"Blinding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes turned, the intense rays would shine into them. He thought he had arrived at Cremona, and that some men were turning the reflector to annoy him. "Keep those lights off," he shouted, "don't you see they are blinding me?" ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... where the road leaves that tributary of the Kansas, and passes over to the great valley of the Platte river. In their march, across the level prairie of this high table-land, they encountered a squall of rain, with vivid lightning and heavy peals of thunder. One blinding flash was accompanied by a bolt, which struck the prairie but a few hundred feet from their line, sending up a ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... her walk. Tears, blinding tears, were running down her face. She knew that it was all sentiment, all baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward omens. It was ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... it strange if I do not come to you this morning, for I am suffering from one of my blinding headaches, and can scarcely see to write you this. I shall be better ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... blame Grenfell," he said at last. "He had his way to make. I know how blinding the glamour of ambition is, how insidious and insistent the claims of the world may become. I don't pretend to be superior to certain temptations if they came in my way. But I happen to have kept out of their ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... dreamy, tranquil life, How can you fathom the rage and strife, The blinding envy, the burning smart, That, worm-like, gnaws the Maestro's heart When he sees another snatch the prize Out from under his very eyes, For which he would barter his soul? You see I taught him his art from first to last: Whatever he was he owed to me. And then to be browbeat, overpassed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... focussed on a bed of waxen callas before a hedge of ceanothus, and struck into dazzling relief the cold white chalices of the flowers and the vivid shining green of their background. Presently it slid beyond to a tiny fountain, before invisible, and wrought a blinding miracle out of its flashing and leaping spray. Yet even as he gazed the fountain seemed to vanish slowly, the sunbeam slipped on, and beyond it moved the shimmer of white and yellow dresses. It was Yerba and Milly returning to the house. Well, he ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... some age unguessed of us May lift Its blinding incubus, And see, and own: "It grieves me I did ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... echoed her mother. "She's pretty enough, and she's capable; and your father's got the money—I don't know what I'm saying! She ain't equal to him, and she never was. I kept feeling it all the time, and yet I kept blinding myself." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... several that were not sustained by the Holy Scriptures. "Well then—prove it, Sir Vicar General," said Zwingli. It can be seen in works on church-history, how Faber, with no little adroitness and a blinding flow of words, endeavored to point out a contradiction between several of the syllogisms and some points of Holy Scripture. Perhaps, too, this would have succeeded before hearers less instructed; but with the greatest ease his superior antagonist ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... sun has returned. To-day it seemed better than ever and the glare was blinding. There are quite a number of cases ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... of the ruin of Antony and Cleopatra must have struck many students of the records of their age as one of the most inexplicable of tragic tales. What malign influence and secret hates were at work, continually sapping their prosperity and blinding their judgment? Why did Cleopatra fly at Actium, and why did Antony follow her, leaving his fleet and army to destruction? An attempt is made in this romance to suggest a possible answer to these and some ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... another hour the storm, which had not entirely ceased at any time, whipped itself into renewed fury, and before noon the wind was howling and shrieking with demoniac energy, and flinging gritty snow and ice in blinding clouds against the hut, which, situated on a ridge, was completely exposed. Fortunately it is strongly built and solidly anchored. While I entertained no reasonable doubt of its security, yet when a blast of extraordinary fierceness made it tremble, as if it were ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... stared, fascinated, at the sight, the severed slices were drifting slowly away. Swinging the view along the plane of cleavage, Stevens made out a relatively tiny ball of metal, only fifty feet or so in diameter, at a distance of perhaps a mile. From this ball there shot a blinding plane of light, and the Arcturus fell apart at the midsection, the lower half separating clean from the upper portion, which held the passengers. Leaving the upper half intact, the attacker began slicing the lower, driving half into thin, disk-shaped ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... way to the door. Something was writhing and struggling inside her, blinding her eyes, and robbing her of speech. She was only conscious of a desire to be alone, to be back and safe in her own home. She was aware that he was speaking, but the words did not reach her. She found the door, and pulled it open. She felt a hand on her arm, but she shook ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... close to him, and a fragment tore through the side of the tent. He could see the blinding flash, and involuntarily he ducked his head. Then, running and stumbling, he reached her. He felt her standing rigid in the darkness, and even at such a moment he felt a sudden rush of joy as her hands ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... sweep a space for the sun to pour a flood of gold on this field far down at our feet, on that village, on this mountain side with its rosy vapor-wreaths, upon yon distant lake, making it a crater of blinding brightness. On we went wrapped in mantles, mist, and mystery, trembling with chilliness and enthusiasm. We reached the summit just as the sunset-gazing crowd were dispersing. And this is ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Urged by his guide to hasten through this bitter blinding fog—a symbol of anger which is punished here—Dante stumbles along, mindful of Virgil's caution, "Look that from me thou part not." Meanwhile voices on all sides invoke "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." Then, all at once, a voice addresses ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the curtains and slipped out, thankful for the gravel walk that, while it was wet and slippery, was still a delightful contrast to the muddy sea of road they had left. They ran head down against the blinding rain, and gained the bottom step of the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... faint with my hurts, I clung the more tenaciously, my face buried in his foul-smelling jacket, but at last he wrenched one arm from my desperate embrace; there was a sudden blinding shock that hurled me backward into the road: lying thus helpless, my antagonist leapt to kick the life out of my defenceless body, but I saw him reel suddenly and whirl about, grasping at an arm that spouted blood between his hairy fingers, while he ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Then came the blinding tears, the re-enactment of the last passionate adieus, and they were once more afloat upon ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... and there, in a cave that was formed of tumbled rocks, he lay down to rest. He was still rolling about in pain when the sun was high and a strange smell of fire came searching through the cave; it increased, and volumes of blinding smoke were about him. It grew so choking that he was forced to move, but it followed him till he could bear it no longer, and he dashed out of another of the ways that led into the cavern. As he went he caught a distant glimpse of a man throwing wood on ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was now screaming with such violence that they were not sure that they heard any answering shout. Their eyes, accustomed to the darkness, could just make out the huge black outline of the Stack rising from the yeast of boiling waves, and enveloped every moment in blinding sheets of spray. On the top of it Montagu half thought that he saw something, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... ponderous trunk swung downward again, and the beast uttered a grunt of enjoyment, I pressed the trigger of my elephant gun, the barrel of which I had levelled over the bole of the fallen tree a minute or two earlier: there was a flash, a blinding puff of white smoke, and as the forest resounded with the crashing report, an answering crash close at hand proclaimed the fall of the great beast. Then, as the smoke gradually drifted away, we saw that the animal had flung himself convulsively ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... motor-car in front of the house; its blinding lights illuminated the windows at the ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... rolling there to her scuppers, and flaunting the plague-flag as she rolled. A few sea-birds screamed and cried about the ship; and within easy range, a man-of-war guard-boat hung off and on and glittered with the weapons of marines. The exuberant daylight and the blinding heaven of the tropics picked out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must bid farewell to Gerrard Winstanley. We are uncertain as to the place and year of his birth; we know not where he lived, nor where or when he died; yet his words still appeal to us, prompting us to cast off the blinding and distorting spectacles of convention and custom, to look the facts of social life fairly and squarely in the face, and boldly to proclaim whatever social truths reflection and study may reveal to us. Such are the lessons which his life ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence Man has sprung, the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long progress through the Past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... these stolen interviews were apparently the safer because of Joan's tender blinding of her lover. But it seemed that in Jim's condition of mind this yielding of her lips and her whispers of love had really been a mistake. Not only had she made the situation perilously sweet for ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... words they did. I put Barbara behind me, and was conscious only of a blinding snow of paper flakes, the punch and slap of dusters, in an uproar of ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... St. Petersburg, despite its grim and murky exterior, they exist. Yes, even though thirty degrees of keen, cracking frost may have bound the streets, and the family of the North Wind be wailing there, and the Snowstorm Witch have heaped high the pavements, and be blinding the eyes, and powdering beards and fur collars and the shaggy manes of horses—even THEN there will be shining hospitably through the swirling snowflakes a fourth-floor window where, in a cosy room, and by the light of modest candles, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air, and fell, a descending column of blaze eddying spirally in the midst of a whirlwind. Both the aeroplanes were tossed like shuttlecocks, hurled high and sideways and the steersman, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... found that the partial veiling of the mountain heights restored the charm which I had lost and made me feel once more at home. The landscape takes a graver tone beneath the mist that hides the higher peaks, and comes drifting, creeping, feeling, through the pines upon their slopes—white, silent, blinding vapour-wreaths around the sable spires. Sometimes the cloud descends and blots out everything. Again it lifts a little, showing cottages and distant Alps beneath its skirts. Then it sweeps over the whole valley like a veil, just broken here and there above a lonely chalet or a thread ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ten it kept pace with them. From ten to eleven the sea increased in violence, the waves now dashing entirely over the turret, blinding the eyes, and causing quick catchings of the breath, as they swept against us. At ten the engineer had reported the leak as gaining on us; at half-past ten, with several pumps in constant motion, one of which threw out three thousand gallons ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... him, so that a space was cleared before the throne. Suddenly his eyes fell upon Effingston; for an instant he paused, then following the gaze of the grief-stricken nobleman, saw her who lay upon the floor. A mist gathered before his eyes; a blinding flash of unreal but fierce accusing light seared his brain and turned him into stone. Horror-stricken he advanced, scarce conscious that he moved, until he stood before the body of his daughter upon whose breast showed the red wound made by the knife. The King, Salisbury, and the ministers had ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... drove, head down, buffeted by a screaming wind laden with stinging sleet that swept howling across the lake. All about them they heard the sharp reports of cracking ice. At any moment a fissure might open, and its width might be an inch or several yards. In the blinding gale they could see nothing. Literally, they ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... my head. There was a shock, a whirl, a blinding darkness, followed by a flash of light. Mr Travers had said "America," and the word had a terrible significance. I sat stunned into silence, and Mr Travers obviously ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... an eventful moment in the career of the young fireman. There was a blinding glow, a rain of fire swayed through the locomotive cab, then, just as they cleared the bridge, the structure went down ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... in the picture was not that of the savage, unrelenting parent of the old plays, who used to disinherit his sons and drive his daughters out into blinding snowstorms because they dared thwart his imperial will. Edwin Smith was distinctly a handsome man, gray-haired, of course, and strong-featured, but with a kind rather than a stern expression. As Mary had said when she first saw his likeness, he looked as if he might have had experiences. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... easy of statement but by no means so easy of solution. At the age of six the boy takes his place at a desk in the school. Twenty years hence, let us say, he will be a railway engineer. As such he must drive his engine at forty miles an hour through blinding storm, or in inky darkness, or through menacing and stifling tunnels, or over dizzy bridges, or around the curve on the edge of the precipice—and do this with no shadow of fear or hint of trepidation, but always with a keen eye, a cool head, and a steady ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... for the protection of a fringe to hide her burning blushes. Her momentary courage had evaporated; she was shocked at having betrayed herself to a stranger; her brief fit of passion left her stiffer and shyer than ever. Blinding tears rushed to Priscilla's eyes, and her terror was that they would drop on to her plate. Suppose some of those horrid girls saw her crying? Hateful thought. She would rather die ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... it, for the lamp was lighted and the glass flashed a blinding glare into my eyes. You see we raced in about the worst winter weather there was and the lamp had to be ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... was, not a glimpse of the ship could be seen, for every wave that broke upon the rock rose in a fountain of spray, to mingle with the blinding drift and mist of foam. But all the time their eyes were strained towards the rock upon which the ship had struck, and along the reef that the venturesome boat's crew had made the shelter which resulted in the saving of some of the poor ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... something else. There was a suggestion of immense pride and disdain in the face almost of hatred, and at the same time something confiding and very full of simplicity. The contrast aroused a deep sympathy in his heart as he looked at the lovely face. The blinding loveliness of it was almost intolerable, this pale thin face with its flaming eyes; it was ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wetness of every little blade and blossom and of the little scraps and seeds of grass upon my soaking and discolored boots. Our footsteps were dark green upon the dew-grey grass. And I feel the same hungry freshness again at the thought of those stolen meetings. Presently came the sunrise, blinding, warming, dew-dispelling arrows of gold smiting through the tree stems, a flood of light foaming over the bracken and gilding the under sides of the branches. Everything is different and distinctive in those opening hours; everything has a different ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the noon temperature below 120 deg. in the shade. No work was done between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., except at midday when the horses were watered and fed; and we loathed the whistle that summoned us from our tents into the blinding sunlight to perform this duty, necessary though we knew it to be. We literally prayed for the night and the cool breeze from the sea. The Mountain of Deliverance was in truth a symbol to us; for as we watched the sun sink slowly behind its sheltering bulk we knew that another day was done. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... run now and have breakfast ready. We come quick." He held the door open another half minute, and he heard Annie-Many-Ponies laugh as she fought her way back to the house through the blinding blizzard. He saw a faint glow through the snow-whirl when she opened the kitchen door, and he shut out the storm with a certain vague reluctance, as though he half feared it might somehow escape into a warm, sunny morning and prove itself no more than a maddeningly ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... and sewed for me and my friends. She was left a widow when her one little girl was five years old. Her husband was drowned off the Jersey coast, and out of blinding pain and loss and anguish had grown a sort of idolatry for the delicate, beautiful child whose brown eyes ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... group of men were standing about the "World" bulletin, stopping, reading and passing on—all the more slowly because the shade of the high building was refreshing in that hot, blinding, cloudless July morning sun. A group of politicians who had read the bulletins and taken their second breakfast at Crook and Duff's, were digesting the one and picking their teeth from the fragments of the other, before the door of that unaccountably-popular establishment, on the block above. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... died; then the Empress put me in a convent and I was forgotten. The convent was on the side of a bare yellow hill, where bees made a hot buzzing in the thyme. Below was the sea, blazing with a million shafts of light; and overhead a blinding sky, which reflected the sun's glitter like a huge baldric of steel. Now the convent was built on the site of an old pleasure-house which a holy Princess had given to our Order; and a part of the house was left standing ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... of the coldest of winter days when we started, the glass very low, a high wind, and the snow whirling through the air in blinding clouds. We went by train to Forest, and there Ahbettuhwahnuhgund met us with his sleigh. It was just a common box sleigh with two seats, and the bottom filled with straw, and two horses to pull us. We were all bundled up in rugs and blankets ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... burnt-gold hair; his shoulders acquired a scholarly droop, and he wore glasses on a black ribbon. It was when he put on glasses that I began to feel a thousand years old. Yet always when he was away from me I thought of him as the Jimmie whose youth had shone with blinding radiance. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... grappling irons into the enemy, who were thus held fast. The English archers hailed a storm of well aimed arrows on the French decks, which were densely crowded by the soldiers Eustace was taking over to conquer England. Then the English boarded, blinding the nearest French with lime, cutting their rigging to make their vessels helpless, and defeating the crews with great slaughter. Eustace, having lost the weather gage, with which he had started out that morning, could ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... room, and Patty hadn't gone much more than halfway, when she concluded to give up the race as being too tiresome. She made her way to the side of the room, and reaching the wall she took off her blinding handkerchief and kicked off the snowshoes. To her great surprise she found that many of the other girls and some of the boys had done the same thing, and not half of the original contestants were still in the race. And, indeed, it proved to be much greater fun to ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... meet my fingers but the fleece of night Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if in their flight My hands should touch ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... she could not with any confidence look on the prodigal as a repentant one; and if he was not, all this tenderness, she feared and with reason, would do him harm, causing him to think less of his crime, and blinding him to his low moral condition. But she thought also that God would do what he could to keep the love of such a mother from hurting; and it was not long before she was encouraged by a softness in Corney's look, and a humid expression in his eyes which she had never seen before. Doubtless ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... after found his Empire reduced to the dimensions of Albania and West Macedonia. War troubles that the Greeks had with Asia brought to the Czar Samuel a brief respite, but a campaign in 1014—this was the one marked by the blinding of the captive Bulgarian army—shattered finally his power. He died that year heart-broken, it is said, at the sight of the ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... what it is marked. All business would be done with honesty of purpose and love of justice; in fact the character of the Divine would be seen in all dealings. No longer would the great dailies be owned by the money power, and intellectual prostitutes write the editorials of their columns, blinding and deceiving the minds of the people that the classes may fleece them. In short the ethics of Christ would enter into the industrial and social systems. Usury would be abolished. Instead of having Christ so much in prayer and song, in poetry ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... was upon her before the mother guessed at the blinding and awful truth. She was a proud, stern, old woman, come of a race strong in rectitude, and she would scarcely have believed an angel if one had come to testify to her daughter's dishonour. But the time came when it could no longer be hidden, when the birth-pains ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... the effect of a blinding light, yet seemed to endow him with a new vigour, so that he felt strong and eager to be up, to spread his truth abroad. Some remnant of that old fire of inspiration flamed up within him as he lay on the hard bed in his little room, with the summer ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... rifle, but did not cock it. That action would have made a clicking sound, sharp and clear in the fog, but the quick hands were ready for instant use. He knew, as Tayoga had said, that the chance of the warriors walking upon them in the blinding fog was small, but if the chance came it would have to be met with all ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... upon Walter's letter lying forgotten in her lap. She took it up, glanced over it, then read it more carefully, pausing often to wipe away the blinding tears. As she finished, ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... suddenly up a hill and glided through two iron gates opening on the lawn and the great white chateau loomed before them in a flash of blinding beauty. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the Spirit of human life. He bends all the might of his human will to draw him down from his sphere. 'Come!' he exclaims. 'Thou must! Thou must!—e'en should it cost my life!' Enveloped in blinding flame the Spirit of life appears. At the apparition Faust cowers back terrified and turns his face away. But it is only for the moment. Stung by the contemptuous words of the phantom he answers: 'Shall I yield to thee, Spectre of flame? 'Tis I, 'tis Faust, thine equal!' The human ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... the hearts and blinding the eyes of wicked men, or infatuating them, as a just punishment for their other willful sins, to their own destruction, see the note on Antiq. B. VII. ch. 9. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... flashed the previous night from the interior of the deserted building. But this intrusion was not necessarily of inimical significance, he argued. Tramps, perhaps, or some belated hunter stealing a shelter from the blinding fog, or even petty thieves, finding an unguarded entrance—it might mean no more. In fact, such intrusion was the normal incident of any vacant house in remote seclusion, unprotected by a caretaker. But this reasoning did not convince the servants. Something had happened, they reiterated; ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... sail far out in the bay, but it disappeared and, at the same moment, a sudden, violent wind swept in from the sea, and almost threw her down. She caught hold of a sapling-stem to steady herself, and held tightly till the gust passed. Next instant came a great roar of blinding rain, and she was forced to run as fast as she could to the house. It took but two minutes to reach it; but already she was drenched to the skin, and the water was running in streams from her dress and the braids ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... fortunate. He leaned far forward and succeeded in getting a firm grasp of the neck, but he had guided his horse too close to the bird, and his jerk drew it directly over his face, blinding him ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... high rocks the haunts of doves, the mounds Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out, Past tracks of milk-white minute blinding sand." ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... doubtless, be frequently importuned to continue with thy gay acquaintance, in pursuit of that false glare of happiness, which the world, in too bewitching and deceitful colours, holds out to the unwary traveller, and which certainly ends in blinding the intellectual eye from discovering the pure source of soul-felt pleasure resulting from a humble heart, at peace with its ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... in narrow gorges, the lightning of the hills, blinding and smothering sandstorms on the desert detained her not, for in her chosen path ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... must therefore run upon the rocks beyond the Point or make for Marblehead harbor. But the latter was an untried and dangerous course for an inexperienced boatman, and, grim as the coast looked, he was obliged to trust to its tender mercies for the chance of getting ashore. The rain now fell in blinding torrents and a blackness as of night brooded over the sea. Greenleaf was utterly bewildered, but held on to the tiller with his aching, stiffening hand, and strove to inspire his companion with courage. The boat was "down by the head," on account of the wind's drawing the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... its pride of place attain'd, Glances around the illimitable void, And sees no goal, and finds no resting-place In the blue, boundless depths—then, silently, Pauses on wing, and with gyrations down And down descends thorough the blinding clouds, In billowy masses, many-hued, around Floating, until their confines past, green earth Once more appears, and on its loftiest crag The nest, wherein 'tis bliss to rest his plumes Flight-wearied—so, from farthest dreamland's shores, Where clouds and chaos form the continents, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... would certainly fail without the wizardry of the voice of the speaker, for the voice is the soul of the marionettes. And as the cobbler from Mount Eryx found his opportunity in the Death of Bradamante at Trapani, so the voice at Palermo would surely have done something with the Blinding of Samson—something perhaps not unworthy of Total Eclipse. It communicated to us the dignity and beauty of Samson's character; when he was observing the industrious bees it was full of pity for the dead ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... knowledge of its sequel? She longed to feel that they might be merciful and not tell it. She coveted happiness for her son, and in her heart was prepared for almost any surrender that would purchase it for him. If the lure were not so great! If the woman were not so blinding fair, why, then one might find a virtue in excusing her, in condoning her silence, even. But, clothed in that power, to have pretended innocence ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... so cold that it stung as boiling water stings. The dead and most untouched deep water of the sea had been heaved to the top by the submarine volcano—the chill still water that kills all life and smells of desolation and emptiness. We did not need either the blinding fog or that indescribable smell of musk to make us unhappy—we were shivering with cold and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... as he saw Nelson grip a great switch there came over him a wild impulse to bolt from the transmitting chamber. But then as his thoughts whirled maelstromlike there came a clang from the clock and Nelson flung down the switch in his grasp. Blinding light seemed to break from all the chamber onto the three; Randall felt himself hurled into nothingness by forces titanic, inconceivable, and then knew ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... mile, just as the hollow sloped and merged into level ground, they left us behind and disappeared so quickly as almost to frighten me. My mustang plunged out of the forest to the rim and dashed along, apparently unmindful of the chasm. The red and yellow surface blurred in a blinding glare. I heard the chorus of hounds, but as its direction baffled me I trusted to my horse and I did well, for soon he came to a dead halt ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... and Central City where our freight was consigned. The most hazardous part of our trip was before us, one that to this day makes me shiver when I think of it. The first team entered the canyon at 11 A. M. in a blinding snowstorm. The road for nearly the entire distance was hewn from solid rock out of the side of steep mountains, gradually ascending to a great height, then descending to what seemed a bottomless canyon. We finally arrived ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... once when the chestnut shied violently he muttered something under his breath. But her satisfaction was short-lived. A few minutes afterwards his arm tightened round her once more and he twined a fold of his long cloak round her head, blinding her. And then she understood. The galloping horse was pulled in with almost the same suddenness that had amazed her when she had first seen the Arabs. She felt him draw her close into his arms and slip down on to the ground; there were voices around her—confused, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... wind. Chesney's observations in Arabia, and the testimony of the Bedouins he consulted, are to the same purpose. The dangers of the simoom are of a different character, though they are certainly aggravated by the blinding effects of the light particles of dust and sand borne along by it, and by that of the inhalation of them upon the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... The gale was increasing, the wreck rocked to and fro, large portions were constantly being detached and hove against the rock. At length a sea heavier than any of the preceding ones came roaring in. It struck the wreck. High over it the foaming waters rushed, the spray from it almost blinding Hemming and his companions, far above it as they stood. A piercing shriek reached their ears, the squall passed by. They looked towards the spot where the brig had been. Not a particle was to be seen hanging together. Not one of those clinging to it ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... faint rustling of leaves. The darkness before and behind was a wall through which he must in some way manage to thrust himself into the light. With his hand before him, as though trying to push aside some dark blinding mass, he moved out of the grove and thus moving stumbled up the steps ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... passes and sweeping across the wide miles of desert, gathering the sand as it came. Swiftly the golden mist extended over their heads, a thick, yellow fog, through which the sun shone dully with a weird, unnatural light. Then the stinging, blinding, choking blast was upon them with pitiless, savage fury. In a moment all signs of the trail were obliterated. Over the high edges of the drift the sand curled and streamed like blizzard snow. About the outfit it whirled and eddied, ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... he was coming home. She scorched something in the ironing that day because tears of joy were blinding her eyes. Her thoughts were busy with the meeting that was to be. She had a brand new dress for the occasion—a lawn, with dark blue dots, and a blue sash—and there was a new hat, wonderful with the flowers of summer, and ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... in the men of his battalion. They could die at the wire or in the trench, but they could not be moved. While mechanically carrying on his work, his mind was with the fighting, dying remnant of his comrades. The O. C. of the C. C. S. passing on his rounds found Barry carrying on with tears blinding his eyes so that he could hardly see the figures he was ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... to feel relief and a trifle of contempt for this clumsy slow-moving and visible missile. Their relief and contempt vanished for ever when the fifth bomb fell exactly in the trench, burst with a nerve-shattering roar, and filled the air with whistling fragments and dense choking, blinding ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the siege; beneath his dusky skin beat a heart of gold, and to him I could safely have confided uncounted treasures. As the daylight increased so did the wind in violence; it was blowing a perfect gale, and the dust and sand were blinding. We outspanned for breakfast twelve miles out, at the farm of a presumably loyal Dutchman; then on again, the wind by now having become a hurricane, aggravated by the intensely hot rays of a scorching sun. I have ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... high cones before me, and then the mist, finding it cannot drive me back easily, proceeds to desperate methods, and lashes out with a burst of bitter wind, and a sheet of blinding, stinging rain. I make my way up through it towards a peak which I soon see through a tear in the mist is not the highest, so I angle off and go up the one to the left, and after a desperate fight reach the cairn—only, alas! to find a hurricane raging and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... all rot," said the School-master, impatiently. "Country life is ideal only in books. Books do not tell of running for trains through blinding snowstorms; writers do not expatiate on the delights of waking on cold winter nights and finding your piano and parlor furniture afloat because of bursted pipes, with the plumber, like Sheridan at Winchester, twenty miles away. They are dumb on the subject of the ecstasy one feels when pushing ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... up to the top gallery, the hands of the setting sun reached out and seized them with red ardor. The radiance was half blinding, from that sun and from light reflected by the heavily running waves, all white-caps to shore. On both aileron-tips, the machine-guns were spitting intermittently, worked by crews under the major and ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... had decided that he would walk the three leagues into Calais, despite the cold, which was intense, and the blizzard, which was nearly blinding, and that he would call at the post of gendarmerie at the city gates, and there see the officer in command and tell him the exact state of the case. It would then be for that officer to decide what was to be done; our responsibility as loyal ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... was blowing past the windows in blinding drifts, and the road in front of the Ballards' home was fast filling to the tops of the fences. A bright wood-fire was burning in the great cookstove, which had been brought into the living room ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... beholding her other self, as if she had leaped backward many years, and was seated again upon the nursery floor like the child before her. Like gleams of lightning, confused memories of the past came rushing over her only to pass away, leaving her in deeper darkness. One thought, however, like a blinding flash caused her brain to reel, while she grasped Arthur's arm, exclaiming, "Are you sure the baby died—sure she was buried ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... hath no earthly metaphor, A blinding word that hath no earthly rhyme, Love! we can only call and no name more; As the great lonely thunder rolls sublime, As the great sun doth solitary climb, And we have but themselves to know them by, Just so Love stands a stranger ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... tourists—the old man, the woman, or the cripple, who are supposed to appreciate the real beauties of Alpine scenery—may look at it comfortably from their hotel. They may see its graceful curve, the long straight lines that are ruled in delicate shading down its sides, and the contrast of the blinding white snow with the dark blue sky above; but they will probably guess it to be a mere bank—a snowdrift, perhaps, which has been piled by the last storm. If you pointed out to them one of the great rocky teeth that projected from its summit, and said that it was a guide, they ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... rolling of the surf; did they wander over the verdant hills, or settle on the beetling clift; did she raise her cherub-face to the heavens, and wonder at the studded firmament of stars, or the moon sailing in her cold beauty, or the sun blinding her in his warmth and splendour; she knew that it was God who made them all. Did she ponder over the variety of the leaf; did she admire the painting of the flower, or watch the motions of the minute insect, which, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... water—perhaps one should say too few paths and bridges. For the last two days a sand-storm of unusual violence has been raging. On the ridges above the town one can hardly stand on one's feet; the grains fly upwards, over the crest of the hill, in blinding showers, mighty squadrons of them careering across the plain below. The landscape is involved in a dim, roseate twilight. But occasionally there comes a sickly radiance from behind the curtain of cloud that glimmers lustreless, like an incandescent lamp seen ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... those few moments were very vivid—the blinding beat of the storm in my face, the unbroken front of horned heads bearing down on me, resistless as fate, the long slant of rain with the sun shining in ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... time gleams of lightning shone luridly on the horizon and lighted up the jagged peak of mountain with a flare; the moon had risen, but its waning disk was frequently obscured by dark driving masses of cloud; blinding flashes, tender light, and utter darkness were alternating with bewildering rapidity, when Paulus at last collected himself, and went down to the spring to drink, and to cool his brow in the fresh water. Striding ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... discovery, crashing in on him after he was bound to Mary, and in what would else have been the sweet interval of love and longing 'before they came together,' is delicately and unconsciously brought out in verse 18. 'She was found'—how the remembrance of the sudden disclosure, blinding and startling as a lightning flash, lives in that word! And how the agony of perplexity as to the right thing to do in such a cruel dilemma is hinted at in the two clauses that pull in opposite directions! As a 'just man' and 'her husband,' Joseph owed it to righteousness and to himself ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... completely destroyed, only a few links remaining. Together with some fused coins, these were found close by, and are deposited in a closed box in the Museum. According to Orman's account of the affair, he first felt a violent blow on the chest and shoulders, and then he was involved in a blinding light and hurled into the air. He said he never lost consciousness; but when at the hospital he seemed very deaf and stupid. He was discharged perfectly cured twenty weeks after the occurrence. The scientific explanation of this amazing escape from this most eccentric vagary of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... for I was once caught in onemyself, while crossing the river in an undecked boat about a day's journey from Santarem. They are accompanied with terrific electric explosions, the sharp claps of thunder falling almost simultaneously with the blinding flashes of lightning. Torrents of rain follow the first outbreak; the wind then gradually abates, and the rain subsides into a steady drizzle, which continues often for the greater part of ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... for ever on her lip, "on the fair realm of France." As her passion grew she recalled old prophecies that a maid from the Lorraine border should save the land; she saw visions; St. Michael appeared to her in a flood of blinding light, and bade her go to the help of the king and restore to him his realm. "Messire," answered the girl, "I am but a poor maiden; I know not how to ride to the wars, or to lead men-at-arms." The ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... ready on the quay, where the postmen ran, and the carriages rolled amid smoke and noise, under the light that fell from the windows. Through the open doors travellers in long cloaks came and went. At the end of the station, blinding with soot and dust, a small rainbow could be discerned, not larger than one's hand. Countess Martin and the good Madame Marniet were already in their carriage, under the rack loaded with bags, among newspapers thrown on the cushions. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the mountains were wrapped in smoke so dense and blinding, that the explorers, if by chance they separated, could only find each other by shouting. Often, too, they had to grope their way through the yet burning forests, in constant peril from the limbs and trunks of trees, which frequently ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... gods. The sun is sinking—all the sky's afire— And vale and mountain glow like molten ore In the intense full splendor of its rays. A half-hour hence all will be dull and grey; And Lucius only waits until the shade Sweeps down the plain then mounts and makes his way On through the blinding desert to the sea, And thence his galley bears ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story
... a long, twisting, whirling column of water that neither sea nor sky seemed able to break away from. It was a weird sight to see this dark shape writhe and spin before the storm, and at last the base of it struck a coral reef, and it disappeared, leaving nothing but a blinding squall of rain and a tumult of white waves breaking on the reef. And then the water whirled and tossed, and flung its white arms about, till the whole sea, which had been ink a few minutes before, had lashed itself into a vast sheet ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... occasion, he would probably have found that the Empress Irene, a name dear to the reverencers of images, was the person meant. The original Latin probably gives no clue to the sex; but still this empress, who is considered as a saint by her church, notwithstanding the deposition and blinding of her own son, was not a personage ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... the Russian frontier. On Christmas Day they looked down on the town of Sarikamish and the vital railway that stretched away to the eastward. At the same time the two divisions of the First Corps, stationed at Trebizond, making a wider sweep, had, by forced marches through a blinding blizzard that threatened to make necessary the abandonment of the artillery, reached the vicinity ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... discovered through blinding clouds of dust, riding swiftly towards the hill, had seen their danger, dismounted, and with ready presence of mind, prepared to seize the horses the instant the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... of the soul. It takes in that whole process of rescue from the power of sin and selfishness that should be going on from day to day in every human life. We have seen that there is a natural principle in man lowering him, deadening him, pulling him down by inches to the mere animal plane, blinding reason, searing conscience, paralyzing will. This is the active destroying principle, or Sin. Now to counteract this, God has discovered to us another principle which will stop this drifting process in the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond |
