"Dimness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his turnings, the old bishop gave us the benediction. Then the door closed on the glory of his robes, and in a minute, in the darkness we were rustling down a circular narrow staircase into the dimness of a crypt, lit by the little blue flame of an oil lamp. From above came sounds like thunder, immense, vibrating; we were immediately under the choir. Through the cracks round a large stone showed a parallelogram ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... had run before, now he flew. But fast as he ran, the leaves burned faster. The flame was ready to expire when, with a great leap, he bounded on the mat. The wind of his leaping blew it out; and with that the beach was gone, and the sun and the sea, and they stood once more in the dimness of the shuttered parlour, and were once more shaken and blinded; and on the mat betwixt them lay a pile of shining dollars. Keola ran to the shutters; and there was the steamer tossing in the ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carving, both on the screen that separates it from the nave, and on the seats and walls; very curious and most elaborate, and lavished (one would say) most wastefully, where nobody would think of looking for it,—where, indeed, amid the dimness of the cathedral, the exquisite detail of the elaboration could not possibly be seen. Our guide lighted some of the gas-burners, of which there are many hundreds, to help us see them; but it required close scrutiny, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... toiled up the steep stair, guiding ourselves by feeling, and in a few minutes Were at Prospect Point, that jutting bit of turf on the precipice's edge where the trees draw back and allow in daytime a wide view of the city and surrounding country, and we both stood breathless there in the dimness, in front of a sight bewilderingly grand enough to of itself ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... The dimness of [g] and [d] is an infallible precursor of rain, and if the Bee Hive is not visible in a clear sky, it is a presage ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... of those variously contrived reliquaries, great and small, glittering so profusely about the dusky church, itself ministering, by its very shadows, to a certain appetite in the soul of Gaston for dimness—for a dim place like this—such as he had often prefigured to himself, albeit with some suspicion of what might seem a preference for darkness. Physical twilight we most of us love, in its season. To him, that perpetual twilight ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... not yet wholly in possession. The limestone road shone dimly white, the forms of the leafless trees passed them in a windy procession, and afar on the horizon, beyond the dark gulf of the lake, there was visible at intervals a persistent dimness, something less black than the sky above and the veiled earth below, which Fenwick knew must be the snowy tops of the mountains. But it was a twilight more mournful than a total darkness; the damp air was nipping cold, and every few minutes gusts ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the one-eyed leader, glared from him into the dimness of the night, whining softly. A low, mourning wind swept through the spruce tops, and from Jan's throat there burst sobbingly words which he had heard beside this same grave more than seventeen years before, when Williams' choking ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... his kind resort, And Phoebus your father, with his streames red, Adorns the morrow, consuming the sort* *crowd Of misty cloudes, that would overlade True humble heartes with their mistihead.* *dimness, mistiness New comfort adaws,* when your eyen clear *dawns, awakens Disclose and spread, my life's ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Numberless as are your hairs; You have pulses that do beat High, and passions less of heat; You are young, but must be old:— And, to these, ye must be told, Time, ere long, will come and plow Loathed furrows in your brow: And the dimness of your eye Will no other thing imply, But you must die ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... The autumn-evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent;—hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play! The lights come out in the street, In the school-room windows;—but cold, Solemn, unlighted, austere, Through the gathering darkness, arise The chapel-walls, in whose bound ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then the ladder was ascended again ... [here the MS. is illegible] ... for one instant I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not farther describe. But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath the lava, too foul to be spoken of ... as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor beast, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... a very easy nor quick job. Ellen worked at it patiently, and finished it well by the end of the half-hour, though with a burning cheek still; and a dimness over her eyes frequently obliged her to stop till she could clear them. It was done, and she carried it out to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... and the question with me now became, "are they flesh and blood?" I had not sunk so far into reverie as to imagine that they were the actual spectres of the unhappy tenants of those beds on the night before, all of whom were now, doubtless, in the grave; but the silence, the distance, the dimness perplexed me, and I left the question to be settled by the event. At a gesture from the central figure they all stood up—and a man loaded with fetters was brought forward in front of their line. I now found that a trial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... miraculous bridging of any mythical gulf; for there never has been any gulf. And the outcome, not as we look forward are we haunted by fearful anticipations of darkness and evil; as we listen, we do not ever hear the clanking of chains; as we look, we know that the dimness that hangs over the coming time is not caused by "the smoke of the torment that ascendeth up forever and ever." It is a story of eternal hope for every race, for every child of man and ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... have descended between him and the sun,—there was greyness everywhere, and dimness, and uncertainty—in his mind, in his eyesight—and sometimes the vagueness was in his speech. He had noticed that—for, sometimes the word he meant to use was not the word he uttered. It had occurred a number of times, making foolish what he ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees towards the park were growing black. All about me the red weed clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dimness. Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. But while that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation, had been endurable; by virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... barrel, making sure it was full open, then he twisted the focusing ring until it stopped. Now the camera was focused on infinity. All he needed to do was aim and shoot. He looked at Scotty. His friend's face was a white blur in the dimness inside the plane. "Think ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... her off again. Yet she had a consciousness of tunnels and hills and of broad marshes pallid under a moon and a coming dawn. And in the dawn there was Pisa. She watched the word hanging in the station in the dimness: "Pisa." Ciccio told her people were changing for Florence. It all seemed wonderful to her—wonderful. She sat and watched the black station—then she heard the sound of the child's trumpet. And it did ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... jaws of the dragon Oblivion! What he is, we leave to the learned, who could no doubt dispose of him suitably in connection with the highly convenient solar myths, as a Potent Rescuing Power! As for us, we meddle not with the mists: we rather like the delicious glow of their luminous dimness, which glorifies the past if it clouds it; and which softens off the hardness of our prosaic modern life, as a ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... heroic than at that moment, offered her his arm, which she accepted with an air of scarecrow gentility. Either the change of costume had struck in, or it was the symbol of inward change. She seemed struggling against her torpor, her dimness and deadness. She tried, perhaps, to recall the day when that dress was first put on,—the day of Helen's marriage, when Salome had attended her mistress to the altar,—when she hoped before many weeks to stand at an altar on her own account.—Not ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of British territory, and it is a scandal that some effort is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the bars of a padlocked door, from which spurt blasts of mephitic heat, we can descry amid the steam of foul exhalations, as soon as our eyes become accustomed to the dimness, a mob of seething, sweating, sweltering captives, like in aspect as a whole to so many gaunt wild beasts. Some are gibbering like fiends, others jabbering like idiots. They are there young and old; a few—the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... miles they could see a rolling, open country, curving slightly upward into the dimness of the distance. At their right, close by, lay a broad lake, its surface wrinkled under a gentle breeze and gleaming bright as a great ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... between the willow beds and islands out towards Chaumont. But poor Mari' Anto did not look at the view when, worn out with retracing the steps of her grief, she leant both elbows on the balustrade and gazed into the dimness. Her life appeared before her, waste and desolate, at an age when it is difficult to make a fresh start. A faint sound of voices rose from Mousseaux, a group of two or three small houses on the embankment; the chain of a boat creaked as the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... and Alice disliked the silence more than the dimness,—so much, indeed, that she longed to hear Richard's voice. But she had always been so cross to him when he had spoken, that he thought it better to let her speak first; and she was too proud to do that. She would not even ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... no doubt that I had experienced the ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing about us that this bright spirit with which we are lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness. Such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our final destiny, and it saps us with numbness, and we are less than ourselves. Seven nights had I been on pilgrimage, and two of them had I passed in the open. Seven great heights had I climbed: the Forest, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... he and they had been overwhelmed by the same fate. He lay now, like Punch in his booth, with his head and two limp arms hanging over the ledge of the pulpit. It was a nightmare, the grey, dusty church, the rows of agonized figures, the dimness and silence of it all. We moved about with hushed whispers, walking ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them on board the ship and took an affectionate farewell of his old friends. Before parting, the Captain insisted on his accepting a small loan which he said he could return to Nassau whenever he felt like it. There was a suspicious dimness in his eyes as he crushed Paul's hand in his own, while Betsy cried outright as she heartily kissed him good-bye. When the weather became mild again, Paul engaged a small fishing craft and went down the coast to the vicinity of the wreck but his ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... by the sun on the plates of photography! True, the pictures were perhaps now slightly fading into the similitude of pale negatives, . . but still, would not everything that happened in the ACTUAL world merge into that same undecided dimness with the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... clearly the gallop of the cavalry, and the men heard it also. They looked up and turned their faces toward those who must be foes. Despite the dimness Dick saw their eyes brighten. Colonel Winchester had judged rightly. The boys ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... grabbed the hand-hold by the plate before he swirled past, loosened the plate, lifted it only enough to be sure that the room was empty, and then pushed it off, pulled himself through, and emerged into the whining dimness of Compressor Room 9, next to the machine shop. The low whine assaulting his ears was that created by the air compressors that fed the jets that drove the waters ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the breeze, and feel that exhilaration that thrills in one's hair and quivers down his back bone when he knows that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel cleaving through the waves at her utmost speed. There was no darkness, no dimness, no obscurity there. All was brightness, every object was vividly defined. Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every calabash of poi; every puppy; every seam in the flooring; every bolthead; every object; however minute, showed sharp and distinct in its every outline; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... looked her last upon the Virginian. Her lips were faintly parted, and no woman's eyes ever said more plainly, "I am one of your possessions." She had forgotten that it might be seen. Her glance caught mine, and she backed into the dimness of the room. What look she may have received from him, if he gave her any at this too public moment, I could not tell. His eyes seemed to be upon the horses, and he drove with the same mastering ease ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... A grey dimness was creeping in upon the schooner when a little bitter breeze sprang up from westwards, and Dampier bade them get the mainsail on ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of St. Alphonsus' Church, near Canal Street. Up the steps and through plain brown doors we went into the church, which was cool, quiet, and empty, save for a busy charwoman with humorous Irish face. Under the altar canopy wavered a small candle spark, and high overhead, in the dimness, were orange and scarlet gleams from a stained window. A crystal chandelier hanging in the aisle caught pale yellow tinctures of light. No Catholic church, wherever you find it, is long empty; a man and a girl entered just as we went ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... loud against it cry, See they don't entertain it inwardly; Sin, like to pitch, will to the fingers cleave, Look to it then, let none himself deceive; 'Tis catching; make resistances afresh, Abhor the garment spotted by the flesh. Some at the dimness of the candle puff, Who yet can daub their fingers with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... herself recede, as it were, into a sort of anagogical half consciousness, laved and carried along on currents of melody that were as sensually delicious as a warm bath. Her awareness of Lindsley on a diagonal from her so that she could see his profile hook into the music-scented dimness, ran under her skin like a ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... up gravely from the script-laden table before them as Martin Pike came into the strong lamplight out of the dimness of the hall, where only a taper burned. He shambled a few limp steps into the room and came to a halt. Big as he was, his clothes hung upon him loosely, like coverlets upon a collapsed bed; and he seemed but a distorted image of himself, as if (save for the dull ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... resist the entreaties of the old sheik and his daughter not to risk what he had gained, so he continued to use the shade of leaves, and allowed himself to be persuaded to defer his departure until the dimness which still prevented his seeing anything ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... find that it becomes dim, just as that jar is dim. If you can get a silver dish, or something of that kind, you will make the experiment still better. And now, just to carry your thoughts forward to the time we shall next meet, let me tell you that it is water which causes the dimness; and when we next meet. I will shew you that we can make it, without difficulty, assume the form ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... have been a glimpse of the "glory to be revealed" breaking through the dimness of death; for he did not see the dear face so close to his, and if he heard her voice, he was past all answering now. Just once again his lips moved, murmuring a name—the dearest of all—"Jesus;" and then he ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... irrationality of the whole proceeding. He held the statuette out stiffly, it seemed fairly to leap in his hands, as if tugging with an ecstatic longing to reach the dark place ahead. The rocks closed completely overhead; the dimness changed to stygian darkness. I got out my flashlight, sent the beam ahead. But Jake was pressing on through the darkness, directly in the ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... Saint-Sernin, so that I took my departure and went in search of the cathedral. It was scarcely worth finding, and struck me as an odd, dislocated fragment. The front consists only of a portal beside which a tall brick tower of a later period has been erected. The nave was wrapped in dimness, with a few scattered lamps. I could only distinguish an immense vault, like a high cavern, without aisles. Here and there in the gloom was a kneeling figure; the whole place was mysterious and lopsided. The choir was curtained ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... succeeded. This proved however to be a second passage, which evidently ascended. It terminated like the former; though something approaching to a ray, we could not tell whence, shed a very doubtful twilight in the space. By degrees, our eyes grew somewhat accustomed to this dimness, and we perceived that there was no direct passage leading us further; but that it was possible to climb one side of the cavern to a low arch at top, which promised a more easy path, from whence we now discovered ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... glide! The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe, The lake is smooth and clear beneath, Where once again the spangled show Descends to meet our eyes below. The grounds which on the right aspire, In dimness from the view retire: The left presents a place of graves, Whose wall the silent water laves. 20 That steeple guides thy doubtful sight, Among the livid gleams of night. There pass, with melancholy state, By all the solemn heaps of fate, And think, as softly-sad ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... his high, cracked voice even more shrill and thin than usual. "God bless ye!" And as she let her hands slip down, and, turning, gently looked at him, he nodded to her speakingly, because out of the dimness of his being, some part of Nature's working had ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the dimness of early times, we find that many of the ancients preferred green gems to all other stones. The emerald was thought to have many virtues. It kept evil spirits at a distance, it restored failing sight, it could unearth mysteries, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... see any way out. I marched in the dimness with the rest, and we managed to make surprisingly little noise. Wohlen's animals were active and stirring, ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... earliest morning and dawn was but just beginning, Face-of-god awoke and rose up from his bed, and came forth into the hall naked in his shirt, and stood by the hearth, wherein the piled- up embers were yet red, and looked about and could see nothing stirring in the dimness: then he fetched water and washed the night- tide off him, and clad himself in haste, and was even as he was yesterday, save that he left his bow and quiver in their place and took instead a short casting-spear; moreover he took a leathern scrip and went ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... her lip until the blood started, and, to conceal her chagrin, took refuge in the parlor, where the quiet dimness offered a covert. Locking the door, she sat down in one of the cushioned rocking-chairs and looked at the letter lying between her fingers. The gilt clock on the mantel uttered a dull, clicking sound, and a little green and gold-colored bird hopped out and "cuckooed" ten times. Miss Jane ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know that it was a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and shadowy, Deepening o'er the sunset's glow, Softly through the mystic dimness Flitting ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... A dimness suffused the stars of Arabia; the surrounding heights, that had risen sharp and black in the clear purple air, blended in shadowy and fleeting masses, the huge branches of the cypress tree seemed to stir, and the kneeling pilgrim sank upon the earth ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... set it over the silver stick. Small moths flew in and out, and like a distant ground swell came the noise of the fevered town. The house itself was quiet after the turmoil of the day; large halls and stair in dimness, the ill or wounded quiet or at least not loudly complaining. Now and then a door softly opened or closed; a woman's figure or that of some coloured servant passed from dimness to dimness. They passed and the whole was quiet again. Mother and son spoke low. "I will not wake Miriam until just ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... The dimness and poverty of their theological speculation caused the Stoics to attribute the government of the universe less to the uncertain design of gods than to a definite law of nature. By that law, which ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... he was taken with a violent fit of vomiting for some hours, to which a fever succeeded, that continued four months: this brought his body exceeding low, together with a dimness in his eyes, which after occasioned him to make use of Mr. Henry Coley, as his amanuensis, to transcribe (from his dictates) his astrological judgments for the year 1677; but the monthly observations for that year, were written with his own hand some time before, though by ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... phenomenal world than by passing beyond it? But such an idea has rarely satisfied Indian thinkers. If, on the other hand, Maya is an evil or at least an imperfection, if it is like rust on a blade or dimness in a mirror, if, so to speak, the edges of Brahman are weak and break into fragments which are prevented by their own feebleness from realizing the unity of the whole, then the mind wonders uneasily if, in spite of all assurances to the contrary, this does not imply that Brahman is subject to ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... houses that hedged their course discovered a profile, ragged, black against a sky whose purple dimness held the first dull ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... nutrient arteries convey impure material to the brain, the nervous and bilious headache, confusion of ideas, loss of memory, impaired intellect, dimness of vision, and dulness of hearing, will be experienced; and in process of time, the brain becomes disorganized, and the brittle thread of life ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... interesting mistress; why, I cannot remember, and I am glad to put her out of my mind, for I want to think of the strange poet whom we heard reciting verses, under the aspen, in which one of the apes had taken refuge. Through the dimness of the years I can see his fair hair floating about his shoulders, his blue eyes and his thin nose. Didn't somebody once describe him as a sort of sensual Christ? He, too, was after the commercant's wife. And didn't he select her as the subject of his licentious verses—reassure yourself, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... and temptations of this world, Jacqueline seemed for the first time to understand why Giselle regretted that she might not share forever the blessed peace enjoyed in the convent. A torpor stole over her, caused by the dimness, the faint odor of the incense, and the solemn silence. She imagined herself in the act of giving up the world. She saw herself in a veil, with her eyes raised to Heaven, very pale, standing behind the grille. She would have to cut ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... door of her aunt's private apartments on the second floor and entered. She stepped back amazed. There was no dust here, no musty air, no dimness of window. A fire burned on the hearth. The gas was lit and softly shaded. The vases on the mantel were full of flowers. On one table was a basket of fruit; on another were the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cobs had been persuasive. Kenny saw beyond in the dimness cobs and an empty basket. The farmer was gone. He lay down again in deep disgust, merely reaching a pleasant stage of drowsiness when the sound of voices near ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... she then buy no more such dainty fruit? Must she no more such succous pasture find, Gone deaf and blind? Her tree of life drooped from the root: 260 She said not one word in her heart's sore ache; But peering thro' the dimness, nought discerning, Trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way; So crept to bed, and lay Silent till Lizzie slept; Then sat up in a passionate yearning, And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept As if ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... lifted them up to display their merits, by the dimness of the candle-light, and, as he raised them up, there appeared beneath the gray fox-skin with its scarlet lining and pompadour knots, the Lady de Brantefield's ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... was fleeing from Claverhouse, so it is now in my affairs. I am moving in a mist which folds me round like a thin garment; here and there I see the light struggling through, and it seems to me most beautiful even in its dimness; by and by the mist shall altogether pass, and I shall stand in the light, which is the shining of His face. But whether I shall then find myself at Cana of Galilee or in the Garden ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... little sparkle red, Afar, drew close. A woman's form grew up Out of the dimness, tall, with queen-like head, And in one hand was fire; in one, a cup. Of aspect grave she was, with eyes upraised, As one whose thoughts perpetually did sup At the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... desolate hoarseness in the dusk. The cows in the far fields had long ago wandered home to be milked, scarcely a bird moved in the high silences, the gnats had hidden themselves away in the deep, rugged bark of the trees, and, through the dimness, the heavy beetles were hurling like stones, and dropping and rising again ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... should be spread in their coops at sea, which prevents this disorder, and will sometimes cure it. At the commencement of this complaint, the circumstance that first engages the patient's attention is the dimness of his eye-sight at twilight: the nocturnal dimness of vision was such, in the instance before-mentioned, that the youth could scarcely see, even with a candle in his hand, which he described, as seen by him, as if it were misty, or as ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... So in the dimness Pierre fumbled, by force of habit, at his throat, and found the cross which he wore by a silver chain about his throat. He held it in a great grip and closed his eyes and prayed. When he opened his eyes again it was almost deep night ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... owning myself at my wit's end when a ray of hope was vouchsafed me. The kitchen door opened and let out a leather-clad figure which strode across the courtyard, lantern in hand, and let itself into the garage. Despite the dimness, I recognized Miss Falconer's chauffeur, the man she had addressed as Georges when they left the rue St. Dominique. The very link I needed, provided I could get into communication with ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... party had not emerged all evening, but now, as the sex given to things of the spirit while the men warred against base things material, they took command and cried, "Oh, let's!" In the dimness the men were rather solemn and foolish, but the goodwives quivered and adored as they sat about the table. They laughed, "Now, you be good or I'll tell!" when the men took their hands ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... mourn the fate Of those, to whom my life I owe; And hate the hearts that thus create The dimness ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... while after this, smiling at each other like adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height from which they discover a new world. The actual world at their feet was veiling itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear moon rose ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the German spirit has become a common right of the whole people, Culture will become, if not the sign at least the presupposition of creative activity. The proof of capacity will then cease to be settled either between agitators and the masses, or in the dimness of privileged chanceries, but in the productive competition of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... had come up, and the dimness of coming eventide had already spread over the water, but there was no rain. In fact, it had turned too cold for that. A fine baffling mist was falling, however, and this was condensing ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... omens, and the hazard of the voyage. For while he was making the circuit of the temples, having seated himself in that of Vesta, when he attempted to rise, the skirt of his robe stuck fast; and he was instantly seized with such a dimness in his eyes, that he could not see a yard before him. In Achaia, he attempted to make a cut through the Isthmus [580]; and, having made a speech encouraging his pretorians to set about the work, on a signal given by sound of trumpet, he first broke ground with a spade, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... countenance of an angry God, the revengeful sword of justice shaken in the word; all above us as if the sun were turned into blackness, and the moon into blood, and behold trouble and darkness, and dimness of anguish. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... alas, It wipes no dimness from the glass Where I am flattening my poor nose, In hope to see beyond my toes, Though I accept my pedigree, Yet where, pray tell me, is the key That should unlock a private door To the Great Mystery, such no more? Each offers his, but one nor all Are much persuasive with the wall 230 That rises ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... any outcry, Malone rushed back. Boyd was struggling with a figure in the dimness. Malone grabbed the figure and clamped his hand over its mouth. It bit him. He swore in a low voice, and clamped the hand ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... cigar waxed, a pin-point of light in a world of dimness and mystery. Subdued breathing made our silence rhythmic. When I found my voice, it was hardly more than ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said Lannes, struggling against the dimness that was coming over his eyes and the weakness permeating his whole body. "Be careful, Oh, be careful as you can, and then, in your American language, a lot more. Slowly! Slowly! Yes, I can move alone. Drag yourself over me, and I can slide under ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was evidently meant to be friendly, but his expression belied it. He was slightly taller than his father, and his cast of features was altogether different. His cheeks were pale, almost sunken, his eyes were too close together, and they had the dimness of the roue or the habitual dyspeptic. His lips were too full, his chin too receding, and he ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... trampling of feet among the advanced guard as they came confusedly to a halt, and almost at the same instant a more ominous sound, as of galloping horses in the path before us. The moonlight outside the woods gave that dimness of atmosphere within which is more bewildering than darkness, because the eyes cannot adapt themselves to it so well. Yet I fancied, and others aver, that they saw the leader of an approaching party mounted on a white horse and reining up in the pathway; others, again, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sleep, which fatigue and fasting had rendered more oppressive than refreshing, he found that the splendors of the night were succeeded by a heavy rain, and that he was wet through. He arose with stiffness in his limbs, pain in his head, and a dimness over his eyes, with a sense of weakness which almost disabled him from moving. He readily judged that he had caught cold; and every moment feeling himself grow worse, he thought it necessary to seek some house where he might ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... the red-brick court and walled carriage-drive stand finely from their background. Behind the house is the terraced garden which Evelyn himself made, and beyond it a streak of water running between wooded banks away to the blue dimness of Leith Hill. John Evelyn shall describe ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... silent Baal, our imaged deity, Although his marble face looks frowningly, As the dusk shadows of the evening cast His trow in coming dimness and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... heard them no longer, then slowly she turned. Pierre had not moved from his chair. He was gripping the arms as before. She stood with her back to the light, thankful for the dimness that obscured her face. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... repairmen were working down in the hull, and the Swiftwing was a hell of clanging noise and shuddering heat. Maintenance was working overtime, but the rest of the crew, with nothing to do, stood around in the recreation rooms, tried to play games, cursed the heat and the dreary dimness through the viewports, and twitched at the boiler-factory racket from ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... bless you, I am 'going' to take up my alpenstock and cross all the passes. And, I am 'going' to Italy. I am also 'going' up the Nile to the second cataract; and I am 'going' to Jerusalem, and to India, and likewise to Australia. My only dimness of perception in this wise is, that I don't know when. If I did but know when, I should be so wonderfully clear about it all! At present I can't see even so much as the Simplon in consequence of certain farewell readings ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... brooding, puzzled look, 'Poor little soul, she is feeling her growing-pains!' said Mistress Mary. It was a mind sitting in a dim twilight where everything seems confused. The physical eye appears to see, but the light never quite pierces the dimness nor reflects its beauty there. If the ears hear the song of birds, the cooing of babes, the heart- beat in the organ tone, then the swift little messengers that fly hither and thither in my mind and yours, carrying echoes of sweetness unspeakable, tread ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mysterious, for the wild cheering which had brought him down from his room had given way to a solemn exaltation of triumph. If he had had a hat on his head, he would have pulled it off, hearing the school song sung that way. He felt a tug at his heart and again the dimness covered his eyes because he should be fated to have no active part in that thrilling chorus ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... seen from the land. As you ascend the mountains about its shores, says he, you behold this immense body of water spreading itself before you, and stretching further and further, in one wide and far-reaching expanse, until the eye, wearied with continued and strained attention, rests in the blue dimness of distance, upon lofty ranges of mountains, confidently asserted to rise from the bosom of the waters. Nearer to you, the smooth and unruffled surface is studded with little islands, where the mountain sheep roam in considerable numbers. What extent of ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... horrid form, when this was no longer visible. It was hidden in what appeared a shower of bluish pearls suddenly projected underneath the water, and enveloping both the dead body of the sailor and the living form of the shark. Through the dimness could be distinguished gleams of a pale phosphoric sheen like lightning flashes through a sky cloud; and soon after froth and bubbles rose effervescing upon the surface of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... all had gone well and hopefully, and the enthusiasm of the moment had brought a flush to the cheek and a dimness to the eye of many a weather-beaten tar among the little crew. But enthusiasm is fleeting in these practical days, and the sound of the last cheer had scarcely died away upon the summer breeze ere the scene changed, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... a laugh, which ended in a sound of pain. Then he lifted her hand again, kissed it, and was gone; running—head down—through the dimness ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... philosopher looking down from the cliff on the wild sea; we yawn over the wailings of Werter and Raphael, but we ponder gravely over the last chapters of the Heir of Redclyffe, and feel a curious sensation in the throat—perhaps the slightest dimness of vision—when we read in The Newcomes how that noble old soldier crowned the chivalry of a stainless life, dying in ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... was found! The spire was isolated from the church, and was entirely of wood, save for a stone stump. Great beams crossed and recrossed one another, in an ever-narrowing pyramid, for about two hundred feet. Up in the dimness and final darkness near the apex was ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... difficulty I have throughout in considering what are the Eugenist's proposals is that they do not seem to know themselves. Some philosophic attitude which I cannot myself connect with human reason seems to make them actually proud of the dimness of their definitions and the uncompleteness of their plans. The Eugenic optimism seems to partake generally of the nature of that dazzled and confused confidence, so common in private theatricals, that it will be all right on the night. They have all the ancient despotism, ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... improved, and seemed conditionally sure of further improvement; but the negro, having arrived at a certain point—and that usually no high one—seemed incapable of further progress, as a man, though not afflicted with dimness of vision, is prevented by natural causes from seeing beyond the horizon. Doubtless the spirit of rivalry already mentioned, born of defiance and resentment in a mild form, was to some extent the incentive to application, and its brief duration serves to illustrate the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various |
