"Translucency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... driving arrows, Or serene slidings, or March narrows. There slipping wave and shore are one, And weed and mud. No ray of sun, But glow to glow fades down the deep (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); Shaken translucency illumes The hyaline of drifting glooms; The strange soft-handed depth subdues Drowned colour there, but black to hues, As death to living, decomposes— Red darkness of the heart of roses, Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, And gold that lies behind the eyes, The unknown unnameable sightless ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... those shaded under ledges are only grey. I have shown specimens of this incrustation to several geologists, and they all thought that they were of volcanic or igneous origin! In its hardness and translucency — in its polish, equal to that of the finest oliva-shell — in the bad smell given out, and loss of colour under the blowpipe — it shows a close similarity with living sea-shells. Moreover, in sea-shells, it is known that the parts habitually ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... redness was out in Albert's ears that against the lights they were of the translucency of red-hot iron, and even through her pity for his malaise, her old poignant distaste of him would not be laid. She wanted him to lunge somehow with that bull-like head of his with the bashedin squareness to its top, but since nothing like that happened, she sprang ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... reagent to test out the growth effects of different glands of internal secretion has also been employed for the pineal. Ten-day-old tadpoles fed on pineal present a marked translucency of the skin due to a retraction of the skin pigment cells. Now without a doubt a number of as yet unknown growth and metabolic effects follow exposure of the body to the complete gamut of light rays. The interesting suggestion ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... cannot be touched without spoiling the whole of the work. The difference first of all between painting in water and in oil colour, is that a peculiar grain exists with painting in water that it is absolutely impossible to get in oil. The charm of a marble is, I think, its translucency as much as its beautiful colour; it is to that translucency (for in marble fixed we have no transparency) that it owes its softness of effect, which makes marble of such decorative value. This translucency can only be obtained by thin glazes of colour, by which means each succeeding ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... upwards with the flapping folds of a huge black standard. Through the yawning gap in the walls below him he could look down upon the packed attentive multitudes in the Hall of the Atlas. The distant flying stages to the south came out bright and vivid, brought nearer as it seemed by an unusual translucency of the air. A solitary monoplane beat up from the central stage as if to meet the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Body. And I remember, I have for Trials sake taken Lumps of Rock Crystal, and Heating them Red hot in a Crucible, I found according to my Expectation, that being Quench'd in Fair water, even those that remain'd in seemingly entire Lumps exchang'd their Translucency for Whiteness, the Ignition and Extinction having as it were Crack'd each Lump into a multitude of Minute Bodies, and thereby given it a great multitude of new Surfaces. And ev'n with Diaphanous Bodies, ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... the difference between marble and syenite, porphyry or alabaster. Marble not only gave the power, it actually introduced the thought of representation or realization of form, as opposed to the mere suggestive abstraction: its translucency, tenderness of surface, and equality of tint tempting by utmost reward to the finish which of all substances it alone admits:—even ivory receiving not so delicately, as alabaster endures not so firmly, the lightest, latest touches of the completing ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... courage returned, and I scraped away more dirt in the light of the electric torch I had provided. The surface I uncovered was fishy and glassy—a kind of semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestions of translucency. I scraped further, and saw that it had form. There was a rift where a part of the substance was folded over. The exposed area was huge and roughly cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-white stovepipe doubled in two, its largest part ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... reverberates, colour withdrawing Into a sky so white, sight cannot follow it. While in the shadows cast, rich hues, intenser Far than in light spaces, offer me gladness. Sun reigns triumphantly, thinning all vapour Into translucency, through which the foliage Bears out in sparkles of full golden greenery. O'er this, short dashes of keen grey-green masses lie; Even the cooler tints, pitched in this higher key— Purpling and greening greys—are fierce as fires. All the vast universe lives in one ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... fragments, show that he embellished them; but his taste was too exquisite for him to do other than devote his genius to the honest translation of such pieces as the above. Menander, then; with him, through the affinity of sympathy, Terence; and Shakespeare and Moliere have this beautiful translucency of language: and the study of the comic poets might be recommended, if ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... marked wherever the brain is in an active growing condition. The criminal's skull must be studied by post mortem examination, and the most effective method is by placing a taper through the foramen magnum at the bottom of the skull which will reveal the more active organs by the translucency and thinness of the bones, while the inactive organs are indicated by their opacity and thickness, as ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... N. transparence, transparency; clarity; translucence, translucency; diaphaneity[obs3]; lucidity, pellucidity[obs3], limpidity; fluorescence; transillumination, translumination[obs3]. transparent medium, glass, crystal, lymph, vitrite[obs3], water. V. be transparent &c. adj.; transmit light. Adj. transparent, pellucid, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... incompatible with the highest beauty because they destroy form, on the full perception of which more of the divinely character of the object depends than upon its color. Hence, in the beauty of snow and of flesh, so much translucency is allowed as is consistent with the full explanation of the forms, while we are suffered to receive more intense impressions of light and transparency from other objects which, nevertheless, owing to their necessarily unperceived form, are not perfectly nor affectingly ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... N. transparence, transparency; clarity; translucence, translucency; diaphaneity[obs3]; lucidity, pellucidity[obs3], limpidity; fluorescence; transillumination, translumination[obs3]. transparent medium, glass, crystal, lymph, vitrite[obs3], water. V. be transparent &c. adj.; transmit ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... crippled boy on his right arm, and he gave her his left hand. In the parlour he set his burden down in a chair, and the child drew up under his thin arms a pair of crutches that stood beside it. His white face had the eager purity and the waxen translucence which we see ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... nags, could still be descried in the distance against the sapphire translucence of the sky, where the broken rocks and the chaparral melted into a single bluish smooth surface. Across the air a gust of hot wind bore the broken, faltering strains of "La Adelita," the revolutionary song, to the settlement. Camilla, who had come out when ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... his enigmatic, gentle, comprehending smile and caught the coat sleeve of the other. The brilliant light in the Prince's eyes was softening to a dreamier, cloudy translucence. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry |
