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Fading   /fˈeɪdɪŋ/   Listen
Fading

noun
1.
Weakening in force or intensity.  Synonym: attenuation.



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"Fading" Quotes from Famous Books



... not Truth! for he that tries Shall find thee all deceit and lies, Thou art not Friendship! for in thee 'Tis but the bait of policy; Which like a viper lodg'd in flow'rs, Its venom through that sweetness pours; And when not so, then always 'tis A fading paint, the short-liv'd bliss Of air and humour; out and in, Like colours in a dolphin's skin; But must not live beyond one day, Or convenience; then away. Thou art not Riches! for that trash, Which one age hoards, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... in the box labelled CHRISTMAS TREE THINGS, FRAGILE. The box goes up to the attic, and the parent blows a faint diminuendo, achingly prolonged, on a toy horn. Titania is almost reduced to tears as he explains it is the halloo of Santa Claus fading away ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... he spoke, and she rose too. Already the anger in his eyes was fading fast before the sight of her so genuine emotion. They went out into the garden, and there she took up her ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... as the world "would not willingly let die," was content to occupy himself with the most ephemeral of all hackwork. His own polemical writings may be justly described in the words he himself uses of a book by one of his opponents, as calculated "to gain a short, contemptible, and soon-fading reward, not to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise man ... but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, and ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... means exquisite, sentiment. At this moment Lady Holme found them soothing. There was a certain music in them and very little reality. They seemed to represent life as a pensive phantasmagoria of bird songs, fading flowers, dying lights, soft winds and rains and ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... Martha Eggers' room now to find that lady intent upon a white sock, darning needle in hand. She was working in the fast-fading light that came through her one window. Myrt, kimono-clad, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... trees of other species. Here, under the ample shade of a plane-tree, that spread its majestic canopy towards the river, St. Aubert loved to sit in the fine evenings of summer, with his wife and children, watching, beneath its foliage, the setting sun, the mild splendour of its light fading from the distant landscape, till the shadows of twilight melted its various features into one tint of sober grey. Here, too, he loved to read, and to converse with Madame St. Aubert; or to play with his children, resigning ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... its truest glories and its worst bereavement. By and by the guests drop in, hat in hand, wearing upon their sleeves waving crape; and some of them slip up to the coffin to carry away a last impression of the fading face. ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... strong, and as able to be used to print from, as when first done. The paper was prepared with the single iodide of silver solution, and rendered sensitive with aceto-nitrate sil. and gallic acid in the usual way. I attribute the fading to the hyposulphate not being got rid of; and the question is, Can the picture ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various

... we hardly could tell why, but yet we instinctively felt, that the moss-grown thatch, the mouldering paling, the hoary apple trees, in a word, the evidences of decay visible around the place, were but types of the fading fortunes of the inmates. ...
— The Widow's Dog • Mary Russell Mitford

... Of branched evergreen; Change cannot touch them With fading fingers sere: 60 Here the first violets Perhaps will bud unseen, And a dove, may be, Return to ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... within the mark, I think, in assuming that Phonician adventurers, or possibly even the regular trading ships of Tyre and Sidon, had established relations with the semi-barbarous chiefs of Botica as early as the XIIth century before our era, that is, at the time when the power of Thebes was fading away under the weak rule of the pontiffs of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the soft light that was now slowly fading from the side of the mountain because of the retirement of the sun, I sat me down upon the step of the hut and wrote to my Gouverneur Faulkner ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... listened; Then he sped forward Faster and faster Toward the bright water. Breathless he reached it. Why did he crouch then, Stark as a statue? What did he see there Could so appall him? Only a circle Swiftly expanding, Fading before him; But, as he watched it, Up from the centre, Slowly, superbly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... borne bad fortune better than this," said Mr. Moreland; and then I remember telling him, in incoherent words, how poor we had been and how Clare was fading away for want of the nourishment and good support I was utterly unable to ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme

... after rising, gorgeous sunset, first of the afterglows; sky and clouds yellow and red up to the zenith." 28th and 29th, Natal—"most vivid sunsets, also August 31st and September 5th, sky vivid red, fading into green and purple." On the last days of August and September 1st, the sun, as seen from South America, appeared blue, while at Panama on the 2nd and 3d of that month, the sun appeared green. "On the 2nd of September, Trinidad, Port of Spain—Sun looked like ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... fading of the hills into night clouds, interested in her thoughts vaguely—her thoughts adrift and faded somewhat as the spectacle before her. She wondered if her lodger would be satisfied with her mother's cooking; she hoped ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... would sustain him. He propped Jim off with his long arm, and though the lad sprang lightly round him looking for an opening, he was held off as if a forty-inch bar of iron were between them. Every instant now was in favour of Berks, and already his breathing was easier and the bluish tinge fading from his face. Jim knew that his chance of a speedy victory was slipping away from him, and he came back again and again as swift as a flash to the attack without being able to get past the passive defence of the trained fighting-man. It was ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... (important) 642; notable, notorious; celebrated, renowned, ion every one's mouth, talked of; famous, famed; far-famed; conspicuous, to the front; foremost; in the front rank, in the ascendant. imperishable, deathless, immortal, never fading, aere perennius [Lat.]; time honored. illustrious, glorious, splendid, brilliant, radiant; bright &c 420; full-blown; honorific. eminent, prominent; high &c 206; in the zenith; at the head of, at the top of the tree; peerless, of the first water.; superior &c 33; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... trailed long shadows across the canon; shadows that drifted imperceptibly farther and farther, spreading, commingling, softening the broken outlines of ledge and brush until the walled solitude was brimmed with dusk, save where a red shaft cleft the fast-fading twilight, burning like a great spotlight on a picketed horse and a man asleep, his head ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... now gird themselves With swords and Bibles, and, nought doubting, rush Into the world's undying chronicles! This struggle hath in it a solemn echo Of the old world, when God was present still In fiery columns, burning oracles: Ere earnest faith and new reality Had grown diluted, fading from the earth Through feeble ages of a mock existence, Whose Heaven and Hell were but as outer fables, That trouble not ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... and ever fainter, As she murmur'd "Oh, that he Were once more that landscape-painter Which did win my heart from me!" So she droop'd and droop'd before him, Fading slowly from his side; Three fair children first she bore him, Then before ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... with a heavy sigh, dropped her small belongings on to a narrow bare table that stood against the wall near the foot of the stairs. Daylight was fading. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... thousand feet above the level of the sea. The base of the Cumulus is probably never more, in England, than five thousand feet high, rarely this. The Nimbus is the Cumulus shedding its vapour in rain; and the Stratus is the partially exhausted and fading Nimbus. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... knows where—for months; but suddenly, and just as mysteriously as he departed, he turned up a few days ago at Herst, where the old man is slowly fading. The winter has been a severe one, and they think ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... the principal actor in the scene, his Majesty made some observations to M. David, with all possible delicacy. They were attentively noted by this admirable artist, who, with a bow, promised the Emperor to profit by his advice. Their Majesties' visit was long, and lasted until the fading light warned the Emperor that it was time to return. M. David escorted him to the door of his studio; and there, stopping short, the Emperor took off his hat, and, by a most graceful bow, testified to the honor he felt for such distinguished talent. The ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... with a peculiar feeling of relief that all on board the sloop passed out into the open and saw the dull green banks of the mangrove forest fading away astern. For there had been a haunting feeling of depression hanging over the vessel which seemed to affect the spirits of ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... again where the people were, and the people seemed to forget about him. He went to his little room under the sloping roof. He had not let go of the shell and now, in the fading light from the low window, he lost himself once more in its depths. Inwardly he knew that a terror lurked near, but he had not yet felt it. Only when bedtime came did the continued silence of his mother become meaningful. When he was left alone, he cried for her, still ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... steamboat. It was only a block or two beyond the place where Randolph had landed that eventful night. He had to pass it now; but with Miss Avondale clinging to his arm, with what different feelings! The rain still fell, the day was fading, but he walked in an enchanted dream, of which the prosaic umbrella was the mystic tent and magic pavilion. He must needs even stop at the corner of the wharf, and show her the exact spot where ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... to relate—I was seated in a bower that overlooked the river. It had been a lovely evening—so lovely, that I lingered there, wrapped in the heavenly contemplation of its beauties. I watched each rosy tint reflected upon the surface of the rapid stream—now fading into yellow—now shining silvery white. I noticed the mystic mingling of twilight with darkness—of night with day, till the bright current on a sudden became a black mass of waters. I could scarcely discern a leaf—all was darkness—when lo! another change! The moon was up—a ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... taste and luxury. At first, I was almost overpowered by the too genial warmth of the apartment, and the aromatic and rose-imbued odours that filled it. I trod on, and my step sank into, a yielding carpet, which seemed to be elastic under my feet, and which glowed with a thousand never fading, though mimic flowers. The apartment was not crowded, though I saw candelabra, vases, and side-tables of the purest marble, supported upon massive gilt pedestals. In all this there was nothing singular—it was the work of the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... than this—the absolute solitude, the dull red glow of the light fading in the west, gradually getting fainter and fainter, the light shiver of the reeds, as a breath of wind rustles through them, and best of all the whistle of beating pinions high overhead, betokening ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates

... certainty that a true knowledge of their native Flora was meant by Heaven to be one of the first heart-possessions of every happy boy and girl in flower-bearing lands, that have compelled me to gather into system my fading memories, and wandering thoughts.[25] And of course in the diaries written at places of which I now want chiefly the details of the Flora, I find none; and in this instance of the milkwort, whose name I was first told ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... I hope to gain, I know swift Time doth fly; Those fading buds methinks are vain, To-morrow ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... Jubal, bringing or fading. So then in these two sons might be shewed unto us the world, as it is in its utmost glory: that is, it brings buds, it brings fading: today in the field, tomorrow in the oven: "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof, is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... describes as mariage apres la nature. For all that, however, one seems to hear less of the "hill-top" species, and possibly—with the problem play, without which no theatre was complete a couple of years ago—it may be fading into the mist of the past. It is with communities, we may take it, as with individuals. There are moments when, as it has been said, "every one is an atheist, from archbishops downwards," when a sense of the purposelessness and futility ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... going down behind the Pentlands, cast golden lights and blue shadows on their snow-clad summits, slanted obliquely into the rich plain before them, bathing with rosy splendour the leafless, snow-sprinkled trees, and fading gradually into shadow in the distance. To the south, too, they beheld a deep-shaded amphitheatre of heather and bracken; the course of the Esk, near Penicuik, winding about at the foot of its gorge; the broad, brown expanse of Maw Moss; and, fading into blue indistinctness in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... silent jog home with Winton in fading daylight, she felt very happy—saturated with air and elation. The trees and fields, the hay-stacks, gates, and ponds beside the lanes grew dim; lights came up in the cottage windows; the air smelled sweet of wood smoke. And, for the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... soon afterwards, and the Scarrowmania was smoothly sliding seawards with the first of the ebb when Agatha met Wyllard. He glanced at the Lancashire sandhills, which were fading into a pale ochre gleam amidst the haze over the starboard hand, and then at the long row of painted buoys that ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... the ocean's rim, and the whole world kindled into a glory of color. The fading green fields brightened, quivered and glowed, as over them fell a veil of lilac mist. Through them wound the little river, a stream of molten gold. Just at John McIntyre's feet it passed lingeringly through a bed of rushes, where the dark green of the reeds turned the golden ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... of a dwarf broom. It was evening when I descended into a wide valley from which came the chime of cattle-bells, mingled with the barking of dogs and the voices of children, who were driving the animals slowly homeward. There were green meadows below me, over which was a yellow gleam from the fading afterglow of sunset, and in the air was that odour which, rising from grassy valleys at the close of day, even in regions burnt by the southern summer, makes the wandering Englishman fancy that some wayfaring wind has come laden with the breath of his native ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... over yonder, just behind the tall picket fence, were corn-cribs bursting with corn and hay-lofts choked with hay. Fifty or sixty negro hovels, irregularly grouped together down by the bayou-side, and indistinctly seen in the fading twilight, contained about three hundred slaves, who, having trooped in from the field at the sound of the bell, were now eating pork and hominy as fast as they could swallow. But no one would have guessed that all this abundance was at hand, or that this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... Sandy said. "You've come to the right shop for fighting men. I can see those two fellows fading away at ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... herself the livelong day. But a moment after the smile passed from her face and a shade of sadness crept into her eyes. She bound up her tresses, drew her veil over her arms, and sighing slowly, walked away like a beauteous evening fading into the night. To me the supreme fulfilment of desire seemed to have been revealed in a flash and then to have vanished. . . . But who is it that ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore

... ye winds! and pour, thou rain! Your stormy sobs and tears are vain, If shed for her whose fading eyes Will open soon on Paradise; The eye of Heaven shall blinded be, Or ere ye cease, if shed ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... Kay, guided by a maid, proceeded to her room. A recent job of calcimining had transformed the room from a dirty grayish, white to a soft shade of pink; the old-fashioned furniture had been "done over," and glowed dully in the fading light. Kay threw open the small square-hinged window, gazed through the iron bars sunk in the thick walls, and she found herself looking down the valley, more beautiful than ever now ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... eyes at the turning of the handle, but now opened them again, curious to watch the aspect of the fading world. She had determined to do this a week ago: she would at least miss nothing of this unique ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... possessor with the brightest and most captivating beauty. Admiration will follow their footsteps, and the homage of crowds be paid to their charms. But even you, my children, uninformed as you are, must know that beauty at best is but a fading flower, and the adoration it excites equally transitory. If in those who derive it from this gift, it be accompanied with modesty and humility, it will insure to them all the happiness and gratification that a consciousness of the power to please must naturally confer. But if, on ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown

... and fading tree, Lines of white in a sullen sea, Shadows rising on you and me—The swallows are making them ready to fly, Wheeling out on a windy sky: ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... face demoniacally impassioned, yet fading into the pasty gray of fear—the fear that was the more unmanageable because it was a new emotion which had never risen ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... cleaning up the floor, and putting the confused room into a little order, she sat down to finish some work promised by the next morning. It was nearly dark, and she was standing, with her sewing, close up to the window, in order to see more distinctly in the fading light, when there came a loud knock at the door. One of the children opened it, and a man, whose face she knew too well, came in. He was the owner of the poor tenement in ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... broke into a kind of cry. "Take care!" she said. "Take care! I see another form. It has taken the place of your father. I think it is the form of a woman who has passed over, and who loved you once, but whose heart is now full of hatred. D'you follow me? Quick! quick! She's fading away!" ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... the body, to be healthy, demands for food is Sun-light, that invaluable medicine for all forms of nervous disease, which Americans, more than any other people, curtain carefully out for fear of fading carpets and furniture. But what are French moquettes, brocade, or satin, compared with rosy cheeks, clear complexions, and steady nerves? If we would only draw up the shades, open the shutters, and loop the heavy curtains out of the way, or, better still, take ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... against the wall, Old volumes, full of tales, such as in dreams One finds in bookshops strange, in tortuous streets; Beside me, over me, soul of the place, Filling the gloom with calm delirium, That wondrous woman-statue evermore, White, radiant; fading, as the darkness grew, Into a ghostly pallour, that put on, To staring eyes, a ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... that were as white As moonbeams shining in the night, Betray the fever's awful pain, And fading, show a darker stain. ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... vale of love with moving tracery, the oak woods reaching forward between the vineyards on the hillsides which are rounded by the river into constant variety, the soft outlines crossing each other and fading to the horizon." ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... Jacob felt a gradual fading away of impressions of need. He was comfortably settled at Shechem. He was surrounded by a wild, godless household who cherished their idols, and he knew that if he went to Bethel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... of the procession was Black Bill, taking his time, barely keeping up with the others. A distance race was no new thing to Black Bill. He had seen front runners before and knew that they had a habit of fading in the final quarter. Beside him was Elisha, matching him, ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... each other Or injured friend or brother, In this fast fading year; Ye who, by word or deed, Hath made a kind heart bleed, Come gather here. Let sinn'd against and sinning, Forget their strife's beginning; Be links no longer broken, Be sweet forgiveness spoken, Under the ...
— Christmas Sunshine • Various

... dawn fading into full daylight; and between dawn and sunrise were all men stirring; for the watch had waked the hundred- leaders, and they the leaders of scores and half-scores, and they the whole folk; and they sat quietly in the wood and made ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... Field Ambulance was ordered back for rest and reorganization to a village called Ouderdom, three miles to the Southwest, and their O.C. invited me to follow them. It was late in the evening when I started to walk. The light was fading and, as I had no map, I was not certain where Ouderdom was. I went down the road, delighting in the sweet smells of nature. It was with a sense of unusual freedom that I walked along with all my worldly possessions in my haversack. I thought how convenient it ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... because of the fact that he was a sergeant; and now, although with a badly shattered leg which the surgeon had told him might later have to go, he grinned broadly as Jeb clasped his hand. Bonsecours' greeting also was affectionate and genuine; for, despite his fading hope of happiness, and the memory of Jeb's face which had worn the stamp of abject fear twenty-four hours earlier, he was too big a man to refuse tribute ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... had died in the previous December, of a kind of decline, fading away like, almost unbeknown; and being, oh, so faithfully nursed and cared for by that blessed daughter of his. And people did say that he had once been very wealthy, and had lost his money in some speculation; and the loss of it had preyed upon his mind, and he had fallen into a settled ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... under fire, but full of bravery and patience. Diarrhoea and dysentery were already sending many of them from the Peninsula. The trenches were often noisome. Only in the evening, with Imbros growing fainter in the fading day and Samothrace rising huge and cloudy behind, while the red and green lights of the hospital ships off Helles shone brightly across the water, was physical vigour possible. When I acted as Second in Command, as was ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... this, everything becomes clear. The story of Phoibos and Daphne is no more than a description of what every one may see every day; first, the appearance of the Dawn in the eastern sky, then the rising of the Sun as if hurrying after his bride, then the gradual fading away of the bright Dawn at the touch of the fiery rays of the sun, and at last her death or disappearance in the lap of her mother, the Earth. All this seems to me as clear as daylight, and the only objection ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... Whatever he had wished to say would remain unsaid forever. Charles laid him down, and stood a long time looking at the set face. The likeness to Raymond seemed to be fading away under the touch of the Mighty Hand, but the look of Ruth, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... army that ever fought for freedom, and to make him President would not add a solitary leaf to the wreath of fame already on his brow; and should he be elected, the only thing he could do would be to keep the old wreath from fading. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... after we had moved into the new house, I came out of the Club, where I had been lunching in conference with Scherer and two capitalists from New York. It was after four o'clock, the day was fading, the street lamps were beginning to cast sickly streaks of jade-coloured light across the slush of the pavements. It was the sight of this slush (which for a brief half hour that morning had been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... more beautiful than the moderate, finely rounded heights at these peaceful spots rich in vegetation and in water, when gilded by the fading light of a lovely summer evening or illumined by the rosy tinge of the afterglow. Many of our later German painters have learned to value the charm of such a subject, while of our writers Fontane has seized and very happily rendered all their witchery. At my brother ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... somewhat of a nuisance. A world without women and roses and asparagus would, he admitted, be robbed of much of its charm, but with all their charm these things were tiresome and thorny and capricious, always wanting to climb or creep in places where they were not wanted, and resolutely drooping and fading away when they were desired to flourish. Animals, on the other hand, accepted the world as it was and made the best of it, and children, at least nice children, uncontaminated by grown- up influences, lived in worlds ...
— When William Came • Saki

... particulars, however. His genial and expansive smile and the unobtrusive manner of his fading away are there vaguely associated with Cheshire Puss, of joyful memory, whose disappearance, like his, began with the ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... From his valise he took a small but powerful telescope. In the fast-fading light he focused it on the two ox carts. The next moment he uttered an exclamation ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton

... of all who hesitate, for a glance through the window showed him that, although the glowing, iridescent reflection from the western sky still lingered in the mountain top, embroidering its edge with gold, it was fast fading, and already Night had spread her dusky mantle over the eastern slope. Already darkness had blotted ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... lock'd in one of them: If you do love me, you will find me out. Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof; Let music sound while he doth make his choice; Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, Fading in music: that the comparison May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream And watery death-bed for him. He may win; And what is music then? Then music is Even as the flourish when true subjects bow To a new-crowned ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... the place of the hard-worked, ill-paid governess, and the governess loved her wild charges, as indeed did everyone who knew them, and sorrowed over them in her heart, because she saw what their blind young eyes never noticed— the coming shadow on the house, the gradual fading away of the weary, overtaxed mother. Mrs O'Shaughnessy had fought for years against chronic weariness and ill-health, but the time was coming when she could fight no longer, and, almost before her ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... soon afterwards, and the Scarrowmania was smoothly sliding seawards with the first of the ebb when Agatha met Wyllard. He glanced at the Lancashire sandhills, which were fading into a pale ocher gleam amid the haze over the starboard hand, and then at the long row of painted buoys that moved back ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... was returning from the post office, he felt blind for a moment and put his hand to his head. The wold of vivid green grew gray, and life rceded from him into illimitable distance. He had one dim fading glimpse of a shaggy-bearded face looking down at him, and felt the clutch of an iron-hard strong arm under him, and then he lost hold even ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... the destroyers and indulging in a very spasmodic conversation. At their fourth promenade, as they reached the stern extremity of their deck, the woman paused, and, holding to the railing with one hand, looked steadily back towards New York. The colour was fading slowly from the sky now, but it was still ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fading branches of decaying bayes, Who now will water your dry-wither'd armes? Or where is he that sung the lovely layes Of simple shepheards in their countrey-farmes? Ah! he is dead, the cause of all our harmes: And with him dide my joy and sweete delight; ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield

... sank lower and still lower upon the ridge of those long, darkly-wooded hills to the westward, shed its last red rays upon the ocean, reflected its dying brilliancy upon the fleecy clouds above, and soon left nothing but a fading twilight to show men their way about the world. To a man seeking unknown objects in a hitherto unexplored vicinity this condition of affairs is unpropitious; but Dudley, having tied his hired steed to a neighboring fence, concluded nevertheless not to be daunted, and proceeded on foot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... he was done, but he opened his hymn-book and turning over a few leaves sang the same hymn he had sung to her that day. He sang it all through to the end, the low, strange, dirge-like hymn, and chanted as it was by that old man alone, standing in the fading evening light beside the grave which he had dug for his daughter, the last of his race, I never heard anything so moving. Then he knelt, and clasping his hands offered a prayer. The words, from habit, ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... heart of the child; as is proved by his Flower of Old Japan, and Forest of Wild Thyme, a kind of singing Alice-in-Wonderland. These are the veritable stuff of dreams—wholly apart from the law of causation—one vision fading into another. It is our fault, and not that of the poet, that Mr. Noyes had to explain them: "It is no new wisdom to regard these things through the eyes of little children; and I know—however insignificant ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... resembled those: Nor was a burden to mankind With half her course of years behind. You taught how I might youth prolong, By knowing what was right and wrong; How from my heart to bring supplies Of lustre to my fading eyes; How soon a beauteous mind repairs The loss of changed or falling hairs; How wit and virtue from within Send out a smoothness o'er the skin: Your lectures could my fancy fix, And I can please at thirty-six. The sight of Chloe at fifteen, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... long time Vandy and I faced one another, breathing heavily. I watched the blood fading out of the fellow's cheeks. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... His fate is unalterably, and I trust happily, fixed. He lived the life, and died the death, of the righteous. O that my last end may be like his! This event will, I hope, make a suitable and abiding impression upon my mind, teach me the fading nature of all sublunary enjoyments, and the little dependence which is to be placed on earthly felicity. Whose situation was more agreeable, whose prospects more flattering, than Mr. Haly's? Social, domestic, and connubial joys were fondly anticipated, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... building; the cheerful thought of the cosy rooms which the girls were to share together in their friend's house; the dear delight of having furniture of their very own again; all these very healthful and natural dreams were fading and fading, for whenever Primrose even alluded to their leaving their present quarters Daisy clutched her hand, and looked at her with such pleading eyes, and used hurried words of such anguished entreaty, that at last the eldest sister felt obliged ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... Hamdon near by we obtain one of those exquisite prospects of this English countryside that few can look upon unmoved. The beautiful hills of Somerset and Dorset, fading into the gentlest tones of soft purple and blue, ring the horizon on every side. Alfred's tower, built to commemorate the victory over the Danes, is far away on the Wiltshire border, but appears startlingly close for some rare moments when winter rain is near. Away ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... of an aged people, in the eve Of fading civilization, I was born. . . . . . . Oh, fortunate, My sisters, who in the heroic dawn Of races sung! To them did destiny give The virgin fire and chaste ingenuousness Of their land's speech; and, reverenced, their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... known was fading voyage by voyage. Only rarely was there time to go from the Tyne or the Wear or the Clyde to my home in London. Coal is shipped and ore discharged in the North. But even the North meant little to me beyond the staiths where the ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-liv'd phoenix, in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets; But I forbid thee one most heinous crime: O! carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... not a faith, it was a law, one that for its majesty was admired and for its poetry was beloved. In the deification of whatever is exquisite it was but an artistic cult. The real Olympos was the Pantheon. The other was fading away. Deeper and deeper it was sinking back into the golden dream from which it had sprung. Further and further the crystal parapets were retreating. Dimmer and more dim the gorgeous host became. In words of perfect piety Epicurus pictured them in the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... pleasant people, and see, from a dizzy yardarm, their exquisite island sink forever behind him. The place thus possessed for him the charm of something he was destined soon to lose, and he clung to it as a man clings to his fading youth, with a sense that it is slipping from him. He sighed as he thought of the forecastle that he knew somewhere awaited him; how he would recall those still nights in Oa when he would be roused by the boatswain's handspike on the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... inroads and undermining her constitution, and the numerous miscarriages of her early years as mistress contributed to her physical ruin. For years she had kept herself up by artificial means, and had hidden her loss of flesh and fading beauty by all sorts of dress contrivances, rouges, and powders. She died in 1764, at ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... the bones: but as the victor stands His fatal thrust achieved, and points the blade Unfaltering, watching for the end, there creeps Torpor upon the limbs, the blood congeals About the gash, more faintly throbs the heart, And slowly fading, ebbs the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... among the horrors of Greek religion. That the sacred women of Dionysus ate, in mystical ceremony, raw flesh, and drank blood, is a fact often mentioned, and commemorates, as it seems, the actual sacrifice of a fair boy deliberately torn to pieces, fading at last into a symbolical offering. At Delphi, the wolf was preserved for him, on the principle by which Venus loves the dove, and Hera peacocks; and there were places in which, after the sacrifice of a kid to him, a curious mimic pursuit of the priest who had offered ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... coming, the Senator had in some degree recovered from his agitation; he lay now in a room which opened upon the central court of the villa, a room adorned with rich marbles and with wall-paintings which were fading under the hand of time. Deathly pale, scarce able to raise his head from the cushion of the couch, he none the less showed a countenance bright with joyous emotion. His quivering voice strove to welcome the ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... to be shining into her eyes as with a will and purpose, perhaps to obliterate something, some old dream or memory, or to impart some new power—the power of seeing the unseen. And this very thought, this fear of some possible loss, brought the fading memory back, and she pressed her hands against her throbbing temples as if to bind and chain it there forever; and it was he to whom her thought returned. She heard his voice, saw him beckoning to her to follow ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... of the stillness a bird's note fell through the jungle and there was a gleam of whiteness. That instant Silence was lifted, dawn began to sing through the jungle and you could hear its flute-like call fading away in the distance, followed by a momentary hush. Then the birds began to sing, and soon the sun came leaping over the forest like a horse of flame. This must have taken at least an hour and a half, but we did not even know when the ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... his own experience has shown the thing to be not so bad. Such an accusation will be unjust in most instances. The differences in conception depend to a large degree on differences in time, and consequent fading in memory. Several other particular conditions ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... mother's womb The unborn child—old age and infancy Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends, And what was he who taught them that the God Of nature and benevolence had given A special sanction to the trade of blood? His name and theirs are fading, and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... another term for countries with advanced, industrialized economies; this term is fading from use; ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... knew herself to be a woman, saw the lonely years come and go. While she waited without the door that led to the life of her womanhood's dreams, she saw the beauty that her mirror revealed slowly fading—saw her firm, smooth, cheeks become thin and wrinkled, her bright eyes grow dim and pale, her soft, brown, hair turn thin and gray, her body grow lean and stooped. All the wealth of her womanhood that she had treasured with such care she saw become as dust, worthless. All the ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... Middleton was a standard topic of conversation among the girls. They wondered for what L. stood. Fannie guessed Louis, Marie spitefully suggested that it might be Lucifer, and that was why he didn't spell it out. Then as he seemed about fading from the horizon, he reappeared suddenly one crisp October morning, just starting on his eastern fall route, he said, and invited Fanny to go to the ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... few years later. Everything in the way of fading and wrinkling had stopped so far as the Little Gray Lady was concerned. If there were any lines left in her forehead and around the corners of her eyes, I could not find them. Joy had planted a crop of dimples ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... at length reached the end of the gallery and stood once more beside the black pool into which he had been flung, what little of daylight found its way into those dim depths was rapidly fading. It only served while he gathered every stick of drift that some former high stage of water had deposited on the rocky platform, and then another night of almost arctic ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... is a little strong in color, you can always make it more quiet by washing or fading it to any extent. There is very little material which is absolutely fast color. But when it is so, and the color is ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... of bliss Memory's fading dream; Give me, while thy lip I kiss, The heaven that's ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... glow was fading to a weird, yellow light, an anxious group was gathered about Darrell's bedside. He still tossed and moaned in delirium, but his movements had grown pathetically feeble and the moans were those of a tired ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... the one who had dragged him through that bad night Gary fell asleep; he slipped off into slumber, the very calmness of which guaranteed that the crisis had passed. But the lugubrious astonishment which the question had evoked consumed more time in fading from Joe's face. The latter's jaw had sagged open; he dragged a sleeve across his damp forehead while he stood and gazed in a sort of dumb dismay down at those pale and handsome features. Then he chuckled suddenly; his whole squat body shook ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... when you meet them young giants or pagan poets. They are mostly Cockneys who have lost their last music of real things by getting out of the sound of Bow Bells. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, a man of real though decadent genius, threw a theoretic glamour over them which is already fading. Mr. Kipling is, in a precise and rather startling sense, the exception that proves the rule. For he has imagination, of an oriental and cruel kind, but he has it, not because he grew up in a new country, but precisely because he grew up in the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... forlorn feeling to Mildred,—the being left on the house-top in the cold grey morning, at an hour when she had always hitherto been asleep in bed. The world itself, as she looked round her, seemed unlike the one she had hitherto lived in. The stars were in the sky; but they were dim,—fading before the light of morning. There were no fields, no gardens, no roads to be seen;—only grey water, far away on every side. She could see nothing beyond this grey water, except towards the east, where a line of low hills stood between her and the brightening ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... and, ordering a fresh horse for the rider, whose mount was weary, almost without a word the two galloped back together under the fading stars to the city of tumult and horror and crime. And as they raced forward in silence, a thousand hopes and fears crowded in upon Calvert's mind, but he put them steadily from him, trying to think but of the King and Queen and if there might yet be help for them or service to render. ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... manner. At the time of flowering it is like the ovary of lamarckiana, neither smaller nor larger. But it is reached by only a very few pollen-tubes, and is therefore always incompletely fertilized. It does [530] not fall off after the fading away of the flower, as unfertilized ovaries usually do; neither does it grow out, nor assume the upright position of normal capsules. It is checked in its development, and at the time of ripening it is nearly of the same length as in the beginning. Many of them contain ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... like one of those wreaths of flowers which the guests at a banquet bind round their brows, and which gradually fade as their wearers drink deeper and deeper. "Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with wine. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters overflowing, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... empty regions beyond the light slowly changed till it grew less unreal. What at first had appeared a livid gloaming, like a northern summer's eve, became now, without any intervening "dark hour before dawn," something like a smiling morn, reflected by all the facets of the oceans in fading, roseate-edged streaks. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... vacantly on the glowing embers, when a coal fell from a mass of others which had formed themselves into a hollow body in the fire, leaving a tinge of deeper red over the spot, in the midst of which the letter, T, appeared indistinctly, fading and reappearing for some time, till, at last it became as visible as the mark I make with my stick on this sand. Another coal was driven suddenly with a loud noise, into the middle of the room, and the little cavity collapsed. No sooner had I ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... continued on toward the burning ship. There was an odd clicking sound and he stopped. It sounded again. Brandon realized he was perspiring despite the chill of the desert night. Again he moved on, the sound fading ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks

... evening when above the darkening town the soft sky was like an Oriental carpet, rich in warm faded colors, Christophe walked along by the river from Notre Dame to the Invalides. In the dim fading light the tower of the cathedral rose like the arms of Moses held up during the battle. The carved golden spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, the flowering Holy Thorn, flashed out of the labyrinth of houses. On the other side of the water stretched the royal front of the Louvre, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... symptoms of scorch do not begin to appear under conditions at Beltsville until about the middle of July or later. The first symptom is fading of the green color, especially around the margins of the leaf blade. Sometimes this chlorosis results in blotches, which may extend for a considerable distance from the margin towards the mid-rib. This stage is of short duration, as the tissues of marginal chlorotic areas or those of the blotches ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... hour before the sun goes down Behind the ragged boughs, I go across the little run And bring the dusty cows; And once I used to sit and rest Beneath the fading dome, For there was one that I loved best ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... behind. It was still raining, but not heavily—a thin drizzle, which penetrated almost to the marrow. Not many passers-by haunted this forlorn quarter of old Paris. To right and left tall houses almost obscured the last, quickly-fading light ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... and all Set free. Well, I know That I turned my cold face to the wall, Was silent, strove, gasped, then there fell A numbness, a faintness, a spell Of blindness, hung as a pall, On me, falling low, And a far fading sound of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Peggy. "You're both coming along to fifty-one this minute. You don't suppose I'm going to leave you two infants alone together like that. We've heaps of room at fifty-one"—she sighed a little—"people have been fading away like the flowers of the forest, and we should be ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... the fading sunset comes a cry, And in the twilight voices wailing past, Like wild-swans calling, "When we rest we die, And woe to them that linger ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke



Words linked to "Fading" :   fade, attenuation, fading away, weakening



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