"Starry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Coleridge's when they're shut, but when they 're open. Who would not rather lie with me in the podere in the shade of the cypress trees, under the blue, blue sky, and behold through a tangle of olive-boughs the marvellous Dome of Florence, as satisfying as the sea, or under a starry heaven the loveliest of cities glittering like a rival firmament with answering constellations? And yet I recant. For if there is one piece of art which is better than nature, 't is Botticelli's so-called "Spring," which, long misprised and now worm-riddled, adds ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... passed through the panelled hall to the drawing-room Hugh Roughsedge saw no need for apology. Amid the warm dimness of the house he was aware of a few starry flowers, a few gleaming and beautiful stuffs, the white and black of an engraving, or the blurred golds and reds of an old Italian picture, humble school-work perhaps, collected at small cost by Diana's father, yet still breathing ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... itself, for all the world like one of those little demon electric lights with which the dentist makes a momentary treasure-cave of your distended jaws, flashing with startled stalactite. At the same moment Nicolete's starry eyes took the same direction; then there broke from her her ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... I am worser than thou, which is like enough. I would not like to hear all my foolish words, all my angry words, all my sinful words, echoed back to me from the starry walls of heaven. And suppose, Sissot—only suppose that God should do as much with our thoughts! I dare say ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... rhythm. Gayer strains would have sounded sacrilegiously out of tune with the darkling glint of the river, with the mysterious splash of its waves against the bobbing bulkheads of the pier, with the starry enchantment of the passing ferry-boats, with the love-enraptured solemnity ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Of grateful evening mild; then silent night With this her solemn bird and this fair moon, And these the gems of heaven, her starry train. Paradise ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... having turned, we hove up our anchor and stood out of the bay, with a fine starry heaven above us,— the first we had seen for many weeks. Before the light northerly winds, which blow here with the regularity of trades, we worked slowly along, and made Point Ao Nuevo, the northerly point of the Bay of Monterey, on Monday afternoon. We spoke, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... And all the more, when he thinks of things that his strength cannot achieve or grieves at things his mind cannot understand, is it strange that cheeks that were steeped in red should grow withered as an old stick, and hair that was black as ebony should turn as spangled as a starry sky? How should ought else but what is fashioned of brass or stone strive to outlast the splendour of a tree? Who but man himself is the slayer of his youth? Why was I angered ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. He was the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning; the Lucifer of that starry flock which in the thirteenth century shone forth from republican Italy, as from a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted world. His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... "Oh! Oh!" from the audience, and Kelson's heart beat quicker, when a girl with wavy, fair hair and big, starry eyes, screamed out "Don't go near it! Don't go ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... she had quitted it, and he made his way to the door. As he opened it, he could not help glancing at Beauchamp. Instead of the dismay he expected, he saw triumph on his pale countenance, and in the curl of his scarred lip.—He flew frantic from the house. The sky was crowded with the watchings of starry eyes. To his fancy, they were like Beauchamp's, and he hated them. Seeking refuge from their gaze, he rushed to the library, and threw himself on a heap of foreign books, which he had that morning arranged for binding. A ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... and held out his cigarette case to the girl. And it was as she turned to take one that he saw her eyes were very bright—with the starry brightness of unshed tears. "Sure—but it's nice to talk rot at times, my lady, isn't it?" he murmured. "And, incidentally, I'm thinking I didn't tell the grey girl's story quite right. Because it wasn't ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... that exercise the virgin court Of peaceful Thespia, my muse consort, Making her drunken with Gorgonean dews, And therewith all your ecstasies infuse, That she may reach the topless starry brows Of steep Olympus, crown'd with freshest boughs Of Daphnean laurel, and the praises sing Of mighty Cynthia: truly figuring (As she is Hecate) her sovereign kind, And in her force, the forces of the mind: An argument to ravish and refine An earthly ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... that the sun moves sometimes in the ether, sometimes in the lower-world, it must be understood that the starry bodies, considered in relation to the universe, neither set nor rise; but only appear to do so to our sight on earth, which is suspended by the motion of some interior spirit, and compared with the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... out before her, lithe-limbed and big-chested, the atmosphere of that firelit place seemed filled with a sense of safety. His deliberate manner of speech, quite different from the slowness of a drawl, was the natural voice of that big starry world so generous of time. Occasionally he made a remark which ought to have been flattery, but which, coming from him, was so quiet and true that one might float on it to topics of unknown depth. He was so evidently interested in everything she said, and ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... loving them, I cannot, of course, feel the same degree of affection towards all the members of so various a family. The fairy gossamer, scarce seen, a creature of wind and sunshine; the gem-like Epeira in the centre of its Starry web; even the terrestrial Salticus, with its puma-like strategy, certainly appeal more to our aesthetic feelings than does the slow heavy Mygale, looking at a distance of twenty yards away, as he approaches you, like a gigantic cockroach mounted ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... and surprise, the Goth stepped forward, raised the trembling outcast in his arms; and, in the impulse of the moment quitting the solitary house, stood the next instant on the firm earth, and under the starry sky, once more united to the charge that he had abandoned—to Antonina whom he ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... at Diou-djen-dji in the starry night, it is the music of her chamecen, heard from afar, which recalls to us her existence; she is studying some vocal duet with Mdlle. Oyouki, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Everyone knew the importance of silence. The three boats, urged on by their eager crews, advanced abreast at full speed. Ten minutes, or little more, were sufficient to show the dark outline of a schooner, her masts and spars relieved against the starry sky. Silent as the grave, the boats pulled on, their oars so carefully dipped, that scarcely a splash was heard. Those on board the schooner slept, or seemed to sleep, for not a sound was heard from her decks. ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... the lashing of the sea and the myriad voices of the singing stars as they whirled in their courses through space—listened to the chant of life. Yes, she was the ideal, the living incarnation of nature, the Golden Girl with the white starry flower on her breast who was awaiting his coming, the woman of Jose's dream to whom he had been guided unconsciously by the hand of the Unseen. No wonder he had failed to find the place of his dreams; without knowing it, he had been waiting for her. But now all was changed. The earth ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... arch of night, The moon thy timid beams outshine As far as thine each starry light, Her rays can never ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... soul can approach God, yet what is known as religious worship is only as it were a postern by the side of the great portals of beauty and nobility and truth. One whose heart is filled with a yearning mystery at the sight of the starry heavens, who can adore the splendour of noble actions, courageous deeds, patient affections, who can see and love the beauty so abundantly shed abroad in the world, who can be thrilled with ecstasy and ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... open at the end of that grey hall, and through them with noiseless steps, with shadowy wings, floated a being that bore in its arms a child. Before her it stayed, and the light of its starry head illumined the face of the child. She knew it at once—it was that baby brother whose bones lay by the shore of the African sea. It awoke from its sleep, it opened its eyes, it stretched out its arms and smiled at ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... power on into the night, and exercising among women the functions which he exercised among men. The representatives of our Lady, on the other hand, are such as the ancient Rhea,—Latona, with her dark and starry veil,—Tethys, the world-nurse,—and the Artemis of the East, or Syrian Mother; to say nothing of Oreads, Dryads, and Nereids, that without number peopled the mountains, the forests, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... a lovely starry night, and I determined to sleep on deck. Before turning in I went to have a look at Bo. Having nailed her in a box securely, as I thought, I must have left my cabin door ajar. Anyhow she was gone. She must have braced her back against one side ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... search in my poor confused head for the fragments that have remained in it? So much has been lost in the wear and tear of the world, and yet since it has grown so dark with me something flashes out, and shines forth on high, like some starry crown in the night! Shall I invoke the holy figures that they may stand by me through the anguish of my last days, that they may surround me with their glad eternal light, and let no spirit of despair come near me?—The path between the walls of this ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... last twenty years. The very next night, I heard Anna Dickinson in the largest hall in New Haven, and before nearly 3,000 people, urge the women present to consider their duty to this vast Republic in which we dwell, and whose starry banner is as dear to women as to men. The keynote of her bugle-call to the rescue was the idea of duty, and that is the idea which inspires the women on this platform to-day, while thousands of hearts throughout our Union respond, with the same sentiment, to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... world Was fresh and bright, With its golden noon And its starry night; Glad and light, By mountain and river, Have I bless'd the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... hardly say that is a model of the celestial sphere," whispered Gazen, indicating the starry vault. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... lay tense and rigid, his set face staring up into the starry night. It was his hour of trial. A rising tide was sweeping him away. He had to clutch at every straw to hold his footing. But something in the man—his lifetime habit of facing the duty that he ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... successful, capturing no less than thirty vessels laden with supplies for the British army in Boston. Among the most active of these was a little Connecticut cruiser of fourteen guns, named the Defense. She took prize after prize; and on a starry night in June, 1776, she, with some other small vessels, fought and conquered two British transports near Boston, laden with two hundred soldiers and a large quantity of stores. By midsummer (1776), American cruisers had captured more than ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the stolen garb of the Madonna or the saints. Who knows whether they do not exist to this day? And, indeed, is it possible they should not? For the awfulness of the deep woods, with their filtered green light, the creak of the swaying, solitary reeds, exists, and is Pan; and the blue, starry May night exists, the sough of the waves, the warm wind carrying the sweetness of the lemon-blossoms, the bitterness of the myrtle on our rocks, the distant chant of the boys cleaning out their nets, of the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... replaced by the stars and stripes, and in the meantime he would send a battery with his sailors and marines ashore to maintain order. But no one was found in the city to take the Confederate flags down, and hoist the starry banner in their place; so a battery of ships' guns was landed and hauled through the streets till it reached the City Hall, and there it was placed in position to cover every point of approach. A young middy, apparently ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Throned 'mid th' Olympian vasts Majestic, splendidly serene 'Spite Boreas' rageful blasts. Immaculate, 'midst starry fires Incalculable thou—" ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... twilight of Midsummer Eve came to a close; night folded the world beneath its starry curtains. At twelve o'clock, though not a breath of air was stirring, the trees were shaken as if by a mighty wind, the rustling of the leaves blending into strange and lovely music, and presently the King of the Trees entered the haunted wood. Even ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... was like a page from some fantastic romance of Jules Verne's; the peace of the little old town, the people going to bed, the quiet streets, the quiet starry sky, and then for ten minutes an uproar of guns and shells, a clatter of breaking glass, and then a fire here, a fire there, a child's voice pitched high by pain and terror, scared people going to and fro with lanterns, and the sky empty again, the ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... month later than October could have been the date of the incident will, I presume, scarcely be argued for. The moon was at the full on Tuesday the 2d of November, and it could not be till after that day that the first hour of the night would be "starry," with Venus in full blaze. By that time, as far as we can gather from the chronicles of the time, the harvest was past. Besides, Mrs Burns might easily mistake September for October, but scarcely for November, a month of such different ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... I too might go, if my hurrying foot could poise amid the lights of heaven and hold on its starry course. But now, without thee, night comes drearily with its dark wings, and the day itself and the glittering sunshine is darkness to me. Lily, narcissus, violet, rose, nard, amomum, bring me no joy—nay, no flower delights my heart. That I may see thee, I pass hovering ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... of all hues, Packed full of service are thy bygone years; Thy winged steed doth fly Across the starry sky, Bearing the lowly burthens of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... a murmur vast and faint; the murmur of trembling leaves, of stirring boughs, ran through the tangled depths of the forests, ran over the starry smoothness of the lagoon, and the water between the piles lapped the slimy timber once with a sudden splash. A breath of warm air touched the two men's faces and passed on with a mournful sound—a breath loud and short like an uneasy ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... alarm, hastening to bethink herself that God cared more for one miserable, selfish, wife-and-donkey-beating costermonger of unsavory Shoreditch, than for all the hills and dales of Cumberland, yea and all the starry things of his heavens. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Christian theology the place of the immediate Divine presence, where God manifests Himself without veil, and His saints enjoy that presence and know as they are known. In Scripture it denotes, (1) the atmosphere, (2) the starry region, (3) a state of bliss, (4) as defined, the divine presence, and (5) ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... night, and the view very lovely," said Molly. And indeed the moon was riding high in a deep blue starry heaven, and shimmered on the strip of distant ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... carving his new staff, the girls who busked them for the vintaging—were conscious, as the wind went by among the beeches and the pines, and brought with it the sounds of a lonely and mysterious night, that hard by them in the starry darkness the divine Huntress was abroad, and about the base of AEtna she and her forest maids drove the chase with horn and hound. In the cities ladies sang the psalm of Adonis brought back from 'the stream eternal of Acheron.' Under the mystic moon love-lorn damsels ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... for he never indulged in rhetoric or rhodomontade or claptrap, that one would be inclined to think he was beside himself, or had been dining out, like Daniel Webster when he proposed, in the Senate Chamber, to plant our starry banner on the outermost verge, the Ultima Thule, of our disputed territory, heedless of consequences. Both Pierpont and Calhoun certainly forgot the injunction to be "temperate in all things"; and allow me to add, that, in my judgment, it mattered little who was with, or who against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... understood love, which he himself had never known; he fought, he loved, he conquered; he enlightened nations, gave peace to the world, redressed the wrongs of mankind, and raised up temples to the mighty spirit of the universe. He saw in the starry firmament all the gods of Olympus, the fathers of primitive humanity. In the constellations he read the story of the golden age, and of the ages of brass; in the winter wind he heard the songs of Morven, and in the storm-clouds he bowed to the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... to drive Columbia and the States to the "raising" on the top of his own stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and basting and stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the starry part of the spangled banner was to remain with each of them in turn until she had performed her share of ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of song Spreads o'er th' expanse of heaven? In waves of light it thrills along, Th' angelic signal given— "Glory to God!" from yonder central fire Flows out the echoing lay beyond the starry quire; ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... that the colored race should know something of the steps which led from Egypt to Canaan, something of their own contributions to the grand march of the tribes across and beyond the Red Sea. There are no slaves beneath the starry flag. All may read who will, and what they will. For the colored man no history can be more instructive and inspiring than this, of his own making, and written by one of his own race. The generations are growing in light. Not to know of those who were stronger than shackles, who ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... iv a limon peel and a case iv jandhers!" cried Mr. Quilty in wrath at these aspersions on an honourable calling, "I'm a notion to get down an' slug the head off iv yez! Faix, ut's no murder to kill a Chinaman, but a bright jewel in me starry crown, ye long-nailed, rat-eatin', harrse-haired, pipe-hittin' slave iv th' black pill! I'll make yez think I'm a Hip Sing Tong or a runaway freight on th' big hill. I'll slaughter yez, mind, if I get off. Do yez know where yez will go whin yez die ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... been woods and rills, The silence, that is in the starry sky; The sleep, that is ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... The wind? No, no—this time It is the sable friar as before, With awful footsteps regular as rhyme, Or (as rhymes may be in these days) much more. Again through shadows of the night sublime, When deep sleep fell on men, and the world wore The starry darkness round her like a girdle Spangled with gems—the monk ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Where this deity is shrined, Who gives the seas and sunset-skies Their unspent beauty of surprise, And, when it lists him, waken can Brute and savage into man; Or, if in thy heart he shine, Blends the starry fates with thine, Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee, And makes thy thoughts archangels be; Freedom's secret would'st thou know?— Right thou feelest ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... detail all the thoughts that passed, and the emotions that were excited in my mind. Every object around, beneath, above me seemed in silent but impressive eloquence to celebrate God's praise; from the moon that led the starry train, from the patriarch of his kindred hills and nearest to the heavenly sanctuary, down to the frozen glaciers and the roaring torrents of the lower valleys, all seemed endowed with a peculiar language—a voice to touch the heart of man, and to enter into ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... thrill of emotion, I saw the first trees of the Wood of the Dead rise in front of me in a high black wall. Their crests stood up like giant spears against the starry sky; and though there was no perceptible movement of the air on my cheek I heard a faint, rushing sound among their branches as the night breeze passed to and fro over their countless little needles. A remote, hushed murmur ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... sighing souls born of dust's despair, They who fed on bitter bread when the world was bare, Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair. ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... I had been wrong about Raffles after all, and that enhanced my mirth. Surely this was the old gay rascal, and it was by some uncanny feat of his stupendous will that he had appeared so haggard on the platform. In the London lamplight that he loved so well, under a starry sky of an almost theatrical blue, he looked another man already. If such a change was due to a few draughts of bitter beer and a few ounces of fillet steak, then I felt I was the brewers' friend and the vegetarians' foe for life. Nevertheless I could detect a serious side to my companion's mood, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Robert of Cabane came to tell the prince that the queen awaited him; Andre cast one last look at the smiling fields beneath the starry heavens, pressed his nurse's hand to his lips and to his heart, and followed the grand seneschal slowly and, it seemed, with some regret. But soon the brilliant lights of the room, the wine that circulated freely, the gay talk, the eager recitals of that day's exploits served to disperse the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... done. The art of painting, which in the fifteenth century had done its best to foster the delusion now expressed the altered tone of thought. Raphael, in the cupola of the Capella Chigi, represents the gods of the different planets and the starry firmament, watched, however, and guided by beautiful angel-figures, and receiving from above the blessing of the eternal Father. There was also another cause which now began to tell against astrology ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... had been installed in a splendid apartment, a regal apartment as beautiful as that of the Pharaoh. Elegant pillars with lotus capitals upbore the starry roof, framed in by a cornice of blue palm-branches painted upon a golden background. Panels of a tender lilac-colour with green lines ending in flower buds showed symmetrically on the walls; fine matting ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... conveyed from man to man, and the toilsome movement briskly accelerated under the inspiring watchword. Shortly afterward the larger growth—cypress and oak—diminished, as the band straggled into the open, starry night at the margin of what they could tell was water by the croaking of frogs and plashing of night birds and reptiles. Then the train was halted. Jones left Nasmyd in command and plunged into a thick skirt of bushes. Now Barney, hot and dirty ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... lantern, summoned a turnkey, and said, returning to Aramis, "I am at your orders, monseigneur." Aramis merely nodded his head, as much as to say, "Very good;" and signed to him with his hand to lead the way. Baisemeaux advanced, and Aramis followed him. It was a beautiful starry night; the steps of the three men resounded on the flags of the terraces, and the clinking of the keys hanging from the jailer's girdle made itself heard up to the stories of the towers, as if to remind the prisoners that liberty ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Arabs say the shooting stars, meteorites, are starry stones which the angels fling at the poaching demons whom they catch sight of prowling too near the palisades of heaven. I must say I like Arab angels. My heaven would coruscate like a catherine ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... hope; New axes shine, and in the sun new purple bravely sports, And greeted-far the curule chair new weight of worth supports;[12] New oxen come that lately cropp'd the sweet Faliscan grass, And yield to Jove their willing necks on which no yoke did pass. He, from his starry throne sublime, looks East and West; and lo! He sees but Rome, and Rome's domain, in all he sways below. Hail happy day, and still return to bless with happier face The sons of Romulus, lords of Earth, not thankless for thy grace! But who art thou, strange biform god, and what thy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the starry sky. "The orbs are shining excessively," he said; then added, "To the greater glory of God. One is never tired ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... was the youthful Earth, And lightly tripped along To music from a starry choir, Whose sweet celestial song Through Nature's temple echoed wild, And soft as streamlets flow, Where sister spheres replied with her, Six ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Carmen, what would it do with her? Would it not set its forces to work to teach her that evil is a reality—that it is as powerful as good—that God formed man and the universe out of dust—that Jesus came down from a starry heaven that he might die to appease the wrath of a man-like Father—that Mary pleads with the Lord and Jesus, and by her powerful logic induces them to spare mankind and grant their foolish desires—all the dribble and rubbish of outlandish theology that has accumulated around the nucleus ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... powerful retracting telescope with him, through which he gazed at the starry heavens during the long nights; at the planets with their moons and rings, on which in winter white spots are visible, while in summer a red light surrounds them; and then at that great enigma of the firmament, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in being human had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above the monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down upon all their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of the commonplace. He felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary superiority that a brave man feels over powerful beasts or a wise man over powerful errors. He knew that he had ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... down to sleep they could hear the ponies munch the rich grass in an open spot near by. Through the smoke hole of the pine-bough wigwam Manitoshaw gazed up into the starry sky, and dreamed of what she would do on the morrow when she should surprise the wily moose. Her grandmother was already sleeping so noisily that it was enough to scare away the game. At last the maiden, too, ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... in Christian lands: it may be questioned if there are really any such beings. Hume, known as a famous sceptic, is reported to have said to Ferguson, as together they looked up into the starry sky: "Adam, there is a God." Voltaire, the atheist, prayed to God in a thunderstorm. Ingersoll, when charged with being an atheist, indignantly refuted the charge, saying: "I am not an atheist; I do not say that there is no God; I am an agnostic; I do ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... climbed up into a tea tree bush, and swung himself gently to-and-fro until he rocked himself to sleep among the pretty little starry flowers, a thing he should never have done unless a Piccaninny Boy Scout had been posted near by in case of danger. He was so drowsy, that he ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... merry camp that night—merry and beautiful and picturesque. The night was very cold and brilliantly starry, as nights usually are in the Never-Never during the Dry; the camp fires were all around us: dozens of them, grouped in and out among the gundies, and among the fires—chatting, gossiping groups ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of the breeze Gives every reed a voice From tenebrae and silences; Over the valleys borne, Come organ harmonies; And when the low winds call, The pines with miserere mourn A requiem musical, Softer than moonbeams fall Across the starry oriels of night, Flooding the azure round With hushed delight And sanctity ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... better demonstration of the Astrologers that there are three: one, according as the star moves towards its Epicycle; the other, according as the Epicycle moves with its whole Heaven equally with that of the Sun; the third, according as the whole of that Heaven moves, following the movement of the starry sphere from West to East in one hundred years one degree. So that to these Three Movements there are Three Movers. Again, if the whole of this Heaven moves and turns with the Epicycle from East to West once in each ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... against the base of which the little village nestled. The distant sound of the evening bell was calling the simple cottagers to "Ave Maria." It was an enchanting picture of innocence and peace; in striking contrast to this courtly assemblage, glittering with gems and starry orders—a startling opposite to that sweet, pure idyl. And now this select circle seemed agitated as by an electric shock. There, upon the stage, floated ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... tinkling bells, the fire by night, and the cigarito, smoked till he fell asleep. Then he remembers the gypsies who came to the camp, and the black-eyed girl who told him his fortune, and all that followed in the rosy dawn and ever onward into starry night. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... grasses and wild flowers. Nancy declared that it reminded her of me. We sat there, into the lush, warm nights, and the moon shone down on us, or again through long silences we searched the bewildering, starry chart of the heavens, with the undertones of the night-chorus of the fields in our ears. Sometimes she let my head rest upon her knee; but when, throbbing at her touch, with the life-force pulsing around us, I tried to take her in my arms, to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sound of the carriages bearing away Savinien, Herzog and his daughter, resounded in the calm starry night. In the villa everything was quiet. Pierre breathed with delight; he instinctively turned his eyes toward the brilliant sky, and in the far-off firmament, the star which he appropriated to himself long ago, and which he had so desperately ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... ringlets wide, And leapt to him, and kept his pace,— Sang when he sang, and when he sighed, Turned up to him its starry face. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... it be a dark one. If not, 'twill be wiser to let things lie over for the next. A day can't make much difference; while the colour of the night may. A moonlit sky, or a clear starry one, might get us all where we'd see stars without any being visible—through ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... editorial Jabberwocks came galloping daily down the slopes of Sinai bearing new tablets written in fire. The original and only genuine tableau was gone. The starry heavens which concealed the Deity Himself had become a junkpile full ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... 'Starry Wonder of the North,' he said, kneeling, 'I bring fuel to your ineffable fires. Our King of Lovers and Lover among Kings is all at your feet, sighing in this paper.' He seemed to talk in capitals, with a flourish handed her the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... check; Thus rolls the molten lava stream, Dispersing havoc dire, supreme, Enfolding, whelming all in wreck! Thus flies the pollen on the breeze To meet its floral love; The song, outgushing from the soul, Thus seeks the starry vault above. Is it a curse? There is no other life for me. 'Tis written in the book of fate: Thy race must ev'ry pledge abate And wander, rove eternally! But why? and where? I know it not,— I needs ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Thus, in a starry night, fond children cry For the rich spangles that adorn the sky, Which, though they shine for ever fixed there, With light and influence relieve us here. All her affections are to one inclined; Her bounty and compassion to mankind; 40 To whom, while she so far extends her grace, She makes ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... corpse with a hush. His warriors bend over their spears, His sisters gaze upward and mourn. Weep, weep, for Adondo, is dead! The sun has gone down in a shower; Buried in clouds in the face of the moon; Tears stand in the eyes of the starry skies, And stand in the eyes of the flowers; And streams of tears are the trickling brooks, Coursing adown the mountains.— Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi: The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... sages Who, in the days of yore, In combat met the foemen, And drove them from our shore. Who flung our banner's starry field In triumph to the breeze, And spread broad maps of cities where ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Bulben, by which the champion, Diarmid, was slain; the Phoenix in the stork of Inniskea, of which there never was but one, yet that one perpetually reproduced itself; the spirits of the wood, and the spirits inhabiting springs and streams; the fairy horse; the sacred trees; the starry influences. Monstrous and gigantic human shapes, like the Jinns of the Arabian tales, occasionally enter into the plot, and play a midnight part, malignant to the hopes of good men. At their approach the earth is troubled, the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... start at daylight, he ordered all hands to lie down at an early hour, and obtain as much rest as they could, with the hard ground for their beds, and the starry heavens overhead. A piece of canvas let down from the side of the waggon served somewhat to screen the young Englishmen—who were supposed to be more luxuriously inclined than the rest of the party—from the chilly night air, while the mound ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... them there: whatever feeling great mountains evoke, THAT feeling was clear in Rodriguez and Morano. They were all amongst those that have other aims, other ends, and know naught of man. A bitter chill from the snow and from starry space drove this ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... chickweed, With small starry flowers, Where red-caps oft pick seed In hungry Spring hours. And blue cap and black cap, in glossy Spring coat, Are a-peeping in ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... distinctly relevant to what was in each of their minds. "She's got a good boat's- crew, and she's a sailor herself. Good-night, Mr. Sheldon. Anything I can do for you down Marau-way?" He turned and pointed to a widening space of starry sky. "It's going to be a fine night after all. With this favouring bit of breeze she has sail on already, and she'll make Guvutu by ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... 1876. A curious, dwarf-growing shrub, with small, bright yellow, starry flowers produced in June. The hardiness of ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... especially in very cold weather, which is nearly always very clear weather, that brief appearance is preceded by a feast of rich, delicate colour. First a greenish glow on the southern horizon, brightening into lemon and then into clear primrose, invades the deep purple of the starry heavens. Then a beautiful circle of blush pink above a circle of pure amethyst gradually stretches all around the edge of the sky, slowly brightening while the stars fade out and the heavens change to blue. The dead ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... are curious. The whole of the blue satin ground is worked with crosses "parseme." Parts of the design are so adorned with larger and smaller Greek crosses—and others with the starry cross. On the shoulder is ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... twilight faltered into dusk, and later it was a starry dark outside, filled and permeated with the frail gorgeousness of Roxanne's white dress and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... have reived, whose wife stolen away, whose little ones put to the sword and fire. Me only have they left alive; and where should I come if not here?" So they let him in, and he came and stood in the hall of Paris with many other wretches. Then presently came Helen of the starry eyes and sweet pale face, she and her women to minister. And she knelt down with ewer and basin and a napkin to wash the feet of the poor. To whom, as she knelt at the feet of Odysseus, and rinsed his wounds and wiped away the dry ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett
... conquests. From the "Everlasting No,"—that dreadful realm of enchantment, where all the forms of nature are frozen forever in dumb imprisonment and despair,—the great vaulted firmament no longer serene and holy and loving as God's curtain for his children's slumbers, but flaming in starry portents, and dropping down over the earth like a funeral pall; through this region of life-semblance and death-reality the lonely and aching pilgrim wanders,—questioning without reply,—wailing, broken, self-consuming,—looking with eager eyes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, and the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry fingerpoints the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the look-out knows that the midnight is passing—that relief and rest ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... as a nothingness. It was a hard experience. But, after her repeated obliviousness to him, after he had seen so often that he did not exist for her, after he had raged and tried to escape, and said he was good enough by himself, he was a man, and could stand alone, he must, in the starry multiplicity of the night humble himself, and admit and know that without her he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... of reason and faith—he looks beyond the present issue, he detects the significance of his calamity, and strengthened thus a brave heart can vanquish any sorrow. But, as Richter beautifully says—"the little cradle, or bed-canopy of the child, is easier darkened than the starry heaven of man." Surely, then, it is a blessed thing to contribute aught that will lighten this gloom, and place the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... a clear starry night!" the watch was bawling as I set out from my rooms to keep my appointment with Lord Balmerino. I had little doubt that a Stuart restoration was the cause for which he was recruiting, and all day I had balanced ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... thus answered: "Ye must first, with the mouth of your heart and of your body, devoutly receive the flesh and the blood of your Spouse, so that, being quickened with the living food, and having tasted of death, ye may pass from this impure world unto the starry bride-chamber." Then the virgins, believing in the word of the man of God, devoutly entreated and received the Eucharist, and, immediately falling asleep in the Lord, they quitted their earthly tabernacles, and went ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... rich hazy light, and as the fantastic symphony wept and exulted and wavered and despaired Ardita's last sense of reality dropped away, and she abandoned her imagination to the dreamy summer scents of tropical flowers and the infinite starry spaces overhead, feeling that if she opened her eyes it would be to find herself dancing with a ghost in a land created by her ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the theory of evolution applied to the life-history of the earth and the starry firmament, to the development of nations and races, to the progress of mind, morals and religion, even to the origin of consciousness and life—a conception which has completely revolutionised man's attitude towards himself and the world and God. Evolution ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... as the car began to develop speed in the first long, open space between settlements. She was trying to remember something distinct about the nightmare of misery that had followed her admission of the identity of the man who had kissed her hand that starry night in October, but from the black chaos of her recollection she brought out only, "Oh, you don't realize how things are with a girl—how many million little ways she's bound and tied down, just from everybody in the family ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Starry roof and earthy floor, Sea, and all thy wideness yieldeth, Now rejoice, and leap, and roar. Leafy infants of the wood, Fields, and all that on you feedeth, Dance, O dance, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... crisp, cold night outside; starry, wintry, but open weather, and clear; the ground would be just right on the morrow, neither hard as the slate of a billiard-table, nor wet as the slush of a quagmire. Forest King slept steadily on in his warm and spacious box, dreaming doubtless of days of victory, cub-hunting in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... us condescendingly, as if our gifts were small, But do you think Almighty God has dowered you with all? Earth's greatest continent is ours; her highest mountains rise In unapproached sublimity beneath our starry skies; Ours, too, the cradle of the race; and at our Buddha's shrine Unequalled numbers of mankind adore him as divine. How dare you speak of Asian thought with pity or a sneer, When practically all you ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... passion for being despised, which was so essential to my peace of mind, I found at times an altitude—a starry altitude—in the station of contempt for me assumed by my brother that nettled me. Sometimes, indeed, the mere necessities of dispute carried me, before I was aware of my own imprudence, so far up the staircase of Babel, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a sheet for a covering, there we lay, looking up at the starry heavens. I watched the Great Bear go around, and other constellations and seemed to come into close touch with Nature and the mysterious night. But the melancholy solemnity of my communings was much affected by the howling of the ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... As the starry flag of the United States ran slowly to the top of the tall staff the Ninth Regiment band crashed forth the inspiring strains of "The Star-spangled Banner," and every American present, excepting, of course, the troops on duty, bared his ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... pulsing of that dull red glare from the windows of the building across the court-yard shone more brightly, and the glare from other flaming buildings, which Otto could not see from his window, turned the black, starry night into ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... sapphires too, all glistening gloriously in the new light. The jasper tents on the everlasting hunting grounds, and the motionless streams were brightning with living flame. Thousands of Indians, strong and fair, in countless groupings, seemed, to surpass even the sky itself in their glittering starry dress. ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... the sun-baked square. Let statue, picture, park and hall, Ballad, flag and festival, The past restore, the day adorn And make each morrow a new morn So shall the drudge in dusty frock Spy behind the city clock Retinues of airy kings, Skirts of angels, starry wings, His fathers shining in bright fables, His children fed at heavenly tables. 'Tis the privilege of Art Thus to play its cheerful part, Man in Earth to acclimate And bend the exile to his fate, And, moulded of ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Miss Insull called out to Constance, in a peculiar tone. And a flush, scarcely perceptible, crept very slowly over her dark features. In the twilight of the shop, lit only by a few starry holes in the shutters, and by the small side- window, not the keenest eye could have detected ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... as I had appointed, by H. Russell, between two and three o'clock, and I and my boy Tom by water with a gally down to the Hope, it being a fine starry night. Got thither by eight o'clock, and there, as expected, found the Charles, her mainmast setting. Commissioner Pett aboard. I up and down to see the ship I was so well acquainted with, and a great worke it is, the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... trees had attained gigantic height, thrusting their plumy heads heavenward, as their lower limbs died; and year after year the mellow brown carpet of reddish straw deepened, forming a soft safe nidus for the seeds that sprang up and now gratefully embroidered it with masses of golden rod, starry white asters, and tall, feathery spikes of some velvety purple bloom, which looked royal by the side of a cluster of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to this magic spectacle of the starry Heavens? Where is the mind that is not attracted to these enigmas? The intelligence of the amateur, the feminine, no less than the more material and prosaic masculine mind, is well adapted to the consideration of astronomical problems. Women, indeed, are naturally predisposed to ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... P. M. and the mention of the flag has reminded me that our own Emblem still fluters beneath the Starry Sky. ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies: And all that's best of dark and bright Meet her in aspect and in her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... and by the light of the lamps from the cabin, gazed out at the banks of the river. At least he looked for them. But there weren't any banks. Instead, steep and rugged cliffs rose on each side, and overhead, instead of a starry sky, was a great arched roof of a cavern glistening with moisture and ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... first to hold to her own loving breast many little children who came into their wild and desolate inheritance of life. She was the first to teach a hundred childish lips to say "Now I lay me down to sleep," and more than one woman she made to see the clear and starry way to brighter life. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... of the Coast! Uncounted ages heaped my shining snows; The sun by day, by night the starry host, Crown me with splendor; every breeze that blows Wafts incense to my altars; never wanes The glory my adoring children boast, For one with sun and ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... when toward morning a light footstep glided across her threshold she did not hear it. The bolt was drawn, the key was turned, and just as the clock struck three, Adah stood outside the yard, leaning on the gate and gazing back at the huge building looming up so dark and grand beneath the starry sky. One more prayer for Willie and the mother-auntie to whose care she had left him, one more straining glance at the window of the little room where he lay sleeping, and she resolutely turned away, nor stopped again until the Danville depot was reached ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... wealth wherewith to secure all objects of desire (CDXXVI—CDXXXIV); He that is above despair; He that exists in the form of Renunciation; He that is without birth; He that is the stake unto which Righteousness is tethered; He that is the great embodiment of sacrifice; He who is the nave of the starry wheel that revolves in the firmament;[601] He that is the Moon among the constellations; He that is competent to achieve every feat; He that stays in His own soul when all things disappear He that cherishes the desire for Creation (CDXXXV—CDXLIV); He that is the embodiment of all sacrifices; He ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... noticed very little that went on around her in those days. Sometimes, indeed, she caught the hard, shallow gaze of her husband fixed upon her, curiously. But if he drew his own conclusions from her pallor, her starry eyes, her long fits of brooding, he at least did not trouble her with questions. Which perhaps was just as well. She ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... very like the figure that once lay on the sand,—only she was not now made of stones and shells. There was the long brown hair blowing about her face, with a wreath of starry shells in it. Her eyes were gray, her cheeks and lips rosy, her neck and arms white; and from under her striped dress peeped little bare feet. She had pearls in her ears, coral bracelets, a golden belt, and a glass and comb in ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... open petals of the spring beauty coil up into tight little spirals, the young leaves on the pin-oaks draw in toward the stems from which they had been expanding. Over the low fence, the blue phlox, that dainty carpeting of the May woods, shut its starry flowers, and lay close to the ground. Quiet as we were, we could see the birds find sheltered nooks in the ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... only roam them in a contemplative spirit, with eyes turned up to the peaceful constellations, the public might fall down an area now and then, but would not much disturb the neighbourhood. But the 'Arry that walketh by night thinks of nothing less than admiring, with Kant, the starry heavens and the moral nature of man. He seeks his peers, and together in great bands they loiter or run, stopping to chaff each other, and to jeer at the passer-by. Their satire is monotonous in character, chiefly consisting of the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... do we move with certain step when we hear God's voice bidding us go forward, as he commands the starry host to fly onward, and all living things to spring upward to light and warmth. When we understand that he has made progress the law of life, we learn to feel that not to grow is not to live. Then our view is enlarged; we become lovers ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... thy characters are so full of wit And fancy, as each word is throng'd with it. Each line's a volume, and who reads would swear Whole libraries were in each character. Nor arrows in a quiver stuck, nor yet Lights in the starry skies are thicker set, Nor quills upon the armed porcupine, Than wit and fancy in this work ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various |
