"Penumbra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... received a final answer. Greece is fighting for an empire over Turks. Ireland is fighting the British Empire to obtain the right to do what she wants in the world. The business penumbra of the United States has begun to cover Mexico. Five or six constituents of old Russian have cut free. But France has become imperial and would impose a superior ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... darkness; night; midnight; dead of night, witching hour of night, witching time of night; blind man's holiday; darkness visible, darkness that can be felt; palpable obscure; Erebus [Lat.]; the jaws of darkness [Midsummer Night's Dream]; sablevested night [Milton]. shade, shadow, umbra, penumbra; sciagraphy^. obscuration; occultation, adumbration, obumbration^; obtenebration^, offuscation^, caligation^; extinction; eclipse, total eclipse; gathering of the clouds. shading; distribution of shade; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... or rather globes, by which all things are held together. One is the celestial, the outermost, embracing all the rest,—the Supreme God himself, [Footnote: Here crops out the Pantheism—the non-detachment or semi-detachment of God from nature—which casts a penumbra around monotheism and the approaches to it, almost always, except under Hebrew and Christian auspices.] who governs and keeps in their places the other spheres. In this are fixed those stars which ever roll in an unchanging course. Beneath this are seven ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... there a soft whistle sounded from the bushes across the gully, and Jim Burdon pushed a ghostly face into the penumbra. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... plurality of states of consciousness (polyideism). Through association there is a radiation in every direction. In this totality of coexisting images no one long occupies first place; it is driven away by others, which are displaced in turn by still others emerging from the penumbra. On the contrary, in attention (relative monoideism) a single image retains first place for a long time and tends to have the same importance again. Finally, in a condition of obsession (absolute monoideism) ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... was like a sea of liquid black, and the sky blazed with stars, we rode by a sheep-herder's camp. The flicker of a fire threw a glow out into the dark. A tall wagon, a group of silhouetted men, three or four squatting dogs, were squarely within the circle or illumination. And outside, in the penumbra of shifting half light, now showing clearly, now fading into darkness, were the sheep, indeterminate in bulk, melting away by mysterious thousands into the mass of night. We passed them. They looked up, squinting their ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... with more vigour and precision than usual, and the now customary sound of one taking his seat at once ensued. It was that night that my brother, looking steadfastly at the chair, saw, or thought he saw, there some slight obscuration, some penumbra, mist, or subtle vapour which, as he gazed, seemed to struggle to take human form. He ceased playing for a moment and rubbed his eyes, but as he did so all dimness vanished and he saw the chair perfectly empty. The pianist stopped also at the cessation ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... ceremony—accentuated the younger man's advantage in natural and acquired graces; otherwise, they presented the contrast of character and insignificance. Rolfe had a shaven chin, a weathered complexion, thick brown hair; the penumbra of middle-age had touched his countenance, softening here and there a line which told of temperament in excess. At this moment his manner inclined to a bluff jocularity, due in some measure to the bottle of wine before him, as also was the tinge of colour upon his cheek; he spoke briefly, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... continued, while the dun penumbra still more and more withdrew him from Leclair's sight, "that great lacunae exist in the scale of vibratory phenomena. Some of the so-called lower animals take cognizance of vibrations that mean nothing to us. Insects hear notes far above our ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... that picture so acidly etched into Miss Slayback's brain that she had only to close her eyes in the slit-like sanctity of her room and in the brief moment of courting sleep feel the pink penumbra of her vision ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... that night a long, long letter, the nearest to a love letter she had ever written him. She brought Ross in quite casually; yet—What is the mystery of the telltale penumbra round the written word? Why was it that Dory, in far-away Vienna, with the memory of her strong and of the Villa d'Orsay dim, reading the letter for the first time, thought it the best he had ever got from her; ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... wind—the heart of man refuses to believe it can be so with him. To be created only to be abandoned—he will not think that the forces of existence are so cruel and so unrelenting and so fruitless. In the world he may learn to say that he thinks so, and is resigned to it; but in loneliness the penumbra of his own existence lies on all creation, and the winds and the stars and the daylight and night and the vast unknown mute forces of life—all seem to him that they must of necessity be either his ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Septuagesima, i.e., the seventieth." The reason for thus numbering these Sundays has been beautifully set forth in "Thoughts on the Services" as follows: "The Church now (Septuagesima Sunday) enters the penumbra of her Lenten Eclipse, and all her services are shadowed with the sombre hue of her approaching Season of humiliation. . . .We have turned our back upon dear old Christmas and the group of holy ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... ahead, doing his Latin, and groping farther into the dusky penumbra of mathematics. "Why?" he asked; and they explained that it was the necessary preparation for the university. Albert pondered. He began to fear that he must continue learning things he didn't want or need, so that he might go ahead toward learning ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra. The air, warm and still, was sweet with garden-scents. The lake, according to its habit at this hour of the afternoon, had drawn a grey veil over its face, a thin grey veil, through which its sapphire-blue shone furtively. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... words, the result obtained or the presiding intention. Examine closely what is in your mind when you speak of an action in course of accomplishment. The idea of change is there, I am willing to grant, but it is hidden in the penumbra. In the full light is the motionless plan of the act supposed accomplished. It is by this, and by this only, that the complex act is distinguished and defined. We should be very much embarrassed if we had to ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... interest is, therefore, the historical question. Those of us who did not foresee this war until we were in the very penumbra of the tragedy cannot complain that our Christian neighbours did not foresee and prevent it. Those of us who feel that the participation of our country is just and necessary may, with no strain of imagination, conceive the men of other countries equally ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... field for a discussion of the general principles of liability for unintentional wrongs at common law. For it can hardly be supposed that a man's responsibility for the consequences of his acts varies as the remedy happens to fall on one side or the other of the penumbra which separates trespass from the action on the case. And the greater part of the law of torts will be found under one or the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... with 'the crepuscular penumbra spreading her dim limbs over the boskage'; with 'jolly rabbits'; with a herd of 'gravid polled Angus'; and with the 'arresting, gipsy-like face of their swart, scholarly owner—as well known at the Royal Agricultural Shows as ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Napoleon, having obtained possession of the bridges of the Danube, entered Vienna. He established himself in the imperial palace of Schonbrunn. The Austrian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire—which was its shadowy penumbra—seemed to ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various |
