"Limelight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their way forward, pushing toward the open space, upon which a shaft of limelight had been thrown, the better to display the faces and figures of eight Spanish women who, dressed in their national costume, stood preening themselves like vain birds, tossing their heads and showing their ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... at which George laughed so immoderately, called to Taffy to come and be happy, too; and when Jack the Giant-killer changed to Jack in the Beanstalk, and when in the Transformation Scene a real beanstalk grew and unfolded its leaves, and each leaf revealed a fairy seated, with the limelight flashing on star and jewelled wand, the longing became unbearable. The scene passed in a minute. The clown and pantaloon came on, and presently Sir Harry saw Taffy's shoulders shaking, and set it down ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and I tried to avoid the notice of the newspapers and for about six months we succeeded. Then came the explosion of the bomb on Union Square and we were at once thrown into the limelight. I was ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... of the Navy's goal line. Then the men from Annapolis seemed suddenly to wake up. Darrin, who had had little to do in the last few plays, was now sent to the front again. Steadily, even brilliantly, he, Dalzell and Jetson figured in the limelight plays. Yard after yard was gained, while the Army eleven shivered. At last it came to the inevitable. The Army was forced to use another safety. Stinging under the sense of defeat, the cadet players put that temporary chance to such good advantage that they gradually got the pigskin ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... if we get anything on him it's up to us to keep them out of the limelight. It won't be hard. He only went to their house now and again as he went to lots of others. If this Chinese story pans out as promising as it looks, then we can put Lorry wise and tell her to hang out the 'not at home' sign when Mr. Mayer comes around. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... of genuine dramatic worth. Too much of the drama in the book is theatre rather than drama, and yet the author's gift is essentially dramatic. He knows how to tell a story on his stage that holds you to the fall of the curtain, and makes you almost patient of the muted violins and the limelight of the closing scene. Such things, you say, do not happen in Brookline, Mass., whatever happens in London or in English country houses; and yet the people have at one time or other convinced you of their verity. Of the things that are not natural, you feel like saying that they are ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... available—on the stage. The dreamer of dreams and the Shorter Catechist, strangely united together, were here directly at odds with the creative power, and crossed and misdirected it, and the casuist came in and manoeuvred the limelight—all too like the old devil of the mediaeval drama, who was made only to be laughed at and taken lightly, a buffoon and a laughing-stock indeed. And while he could unveil villainy, as is the case pre-eminently in Huish in the Ebb-Tide, he shrank ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... wave as far as it would take him. He would be a tribune of the people, and they in turn would make of him their hero. With the promised backing of the World he would go a long way. He knew that Jeff would fling him at once into the limelight. And he would make good. He would be the big speaker for the reform movement. Nobody in the state could sway a crowd as he could. James had not the least doubt about that. It was glory and applause he wanted, not the drudgery ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... next sixty-nine evenings he would be dining in cheviot and worsted at dubious table d'hotes, at whirlwind lunch counters, on sandwiches and beer in his hall-bedroom. He was willing to do that, for he was a true son of the great city of razzle-dazzle, and to him one evening in the limelight made up for many ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... been standing in the shadow back of Jim, gave a grunt of surprise at the audacity of this move, but he was game, and stepped quietly into the limelight. Captain Broome stood for a moment in open-jawed surprise, and then he dropped his byplay of grim politeness with startling suddenness. A shot rang out, and a puff of smoke drifted across the hall. The bullet zipped close to ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... OF SHELLEY. The career of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is, in comparison with that of Byron, as a will-o'-the-wisp to a meteor. Byron was of the earth earthy; he fed upon coarse food, shady adventures, scandal, the limelight; but Shelley ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... a time!" shouted the exultant Andy; who thought things could hardly have been better for him, if they were allowed to pass around that stake with their rival trailing in the rear—for surely she would see him there in the limelight, and he was eager to pick Miss Alice out of those many hundreds gathered to cheer the plucky air navigators on ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... answered. "It looks awful in the daylight, doesn't it? But when the footlights are on and the limes are lit, you'd be surprised to see how fine it looks. They say that common materials look better in limelight than good things do. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... of all deliberate and elaborate visits to "beauty spots," even by persons of the most elegant position or the most protected privacy. Specially visiting the Coliseum by moonlight always struck me as being as vulgar as visiting it by limelight. One millionaire standing on the top of Mont Blanc, one millionaire standing in the desert by the Sphinx, one millionaire standing in the middle of Stonehenge, is just as comic as one millionaire is anywhere else; and that is saying a good deal. On the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... Lady Wetherby acted as a temporary check on the development of the situation, but after they had been seated at their table a short time the lights of the restaurant were suddenly lowered, a coloured limelight became manifest near the roof, and classical music made itself heard from ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... he complained as he watched the retreating figure. "He takes the center of the stage until he has told his story, and when my turn comes to get in the limelight he does the disappearing act. That was a pretty good story, but talking of escapes, I can tell you about an escape that is worth talking about. It happened when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a snake show next to a camp meeting down on ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... two concerning yet older fashions, in order to bring into sharper clearness the leading outlines of literary fact, which I ventured only in my last paper to secure in silhouette, obscurely asserting itself against the limelight of recent moral creed, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... choric songs in its praise. The electric lights, it said, were magic torches lighted for its sake, and it was so charmed with the footlights that the children could hardly persuade it to sit still. But when the limelight was shown it could contain its approval no longer. It flapped its golden wings, and cried in a voice that could be heard all ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... when the lid is off," Tracey answered, obviously delighted to have the limelight again. "Well, of course, since Nita couldn't put the lid back on, it was still playing.... What was the tune, honey?" he asked his wife tenderly. "I haven't much ear for music at best, but at a time ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... But they failed to go on south. So another crop of Americans came into the limelight. If we modern Americans do not go on south we will join the Indians, the ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... the large historic hall known as the Library, wherein the great trial of the Bishop of Lincoln is being held. The weird scene strongly resembles the Dream Trial in "The Bells," where the judges, counsel, and all concerned are in a fog. I expect the limelight to flash suddenly upon the chief actor, the Bishop of Lincoln, as he takes the stage and re-acts the part that has caused the trial. The only lights in the long and lofty Library, excepting the clerical and legal, are a dozen or two wax candles and a few oil-lamps—of daylight, gaslight, or electric ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Limelight and the center of the stage was a passion of Sam Clemens's boyhood, a love of the spectacular that never wholly died. It seems almost a pity that in those far-off barefoot old days he could not have ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Dalton robberies and murders will never be known, for the region in which they operated was reticent, having its own secrets to protect; but at last there came the climax in which the band was brought into the limelight of civilized publicity. They lived on the border of savagery and civilization. Now the press, the telegraph, the whole fabric of modern life, lay near at hand. Their last bold raid, therefore, in which they crossed from the country of reticence into that of garrulous news gathering, made ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... tasted the limelight. All the world considered him the greatest scientist of all time—except, of course, the people who knew something about science. But the first actual voyagers in space had become immediately greater heroes ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... into the large hall known as the Library. "Here," said I to myself, "is taking place the historic trial of the Bishop of LINCOLN." The weird scene strongly resembles the Dream Trial in The Bells, where the judges, counsel, and all concerned, are in a fog. Will the limelight flash suddenly upon the chief actor, the Bishop of LINCOLN, as he takes the stage and re-acts the part that has caused the trial? Archbishop BANCROFT founded this library, so theatrical associations are natural. The only lights ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... be sure, and an artificial waterfall (which flooded the cellars, by-the-by), but for everything else we were indebted to Sir George Grey and pure nature. The live bush, the wounds of the woodman's axe concealed by heaps of vari-coloured mosses, bloomed and rustled under the limelight as I suppose it never bloomed and rustled elsewhere in the history of the theatre, and the stage was ankle-deep in withered leaves; the scent of the forest actually getting beyond the footlights for once in ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... London he stepped boldly into the limelight, going to all "first nights" and taking the floor on all occasions. He was not only an admirable talker but he was invariably smiling, eager, full of life and the joy of living, and above all given to unmeasured praise of whatever and ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Belgium, her people, and their part in this conflict. Be the reasons what they may, this little land stands in the center of the stage and holds the limelight. Once more David, armed with a sling, has gone up against ten Goliaths. It is an amazing spectacle, this, one of the smallest of the States, battling with the largest of the giants! Belgium has a standing ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... nicely," said Herman Krech, who never liked to be out of the limelight too long. "It wasn't for money, it wasn't for revenge, it wasn't jealousy; by the time we've eliminated a few more motives we'll have only the correct ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the seeking of pastures new. Friend Rives knew too much and was himself too well known to be a safe companion in their present location. Rives and he could work together to mutual advantage, beyond doubt; but it would have to be in some new territory where the limelight had never played upon either of ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... not criticising individuals. I am denouncing a system. When you substitute patronage for patriotism, administration breaks down. We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight. Let Massachusetts return to the sound business methods which were exemplified in the past by such Democrats in the East as Governor Gaston and Governor Douglas, and by such Republicans in the West as Governor Robinson ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... which constitutes this chapter. Those three papers and others written since that time, notably one by General George B. Davis, judge advocate general, U.S.A., and one by Captain Miller, of the Third Pennsylvania cavalry, have brought the cavalry fight at Gettysburg into the limelight, so that there is no longer any pretext for the historian or student of the history of the civil war to profess ignorance of the events of that day which reflect so much luster on the cavalry arm of ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... enjoyed an average season, and a considerable amount of new blood was injected into the game in the persons of players who made good without attracting freakish attention. The rise of the Washington team from seventh to second place brought its youngsters into the limelight prominently, and of these Foster and Moeller were commended highly. Gandil, who had his second tryout in fast company, plugged the hole at first base which had worried Washington managers for some time. Shanks also made a reputation for himself as a fielder. These men were helped somewhat by ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... doubly armed against them if we look upon them as the exceptions and not the rule and if we draw strength from the great background of human virtue and honesty. And there is such a background, unchanging, resistant, resolute, even though the limelight of publicity be persistently directed upon the few sinister figures on the front of the stage. We cannot afford to lose our faith in human nature, we cannot afford to shut out the greater and the ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... women assumed many strange shapes. There were those who bartered honour for the right to live and in order that they might escape starvation. These were pitiful. There were some who bought jewels at the price of shame, and others who sold body and soul for an hour in the limelight. These were unworthy of pity. But what of those who offered themselves, like ghawazi in a Keneh bazaar, in return for the odious distinction of knowing their charms to be "immortalised" by the brush of Orlando James? These were beyond Flamby's ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... in need of her young men in the field, the audiences of London might consent to forgo a little of the pleasure that comes from watching athletic youths covered with grease-paint and gyrating in the limelight, and, by expressing their readiness to see those necessary evolutions carried out by older men, liberate so much good material to join the Army. Such is the power of the make-up (I am told) that a man of fifty could easily be arranged to look sufficiently like a man of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... me confess that we in the audience are carried away sometimes by that ringing voice, those gleaming eyes. He has us, this Hero, in the hollow of his hand (to borrow a phrase from the Villain). When the limelight is playing round his brow, and he stands in the centre of the stage with clenched fists, oh! then he has us. "What! Betray my aged mother for filthy gold!" he cries, looking at us scornfully as if it was our suggestion. "Never, while yet breath remains in my body!" What a cheer we give him then; ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... Oh, I don't mean to be catty. But she must have a background that's a contrast—like that aunt of hers. I don't believe she'd want to marry for years yet—a man who'd make her leave the stage. She has the air of expecting the limelight to follow her everywhere through life, and I'm sure Max Doran's gorgeous mother wouldn't let her daughter-in-law go on acting, ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... of them down at the Yard that don't like him," he continued. "They call him 'Sage and Onions'; but most of us who have worked with him swear by Mr. Sage. He's never out for the limelight himself, and he's always willing to give another fellow a leg-up. After all, it's our living," ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... Preceding these feats of force, was a feature of his entertainment which Hercule enjoyed inordinately. He stood on a pedestal and struck attitudes to show the splendour of his physique. Wearing only a girdle of tiger-skin, and bathed in limelight, he felt himself to be as glorious as a god. The applause was a nightly intoxication to him. He lived for it. All day he looked forward to the moment when he could mount the pedestal again and make his biceps jump, and exhibit the ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... in notes the music that pours out from the pipes of the unseen organ, or to paint the light that streams through the cathedral windows. And what a magical light it is! There are other trees in this forest, besides the Sequoias; but it is on the redwoods alone that the light concentrates, just as limelight is turned upon the leading characters of a stage drama. They burn with their own ruddy fire, while their neighbour trees (overgrown with golden-green moss that makes sleeves for outstretched arms, and gold embroidery for dark drapery) gleam out among the redwoods' flaming pillars like lighted candelabra. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... heard Peter's story and changed it a little, and then heard him over again and pronounced him all right, and Peter went back to his hotel room and waited in trepidation for his hour in the limelight. When they took him to court his knees were shaking, but also he had a thrill of real importance, for they had provided him with a body-guard of four big huskies; also he saw two "bulls" whom he recognized in the hallway outside the court-room, ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... was at the very top of its success. Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere. He had in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough, the Normandie—always on Broadway, you see. The limelight district was his home. He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks were rumbling ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... before we came out, it could play nothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over at the Jollity in June—is raving over still, I believe! Can't give you the exact title of the thing, but 'Darling, Will You Meet Me In The Centre Of The Circle That The Limelight Makes Upon The Floor, Tiddle-e-yum?' would meet the case. We have Musical Comedy now in place of what used to be Burlesque in your London days, Saxham, with a Leading Lady instead of a Principal Boy, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... red sugar bird on your bridal cake? How long do you expect to hold an audience in a court-room with that kind of stuff? You want to get down to business, and call me "Tweedlums Babe" and "Honeysuckle," and sign yourself "Mama's Own Big Bad Puggy Wuggy Boy" if you want any limelight to concentrate upon your ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and always gladly accepted; and the next day, there he was on the road as usual, with toes exposed. His boots were his method; they were the man's trade; without his boots he would have starved; he did not live by charity, but by appealing to a gross taste in the public, which loves the limelight on the actor's face, and the toes out of the beggar's boots. There is a true poverty, which no one sees: a false and merely mimetic poverty, which usurps its place and dress, and lives and above all drinks, on the fruits of the usurpation. The true poverty ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Evan; "haven't we got all the big newspapers in the country on our side? And aren't the banks in the legislative limelight? They couldn't pull off anything mean on us, because we would keep in touch with our editor friends. If they started firing the boys we could appeal to ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... fail to be! All that horrible publicity. All that concentrating of crude popular interest on themselves! Believe me, nobody who watches a public career carefully but sees the demoralizing effect the limelight has even on men's characters. And I suppose you'll admit that men are less delicately organized ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... beginning to remember all about it, a whole swarm of disqualifying details arrived on the ground: the town would have known of the circumstance, Mary would have known of it, it would glare like a limelight in his own memory instead of being an inconspicuous service which he had possibly rendered "without knowing its full value." And at this point he remembered that he couldn't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... difficulty in flying it, for the controls were very familiar to him, and a straight flight, or even a wide circle of the flying ground proper, offered no apparent difficulties. Joe was naturally a shy and retiring lad, and felt that he was very much in the limelight as he climbed into ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... the skies in successful pursuit of them. If the nation hardly realises yet what it owes to the men of the Fleet and their comrades of the auxiliary Services it is because their work is done with "such thoroughness and so little fuss," and, as Mr. ASQUITH put it, "in the twilight and not in the limelight." ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... to believe that romance was possible," she said, with a smile, "if I often saw a beautiful scene like this. It is what we try to get in the theatre; but I see all the bare boards and the lime light—I don't have a chance of ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black |
