"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Berg knew well that all this geniality was like the ripple and sparkle that play above deep waters. Occasionally he found Miss Burton's eyes directed towards himself in a way that caused him deep anxiety, and he had an uneasy consciousness that she was reading his innermost ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... it from me! Nothing sporty or cake-walky, you understand: just quiet and dignified and rich-like, same as any second vice or gen'ral manager would wear. Two-button sack with wide English roll and no turn-up to the trousers—oh, I should ripple! ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... of strategy! The only strategy, the Master knew, as—panting a little, with thick, black hair glued by sea-water to his head—he flattened himself into a little depression in the sand, where the first ripple ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... native soil, under its own torrid skies. So he made up a bed for its roots out of burned loam and peat; the great lazy leaves were allowed to float at their ease in a tank of water, to which a gentle ripple was imparted by means of a water-wheel, and then a house of glass, of a beautiful device, was built over it all, and the right temperature kept up to still further deceive ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... leave me here to die of drought? I have brought thee the Gorgon's head at thy bidding, and hitherto thou hast prospered my journey; dost thou desert me at the last? Else why will not these immortal sandals prevail, even against the desert storms? Shall I never see my mother more, and the blue ripple round Seriphos, and the sunny hills ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... glided over each ripple, and reed, and closing water-lily; over her face, where the hood had fallen back from her loosened hair; over one hand trailing the water, and the other touching the flower at her breast; and, just above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cuts. They represent three of the spots that stud the Southern Pacific Ocean. The first beams with lovely luxuriance in its wood-crowned heights; while the second and third rise from the bosom of the sea in frowning sterility amidst the gay ripple that ever and anon laves their sides, and plashes in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... into a roar of applause and a ripple of hand clapping ran over the arena from the appreciative performers. They wholly forgot themselves in their surprise and approval of ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... way at the same time with us. Having washed down decks and got breakfast, the two vessels lay side by side in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which since sunrise had been unbroken by a ripple. At length a few whiffs came across the water, and by eleven o'clock the regular northwest wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and were ready for a start upon the first sign of a breeze. Often ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... step divine; And Agni's boon was this, that he would come Whenever Nala called—for everywhere Hutasa shineth, and all worlds are his; Yama gave skill in cookery, steadfastness In virtue; and Varuna, King of Floods, Bade all the waters ripple at his call. These boons the high gods doubled by the gift Of bright wreaths wove with magic blooms of heaven; And those bestowed, ascended to their seats. Also with wonder and with joy returned The Rajas and the Maharajas all, Full of the marriage-feast; for ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... battalions, this balcony, this flag and this speech was a calm, magnificent prospect-trees green and charming, mountains of superb shape, a cloudless sky, the ocean without a ripple. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Sometimes a field became fairyland as I walked through it; or a tree poured out a scent that its blossoms never had before or after. I think now that those must have been moments when you too were in like contact with earth,—had your feet in grass which felt a faint ripple of wind, or stood under a lilac in a drench of fragrance that had grown double ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... his voice died away upon the night, and there was no sound but the soft ripple of the water under keel. In the bow sat the girl, motionless as a crouched Indian, her face ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... 'white wave' (Laughing water)—the purest of all the maids that have been named from the sea-foam or the rivulet's ripple, unsullied,—not the troubled and troubling Aphrodite, but the Leucothea of Ulysses, the guiding ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... a little house so near the sea that at high tide I can see on my bedroom wall the reflected ripple of the water. At night I waken to the melodious welter of waves; or maybe there is a great stillness, and then I know that the sand and sea-grass are lying naked to the moon. But soon the tide returns, and once more I hear ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... half-past four and five that Miss Grierson, driving in the basket phaeton, made her appearance on the streets, evoking the usual ripple of comment among the gossipers on the Winnebago porch as she tooled her clean-limbed little Morgan to a stop in front of the Farmers' ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... death but something passes on and migrates to another equally transitory tenement. Neither Brahmans nor Buddhists seem to contemplate the possibility that the human soul may be a temporary manifestation of the Eternal Spirit which comes to an end at death—a leaf on a tree or a momentary ripple on the water. It is always regarded as passing through many births, a wave ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the river flowed between walls not over four hundred and fifty feet apart at the top. The current was about three miles an hour, with scarcely a ripple, though it appeared much swifter because of the nearness of the cliffs. At the end of seven miles of winding canyon, there came a sharp turn to the east, which brought into view, at the other end, another canyon of nearly equal proportions and ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the bench permitted the slightest ripple of anxiety to disconcert his steadfastness of gaze just then pandemonium was ripe for breaking in his courtroom. But the judge looked down with imperturbable calm as though this were the accustomed procedure of his court, and when a margin of pause had intervened to ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... led to remove hundreds of police officials, capitalists, royalties, and others. They have been poisoned, shot, and dynamited, in the belief that their removal would benefit humanity. Yet nothing would seem to be quite so obvious as the fact that their removal has hardly caused a ripple in the swiftly moving current of evolution. Others, often more forceful and capable, have immediately stepped into their places, and the course of events has ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the birds sing for joy, but, being partly human, he needed an instrument, so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to sit by the shore of the island of an evening, practising the sough of the wind and the ripple of the water, and catching handfuls of the shine of the moon, and he put them all in his pipe and played them so beautifully that even the birds were deceived, and they would say to each other, 'Was that a fish leaping in the water or was it Peter playing leaping fish on his pipe?' ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... threw herself face downward upon the bunk. And, in the edge of the timber, Vil Holland turned his horse slowly about and headed him up the ravine. At the notch in the hills he slipped to the ground and, throwing an arm across the saddle, removed his Stetson and let the night wind ripple his hair. Standing alone in the night with his soul-hurt, he gazed far downward where a tiny square of yellow light marked ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... was becalmed. Anne, Amanda and Amos looked over the smooth stretch of water, but there was not a ripple to be seen. Since sunrise, the boat had not moved. They had made the start at midnight, as they had planned, and had sailed away under a fair wind; but before the sun rose the wind had died away, and the mainsail now swung back and forth and ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... of it. And the garden down below, and the ling all round it, seemed all to be trembling and drifting on a song. For the twilight was full of a song that sang and rang along the edges of the World, and the green garden and the ling seemed to flicker and ripple with it as the song rose and fell, and an old woman was singing it down in the garden. A bumble-bee sailed across from over the Edge of the World. And the song that was lapping there against the coasts of the World, and to which the stars were dancing, ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... Hemming ordered the sail to be lowered. By this they had a better chance of seeing the felucca without being seen. The lieutenant stood up and slowly moved round, scanning every part of the horizon. The land breeze had now completely died away, and there was not a ripple on the water, though the slow moving glassy undulations which came rolling in and constantly rocking the boat, showed that they were not floating on an inland lake. Jack and Adair began to fear that the felucca was not in sight, when Hemming slowly sank down into his seat again, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... Silent, alone he crossed the maidan wide Where first he saw the sweet Yasodhara, Where joyful multitudes so often met, Now still as that dark valley of his dream. He passed the lake, mirror of heaven's high vault, Whose ruffled waters ripple on the shore, Stirred by cool breezes from the snow-capped peaks; And heedless of his way passed on and up, Through giant cedars and the lofty pines, Over a leafy carpet, velvet soft, While solemn voices from ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... individual endured only as long as its delivery lasted. He gained personal distinction only as a virtuoso. The permanent elements of what he presented, the material, the ideas, even the style and metre, already existed. 'The work of the singer was only a ripple in the stream of national poetry. Who can say how much the individual contributed to it, or where in his poetical recitation memory ceased and creative impulse began! In any case the work of the individual ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... lived in a dim castle on the edge of the ocean, but so far above the water that the flying spray never reached its lowest terrace; and only the strongest-winged seagulls could circle its towers and turrets. It was a strange, melancholy, beautiful place, where the light shimmered on the walls like the ripple of water, and in the shadows of the massive walls the flowers waved all day in the sea-wind like little princesses who ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... tones were pure And tender as a summer night, The full moon climbing to her height, The sob and ripple of the seas, The flapping of an idle sail; And then by sudden and sharp degrees The multiplied, wild harmonies Freshened and burst into a gale; A tempest howling through the dark, A crash as of some shipwrecked bark. A loud ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... half pitying his suffering, half impatient of his obtuseness. As he turned away, her gaze rested on his sunburnt neck, rising from the collar of his blue flannel shirt, and she saw that his hair ended in a short, boyish ripple that was powdered with mill-dust. A sudden tenderness for him as for a child or an animal ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, This autumn morning! How he sets his bones To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet For the ripple to run over in its mirth; Listening the while, where on the heap of stones The white breast of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... fear of being thwarted by the brush; then into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... Sandstone of Scotland, though decided traces of desiccated sub-aerial ones are not rare. Shallows and banks seem to have been numerous during the period of at least the Lower formation. The flagstones of Caithness and Orkney, and the argillaceous fish beds of Cromarty and Ross, not only abound in the ripple-marked surfaces of a shallow sea, but also in cracked and flawed planes that must have dried and split into polygonal partings in the air and the sun. The appearance of these in the neighborhood of the town of Thurso, about half a mile to the east of the river, is not a little curious. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... turned her face a little and nodded. "Yes, Alaska," she said, and the old captain fancied there was the slightest ripple of a tremor in her voice. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... dawn ushered in the morning on which the great and all-absorbing event was to take place. A clear sky, a sea so calm that scarce a ripple was to be seen, every sail spread to its utmost capacity, and the mellow tints of the rising sun playing over and investing them with a majesty of outline at once grand and imposing. And yet the massive hull scarce moved, so gentle was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... if I were in a dream. The people were unreal—stretching away from me in long, sloping rows, their white faces staring at me from the darkness beyond the great lights. And there was a little ripple that ran through them as I went out, as if a great many people, all at the same ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... a glorious day. The sea had scarcely a ripple, and the sky scarcely a cloud. The fish seemed to vie with one another in falling upon the bait. The view of Templeton from the sea was perfect, and the sharp outline of the Sprit Rock above them ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... no longer saw her tears, he heard them. They fell swiftly one after another, like the ripple of the rain. A sob broke from her, but in it was something which foretokened peace, the sob which comes to those who have conceived a despairing hope, and suddenly intercept its fulfilment. Her hands trembled; the little ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... Talbot and the Duchess of Devonshire, and scarlet satin sacks and diamonds and ostrich-plumes, and the King's kissing Mrs. Adams,—little Mary's blue eyes grew larger and larger, seeing far off on the salt green sea, and her ears heard only the ripple and murmur of those waters that earned her heart away,—till, by-and-by, Miss Prissy gave her a smart little tap, which awakened her to the fact that she was wanted again to try on the dress which Miss Prissy's nimble fingers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... generation after the battle of Pydna, the Roman State enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there upon the surface. Its dominion extended over three continents; all eyes rested on Italy; all talents and all riches flowed thither; it seemed as if a golden age of peaceful prosperity ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... so thick that it was not possible while standing at the wheel to see the forecastle. Aloft, all the heavens were hidden in a canopy of sickly gray; beneath, the sea showed the same color. Its glassy surface exhibited not a ripple. A small space only surrounded the vessel, and beyond all things were ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... doctor's energies congealed, though but for an instant or two. Then he threw off hat and coat, and stood alert and resolute to dive to Julius's rescue when he rose, while those who manned the yacht prepared to cast a buoy and line. Not a ripple or flash of water passed unheeded; the flood of sunshine rose fuller and fuller over the world; moments grew to minutes, and minutes swelled to hopeless hours under the doctor's weary eyes, till it seemed to them as if the universe ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... glistening like gray ice, unbroken save in this place. The gray strand on which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the wall. Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean banked over with an all-concealing mist. Not a ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my danger was not of the common dangers of mankind, but that which freezes the blood of man when he draws near the supernatural; ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... would a generation that strung together sonorous couplets, and compiled them into a book to Enforce the Practice of Virtue, place such a ripple ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... July sun was shining down on the red parasols, the light dresses, the joyous faces and on the ocean, barely stirred by a ripple. When we were out of the harbor, the little vessel swung round the big curve and pointed her nose toward the distant shore which was barely visible through the early morning mist. On our left was the broad estuary of the Seine, her muddy water, which never mingles ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in what he saw to guide him, nothing which offered the least suggestion of a path. In the darkness the tall waving grass took a nondescript hue which reached unbroken for miles around. Occasionally the greensward seemed to ripple in the breeze, like water swayed by a soft summer zephyr, but beyond this the ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... big, deep, brass basin, with a pale blue- green light floating in the centre like a night-light. Round that basin the man on the floor wriggled himself three times. How he did it I do not know. I could see the muscles ripple along his spine and fall smooth again; but I could not see ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... happy, was in equal abundance. Every bush was loaded with rich, ripe berries; and never, in the memory of the oldest Teton, had the woods been so stocked with game, or the waters so frequently made to ripple with the gambols of the nimble fish. The boy of twelve summers could feed all his father's children with the spoils of his feeble bow and tiny arrows, and the daughter of six would pluck more berries from the prairie and hill-side, in the space of half a sun, than could ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the highest Alps, trickles through a natural channel hidden under the trees and eaten through the rock, escaping below through a gap without a sound. The watery sheet overhanging the fall glides so gently that no ripple is to be seen on the surface which mirrors the chaise as you drive past. The postboy smacks his whip; you turn past a crag; you cross a bridge: suddenly there is a terrific uproar of cascades tumbling together ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... hour, feeling hot and ashamed and troubled with perplexing thoughts, and listening to the jingle of money in the adjoining room, mingled with the ripple of laughter and sometimes the exchange of angry words. At length the agent came back, saying, "Vell, vat can I do for ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... are mistaken," said Max, impatiently, tossing the dagger to the floor and stepping back from the duke. A soft ripple of laughter was heard in the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... ranchers, and he had paid a fair price for them and had shipped them openly, under the eye of the stock inspector, to the El Paso Meat Company. So far he had kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, and had waited until some ripple on the surface betrayed the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... victims forward crowned with flowers, Crowned were tame crocodiles, and boys white-robed Guided their creaking crests across the stream. In gilded barges went the female train, And hearing others ripple near, undrew The veil of sea-green awning: if they found Whom they desired, how pleasant was the breeze! If not, the frightful water forced a sigh. Sweet airs of music ruled the rowing palms, Now rose they glistening and aslant reclined, Now they descended, and with one consent Plunging, seemed ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... the seas, but when the gods tried to launch it they could not move it an inch. The great vessel creaked and groaned, but no one could push it down to the water. Odin walked about it with a sad face, and the gentle ripple of the little waves chasing each other over the rocks seemed ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... isle of memory, lighted by the morning star of life! where the roses bloom by the door, where the robins sing among the apple blossoms, where bright waters ripple in eternal melody! There are echoes of songs that are sung no more; tender words spoken by lips that are dust; blessings from hearts that are still. There's a useless cradle, and a broken doll; a ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... star-pierced, at remoter depths of night. Here, now and then, a stray gull from the sea sends a flying throb of white light across the mirror below, or the sweeping wings of a hawk paint their moth-like image on the blue surface, or a little flaw of wind shudders across the water in a black ripple; but except for these casual stirs of Nature, all is still, oppressive, and beautiful, as earth seems to the trance-sleeper on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the shrubbery he came out to meet her, giving her his hand with a frank, easy air and a pleasant smile. His smile was as bright as the ripple of the sea, and his eye would then gleam, and the slightest sparkle of his white teeth would be seen between his lips, and the dimple of his chin would show itself deeper than at other times. "It is very good of you. I thought you'd come. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... is by itself. It's the centre of everything. It's all Venice and a living creature besides—something like a person's heart. Of course I don't mean the gondolas on the souvenir spoons!" she added, with the little ripple, that was so much prettier than a definite smile. Decidedly, Miss ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... invited me, and I stood and smoked upon it, listening to the ripple of the half-golden, half-shadowy water, watching the revolutions of the green old wheel. I had laid out my plan of action. On my return to the inn I would insist on an interview with Miss Falconer, and would tell her that either she must return with me ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... fell upon a deer. He raised his head and gazed upon the light. Burr moved with the boat without making a ripple and finally he held the boat with his oar and ordered me to fire. This I did, and the deer ran for the shore, Burr pushed his boat to the quag, took the jack, and followed the track. At the distance of about fifteen rods he found the deer unable to move. Burr applied his knife to the throat ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... I'll not," replied the master. "I am very warmly dressed. Come!" This last in a tone of command that made the ghost ripple. ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... sxelo, sxelajxo. Ring (intrans.) sonori. Ring ringo. Ring (a circle) rondo. Ringleader instigulo, instiganto. Ringlet buklo, harleto. Ringworm favo. Rinse laveti, gargari. Riot tumulto, ribelo. Riotous tumulta, ribela. Rip sxiri. Ripe matura. Ripen (intrans.) maturigxi. Ripple ondeto. Rise (ascent) altajxo. Rise (origin) deveno. Rise (in price) plikarigxo. Rise (get up) levigxi. Risible ridinda. Risibility ridindeco. Rising (revolt) ribelo. Risk riski. Rite ceremoniaro. Rival ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... eagle mewed in a sea-stopped cave: He, poised in darkness with victorious wings, Keeps night between the granite and the sea, Until the tide has drawn the warder-wave: Then from the portal where the ripple rings, He bursts ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... I'm here. He has gone to Saria and will not be back till late. I was horribly irritable this morning, so he thinks I'm all right now." A ripple of amusement broke her voice ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... there were daily bulletins of her condition published always in more and more remote corners of the paper, until the little ripple that had been made in the stream of life passed; and no further mention was made of the matter save occasionally when they sent for some famous specialist: when they took her to the shore to try what sea air might do; or when they brought ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... turning fled back to the village. Hot and panting from my exertions, I stood still, but sooner still the pheasant had pulled herself up and stood there, about three yards from my feet, as if nothing had happened—as if not a ripple had troubled the quiet surface of her life! The serenity of the bird, just out of that storm of violence and danger, and her perfect indifference to my presence, was astonishing to me. For a minute or two I stood still watching her; ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... pieces, and sending the splintered fragments to beat against the tall cliffs or strew the shore! But the sea was now placid and beautiful, with the sun making his beams glance off the heaving waves in far spreading rays, while the tiny retiring wavelets left their marks upon the sand in little ripple-marks, covered all over with the casts ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... placed on arrival. The night was beautiful and starlight, and, our repast over, the awning was removed, and we sat out enjoying our cigars in the cool night breeze blowing in fresh and strong from the sea. The quiet ripple of the waves as they broke on the sandy beach had a soothing effect very favourable to reflection (and baccy), and the lights of the little fishing village twinkling at the foot of the black and rugged peak of ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... predecessors and of anything approaching an eager band of successors, suggests an unpreparedness for the discovery when it came. Thus Calisto and Melibaea (1530), an imitation of a Spanish comedy of the same name, though it contained a definitely evolved plot, sent barely a ripple over the surface of succeeding authorship. It represents the steadfastness of the maiden Melibaea against the entreaties of her lover Calisto and the much more crafty, indeed almost successful, wiles of the procuress, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... out upon the river that wus sweepin' along under sun and moon, bearing on every wave and ripple the glory and beauty ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... found playthings I could not carry in my pocket. These have remained with me all my life. The path we leave behind us is the one we oftenest tread. One little brook still flows through my heart. I feel it, I hear its smothered ripple, not meant for hearing, and I ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... overpowering serenity, watched him turn his head slowly from side to side with a "majestical countenance," as his enemies confessed, as if he were on the point of speaking. Silence seemed to radiate out from him, spreading like a ripple, outwards, until the furthest outskirts of that huge crowd was motionless and quiet; and then without apparent effort, his voice began ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... stratum of existence; you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps lose, at last, the realization of your own inhuman plight, and are received, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Pool, past the floating Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea—when every sound of the tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit—exemplifies in the most striking way the rapidity and instinctive ease of ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... sandstone and shale often retain what is called the ripple-mark—that is, the corrugation of surface produced by the gentle agitation of shallow water over sand or mud. We can see these appearances beneath our feet, as we walk over the pavement of almost any of our cities. Such slabs are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... for religious services, came also the ministers of other denominations. We all labored together in harmony, except in one instance, where a conflict of appointments caused a momentary ripple. My appointment had long been established, and, to the surprise of the people, another appointment was announced by a young store-keeper of the village for the same hour. The word reached me of this attempt to displace the Methodists, when ten miles distant from ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... laughed again, through her tears, that enchanting ripple of a laugh that closed her eyes and made her ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... and play On their twangling harps In a sea-green day; Down where the mermaids, Finned and fair, Sleek with their combs Their yellow hair ... Bates and Giles— On the shingle sat, Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called—called—called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy sigh. Then glum and silent They sat instead, Vacantly ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... than within the area of a mile around this pulpit. Dark minds from which God is obscured; deluded souls, whose fetish is the dice-box or the bottle; apathetic spirits, steeped in sensual abomination, unmoved by a moral ripple, soaking in the slump of animal vitality. False gods, more hideous, more awful, than Moloch or Baal; worshipped with shrieks, worshipped with curses, with the hearth-stone for the bloody altar, and the drunken husband for the immolating priest, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... on a July night of the same summer, the air being hot and heavy. In the darkness the ripple of the river Tormes can be heard over the ford, which is near the foreground of ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... over the blue sea, like a swan skimming over a tranquil lake. As seen at that distance, she appeared a mass of white canvas; nor did she cause a ripple on the calm, mirror-like surface. On she came, till her deck seemed almost beneath the rock, and the young Italian fancied, in her eagerness, that she could see the countenances of those who walked it, and could distinguish the ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... said that religion seemed to be a matter of concern. The audience wore a look of interest, and, even after their first gaze of admiration and whispered criticism at the splendors of their new church, when at length the clergyman entered to begin the service, a ripple of excitement swept across the field of bonnets until there was almost a murmur as of rustling cornfields within the many ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... there," he shouted back again, pointing downward to the Havre Gosselin. I did not wait for any further information, but darted off down the long, steep gulley to the little strand, where the pebbles were being lapped lazily by the ripple of the lowering tide. Tardif's boat was within a stone's throw, and I saw Olivia sitting in the stern of it. I shouted again with a vehemence which ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... mountains in the south had grown dark on their eastern side, and the plain of the sea was like a lake of blood, with the heavy hull and masts of the coaster grown large and solemn and distant. There was scarcely a ripple around the rocks at their feet to break the stillness of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... change—mysterious, illusive. There were no words for this that had transpired. But for the moment, one thing only was certain. The night was no longer voiceless, the dark was no longer empty. Far off there, beyond the reach of vision, unlocalised, strange, a ripple had formed on the still black pool of the night, had formed, flashed one instant to the stars, then swiftly faded again. The night shut down once more. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... there were starless nights with only a red moon to shine through cloudy skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded in black velvet, when the dusky sea parted silently to let the boat pass through, and then closed behind it with no laugh or ripple of water to speed it onward, breathlessly still nights of fathomless darkness. The ship's master, burdened with visions of coral reefs on a chartless coast, failed to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of sailing unknown seas in limitless darkness, and either anchored on such nights, or paced back ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... to be, a sea of whitish, coarse grass, with here and there a low clump of bushes (behind one of which we are halted as I write this). One can see a vast distance over the surface. Along the north horizon there is a ripple of small hills and kopjes, looking blue, with the white grass-land running up to them. It is a comparatively cool morning with a few light clouds in the sky and a pleasant breeze. On our left is the railway, and all along on our right, extending far ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... upon the clerk, over Dangerfield's shoulder, with a cynical light, as if he were on the point of making one of his ironical jokes; but he turned back again with a little whisk, the jest untold, whatever it was, to the ripple and the fly, and the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... breed Thought in me beyond all telling; Shootest through me sunlight, seed, And fruitful blessing, with that welling Ripple of ecstatic rest, Gurgling ever ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... more sand than water at most times round Scarthey. For miles northward the wet strand stretches its silent expanse, tawny at first, then merging into silver grey as in the dim distance it meets the shallow advance of briny ripple. Wet sand, brown and dull, with here and there a brighter trail as of some undecided river seeking an aimless way, spreads westward, deep inland, until stopped in a jagged line by bluffs that spring up abruptly in successions of white ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Hopeful of rest, ripple on to the shore; Dimpling with light, as they waver and quiver, Echoing faintly the ocean's wild roar. Locked in the arms of the tremulous waters Nestles an island, with beauty abloom, Where the warm kiss ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... politics of the Near East hinge on it, even when it doesn't appear so on the surface. You see, the Jews have international affiliations through banks and commerce. They have blood-relations everywhere. A ripple here may mean there's a wave in Russia, or London, or New York. I've known at least one Arab blood-feud over here that began with a quarrel between a Jew and ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... in the next room had not stirred. The dumfounded husband sat motionless under pretence of listening. His wife made a despairing gesture. He motioned to hearken a moment more; but no human sound sent a faintest ripple across the breathless air; the earth was as silent as the stars. Still he waited—in vain—they ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... clear and so light was the summer air that the one cloud in the eastern quarter of the heaven was the smoke cloud left by a passing steamer three miles distant and more on the invisible sea. When the voices of the pleasure party were still, not a sound rose, far or near, but the faint ripple at the bows, as the men, with slow, deliberate strokes of their long poles, pressed the boat forward softly over the shallow water. The world and the world's turmoil seemed left behind forever on the land; the silence was ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... rain we may often observe, at the lower end of a furrow, a handful of washed and neatly deposited mud or sand, capable of serving as an illustration of the way in which Nature has produced the deltas of the Nile and Ganges. In the ripple-marks on sandy beaches of the present day we see Nature's exact repetition of the operations by which she impressed similar features on the sandstones of the carboniferous era. Even such marks as wind-slanted rain would in our day produce on ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... every social group he encountered, whether on the street or in the parlor. Serene and buoyant of temper, cordial and winning of language, charitable and tolerant of opinion, his very presence diffused a glow of confidence and kindness. Wherever he went he left an ever-widening ripple of smiles, jests, and laughter. His radiant good-fellowship was beloved and sought alike by political opponents and partisan friends. His sturdy and delicate integrity, recognized far and wide, had long since won him the blunt but hearty sobriquet of "Honest Old Abe." But it became noticeable ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... reader will hardly return to Doctor —— with pleasure. Chaucer with as thin a jest could have made an admirable poem, for the interest would have been distributed by his lightness of touch, by his descriptive power, by slyness, by geniality, by a changeful ripple of enjoyment over the entire piece. With Browning, when we have arrived at the apex of the jest, we are fatigued by the climb, and too much out of breath to be capable of laughter. In like manner few persons ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush: The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze 75 Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... a brief wire from Station Six. Three weeks later the Free Gold Mining Company set up a mild ripple of excitement along Broad Street by exhibiting in their office window a forty-pound heap of coarse gold; raw, yellow gold, just as it had come from the sluice. Every day knots of men stood gazing at the ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... unhooded the cherished hunting-bird, Eleanor gave her a toss into the air, and both sat their horses, eagerly watching her flight. Aloft she soared, the little bells singing like fairy chimes—then dropped like a plummet. There was a ripple in the undergrowth where she pounced, she was recalled to her perch, and presently Marcel, smiling broadly, came up with the woodcock, its gray- brown feathers hardly even ruffled, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... down upon the lady's knee and she is watching the tears trembling on his drooping lashes and wondering, with a little thrill of pain, if he has a sweetheart in his own land, of whom he is so sadly dreaming. She thanks him for the song in a voice low and sweet as the musical ripple of the sacred river among the reeds—she dazzles him with her great Egyptian eyes, those ebon orbs in which ever lurks the sensuous splendor of a summer night's high moon. Her hand strays carelessly ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... taken complete possession of the body as well as the limbs, and a strange ripple ran just under ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... proves that you've not seen Mistress Judith Ogilvie." A faint ripple, that might have been laughter, shook the boy's words. "All men are servants to Mistress Ogilvie, all men who have laid ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... 1998 an assassination attempt was made against President SHEVARDNADZE by supporters of the late former president Zviad GAMSAKHURDIA. In October 1998, a disaffected military officer led a failed mutiny in western Georgia; the armed forces continue to feel the ripple effect of the uprising. Georgia faces parliamentary elections this fall, and presidential elections next spring. After two years of robust growth, the economy, hurt by the financial crisis ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... image of her came back to him. Where would those eyes be, conspirators with the lids above them and the merry fluctuations of the brows; where would those lips be, from which the laughter never quite vanished, even as the ripple of the ocean's edge tries how small it can get but never dies outright; where the great coils of black hair that would not go inside any ordinary oilskin swimming-cap; where the incorrigible impertinence and flippancy be we never liked to miss a word of; where, in short, would Sally be if she ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... a little more whispering and significant glances exchanged among the pupils, not a ripple disturbed the calm of the study hall. It was therefore a distinct and not altogether pleasant surprise when Miss Thompson walked into the room, dismissed the senior class and requested the three lower classes to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... itself. Pierre swung along with Jean by his side, his heart full of happiness. He had had a good winter's hunt and his wife had money for everything necessary. But more than anything else he wanted the golden sunshine, the ripple of the waters in the stream, the curved body of the salmon as they darted out of the water in their eagerness to get up the streams. He told his boy that though they had come out for game, he really ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... enveloped in reeds, and at a loss which way to go, the soft ripple of breaking waves struck my ear like sweet music. The sea was telling me of its proximity. Carefully balancing myself, I stood up in the cranky canoe, and peering over the grassy thickets, saw before me ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop |
