"Fleck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "it may be this woman has some fault: it may be there is some fleck in her beauty somewhere. And sooner than know that, I would prefer to retain my unreasonable dreams, and this longing which is unfed and hopeless, and the memory of to-night. Besides, if she were perfect in everything, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... ask: What cruel chance Made Martin's life so sad a story? Martin? Why, he exhaled romance And wore an overcoat of glory. A fleck of sunlight in the street, A horse, a book, a girl who smiled, — Such visions made each moment sweet ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... silver light of dawn Slipping through the leaves that fleck My one window, hurries on, Throws its arms ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... impressive than he was; a mere intelligence he looked, in a quaint uniform, with his long lip drawn down and pursed a little in this accomplishment of duty, and his eyes steadily in front of him. Hilda's lambent observation was everywhere, but most of all on him; a fleck of the dust from the road still lay upon the warm bloom of her cheek, a perpetual happy curve clung about her mouth. So they passed in streets of the thronging people, where yards of new-dyed cotton, purple and yellow, stretched drying in the sun, where a busy tom-tom called the pious ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... daisies fair To fleck the meadows green, Than thy untrammelled notes are heard Rising the ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... Countess, with a little catch in her breath, and an added fleck of colour in her ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... that of the Ordesa in the Pyrenees, is 3200 feet deep; but here are rents in the side of Chimborazo in which Vesuvius could be put away out of sight. As you look down into the fathomless fissure, you see a white fleck rising out of the gulf, and expanding as it mounts, till the wings of the condor, fifteen feet in spread, glitter in the sun as the proud bird fearlessly wheels over the dizzy chasm, and then, ascending above your head, sails over the dome of ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... This sent the last fleck of color from her face, and with the words almost choking her throat: "Then tell him what I have said to you and perhaps he ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... until your feet dash fire from the flinty stones and your nostrils fleck your breasts with foam. What! do not the wheels smoke yet? Hear ye the fanfares, whose sound reached even to Ostia; the clapping of the hands, the cries of joy? See how the populace shower saffron on my head! ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... days and nights together we sometimes lay almost "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean," when the deep blue dome above matched the deep blue plain below, and never a fleck of white appeared in sky or sea. This perfect stop to our progress troubled none, although it aggravates a merchant skipper terribly. As for the objects of our search, they had apparently all migrated other-whither, for never a sign of them did we see. Finbacks, a species ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... in the box, he remained quietly erect before this brute rage. A fleck of red foam fell on the white front of his shirt. He drew his handkerchief and wiped it calmly away, but a red stain remained. At the same time the two who led the stallion pulled him back from the barrier and he stood with head high, searching ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... stretching to find some break before the dull russet faded into the amber of the horizon and was lost. An American landscape: of few features, simple, grand in outline as a face of one of the early gods. It lay utterly motionless before him, not a fleck of cloud in the pure blue above, even where the mist rose from the river; it only had glorified the clear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... in his chair, and his chin fell forwards upon his chest. The doctor sprang to a side-table and poured out half a glass of liqueur brandy which he held to his patient's lips. A little fleck of colour came into his cheeks as he ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sporadic.] Why didst thou call me? [SAV. looks somewhat embarrassed.] What is thy distress? I see it all! The sanguinary mob Clusters to rend thee! As the antler'd stag, With fine eyes glazed from the too-long chase, Turns to defy the foam-fleck'd pack, and thinks, In his last moment, of some graceful hind Seen once afar upon a mountain-top, E'en so, Savonarola, didst thou think, In thy most dire extremity, of me. And here I am! Courage! The horrid hounds Droop tail at sight of me and fawn away Innocuous. [The ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Theologians—forgetting the commonest facts of our individual development—spoke with the most profound disdain of the theory that a Luther or a Goethe could be the outcome of development from a tiny speck of protoplasm. The work, one of the most distinguished of them said, was "a fleck of shame on the escutcheon of Germany." To-day its conclusion is accepted by influential clerics, such as the Dean of Westminster, and by almost every biologist and anthropologist of distinction in Europe. Evolution is not a laboriously reached conclusion, but a guiding ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... an imaginary lint fleck from his lapel, and looked up at Zeckler slyly. "That—uh—jury trial. The Altairians weren't any too happy to oblige. They wanted to execute you outright. Thought a trial was awfully silly—until they got their money back, of course. Not too ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... Fleck'd with white or red, Whilst their nutty incense, All around is shed. Bonny drooping Blue-bells, Happy you must be With your beauties sheltered 'Neath ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... forgotten Miss Dolly the wayward, the mischievous. But she was before me now, her eyes sparkling, and biting her lips to keep down her laughter. Comyn turned to fleck the window with his handkerchief, while I was not a little put out at their mirth. But if John Paul observed it, he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on his death-bed, and nothing quivered even then in his stony heart,—in that heart devoid of a fleck or a crack. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... brambling, or snow-fleck, is very amusing; and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should delight in such perilous voyages over the northern ocean. Some country people in the winter time have, every now and then, told me that they have seen two or three white larks on our downs, but, on considering the matter, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... irrevocably down on managers' and agents' lists as "comedy black." Countless the premiers she had opened to the fleck of a duster! Hattie came high, as maids go. One hundred and fifty dollars a week and no road engagements. She dressed alone. Her part in "Love Me Long" had been especially written in for the sake of the peculiar kind of comedy relief she could bring to it. A light ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... not the south; ah flower of purple iris, flower of white, or of the iris, withering the grass— for fleck of the sun's fire, gathers such heat and power, that shadow-print is light, cast through the petals of the yellow ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks of the bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... alone with its riches, and she turned the key in the gold, And lifted the sea-born purple, and the silken web unrolled, And lo, 'twixt her hands and her bosom the shards of Sigmund's sword; No rust-fleck stained its edges, and the gems of the ocean's hoard Were as bright in the hilts and glorious, as when in the Volsungs' hall It shone in the eyes of the earl-folk and ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... which should cure him of the scowl and justify his colour,' answered him the Count. 'Moreover, I have given him the chance of eternal life.' Then with a cry—'Oh, Gaston, let us get to the South, see the sun fleck the roads, smell the oranges! Let us get to the South, man! It seems I have entertained an angel. And now that I have given her wings, and now that she is gone, I know how much I love her. Speed, Gaston! We will go to the South, see Bertran, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... laughed!—my mate and I,— On the "Bon Homme Richard's" deck, As we saw that convoy fly Like a snow-squall, till each fleck Melted in the twilight shadows of the coast-line, speck by speck; And scuffling back to shore The Scarborough bailiffs sped, As the "Richard" with a roar Of her cannon round the Head, Crossed her royal yards and signaled ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... his calmly contemptuous attitude, he grasped the situation and a wave of red anger crossed his face. But he was not of the blustering sort, it seemed, and drawing out a handkerchief he proceeded carefully to fleck the dirt and dust from his doublet and hose. When he had removed the last ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... other in mutual surprise and understanding; each in wonder that the other had ever been anything but radiant of out-of-doors health. That fleck on the lungs which brought a doctor's orders had long ago been healed by the physician of the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... sport, and a little-great result. I made the inquest a most searching and minute affair. I asked him to tell me if there were any mark upon the neck, near one ear, and he described the precise locality and outline of a tiny brown fleck, no larger than a pin's head. He told of any little dimple, of any sweep of the downward growth of the brown hair, of any trifling scar from childhood. And of her chin and neck he told the very markings, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... glowing scarlet of these pinks that fleck the Southern woodland as with fire, will light up our Northern rock gardens too, if we but sow the seed under glass in earliest spring, and set out the young plants in well-drained, open ground in May. Division of old perennial roots causes the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... topaz leaves of the walnut glowed, The sumach added its crimson fleck, And double in air and water showed The tinted maples along the Neck; Through frost flower clusters of pale star-mist, And gentian fringes of amethyst, And royal plumes of golden-rod, The grazing cattle on ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... would have it, and could not explain the choice. It must have been some such remote analogy as his likeness to an old dapple-gray family horse, patient flanked and thoroughly imperturbable to the fleck of the whip. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... without further adventure, and the morning sun woke the girls by peering in at a hole in the tent-roof, and making a little round golden fleck, that danced across their eyelids until ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... swiftly to the ships were driv'n His sleek-skinn'd coursers; nothing loth they flew; With foam their chests were fleck'd, with dust their flanks, As from the field their wounded Lord they bore: But Hector, as he saw the King retire, To Trojans ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... like his smooth hair, it was approaching an equally sheer whiteness; and though his clothes were old, they had shapeliness and a flavor of mode. And for greater spruceness there were some jaunty touches; gray spats, a narrow black ribbon across the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses in a pocket, a fleck of color from a button in the lapel of the black coat, labeling him the descendant ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the deck another bride Is standing by her lover's side. Shadows from the flags and shrouds, Like the shadows cast by clouds, Broken by many a sunny fleck, Fall around ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... with no tree in sight. A mile away to the west stood a low stone house, and immediately in front of us opened a half-section of unfenced sod. To the north, as far as I could see, the land billowed like a russet ocean, with scarcely a roof to fleck its lonely spread. I cannot say that I liked or disliked it. I merely marveled at it; and while I wandered about the yard, the hired man scorched some cornmeal mush in a skillet, and this, with some butter and gingerbread, made up my first ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... beautiful precipitous rocks overhanging the sea. Their days, late as it was in the year, seemed spent in boating or land pic-nics; all out-of-doors, pleasure-seeking and glad, Edith's life seemed like the deep vault of blue sky above her, free—utterly free from fleck or cloud. Her husband had to attend drill, and she, the most musical officer's wife there, had to copy the new and popular tunes out of the most recent English music, for the benefit of the bandmaster; those seemed their most severe and arduous duties. She expressed an affectionate hope that, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... those commonly seen are only a few of the total. In a winter stroll by the upper Thames, the absence of the birds which flocked along the banks in summer and spring, when the May was in blossom and the willow covered with cotton fleck, is among the first seasonal changes noticed. The chiff-chaffs, turtledoves, sedge-warblers, whitethroats, coots, sandpipers, and all the little river birds are gone. So are the greater number of the blackbirds, thrushes and missel-thrushes. All the fisherman sees, his daily ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... through the trees, that swayed in masses overhead, dappling the upturned faces with light and shade. The leaves under the tread of the wind rustled softly, and the soaring hawk looked down curiously as he drifted above the grove, like a fleck of cloud. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the end of the cigarette grayed with ash and I began to wonder how long it would be before a fleck of hot ash would fall. How long it would take for the ash to grow long and top-heavy and then to fall into the powder. And whether or not the ash would be hot enough to touch it off. I struggled to keep my hands steady, but they ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... crossed it. That was the same road up which I had climbed on a May morning long ago, when I hurried to the Professor's aid, and I followed it now to the clearing; I saw the clearing with the Professor leaning on his hoe studying a fleck of cloud, and Penelope watching him silently, fearing to disturb his important meditations. In these busy years Penelope had been rarely in my thoughts; if at all, it was as a little girl with a blue ribbon in her hair, the companion of a few ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... beams aslant, Betwixt the continents sails the Phocion, For Baltimore bound from Alicant. Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck Over the chill blue white-capped ocean: From ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... Fleck reports the case of a Dutchman who, during the last two years, by some peculiar innervation of the intestine, had only five or six bowel movements a year. In the intervals the patient passed small quantities of hard feces once in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... fleck flick cake sock deck meek flock pack yoke slick shock poke track hack dock snake neck stuck clack sleek strike crack freak pluck truck stroke brake drake shake black struck sneak spoke ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... gossamer, falls into folds as finely exact as an engraver's point could draw; velvet shoes tread without speck or spot upon the well-scoured pavement of a public street; men-at-arms grasp weapons and hold bridles with hands as carefully tended as any idle fine gentleman's, and there is neither fleck nor breath of dimness on the mirror-like steel of their armour; the very flowers, the roses and lilies that strew the way, are the perfection of fresh-cut hothouse blossoms; and when birds and beasts chance to be necessary to the composition of the picture, they are represented ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... bars faded on my wall to pink, to ashes; a fleck of rosy cloud in mid-zenith glimmered and went out, and the round edges of the world were curtained ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... grasping her by the arm convulsively, "you here! How came you to leave your cabin, dear? Go down, go down; you don't know the danger you run. Stay—I will help you. If one of those seas comes on board it would carry you overboard like a fleck of foam." ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sun the thick-set vines are a level floor of rich maroon, not a level color but a background showing the brush marks of a master painter's hand. Toward the sun this color lightens and silvers to tiny jewel points where the light glances from glossy leaf tips. The later spring growth will fleck the bogs with greens, but the maroon background will still ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... time makes us about 66 degrees West. Ha! humph! we must be about forty miles to the south of Cape Horn; and, by Jove," he added, looking to the north-west, where the blue sky was without a fleck save a little white cloud, like the triangular sail of a boat, seen dimly low down on the horizon, "there's my gentleman ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Merchant, or the Scotchwoman," I have seen much better performed abroad than it was here. Mr. Fleck, at Hamburg, in particular, played the part of the English merchant with more interest, truth, and propriety than one Aickin did here. He seemed to me to fail totally in expressing the peculiar and original character ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... sweeter Sings the brook in rippled meter Under boughs that lithely teeter Lorn birds, answering from the shores Through the viny, shady-shiny Interspaces, shot with tiny Flying motes that fleck the winy ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... head, ears and all, came to him and putting her paws on his knees, thrust her long muzzle into his face and began licking him. But he, looking at her now with different eyes, and seeing her jaws still sprinkled with fresh blood and her claws full of the rabbit's fleck, would have ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... did wane, like moons eclipsed in overwhelming dawns: such radiance was around; such vermeil light, born of no sun, but pervading all the scene. Transparent, fleck-less, calm, all glowed ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... top half of a pseudo-science robot—a squat evil child robot, Gusterson told himself, which had lost its legs in a railway accident—and it seemed to him that a red fleck was moving around imperceptibly in ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... about sixty years and landed me in that little bedroom on that tempestuous night, and brought to my mind how creditable to me was my conduct through the whole night, and how barren it was of moral spot or fleck during that entire period: he said Mr. X was sexton, or something, of the Episcopal church in his town, and had been for many years the competent superintendent of all the church's worldly affairs, and was regarded by the whole congregation as a stay, a blessing, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain |
