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Mirror   Listen
noun
Mirror  n.  
1.
A looking-glass or a speculum; any glass or polished substance that forms images by the reflection of rays of light. "And in her hand she held a mirror bright, Wherein her face she often viewèd fair."
2.
That which gives a true representation, or in which a true image may be seen; hence, a pattern; an exemplar. "She is mirour of all courtesy." "O goddess, heavenly bright, Mirror of grace and majesty divine."
3.
(Zool.) See Speculum.
Mirror carp (Zool.), a domesticated variety of the carp, having only three or fur rows of very large scales side.
Mirror plate.
(a)
A flat glass mirror without a frame.
(b)
Flat glass used for making mirrors.
Mirror writing, a manner or form of backward writing, making manuscript resembling in slant and order of letters the reflection of ordinary writing in a mirror. The substitution of this manner of writing for the common manner is a symptom of some kinds of nervous disease.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mirror" Quotes from Famous Books



... themselves, crept out from the nunnery gate, crossed the wide, pebbled courtyard of the temple and stood, for long moments, by the gnarled roots of the camphor tree, staring out across the beauty of the plain of Yeddo; its shining bay a great mirror to the south, and off, on the western horizon, where the last light hung, Fuji, a cone of ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... "Push that pink dogwood back a little, Aunt Dorrie—make it like a frame around the mirror for the ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... been to point the eye to this fact; to show uses imperfectly suspected in a recurring accident of life; to show a steady tendency to that consummation, by holding up, as in a mirror, (together with occasional glimpses of hidden corners in history,) the corresponding revolution silently going on in a ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... first thing," said Jingleberry, buttoning up his Prince Albert, as though to impart a possibly needed stiffening to his backbone. "She will say yes, and then I shall enjoy the dinner and the opera so much the more. Ahem! I wonder if I am pale—I feel sort of—um—There's a mirror. That will tell." Jingleberry walked to the mirror—an oval, gilt-framed mirror, such as was very much the vogue fifty years ago, for which reason alone, no doubt, it was now admitted to the gold-and-white parlor of the ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... nine-tenths of the year. But in size and depth and color, and the circular fashion of its shaft, which seemed man's rather than nature's design, it might have been the real Tinaja's reflection, conjured in some evil mirror where everything was faithfully ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas, beginning "Yet even these bones," are to me original. I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... that she could not deceive Mrs. Dagon by an appearance of interest; so, after a few moments, Mrs. Dinks seated herself in a large easy-chair opposite that lady, who was still looking at her, shook her dress, glanced into the mirror with the utmost nonchalance, and finally, slowly drawing out her own glasses, raised them to her eyes, and with ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... on the window-sill, But the window had no crack, She then looked into the looking-glass, But the mirror had no back. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... someone else pronounce the portrait to be charming. However, as my host seemed to think that perhaps I was too near, and that the work might gain in enchantment if I gave it a little distance, we moved towards the other end of the gallery and, at his suggestion, looked into an antiquated mirror, where I got in the half light what seemed a reflection of it. The improvement was obvious, and I told my friend so. I told him that the effect was now so lifelike that the figure seemed to be moving; but when he in turn gazed into the glass ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... gates against thee, Isabell Thy mother, these weare her owne handyworkes Bestowde upon thee in thyne infancy To make us nowe boathe happy in thy yoouth. I am Jhon Ashburne marchant, London, Christ Church; The yeare, place, tyme agree thee to bee myne, Oh merher [mirror] of thy ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... in each house were the things which the dead had particularly loved. In one, a trunk contained all of a girl's much-prized clothing. A complete set of dishes was visible in another, while in a third I saw a wash-stand, bowl, pitcher, and mirror. There was something deeply touching to me in all this. They are so poor, their lives are so bare of comforts, that the consecration of these articles to the dead seemed a greater sacrifice than we, who count ourselves civilized, would make. Each chair, or table, or coat, or pair of shoes, costs ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... rose, a trifle excited in the glow of abstract happiness, and walked erratically about, smiling to herself, touching and rearranging objects that caught her attention. Then an innocent instinct led her to the mirror, where she stood a moment looking back into the lovely reflected face with its ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... fashionable style stood on the velvet-covered mantelpiece. There was a nicely fitted cabinet, and the Chinese flower-stands were handsomely filled. The bed, the toilet-table, the wardrobe with its mirror, the little sofa, and all the lady's frippery bore the stamp of fashion or caprice. Though everything was quite third-rate as to elegance or quality, and nothing was absolutely newer than three years old, a dandy would ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... his face in the mirror while I struggled with my collar. It was deeply serious. There could be no question that he spoke of ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... supposed to dwell especially in their tombs, with access to some mysterious subterranean world. They were supposed to need other things besides nourishment; and it was customary to place in the grave various articles for their ghostly use,—a sword, for example, in the case of a warrior; a mirror in the case of a woman,—together with certain objects, especially prized during life,—such as objects of precious metal, and polished stones or gems .... At this stage of ancestor-worship, when the spirits are supposed to require ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... very pleasant to be alone. It is pleasant to be able to gaze at leisure upon those features which all others may gaze upon at their good will! [Looking at his reflection in hand-mirror.] Ah, I am a ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... love which clothed itself in them all in turn, and used them all to give some faint hint of its own perfection, remains unspoken. We know human love, its limitations, its changes, its extravagances, its shortcomings, and cannot but feel how unworthy it is to mirror for us that perfection in God which we venture to name by a name so soiled. The analogies between what we call love in man and love in God must be supplemented by the differences between them, if we are ever to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the Justice, "but for love the gentleman may have dinner and supper and a place to rest as long as he wants it." He had a tin plate, as clear and bright as a mirror, a knife, a fork and a spoon, just as bright as the plate, laid upon the table, and pressed his guest to sit down. The latter fell upon the well-cooked ham, the big beans, the eggs and sausages, which constituted the meal, with all the appetite of youth, and discovered that the food of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... fed and tenderly cared for two swans which swam over the mirror-like surface of the Urdar fountain, and from this pair of birds all the swans on earth are supposed to be descended. At times, it is said, the Norns clothed themselves with swan plumage to visit the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... around to wind them tighter. "Like this? Do I resemble a movie queen? That's what brought me, Janie. This nocturnal visit is consequent upon a disaster. My hammer, the one I put my queens up with, fell through the mirror. Silly little hammer. You know how this house staff ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... the Early Church, The Church and House-Book and The Law-Book," in biblical phraseology and orthography, chiefly derived from documents never yet made known, is my piece de resistance; the sauce for it, in the Introduction, contains three chapters (The Picture, The Mirror, The Practical Reconstruction) for each section (Baptism, School, Constitution, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... stream from the metal terminal, on passing through the glass. It is well known that the metal terminals of a Crookes tube are steadily worn away while the current is passing; so much so that sometimes portions of the interior of the tube become coated with a metallic deposit almost mirror-like. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... is them," said he. "See, Charlie, that table over there. They've got their backs to us, but lean see 'em in the mirror." ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... through a magnificent country abounding in game, and lotus leaves floated on the smooth water. The sun sinks and the moon soars above the mimosa trees, the river shines like a silver mirror, antelopes are on the watch for the dangers of the night. Within the enclosure of the camp the black men sit gnawing at the bones of a newly-shot zebra. But when it is time to set out again from the comfortable camp, the porters ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... good game; but over and beyond was his love of all the other things that go to make up a South Seas rover's life—the smell of the reef; the infinite exquisiteness of the shoals of living coral in the mirror-surfaced lagoons; the crashing sunrises of raw colours spread with lawless cunning; the palm-tufted islets set in turquoise deeps; the tonic wine of the trade-winds; the heave and send of the orderly, crested seas; the moving deck beneath his feet, the straining ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... presents that are made to them by foreigners. The Pope, on his first mission into Northumberland, sent to the queen of that country some stuffs with ornaments of gold, an ivory comb inlaid with the same metal, and a silver mirror. A queen's want of such female ornaments and utensils shows that the arts were at this time little cultivated amongst the Saxons. These are the sort of presents commonly sent ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... traveller quells (Though crawling things, not yet in sight, Are waiting for the shadowy night, To issue forth when all is quiet, And on your feverish pulses riot;) Where one wood shutter scrapes the ground, By crusts, stale-bones, and garbage bound; Where unmolested spiders toil Behind the mirror's mildew'd foil; Where the cheap crucifix of lead Hangs o'er the iron tressel'd bed; Where the huge bolt will scarcely keep Its promise to confiding sleep, Till you have forced it to its goal In the bored ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... masters dwarfs high natures to their size: Seen before a convex mirror, elephants ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... in the spring of 1833 that my grandfather, George Wimbush, first made the acquaintance of the 'three lovely Lapiths,' as they were always called. He was then a young man of twenty-two, with curly yellow hair and a smooth pink face that was the mirror of his youthful and ingenuous mind. He had been educated at Harrow and Christ Church, he enjoyed hunting and all other field sports, and, though his circumstances were comfortable to the verge of affluence, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... have preferred cooked fish to raw. As night, however, crept on, they began to feel the loneliness and helplessness of their position. Still, the calm continued, and the stars shone forth, each spark of light being reflected in the mirror-like ocean; and Harry made out the polar star, and wished that there was a good breeze that they might steer by it towards England. The air was very chilly, but as they had saved several blankets, ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... the mirror, surprised that his face had not been branded by the hells of the past three months. The noise of the decks worried him, and he lay down, his tongue only a little pressed against ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... be transformed in the short space of thirty years, by the contact of Occidental ideas, is absurd. Emotional life, which is older than intellectual life, and deeper, can no more be altered suddenly by a change of milieu than the surface of a mirror can be changed by passing reflections. All that Japan has been able to do so miraculously well has been done without any self-transformation; and those who imagine her emotionally closer to us to-day than she may have been thirty years ago ignore facts of ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... "nobody else. We saw each other in the mirror behind the bar. I don't know whether you ever noticed it or not, Tom, but McMakin's eyes had a way of looking almost like cross-eyes when he was startled or excited. They were a good deal too near together at any ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... morning, he saw in the mirror two of his valets at the foot of the bed weeping, and said to them, "Why do you weep? Is it because you thought me immortal? As for me, I have not thought myself so, and you ought, considering my age, to have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... left to him—of making it a religion to do nothing that she would have disliked. In this, certainly, there was no sacrifice; but there was a pale, oblique ray of inspiration. It would be lonely entertainment—a good deal like a man talking to himself in the mirror for want of better company. Yet the idea yielded Newman several half hours' dumb exaltation as he sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched, over the relics of an expensively poor dinner, in the undying English twilight. ...
— The American • Henry James

... you must be my mirror to-day. But come now, my dear maid! enter upon your duties. In the first place, assist me in ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... it so well that he need never give the slightest thought to his baton while actually conducting, hours of practice in beating time will be necessary. This practising should sometimes take place before a mirror, or better still, in the presence of some critical friend, so that a graceful rather than a grotesque style of handling the baton may result; it should also be done with the metronome clicking or with some one playing the piano much of the time, in order that the habit of maintaining ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... issued. And now began a scene which none who witnessed are likely to forget to their dying day: deeply tragical it might have been, but fortunately circumstances combined to render it merely ridiculous, as reflected in the mirror of memory. The rain still fell heavily, lying in places to the depth of nearly a foot, and converting all the ground that was not rocky into a slippery quagmire. So profound was the darkness, that it was literally impossible to see any object six inches from one's eyes, and it was only by the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... queenly of manner, fair of figure as a fullblown lily, and with those dark eyes that seem to shine out from soul-depths, deep as the distant heaven, and yet may mean no more than the shallow facing of quicksilver behind a milliner's mirror. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... had exhumed from some forgotten souvenirs of his childhood in an old valise. The very first German that she came across was doomed to death. Dona Luisa was terrified to find her flourishing this weapon before her dressing mirror. She was no longer yearning to be a cavalryman nor a diable bleu. She would be entirely content if they would leave her, alone in some closed space with the detested monster. In just five minutes she would ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... with a board of sixty-four squares or one hundred squares'), ghost stories, and unseemly wrangling in regard to belief ("I am orthodox, you are heterodox"), earning a living by prognostication, by taking omens 'from a mirror' or otherwise, by quack medicines, and by 'pretending to understand the language of beasts.' It is gratifying to learn that the scented offenders described in the first-mentioned work were banished from ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... of the mirror and regarded himself—not with the forbearance of a friend but the ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... her inability to leave him, and went, appearing torn away. As well bid healthy children lie abed on a bright summer morning, as think of holding this fair young woman bound to the circle of safety when she has her view of pleasure sparkling like the shore-sea mermaid's mirror. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... wrought was she; Men needed not in no country A fairer body for to seek, And of fine orphreys [9] had she eek A chap(e)let; so seemly one, Ne[10] I werede never maid upon, And fair above that chap(e)let A rose garland had she set. She had a gay mirror, And with a rich(e) gold treasure Her head was tressed [11] quaint(e)ly; Her sleeves sewed fetisely,[12] And for to keep her hand(e)s fair Of gloves white she had a pair. And she had on a coat ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... soul, the hidden things, the Unknown, that theme for which Shakespeare has given us an oft-quoted and oft-abused device, which one of them, Mr. X., now used to point his remarks. Raising his glass, he looked at himself meditatively in a mirror opposite, and, in a good imitation of the manner of his ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... on with his poem, he hastily rolled up the manuscript, thrust it into his desk, and hastening to a small cracked mirror, which hung over the fire-place, there commenced arranging his somewhat disordered locks and apparel, with ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... P., x., 920; "all which died charitably," writes Husee of Anne Boleyn and her fellow-victims; Rochford "made a very catholic address to the people saying he had not come there to preach but to serve as a mirror and example, acknowledging his sins against God and the King" (ibid., x., 911; cf. xvii., 124). Cromwell and Somerset had more cause to complain of their fate than other statesmen of the time, yet Cromwell on the scaffold says: "I ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... entered from either side down a flight of five steps. The berths were flat, naked wooden shelves thirty inches wide, separated by a partition headboard six inches high and without railing in front. Each traveler provided his own bedding. A small table upon which meals were served, a mirror on one side and a lamp on the other, set in an opening in the partition, permitting it to serve two staterooms, completed the furnishings. The roof of the staterooms was covered with an awning and divided crosswise into two tiers of berths, each thirty inches wide, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... mirror of your eyes, Through the soft sigh of kiss to kiss, Desolate winds assail with cries The shadowy ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce

... That fact blotted out the world. He drew his gun again and stole down the length of the bar. Once he stopped and poised the weapon before he realized that the white, fierce face that squinted at him was his own reflection in a mirror. ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... story-telling as soon as he appeared at the assembly ground. So irresistibly droll were his "yarns" that, says Mr. Roll, "whenever he'd end up in his unexpected way the boys on the log would whoop and roll off." The result of the rolling off was to polish the log like a mirror. Long after Lincoln had disappeared from Sangamon "Abe's log" remained, and until it had rotted away people pointed it out, and repeated the droll stories ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... a table-desk. The drawing was fortunately glazed, for as Mr. Ruskin was holding the candle over it the composite dropped on the glass. He pointed out the minute beauties of a camel's eye, which was painted so carefully that even the hairs of the eyelash were given, and the reflections on the mirror of the eye. This praise of minute detail was at that time only too much in accordance with my own taste. I had an intense admiration for such feats of skilled industry as the wonderful lattices that Lewis used to paint ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... valetudinarian that he resolves to leave London immediately for his country house, a circumstance which would be fatal to his wife's amours. Wittmore and she, however, persuade him that he is very ill, and on being shown his face in a looking-glass that magnifies instead of in his ordinary mirror, he imagines that he is suddenly swollen and puffed with disease, and so is led lamenting to bed, leaving the coast clear for the nonce. Isabella, however, has made an assignation with Lodwick at the same time that her stepmother eagerly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... went in, I see a immense mirror turnin' round and round seemin'ly invitin' folks to look. But as I glanced in, I tell the truth when I say, I wuzn't much bigger round than a match, and the thinness made me look as tall ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... the gallery at the opposite end of the lobby from which we entered the drawing-room, there is a boudoir, or robing-room—a perfect gem in its way. [Picture: Nell Gwynne's mirror] You have only to touch this spring, and that picture starts from the wall and affords us free egress. Just take one ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... wound under his eye would leave a permanent scar—the wound had been deep and in spite of the doctor's care, had drawn together queerly, affecting the eye itself and giving it an odd expression. Many times since becoming able to move about had Hollis looked at his face in his mirror, and each time there had come into his eyes an expression that boded ill for the men who had been concerned in ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Samos, a mathematician of great powers, has left a different explanation in his teaching on this subject, as I shall now set forth. It is no secret that the moon has no light of her own, but is, as it were, a mirror, receiving brightness from the influence of the sun. Of all the seven stars, the moon traverses the shortest orbit, and her course is nearest to the earth. Hence in every month, on the day before she gets past the sun, she is under his disc ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... a hill through many a brake, Blueberry and barberry, bay and sassafras, By an abandoned quarry, where, like glass, A round pool lies; an isolated lake, A mirror for what presences, that make Their wildwood toilets here! The road is grass Gray-scarred with stone: great bowlders, as we pass, Slope burly shoulders towards us. Cedars shake Wild balsam from their tresses; there and here Clasping a glimpse of ocean ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein

... hands, we almost fancy we see the scalding tears force their way through the trembling fingers and adorn the shame-reddened cheeks." The same writer goes on to praise "the ingenuity and novelty of the glance at the reflection of his dark face in the mirror, which suggests the words, 'Haply for I am black.'" I cannot agree. Othello had been too often reproached with his swarthy skin and likened to the Devil by Desdemona's father to need any such commonplace reminder of his defects, in his agony of doubt. It is, however, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... close-reefed. Here and there on the forecastle were groups of lazy-looking seamen; and a man walked the quarter-deck, glancing anxiously aloft. The sea was as smooth as a mirror, and that dreadful stillness was in the air which so often preludes a terrific storm in the tropics. A rumbling was heard in the sky like the sound of distant artillery, or heavy bodies of water falling ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Marguerite Bourgeoys took an active part in the work of Montreal. She was the daughter of a respectable tradesman, and was now twenty-two years of age. Her portrait has come down to us; and her face is a mirror of frankness, loyalty, and womanly tenderness. Her qualities were those of good sense, conscientiousness, and a warm heart. She had known no miracles, ecstasies, or trances; and though afterwards, when her religious susceptibilities had reached a fuller development, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... with the Spanish comedy will not fail to have remarked the prodigality of intrigue and counter-intrigue upon which its interest is made to depend. In this, the Spanish comedy was the faithful mirror of the Spanish life, especially in the circles of a court. Men lived in a perfect labyrinth of plot and counter-plot. The spirit of finesse, manoeuvre, subtlety, and double-dealing pervaded every family. Not a house that was not ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... teacher to tell her father that she could never become even a third-rate musician; and Don Roberto had, after a caustic hour, concluded that he would "throw no more good money after bad;" she had had long and meaning conferences with her mirror, conjuring up phantasms of the beautiful dead women of her race, and decided sadly that the worship of man was not for her. She had never talked for ten consecutive minutes with a young man; but she had a woman's instincts, she had read, she had listened ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... the rolling sea! A storm approaches without, calling aloud for human lives. The sea has not put on a new mind with the new time. This night it is a horrible pit to devour up lives, and to-morrow, perhaps, it may be a glassy mirror—even as in the old time that we have buried. Sleep ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... accidental. But could it be that this soft, beautiful, baby-faced woman had on the spur of the moment taken advantage of his loaded gun to wreak her jealousy and her wrongs upon her faithless lover? Well, the face is no mirror of the quality of the soul within, and it was possible. Further than that it did not seem to him to be his ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight of all poems, it is also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... line against clean space, brought a sense of quiet, distance, might. Here solitude was at home. Now Strickland moved, and now he stood and watched the quiet. Turning at last a shoulder of the moor, he saw at some distance below him the pool, like a small mirror. He descended toward it, without noise ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... of the floor there is a settee (probably a reminiscence of the Shelbourne Hotel); and on either side of the fireplace there are sofas, and about the hearthrug many arm-chairs to match with the rest. Above the chimneypiece there is a gilt oval mirror, worth ten pounds. The second room is Alice's study; it is there she writes her novels. A table in black wood with a pile of MSS. neatly fastened together stands in one corner; there is a bookcase just behind; its shelves are furnished with imaginative literature, such as Shelley's poems, Wordsworth's ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... crossed to Cloostedd; and mooring the boat under the solemn trees that stand reflected in that dark mirror, he would disembark and wander among the lonely woodlands, as people thought, cherishing in those ancestral scenes the memory of ineffaceable injuries, and the wrath and revenge that seemed of late to darken his countenance, and to hold him always ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... complete, she stood for a few minutes looking in her mirror. The tall, stately figure in the glorious dress was perfect; the face, framed in shining masses of dark ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... he must seek refuge in flight; he must leave France, abandon the career which was so full of promise for him, and wander abroad, a penniless fortune-hunter. Well might the prospect give him pause. Well might it cause him to survey that pale, sardonic countenance that eyed him gloomily from the mirror above his mantel shelf, and ask it mockingly if it thought that Suzanne de Bellecour—or indeed, any woman living—were worthy of so great ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... Afterwards, if the traveller has happened to linger here and there in the outposts of the desert, has seen the British camp at Kantara or the graceful French garden town of Ismalia, he comes to take the desert as a background, and sometimes a beautiful background; a mirror of mighty reflections and changing colours almost as strange as the colours of the sea. But when it is first seen abutting, and as it were, advancing, upon the fields and gardens of humanity, then it looks indeed like an enemy, or a long ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... confessional booklets, prayer-booklets, and also by voluminous books of devotion. Apart from other trash, these contained confessional and communion prayers instructions on Repentance, Confession, and the Sacrament of the Altar; above all, however, a mirror of sins, intended as a guide for self-examination, on the basis of various lists of sins and catalogs of virtues, which supplanting the Decalog were to be memorized. Self-evidently, all this was not intended as a schoolmaster to bring them ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... filled him with a new hope, Peveril saw that he was sitting on the rocky floor of a cave or chamber that extended back beyond his narrow circle of light. On the other side, and but a few inches below him, was outspread a gleaming surface of water, smooth as a mirror and black as ink. These things he saw, and ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies: Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man: They sell the pasture now to buy the horse; Following the mirror of all Christian kings, With winged heels, as English Mercuries; For now sits expectation in the air. O England!—model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart,— What might'st thou do, that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural! ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... examine the substance of the passage, its sentiments, the ideas conveyed, and the associations suggested, and then think of the author to whom it is ascribed, few probably will be disposed to regard it as a faithful mirror in which to contemplate ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... at last and shed a ghastly grey tinge upon the sick-room, revealing as it were the outlines of all that was bad to look at, which the warm yellow candle-light had softened with a kindlier touch. John accidentally looked at himself in the mirror as he passed and was startled at his own pale face; but the convict, labouring in the ravings of his fever, seemed unconscious of the dawning day; he was not yet exhausted and his harsh voice never ceased its jarring gibber. John wondered ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford

... many delightful provinces. It is also full of trees furnished with flowers and fruits, and with crops of diverse kinds and other wealth. And it is surrounded on all sides with the salt ocean. As a person can see his own face in a mirror, even so is the island called Sudarsana seen in the lunar disc. Two of its parts seem to be a peepul tree, while two others look like a large hare. It is surrounded on all sides with an assemblage of every kind ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... of "feeling," and this same feeling is something vital and should be catered to if our garments are to help set our spirits free. Why should we wear anything which is misleading in regard to ourselves? Let us look in the mirror each day and ask ourselves whether we look to be what we wish others to think ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... to be retold often is like a mirror which reflects not only the original picture, but also the social and moral surroundings of different relators. So this ancient tale has been varied by the poets who have told it; and of these variants the most significant are those made by Wagner. If the ethical scheme of the poet-composer ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... said triumphantly, when they had finished dressing her, even to the arranging of the bouquet of orange flowers in its costly holder and putting it in her hand. "There!" And they wheeled the tall Psyche mirror up before her, that she might view and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... attitude than it stood in his lifetime, and one of the agencies that have wrought the change is the living force of his own works, which led and still lead the thought of men. Goethe may be called the ideal creative critic of life. He held up a mirror, not to Nature, as Shakespeare did, but to society; and society can get away from the image which it sees reflected there only ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... Silvermann was not at home, the small, faded, bewigged creature told him apologetically. Barstein looked curiously round the room, half expecting indications of dentistry or dining. But he saw only a minimum of broken-down furniture, bottomless cane chairs, a wooden table and a cracked mirror, a hanging shelf heaped with ragged books, and a standing cupboard which obviously turned into a bedstead at night for half the family. But of a dentist's chair there was not even the ruins. His eyes wandered over the broken-backed ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... beauty, wisdom, power, and love: We read, we reverence on this human soul,— Earth's clearest mirror of the light above,— Plain as the record on thy prophet's scroll, When o'er his page the effluent splendors poured, Thine own ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... ladies but little, my whole mind having been concentrated on base-ball and billiard playing, and the particular fit of my coat or the fashion of my trousers caused me but little concern. From that afternoon on, however, things were different, and I am afraid that I spent more time before the mirror than was really necessary. I also began to hunt up excuses of various kinds for visiting the house of the Fiegals, and some of these were of the flimsiest character. I fancied then that I was deceiving the entire family, but ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... an iron chest in a secure niche in the dining-room, behind the great central mirror, made for the purpose of concealing it, and to which he alone had access. Here he had kept a store of plate, money, jewels, and papers, so as to defy all burglarious interference or foreign scrutiny, and, in dying, had bequeathed ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... grew older, my collars became finger-marked where her little hands had touched them. We had pictures on our walls, of course, and trinkets on the mantelpiece, and a large glass mirror which had been one of our wedding gifts. These things had become commonplace to us—until the baby began to notice them! Night after night, I would take her in my arms and show her the sheep in one of the pictures, and talk to her about them, and she would coo delightedly. The trinkets on the ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest

... Uppingdon and Potwell. It was a profusely budding spring day and greens such as God had never permitted in the world before in human memory (though indeed they come every year), were mirrored vividly in a mirror of equally unprecedented brown. For a time the wanderer stopped and stood still, and even the thin whistle died away from his lips as he watched a water vole run to and fro upon a little headland across the stream. The vole plopped into the water and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... When Alasnam was in search of his ninth statue, the king of the Genii gave him a test mirror, in which he was to look when he saw a beautiful girl; "if the glass remained pure and unsullied, the damsel would be the same, but if not, the damsel would not be wholly pure in body and in mind." This mirror was ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... few of this kind, and none so breathlessly realistic. It carried him out of himself so completely that as they rowed slowly back to town he did not see a single house in it, although every western window-pane flashed back the out-going sun like a golden mirror. His serious, brown eyes were following the adventures of these bold sea-robbers, "marooned three times and wounded nine and ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... fit, he admitted to himself, as he looked into the mirror. He'd like to get his hands on the man who talked him into it. He looked at his shoes. They too caused him a commensurate amount of worry. Built on lines of comfort they displayed a total disregard of fashion. The longer he examined his attire ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... a brilliant store, passed it with lingering step, then paused, turned back, and stood looking down the glittering aisle. The large mirror at the farther end seemed scarcely broader than the little cracked bureau-glass in her humble room before which she dressed her hair in the mornings. The clerks were hurrying to and fro, eager and business-like, while fine ladies were coming and going, jostling her as she stood ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... did he not receive a polite education at the University in Dublin? So polite, indeed, has his training been that he is already the author of that wonderful "Love and a Bottle," a comedy wherein he amusingly holds the mirror up to English vices, including his own. And, speaking of vices, he can now look back to those salad days when he wrote verses of unimpeachable morality, setting forth, among ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... Scott contributed in 1828 The Tapestried Chamber, My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, and The Laird's Jock, and in ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... these am I, who thy protection claim, 105 A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name. Late, as I rang'd the crystal wilds of air, In the clear Mirror of thy ruling Star I saw, alas! some dread event impend, Ere to the main this morning sun descend, 110 But heav'n reveals not what, or how, or where: Warn'd by the Sylph, oh pious maid, beware! This to disclose ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... his feet and leaned forward towards the mirror for a moment to straighten his tie. When he turned around, he glanced at the collection of bottles Granet ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... The man had paid a large price for her—200 pesos, he said—and the girl's parents did not have it to return to him. It was suggested that if we made her some presents it might induce her to yield. She was presented with enough cloth for two or three camisas and sayas, a mirror, and a string of beads, and she finally gave an unwilling assent to the entreaties of her relatives, and the ceremony was performed in the manner already described. At the conclusion a yell went up from the assembly, and I, at the request of the capitan, fired three ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... the veil of the twilight hours Falls softly, softly, over the hill, Shadows the cross:- creeps on until Swiftly upon us is flung the dark. Then, as if lit by a sudden spark, Each grave is vivid with points of light, Earth is as Heaven's mirror to-night; The air is still as a spirit's breath, The lights burn bright in the realm of Death. Then silent the mourners mourning go, Wending their way to the church below; While the bells toll out to bid them speed, With eager Pater and prayerful bead, The souls of the dead, whose ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless

... cried Katherine, jumping to her feet. "The Prince has come. What a stupid thing that we have no mirror in this room, and it's a sewing and sitting room, too. Do I look ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... surface, which might have been taken for vegetation, but it was thought not improbably to be a reflection from the vast forests of South America. The ancients had a fancy, some of them, that the face of the moon was a mirror in which the seas and shores of the earth were imaged. Now we know the geography of the side toward us about as well as that of Asia, better than that of Africa. The Astronomer showed them one of the common small photographs of the moon. He assured ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Bolsover. The entreaties of the company were of course urgent. Mr. Peters, "who liked verses," was especially persevering, and Sappho at length compliant. After a preparatory hem! and a glance at the mirror to ascertain that her look was sufficiently sentimental, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... if you'll have it," he replied. The boy slipped his little body into the garment and wheeled to survey himself in a mirror. In comparison with the dismembered swallowtail it was the purple of a Solomon. There was a cartridge web across its front, with loops, and after he had looked long and long at his reflection, the boy thrust both his thumbs ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... opinion is "King" and "Master" of the modern world, the "Press" is his "Prime Minister." Between these two great forces there is a continuous action and reaction; the Press is at the same time the moulder and mirror of ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... reddish-brown-gold hair. Such a neglected, sordid little figure, with thin drab shoulders sticking out of a ragged calico frock. She was quite startled. She had never seen herself in any glass before, though a cheap, square, wooden-framed mirror hung on the wall of the bar-room, with a dirty clothes-brush on a hook underneath, and there were swing toilet-glasses in the tawdry bedrooms at the inn. Something stirred in her, whispering in the grimy little ear, "It is good to be clean," and with the awakening of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... common of these "projects" is as follows: A young woman goes down into the cellar, or into a dark room, with a mirror in her hand, and looking in it, sees the face of her future husband peering at her through the darkness,—the mirror being, for the time, as potent as the famous Cambuscan glass of which Chaucer discourses. A neighbor of mine, in speaking of this conjuration, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... but freedom was the other side of that poverty. They had not to set the bounds of realization upon their wishes. They were not shut off, as too many of us are, from the adventure and the enchantment that are in things. A broken mirror upon the wall of a bare room! It is, after all, that wonder of wonders, a thing. But one cannot convey to those who have not known the wonder, how wonderful a mere thing is! A child who has watched and watched the face of a grandfather's ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... circumstantiality of this narrative, as well as the impressive manner and personality of the narrator, might have staggered a listener, and I had begun to feel very strangely, when, as he closed, I chanced to catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall of the room. I rose and went up to it. The face I saw was the face to a hair and a line and not a day older than the one I had looked at as I tied my cravat before going to Edith that Decoration Day, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... lights gleamed from windows on the third floor. Within, all was arranged as if for some special occasion. The larger room, with its three windows looking on the street, was immaculate in its neatness. The brass candlesticks shone like gold, the mahogany table was polished like a mirror, the simple furniture likewise. For today was Father Mozart's birthday and the little household ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... the Baxter children, who squirmed and kicked all night in summer, and pulled the bed-coverings off her in winter. She went over to her dressing-table and fingered its pretty accessories, sniffing with childish pleasure the delicately scented powder and cologne. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, and scowled. Then she began to walk restlessly up and down the room. She had to ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... crow's foot had been painted at the corner of each eye, and a line drawn from the nose to the corners of the lips. The chin and lower part of the cheeks had been tinted dark, to give them the appearance of long shaving. Both of them burst into a laugh as they looked at the two faces in the mirror. ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... days, or the Supreme Court occupied, when Marshall sat in the chief seat on its bench, and William Pinckney brought to its bar his elaborate eloquence, and William Wirt his ornate and touching oratory. The stage is to France what Parliament is to England. It is more: it is the mirror and the fool; it glasses society's form and pressure; it criticizes folly. Murger's success on the stage opened every door of publicity to him. His name was current, it had a known market-value. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... of the SAS approach mirror in part shortcomings of other approaches. Technological solutions are crucial but may not be conceivable outside the EMP effects of nuclear weapons. Intelligence is clearly vital. Without precise knowledge of who and what are to ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... impression may arise from different objects. What limit is to be assigned to this disorder? is there any sensation strong enough to assure us of the presence of the object which it seems to intimate, any such as to preclude the possibility of deception? If, when we look into a mirror, our minds are impressed with the appearance of trees, fields, and houses, which are unreal, how can we ascertain beyond all doubt whether the scene we directly look upon has any more substantial ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... they turned face to face to each other and sideways to me, and each riz up his right arm—honest, Mr. Parks, I couldn't believe but 'twas the same person and him reflected in a mirror, they was so like. I thought they was goin' to strike each other, so I stepped forward and said, ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... I was thinking of the likeness. It rather unnerved me. It seemed as though I was looking into a mirror." ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... silences. I traced this figure idly on the sand today, and suddenly understood the symbolism of the scarab. But did the Egyptians anticipate the Redemption? As men are impressed by the face of the world, so is the world impressed by their faces. The face, as mirror of the soul, shines forth with electricity and makes an impression on life, altering the song of those it acts upon as the violin sound alters the formation of sands resting on a tightened drum. By what ancient intuition does the Latin word "malum" mean both ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton

... chairs, with upholstery matching the walls; the huge leather "slumber-couch," with adjustable lamp at its head. When one opened the door of the dressing-room closet, it was automatically filled with light; there was an adjustable three-sided mirror, at which one could study his own figure from every side. There was a little bronze box near the bed, in which one might set his shoes, and with a locked door opening out into the hall, so that the floor-porter could get them without disturbing one. Each of the bath-rooms was the ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... him like a whipped hound to the kennel, but he could still snarl back his defiance from the shadow of his obscurity. The strong masculine beauty of his face—the beauty, as Cynthia had said, of the young David—confronted him in the little greenish mirror above the bureau, and in the dull misery of the eyes he read those higher possibilities, which even to-day he could not regard without a positive pang. What he might have been seemed forever struggling ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... my glass and slipped away to bed. Consulting the mirror as I undressed, I smiled at the reflection that confronted me. "You can sleep well to-night," I said, "for there are signs that you are about to have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various

... few minutes before had been smooth as a polished mirror, now displayed a picture of terrific grandeur; the waves, crested with foam, rolled and tossed over one another in wild confusion, whilst the roaring of the winds, and the torrents of rain, added to the awful sublimity of the scene. Lord George, though aware of the imminent danger ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... the biggest hotels in the world, and see all the sights she sees. I imagine it is a sort of a palace. She showed us the picture of her three best friends at school. It is in a big silver locket set with sapphires, and hangs over a corner of her mirror. We heard a great deal of them this morning. She seems to think more of that Mollie and Fay and Kell than she does ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... beautiful bright moonlight night, the sea being lighted up like a burnished mirror, and the clear orb making the distant background of the Cornish coast come out in relief, far away on our western bow. The wind being still fair for us, keeping to the east-nor'-east, Sam brought it ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the cape beyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it and about it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you have the shadowy reflections of the leafage and the curving shores and the receding capes pictured in it. Well, that is all beautiful; soft and rich and beautiful; and when the sun gets well up, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... which these two noted people sat had no carpet and but few chairs. A shelf extended along one side of the apartment, and it was covered with mugs containing paint and grease. Brushes were littered about, and a wig lay in a corner. A mirror stood at either end of the shelf, and beside these, flared two gas-jets protected by wire baskets. Hanging from nails driven in the walls were coats, waist-coats, and trousers of more modern cut than the costumes worn by ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr



Words linked to "Mirror" :   mirror image, hand glass, parabolic mirror, portraying, hand mirror, portrayal, reflector, depiction, mirror symmetry, speculum, reverberate, looking glass, car mirror



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