"Dazzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perfect proportion and athletic habits than from breadth and bulk—were all singularly characteristic of the Saxon beauty in its highest and purest type. But what chiefly distinguished this personage, was that peculiar dignity, so simple, so sedate, which no pomp seems to dazzle, no danger to disturb; and which perhaps arises from a strong sense of self-dependence, and is connected with self-respect—a dignity common to the Indian and the Arab, and rare except in that state of society ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... They dazzle us with pyrotechnics in the finale of Com' e bello or Qui la voce, but the simple feeling of Vedrai carino is beyond their grasp. Firmly sustained tones, careful phrasing, flowing grace in the melody, and just, dramatic expression, are the great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the excise idea. I have been just now to wait on a great person, Miss——'s friend, ——. Why will great people not only deafen us with the din of their equipage, and dazzle us with their fastidious pomp, but they must also be so very dictatorially wise? I have been questioned like a child about my matters, and blamed and schooled for my inscription on Stirling window. Come Clarinda-Come! curse me Jacob, and come ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... your friendly feelings is most welcome to me. In much of what you say of marriage, I am inclined, though with reluctance, to agree. As to Lady Florence herself, few persons are more calculated to dazzle, perhaps to fascinate. But is she a person to make a home happy—to sympathise where she has been accustomed to command—to comprehend, and to yield to the waywardness and irritability common to our fanciful and morbid race—to content herself with the homage of a single heart? I do not ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... premises which have been gathered by careful observation and study, often disregards the forms of the logic whose spirit it obeys, and, by its frequent use of analogy and illustration, may sometimes dazzle and confuse the minds it seeks to convince. In regard to opponents, it is not content with mere dialectic victory, but insinuates the subtle sting of wit to vex and irritate the sore ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... to dazzle the locals with an exhibition of his wonderfully puzzling curves and drops. He certainly had them guessing, and in vain did they try to get the ball out of the diamond. Joel Jackman, the first man up, did manage to connect with the ball, perhaps by sheer accident. ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... a little embarrassment of a commission which Mme. de Krudener has just given me. She begs you to come as little beautiful as you can. She says that you dazzle all the world, and that consequently every soul is troubled and attention is impossible. You cannot lay aside your charms, but do not add ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... night her argent archery; And it shall be the tryst of sundered stars, The haunt of dead and dreaming Solomon; Shall send a light upon the lost in Hell, And flashings upon faces without hope.— And I will think in gold and dream in silver, Imagine in marble and conceive in bronze, Till it shall dazzle pilgrim nations And stammering tribes from undiscovered lands, Allure the living God out of the bliss, And all the streaming ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... old General, and your loyal steadfast eyes. You helped to strike that light. Its radience half-frights you. It is so heavenly bright, its rays, may well dazzle you. Brown old soldiers, I love to think of you always a standin' up there, lifted high up by a grateful Nation, a lookin' off over all the world, a lookin' off towards the glowin' west, toward our ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... suggested one—else I do not know the meaning of words. They suggested that where I have failed you could succeed, if you had a mind to try. I have challenged you, Bardelys. I challenge you again. Go about this wooing as you will; dazzle the lady with your wealth and your magnificence, with your servants, your horses, your equipages; and all the splendours you can command; yet I make bold to say that not a year of your scented attentions and most insidious wiles will bear you fruit. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... song Flowering there, the upward throng Of porches, pillars and windowed walls, Spires like piercing panpipe calls, Up to the roof's snow-cloud flight; All glancing in the Spanish light White as water of arctic tides, Save an amber dazzle on sunny sides. You had said, the radiant sheen Of that palace might have been A young god's fantasy, ere he came His serious worlds and suns to frame; Such an immortal passion Quiver'd among the slim hewn stone. ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... jar on the meditative silence of the morning. And so long as a man is reasoning he cannot surrender himself to that fine intoxication that comes of much motion in the open air, that begins in a sort of a dazzle and sluggishness of the brain, and ends in a peace that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... FOUND any buried treasure," I admitted; "but I know where lots of it is, and I know just how to go after it." I endeavored to dazzle him ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... the palace of Abdin none was preferred before me. I was much in the sun, and mine eyes were dazzled. Yet in season I spake the truth, and for you I laboured. But not as one hath a life to give and seeks to give it. For the dazzle that was in mine eyes hid from me the fulness of your trials. But an end there was to these things. She came to the palace a slave-Noor-ala-Noor. . . . Nay, nay, be silent still, my brothers. Her soul was the soul of one born free. On her lips ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... came at irregular intervals during a number of years, began with a sense of color, a glare to dazzle the eyes, till, as Auber insisted, he awaked and saw the sunset glow over a stretch of forest. He was on a hillside field, spotted with daisies and clumps of tall grass. On one side a stone wall, half hidden by the grass and by a sumac hedge in full bloom, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... neither the time nor the patience for the task. But when the chance came to dazzle the rich by the rich generosity of working for nothing, he could not afford to let it pass. To tip a millionaire! He had to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... and draw back the warders of the brain; and there this scene of my infant wanderings still lives unfaded, or with fresher dyes. A new sense comes upon me, as in a dream; a richer perfume, brighter colours start out; my eyes dazzle; my heart heaves with its new load of bliss, and I am a child again. My sensations are all glossy, spruce, voluptuous, and fine: they wear a candied coat, and are in holiday trim. I see the beds of larkspur with purple eyes; tall hollyhocks, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... seemed more beautiful. Some of her sisters, and an old lady, a friend of the family, saw in this behavior a refinement of art. They supposed that Emilie, judging the man worthy of her, intended to delay revealing her merits, so as to dazzle him suddenly when she found that she pleased him. Every member of the family was curious to know what this capricious creature thought of the stranger; but when, during dinner, every one chose to endow Monsieur Longueville with some fresh quality which no one else had ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... features that she never forgot. There was the beautiful suite of rooms, filled with flowers that must have cost a small fortune at that time of year, and in one of them a table tastefully laid. Rachel remembered the dazzle of silver and the glare of napery, the hot plates, the sparkling wine, the hot-house fruit, and the deep embarrassment of sitting down to all this in solitary state. Mr. Steel had but peeped in to see that all was in accordance with his orders; thereafter not even a waiter was allowed to ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... right church, but the wrong pew," I interrupted. "This may be the state of Kansas, but at present we are outside the bailiwick of Ford County, and those papers of yours are useless. Let me take those warrants and I'll indorse them for you, so as to dazzle your superiors on their return without the man or property. I was deputized once by a constable in Texas to assist in recovering some cattle, but just like the present case they got out of our jurisdiction before we overtook them. The constable was a lofty, arrogant fellow like yourself, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... from room to room till the child was almost bewildered; but so modest and refined was she by nature, that the grandeur did not dazzle her. She was just the same simple, quiet child of the woods, with a heart-sick and homesick longing to return to her own poor home; and it was not many days before Laura and Lady Idleways saw that the little wood-violet ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... runic legend runs, there is a region vast as night, where all the rainbows—worn out or to be used—drift about in their vapoury limbo. I have the key to this land of dreams. Over the earth I shall float my rainbows of art like a flock of angels. With them I propose to dazzle the eyes of mankind, to arouse sleeping souls. From the chords of the combined arts I shall extort nobler cadences, nobler rhythms, for men to live by, for men ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... I be feeling, Mother. I'm all a kind of a dazzle within of me, same as 'tis with the sun upon ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... the blackness of the sea beyond the snow-line of surf, as the canoes from Matakatea would round the point, each one with a flaming torch of dried palm-leaves held high by a brown, tattooed hand, to dazzle the flying fish that, with wings outspread, floated motionless upon the surface ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... the earthwork, and the better to commune with this vision, tilted his gold-laced hat forward over his eyes, shutting out the dazzle of the morning sun. Once or twice he shook himself, being heavy with broken sleep, and gazed across the ridges, then drew up his knees, clasped them, and let his heavy, woolly head ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. In the architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the decora of what is technically called keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon none—neither ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the King ever forgave those fetes at Vaux, which were designed to dazzle Mademoiselle la Valliere, whom this man had the presumption to love. One may pity so terrible a fall, yet it is but the ruin of a bold sensualist, who played with millions as other men play with tennis balls, and who would have ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... seigniorial houses, (too poor, indeed, to take part in the fete, yet only excluded from it by their own volition, all, however noble, some even more noble than their lords,) being all present, it was considered highly desirable to dazzle them; and this flowing chain of rainbow-hued and gorgeous light, like an immense serpent with its glittering rings, sometimes wreathed its linked folds, sometimes uncoiled its entire length, to display its brilliancy through the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... curled doggedly around the flagstaff. He had need now to use all the strength in his legs, for he must use one hand to disentangle the black scarf, which lay twisted about the vane just over his head. But it was the right scarf. The glint and dazzle of the diamonds was in ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... in the three-cornered arm-chair, with the sun-dazzle off a burnished mug on the dresser shimmering into her eyes, and making her blink quaintly, she said, with rather severe solemnity, that "she hoped the young fellow had had time to repint of his sins, or else it ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... occasions, to be sure that nothing was wanting for their comfort. She liked the very maids and valets to go away and declare there was no place so pleasant as Hale Castle. Perhaps when people had been to her two or three times, she was apt to grow a little more careless upon these points. To dazzle and astonish was her chief delight, and of course it is somewhat ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... I was not frightened. Cursing the disturbance with all the resounding and harmless words I could accumulate, I jumped out of bed and lit the candle in a second, and in the first dazzle of the flaring match—but before the wick had time to catch—I was certain I saw a dark grey shadow, of ungainly shape, and with something more or less like a human head, drive rapidly past the side of the wall ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... inspired by his ruff and diamonds. Flora says he wants to dazzle me, and will have them changed into paste before he makes them over to his young woman. He has just tin enough to want more, and she says I must be on ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... excrescences of all colors and kinds, and guarded by lions innumerable. To begin to tell the details of so multi-faceted a gem were artistically impossible. It is a jewel of a thousand rays, yet whose beauties blend into one as the prismatic tints combine to white. And then, after the first dazzle of admiration, when the spirit of curiosity urges you to penetrate the centre aisle, lo and behold it is but a gate! The dupe of unexpected splendor, you have been paying court to the means of approach. It is only ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... woman 'clothed with the sun,' and caught up into it from her enemies to be safe there. And that is just an expansion of the Psalmist's grand paradox, 'Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face.' Light conceals when the light is so bright as to dazzle. They who are surrounded by God are lost in the glory, and safe in that seclusion, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the people and the army, one thing became clear to every thoughtful observer, and that was that the new regime, lacking strength to resist misfortunes, must have perpetual success in order to live. Napoleon was condemned, by the form of his government, not merely to succeed, but to dazzle, to astonish, to subjugate. His Empire required extraordinary magnificence, prodigious effects, Babylonian festivities, gigantic adventures, colossal victories. His Imperial escutcheon, to escape contempt, needed rich coats of gilding, and demanded glory to ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... never so superb as then, and never so threatening in her scowling beauty. The barred skirts she always fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous muslins; the diamonds often glittered on her breast as if for her own pleasure rather than to dazzle others; the asp-like bracelet hardly left her arm. She was never seen without some necklace,—either the golden cord she wore at the great party, or a chain of mosaics, or simply a ring of golden scales. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... refinement, even when they were sinking into corruption and depravity. It has ever been the policy of the monarchs who are guilty of the most atrocious crimes, who shrink from no acts of cruelty, to promote that despotism which may banish the remembrance of their enormities, and to dazzle and blind the eyes of their people by the glare and splendour which surrounds their court. And thus these guilty monarchs, by the patronage of the licentious festivals of heathen worship and the alluring rites of a corrupt religion, compelled ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... souls, their immortal destinies, only for a morsel of more savory bread upon their table, for a larger portion of earth under their feet? No! no! enthusiasm soars aloft, it does not fall to earth. Bear me up to Heaven, if you wish to dazzle my eyes; promise me immortality, if you would offer to my soul a motive worthy of its nature, an aim worthy of its efforts, a price worthy of its virtue! But what do your systems of atheistic society show us in perspective? ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... none, now. Before his eyes there seemed to darken, to dazzle, a strange and moving curtain. Through it, piercing it with a supreme effort of the will, he caught dim sight of the dial of the chronometer. Subconsciously he noted ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... shade, black and white, tonality. reflection, refraction, dispersion; refractivity. V. shine, glow, glitter; glister, glisten; twinkle, gleam; flare, flare up; glare, beam, shimmer, glimmer, flicker, sparkle, scintillate, coruscate, flash, blaze; be bright &c. adj.; reflect light, daze, dazzle, bedazzle, radiate, shoot out beams; fulgurate. clear up, brighten. lighten, enlighten; levin[obs3]; light, light up; irradiate, shine upon; give out a light, hang out a light; cast light upon, cast light in, throw light upon, throw light in, shed light upon, shed luster upon; illume[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Paris is like," mused the aunt. "I suppose you think it's all one wild razzle-dazzle—one delirious round ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... waking eyes, has arrayed the morning heavens in the loveliest hues of beauty. Fearing to dazzle by an excess of delight, she first announces day by a faint and glimmering twilight, then sheds a purple tint over the brows of the rising morn, and infuses a transparent ruddiness throughout the atmosphere. As daylight widens, successive groups of mottled and rosy-bosomed clouds assemble ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of soul to divest herself of her sacred habit and don these gay garments belonging to a life long left behind, that his evident delight in the change, moved her to an unreasonable resentment. Also that sudden blaze of love in his dark eyes, dazzled her heart, even as a burst of sunshine might dazzle one ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... poor, foolish, ambitious man. Oho! you admire this Mr. Trevanion much, eh? Yes, that fire of manner, his fine words, and bold thoughts, were made to dazzle youth." ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... makes the whole affair suspicious. When ever has our King set out to dazzle the eyes of the people by pomp and pageantry? He is not the King to make such a thundering row over his progress ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... submerged and quiescent while over you glories The summer. Oread, Dryad, or Naiad, or just Woman, clad only in youth and in gallant perfection, Standing up in a great burst of sunshine, you dazzle my eyes Like a snow-star, a moon, your effulgence burns up in a halo, For you are the chalice which holds all the races of men. You slip into the pool and the water folds over your shoulder, And over the tree-tops the clouds slowly follow your swimming, ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the chaste breast running, Ignores the snare that is for him prepared, I, in the light, the fount, the bosom of my love Behold the flames, the arrows, and the chains. If it be sweet in plaintiveness to droop, Why does that lofty splendour dazzle me? Wherefore the sacred arrow sweetly wound? Why in this knot is my desire involved? And why to me eternal irksomeness Flames to my heart, darts to my breast ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... so that the fish is actually provided with a bull's eye lantern. In other cases the light may rather serve as a defence, some having, as, for instance, in the genus Scopelus, a pair of large ones in the tail, so that "a strong ray of light shot forth from the stern-chaser may dazzle and frighten an enemy." ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... smelled hot coffee from the spaceport cafe near the Kharsa. An instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson fronds waving above us and a dazzle of water. We flicked in and out of the salty air of Shainsa, glimpsed flowers on a Daillon street, moonlight, noon, red twilight flickered and went, shot through with the terrible ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... containing an object which she presently displayed before the astonished gaze of our hero. It was a red stone of about the bigness of a plover's egg, and which glowed and flamed with such an exquisite and ruddy brilliancy as to dazzle even Jonathan's inexperienced eyes. Indeed, he did not need to be informed of the priceless value of the treasure, which he beheld in the rosy palm extended toward him. How long he gazed at this extraordinary jewel he knew not, but he was aroused ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... progress. You have heard Captain Mitchell confess over and over again that till he got this man he could never tell how long it would take to unload a ship. That is bad for progress. You have seen him pass by after his labours on his famous horse to dazzle the girls in some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a fortunate fellow! His work is an exercise of personal powers; his leisure is spent in receiving the marks of extraordinary adulation. And he likes it, too. Can anybody be more fortunate? To be ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... had made another slip. The noise of the thing began to die off, shaking the island; the dazzle was over; and yet the night didn't come back the way I expected. For the whole wood was scattered with red coals and brands from the explosion; they were all round me on the flat; some had fallen below in the valley, and some stuck and flared in the tree-tops. I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... parvenus; and the palaces, the toilets, the equipage, the entertainments, of the mistresses outshine those of the lawful wives. Hence comes a style of dress which is in itself vulgar, ostentatious, pretentious, without simplicity, without unity, seeking to dazzle by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... written by the royal Audiencia (nor could it be, since that is a fount whence the truth flows with so great purity); but that the secretary Was mistaken in thus ascribing to so upright a tribunal what was only signed by an inferior, who desired to dazzle by giving the first news which generally arrives very ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... it I could see here and there heavenly forms moving up and down, flying upon silver wings, or borne along upon the light breath of the sunny air. But as I strained my eyes to pierce into it, it seemed to dazzle and confound them by its great lustre. Then, again, I heard the words of the two; and they spake of what was before them; of the bright light, and the heavenly forms: and I found that they were only travellers through this beautiful garden; that the King who had placed them in it dwelt ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... come: I havn't been so very extravagant. I live ever so quietly; I don't drink; I don't bet much; and I never go regularly to the razzle-dazzle as you did when you were ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... were right. She did not call—unless she did so in her slumber. She has called to me in her sleep before now, sir; as I have sat by, watching, I have seen her lips move, and have known, though no sound came from them, that she spoke of me. I feared the light might dazzle her eyes and wake her, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... shall own me but he, because his cheek is smooth and the water of his mouth sweet as Salsabil;[FN273] his spittle is a cure for the sick and his charms daze and dazzle poet and proser, even as saith ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... the tears roll down his cheeks. Behold yonder tall and scarred veteran, an old soldier of Napoleon, capitulating now before the witchery of genius and wit. Here the noble Russian exile forgets his sorrows in those smiles that, unlike the aurora, warm while they dazzle. And our celebrated composer is discomposed easily by alert and nimble-footed mischief. And our professor of Greek and Hebrew roots is rooted to the ground with astonishment at finding himself put through all the moods and tenses ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... engaging polish. The ballet was on its last legs and night, and the traffic of the Promenade was suffering for the moment. Men and women were crowded in three rows against the barrier. The whirl and dazzle on the stage, the half dark, the mingled tobacco fumes and women's scent, all that curious lure to promiscuity which belongs to Promenades, began to free young Val from his idealism. He looked admiringly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... more than a boy in years, yet dreaded and feared in his own land even then—a possible heir to Elizabeth's throne. Some short distance in front of these two, standard bearers carried the flags of Merry England, each glorious with fringes and tassels of gold. Well might such banners dazzle the eyes and wits ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... rose from his couch, opened the gate, and went out along the white dazzle of the starlit beach. "What the devil is the matter with me? I must be drunk—on two or three nips of whisky.... What a glorious, heavenly night!... And what a grand old fellow Baldwin is!... And I'm an infernal scoundrel to think of ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... acquainted with the world that lay behind the green curtain. The plays, generally, were of the spectacular order; without much literary merit, but well calculated to dazzle the eye of a youth of fifteen. Not only had I never seen anything so grand, but I had never seen anything of the kind. I had never been in a theater, or even a concert room, or seen any form of public amusement. It was much the same with "Davy" McCargo, "Harry" Oliver, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... if dazzle thee as yet The family of heaven," he answered me; "An angel 'tis, who ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... below, Yet hovers and will not circle down To cast t'ward one the leafy crown; Though men drive galleys' golden beaks To isles beyond the sunset peaks, And cities on the sea behold Whose walls are glass, whose gates are gold, Whose turrets, risen in an hour, Dazzle between the sun and shower, Whose sole inhabitants are kings Six cubits high with gryphon's wings And beard and mien more glorious Than Midas or Assaracus; Though priests in many a hill-top fane Lift ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... light which beats upon a throne, if it is apt to dazzle the bystander, helps those at a distance, especially in these days of the still fiercer light of modern publicity, to judge fairly the throne's occupant. The character of the Emperor as monarch ought, therefore, as far as is possible in the absence of archives marked "secret and confidential" ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. One of these, for a moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, to withstand it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, wonderfully, she submitted to without a cry or ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... to study humanity. He found in altruism more pleasure than his riches, his station and all the grosser sweets of life had given him. It was his chief solace and satisfaction to alleviate individual distress, to confer favours upon worthy ones who had need of succour, to dazzle unfortunates by unexpected and bewildering gifts of truly royal magnificence, bestowed, however, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... higher consideration. At times, the narrative rises into a far higher key. Most of all it does so at a period of the writer's life where, of necessity, a severe abstraction takes place from all that could invest him with any alien interest; no display that might dazzle the reader, nor ambition that could carry his eye forward with curiosity to the future, nor successes, fixing his eye on the present; nothing on the stage but a solitary infant, and its solitary combat with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... as a speaker may take advantage of the prejudices and passions of an audience, so he may take advantage of their ignorance. Against the blankness of their brains he may hurl unfamiliar names to dazzle them, cite facts of all kinds to impress them, show a wide knowledge of all sorts of things, "play up to them" in every way, until they become so impressed that they are ready to accept as truth anything he chooses to tell them. Any daily paper will provide examples of the sad ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... censured by the inns-of-court men, for that heinous vice, being out of fashion. He cannot speak to a dog in his own dialect, and understands Greek better than the language of a falconer. He has been used to a dark room, and dark clothes, and his eyes dazzle at a sattin suit. The hermitage of his study has made him somewhat uncouth in the world, and men make him worse by staring on him. Thus is he [silly and] ridiculous, and it continues with him for some quarter of a year out of the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... a schooner out from Kingsport, Through the morning's dazzle-gleam, Snoring down the Bay of Fundy With a norther ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... trick that Garrick, in an immortal scene, played on his own Partridge. There is so little parade about Fielding (for even the opening addresses are not parade to these good people: they may disconcert or even disgust, but they do not dazzle them), that his characters and his scenes look commonplace. They feel sure that "if they had seen a ghost they would have looked in the very same manner and done just as he does." They are sure that, in the scene with Gertrude, "Lord, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... There were elements of oddity in my companions, but they were vague and latent, and did n't interfere with my delight It came mainly, of course, from Ambient's talk, which was the most brilliant and interesting I had ever heard. I know not whether he laid himself out to dazzle a rather juvenile pilgrim from over the sea; but it matters little, for it was very easy for him to shine. He was almost better as a talker than as a writer; that is, if the extraordinary finish of his written prose be really, as some people have maintained, a fault. There was such a ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... himself many enemies. The plainness of his manner and the simplicity of his instructions were inexpressibly wounding to those (and they were many), who, setting up for professors, had hitherto endeavoured to dazzle their hearers by the loftiness of their claims, and to command from them implicit submission by the arrogance with which they dictated. It must be surprising to us, that a man like Socrates should be arraigned in a country like Athens upon a capital accusation. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... the Maluka laughed back. "But before I had time to dazzle the bushies with her the Wizard of the Never-Never charmed her into ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... upon these limits he never encroaches. There is an exquisite grace in his manner of phrasing sweet melodies and throwing off light touches from the higher keys. The boldness, brilliancy, and originality of his play at once dazzle and astonish, and the infantile naivete of his smiling caprices, the charming simplicity with which he renders simple things, seem to belong to another individuality, distinct from that which marks his thundering ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... Sea Bubble rose to dazzle all eyes with its iridescent splendours, it was she more than any other who blew it. She was the witch behind the scenes of the South Sea and many another bubble Company, whether its object was to "carry on a thing that will turn to the advantage of the concerned," "the breeding and providing ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... engineer, the power with the men who wielded it. Perhaps the human interest of politics was after all what really attracted her, and, however strongly she might deny it, the passion for exercising power, for its own sake, might dazzle and mislead a woman who had exhausted all the ordinary feminine resources. But why speculate about her motives? The stage was before her, the curtain was rising, the actors were ready to enter; she had only to go quietly on among the supernumeraries and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... his shoulder as he spoke, her shrill laughter ringing in his ears. The white glare and dazzle of the plain stretched before him, framed by the entrance to the tent; far off, against the horizon, there were moving black specks, which he knew to be the returning servants ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... votaries of fashion, her happy nature qualified her to play her part without effort and with success. Serene and graceful, she mingled in the strange and novel scene, as if it had been for ever her lot to dazzle and to charm. Ere the royal family returned to London, they extracted from Lady Annabel a compliance with their earnest wishes, that she should fix her residence, during the ensuing season, in the metropolis, and that she ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Esquires bearing their masters' shields, whose spotless fields flung back a hundred-fold the noonday sun—plumes so long and drooping, as to fall from the gilded crest till they rested on the shoulder—armor so bright as to dazzle the eyes of the beholders, save when partly concealed under the magnificent surcoats and mantles, amongst which the richest velvets, slashed with gold or silver, distinguished the highest nobles. Pageantry like this mingled with such stirring sounds as the tramp of the ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... place,—a rambling brick house with sharp, pointed roofs, and a long stretch of evergreens. It was beautiful in this soft atmosphere. The birds made a swift dazzle now and then, and ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to gather broccoli-plants or kidney-beans of his own rearing, with no small degree of pride and pleasure)?—Here were 'no figures nor no fantasies,'—neither poetry nor philosophy—nothing to dazzle, nothing to excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared, within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals: pressed down ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... watched a woman loll Like to a clot of seaweed thrown ashore; Heavy and limp as cloth soaked in black dye, She glooms the noontide dazzle where a bay Bites into vineyarded flats close-fenced by hills, Over whose tops lap forests of cork and fir And reach in places half down their rough slopes. Lower, some few cleared fields square on the thickets Of junipers and longer thorns ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... believe that there is, or may be, an art to "read the mind's construction in the face." But, then, in every species of reading, so much depends upon the eyes of the reader; if they are blear, or apt to dazzle, or inattentive, or strained with too much attention, the optic power will infallibly bring home false reports of what it reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory glance at a stranger, "What a fine open countenance he has!" who, upon second inspection, proves to have the exact features ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... importance of these things, and teach her to apply herself diligently to labor. I am not anxious that she should make any exhibition of her mental accomplishments, for I have learned to dislike parlor parades, and the showing off of children's acquirements. I do not want Dawn to dazzle with false how, but to be what she seems, and of use to the world. At the close of each day I shall question her about her studies, and show to her that I am interested not only in her books, but in her domestic attainments. Supply to her, as well as you can, that material, the want of ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... he offers any thoughts new, just, and important, they have rather been overlooked for their simplicity and obviousness. One may dive too deep for that which floats on the surface. Here are to be expected none of the splendid results, which dazzle in the popular sciences. The cultivator of this field can hope only to favor, imperceptibly it may be, the growth of thoughts and sentiments, tending slowly to work out a better condition of the human family. And he begs to commend that advice of Lacon, which himself has found so profitable: ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... of the searchlight would be on these fellows!" said Redgrave. "Those huge eyes of theirs are evidently only suited to dim light. Let's try and dazzle some of them." ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... of the World, or else such Advantages become Misfortunes, and Shade and Privacy are a more eligible Portion. Where Opportunities and Inclinations are given to the same Person, we sometimes see sublime Instances of Virtue, which so dazzle our Imaginations, that we look with Scorn on all which in lower Scenes of Life we may our selves be able to practise. But this is a vicious Way of Thinking; and it bears some Spice of romantick Madness, for a Man to imagine that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of my comrades, I bid you welcome. They come to greet you, with no pageantry, intended to surprise by its novelty, or dazzle by its splendour: But they bring you. General, an offering which wealth could not purchase, nor power constrain. On this day, associated with so many thrilling recollections; on this spot, consecrated by successful valour, they ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... least interesting item of the passage. The writer's most vivid recollection of Southampton Water in the early summer of 1918 is not of the beautiful shores shimmering in the June sun, but of an extraordinary line of "dazzle ships" in the centre of the waterway, moored bow to stern in a long perspective, or it would be more correct to say, want of perspective, the brain and the eye being so much at variance that the ends of the line could scarcely be believed to consist ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... penetration, appeared to have no natural concern in the present dispute between the belligerent powers, although former ministers had often violently introduced it into messages and speeches from the throne, in order to dazzle the eyes of the populace, even while they insulted the understanding of those who were capable of exercising their own reason. This pretext was worn so threadbare, that, among the sensible part of mankind, it could no longer be used without incurring ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to out-coruscate—profitably, if he can. Bill-paying and growing gray hairs over results belong to his principals. It is his to guide the risk, to be the Apotheosis of Front, the three-tailed Bashaw of Bluff, the Essential Oil of Razzle-Dazzle. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... world exchanges calls; ancient charmers with skeleton throats and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together, dazzle the eyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a spectacle ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... why didn't you BOY one?" Mrs. O'Dowd said; and both Amelia and William Dobbin thanked her for this timely observation. But beyond this neither of the ladies rallied. Amelia was overpowered by the flash and the dazzle and the fashionable talk of her worldly rival. Even the O'Dowd was silent and subdued after Becky's brilliant apparition, and scarcely said a word more ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dropped behind the tall hills that line the western shore of the beautiful F— River; but a soft yellow light, too generously spread to dazzle, suffused the whole sky, and was reflected on the tide that stole up with scarcely a ripple. A sharp bend of the stream brought me in sight of the two yachts, not fifty yards away—their inverted reflections motionless as themselves; I rested ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the only way to attract attention. Now-a-days, the person who creates a sensation, secures the prize that a dozen quiet, retiring individuals are looking and longing after, in vain. We must dazzle if we ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... then the thigh-deep grass, which is the lip of the bush, was about him, grey, dry as straw, rustling as he thrust through it with the noise of paper being crumpled in the hands. A green parrot, balancing clown-like on a twig, screamed raucously; he glanced up at its dazzle of feathers. Then the wall of the bush itself yielded to his thrusting, let him through, and closed behind his blue-clad back. Africa had received him to her silence ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... nourished, was this sentiment of contempt, that it lasted with equal bitterness when Constance afterwards became the queen and presider over that great world in which she now shone—to dazzle, but not to rule. What at first might have seemed an exaggerated and insane prayer on the part of her father, grew, as her experience ripened, a natural and laudable command. She was thrown entirely with that party amongst whom were his early friends and his late ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... leaping to position at the very end of one long line. The three leaders reached the first rocket-ship, and their green beams shot out. In that instant the enemy craft seemed to explode in intense blue light. Then the awful dazzle was gone. The rocket ship was there, just as before, but the American helio-planes were gone, were wiped out as though they had never been. The next trio, and the next, rushed up. Again and again came ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... appurtenances of Elsa's new rank. The impulse which moved women so different as my mother, the Duchess, and Victoria, to a common course of conduct was doubtless based on an universal woman's instinct. All the three seemed to set themselves to dazzle the girl with the glories and pomp that awaited her; at the same time William Adolphus became pressing in his claims on my company. Now Victoria never really supposed that I desired to spend my leisure ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope |
