"Twinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the case, and gazed on its contents with twinkling eyes; then, shutting it with a laugh, he leaned back in his chair, rubbing his smooth ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... dusk of the evening, when the flickering tapers of the temperate town are going out one by one. Roars of merriment greet you as you approach the cavernous city of the suburb. There the entertainments of the inhabitants are only about to begin. You see moving lights in the distance twinkling along the grey surface of the rock, and flitting amongst the trees that lie between its base and the margin of the river. Some bacchanalian orgie is going forward." [Footnote: Bell (R.), "Wayside ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... though she had expected an accommodation of the kind. There was not even a stool to be seen in the council-chamber. But at the table of the judges stood a vacant armchair, the property of some absent member; and in the twinkling of an eye Eugene had perceived and rolled it forward. He placed it respectfully behind his aunt, and resumed his position on ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... she stopped, and with her hand upon it said, "Good-night, Charlie;" and was out of the room in a twinkling. ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... unction in that persuasion generally. How cold and apathetic they are, in these soul-stirring times! Not a sinner has been writhing on their floor, I'll engage, nor a wretch transferred into a saint, in the twinkling of an eye, by that parson. Well, we have every reason ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... dinner. Coming out of this small den, and passing a fine large house, opposite the grand palace of the Prince of Valmontone, behold an Italian acquaintance of Caper's standing in a balcony with a very handsome woman; another moment, and Caper was invited in, and passed from poverty to wealth in the twinkling of an eye. Rooms full of guests, tables covered with damask linen, silver, flowers, crystal glasses, delicate food (too late!), good wine (just ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fer stayin', Tommy? I kinder cal'lated you'd weaken when the time come. Ain't goin' ter think better of it, huh?" The old man, smiling through a cloud of tobacco smoke, contemplated Tom with shrewd, twinkling, expectant eyes. "Fun's jest about startin' naow, Tommy. 'Member what I told yer baot them critters. Daont yer go back ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... girl when her handsome and idolized brother David scandalized the family by marrying an actress and himself taking to the stage. But she had seen the bewitching "Miss Arnold" at the theatre in Baltimore—had, with fascinated eyes, followed her twinkling feet through the mazy dance, had listened with charmed ears to her exquisite voice, had sat spell-bound under her acting. To her childish mind, the stage had become a fairy-land and Miss Arnold its presiding genius. That brother David should love and marry ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... pursue. Going first himself, he allowed his horse to follow the path which his own instinct dictated; and by so doing, in the course of an hour the hoofs of his animal once more trod hard ground. In a short time afterwards a twinkling light appeared, far brighter, however, than the "will o' the wisp" which had before deceived them, and they rode up to the very inn which Jack had hoped to reach. The landlord was well pleased to see two well-equipped cavaliers arrive at his humble hostel, and under took to supply them with ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... crashing in the brushwood. Like a flash, five deer leaped into view, rushing across a small opening. They saw the boys and were out of sight again in a twinkling, before a gun could be raised ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... feet up in the night was a gleaming ship. There were rows of portholes that shone twinkling against the black sky—portholes in multiple rows on the side. The craft was inconceivably huge. Formless and dim of outline in the darkness, its vast ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... trek! He waved the twinkling-eyed, curious landlord back, and went up into the foremost waggon, drawing the canvas close. He faced the truth in there, and realized with a throe of mortal anguish that the burial must be soon—very soon. To prison what remained of her in a hastily ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... if perhaps some might not yet be found there, or if all had been wasted and lost. And while he yet pondered a rubicund little man, with leathern apron dark with wine-stains girded about his portly waist, stood at his side looking up at him with twinkling eyes. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... came also the resurrection of the dead.... 50. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 51. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, (for the trumpet shall sound;) and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54. So when this corruptible shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... a beautifully fine, clear, starlit night, without the faintest suspicion of a cloud anywhere in the soft, velvety blue-black dome of the sky; and presently, when the professor's eyes had grown accustomed to the dim, mysterious radiance of the twinkling constellations, he was able to see the landscape steadily unfolding around him like a map, in a rapidly widening circle, as the great ship steadily attained an ever-increasing altitude in the breathless atmosphere. For some ten minutes the scientist remained thoughtfully ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... misery of a bloody calamity. You are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die, but to die at the very moment when, by any even partial failure or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for your effort, and that effort might have been unavailing; but to have risen to the level of such an effort would have rescued you, though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to your ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... health, and in her freedom, and she bounded along over the hard, glittering snow, full of a mere irresponsible animal pleasure, such as moves the young chamois in his bounds from rock to rock. Darkness had come like a blot upon the earth before she had done half the distance, but now she had the twinkling lights and the reddish haze of Dawson before her. Her own eyes brightened as she caught sight of them, and she hastened her steps. By the time night had fairly settled down she came into the side streets of the town. Dawson is an all-night town, and things ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... of the rebel on guard had given the alarm to several others, and in a twinkling Larry and the old Yankee tar found themselves confronted by an even more determined crowd than that encountered on the road. With the water behind them, escape was out of the question, for a jump back into the river would have courted a fire ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... men saw a great convex surface on which lay narrow ribbons of silver, winding veinlike through dark areas that were in some places lit by little clusters of twinkling lights. As they watched, the distances on the surface shrank in on themselves; they could see the outline of a great circle. The sight stimulated the exhausted men. In a hushed and awestruck voice, Jim Wilson ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... a long mile and a half from Pierre Chouteau's house to Dr. Saugrain's, and it was a frosty December evening. It was only five o'clock, but the stars were out, and through the leafless trees I could see lights twinkling from the houses as I passed. Faster and faster I walked, as my thoughts grew more and more bitter toward mademoiselle, and by the time I had reached the cheery living-room, with its blazing lightwood fire, I was in such a glow from exercise and indignation as made the ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... we must take the baby home," said Maurice, signing to the boy. In the twinkling of an eye the human rag called Gustave was lifted into a chair, clothed in his topcoat and hat, dressed and spruced up, pushed down the spiral staircase, and landed in a cab. Then the prestidigitateur returned and performed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that we think up here on the earth's surface in the cheerful light of day—clothing ourselves with elemental sparks, and shooting with fiery speed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from hemisphere to hemisphere, far down among the uncouth monsters that wallow in the nether seas, along the wreck-paved floor, thorough the oozy dungeons of the rayless deep; the last intelligence ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... minutes, when, on the friendly interference of the Consul, the offended and the offender shook hands, and all went on prosperously until midnight, at which hour we took leave of our kind host, some with their eyes twinkling and others seeing double. A few mornings afterwards the Governor asked me to breakfast at six o'clock. I found him taking his coffee on the terrace of the house, where he had one of Dollond's large telescopes, the view from which was magnificent and rich; but before I had been half an hour with ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... everything before him, in spite of the barricades which had been hastily erected by the Papists. The assault was over in a few moments; the priests and their flock fled by one door, while the Reformers entered by another. The building was in the twinkling of an eye adapted to the new form of worship: the great crucifix from above the altar was dragged about the streets at the end of a rope and scourged at every cross-roads. In the evening a large fire was lighted in the place before the cathedral, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the round specks of dew That hung upon the azure leaves did shew Like twinkling stars that sparkle in ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... East dancing with delight. Tom goes in in a twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows, and gets away again before the slogger can catch his wind; which when he does he rushes with blind fury at Tom, and being skillfully parried and avoided, over-reaches himself and falls on his face, amid terrific ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to hire fussing, if you've a big family," said Aunt Milly, her eyes twinkling behind the gold-bowed spectacles. "You'll keep on with ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... was a silence. Perhaps we were both impressed by the scene. In front lay the river, a band of silver, with here and there the twinkling, swaying lights of a crossing boat upon it. All around was the great city, and from the distance there came a murmuring hum of voices, like waves lapping upon a far-off shore. Around us, towering above ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... fields and gardens that topped the hill beyond. The world turned gold and amber, shining beneath a turquoise sky. There was a rush of flaming sunsets, one upon another, followed by great green moons, and hosts of stars that came twinkling across barred windows to his very bedside ... that grand old Net of Stars he made so cunningly. Cornhill and Lombard Street flashed back upon him for a second, then dived away and hid their faces for ever, as he passed the low grey wall beside the church where first he had ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... He ran at me ere I could draw, like the coward he is, sink him, and had me through the shoulder in the twinkling ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... an uncertain turn, as if thinking to seek safety in flight but doubting which way to choose; and the movement struck panic into the minds and hearts of his fellows. In a twinkling all were on their feet. But before one could move a step the lamp in the ceiling winked out, the room was left in darkness unrelieved, and the accents of Number One were ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... my heart leapt to days, when, a careless boy, 'Mid scenes of ambrosial Autumn roaming, The diamond gem of the Evening Star, Twinkling amid the pure South afar, Was gazed on with gushes of holy joy, As the cherub spirit that ruled the gloaming With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... or to cover up damaged reputations. He knew both the heating and the cooling processes of time. I remember when, about 1890, after he had finished making a set of scrap-books of soldiers' letters, reminiscences and newspaper reports of the battles of the war, how heartily he laughed when, with twinkling eyes, he remarked on the tendency of some old soldiers "to remember a good deal that never happened." As his experience with the pen deepened, he became more rigid in his requirements as to the quality of the information which his books gave. Those who ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... twinkling the weight of a score of years slipped like a cloak from Paul's shoulders. With a wild, choking cry he leaped to his feet, and stretching both his arms above him, "My ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... he had lived among a tribe of blacks in Africa; at another been a member of a party of exiled Russians, on tramp to the mines of Siberia. He was telling of an exciting adventure he had had among the Arabs when the twinkling lights in a train crossed the trestle caused him to come ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... meeting to protest; whereupon the father of all the dragon-flies, a magnificent warrior in a steel- blue armour, saw that a conspiracy was afoot, and swept into the midst with a whirr and a snap, a turn here and a flash there, that scattered the host in a twinkling of a ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... book and received a pleasantly appreciative reply. "I always like," wrote Holmes, "to hear what one of my fellow countrymen, who is not a Hebrew scholar, or a reader of hiero-glyphics, but a good-humored traveler with a pair of sharp, twinkling Yankee (in the broader sense) eyes in his head, has to say about the things that learned travelers often make unintelligible, and sentimental ones ridiculous or absurd .... I hope your booksellers will sell a hundred thousand copies of your travels." A wish that was realized in due time, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... presents himself. His sedan chair, that had been hidden, is planted before the Marechal. He cries aloud, he is shaking on his lower limbs; but he is thrust into the chair, which is closed upon him and carried away in the twinkling of an eye through one of the side windows into the garden, La Fare and Artagnan each on one side of the chair, the light horse and musketeers behind, judging only by the result what was in the wind. The march is hastened; the party ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... all about him: in the blue brightness of the afterglow, in the haze of the meadow stretches, and in the elusive woodland scents that vanished as he caught them;—she was in the rosy vapour wreaths on the high horizon, in the laughter of children playing somewhere in the darkness, in the twinkling of the lights that began to show—for now she was wherever a lover finds his lady, and that is everywhere. He went over and over their talk of the morning, rehearsing wonderful things he would say to her upon the morrow, and taking the liberty ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... one and all, his gold half-moon earrings twinkling in his evident satisfaction with himself and ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and at work before the sun, Mr. Leach," said the captain, speaking clearly, but in a low tone, as they approached the camel. The head of the animal was tossed; then it seemed to snuff the air, and it gave a shriek. In the twinkling of an eye an Arab sprang from the sand, on which he had been sleeping, and was on the creature's back. He was seen to look around him, and before the startled mariners had time to decide on their course, the beast, which was a dromedary trained to speed, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... more, was rushing on to us. It was on the break—the moon shone on its crest and tipped its foam with light. On it rushed beneath the inky sky, driven by the awful squall behind it. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, I saw the black shape of the whale-boat cast high into the air on the crest of the breaking wave. Then—a shock of water, a wild rush of boiling foam, and I was clinging for my life to the shroud, ay, swept straight out from it like ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... chuckled behind his great beard when he saw Jerome's alarmed eyes. "Hullo," said he, "who have we got here?" Eben Merritt had a soft place in his heart for all small young creatures of his kind, and always returned their timid obeisances, when he met them, with a friendly smile twinkling like light through his bushy beard. Still, like many a man of such general kindly bearings, he could not easily compass details, and oftener than not could not have told ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... twinkling the door was opened by a neat Shaker sister, whose round, smiling face was flushed, as though she had just come from cooking dinner. I stepped across the threshold: "Bessie Stewart is here. Please say to her that a friend—a friend from England—wishes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... entered, she bolted the entrance door from within and said to me, "Sit here till I go in to the slave-girls and cause them enter a place whence they shall not see me." "'Tis well," answered I and sat down: whereupon she entered and was absent from me an eye-twinkling, after which she returned to me, without a veil, and straightway said, "Arise and enter in the name of Allah." So I arose and went in after her and we gave not over going till we reached a saloon. When I examined the place, I found it neither handsome nor pleasant, but desolate and dreadful without ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... horrible faces glared upon me from the walls—faces ever changing, and displaying new and still more horrible features; black bloated insects crawled over my face, and myriads of burning, concentric rings were revolving incessantly. At one moment the chamber appeared as red as blood, and in a twinkling it was dark as the charnel house. I seemed to have a knife with hundreds of blades in my hand, every blade driven through the flesh, and all so inextricably bent and tangled together that I could not withdraw them for ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... moor; below was a wide valley with a river twinkling in the moonlight, and beyond ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... bird-like way of skimming her ground that took her over it with wonderful swiftness; all the tassels, and ribbon knots, and sashes with which her uniform was rendered so gay and so distinctive fluttering behind her; and her little military boots, with the bright spurs twinkling, flying over the earth too lightly for a speck of dust,—though it lay thick as August suns could parch it,—to rest upon her. Thus she went now, along the lovely moonlight; singing her drinking song so fast and so loud that, had it been ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... a paternal despotism and the calm existence of a Russian or Asiatic. He showed me a picture of Faraday, which is wonderfully fine: I am almost inclined to get it: it has a curious likeness to Keble, only with a calm, earnest look unlike the latter's Flibbertigibbet, fanatical, twinkling expression. ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his pistols over the rest of him. He was small, lean, and wiry, with dark, sharp face and deep-set twinkling eyes. One moment's glance gave us to know ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... loose and rush away like a wild river, and now subsiding as suddenly, and allowing them to recover themselves and stand upright, with tones and motions of indignant expostulation. There was just one cold bar of light in the west, and the east was one gray mass, while overhead the stars were twinkling. The grass and all the ground about the trees were very wet. The time seemed more dreary somehow than the winter. Rigour was past, and tenderness had not come. For the wind was cold without being keen, and bursting ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... after, when she was in a particularly Corso-Carnival mood. She wandered helplessly about, restless and full of desire to be down at the balcony with the rest. And such a strange thing is the human heart, that it was Norman Mann's face she saw before her constantly, and she found Miss Rae's little twinkling sort of eyes far more haunting than those ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... moment of sensational suspense was brief. In a twinkling the doorkeeper's vengeful hands were on ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... into the woman's small twinkling eyes. 'Wait a little,' she said; 'what are you going to give me for delivering this great ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... stout spar overhanging the tide, and thence along a vessel's deck, empty, glimmering in the moonlight; upon mysterious coils of rope; upon the dew-wet roof of a deck-house; upon a wheel twinkling with brass-work, and behind it a white-painted taffrail. Her eyes were travelling forward to the bowsprit again, when, close by the foremast, they were arrested, and she caught ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... climbed the sleigh with shout and din, To bind his hands and feet; A hundred strong they clambered in Our good old Kris to meet. He sat quite still, with twinkling eyes, Then seized his mystic wand, He raised it up, and waved it round Stilled was ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... eyes of his young teacher twinkling from between the slats of the window-blinds, and he spoke up with a ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... Hubert, "drew a good bow at the battle of Hastings, and never shot at such a mark in his life—and neither will I. I might as well shoot at the edge of our parson's whittle, or at a wheat straw, or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak which I ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... annoy, The word for it is Joy, just simple joy: The joy of life; The joy of children and of wife; The joy of bright blue skies; The joy of rain; the glad surprise Of twinkling stars that shine at night; The joy of winged things upon their flight; The joy of noonday, and the tried, True joyousness of eventide; The joy of labor and of mirth; The joy of air, and sea, and earth— The countless joys that ever flow from Him Whose vast beneficence doth dim The lustrous light ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... strength than sense. My turn will soon come. When the job is finished we shall see to whom all this belongs." When the work was completed and they had pronounced all things good, in stepped the Devil, and in the twinkling of an eye rendered imperfect all that they had so labored to create perfect;'turning everything topsy-turvey, seducing the first pair of human beings, sowing the seeds of original sin, and at one stroke securing the wholesale damnation of our race. What were they about, to let him do ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... moving very fast towards the lands of the Shawanos. One was just as high as the other, and they were both as high as the goat-sucker flies before a thunderstorm. At first they were close together, but as they came nearer they grew wider apart. Soon our people saw, by their twinkling, that they were two eyes, and in a little while the body of a great man, whose head nearly reached the sky(9), came after them. Brothers, the eyes of the Great Spirit always go before him, and hence nothing is hid from his sight. Brothers, I cannot describe ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... man actually lives and moves before our eyes. The veracity of the picture is destroyed by no final inconsistency. What Numa is, Numa will be. Daudet never descends at the end of his novels like a god from the machine to change character in the twinkling of an eye, and to convert bad men to good ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... toward his revolver, but stopped before they reached it. There must be no shooting so near the enemy trench. A horde of Germans would be upon him in a twinkling. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... picking up the other white cat, he began a gentle massage that stimulated her purring, apparently at the expense of her color and size, for in a few moments she also dwindled until she became a very small, coal-black kitten, changing in a twinkling to a blackbird, when he cast her carelessly toward the ceiling. It was well done; in all India no magician could have done it more cleverly, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... March, we sat in the verandah looking still over the blackened unlovely prospect, but now cheerfully and with hope; for the eastern sky was piled up range beyond range with the scarlet and purple splendour of cloud-land, and, as darkness gathered, we saw the lightning, not twinkling and glimmering harmlessly about the horizon, as it had been all the summer, but falling sheer in violet-coloured rivers behind the dark curtain of rain that hung from the black edge of a ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... been broken or was born so, clever mobile mouth, and blue-grey eyes with a humorous twinkle in them and crow's-feet at the corners. Only to us youngsters, as we soon discovered, that humorous face and the twinkling eyes were capable of a terrible sternness. He was loved, I think, by adults generally, and regarded with feelings of an opposite nature by children. For he was a schoolmaster who hated and despised teaching as much as children in the wild hated ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... have one to return to you. I heard some one say that you had 'the rare gift of an absolutely direct mind.' That you were like George Washington: you couldn't tell a lie—that truth had its home in your eyes." Her eyes were twinkling. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Beecher, his eyes twinkling, "let's have it out. My people say that Plymouth holds more people than the Tabernacle, and your folks stand up for the Tabernacle. Now which is it? What is ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... longer the road the more happiness you can find along the way, my dear!" Merry Chuckle replied, quick as a wink, his little eyes twinkling brightly. "If you look up at the blue sky and the beautiful sunshine and sing with the birds as you run along you'll find the road seems too short and you'll be back before you notice it. Just ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... thinking of sleeping till we get our message delivered. I was wondering whether we should be lucky enough to get so far that after dark, if we climbed up high enough, we might be able to see our people's watch fires twinkling like ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... Betty, twinkling, "it's mighty lucky for Frank that there aren't any young men of marriageable age on the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... the twinkling stars; Watch no more the chalky bourne; Lady, from the holy wars Never will thy love return! Cease to watch, and cease to mourn; Thy lover ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... to gaze upon a naked man; that the nature of the wolf is such that if the man sees him first, the wolf is deprived of force and vigor, but if the wolf first sees the man, his power of speech will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Furthermore, there were curious ideas current concerning the mystic power of precious stones, and many were the lapidaries which were written for the edification of the credulous world. The diamond was held in somewhat doubtful esteem, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... intricate and rhythmical figures, while the other young men stood around in a circle and clapped their hands, keeping time. Then Odysseus said to Alkinoos: "Truly, no one excels the Phaeacian princes in dancing. I see the twinkling of their feet ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... took the floor in couples. The men did double-shuffles and cut pigeon wings, moving faster and faster as the fiddler quickened the tune till they gave up at last exhausted. Their partners performed as vigorously, the moccasined feet twinkling in and out so fast ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... quick leap, and the Belgian felt a heavy body hurtle onto the rump of his terror-stricken mount. The horse, snorting, leaped forward. Giant arms encircled the rider, and in the twinkling of an eye he was dragged from his saddle to find himself lying in the narrow trail with a naked, white ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... precious things of by-gone days. The splendid universe around me seemed no more upheld by the hand of God—no more a majestic marvel; it was to me but an inflated bubble of emptiness—a mere ball for devils to kick and spurn through space! Of what avail these twinkling stars—these stately leaf-laden trees—these cups of fragrance we know as flowers—this round wonder of the eyes called Nature? of what avail was God Himself, I widely mused, since even He could not keep one woman true? She whom I loved—she ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the next few minutes. It was growing dark; the hills had faded to blurs of shadows, and the moor ran back, a vast, dim waste. Then a twinkling light moved toward them up the ascending road. Bland ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve, and then ran home ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... was behind us. For eight miles it had shut out the sight of our goal, but now, directly in front of us, was spread a great city of dirty tents and grass huts and Red Cross flags—the neutral camp—and beyond that, four miles away, shimmering and twinkling sleepily in the sun, the white walls and zinc roofs ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... Raven and I suddenly been caught up out of that little coast village and transported to the far East on a magic carpet, to be set down in the twinkling of an eye on some Oriental threshold, we could scarcely have been more surprised than we were at the sight of that bland, smiling countenance. For the moment I was at a loss to think who and what the man could be; he was in the dress of his own country, a neat, close-fitting, high-buttoned ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... twinkling the fires of Berd. We were approaching the deep ravines which served as natural fortifications to the little settlement. Saveliitch, though keeping up to me tolerably well, did not give over his lamentable supplications. I was hoping to pass safely ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... distinct, now looming in the mist, sketchily, with uncertain outlines, and all the fascination of the fabrics, innocent of detail, that confront the dreamer in enchanted woods, or lure him to the edge of fairy lakes with twinkling lights all multiplied by their own reflection in the water. Beth had rolled in that direction in luxurious carriages often, and never joyed in the scene, her mind being set on other things—things prosaic, such as what she should wear, or whether she was late, scraps of society gossip, conversations ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Gibbon River the cataracts have proved to the trout an impassible barrier; but, strangely enough, its despised associate, the sluggish, chunky blob, the little soft-bodied, smooth, black tadpole-like fellow, with twinkling eyes and a voracious appetite—a fish who cannot leap at all—has crossed this barrier. Hundreds of blob live under the stones in the upper reaches of the stream, the only fish in the Gibbon waters. There he is, and it is a standing puzzle even to himself to know how he got there. We might ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... eye; then show how the twinkling of a star is really in the eye and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays from the stars originate in the eye; and add, that if the twinkling of the stars were really in the stars —as it seems ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... a gorgeous kite, the giant butterfly of childhood, twinkling with gilding, and soaring to the sky? The children forget the string that holds it, some passer-by cuts it, the gaudy toy turns head over heels, as the boys say, and falls with terrific rapidity. Such was Esther as she listened ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... on like a man, Bob. We've got a man here drowned or half-drowned; and we want to get him on the wharf in a twinkling." ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... for worlds have resigned, now tingled, now chilled my blood. At last, climbing a stony hill, the skies lay beneath me reddening with the flame of camps and flaring and falling alternately, like the beautiful Northern lights. I heard the ring of hoofs as I looked entranced, and in a twinkling, a body of horsemen dashed past me and disappeared. A little beyond, the road grew so thick that I could see nothing of my way; but trusting doubtfully to my horse, a deep challenge came directly from the thicket, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... with his eyes twinkling with the same delight which infused his companion, who rolled on the deck in ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... swiftly down the mountain. Once past the petrified forest, I could see the Nautilus's beacon twinkling like a star. The captain walked straight toward it, and we were back on board just as the first glimmers of dawn were whitening the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... was produced in a twinkling from one of the saddle holsters of the men, and with great dignity the lieutenant weighed out the full amount, and ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... all had partaken of Senor Montenegro's enforced liberality, we repaired to the launch, accompanied by almost the entire population of Misamis, and amidst a shrill chorus of "Hasta la vista," and "Adios," we steamed back to the Burnside, whose twinkling lights shone out dimly against ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... in 1853, he had an extremely difficult problem before him. By a custom extending through two centuries, each astronomer was to a large extent the master of his own work. Leverrier undertook to change all this in a twinkling, and, if reports are true, without much regard to the feelings of the astronomers. Those who refused to fall into line either resigned or were driven away, and their places were filled with men willing to work under the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the Panjab, however, Captain Temple ascribes to children marvellous power of telling tales, which he states they are not slow to exercise after sunset, when the scanty evening meal is done and they huddle together in their little beds beneath the twinkling stars, while the hot air cools, the mosquito sings, and the village dogs bark at imaginary foes. The Rev. Hinton Knowles' collection was gathered in Cashmere apparently from men and boys only; but all classes contributed, from the governor ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... I'm sure. Aw dedn't knaw Crows had another passenger to-night." A husky voice spoke unseen. "'Taint often it 'appens." There was the splutter of a match, and as it flared up Barrant saw a pair of twinkling grey eyes regarding him from a brown and rugged face. "Old Garge never reckons on haavin' passengers back by th' laast wagonette, so 'e never lights up inside. I'll make a light now, then we'll be more comfortable." He struck another ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... On the twinkling grass, Rain-awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... go away for the present, but would return for him in a few days in a carriage drawn by four grey horses. He told her to 'be aisy,' and not speak like that to him. 'I have paid dear for you for the last three nights,' he said, 'if I have to part with you now;' but in the twinkling of an eye she had disappeared. He did not know what to do with himself when he saw that she was gone, but before she went she had given him a little rod, with which he could, when he pleased, waken the men who had been sleeping there, some ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... colours of the earth, Ere nun-like frost Lay her hard hand upon this rainbow mirth, With twinkling emerald crossed. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... like the feeling he would have if, sitting in a hammock, someone sat down beside him. Immediately following this came a terrific explosion, numbing in its intensity, and a wall of maddened water leaped past the rail for a hundred feet into the air. In a twinkling Tim dragged him through the door, as a shower of debris came down upon the place where they had been sitting. The huge smoke funnel crashed to the deck, scattering soot in all directions, then balanced an instant, and plunged ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... there! Mr. Nipper, clap a canister of grape over the round shot in the bow gun, give it to him." "Ay, ay, sir!" gleefully rejoined the boatswain, forgetting the augury, and everything else, in the excitement of the moment. In a twinkling the square foresail—topgallant—royal and studding-sail haulyards, were let go on board the schooner, as if to round to. "Rake him, sir, or give him the stern. He has not surrendered. I know their game. Give him your broadside, sir, or he is off to windward of you, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... at the blue sky. Perhaps it was because he thought it was Charley's home. He watched every evening for the moon, with her silvery light, and for the twinkling stars. ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... The twinkling eye, the humorous accent, which had won Piers' affection, soon allayed his disquietude at being in this house. He spoke of his own recent excursion, confessing that he better appreciated London from ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... for their cars. Vidac continued to look at Astro, a thin smile tugging at his lips, his eyes twinkling. "You stay here with me, ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... attempt a strolling minstrel visited the kingdom of the Emperor. One evening he was playing his one-stringed instrument outside a dark wall. It was a summer's evening, and the sun had sunk in a glory of dusty gold, and in the violet twilight one or two stars were twinkling like spearheads. There was an incessant noise made by the croaking of frogs and the chatter of grasshoppers. The minstrel was singing a short song over and over again to a monotonous tune. The sense of it was something ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... her face laughing with a show of cheek-dimples, an arching of finely sketched brows and the twinkling of large blue-gray eyes. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... God—the centre and source of good—is every where radiant with beauty. From the shell that lies buried in the depths of the ocean, to the twinkling star that floats in the more profound depths of the firmament—through all the forms of material and animated existence, beauty, beauty, beauty prevails! In the floral kingdom, it appears in an infinite variety—in an unstinted and even a richer profusion ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... out over far olive-yards and gardens, and the bright roofs and basins of the Piraeus, and the broad blue sea, with the purple peaks of Aegina beyond all.... And a dark-eyed boy, with his arm around her neck, pointed laughing to the twinkling masts in the far harbour, and called her sister.... The dead soul woke within her; and with a wild cry she recoiled from him in an agony of shame, and covering her face with both her hands, sank ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... decorations, the wreaths, the gauze, the tinsel, and paper angels, suspended by invisible wires over the counters, and all glittering and shining and twinkling with light, a strong whiff of evergreen fragrance came to her, and the aroma of fir-balsam, and it was to her the very breath of all the mysterious joy and hitherto untasted festivity of this earth into which she had come. She felt deep in her childish soul the sense of a promise of happiness ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... you ought to be if you're jogging round the country together," said the other, her eyes twinkling. "But if you're not, take warning, padre. A girl that talks about corsets in public isn't respectable, especially as she doesn't wear them herself, except in the evening, for the sake of other things. Or she used not to. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... ached with the strain of her position; but her fingers lacked cunning to solve the secret; and in the end, when on the point of climbing down to fetch matches, she heard a sound that chilled her heart and checked her breath in a twinkling—an odd, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... that he should be witty, and of a woman that she should be entertaining. The world of the boulevards—with its cafes and restaurants and theatres—was the accepted rallying point of the authors and poets, the painters and musicians, and the lights twinkling in the theatrical and journalistic firmaments, the men in velveteen jackets and peg-top trousers, the women in flounced skirts and shawls and elastic-sided boots. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of time] Instantaneity — N. instantaneity, instantaneousness, immediacy; suddenness, abruptness. moment, instant, second, minute; twinkling, trice, flash, breath, crack, jiffy, coup, burst, flash of lightning, stroke of time. epoch, time; time of day, time of night; hour, minute; very minute &c, very time, very hour; present time, right time, true time, exact correct time. V. be instantaneous &c adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... did not know, several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man with twinkling eyes. "Noo tak. Fine, our hospital, don't you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here, golubchik, this way.... Finger, is it? Oh! that's nothing. Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors?... scissors, some one. One moment.... One ... moment. Ah! there ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... yellow skin, two inches wide, down the center—a gridiron with a spoke broken out; and some with the entire face discolored with the popular mortification tint, relieved only by one or two thin, wavy threads of natural yellow running across the face from ear to ear, and eyes twinkling out of this darkness, from under shadowing hat-brims, like stars in the dark ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... embankment, where he stripped off his overcoat and wrapped it about her. But she was hardly conscious of what he was doing, for suddenly everything seemed to be spinning round her. The lights of the torches bobbed up and down in a confused blur of twinkling stars, the sound of voices and the trampling of feet came faintly to her ears as from a great way off, while the grim, black bulk of the piled-up coaches of the train seemed to lean nearer and nearer, until finally it swooped down ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... turn or term of his life, has longed for supernatural powers and a glimpse of Wonderland. Here he is in the midst of it. Here he sees mighty spirits summoned to work the human mite's will, however whimsical; who can transport him in an eye-twinkling whithersoever he wishes; who can ruin cities and build palaces of gold and silver, gems and jacinths; who can serve up delicate viands and delicious drinks in priceless chargers and impossible cups, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Then Drona struck Vasudeva with five arrows. And he struck Arjuna with three and seventy arrows, and his standard with three. Then, O king, the valorous Drona getting the better of his disciple, within the twinkling of an eye made Arjuna invisible by means of his arrowy showers. We then beheld the shafts of Bharadwaja's son falling in continuous lines, and his bow also was seen to present the wonderful aspect of being incessantly drawn to a circle. And those shafts, countless in number, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the river late that evening, and after watering, grazed until dark and camped for the night. But it was not to be a night of rest and sleep, for the lights were twinkling across the river in town; and cook, horse wrangler, and all, with the exception of the first guard, rode across the river after the herd had been bedded. Flood had quit us while we were watering the herd and gone in ahead to get a draft cashed, for he was as moneyless as the rest ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... to touch the cod's disgusting head; It was because the weather was too warm To hide the horror in the refuse-bin, And too intense the perfume of its form, My wife commanded me to do the sin, To take and cast it in the twinkling Thames— A practice which the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... the road to Wasen, and some twinkling lights and a huge crimson eye at the entrance to the great tunnel told us that we had done the ten miles to Goeschenen. No one stirred in the streets of the village, and, gliding cat-like past the station, Jack put the car at the beginning of the real ascent of the famous St. Gothard Road. The ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... man, with a foreign air, and quick, restless manner. His features were small, a heavy beard and mustache covered his face, his brow was low, and his eyes black and twinkling. A sharp, furtive glance which he gave at Brandon attracted the attention of the latter, for there was something in the glance that meant ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the lights of Boma could be distinctly seen, twinkling silently over the bay of the town. They dropped anchor among a score of other vessels; and the long ocean trip became a ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... the small, fleet hand was dashed across the twinkling, tearful eyes of this April day of a middle-aged man of the world—this modern Mercutio—merry and mournful at once, as if there were two sides to his every mood, like the famous shield of story. When we reached ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... would sarve mun but he must be a drummer; and one of the drummers took up with mun and taught mun almost so soon as he was big enough to hold the sticks, and it was wonderful to see how quick he learned. It was pretty, too, to see his little hands a-twinkling, for very soon he could beat so well as any of mun. So he became a bit of a favourite, for he was a sweet pretty boy, and the officers took notice of mun, and the tailor he made mun a little coat and breeches and ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... have been content still to look and to listen, down in the hidden tiny ways of the marshland, but for the fading light that warned us homeward. What would night be among the sedges with the wandering rivulets full of twinkling stars, with the soft calling of wakeful birds, and with the skurrying of little creatures in ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... sate goodly Shamefastnesse, Ne ever durst, her eyes from ground upreare, Ne ever once did looke up from her desse,[149] As if some blame of evill she did feare That in her cheekes made roses oft appeare: And her against sweet Cherefulnesse was placed, Whose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening cleare, Were deckt with smyles that ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... little man, - for he is, as it were, chubby all over, without being stout or unwieldy, - but yesterday his alacrity was so very uncommon that it quite took me by surprise. For could I fail to observe when he came up to me that his gray eyes were twinkling in a most extraordinary manner, that his little red nose was in an unusual glow, that every line in his round bright face was twisted and curved into an expression of pleased surprise, and that his whole countenance was radiant with glee? I was still more surprised to ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... very superb indeed. For the whole building was dressed in red; and the sinking sun, streaming in, through a great red curtain in the chief doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own. When the sun went down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, except for a few twinkling tapers on the principal altar, and some small dangling silver lamps, it was very mysterious and effective. But, sitting in any of the churches towards evening, is like ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... replied, his eyes twinkling; "once I fell off my boat at the mouth of Bear Creek, and, although I'm an expert swimmer, I guess I'd be there now if it hadn't been for my crew. You see the water was just deep enough so's to be over my head when I tried to wade out, and just shallow ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the fruit of which this keen-eyed Blackbird made up his mind to regale himself at no very distant period. Altogether, his day, which had begun so unpromisingly, was a decided success, and that night, as he fluttered to rest in the ivy, and saw the little silver stars peeping and twinkling at him through the warm green curtains of his canopy, he thought of all the little Robin's wise words. It was with a chirp of sincere thankfulness that he tucked his head ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... him, which was lighting itself up for the night, for the abominations of that accomplice night which, like fine dust, was little by little submerging the expanse of roofs. And the hateful monstrosity of it all howled aloud under the pale sky where the first pure, twinkling stars were gleaming. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... In the twinkling of an eye the scene was changed, the Vernons with their peculiarities were consigned to the limbo of forgotten things, while boys and girls squatted on the rug scrambling for nuts out of a paper bag, and cracking them with their teeth ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to love you. I am sorry, on your account, you should employ these talents in a work which is so little worthy of them. A few months ago the Duke de Richelieu commanded me to make, absolutely in the twinkling of an eye, a little and bad sketch of a few insipid and imperfect scenes to be adapted to divertissements which are not of a nature to be joined with them. I obeyed with the greatest exactness. I wrote very fast, and very ill. I sent this wretched production to M. de Richelieu, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... against the sky; the stars came out in twinkling myriads and the dash and roar of the river was an accompaniment to their ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... had darted through the line like a bullet. Without slackening speed or veering from his course, he scooped up the ball as he fled toward the Yale goal-line. It was done and over within a twinkling, and while the Yale team stampeded helplessly in his wake the devastating hero was circling behind the goal-posts where he flopped to earth, the precious ball apparently embedded in his stomach. It was ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) |
