"Spark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door should be pillaged. Their verdict was, in effect, "Serve God right, for creating the Germans!" The incident would have been impossible in a country where the Church was as powerful as the Church of England, had it had at the same time a spark of catholic as distinguished from tribal religion in it. As it is, the thing occurred; and as far as I have observed, the only people who gasped were the Freethinkers. Thus we see that even among men who make a profession ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... "it cannot be there is a creature who loves evil for its own sake. That were quite to extinguish the heavenly spark. Judge not unhappy Master Spikeman so harshly. Commend me to the love of Mistress Eveline," she added, rising, "when you see her, and say that I wear her ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... saw I France and Holland say'd Cales won, And Philip and Albertus half undone, I saw all peace at home, terror to foes, But oh, I saw at last those eyes to close. And then methought the clay at noon grew dark, When it had lost that radiant Sunlike Spark; In midst of griefs I saw our ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... good sense of our rural population is made in all sincerity and with the hope that it will be heeded by every man who has a spark of patriotism in his soul, and who dares show it in his labors by setting up a few milestones in the form of nut-bearing trees along the roadsides—if for no other purpose than the present pleasure of anticipating ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... the keynote of success in courtship. When the current became balanced in negative and positive qualities, the desirable equilibrium recognized by each pole as the real thrill of mutual romance, jealousy and despair would spark, blow out the fuse and short-circuit into a proposal and an acceptance. Jim was negative in desire and positive in appearance, thus securing neutrality, and my passive state was the resultant of a positive inclination and a negative exterior. Thus Jim ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... passes!" exclaimed Bernard the Dane. "Our young Lord is no monk, and we will not see each spark of noble and knightly spirit quenched as soon ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wasn't for the carburetor rubbing on the spark plugs," she said plaintively, "I'd get the Doric in spite of everything. Did you ever see such blue eyes ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... Kerry, a faint spark of his old truculency lighting up the weary eyes. "The man from Whitehall only ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... servitude, which arises from those, that are unjust? Which arises from those African wars, that relate to the present subject? The African princes, corrupted by the merchants of Europe, seek every opportunity of quarrelling with one another. Every spark is blown into a flame; and war is undertaken from no other consideration, than that of procuring slaves: while the Europeans, on the other hand, happy in the quarrels which they have thus excited, supply them with arms and ammunition for the accomplishment of their horrid ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... Well! this will indeed be a tryal of one's patience; and who must go with us on this expedition? Mr. Johnson!—he will indeed be the only happy person of the party; he values nothing under heaven but his own mind, which is a spark from heaven, and that will be invigorated by the addition of new ideas. If Mr. Thrale dies on the road, Johnson will console himself by learning how it is to travel with a corpse: and, after all, such reasoning is the ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... to produce frictional or "static" electricity, of which the quantity is usually small, and is therefore now produced chiefly for laboratory experiments. When the wheel at the left was turned sufficient electricity was generated to cause a spark to jump between the two hands at the right. This machine paved the way for the invention of the dynamo electric machines for which Schenectady is ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... my knowledge of these and after-events I believe with truth, that this occurrence was the spark that started the terrific explosion in United States Steel, for not long afterward some unknown and mysterious power began that formidable attack on Steel stock which left Wall Street full of the unattached ears, eyes, noses, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Disraeli were the spark that fired the train. In answer to a request from Miss Jessie Boucherett, Mrs. Bodichon and Miss Bessie R. Parkes, Mr. Mill replied that if they could find a hundred women who would sign a petition ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... numbers, finally enlarging the hole in the net to such an extent that at length it was big enough to permit the passage of a man, when one after another they began to force their way through. It was at this precise moment that the spark of the burning fuse reached the powder, which of course instantly blew up, igniting the hundred or so of cartridges that remained in the case, and scattering the bullets in them in all directions. ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... these be all dead corpses, but I will examine each if there be any spark of life remaining. Go ye into the houses, and if there be any sound persons within, bid them, in the name of humanity and their own safety, come forth and help to bury their brethren. If they are suffered to lie here longer, every soul in ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 'tinted face.' If he brings them within three days, I will take the silver with my left hand and give the girl with my right. But after three days, it matters not at all to me that three times seven are twenty-one; Lord or no Lord, I shall beat out this young spark with my broom, and you must ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... raised his hand out of old habit acquired in preaching, and a ray from the after-glow of the sunken sun lit up the jewel in the apostolic ring he wore, warming its pale green lustre to a dim violet spark as of living fire. His fine features were for a moment warm with fervour and feeling,—then,—suddenly, he thought of the great world outside all creeds,—of the millions and millions of human beings who neither ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... 1820 has a separate interest of its own, connected with the character of the very celebrated person to whom it chiefly relates; but we notice it chiefly as the real occasion, the momentary spark, which, alighting upon the combustibles, by this time accumulated everywhere in Greece, caused a general explosion of the long-hoarded insurrectionary fury. Ali Pacha, the far-famed vizier of Yannina, had long been hated profoundly by the Sultan, who in the same proportion loved and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... tow, and the maker as a spark. From the house of every citizen, lately vocal with the praises of the Protector, issues a subject ready to welcome his king with the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... said, striding about the room; "and then she is so petty, always these absurd squabbles. She hasn't got a spark of love for God or man. That's at the root of it all. We don't want a person of that sort here. If she cared about the people, even if she did pauperize them, I might think her a fool, but I could respect her; but you know she doesn't care ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... spark is seen to shoot out from one of the circling cavaliers, which rising rocket-like into the air, comes in parabolic curve ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... all those qualities of prudent forethought, with prompt execution and attention to business, which was so necessary in controlling the irritable Alexandrians, who were liable to be fired into rebellion by the smallest spark. Justice was administered fairly; the great were not allowed to tyrannise over the poor, nor the people to meet in tumultuous mobs; and the legions were regularly paid, so that they had no excuse for ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the state of Nanny's mind as early as the end of August, when this dialogue with Mr. Tomms occurred, you may imagine what it must have been by the beginning of November, and that at that time a very slight spark might any day cause the long-smouldering anger to flame forth in ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... his wrongs grew changed To a darker and fiercer hue, Till the horrible shape it sometimes wore At last familiar grew; There was darkness all within his heart, And madness in his soul; And the demon spark, in his bosom nursed, Blazed ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... much like a man. I felt as though I was some fellow without a single spark of manhood in my whole make-up. I thought of mother; what would she say if she knew I had broken my promise to her? I had promised her when father died never to take a drink in all my life. I knelt ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... Not the slim green pamphlet with the imprint of Andrew Elliot, for which (as I see with amazement from the book-lists) the gentlemen of England are willing to pay fancy prices; but its predecessor, a bulky historical romance without a spark of merit and now deleted from the world.—[R. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you say that by looking at her with longing eyes I shall be guilty of breaking some one of the ten commandments—I don't know which—why, then, hands off at once. That's fair, and will prove to you that, although not a parson like yourself, there is still a spark of honor, if not of goodness, ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... Heerden sat by the side of the big four-poster bed, where the girl lay, and his cold blue eyes held a spark of amusement. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... is the only rational guarantee of that human brotherhood which is being so strongly—or, at least, so loudly—insisted on to-day. Man, that is to say, is not identical with God, any more than a son is identical with his father; but man is consubstantial, homogeneous, with God, lit by a Divine spark within him, a partaker of the Divine substance. As in nature we discern God revealed as Power, Mind, Will, Purpose, so in man's moral nature, and his inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction according as he does or does not approach a certain moral standard, we discern ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... increasing the pressure. Malthus, again, has proposed that parents should be responsible for their children. That is, says Hazlitt, Malthus would leave children to starvation, though he professes to disapprove infanticide. He would 'extinguish every spark of humanity ... towards the children of others' on pretence of preserving the 'ties of parental affection.' Malthus tries to argue that the 'iniquity of government' is not the cause of poverty. That belief, he says, has generated discontent and revolution. That ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... they are but a few of the vital actions constantly taking place—are the instant result of one gasp of life-giving air. No subject can be fraught with greater interest than watching the first spark of life, as it courses with electric speed "through all the gates and alleys" of the soft, insensate body of the infant. The effect of air on the new-born child is as remarkable in its results as it is wonderful in its consequence; but to understand this more ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... and but for the spark who had the impudence to thrust his nose into what didn't concern him, I'd have had her safe. But I've made amends. I've ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... footstool. Trifles affect women curiously, and often most irresistibly when some agitation sways them. The sight of the old hassock vividly recalled Charlie, for he had kicked it on the night she never liked to remember. Like a spark it fired a long train of recollections, and the thought went through her mind: "I fancied I loved him, and let him see it, but I deceived myself, and he reproached me for a single look that said too much. This feeling is very different, but too new and sudden to be trusted. I'll neither ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... news that they were quarreling, breaking up, and dispersing. So much for the whisky of the emigrants! Finding themselves unable to drink the whole, they had sold the residue to these Indians, and it needed no prophet to foretell the results; a spark dropped into a powder magazine would not have produced a quicker effect. Instantly the old jealousies and rivalries and smothered feuds that exist in an Indian village broke out into furious quarrels. They forgot the warlike enterprise that ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... common gunpowder; the "Ticker" containing thus a powder which equals in force two hundred pounds of the common gunpowder. At one end of the machine is fastened an invisible clock-work meant to regulate the time of the explosion, which time may be fixed from one minute to thirty-six hours. The spark is produced by means of a steel needle which gives a spark at the touch-hole, and communicates thereby the ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... eye look love, and 't will disarm him Of all the evil passions with which he Hath mailed his soul in terrible array. Think not to tame the wild by brutal force. As well attempt to stay devouring flames By heaping fagots on the blazing pile. Go, do man good, and the deep-hidden spark Of true divinity concealed within Will brighten up, and thou shalt see its glow, And feel its cheering warmth. O, we lose much By calling passion's aid to vanquish wrong. We should stand within love's holy temple, And with persuasive kindness call men in, Rather than, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... Anna possessed great vital energy, and with her to think was to act. She saw that the delicate, slender young mother and the child must both die, unless she could find some means of getting them warm. There was an abundance of dead wood close by, if she could only start the first spark of fire. Pushing her way a few yards into the forest, she brought out a quantity of dead grass and resinous wood, and continued striking two stones together until at last the spark came, and a good fire soon blazed high, ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... have not destroyed my Scottish poem. I mean to remodel it, and infuse into it something more of the spark of living life. But my pen has of late strayed into the regions of prose. Poetry is too much its own reward; and one cannot always write for a barren smile, and a thriftless clap on the back. We must ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... rejoined Almos. "For lives are sometimes lost in accidents. Instant death defies all our science, and will not be conquered. But in accidents, no matter how serious, where a spark of life remains, we can prevent that from escaping until the body is in a condition to ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... of gaunt and barren rock, a shot was fired at her, and flew within a hair's breadth of her brain; she never even looked around to see whence it had come; she knew it was from some Arab prowler of the plains. Her single spark of light through the half-veiled lantern passed as swiftly as a shooting-star across the plateau. And as she felt the hours steal on—so fast, so hideously fast—with that horrible relentlessness ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... spark and a report away down in a field of maize, some six hundred yards below us, and the whizz of ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... with even greater horror than it deserves, because they cannot understand this; the attraction of risk, and the wild joy of "pulling off" something when the chances are against one, are unknown to them. It is the same with the love of liquor. Richard Luscombe had not a spark of that (his father left him one of the best cellars in England, but he never touches even a glass of claret after dinner; "I should as soon think," he says, "of eating when I am not hungry"); but ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Amadis de Jocelyn, say of it and of her "mother" if he knew! He looked at her sideways now and then, curiously moved by mingled pity, admiration and desire,—the cruelty latent in every man made him long to awaken the first spark of passion in that maidenly soul,— and with the full consciousness of a powerful personality, he was perfectly aware that he could do so if he chose. But he waited, playing with the fire of his own inclinations, and talking lightly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... enough," said Harry, working while he talked. "You see, the motor itself can't be hurt unless you take an axe to it, and break it all up! But to start you've got to have a spark—and you get that from electricity. So there are these little wires that make the connection. He didn't cut them, thank Heaven! He just disconnected them. If he'd cut them I might really have been up a tree because that's ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... which he had to struggle before he won at last the fame he deserved. And the conclusion to which I came, after having read them most attentively and conscientiously, was that it is often a great misfortune to possess that divine spark of genius which now and then touches the brow of a few human creatures and marks them for eternity with its fiery seal. Had Balzac been one of those everyday writers whose names, after having been for a brief space of time ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... halted for a moment, then in a meandering tone—"You have read perchance in story-books," he said, "of love being born from the first meeting of two pairs of eyes, as a spark is born of flint and steel, and you may have laughed at the conceit, as I have laughed at it. But laugh no more, Gaston; for I who stand before you am one who has experienced this thing which poets tell of, and which hitherto I have held in ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... along the river and raced wordlessly the greater part of the remaining half mile to the Bar L-M corrals. When they drew rein in the wide clearing in which stood range house, bunk house, stables and corrals, there was no spark of light about. They unsaddled swiftly, turned their horses loose with a resounding slap to send them out toward the little enclosed pasture, and went up to the range house. At the door of the men's quarters ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... that the interior was on fire. The alarm was immediately given, but almost before the people had time to assemble, the whole edifice was wrapped in flames. From a defect in the construction of the chimney, a spark from the stovepipe had probably communicated with the surrounding wood work, and from the combustible nature of the materials, the flames spread with a celerity that made every effort to arrest ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... were like waves of delicious music to my being, and for whom I had a surpassing tenderness. And yet all these were a mere handful compared to the numbers who denied my existence, and who had wilfully crushed out and repelled every spark of my essence in themselves. And as I contemplated this, the voice I had heard at the commencement of my dream rushed towards me like a mighty wind broken ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... extinguisher which Heaven holds suspended over the city of Rome, stifles even the subtle spark of passion. If Vesuvius were here, it would have been cold for the last forty years. The Roman princesses were not a little talked of up to the end of the thirteenth century. Under the French rule their gallantry assumed a military complexion. They used ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... marriage the most perfect union on earth,—the sweetest and most blessed companionship; but when it is a mere gust of fire, bright and fierce as the sudden leaping light of a volcano, then it withers everything at a touch,—faith, honor, truth,—and dies into dull ashes in which no spark remains to warm or inspire man's higher nature. Better death than such a love,—for it works misery on earth; but who can tell what horrors ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... expect that no other force, save that of association, should have power to kindle, so to speak, into the flame of action the atomic spark of memory, which we can alone suppose to be transmitted ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... that are his birthright. Less willingly do we do this when homage, however unwilling and reluctant, has been paid. But we have our duties to ourselves and to our submitted subjects to consider, and it is not meet to send firebrands alight into the world, when a spark may raise so fierce a conflagration, and when hundreds of lives have to pay the penalty of one mad act of headstrong youth. It is your youth that shall be your excuse from the charge of graver offence, but those who ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... thousands of acres of valuable timber. All this terrible loss is due to one careless man who, in the first place, should not have been smoking cigarettes, and in the second place should have known better than to throw a spark into ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... foundation is from a real accident which happened among my acquaintance.[82] A young gentleman of a great estate fell desperately in love with a great beauty of very high quality, but as ill-natured as long flattery and an habitual self-will could make her. However, my young spark ventures upon her, like a man of quality, without being acquainted with her, or having ever saluted her, till it was a crime to kiss any woman else. Beauty is a thing which palls with possession; and the charms of this lady soon ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... clothes on them, being kept in a constant sweat. Yet these same persons, after lying in this situation awhile, till the pores of their bodies were as perfectly open as possible, were of a sudden taken out and put into some of the churches of New York, without covering, or a spark of fire, where they suffered as much by the cold as they did by the sweating stagnation of the air in the other situation; and the consequence was that they took such colds as brought on the most fatal diseases, and swept them ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... and water to ice, so is Brahma variously transformed and diversified, without aid of exterior means of any sort. The human soul, according to the Vedas, is a portion of the supreme ruler, as a spark is of ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... beg you, if it be your will, To grant the Prince his pardon after all: Fulfil it ere an odious deed be done. You know that every army loves its hero. Let not this spark which kindles in it now Spread out and wax a wild consuming fire. Nor Kottwitz nor the crowd he has convened Are yet aware my faithful word has warned you. Ere he appears, send back the Prince's sword, Send it, as, after all, he has deserved. One piece of chivalry the more ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... good from every paper, as the bee from every flower; and the National Intelligencer, too, which is edited by a North-Carolinian: and that the fire should blaze out all at once in Essex, one thousand miles from where the spark is said to have fallen. But if really taken from the Raleigh Register, who is the narrator, and is the name subscribed real, or is it as fictitious as the paper itself? It appeals, too, to an original book, which is burnt, to Mr. Alexander, who is dead, to a ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... her lethargy by appeals of different kinds. She certainly was not an intellectual woman, though she had a strong and well-cultivated mind, and was accomplished in many ways,—society accomplishments, with a view to the admiration they might win. He could seem to strike no electric spark, though he succeeded in restoring her to health. Every week of her stay at Depford Beach, she had improved; but there was the old, dreary, listless life. She used to think herself, if some shock like that of an earthquake could lift her completely out ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... however, were by no means limited to sensual or frivolous enjoyments. His appreciation of the bottle was combined with an equally hearty sensibility to more intellectual pleasures. He had not a spark of philosophic or poetic power, but within the ordinary range of such topics as can be discussed at a dinner-party, he had an abundant share of liveliness and intelligence. His palate was as keen for good talk as for good wine. He was an admirable recipient, if not an originator, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... in coarse silk, the poorer in bunting or whatever they could get. The iron hoops here and there built into the walls for that purpose, held long pine-sticks, to be lighted as torches after dark; and they would need careful watching, for a great deal of the city was built of wood, and if a spark lighted on the walls, a serious fire might be the result. In the numerous balconies which projected from the better class of houses sat ladies dressed in their handsomest garments on the Thursday morning, and below in the street stood men and women packed tightly into a crowd, waiting for the ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... 'Tis love, combin'd with guilt alone, that melts The soften'd soul to cowardice and sloth; But virtuous passion prompts the great resolve, And fans the slumbering spark of heavenly fire. Retire, my fair; that pow'r that smiles on goodness, Guide all thy steps, calm ev'ry stormy thought, And still thy bosom ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... heartless. Will he deny him a grateful recollection when he reads of how much good he was permitted to achieve in the Church of Christ; of how many a doubting heart he reassured; of how many a soul he fired with a true spark of Christian love; when he reads of how the monk preached the faith of Christ, and how often he led some wandering pilgrim into the path of vital truth by the sweet words of the dear religion which he taught; ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the inquisitor, the Jesuit, these were the lords of Spain,—sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed and fed the dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed and fed the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble nation to bigotry, dark, blind, inexorable as the doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a rich, strong nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... of its mark, but the intrepid sheriff loaded quickly and again attempted to fire, but he spilled the powder from his pan, and the spark did not ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... historically and spiritually, our religion sustains from this doctrine. Of minor importance, yet not to be overlooked, are the forced and fantastic interpretations, the arbitrary allegories and mystic expansions of proper names, to which this indiscriminate Bibliolatry furnished fuel, spark, and wind. A still greater evil, and less attributable to the visionary humour and weak judgment of the individual expositors, is the literal rendering of Scripture in passages, which the number and variety of ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... arm she held, sprang through the doorway, and headlong down the bluffy steep, stones rattling about her. She leaped into the car. Would her memory serve her? Would she forget some detail that she must know? There were two levers under the steering-wheel. She advanced her spark and partly opened the throttle. From the steady, comfortable purr which had undertoned all sounds in the tiny glen, the machine burst at once into a deep-toned roar. The narrow depression vibrated ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... as if remembering that Betsy had asked her a question. "Any man could strike a spark from his flint and steel that he had for his gun. And he'd keep striking it till it happened to fly out in the right direction, and you'd catch it in some fluff where it would start a smoulder, and you'd blow on it till ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... a tear for you, you big dope, but I won't," Sandra retorted. "What do you want to be, besides the brain and the kingpin and the balance-wheel and the spark-plug of the outfit? Do you want ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... tell you again," she says, still gently, but with some natural indignation, "that if I knew you for ever and ever, I could not feel for you even the faintest spark of affection of the kind you mean! I would not marry you for all the bribes you could offer. It is not your fault that it is so, nor is it mine. You say 'try' to love you. Can love be forced? Did ever any one grow to love another through trying? You know ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... believed him to be guilty, but his sister never would believe it. She lives for him and suffers with him. Hawthorne does not mitigate the unpleasantness of her appearance, but he instructs us that there is a divine spark glowing within. Very pitiful is her attempt to support the enfeebled brother by keeping a candy store; but noble and heroic is her resistance to the designs of her tyrannical cousin. It is her intrepidity that effects the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... whole to comprehend, Part join'd to part, concurring to one end. If thou to earth, but turn'st thy wrathful eyes, Her basis trembles, and her offspring dies. Thou smit'st the hills, and at th' almighty blow, Their summits kindle, and their entrails glow. While this immortal spark of heav'nly flame, Distends my breast, and animates my frame, To thee my ardent praises shall be born, On the first breeze, that wakes the blushing morn: The latest star shall hear the pleasing sound, And nature, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... to have ever so faintly sketched Ebbo's career through the ensuing troubles; but the history of the star and of the spark in the stubble seemed to need completion; and the working out of the character of the survivor was unfinished till his course had been thought over from the dawn of the Wittenberg teaching, which must have seemed no novelty to an heir of the doctrine of ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fashion, yes," said he, without a spark of shame. "The chateau was in rather a dilapidated condition, and she insisted on its restoration. It was also necessary to spend a great deal of money in the effort to secure for herself a certain position in society. My own position was not sufficient for her. She wanted ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... fears and scruples, of a dread that she could not make articulate even to herself. Having finished, she would lean out into the night. The Colonel, his black figure cloaked against the dew, would be pacing up and down the lawn, with his good-night cigar, whose fiery spark she could just discern; and, beyond, her ghostly dove-house; and, beyond, the river—flowing. Then she would clasp herself close—afraid to stretch out her arms, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... they are called. For the first conformation goeth forth through that Spark of the most refulgent Light-bearer,(869) and goeth down beneath the hair of the head, assuredly beneath those ...
— Hebrew Literature
... enter with me through the little door which I will open to you; it gives admittance to a great house, often maligned, but better far than its reputation. That threshold once crossed, you can rise to the height of your natural genius, whatever its spark may be. Statesmen, kings even, will admit you to their most secret thoughts; you will be their occult collaborator, and none of the joys which money and the highest powers can bestow upon a man will be lacking ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... to his car, jumped into the driver's seat, and advanced the spark. The purr of the motor ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... engage his attention by strenuous efforts, loud, earnest tones, gesticulations and signs, and a constant presentation of some visible object of bright color and striking form. The eye wanders, and the spark of consciousness and intelligence which has been fanned into momentary brightness darkens at the slightest relaxation of the teacher's exertions. The names of objects presented to him must sometimes be repeated hundreds of times before he can learn them. Yet the patience and enthusiasm ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... words circulated in a low tone, still, it is true. "The mystery! the mystery!" they murmured, in hollow voices. Heads began to ferment. A tempest, which was only rumbling in the distance as yet, was floating on the surface of this crowd. It was Jehan du Moulin who struck the first spark from it. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the spark to the powder; by to-morrow the devastation would be complete. That, she knew full well. And he—the man she loved above all else in life—in order to escape must seek safety with those others! All those others—men! men! men! ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Milt. Frankie followed Pop's eyes and saw the look Milt returned. Then the spark of understanding that passed between them. Odd, Frankie thought. What understanding ...
— Vital Ingredient • Gerald Vance
... property and their nearest relatives were not won over by the opening of gardens, the distribution of bread, or the promise of games and gifts. The catastrophe had been too great and unparalleled. Others, in whom was hidden yet some spark of love for the city and their birthplace, were brought to despair by news that the old name "Roma" was to vanish, and that from the ashes of the capital Caesar would erect a new city called Neropolis. A ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... instantly carried below, and, the most inflammable materials being thrown together in piles along her lower deck, were set on fire. The thick wreaths of smoke which ascended assisted to conceal the party in their rapid retreat, the more rapid as they could not tell at what moment a spark might enter the magazine and blow them all into ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... not a drop of gasolene in the tank, you will recall. Even the water in the radiator was low. I lifted the hood. Some one must have tampered with the carburetor. It was adjusted so that the amount of air in the mixture was reduced. More than that, I don't know whether you noticed it or not, but the spark and gas were set so that, when I did put gasolene in the tank, I had but to turn the engine over and it went. In other words, that car had been standing there, the engine running, until it simply stopped for want of fuel." He paused ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... stammering, that she had not been destined in the first place for the throne of France, and that this want of forethought had injured her education; then, feeling a spark of courage in her heart, she said that the late Queen had more than once confided to her that the Court of France was disorderly in its fashions, because it was never the princesses who gave ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... his troops in an entrenched camp before Capua. The whole country was rising against the invaders; and, in spite of lost battles and abandoned fortresses, the Neapolitan Government if it had possessed a spark of courage, might still have overthrown the French army, which numbered only 18,000 men. But the panic and suspicion which the Government had fostered among its subjects were now avenged upon itself. The cry of treachery was raised on ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... It is from this cause that thousands commit suicide, both men, women, and girls. It is the continual gnawings of the conscience over the secret sins and crimes they have not the moral courage to confess. Like the hidden spark of fire in a bale of cotton, it continues its ravages until the whole bale is reduced to ashes. This will account in great measure for the hundreds and thousands of unaccountable suicides of to-day, which are principally confined to ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn
... blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires. Nor public flame nor private dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! Lo! thy dread empire Chaos is restor'd, Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... was dizzy and reeling. The aching misery lay heavy on his heart, and yet one faint spark of hope lingered amid the black despair, the natural buoyancy of his nature that refused even to submit to the ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... of it now the hour, if it was an hour, was simply a background for Delia More. For it was not only Calliope and I who responded to Abel's light-hearted talk, but, little by little, it was Delia too. Perhaps it was that faint spark in her—fanned to life on the night of her coming home, so that she "took stock"—which we now divined faintly quickening to Abel's humour, his wisdom, even his fancies. Save in her bitterness, on that first night, I had not heard her laugh; and it ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... almost moved in words other than those of the playwright—words that told her he knew the height and the depth of her sacrifice and forgave it, "Neither do I condemn thee...." In his exultation he saw what it was to perform miracles, to remit sins. The spark of divinity that was in him glowed to a white heat; the woman on the stage warmed her hands at it in two consciousnesses. She was stirred through all her artistic sense in a new and delicious way, and wakened in some dormant ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... you watch the level of the water (in F), you will see that the gas will rise. I will now close the stop-cocks, as I have drawn up as much as the vessel can hold, and being safely conveyed into that chamber, I will pass into it an electric spark from this Leyden jar (L), when the vessel, which is now quite clear and bright, will become dim. There will be no sound, for the vessel is strong enough to confine the explosion. [A spark was then passed through ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... artificial assistance of a speaking-trumpet to throw its sound beyond the ordinary distance; thought requires a similar artificial conductor. You remember," said Franklin, "in my early experiments with the kite and key, I could not obtain the spark until I had established the necessary attraction, although the air was filled with the electric current. So of the thought-electricity, which is constantly flowing; we have to apply means to concentrate ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... creature's neck. Tibo had shuddered at the sight, but he had thrilled, too, and for the first time there entered his dull, Negroid mind a vague desire to emulate his savage foster parent. But Tibo, the little black boy, lacked the divine spark which had permitted Tarzan, the white boy, to benefit by his training in the ways of the fierce jungle. In imagination he was wanting, and imagination is but another name ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bridge had express orders to pass his bayonet through the body of the rash man if he was unable to answer the questions of this last sentinel. These rigorous precautions were rendered necessary by the vicinity of these terrible powder magazines, which a single spark might blow up, and with it the town, the fleet, and ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the coolest fellow I ever heard of. He not only proposes to complete Macaulay's 'Lays' by some new ones, but to re-edit and correct the original Lays, which, he says, 'are very irregular.' His own verses have not a spark of poetry or fire in them; they are mere trash, and ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... feared to see their country devastated by war. The grand duchy of Warsaw, ceded in 1807 to the King of Saxony under the Treaty of Tilsit, was the only province of the ancient Poland which retained a spark of national spirit and was somewhat attached to France, but what was the use of this little state to the ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... hold quick, and break this fellow's clasp," he cried, briefly. "The girl retains a spark of life yet, but the man's arms fairly ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... sooner quitted the room, than the petty-fogger, in a whispering tone, asked Mrs Whitefield, "If she knew who that fine spark was?" She answered, "She had never seen the gentleman before."—"The gentleman, indeed!" replied the petty-fogger; "a pretty gentleman, truly! Why, he's the bastard of a fellow who was hanged for horse-stealing. He was dropt at Squire Allworthy's door, where ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of years— The prim old maid, and, by her side, her Niece, Full of bewitching beauty, health, and love. See, how the tabby watches Laura's eyes, Lest they should smile upon some pleasing spark, And violate grim prudery's tyrant ties. With icy finger, she her charge directs, To view the faithful dial of the sun, Whose moral tells how tide and time pass on. See, there—the fated victim of mischance; Read, in that hollow eye, and alter'd look, The deep anxiety which gnaws the heart, Incessant ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... for Harry. Making clay crocks. How to glaze or vitrify them. The use of salt in the process. A potter's wheel. Uses of the wheel. Its antiquity. Inspecting the electric battery. How it is connected up. Peculiarities in designating parts of the battery. Making the first spark. Necessary requirements for making a lighting plant. The arc light. What arc is and means. The incandescent light. Why the filament in bulb does not readily burn out. Oxygen as a supporter of combustion. Carbon, how made. Essential of the invention of the arc light. Determine again ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... at any rate no possibility that he should divide with a Tigellinus the direction of his still youthful master. He was by no means deceived as to the position in which he stood, and the few among Nero's followers in whom any spark of honour was left informed him of the incessant calumnies which were used to undermine his influence. Tigellinus and his friends dwelt on his enormous wealth and his magnificent villas and gardens, which could only have been ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... and Hal could see that the gasoline flow had been turned on nearly to the full capacity. It was the poor ignition work that was making the motors respond so badly. A little less, and a little less, of the electric spark that burned the gasoline, and air mixture—that was the secret of the gradually decreasing speed, while all the time it looked as though the "Farnum" was doing her level best to win ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... O'Trigger. If any gentlemen opposed the piece from that idea, I thank them sincerely for their opposition; and if the condemnation of this comedy (however misconceived the provocation) could have added one spark to the decaying flame of national attachment to the country supposed to be reflected on, I should have been happy in its fate, and might with truth have boasted, that it had done more real service in its failure, than ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... showers towards the close of that month, continues, with little interruption, throughout the full season. The immense mass of vegetation with which the fertile soil loads itself during the summer is suddenly withered, and the whole earth is covered with combustible materials. A single spark of fire falling anywhere upon these plains at such a time, instantly kindles a blaze that spreads on every side, and continues its destructive course as long as it finds fuel, these fires sweeping on with a rapidity which renders it hazardous even ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Rappahannock rivers. John married a Miss Anne Pope, of the same county, and took up his residence on Bridges Creek, near where it falls into the Potomac. He became an extensive planter, and, in process of time, a magistrate and member of the House of Burgesses. Having a spark of the old military fire of the family, we find him, as Colonel Washington, leading the Virginia forces, in co-operation with those of Maryland, against a band of Seneca Indians, who were ravaging the settlements along the Potomac. In honor of his public services and private virtues the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... water-colour drawing, perhaps the most neglected is that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most wonderful works, though unfinished. If you examine the larger white fishing-boat sail, you will find it has a little spark of pure white in its right-hand upper corner, about as large as a minute pin's head, and that all the surface of the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will begin ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame in the young heart. "You can sew so much of yourself into your star," she went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, "that when you are an old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the others. Good-by! Come up to the parsonage ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... woman sternly, "you are right for once. You won't indeed believe ill of YOUR husband, but you'll have to believe ill of MINE. There's no use of your putting on such airs any longer. No matter how rash and silly you may have been, if you have a spark of honesty you'll be open to proof. If you and he try to brazen it out, the law will open both your eyes. Look at that likeness, look at these letters; and I have other proof and witnesses which can't be disputed. The name of ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... young spark has not been in evidence during the past few days at any rate," he commented, and his voice was not so nonchalant as he imagined, because Mrs. Paxton looked ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... darken history's page, I've made them rulers of the world in many a by-gone age. They all have shown a human turn, from Nero down to you, But now my life-long dream of a super fiend at last seems coming true. I've watched you since the faintest spark blazed in your mother's womb, I've watched your hypocritic grief, beside your father's tomb; I know the tainted blood that flows thru your each and every vein That shows up in your withered arm, and feeds your ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... conversation on the result of which depended peace or war; for it is a point agreed among the Highlanders, that if Lochiel had persisted in his refusal to take arms, the other chiefs would not have joined the standard without him, and the spark of rebellion must have ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... A spark shot out of Madeline's great, black eyes. Then she laughed unpleasantly. "There's something in the wind besides ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... brave and Washington was great; but there was more behind—more than your school teaching ever led you to suspect, if your schooling was like mine. I imagined England as being just one whole unit of fury and tyranny directed against us and determined to stamp out the spark of liberty we had kindled. No such thing! England was violently divided in sentiment about us. Two parties, almost as opposed as our North and South have been—only it was not sectional in England—held ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... duties of quartermaster and commissary, his experience did not kindle in him any new love for his profession, nor any ardor of military glory. He had not revealed the possession of extraordinary talent, nor any spark of genius. He accounted the period of great value to him in his later life, but his heart was never enlisted in the cause for which the war was made. His letters home declared this. When he came to write his memoirs, speaking of the annexation of Texas, he said: "For myself ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... own degradation, I do not know. I fear not; and if not, then centuries of repression had borne their legitimate fruit. But in the simple human feeling, and still more in the undertone of sadness, which pervaded his stories, I thought I could see a spark which, fanned by favoring breezes and fed by the memories of the past, might become in his children's children a glowing flame of sensibility, alive to every thrill of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... signs of this was the cessation of his accustomed labors; but while doing nothing (with him how plain a proof that nothing could be done), he would frequently anticipate a coming period of his usual industry. His mind, while any spark of its reasoning powers remained, was busy with its old day-dreams—the History of Portugal—the History of the Monastic Orders—the Doctor—all were soon to be taken in hand in earnest—all completed, and new works ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... is not always that we may light a camp-fire," said Pierre Porteret to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his tinder with the flint and steel which a ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood |
