"Spark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to go wrong. She had relied on Knowles and Miss Gladys Armstrong for a brilliant display of intellectual fireworks; but beyond the first casual remarks absolutely required of them, they had not a word to say to each other. Miss Armstrong managed cleverly enough to strike a little spark of epigram from the flinty dialogue. It flickered and went out. Knowles smiled politely at the abortive attempt; but at her first serious remark he shook his head, as much as to say, "My dear lady, this is a conundrum; I give it up," and ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... mother to the place of meeting. He quite captivated her with a most pathetic account of his idolized boy "Pickie," who had died a short time before. Mr. Greeley was one of the most simple-hearted, great men whom I have ever met; without a spark of ordinary vanity he was intensely affectionate in his sympathies and loved a genuine kind word that came from the heart. He relished more a quiet talk with an old friend in his home at Chappaqua than all the glare of public ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... pointed a power at work who dared insult the sacred place—some god greater than Diana warred against her, degrading her home. This was the augury the priestess drew, and wondered greatly at the sign. It was a revelation to her—a spark of virgin light, dim as the faintest dawn. But it shook her faith, and she spread out her hands as one wandering ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the aqueous eyes of Mirandy destroyed the last spark of Ralph's pleasure in his triumph, and sent that awful below-zero feeling all ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... empty, and famine would be in the land, although the farms and butchers' shops were still well stocked. The general community would be like an automobile when the magneto fails. Everything would be there and in order, except for the spark of credit which keeps the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... could not live through the year. Barbara loved her sister far too well to think of marrying at such a time, and said she must attend to no one else. All that winter and spring she was nursing her sister day and night, watching over her, and quite keeping up the little spark of life, the doctors said, by her tender care. And though Lady Jane lived on day after day, she never grew so much better as to be fit to hear of the engagement and that if she recovered her sister would be separated from her; and so weeks went on, and ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are," said I irritably, "but if you have a spark of human sympathy, you will give me ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... within. It can never come by the imposition of an external law imposed by another people: Never did master and slave work in true unison, no matter how benevolent the master or how yielding the slave, for there is in every man, no matter what his condition, a spark of divine life, and it will always be ready to stir him out of subjection, as the fires of earthquake lie below the cultivated plain. Man is a creature who has free will, and it is by self-devised and self-checked ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... make ourselves small and humble, to submit to feel ourselves limited, feeble, dependent, ignorant and poor, and to throw ourselves upon God for all, recognizing our own worthlessness, and that we have no right to anything. It is in this nothingness that we recover something of life—the divine spark is there at the bottom of it. Resignation comes to us, and, in believing love, we reconquer the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hour later the last spark had been extinguished. Then men climbed all over the trestle to ascertain just how much it had been ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... beneath his garment, and unsheathed it so far that the blade glimmered clear in the fire-light—"with this," he pursued, as he thrust the weapon back into the scabbard, "I can, if necessary, defend the vital spark enclosed in this poor trunk, against the fairest and strongest that ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... death, finding the decays of nature increase every day, and his final dissolution approach, he called together all his children, to the number of eighteen, and summoned as many of his subjects as were within a convenient distance, being willing that the last spark of his life should go out in the service of his people; this summons was obeyed with heavy hearts by his loving subjects, and, at the day and place appointed, a ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... shower of stones came rattling about the car, and they heard the shouts of two hundred men who came charging down the banks into the cut. Jawn and his men breathed more freely now that the waiting was over, and drew themselves up with a spark of their old alertness. One man began singing, drumming on the car floor with ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... gazing after him, "the train is laid; the spark has been applied; the explosion will soon follow. The hour is fast approaching when I shall behold this accursed house shaken to dust, and when my long-delayed vengeance will be gratified. In that hope I ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Tailor: Mr. Dishart never got the length of the pulpit. He fell in a swound on the vestry floor. What caused it? Oh, nothing but the heat. Thrums is so dry that one spark would set it in ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... of Rochester, who had been elected year after year without opposition, was defeated. No one had openly opposed him, but a canvass of the returns disclosed a silent vote which was quickly charged to the Masons. This discovery, says Thurlow Weed, "was like a spark of fire dropped into combustible materials." Immediately, Rochester became the centre of anti-Masonry. In September, an anti-masonic convention nominated a legislative ticket, which, to the amazement and confusion ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... had jumped the plowed boundary and blackened the earth to the fence which marked the line of the right of way, and, in some places, had burned beyond. It took a flag-flying special train of that bitter Presidential campaign to find a weak spot in the guard, and to send a spark straight into the thickest bunch of wiry sand grass, where the wind could fan it to a blaze and then seize it and bend the tall flame tongues until they licked around the next tuft of grass, and the next, and the next—until the ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... he said, 'at least I am as little as possible a pedant out of doors.' In the evening he would occasionally seek the society of ladies, by way of recovering some of that native gaiety of heart which had hitherto kept him alive. 'I blow on this spark,' to use his own words, 'just as an old woman blows among the ashes to get a light for her lamp.' A student and a thinker, De Maistre was also a man of the world, and he may be added to the long list of writers who ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... to write me so often. Your last is from Petersburgh. "Like gods," forsooth; why, you travel like—; that, however, was a very pretty allusion. I have repeated it a dozen times and more. Your other letters also contain now and then a spark of Promethean fire: a spark, mind ye; ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... better, for somewhere hidden within him this pale young man had a spark of the divine fire, but it was so dampened by the atmosphere of the church that it never rose ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... was nothing novel, therefore, in the hatching out of this particular scheme. But for a paltry detail it would never have attained notoriety. We never blazon our failures—why should we? The one spark of original thought that enlightened the prosaic plans of the undertaking was this: The promoters wanted quality in the eggs of their hens as well as quantity. Quantity rests with the hen, but quality—like the "sluttishness" ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... altogether veil the spirit that looks out of these "windows of the soul." The studied attitude and genuflection fail to hide surliness or contempt; and hostility, bitter and implacable, may reveal itself by the smoldering spark of anger in the eye, and destroy the effect of the most artful obsequiousness of manner. Since we cannot control this one impulsively-truthful medium of expression, it becomes a matter of policy as well as of morals to harbor no spirits whose ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... wreckage just like my car, both terminus stations wrecked utterly, and no one found alive except myself. So, although I am to be a hopeless cripple, yet I am not sorry that the skill and untiring patience of the great English surgeon, Dr. Thompson, managed to nurse back the feeble spark of my life through all those weeks that I hung on the borderland; for if he had not, the world ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen
... being purchased by Dr. Withering, he altered the name of it to the Larches. Having passed through the turnpike, on the left is Sparkbrook-house, John Rotton, Esq. resident. At the distance of one mile and a half the road to Warwick branches off to the left, and on the summit of the hill is Spark-hill-house, inhabited by Miss Morris. Opposite the three mile stone is a very neat pile of building, called Green-bank-house, where Benjamin Cooke, Esq. has taken up his abode. A little beyond, at a place called the Coal-bank, there is a free school, which is endowed with about ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... fortified Boston Neck, and seized powder wherever he could find it. A rumor having been circulated that the British ships were firing on Boston, in two days thirty thousand minute men were on their way to the city. A spark only was needed to kindle the slumbering hatred ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... for people with aims and vocations which compelled abandonment of many of life's highest pleasures. Truly wise men called on each element alike to minister to their joy, and while the touch of sun-bathed air, the fragrance of garden soil, the ductible qualities of mud, and the spark-whirling rapture of playing with fire, had each their special charm, they did not overlook the bliss of getting their feet wet. As I came forth on the common Harold broke out of an adjoining copse and ran to meet me, the morning rain-clouds ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... scornful smile, and the eyes flashed with a spark of fire that must have once been in them. "Oh, a church member; no, I beg of you, don't let him come here; I want ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... the piece of bark in the trader's hands was shredded to tinder. He drew from his pocket his flint and steel, and struck a spark into the frayed mass. It flared up, and he held first the tips of his fingers, then the palm of his hand, then his bared forearm, in the flame that licked and scorched the flesh. His face was perfectly unmoved, his ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... have been some other force which, at the appointed time, struck from this stream of signals a spark, so to speak, into the magazines of La Liberte, one after the other. That there was an appointed time we cannot doubt—we know that it was the moment of sunrise yesterday. That the magazines were fired one at a time, and at spaced intervals we also know. That they could ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... so soon forgetful of the Hand That hushed the thunder, and serenes the sky, Extinguished fed that spark the tempest waked, That sense of powers exceeding far his own, Ere yet his feeble heart ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... back! Remember, Gabriel, the Party is far larger than when you were buried alive in a cell. Even though in some ways outlawed and suppressed, its potential power is tremendous. All it needs is the electric spark to cause the world-shaking explosion. All that keeps us from power now is the Iron Heel—that, and the clutch of the Air Trust already crushing and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... I'm a magazine, full of gunpowder; the least spark in the world, and I am blown up. Consider the danger. You surely would not be the destruction of your father, Peter?" and the poor old gentleman burst into tears, and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Samoncho[u]. Alas! He will never sleep again. Oh! Oh! To be haunted in the next existence by such a rotten O'Bake." Said Kwaiba—"Did Iemon really beat her? He says he did." Answered Kondo[u]—"She could barely move a limb. Of love for Iemon not a spark is left; but she clings to the honour of Tamiya, to the wife's duty to the House. There is no moving her. Rokuro[u]bei is suspect, as not doing his duty as nako[u]do. Look to yourselves. If she ever gets suspicious of the real facts, has an inkling of the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... rifles to slay the Indian. Many of them sleep on yonder hill where Pahaska—White Chief of the Long Hair—so bravely fought and fell. A few more passing suns will see us here no more, and our dust and bones will mingle with these same prairies. I see as in a vision the dying spark of our council fires, the ashes cold and white. I see no longer the curling smoke rising from our lodge poles. I hear no longer the songs of the women as they prepare the meal. The antelope have gone; the buffalo wallows are empty. Only the wail of the coyote is heard. The white ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... the great business, is concluded," Lousteau continued. "That Finot, without a spark of talent in him, is to be editor of Dauriat's weekly paper, with a salary of six hundred francs per month, and owner of a sixth share, for which he has not paid one penny. And I, my dear fellow, am now editor ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... was look at him. His face discolored, yellow, pale; his skin drawn tight over his cheekbones; and—the only sign of life—the fire that gleamed in his eyes like a spark of wild joy! Oh, a curse was on the family! ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Know then.... Oh! how I tremble to name the word! Listen to me with pity, revered Ambrosio! Call up every latent spark of human weakness that may teach you compassion for mine! Father!' continued He throwing himself at the Friar's feet, and pressing his hand to his lips with eagerness, while agitation for a moment choaked his voice; 'Father!' continued He in faltering ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... must yield freely if at all, and she grants me the use of similes; but her tactics are to contest them one by one, and the admirable pretender is not as shifty as the mariner's breeze, he is not like the wandering spark in burnt paper, of which you cannot say whether it is chasing or chased: it is I who am the shifty Pole to the steadiest of magnets. She is a princess in other things besides her superiority to Physics. There will be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Light, that so high upliftest Thyself from mortal conceptions, re-lend a little to my mind of what Thou didst appear, and make my tongue so powerful that it may be able to leave one single spark of Thy glory for the future people; for by returning somewhat to my memory and by sounding a little in these verses, more of Thy victory ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... simpered Brass, who, in his deep debasement, really seemed to have changed sexes with his sister, and to have made over to her any spark of manliness he might have possessed. 'You think so, Sarah, you think so perhaps; but you would have acted quite different, my good fellow. You will not have forgotten that it was a maxim with Foxey—our revered ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... she felt drawn to something in the serious, worn face. For the first time in her life the child had felt the charm of manners; perhaps she owned a kinship between that which made him what he was, and the spark of nobleness and purity in her own simple soul. She turned again and again to look back at ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... little nature, for which it seemed, indeed, to have a peculiar affinity; 'twas a balm, 'twas an opiate soothing his wounded pride, lubricating all his inner man; nay, flooding it, so as at length to extinguish entirely the very small glimmering spark of discernment which nature had lit in him. "To be forewarned, is to be forearmed," says the proverb; but it was not verified in the present instance. Titmouse would have dined at Satin Lodge on the very next Sunday, in accordance with the pressing invitations of Tag-rag, but that he happened ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... apple. In good manners, he forbore to eat any himself, lest the stranger should not have enough; but that he might seem to bear the other company, sat and nibbled a piece of a wheaten straw very busily. At last, says the spark of the town:—"Old crony, give me leave to be a little free with you: how can you bear to live in this nasty, dirty, melancholy hole here, with nothing but woods, and meadows, and mountains, and rivulets ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... leaving their lives and properties entirely at the discretion of Bachicao, who was no less cruel than the lieutenant-general Carvajal, or even more so if possible; being at the same time exceedingly addicted to cursing and blasphemy, and among all his vices not a single spark of virtue could be found ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... whether she realised the fact of Elma's existence. Up till now he himself had drifted along in the easy-going manner of bachelors approaching their thirtieth birthday before the crucial moment arrives which acts as a spark to smouldering flames. He had indulged in lazy day-dreams in which Elma played the part of heroine; had thoroughly enjoyed her society when fate placed her in his way, without, however, exerting ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... under the eye of the magistrates and the power of the laws, that he might learn obedience, and a modesty which should teach him not to think himself superior to all other men. He concluded with saying, that he feared this spark, which was then kindling, would one day rise to a conflagration. His remonstrances were not heard, so that the Barcinian faction had the superiority, and Hannibal ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... for an instant there flowed out of her soft eyes that wild fierce spark, latent even in these quiet humble natures, which is ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... devotion. His precepts are rigid, but they are founded on the gospel; his satire is sharp, but it is drawn from the knowledge of human life; and many of his portraits are not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he finds a spark of piety in his reader's mind, he will soon kindle it to a flame; and a philosopher must allow that he exposes, with equal severity and truth, the strange contradiction between the faith and practice of the Christian world. Under the names of Flavia and Miranda he has admirably ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... began to get excited, and made several violent pulls at the line, under the impression that something had bitten. Suddenly his rod, stout as it was, bent with the immense muscular force applied to it, and a small goldeye, about three or four inches long, flashed like an electric spark from the water, and fell with bursting force on the rocks behind, at the very feet of a small Indian boy, who sat, nearly in a state of nature, watching our movements from among the bushes. The little captive was of a bright silvery colour, with a golden eye, and is an excellent ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... right.' The aim of the abandoned monarch and his advisers was manifestly total extermination, and journalism appeared to be at its last gasp. But though crushed and mutilated in every limb, and bleeding at every pore, faint respirations every now and then showed that the vital spark still lingered. But brighter days were at hand. That festering mass of mental and bodily corruption which had once worn a crown, was buried away out of the sight of indignant humanity, and the vacillating James ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... a great heap of straw, ten feet high and twenty yards long, which the Germans had piled along the north aisle. We tried to catch the sparks in our hands as they fell, and such of the German wounded as were able to walk helped us. But the first spark that fell on the pile set it blazing. There was time to think of nothing but getting out ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... thought out scheme would do the trick. He would admire her, would be interested, would be drawn into a position where she could enlist him as a constant adviser. He moved toward the edge of his chair as if about to rise. He said, pleasantly enough but without a spark of enthusiasm: ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... more power to annoy than the veriest reproaches. I should have borne in mind the suspense and anxiety he was suffering, and which had so changed him that I scarcely knew him for the gay young spark on whose toe I had trodden. I should have remembered that he was young and I old, and that it behoved me to be patient. But on my side also there was anxiety, and responsibility as well; and, above all, a rankling ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... meanwhile be solved. Our eyes are still confused with the light, with that ardent flame, as we knew it here. But this we know, it was indeed "a central fire descending upon many altars." These, though touched with but a spark of the immortal principle, bear enduring testimony. And what testimony! How heartfelt: happily also how ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Almanack of years— The prim old maid, and, by her side, her Niece, Full of bewitching beauty, health, and love. See, how the tabby watches Laura's eyes, Lest they should smile upon some pleasing spark, And violate grim prudery's tyrant ties. With icy finger, she her charge directs, To view the faithful dial of the sun, Whose moral tells how tide and time pass on. See, there—the fated victim of mischance; Read, in that hollow eye, and alter'd ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... the rich of all their wealth and power?" asked one man, after long pondering and gazing at Pelle. The struggle seemed to have dealt hardly with him; but it had lit a spark in his eyes. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... or whatever else his name was, here broke off from his miserable words, and, forgetting all about my presence, set his gloomy eyes on the ground. Lightly he might try to speak, but there was no lightness in his mind, and no spark of light in his poor dead soul. Being so young, and unacquainted with the turns of life-worn mind, I was afraid to say a word except to myself, and to myself I only said, "The man is mad, poor fellow; and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... on my Side— Her Brother and my own—My Force is strong— But could her Father now be rous'd to War, How should I triumph and defy even Fate? But Fortune favours all advent'rous Souls: I'll now to Philip; tell him my Success, And rouse up every Spark of Vigour in him: He will conceive fresh Hopes, and ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... country behind was in flames. In order to explain this event, I must observe, that all the plains in America produce a rank, luxuriant vegetation, the juices of which are exhausted by the heat of the summer's sun; it is then as inflammable as straw or fodder, and when a casual spark of fire communicates with it, the flame frequently drives before the wind for miles together, and consumes everything it meets. This was actually the case at present; far as my eye could reach, the country was all in flames, a powerful ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... loves all, and not only loves but worships. Life has not touched her, even with the tip of one of its angel feathers. Just imagine what would happen if, into that little volcano of lofty feeling, a spark of this knowledge were to fall. And this may happen any moment. If we do not change the condition of affairs ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... it's careless," repeated the Forester. "Sometimes a camper leaves a little fire smoldering when he thinks the last spark is out; sometimes settlers who have to burn over their clearings allow the blaze to get away from them; when Indians are in the neighborhood they receive a large share of the blame, and the hated tramp is always quoted as a factor of mischief. In earlier days, sparks from locomotives were ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... affect one's honour are best settled in public,' retorted the old one. 'Where I'm concerned, the honour of the de Gornes comes before everything; and that fine spark, with his ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... study of the Violin is a taste which needs as much cultivation as a taste for poetry or any other art, a due appreciation of which is impossible without such cultivation. Secondly, it needs, equally with these arts, in order to produce proficiency, that spark commonly known as genius, without which, cultivation, strictly speaking, is impossible, there being nothing to cultivate. We find that the most ardent admiration for the Violin regarded as a work of art, has ever been found to emanate from ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... conservative Sadducee, Roman politician and false friend, bawling rabble and undiscriminating soldiery, the host of indifferent or approving faces of the public behind them—they seem strangely familiar to us. They have been, they are still, alive by turns in us. The harmless spark of electricity that greets the touch of one's hand on a metal knob on a winter's day is one with the bolt of lightning that wrecks a giant oak. The selfish impulse, the narrow prejudice, the ignorant suspicion, the callous indifference, the self-satisfied ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... aroused in one instant, as if youth had returned to him, as if the dying sparks of his talent had blazed forth afresh. The bandage suddenly fell from his eyes. Heavens! to think of having mercilessly wasted the best years of his youth, of having extinguished, trodden out perhaps, that spark of fire which, cherished in his breast, might perhaps have been developed into magnificence and beauty, and have extorted too, its meed of tears and admiration! It seemed as though those impulses which he had known in other days ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... declared war against that power. A squadron was immediately fitted out, under the command of Commodore Decater, consisting of the Guerriere, Constellation and Macedonian frigates, the Ontario and Epervier sloops of war, and the schooners Spark, Spitfire, Torch and Flambeau. Another squadron, under Commodore Bainbridge, was soon to follow this armament, on the arrival of which, it was understood, Commodore Decater would return to the United States in a single vessel, leaving the command ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... sentence of death which he had passed upon himself had been carried into effect. He had felt himself falling, and then there had been sudden darkness. Like a dim taper flickering in the night, the spark of life began to kindle again. At first he was conscious of but one truth-that he was not dead. Where he now was, in this world or some other, what he now was, he did not know; but the essential ego, Alford Graham, had not ceased to exist. The fact filled him with a dull, wondering ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... "See, I can start it without cranking"; and to prove it, when the engine was quiet, she threw forward the spark lever, shifted the gasolene one a trifle, and the motor began ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... sweetest stage just then—that happy, early stage when the first glass of champagne, or the second, has proved its quality. He urged, in support of his idea, the word that Munro had brought concerning the Nast book, but nothing of what he said kindled any spark of hope. I could not but believe that some one with a larger equipment of experience, personal friendship, and abilities had already been selected for the task. By and by the speaking began—delightful, intimate speaking in that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with complaint so true, And in such fervid rhymes to make me heard, Seem'd as at last some spark of pity stirr'd In the hard heart which frost in summer knew. Th' unfriendly cloud, whose cold veil o'er it grew, Broke at the first breath of mine ardent word Or low'ring still she others' blame ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... "Randolph" had floated. The English vessel was thrown violently on her beam-ends. The sky was darkened with flying timbers and splinters, which fell heavily into the sea. The "Randolph" had blown up. A spark, a red-hot shot, some fiery object, had penetrated her magazine, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... good deal more to the same effect. As I was saying, Jim was astonished. He said very little in return, but only pulled away harder than ever at his hair. Though before that time I should not have supposed that he had a spark of ambition in his soul, I after this observed a marked change in his demeanour and character. I suspect his eye was never off the quarter-deck. When not on duty, he was always reading and writing, and talking ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the wisdom of a mortal angel help his ambition, as well as her beauty his happiness; or whether (which I will never believe of one of those dark children of the devil, though I can boldly assert it of myself) some spark of boldness within him made him too proud to take by force what he could not win by persuasion, certain it is, as the Indians themselves confessed afterwards, that the savage only answered her by smiles; and bidding his men unbind her, told her that she ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of oneself as a person of some importance, whose vital spark, even in these days when life is so cheap, ought to be guarded with solicitude. Indeed, to adapt CLOUGH'S phrase, one wants other people—and especially those whose prosperity is dependent upon ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... not be far out if he guesses that Miss Mary and Mr. Spearman made a match of it not very long after this month of June. Mr. Spearman was a young spark, who had a good property in the neighbourhood of Whitminster, and not unfrequently about this time spent a few days at the "King's Head," ostensibly on business. But he must have had some leisure, for his diary is copious, especially for the days ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... afire with the idea of vengence and to such an extent that he had succeeded in infecting Justin himself with a spark of it. He thought of him with pity almost; pity that a man should obsess his life by such a phantasm as this same vengeance must have been to him. Was it worth while? Was anything worth ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... distinctly conscious of. The clear utterance of it, its distinct proposition to us, is the very thing that is often wanted to convert this dim feeling into distinct vision. This is the electric spark which transforms two invisible gases into a visible and transparent fluid; this is the influence which evolves the latent caloric, and makes it a powerful and ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... supremacy of the Catholics in the Church, and supremacy of the Church over the State. The fruits of the forty years' war would have become dust and ashes. It would be mere weak sentimentalism to doubt—after the bloody history which had just closed and the awful tragedy, then reopening—that every spark of religious liberty would have soon been trodden out in the Netherlands. The general onslaught of the League with Ferdinand, Maximilian of Bavaria, and Philip of Spain at its head against the distracted, irresolute, and wavering line of Protestantism ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as well have tried to get a spark out of wood, as to get him to lose his temper. No; the dean was bland as ever, and when I left he shook my hand, and hoped he might soon have the pleasure of seeing me again. But afterwards I got well paid ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... out not only from public places, but from private homes. And if any woman would take her sister to her heart, and warm her there again by sympathy and kindness, if she would endeavor once more to infuse into her the spark of life and virtue, of morality and peace, she often dare not so far encounter public prejudice as to do it. It requires a courage beyond what woman can now possess, to take the part of the woman against the villain. There are few such among us, and though few, they have stood forward nobly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it is to you I owe the ill service of bringing me back to life. Who knows?—I might have passed quietly away to death here had you not come and revived the feeble spark left in me. I must have ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the part of patriot spirits to effect some sort of political union among the different cities and states of the peninsula. The most noteworthy of these movements, and one which gave assurance that the spark of patriotism which was in time to flame into an inextinguishable passion for national unity was kindling in the Italian heart, was that headed by the hero Rienzi, in the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... moods. Besides, their inspiration is gone, their singing hearts are benumbed by the cold. But for your letter thrust somewhere I could not have escaped the ghost of sadness that seemed to haunt the earth and sky. Suddenly, as I stood in the midst of it all, a cardinal flashed like a red spark into a tall pine, fluffed out his breast, and swept the forest with a defiant note of melody. It was a challenge to the long winter time, a prophecy of spring and of high green trees, and of a mate ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... saw her. Then the wood was used up. I clawed out chips with my nails from the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept up a little blaze. By and by I couldn't pull any more. Then there were only some coals,—then a little spark. I blew at that spark a long while,—I hadn't much breath. One night it went out, and the wind blew in. One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had fallen down in the corner, dead and stiff. Beauty had pushed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... abilities from amongst the natives; one named Julius Florens is styled by Quintilian the Prince of Eloquence. In fact a brilliant era appeared as if beginning to dawn throughout the greater portion of Gaul, academies were establishing, learning was revered, when suddenly every spark of refinement and civilisation was banished, by the successful aggression and permanent occupation of the country by hordes of barbarians; the natives being obliged to have recourse to arms for their defence ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... I said to the two [ruffians] Gog and Magog, 'for God's sake take some pity on me, I have still a spark of life left; when I die, do with me what you please; the dead are in the hands of the living; [372] but tell me what has happened to me; why have I been wounded, and who are you? pray explain thus much to me.' They then having taken pity on me, said, 'The young man who is confined in the ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... shook under the fierce blasts, and the chestnuts waved their hoary branches wildly, beseechingly, above it, as if they wanted to warn those within of some threatened danger. But they slept and heard them not. From the kitchen chimney, after a blast more violent than any that had gone before, a red spark issued, was whirled upward and beaten against the shingle roof of the barn, swept clean of snow. Another followed it, and another. Still they slept in the cottage; the chestnuts moaned and brandished their arms in vain. The storm fanned one of the sparks into a ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... before the world dripping with blood and daubed with dishonour. I will first try to take the beam out of my own eye, trusting that even private effort somehow betters and braces the general atmosphere. See, for example, if England has shown (I put it hypothetically) one spark of manly sensibility, they have been shamed into it by the spectacle of Gordon. Police- Officer Cole is the only man that I see to admire. I dedicate my NEW ARABS to him and Cox, in default of other great public characters. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the possible exception of "Stonewall" Jackson. In this respect he to my mind more nearly resembled John Churchill, the great duke of Marlborough, than any other historical character of modern times of whom I have any knowledge. If he had not the spark of genius, he came very near to having it. This is a personal judgment put down here, the writer trusts, with becoming modesty and with no desire to put himself forward as a ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... world. It has five or six natural states or stages:—(1) sensation, in which it is almost latent or quiescent: (2) feeling, or inner sense, when the mind is just awakening: (3) memory, which is decaying sense, and from time to time, as with a spark or flash, has the power of recollecting or reanimating the buried past: (4) thought, in which images pass into abstract notions or are intermingled with them: (5) action, in which the mind moves forward, of itself, or under the impulse of want or desire or pain, to ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... this room warm, Harry," said Mrs. Castleton, "you had better go in the dancing-room—there is not a spark ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... opportunity. She brought in the coffee and arrack and poured it for him herself. While doing so she fawned upon him, touched his hands and arms, as though accidentally, lowered her eyes, and kept up a continual flirtation, trying to awaken some spark ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... can nevermore set. Thus it is unquestionably true that all melodies which, stirred up in this way, proceed from the depths of the composer's being, seem to us to belong to the singer alone who fanned the first spark within us. We hear her voice and record only what she has sung. It is, however, the inheritance of us weak mortals that, clinging to the clods, we are only too fain to draw down what is above the earth into the miserable ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... noticing afterwards that I could not have been long asleep. When I began to dream I had only just blown out the candle, and when I awoke again there was still a smouldering spark ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... upon one another in evil masses, preying upon one another as no other creature has ever preyed upon its kind, they have become a festering heap which all the oceans in vain lave with their antiseptic waters, and all the winds of heaven cannot purify. It is only in the unextinguished spark of reason within him that salvation for man may ever be found, in the realization that he is his own star, and carries in his hands his own fate. The impulses of Individualism and of Socialism alike prompt us to gain self-control and to learn the vast extent of our responsibility. The whole of humanity ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... blind-man's-buff. This exhausted the last spark of physical energy left even in the strongest. But the mental and spiritual powers were still vigorous, so that when they all sat down in quiescence round the room, and Toc took down the family Bible from its accustomed shelf and set it before Adams, they ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... twenty-four of these local Democratic societies, scattered from Maine to South Carolina and westward to Kentucky. Their object, as set forth by a Vermont society, was "the promotion of real and genuine Republicanism, unsullied and uncontaminated with the smallest spark of monarchical or aristocratic principles." They pledged themselves to the "utmost exertions to support the rational and equal ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the vivacious Cockney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its dullest mood, explode ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... in whom the spark of life was long fading, closed his eyes, and it went utterly out, as to this world, on a Saturday night, between the hours of eleven and twelve. We had that afternoon got an inkling that he was drawing near to his end. At the latest, Mrs Pawkie herself went over ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... process which the man watched curiously. First, kneeling on the ground, she rubbed together two dry willow sticks until a little pile of dust had gathered. Then, still stooping, she struck two flints together until at last a spark fell into the dust. Some dry leaves were dropped upon the tiny blaze, then twigs, ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... humorous brilliancies on him and getting no return—not a scintillation in his eye, not a spark of recognition of what I was doing there. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the earth, in some prehistoric time when even the colors were hardly created, when there was only blank daylight between cloud and clay. These dead hues were relieved only by one spot of gold—the spark of the candle alight in the window of the lonely tower, and burning on into the broadening daylight. As the group of detectives, followed by a cordon of policemen, spread out into a crescent to cut off all escape, the light in the ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... A spark had been kindled within his very soul, the night that Sarthia found herself in Nu-nah's temple and for a moment consciously remembered and spoke, that had been burning deeper and deeper until now, it was ready to burst forth as an ever-living flame at the first breath of hope that ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... the heat of the sun dries up all vegetation. The least spark of fire then suffices to create a mighty blaze, especially if accompanied by the pampero wind, which blows with irresistible force in its sweep over hundreds of miles of level ground. The fire, gathering strength as it goes, drives all before it, or wraps everything in its devouring ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... looking up to heaven as he crossed himself repeatedly. "There," said Arthur, "is a man who has left a parcel of his cursed rockets and fireworks, with I don't know how much gunpowder, in the count's house, from which we have just fled. The wind blows that way. One spark of fire, and the ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... comparatively negligible in importance, is the flickering chance-sown spark typified in this pretty chimera of flying immaturity, compared with the majestic quenchless flame of life and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman |
