"Nimbus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... region about midway between Copernicus and Gambart, which Klein describes as perforated like a sieve with minute craters. A short distance south-west of Copernicus stands a bright crater-cone surrounded by a grey nimbus, which may be classed with these objects. It is well seen under a high light, as indeed is the case with most of ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... beginning on the doughnuts, when a step on the planking above him caused him to look up. A girl in a tam-o'-shanter cap was leaning over the rail. The sun was behind her, throwing her face into shadow—so blinding a light that Oliver only caught the nimbus of fluffy hair that framed the dark spot of her head. Then came a voice that sent a thrill ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Philosopher, she stands veiled, and draped, with a noble head, no glory, and the arms outspread, just as she appears in the old mosaics. On a coin of Romanus the Younger, she crowns the emperor, having herself the nimbus; she is draped and veiled. On a coin of Nicephorus Phocus (who had great pretensions to piety), the Virgin stands, presenting a cross to the emperor, with the inscription, "Theotokos, be propitious." On a gold coin of John Zimisces, 975, we first find the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... as though to draw her into life. There is, perhaps, an excess of dramatic action in the lifted right leg of Eve, and too much of pantomimic language in the expressive hands of Eve and her Creator. The robe, again, in its voluminous and snaky coils, and the triangular nimbus of the Deity, convey an effect of heaviness rather than of majesty. Yet we feel, while studying this composition, that it is a noble and original attempt, falling but little short of supreme accomplishment. Without ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... faint scraping sound on the outside of his cabin, and a dark shadow eclipsed the faint nimbus of light which the foggy night sent through his porthole. On the deck directly over his head three dark figures sat in deck chairs, while a fourth paced the deck, his cigar glowing like the tail ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... human love, — Around her beauty valuable above The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world; Flowing as ever like a dancing fire Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists, Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists The nimbus of ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... All her buoyancy, the charming camaraderie that stopped just short of intimacy, had dropped from her. It was as though the atmosphere of that pocket rose and clung to her, enveloped her like a nimbus, as she went down. In the pent heat her face seemed cold. She had the appearance of being older. The fine vertical line at the corner of her mouth, which Tisdale had not noticed before, brought a tightness to ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... yet with something blithe and unperturbed in his bearing that, as she stood waiting for what he might say to her, seemed the very nimbus of chivalry. He was splendid to look at, too, tall and strong with clear kind eyes ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... she maintain this attitude of criticism when the new editor himself, bursting in upon her little parlor in a golden nimbus of optimism, radiant good humor and success, showed up the shallowness and the injustice ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... markings consist only of darker or lighter brownish-pink shades. Occasionally a few, almost black, twisted lines are intermingled with the other markings, and in these cases the lines are frequently surrounded by a reddish-purple nimbus. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... golden head a star rose in the purple night. Oneiros standing next was a youth whose eyes smiled as though they beheld visions that were welcome to him; in his hand, amongst the white roses, he held a black wand of sorcery, and around his bended head there hovered a dim silvery nimbus. Thanatos alone was a man fully grown; and on his calm and colourless face there were blended an unutterable sadness, and an unspeakable peace; his eyes were fathomless, far-reaching, heavy laden with thought, as though they had seen at once the heights ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the church, which was erected in the thirteenth century. On one of the corbels (the nearest to the altar, and therefore in the most honourable place) there is a lamb bearing a flag. The lamb has a nimbus {279} round its head, and the staff of the flag terminates in a cross like the head of a processional cross. The device, I have reason to think, was the badge of the knights of the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, who had a preceptory in this neighbourhood during ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... of the Madonna and Child on this wall, the better being No. 63, which is both sweet and masterly. In No. 56 the Child becomes a pretty Spanish boy playing with a rosary, and in both He has a faint nimbus instead of the halo to which we are accustomed. On the same wall is another fine Andrea, who is most lavishly represented in this gallery, No. 58, a Deposition, all gentle melancholy rather than grief. The ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... on the platform, still talking to the president, heard the oncoming train and looked around for Michael. He saw him coming from the car with his exalted look upon his face, his cap off, and the golden beams of the sun again sending their halo like a nimbus over his hair. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... days with the nuns; such dear little nuns (nuns always go straight to the heart of an old priest-hater and conspirator against the Pope, you know), dressed in brown robes and close, white caps, with an immense round straw-hat flapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are called Sisters of the Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a little way inland, with an untidy garden full of lavender and cherry-trees. Your protegee has already half set the convent, the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the way they had come. From the top of a hill they saw Madrid in the twilight, covered with fog; and in the streets newly opened between the sides of sand, the lights of the gas-lamps sparkled in a nimbus ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the Lamb of God, and Peter's quotation of this very prophecy, and the continual recurrence in the Apocalypse of the name of The Lamb as the title of honour of 'Him who sitteth on the throne.' A kind of nimbus or aureole shines round the humble figure as drawn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... at the moment was practically perfect—the small head tilted a little on the long round throat, while the slanting rays of the sun turned the dusky hair into a shadowy, gold-flecked nimbus. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... seconds' duration, the rivals stand vis-a-vis, neither venturing to advance. Around them is a nimbus of angry electricity, that needs but a spark to kindle it into furious flame. A single word will do it. This word spoken, and two of the four may never enter Don Gregorio's ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Apostles' Creed. Most of the screen was fifteenth-century work, and it was one of the finest in the county; much of the work was Flemish. On it were images of saints, both male and female, and of some of the prophets, the saints being distinguishable by the nimbus or halo round their heads, and the prophets by caps and flowing robes after the style of the Jewish costumes in the Middle Ages. There was also a magnificent pulpit of about the same date as the screen, and so richly designed as to equal any carved ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... jarring and clattering loud overhead—then flung a red earthquake just beyond the Lancers' horses. Again and again,—it looked as if he could not miss them; but the horses only twitched their tails, as if he were a new kind of fly. The 4.7 crashed hoarsely back, and a black nimbus flung up far above the trees on the mountain. And still the steady tack and tap—from the right among the Devons and Liverpools, from the right centre, where the Leicesters were, from the left centre, among the 60th, and the extreme left, ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... circumstances of his heroic death, and in the halls of Harvard a tablet has been placed in his honor. Charles Shier is a name which ought to be as proudly remembered in Michigan and in Ann Arbor as is that of Charles Lowell in Massachusetts and in Cambridge. But fate, in its irony, has decreed that the nimbus which surrounds the brow of a nation's heroes shall be reserved for the few whom she selects as types, and these more often than otherwise idealized types chosen by chance or by accident. These alone may wear the laurel that catches the eye of ideality and furnishes the theme for the poet's ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... sped away, with a thousand diamonds flashing on its surface—floating, sinking, rising—where the sun caught its ripples. There were some charming bits of greensward. There was a fountain, plashing melodious coolness, in a nimbus of spray which the sun touched to rainbow pinks and yellows. There were vivid parterres of flowers, begonia and geranium. There were oleanders, with their heady southern perfume; there were pomegranate-blossoms, like knots of scarlet crepe; ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... her hair, turning it into a nimbus of ruddy gold, and there was something delicately flower-like in the droop of her small bent head on its slender throat. It reminded him ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... invisible, the sulphurous smoke forming a nimbus around him. When it ascends, he is seen prostrate upon the earth; the blood gushing from a wound in his breast, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... narrowing to a point under a distant hazy nimbus, marked the course of the outreaching arteries of a great city. Warning bells clanged peremptorily at the lowered gates of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine, Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float, Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine, These that we feel in the blood of our blushes ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... pierced for windows, which have trefoils with pointed heads, though the trefoil heads of the niches themselves are round at the top. The three intervening niches contain figures. All these nine figures have a nimbus; and as these, with the three under the crosses, make up twelve, it is assumed that they represent the Apostles. The six smaller statues, just above, are said to be kings; the twelve below, benefactors. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... hypothesis, the first l be a g, it is absurd that it should be an l. Write g for the first l, and we have un fait accompli. I shall be in pillory; and overhead, in a cloud, will sit Mr. James Smith on one stick laid across two others, under a nimbus of 3-1/8 diameters to {156} the circumference—in [pi]-glory. Oh for a drawing of this scene! Mr. De Morgan presents his compliments to Mr. James Smith, and requests the honor of an exchange ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... we formerly called him, had now quite dropt the military title, nobody even of his friends now remembering it; and was known, according to his wish, in political and other circles, as Mr. Sterling, a private gentleman of some figure. Over whom hung, moreover, a kind of mysterious nimbus as the principal or one of the principal writers in the Times, which gave an interesting chiaroscuro to his character in society. A potent, profitable, but somewhat questionable position; of which, though he affected, and sometimes ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Bartholomew standing, with nimbus, lifting up the right hand in benediction, in the left hand a ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... vanquished clear the vast indemnity asked? Each passing day demonstrates more clearly the misunderstanding of the indemnity. The non-experts have not learned financial technics, but common sense tells them that the golden nimbus which has been trailed before their eyes is only a thick cloud of smoke ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... wider spheres Even as the infinite years of the past melt in the infinite future years. Each new delight of sense, Each hope, each love, each fear, Widens, relumes and recreates each sphere, From a new ring and nimbus of pre-eminence. I am the Sphere without circumference: I only and for ever comprehend All others that within me meet and blend. Death is but the blinding kiss Of two finite infinities; Two finite infinite orbs The splendour of the greater of which absorbs The less, though both like Love have ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... chanced, been conducted under Mr. Gray's personal and ardent supervision. He had overseen the flying of the kites, the impudent invasion of the upper depths when a button was touched, and then he had seen the white cumulus clouds gather and become nimbus, followed by a brief rainfall upon a hot and yellow land. He had felt as Moses may have felt when he smote the rock, as De Lesseps may have felt when he brought the seas together. He thought one of the man-helping problems of ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... striding pace made Celeste fairly trot along at his heels. He went through room after room. Was there no end to them? At last Nina's slight, girlish figure was seen silhouetted against a broad window at the end—the light at her back hazing the gold of her hair, like a nimbus, about her face. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... to own that a thrill of disgust had taken the place of that vague general sense of beatitude which threw beauty even upon Prickett's Lane. The Curate gave but a sulky nod to the salutation of Tom Burrows, and walked on in a savage mood by the side of Miss Wodehouse, around whom no nimbus of ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... now to consider what I have already called the central feature of every total eclipse. It was long ago compared to the nimbus often placed by painters around the heads of the Virgin Mary and other saints of old; and as conveying a rough general idea the comparison may still stand. It has been suggested that not a bad idea of it may be obtained by looking ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... n't stop to analyze my feelings at the time. For a while I was shaken, panic-stricken, utterly unable to do more than stare numbly down at the sweet pale face, framed in its nimbus of wavy brown hair. I got a grip on myself, though, and Stodger was sent flying ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... little beyond, he pulled his travelling cap over his ears, and settled down to slumber. I sat wide awake beside him. The spring night had a touch of chill in it, and the breath of our horses, streaming back upon the lamps of the caleche, kept a constant nimbus between me and the postillions. Above it, and over the black spires of the poplar avenues, the regiments of stars moved in parade. My gaze went up to the ensign of their noiseless evolutions, to the pole-star, and to Cassiopeia swinging beneath it, low in the north, over my Flora's pillow—my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sleep under the moon, we rose at 5 A.M. and loaded the camels. It was a raw morning. A large nimbus rising from the east obscured the sun, the line of blue sea was raised like a ridge by refraction, and the hills, towards which we were journeying, now showed distinct falls and folds. Troops of Dera or gazelles, herding like goats, stood, stared at us, turned their white tails, faced away, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the child was as other children: about its head was neither nimbus nor material crown; its lips opened not in speech; if it heard their expressions of joy, their invocations, their prayers, it made no sign whatever, but, baby-like, looked longer at the flame in the lantern than ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... and in the end somebody said Guido was a dreamy name, as if it belonged to one who was full of faith. Those golden curls shaking about his head as he ran and filling the air with radiance round his brow, looked like a Nimbus or circlet of glory. So they called him St. Guido, and a very, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... cirrus, cat's-tail, mare's-tail; cumulus, stratus, nimbus; cirro-cumulus, cirro-stratus, cumulo-stratus; storm scud, wane cloud; tarnish, blemish; eclipse, obscurity. Associated Words: nephology, meteorology, nubiferous, nephelodometer, nephelometer, nephoscope, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... are seen with wonderful distinctness. They fly toward and under the sun and are in a strong light, while the near woods which form the background are in deep shadow. They look like large luminous motes. Their swiftly vibrating, transparent wings surround their bodies with a shining nimbus that makes them visible for a long distance. They seem magnified many times. We see them bridge the little gulf between us and the woods, then rise up over the tree-tops with their burdens, swerving neither to the right ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... is in the uppermost quatrefoil of the central compartment; His countenance will bear the closest inspection; it exhibits evident traces of suffering, but is calm, severe, and dignified. His head is surrounded by a cruciform nimbus. Below this are two quatrefoils, easily distinguished by their silvery appearance. These represent the Procession of the Redeemed to the heavenly Jerusalem, whose towers and pavilions are shown in the quatrefoil to the right. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... verse. In versifying the completed scenes he found himself, so he wrote to Goethe, before a different tribunal. Much that had seemed very good in prose would not do at all; for verse tended to invest everything with an imaginative nimbus which rendered triviality ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... pause. Ruth flashed in and out of the sunshine; and he took note of the radiant nimbus above her head each time the sunshine touched ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... shadows, sat Lampron engraving, solitary, motionless, beneath the light of a lamp. His back was toward me. The lamp's rays threw a strong light on his delicate hand, on the workmanlike pose of his head, which it surrounded with a nimbus, and on a painting—a woman's head—which he was copying. He looked superb like that, and I thought how doubly tempted Rembrandt would have been by the deep significance as well as by the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... midsummer, and spent a month in the country, wandering about cathedrals, castles, and ruins. Several times, taking a walk from his inn into meadows and parks, he stopped by a well-worn stile, looked across through the early evening at a gray church tower, with its dusky nimbus of thick-circling swallows, and remembered that this might have been part of the entertainment of his honeymoon. He had never been so much alone or indulged so little in accidental dialogue. The period of recreation appointed by Mrs. Tristram had at last ...
— The American • Henry James
... rose-pinks and pale violet-blues. Her hair floated free to her shoulders; and that, more than any other detail, seemed to accent the quality of faery in her personality. In calm it clung to her head like a pale-gold mist; in breeze it floated away like a pale-gold nimbus. It seemed as though a shake of her head would send it drifting off—a huge thistle-down of gold. Her eyes reflected the tint of whatever blue they gazed on, whether it was the frank azure of the sky or the mysterious turquoise of the sea. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Tuyn, enthroned among distinguished and definite Georgians in a nimbus of smoke, presently began to wonder what had become of a certain young man. Despite the clamour of voices about her, and the necessity for showing incessantly that, although she had never bothered to paint cubist pictures or to write minor poetry, or even to criticize ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... had a nimbus of curls than which that of Adonis—nay, of the sun-god himself, was not more perfect, while her eyes were like the brown pools of water in a rippling mountain stream, flecked with sunshine, yet with depths untold. ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... of this Tchernoff made a great impression upon him—his dishevelled beard, and oily locks, his spectacles upon a large nose that seemed deformed by a dagger-thrust. There emanated from him, like an invisible nimbus, an odor of cheap ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... than the rest, in which we seem to have a second representation of the king, differing from the first only in the fact that his arrow has flown, and that he is in the act of taking another arrow from an attendant In this second representation the king's head is surrounded by a nimbus or "glory." Altogether there are in this tablet more than seventy-five human and nearly 150 animal forms. In the other, the human forms are about seventy, and the animal ones about ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all, From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold- coloured light; From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman, it ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... removal of these relics the lid of a third oak coffin was revealed, in a very advanced state of decay. This innermost coffin was covered over its entire surface with carvings of human figures, the heads surrounded by a nimbus. When this coffin was removed the skeleton was exposed to view, wrapped in coverings, the outer of which had been of linen. The robes beneath were much decayed, and only portions of them could be preserved. On the breast of the body, among the robes, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... than before. It was as though she felt that she could afford to stoop now that her loftiness was realized—that her position was recognized and secure. If her inherent dignity made an impenetrable nimbus round her, this was against others; she herself was not bound by it, or to be bound. So marked was this, so entirely and sweetly womanly did she appear, that I caught myself wondering in flashes of thought, which came as sharp periods of doubting judgment ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... river was so smooth at times as to be almost invisible, and in its place was the indefinite continuation of the opposite shore down toward the nether world. One seemed to be in an enchanted land, and to breathe all day the atmosphere of fable and romance. Not a smoke, but a kind of shining nimbus filled all the spaces. The vessels would drift by as if in mid-air with all their sails set. The gypsy blood in one, as Lowell calls it, could hardly stay between four walls and see such days go by. Living in tents, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Kramer observed, "you'd have run through the streets of the city brandishing an ax smashing saloons. You're a lineal descendent of Carrie Nation." He puffed quietly until his head was surrounded by a nimbus of smoke. "Stop trying to reform me," he added. "You haven't been here ...
— Pandemic • Jesse Franklin Bone
... the ancient enemy in flight! Her cheeks were rosy with the happy thrumming of her heart; a delirious beat was in her temples. She wanted to sing and cheer and give thanks to the Almighty. The advancing bursts of billowy shrapnel down the slopes were a heavenly nimbus to her eyes. She breathed a silent blessing on a manoeuvring Brown dirigible. They were coming! The soldiers of her people were coming to take back their own from the robber hosts and restore her hearth to her. Soon she would be seated on the veranda watching ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... adorable, with her hair and ears dazzling with jewels, stood clearly out against the background of the box in which, like an enormous Cyclopean eye, appeared the round, ground glass let into the door, forming a nimbus of light around Marianne's brow. Paler than her, with a sickly but smiling countenance, Rosas showed his bloodless, pale, Spanish face beside that of Marianne, as tragic looking as a portrait by Coello. His tired-looking, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Jews and Romans, reacted on their brethren to give profounder firmness and new intensity to their faith in a glorious life beyond the grave. The Christians thrown into the amphitheatre to the lions calmly kneeled in prayer, and to the superstitious bystanders a bright nimbus seemed to play around their brows and heaven to be opened above. As they perished at the stake, amidst brutal jeers and shrivelling flames, serenely maintaining their profession, and calling on Christ, over the lurid vista of smoke and fire broke on their rapt vision the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and sweet By self-devotion and by self-restraint, Whose pleasure is to run without complaint On unknown errands of the Paraclete, Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet, Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint Around the shining forehead of the saint, And are in their completeness incomplete! In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower, The lily of Florence blossoming in stone,— A vision, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... so high!—in the receding waters the vagrant raven cheerfully picking out the eye of a defunct pterodactyl. The heavy clouds rolling off the sodden world—they must have indeed been heavy clouds, nimbus of the first water—as they had raised the world's water-level 250 feet per day during "the flood" ... ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... such as they there still remains the example of the turnpike-loving clerk, with all its golden possibilities. Denied the great delight of driving a locomotive, or a fire-engine — whirled along in a glorious nimbus of smoke-pant, spark-shower, and hoarse warning roar — what bliss to the palefaced quilldriver to command a penny steamboat between London Bridge and Chelsea! to drive a four-horsed Jersey-car to Kew at sixpence a head! Though turnpikes be things of the past, there are still tolls to be taken ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... on the height only a cutting wind, and little enlightenment as to the true course. North and east all nimbus still. A brace of sun-dogs following the pale God of Day across the narrow field of primrose that bordered the dun-coloured west. There would be more snow to-morrow, and meanwhile the wind was rising again. Yes, sir, it was ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... two figures are transposed, their attitudes become intelligible. S. John is inculcating a message inscribed in his open book, while the monk is displaying his humble answer on his own page. The use in it of the term servus suggests that he is a Servite, though the want of the nimbus precludes the idea that he is one of the founders. It is probable that he is S. Filipo Benizzi, who, though considered as a saint from the time of his death, was not canonised ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... out in my soul, which I could read, if the flash might pass through them,—but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah! but what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged cirrus of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered cumulus of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer worship,—the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... was a pardon, or a fete, or a first communion, we never knew. But the town of St. Lo is ever gloriously lighted, for us, with a nimbus of young heads, such as encircled the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... idealization of the bourgeoisie. Enlightened rulers and publicists, here and there, were coming to feel that a virtuous yeomanry was the sure foundation of a state's welfare. Countless idyls and pastorals and moralizing romances had thrown a nimbus of poetry about the simple virtues and humble employments of the poor, and taught people to contrast these things with the corruption and artificiality of courts and cities. It was, however, the passionate ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... marked variations. It is possible that they may be layers of clouds because the upper portions of terrestrial clouds where they are illuminated by the sun appear white. But various observations lead us to think that we are dealing rather with a thin veil of fog instead of a true nimbus cloud, carrying storms and rain. Indeed, it may be merely a temporary condensation of vapor under the form of dew or ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Flag.—A symbolical representation of our Blessed Lord, used in Church decorations. The lamb is the chief emblem of our Saviour who was called by St. John Baptist, "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." The lamb is represented with a nimbus or glory of four rays, one partly concealed by the head. The rays are marks of divinity and belong only to our Lord. The lamb bearing a flag or banner signifies Victory, and is an emblem of the Resurrection. This symbolism is ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... little of their mother, but her occasional glimpses of her had left her with a haloed image of a delicate, spiritual face that grew more and more Madonna-like with memory. The nimbus of the Divine Mother, as she herself had dreamed of her, had seemed indeed to illumine that ...
— Different Girls • Various
... that at this moment are to me Dearer than words on paper, shall depart, And be no more the warder of my heart, Whereof again myself shall hold the key; And be no more, what now you seem to be, The sun, from which all excellencies start In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart Of moonlight, even, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... and he wished she hadn't. After she was gone he supposed that he ought to have asked for those references, if only because she would think him so unbusiness-like not to, but he could as soon have insisted on references from a saint in a nimbus as from that ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... dozen times on bare toes at the top of the stairs, spinning until her silken skirts expanded in a nimbus, then danced down-stairs into Tess's arms, where she ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the heathen gods is to be swept away from the hamlets and fields of the pious Mary. That is what is intended! Then they will hurry off to the Bishop with the great news and to crown one marvel with another, the reversion will be secured of a martyr's nimbus. And this is what all this zeal is for—this ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the moonlight, quite ethereal-looking, and her hair a nimbus for that small white face of hers; just as small, just as white, and just as smooth as when those big eyes used to look up into our eyes under an Indian moon. And she is always agreeable, always witty, or at least "smart." Still, I must confess that ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... She thought, standing before her little mirror, that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her lips together, as she had seen Anna do, and blowing out the smoke in a thin line. She smoked very hard, so that she stood in the center of a gray nimbus. She hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps it grew on one; perhaps, also, if she walked about it would choke her less. She practiced holding the thing between her first and second fingers, and found that easier than smoking. Then she went to the salon where there was ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... house. Slowly, step by step, shivering and shrinking, she began to creep down- stairs. At the closed door of the dining-room—next to that other room which Harris had bidden them lock up; she stood for a long time, her fingers trembling on the knob; her lamp, shaking in her hand, cast a nimbus of light around her small gray figure. It seemed to her as if she could not turn that knob. Then, with gasp of effort, it was done, and she entered. Her first look was at that place on the floor, where for the last two days the pillows had been ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... have had a hope of rescue in reserve; certain it is, they who saw him, taller of his long gown, his hair on his shoulders and down his back, his head upturned, the sunlight a radiant imprint on his forehead, and wanting only a nimbus to be the Christ in apparition, ceased jeering him; it seemed to them that in a moment, without effort, he had withdrawn his thoughts from this world, and surrendered himself. They could see his lips move; but what they supposed his last prayer was only a quiet recitation: "I ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... anything overhead but sky. The clouds were a long way down, and the sky was simply up. Joe looked down and saw a faint spot of racing brightness with a hint of colors around it. It was the sort of nimbus that substitutes for a shadow when a plane is high enough above the clouds. It raced madly over the irregular upper surface of the cloud layer. The plane flew and flew. Nothing happened at all. This was two hours from the field from which it ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... young and girlish speech. It was delivered with tremendous sincerity. Yet it did not matter much what she said, for what counted was that Lydia's contralto voice was very young and rich, that her golden hair was like a nimbus about her head, that her lips were red and sweet, that her cheeks were vivid and that her eyes were very blue, very innocent ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... vaguely, that through harm to her he might inflict the greatest punishment upon her father; but the idea came like a dark shape that faded away and vanished into nothingness as soon as it came within the nimbus that surrounded the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... sentiments; Mrs Browning gave away her imagination to popular movements; she was also naturally a hero-worshipper; she hoped more enthusiastically than he was wont to do; she was more readily depressed; the word "liberty" for her had an aureole or a nimbus which glorified all its humbler and more prosaic meanings. Browning, although in this year 1847 he made a move towards an appointment as secretary to a mission to the Vatican, at heart cared little for men in groups or ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... kindled flickered and wavered, a red spot on the duskier shore, with a yellow nimbus in which they saw him move here and there, and sit down at last with his back to a log and his feet ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... us, first on one leg and then on the other, his bulky frame swaying to and fro, like that of an elephant performing a jig, with the crackers exploding every instant, and his bald head surrounded apparently with a halo of smoke like a "nimbus." The boys fairly shrieked with laughter, and even Smiley and the Cobbler had to turn their heads aside, to hide their irrepressible grins. As for myself, I confess that at the moment of perpetrating the cruel joke, I felt that ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... say that Gregory wore the penula (cloak) of chestnut colour, and over it the sacred pall, and that in his hands he carried the book of the Gospel. We learn, further, that he did not have the round nimbus, but a rectangular or square one, with which it was the custom to adorn the heads of portraits of eminent people in their life-time. John considers this a sure proof that the painting was executed during the life of the ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... from the ceiling above, from the headboard behind him, and from the footboard, strong lights played full and flary upon his twitching, aching eyelids; and finally, towards dawn, with every nerve behind his eyes taut with pain and strain, awakening unrefreshed to consciousness of that nimbus of unrelieved false glare which encircled him, and the stench of melted tallow and the stale reek of burned kerosene foul in his nose. That, now, had been the hardest of all to endure. Endured unceasingly, it had been because ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... coming down my office steps this afternoon, and had just reached the foot, when a bright-faced, bright-haired boy stood before me with an eager light in his eyes. 'Aren't you Dr. Kemp?' he asked breathlessly, like one who had been running. I recollected him the instant he raised his hat from his nimbus of golden hair. 'Yes; and you are Will Tyrrell,' I answered promptly. 'Why, how did you remember?' he asked in surprise; 'you saw me only once.' 'Never mind; I remember that night,' I answered. 'How is that baby sister of yours?' 'Oh, she's all right,' ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... into a blue nimbus of crackling flame, his skin blackening, charred. He was dead in an instant. A second pillar of flame bloomed next to the car, and a choking scream was cut off at the moment ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... had, all his life, seen his master, Ursus, bow himself down in fear—that prodigious pinnacle was under his feet. He was in that place, so dark and yet so dazzling in England. Old peak of the feudal mountain, looked up to for six centuries by Europe and by history! Terrible nimbus of a world of shadow! He had entered into the brightness of its glory, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... who perhaps began with the simple ambition of becoming a 'literary man,' soon finds how radically incapable of ever being merely that he is. Alas! how soon the nimbus fades from the sacred name of 'author.' At one time he had been ready to fall down and kiss the garment's hem, say, of—of a 'Canterbury' editor (this, of course, when very, very young), as of a being from another sphere; and a writer in ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... converts, than have been raised to the richest Bishopric in England. And yet, with this exultation, there was a spirit of deep melancholy pervading his countenance, as well as his discourses, that seemed to imply a sense of danger. The nimbus of the saint in his eyes was associated with the crown of martyrdom. He seemed to look forward to a fatal termination of his ministry, as the most and proper ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... footsteps echoing hollow. Men were running toward him down the brick sidewalk, their voices sounding nearer. At the corner they turned and went, westward, the sound of them growing fainter and fainter. He looked back, and at the gate he could see a shadow standing there waiting. There was a faint nimbus about the head and the face, turned toward him, was ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... was a battle. No soldiers, no guns, in sight; only against masses of autumn green a diaphanous, man-made nimbus which was raining steel hail. Ten miles of this, one would say; and under it lines of men in blue coats and red trousers and green uniforms hugging the earth, as unseen as a battalion of ants at work ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... I still sat there, the door was very gently opened, and I beheld Giuliana standing before me. She detached from the black background of the passage, and the light of my three-beaked lamp set her ruddy hair aglow so that it seemed there was a luminous nimbus all about her head. For a moment this gave colour to my fancy that I beheld a vision evoked by the too great intentness of my thoughts. The pale face seemed so transparent, the white robe was almost diaphanous, and the great dark eyes looked ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Secrets. There were on his brow great spots of perspiration, and, as if from agony, tears trickled down his cheeks, but his eyes were upturned and glazed, and his face was as that of a dead man without soul, only it seemed to me that the nimbus of which men spoke was verily round his head. His form, too, which was grown rigid, appeared strangely taller. One hand grasped the corner of the dresser. I turned away my eyes quickly, fearing lest they should be smitten with blindness. I know not how many minutes passed before I heard a great ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... bouncing person, with a noisy though imperfectly articulate habit of speech, and the prominent hips and bust which composed the "fine figure" of the period, Florrie seemed to float with all the elusive, magic loveliness of a sunbeam. From the shining nimbus of her hair to her small tripping feet she was the incarnation of girlhood—of that white and gold girlhood which has intoxicated the imagination of man. She shed the allurement of sex as unconsciously ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... their little velvet porringer-caps stuck on the sides of their heads, with their long hair stiff with pomatum, and their heads set inside a well-starched ruff a foot wide, "like St. John's head in a charger," as a splenetic contemporary observed, with a nimbus of musk and violet-powder enveloping them as they passed before vulgar mortals, these rapacious and insolent courtiers were the impersonation of extortion and oppression to the Parisian populace. They were supposed, not unjustly, to pass their lives in dancing, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "restorers" alike. The subjects chosen by the painter in St. Mary's Church are peculiar and strangely grouped. The centre of the group is a "Majesty," the conventional representation of the second coming of Christ. The head of the Christ has its nimbus; that He is "in his glory" you can see by the mantle of royal purple, and "the holy angels with Him" are represented by two little cramped figures, set apart to make room for other drawings. Altogether there are six medallions besides the "Majesty," and there are also designs in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... a small, withered man with a big head, great, luminous eyes, and a bald scalp. Such hair as yet remained to him was the true Redmayne scarlet; but the nimbus that still adorned his naked skull was streaked with silver and his thin, long beard was also grizzled. He spoke in a gentle, kindly voice, with little Southern gestures. He was clad in a great Italian cloak and a big, slouchy hat, which between ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... dead, the shouting of the audience and the blaring of the band as it had saluted her trembling, bowing figure in the box—finally would prove too strong for her. He, too, had come in for some of the applause, a sort of inverted glory which like a frosty nimbus envelopes the head of the librettist. Now he recalled all this and rejoiced that his charge was safely ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... in the pack. It was bitterly cold in the crow's-nest however much one put on then, and water skies often turned out to be nimbus clouds after we had laboured and cannoned towards them. The light, too, tired and strained one's eyes far more than ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... whom you do not happen to like; sometimes called, also, a hen, or cat. Old witches, sorceresses, etc., were called hags from the belief that their heads were surrounded by a kind of baleful lumination or nimbus—hag being the popular name of that peculiar electrical light sometimes observed in the hair. At one time hag was not a word of reproach: Drayton speaks of a "beautiful hag, all smiles," much as Shakespeare said, "sweet wench." It would not now be ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the way in which the adventure had terminated, even though at moments between her exultations she was abashed and blushful. Then this consideration recurred to chill her: What was the use of her exploit? She was at present a total stranger to the Yeobright family. The unreasonable nimbus of romance with which she had encircled that man might be her misery. How could she allow herself to become so infatuated with a stranger? And to fill the cup of her sorrow there would be Thomasin, living day after day in inflammable ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... fighting. With every inducement to offer himself for a romantic figure, he despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance, its shears and its labels: in fine, every one of those positive things by whose aid, and by some adroit flourishing of them, the nimbus known as a mysterious halo is produced about a gentleman's head. And a highly alluring adornment it is! We are all given to lose our solidity and fly at it; although the faithful mirror of fiction has been showing us latterly that a too superhuman beauty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was frantically applauded. The men could not admire enough the suppleness of Esperance's lovely body, the whiteness of her bare feet with their pink arches, the gold of her hair floating like a nimbus around the head of Andromeda, waved by the breeze as the stage turned. The women admired the Duke, so very beautiful in his ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... carries his fortune or success in his hands. No doubt there are occasional flukes for him; but, generally speaking, the greatest have been for collections formed and dispersed without any view to profit, where the state of the market has accidentally favoured the owner, or there was some nimbus round the name. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... guarantee of virtue and propriety. The mere fact that Fanny had gained Flora's friendship made her own domestics regard her with quite different eyes, and even Squire John himself began to understand what sort of a wife he had won; and so the nimbus of gentility ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... passed between packed ranks of townspeople; cheers, the pealing music of the bells, the thunderous shock of the guns grew to a swimming, dreamy sound, through which the flag fluttered on high, crowned with the golden nimbus of the sun! ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... were fine, and their apparent solidity impressive. On Thursday morning the green of the sea was displaced by a deep indigo blue. The whole of Thursday we steamed across the bay. We had little blue sky, but the clouds were again grand and varied—cirrus, stratus, cumulus, and nimbus, we had them all. Dusky hair-like trails were sometimes dropped from the distant clouds ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... water.] Bubble [Cloud.] — N. bubble, foam, froth, head, spume, lather, suds, spray, surf, yeast, barm^, spindrift. cloud, vapor, fog, mist, haze, steam, geyser; scud, messenger, rack, nimbus; cumulus, woolpack^, cirrus, stratus; cirrostratus, cumulostratus; cirrocumulus; mackerel sky, mare's tale, dirty sky; curl cloud; frost smoke; thunderhead. [Science of clouds] nephelognosy^; nephograph^, nephology^. effervescence, fermentation; bubbling &c v.. nebula; cloudliness &c (opacity) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... moreover, it lies hidden by a bank of French-grey clouds, here and there sun-gilt and wind-bleached. We saw the 'Pike' bury itself under the blue horizon, at first cloaked in its wintry ermines and then capped with fleecy white nimbus, which confused ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... clear golden yellow. Great teachers often have this so strongly in evidence, that at times their students have glimpses of a golden "halo" around the head of the teacher. Teachers of great spirituality have this "nimbus" of golden yellow, with a border of beautiful blue tint, ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... reference here has a deep impersonal significance," my guru explained. "The Son of God is the Christ or Divine Consciousness in man. No MORTAL can glorify God. The only honor that man can pay his Creator is to seek Him; man cannot glorify an Abstraction that he does not know. The 'glory' or nimbus around the head of the saints is a symbolic witness of their CAPACITY to ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... say what thou art? Diana's nimbus? The golden clasp of her floating robes? The blazing head of the great bolt that rivets the lunar hemispheres in union inseverable? Or cans't thou have been some errant bolide, which missing its way, butted blindly against the lunar face, and there stuck fast, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... darkness, she feels how her own breath drags at the tough air, and how her throat resents the sting of the large percentage of sulphur monoxide it contains. The gas-jet is on at the full—or rather the tap is, for the fish-tail burner doesn't realise its ideal. It sputters in its lurid nimbus—gets bronchitis on its own account, tries to cough its tubes clear and fails. Sally and her mother sit on in the darkness, and talk about it, shirking the coming suffocation of their old friend, and praying that his sleep may last till the deadly air lightens, be it ever so little. Sally's ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan |
