hurried out and flung the door to behind ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... ample chimney, and the hangings were of Spanish leather, with all the wondrous history of Santiago's relics, including the miracle of the cock and hen, embossed and gilt upon them. There was a Venetian mirror, in which the ladies saw more of themselves than they had ever done before, and with exquisite work around; there were carved chests inlaid with ivory, and cushions, perfect marvels of needlework, as were ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he; and, as he uttered the words, he saw in the mirror the figure of Madame Cardot, looking at him from the further end of the rooms. "Come, Didine, go with Pamela and get your trunks unloaded," said he in her ear. "Go; do not cry; ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight of all poems, it is also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... in the opulent family of the celebrated marechal. From his infancy he had, with calculation beyond his age, lent his mane and complaisance to the follies of the Comte de Guiche. If his noble companion had stolen some fruit destined for Madame la Marechale, if he had broken a mirror, or put out a dog's eye, Manicamp declared himself guilty of the crime committed, and received the punishment, which was not made the milder for falling on the innocent. But this was the way this system of abnegation was paid for: instead of wearing such mean habiliments as his paternal ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... recourse to our paddles) or we shall not see the Nine-Mile Creek this day, I can tell you." The impetus given to our canoe by the vigorous application of eight paddles, independent of our steersman, made the De Witt Clinton (the name of our canoe) fly through the water, which was now as calm as a mirror. After the wind fell, the heat was intense; and, towards noon huge double-headed thunder-clouds showed themselves, slowly emerging out of the still waters of the Huron, far away to the north-west—a certain indication of a ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... an angry grunt flung a look of scorn at the calm and placid one. Then, furtively opening his desk drawer, he once more sought the little vial and took two more pellets—an action which Waldron, without moving his head, complacently observed in a heavily-bevelled mirror ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Colonel wanted to meet me, and for no other reason would I have consented to meet him. But our meeting had been so brief, so disturbed, so futile as regards its purpose, that I had got no light from him whatever. Still, ever since then I had been seeing, in the mirror of life, the face of Marget Forbes, a daughter of the clan whose name she bore, a handsome lass with a long pedigree, heiress to the lands of Corgarff, now forfeit for the Jacobite cause, when they should come back to her line, and incidentally, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... of a magnificent channel. There was a large sheet of water to our left, covered with wild fowl. Flooded gum-trees of large size grew on its banks, and its appearance was altogether imposing. I stood looking in admiration on the broad mirror so close to me, and upon a sight so unusual; and I deeply regretted at that moment that Mr. Browne was not with me to enjoy the gratification of such ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... minute or two thinking, Nora uncovered the lamp. Then she took it up in both her hands, stepped to a mirror that hung near, and, turning the light hither and thither, looked at her blooming face, in full and in profile. Then she replaced the lamp upon the table, yawned, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... however, the load may be read at regular increments of deflection. The deflection readings should be to the nearest 0.01 inch. To avoid error due to parallax, the readings may be taken by means of a reading telescope about ten feet distant and approximately on a level with the wire. A mirror fastened to the scale will increase the accuracy of the readings if the telescope is not used. As in all tests on timber, the strain must be continuous to rupture, not intermittent, and readings must be taken "on the ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... delight and reverence. This was the first time he had enjoyed it at close hand. The blue of the octagon barrel was like satin; the polish of the stock like a mirror; the gold plating of the most fancy lock and guards like the sheen of silk. Bobby loved, too, the indescribable gun smell of it—compounded probably of the odours of steel, wood and oil. With some difficulty he lifted it to his ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... at that moment a rapid signal was flashed by the sun's rays upon a mirror, and reading ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... toothpicks! Poems are painted upon shop-signs, panels, screens, and fans. Poems are printed upon towels, draperies, curtains, kerchiefs, silk- linings, and women's crepe-silk underwear. Poems are stamped or worked upon letter-paper, envelopes, purses, mirror-cases, travelling-bags. Poems are inlaid upon enamelled ware, cut upon bronzes, graven upon metal pipes, embroidered upon tobacco- pouches. It were a hopeless effort to enumerate a tithe of the articles decorated with poetical texts. ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Terry's dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre one evening during that lady's temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt picked up a crayon and wrote this pretty word on the mirror—Dearling, mistaking it for the word darling. The French actress lighted by chance upon a Spenserianism now become obsolete without good reason. It is a more charming adjective than the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments, amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... him round the collection. He saw the Louis Quatorze curtain-rods, the cork bedroom suite, the Caesarian nail-brush (quite bald), the antique shaving-mirror with genuine crack—he saw it all. And then we went back into the other rooms and found some ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... preparing to renew hostilities which, as I have already said, had not been suspended by any agreement, but simply de facto. All was completely peaceful in my camp, and I had as usual taken off my coat and was preparing to shave in the open air before a little mirror nailed to a tree, when I was given a slap on the shoulder. As I was in the middle of my regiment, I turned round sharply to see who had used this familiarity with his commanding officer...I found myself facing the Emperor, who, wishing to examine some neighbouring positions without arousing the enemy, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... the air seemed to be sweet with perfumes; the water sparkled brightly, and the blue sky hung cloudless over the placid mirror ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Junior Extrapolator, stood nude before his bathroom mirror and played a no-beard light over his chin and thin cheeks. That should take care of the beard problem for the next six months or so. He leaned forward and examined the fine lines beginning to appear at the corners of his eyes. Well, that ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... cent. profit." The back of the shop was closed in with magenta curtains, through which the bald head of Mr. Brown would not unfrequently be seen to emerge; and on each side of the curtains there stood a tall mirror, reaching up to the very ceiling. Upon the whole, the thing certainly ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... of divination performed by the aid of a mirror. This method of divination was common among the Achaians. The mode of procedure was, when one was sick and in danger of death, to let down a mirror into a fountain before the temple of Ceres, and, from the appearance of the glass, to ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... put on a woman's bonnet with hanging lace; then, placing myself before a mirror, I took a brush and painted wrinkles in my face. This took me nearly an hour. Then I put on the dress and a large shawl, and I was actually afraid of myself. Fledermausse seemed to me to look at me ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... stepping out of it. Yet he always believed he once had some uncommon stuff in him, and he claimed his own respect for having had it, even if he had lost it now; he had his own way of proving it too. His wife was the mirror by which he judged himself. She was a German woman, whom he found in the city hospital; or rather she found him, shot through the throat by the accidental discharge of a rifle. She was just from the fatherland, and could not speak a word of English; with his swollen head he could ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a matter of "feeling," and this same feeling is something vital and should be catered to if our garments are to help set our spirits free. Why should we wear anything which is misleading in regard to ourselves? Let us look in the mirror each day and ask ourselves whether we look to be what we wish others to think ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... the dressing-room mirror with satisfaction, then turned to the autobar and dialed himself a stone-age-old Metaxa. He'd lost his taste for the plebian tequila ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... "And thy Venetian mirror, deep as a cold fountain in its banks of gilt work; what is reflected there? Ah! I am sure that more than one woman bathed there in her beauty's sin; and, perhaps, if I looked long enough, I should see a ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... convinced and angry a cynic and pessimist, his behaviour had been remarkable. When I returned to Fanny she was admiring her pretty, new, dove-coloured frock in the fly-blown mirror of our sitting-room. Poor child, her experience of new ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the consequent curbing of his powers, have sprung from his fastidiousness in the matter of versification. The sermons, the satires, the speeches, the odes, and the didactic poems of the fastidious are generally short, and do not, therefore, fully mirror the amplitude, or express the energy of their genius. To his poem on the escape of Prince Charles, succeeded that on the Prince, and two or three others of a similar kind; all finding their inspiration, not as yet in that love of others which animated his amatory effusions, but in that ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... looked down into the dimpling mirror of the fountain, and saw what he took to be the reflection of the bird, which seemed to be flying at a great height in the air, with a gleam of sunshine on its snowy or ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... magnificent creature!' thought I, as I beheld that tall, finely developed figure, and the reflection of the handsome face in the mirror before me, with the glossy dark hair, slightly and not ungracefully disordered by the breezy ride, the rich brown complexion glowing with exercise, and the black eyes sparkling with unwonted brilliance. On perceiving me, she ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... on a certain occasion.—Everything was still so bright and new! The green coverlet looked like a mown lawn, and the little pillows reminded her of two white kittens curled up on the grass. The polish of her dressing-table reflected the light: the mirror had as yet none of those ugly stains which are made by the splashing of water. The silver on the back of her hair-brush, her powder-box, her tooth-brush, all shone and sparkled. Her bedroom slippers were still so new and pretty that it was impossible to picture them ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... rode a little behind, on purpose, for I love to see a pretty woman turn her head and look backward across her shoulder. She has no pose more charming, unless it be when she stands before the "laughing mirror" and lifts her hands ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... book he says, in a letter that the Countess Ilse writes to her husband in Ruegen: "This duality is so bewildering. I to be myself, whom you know, and whom I know—and then that other I, whom you do not know at all and whom I only catch glimpses of as in a mirror, or hear whispering for a moment in the twilight." That he could not take up the topic so definitely in his later writings must have, indeed, been a cross to him, for there was hardly any other question, unless perhaps that of "ancestral memory," which ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... turned to the old warm-toned furniture beneath the pictures, and to her own idle image in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Even in that one small room there were enough things of price to buy a release from her most pressing cares; and the great house, in which the room was a mere cell, and the other greater ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the Finite—the absolute good in that which is like the good. Does Tregarva pretend to more? He sees God in His own thoughts and consciousnesses, and in the events of the world around him, imaged in the mirror of his own mind. Is your mirror, then, so much narrower ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... holding up a spangled dress, admiringly. "Ain't dat beautiful!" She drew near the mirror, attempting to see the reflection of the tinsel and chiffon against her very ample background of gingham and avoirdupois. "You'd sure be a swell nigger wid dat on, Honey," she chuckled to herself. "Wouldn't dem deacons holler if dey ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... but imperfect symbols; and the alternate baptisms in fire and water intended to purify us into immortality, are ever in this world interrupted at the moment of their anticipated completion. Life is a mirror which reflects only to deceive, a tissue perpetually interrupted and broken, an urn forever fed, yet ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... altogether fancy—that there was a stirring up of her system: a strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half-painfully, half-pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself, pale as a white rose, and with the crimson birth-mark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... and outward shews: { Where daily nearer me with magic Ties, { What time and where, (wove close with magic Ties Line over line, and thickning as they rise) The World her spidery threads on all sides spin Side answ'ring side with narrow interspace, My Faith (say I; I and my Faith are one) Hung, as a Mirror, there! And face to face (For nothing else there was between or near) One Sister Mirror hid the dreary Wall, { bright compeer But that is broke! And with that { only pheere[1111:2] I lost my object and my inmost All—— Faith in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... even smaller comfort. A rude bedstead, one leg considerably short and propped up by a half brick, stood against the board wall; a single wooden chair was opposite, and a fly-specked mirror hung over a tin basin and pitcher. The floor sagged fearfully and the side walls lacked several inches of reaching the ceiling. Even in the dim candle light of the evening before, the bed coverings had looked so forbidding that Molly had compromised, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... their ringed rowan staves, and spit red juice of the alder bark that they are chewing as men chew tobacco. Far below them they see the farm lands, grey in shadow, and, beyond, the waters of the fjord, yellow in the evening light, a mirror where red clouds and white sails and hills of liquid blue are shining. And away out on the farthest headland, the lonely star of the coast light over ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Arabic manuscripts were at this time written on satin paper, and embellished with a quantity of ornamental work, painted in such gay and resplendent colors that the reader might behold his face reflected as if from a mirror. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, as an article of their religion, of which the following story, related by a person of credibility, is a singular instance. One of these princes having viewed himself in a mirror, after recovering from the small-pox, and noticing how dreadfully his face was disfigured, observed, that no person had ever remained in his body after such a change, and as the soul passes instantly into another body, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... some few days later on a late afternoon, with back bent nearly double, eyes fixed steadily on the ground and his face a perfect mirror of thoughtful concentration within, slowly walking along the tiny footpath which wound in and out the groups of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy |
