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Spark   Listen
noun
Spark  n.  
1.
A small particle of fire or ignited substance which is emitted by a body in combustion. "Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward."
2.
A small, shining body, or transient light; a sparkle.
3.
That which, like a spark, may be kindled into a flame, or into action; a feeble germ; an elementary principle. "If any spark of life be yet remaining." "Small intellectual spark." "Vital spark of heavenly flame." "We have here and there a little clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge." "Bright gem instinct with music, vocal spark."
Spark arrester, a contrivance to prevent the escape of sparks while it allows the passage of gas, chiefly used in the smokestack of a wood-burning locomotive. Called also spark consumer. (U.S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spark" Quotes from Famous Books



... Katerina clasped the murderer in her arms. All was apparent joy and revelry; but there was anguish in the heart of M'Clise, who, now that he had gained his object, felt that it had cost him much too dear, for his peace of mind was gone for ever. But Katerina cared not; every spark of feeling was absorbed in her passion, and the very guilt of M'Clise but rendered him more dear; for was it not for her that he had done all this? M'Clise received her portion, and hasted to sail away; for the bodies were still in the canal, and he ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... grumbled, as he squeezed the cloth and put out the tiny glowing spark. "Must have dropped off. Looked nice if I'd slept all night in this idiotic place. Too soon yet, but I ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... may break on reason, Faith may prove a treason To that highest gift That is granted by Thy grace; But Hope! Ah, let us cherish Some spark that may not perish, Some tiny spark to cheer us, As ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was sparkling and witty and full of variety, but no spark from him was ever a cinder in ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... she married him, was a wise woman when she died. Parson or not, he will never go where she is. Well, it's sad, but you'll be well out of this cold house, where there's so much praying but not a spark ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... able to produce fire. The back of a pocket knife, or an old file with a fragment of flint, quartz, or pyrites struck smartly together over the remains of a burnt piece of calico, will in deft hands produce a spark which can be fanned to a glow, and so ignite other material, till a fire ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... seating themselves, along the ground for the purpose. Fire, however, was wanting; and to procure it, Shungie took my fowling-piece, and, stopping up the touch-hole, he put a small piece of linen into the pan, and endeavoured to excite a spark. But this expedient proved unsuccessful, as the lock had got rusted and would not go off; he then got some dry grass and a piece of rotten wood, and turning a small stick rapidly between his hands, in the same manner as we mill ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... accompanied with large hail-stones and thunder and lightning. The wind was instantly lulled, and after the first burst of the storm a deathlike silence succeeded to the crackling of the flames. A deluge of rain descended, and an instant every spark of the conflagration was extinguished, and the pitchy darkness of the night was unbroken by even a ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... to the ship's side, and flung the end of his cigarette overboard; it struck, a red spark amidst the lurid phosphorescence of the bubbles that swept ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... of orange and red swam before Ham's eyes. Deep in his being something snapped, and, as a fuse spark reaches and ignites its charge, so something fired the eruption that ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... look on their afflictions. Sidewalk venders cluster about you. And if you are smoking the spark of your cigar inevitably draws a full delegation of those moldy old whiskerados who follow the profession of collecting butts and quids. They hover about you, watchful as chicken hawks; and their bleary eyes envy you for each puff you take, until you grow uneasy and self-reproachful under their ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... dryness of the skin. One cold night I rose from my bed, and having lighted a lantern, was going out to observe the thermometer, with no other clothing than my flannel night-dress, when, on approaching my hand to the iron latch of the door, a distinct spark was elicited. Friction of the skin at almost all times in winter produced ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... sorrowful, do not grieve," I broke out. "If there is in Ginevra one spark of worthiness of your affection, she will—she must feel devotion in return. Be cheerful, be hopeful, Dr. John. Who ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... young spark has not been in evidence during the past few days at any rate," he commented, and his voice was not so nonchalant as he imagined, because Mrs. Paxton looked ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... critic-folk, deep read in books, might scoff at the very suggestion of a ploughman turning poet, but he recognised also that they might be wrong. It was not by dint of Greek that Parnassus was to be climbed. 'Ae spark o' Nature's fire' was the one thing needful for poetry that was ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... full of bliss!" He was going to say—"without getting tired;" but he saw that it was the eternal joy itself that bubbled from their little fountains: weariness there would be the silence of all song, would be death, utter vanishment to the gladness of the universe. The sun would go out like a spark upon burnt paper, and the heart of man would forget the sound of laughter. Then he said to himself: "The larks do not make their own singing; do mortals make their own sighing?" And he saw that at least they might open wider ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... from the halyards, and the tramp of the grenadiers awoke the silence of Broadway, she never faltered in her allegiance, never doubted, never failed throughout those seven years the while she lay beneath the British heel, a rattlesnake, stunned only, but deadly still while the last spark of life remained. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... moods. Besides, their inspiration is gone, their singing hearts are benumbed by the cold. But for your letter thrust somewhere I could not have escaped the ghost of sadness that seemed to haunt the earth and sky. Suddenly, as I stood in the midst of it all, a cardinal flashed like a red spark into a tall pine, fluffed out his breast, and swept the forest with a defiant note of melody. It was a challenge to the long winter time, a prophecy of spring and of high green trees, and of a mate cloistered now far away in the wilderness: "You shall not hear a simple song, but ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... so entirely for men, I should think when it was proposed to women they would feel, at least, some spark of the old spirit of races allied to our own. "If he is to be my bridegroom and lord" cries Brunhilda, [Footnote: See the Nibelungen Lays.] "he must first be able to pass through fire and water." "I will serve at the banquet," says ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... grazing is encouraged in the forests. Rangers patrol the principal automobile roads to see that careless campers and tourists have not left burning campfires. Railroads are required to equip their locomotives with spark-arresters. They also are obliged to keep their rights of way free of material which burns readily. Spark-arresters are ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... Only wholesale hero-worshipers consider all of the thirty-two Sonatas of equal significance. It is true that, taken as a whole, they are a storehouse of creative vitality and that in each there is something, somewhere, which strikes a spark; for everything which Beethoven wrote was stamped with his dominating personality. But the fire of genius burns more steadily in some of the Sonatas than in others. It is the very essence of genius to have its transcendent ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... afire than most houses on fire contrive to look from start to finish. Every window showed eager flickering flames, and flames like serpents' tongues were licking out of three large holes in the roof, which was already beginning to fall in. Behind, larger and abundantly spark-shot gusts of fire rose from the fodder that was now getting alight in the Royal Fishbourne Hotel stables. Next door to Mr. Polly, Mr. Rumbold's house was disgorging black smoke from the gratings that protected its underground windows, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... is the frightful seed The spark intense within it, all without Mordant corrosion gnashing and champing hard For ruin ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... rich and I don't own railways. Lately bad feeling has been growing on the Sagalac, and only a spark was needed to fire the ricks. You struck the spark in your sermon last night. I don't see the end of it all. One thing is sure—you're not going to take the funeral ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Father, in whose light of love they live. They delight to do good to every created being, whether good or evil. They would not, and could not recognise an evil person as a congenial spirit, but for the sake of awakening in him some spark of a beautiful love, a disinterested thought and affection; they would crown his whole life with loving kindness and tender compassion. A true, heavenly angel could be happy in the effort to do good to the most fallen human spirit; and should ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... They hadn't been able, however, to overtake Red Knife and had finally abandoned the expedition partly because of the doubtful loyalty of the Chinese troops, who weren't over eager to chase Red Knife. That whole region in those days needed only a spark to set it aflame against ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... down at the edge of the water, placed his tinder box in his lap, took his turban off and put it over his hands, so as to deaden the sound, and then struck the steel sharply against the flint. The first blow was successful. The spark fell on the tinder, and at once ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... our involuntary respect: the climate (whatsoever may be its influence) was no longer the same: [1] the purity of blood had been contaminated through a thousand channels; but the venerable aspect of her ruins, and the memory of past greatness, rekindled a spark of the national character. The darkness of the middle ages exhibits some scenes not unworthy of our notice. Nor shall I dismiss the present work till I have reviewed the state and revolutions of the Roman City, which acquiesced ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... it now the hour, if it was an hour, was simply a background for Delia More. For it was not only Calliope and I who responded to Abel's light-hearted talk, but, little by little, it was Delia too. Perhaps it was that faint spark in her—fanned to life on the night of her coming home, so that she "took stock"—which we now divined faintly quickening to Abel's humour, his wisdom, even his fancies. Save in her bitterness, on that first night, ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... contrary to the Letter of the Militia Act. I trust then I was misinformd when I was told that it was countenanced by those who of all Men ought to pay the most sacred Regard to the Law. Are we arrivd to such a Pitch of Levity & Dissipation as that the Idea of feasting shall extinguish every Spark of publick Virtue, and frustrate the Design of the most noble and useful Institution. I hope not. Shall we not again see that Sobriety of Manners, that Temperance, Frugality, Fortitude and other manly Virtues wch were once the Glory and Strength ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... Overpowered by the violence of their emotions, both are for a space silent; at length Layla addresses Majnun in tender accents; but when he finds voice to reply it is evident that the reaction has completely extinguished the last spark of reason: Majnun is now a hopeless maniac, and he rushes from the arms of Layla and seeks the desert once more. Layla never recovered from the shock occasioned by this discovery. She pined away, and with her last breath desired her mother to convey the tidings of her death to Majnun, and to ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... district when the serious ones voiced their fears to him, his own thoughts always came back to those fears. From the Red River Valley to the foothills long-smouldering indignation was glowing like a streak of fire in the prairie grass; a spark or two more and nothing could stop the conflagration that would sweep the plains country. If the law were to fail these red-blooded and long-suffering homesteaders there would be final weapons alright—real weapons! It was no use shutting one's eyes to the danger. ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... such a degree that those who were the nearest shifted their position. The warrior who was on his feet stepped forward a single pace, and was still standing in his idle fashion with his hands half folded behind him, when a spark flew outward with a snap, and dropped down the neck of the unsuspicious red man. When he felt the burn, like the thrust of a big needle, he sprang several feet in the air, and began frantically clutching ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... engage his attention by strenuous efforts, loud, earnest tones, gesticulations and signs, and a constant presentation of some visible object of bright color and striking form. The eye wanders, and the spark of consciousness and intelligence which has been fanned into momentary brightness darkens at the slightest relaxation of the teacher's exertions. The names of objects presented to him must sometimes be repeated hundreds of times before ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... theory that every man of genius is two men, one visible, one unseen and often unsuspected by his counterpart. For who has not felt the shadow's influence in dealing with such as have the Spark? Napoleon spoke of stars, being Corsican and a mystic. Those who met him in his last days were uneasily conscious that the second Bonaparte had died on the eve of Waterloo, leaving derelict his brother, a stout and commonplace man who was in turn ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... she read, and her heart beat fast. It was not the first time that the seriousness of the situation had come into her mind. But she had always excused herself by the justness of her cause. Any girl with the least spark of spirit would do the same, she reasoned. Her parents had no right to force her to marry a man she hated. But the thought of the men searching for her body was horrible. What would the papers say if the truth became known, ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... of Fanny Kemble's reading without a spark of ill-nature, but with many a gleam of humor. He told me at the same time of the wonderful effect that Adelaide Kemble (Mrs. Sartoris) used to make when she recited Shelley's ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... day, and his final dissolution approach, he called together all his children, to the number of eighteen, and summoned as many of his subjects as were within a convenient distance, being willing that the last spark of his life should go out in the service of his people; this summons was obeyed with heavy hearts by his loving subjects, and, at the day and place appointed, a ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... stick of soft wood, he twirled the stick rapidly between the palms of his hands, so fast and so long that presently the dust ground from the softer stick, falling to one side in a little pile, began to smoke, and at last a faint spark was seen at the top of the pile, which began to glow, and, spreading, became constantly larger. He, or his companion, for often two men twirled the stick, one relieving the other, caught this spark in a bit of tinder—perhaps some dry punk or a little fine grass—and by ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell

... Ruhmkorff's apparatus, which threw an artificial brightness into the depths of the Columbiad. There the cartridges were arranged with the utmost regularity, connected by a metallic thread, destined to communicate to them all simultaneously the electric spark, by which means this mass of gun-cotton was ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... Sneak: "only a spark of fire got agin the Indian's foot. He ain't as good pluck as the other one we had—he could stand burning at the stake ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... through which he had to struggle before he won at last the fame he deserved. And the conclusion to which I came, after having read them most attentively and conscientiously, was that it is often a great misfortune to possess that divine spark of genius which now and then touches the brow of a few human creatures and marks them for eternity with its fiery seal. Had Balzac been one of those everyday writers whose names, after having been for a brief space ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... Less willingly do we do this when homage, however unwilling and reluctant, has been paid. But we have our duties to ourselves and to our submitted subjects to consider, and it is not meet to send firebrands alight into the world, when a spark may raise so fierce a conflagration, and when hundreds of lives have to pay the penalty of one mad act of headstrong youth. It is your youth that shall be your excuse from the charge of graver offence, but those who ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... thick wavy brown hair. His cheeks were a dusky red and the lashes of his closed eyes were as long and dark and silken as a girl's. He wore a light gray suit, and on the slender white hand that hung down over the hammock's edge was a spark of ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... A spark of light made an erratic course from the Temple door: someone was bringing a flame to light the lamps. A moment later there was a flare of yellow light as the oil in a large wall lamp caught fire, and then the darkness melted further ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... second return to the United States he embarked from Havre on the packet ship Sully, in the autumn of 1832 and in a casual conversation with some of the passengers on the then recent discovery in France of the means of obtaining the electric spark from the magnet, showing the identity or relation of electricity and magnetism, Morse's mind conceived, not merely the idea of an electric telegraph, but of an electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph; substantially and essentially as it now exists. ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... dispensed even-handed justice and motherly kindness impartially all round. And if the lassie Grant's excellences were somewhat obtrusively contrasted with Baubie's shortcomings, it was because, the two children being of the same age, Mrs. Duncan hoped to rouse thereby a spark of emulation in Baubie. Neither was there any pharisaical self-exaltation on the part of the rival. She was a sandy-haired little girl, an orphan who had been three years in the refuge, and who in her own mind rather deprecated as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... whom we saw in Safita, asked the Nusairiyeh women to repeat to him their nursery rhymes, they denied that they had any. They were afraid to recite them, lest he write them down and use them as a magic spell or charm against them. When a child is born among them, no one is allowed to take a coal or spark of fire from the house for a week, lest the child be injured. They always hang a little coin around the child's neck to keep off eruptions and ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... very proof, Pinabel of Sorence, Tierri he strikes, on 's helmet of Provence, Leaps such a spark, the grass is kindled thence; Of his steel brand the point he then presents, On Tierri's brow the helmet has he wrenched So down his face its broken halves descend; And his right cheek in flowing blood is drenched; And his hauberk, over his belly, rent. God's his ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... in the second sense, is a term reserved for what has certain natural conditions, namely, for the spark flying from the contact of stimulus and organ, led Kant to shift his point of view, and to talk half the time about conditions in the sense of natural causes or needful antecedents. Intelligence is not an antecedent of thought and knowledge but their character and logical energy. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... to work—took a handful or two of the crumbling wood, broke it up into dust, then struck a spark on to the tinder, touched it with a slow match and inserted this into the little pile of wood; a minute's blowing and the flames sprang up. He drew out the slow match and putting his foot upon it placed it in his wallet, ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... negotiate with other tribes, and always found him equal to any emergency; but on this occasion his ambition ran away with his judgment, and led him to fatal results. With all these influences at work, it took but a spark to fire the magazine, and that spark was struck on the seventeenth day of ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... if you will tip back your head like a paper-hanger—whose Adam's apple would seem to attest a life of sidereal contemplation—you will see in the center of the murk above you a single point of light. It is the spark that will ignite the great gas chandelier. I strain my neck to the point of breaking. My grandfather strains his too, for it is a game between us which shall announce the first spurting of the light. At last! We cry out together. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... by her very existence which made it possible, to begin the fight, he felt the blood run quickly in his veins, and his blue eyes flashed again, and the words came flowing easily and surely from his lips. But he wondered at his own eloquence, not seeing yet that the divine spark had kindled his genius into a broad flame, and not half understanding ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... with a spark of her ancestral fire lighting her meek eyes through its tears, "not beneath me, but above. What do I say! Isabel, ask me no more. Enough that it is a folly, a dream, and that I could smile with pity at myself to think from what light causes love ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Lawrence from her lethargy by appeals of different kinds. She certainly was not an intellectual woman, though she had a strong and well-cultivated mind, and was accomplished in many ways,—society accomplishments, with a view to the admiration they might win. He could seem to strike no electric spark, though he succeeded in restoring her to health. Every week of her stay at Depford Beach, she had improved; but there was the old, dreary, listless life. She used to think herself, if some shock like that of an earthquake could ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... because it rises above the idioms of person or race and is universally acceptable in form and essence. Such is the intrinsic nature of the process, and the historical circumstances of its beginnings make it clear. It was the quick mind of the Greek which acted as the spark to fire the trains of thought and observation which had been accumulating for ages through the agency of the priests in Egypt and Babylonia. The Greeks lived and travelled between the two centres, and their earliest sages ...
— Progress and History • Various

... this day, like that now complained of, would put further parley beyond our power; yet to such accidents we are every day exposed by the irregularities of their officers, and the impatience of our citizens. Should any spark kindle these dispositions of our borderers into a flame, we are involved beyond recall by the eternal principles of justice to our citizens, which we will never abandon. In such an event, Spain cannot possibly gain; and what ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Berkley, outraged pride had aided to buoy her above the grief over the deep wound he had dealt her. She never doubted that his insolence and deliberate brutality had killed in her the last lingering spark of compassion for the memory of the man who had held her in his arms that night ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts of AEsthetic Tea," flit higher; and, by electric Promethean glance, kindle ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... of lookin' arter, an' no mistake," old Jacob was remarking, as he surveyed the fine crop with the bland and easy gaze of ownership. "Why, in a little while them top leaves thar will be like tinder, an' the first floatin' spark will set it all afire. That's the way Sol Peterkin lost half a crop last year, an' it's the way Dick Moss lost his whole one the year before." At Christopher's entrance he paused and turned his pleasant, ruddy face from the fresh logs which he had been watching. "So you want to have ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... shades, on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge grey form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, And through their clustering branches dark Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark— Like starry twinkles that momently break, Through the rifts of the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... hardly noticed and did not understand when they happened. I was afraid of her when I was a little girl, but I think if I had grown up sooner, I should have enjoyed her heartily. It never used to occur to me that she had a spark of tenderness or of sentiment, until just before she was ill, but I have been growing more fond of her ever since. I might have given her a great deal more pleasure. It was not long after I was through school that she became so feeble, and of course ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... wandered upon the shallows, and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the reeds; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone; the kingfisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' bills snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swift's wings whirred like musket-balls, as they rushed screaming past his head; and ever the river fleeted by, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... Supports hurried up and hurled themselves in, and a spasm of fresh strength and fury lifted the line and heaved it forward. So far the fire of its fury brought it; and there the hosing shrapnel met it, swept down and washed it away, and beat it out to the last spark ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... for indulgences. From this beginning, honest or at least excusable in itself, he says, Luther, carried away with ambition and popular applause, nourished a party. The pope might easily have allowed the revolt to die had he neglected it, but he took the wrong course and blew the tiny spark into a great flame ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Even that spark of divine intelligence which comes into the animal soul, as Aristotle says, from beyond the gates, comes and is called down by the exigencies of physical life. An animal endowed with locomotion cannot ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... so many years—to whom? To this faithless dog, that, thinking to have a strange woman in his embrace, has in the brief while that I have been with him here lavished upon me more caresses and endearments than during all the forepast time that I have been his! A lively spark indeed art thou to-day, renegade dog, that shewest thyself so limp and enervate and impotent at home! But, God be praised, thou hast tilled thine own plot, and not another's, as thou didst believe. ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... began to cry early in the morning, "Rico won't come to-day! Rico won't come to-day!" and scarcely ceased until the evening; and the second day it was the same, but on the third,—he was tired out by that time, and seemed like a little heap of straw, that the least spark could ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... from the "Salem Gazette," July 13, 1790, has an interest to us from what it says of the likenesses "produced from a Spark of Electricity." It is difficult to conjecture what this means; though additional interest is derived from the fact of these likenesses having been presented by ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... Nunckle be contented, 'tis a naughtie night to swimme in. Now a little fire in a wilde Field, were like an old Letchers heart, a small spark, all the rest on's body, cold: Looke, heere comes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... isolated were waiting for direction, and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in vain. Luther had kindled the spark, which was to become a conflagration in Germany, at Wittemberg, on October 31, 1517, by his denunciation of indulgences. His words found an echo, and flew from lip to lip all through Western Europe. Tyndal, an Oxford student, went to Germany, saw Luther, and under his direction translated ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... of those who had enrolled themselves in the yeomanry, were solely actuated by a desire to take care of their own property, that they were impelled to take up arms merely by selfish motives, and without possessing a spark of the amor patriae. He recalled to my recollection the immense sacrifices made by our forefather, Colonel Thomas Hunt, in the reign of the Charles's; he pointed out the noble domains and productive estates that were confiscated by Cromwell, in consequence of my ancestor's zeal in the cause ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... in a deed of mercy. Little Annie lay dead in her bed the night it arrived. Jeffreys that morning, before he started to work, had watched the little spark of life flicker for the last time and go out. The mother, worn-out by her constant vigils, lay ill beside her dead child. The father, a drunkard, out of work, deserted the place, and the two other children, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... agent for the Adamantyne Tombstone Company, of Tennessee. We own the only quarry of snow-white, non-grit, pristyne Parian rock on this side of the blue ocean, and we have in our employ the best and most world-renowned chisel-artists that ever breathed the spark of life into inanimate matter. Now, just set where you are, gentlemen—don't move—and I'll show you a beauty—a tombstone that will make a man want to die—if he's able to pay ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... of the human soul at which it was first "introduced" into man's vertebrate body. Hence, at the time when the human body was evolved from the anthropoid body of the ape (probably in the Tertiary period), a specific human psychic element—or, as people love to say, "a spark of divinity"—must have been suddenly infused or breathed into the anthropoid brain, and been associated with the ape-soul already present in it. I need not insist on the enormous theoretical difficulties of this idea. I will only point out that this "spark of divinity," ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned with his wrongs and raging for revenge! The whole depends upon the turn of a thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into a flame; and the explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, and nearly all those in Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up to its highest pitch, afford examples of this dramatic ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the sky grew lighter, except at that point of the east where earth and heaven seemed to be kindling with a mighty fire. There the haze was glowing with purple and crimson; and there was Henri intently watching for the first golden spark of the sun, when Toussaint touched his shoulder, and pointed to the northwards. Shading his eyes with his hand, Christophe strove to penetrate the grey mists which had ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... lived. He smoked his pipe nonchalantly, as though a hundred professors could not daunt him. I was sure that there was something of bravado in his conduct until he began to sing, and his voice rang out without a tremor, so full and strong that it fanned a spark of courage into my cowering heart. James had a wonderfully inspiring way of singing. He tuned his voice to the day and to the time of the day. This morning the sky was clear blue above us, and about us the orchards blossomed pink ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... gentleman of great estate fell desperately in love with a great beauty of very high quality, but as ill-natured as long flattery and an habitual self-will could make her. However, my young spark ventures upon her like a man of quality, without being acquainted with her, or having ever saluted her, until it was a crime to kiss any woman else. Beauty is a thing which palls with possession, and the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... to a nicety the fine distinction between giving trouble and open defiance. She never actually overstepped the line, but she contrived to make matters very unpleasant for poor Winnie. It was her boast that she could always raise a spark out of Miss Gascoyne, and her admirers were ready ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... fifty," explained the Honorable, "L'Institut Canadien was our national thinking Society, and the spark of an awakening ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... sees nothing; the ear hears nothing. Horror seizes on the strongest mind: the same darkness, the same desolate emotion, had Heinrich's words breathed into Otto's soul; therefore he sank like the traveller to the earth: but as the traveller's whole soul rivets itself by the eye upon the first spark which glimmers, to kindle again the torch which is to lead him forth from this grave, so did Otto attach himself to the first awakening thought of help. "Wilhelm? his soul is noble and good, him ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... blow will tell, will be directed to the right spot by practised hands. But they discharge the task imposed by society, and both wear the same mask of indifference, so that the masterful hate of the one can meet and strike against the spiteful hate of the other without producing a spark. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... life, the lips of Death Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath; Naught shall revive thy vanished spark . . . Love, must I dwell ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu

... so." Then again we find, "Let them only leave me my mornings free." Lastly, he wrote in his journal, before marrying Miss Milbank, and while in correspondence with her, "It is very singular, but there is not a spark of love between me and Miss Milbank." If, then, Miss Milbank married Lord Byron out of self-love, and to prevent his marrying a young and beautiful Irish girl, Lord Byron, on his part, married Miss Milbank from motives the most honorable to human nature. It was her simple ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... not be far out if he guesses that Miss Mary and Mr. Spearman made a match of it not very long after this month of June. Mr. Spearman was a young spark, who had a good property in the neighbourhood of Whitminster, and not unfrequently about this time spent a few days at the "King's Head," ostensibly on business. But he must have had some leisure, for his diary ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James

... unimpaired, within its screen of grass and nettles, lit in his soul a spark of the old fire. Surely his plan should be to move onward through good and ill—to avoid morbid sorrow even though he did see uglinesses in the world? Bene agere et loetari—to do good cheerfully—which he had heard ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... medicine, unguents, etcetera; but these he always sold to an apothecary as soon as he had procured them from the authorities. The teeth of the dog had, however, their effect, and Mr Vanslyperken opened his eyes, and in a faint voice cried, "Snarleyyow." Oh, if the dog had any spark of feeling, how must he then have been stung with remorse at his ingratitude to so kind a master! But he apparently showed none, at least report does not say that any ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... creation, this favourite of heaven, and of allotting to him his interior qualities by means of his exterior appearance. Men of his character so frequently deceive themselves, that it is impossible to say whether some remaining spark of understanding had whispered to him that this new delusion would give a fresh polish to the old one; and that more pious souls would come to him than ever, in order to be told so many wondrous things about their faces. ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... at the wheel of the touring car and, once the farm was left behind, and they were on a fairly good country road, he advanced the spark and the gasoline control until they were running at twenty-five and ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... her white gloves clasped on her knee, the embroidered bag hanging by its golden cords to the tip of the golden slippers. She fixed her eyes steadily on her companion, and there was in them a spark of anger, before which Cecil had the grace ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... first knowledge of him, was never rent; yet occasionally it seemed to me to gape in a manner that let a little momentary finger of light through, in the flashing of which a soul kindled and shut in his eyes, like a hard-dying spark in ashes. I wished to know what gave life to the spark, and I set ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... man of the vagrant class had been arrested in London whilst endeavouring to sell a gold watch believed to be that of Professor McMurray, was the first spark. Later the watch was identified and the man charged with the murder. He protested his innocence, saying that he had picked up the watch by the roadside, just outside Gorling, nearly a month before. There were bloodstains upon his ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... the spark of the divine spirit, and by the realization of that spark, and all it means, whatever is desired by mortal man may ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... experience, Borism is fast attaining a head it never reached before. Speechifying is the crying and prominent vice of the age. Why will the ganders not recollect that eloquence is the gift of heaven, Thomas? A man may improve it unquestionably, but the Promethean fire, the electrical spark, must be from on high. No mental perseverance or education could ever have made a Demosthenes, or a Cicero, in the ages long past; nor an ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... night. These boys were apprentices to the rope-making business, and a few days before, while spinning ropeyarns, with the loose hemp wound in folds around their waists, the youngest, a lad about fourteen years old, unwittingly approached an open fire, the weather being cold. A spark ignited the hemp, and in a moment the whole was in a blaze. The other boy, obeying an involuntary but generous impulse, rushed to the assistance of his companion, only to share his misfortune. They were both terribly burned, and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... merely a phantom. To-day, from minute observation, the conjecture rose in her that something uncommon had happened, and that something more must happen, also; she was colder and more formal than ever, with a burning spark of fear in the depth of her blue, clear eyes. Her dress was of cloth, closely fitting, somewhat masculine in the cut of the waist, and on the top of her head was a Japanese knot of fiery hair, pierced by a pin with steel lustres. In her hand was an open book, and she walked ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... Schombergh gives an account of shooting one when ascending the River Berbice. The snout was taken off by one ball, and another entered the hinder part of the skull, when the Indians, attacking it with their clubs, appeared completely to have knocked out every spark of life. It was at last hauled up and placed on the bow of the corial. While the corial was being drawn across the rapids, two of the Indians took up the cayman in order to lay it in a more convenient ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... the dandy Blue Shark, a long, taper and mighty genteel looking fellow, with a slender waist, like a Bond- street beau, and the whitest tiers of teeth imaginable. This dainty spark invariably lounged by with a careless fin and an indolent tail. But he ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... babbled along across the pike, on its grassy banks, and beneath the shadow of a large tree, was gathered a little group of boys in blue, performing the last acts of kindness to a comrade in whom the vital spark was almost extinguished, and a surgeon bending over the dying soldier striving to render less painful the few lingering ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... however great and decided it may have been, was nevertheless limited to the theologians and literati of the age; his voice did not find that responding echo among the common people, which alone is able to give life to abstract doctrines. It was in Bohemia, that the spark first blazed up into a lively flame, which a century later spread an enlightening fire over all Europe. The names of Huss and Jerome of Prague can never perish; although less success has made them less current than those of Luther and ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... leave to refer them to the paper itself. I hope that there is none here, who, considering the subject in the calm light of philosophy, will advance an objection dishonorable to Virginia; that at the moment they are securing the rights of their citizens, an objection is started that there is a spark of hope, that those unfortunate men now held in bondage, may, by the operation of the general government, be made free. But if any gentleman be terrified by this apprehension, let him read the system. I ask, and I will ask again and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... garden tired with autumn, Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark, In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April, The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark; ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale

... at the expense of him who had so helped him rise. If John had been less noble than he was, and his friendship for Jesus less loyal, such words from his followers would have embittered him. There are people who do irreparable hurt by such flattering sympathy. A spark of envy is often fanned into a disastrous flame by friends who come with such appeals to the evil ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... of wheat produce an ear-bearing stalk, or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from a small berry or acorn which has escaped being eaten by the bird, kindling and setting generation on fire (as it were) from a little spark, it sends forth the stock of a bush, or the tall body of an oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence also they say that seed is in Greek called [Greek omitted], as it were, the [Greek omitted] or the WINDING UP of a great mass in a little compass; and that Nature has the name of [Greek omitted], as ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... insulating purposes in the manufacture of a large variety of electrical equipment. The highest grades are employed particularly in making condensers for magnetos of automobile and airplane engines and for radio equipment, and in the manufacture of spark plugs for high tension gas engines. Sheet mica is also used in considerable amounts for glazing, for heat insulation, and as phonograph diaphragms. Ground mica is used in pipe and boiler coverings, as an insulator, ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... this piece there was not a single line of real humor, a spark of human sentiment, a gleam of intelligence; it was a kind of delirium tremens of the drama. To Thyrsis it seemed as if a whole civilization, with all its resources of science and art—its music and painting and costumes, its poets and composers, its actors, singers, orchestra, and audience—had ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... decorated with real estate, an' burrs, an' everythin' loose what would stick to him. An' when he gets to where I sits, he flops down flat on his back. He sure is exhausted; even his paws is limp. But one of his eyes seems t' hold a spark o' life, an' he fixes that on me. An' he ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... night, are all sandwiched with numerous mirthful incidents. Soldiers, above all people, have an eye for the ridiculous, and are ever ready to make merry and laugh over the most trivial matter. Even the horrors of battle are unable to quench the spark of gaiety ever present in the make-up of a ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves



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