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Glimmer   /glˈɪmər/   Listen
Glimmer

noun
1.
A flash of light (especially reflected light).  Synonyms: gleam, gleaming.
2.
A slight suggestion or vague understanding.  Synonyms: glimmering, inkling, intimation.



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"Glimmer" Quotes from Famous Books



... be. Power crowned— Earth around Like a sun-song rolled the sound. Mute they wander. Sweet strains ending— Eye nor tongue dares yet the lending Speech to thought. But lo! quick blending, All things speak! They sound and shimmer, Bloom in fragrance, ring and glimmer, Tint and tone combining, nearer, Meet as one-with all their thinking In one beauty, higher, clearer,— Heaven ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... sent money to pay the old folk's passage. Our hearts gathered coorage and strength at once, miss, and we thought, shure, the great throubles were over. But the next vessel brought the bad news for us, and we forgot the glimmer of hope we had; for it was our own father dear who was dead o' ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous

... unmistakably the manner of a gentleman. He wound his way slowly through the crowd; stopping to look at every lady whom he passed, and then looking away again with a frown. Little by little he approached the conservatory—entered it, after a moment's reflection—detected the glimmer of a white dress in the distance, through the shrubs and flowers—advanced to get a nearer view of the lady—and burst into Clara's presence ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins

... One faint, struggling glimmer of hope I am delighted to discover. Mr. Chesterton likens Little Bethel to a monstrous mushroom. There can be only one reason for this inartistic mixture of analogy and antithesis. Mr. Chesterton evidently knows that a large mushroom is not so sweet or so toothsome ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... distance from the college grounds when they heard the sounds of horns and rattles. Then they beheld a glimmer of light down by the river bank. Soon the light brightened until it covered a goodly ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield

... band at Lambda 4,688 as the fundamental member of the third, and principal, hydrogen series.[1423] None of the "Pickering lines" (as they may be called to distinguish them from the "Huggins series") can be induced to glimmer in vacuum-tubes. They seem to characterise bodies in a primitive state,[1424] and are in many cases associated with absorption rays of oxygen, the identification of which by Mr. McClean in 1897[1425] was fully confirmed by Sir David Gill.[1426] The typical "oxygen star" ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... Balatka lived, that it would seem at night, when the moon was shining as it shines only at Prague, that the colonnades of the palace were the upper storeys of some enormous edifice, of which the broken merchant's small courtyard formed a lower portion. The long rows of windows would glimmer in the sheen of the night, and Nina would stand in the gloom of the archway counting them till they would seem to be uncountable, and wondering what might be the thoughts of those who abode there. But those who abode there were few ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... o'clock, through the hot glimmer of the down-pouring rays of the sun, we saw what appeared, and afterwards proved, to be a clump of cottonwood trees. Our hopes and courage were renewed, for we well knew the cottonwood usually grows ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... come upon the beach? She was cynical, this spinster. There was no such a thing as perfection in a mixed world. Clergymen were human. Still, it was rather terrible to suspect that one had fallen from grace, but nevertheless the thing was possible. With the last glimmer of decency he had sent the daughter to his sister. The poor child! What frightful things she must have seen ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... out of the room. And all the light had gone out of her life. So we write, and so ye read; but do we realise it? It is not many of us who have suddenly to look at life without so much as a glimmer in its dark recesses to make it worth the living. It is not many of us who come to be told by the doctor: "For the rest of your existence you must give up eyesight," or, "For the remainder of life you must go halt." But these are trifles. Everything ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... blackness remained black. The cries became shrieks—but nothing followed; the shrieks developed into prolonged screams. No Louisa, no light, no milk. The blackness drew in closer and became a thing to be fought with wild little beating hands. Not a glimmer—not a rustle—not a sound! Then came the cries of the lost soul—alone—alone—in a black world of space in which there was not even another lost soul. And then the panics of which there have been no records and never will be, because if the panic ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... raining, a thick drizzle that settled slowly, lacking little of a fog's opacity; and the faint glimmer from the street lamps of that poorly lighted quarter, reflected by the low-swung clouds, lent Lanyard and the girl little aid as they picked their way cautiously, and always in complete silence, over the rude and slimy cobbles of the foul back way. For the adventurer ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... at a club-dinner, and was relative to which of the two had the largest quantity of game on his estates. Infuriated by wine and passion, they retired instantly into an adjoining room, and fought with swords across a table, by the feeble glimmer of a tallow-candle. Mr. Chaworth, who was the more expert swordsman of the two, received a mortal wound, and shortly afterwards expired. Lord Byron was brought to trial for the murder before the House of Lords; and it appearing clearly, that the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... intention of privily detecting the offender, deeming that he must belong to the palace, and that, whoever he might be, he could not have quitted it. So, taking with him a small lantern which shewed only a glimmer of light, he went into the dormitory which was over the palace-stables and was of great length, insomuch that well-nigh all the men-servants slept there in divers beds, and arguing that, by whomsoever that of which the Queen spoke was done, his heart and pulse could not after such a strain as yet ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... extraordinary mental powers for allegory and for spiritualizing, but to compare him with the best of the fathers is faint praise indeed. He was as much their superior, as the blaze of the noon-day sun excels the glimmer ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... faintest glimmer of a casement square, high up before Katharine; violence and carryings off were things familiar to her imagination. A hundred men might have desired her whilst she stood on high in ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... advent in Magdalena Bay. A store of bait had been accumulated, split and halved into chunks for the shark-hooks, and Wilbur, baiting one of the huge lines that had been brought up on deck the evening before, flung it overboard, and watched the glimmer of the white fish-meat turning to a silvery green as it sank down among the kelp. Almost instantly a long moving shadow, just darker than the blue-green mass of the water, identified itself at ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... (Khwjeh Kostantin?) for a large sum—two napoleons, a new shirt, and a quantity of coffee. A similar story is found in the Bdiyat el-Th, the Desert north of the Sinaitic Peninsula. At the ruined cairns of Khara'bat Lussn (the ancient Lysa), an Arab saw a glimmer of light proceeding from a bit of curiously cut stone. "This he carried away with him and sold to a Christian at Jerusalem for ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... as she took her slow stitches, she raised her eyes and covered me with a glance which seemed at first to denote a placid curiosity, but in which, as I saw it repeated, I thought I perceived the dim glimmer of an attempt to establish an understanding with me at the expense of our companion. Meanwhile, as mindful as possible of Theobald's injunction of reverence, I considered the lady's personal claims to the fine compliment he ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... enough of an answer. "Nothing—of all you speak of," she nevertheless returned, "will matter then. She'll so simplify your life." He remained just as he was, only with his eyes on her; and meanwhile she had turned again to her window, through which a faint sun-streak began to glimmer and play. At sight of it she opened the casement to let in the warm freshness. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... Ditch chafed up from under us against its banks with a smell that enabled me to hide the emotions Mrs. Morgan evoked behind my handkerchief. The pale desert was pictorial with the drifting, deepening purple shadows of clouds, and in the midst a blue glimmer of the Bitter Lakes, with a white sail on them. A little frantic Arab boy ran alongside keeping pace with the ship. Except for the smell, it was like a dream, we moved so quietly; on, gently on and on between the ridgy clay banks ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... honours to his body; and with a sorrowful heart, and not one sou in his pocket, proceeded home to his wife Petronella. He immediately recommenced the study of his pictures; but for two whole years he was as far from understanding them as ever. At last, in the third year, a glimmer of light stole over his understanding. He recalled some expression of his friend the doctor, which had hitherto escaped his memory, and he found that all his previous experiments had been conducted on a wrong basis. He recommenced them now with renewed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... in the wall. I pursued it as fast as I could, and found myself in a narrow crack among the rocks, along which I was just able to force my way. I followed it for what seemed to me many miles, and at last saw before me a glimmer of light which grew clearer every moment until I emerged upon the sea-shore with a joy which I cannot describe. When I was sure that I was not dreaming, I realized that it was doubtless some little animal which had found its ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... been speaking the faint, ghostly glimmer that I had detected had resolved itself into the spectral semblance of a large ship clothed from her trucks down with canvas upon which the rapidly growing light of the advancing dawn was falling and thus rendering it just barely visible against ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... my house," he murmured, pointing to a glimmer among the trees, "and here is the cottage which I am going ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... have talked, but Stair sat grave and silent. At last, visibly unquiet, he betook himself up through the wood to the edge of an old turf-built fold where in summer the cows were wont to be milked. Here he occupied himself with the priming of his gun and looked to his pistols. An undefined glimmer from the sky and the absence of trees on the heathery slopes enabled him to ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... distant song had sufficed to draw Silvere from her embrace. It seemed as if the whole band had thrust itself between them. They had been so happy a few minutes before, locked in each other's arms, alone and lost amidst the overwhelming silence and discreet glimmer of the moon! And now Silvere, whose head was turned away from her, who no longer seemed even conscious of her presence, had eyes only for those strangers whom ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... stream, though, as we know to-day, the stream still flows in an unending circle. There is never a moment when the new dawn is not breaking over the earth, and never a moment when the sunset ceases to die. It is well to greet serenely even the first glimmer of the dawn when we see it, not hastening towards it with undue speed, nor leaving the sunset without gratitude for the dying ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... literature is anomalous. It has no centre, or, if it have, it is like that of the sphere of Hermes. It is, divided into many systems, each revolving round its several suns, and often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer of a milk-and-water way. Our capital city, unlike London or Paris, is not a great central heart from which life and vigor radiate to the extremities, but resembles more an isolated umbilicus stuck down as near a's may be to the centre of the land, and seeming rather to tell a legend of former ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... upright columnar shot of the shriek from the boiler. He wished every mad antagonism to his wishes: that he might see her, be blind to her; embrace, discard; heal his wound, and tear it wider. He thanked her for the grossness of an offence precluding excuses. He was aware of a glimmer of advocacy in the very grossness. He conjured-up her features, and they said, her innocence was the sinner; they scoffed at him for the dupe he was willing to be. She had enigma's mouth, with the eyes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... glimmer in the east told me that the dawn was coming. Just by the wagon grew a fair-sized, green-leaved tree, and as it was quite easy to climb even by starlight, up it I went so as to get above the ground mist and take ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... become magic jewels, because the seeds were brought from Fairyland. Fairies, who no longer bewitch children, have turned their attention instead to enchanting the young, slender birches of the mountain waysides. The enchantment consists in causing rays of moonlight always to glimmer mysteriously on the white trunks, in full daylight. They seem illuminated, even to eyes that haven't found out the secret. The carpets of moss are the Fairies' roof-gardens, where they dance and pretend to be ferns if you look at them. The round stones in the ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... universe, how less than nought Without my God—how desolate and drear! A mockery Earth with her vain splendors fraught— A gilded pageant every rolling sphere; The noonday sun with all his glories crowned, A sickly flame, would glimmer faint and pale; And all Earth's melodies, their sweetness drowned, Be but the utt'rance of ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... the suddenness of it, and besides I didn't look for seeing it in the bar. There was only a glimmer of light there, and it was sitting on the floor. I ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock

... the distance, and grows and veers and swings, Like any homing swallow with nightfall in her wings. The wind's white sources glimmer with shining gusts of rain; And in the Ardise country the spring comes back again. It is the brooding April, haunted and sad and dear, When vanished things return not with the returning year. Only, when evening purples the light ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman

... shade themselves from the hot sun. The ape or baboon who puts a stone in the open oyster to prevent it from closing, or lifts stones to crack nuts, or beats his fellows with sticks, or throws heavy cocoanuts from trees upon his enemies, or builds a fire in the forest, shows more than a glimmer of intelligence. In the sly fox that puts out fish heads to bait hawks, or suddenly plunges in the water and immerses himself to escape hunters, or holds a branch of a bush over his head and actually runs with it to hide ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... to go through the yard, because of the dogs, she turned off along the hill-side to descend on the pond from above. The moon was transcendent over the bare, open space, she suffered from being exposed to it. There was a glimmer of nightly rabbits across the ground. The night was as clear as crystal, and very still. She could hear a distant ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... Lancaster—a good though mistaken man, that used him not ungently, yet kept him straitly. Sir Hugh and Sir Simon were brought to the Queen at Hereford, and I was in waiting when they came into her presence. I had but one glimmer of her face (being behind her) when she turned her head for a moment to bid me send Oliver de Nantoil to fetch my Lord of Lincoln to the presence: but if ever I beheld pictured in human eyes the devilish passions of hate, malice, and furious purpose, I beheld them that minute in those lovely eyes ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... dazed by the misery of her darkness. It was only then that I realised the part the child had played in her development. Her nature had been stirred to the quick; the capacity for emotion had been awakened. She had left me without a qualm. She had given herself to Pasquale without a glimmer of passion. She had returned to me like a wounded animal seeking its home. For the child alone the passionate human love had sprung flaming from the seed hidden in her soul. And now the child was dead, and the sun had gone from her ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... "What I gleaned I am sure I do not know, but indeed I had already my own private determination to be an author ... though I haunted the breakwater by day, and even loved the place for the sake of the sunshine, the thrilling sea-side air, the wash of the waves on the sea face, the green glimmer of the diver's helmets far below.... My own genuine occupation lay elsewhere and my only industry was in the hours when I was not on duty. I lodged with a certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade, and there as soon as dinner was despatched ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton

... was sapphire blue, with fleecy little strings of white clouds, an innocent-looking sky, that had not noticed how cold it was below. The ground was white and sparkling, as if with silver tinsel, a glimmer of diamonds. Frost-wreaths would have crusted the trees and turned them into a fairy forest if there had been trees; but there was not a tree at the Chicken Hill School, so the frost-wreaths lay like ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... Hooker and Bull and Pearson, must have found how utterly unlike to the Catholic Faith which they there were taught, were the "distributions and definitions" of that "theoretical divinity" in which they had been trained. It was indeed, as one of them said, "emerging from the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of open day." Men who had unlearned their prejudices against "pre-composed forms of prayer" by the study of such books as King's Inventions of Men in the Worship of God and the fifth ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... economic laws are nothing more than a few trifling generalities, to which the economists thought to give an appearance of depth by clothing them in high-sounding words. As for the attempts that have been made by the economists to solve social problems, all that can be said of them is, that, if a glimmer of sense occasionally appears in their lucubrations, they immediately fall back into absurdity. For twenty-five years political economy, like a heavy fog, has weighed upon France, checking the efforts of the mind, and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... glimmer, that appeared to have found admission through a tiny crevice under the huge copestone; and Hamersley's face, close to it, was seen only in faint shadow—fainter from the film of smoke ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... wave— A twofold tower above the whistling cave— Whose strength in thunder shields the gentle lea, And makes a white wrath of a league of sea, Now wears the face of peace; and in the bay The weak, spent voice of Winter dies away. In every dell there is a whispering wing, On every lawn a glimmer of the Spring; By every hill are growths of tender green— On every slope a fair, new life is seen; And lo! beneath the morning's blossoming fires, The shining city of a hundred spires, In mists of gold, by countless havens furled, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... descend the stair. But when I sought to follow, I found myself for the second time overwhelmed by darkness. The gas jet, which had hitherto burned with great brightness in the small room, had been turned off from below, and beyond the faint glimmer which found its way through the small window of which I have spoken, not a ray of light now disturbed the heavy gloom of ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... of him. The others saw only a wide plain covered with grain fields and encircled by a range of hills, and in the centre of the plain a big farmstead. At that moment the glow of sunset rested upon the farm; all the window pans glittered, and the old roofs and walls had a bright red glimmer about them. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof

... long day endeth, As the cool of night descendeth His last strength thy lover spendeth in returning to thy breast, Where beneath the Babul nightly, While the planets shimmer whitely, And the fire-flies glimmer brightly, thou shalt give ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope

... at once blotted out. As a match going out suddenly makes the gentle glimmer of the stars shine out from the dark sky, another ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... the coast a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short sea. From the Vindictive's bridge, as she headed in toward the mole, with the faithful ferryboats at her heels, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead, as she drove through the water, rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing Commander Brock, without which, acknowledges the Admiral in command, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... capstan-bars. I might have been twice as weary, yet I would not have left the deck; all was so new and interesting to me—the brief commands, the shrill note of the whistle, the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... widowah, suh, and a childless old man," continued the colonel; "my only boy fell in the wah ah, and it broke his mother's heaht. Pahdon me," he said, as his voice shook a little, and the least glimmer of a tear stood in his eye, "I rahely talk of these mattahs of a puhely pehsonal kind, but, as you are kind enough to be intehested in my affaiahs, I say this ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... is possible only for one who himself possesses that which he proclaims. This sermon was a notable example of Phillips Brooks' definition of preaching, "Truth conveyed through personality." The few notes here included give only a glimmer of the range of his thought, and do not adequately convey the personal factor which made one want to rise up ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick

... 22, where all the stuff for the play is." Joe flashed a small pocket electric light and by its glimmer Sahwah could see him adjusting a false beard—the one that was to be worn by the villain in the play. Abraham was apparently disguising himself in a similar fashion. This accomplished they picked up the statue ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... magnificence was reached when the approaching surface came so close as to appear concave, and our little ark floated above a hemisphere of dazzling brightness under a hemisphere of appalling darkness faintly relieved by the glimmer of stars and the ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... sailors are generally down at breakfast—tucks up her skirt and gayly runs upon the accustomed play-ground, with her pony left to wait for her. The pony is old, while she is young (although she was born before him), and now he belies his name, "Lord Keppel," by starting at every soft glimmer of the sea. Therefore now he is left to roam at his leisure above high-water mark, poking his nose into black dry weed, probing the winnow casts of yellow drift for oats, and snorting disappointment through a gritty dance ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... outline of the tower, its domed hall rising in its midst, with pretty villas surrounded by woods beyond, before the fast-gathering darkness shut them out of our view, while the twinkling lights from the old town and a number of stone-vessels and other coasters and fishing-boats cast their glimmer on the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... wakes Floyd Grandon. How they fling their notes back at one another, with a merry audacity that makes him smile! Then a strange voice, a burst of higher melody, a warble nearer, farther, fainter, a "sweet jargoning" among them all, that lifts his soul in unconscious praise. At first there is a glimmer of mystery, then he remembers,—it is his boyhood's home. There were just such songs in Aunt Marcia's time, when he slept up under the eaves of ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... in Surrey—cold, still and gray, with a frail glimmer of sunshine coming through the bare trees to melt the hoar-frost on the lawn. The postman has just gone out, swinging the gate behind him. A fire burns brightly in the breakfast-room; and there is silence about the house, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... began to dawn. A pale glimmer appeared in the horizon, and pearly drops of dew lay thick on the plain and on the tall grass, already stirred by the breath ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... livid and foggy eclipse, repeating itself for weeks and weeks without the slightest streak of clearing, as though the sun had departed from the earth forever. Not a glimmer of white existed in this tempestuous outline; always gray,—the sky, the foam, the seagulls, the snows.... From time to time the leaden veils of the tempest were torn asunder, leaving visible a terrifying apparition. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... these sepulchres are so old, and these skulls and white ashes so very dry, that methinks they have ceased to be haunted. The most awful idea connected with the catacombs is their interminable extent, and the possibility of going astray into this labyrinth of darkness, which broods around the little glimmer of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a view to showing herself off. But attached to Pao-yue's personal service were a lot of servants, all of whom were glib and specious, so that how could she ever find an opportunity of thrusting herself forward? But contrary to her anticipations, there turned up, eventually on this day, some faint glimmer of hope, but as she again came in for a spell of spiteful abuse from Ch'iu Wen and her companion, her expectations were soon considerably frustrated, and she was just plunged in a melancholy mood, when suddenly she heard the old ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... touch of Danny's soft cheek and clinging arms that brought to her the rapture that is so sweet it hurts, and she realised that she had missed the sweetest thing in life. A tiny flame of real love began to glimmer in her heart and feebly shed its beams among the debris of cold theories and second-hand sensations that had filled ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... great beads on his forehead as he worked. The light that came through the machine's iris was faint at first, the barest glimmer of white in deep darkness. But as he adjusted controls the light grew brighter and brighter, beating in upon him until he was kneeling in a circle of radiance that dazzled his eyes and set his ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long

... itself. Not only do human ideals contradict each other; but the ideal in any and all of its forms is contradicted by the actual. So it is the discontent of the human world-soul that is mainly borne in upon him who shares in it most fully. A possibility of completed good may glimmer at the far end of the quest; but the quest itself is experienced as a bitter striving. Bitter though it may be, however, it is likewise ennobling. Here, then, I find the philosophic, that is, the ultimate and truest, ...
— Progress and History • Various

... up the long stairs, and knocked, with no one will ever know what purpose in her heart. If it was a last glimmer of good, of forgiveness, it was promptly squelched. It was Sheeny Rose who opened ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... in body, he slipped down the back steps, skirted Aunt Melvy's domain, and turned the corner of the house just as the Nelson phaeton rolled out of the yard. Before he had time to give way to utter despair a glimmer of hope appeared on the horizon, for the phaeton stopped, and there was evidently something the matter. Sandy did not wait for it to be remedied. He ran down the road with all the speed ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... concealed her face. Her stillness, her reverence appealed to his heart, for it was easy to see that she was enjoying the music not as a mere concert, but, above all things, as an accompaniment to the words themselves. One time, when he glanced at her as she rose from her knees, he surprised a glimmer of tears in her eyes, and the sight brought a stab to his heart. Why should she cry? What was the reason of the air of repression and strain which from time to time flitted across her face? If it were Stanor's doing. ... Stephen ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... in the room. He wondered if one might not be Hauptmann Schneider, for two of them were captains. The girl he judged to be of the intelligence department—a spy. Her beauty held no appeal for him—without a glimmer of compunction he could have wrung that fair, young neck. She was German and that was enough; but he had other and more important work before ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... were standing on the moist banks of a broad, flowing river, the surface of whose waters served as a mirror to the splendid lights above. Away behind them, where the ground rose up towards the higher slopes, was the glimmer of the fire which marked their camp. They were all three gazing out at the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... Dalston, a distance which does not improve hares by the circuitous route of Cov't Garden, though for the sweetness of this last I will answer. We dress it to-day. I suppose you know my sister has been & is ill. I do not see much hopes, though there is a glimmer, of her speedy recovery. When we are all well, I hope to come among our town friends, and shall have great pleasure in welcoming you from ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... it mine To curb the sigh which bursts o'er Heaven's decree; To tread the path of rectitude—that when Life's dying ray shall glimmer in the frame, That latest breath I may in peace resign, "Firm in the faith of seeing thee ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... as his ear seemed to catch a sound other than the voice of the tempest, he drew his rein and raised the fluttering symbol at his drawn sword's point. Through the dark masses of foliage that skirted the roadside, presently could be seen the fitful glimmer of a watchfire, and the traveller redoubled his precautions, but yet ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... he was treacherous. He said nothing, nor gave warning that his anger was more than skin-deep; and made as though to pass Nicanor and go his way. Nicanor went on, laughing carelessly. But he was scarcely past when Balbus wheeled around and struck. There was the glimmer of a blade, a smothered oath, and that was all. Nicanor turned as though to attack his assailant, who had sprung back, staggered, pitched forward, and fell, rolling down the slight declivity. He struggled a moment to rise, and lay down again, very quiet, and the slope ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... the hotel, in order, he afterwards confessed, to show us the city. He was a poet, though in that lowly walk of life, and he had done well. No other moment of our stay would have served us so well for a first general impression of Vicenza as that twilight hour. In its uncertain glimmer we seemed to get quite back to the dawn of feudal civilization, when Theodoric founded the great Basilica of the city; and as we stood before the famous Clock Tower, which rises light and straight as a mast eighty-two metres into the air from a base of seven metres, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... experience of mankind. And when he could not find it, he did the only thing he could do. He was wrong, as we now know. But he had a hold in the dark on the truth—not the whole truth by any means; he never had a glimmer of that. He never had the faintest conception of the big, amazing truth. But as I have said, he had his fingers ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... just as well if I told the police of his threat?" asked Aldous, looking across the river with a glimmer ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... Langdale. The snow lay piled on either side of the road, the rain beat down, and the trees clashed and moaned overhead. Not a house, not a light, upon their path—only swirling darkness, opening now and then on that high glimmer of the snow. Fresh from London streets, where winter, even if it attack in force, is so soon tamed and conquered, Fenwick was for the first time conscious of the harsher, wilder aspects of his native land. Poor Phoebe! Had she been a bit lonesome in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... from the fly, Not a glimmer from the worm. When the crickets stopped their cry, When the owls forebore a term, You heard music; that ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... and in an instant Esperance and Giovanni were securely bound. The young men read desperate resolution and fierce vengeance upon all the rough countenances around them. There was not the faintest glimmer of hope; death would be dealt out to them at once and in the most summary fashion. Indeed, nooses were already dangling from a couple of trees by the roadside, waiting to do their fell work. The sight of these dread preparations roused Giovanni. ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg

... to and fro before the palace; and across the Piazza, those of the guard before the closed entrance of the Fortress of Famagosta where their Queen and the infant Prince were in residence, echoed them back. From the Duomo San Nicolo shone the faint twilight glimmer of the tall candles that were ceaselessly burning about the tomb of Janus—each pale flame wafting a prayer for absolution from the broken heart of the Queen, who before her illness had brought them daily with her own hands: and far down upon the shore was dimly heard the ceaseless ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... stairs cottage-room, the corners betwixt the ceiling and the walls cut off by the slope of the roof. So dark was the night, that, when Mrs. Puckridge carried the candle out of the room, the unshaded dormer window did not show itself even by a bluish glimmer. But light and dark were alike to her who lay in the little tent-bed, in the midst of whose white curtains, white coverlid, and white pillows, her large eyes, black as human eyes could ever be, were like wells of darkness throwing out flashes of strange light. Her hair ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... autumn to the Quah-Davic, with the pale blue smoke of asters along the meadow-ledges, the pale gold glimmer of birches on the slopes, and the wax-vermilion bunches of the rowan-berries reflected in each brown pool. By this time the black bull was of the stature of a well-grown two-year-old, massive in the shoulder, lean and fine in limb and flank, with a cushion of dense, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... against him. He is likely to grow up into an Ishmaelite if he grows up at all. He starts with an ill-starred name—a name that spells misfortune. He starts without his mother's blessing and without a glimmer of hope to cheer him; no father to give him a helping hand by the way—without endowment, fortune, family, or friends. What chance can there be in the race for one so heavily handicapped? Failure is written on his brow by the hand that nursed him. Failure is written on ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... easier if a glimmer of reason were to aid them. Through the wire network, over which they have so often strayed, they have seen, outside, the free soil, the promised land which they long to reach. A hundred times if once have they dug at the foot of the rampart. There, in vertical wells, they ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... Love of it was in his blood, a part of his soul, and there were times when he yearned for this "talk of the mountains" as others yearn for the coming of spring. He welcomed it now as his eyes sought through the darkness for a glimmer of the light that always burned from dusk until dawn ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... illumination was a single night-light burning in a saucer, casting a faint, uncertain glimmer over everything, and shaded with an open book so that the occupant of the bed lay in deepest shadow. Unlike what one would have expected to find in such a house, an iron bedstead with brass rail, the bed was a great old-fashioned one with heavy wool damask hangings; ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... yet brilliant in the sapphire vault, and in the branches the birds were still asleep when a merry party went through the streets of the pueblo, toward the lake, lighted by the glimmer of the pitch torches here ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... No glimmer of light could penetrate to the closet where they stood, in the thickness of the wall, but a tremendous peal of thunder shook the house, and Miss Sophronia's voice could be heard calling frantically on Gerald ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... middle of the night my compass lamp began to glimmer faint, and it was soon evident that the flame must go out. Here was a discomfort: the wind veered so much that its direction would be utterly fallacious as a guide to steer by, and this uncertainty ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... place, the difference between hereditary and acquired sexual anomalies is only relative and gradual, so that it is necessary to avoid opposing one against the other. When an anomaly arrives spontaneously in the first sexual glimmer of the child's mind during its development, it is obvious that it is the expression of a profound hereditary taint, the result of blastophthoria or of unfortunate combinations of ancestral energies which have been associated by the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... of the castle, thrusting aside the turret door and issuing upon the wide, open spaces with an assured step. The cool breeze from the west restored him to himself in a moment. The waning moon cast a pale light across the landscape, and he could see the tents on the castle island glimmer greyish white beneath him. Beyond that again was the shining confluence of the sluggish river about the isle, and the dark line of the woods of Balmaghie opposite. He had begun to meditate on the rapid changes of circumstance which had overtaken ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... in the Frauengasse were barricaded like others—many of the lower windows were built up. The door of No. 36 was bolted, and through the shutters of the upper windows no glimmer of light penetrated to the outer darkness of the street. Barlasch knocked and waited. He thought he could hear surreptitious movements within the ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... in the tone of reproach so often heard these days, "she's been frittering away the whole afternoon. And not a glimmer for ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... had seen. I was his guest until late that night, and was entertained royally on what humble fare he had to offer. We both intended to renew our acquaintance in the morning, but some prowling Mexicans near my boat, croaking frogs, and swarms of mosquitos gave me a restless night. With the first glimmer of daylight I was up, and half an hour later I was away ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... the debate ran on. Occasionally one caught a glimmer of real comprehension, amongst these men about to vote upon our political liberty; but more often the discussion stayed on a very ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... recollection, memory. rechazar repel, reject. rechinamiento m. gnashing. rechinar creak, gnash. rededor m. environs; al —— de around. redoblar redouble. redoble m. roll. redor cf. rededor; en —— round about. reflejar reflect. reflejo m. light, gleam, glimmer. refregar rub. refulgente adj. resplendent, brilliant. regalar make merry, cheer, entertain, delight; —se feast, make merry, fare sumptuously. regar lave, water. regio, -a royal, regal, magnificent. regin f. region, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... [Distribution of light] chiaroscuro, clairobscur[obs3], clear obscure, breadth, light and shade, black and white, tonality. reflection, refraction, dispersion; refractivity. V. shine, glow, glitter; glister, glisten; twinkle, gleam; flare, flare up; glare, beam, shimmer, glimmer, flicker, sparkle, scintillate, coruscate, flash, blaze; be bright &c. adj.; reflect light, daze, dazzle, bedazzle, radiate, shoot out beams; fulgurate. clear up, brighten. lighten, enlighten; levin[obs3]; light, light up; irradiate, shine upon; give out a light, hang out ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... to my mind that beautiful line of the Elegy: "And all the air a solemn stillness holds;" while that other line: "Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight," is exactly true. The landscape did glimmer, and as I watched the sun go down, I pleased myself with the fancy that I was sitting just where the poet sat, as he revolved those lines which the world has got by heart. Just then came the cry of the cattle, and I knew why Gray wrote: "The ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... get a light from somewhere at once, and look to the wounded without a moment's delay," said the former. "I fear that our loss has been very serious in this affair. Ah! there is a faint glimmer of light from the skylight yonder; I will go below and see what it is. Meanwhile, Mr Ryan, muster your men, and load the guns, if you can lay your hand upon any ammunition. Those schooners will try ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... war-ships at night can be fully realized only by those who have experienced it. Except on Morro Castle at Havana there were no lights on the northern coast of Cuba; if it was cloudy and there happened to be no moon, the darkness was impenetrable; the war-ships did not allow even so much as the glimmer of a binnacle lamp to escape from their lead-colored, almost invisible hulls, as they cruised noiselessly back and forth; and the correspondent on the despatch-boat not only did not know where they were, but had no means whatever ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... its end, no matter how, fell the huge globes and cones of murder. Shrieks and cries, slain babes and wounded women on shore; surly, half-mutinous officers and crew on that iron hulk, shocked at the fell work they were set to do; and the glimmer and wash of the bay-water below—that sweet, tranquil, half-transparent liquid, with idle weeds and chips upon it, empty crates and boxes of dead merchandise, sacked of their life and substance by the war, as one might swallow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... he blew, and she thinned to a thread. "One puff More's enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... still, as in October; the country-side is shrouded by night. Men alight at each stop after Polotsk; no one sits down again; and at every stop thirty miles of narrow gauge railway lead to the trenches. What monotony after Moscow! after the hustle and clatter of an endless day! There is the faintest glimmer of dawn, and the eastern sky looks like a ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... by one, joining the dancers inside. Borgert, though, enjoying the mild night air, lit a fresh cigar and strolled about the garden, his habitual cat-like tread barely audible on the soft ground. Puffing the fragrant weed, he suddenly spied, in the uncertain glimmer of the moon, the sheen of ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... girl," continued Mr. McBride, diplomatically, "and a fellow like that took a shine to me I'd show a glimmer of sense. I'd ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... With the first glimmer of morning light the baby began to cry. The charcoal-burner, on going over to it, found that his wife ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... followed by Mr. Rogers' entire person, and Mr. Rogers, having thus made good his entrance, stood blinking, with an apologetic laugh. "You'll excuse me—but I took it for granted the door was barred, and seeing a glimmer of light in ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... only the extreme corners of his mind, the main portion of which was entirely filled with the chilling fear that that man might be the Keswick he was looking for. Of course, there was a bare chance that it was not, for there might be a numerous family, but even this little stupid glimmer of comfort was extinguished when Mr Brandon familiarly addressed ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... all the leaves that lay Burned in the heat of the consuming day. The lawns and lakes lie in this night of love, Admitted to the majesty above. Earth with the starry company hath part; The waters hold all heaven within their heart, And glimmer o'er with wave-lips everywhere Lifted to meet the angel lips of air. The many homes of men shine near and far; Peace-laden as the tender evening star, The late home-coming folk anticipate Their rest beyond the passing of the gate, And tread with sleep-filled hearts ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell

... the early 'fifties, Herndon had much occasion to test his partner's indifference to other men's views, his tenacious adherence to his own. Herndon had become an Abolitionist. He labored to convert Lincoln; but it was a lost labor. The Sphinx in a glimmer of sunshine was as unassailable as the cheery, fable-loving, inflexible Lincoln. The younger man would work himself up, and, flushed with ardor, warn Lincoln against his apparent conservatism when the needs of the hour were so great; but his only answer ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... his watch, and held it down so that the glimmer of the red light from between the bars of the ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... from your eyes at first, but plainly visible as you look closer, are countless forms of brightness and of beauty. You will find them among the shining coals that glimmer in scarlet and gold before you when the embers lie clear and warm upon the hearth. You will behold them among the shadows that flit across the embers with delicate grace and ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield

... walked alone upon his danger. He was near the tavern, he was passing the end of a court. From the blackness there men rushed upon him. They managed it well. He was almost borne down by the first onset, but hearing something in time, seeing a glimmer of steel, he swung aside and staggered back into the kennel slashing at them with his stick. They were borne past him by their vehemence, but he carried no sword and their swords were all about him. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... beside her and the two talked very busily. Matilda, left to herself, put off her coat and hat and sat down at the other side of the fire, for a fire was burning in the grate, and pondered the situation. The house was like a palace in a fairy tale, surely, she thought. Her eyes were dazzled with the glimmer from gildings and mirrors and lamps hanging from the ceilings. Her foot fell on soft carpets. The hangings of the bed were of blue silk. The couches were covered with rich worsted work. Pictures made the walls dainty. Beautiful things ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner

... about something he had to think about, have I not said nearly enough on the matter? Should I ever dream of attempting to set forth what love is, in such a man for such a woman? There are comparatively few that have more than the glimmer of a notion of what love means. God only knows how grandly, how passionately yet how calmly, how divinely the man and the woman he has made, might, may, shall love each other. One thing only I will dare to say: that the love that belonged to Malcolm's nature was one through the very ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... the air, castles in Spain, chateaux en Espagne [Fr.], le pot aut lait [Fr.], Utopia, millennium; day dream, golden dream; dream of Alnaschar^; airy hopes, fool's paradise; mirage &c (fallacies of vision) 443; fond hope. beam of hope, ray of hope, gleam of hope, glimmer of hope, flash of hope, dawn of hope, star of hope; cheer; bit of blue sky, silver lining, silver lining of the cloud, bottom of Pandora's box, balm in Gilead; light at the end of the tunnel. anchor, sheet anchor, mainstay; staff &c (support) 215; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... reading affected Mary more than the first—because, of course, she took in more. And this time a glimmer of meaning broke on the slower mind of Letty: as her cousin read the passage, "Oh, then came, fearful for the heart, the dead Children who had been awakened in the Churchyard, into the temple, and cast themselves before the high Form on the Altar, and said, 'Jesus, have we no ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... choice of her lover—her right!" Then it came over me that I'd made a terrible mistake ... and at that minute, you called to me. [Impressively.] In the darkness surrounding all I had left behind, there came a light ... a glimmer where you stood ... a clear call in the night.... It seemed as though I had not been away one second ... but in that second, you had suffered.... Now I am back to show you the way.... I am here ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... from those already related. Whereas everything hitherto was a reflection of outer life and feeling, there now begins a kind of inner life. In the Saturn world a life of light begins flickering here and there, and growing dim again. A quivering glimmer is seen in some places, something like flashes of lightning in others. The Saturn heat bodies begin to glimmer, to sparkle, and even to emit rays. This stage of evolution having been reached, there again arises ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... blowing straight out of the north, at the pitch of half a gale. With this abeam we made brave progress; but yet 'twas late at night when we floundered down the gully called Long-an'-Deep, where the drifts were overhead and each must rescue the other from sudden misfortune: a warm glimmer of light in Jonas Jutt's kitchen window to guide ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... alarm from Peterkin startled us in the morning, just as the grey dawn began to glimmer ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... encouragement, but of terror, not fit to be imitated, but fit only to be shunned, where else shall the world look for free models? If this great Western Sun be struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... turned to the door, but at his words she paused, looking back. A glimmer of resentment still shone ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... been so frank. With each new report, I was more and more convinced that these had been confidential discussions of various possible answers, circulated between Project "Saucer" officials. Why they had been released now was still a puzzle, though I began to see a glimmer ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... young lady? I'm sure anything I can do—" and Sarah seated herself in her master's great chair, and drew it close to Fanny. There was no light in the room but the expiring fire, and it threw upward a pale glimmer on the two faces bending over it,—the one so strangely beautiful, so smooth, so blooming, so exquisite in its youth and innocence,—the other withered, wrinkled, meagre, and astute. It was like the Fairy ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton



Words linked to "Glimmer" :   flash, radiate, suggestion



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