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Colours

noun
1.
A distinguishing emblem.  Synonym: colors.
2.
A flag that shows its nationality.  Synonym: colors.



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"Colours" Quotes from Famous Books



... defence, his troops immediately began to plunder. 14. In the mean time, however, the lines of Cassius were forced, and his cavalry put to flight. There was no effort that this unfortunate general did not exert to make his infantry stand; stopping those that fled, and himself seizing the colours to rally them. But the valour of an individual was insufficient to inspire a timorous army. 15. At length, despairing of success, Cassius retired to his tent and killed himself. Brutus was soon informed of the defeat of Cassius, and in a little time after, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... surroundings of field and wood. It is a good idea to sit silently for a time on some log or stump, and soon the birds will come about you, for they seldom notice a person who is motionless. A great aid to field study is a good Field Glass. A glass enables one to see the colours of small birds hopping about the shrubbery, or moving through the branches of trees. With its {9} aid one may learn much of their movements, and even observe the kind of food they consume. A very serviceable glass may be secured at a price ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... order" of the ship of the line whose flag had braved the battle and the breeze, yielding place to the new, in the little steam-tug—these pathetic contrasts are repeated and enforced by a technical tour de force in the treatment of the colours which is without a parallel in art. And the picture itself thus combines the evidences of Turner's supremacy alike in imagination and in skill. The old masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its unity all the exquisite gradations and varied ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... Office Archives is a statement that a local tradesman named Wyllie generously supplied the waistcoat and breeches: "they was of satin."[297] In July 1793 there appeared an "Address to the People," dated "Berean Meeting House, Dundee," which painted the Government in the darkest colours, and contained these assertions: "You are plunged into war by a wicked Ministry and a compliant Parliament, who seem careless and unconcerned for your interest, the end and design of which is almost too horrid ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... of the elder Mavering, his ability, his goodness, his shyness, which he had always had to make such a hard fight with. Munt was sensible of an access of popularity in knowing Dan Mavering's people, and he did not spare his colours. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... creatures, according to the names by which they are known in these parts, I can furnish you with one from the best authority. These, however, are generally to be found about outhouses, and only occasionally visit your apartments. There is the chicaclina, a striped viper, of beautiful colours—the coralillo, a viper of a coral colour, with a black head—the vinagrillo, an animal like a large cricket. You can discover it, when in the room, by its strong smell of vinegar. It is orange-coloured, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... a youthful train, Descending swiftly to the plain, Drest like the fairest sons of day, In floating robes and colours gay; No crested helmets there appear, No glittering shield or pointed spear, But youths with honey-suckles crown'd, Or their fair locks with fillets bound, Whose circling ranks and varied dyes, Shew'd like ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham

... separate belts, the first a common belt, then the leather "kolan" for the support of the weapons, and over all a silk sash, the "pas," sometimes twenty yards long, wound round and round many times and of brilliant colours. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... exacting critic of ladies' dress, even to the accidental position of a riband. He could even lay down aesthetical canons upon such matters. He reproved her for wearing a dark dress as unsuitable to a "little creature." "What," he asked, "have not all insects gay colours?" His insensibility to music was even more pronounced than his dulness of sight. On hearing it said, in praise of a musical performance, that it was in any case difficult, his feeling comment was, "I wish ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... the final disagreement which led to the sale of the boats in 1874. Even if it be true one cannot say that the bluff independence came off with flying colours in this particular instance. But FitzGerald could have told another story, if one may judge from his letter to Mr. Spalding of the 9th January, 1874, written from Lowestoft (Two ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth

... Oxford, and the disgrace in which you left the University. Allow me to say, sir, that it reflects little credit on your honour that you should have imposed on your late employer, and taken advantage of his weak health and faculties to foist yourself upon his family under false colours." ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... has been portrayed by all his biographers in very agreeable colours. He was amiable and virtuous, and was as much courted for his popular manners as for the charms of his conversation. The associate of Johnson, Armstrong, Hill, Garrick, Quin, Foote, the two Wartons, and Thomson, and the friend of several of these eminent men, he must have ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... substances, its power is in a great measure neutralized, and it becomes a valuable article, both to the chemist as a test, and to the physician as a medicine. The Prussiate of potash and iron will enable the chemist to discover nearly the whole of the metals when in solution, by the colours its combination produces. Dr. Zollekoffer says, that in intermittent fevers the Prussiate of iron is in its effects superior to Cinchona bark, and says it never disagrees with the stomach, or creates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... wheel which they turned. When Mary stood in the corridor, while the beds were being made, she saw them turning this wheel, and wondered what the game could be. They had a folding board with yellow numbers on a dark green ground, and they were playing with ivory chips of different colours. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... profoundly David had been moved, and how he is labouring, as it were, to make himself familiar with the astonishing vista that has begun to open before his believing eyes. Well is it for us if we, in like manner, seek to fix our thoughts on the yet grander 'for ever' disclosed to us, and if it colours all our look ahead, and makes the refrain of all our hopes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Abundance of Sumack is yearly consumed in England; but not being perfect in the Use and Nature of it, I shall only say that it grows there in great Plenty; and that the Indians have several fine Colours both for Dying and Painting, that we know nothing of, as to their Composition and Use; but Enquiry into these Things, and Experience might, for what any knows, in a small Time turn to a good Account, both for the publick Advantage, and for ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... no tastes. He is merged in "the house." He must dance and ride admirably; he ought to shoot; he may sing and paint in water-colours, or botanise a little, and the faintest aroma of the most volatile literature will do him no harm; but he cannot be allowed preferences. If he has a weakness for very pronounced collars and shirt-cuffs in mufti, it may be connived at, provided ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... the bay was white with silent light, Till rising from the same Full many shapes, that shadows were, In crimson colours came. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... you like the little costume, but that is all you say, and you give me no details as to the colours, the length and shape. I will believe my treasure, my jewel, that your bosoms will be white, swollen and soft as velvet, and it is very nice of you to tell me that my hands will have difficulty in holding them and putting their ruby lips ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... talents. Conversation with the latter tribe is like the use of leaden bells—one wearies by exercise. Lamb every now and then "irradiates", and the beam, though single and fine as a hair, yet is rich with colours, and I both see and feel it. In Bristol I was much with Davy, almost all day. He always talks of you with great affection, and defends you with a friendly zeal. If I settle at Keswick he will be with me in the fall of the year, and so must you: ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... leaving a portion of his glory behind him, until the stars, in obedience to the divine fiat, were lighted up to "shine by night;" the sea rippling on the sand, or pouring into the crevices of the rocks, changing its hue, as day-light slowly disappeared, to the more sombre colours it reflected, from azure to each deeper tint of grey, until darkness closed in, and its extent was scarcely to be defined by the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... insist you never mention his name to me more; for, I promise you, it was upon the fullest and plainest evidence that I resolved to take the measures I have taken." "Well, sir," says she, "I make not the least doubt but time will shew all matters in their true and natural colours, and that you will be convinced this poor young man deserves better of you than some other folks ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... much of your company, Mrs. Huntingdon,' observed he, after a brief pause, during which I went on coolly mixing and tempering my colours; 'and I cannot wonder at it, for you must be heartily sick of us all. I myself am so thoroughly ashamed of my companions, and so weary of their irrational conversation and pursuits—now that there is no one to humanize them and keep them in check, since you have justly abandoned ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... Ghent were the real masters of Flanders. They kept their count in scarcely veiled captivity, forcing him to wear the Flemish colours and to profess acceptance of the policy that he disliked. In such circumstances the neutrality of Flanders could not last long. Both Edward and Artevelde regarded it simply as a step towards a declared alliance. Before long Philip became ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... not like the light reflected from a mirror, which delineates the object from which it originally came; but, like rays that come broken and dispersed from an opaque or unpolished surface, only give the colours and features of the body from which they ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... look like a young St. John of Donatello's. The girl returned his look with one of her clear glances, and the group having presently broken up again, Mrs. Peyton saw that she had drifted to Darrow's side. The visitors at length wandered back to the work-room to see a portfolio of Dick's water-colours; but Mrs. Peyton remained seated behind the urn, listening to the interchange of talk through the open door while she tried ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... and yellow tresses of heare reaching downe to hir thighes, hir braue and gorgeous apparell also caused the people to haue hir in great reuerence. She ware a chaine of gold, great and verie massie, and was clad in a lose kirtle of sundrie colours, and aloft therevpon she had a thicke Irish mantell: hereto in hir hand (as hir custome was) she bare a speare, to shew hirselfe ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed

... or no harm is done though they are not to be had. And when the handling and bother of using live bait is taken into consideration, we think that most folks will prefer the artificial lure. The phantom we consider the very best of all the imitations; and the troller should have them in different colours and sizes, from Nos. 1 to 7. The hooks attached to the larger sizes should be mounted on gimp, as in trolling for large fish—and especially for salmo ferox—no risk should be run of the mountings giving way. Tin boxes, divided into compartments, ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior

... Indians several beautiful legends relating to them. In one, the Milky Way is the girdle of a stupendous deity, and the Northern Lights the splendid gleams emitted by his ball when playing. In another, the narrator describes him as clad in an ineffable glory of light, and in colours ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... those things which happened in the Spanish Seas, and which were done in Syria and Palestina, against the Sultan the King of Babylon, and the trecherous Saracens. All which things he wrote and expressed them as it were in liuely colours, as if they had bene still in doing before his eyes, and handled the same Argument in Heroicall verse which the forenamed Richard Canonicus did. And hauing finished his worke he dedicated it to Hubert Archbishop of Canterburie, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... With picks and bars they broke the wall open, and when several stones had come out they found a large closet like a laboratory, containing furnaces, chemical instruments, phials hermetically sealed full of an unknown liquid, and four packets of powders of different colours. Unluckily, the people who made these discoveries thought them of too much or too little importance; and instead of submitting the ingredients to the tests of modern science, they made away with them all, frightened at their probably ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... fullest beauty, and close to a small stream that here came down from a side valley. The freshness of the morning air, the extreme beauty of the place, the lovely birds that flitted from tree to tree, the exquisite shapes and colours of the flowers, still dew-bespangled, and above all, the tenderness with which George treated him, soothed my father, and when he and George had lit a fire and made some hot corn-coffee—with a view to which Yram had put up a bottle of milk—he felt so much restored as to look forward ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... more and more; a beautiful country with Bricklow groves, and a white Vitex in full blossom. The flats most richly adorned by flowers of a great variety of colours: the yellow Senecios, scarlet Vetches, the large Xeranthemums, several species of Gnaphalium, white Anthemis-like compositae: the soil is a stiff clay with concretions: melon-holes with rushes; the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... Gainor was in a brocade which she told me was flowered beautiful with colours very lively. I thought they were. As to the rest of her toilet, I am at a loss for words. The overskirt was lute-string silk, I was told. The hoops were vast; the dress cut square, with a "modesty-fence" of stiff lace. A huge high cap "with wings is the last thing," cried the ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... not less curious, and an infinitely vaster field of research. Experience has proved, for example, that some people are absolutely blind to certain colours, as red, and enjoy perfect vision relatively to yellow, to green, and to blue. If the Newtonian theory of emission be true, we must irrevocably admit that a ray ceases to be light as soon as we ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... was one of the Turner water-colours which glorified the cottage; the most adorable, she thought, of all of them. It shewed a sea of downs, their grassy backs flowing away wave after wave, down to the real sea in the gleaming distance. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... grounds thoroughly, and had made excellent improvement of both; it was in vain to try to persuade him that seed-time and harvest were the same thing, and that he had nothing to do but to rest in what he had done; show his bright colours and flutter like a moth in the sunshine, or sit down like a degenerate bee in the summer time and eat his own honey. The power of action which he knew in himself could not rest without something to act upon. It ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... difficult to maintain our armies in the field from lack of personnel—a state of things directly attributable to the Government's opportunist, hand-to-mouth policy in the matter, and to their disinclination to insist upon practically the whole of the younger categories of male adults joining the colours. The organization of the Tank Corps was finally decided actually while I was acting as D.C.I.G.S. In so far as the general control of Tank design and the numbers of these engines of war to be turned out was concerned, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... wealth of carving and bold design, give a rich and furnished look to the dark old church, an effect enhanced by the tattered colours hanging overhead. The principal one of these colours was executed by Queen Victoria and her daughters for the volunteers at Chelsea when an invasion was expected. The shelf of chained books by a southern window is interesting. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... was obliged at last to draw off his troops and leave Colberg to its fate. The place held out to the 26th of February, when the garrison surrendered and were allowed to march out with the honours of war, with pikes carried, colours flying, drums beating, matches lighted, with their baggage, and with two pieces of cannon loaded and ready for action. They were saluted by the army as they marched away to the nearest town held by the Austrians, and ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... and the Faust legend. They are and will remain of a purely material character. This preference for matter to form is the same as a man ignoring the shape and painting of a fine Etruscan vase in order to make a chemical examination of the clay and colours of which it is made. The attempt to be effective by means of the matter used, thereby ministering to this evil propensity of the public, is absolutely to be censured in branches of writing where the merit must lie expressly in the form; ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... a dominion over us, since it is by chance we live. It is not possible for any one who has not designed his life for some certain end, it is impossible for any one to arrange the pieces, who has not the whole form already contrived in his imagination. Of what use are colours to him that knows not what he is to paint? No one lays down a certain design for his life, and we only deliberate thereof by pieces. The archer ought first to know at what he is to aim, and then accommodate his arm, bow, string, shaft, and motion to it; our counsels deviate and wander, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... events in the crude literality of Sir Richard Burton, pale before them like a mirage. The variety of scenes and images, the untiring evolution of plot, the kaleidoscopic shifting of harmonious colours, all these seem of the very essence of Arabia, and to coil directly from some bottle of a genie. Ah! what a bottle! As we whirl along in the vast and glowing ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... away from the Americans in the course of the peace negotiations, Spain soon began to show that she was at least mistress of the lower part of the river. Just where her dominion began was uncertain. During the war, a Virginia captain raised his colours on the Mississippi a few miles above Natchez. A Spanish commandant buried a box near the same spot with the colours of his sovereign as a token of possession. After 1783, the flatboatmen, who adventured down the river with loads of tobacco, flour, or planks, seeking a ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... glowing crimson by the blaze of ruddy sunshine, and lighted here and there by bright patches of the thorny golden rod. Dame Nature had evidently painted out of her summer paint-box, and had not spared her best and brightest colours. Crimson-lake, children; you know what a lovely colour it is, and how fast it goes, for you are very fond of using it, and there is only one cake in each of your boxes. But here was crimson-lake enough to have emptied all the paint-boxes ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... heard him mutter, and then, perhaps, something worse. The key was found, and he had then to bend his great height to squeeze through the little door. Once inside, he was at the corner of the Saint Margaret Chapel and could see, in the faint half-light, the rosy colours of the beautiful Saint Margaret window that glimmered ever so dimly upon the rows of cane-bottomed chairs, the dingy red hassocks, and the brass tablets upon the grey stone walls. He walked through, picking his way carefully in the dusk, saw ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... Williams, I am sorry it is a true one. Indeed those who do not know him, will hardly believe it so; but what Scandal doth it throw on the Order to have one bad Member, unless they endeavour to screen and protect him? In him you see a Picture of almost every Vice exposed in nauseous and odious Colours; and if a Clergyman would ask me by what Pattern he should form himself, I would say, Be the reverse of Williams: So far therefore he may be of use to the Clergy themselves, and though God forbid there should be many Williams's amongst them, you and I are too honest to pretend, that ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber

... globes, mathematical instruments, turkeys, telescopes, hams, tongues, microscopes, quadrants, sextants, fiddles, flutes, tea, sugar, electrical machines, figs, spices, air-pumps, soda-water, chemical apparatus, eggs, French-horns, drawing books, palettes, oils and colours, bottled ale and porter, scenery for a private theatre, pickles and fish-sauce, patent lamps and chandeliers, barrels of oysters, sofas, chairs, tables, carpets, beds, looking-glasses, pictures, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... waves of light come dashing up against the ridged surface, they are broken like the waves on a shingly shore, and are flung backwards, so that they cross each other and the oncoming waves; and, as every ray of white light is made up of waves of seven colours, and these waves differ in length each from the others, the fairy ridges fling them backward separately, and each ray reaches the eye by itself; so that the colour of the mother-of-pearl is really the spray of the light waves, and comes from arrangement of matter once again. Give ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... they turned off the main line of the rolling clays toward the foot of the chalk hills, and began to brush through short cuttings of blue gault and "green sand," so called by geologists, because its usual colours are bright ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... knew as much. There had been no attempt on the part of either to conceal the fact of the duel in November. Their world of town and country surmised and conjectured, volubly or silently, according to company, drew its conclusions, and chose its colours. The conclusions were largely false, for it occurred to no one—at least outside of Fontenoy—to connect the quarrel and the duel with the President's proclamation and the Burr conspiracy. During the past winter ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... and brought intelligence that the Duke of Wellington had gained a complete victory, and that the French were flying, closely pursued by the Prussians. Sunday night was employed in enthusiastic rejoicing. The tri-coloured cockades had all disappeared, and the British colours were hoisted from every window. The great bell of St. Gudule tolled, to announce the event to the surrounding neighbourhood; and some of the English, who had only hidden themselves, ventured to re-appear. The only ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... replies that although pleasures may be opposed in so far as they spring from opposite sources, nevertheless as pleasures they are alike. Yes, retorts Socrates, pleasure is like pleasure, as figure is like figure and colour like colour; yet we all know that there is great variety among figures and colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of this remark; and Socrates proceeds to ask how he can have a right to attribute a new predicate (i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate ...
— Philebus • Plato

... of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and retaining the freshness of its colours most remarkably, considering the length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... nuptial in colours, her roof looking like a plaza of Lima or La Paz at Carnival, flags in mountain-ridges round her edges, flags in festoons, in slanting clothes-lines, in trophy-groups, on bandroled poles, bedecking her; some scaffolding still round her; and three running derricks, capable of wielding ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... horses often sank up to the knees in it. The whole surface of the earth is covered with salt in the same manner as on the banks of the Nile, and would, it is probable, prove no less fruitful were it irrigated with equal care. The stones on the beach, it is added, were all quartz, but of various colours; some specimens of which, having a slaty structure, emitted, when exposed to fire, a strong smell of bitumen, thereby ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... stock any where but in the gardens of the Hotel de Soissons. In the midst, among the trees, about five hundred small tents and pavilions were erected, for the convenience of the stock-jobbers. Their various colours, the gay ribands and banners which floated from them, the busy crowds which passed continually in and out—the incessant hum of voices, the noise, the music, and the strange mixture of business and pleasure ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... must serve forty generations before they get the secrets; where they press out a ton of petals for a pound of essential oil! And that's where the big mountains stand by—High Himalaya herself—incredible colours and vistas—get ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... roof has fallen in. War was declared this afternoon by Austria. The town is seething with excitement and everybody seems to realise how near they are to the big stage. Three classes of reserves have already been called to the colours to defend Belgian neutrality. A general mobilisation is prepared and may be declared at any time. The Bourse has been closed to prevent too much play on the situation, and let things steady themselves. In every other way the hatches have ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... reminded of what I read years ago, hastily, as a boy does, in the library of a man who was learned in secular literature. There were there portraits of Orators and also of Poets worked in mosaic, or in wax of different colours, or in plaster, and under each the master of the house had placed inscriptions noting their characteristics; but, when he came to a poet of acknowledged merit, as for instance, Virgil, ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... in a little restrained gesture of comment. "You consider only the extremes," she told him. "Between black and white there are so many colours and shades and half-tones! The whole spectrum, in fact. Hardly anybody, I should think, gets over the edge into the true black or the true white. There are always tints, modifications. People are always inside the colour-scheme, so to speak. The worst ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... be abandoned after a few bold touches: the difficulty of avoiding too close a portraiture to the living original having apparently proved irksome. Against one such, evidently an attempt to help Dick see himself in his true colours, I find this marginal, note in pencil: "Better not. Might make him ratty." Opposite to another—obviously of Mrs. St. Leonard, and with instinct for alliteration—is scribbled; "Too ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... inspecting these rich treasures, after which she once more began to glance round the room. Such a stately room, large enough to shelter two or three families, so richly decorated with its red and cream colours, yet silent and cold and dusty and untenanted! On the mantelpiece of grey marble stood a large ornamental clock, which ticked not and the hands of which were stationary, supported on each side by bronzes—a stalwart warrior in a coat of mail in the ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... something in this style we should be pleased to look at it." The said text was "Thou, God, seest me." The letter was of a degraded form, bearing much the same relation to the true character as a "churchwarden gothic" building does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours were varied. The initial was pale gold, the h pink, the o black, the u blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a bird's nest containing the young of the pigeon, who were waited ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... the best hour for the river, Mademoiselle." The colours of the dawn were beginning to creep up beyond the eastern bank, sending a lance of red and gold into a low cloud bank, and a spread of soft crimson close after. "Perhaps you ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... you. But let me just for a brief moment call to your mind ROLAND PRETTYMAN. Upon my soul, I think ROLAND the most empty-headed fribble, the most affected coxcomb, and the most conceited noodle in the whole world. He was decently good-looking once, and he had a pretty knack of sketching in water-colours. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various

... of nutrient media. Resistance to lethal agents: Physical: Desiccation. Light. Colours. Chemical ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... sore spot in it. The spot grew larger and larger, and by degrees the centre of his consciousness came to be a soreness: his cherished idea had been fooled; he had taken a silly girl for a woman of undeveloped wealth;—a bubble, a surface whereon fair colours chased each ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... of Europe has become a battle line painted in three colours: yellow for the Belgian Army, blue for the British and red for the French. It is really a double line, for the confronting German Army is drawn in black. It is a narrow line to signify what it does—not ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... we cannot have. It is not possible with our limited faculties and limited experience. We could not be taught it. We have no faculties to take it in and no experience to aid us in realizing it. A blind man cannot picture colours to himself, a deaf man cannot imagine music. It is not that we are unwilling to teach him, but that his limited faculties prevent him from taking in ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... this drift back from Bapeaume were the scenes which followed immediately as I turned back into the town. Thousands of boys had been called out to the colours, and had been brought up from the country to be sent forward to the second lines of defence. They were the reservists of the 1914 class, and many of them were shouting and singing, though here and there a white-faced ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... sells candles of different sorts. Q. What does milliner mean? A. A person that makes ladies' caps, tippets, and things for little children. Q. What does a dyer mean? A. A man that dyes cloths of different colours. Q. What does a druggist mean? A. One that sells drugs of different kinds, such as nutgalls, alum, bark, &c. Q. What does wheelwright mean? A. A man that makes carts, wheelbarrows, &c. Q. What does a shoe-maker do? A. Makes shoes for men and women and little boys and girls. Q. What ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... a well-shaded avenue to the house, and here I was ushered into a room where, round tables covered with green cloth, sat a great many officials. All these men wore pleated frock-coats of all tints and gradations of the colours of the rainbow. One and all rose and politely saluted me before ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... the acolytes, in scarlet, with gleaming crucifix, brass candle-sticks and censer, followed by boys and girls symbolically dressed, a lilting dance of flags and banners in brilliant colours. Next came the priest, in a gorgeous vestment stiff with silk and silver thread and gold tracery; and, in two rows, on either side of the street, preceded by four little angels with gold wings, the first-communicants, really such on this occasion, in their proper clothes, with ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... perform sundry necessary duties every day at noon. Mary Beechinor was a paintress by trade. As a class the paintresses of the Five Towns are somewhat similar to the more famous mill-girls of Lancashire and Yorkshire—fiercely independent by reason of good wages earned, loving finery and brilliant colours, loud-tongued and aggressive, perhaps, and for the rest neither more nor less kindly, passionate, faithful, than any other Saxon women anywhere. The paintresses, however, have some slight advantage over the mill-girls in the outward reticences ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... temperament. Kaye writes of him: 'Sometimes sanguine, sometimes despondent, sometimes confident, sometimes credulous, Burnes gave to fleeting impressions all the importance and seeming permanency of settled convictions, and imbued surrounding objects with the colours of his own varying mind.' But if Burnes had been a discreet and steadfast man, he could have exercised no influence on the autocratic Macnaghten, since between the two men there was neither sympathy nor confidence. Burnes had, indeed, no specific duties of any kind; in his own words, he was ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... of my name Can sing my sorrow down that comes and goes And colours hope with fear and love with shame. Rose hast thou called me: were I like the rose, Happier were I than woman: she survives Not by one hour, like us of longer lives, The sun she lives in and the love he gives And takes away: but we, ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of evening fell And tender colours touched the sky, He still felt youth within him dwell And half forgot ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... francais. At least a prince of a dark and desirable country, a king over a gold-skinned people who would return when he wished to his fountains and his houris. I learned upon inquiry that he travelled in various countries with a horse and cart and his wife and children, selling bright colours to the women and men of these countries. As it turned out, he was one of the Delectable Mountains; to discover which I had come a long and difficult way. Wherefore I shall tell you no more about him for the present, except that his name was ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... and you, Joyful Star, daughter of a conquering race and well-beloved of our Lord, see the emblem of the union between you! As the strong red wine colours and strengthens the pure water, so, Joyful Star, shall the stronger nature of thy chosen husband colour and strengthen thine, and, as the pure water tempers and purifies the wine, so, Vilcaroya Inca, shall the gentler and purer nature of her who is henceforth ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith

... now open to the public, a short distance from Somerset House. To the mere tyro in zoology, shells are attractive as the elegant sports of nature, in the beauty, splendour, and intricacy of their colours and structure; while their scientific arrangement is one of the most delightful pursuits of ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various

... creature sat in a room furnished in clear, pale colours—that was pink, white and blonde like herself. Madeline sat down without greeting her, saying in a scolding voice, as she ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... I've been doing?" thought Jan. "Weaving coats of many colours out of happy dreams?" Were she and the ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... Darrell, and placed him in the hands of a Dutch Skipper, with orders to throw him overboard when he got out to sea; and though this was proved as clear as day, the rascal managed matters so adroitly, and gave such a different complexion to the whole affair, that he came off with flying colours. One reason, perhaps, of his success in this case might be, that having arrested his associate in the dark transaction, Sir Rowland Trenchard, on a charge of high treason, he was favoured by Walpole, who found his account in retaining such an agent. Be this as it may, Jonathan remained ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... woman wore, as she does now, a flowing skirt of gay colours—bright red, green, and white being the common choice. The length of train, and whether the garment be of cotton, silk, or satin, depends on her means. Corsets are not yet the fashion, but a chemisette, which just covers her breast, and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... They blended colours that will not blend, All hideous contrasts voted sweet; In yellow and red their Quakers dress'd, And considered it ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... the distinct musical notes struck out by their wings, or cooed and cooed round the dove cots. The dairy women of the farm laughed and sang and called out to one another in Flemish and Wallon rough chaff about their men-folk who were called to the Colours. There was nothing suggestive here ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... for one of those "portages" of prose which I have described.(137) There is no reason for denying the whole of this passage to Jeremiah, whether because it is in prose or because it treats of Northern Israel as well as Judah.(138) But on parts of it the colours are distinctly of a period later than that of the Prophet. All the rest of the Oracles may be taken to be from himself. Duhm after much hesitation has come to doubt the genuineness of Ch. II. 5-13, but his suspicions of deuteronomic influence seem ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... the past is patriotism to look? Is Charlemagne one of the glories of French history? Is it Julius Caesar or Vicingetorix that is to warm the patriotic heart? Want of reflection and a blind subservience to the colours of the map has led some historians to call Roman victories defeats suffered by their country, even when that country is essentially so Roman, for instance, as Spain. With as good reason might a Sicilian or a Florentine ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... heaven is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. I will be Paris, and for love of thee, Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd; And I will combat with weak Menelaus, And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, And then return to Helen for a kiss. O, thou art fairer than the evening [241] air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; Brighter art thou ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... The fall from it was almost precipitous to the ocean, so that the face of the rocks immediately below was not in view; but there was a curve here in the line of the shore, and a little bay in the coast, which exposed to view the whole side of the opposite cliff, so that the varying colours of the rocks might be seen. The two ladies had made a seat upon the turf, by moving the loose stones and levelling the earth around, so that they could sit securely on the very edge. Many many hours had Mrs. O'Hara passed upon the spot, ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... welcome me, but I hope I shan't see very much of her, because she isn't just exactly what I should call ladylike. Of course I wouldn't breathe this to any other living soul, but I thought her entirely too free and easy in her manner, and she dresses in such very bright colours. Why, she had a red feather in her hat, and she must have been married at least fifteen years. Oliver says he doesn't believe she's a day under forty-five. He says he likes her well enough and thinks she's a ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... the Sirius's wake, under an easy sail; the night was dark, but clear in the horizon, so that we could see near two leagues a-head. This night the aurora austreales were very bright, of a beautiful crimson colour, streaked with orange, yellow, and white, and these colours were constantly changing their places: the highest part was about 45 deg. above the horizon, and it spread from south by east to south-south-west. On the next morning at sun-rise, one of the transports having pushed a little a-head, made the signal for seeing the land, ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... and half apologue, like the 'Midsummer Night's Dream', this delightful poem may be safely left to deliver its own message and convey its own meaning. It is an excellent illustration of the truth of Tennyson's own remark: "Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader must find his own interpretation according to his ability, and according to his ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... swagger by—and guns, both French and English. Behind the station much ammunition was stored, a source of keen pleasure if ever the Germans had attempted to shell the station. It was well within range. During the last week His Majesty's armoured train, "Jellicoe," painted in wondrous colours, would rumble in and on towards La Bassee. The crew were full of Antwerp tales and late newspapers. The first time the train went into action it demolished a German battery, but afterwards it ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... touching the ceiling of the lower front room in which they stood—"won't stand anything but the most simple treatment, and expensive papers and upholsteries would be out of place. It will take only very small rugs to suit the floors. The main thing for you to think of will be colours and effects. You'll find five hundred dollars will go a long way, even after the repairs and ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... scientific men are exceedingly useful members of a community; and so are engineers, and bakers, and blacksmiths, and artists, and chimney-sweeps. But we can't all be bakers, and we can't all be painters in water-colours. There is a dim West Country legend to the effect that the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in one another's washing. As a matter of practical political economy, such a source of income is worse than precarious—it's frankly impossible. "It takes all sorts ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... continued," which were very brief. "Since our last, the population of Coventry has undergone a change. The former inhabitant has walked out with flying colours, and the place is ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... glass upon the vessel, and, after a time, not having forgotten the lessons so repeatedly given me by Spicer, I said, "She has no colours up, but she's an Embden vessel ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... vines are drest Above the noble slain: He wrapt his colours round his breast, On a blood-red field of Spain. And one—o'er her the myrtle showers Its leaves, by soft winds fanned; She faded 'midst Italian flowers,— The ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... a man of the world: he suffered this first transport to subside, and then very deliberately unfolded to her the offers of the old Earl, expatiated on the many benefits arising from an elevated title, painted in glowing colours the surprise and vexation of Temple when he should see her figuring as a Countess and his mother-in-law, and begged her to consider well before ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... the smallest awkwardness in entertaining her guest. The rain of the morning had left the air chilly, and a wood fire burnt on the hearth. Its pleasant flame gave an added touch of intimity to the little drawing-room, with its wild flowers, its books, its water-colours, and its modest furnishings. After the long struggle of his illness, and the excitement of the morning, Faversham was both soothed and charmed. His whole nature relaxed; happiness flowed in. Presently, on an impulse he could not resist, he told her of the offer which ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... was erected, and the young fellows of the neighbourhood were wont to try conclusions with their friends or those celebrities from more distant parts of the country who were anxious to lower their colours. ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... was gone Robert went up to his studio, and having ground some colours upon his palette he stood for some time, brush and mahlstick in hand, in front of his big bare canvas. But how profitless all his work seemed to him now! What object had he in doing it? Was it to earn money? Money could be had for the asking, or, for that matter, without the asking. ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... men, neither above thirty; and both of swarthy complexion, though with beards of different colours; that of Gomez black, the other reddish-brown. Besides having heavy moustaches, their whiskers stand well forward on their jaws, and around their throats; growing so luxuriantly as to conceal the greater portion of their faces; the expression upon which it is difficult to determine. Equally ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... correspond with the circumstances of David during the years of his wanderings. The scenery and life of the desert colours the metaphors which describe his enemies as wild beasts; himself as a poor hunted creature amongst pits and snares; or as a timid bird flying to the safe crags, and God as his Rock. Their strong assertions of innocence accord with the historical ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... ago ceased to be a blot in one of the fairest valleys in beautiful Derbyshire, for it was time-stained with a rich store of colours from Nature's palette; great cushions of green velvet moss clung to the ancient stone-work, rich orange rosettes of lichen dotted the ruddy tiles, huge ferns shot their glistening green spears from every crack and chasm of the mighty walls of the deep glen; ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn

... asked her concerning the four colours which the beast had upon its head. But she answered me saying; Again thou art curious in that thou asketh concerning these things. But I said to her, Lady, chew me what ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... gateway. As he sits down to breakfast the bugles will start sounding nigher, with music absurd and barbarous, but stirring, as the Riflemen come marching down the High Street to Divine Service. In the Minster to which they wend, their disused regimental colours droop along the aisles; tattered, a hundred years since, in Spanish battlefields, and by age worn almost to gauze—"strainers," says Brother Copas, "that in their time have clarified much turbid blood." But these are guerdons of yesterday in ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... particularly his, and distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same degree of sense and virtue would appear in their common and ordinary colours. As I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have just now mentioned? and without staying for my answer, told me, That he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table; ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... Forster's Irish Land Bill. [Footnote: The Compensation for Disturbance measure.] ... I placed my conditional resignation in Chamberlain's hands, and he his and mine in Forster's, in case the latter was inclined to nail his colours to the mast. I noted in my diary: "I do not care in the least about the Bill, but I must either go out with these men or climb into the Cabinet over their bodies, to either become a Whig or to eventually suffer the same fate, so I prefer to make common cause. I suppose there will be a compromise ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... subjects of sexual anaesthesia have as little idea of sexual sensations as a blind man has of colours; this causes them to commit great blunders, because they do not comprehend the nature of the sexual appetite in others, and often marry an erotic individual without knowing what they ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... stately. It is as fine within as without, but sorely disfigured by the coloured glass, which is garish. French painted glass is very bad. It is precisely the sort of stuff that was turned out by English glass-painters about thirty years ago, the colours crude and distressing to the eye—windows that our more cultured taste cannot now endure. But the French artists have not advanced, the windows put in to-day are as detestable as those they put in at the beginning ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... skirt-borders double lines of cowries are sewn. Their breast-cloths are profusely ornamented with needle-work embroidery and small pieces of glass sewn into them, and are tied behind with cords of many colours whose ends are decorated with cowries and beads. Strings of beads, ten to twenty thick, threaded on horse-hair, are worn round the neck. Their favourite ornaments are cowries, [221] and they have these on their dress, in their ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... were turned with distinctions, and art and science were all the rage. But the narrow-minded leaders of a time of great intellectual progress all of them detested art and science. They had not even the wit to present religion in attractive colours, though they needed its support. While Lamartine, Lamennais, Montalembert, and other writers were putting new life and elevation into men's ideas of religion, and gilding it with poetry, these bunglers ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... lank flow of nature. These Indians, in general, pluck out their beards. Their eyes are black, keen, and penetrating; and their countenance is open and agreeable. Fond of decoration, they paint their bodies with different colours of red, blue, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... Lucy Darleton's letter of reply to her friend Clara was fair before sunrise, with luminous colours that are an omen to the husbandman. Clara had no weather-eye for the rich Eastern crimson, nor a quiet space within her for the beauty. She looked on it as her gate of promise, and it set her throbbing with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... tints of blue, and rose, and glorious gold! This period which, in art, began with Giotto and ended with Botticelli, culminated in Fra Angelico, who flooded the world of painting with a heavenly spiritualism not material, and gave his dreams of heaven the colours of the first pure rays ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... was evidently a gentleman, wore a blue top-coat, a dark tweed suit, and what looked like a regimental tie, but I didn't see much of the colours. He was very tanned, as I have said, even to the backs of his hands—and oh, yes! there was one point: He ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... experience of mankind, popular with all free states, from having restored freedom to the colonies of Ionia—every advantage of foreign circumstance and intrinsic ability in his favour,—about to address the breathless and excited multitude. He rose: he painted, as he had done to Cleomenes, in lively colours, the wealth of Asia, the effeminate habits of its people—he described its armies fighting without spear or shield—he invoked the valour of a nation already successful in war against hardy and heroic foes—he appealed to old hereditary ties; the people of Miletus had been an Athenian colony—should ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... they could with arms, formed themselves into companies and regiments, chose their own officers, and met every week to be instructed in the manual exercise, and other parts of military discipline. The women, by subscriptions among themselves, provided silk colours, which they presented to the companies, painted with different devices and ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... find, Which chills the fancy, and benumbs the mind, When cruel you withdraw your magic ray. You finely paint on ev'ry rhyme Features most noble and sublime, Resplendent all the images, In rich immortal draperies. You give me colours that can never die, But baffle time, and live ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... was to get away, Jess could see no hope of returning to the farm till the excitement was over. Then, a day or two later, Conductor Egerton came limping into Pretoria from the scene of the disaster at Bronker's Spruit, with the colours of the 94th Regiment tied round his middle, and such a tale to tell that the blood went to her heart and seemed to ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... innumerable mysterious {126} powers. In the stirring of the leaves, in the glint of the sunbeam amid the foliage, in the shadow on his path, in the flash of the lightning, in the crash of the thunder, in the roar of the cataract, in the colours of the rainbow, in the very beat of his pulse, in the leap of the fish, in the flight of the birds, he saw some supernatural power to be evoked. The Indian companions of Champlain, we remember, threw tobacco to the genius or Manitou of the great fall of the Ottawa. The Manitou of the Algonquins, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... moonbeams shroud, Or golden ev'ning edge the dusky cloud; Yet, till this hour my doubting heart has thought Thy glowing scenes by fancy's pencil wrought, Or drest in poetry's enchanting hues, And all the flatt'ring colours of the muse; But if in winter's storms thy beauties charm, If the cold breast thy varying landscapes warm, In summer's smiles it surely stands confest, That he who draws thee fairest ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... great landscapes of England. You may see it in that most individual, that most peculiar, and, I think, that most glorious school of painters, the English landscape painter, Constable with his thick colours, Turner with his wonderment, and even the portrait painters in their backgrounds depend upon the view of the plains from a height. To-day our landscape painters sometimes do the same, but the market for that emotion is capricious, it is no longer the secure and natural way of presenting ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... Bloodsuckers. There were as many convents in Ratisbon as plums in a Christmas porridge; there were Nuns of all kinds of orders, many of whom, I am afraid, no better than they should be; there were Black Monks and Gray Monks and Brown Monks and White Monks, Monks of all the colours of the Rainbow, for aught I can tell. There were Canons and Chapters and Priories and Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods and Ecclesiastical Hospitals and Priors' Almonries and Saints' Guilds without end. Never did I see a larger fry of holy men and women, professing to live only for the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... his brother, speaking in a low deep voice, as he gazed right away through the transparent air at the glorious colours where the sun sank in a canopy of amber and gold. "No, Dicky, it has its beauties, in ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... as it might be—of an atmosphere, a delicate and gentle setting to the crudity of their later life. Carfax, when alive, had blundered into coarse disaster but had blundered in back streets. Now the manner of his death painted him in shrieking colours. The harmony was disturbed, therefore ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... this characteristic is the sense of profundity, of mighty significance. And this feeling is not necessarily an illusion. The nature of our materials — be they words, colours, or plastic matter — imposes a limit and bias upon our expression. The reality of experience can never be quite rendered through these media. The greatest mastery of technique will therefore come short of perfect adequacy and exhaustiveness; there must ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... limitations that insensitive eyes scarcely recognise it. In early spring there is a fresher touch of green on all the spaces of grass, the distance grows less mellow and more radiant; by the coming of May the green has been imperceptibly dimmed again; it blushes with the mingled colours of minute and numberless flowers—a dust of flowers, in lines longer than those of ocean billows. This is the desert blossoming like a rose: not the obvious rose of gardens, but the multitudinous and various flower that gathers ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... riding-horses, his camp-equipage containing splendid tents, comprising halls for public receptions, apartments for feasting, galleries for exercise, chambers for retirement, all of splendid material and rich and varied {195} colours. They describe the Emperor himself on the days of special ceremonial seated in a rich tent, the awnings of which were thrown open, in the centre of carpeting of the softest material, covering at least two acres of ground, receiving the homage of his nobles. These occupied tents inferior ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson

... the production of a bottle for a social dram, in which I cordially joined. Then presently we came to a small newly-built village, the Prussian military station. A sentinel standing silent and alone by his sentry box striped with the Prussian colours, black and white, marked where the road crossed the Prussian frontier. We passed unchallenged, and found dinner upon the territory of the Black Eagle, in a very ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... Campeador made no tarriance in Valencia; he made ready for the meeting: there was many a great mule, and many a palfrey, and many a good horse, and many a goodly suit of arms, cloaks, and mantles both of cloth and of peltry; ... great and little are all clad in colours. Alvar Faez Minaya, and Pero Bermudez, and Martin Munoz, and Martin Antolinez that worthy Burgalese, and the Bishop Don Hieronymo that good one with the shaven crown, and Alvar Alvarez, and Alvar Salvadores, and Muo Gustios that knight of prowess, and Galind Garcia ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... features better than a veil; And one hand o'er the ottoman lay drooping, White, waxen, and as alabaster pale: Would that I were a painter! to be grouping All that a poet drags into detail! Oh that my words were colours! but their tints May serve perhaps as outlines ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... mistress was to identify them. As they left the carriage, they glanced anxiously at the coat of each lady who passed them on the platform, to descry a similar rosette. All in vain. Everybody was in a hurry, and nobody sported the Brackenfield colours. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... gone out from the house. All of them. They be in clothes what do lie in boxes most of the time with lumps of white among they. Them be set out in the best as they has, and in grand things of many colours. There 'tis. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... Council, their new plan will end like every other, in snarling or in licking. That's my view of things as a plain man. Not that I consider it becoming in men of family and following, who have got others depending on their constancy and on their sticking to their colours, to go a-hunting with a fine net to catch reasons in the air, like doctors of law. I say frankly that, as the head of my family, I shall be true to my old alliances; and I have never yet seen any chalk-mark on political reasons to ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... doubt he had,—just as Phineas Finn had a conscience about Canada, and Jamaica, and the Cape. Barrington Erle was very strong about parties in general, and painted the comforts of official position in glowing colours. But I think that the two ladies were more efficacious than even their male relatives in the arguments which they used. "We have been so happy to have you among us," said Lady Cantrip, looking at him with beseeching, almost loving eyes. "Mr. Finn knows," said Lady Laura, "that since he ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... turned all colours. He was a straightforward, honest boy, and his nature would have enjoined him to speak out and frankly say that his word had been already passed to go with Jerry Blunt to the woods on Wednesday, but his tongue was tied for Alick's sake. He could see that Theo was ignorant of her ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell

... had handed her the packet, and a gleam of pleasure crept into Laura's eyes when she opened it. There was first of all a box of gloves of various colours, and then inside another packet a wonderful piece of lace. The artistic delicacy of the lace appealed to her, for though she possessed very few dainty things she was fond of them, and she almost fancied ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave 5 Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. I knew one who had lifted it—he sought, For his lost heart was tender, things to love But found them not, alas! nor was there aught The world contains, the which he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... of some were yellow. The throats of some were blue, and the ears of some were long, O Bharata. The stomachs of some were like masses of antimony. The eyes of some were white, the necks of some were red, and some had eyes of a tawny hue. Many were dark in colour and many, O king, were of diverse colours, O Bharata. Many had ornaments on their persons that looked like yak-tails. Some bore white streaks on their bodies, and some bore red streaks. Some were of diversified colours and some had golden complexions, and some were endued with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... information shape for himself a creature in whom he could believe. Years elapsed ere he succeeded; but now that he views the completed picture, he thinks that many persons might be disposed to object to the brightness of his colours. Yet it would not be difficult for the writer to justify every shade which he has used. If, during his creative work, he learned to love his heroine, it was because, the more distinctly he conjured before ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... printed in two or three colours, on heavy light-brown paper, and it was tacked up on the schoolroom wall in full view of all, so that each person would know when his or her turn had come, and could disappear in the dark closet,—no lights were allowed there for fear of fire,—to reappear immediately before ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... habitations: and when asked why they did so: (they said it was) because of the soil, which, from its filthiness, was already unhealthy and corrupted, and that it bred aches in their bodies, which seemed to us a good reason: their riches consist of birds' plumes in many colours, or of rosaries which they make from fishbones, or of white or green stones which they put in their cheeks and in their lips and ears, and of many other things which we in no wise value: they use no trade, they neither buy nor sell. In fine, they live and are contented with that which nature ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... so thynketh my wrytynge dull and blont And wolde conceyve the colours purperate Of Rethoryke, go he to tria sunt And to Galfryde the poete laureate To Janneus a clerke of grete estate Within the fyrst parte of his gramer boke Of this mater there groundely may ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... the sergeant-major. "But it will be all right," he said, "at any rate so long as I have you, Schumann. I can depend on you. God knows, I should be pretty furious if you thought of deserting the colours." ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... were shooting hither and thither, with marvellous evanescence and re-generation. No dance of goblins could be more lawless in its grotesqueness than this dance of the northern lights in their ethereal beauty, shining, with a wild ghostly changefulness and feebleness, all colours at once; now here, now there, like a row of slender organ-pipes, rolling out and in and along the sky. Or they might have been the chords of some gigantic stringed instrument, which chords became ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... plan was then enlarged to include a volume illustrating "two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination." Wordsworth was to illustrate the former principle, Coleridge the latter, and the proceeds of the book were to go toward the expenses of a trip to Germany, decided on in the spring of 1798. The bulk of the volume ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge



Words linked to "Colours" :   ensign, plural, emblem, plural form, flag



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