"Illuminate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... does not lie upon you to force them to identify themselves with your act and situation. But better too much openness than too little. Squalid intrigue was the shadow of the old intolerably narrow order; it is a shadow we want to illuminate out of existence. Secrets will be ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... on one knee beside the body as they laid it down. The lanterns were drawn together that their combined light might illuminate the spot. Ruth saw that the figure was that of a youth not much older than herself— lean, long limbed, well dressed, and with a face that, had it not been so pale, she would have thought ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... and you expect a night attack, place obstacles in front of your position, heavily patrol your front, fix bayonets, move up your supports, open fire as soon as results may be expected, and illuminate the foreground. ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... boy's father that he should be a painter, and that art being unknown to the Abbe Charles and the village Cure (in which manner of ignorance, if the infallible Pope did but know it, he and his now artless shepherds stand at a fatal disadvantage in the world as compared with monks who could illuminate with color as well as word)—the simple young soul is sent for the exalting and finishing of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... no longer to illuminate the cavern with its electric light. Possibly it might not yet be extinguished, but no ray escaped from the depths of the abyss in which reposed all that ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... merely symbolize the divine. For instance, the Gospel of John has been called the philosophical or spiritual gospel. And in spite of the fact that it has been assailed and historically discredited by modern critics, for me it serves to illuminate certain truths of Christ's message and teaching that the other Gospels do not. Mark, the earliest Gospel, does not refer to the miraculous birth. At the commencements of Matthew and Luke you will read of it, and it is to be noted that the rest of these narratives curiously and naively contradict ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... electric-lighting plant and placed lights for occasional use in the observatory, the meteorological station, and various other points. We could not afford to use the electric lamps freely. Hurley also rigged two powerful lights on poles projecting from the ship to port and starboard. These lamps would illuminate the "dogloos" brilliantly on the darkest winter's day and would be invaluable in the event of the floe breaking during the dark days of winter. We could imagine what it would mean to get fifty dogs aboard without lights while the floe was breaking ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Matthews ran into Ganz himself. The Swiss was a short, fair, faded man, not too neat about his white clothes, with a pensive mustache and an ambiguous blue eye that lighted at sight of the young Englishman. The light, however, was not one to illuminate Matthews' darkness in the matter of news. What news trickled out of the local wire was very meager indeed. The Austrians were shelling Belgrade, the Germans, the Russians, and the French had gone in. That was all. No, not quite ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... notorious Anglo-Norman, who visited Ireland towards the close of the twelfth century, has been convicted out of his own mouth when he states that Ireland was a barbarous nation when his people came there. He forgot that a people who could illuminate the Book of Kells and build Cormac's Chapel could not be called savages, nor could a church be lost to a sense of decency and dignity that numbered among its children such a man as St. Laurence O'Toole. Abuses there were, it is true, consequent on long continued war, though these abuses were ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... and though she had so often pulled all the little drawers out, she had never thoroughly explored the recesses which received them. But in her new-born passion of search, she held her light so as to illuminate all these deeper spaces. At once she thought she saw the marks of pressure with a finger. She pressed her own finger on this place, and, as it yielded with a slight click, a small mahogany pilaster sprang forward, revealing ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mind at once, carefully and consistently, to Franklin's interests. She found atoms and kinetics rather confusing at first, but Franklin's delighted and deliberate elucidations made a light for her that promised by degrees to illuminate these dark subjects. Yes; already life had taken hold of her and, ironically, yet not unwillingly, she followed it along the appointed path. Yesterday, however, and to-day, especially, a complication, subtle yet emphatic, had ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... rocks and bay, The midnight moonbeam slumbering lay, And poured its silver light, and pure, Through loophole, and through embrazure, Upon Tantallon's tower and hall; But chief where arched windows wide Illuminate the chapel's pride, The sober glances fall. Much was there need; though, seamed with scars, Two veterans of the Douglas' wars, Though two grey priests were there, And each a blazing torch held high, You could not by their blaze descry The chapel's carving fair. ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... romance, through whom came tragedy. You see already the whole stark simplicity of the theme. What I cannot convey to you is that secret of Mrs. WHARTON'S that enables her by some exquisitely right word or phrase so to illuminate a scene that you see it as though by an inspiration of your own, and feel that thus and thus did the thing in fact happen. There are episodes in Summer—for example the Fourth of July firework evening, or the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... for this will prolong his stay here. He is a very charming fellow; a Liberal in politics, but a gentleman at heart. Marillac, who is a superb penman, undertakes to make a fair copy of the genealogy and to illuminate the crests. Do you know, we can not find my great-grandmother Cantelescar's coat-of-arms? But, my darling, it seems to me that you are not very kindly ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... his emotions, and thrills his heart with gladness. The poet's song has become incorporated with the poor man's nature. You may see that it fills his eyes with tears; but they are not of sorrow. His cheek is flushed with hope, and a radiant expectation, founded on experience, which seems to illuminate and gild his future destiny. Marvellous, indeed, are the influences of a true song; and while they are rare, they are by fashion rarely appreciated. In it are embodied the best thoughts in the best language. By it the best of every class in every clime are swayed. In it ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... be dishonoured through their silliness. But while they, self-deprived of light, grope like blind men along a wall, and fall into many a ditch, and scratch out their eyes on many a bramble bush, the sun, firmly established on his own glory, shall illuminate them that gaze upon his beams with unveiled face. Even so shineth the light of Christ on all men abundantly, imparting to us of his lustre. But every man shareth thereof in proportion to his desire and zeal. For the Sun of righteousness disappointeth none of them that would ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... sacrifices were accepted in heaven—and even on this earth they had their reward. She, for whom he gave up all, in turn gave up all for him. She devoted herself to his comfort. Many times she returned to the lunatic establishment, but many times she was restored to illuminate the household hearth for him; and of the happiness which for forty years and more he had, no hour seemed true that was not derived from her. Hence forwards, therefore, until he was emancipated by the noble generosity of the East India Directors, Lamb's time, for ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... you about very slight changes in the buds, pray have the kindness to illuminate me. I have cases of seven or eight varieties of the peach which have produced by "bud-variation" nectarines, and yet only one single case (in France) of a peach producing another closely similar peach (but later in ripening). How strange ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... man prepared all that the Saint had commanded, and at last the day of gladness drew nigh. The brethren were called from many convents; the men and women of the town prepared tapers and torches to illuminate the night. Finding all things ready, Francis beheld and rejoiced: the manger had been prepared, the hay was brought, and the ox and ass were led in. "Thus Simplicity was honoured, Poverty exalted, Humility commended, and of Greccio ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... hideous, repulsive, and complete physical deformity; place it where it stands out most prominently, in the lowest, most subterraneous and despised story of the social edifice; illuminate this miserable creature on all sides by the sinister light of contrasts; and then give it a soul, and place in that soul the purest feeling which is bestowed on man, the paternal feeling. What ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of unreal pleasure, and banish the glittering meteors of unsubstantial happiness. Or if these fail, lead him to the holy fane of religion: she will regulate the fires of fancy, and assuage the tempest of the passions: she will illuminate the dark wilderness, and smooth the thorny paths of life: she will point him to joys beyond the tomb—to another and a better world; and pour the balm of consolation and ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... case the mirror, A, is removed, and the projector inclined above the horizon in such a way as to illuminate the clouds to as great a distance as possible. A maneuver of the occultator, E, between the lamp and the mirror arrests the luminous rays of the source, or allows them to pass, and thus produces upon the clouds the dots and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... I said. "Yours shall be the glory. Fame shall crown you; and perhaps if there remains any reflected light in the form of a by-product, some modest and negligible little ray may chance to illuminate me." ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... the beacon hill. The beacon hill stands behind Farringford. If you follow the little wood of nightingales and thrushes, and follow the lane where the blackthorn hedges shine in spring-time (lovely dials that illuminate to show the hour), you come to the downs, and climbing their smooth steps you reach 'Mr. Tennyson's Down,' where the beacon-staff stands firm upon the mound. Then following the line of the coast you come at last to the Needles, and may look down upon the ridge ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... used to be similar. On the night of Christmas Eve, says the antiquary John Brand, "our ancestors were wont to light up candles of an uncommon size, called Christmas Candles, and lay a log of wood upon the fire, called a Yule-clog or Christmas-block, to illuminate the house, and, as it were, to turn night into day." The old custom was to light the Yule log with a fragment of its predecessor, which had been kept throughout the year for the purpose; where it was so kept, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... very small quantity of heat in addition to that already residing in the earth, which by emanations from the centre to the circumference renders the surface habitable, and without which, though the sun was constantly to illuminate two thirds of the globe at once, with a heat equal to that at the equator, it would soon become a mass of solid ice. His reasonings and calculations on this subject are too long and too intricate to be inserted here, but are equally curious and ingenious ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... spirits. Several members of the party preceded them, and all seemed to feel the hushing influence, for they passed on in silence, and stepped softly as they entered the great Palace of Art. The torch-bearers were soon in readiness to illuminate the statues, which they did by holding a covered light over each, making it stand out alone in the surrounding darkness, with very striking effects of light and shadow. Flora, who was crouched on a low seat by the side of Mrs. Delano, gazed with a reverent, half-afraid ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... stopping a vessel, to ascertain whether she had a right to fly one flag or another. Consequently the ships belonging to Dutch and American lines had their names painted with large lettering along their sides. At night, streamers of electric lights were hung over the sides to illuminate these letterings; and on the decks of many of the neutral ships their names and nationalities were painted in large letters so that they might be identified by aircraft. Owing to such precautions the Dutch ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... cause him to ride upon the back of a lame one. They dress up the former in the garments of Adam (such as God made for him in Paradise), and cover his face with the skin of the face of Rabbi Ishmael, the high priest, and adorn his neck with a precious stone. They illuminate the streets, and then lead the two men through the city, a herald proclaiming before them, "The account of our Lord was false; it is the brother of our Lord that is the deceiver! He that sees this festival sees it, and he that does not see it now will never see it. What advantage ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Moon for the body of the common people, considered as the King's wife; the Stars for subordinate Princes and great men, or for Bishops and Rulers of the people of God, when the Sun is Christ; light for the glory, truth, and knowledge, wherewith great and good men shine and illuminate others; darkness for obscurity of condition, and for error, blindness and ignorance; darkning, smiting, or setting of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, for the ceasing of a kingdom, or for the desolation thereof, proportional ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... this poor woman, to pray to God, though they were to be all Protestants at first, rather than they should continue pagans and heathens; firmly believing, that He who had bestowed that first light upon them, would farther illuminate them with a beam of his heavenly grace, and bring them into the pale of his church, when he should ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... some seal-fat, or blubber, along with him. A portion of this he now put into the lamp, and, placing the latter on a snow-shelf prepared expressly for it, he set it on fire. The flame, although not very steady, was bright enough to illuminate the large igloo, and to throw a strong gleam into the smaller one. Over this lamp Frank placed a small tin kettle, filled with snow, which was speedily converted into water; and while this was being ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... reasons oppose this idea, and keep me in doubt. She was not within hearing at the moonlight conference, and knew nothing of my having mentioned the Polish fete, or of her husband's having proposed to illuminate the bridge for me. Besides, I remember, the other day when she was reading the new French novel you sent me, she expressed great dislike to the sentimental fetes, which the lover prepares for his mistress. I would give more than I dare tell you, my dear ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... now joy in King Giglio's circle. Dancing, feasting, fun, illuminations, and jollifications of all sorts ensued. The people through whose villages they passed were ordered to illuminate their cottages at night, and scatter flowers on the roads during the day. They were requested, and I promise you they did not like to refuse, to serve the troops liberally with eatables and wine; besides, the army was enriched by the immense quantity of ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was in total darkness. The atom of gas that still remained alight did not illuminate a distance of three inches round the burner. I desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out even the darkness, and tried to think of nothing. It was in vain. The confounded themes touched on by Hammond in the garden ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the doors that open from it (a dozen or two) off their hinges, and a bare board on tressels for a table, at which thirty people might dine easily, and a fireplace large enough in itself for a breakfast-parlour, where, as the faggots blaze and crackle, they illuminate the ugliest and grimmest of faces, drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed chimney- sides by previous travellers. There is a flaring country lamp on the table; and, hovering about it, scratching her thick black hair continually, a yellow ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... When on this pile are heaped the countless hoards which my own now long life has gathered together, of my personal property, such as it is, and the correspondence of my family and my friends, and innumerable incidental windfalls, the whole forms a body that might make a bonfire to illuminate me nearly from hence to Penzance. And such a bonfire might perhaps be not only the shortest, but the wisest way to dispose of such materials. This enormous accumulation has been chiefly owing to a long unsettled home, joined to a mind too deeply ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... there can be no practical or direct evidence as to the origin of petroleum; therefore "theories are the only lights with which we can penetrate the obscurity of the unknown, and they are to be valued just as far as they illuminate our path." ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... is to illuminate our whole spiritual being, as the sun illuminates our physical being, and bring us into such union and sympathy, such oneness of thought, desire, affection, and purpose with God, that we shall, by a kind of spiritual instinct, know at all times the mind of God concerning us, ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... handsome face close to the little, elfish, even evil face of the child, and kissed it. Then the baby smiled a fatuous, toothless smile, and he also was transformed; his little glory of infancy seemed to illuminate the face marked with the labors and sins and degradation of his progenitors. The other Hungarian woman, who had with her one child, older than the baby, very large and heavy, caught it up and kissed it with fervor, and the child stared at her in return with a sort of patient ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... which done, the Lee Red-Box is left on the stairs of the Lee Tavern; Box locked again, and complete; only the Friedrich-Lee Secrets completely pumped out of it, and now rushing day and night towards England, to illuminate the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... transmittal to Washington in the spring. There were maps to be drawn, too; and a mass of interesting objects was gathered to illustrate the natural history of the route. This material had to be cleaned, prepared, assorted and catalogued, and packed for shipment, to accompany the report and illuminate its story, so that Mr. Jefferson might have a full understanding of what had been accomplished during the first year. The five months spent at Fort Mandan did not drag. The best part of the winter's work lay in the attitude which was taken ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... modesty and gentleness to illuminate your dream of an ideal wife, you chase the pleasant phantom to that shadowy home—lying far off in the future—of which she is the glory and the crown. I know it is the fashion nowadays with many to look for a woman's excellencies and influence—away ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... contorted body of the lieutenant lay and stood together at the stern of the monitor, staring at the sinister vessel they trailed behind them. It was a close, dark night that had only phantom flickerings of sheet lightning to illuminate it. The cuberta, a vague black triangle, rocked about in the steamer's wake, her sails bobbing and flapping, and the black smoke from the funnels, spark-lit ever and again, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... What know they of a critic in the palate, and a frame all revelry! And mark you, revelry in sobriety, containment in exultation; classic revelry. Can they, dear though they be to us, light up candelabras in the brain, to illuminate all history and solve the secret of the destiny of man? They cannot; they cannot sympathize with them that can. So therefore this division is between us; yet are we not turbaned Orientals, nor are they inmates of the harem. We are not Moslem. Be assured of it in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thought he would perish for not being understood, and perhaps did not understand him—called Donne with justice, might not be thought likely to be among the first letter-writers. The marvellous lightning-flashes of genius in a dark night of context which illuminate his poetry and his sermons, can hardly be expected—would indeed be almost out of place—in ordinary letter-writing. Moreover, Donne is, perhaps, with Browne, the most characteristic exponent of that magnificent seventeenth century style ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... which she had made to him. She was indulging these reflections, and continued sunk in the sleep in which the Sultan seemed to surprise her. All at once twenty slaves, carrying flambeaux, came to illuminate her apartment; they walked before the Sultan, who conducted by the hand and looked with kindness on the beloved son of the most virtuous of mothers. He had caused Shaseliman to be dressed in the most magnificent garments; ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... characteristic imaginative qualities of poetic were excluded. The ideas and propositions of rhetoric would most ineffectually reach an audience if they were not made vivid. That rhetoric is not thus made synonymous with poetic is due to the fact that in rhetoric the images exist to illuminate the concept, while in poetic they are woven into the movement of the plot. Oratory, like poetry, is emotional, as Longinus asserts.[81] Cicero phrases the aim of the orator as "docere, delectare, ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... light shining of the sempiternal brightness! O clear sun of justice and heavenly righteousness, come hither and illuminate the prisoner sitting in the dark prison ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... treatment is personal, fresh, and original throughout. Lucidity is unfailing. Learning is marshalled behind every paragraph, and almost behind every sentence, and yet is never obtrusive. The lectures are equally adapted to illuminate the scholar and to introduce the novice to the study of the mighty scheme of human affairs in its dynamic flow. The selection of detail is governed by consummate judgment; and frequently information drawn from sources alien to the matter in hand is dropped ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... people who had suddenly become incredible was indeed one of the most remarkable facts in English intellectual life during the opening phases of the war. The English state of mind was unlimited astonishment. There was an enormous sale of any German books that seemed likely to illuminate the mystery of this amazing concentration of hostility; the works of Bernhardi, Treitschke, Nietzsche, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, became the material of countless articles and interminable discussions. One saw little clerks on the way to the office ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... to you with such trophies," he objected, "you would tell me that the railroads belonged to the people and that the electric light only served to illuminate ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... admirable!" said Napoleon; "it is not just to paint everything dark, like Tacitus. He is certainly a skilful artist, a bold, seductive colorist, but above all he aims at effect. History wants no illusions; it should illuminate and instruct, not merely give descriptions and narratives which impress us. Tacitus did not sufficiently develop the causes and inner springs of events. He did not sufficiently study the mystery of facts and thoughts, did not sufficiently investigate ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... contrivance, the gas jet was suddenly lowered to the point of extinction, and, after a set period, as suddenly raised again. The chief superiority of this form of intermittent light is economy in the consumption of the gas. In the original design, of course, the oil continues uselessly to illuminate the interior of the screens during the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Oxford in especial made a brave show of its white roses. The Loyalists, who endeavored to do a similar honor to the birthday of King George, were often violently assailed by mobs. In many places the windows of houses whose inmates refused to illuminate in honor of the Chevalier were broken; William the Third was burned in effigy in various parts of London, and in many towns throughout the country. So serious at one period did the revulsion of Jacobite ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... happened to me, as you may well guess, for the years of childhood that followed, when I was learning to read, write, and illuminate, to sew, embroider, cook, and serve in various ways. My Lady Prioress found that I had a wit at devising patterns and such like, so I was kept mainly to the embroidery and painting: being first reminded that it was not ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... to company. I had all their blessings pronounced at once, as from one mouth. The melancholy brother was enlivened: who knows but the consequence of this alliance may illuminate his mind? I could see by the pleasure they all had, in beholding him capable of joy on the occasion, that they hoped it would. The unhappy situation of the family affairs, as it broke the heart of the eldest brother, fixed a gloom on the temper of ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... quotha. Why, there you word the key-note, you touch the cornerstone, you ruthlessly illuminate the mainspring, of an intractable unfeeling universe. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the palms extended and open, as about to confer some boon on those who approached the altar. These arms were formed of bronze, and being placed farther back than the altar with its incense, were seen through the curling smoke by lamps so disposed as to illuminate the whole archway. "The meaning of this," thought the simple barbarian, "I should well know how to explain, were these fists clenched, and were the hall dedicated to the pancration, which we call boxing; but as even these helpless Greeks use not their ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... beyond my grandfather, I know nothing. His forefathers had lived in Bedfordshire beyond memory, and sleep indistinguishable, I am told, in Wilstead churchyard. He was Radical, and almost Republican. With two of his neighbours he refused to illuminate for our victories over the French, and he had his windows smashed by a Tory mob. One night he and a friend were riding home on horseback, and at the entrance of the town they came upon somebody lying in the road, who had been thrown from his horse ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... he should redeem all the injury which fortune had done him. And in truth this man had been misused by fortune. His companion whispered in his ear, but he heard not a word of it. He increased the twelve to fifteen, and again won. As he looked round there was a halo of triumph which seemed to illuminate his face. He had chained Chance to his chariot-wheel and would persevere now that the good time had come. What did he care for the creature at his elbow? He thought of all the good things which money could again purchase for him as he carefully fingered the gold for the next stake. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... to the affairs of France. Mr. Burke's book has the appearance of being written as instruction to the French nation; but if I may permit myself the use of an extravagant metaphor, suited to the extravagance of the case, it is darkness attempting to illuminate light. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... died in torments, and their torments were imbittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses; others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to the fury of dogs; others again, smeared over with combustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were destined for the melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a horse-race and honored with the presence of the emperor, who mingled with the populace in the dress and attitude of a charioteer. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... connect with any of my thoughts or beliefs or habits; it was a wonder, a mystery, a discovery about myself, a discovery about the whole world. Only in after years did sexual feeling lose that isolation and spread itself out to illuminate and pervade and at last possess the whole ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... which these brilliant torch-lights illuminate my welcome among you, I can only acknowledge your kindness, on this occasion, by assuring you that to-morrow morning, by the light of the blessed sun, I hope to take everyone of you by the hand, and express feelings ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... and impetuous as his discourse was clear, logical, and original. The great crowd was electrified. It was as if a blade of lightning had shot down from the hot blue sky to illuminate the doubting recesses of their understandings. They murmured repeatedly "It is a collegian," "a collegian," and they thundered ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... feast (the splendour of which induced the Pope's legate to dissent from an opinion which he had hitherto held, that Scotland, namely, was the—the—the latter end of the world)—besides these, might I not illuminate my pages with Taylor the Water Poet's hunting in ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... they were all served. On the following Sunday, he ordered a butcher to supply each of them with a joint of meat. Riley has taken a house in Argyle Square; and, upon entering it, purposes to give a dinner to all the dustmen in London, and illuminate the front of ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... through your own heart comes the one light which can illuminate life and make it clear ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... idols. There were a few pieces of Chinese ivory work. There were many skins of lions, bears, and tigers on the floor, besides a great Persian rug which gleamed like a blurred jewel. Besides the firelight there was only one great bronze lamp to illuminate the room. This lamp had a red shade, which cast a soft, fiery glow over everything. There were not many pictures. The rich Eastern stuffs, and even a skin or two of tawny hue, covered most of the wall-spaces ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... while only a few of us who were on the inside knew what he was doing—our opera house, our bank, our newspaper, our telephone lines, our ice plant, and our power plant—which to-morrow night for the first time will illuminate the heavens. Think of it! electric lights in the midst of a desert that, since God made it, has known only the light of the stars. I maintain, gentlemen, that it is the duty of every soul in The King's Basin to be present at the celebration of the splendid ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... unassisted. Interest him in politics. He is a Tory and he loves me. Remind him constantly of the Whig inferno from which we have just emerged. I am sure he would write political pamphlets of incomparable influence. I have never heard Warner talk politics, but I don't doubt that his mind would illuminate that subject as it does everything else it touches. Fill the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... that they should be made as luxurious as heart could wish before many weeks had elapsed. But when, in the gloom of an autumnal evening, I caught my own face and figure reflected in all the mirrors, which showed only a mysterious background in the dim light of the many candles which failed to illuminate the great proportions of the half-furnished salon, I clung to M. de la Tourelle, and begged to be taken to the rooms he had occupied before his marriage, he seemed angry with me, although he affected to laugh, and so decidedly put aside the notion of my having any other rooms but these, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and make it intelligible at a glance from such and such a point of view, and I find after taking infinite pains to reproduce as many as I can of its numerous petals, and as much as possible of its complicated foliage, that I had not reckoned with the light which was to illuminate it, and that instead of displaying my work to advantage, it has blurred all its delicate forms into dusky and chaotic masses, would I not be foolish if I repeated such an experiment? Rather, I take the opposite extreme, and ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... find them out, and know them for our friends; These men who toiled and wrote only for this, To leave behind such modicum of truth As each perceived and each alone could tell. Silently waiting that from time to time It may be given them to illuminate Dull daily facts with pristine radiance For some long-waited-for affinity Who lingers yet in the deep womb of time. The shifting sun pierces the young green leaves Of elm trees, newly coming into bud, And splashes on the floor ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... he muttered to himself, "which, pretending to draw the curtain of futurity, misleads those whom it seems to guide, and darkens the scene which it pretends to illuminate! Who would not have said that I was that enemy most dangerous to Richard, whose enmity was to be ended by marriage with his kinswoman? Yet it now appears that a union betwixt this gallant Earl and the lady will bring about friendship betwixt Richard and Scotland, an enemy more dangerous ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... compensation which there is in Jesus Christ, the satisfaction for all our needs and desires, we do not need to trouble ourselves so much as we sometimes do about these changing things round about us. Let them come, let them go; let the darkness veil the light, and the light illuminate the darkness; let summer and winter alternate; let tribulation and prosperity succeed each other; we have a source of blessedness unaffected by these. Ice may skin the surface of the lake, but deep beneath, the water is at the same temperature in winter and in summer. Storms may ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, [1:77]to give a knowledge of salvation to his people, with a forgiveness of sins, [1:78]on account of the compassionate mercies of our God, by which a morning from on high has visited us, [1:79]to illuminate those sitting in darkness and the shade of death, to direct our feet in the way of peace. [1:80]And the child grew, and became strong in spirit, and was in the wilderness till the day ...
— The New Testament • Various
... large fire had been made, as much to answer the purpose of torches as for the use of their simple cookery; and at this precise moment it was blazing high and bright, having recently received a large supply of dried brush. The effect was to illuminate the arches of the forest, and to render the whole area occupied by the camp as light as if hundreds of tapers were burning. Most of the toil had ceased, and even the hungriest child had satisfied its appetite. In a word, the time was that moment of relaxation ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... my son Omar, that I send my stick unto thee by our trusty Kouaga. Return unto Mo on the wings of haste, for our throne is threatened and thy presence can avert our overthrow. Tarry not in the country of the white men, but let thy face illuminate the darkness of my life ere I go to the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... it gives other returns in generous measure. For teachers it is less difficult than for most people to preserve their faith in human nature, less impossible, even in the midst of daily routine, to believe in the dignity of labour, and to illuminate it with the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... separated and passed out into the silent moonlit streets of Rochester, all and each of them felt as if some great light had suddenly gone out, and life was changed to them. There was a mighty blank in space and a shadow everywhere, but spirit light came no more to illuminate the thick darkness. ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... I always felt in her presence became suddenly as acute as physical soreness, and the blush in her face served only to illuminate her consciousness of my difference, of my roughness, of the fact that externally, at least, I had never managed to shake myself free from a resemblance to the market boy who had once brought his basket of potatoes to the door of this ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... of bread which they had begged on the road, of some charitable soul. And they embraced each other more ardently still, when they were obliged to stop for the night in the open country, and shivered in the old, badly-closed vans, and had to be very sparing with the wood, and could not illuminate the snow with those large bivouac fires, whose smoke rises in such fantastic, spiral curls, and whose flames look like a spot of blood, at a distance, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... remained talking in the bright glow of the counter, face to face with the big mirror, in which the flasks and bottles of liqueurs were reflected like rows of Venetian lanterns. In the evening all the metal and glass of the establishment helped to illuminate it with wonderful brilliancy. The old maid, standing there in her black skirts, looked almost like some big strange insect amidst all the crude brightness. Florent noticed that she was trying to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... some of the thoughts which gleam out the present Book and illuminate the whole Odyssey. We can now consider structure of the Book, which falls into two distinct parts, determined by the Goddess. When she makes ready to quit Telemachus, we enter the second portion of the Book, and Telemachus continues his journey ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... harmoniousness of tint that surprises us, but there are no useless effects in it. In nearly all these frescoes (excepting the wedding of Zephyrus and Flora) the light spreads over it, white and equable (no one says cold and monotonous), for its office is not merely to illuminate the picture, but to throw sufficient glow and warmth upon the wall. The low and narrow rooms having, instead of windows, only a door opening on the court, had need of this painted daylight which skilful pencils wrought for them. And what movement there was in all those figures, what ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... will be, as long as Hypatia lives to illuminate the earth; and, as far as I am concerned, I promise you a clear stage and—a great deal of favour; as is proved by my visiting you publicly at this moment, before I have given audience to one of the four hundred bores, great and small, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... now near six—the sun for two hours past has been illuminating every thing about me: for that impartial orb shines upon Mother Sinclair's house as well as upon any other: but nothing within me can it illuminate. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... theme on which all alike become eloquent, the one strain of pathos in all their writing and speaking and thinking, concerns that final uncertainty, that utter blackness of darkness bounding their work on every side. If the light of Nature is to illuminate for us the Spiritual Sphere, there may well be a black Unknown, corresponding, at least at some points, to this zone of darkness ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... table; at the right of this is shown the table for the absorption system, and at the left the chair calorimeter with the balance for weighing subjects above it. The mercury-vapor light, which is used to illuminate the room, is immediately above the balance for ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... window-curtains, which were of Indian muslin lined with rose-colored taffeta, and set off with a fringe of poppy-color and black. Six silver-gilt arms, each supporting two candles, were attached to the tapestry at an equal distance, to illuminate the divan. The ceiling, from the middle of which a lustre of unpolished silver hung, was of a brilliant whiteness, and the cornice was gilded. The carpet was like an Oriental shawl; it had the designs and recalled the poetry of Persia, where the hands of slaves had worked on it. The furniture ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Amongst the treasures of the ladies of my family, her letters have been honoured with a volume to themselves. I read about a half of them myself; then handed over the task to one of stauncher resolution, with orders to communicate any fact that should be found to illuminate these pages. Not one was found; it was her only art to communicate by post second-rate sermons at second-hand; and such, I take it, was the correspondence in which my grandmother delighted. If I am right, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lager for the two places of which he claims the monopoly. He would sell his creed for less. Miriam is dying to ask him what he has done with the Confederate uniform he sported before the Yankees came. His son says they are all Union men over there, and will "lemonate" (illuminate) to-night. A starving seamstress opposite has stuck six tallow candles in her window; better put them in ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... difference, outwardly, between him and scores of other boys who jostled one another in the narrow, crowded thoroughfares. But under the shabby jacket of Michael Faraday beat a heart braver and tenderer than the average; and, under the well-worn cap, a brain was throbbing that was destined to illuminate the world of science with a light that would never ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... you may chance—let me say on a New Year's night—on the village church all ablaze with light. The garrison have decorated the gaunt old Norman arches with laurels and evergreens; they have cleared out the market-vendor's stock of tallow-dips to illuminate the church wherewithal. The band has been practising the glorious Nun Danket alle Gott for a week; the vocalists of the regiments have been combining to perfect themselves in part-singing. The gorgeous trumpery of Roman Catholic ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... conspiracy to soften, mellow, and clothe its external blemishes of breach and accident, its irregular design, its additions, accretions, ruins, and lapses with a harmonious charm of outline and color; poets, romancers, and historians had equally conspired to illuminate the dark passages and uglier inconsistencies of its interior life with the glamour of their own fancy. The fragment of menacing keep, with its choked oubliettes, became a bower of tender ivy; the grim story of its crimes, properly edited by a contemporary bard of the family, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... gentlemen-investors will, at the nearest, come no nearer representing the material needs and interests of the common run than a parable comes to representing the concrete facts which it hopes to illuminate. And as bears immediately on the point in hand, these gentlemanly administrators of the nation's affairs who so cluster about the throne, vacant though it may be of all but the bodily presence of majesty, are after all gentlemen, with a gentlemanly sense of punctilio ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... protuberances in its head, which look like its eyes. It is called the lantern-fly in English, and lives in South America. The light it gives is so bright that you can read a book by it. The natives employ them in place of candles to illuminate their rooms while performing their domestic work. We have seen one exhibited in a room where eight gas-burners were in full blaze, and yet its two great demoniac-looking eyes (or what appeared to be eyes) shone more ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... human laws and natural sympathy would hold society together. As reasonably might we believe that were the sun quenched in the heavens, our torches would illuminate, and our fires quicken and fertilize the creation. What is there in human nature to awaken respect and tenderness, if man is the unprotected insect of a day? And what is he more, if ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... regards the artist of the Beautiful as one of the chief God-revealers to the race of which he is a portion; which sees in the great musical artist, or the sculptor, or the painter, a God-inspired man, bringing down the grace of heaven to illuminate the dull grey planes of earth. The artists should be the prophets of our time, the revealers of the Divine smothered under the material; and were they this, they would be regarded with love and ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... lengths. Then a slit was made between the middle points of the sides of the squares next to each other, so that there was a narrow path or trough joining the squares between their adjacent sides. Inside the dark room he arranged a bright light so that it would illuminate this trough, but not be seen by a person seated some distance in front of the window in the next room. A needle (D) was hung on a pivot behind the cardboard, so that its point could move along the bright trough in either direction; and on the needle was put ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... hopelessness. On the third day he smiled; it was in recess that she detected him at it. An organ-grinder's monkey in the school-yard called it forth, a sweet, glad smile, which lit up his dense features as the sun at twilight will pierce through and illuminate for a few minutes a sullen cloud-bank. Miss Willis saw in a vision on the spot a refuge from hopelessness. Behind that smile there must be a winsome soul. That spiritless expression was but a veil or rind hiding the germs of ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... table became greatly scandalised by Buckland's conversation and manners. The professor, seeing this, became more outrageous than ever, and on parting with Lyell for the night took the candle and placed it between his teeth, so as to illuminate the mouth-cavity exclaiming, 'There Lyell, practise this long enough and you will be able to do it as well as I do.' When Buckland had retired, the stranger revealed himself to Lyell as an old friend of his father's, adding 'I hope you will never be seen in the company of that buffoon again.' ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... moment, as though trying hard to finish on a warmer, more generous note. Perhaps some faint flicker of recollection revived in him. But it could only illuminate a horrifying indifference. He went out without so much ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... result will be meagre in comparison with the capabilities of the subject. The study of the text should always be supplemented by a series of practical experiments. Actual observations and actual experiments are as necessary to illuminate the text and to illustrate important principles in physiology as they are in botany, chemistry, or physics. Hence, as supplementary to the text proper, and throughout the several chapters, a series of carefully arranged and practical experiments has been added. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell |
