Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Illumination   Listen
noun
Illumination  n.  
1.
The act of illuminating, or supplying with light; the state of being illuminated.
2.
Festive decoration of houses or buildings with lights.
3.
Adornment of books and manuscripts with colored illustrations. See Illuminate, v. t., 3.
4.
That which is illuminated, as a house; also, an ornamented book or manuscript.
5.
That which illuminates or gives light; brightness; splendor; especially, intellectual light or knowledge. "The illumination which a bright genius giveth to his work."
6.
(Theol.) The special communication of knowledge to the mind by God; inspiration. "Hymns and psalms... are framed by meditation beforehand, or by prophetical illumination are inspired."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Illumination" Quotes from Famous Books



... when seen at an unaccustomed hour, their time of activity and bustle past. The rooms were littered with torn papers; waste-baskets overflowing; looking silent, scrappy, and abandoned in the grey morning light which seemed intrusive, usurping the place of the usual artificial illumination, and betraying a bareness which the other concealed. Jennie recognized a relationship between her own up-all-night feeling and the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... more transparent than cadmiums and less obtrusive, the new yellow is adapted for mellow sunset and sunrise clouds, or for sunshine on distant mountains. With French blue it affords a beautiful sea green; and, mixed with aureolin, gives fine foliage tints. It is also eligible for draperies and illumination. For enamelling it is inadmissible, the colour being destroyed by great heat; but in fresco it may safely ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... rising sun were shining upon the door of it. The window through which they entered was a small one, and the mornings of the year in which they so fell were not many. When he opened the door, they shot straight to the back of the closet, lighting with rare illumination the little place, commonly so dusky that in it one book could hardly be distinguished from another. It was as if a sudden angel had entered a dungeon. When the door fell to behind him, as was its custom, the place felt so dark that he seemed to have lost ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... in his day for virgins to pretend to be with child by the Holy Ghost; and so we do not criticise those who refuse to accept the dogma of the virgin birth. But a little reflection in the light of what we have been discussing throws a wonderful illumination upon the question. If matter and material modes are real, then we must at once relegate the stories of the virgin birth, the miracles, the resurrection, and the ascension to the realm of myth. If the so-called laws of matter are real, irrefragable ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... in truth the eve of an epoch of illumination, and in these epochs it is not old academic systems that the new light is wont to strike with its first rays. The summer of 1831 is the date of Sir William Hamilton's memorable exposure,[38] in his most trenchant and terrifying style and with a learning all his own, of the corruption ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... still lay across the world. It meant nothing but illumination to Kingozi. By its light he discerned a paper lying against a bush; and since paper of any sort is ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... The favorable hour came. The sun went down in clouds, and a night of Egyptian darkness enveloped the armies. The glimmer of innumerable camp-fires only pointed out the position of the foe, without throwing any illumination upon the field. Eugene visited all the posts of the army, ordered abundant refreshment to be distributed to the troops, addressed them in encouraging words, to impress upon them the importance of the enterprise, and minutely assigned to each battalion, regiment, brigade ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... melancholy, or prophetic of future misfortune and woe. Flashes of enthusiasm, too, shot along his conversation, gleaming like the sheet-lightening of an autumn eve, which throws a strong, though momentary illumination, across the sober twilight, and all the surrounding objects, which, touched by it, assume a wilder and more striking character. In general, however, Bridgenorth's remarks were plain and sensible; and as he aimed at no ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... The sudden illumination of Mr. Hornblower's heavy features indicated that he had grasped Persis' metaphor. He broke out eagerly. "Now, that's just what I was saying to my wife. If ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... her other hand over his, considering him earnestly. Ailsa looking on, astonished, noticed a singular radiance on his face—the pale transfiguration from some quick inward illumination. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... was a little bit in awe of the matronly descendant of the ancient Spanish grandees. She might be a powerful personage in more ways than one. At all events, Ned was led out to the central hall and across it, to where an uncommonly wide door stood open, letting out a flood of illumination. ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard

... on down the inclined gallery. Water splashed upon his slickers and trickled about his feet; the tunnel was narrow and the air was foul. Here and there a smoky light burned among the props lining the walls, and the dim illumination touched the beams that crossed the roof, but the gaps between the spots were dark. The timbers were numerous, and where one could see a short distance, ran on into the gloom in rows so closely spaced that they ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... the roads at night with all the horrors of the Rome of Juvenal. Oil lamps flickered freely in some of the better streets, but even these were not lit so long as any suggestion of twilight served for {72} an excuse to delay the illumination. When the moon shone they were not lit at all. Link-boys drove a busy trade in lighting belated wanderers to their homes, and saving them from the perils of places where the pavement was taken up or where open sewers yawned. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... has simply failed: but next comes a worse result; an evil, not negative but positive. Because, thirdly, to apply the light of a revelation for the benefit of a merely human science, which is virtually done by so applying the illumination of an inspired teacher, is—to assault capitally the scheme of God's discipline and training for man. To improve by heavenly means, if but in one solitary science—to lighten, if but in one solitary section, the condition of difficulty which ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... in the emancipation of the American colonies from the monarchy, Burke's political genius shone with an effulgence that was worthy of the great affairs over which it shed so magnificent an illumination. His speeches are almost the one monument of the struggle on which a lover of English greatness can look back with pride and a sense of worthiness, such as a churchman feels when he reads Bossuet, or an Anglican when he turns over ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... mystery, for, whichever way he turns, a wall of darkness rises before him; but down upon the present, as through a skylight between the shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal colors into the clear harmony of light. The author of Proverbial Philosophy has a passage not unworthy of note in this ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Sir Gawayne and the Grene Kny[gh]t follows, fol. 91. Prefixed is an illumination of a headless knight on horseback, carrying his head by its hair in his right hand, and looking benignly at an odd-eyed bill-man before him; while from a raised structure above, a king armed with a knife, his queen, an attendant with ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... life except in a feeble, red glow through the Venetian blinds of the many windows of one large room. Within, a huge fire of mighty logs lit up with distinctness only the middle space, and fell with variable illumination on a silent ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell

... Saturday in the Place Vendome. In honour of his election, M. Bernard Jansoulet, the new deputy for Corsica, gave a magnificent evening party, with municipal guards at the door, illumination of the entire mansion, and two thousand invitations sent ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... dark out on the lawn in contrast with the brilliant illumination of the house, and Barbara was running swiftly. She had begun to wonder what explanation she could make if Harriet or Mr. Hamlin asked where she had been. As usual, Barbara was repenting a rash impulse ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... with an ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations . . . with frank affections, inexhaustible hopes, audacities, activities, and general radiant vivacity of heart and intelligence, which made the presence of him an illumination ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... order, he stalked out of the room. And now commenced a fearful scene. The lovers were torn from each other's arms, and the women were brought forth again. The storm had grown more violent, and the spray was dashing far over the cliff, whilst the vivid flashes of lightning afforded a horrible illumination to the dreary scene. Proceeding along the brink of the precipice, they at length came to a chasm which resembled somewhat the crater of a volcano, as it was completely closed, with the exception of the opening at the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... husbands who have been made more just, more tolerant, more large-hearted and large-headed, by their wives; for justice lives in a drier light than that of the affections, and dry light is not a very popular mode of illumination under "the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... grin and twirl his pointed mustache in the faint illumination. "Zay are very numerous," he laughed. But the Gaul had no sooner swung his weight against the wheel ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... shady lane, fire from somewhere began to make a certain illumination in spite of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... New Zealander is, we know, to sketch our own "mediaevalism" with contemptuous pity for its darkness. But until his day comes, our farthing-dips seem to make a gaudy illumination. And, meantime, we are alive; we walk about; we, too, can swell the chorus which the Initiated chant in every century with the same fond confidence: "We alone enjoy the ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... and great men? Such a life is a sun, and it casts a disk of light upon the very earth on which it shines; not that flashy circle which the lens of the microscope casts upon the opposite wall, to show how scarcely visible mites may be magnified; but a soft and steady illumination that does not dim under the beating storms and bleaching dews of centuries, but grows brighter and brighter, as if the seed-rays that made it first multiplied themselves from year to year. The earth becomes more and more thickly dotted with these permanent disks of light, and each is visited ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... through Pall Mall, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly, followed all along by a great concourse of people. In St. James's Street the water had previously created abundance of mud, and this material the crowd bestowed upon some public offices which were prepared for an illumination. During the whole course of her Majesty's progress no ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... perhaps at that time that their science had brought the Schree type into existence. There were perhaps a hundred of them at work in the big chamber—a chamber bewilderingly filled with hanging surgical non-glare lights, filling the place with a shadowless illumination, revealing great, gurgling bottles of fluid with tubes and gleaming metal rods; pulsing elastic bulbs; throbbing little pumps, with row on row of gauges and dials and little levers along ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... expectation of beholding the watchful and warning fires gleaming there, to give the mariner notice of the position of the dangers that surrounded the place. Minute went by after minute, however, and the customary illumination seemed to ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... light affords, probably, the strongest and best illumination for the magic lantern; then comes the magnesium light; but their use is a little troublesome and rather expensive; next to these in illuminating power is the oxy-hydrogen or Drummond light. The preparation of the gases and the use of the calcium ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... Worm wheel and worm are carefully cut, and protected by brass shields. Right ascension and declination circles have fine graduation on solid silver and coarse finding graduation on the edge. Electric illumination and magnifying glasses are fitted to the verniers. The handles for all clamps and slow motions are fastened conveniently near the eye end of the telescope and are of different shape so as to distinguish in the dark right ascension and declination. The axes are of tool steel carefully fitted to ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.

... they watched and waited— While the silver moon was racing Through the silken clouds, and flooding All the bay and hills and ocean With a pale illumination, Casting moving shadows earthward When a dark cloud passed before her. Wild Coyotes broke the silence Of the midnight with their barking, And the prowling Wolves crept nearer, Till the patter of their footsteps Could be heard in ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell

... of Nature be indeed a truth, our contemplation of her beauty and marvel is seen to be a method of illumination, and her varied spectacle actually a sacred book in picture-writing, a revelation through the eye of the soul of the stupendous purport of the universe. The sun and the moon are the torches by which we ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... moon swam in the zenith. For three days now that rare clarity had hung in the sky, and for three nights the moon had grown. Its benign, poisonous illumination flowed down steeply through the windows of the dark chamber where Christopher huddled on the bed's edge, three pale, chill islands ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... your winter stock of provisions. In the middle of these huts, however, palaces have been erected, and a number of churches, whose green and gilt cupolas singularly draw the attention. When towards the evening the sun darts his rays on these brilliant domes, you would fancy that it was rather an illumination for a festival, than ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... and the red peppers that grew in the starch-box at the window gave quite a cheerful appearance to the room. In the corner, under a cheap print of the Virgin Mary with the Child, a small night-light in a blue glass was always kept burning. It was a kind of illumination in honor of the Mother of God, through which the widow's devout nature found expression. Paolo always looked upon it as a very solemn show. When he said his prayers, the sweet, patient eyes in the picture seemed to watch him with a mild look ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... highest honour among the opinions of the early Quakers, the Anabaptists, the Muggletonians, the Fifth Monarchy men, and other fanatics of recent memory. Did not the very meaning of the word 'enthusiasm,' as well as its history, point plainly out that it is grounded on the belief in such inward illumination? And who, with the examples of the preceding age before him, could foretell to what dangerous extremes enthusiasm might lead its excited followers? Whenever, therefore, any writers of the eighteenth century had occasion to speak of man's ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... Saxham, with a curious smile that made no illumination in his sombre face. "For Death! There is no better friend than Death, my child, either for you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... echoes of the pistol shots, as the bass bellow of his sire might dominate the feeble bleatings of a new-born calf. A vivid flash split the night. In the momentary illumination details were limned sharply—the buildings, the groups of men on one side, the running figures on the other. And poised, stationary, as it seemed, in mid-air, above the instant eruption, hung a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust, specked with fragments of riven ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... the door, and they slipped inside. The air was warmed by a big stove, and the room—for the afternoon was dark—lighted by two swinging lanterns suspended from the low roof. By that illumination Father Anthony saw two men stripped naked, save for a loincloth, and circling each other slowly in the center of a ring which was fenced in with ropes and floored with a ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... staircase and waited respectfully for the queen to pass. As she came on, passing alternately through the shadow cast by the columns, and the sunlight that blazed between, her advancing figure flashed with a new illumination at every step. She made as though she were going straight on, but as she passed over the threshold to the staircase, she suddenly stopped and turned half round, and ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... hymns and services, which we say daily, of laud and thanks to God for His marvellous works. And forms of prayers, imploring His aid and blessing for the illumination of our labours; and turning them ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... From the illumination in the Dalton sink window, Caleb thought Amanda sat in the kitchen evenings, but she didn't. She said she kept the second light there because she could afford it, and because the cat liked it. The cat enjoyed ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Steele's heart went cold in the belief that his father had died under the effect of his declaration. But at last the eyelids raised, the eyes gazed at him. And all at once the features of the harsh visage seemed softened, changed, lightened by a dim illumination. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... impartially, his loathing strangely tempered by a sort of self-contempt, that he should have been so deluded. The clumsy lies which this man had told him, and which he in his indolent charity had believed! All at once, and finally, in a flash of brutal illumination, he saw Lightmark, who had once been his friend, as he really was, naked and unclean. It stripped him of all his superficial qualities; the mask of genial good-nature, the air of good-fellowship, under which his gross egoism lay concealed that it might be more securely mischievous ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... It opened and a wan and pathetically drooping little figure stood before him. Ever since she had been awake Ruth, had been haunted by that unwelcome bit of memory illumination which had come the night before. No wonder she drooped and scarcely dared to lift her eyes to her lover's face. But in a moment he had her in his arms, a performance which banished the droop and brought a lovely color back into the ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... have been said of the illumination next introduced. Now, however, common kerosene lamps are no longer so much of a sight even in Japan. Indeed, I had the assurance to ask for a shade to go with the one they set on the table in all the glaring nudity of a plain chimney. This there was some difficulty ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... fork, brusquely, as though by the virtue of a sudden illumination he had been made aware of poison in his plate, and became positive in his mind that he could never swallow another morsel of food as long as he lived. The dinner went on in a room that had been steadily growing, from some cause, hotter than a furnace. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... their tones, and in a little while their shouts rang as merrily as though they were boys at play. Never before had I realized that coyotes too had enjoyments, and I listened to their shouts with pleasure. At last the illumination faded from the cathedral grove and its templed top stood in charcoal against the clear heavens as I fell asleep ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... they can employ are entirely dependent upon this element. He defined the term "rock-pressure", and showed the decrease of its rate westward. He said four hundred thousand people in Northwestern Ohio and Central Indiana alone depended upon natural-gas for fuel and illumination. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... than his declaration of love. For hours he had sought for it, cudgelling his brain to discover an explanation; but only now, as he cantered along through the bush with his spirits rising in harmony with the glories of an Australian dawn, did illumination ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... during which, turn whither he would, life responded with nothing but negations to every question and appeal. And as to Teufelsdroeckh in the Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer in Paris, so to Carlyle in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, there had come a moment of sudden and marvellous illumination, a mystical crisis from which he had emerged a different man. The parallelism is so obvious and so close as to leave no room for doubt that the story of Teufelsdroeckh is substantially a ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... it is true, had given to the world his immortal vision, and Boccaccio, its first expounder, had shown the capabilities of Italian prose. But the light of Florentine culture was even for Italy a partial illumination. On the whole, we may say that modern literature did not exist, and the Oriental had not yet come to light. What wonder that the classics were received with boundless enthusiasm! It was through the influence of that enthusiasm that the study of Greek was introduced into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... like the excellent minion he was, Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass, Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, When a great illumination surprises a festal night— Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire) Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... of industry in Archidona is the manufacture of pita thread from the aloe. It is exported to Quito on human backs. The inhabitants also collect copal at the headwaters of the Hondachi, and use it for illumination. It can be bought in Archidona for three or four cents a pound. The gum exudes from a lofty leguminous tree having an oak-like bark. It resembles the anime of Madagascar rather than the copal of India, which flows from an entirely different tree. Guayusa, or "Napo ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... out of the house, and hurrying as fast as he could toward the shore. He had gone but a short way when the rain struck him, and soon he was drenched to the skin. He could only direct his course by the flashes of lightning, and after each illumination the darkness was more intense than ever. As he neared the shore, he stopped and peered anxiously forward, and by the next vivid streak which followed a terrific crash, he caught one fleeting glimpse of the "Eb and Flo." She was still there, and her sail was down. He breathed ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... electric-light company was organized in that city, and this brilliant illuminant was introduced not only into the streets and stores, but into many private houses. Shortly after its introduction, the family was converted to the superiority of the new method of illumination, and passed at one leap from the old-style lantern to the latest product of the nineteenth century. This incident is considered typical of the transformations characteristic of modern Japan. It is supposed that New Japan is in no proper sense ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... there could be heard a scraping noise, as the two boys lowered themselves down into the opening. Fred struck another match, which he held up in order to give them the benefit of the feeble illumination. Assisted by this light, both of the newcomers managed to reach the side of their chum without encountering ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... gleamed, and there was a strangely disarming quality in the smile that broke in sudden illumination over his dark face. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... applied his candle to the rush-thatched eaves of the house, and with the utmost coolness watched to see how the flames would spread. By the light of the fire he could the more comfortably calculate how much money he had got for this illumination. He found he could hire three good houses for it in the neighbouring town of Szeged, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... from utter darkness, the light admitted into three windows produced, to my eyes, a considerable illumination. Objects which, on my first entrance into this apartment, were invisible, were now clearly discerned. The bed was shrouded by curtains, yet I shrunk back into my covert, fearful of being seen. To facilitate my escape, I put ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... of art had rendered you more susceptible to the impressions of beauty in any form. You supposed yourself alone— when you saw a maiden who, I will readily allow, may have been very beautiful, and whose charms were heightened by a favorable illumination of the setting sun, a graceful attitude, and an expression of fervent devotion—what is more natural than that your vivid fancy should look upon such a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... lighter than that of mould-running and clay-wedging, and the pay was somewhat higher. But there were minor disadvantages. He descended by twenty steps to his toil, and worked in a long cellar which never received any air except by way of the steps and a passage, and never any daylight at all. Its sole illumination was a stove used for drying. The 'throwers'' and the 'turners'' rooms were also subterranean dungeons. When in full activity all these stinking cellars were full of men, boys, and young women, working close together in a hot twilight. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... Bute, and I know not what questionable figures and intrigues, or suspicions of intrigue, much about her. His Duchess, Louisa Dorothee, is a Princess of distinguished qualities, literary tastes,—Voltaire's Hostess, Friedrich's Correspondent: a bright and quietly shining illumination to the circle she inhabits. Duke is now fifty-eight, Duchess forty-seven; and they lost their eldest Son last year. There has been lately a considerable private brabble as to Tutorage of the Duke of Weimar (Wilhelmina's maddish Duke, who is dead lately; and a Prince left, who soon died also, but ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... of illumination she realised that the frail blossom of love which had been tentatively budding in the garden of her heart was dead—withered, starved out of existence ere it had quite believed in ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... elaborated: the facts which demand them become first prominent; then, to the period of observation succeeds a period of pondering and of tentative explanation. By such efforts the human mind is gradually prepared for the final theoretic illumination. The colours of thin plates, for example, occupied the attention of Robert Boyle. In his 'Experimental History of Colours' he contends against the schools which affirmed that colour was 'a penetrative quality that reaches to the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... bracket above his bench, reflector and all, and you will see us, a row of dusky figures, Baxter in the lead, proceeding down the roadway to the schoolhouse. Having arrived, some one scratches a match, shields it with his hand (I see yet the sudden fitful illumination of the brown-bearded, watchful faces of my neighbours!) and Baxter guides us into the schoolhouse—with its shut-in dusty odours of chalk and varnished desks and—yes, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... the Rat said, "that you may throw raw and unnecessary illumination upon all the unloveliness in the world. Unloveliness which we shall—er—have always with us. At the same time you will riotously neglect the so-called little but vital graces that make ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... of the people, environed as they are on every side with Jenkinsons, Percevals, Melvilles, and other perils, were to pray for divine illumination and aid, what more could Providence in its mercy do than send them the example of Scotland? For what a length of years was it attempted to compel the Scotch to change their religion: horse, foot, artillery, and armed ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... how Shelley ever got his big illumination that curls was not a curse put on him by his Maker. But he certainly did get it when he was round twelve. After two years of finish fights he suddenly found out that curls is optional, or a boy's own fault, if not his mother's, and that they may be cured by a simple and painless ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... the lights at once, and put them in all the principal rooms of the house. We will have an illumination in honor of our arrival, papa," she said, in a sprightly tone, turning to him with one of her sweetest smiles, "and besides, I want to see the whole ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... moment, for she saw how little simple was the crux of her destiny. The two of them had been set apart by the fates; each had salvation to work out alone; no facile union would ever join them. For him there was the shaping of a man's path; for her the illumination which only sorrows and parting can bring. And with the thought she thought kindly of the man to whom she had pledged her word. It was but a little corner of her heart he could ever possess; but doubtless in such matters he was ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation." He has spoken of the wealth of blessing stored up in Christ (ver. 3), and of God's grace abounding to us in all wisdom and prudence (ver. 8). Now he asks for wisdom and illumination to perceive all this for themselves as a personal experience. The word "spirit" seems to refer to their human faculty, though of course as indwelt and possessed by the Divine Spirit. But the absence of the definite article ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas

... who have lived so long; but I am able to enjoy my newly reopened life. I shall be a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for the gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet. I was getting hard, and if I had decided differently I think I should ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... realm of the corona; here he would find scattered particles of matter, the bits so far apart that there would perhaps be not more than one or two in the cubic mile; yet, as they would glow intensely in the central light, they would be sufficient to give the illumination which is visible in an eclipse. These particles are most likely driven up from the sun by some electrical action, and are constantly in motion, much as are the ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... now before the public, which show conclusively that the use of ardent spirit tends strongly to hinder the moral and spiritual illumination and purification of men; and thus to prevent their salvation, and bring upon them the horrors ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... lightning was of considerable assistance to the trapped saddle boys, for it enabled them to see. Frank had lost his lantern during the climb, as it was torn from his belt by a rock he struck; so that only for this heavenly illumination they must have been in utter darkness. And when peril threatens it is some satisfaction at least to ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... Austria, and they felt that their victory had been carried too far. They condemned the imitation of Louis XVI., whose sad fate was attributed to a similar selection." But the fickle crowd which assembled, eager for pleasure in the park of Saint Cloud, made no such reflections. "The illumination of the park," says the Moniteur, "had been arranged with infinite art; the fountains were rendered more brilliant by the lights which were thrown upon the cascades. The great waterfall especially produced a magical effect. Poets, in their description of enchanted ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... Fisher, Lord, destroyer programme of, Fisher, Captain W.W., Director of Anti-Submarine Division, tribute to, Fitzherbert, Rear-Admiral the Hon. Edward, appointed Director of Torpedoes and Mines, "Flares," for night illumination of minefields, Folkestone-Cape Grisnez mine barrage, Ford Company, the (U.S.A.), France, the Staff organization at G.H.Q. in, Fremantle, Rear-Admiral Sydney, French, Sir John (Field-Marshal Viscount), French ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... presented when finally a few half-hearted torches were pressed into use to produce a scant illumination. What had been a commonplace scene now was become one of tragedy. The bank of this willow-covered island had assumed the appearance of a hostile shore. Combat, collision, war had taken the place of recent peace and silence. The night seemed ominous, as though not even these ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... but puffery? Why do little children learn their letters at school, but that they may come hereafter to read puffs at college? Why but for the propagation of puffs do honorary lecturers hold forth upon science, and gratuitous editors circulate literature? Are not gas-lights chiefly used for their illumination, and steamboats for their spread? And shall not history, which has given to one era the name of the age of gold, and has entitled another the age of silver, call this present nineteenth ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford

... to the huge shed, however, Ned chanced to look down the enclosure. There were several arc lights burning, but even these only furnished a dim illumination ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... white ghost in her wedding gown, her little slippers stumbling over the stones, her breath coming sobbingly as she ran. They followed her. Back of them, at the great fire whose illumination deepened the shadows here, rose a murmur, a rising of curious people, a pressing forward to the Wingate station. But of these none knew the truth, and it was curiosity that now sought answer for the delay in ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... Carter, having sent away his boats, was reduced to a Carley float, an apparatus like an exaggerated life-buoy, with the floor of a grating. Upon contact with the water it ignited a calcium flare and he was adrift in the uncanny illumination with a German machine gun a few hundred yards away giving him its undivided attention. What saved him was possibly the fact that the defunct Intrepid still was emitting huge clouds of smoke which it had been ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... of illumination and calligraphy have been primary objects in the collectors' eyes, and that is the ruling passion with most of those who buy MSS. nowadays. At the beginning of the nineteenth century what was more coveted ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... of itself, and what is poetry alike in accident and essence. In all his work before the Odes of 1868, Patmore had been writing down to his conception of what poetry ought to be; when, through I know not what suffering, or contemplation, or actual inner illumination, his whole soul had been possessed by this new conception of what poetry could be, he began to write as finely, and not only as neatly, as he was able. The poetry which came, came fully clothed, in a form of irregular but not lawless ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... crusades, the various orders of Dervises were multiplied by the example of the Christian, and even the Latin, monks. [14] The lord of nations submitted to fast, and pray, and turn round [141] in endless rotation with the fanatics, who mistook the giddiness of the head for the illumination of the spirit. [15] But he was soon awakened from his dreams of enthusiasm by the Hungarian invasion; and his obedient son was the foremost to urge the public danger and the wishes of the people. Under the banner of their veteran ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... that illumination has shone only from far off, there may still be something to learn about its component elements; for it has come to consist of many separate rays, and the weary strain of the last year has been the spectroscope to decompose them. From the very beginning, when one felt the effulgence ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... Oriental simplicity, not to say economy. But Balsamides had sent down a bale of beautiful carpets, which he lent me for the occasion, and which I had hung upon the walls and spread upon the floors and divans. Tea, coffee, sherbet, a beautiful view, and a little illumination of the gardens, constituted the whole entertainment, but the enthusiasm of my guests knew no bounds, probably because they had never seen anything of ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... remembered that the 2nd December was the anniversary of the coronation of the emperor. The soldiers gathered up the straw upon which they were stretched, making it into bundles, which they lit at the end of poles; a sudden illumination lit up the camp. "Be assured," said an old grenadier, advancing towards the chief who had so many times led his comrades to victory, "I promise thee that we will bring thee to-morrow the flags and the cannon of the Russian army to signalize the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... staying out in the raw winds; but from the windows everything was apparent, and silently they watched the rapid progress of the flames. The fire had caught in the lower part of the building, and was advancing up from floor to floor with its horrid illumination ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... wondrously complex problem for the individual, until, some day, in a moment of illumination, he awakens to the great realization that he can make it simple,—never quite simple, but always simpler. There are a thousand mysteries of right and wrong that have baffled the wise men of the ages. There are depths in the great fundamental questions of the human race that no plummet of philosophy ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... for roofing the palace apartments, we come naturally to investigate their system of illumination. In view of the extravagant thickness of their walls it is difficult to believe that they made use of such openings as we should call windows. The small loop-holes that appear in some of the bas-reliefs near the summits of towers and fortified walls were mere embrasures, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... by this convective process. If it is not charged to start with, the electrons will still be liberated at the surface of the body, and this will acquire a positive charge. If the body is positively charged at first, we cannot discharge it by illumination. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... magnificent stereographs of the Moon, to be had at every optician's; to the clear and correct map prepared by Lecouturier and Chapuis in 1860; to the many beautiful pictures of the Moon in various phases of illumination obtained by the Messrs. Bond of Harvard University; to Rutherford's (of New York) unparalleled lunar photographs; and finally to Nasmyth and Carpenter's wonderful work on the Moon, illustrated by photographs ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... Harmer's house were assembled that February evening six persons. It was just growing dusk, but the dancing firelight gave a pleasant illumination. Harmer and Mason were seated on opposite sides of the hearth in straight-backed wooden armchairs, and both were smoking. Rachel sat at her wheel, with her sister Dinah near to her; and in the background hovered two fine-looking young men, the two eldest ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... stood off and laughed—"if I have to diagram things for you, the money interests behind the O.R. & T. have seen the light. I'll admit it took about three hours of telephoning to New York to cause the illumination; but they've seen it, and that's enough. They also have agreed to buy the Ozark Central and to merge the two. Further, they have realized that the only possible president of the new lines is a man ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with some inward illumination. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... Lars Peter woke early—as usual. There was a curious illumination in the sky, and with terror he tumbled quickly out of bed. Was the barn on fire? Then suddenly he remembered that he was not at home; the gleam of light on the window-panes came from the street lamps, which struggled ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... were floating in the air, I could not feel my feet touching the floor. All the lights merged into one dazzling glow and my heart kept time to the rhythm of the music. When the music stopped, the glorious illumination seemed to go out and leave only a little straggling light from a few badly smelling kerosene lamps. The beautiful, fantastic music had been in reality only a harsh horn accompanied by a concertina or some other stupid instrument jangling vile ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... the whole city was illuminated. After dinner the party went into the square of El Bekri, the illumination of which, in coloured lamps, was very beautiful. An immense concourse of people attended. They were all placed in order, in ranks of from twenty to a hundred persons, who, standing close together, recited the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Connecticut, where he arrived on Saturday morning, with similar marks of affection and esteem to those so cordially bestowed on him in the towns he had already visited. He was expected by the citizens on Friday evening, and arrangements were made for a general illumination. He was escorted into the city by the military, and a large procession of the citizens received him soon after he entered within its bounds, and conducted him to the State House, where he was addressed by the Mayor of the city, who assured ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... they walked swiftly away from the square. The arc lamp on the corner which they approached sputtered continuously, like soda water bubbling out of a bottle. He looked down at her curiously in the flickering illumination from this lamp and found the girl looking up at him ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... to advance the understanding of the problems of sleep walking and moon walking. But unfortunately no one undergoes such an expensive and time-consuming treatment as psychoanalysis for moon walking, so that the hoped for illumination can come at the best only as a by-product in the psychoanalysis of neurotics. That has in fact been my good fortune twice, where I have been able to lift the curtain, though only a little, in two cases among my patients and also in individuals ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... the desires of youth had been spent. Its floor matting was worn threadbare with the impatient pacings of his feet (four strides from door to window: swing and repeat ad libitum). Its solitary gas-jet had, with begrudged illumination, sicklied o'er the pages of those innumerable borrowed books with which he had ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... Publishers Indian, The Interesting to Bone Boilers Interior Illumination Indian Question, The Information Wanted Inspiration vs. Perspiration ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various

... she accepted death as the promised deliverance; that she no longer understood her salvation in the Judaic and material sense, as until now she had done, that at length she saw clearly; and that, rising above all shadows, her gifts of illumination and of sanctity were at the final ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... illumination came from the hall, so that we could just see each other. He lifted me ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... we need to emphasize in our use of the Bible is the truth that the same Spirit who gave the men of the olden time their message is with us, to help us to the right understanding of it, and to give us the message for our time. Nor is his illumination confined to any guild or rank of believers; the day foretold by the prophet has surely come, when the Spirit is poured upon all flesh, and the prophetic gift may be received by all the pure ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... in an opposite window. As if touched by a gleam from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination, the spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver over its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic figure—Dr. Renton, himself—came in sight, striding down the slope of the pavement to his own door, his over-coat thrown ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor

... the delicacy of the first tints vanishes in an immense illumination, and everything remains bathed in white light until toward evening. Then the divine spectacle begins again. The air is so limpid that from Galata one can see clearly every distant tree, as far as Kadi-Kioi. The whole of the immense profile of Stamboul stands out against ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... palaces burst into illumination, before pale morning showed the monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown. A clattering of clogs upon the pavement; a rapid ringing of bells; and all the melancholy mad elephants, polished and ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... cross-arms three feet across, with a tin candlesocket upon each end. Another socket was set where the arms crossed—thus each candelabra was of five-candle power. Set a-row down the middle of the table, with single candles in tall brass sticks interspersed, they gave a fine soft illumination. Often they were supplemented with candelabra of bronze or brass, tricked out with tinkly pendant prisms. Such household gauds were commonly concentrated at the spot where the bride and her maids would stand. They were more elegant, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... reclosing the retorts. There is necessarily, therefore, less labor and cost in working, and as the gas is cleaner or freer from impurities, purifying plant and material will be correspondingly less. Oil gas is now employed for lighthouse service in the illumination of the lanterns on Ailsa Craig and as motive power in the gas engines connected with the fog horns at Langness and Ailsa Craig lighthouse stations. It is also used largely in the lighting of railway carriages. Various populous places ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... moral revolution, which shall touch and vivify the inner life of a people, which shall give them dissatisfaction with ignoble motives and sensual desires, which shall bring to them a resurrection from inferior ideas and lowly ambitions; which shall shed illumination through all the chambers of their souls, which shall lift them up to lofty aspirations, which shall put them in the race for manly moral superiority. A revolution of this kind is not a gift which can be handed over by one ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... tinkling joy. So indescribably wonderful and beautiful, yet so tender, seemed this scene—as of a mighty light informing the least atom of this tearful human existence—that the profoundest depths of Justin's nature opened to the illumination. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... books too," said Beth; "but I found little illumination in them, most of them being but the dry husks of the subject, uninformed of the spirit, containing no vital spark, and stained ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... could be spared a spell every day as well as not. Reeves told Helen of his plan himself, meeting her in the evening as she was bringing the cows home from the low shore pastures beyond the marsh. He was surprised at the sudden illumination of her face. It almost transfigured her from a plain, sulky-looking girl into a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the engines had stopped, and from stern to stern the great ship was one mass of soothing flame. The light threw a glare upon the clouds above, and made it so bright where our friends were floating in the water that they could have read the pages of a printed book. The illumination must have been seen for many and many a mile in ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... Sudden illumination came to Margaret Elizabeth. "That is just what it isn't," she cried. "It's splendid and beautiful, and all sorts of things, except a fairy-tale. I wonder why? I love fairy-tales ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard

... iridescent crystal-symbol of the soul- half shut within his hand. But always under this largess of colour lay some tender homily addressed to man's fragile hopes. This spiritual eagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek for illumination or else mourn for a joy that has gone. One of these especially comes to mind. A winter or two ago he spent much of the night walking up and down upon the mountain talking to an old peasant who, dumb to most men, poured out his cares for him. Both were unhappy: X——- because he had then ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats

... on the hoardings, it stands in rows in every chemist's storeroom, it still assuages the coughs of age and brightens the elderly eye and loosens the elderly tongue; but its social glory, its financial illumination, have faded from the world for ever. And I, sole scorched survivor from the blaze, sit writing of it here in an air that is never still for the clang and thunder of machines, on a table littered with working drawings, and amid fragments of models and notes about ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... trees, filtered by the branches, she saw a light. But when she came to the edge of the clearing she made out that the illumination came from a fire, not a lantern. The interior of the cabin was awash with shadows, and across the open doorway of the hut the monstrous and obscure outline of a standing man wavered to and fro. There was no clamor of many voices. And her heart leaped with relief. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... as the first, stands the sarcophagus or tomb of the Saviour, of white marble. The approach is by such a low door that one has to stoop exceedingly in order to enter. The tomb occupies the whole length of the chapel, and answers the purpose of an altar. We could not look into the sarcophagus. The illumination of this chapel is very grand both by night and day; forty-seven lamps are kept continually burning above the grave. The portion of the chapel containing the tomb is so small, that when the priest reads mass only two or three people have room to stand and listen. The chapel is entirely ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer



Words linked to "Illumination" :   ultraviolet illumination, state, illuminate, clarification, painting, luminance, lighting, disambiguation, brightness, illuminance, Dark Ages, dark field illumination, luminousness, luminosity, condition, source of illumination, dark ground illumination, dark, miniature, darkness, light, brightness level, elucidation, illumination unit, picture, interpretation, Middle Ages, status



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com